Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Healthy habits, one strand at a time | Saloni Anand & Altaf Saiyed @ Traya
172 Plays1 year ago
In a country obsessed with beauty, hair and skin, Traya is a result when a wife decides to ensure that the husband needs to focus on his health. Founder duo Altaf and Saloni created an innovative product to prevent hairfall while focusing on technology for holistic healthy habits. They spill the beans on building Traya, using cohort marketing to innovate, navigating investor relations, fundraising tactics, and the art of cultivating a winning culture in a startup.
Get notified about the latest releases and bonus content by subscribing to our newsletter at www.founderthesis.com
Read more about Traya:-
1.Meet husband, wife who built healthcare company after facing personal health issues
2.Changing The Conversation Around Hair Loss: Saloni Anand Talks About Building Her Brand Traya
3.How Traya is Transforming Hair Health with a Holistic Approach
4.‘My Husband’s Hairfall Inspired These Hair Solutions’: Engineer’s Biz Finds 2.5 Lakh Customers
5.The Business Of Reversing Hair Loss; How Traya Is Fitting Into The Wellness Landscape
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Background
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi, I'm Saloni Anand. I'm Haldab Sayyad. We are co-founder of Triad.
00:00:18
Speaker
How do you help people build a habit? This is a simple problem statement. But if you can find the answer to it, then it has profound implications. Altaf and Saloni are on a mission to answer this question at their startup, Traya. Traya helps people to reverse hair loss through a combination of Western medicine, Ayurveda and healthy habits. And this is just the start. If you can influence habit building, then there are literally unlimited problems that you can solve.
00:00:45
Speaker
In this episode of the Founder Thesis Podcast, your host Akshay Dutt gets into an insightful and candid conversation with Altaf and Saloni, the husband-wife duo behind Traya. Stay tuned for tons of lessons in finding product market fit and scaling up and please to subscribe to Founder Thesis on YouTube or any audio streaming platform.
Founding Story and Early Ventures
00:01:12
Speaker
So I want to start with, I mean, you're both like not just co-founders, but you're also married to each other. So let's start with your personal journey first. How did the two of you meet? How did that intersection happen? And then we can talk about how you ended up starting Dreyer. I think for this question, we both have a version of
00:01:34
Speaker
How different are your versions? There are overlap, but in both our stories we are the hero.
00:01:48
Speaker
Let's do ladies first. Yeah, I'll start. I like to dominate there. So I'm sorry. Altaf and I met in Hyderabad. Altaf was back then running his food startup. And I was working for a company.
00:02:06
Speaker
up short and we lived in the same lane so our buildings were right across the road. The reason we sort of or rather Alta recognized me is because we both come from the same town so back in the school days we actually went to the same school but we had never met each other in the school because these five years ended to me but
00:02:32
Speaker
It's a town called Vapi in South Gujarat, known for its chemical industries and pharma. So we studied in that town and we had like common, his younger sister was my classmate and we had like common connects. So that's how we literally met on the road. He just stopped and he said, I think I know you. Are you from Vapi? I said yes.
00:02:59
Speaker
Okay. Okay. And so how did you end up being an entrepreneur? You were already an entrepreneur when you met Saloni. I did my undergrad in medical bar chemistry with a thought that I will know I did it from UK and then I did MBA from Stanford later.
00:03:19
Speaker
But in third year, I was very clear that I cannot be a scientist. Very difficult, very challenging, different bent of life. So fourth year, I was the only guy who did a dry project and not just theoretical dry project. I actually did a business project in a science background. It was a lot of fun. But I was very clear by then that this is something that I enjoy and I would like to do for a longer period of time as well.
00:03:43
Speaker
And how did, what happened between that and Stanford MBA? You started your business after Stanford or? No, no, I started my first business when I think in 2009 or 10, something like that. So again, I think most of the companies that I have worked in comes from like a personal, more of a personal story than just like a market validation, even try is an outcome of the same thing. So the first company started in affordable housing.
00:04:11
Speaker
And the idea was very simple. So I grew up in a concept called in small town, they have this thing called LID, M-I-G, H-I-G, which is basically something like that. So I grew up in one of those LIG, which is like your affordable housing. And they are very pleasant, right? You have like one BHA, two BHA, good veranda, balcony. You have like a common ground and everything. So that's the concept of affordable housing that I grew up with.
00:04:38
Speaker
2009-2010, I started looking into another project, trying to figure out if the affordable housing market would work for some other project that I was working in. And all I could find was a glorified chance kind of a thing.
00:04:53
Speaker
Most of the things are really narrow worker housing kind of a thing that people living in a small apartment and I thought I could I could do a little better and my experience in that affordable housing kind of helped because I understood that the guys living in store were not
00:05:10
Speaker
not really poor, right? Like I would categorize them as probably middle class kind of a thing, working as a supervisor to like a higher up senior labor in a factory. And most of them are bankable guys, right? Like working in a company for longer period of time. So I thought like, these guys would never live in this kind of affordable housing. I would never live in
00:05:32
Speaker
the child affordable housing. So I can create a better concept. That's how I created the first company. Very little money, very little experience. And I feel that if I had even the 10% of knowledge that I have right now, I would have never started it.
00:05:47
Speaker
I mean, your intention was to acquire a parcel of land and build affordable housing and sell it, like that kind of real estate development. So kind of that, but I didn't have money to acquire land. So I just went out to a farmer next door and said, like, hey, you would like to tie up and whenever we get the money, the first installment will be yours and then I'll take it up.
00:06:14
Speaker
it worked out. We did like very interesting marketing where we would go to all the factories, pitch to the labors, zero budget spend. And the fun thing was that 70 or 65% of the housing got sold on first day. So required hardly any CapEx. I
00:06:34
Speaker
shifted out of India, I think after two or three projects and then I finished my MBA. So why didn't you just scale that up and become a developer like Alodha or something? Right, so I think I was too young to have that part process of
00:06:52
Speaker
building an organization. I was doing what a simple, small businessman would do, one project at a time. I didn't have the resources, I didn't have the thought process in terms of how do you build team, how do you keep them motivated and other parts. I think building business is two parts, which is one is just getting that
00:07:16
Speaker
that ball rolling. But more importantly, and more difficult part is that how do you keep that ball rolling into
00:07:24
Speaker
a big snowball, right? Like how do you keep on multiplying that thing? And for that, you need to have that five years, six years, eight years horizon where you are investing in your manpower. You are building that scale. You are creating that coach. You are coming across as a person who is a thought leader rather than just like one guy who is kicking the ball around, right? I was too immature to have that. I was more motivated.
00:07:48
Speaker
aware of your immaturity and that's why you chose to do an MBA. I think everyone around me was aware of my immaturity. In fact, one of the friends who was with me in that company, he was a much much senior guy and he actually told me that an MBA would definitely help you out a little. And he was very very precise that go to Stanford that could be a school that you might enjoy way more. That's what I ended up doing.
00:08:19
Speaker
Okay, and after Stanford? Stanford also has this big entrepreneurial culture like the Google founders were all Stanford guys. Stanford has a very good culture like how I describe the culture is very simple that it's one place in the world where I would get out and just say I want to be as an Indian saying that here I want to be a president of
00:08:42
Speaker
U.S., right? And someone would say that, how can I help, right? And then saying, this is stupid. They might just say, how can I help kind of thing, like very, very collaborative, helping culture. And that kind of added to the fire as well. And also gave me a little better understanding of what it is, building a company and not just building a small project. With that thought process, I started my second company, which was into food production.
00:09:11
Speaker
in India or in the US? No, no, I started in India. I did a couple of pilots, but nothing worked out in the US. So I moved back to India.
