Use Case: Recent Episodes
JPK
Exploring the start up world in India and learning from some of the most accomplished entrepreneurs, investors, and CXOs in India. Part of turnaround.substack.com
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For over five decades, Azim Hashim Premji has been one of the trailblazers of India Inc. Taking over his family business of vegetable oils at the young age of twenty-one after the untimely demise of his father, he built one of India's most successful software companies along with a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate. As of 2019, he was the tenth richest person in India, with an estimated net worth of $7.2 billion. Yet, the one facet of the man which has overshadowed even his business achievements is his altruism. He’s given away most of his wealth!
In this episode, we’re joined by Sundeep Khanna, veteran journalist, and author of the book “Azim Premji: The Man Beyond the Billions”. Sundeep peels the layers off Premji's life while chronicling his professional and charitable work in the context of his many strengths and shortcomings. The episode is sponsored by Gaja Capital as part of the Gaja Capital Business Book Prize 2021.
Tune in!
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Few brands inspire the kind of devotion that an Enfield does. Its distinctive look and feel, the sound of its engine and the image that it creates of its rider have all contributed to putting the brand on the kind of pedestal that others could only dream of. But the story of how Royal Enfield became the brand it did today is filled with ups and downs, from its robust origins in the early 1950s to the rock bottom that was the 1980s to the lifestyle bike it is today trying to make a presence internationally. Enfield has truly come to epitomise successful business turnarounds and a case study in branding.
In today’s episode we’re joined by Amrit Raj, the author of the best selling book “Indian Icon: A Cult Called Royal Enfield” for which he’s been nominated for the prestigious Gaja Capital Business Book prize 2021.
Tune in!
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In 1956 at the Dartmouth workshop, the idea we’ve now come to know of as artificial intelligence was sown. John McCarthy of Dartmouth college named the field, Artificial Intelligence. After the initial excitement, the artificial intelligence winter set in. With the availability of large amounts of data and computing power, we’re seeing a revival in AI. Several fields are being transformed by artificial intelligence now. And that includes writing.
A few months ago, I’d interviewed Paul Yacoubian, the founder of Copy.ai. He is easily one of the most interesting entrepreneurs to watch out for. In just four months, his startup, Copy.ai had gone from $0 to $50,000 in monthly recurring revenue. The company uses the language model GPT3 to write marketing copy. And the traction it is seeing is proof that thousands of people are using it.
It’s not just writing that’s being transformed by AI. It has found applications in several fields, including healthcare, manufacturing, banking, and finance. We figured it is about time we had someone on the show to talk about AI.
In this episode of the Use Case podcast, we talk to Manish Singhal, the founder of Pi Ventures on investing in AI and deep tech companies. Pi Ventures is a Bangalore-based fund that only backs companies that uses deep technologies like AI to solve real-world problems.
Timestamps
3:01: Why did Pi Ventures choose to invest in deep tech and its thesis.
6:36: On cancer screening tech from Niramai and mental health company Wysa.
10:50: On Pi Ventures fund II.
13:02: What has changed in deep tech for it to become investible now?
14:52: How Pi Ventures invests.
17:08: Understanding Demand & Supply Resonance Maps
24:24: India’s place in deep tech
28:33: Incremental innovation and 10x innovation
29:34: Domestica capital in deep tech
32:03: Pi Ventures has 42% women-founded deep tech companies
Link to Pi Ventures blog.
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There is a saying that debt is often cheaper than equity.
Our topic for today is venture debt, which has become mainstream in the Indian start-up ecosystem of late. In 2019-20, the total amounts raised by venture debt funds was about $62 million which jumped to about $85 million in 2020-21.
As the pool of growth stage start-ups increase, it is fast becoming an attractive non-dilutive alternative to equity financing. Not just that. In many cases, it is a great additive to equity financing as a bridge round. Say you are at a Series B stage company and you know you have to raise the next round in the coming year, but if you were to go out to the market today and raise capital you will get a lesser valuation than what you would if you improve your numbers over the next 10-12 months and then raise. To get that extra 10-12 months runway, Venture Debt can be an alternative to bridge rounds.
Our guest on the podcast today is Ishpreet Singh Gandhi, the Managing Partner and Co-founder of Stride Ventures, one of India's leading venture debt funds. You could listen to the episode on the browser above or on Spotify/ Apple Podcast/ Google Podcast by clicking the play button below:
Here are parts of the transcript (edited slightly for better readability):
Ravish: A good point to start off with might be to understand what venture debt is. Traditionally, we've looked upon debt as a bad thing. Now, venture debt comes in at the stage where a lot of companies do not have the traditional cash flows or even assets (which has been the traditional way for underwriting term loans by banks). You've worked with multinationals as well as start-ups. I know that Lendingkart and Rivigo were some of the first start-ups that you lent to while you were at IDFC. Two questions – what is venture debt and at what stage of a start-up’s life cycle should one explore raising venture debt?
Ishpreet: So venture debt becomes available in eligibility once you've raised your first institutional capital. So moment you raise a venture capital round with an equity infusion of around $4-5 million, you become eligible for venture debt for a very early stage company. And it can go to later stages as well because you remain backed by some of the institutional investors by then.
In terms of standard offering, a traditional venture debt product is typically coming on top of venture capital round. So the moment you have a venture capital infusion, you can club your financing with venture debt. Say hypothetically you're a company that is planning to raise ₹50 crores, and you believe that ₹40 crores are getting committed from the VC. The remaining ₹10 crores, you say, okay I do not want to dilute for this capital and that 10 crores can be replaced with the venture debt option, which ends up getting repaid over a period of next 2 to 3 years.
And while doing that you pay a certain interest rate plus you give a certain portion of warrants in the company, which can be 10-15% of the debt amount. And that typically ensures that you do not dilute your stake in the company for those ₹10 crore rupees.
It's been a very widely used tool in the US and the mature economies. It came in existence in the 70s-80s in the US when Venture Capital started coming in and today constitutes a very large portion of the US equity market. Its size ranges anywhere from 13-15% of the Venture Capital market in the US. And some of the other economies like Europe, it will be 8-10%. It's gaining steam in India – it will be around 3-4% of the Indian Venture Capital market today. We think it can be a billion-dollar market in the next one and half years because it is closely correlated with the Venture Capital market and we have seen that grow exponentially over the years.
Our whole purpose remains - how it can be used by founders. Because a lot of founders realize while raising rounds that they end up diluting a lot, which could have been replaced by debt.
The other point, which you have to understand is that this debt can be replaced by equity because this has to be repaid. It's a loan ultimately. A founder must understand that this should be done at a time when you can afford to repay. So it can backfire if you have not timed it well or have not done it in an educated manner. And that's where it's very important for the founders to realise the importance in terms of creating non-dilutive structures which can be repaid.
Another benefit is that the turnaround time is faster than the typical equity venture capital fundraise.
Ravish: What are some of the other pros and cons to taking venture debt? When receivables aren’t coming in or if you’re using it just as a way to prevent dilution and not using the money - then effectively you might just end up paying interest on undeployed capital! When is the right time to take it? And also at what point should you not take debt?
It's a very valid question. When you raising the capital round, you have to be very sure of how much capital you're looking for. And I'm sure generally founders are aware of that. So of the 40- 50 crores of capital being required upfront, it's very important for a founder to understand and forecast the revenues and losses. And then back-calculate that this is the type kind of runway I want for my company for the next couple of years. to check if they should take venture debt.
When I started Stride in 2019 and went to the Venture Cap ecosystem and founders, there were mixed reviews. People are clear of the fact if they’d be pre-revenue or very minimal in revenues - so revenues are not very clear. That's where the traditional venture debt of long-term loan comes in. And, and more importantly, this is an instrument that works beautifully where you're sure that this is a fix-six year story.
That's why I said it's very critical for the founder to time it, well, they should be on top of their business.
Ravish: How do incoming venture capital investors (ex: a Series B investor coming in) look at companies or start-ups that have already some amount of debt on their balance (say debt taken while/ after raising Series A)?
Ishpreet: So venture capital investors have started realizing the importance. We work very closely with all the top funds in the country. Our portfolio has a lot of companies funded by Sequoia, Accel, Elevation, Chiratae, and others. The whole purpose is that they also don't want to dilute in good companies and they would want debt funds to contribute, to grow their portfolio companies.
Ravish: But this is for existing investors, what about incoming ones?
Ishpreet: In both the cases we have seen it is complimentary. And that's where your first aspect of the question comes in handy - asking what the use case is and how do they intend to repay debt- do they repay when they raise equity capital or do they immediately repay or do they keep on holding onto it. We have, I think in our portfolio, already seen more than 15 companies raising or about to complete the follow on equity rounds. In fact, they were talking about augmentation of further debt!
Because the genuine capital requirements cases can be replaced by debt.
Most would not want to raise large equity rounds if that capital requirement can be complemented with debt. Especially where the marketing spends are high and that additional capital can generate the delta revenue for you.
Ravish: Is that the same as Accounts Receivable financing?
Ishpreet: No. AR financing is more of receivable financing for corporates. That is typically like capital provided for you for a marketing spend. So it's more prevalent in the B2C companies where you say, okay, I have to increase my Google spends and my marketing spends by 10% - on that I can generate 20% more winnings, but I do not have that source of capital to do it from equity investor. In AR financing the repayment happens as a share of revenue every month. In Venture Debt the repayment also happens monthly but it is secured lending done on the assets of the company. AR financing is unsecured and it is done as a share of the revenue. There the return for the lender can be as high as 25-26% because they are taking a larger risk because if a company is unable to pay you back, you practically can’t do anything.
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Why this topic for this season’s first episode - A few days ago, one of my best friends from college got an offer from a Thrassio like set up to buy X% stake in her D2C company. Now she had bootstrapped and built this business from absolute zero to a multi-crore turnover company with ~30% margins on each sale! Yet she felt absolutely lost and helpless during the negotiations because she had no clue how pre-money and post-money valuations worked. As a builder and an operator, her primary skill set was building stuff. On the other side of the table were multiple ex- PE guys whose only job was to do these calculations and negotiations inside out.
At that stage, I realised how important it is to understand how valuations, dilution and investor rights in term sheets work. I figured, if ever I want to start up myself - THEN would NOT be the right time to know about these basics.
Moreover, working at start ups mean you’re working for ESOPs and to know what the value of ESOPs could be at various stages, one must understand how dilution and liquidation preferences work.
So, in this episode of the Use Case podcast, I’m thrilled that Kushal Bhagia, who is the founder and CEO of First Cheque, could join us to explain these important concepts. He’s a super founder friendly investor who has been trying to educate the market on these concepts with his Youtube series called “Know your termsheet”.
These are some of the things we cover in this episode. They’ll help you make sure you’re getting a fair deal.
04:00 - Context setting
07:50 - Your company has a value only because an investor is putting money in it - fir that new shares are created -> dilution happens; pre-money and post-money explained with an example
13:20 - Key items agreed in a term sheet; terms and conditions that come with this collateral free money that you get; tag along rights, pre-emptive rights.
26:00 - If an exit happens, in what order and how much will people get money; preferential shares, participating and non-participating shares
35:00 - Special case of accelerators, pre-seed rounds, convertible debt (YC specific - SAFEs)
44:00 - What bets do VCs like to make? Honestly, expect a no.
Listen to this episode in your favourite podcasting app:
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One of the most common things you hear in the world of startups is “We weren’t able to monetise.”
The theme that often plays out is this - the team gets excited about an idea - they start working on it - they talk to customers and if everything works out, they build a great product with an obvious demand in the market. However, in this entire journey as engineers and product enthusiasts we first build the full product and then, almost as an afterthought, decide what to price it at and how to sell it!
Pricing strategy is an important concept that must be incorporated into the plan from Day 1 - even before execution because if you know what your potential customers are willing to pay for, you will automatically prioritise features to fit the price (a.k.a cost based pricing).
In this episode with Dr Sreelata Jonnalagedda, Associate Professor at IIM Bangalore - we discuss how startups can adopt a pricing strategy that is right for them. In the short 30 minutes, I think Dr Sreelata managed to squeeze at least 6 case studies and examples discussing everything from decoy pricing to predatory pricing.
Here are 3 of my favourite examples from the episode:
Framing - Make it difficult to compare competitors’ features! Especially for SaaS.
Prof Sreelata gives a very interesting example comparing Dropbox and Google Drive. Now, there is not a lot of difference in cloud storage, right? Whether you store your files in A or in B, ultimately as a consumer you are deriving similar value from both. So what would you do? You would go with whatever is the cheapest!
But here is something successful startups do - they make it difficult for users to compare features against their competitors’ products. This works where there is not a lot of scope for differentiation in product offering. Dropbox has a loooong list of features across its plans and even if I open the website from India, it still prices the storage in US $. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Most users hate doing complicated maths and making detailed price to value comparisons for every purchase. Framing your pricing with the offering in a way that makes it harder to compare your product is a smart option.
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Predatory Pricing: Uber, Ola, Swiggy, Jio, Delhivery, Bounce
Many times market disruption involves new habit creation. Think about the early days of e-commerce when products were priced at massive discounts to incentivise first time online shoppers to buy goods online. Or when as Indians we first learnt to ditch the then omnipresent autos for cabs because they cost the same as taking an auto anyway.
Predatory pricing is a technique where you price your product (say, P1) lower than the equilibrium price in the market (P0 in graph 1) for same or similar products. This allows you to capture a significant market share. Once you’ve built enough customer loyalty to your platform/ product, you change the demand curve altogether.
Now if you increase the price from P1 to P2 (i.e., P2>P1), some customers will stop buying your product but some will stay back because there is an exit cost/ switching cost to leaving your product.
It’s a very aggressive pricing strategy that only those startups that are heavily funded by big growth stage investors are able to follow. It is not something that you can do for a short duration as an experiment and hope to build enough customer loyalty to achieve customer loyalty.
Building loyalty at scale takes both time and big coffers! So do it only if you can afford both.
Bundling - Get Amazon/ Times Prime for ₹999!
Perhaps one of the best example for bundling implemented in the Indian context is Times Prime. For just ₹999 you get subscriptions from Gaana, Sony Liv, ET Prime, TOI, Google One apart from several other benefits from other partners.
I’m not a Times Prime user, but when I looked at the list of offerings under the subscription, I felt like purchasing it just for the sake of perceived benefits it offers.
From the bundled meals at McDonald's to Zoho’s bundled list of enterprise offerings, bundling is everywhere.
Say you are an Ed-Tech platform offering government exam test preparation services. Now the content tested in most of these exams is the same. While making your course pricing catalogue you could offer an SSC exam preparation course for ₹599/ month or you could make a combination and offer SSC + RBI + LIC exam for ₹799/ month.
The first price is a decoy placed to make the consumer find greater perceived value in the ₹799 bundle.
These are just 3 of the many examples Prof Sreelata shared in this episode we did in collaboration with NSRCEL at IIM Bangalore. Do give the episode a listen.
By the way, NSRCEL is a great place for entrepreneurs to start up. Not only do you get support from the faculty at IIMB, but as an incubator, they support you with office space, industry connects and much more. Also, being in the beautiful green IIM-B campus has its perks. Reach out to Shloka for more information!
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If you’re a data driven professional, in all likelihood this episode is for you.
There are also some interesting analysis techniques I came across this week, that I thought I’d share. Check them out at the end of this email below !!!
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On the show today JPK and I got a chance to speak with Shripati Acharya, Managing Partner at Prime Venture Partners on how to measure various SaaS Metrics and why valuations are a geometric function of growth. An astute mind, I’m just surprised how calm successful people like him are and they way they structure their thoughts so well.
Of the many cool things Shripati shares, here were my top 3 learnings from him:
A better way to measure LTV
As common as this metric is, it is also the most mistaken one.
Broadly Lifetime Value or LTV is a measure of how valuable a product is to a user. At the very basic level it can be defined as the Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) divided by the churn. The numerator is a signifier of how much value the product has to the client/user over an average contract period. Shripati argues that instead of using revenue, one should use contribution margin in the numerator. Using ARPU would imply a $1000 product with 10% CM and a $1000 product with 20% CM have the same LTV. But this false sense of pegging value to revenue can lead to costly errors in customer acquisition, he argues.
Next, the denominator relates to the customer lifetime. The lower the churn, the higher the customer lifetime. As Sripathi puts it, “If monthly churn is 10%, customer lifetime is 1/0.1. = 10 months. Meaning in 10 months substantially all the customers acquired today would leave (pretty bad business).”
But there is a problem here. Shripati has written quite extensively on this before:
Startups frequently arrive at pretty attractive customer lifetime figures in their initial days. If a service launches and in the first 6 months only 5% of customers churn, it appears like the startup has achieved a 10% annual churn or a 10 year customer lifetime! Calculating customer lifetime by inverting churn can lead to sky-high customer life-times. Early data does not truthfully reflect customer behaviour over the long term and also suffers from skew due to early adopter behaviour being very different from mainstream users
This can lead to all kinds of disastrous downstream effects such as investing in expensive sales channels that soon prove to be uneconomical.
His advice:
Early-stage startups should focus more on customer payback, ie the time period for recovering customer acquisitions cost (CAC), than calculated LTV. In the absence of customer data, using a sub-24-month payback to inform the choice of sales and marketing strategies is prudent.
Companies A & B have same revenue today, A’s revenue growth rate is 2x of B’s. Why should B be valued 4x/8x/ possibly16x of B?
The chart below from a paper by Morgan Stanley, ‘The Math of Value and Growth’ (link here) shows that the relationship between growth and the P/E is convex. Small changes in growth expectations can lead to large changes in the P/E, especially when growth rates are high.
The key point is that a company growing faster should enjoy a multiple that grows geometrically with the growth rate, not linearly.
This is why SaaS companies that make the same revenue can have very different valuations - and as Shripati notes founders need to recognise this before asking “Why is that company valued so much and not mine?”
How much is 20% NDR worth in the long run?
In a similar context, JPK also made an important observation of how important Net Dollar Retention or NDR is to SaaS companies.
Imagine three companies: one at 120% NDR, one at 140% NDR and the last at 160% NDR. In five years, assuming all else is equal, how much bigger is the last company than the first?
The answer is 4.2x - four times bigger! Each marginal 20% of NDR is a doubling of company ARR in 5 years!
Some interesting links/ readings to help you do better data analysis:
Using RFM analysis to derive customer insights: RFM analysis is a customer behavior segmentation technique. Based on customers’ historical transactions, RFM analysis focuses on 3 main aspects of customers’ transactions: recency, frequency and purchase amount. These 3 key behaviors can do wonders to analyse the business. Check out this post for how it works: https://towardsdatascience.com/simple-customer-segmentation-using-rfm-analysis-1ccee2b6d8b9
Two Methods of estimating LTV with a spreadsheet: A nice summary of how you can go about modelling complex scenarios to come up with a measure of LTV using simple excel. Linked to within the presentation is a spreadsheet that showcases examples of the models discussed, each built on a data set of 100,000 rows of fake user profiles. Check it out: https://www.slideshare.net/EricSeufert/ltv-spreadsheet-models-eric-seufert
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The importance of thinking in outcomes
When Gaurav Munjal, the founder and CEO of Unacademy was pitching to Nexus, he was asked - how could a company offering video test prep solutions scale in a country with such poor internet bandwidth (this was the pre Jio era)?
He simply pointed the committee to the fact that the lessons were not a video - they were instead a slide deck with a pointer made to look like a video! He could have switched on mumbo jumbo mode and talked about fancy compression algorithms for running videos on low bandwidth that would give Pied Pipper a run for its money, but instead he was thinking not about features, but about the outcome - which at the end of the day was to help people crack UPSC and not stream high quality videos.
As founders and PMs it’s often that we get lost in a complexity of our own design and forget to think about the problem that the company/ product is trying to solve. We get obsessed by features.
When I asked Pratik Poddar of Nexus Venture Partners, our guest on this episode of the podcast about his thesis for evaluating companies, his answer was quick - Is the company/product outcome oriented? And that got me thinking, just as for a company (for a founder) it is important to think about outcomes, for us as PMs it becomes imperative to ask ourselves - will this feature/ product solve something or is positioned in a way that the user feels an intrinsic need to use the product?
If so, then the outcome of using the product will automatically be clear to the user - enticing a willingness to pay/ try out the product. Not only that, it would also lengthen the average time spent by the customer on your product.
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Personally, I’ve seen the massive difference this approach brings. When we started indiagold, we set out to build a Gold backed Open Credit Enablement Network (GOCEN) offering gold loans. But in order to increase our topmost acqui-funnel and encourage word of mouth, we offered a product called Digital Gold. Now, digital gold is something you can find on almost all major apps like Paytm, Google Pay, etc. People buy and sell gold - mostly with a trader mindset. But that is not something we wanted. We asked ourselves, what is the intrinsic motivation for Indians to buy gold and how do we replicate that virtually? We found the answer in the fact that deep down in the our minds, gold is a form of savings for an Indian household. We immediately changed the positioning of the same product designed for a trader mind to that for a savers mind. We pictorially depicted a user’s progress in saving gold in grams which encouraged them to keep buying again and again in an amount of their choice like ₹50,₹100, ₹200 (rather than trading in a one of instance). We also gave the option to a user to convert this digital gold into physical gold (again, the emotional satisfaction of holding physical gold in your hand bought out of your own savings).
This encouraged stickiness.
And it’s abundantly clear that VCs like Pratik value that. Which is something he also talked about on the podcast on the 2 kinds of business models that he looks out for.
Now, to listen to the 2 kind of models, you will have to listen to the show. It’s a ~30 odd minutes episode and very insightful. You could listen on the audio file above or on your favourite podcasting app. Let us know what you think! Share it with your friends if you like it - you could forward this email/ share it on Twitter/ do you thing buddy - get those bragging rights!
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Byrne Hobart called it “the Vegas Wedding Chapel of liquidity events” - quick and easy.
One of the hottest trends of 2020 among late stage tech companies was to go public via a SPAC or Special Purpose Acquisition Company. SPACs are essentially blank cheque companies set up and listed with the sole purpose of merging and taking another company public in the next 2 years or so.
This episode however is much more than just about SPACs. For anyone interested in Venture Capital, growth investing and tech - it is a must listen!
Our guest on the show, Gopal Jain co-founded Gaja Capital, one of India’s leading Private Equity firms, in 2004 and is a managing partner at the firm. He has led several of the firm’s investments in sectors including education and financial services. He is one of the more experienced private equity investors in India having led or co-led over 25 private equity investments since 1995.
This episode is part of a 4 episode series on the best Indian business books nominated for the prestigious Gaja Capital Business Book Prize 2020.
Don’t miss out Gopal’s 1 key tip at the end of the show on how to break into Private Equity. Hope you enjoy the show!
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Why are Amazon, Reliance, Walmart backed Flipkart, and several others competing for a piece of the action in online grocery retailing? Consider some numbers from Redseer:
⚡️Grocery is expected to be a $790 billion market by 2024. Of this, online grocery is expected to be around $18.2 billion.