00:09:21
Speaker
Even from even before going to Stanford, I was very clear that I will move back to India. I feel like home only. Like, yeah, I guess that and also like I only feel at home in India, everywhere else I would, I would kind of feel like a foreigner. So I was, I was back and I started my last company and I think last company taught me more than anything in my life. It's terribly fair, right? Like I would have
00:09:51
Speaker
What kind of food products? Was it like a cloud kitchen or was it like a package? We did everything, right? Like from package to cloud kitchen to cafeteria management. Now the challenge with the business is also that when you get an early success in which I got in cafeteria, right? Like where I got like a couple of contracts where you will make for office catering.
00:10:15
Speaker
Which city was this in? This was in Hyderabad to start with. That's where you guys met. So I call those business Oxygen business where you never die but you can never ever have full
00:10:31
Speaker
a share of oxygen, right? You are never thriving, but you are just moving along. A lot of learning, a lot of understanding, a lot of hard ones acquired, not money, but a lot of diseases. And that's why I feel one of the most important part of your life is also to have a sounding partner like Salone in your life.
00:10:54
Speaker
who could tell you straight up that, hey, you're doing something wrong, but you are in this business where you're coming home at 12 and going at five and your life is not getting any better. I think that's the time when Treyha story also happened and Saloni started lifting a lot more weight than I did till that time. What was some of those learnings from the failed food business?
00:11:20
Speaker
You must have learned about how to evaluate spaces, which is a good space and so on. The most important thing is the importance of PMF or the product market. And we kind of use that learning in Traya for like two years. Please correct me if I'm wrong there.
00:11:42
Speaker
Overall, what we did was just made sure that whatever our thesis was there, let the market decide it. Two very critical part to it. One is have extreme PMF rather than just a tick mark PMF, where it is actually difficult to prove that product market fit, and it cannot be just like, hey, 100 people buy me, then I am a PM.
00:12:06
Speaker
people giving me, like 100 people who bought me gave me 8 NPS or 9 NPS and I'm very good, right? The real proof of putting is when a person actually buys you again.
00:12:20
Speaker
right? Without a strong incentive, right? Like without the discount, without forcing that they buy this and whatever those things. Like on its own when they buy for the benefit of the product, that's when the PMF is done, right? That's our whole part of it.
00:12:37
Speaker
my learning in that large business was this. I could do sales. I would get that kind of product sell. But I would never get the incremental revenue or exponential revenue. Every time I want to do the second sale, I have to put in enough or the same kind of effort. That was the first problem. Second, you'd never want to build a company where
00:13:02
Speaker
You are just a tick mark, right? Like if it is just yet another company where there is like so many other players and you don't have a clear value addition, it becomes a very challenging aspect. And third important part is... Like if you are easily replaceable, you don't want to build a business where you are easily replaceable. It then just becomes a commodity business. You will always be fighting in margins.
00:13:28
Speaker
And third very important learning that I had is that the guy who is utilizing the service and the person who is paying the bills, if they are different, the incentives are very different because the guy who is paying the bills is always looking for discount whereas the guy who is utilizing the service is always looking for royalty.
00:13:46
Speaker
Right. So for example, in cafeteria, what happens is the company is paying for the bills. So he's always saying that, hey, reduce down the cost. Whereas the employees are eating, who is saying like, Hey, this food is horrible because you are not giving me whatever the things are. So this was big learnings. And then
00:14:04
Speaker
I think I would want to add one more learning to that company Altaf, which is not starting a company alone and having a co-founder and fundraising rather than using your own money.
00:14:20
Speaker
So I think it was the last company that Alta was referring to, it was completely bootstrapped, no external fundraise. And how much ever you tell yourself that this money is just to run this project and to experiment, somewhere you sort of fall in the pressure of taking short term gain over long term gain, because you want to see some revenue out, which might not be a right approach in a lot of
00:14:50
Speaker
startups. So when we started prior, we decided that this time we'll raise fund because we don't want to be alone, but we want a group of people supporting us. So external fundraising over using your own money. And I guess that business was not fundable also, right? Like running cafeterias is not something a VC would fund. Yeah, I think but also the time was in a manner that if I had
00:15:16
Speaker
I've probably wrapped the story in a better wrapper. It might have worked.
00:15:20
Speaker
Okay, as a cloud kitchen. But in all fairness, right, like while I am saying this story as my story, it is actually, Saloni was through that horrible period of time, equally stressed out, equally involved, like you are married, you understand that it's never just one person's game. It is like when you are, when you are starting a company, I think the more difficult job is of the other partner.
00:15:45
Speaker
like your spouse, because while you are there saying that, hey, I'm going to do it, they have to be in play where they are taking whatever rubbish you are throwing, saying that it's okay, you are going through stress, you are going through stress. And I think because of that, Saloni went up through that entrepreneurship ladder much, much faster just by looking at it rather than doing it first time.
00:16:10
Speaker
So how did you decide to shut it down?
Health Challenges and Traya's Approach
00:16:13
Speaker
There must have been some trigger where you said, OK, let's shut this down and try something else. Was it that triad idea came up and automatically this idea got sidelined? So what happened?
00:16:25
Speaker
Saloni had this point that, hey, this is something that this is not scalable. Are you ever going to be fulfilled with your dream on this particular thing? And by this time, it was decent scale. It was not just like a
00:16:41
Speaker
a crore rupee per year kind of revenue. It was like decent scale, 200, 150 employees, three cities. So it was scaling up, right? So you cannot just like pull the plug. So Saloni suggested that, hey, why don't you hire someone who can run this full time and give them the equity and you gradually move out where a person who is more capable of running this kind of business is doing it rather than
00:17:05
Speaker
rather than I, who is not capable of doing it. So I actually ended up hiring a very smart guy and he took it up. He ran it in a much, much more professional
00:17:15
Speaker
professional manner. Unfortunately, COVID hit, where we didn't have an option, I could think of it from an arm slam distance. And then we eventually decided to shut it off. But if COVID hadn't happened, I think that company would be still doing oxygen business. Okay, so COVID was actually good for you in a way. Okay.
00:17:42
Speaker
And how did the trial journey start?
00:17:47
Speaker
So while this company was running and we got the CEO there and Altav got a bit free, we decided to take a six month break and work on his health. Because what had happened running that startup was that he was 20 kg heavier than what it is right now. His thyroid levels were off the roof. He had severe hair loss. And I think for me, the most concerning point was his hypothyroidism.
00:18:12
Speaker
So we decided, let's do something about it. And in that sort of health focused break in life that we took, the sabbatical that we took, we ended up forming the foundation of what Traya is today. I think Traya started almost a year and a half later, but the foundation was built back then.
00:18:36
Speaker
We realized that his thyroid levels were off the roof and the best endocrinologist doctor also did not have anything else to do. He was giving the pill and said, this is the pill you have to have all your life. That's when we sort of explored alternative sciences. We moved from Homupati, Ayurveda. In Ayurveda, we met like 12 Ayurvedic doctors in Bombay.
00:18:56
Speaker
Eventually, we met a doctor that could really explain us the science in English, where you could trust him. And the interesting thing that he said is that, okay, fine, you guys are not comfortable eating herbs. Let me just give you a diet.
00:19:12
Speaker
He explained us how powerful food science is and we can actually control his and there were multiple issues in his body. He had uric acid thyroid all triggered out out of bad lifestyle building startups and heavy stress, right and
00:19:29
Speaker
We went on this regime where we followed his food principles. We ate very specific vegetables, et cetera, to very, very ayurvedic concept of what vegetable to eat to really bring his body back in balance. And the results were phenomenal. His endocrinologist doctor was also surprised how his thyroid levels were coming down. His dosage was reduced every visit. During this time, we also saw that his hair regrouped.
00:19:58
Speaker
And he was using certain Dormack prescribed things forever, like for yours. But it was during this time when he really focused on his health that his hair regrowth happened. People around us, you know, all our friends were at that age where they were getting married, 27 to 30 age range.
00:20:18
Speaker
You know, coming here, what did you do? Suddenly looking so fit and you know, when we shared our thyroid story, everyone had something, oh, you know, my uncle has this, I have this. What do I do? And we kept telling them that, hey, you know,
00:20:34
Speaker
There's so much that you can do about your health if you sort of bring this whole Ayurved and natural pathy and food science into your life. And these are the five doctors that we have figured that are really good. Go meet them.
00:20:49
Speaker
Some of them met, some of them did not, some of them failed. Almost a year and a half later in, I think, January or February 2019, I was at that point where I wanted to quit my job and look for something new in life. So I was just having that brainstorm with Altav that what do I do next? And, you know, he is
00:21:12
Speaker
as entrepreneurial in his mindset as it gets. If he had a chance, he would never let anyone do a job. So he said, Saloni, why don't you start something? I said, no, I'm not sure. He said, okay, take at least two months break.
00:21:28
Speaker
work on something. There's so much that can be done. And then we start the discussion went to what is it that we are passionate about? And the immediate thing in that brainstorming discussion came out is health. And I told him how much our lives as a couple changed after we adopted that holistic living and moved from being unhealthy individuals to healthy individuals.
00:21:54
Speaker
And then we thought, okay, there's probably there's something in the chronic health space that we could do and what we experienced. I think the initial thought was that there is no
00:22:06
Speaker
doctor or hospital designed for chronic health, where there is this entire ecosystem of holistic science, multiple fields of science, sitting in one clinic, helping you, telling you not just to eat healthy, but exactly what to eat for lunch, what to eat for dinner, and then giving you that support system that is required to follow up and adhere to it because it's
00:22:28
Speaker
always a lifelong change that you do in chronic health. It's not like five medicine scores, and then you are done. So we started working in that direction, and then there was no turning back. Every day that we went into it, it was so exciting. We did surveys. We sort of launched landing pages. We did our market study. We got into the science. We met R&D people, formulators.
00:22:56
Speaker
And one thing led to the other and somehow hair loss came out as the most exciting piece because we saw that young people, our friends were affected by it. It wasn't a 50 problem. It was a 26 year old problem in India. Large market opportunity.
00:23:17
Speaker
large market. But to be very honest, Akshay, it wasn't that the market was large. And that's why we started the company. We started the company because we actually found it very, very exciting that it is the most crowded and cluttered market from the laurels of the world to everybody is selling hair fall, hair fall, hair fall, making so much money, but nothing grows hair.
00:23:42
Speaker
because we had tried everything possible available in the market to grow Alta's hair and we could not. And that made us really excited that what if there is something in hand that could actually grow hair and sort of prove everyone, bring more efficacy to the table, basically. So we went on to this mode where we put together a team of doctors. We also got the Ayurveda doctor that we were in touch with in Bombay. And we
00:24:11
Speaker
created a group of 55 people. These were people who were not friends and family, but people who had come to our landing pages and filled detailed forms. We had done long consumer interviews. They had hair loss. They were interested to solve it, et cetera. We told them that, look, hey, we are starting off. Here are a team of doctors that will interact with you. And we'll sort of put together a treatment for you. We'll see what happens. If you don't see results, we'll pay your money back.
00:24:40
Speaker
So, that happened in June 2019. Whatever the dermat prescribed was somehow available in the pharmacy. So, we went to the pharmacy, picked up those products. But what are either way the doctors prescribed was not available at all, because those were like 35 herbs combination needed. And we also realized that there was customization needed, otherwise the results won't come.
00:25:05
Speaker
Because the reason why, let's say, Akshay would face hair loss is very different from reasons why Alta would face hair loss. So we sort of did some level of customization, put together those herbs, did like small batch manufacturing in a small, interesting factory in Panchkini, and shipped out these products to these 55 people, and then shut down all our marketing activities, all our landing pages, surveys.
00:25:29
Speaker
With from then on, what Altaf and I did was just talk to these 55 people every day, at least once a week. The idea was to really learn from them what's happening, what other things changes that they're doing. Are they using their medicines properly? Are they making those diet changes? And by December that year, 2019, out of 55, we had 35 people with unrealistic before-after pictures.
00:25:56
Speaker
where they had regrown their hair. And that's when we realized that, you know, this is something that could, you know, what Altaf said, bring value to the table, which is not replicable, not available in any of the competition. We realized that it mattered to people a lot.
00:26:19
Speaker
as well, right? It was something that people would pay up for. And sort of those elements of product market fit were falling in place. And that's when we sort of raised our seed fund, that's the time COVID hit February 2020. So technically, it was in November 2020 that we launched TRIA, but it was almost a year of work before TRIA was launched to really put together the formulations, fine tune those formulations and put together the whole system.
00:26:50
Speaker
Just to add what Saloni said, might be repetitive there, but what I mentioned about the hypothesis in the PMF, the first six months we actually didn't, we were not completely convinced that the PMF was there. In fact, we created the hypothesis which lasted, which took us another one year to move.
00:27:13
Speaker
very, very out there hypothesis. One of them was a country like India. Can you sell where the market has been telling people that 10 days may Karishma, like 10 days miracle will happen?
00:27:29
Speaker
that this particular shampoo will solve your problem or whatever those things. Can you get into the market with saying that, hey, it's going to take x, y, z months to see any result? Would that work? One second hypothesis that we created was to do this, I will have to be on my own platform and not a marketplace. Would that be possible at all? It's very genuinely difficult for a person to trust a new website compared to a marketplace.
00:27:58
Speaker
And third, very important thesis was that you cannot be a brand just with this one percentile elite people, right? Like you want to solve the problem for the masses. And that was the whole hypothesis that there are only X number of doctors. Can we take what X doctors do to the masses and solve it for the masses as well? So the other hypothesis would be that would a person in a remote place of Madhya Pradesh could be buying Raya. If that is true, then there is a market otherwise not.
00:28:28
Speaker
It took us, what, saloon, another one and a half year to prove all those points. Super interesting. Give me a quick overview of that 55 people
Product Development and Experiments
00:28:40
Speaker
experiment. Were you selling a monthly subscription at that time?
00:28:45
Speaker
Yeah. So I'll explain a few things actually. Before we started working on those 55 people, we realized that the reason or rather if you want to be efficacious with these 55 people, there are a few things that we'll have to do rather few rules that we'll have to break of the current hair industry. Rule number one, a superficial just a shampoo oil will not be able to do their hair.
00:29:12
Speaker
Ayurveda clearly said that hair loss is because of something going wrong internally in your body and you need to address that to actually regrow hair. So that was rule number one. Rule number two, we will have to identify the root cause of hair loss and this root cause is different for every people, which means that one combo or one product for all cannot work. We will have to do some level of customization, some level of diagnosis.
00:29:38
Speaker
Whether it's a face-to-face consultation, whether it's a on-phone consultation, whether it's a Google form, we'll figure out. But we'll have to understand this person's health profile, his gut, his energy levels, his sleep patterns, his stress levels, to be able to build this plan. So that was the second rule.
00:29:55
Speaker
Third, like you see, it cannot be one product. It has to be four or five things. There'll be something from dermatology, something from Ayurveda, there would be a diet. So it will be a holistic program or a plan rather than a product.
00:30:09
Speaker
Right. So we understood these three things and the fourth and the most important, it cannot be, it will take four to five months, at least to see results, because that's the time a hair cycle goes through one phase, delusion to antigen, the other phase where regrowth in an empty follicle can happen, which means that we are actually now in a business where we are telling people that, hey,
00:30:35
Speaker
You have to quietly use this for five months to see any results, which is not something that anybody in the hair industry has done before. So we understood these things, and then we sort of approached the 55 people. We did it in the most rudimentary fashion. We set up Zoom calls with doctors, et cetera, at that point.
00:30:54
Speaker
But these three things were done. There was mixing of three sciences. There was a regime that was made. There was customization, diagnosis-led treatment. There was diet given to each person. And most importantly, there was Altaf and Saloni on their head for five months, calling them to make sure they complete the treatment.
00:31:14
Speaker
Would this 55 cohort prove these three hypotheses? That it's a many months journey. You need some like you need Amadmi also to be ready to go for it and they need to trust your own website instead of going through an Amazon.