⚡️ The market, currently around $603 billion in size, is dominated by traditional retail (95.7%).
⚡️Only 0.3 % of the market is served by online retail and 4% is served by modern retail. The remaining is still catered to by traditional stores.
What do these numbers tell us?
The headroom for growth is massive! At the risk of sounding cliched, I’ll say this: even if you end up with a modest 1% of the market, you’d have a business that sells goods worth over $7.9 billion a year.
What will help drive this growth?
Improvement in supply chain infrastructure
Expansion to smaller cities
Government policy that allows 100% FDI in food and retail
Did the lockdown slow them down? Not at all. On the contrary, after a slowdown in the months of March and April, they grew faster.
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Since I started tracking the sector in 2012, dozens of startups have come and gone. But one company has been constantly on my radar: BigBasket. The company, which mostly focused on heads down execution, was valued at $1.2 billion in their previous round of funding (2019). As per reports, their valuation is likely trending upwards of $2 billion now.
BigBasket is not our typical startup with young founders, snazzy tech, and headline-grabbing public relations machinery. Its founders are older, it works in a business with razor-thin margins, yet is inching closer to profitability, and it has held its own even when hyper funded startups unleashed deep discounting blitzkrieg.
How does the company win? What makes it tick? In the book ‘Saying No to Jugaad: The Making of BigBasket’, authors T N Hari and Subramanian MS tell you how. The book gives us an insider’s view of what helps the company succeed. It talks about culture, strategic decisions, and focused execution. In this episode of the podcast, we discuss the book. This episode is brought to you by the Gaja Capital Book Prize which was instituted to celebrate the best books on contemporary Indian business.
Listen in!
JPK & Ravish
PS: Also check out this episode on getting startup hiring right on The Orbit Shift Podcast. It is a podcast that I’ve been working and brings you practical insights from founders, investors, and experts.
★ Giveaway alert ★
We’re giving away five copies of the book ‘Saying No to Jugaad: The Making of BigBasket’ to our listeners. All you have to do is to say something (be nice 😊) about this episode on Twitter or LinkedIn with the hashtag #UseCasePodcast. Tag me and Hari.
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Did you know that in 2020 on an incremental basis, more deposits went to private banks in India instead of Public Sector Banks for the first time in history?
What is happening to the bad loan mess and NPAs that Indian banks have been forced to deal with by the RBI? Is the worst over?
Forced by the rapid pace of technology, can India’s gigantic banking system rapidly evolve to meet the consumer demands? What’s stopping them?
In this episode, we’re joined by Tamal Bandhopadhyay to get answers to all these questions and more. As a business journalist, Tamal has covered India’s banking sector for more than 2 decades. He’s published 6 books on the subject and is constantly speaking to the top bosses to get a lay of the land. Now, like Tamal we can’t get the ex-RBI heads or Aditya Puri on our podcast, so he’s really the best person to give a rundown on where India’s banking sector stands today.
His latest book HDFC Bank 2.0: From Dawn to Digital has been nominated for the prestigious Gaja Capital Business Book Prize. And ̇we’re delighted that this episode was sponsored by Gaja Capital, one of India’s largest Private Equity firms.
Tamal called his latest book ‘Pandemonium: The Great Indian Banking Tragedy’, but is that really so bad? We’ll leave it for you, the intelligent listener, to decide.
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Welcome to yet another episode of The Use Case Podcast. I hope you've started thinking about your new year’s resolutions because if you are then you've got to listen to today's show. Believe me, it's going to change how you think about money. Our guest today is Monika Halan, the author of the best-selling book Let's Talk Money, published by Harper Collins in 2018. Monika has worked across several media organizations in India and has run many successful TV shows around personal finance in NDTV, Zee, and Bloomberg.
She's also a consulting editor at Mint. And ever since I read her book, I just wanted to have her on the show to talk about personal finance, because this is such an important topic for people in the startup ecosystem.
★ Giveaway alert ★
We’re giving away five copies of Let’s Talk Money to our listeners. All you have to do is to say something (be nice 😊) about this episode on Twitter with the hashtag #UseCasePodcast. Tag me and Monika.
★ Show notes ★
In this show, we talked about a mental model called ‘The Money Box’ that helps you think about your personal finance better. Some of the basics of the Money Box we talked about are:
✅ Understanding cashflows (income, expense, and savings)
✅ Creating an emergency fund
✅ Insuring yourself and the people around you from shocks
✅ Investing your money smartly
We also talked about why it’s a bad idea to (subject to caveats):
❌ Confuse insurance with investment
❌ Invest in real estate
❌ Buy gold as an investment
❌ Take on debt for instant gratification
Links to the stuff we talked about in the show
👉🏾 Buy Let’s talk Money on Amazon (contains an affiliate link)
👉🏾 Follow Monika on Twitter, LinkedIn, Blog
👉🏾 Thread by Dhimant of Better India on Personal Finance
I really enjoyed this conversation. I hope you do too! Like the podcast? Spread the word.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit turnaround.substack.com
There are very few VCs in India who have seen more than 2 Venture Capital cycles play out. Then there are those select few who have raised more than 3 funds. And then there are even fewer those who have seen their portfolio companies go all the way and IPO.
Then there are the likes of Rahul Chandra who have started not one but 2 VC firms over the years apart from investing in some mega startups like MakeMyTrip and Bigbasket and companies that went all the way to do stellar IPOs like the micro finance firm, Spandana.
Starting all the way back in 1998 to co-founding Helion Venture Partners in 2006 to now starting a second innings with Arkam Ventures, Rahul has had a ringside view of the VC industry and the barren honesty is honestly, delightful.
No PR. Just plain talk.
This is a stellar episode and by far one of our favourites this season! 🔥
Timestamps of topics covered:
2:15- 3 phases of Indian VC since 2006, changing criteria, how valuations have become frothy, shift in VC biz from a ‘rule based businesses to an ‘exception business’
8:55- How multiple VC funds compete and collaborate in the same rounds, enter Tiger Global and cash burning competition (Ola vs TaxiForSure case)
15:50- Is India really innovating? Early stage companies behaving like big consumer brands
20:30- Irrational exuberance, shift in Masa Son style investing vs value investing; impact of low interest rates in early-stage VC investing
27:30- Rahul’s anti-portfolio, missing BookMyShow because of small TAM
33:30- Credit landscape then and now; How Spandana recovered from Tamil Nadu government banning microfinance industry to IPO in 2019
49:50- Dissecting the “Middle Income” 400 million base in India; why Arkam Ventures has a thesis for targeting this base
1:03:00- Book reading from The Moonshot Game, covering what happened when Helion Venture Partners was being shut down. What was going on in Rahul’s mind?
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This episode was sponsored by Gaja Capital, one of India’s leading Private Equity funds. Rahul’s book, The Moonshot Game: Adventures of an Indian Venture Capitalist has been nominated for the prestigious Gaja Capital Business Book Prize 2020.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit turnaround.substack.com
There’s no template to success. That’s for sure. But, there are traits.
In this episode Chris Saad, who was previously the Head of Product for Uber Developer Platform and is presently a strategic advisor to several startups joins us to share his learnings on what leadership characteristics set our favourite CXOs apart.
Chris fundamentally believes that leaders look at the world in a special way. In the episode he shares concise, pragmatic insights into how leaders think and act - their lens; and gives actionable advice on how to implement those strategies in our daily lives.
3 important traits we discuss in the episode are:
Intention: Most people do not fully understand or shape their intentions. Instead, they allow them to remain subordinate to the whims of the current circumstances. Consequently, their intentions haphazardly change from moment-to-moment without being subject to a deliberate process of critical reflection. It is such carelessness that translates to ineffectual behavior - which, in turn, leads to failure, anxiety, frustration, and anger.
Curiosity: Curiosity-suppression has been institutionalised in our world. With few exceptions, the education system is mostly anachronistic - designed around the conditions and requirements of the industrial age. During that era, workers needed to remember facts, sit on an assembly line, repeat the same task over and over - responding to bells and queues. The thinking was done by rote. Consequently, the education system designed to cater to that era’s needs is effectively a regime of Pavlovian conditioning, bereft of edification, wherein critical thinking took a back seat to being able to remember and follow the rules. In the 21st century the strategies for learning will be completely different.
Agency: Do it as a thought experiment. Ask yourself, “In an ideal world, if I had no constraints or obligations, how would I want this aspect of my life to change?”… Have an abundance mindset. Remember, almost everything is possible - you just have to figure out how. The most successful people, especially among entrepreneurs are those that have the ambition and drive to go out there and achieve what they want. Cultivating that agency is what matters.
The episode is filled with examples and some very fun anecdotes about Uber India. This is such a wonderful way to start a Monday with! Hope you enjoy this episode:
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I was on my way back from a long day at work a few months ago. Went straight to bed. The next morning was busy. The day after too. And it was only a few days later that I noticed that my wallet has been missing.
All these days, I did not really have to take out my wallet. Almost everyone, from the grocer to the vegetable vendor accepts mobile payments in Bangalore. But then I had to fly out a few days later to Chennai and I started to panic.
How will I enter the airport without an identification card?
That’s when I downloaded Digilocker, the app launched by the Indian government to download and store all documents in a digital format. I downloaded my Aadhaar card, my driving license, and registration certificates for my vehicles.
These certificates are legally valid and I don’t’ really need physical copies anymore. It works at the airport and most other places I need it. And that’s when it struck me that Digilocker is really one of the most underrated apps in India today.
On Digilocker, you can download and store hundreds of documents issued by the government — even your education records and pension certificates.
I knew one of the people behind Digilocker. Amit Ranjan. He’s one of the few people who’ve gone from the private sector to join the government for a salary of Rs 1 to help deliver better digital governance in India. Amit had sold his startup Slideshare for $119 million to LinkedIn.
Every time I go to Delhi, I made it a point to meet Amit. Sitting at a coffee shop near IIT- Delhi, we’d talk about the startup scene in India. It was always an insightful conversation and I’d walk away feeling good that he was doing what he was doing.
So a few days ago, when Amit tweeted about a design agency that did some great work reimagining Digilocker, I had to get in touch and ask them to be on a podcast. From my past experience, I’ve noticed that most of the time, design firms, code shops, and companies don’t come together properly, and in most cases, it ends up in a disaster. So this was different and I wanted to figure out what’s different.
After the revamp, 30-Day retention rate for the Digilocker app jumped by 280% and it is also ranked #1 on the iOS top charts. The design agency is called Parallel and the founder of the agency is Robin Dhanwani. And he’s our guest on the show today.
About the guest
Robin is a techie turned designer and runs Parallel, a product design and innovation studio in Bengaluru. He is passionate about the power of workshops to help teams align, focus, deliver and specializes in Google's design sprint technique to help companies build better products. Believes the purpose of design is not just to create good experiences, but to move metrics. You can reach him on @robindhanwani on Twitter.
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Vikrama Dhiman is presently the Head of Mobility Products at Gojek and has been a builder for more than a decade across firms like Bharti Softbank, WizIQ, and Zeta- a Directi company.
Vikrama says that having such becoming a Product Leader today has come at the expense of making several mistakes. He’s grown from making them, and gained an almost anticipatory sixth sense in prioritizing and responding to challenges - a critical skill for all founders, PMs and builders alike.
Here’s what we talk about on this short yet insightful episode:
1:07- Launching Gojek in Singapore, the challenge of localization
7:15- Hiring strategies and measuring PM competence
14:50- Shift from glorified Project Managers as Product Managers
16:40- Anticipation vs adaptation - being agile
19:20- Mistaking features for product strategy
22:30- A politically incorrect rapid fire
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On this podcast in the past, we’ve talked about product-market fit, minimum viable product, jobs to be done, lean startup model, blitz scaling and several other ways startup founders approach company building.
In today’s episode, Dr Ajay Sethi, venture partner at Accel talks about a new way of looking at startup building. He calls it the engagement centric model. The model tells you when the lean startup or minimum viable product just doesn’t work.
In fact, it offers an improved framework to understand many of the questions founders grapple with. As you know, we’ve interviewed dozens of people on this topic before. And this is among the best of all. Listen in.
🙏If you like this podcast, please do give us a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating on Apple Podcasts. It helps!
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Let’s be honest. The title is every bit deceiving. Yet, there’s truth in it.
It is true because this conversation with Vindhya captures so much of what building a product for India and being a Product Manager is about. It is deceptive because hidden within it are so many elements that are relevant even if you’re not a product manager.
For example, the transcript below is from a part of the episode that touched upon user privacy. It’s got 1) an interesting book recommendation, 2) some masala as to what could have been a mega scandal between Uber and Apple, and 3) a prefix to a more detailed guide on building great onboarding experiences for customers.
JPK: I’m reading a book called Future Crimes by Marc Goodman, who has worked with the FBI and the Interpol and he talks about how crimes will look like in the future. I'm fairly aware of privacy, but you know, this just scares you a lot. You know, interestingly, I think a lot of things that Product Managers like yourself complain about are getting permissions and things like that. I think Apple does it in the interest of the consumer. I don't have to worry about malware and, you know, some random dude going and launching some crazy app on the Appstore.
Ravish: Yeah Vindhya, how do we better integrate privacy in products?
Vindhya: A lot of people, like JPK said, on Android do not care about privacy and you know, they're (PMs?) always trying to find a way through it. Especially if you are a B2C app - you will take any data that comes your way. Apple does not let you do that.
In fact, I remember that whole Uber story, where they were trying to do a lot of things. (Context: This NYT piece showing how Uber was fingerprinting iPhones secretly, a violation of Apple’s privacy policy.) Apple's really good with the team that they have in place, to go through your code and understand what kind of permissions you're asking.
But I think fundamentally also we need to think about how we're sending notifications and when & where you’re sending them. Unfortunately, I don't think a lot of apps have it in their ethos to be honest. So let's start from there- really being honest.
Companies that are starting up, they’ll be like let’s just get all the contacts and all the information- “We have 50 million contacts” - I’m like what are you even going to do with that?" Consciously asking yourself (why you need this data)is very very important.
I can’t think of a better way to start a Monday, and Season 2 of the podcast, than with Vindhya on the show. Hope you enjoy this one. Cheers!
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It’s not often you meet old friends and take a trip down the memory lane and wind up with a podcast decent enough (I think) for other people to listen to. I caught up with Vineet Devaiah, the co-founder of Teliportme (10 mn + downloads on Play Store) after long and had a fun talk about venture capital, startups and we even talked about GPT3, a la hype cycles.
The last we met, was at the Indian Coffee House (not the one on Church Street) in Bengaluru. We were both at the crossroads. I was about to move on from FactorDaily and he was about to move on from Teliportme.com. I moved on and joined Freshworks. He stuck to his guns and continued to build. Go ahead and give it a listen. You might like it.
If you’re listening to this episode on a podcasting app, please give us a positive rating so we reach more people. Also, subscribe to our newsletter on turnaround.substack.com. Give us a shout out on social media. It means a lot to us.
Ravish joins me next week for an episode with an amazing episode, with an amazing product manager.
Cheers — JPK
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“Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather…
…You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you create the wealth of our marketplaces. You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.
You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don't exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract. This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different.”
John Perry Barlow
A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
Davos, Switzerland
February 8, 1996
What many call a rhetorical dartboard for Internet libertarians and a dot-com era hubris of mis-founded optimism, the document “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” still remains relevant in a world of data surveillance and increasing nationalization/ regulation of the internet.
More than 20 years have passed since Barlow first first typed it out as an email in his hotel room at Davos to some 600 odd friends after being pissed with President Bill Clinton for signing the Communications Decency Act into law, empowering the FCC to ban the transmission of "obscene" material on the Internet.
Now, I wouldn’t call Nikhil Pahwa the John Perry Barlow of India, for his stance, is almost always balanced between the libertarian ideals of freedom and the practical implications of leaving the internet unchecked, but he has done much for the freedom of internet in India, which both you and I often take for granted.
You’d remember when Facebook decided to bring Free Basics to India, it led to a huge outpour of criticism against the move and a cry for net neutrality led to the birth of the “Save the Internet” campaign. Nikhil was one of the key people behind the movement.
As the founder of Medianama, Nikhil has spent more than a decade working in and for the internet space in India and I can’t stress enough, how informative listening to him talk about the legal, ethical, and market implications of restrictions on the internet is - the most recent restriction being the app ban that Indian imposed, for which justification can be made, but it raises serious questions. For example, if code is speech then is imposing a ban on code a ban on Freedom of Speech?
We talk about everything ranging from the hypocrisy founders show while sucking up to the government and taking foreign money to the geo-political implications of banning Chinese apps, what is likely to happen to them as they appeal against the order in the judiciary ++ much more!
It’s a very informative discussion that personally opened my mind up and I have to urge you to check it out as well!
You could listen to the show on the audio above or listen to it on your favorite podcasting app:
Apple/Google Podcasts: http://link.chtbl.com/yj6meSpk
Spotify: http://spoti.fi/2n4elRe
NEW SECTION ALERT:
We’re calling it “HOW TO SOUND SMART DURING A DINNER PARTY” where we will try to give you fodder for interesting conversations.
New Non-Personal Data Governance Framework released by the Government, which would impact the competitive advantages of some startups if enforced (clarity awaited).
Our country’s policymakers and legal experts view data in 2 types. Personal and Non-Personal Data.
While an individual’s own location would constitute as personal data; the information derived from multiple drivers’ locations, which is often used to analyze traffic flow, is referred to as non-personal data.
So far, India’s regulation of its citizens’ data and their privacy online was governed under the Information Technology Act, 2000 but last year the Personal Data Protection Bill was tabled in the Lok Sabha. It was sent to a Joint Committee for review and is yet to be passed by both houses. The bill brings several laudable changes to the powers vested with the Indian consumer (“data principal”) on how their data can be used by startups and companies (“data fiduciary”). You could find the details of that the bill and how it would likely impact your business here.
Meanwhile, in important news this month - even as the PDP Bill was being considered by both houses, a nine-member panel, headed by former Infosys vice-chairman Kris Gopalakrishnan, released a draft of the Non-Personal Data Governance Framework. Under this framework, as Anirudh Burman writes in the Indian Express:
“the draft report proposes an expansive regulatory regime that would mandate data-sharing by anyone collecting data above a certain threshold, and require registration with another new data regulatory body for anyone collecting or deriving benefits from non-personal data.”
This means that if as a startup you are collecting non-personal data above this threshold you’d be required to register with a regulator and share this data. Which in the draft’s own words:
Factual information will mandatorily need to be made available for free, but data where there is value-add might be available to your competitors by the government, for a “fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory” price.
Many including Nikhil, as he outlined it in this op-ed, are calling it India’s Nationalisation of Data while some like to draw comparisons to the license raj days.
While it is laudatory that an open data regime exists where the barrier to entry for new startups is reduced with open data sets, the question is if it is fair to those who were innovators and tapped the first-mover advantage in collecting and owning that data.
This could be a nightmare scenario for founders and investors who define valuation for several young AI startups based on the data they own. We’ll be sure to watch this space closely in the coming days on this newsletter. Till then, if you haven’t already, do forward this email to your friends! Maybe this will be a fun way for you to connect with friends during these times and chat about something interesting!
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Some weeks ago, I asked on Twitter who are the best product managers I should have on the show. And many people said we should have Taruna Manchanda, now at LinkedIn talk about her experience. We finally made that episode happen.
If you enjoyed listening to our episodes with Mona Gandhi, founder of Upraised; Disha Chhabra, product manager at Google, and several other product managers we’ve had on the show, you’ll definitely enjoy this.
Taruna has some practical advice gleaned from 4+ years of experience as a product manager. Listen in.
If you’re listening to this episode on a podcasting app, please give us a positive rating so we reach more people. Also, subscribe to our newsletter on turnaround.substack.com. Give us a shout out on social media. It means a lot to us.
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The job of the Venture Capitalist, as has been mentioned on the show before, is in many ways to predict change and place bets that are likely to give returns. However, for an impact investor, it’s not just about predicting change but also about creating change.
Bharath Visweswariah, Director of Investments at Omidyar Network is one such investor who has, by way of placing strong bets like The Ken and Newslaundry, definitely lead the frontiers to sectoral change from the forefront.
After a successful career in the corporate world first as Project Manager at Mckinsey and then as the Managing Director at CEB, Bharath moved to the world of impact, setting up the University of Chicago’s India centre and then as the Director of Antara Foundation before joining his present role at Omidyar Network where he leads investments in civic-tech, media, citizen engagement and now his newfound passion - legal tech!
It’s a great listen, and we could not have hoped for a better person to have on the show to talk about the topic.
You could listen to the episode on the audio file in this email or on your favourite podcasting app. If you’re listening to this on Apple podcasts, please do give us a rating and a review! ❤️
For more such content from the world of startups and products in India, do subscribe to the Turnaround Newsletter.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit turnaround.substack.com
We’ve been talking to some of the best product folks ever since we began this podcast. We had Deepak Abbot’s masterclass on products some time ago. Then we had Nir Eyal, Anshumani Ruddra, Sidu Ponnappa, and Mona Gandhi on the show. They all gave us a deeper understanding of what goes into building great products.
Today on the Use Case podcast we have Disha Chhabra, currently a product manager at Google. In today’s episode, we talk about the importance of writing and managing stakeholder expectations as a Product Manager, and also she shares some tips on cracking the product manager interview at Google.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the Disha are her own and don’t reflect the views of her employer, in this case, Google.
Some interesting things
Ritesh Banglani on Coffee.
Bloomberg on the Ambani sibling rivalry
A thread on Naukri
Untools: A collection of thinking tools
How Tom Cruise saved Ray Ban
Long read on Parle G
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🔥🔥🔥BANGER EPISODE ALERT! 🔥🔥🔥
The story goes that Bytedance founder Zhang Yiming was super inspired by Steve Jobs. So much so that the name Bytedance was derived from Jobs’ philosophy for matching technology (byte) with art (dance).
Rui Ma, who is one of THE MOST RESPECTED voices on tech in China, and the host of the popular Techbuzz China podcast, doesn’t buy that fully. But then again, no one today claims to believe everything that is said by startup PR teams- except maybe the founders themselves.
So to find a balanced, extremely informative and nuanced perspective on what is obviously the most valuable startup in the world - is something I highly highly recommend. Trust me, this is a killer one! 🕵
Rui Ma has been an investor across Silicon Valley and China, advised multiple startups and is soon coming out with a book on Bytedance - using multiple sources that never make it to the English media. She presently lives in Redwood City working across the US and China and her dog makes a special appearance towards the end on the show (so, I guess we had 2 guests on the show this time?!)