00:31:32
Speaker
So Akshay, not really. The idea of this first 55 people was, can hair be grown like it was grown for Alta for other people also. So we wanted to basically just... We were just testing that, yeah, is it repeatable? Are people seeing the regrowth that we saw with Alta? Is this regrowth good enough for people that they're super excited about Traya? So that was the initial thought that
00:32:00
Speaker
do we even have something phenomenally different from what is available in the other? And then when we sort of crossed that piece, what Altav mentioned, I think the next one and a half year after starting prior, we focused on really breaking those hypotheses or rather proving them right or wrong. So the seed fund you raised would have helped you for those three hypotheses.
00:32:23
Speaker
Okay. You spoke of a telogen to anogen cycle. What is that? Just briefly if you can. So hair has, hair has four, any hair right on the head has a cycle and stages.
00:32:38
Speaker
Now, for every healthy individual, the hair will go through these stages, fall down, and in the empty follicle, a new hair will come, which means that some hair fall is absolutely normal. In fact, 150 to 200 strands a day is what they say is absolutely normal.
00:32:55
Speaker
Now, in a person who has a hair loss condition, this cycle shortens, which means that the hair quickly falls down and the new hair that comes, it falls before its actual time that it was supposed to be on the head. Also, every cycle, the new hair that comes, the diameter becomes thinner and thinner. So, two problems happen, shortening of the cycle and thinning of the diameter.
00:33:20
Speaker
Eventually, after a few cycles, the hair becomes very thin and it stops coming. That's why a person sees balding, whether it's, you know, here or whether it's on top of the head. The balding is because the hair stops coming after certain cycles. Now, for any treatment to actually do a real difference and grow hair in an empty follicle, which is regrowth, I'm not saying controlling hair fall, I'm saying
00:33:48
Speaker
growth of hair on a bald patch, right? The follicle has to move through these stages to actually show growth, which is a five-month period, at least. And if one understands this, one will understand that anybody in the hair industry is saying that 22 days hair regrowth, 10 days tail agao, baalu agao, it cannot happen. Scientifically, anatomically, it cannot happen.
00:34:16
Speaker
It's literally like saying that a senior KG kid will be six foot. It's physiologically not possible. Similarly, this is not possible. Sometimes what happens is people swear by a treatment and that could be very, very coincidental.
00:34:32
Speaker
Let's say, if you had just a short amount of hair fall, which is not prawny, which is because of some other issue in life, and you ended up using a particular serum or a shampoo, and suddenly you used it, and you saw a positive effect, you kind of correlate with like, hey, because of this, this worked out. But scientifically, that is very difficult to have. Okay, got it. How do you...
00:35:02
Speaker
How do you ensure that people adhere to the regime? Because it's not just that you have to take whatever you have to consume some medicine thrice a day, but you also have to not eat some food types and, you know, whatever timings of meals, etc. There won't be so many things in the regime.
00:35:20
Speaker
It's not as difficult as it might sound. Anything in the dryer regime is either morning or night, which means either you eat a supplement in the morning or night or apply something on your head morning or night. Yes, there are diet changes. What we've done over a period of time is
00:35:39
Speaker
understood what is the right way of introducing diet changes. So we did not give our customers a completely new diet plan and say that Akshay from today you stop eating whatever you are doing and start eating these 10 things. We instead follow a very incremental approach where we sort of eliminate one thing at a time.
00:35:59
Speaker
Once the person is able to eliminate the first, we move on, promote the guy to eliminate the second thing. So we've sort of learned how to make it comparatively easier to do. I think just the fact that you make people aware that these are the right things, that these are the bad things, itself is a big win because in a space like hair loss, people did not even realize that my diet has a role to play.
00:36:28
Speaker
People are so busy applying things and masks on their head and waiting for their head to grow that I think even if people follow, I would say some portion of the diet that we are prescribing, we're good.
00:36:44
Speaker
Okay, interesting. But Akshay, that's a constant warfare. We are innovating on everyday basis, just focused on this one problem, because we understand that the products are fine, products work. Now, the winning is not winning in terms of doing that oneself. The winning is showing the efficacy. And for that efficacy, I have to focus on this guy taking that regularity.
00:37:12
Speaker
So 90% of Sanoni and my time would be just spent on either analytics or behavioral science or a few other things. In terms of how do you incentivize to that extent that in Triya would be one of those companies where we are very clear that if you don't order within this rigid period of time, I will not give you a stop. I'm going to only support any kind of discount if
00:37:37
Speaker
you are ordering in your defined time. If you are not, then okay, I cannot help you out. So every action and the thought process is more towards behavioral science than anything else.
00:37:47
Speaker
Interesting, okay, okay. So if someone is ordering like a one-one supply after one and a half months are passed, so it means that the first supply he did not consume regularly, so he ends up not getting a discount. Okay, interesting. Tell me about the fundraise. You did a fundraise without, like in a way it was pre-revenue, right? That cohort of 55, a typical VC would not have considered you as a
00:38:15
Speaker
like a company which is making a revenue, right? One full lakh rupees per month. Okay. That was the revenue and stuff. Are you sure it was one lakh? Let me think it was one lakh. Well, it was hardly anything. Okay, right. But I think they took a call on the whole bit of it.
00:38:40
Speaker
It wasn't as challenging as I would think about it, I would have thought about it. I think I got right people, we got right people to support us, believed in the theses, agreed, saw the
00:38:57
Speaker
saw the passion that we were there to solve a problem rather than, in fact, if you even look at my current deck, I would never ever talk about the market or the TAM or other good software.
00:39:14
Speaker
We would always talk about more in terms of how this will change a person's life. And we strongly believe in that particular thesis that this is something where I can change a person's confidence in the way they look at the world, if I have done my job right. And our studies also say it's very clear. In fact, the first statement in all of our deck has always been there, that either you shave a dog or have a full set of pet, everything is sexy.
00:39:44
Speaker
The thing is, what do you want? And that's where draft comes in. And all of our messaging and everything has been positive in those forms. But getting into more details in terms of fundraise, we had at that time two investors who joined in, Whiteboard and K-Capital. Was it after a lot of nulls? You must have had to learn how to do fundraise, right? Or did it happen relatively easily? Saloni, how would you look at it?
00:40:13
Speaker
Again, both have our own version of story. But Altaaf, I think it was very smooth, easier. For me, it was very difficult. I had never faced investors or done fundraising.
00:40:30
Speaker
I think back then I did not even know if I could be an entrepreneur. So it was difficult for me. I think I have goofed up a lot of meetings that Altaf has forgotten over the years. You know, I haven't forgotten. I just don't try to remember it. He's a wise man.
00:40:57
Speaker
But um...
00:41:00
Speaker
I think now when I look back, I think it is difficult for a first timer to go out and confidently say that I'm going to build a large company. And you're throwing questions like, when are you going to be one crore per month revenue? And you're like, oh, I don't even know how that's possible. I'm doing one lakh per month right now. I don't know. I just know what I know. I don't know how to.
00:41:29
Speaker
probably I was not good at selling, which I learned over the years. But we found people who sort of understood the passion and the honesty with which we were doing what we were doing rather than looking at our selling skills. So eventually everything fell in place. But yeah, I think I do remember the nose and the difficult difficulty that I went through.
00:41:56
Speaker
facing people. Yeah, I think Altaaf would have developed a thick skin as an entrepreneur, right? Like hearing no's is not something that he would even remember. Whereas you must have felt each no much more deeply than he would have felt. Yeah, I think he gets even more excited after a no rather than a yes because he comes out and he says, oh man, this guy is going to feel so guilty later in life. I think he gets positive energy even from a no.
00:42:23
Speaker
Oh, man. Amazing. No, but like, how are both the investors are very fine. In fact, like both of them would have said yes to me a lot of coffee. Was a lot of coffee. I remember one from whiteboard. I'm sure, right?
00:42:41
Speaker
We used to meet in a restaurant called Table in Hawaii. And over the coffee, he was like, this is all fine, you are doing all these things. Do you think you will take money or you will need money? I'm like, we can go take it. And his point was okay, let's get it done.
00:42:59
Speaker
in the software. I think that's why Anshu really liked me because it wasn't an official pitch. Anshu started interacting with us and then he, I think I got very comfortable working with him. And he also joined in at similar time.
00:43:15
Speaker
So you raised about, I think, 2 crores roughly. 4.5 crores. We took that money. We put, I think, 50 lakh to a crore in marketing. And the rest, 3.5 crore, we spent it on just building
00:43:35
Speaker
the building mode around our thesis, right? Like where we say that we will require tech, we will require adherence, we will require product scaling up and everything. And we would grow at a much, much lower base than any startup at that peak, right? You would hear a story that, hey, this guy started
00:43:55
Speaker
in January and by December this guy is doing like, I don't know, 50 crore per month. We wouldn't get there. Fortunately, every friend and mentor who was around us were very supportive in terms of that. Take it easy, take it one step at a time, it takes time, whatever those things are. No one ever
00:44:14
Speaker
or pushed us in terms of getting those numbers. In fact, we stopped tracking the new sales numbers. We would only track like how many people we purchased from us than anything else for like a good one year.
00:44:29
Speaker
Yeah, our North Star metric was repurchase and not new revenue. And our thought was that new revenue is a function of marketing, building brand, et cetera. But we need to really solve for those three, four hypotheses that Alta mentioned with this money to see that can people actually complete a regime? What it takes to complete a regime? So for the longest time, our North Star metric was repurchase.
00:44:56
Speaker
You can buy new customers. That's just about burning money. But getting repurchase is not something that you can just burn money to achieve. Absolutely. And I think that's important for PMF, right? If you can, with the small set of people, first prove that with the money you have rather than trying to achieve scale, I think that's a better approach.
00:45:22
Speaker
What exactly did you do to build your mods?
Customer Experience and Service Delivery
00:45:26
Speaker
And this was pure online, like the consultation was online, and then the product would, they would pay on a, like a website or something, and then the product. Yeah, it was 100.
00:45:38
Speaker
Yeah. We've always been on our website. Now we have an app, so app plus website. I think the first moat was tech. We spent a lot of money on tech. There's a lot that happens in the backend to tell us that Vilakshay
00:46:00
Speaker
follow the treatment or not? Or what will we do with Akshay rather that will push him to start following the treatment? What is the right time to call Akshay? What is the right time to message Akshay? What is Akshay on the app? Is Akshay excited to join a trial community? What is it that I can do with Akshay to really explain him that you need to follow this treatment? So a lot of tech and intelligence was built into this, which means that we have
00:46:29
Speaker
entire back-end built homegrown at Trias. We did not use any CRMs or ready-to-use tools. We built all of this. And I think this later on proved to be very useful. So, as we sort of early on built this tech. Other than tech, Altaf, I think, is there anything else that
00:46:51
Speaker
I think the first year we just focused on the tech. Then I think by September that year, I said also give us some money. And they came with their own unique sets of intelligence, learning, other parts of it. They helped us develop few models in terms of how do you test, how do you
00:47:13
Speaker
changed things. So for the next one year, we were just A-B testing the marketing part of it. Till fireside came in, we were hardly spending on marketing. Then we started doing experimentation. We created our own playbook in terms of what could work or could not work, how things will look at it, how people perceive what is brand study. And we were literally learning everything from scratch.
00:47:37
Speaker
And among Saloni and I, we divided the whole company into two parts. Anything, digital, branding, new acquisition is what Saloni would look into. Anything that is ops, tech, product, or attention would be something I would look into. And we started running on our own horses.
00:47:59
Speaker
And that kind of helped us as well. Saloni is not our marketeer by education. But right now, I feel that even the board would feel that she would be probably top one percent in the country in terms of how does she break down the data. And I think Kuda was too, the whole part where it's just the learning instinct, right? Like it's consistently building there.
00:48:27
Speaker
Altaaf, can you help me understand what does your tech do? What data does it ingest and what does it throw up? Is there some automation of workflows, etc., that you've built on it? What does your tech do? At the high level, what we try to do is we try to collect different
00:48:48
Speaker
different parts of a person's behavior to help them adhere to two parts of the data. One is more in terms of predictive that just because of XYZ action, how likely is this guy going to be capable of finishing it. End of the day, the objective has to be that there are few people that you cannot help.
00:49:12
Speaker
Now, spending resources on them is not useful because eventually they will not be able to fulfill the whole part of it. And it doesn't matter what you try to do, this is not going to happen. So what are the data points you're collecting which help you predict?
00:49:29
Speaker
So in terms of how they interact, how many times do they interact or do they pick up the phone? With the app. With the app, with the call, with the WhatsApp, with the email. We also have something called the Trya Hair Coaches, where people book appointments and speak to a coach to help them get some guidance on how to use the treatment.
00:49:50
Speaker
So that service element is an important part of getting more data. So, but like every time we would have interacted, there would be one person who would be clicking a dot saying that, hey, this is happening. And as soon as that dot is clicked, it will feed into the major bucket saying that they have this guy should be put into which bucket.
00:50:12
Speaker
And the idea behind this whole exercise was that can I influence the behavior to do a better job? Like adherence is a very interesting subject for the world. 68% of the people across the world fall from any kind of medical regime within 15 days. It's a massive problem.
00:50:36
Speaker
So when we started doing it, it was more of a theoretical experience that, hey, I can probably with a better content, with a better perception, I can probably help them make the right decision. Like end of the day, everyone wants to go to the gym. The challenge is that only 10% of us will go to the gym. Can I create a system where 10% can be 20% or 30% or 40%?
00:51:00
Speaker
So that's what the idea. So we started collecting the data. We started breaking down. We started having that personalized content, personalized messaging, personalized ability. And then we took a step ahead where we said that rather than just putting a personalized content, can we also have a personalized media? There will be a few guys who will require a call. There will be a few guys who might require just a message. There will be a few guys who might require nothing. They are just born champions and doesn't require any help.
00:51:29
Speaker
So you needed that particular data block who solves the problem and the challenge with the data is that you need to have it in such a big number only then it will make sense.
00:51:41
Speaker
Right. So it took us a long time, but now I think more or less, it's a constantly evolving piece, but that's what we have been doing. Amazing. Okay. So that helps you predict how to communicate, what communication to send, through what medium, how frequently, so all of those things. Right.
00:52:04
Speaker
Yeah. And also to add, I think we can now tell a person even who's starting the treatment, when will they see results with prior? So, you know, even efficacy beta being fed into the system in terms of age and the stage of hair loss, we use these input parameters to really understand the health profile and tell that, hey, you're going to take five months, but you know, Rahul, you are going to take eight months because of certain health profile that you are in.
00:52:34
Speaker
So I think since we have all the data, it's not just behavioral data, but also efficacy and health data that goes into the system. What's a typical customer journey like? Like you mentioned, there is a service element also. And how does the sales cycle work? And just help me understand from somebody seeing an ad on Facebook to actually seeing his regrowth. What's the whole journey?
00:53:00
Speaker
Yeah, so people, let's say you actually will see an ad, you land on the Craya website, or you would land on Craya app. Today there are two platforms. Both these platforms, the first step that will be asked would be to take a head test. Head tests are series of questions that a dermatologist or an Ayurveda doctor needs to understand what's happening in your body. Once you answer these questions, you'll also be asked to upload pictures of your head.
00:53:29
Speaker
Once you do that and click on submit, there's an online algorithm that will basically try to diagnose what type of hellos you have, what stage you are on, how many months you will take to see results with prior, and put together a plan, a program, where you can see what are the kind of products that you will get in the first month, et cetera. From there on, it's a simple buy now, checkout, payment,
00:53:56
Speaker
There's no human being who drives the conversion. No human interaction. No human involvement to drive conversion. But why not? Wouldn't that boost conversion if you had a sales team?