Check out the timestamps from this episode and tell me you don’t want to listen to this! I’ve highlighted my favorite parts with 🔥
You could listen to the audio file you above or on your favorite podcasting app. Please do give us a review on your favorite podcast app! 🙏
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00- Some Chinese rap songs, why are all Chinese Tech CEO’s “Ma”, Rui’s journey from investing to podcasting herself, why people either love or absolutely hate China
07:23- Why Bytedance capturing US-China is such a big deal, breaking down some misconceptions about Bytedance
14:00- The birth of Jinri Toutiao, Bytedance-Meituan connection, the early boom days of China tech, How is Bytedance different from Tencent- a cultural difference? Acquisitions vs internal innovation, internal product testing 🔥🔥🔥
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25:00- 996 of course, engineering culture in China and Silicon Valley
29:45- How much do Chinese tech firms imitate SV firms? Zhang Yiming’s inspirations from Amazon, Google, Facebook and even Nike!
37:00- Being in the media industry, how much does the Propaganda department in China care about major Chinese tech players, moderating content in China 🔥🔥🔥
41:52- Bytedance’s international expansions, a new approach to internationalization after Kevin Mayer as new Tiktok CEO, Beijing driving strategies for India
47:00- LIVESTREAMING, China’s rural-urban divide in tech adoption and market opportunities, saturation in new user growth after smartphone growth stopped in 2017-18, monetization strategies for Bytedance 🔥🔥🔥🔥
58:50- Advertising on Tiktok vs Facebook, different product purposes and goals
1:05:00- The poor quality of China-tech journalism, people don’t have sex with dogs in India and people don’t eat dogs in China
1:12:23- How do Chinese citizens look at privacy? The cultural concept of “Yinsi”🔥🔥🔥🔥
1:18:20- Parting thoughts, Rui promises a list of best resources on China-tech
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It seems surreal but we’re almost five months into 2020 already. Feels like the world, in a hurry, decided to borrow chapters from a dystopian novel. I’ve been worried about several things including the Covid19 pandemic. But I’ve also tried keeping busy during the lockdown.
The book that I signed up with Harper Collins is almost complete. I’ve sent in the first draft. But I’m not celebrating yet. As Kevin Kelly says: When you are 90% done any large project the rest of the myriad details will take a second 90% to complete. If all goes well, the book will hit the stands by November.
I moved teams at Freshworks, the company which employs me. I now work with the Freshworks for Startups program. This means I get to work with founders and ecosystem builders. I love that. I also get to learn from some amazing colleagues.
As I’ve written before, in the practical guide to getting fit, running was at the core of my fitness routine. Then I started lifting. But because the neighborhood gym is shut, I’ve started running more. In May, I had the best month ever with 10+ runs and 66.5 kilometers in the books. I’ve also started intermittent fasting with a 16:8 window.
I’m reading my seventh book of the year: Modern South India: A History from the 17th Century to Our Times. The other books I read are here. That’s it about me. You tell me? Feel free to write in even if it’s just to say hi.
Some interesting stuff from Twitter
On understanding privilege
On fundraising
Sequoia’s Youtube investment recco
Failing and picking oneself up
A great self-improvement tip
The Use Case Podcast
In today’s episode of the Use Case podcast, we have Mona Gandhi, the founder of Upraised with us. She was the first female engineer at Airbnb. When she started at the company, the team only 30 people. She’s worked at many other places including Aperture, which was acquired by Google. Now she's building a platform called Upraised, for product managers.
Here’s what we mostly talked about:
⚡️Going from engineering to product management
⚡️Basics of product management and the skills required to become one
⚡️Identifying product-market fit
🔥Growth ~ Acquisition, Retention and Monetization
⚡️How Airbnb’s product-led approach helped them crack growth
If you’d like more on product management, check out our previous episode with Deepak Abbot, former SVP of Product at Paytm. We also have episodes with Anshumani Rudra, who heads product at Hotstar and Nir Eyal, the best selling author of Hooked. Check them out here and here.
Useful Links
Rahul Vohra on Superhuman’s product-market fit framework
Take the Upraised test for product managers here
Mona Gandhi on Twitter
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The art of building big brands in an Indian context
We’re here with yet another episode of the Use Case podcast. And this time we have with us Meeta Malhotra, the founder of The Hard Copy, a magazine that focuses on design, growth, and innovation in India.
Meeta started her career with Infosys and was one of the partners at the famous brand design consultancy, Ray and Keshavan. Over the years, she's played a huge role in shaping several brands that you see today like Airtel, Kotak Bank, Mother Dairy, Titan, and Vistara Airlines.
In this episode, we cover the six key components of brand building and illustrate how it’s applied through the example of brands like Vistara.
Business strategy
Brand strategy
Brand architecture
Visual identity
Brand communication
Brand performance & association
Enjoy the show. And if you like the show, don’t forget to give us a rating on your podcasting app. It goes a long way! If you’re new to the turnaround newsletter, please consider subscribing to our weekly newsletter + podcast from the world of startups in India.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit turnaround.substack.com
What would have happened if Vijay Shekhar Sharma and Sairee Chahal had decided to get the license for starting Facebook in India back when it was just a college network? We wouldn’t have had two of India’s most successful startups - Paytm and Sheroes.
Sairee Chahal is one of the kindest, most accomplished and successful founders who has managed to build a women’s only social network in India, Sheroes which boasts of over 15 million users. In this episode, she lays out the principles of building a social network - what goes into running one and why she’s not a fan of men boasting of their cooking adventures during the lockdown as an accomplishment on Twitter.
You could listen to the episode on the audio file above or on your favourite podcast app. As a founder, if you would like to get some feedback on your business idea or have questions from the podcast and would like to connect with Sairee - please fill out this short form and we’ll try to make that happen.
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I’m super thrilled to finally release this podcast with Nir Eyal on how you can become indistractable and reclaim your life. I read his first book Hooked: How to build habit-forming products, a couple of years ago. And ever since then I’ve followed his work.
Nir’s second book Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Lifedeals with a topic that is very close to my heart. If you’ve followed this newsletter, you know that I’ve struggled with distractions all my life. This new book is easily the most definitive take on dealing with distractions.
Nir also founded two tech companies since 2003 and has taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford. He blogs on NirAndFar and is featured often in The Harvard Business Review, Time Magazine, and Psychology Today.
Here’s what we broadly talked about in the podcast.
Four strategies to deal with distraction
Mastering internal triggers
Make time for traction
Hack back the external triggers
Prevent distraction with pacts
How to create an indistractable workplace
Creating psychological safety
Forums to talk about issues
Management exemplifies indistractable work culture
Some techniques to
Deal with email overload
Make meetings more productive
Deal with the tyranny of the to-do list
Enjoy the show. If you like the podcast, go ahead and give it a rating on your favorite podcasting app. It really helps us if you do that. Also, do consider becoming a paid subscriber to support our work.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit turnaround.substack.com
I don’t say this lightly - this is, in my opinion, one of the best episodes on the Use Case podcast, and not one to miss!
'Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot, lucre, moolah, readies, the wherewithal: call it what you like, money matters' - Niall Ferguson begins the The Ascent of Money, a beast of a book on the world’s financial history, with this sentence. Regardless of who we are or what we do, we are constantly impacted by, IMO the best human invention since fire - money.
Gaurav Sharma, has over 2 decades of building products in the world of banking and is now working on Neo-bank, a smart banking app for India and South East Asia. He is one of the smartest people I know and his Medium page is often a treasure trove of information no one will tell you (except he himself on the podcast 😉).
The episode is more so a masterclass wherein he walks us through the current state of the global economy, the ensuing financial crisis and governmental responses followed by a deep dive into the world of neobanking (see timestamps below).
By the way, he is also building a stellar team for his startup and is looking for “free radicals” across all verticals to join his team. If you are interested in applying, DM him on Twitter! But first, listen in to this awesome conversation on the audio file above or on your favourite podcast app.
Timestamp
02:30: Gaurav’s entrepreneurial journey
07:40: The current financial crisis, similarities and differences with 2008 crisis
11:40: Understanding debt, its importance and impact
17:00: Increased global inequality because of quantitative easing and low cost of capital
20:00: Is the crisis actually a good thing for VC world in long term? 🔥
23:30: Fintech wave 1 post Lehman 2008
29:00: What does the bank of the future look like?
32:20: Different strategies adopted by emerging neo-banks, key factors for success 🔥
40:00: How do big banks look at neo-banking? Is it a threat?
49:50: Financial advice for millennial generation – how to grow rich?
For the latest updates from the world of startups and venture capital in India, subscribe to the Turnaround Newsletter.
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Sometime back while travelling in Beijing, I took this picture:
The picture is a perfect tool to visualise the experiment that Anindya Ghose, who is the Heinz Riehl Chair Professor of Business at NYU’s Stern School of Business and the Director of its Masters of Business Analytics Program, and his team conducted across various cities in China.
In the field experiment, they sent out ~14k mobile coupons across to ~10k users. They then tested if commuters were more likely to respond to those coupons when in the subway. The results showed that peak commuting hours were actually the best time to send a marketing coupon (and I imagine then, also a push notification for your app). It also led to some other very unique insights. Here’s a quote from the paper.
The key findings indicate that commuters are about three times as likely to redeem their first mobile coupon compared to non-commuters.
…suggest that enhanced receptiveness to mobile coupons is more perceivable when users obtain multiple coupons.
Moreover, coupons with short expiration dates more successfully improve the response rates of commuters than do coupons with long expiration dates.
-From Seizing the Commuting Moment: Contextual Targeting based on Mobile Transportation Apps
This is but one example of many which the man himself, Prof Ghose talks to us about on this episode of the Use Case podcast. On the show, we dive deep into PRACTICAL ways using which data and analytics can be used to improve business performance.
You could listen to the full episode on the audio file above or in your favourite podcast app and for more such content, subscribers to the Turnaround Newsletter - to stay abreast with the latest from the world of tech and startups in India.
If you’d like to read instead, here are a few papers by Prof Ghose which I mention in the episode:
Deriving the Pricing Power of Product Features by Mining Consumer Reviews
Trade-offs in Online Advertising: Advertising Effectiveness and Annoyance Dynamics Across the Purchase Funnel
Let’s push our performance graph upwards!
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We’re here with another episode of the Use Case podcast and I’m excited to welcome leadership coach Deepak Jayaraman to the show. Deepak has trained several CEOs in navigating difficult times, and given the current crisis, it’s only fair we pause and think about how we can all ‘play to potential’. Deepak is an alumnus of IIM-A and London Business School and was previously a consultant with McKinsey & Company and Egon Zehnder.
In this episode, we talk about leadership in the time of crisis as the world reels under effects of the Coronavirus pandemic. We discussed three key aspects here:
Harmonising self, work, home and community
Thinking about business in the short term and the long term
Taking a mindful approach to your responses
We also talk about a some tactics to become more efficient and effective. Books. And the importance of story telling in the days of remote working. You could listen to the show above or on your favourite podcast app.
Apple/Google podcasts: http://link.chtbl.com/yj6meSpk
Spotify: http://spoti.fi/2n4elRe
If you’re not a subscriber to this podcast and newsletter, go ahead and click the button below to sign up (it’s mostly free. Paying subscribers get bonus content like the recent analysis on Technological and Financial bubbles).
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit turnaround.substack.com
A writer, a game designer and a product manager walked into a bar.
Twist - all of the three is the same person!
Say hello to Anshumani Ruddra, who is presently the VP of Products at Hotstar. He’s worn the hat of a writer, a game designer and a PM, which gives him the unique ability of looking at products in a way that most of us skip.
Come to think of it, just as a well written article takes you through a journey while gradually stacking layers of information, a good game design or a good user journey does exactly that. You begin by subtly grabbing the user’s attention, adding a new piece of information without overwhelming the reader/user and then continue doing so until you reach a call to action (CTA).
In our case, the CTA is us requesting you to check out this awesome podcast with Anshumani.