00:54:11
Speaker
Very right Akshay. I'll just complete the journey and then answer that question. So once you place the order and your order or your purchase comes into the system, we assign a dermatologist and an Ayurveda doctor in the packet.
00:54:29
Speaker
These doctors will look at your entire health details, the pictures will look at what the algorithm recommended. And if the algorithm is 100% accurate or not, we have the complete authority to remove products, add products, change the prescription.
00:54:46
Speaker
They are the ones who will put the exact dosage, whether it should be 001, 101, two tablets, one tablet, et cetera. They'll put all of that. And once the doctors submit, the case will go to the packaging team. They'll put together the box and ship the box with the digital prescription for you to get started.
00:55:06
Speaker
It is now that a hair coach is assigned and you can go on the web or at book a call with a coach. The coach will help you understand how to use the box, will explain why it will take five months, what the monthly goals are, what are we working on month one, what will we work on month two, how we will tweak the treatment along the journey.
00:55:26
Speaker
What are the signs to look for to know that you are on the right track? So the coach is basically you're available for free. You can book as many appointments as you want throughout your journey. The idea is that we are here till the time we give you the results, whether it's four months, eight months, whatever time it takes. So that's the overall customer journey. Now coming down to your point,
00:55:49
Speaker
When we started off, Akshay, in fact, if I go to 2020 to 2021, the entire one that year at Dreyer, all sales happened through consulting sales. And the reason was Dreyer was too complicated for people to understand. Everybody's used to landing on a website where you can add to cart a product, check out and leave. Here is a company that's saying, I'm not going to sell you a single product unless you fill a long eight minute head test.
00:56:18
Speaker
you upload your pictures, then I will give you a regime which has five products, not one. And you cannot buy one and go home. If you want to buy a try, you have to buy five products. It was really complicated and very difficult to sell.
00:56:33
Speaker
that was one of the first toughest battle that we had to win. We realized that we'll have to call and explain people by five products, why we are giving you not just a shampoo. And that's what we did. We did consulting sales, we put together a sales team, we would call people. But when we reached, I think about
00:56:55
Speaker
March 2021, we reached a significant revenue size where we felt that now we need to sort of to really scale this move out from consulting sales and let brand do the talking. It should be the brand that explains people that, hey, Triya works, but to make Triya work for Triya's efficacy, you will have to do these things. Did you cross like once a year a month by that time? By March 2021? Yeah. Okay.
00:57:25
Speaker
Yeah, we had crossed that number. And we basically, in the world that we are, which is digital marketing, where video is a strong medium, anything that a person says on the phone can actually be explained through very good content online. And with that belief system, we started moving from consulting sales to direct conversion. And I think it was just a three month period where we pulled the plug and the sales team was dissolved completely.
00:57:54
Speaker
Wow, amazing. Which would possibly answer the hypothesis that can this be a mass market product? Because you can't have so much human debt sales if you really want to be mass market.
00:58:07
Speaker
Yeah, you're absolutely right. I think in March when we decided to build the plot or try to do the ship, the hypothesis that we created in terms of EMF was there. We were convinced that this is something that the masses need and we will be able to take it to masses.
00:58:27
Speaker
Just need to find out the right objective. And again, I think every entrepreneur has this group of friends that comes in form of employees, in form of colleagues, in form of board, in form of investors. If that group of friends is right, everything becomes much easier. We also have been fortunate with right group of friends where they advise the right thing at the right time.
00:58:58
Speaker
Okay. What's your pricing strategy? And I'm sure you must have gone through a journey to figure out what's the best way to do the pricing. Do you charge everything upfront or is it like a monthly payment? What have you done in terms of pricing? What have been your learnings? Yeah. So our pricing is based on the MRP of the products that are going in your monthly pack.
00:59:25
Speaker
We do not charge for the doctor prescriptions. We do not charge for the hair porch. These are value-added service. And this is something that I learned after starting Phraya, that in India, it's very difficult to charge for something that is not actual.
00:59:41
Speaker
So let's say if you are running a yoga course online, which is some teacher, which is video recording yoga, it's very difficult to get money for that. But if you sell a yoga mat, you can easily get money out of it. That's my learning. So we kind of put that into the model. And we started charging only for the product.
01:00:04
Speaker
Subscription in India is very difficult. And later on, all the rules that the bank brought in, it's kind of impossible to have people put in their credit card and then charge them. So we realized that monthly pack is something that would be the most suitable upfront charging people for it is something that works.
01:00:28
Speaker
In terms of price points, we actually did a lot of experiments to increase the price points and decrease the price point. Cryo is actually not a good to have product, but a need to have product for the person who's having it. It's not an impulse buy. People don't suddenly decide that I want to buy a new t-shirt today and come and buy a Cryo. They really research. They, on an average, visit Cryo website six to seven times before they make the purchase.
01:00:58
Speaker
And hence, the price elasticity is there. But also we wanted, Altaf and I really wanted Traya to be affordable in mass market. So we were not just looking at the PG that we were catering to at that point in time, which was more city. We were thinking of the Bharat and saying, will 2,500 a month be affordable to a guy who is, let's say, living in Uttar Pradesh in a tier three
01:01:25
Speaker
And the answer was that since it's need to have category, a lot of people are pretty open to pay. In fact, we made, I remember in one of the experiments, we made the price cheaper to see if the conversion improved, the conversion actually dipped.
01:01:45
Speaker
because suddenly people could not trust five products and 900 rupees coming in their box and they felt that this is not a good quality brand. So we found our sort of sweet spot where we could really make it affordable for mass India, but at the same time, have the perceived value that it deserves. And what's an average monthly cost to a triad user? 2,500.
01:02:15
Speaker
So that's the first buy. After that, it gradually keeps on tapering down. So if you look at the, and that's the theory, the hot process as well. As a company, I want to charge as little as possible, which I can afford.
01:02:34
Speaker
So in the first way, I cannot afford much, but over time I can afford much more. So we keep on removing products. We try to reduce the price. By the six months or seventh month, we want to keep this guy at like barely 900 to 1400 in that range and further reduce it down as much as possible. Because over time, taking more money from the customer is not
01:02:59
Speaker
a good strategy according to us. The basic thought process has to be you want to be with the customer for a longer period of time and taking a smaller price for the product that they deserve, not the product that you want to sell. Does it become zero?
01:03:17
Speaker
So we would like to have just maintenance back for them because hair loss like thyroid or other things it's like more of an autoimmune or a genetic disease right like where it cannot be solved but it can be managed to a significant extent.
01:03:33
Speaker
Now, with the management, all you have to do is like a basic 500 to 700 box, and you can sustain that for the longest period of time. So that's what goes into the maintenance case. And what is it that you're buying when you're in the maintenance mode, like some supplements or something to apply? So one would be minoxidil for sure. And second would be some supplement, either Ayurveda or it would be oil, just to product.
01:03:59
Speaker
Sorry, one would be, you said Minatsura. Yeah, Minatsura. Asiram. Asiram. Okay. Which you apply on your hair and it promotes regrowth. Okay. Help me understand what products you're selling and what each of them achieves for a user. Like you said, there were two problems, the shortening of cycle and the diameters going down. So what product does what? Like, how do you reverse balding?
01:04:25
Speaker
Sure. So let me sort of explain in two buckets. There are dermatology products that the doormat prescribe. These products are mostly some form of serums. They are peptides that work at the follicle level. So minoxidil, for example, is a stimulator, which means that your body
01:04:49
Speaker
is reducing or shrinking the diameter of the hair, it does exactly opposite. It increases the diameter of the hair. So at a follicular level, it is fighting against the DHT of your body, the chemical in your body that's shrinking the hair. Similarly, there are certain other peptides based on the type of hair loss, the stage and where the person is. We choose which peptide suits the best to the person.
01:05:16
Speaker
Um, when you, uh, and then second is a nutrition, right? So there are supplements, vitamins, multivitamins that are given, which has biotin, selenin, and there are a lot of macro and micro nutrients, which when deficient leads to hair fall or acceleration of balding. So this is the second thing that the dermat really puts into the treatment, which is making sure that deficiencies are handled for.
01:05:41
Speaker
So that's dermatology, which is comparatively the simplest of the two sciences. Now coming to Ayurveda, in Ayurveda, hair loss is not a disease that is mentioned in Ayurveda at all. Hair loss is a symptom. It's a way your body communicates to you that something in your body is wrong.
01:06:02
Speaker
So hair loss is referred to 10 other problems that your body could be going through. It could be that your body has an imbalance of pithodosia. It could be that your body has severe gut issues. It could be your body has high stress. It could be your body has poor metabolism and your gut cannot absorb the nutrients that you are giving, which means you are going to feel really low on energy in the early mornings. So there are lots of things in Ayurveda starting all the way from
01:06:31
Speaker
You know, in women, PCOS, hormonal issues, postpartum, perimenopause stage, in men, things like gut, sleep, stress. And we use Ayurveda to work on each of these things. So for example, if you say that you have a high stress life and you're not able to sleep properly, we'll give you something called a nasiagrit, which is a nasal drop that will put you to sleep like a baby for eight hours.
01:06:58
Speaker
So there Ayurveda is actually used here at prior to work at an internal root cause level to bring the body in that regenerative state that is required for regrowth. Dermatology is used to actually work at the hair follicle level to really reverse what is happening at the hair follicle level. And so when you really combine the two and then add a layer of diet to it, the results are phenomenal.
01:07:28
Speaker
Okay, interesting. So I guess stuff which you apply is taking care of the diameter problem and the cycle problem is being solved through IRE that through consumption.
01:07:38
Speaker
and diet control and things like that. Okay. Okay. Interesting. I want to understand how you built up the kind of people you needed. Like you need a lot of hair doctors who are not just going to be like Western medicine practitioners, but they need to understand algorithm also. How would you have
01:07:58
Speaker
built up that kind of a team. How did you build up hair coaches? Again, I mean, if you were, let's say in nutrition, it's easy to find dieticians because there are courses, people do those courses. But how did you build up hair coaches? You know, how did you build operational ability to service clients who were signing up?
01:08:16
Speaker
So doctors have been kind of straightforward. We don't let the Ayurveda doctor talk anything about the Western medicine. Like the Ayurveda doctor is just, we have two sets of doctors, the dermatologist and the Ayurveda practitioner. So dermatologist is only going to take care of the dermatology side of the equation. And the Ayurveda doctor is only talking about the Ayurveda doctor.
01:08:46
Speaker
They can be complimentary because they don't interfere with each other's learning. So that's how this two things comes into play. So when his treatment is reviewed, there's an Ayurvedic doctor who's reviewing it and there's a dermatologist who's also reviewing it. So it will be simultaneously going to both the doctors.
01:09:09
Speaker
Hair coach was an interesting phenomenon. When we started, we thought that, hey, let's have a system where we can let doctors talk to them. But then within like, I think three days, we realized that's not a very good idea because this is a very, very qualified person doing a very, very simple job. And you're kind of not respecting the profession to a significant extent.
01:09:32
Speaker
So we went to them, we said like, where did you learn? What are the things? So there is a book called Rook's book of dermatology. In Ayurveda we sat with Ayurveda practitioner. He gave me a book but it was written in Sanskrit and neither of us could read it. So he told them to help us out. And we sat down and we created a curriculum which is an inclusion of dermatologists and Ayurveda.
01:09:55
Speaker
and then started putting it to the coaches. Before they actually join or come to the floor, they would have gone through 45 days of training before you actually hit the throat. So you try to end. Over time, you keep on rechecking the knowledge, retesting, whatever those things are. I think that becomes a very critical thing. I think I learned this from Infosys. I'm a computer science engineer.
01:10:20
Speaker
And I know how Infosys really took people who know nothing, namesake engineers, but through their six months, training really teaches how to code. And if I can, they put together a whole Institute of manufacturing coders out of it, whether you put a become graduate or an engineer, it doesn't matter. The person who comes out as a coder. I think we sort of with that approach set up the entire learning and training.
01:10:49
Speaker
team here that could, and it really made sense because this coach would be able to hold a conversation with a doctor on how the BHT is working on your hair follicle and how the peptide is going to help you. At the same time, we'll hold a conversation with the person who knows Ayurveda. But more importantly, this coach is also trained on behavioral science techniques.
01:11:12
Speaker
to really what to say on the phone call, to really get that commitment out of that person that you will have to use this. And then we build this entire system where the incentives for these people is not the repeat revenue that they bring. The incentive is really doing a good conversation with the customer, getting positive reviews. So we sort of really removed money out of the equation so that it's
01:11:40
Speaker
purely customer service and coaching rather than another sales channel. Okay, interesting. How long is the training period for a coach? Like from hire to hitting the floor? What is and are they on period or do they get paid like a gig worker or what?
01:11:57
Speaker
They are completely on payroll. And the fun thing is that they are never incentivized in terms of the orders. Their whole system would be based on if they are helping the customer or not. So not a single penny is in terms of any kind of order. It would take around 45 days to train these guys to hit the floor. The ratio is actually pretty bad in terms of 100 people joining in. Only 50 will actually go to the floor.
01:12:26
Speaker
50 will not make it up. These 45 days, you are paying them salary or their salary starts once they... Oh, wow. We pay them salary. Okay. Oh, wow. You're taking that bet. And yeah, I guess the hair coach is like a key driver for this because he's the face of the company to the customer, right? The customer... Absolutely. His feedback on trial will depend totally on his experience with the coach. Absolutely.
01:12:57
Speaker
We also have a convertible. What do you mean by a convertible? Where the cap and the floor is defined and it will be defined on a particular event. So let's say for some company it might be defined on
01:13:15
Speaker
whatever your next valuation is, we'll take a XYZ discount. If it is above cap, then it will be at cap. If it is below cap or below floor, then it will be at floor panel. So basically, convert it at a future date. Okay, so this technically stays on your book as a debt until the next funding event when it gets converted into equity.
Scaling and Market Expansion
01:13:36
Speaker
And the valuation depends on the valuation received in the next funding. So like two certain extent, but there is a cap and a floor defined, the ceiling and the bottom defined. We have grown at a decent pace. What did you need funds for? For customer acquisition?
01:13:55
Speaker
So multiple things. So our philosophy has been experimentation, right? Like that what all things works, what not, whatever those things are. And we needed to be a little, sometimes it's important when you are at a certain scale to have an inefficient way of doing things as well because that is the only way you can learn.
01:14:14
Speaker
The difference between like what Saloni mentioned earlier that difference between my earlier company and this company is that earlier company it was every penny was measured very very thoroughly. I'm not in the favor of spending ridiculously but you need to spend a little to experiment. One of the examples that Saloni came up with in earlier is that if you do an experiment with 5000 rupees on Facebook, 100% it will pay.
01:14:42
Speaker
Right, because the engine itself will not optimize. So you need a certain amount of budget to do that experiment. Saloni, please add what you think is appropriate as you are. Yeah, absolutely. The experiments were largely for customer acquisition or any other experiments also. Multiple, so including retention, behavioral science, customer acquisition, exchanges. I think there was like this big mess up that I did in
01:15:10
Speaker
I think six months ago or something, I changed something in deck for two months, we just were like completely running like 10 days a second. So original part of it. And I think we also actually grew faster than we imagined. So I think 2022 March to 2023 March, we almost grew 20 times.
01:15:34
Speaker
Wow, amazing. We are now a team of 400 people and last year this time we would have been like a 50 people team. It must be like 200 to 300 CR top line kind of business now.
01:15:49
Speaker
In terms of number of customers, we would have close to around 500,000 customers right now. We would have really good repeatability. But overall, still, we are kind of anxious in one term. We set out with a clear mission. We set out with a goal that, hey, we are here to solve a problem and solve a problem in an ethical fashion.