Timestamps:
0:25- Managing work from home in Covid-19 lockdown 😷
2:30- Anshumani’s journey and his tryst as a writer and some writing tips
7:10- The concept of instant gratification and it’s relevance to products, life and work
11:08- ‘Products and games’ : gaming and how firms are ‘gamifying’ their products
21:40- External rewards vs internal rewards
24:00- Can gifting as a source of monetisation for live streaming work in India?
31:30- How Hotstar built a community feature on their app & concept of exit cost
42:00- Angel investing and fundraising after covid-19
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit turnaround.substack.com
Late last year, Mihir Dalal created waves with his reporting when he launched his first book, Big Billion Startup: The Untold Flipkart Story, sharing behind the scenes of India’s most successful unicorn story. In this episode we caught up with Mihir to dive deep into how the company was born, the scandals that happened and the ups and downs in creating a company that would change the face of retail in India.
Timestamps:
00:50: Amazon’s influence on early Flipkart, Two Pizza team culture
06:00: Taking risks even when there isn’t a lot of visibility, turning down early acquisition offers
11:00: On pompous Venture Capital Lords and Flipkart
15:00: Enter the Tiger, Lee Fixel and Deep Kalra
19:00: With $10 million, Flipkart powers ahead
20:01: Flipkart’s official sex appeal bringer
25:00: Iyappa, the Human ERP at Flipkart
29:00: Cash on Delivery as a game changer
32:00: How to hold inventory without inventory
33:00: Sujeet Kumar- the man who got things done
37:20: Competition heats up as Amazon enters India
39:00 General Atlantic shocker and emergency funding
41:03: Fixing the broken bits: Kalyan Krishnamurthy
48:30: After the funding boom, Snapdeal and other rivals
51:15: Mihir reads out a chapter! Enter Softbank!
64:30: Market consolidation, exits and acquisitions
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit turnaround.substack.com
Dan Ariely in his book, Predictably Irrational, starts off with this example. If you were to choose one of The Economist’s subscription plans, which would you choose? 1) Digital only for $59, 2) Print only for $125 or 3) Print + Digital for $125?
Most people go for the third option, even if they came in to buy just the Digital subscription! Such examples, where product managers utilise consumer psychology to push/pull the consumer abound the world of technology. This particular strategy is called ‘Decoy Pricing’ and we do it on the Turnaround newsletter too (I’m talking to all you folks who pay $5 every month instead of $30 for the year!)
On the Use Case podcast today, we have Dr. Syagnik Banerjee who is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Michigan-Flint. The conversation begins by introducing the rational/irrational behaviours that exist in the market, how they are integrated in both digital and physical products around us followed by a discussion of how Trump’s marketing team used consumer psychology to tap into the voters’ minds. Would it be unethical to take a cue from him? Yes. But, we will discuss it nevertheless because it’s important to be aware.
You could find the show on your favourite podcast apps, including 👂Apple/Google podcasts and 👂Spotify or on the audio file above. Check out the timestamps below:
Timestamps:
00:30- What is common between Al Pacino as a drug lord and Big-tech CEOs? Fair/Unfair?
04:12- The internet as an imperfect marketplace- more information but ever less accessible
09:05- Honey are you pregnant?🔥
12:15- Marketing is now about looking at associations rather than establishing causality
13:50- Prediction prediction everywhere, not a drop to choose
16:40- Discussing Donald Trump’s campaign- setting the context
21:00- 🔥On the basis of 68 likes can predict your skin colour & political affiliation!
26:00- Hard to get noticed, unless a radical idea is presented?
30:11- How Trump used the Democratic internet users against them, for his own marketing (tapping into people’s consumer psychology!)🔥
37:30- Privacy in product marketing - is it a straight line?
Hope you enjoy listening to this! If you’re listening to the show on the Apple podcast app, please give us a rating and a review - it really helps the show attract more like minded people and I’d be grateful. 🙏🙏🙏
Thanks,
Ravish
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit turnaround.substack.com
I was on a long flight and on this flight there was a gentleman in the aisle seat across from me sleeping - very clearly knocked out.
A flight attendant was coming through the aisle, she stops at our row and she turns to him and says "Sir?"
He’s clearly asleep, so she calls out louder “Sir!”
He's got his blanket up to his chin and he's got a big pillow - he's definitely passed out. And so she says it a third time. She says, "Sir!"
He wakes up and says, "What is it? What is it?"
And she says, "Sir, what would you like to drink?"
Don’t the app notifications we keep getting on our phones all day feel the same?
These are all external triggers that product managers love to use!
Nir Eyal, author of the best selling book ‘Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products’ uses this example while explaining how time and again we make the mistake of focussing on external triggers to grab the customer’s/user’s attention.
Instead, what we should be doing is asking ourselves - what are the “internal triggers” that would inspire someone to use my product? What deeper emotional need can I solve for that would inspire the user to come back and use my product again?
In this episode of the Use Case podcast, Anshumani Ruddra, Vice President at Hotstar chats with author Nir Eyal as part of an invite only event organised by Axilor Ventures, one of India’s leading seed stage funds and accelerator program. Check out their Summer 2020 accelerator program, the applications for which are now open!
You could listen in to the podcast above or on any of your favourite podcast apps.
Apple/Google Podcast apps: https://t.co/g5VB6CByD9?amp=1
Spotify: http://spoti.fi/2n4elRe
For more such content, subscribe to the Turnaround Newsletter
Timestamp:
00:00- Setting for the conversation
04:00- The shrinking real estate for user attention
10:30- Case in point: “Why your fitness app is making you fat?”
13:00- Building a defensible competitive advantage and the line of differentiation for consumer and enterprise products
17:45- Can you get customers to buy pressure cookers again and again? How to get users to come back?
21:30- Discussing the Hooked model in detail 🔥🔥🔥
29:30- What can you do if you are not building from 0 to 1, but 1 to 1.5? increasing velocity and speed of use in the action phase
38:00- Bing vs Google
39:00- How can you keep distractions away and enjoy life?
44:30- Difference between overuse and addiction
51:00- Can we use technology to limit technological distraction?
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit turnaround.substack.com
Sanjay Ramakrishnan was the Senior Director for Product Marketing at Flipkart and has led various leadership positions at literally every one of the cool places that an aspiring marketer would desire, including Google, Myntra and Ogilvy and Mather. In his current avatar, he is the co-founder of Multiply Ventures, a newly launched early-stage investment fund based out of Bangalore.
We discuss some interesting stories from the early days of Flipkart, Myntra and Orkut, where Sanjay led their marketing efforts and dive deeper into product marketing and branding. My favourite one was how they entered Orkut as part of the MTV youth icon awards, and won!
—> You can listen to the audio file above or find it on Spotify/ Apple or Google podcast apps or any of your favourite podcast apps.
—> Sanjay’s Twitter and LinkedIn handles.
Also, do check out this old Webex commercial with RuPaul that we mention in the episode. It’s something! :D
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit turnaround.substack.com
In the past on the Use Case podcast we’ve discussed and debated how several Indian startups have been commanding incredibly high valuations to their business. One practical way how they do so is by creating extremely strong brands - and this is especially true for consumer internet companies. In fact there is an interesting research report by Forbes which shows, how over the last few decades “intangible assets” make up over 80% of the S&P 500 market value.
And then, as the graph by Forbes above would show, within this intangible component as well, the contribution of marketing related activities is extremely significant! Well placed marketing also increases the perception of innovation, bargaining power with the customer and brand loyalty which drives the valuation higher - investors hate that, and founders love it (they’ll deny it, but they love it).
And so, first in our series of episodes on Marketing, WE ARE THRILLED to be joined by Raja Ganapathy, who was till recently the Chief Marketing Officer at Sequoia Capital India, and is now the co-founder of Spring Marketing Capital, which invests in and works directly with the founders in shaping the startup's marketing and branding strategy.
You can listen to the audio file above or find it on Spotify/ Apple or Google podcast apps or any of your favourite podcast apps.
My favourite part of the show is when JPK and Raja play and discuss sections of this iconic talk by Steve Jobs on marketing. Do check it out!
Know a friend who would enjoy listening to the series? Tell them about it! They will appreciate it, and so would we :)
Best,
Ravish
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit turnaround.substack.com
On a recent trip to Beijing, I was travelling in the subway during peak hours. I looked to my left - almost everyone I saw was on their phones. Looked to my right - same thing. Like a typical waiguoren (“foreigner”) I was fascinated.
China has grown exponentially in mobile growth, creating new industries like livestreaming along the way.
In this episode of the Use Case podcast (you can listen to it on the audio file above or find it on Spotify/ Apple or Google podcast apps), I caught up with Andy Tian, the CEO of Uplive, a live streaming + social gaming+gifting platform on building a successful internet startup in China and expanding it globally.
Andy grew up in the US, went to MIT to study engineering and decided to startup in China. He is exceptionally well aware of the Indian market, which reflects a new breed of Chinese entrepreneurs looking to India as a digital economy.
Check out the timestamp of the conversation - you might find a few topics of your interest. The total audio is of ~40 minutes and something cool to listen to on your next commute!
Timestamp
00:00- Why be pirate? Company culture of a startup
05:30- Andy’s early career choices, going to MIT and moving between US & China; How has China’s startup world evolved since 2000?
10:00- What makes Andy bullish on India and how did early Chinese startups survive the “Internet Winter”?
15:10- Building a live steaming business - Entertainment vs Utility
20:00- Can India leapfrog China?
23:30- Globally, where is live streaming working and how to monetize? How does Andy look at Indian users and compare it with users in other countries
31:30- How do you compete with big platforms like Tiktok?
34:30- How are Chinese entrepreneurs looking at India as a market?
Talking of Chinese startups entering India, we dissected the product strategy Bytedance is building to launch its new music app in India, called Resso. Check out the story here or by copy pasting this link- https://turnaround.substack.com/p/decoding-bytedances-strategy-to-tap
For more such stories, subscribe to turnaround.substack.com
Would love to know your thoughts, let us know what you think in the comments section.
Thanks,
Ravish
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit turnaround.substack.com
In today’s episode we are joined by Sanjay Nath, who is the Managing Partner of Blume Ventures, one of India’s leading early stage VC firm.
From his early career when he was as a management consultant in Silicon Valley to the days when he helped his father scale a tech company (which went on to then be acquired by a global tech giant), to being one of the first angel investors to put his own money in deep tech startups before AI was a thing, Sanjay is a force to reckon with when it comes to his knowledge of building and scaling enterprise technology companies. In this episode Ravish and Sanjay go deep into the intricacies of building and scaling B2B, SaaS and deep tech startups (see timestamp below for exact topics covered).
👂You can check out the show on your browser or Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or other podcast apps.
Note: When Sanjay’s co-founder, Karthik Reddy was on the show he talked about the need for Indian startups to balance growth and profitability. In a similar context during the episode, we mention the Rule of 40 - which we believe is an important mental model for investors and founders to measure the balance between growth and profitability . According to it, as a rule of thumb for SaaS companies, your growth rate + your profit % should add up to 40%. So, if you are growing at 20%, you should be generating a profit of at least 20%. If you are growing at 40%, it’s okay if you are generating a 0% profit. If you are growing at 50%, you aren’t in bad zone if you have a loss of 10%.
It goes to show that both the growth rate and profitability are important in determining the valuation multiple of a SaaS company and a balance between the two must be maintained. See the graph of public SaaS companies in the US plotted by Pacific Crest below.
The rule was suggested by Brad Feld, MD of Foundry Group and co-founder of Techstars, based on his learnings from various board meetings of global SaaS companies. Remember though, that this is not set in stone, but just a general mental model to remember that balancing growth with profitability is important, especially as it impacts your company’s valuation.
If your goal is to enhance your knowledge of the Indian startup ecosystem and learn from some of the best founders, CXOs and investors in the business, consider subscribing to the Turnaround newsletter to access more such insights.
Timestamp/ Topics covered
00:33 - Industry level changes in B2B/Enterprise tech startups in last 10 years
02:35 – Talent and capital shifts in India; the lack of non-consumer datasets to tie real economy to enterprise technology
08:10 – Dependency of Indian B2B startups on US/ other international markets for data and sales as a major barrier to entry and ways to overcome that – lead generation, sales, incubation, tips for founders
16:47 – Pricing software- art or science? Understanding the difference between Asian and western markets, discounts and positioning
21:45- Three chasms in growth: ARR $1mn, $5mn and $10mn; metrics & benchmarks to measure B2B/SaaS companies – Annual Recurring Revenues, Net Dollar Retention, Margins, etc...
26:00- Has the larger Indian IT industry done enough to grow the domestic Indian B2B startups?
28:45- Board room shifts in B2B startups during early stages; the rule of 40 for SaaS companies – valuation as a function of growth and profitability; current market valuations
34:00- Closing thoughts for founders
If you like listening to the show, please consider sharing it with those you think might find it helpful and subscriber at turnaround.substack.com for more such insights.
See you next time!
Thank you for listening,
JPK and Ravish
Correction (added after publishing):
At 22:30, I mix Annual Recurring Revenue and Accounting Rate of Return as the definition of ARR. Apologies for the mistake!
-Ravish Bhatia
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit turnaround.substack.com
India is the world’s fastest-growing app market but it is also a competitive and fragmented market. Only a few companies have been able to scale and achieve repeated consumer engagement while solving a problem.
Companies spent nearly $1.14 billion on mobile advertising to drive app installs in 2019. But nearly 77% of users uninstall the apps they installed within the first day and only 2.6% of users stick to the app even after 30 days, according to data from AppsFlyer.
Image: Retention rates of apps downloaded in India. Full report by AppsFlyer here.
So what goes into making a successful app for the Indian market?
Our guest on the show this week as part of the Product Management series, Deepak Abbot, gives a masterclass on this topic! Deepak was until recently the Senior Vice President at Paytm where he was responsible for products and growth and he shares some very deep insights into the Indian appspace (see timestamp below).
🔐🔐🔐As a BONUS for our paying subscribers on the show, Deepak gives a video presentation on app development and growth hacking as the second part of the podcast.
In the presentation, he shares some benchmarking data and insights that are specific to India. He also walks us through the different stages in the lifecycle of an app and the tasks a product manager should take on at each stage. It is truly a masterclass!
The video can be accessed through this link. If you haven’t subscribed yet, you could do so below and get access to all exclusive subscriber content for a year! Prices go up next week.
👂You could listen to the show on your browser or Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, other podcast apps. If you like it, please give us a review on your podcast app, or show us some love by clicking on the heart button below the title.
TIMESTAMP [for public content]
0:00= Episode structure, bonus content announcement, setting the tone
3:00= Nature of India’s app market- characteristics, size, peculiar user download behaviours, calendar trends, average monthly statistics
7:00= Product design to grab the attention of the Indian user
9:55= Starting point for building an app, how to choose a platform?
12:00= Resource management and product development planning
14:00= Key points to always keep in mind while launching an app in India
17:15= Different stages of the app life cycle, measuring performance and growth hacking for the Indian market, incentivising users, App Store Optimisation, launching an app and more
22:15= Early customer ratings and recent changes in Playstore’s rating mechanisms
25:50= Pre-launch app stage - tools to use, PR and other things to note
31:00= Privacy and app permissions - a double-edged sword; How Paytm asks for permissions
36:00= When to raise capital, how would Deepak think about raising capital
39:00= Powerpoint presentation on growth hacking for paying subscribers
Here’s what’s in the video for paying subscribers
🔥What the classic app funnel looks like
🔥Measure the right metrics: be paranoid about the 1%
🔥Benchmarks in different segments like games, business, e-commerce
🔥Tips, tools and techniques to measure, retain and grow your app users
We really appreciate your support and hope to bring you much more in 2020 from the best minds out there in the Indian startup ecosystem. See you all on the other side!
Happy new year! 🎉
Best,
JPK and Ravish
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit turnaround.substack.com
Every product manager has a unique story. The multi-dimensional nature of the role implies that there is no one fixed path to becoming a great product owner. Our first guest as part of the Product Management series, Sidu Ponappa, shares one such journey, which sounds like a 90s love story - only here, his love is computers 💻
BY THE WAY, if you haven’t signed up for the series, you can still subscribe here!
Sidu served on the Board of Directors of Gojek and was Head of Gojek India from 2015 to 2019. He is a 4x founder, whose last startup was acquired by the Indonesian decacorn, where he scaled his 35 member startup team into an 700 member product and engineering organisation across 3 countries that simultaneously:
shipped 18 products in 18 months
reduced downtimes by 1000X
scaled the stack from 4K daily completed orders to 1M daily completed orders in 18 months
No wonder why he talks about Hypergrowth so much on the show. 🤓
BUT THE COOLEST part of the conversation is the discussion around what makes a superapp - the underlying assets and features that are required (are they?) and more!
😼We also discuss how to manage and hire teams, how the Indian market is different from the Indonesian one (twice have VCs negated our claim that the Indian digital economy is far from picking up like Indonesia, but we find some redemption here!)
👂You could listen to the show on your browser or Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, other podcast apps. If you like it, please give us a review on your podcast app, or show us some love by clicking on the heart button below the title. ❤️️
If you think someone would be interested in learning more about this, feel free to forward them this email or share it on Whatsapp/ other social media.
We will be having Deepak THE KING Abbot , ex Vice President at Paytm, on the show next, teaching a master class on building and scaling mobile apps next week (we will be emailing the video lecture to only to our paying subscribers).
Stay cool and Keep hustling guys! 💪💪💪
Best,
JPK and Ravish
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit turnaround.substack.com
In today’s Use Case podcast, we try to understand how the media industry has changed in the recent past, what sort of business models are working and how founders of new media startups should think about monetisation. Check out the timestamps for more.
Joining us to dive deep into these trends is Miten Sampat, the Chief Strategy Officer of Times Internet, the internet company owned by the Times Group. He and his team have led ~15 acquisitions and 10+ minority investments, making them one of the most active Corp VC / M&A arm in the India internet sector. He is a board member for multiple new media and internet companies such as MX Player, ET-Money, Dineout, Haptik, OML, Shuttl and Myra, among others.
🎧Listen in to the episode on your browser or find it on Apple/Google Podcast apps, Spotify, or Stitcher; ⚡️⚡️⚡️Please consider leaving us a review and rating us on Apple podcasts if you find this episode useful. ⚡️⚡️⚡️
Note: Link to Miten’s 2010 blog discussed on the show at around 27:00; some thoughts about the topic after the timestamp
Here are the timestamps:
0:00= Introducing Miten; Media as the most disrupted industry through all industrial revolutions
2:00= Two big types of transitions media has had to face in recent past
4:00= Shift from advertising to subscription model; Why now?⚡️
7:00= Competing with Facebook and Google for advertising- is it worth it? Can you do it?
8:44= Trust deficit leading shift to influencer/ personality driven content?🔮
9:37= Competing with vs utilising Facebook and Google platforms for advertising lead business models
13:30= How are advertisers responding to changes in platforms? Does advertising for India 2.0 give a return on advertising spend?⚡️
16:50= Is the Indian industry growing fast enough? Are they making money?
23:00= Are local Indian internet platforms beginning to be competitive enough?
27:00= Excess infrastructure leads to innovation and new opportunities⚡️
29:30= Miten’s strategy/advice if he were to start a new company in the media/internet space
31:00= MX PLAYER disrupting a mostly subscription driven streaming industry - Could it pivot into a video commerce company? Could it disrupt the Hotstar/Amazon/Netflix monopoly🔮
34:50= Content producers vs content aggregators - who wins? Is the content market consolidating?⚡️
37:30= Closing thoughts
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For more than a decade now, I’ve read about media being in trouble. As a reporter at two leading newspapers and then as part of early teams at digital media startups, I’ve had some time to think about it. Below, I’m reproducing a piece I’d written earlier on Twitter because it’s relevant here.
So we all know the media is in trouble because revenues from print advertising are falling in most markets. And that money is going to digital media. That’s a good thing right? More for digital media companies?! Well, no.
For digital media startups banking on that shift, the big payday will never come. Because digital advertising will never deliver the goods to you. Because you’re competing for the same ad dollars that big tech companies are competing for.
Most of the money in digital advertising goes to Google, Facebook, and platforms like Instagram with an endless supply of ad inventory. For these platforms, the cost of content is nearly zero. They like to keep it that way and invest technology to capture eyeballs and not in ‘content’ itself.
You, as a journalism startup, have inferior technology, no matter how much you try, and you have the cost of content to bear. On both counts, Big Tech will always win. You could point to a few profitable digital news sites and say that it’s working for them.
In the short run, it may work for a company. And some companies may even be able to grow big enough to invest in better technology, hire a direct sales team and so on. But in the end, it is bound to fail.
For a moment, think of what the endgame will look like: Thanks to ad:tech, a marketer can always target your reader or readers of similar quality on Facebook or Twitter or TikTok or Spotify or an endless number of platforms. Why would they spend on your news site?
In the long run, the competition for digital advertising dollars will get even more brutal as the supply of inventory grows. For instance, two years ago, there was no TikTok in India. Now the Chinese behemoth with over 50 million users in India wants to make money from ads in India.
Until last year, Gaana was the only place a marketer could advertise at scale to streaming music users. Now there’s Spotify, Saavn and at least a dozen other streaming platforms fighting for the same money.
Heck, even Amazon and Flipkart are booking healthy advertising revenues.
As mega-platforms and apps powered by user-generated content bring an endless supply of ad inventory to the market, news media sites that manually put out stories don’t stand a chance. Your margins will constantly come under pressure because hey, how fast can your newsroom type?!
So then what’s your lever here as a news media company? Bring down the cost of content and increase ad inventory? But that’s not an option because as a news outlet, readers expect a minimum standard from you.
Best case, to make content cheaper, you hire cheaper and churn out content faster. You lose credibility and in turn, your ability to sell ads. You’re then left to pick up the scraps from the table on which the giants feast.
This is a downward spiral if there was ever one. Because it’s not just you who’s waiting to pick up the leftovers. Every day, there are more and more people just like you publishing online hoping to make a living out of it.
Perchance, if some money dribbles down to news media sites, it is cut up into a thousand parts since entry barriers are so low and everyone is publishing. The money isn’t meaningful enough for anyone to even think of investing in quality journalism.
So then, if it’s all doom and gloom, why don’t we all just go home? That’s not an option either. Because in these dark days, media has a role to play more than ever before. Can we make it work? To answer this, I like looking at how the media works. The traditional media model looks something like this.
Most of the money will come from advertising, some from subscriptions and a little from intellectual property. Currently, most media companies rely on advertising because it’s the lowest hanging fruit. They hardly have any subscription revenues and IP/ events are far and few. Advertising, as we showed earlier doesn’t make enough money.
The answer to our problem is in front of us really. If you look closer, you’ll realize: as you go higher up the pyramid, the value per user goes up.
What it means is that you can make a dollar by showing an ad to 1000 people who land up on your site or you can make $100 by selling one annual subscription to one person. Or you can make $1000 by selling a ticket to an event or access to a database to one person.
So let’s update the figure a little to reflect this. Now if you, as a media startup, flip the model: you’ll get something like this:
Here, you don’t spam your reader with advertising. But you work hard to hook them to your product. Hooking a prospective user, or a loyalist is extremely vital here. This can be achieved by a combination of good product thinking and analytics to back it (Pro tip: Try this Audience Explorer Dashboard and Data Tools for News from Google). Consider the money you forgo in advertising revenues as your marketing costs.
Now you build products focussed on IP and events/ conferences for the same audience groups. Which means you have to be very careful to tie your editorial stack closely to these audience groups. Again, analytics is important here.
Here media companies have a natural advantage over platforms in building content related IP because of the access they have to thought leaders and data sources. It has higher margins, and scope for deeper work that rewards experienced journalists and quality stories.
If you build your strategy around building a stack of this nature, it will probably start looking like a sustainable company in the long run. To make this work, it’s important to segment your users clearly, have an editorial strategy around each segment (niche?) and eventually build IP based products for the segments.
If you crack one segment, perhaps you can port this model into other segments as well. Hope this helps.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit turnaround.substack.com
Some six months ago, after shutting down Factordaily, I joined Freshworks, a fast-growing software as a service company built out of Chennai. If you’ve followed this newsletter, you know that I’ve made some seemingly random career choices and it has worked out well for me.
When I joined Freshworks, I didn’t quite realize how big the Indian Software as a Service industry was going to be. But then, I started learning about it. Turns out, it could potentially be a trillion-dollar industry in a couple of decades.
Some signals here:
⚡️Indian SaaS startups raised over $1 billion venture capital in 217 deals in 2018 (source).
⚡️The industry is set to clock $7 billion in revenues by 2022 (source)
⚡️In a recent funding round, Freshworks was valued at over $3.5 billion (source)
So I sat down with Rajan (Thiyagarajan Maruthavanan), the co-founder of Upekkha earlier this month to quickly dive into the world of SaaS. We start by understanding the opportunity and then dive into how early-stage founders could look at going from 0 - $10,000 in monthly recurring revenue.
Listen in to the episode on your browser or find it on Apple/Google Podcast apps, Spotify, or Stitcher; Please consider leaving us a review and rating us on Apple podcasts if you find this episode useful.
⚡️⚡️⚡️ Here are the timestamps:
1:44= SaaS revenue today vs 10 years ago
2:30= Shift in the way SaaS is sold because of social and cloud
5:37= $1 trillion opportunity and the magic number 66
7:50= Shift in the way India builds software
11:30= How to think about building a product and start a SaaS company
17:00= Defining a persona for whom one is trying to solve a problem
21:50= BAF business framework for SaaS
25:25= Definition of a ‘product’ to remember as a mantra
30:00= Pricing!
33:20= Marketing for SaaS companies
Ravish who co-hosts the Use Case podcast along with me was in Beijing last week. We’ll bring you some great stuff from the middle kingdom in the following editions of this newsletter.
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Payal Arora, digital anthropologist and author of the book, ‘The Next Billion Users: Digital Life Beyond the West’ talks to Jayadevan on the sidelines of the Design Up conference in Bangalore on designing products for the Next Billion Users or NBUs. She is presently Professor & Chair in Tech, Values & Global Media Cultures at Erasmus University and has been researching digital behaviours in different economies for over ten years.
Note: If you are listening to this episode on Apple Podcasts (click here), please do consider leaving us a good rating. It takes a few seconds, but helps make the show become more discoverable. You could also find us on other platforms like Spotify and Google Podcasts. If you want to listen to this on your phone’s browser window, just minimise the browser window and it should continue playing.
TIMESTAMP:
1:05 - The NBU as the new focus area for businesses and investors (especially Western)
2:30 - The poor-rich gap and misunderstanding the wants of NBUs
3:45 - Internet as the sole “leisure economy” for the NBU
5:05 - Designing products for Next Billion Users
9:50 - Catching up with socio-politics around NBU design vs allowing users to create for themselves
12:30 - Surviving piracy while targeting NBUs
13:25 - Implications for privacy of NBUs
14:55 - Adding friction into product design to reduce social risks
17:50 - Social Credit System in China, the biggest NBU product
20:45 - Want for fabulousness by the NBU, digital products as an equaliser between the rich and poor
Link to Payal’s website: http://payalarora.com
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit turnaround.substack.com
Seasoned Indian business journalist and author of ‘Big Billion Startup- The untold Flipkart story’, Mihir Dalal shares the ups and downs in Flipkart’s growth story and the journey of the people who built it. He and Ravish unpack some stories from the book that have never been told in the media before. Lots of lessons to learn from the big Indian unicorn!
Listen in to this episode on your browser window (if you’re listening on your phone, the audio should continue playing even if you minimise the window) or find us on the podcast app of your choice. We’re live on Spotify, Apple, Google Podcasts & Stitcher. If you like the episode please consider leaving us a review on your favourite podcast app.
Timestamp:
00:50: Amazon’s influence on early Flipkart, Two Pizza teams and culture
06:00: Taking risks even when there isn’t a lot of visibility, turning down early acquisition offers
11:00: On pompous Venture Capital Lords and Flipkart
15:00: Enter the Tiger, Lee Fixel and Deep Kalra
19:00: With $10 million, Flipkart powers ahead
20:01: Flipkart’s official sex appeal bringer
25:00: Iyappa, the Human ERP at Flipkart
29:00: Cash on Delivery as a game changer
32:00: How to hold inventory without inventory
33:00: Sujeet Kumar- the man who got things done
37:20: Competition heats up as Amazon enters India
39:00 General Atlantic shocker and emergency funding
41:03: Fixing the broken bits: Kalyan Krishnamurthy
48:30: After the funding boom, Snapdeal and other rivals
51:15: Mihir reads out a chapter! Enter Softbank!
64:30: Market consolidation, exits and acquisitions
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit turnaround.substack.com
One of the rising stars of the Indian fin-tech space, Nikhil, co-founder of Setu, shares with us his experience building the BHIM app, how the Fintech space is changing, his tips and tricks for building a successful SaaS startup in India, starting a business in the age of Big-Tech competition and more. We also have some fun moments discussing productivity hacks, favorite books, podcasts and more.
Timestamp:
1:30= Nikhil’s background and journey; 4:30= Thinking big; 8:00= Building BHIM app; 14:30 = Future of Fintech and opportunities; 19:00= Shift to value added services in payments and convergence of SaaS & Fintech business; 30:30 = Building Setu as an API business; 37:30 = Productivity, podcasts and books
You can also listen to the show on iTunes: http://bit.ly/usecasepod Google: http://bit.ly/2nIa0DF & Spotify: http://spoti.fi/2n4elRe
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit turnaround.substack.com
It was 2012. I'd just started working at Pluggd.in, the startup and tech site run by Ashish Sinha. Yourstory also covered startups those days. Mainstream media was still covering quarterly results at IT services companies and listening to the same "management commentary," every three months.
A new fund had launched a few months ago. They called themselves a micro VC and they were writing cheques faster than you could get from Silkboard to M G Road in Bangalore. I exaggerate, but you get the drift. The fund was called Blume Ventures. It was run by Karthik Reddy and Sanjay Nath.
Using their first fund, about Rs 60 crore of Indian capital (most of the money that comes into Venture Capital in India is foreign), Blume backed 70 companies. Some of them are well-known names now. Blume was also a backer of FactorDaily, the media company Pankaj and I started some three years ago (Read Lessons from a rookie entrepreneur by Pankaj here).
Cut to 2019.
Plugdd.in is NextBigWhat.
Yourstory is Yourstory.
You've been reading my story on this newsletter.
Mainstream media has dedicated startup pages now.
Blume is raising its third fund (nearly $100+ million).
India has over 20 companies valued at over a billion dollars. This year alone about half a dozen of them were born (thanks to Softbank and some late-stage investors). Indian startups have been in hot pursuit of growth, sometimes even showing utter disregard for unit economics.
Many times this is because companies heavily subsidize goods for new consumers hoping to create new market behaviours. After the WeWork fiasco, we've started hearing some chatter about profitability.
In the balancing act between profitability and growth, the Indian ecosystem should have grown enough by now to show a few big exits, but apart from Flipkart, there aren’t many.
Truth be told, profitability is nowhere in sight for many startups. Some have begun to question if this has become a “mindset” feature of the Indian startup multiverse.
Earlier this month, Karthik wrote a provocative blog about why Indian companies need to show that they have the mettle to go public or list their stocks to be traded at an exchange. He argued that though this brings on the burden of compliance, it is high time Indian startups started showing "cash exits," and not markups to paper valuation.
Ravish and I decided to do this week's Use Case podcast with Karthik to unpack what he meant by that and why it was important. With Karthik, who has shaped Blume’s investment philosophy for almost a decade and brings a wealth of prior experience across financials, technology and media, we also tried to contextualise what is happening with venture capital in India. We hope you like it. This one is meant to create ripples!
You can listen to the show directly in this browser on your phone/desktop by clicking on the play button at the top of the email. Alternatively, you can find this episode of the Use Case podcast on Itunes/ Spotify/ Google Podcasts. Listen to it directly, or download it for later.
If you do like the podcast, consider asking a friend to subscribe to this newsletter. Or share it on your social feeds. We'd really appreciate a shout out. Should you have any thoughts on the subject, please feel free to write to us on email or tweet it out!
Other recommendations this week
💥 Mihir Dalal's book on Flipkart which was published earlier this month. Check out here.
💥 Sajit Pai's Tweet thread on Karthik's blog post. Read here.
💥 Set of talks by Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Bhavish Aggarwal and others from TechSparks 2019 by Yourstory. Check here.
Cheers,
JPK
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit turnaround.substack.com
In this episode we meet up with Ankush Gera, the CEO of Junglee Games to learn more on the start-up and gaming industry in India. We learn what the state of the nascent but fast expanding gaming industry in India is like, what it takes to build a product based business that grow at a 100% YOY, the hustle of an entrepreneur, the right way to acquire customers, and much more.
Check out our newsletter, Turnaround on Substack at https://turnaround.substack.com/about
For sharing feedback or if you want us to forward your questions to our guests, please DM me on Twitter @RavBhatia
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit turnaround.substack.com
This week’s episode is especially for entrepreneurs who are looking to raise their first round of capital as we speak to Vinit Bhansali from Orios Venture Partners on what makes the perfect pitch deck. Some key topics covered in the episode include: * What are the key elements of a pitch? * Team, product, business model, long term strategy - what is the investor looking for in 10 min conversation after a conference? * How can you make a VC, who gets 200+ pitch decks a week, remember your pitch? * Vinit’s personal experience as an entrepreneur and pitching * Common biases that VCs have while listening to pitches and what to take note of
Vinit also goes on to kindly agree to mentor founders on refining their pitch and can be reached out to via Linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/in/vinitb/ If you have ideas on what you’d like to listen on the show next, please DM me on Twitter at @RavBhatia
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We head to Beijing and meet up with Dr. Dongmin Chen, Dean of School of Innovation at Peking University who works closely with various provincial governments, WIPO and Chinese Academy of Sciences on China’s innovation policies and try to go beyond the noise in western media to have a candid discussion on what is really happening on the ground in China. In this episode we find out not just how the Chinese government is trying to create an innovation driven economy but also how it is thinking about it. We also probe whether the common perceptions about Chinese market in western media are true and try to answer If there is a small tech bubble emerging in China. We further discuss how universities engage in commercialisation of technology, the culture of failure and entrepreneurship in China, civil military technology diffusion and much more!
Media: Trapped by YouTube Audio & Donald Trump says "China" by Huffpost Entertainment
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