01:16:14
Speaker
I think still there is a long, long journey to do. We did a recent dance study and where we asked 1000 individuals, what could you take for your hair loss? What do you think majority would have? Same answer. What do you think? Not sure.
01:16:40
Speaker
Shampoo. 78% of people still believe that shampoo will solve that problem. And that is the thing, right? Like if we can solve this problem or manage this problem, at least people are aware of making the right decision. You choose Traya or you go to the doctor, that's completely up to you, right? Who's the doctor who solved the problem, right?
01:17:06
Speaker
you will go to a simple company to solve your thyroid or diabetes. You go to the doctor, why not for hair loss, you need to go to the doctor. So that's what the ultimate vision is. What are the challenges in front of you today?
01:17:24
Speaker
things that you want to solve, like you told me that 2020 you had these hypotheses that can we sell on our own website? Can we sell a product for which the duration of that product showing results is a couple of months? So what are currently the things that are challenges for you, things you want to see?
01:17:45
Speaker
Yeah, I think I would state two. One is a challenge that will always remain a challenge till we really succeed, which is retention. And as we are scaling and as the kind of consumer that's using triad changing from just an English speaking guy to now 50% of triads Hindi speaking as well, we're entering tier two, tier three. So really understanding that consumer bringing them
01:18:13
Speaker
to that fourth, fifth month mark where they start seeing results. So I think number one challenge will always be maintaining retention with the scale. Number two would be... What is your retention rate like currently? Around 45, 45 odd percent at the fifth month. Okay. And I think the second would be...
01:18:37
Speaker
We are 100% online and a lot of people say that online has a ceiling, which is something that we will have to explore and see how we sort of
01:18:54
Speaker
The ultimate goal is that every person suffering through hair loss should know triage triage should be in the conversation and every household where hair loss is being discussed. And I think to reach there, we'll have to figure out or break open newer channels, etc. So I think these are the only two things identifying those new channels and maintaining retention.
01:19:20
Speaker
Like just to add to back to our, like, I think that's business problem. And that will eventually get resolved on its own. Like, personally, Saloni and I, we are spending a lot of time right now in
01:19:35
Speaker
making sure that the culture that we build in the company can be actually replicated across a larger organization as well. I feel that empathy driven organization building that is super challenging. Like it's very different when you're a three people team and whatever you say is easily percolated down the system. Now it becomes challenging because
01:19:56
Speaker
I will say it's a Chinese whisper. I will say A by the time it reaches down it will be Z. How do I create a system where A is transferred in its own intact form till the last article of your company. That's where
01:20:13
Speaker
We keep on trying to build that and learn that. And I feel neither of us alone or I have ever built a company which is 300, 400 people. We don't even know half the time that we're supposed to speak in a common meeting. Sometimes I crack inappropriate jokes and someone would say that this is not appropriate. Even better, a leadership team will come up and say probably and shut up next time. So we are also learning there.
01:20:43
Speaker
So how do you scale culture? What have you learned so far about scaling culture? Because 400 is a pretty large number. I think overall what happens there is it's never about one exercise.
01:20:58
Speaker
You get in this five people and they will do this five exercise and everything. I think it's fine. It might be a starter, but culture is something where you have to literally make sure that the air that you breathe in is that culture. You cannot let go of that word and terminology ever and especially in the most difficult time. It's very easy to say that, hey, I'm going to be empathetic and I'm going to be coach driven and I'm going to be XYZ when the things are looking good.
01:21:28
Speaker
The real test of culture is when things are not looking good. That's the time when you come up and say that, hey, I'm still empathetic. I'm empathetic towards my customer. I'm empathetic towards my people. And let's try to solve that out. And I think that that is every action. So what we try to do in our company is now
01:21:50
Speaker
It's still in process, but what we are trying to do is that the leadership is responsible for their team's failure or success. For example, if there are five people in my team, it is my responsibility to spare x number of hours to coach them, to get them to a better place, give them a portal where they can shine and not just keep them in the back end and I shout out all the time.
01:22:15
Speaker
consciously we are trying to do that we are trying to take help from various leaders across the different industries as well but still still on a learning curve if you have some some inputs more than happy to take okay okay okay
01:22:32
Speaker
Well, I want to kind of understand
Marketing Strategies and Influencer Collaborations
01:22:35
Speaker
this. VCs love this metric of CAC to LTV, like customer acquisition costs versus what is the long term value from that customer. So what is that like for you today? And do you have like a target number?
01:22:48
Speaker
So I think it's like, let's keep it at a higher level. It's at a decent player, right? Like we do at an happy level, it would be positive. So that particular ratio is on a unit economics, right? Like basically, when you're not making money, you want to basically also say that eventually at unit economics, this makes sense. It's just that I'm growing at this particular
01:23:14
Speaker
and that's why LTV over CAD could be 2.5, 3, whatever VC would require. But like LTV, again, I feel that is the most important matrix in a company just because that is the true sense of repeat custom.
01:23:32
Speaker
Now, what different companies do in LTV is different. For example, a company where you have 700 SKUs or 70 SKUs, your LTV will be defined by the second purchase which might be the same product or might be most probably a different product.
01:23:50
Speaker
a cream, he has bought cream in the first product. Second time he's buying sunscreen. It's not like the real gestate doubts of the product quality. It is basically just buying different product from the same platform. And that's why Amazon's would have a phenomenally large LP, right? But a product company I feel should be defined in LTV in doubts of I bought X, did I bought X multiple times or I bought Y and Z and something like that.
01:24:16
Speaker
That's how we define the LTV. I think over time we have managed to get a decent LTV and that's why our bottom line and everything is healthy. But there is a huge scope of improvement. I feel CAC is important, but I feel it's a secondary matrix that we look at. Most important thing is if I can convince a person for a longer period with me, that's how we will learn.
01:24:42
Speaker
And what are you doing to bring down the CAC? How are you creating a top of the funnel which is done economically without burning too much? I think it's multiple aspects. For example, right now it's October, November, December going on. Spending a penny on your marketing is just wrong.
01:25:07
Speaker
Because of the Diwali season, everybody is spending. Exactly. It's like saying that, hey, I'm going to get this consumer at 100 rupees today, or I will wait for one and a half month and I'll get the same consumer for 50 rupees. Now, there is a pressure from the market that, hey, I need to grow at a certain rate. Why? You don't need to grow at a certain rate.
01:25:30
Speaker
It is a pressure that we build for ourselves, where we get into the same problem. Now, if I spend today, I know I will grow at that particular percentage. Tomorrow, when you ask me, I'll say, hey, I was pressurized. But was I really pressurized? Probably not. So understanding that nuances will help out. But at a larger scale, what we try to do is that the top of the funnel is very important. Like you want to get the
01:25:55
Speaker
write audience to your website and the only way to do it is basically have the cheapest source of first layer of screening
01:26:06
Speaker
So, if I can get you screen in 2 rupees, I want to screen through that. It could be a video view, it could be SEO, it could be whatever. But basically, I want to have the cheapest way of screening the qualified audience. The qualified audience definition is if you have visited my website. Once you have visited my website, then I want to spend on you. Till that time, I don't want to spend on you and that's how we reduce down the gap. But suddenly, please add on. What do you think?
01:26:35
Speaker
So you are trying to not spend too much on getting first time visitors, but once you have a first time visitor, then you want to spend on retargeting, remarketing.
01:26:46
Speaker
Right. So conversion is a bigger importance than just the session because session top, I was saying, yeah, and creating interesting, more organic channels, et cetera, for the top of the funnel. So that you get like ultra set, cheaper audience.
01:27:06
Speaker
onto your website. So a lot of brand building activities are done at top of the funnel, but you find more efficient, cheaper ways of doing that rather than really giving all the money to Facebook there.
01:27:22
Speaker
Okay, okay. What works there at like, do you do influencer marketing or do you do like, what are you doing? We do influencer marketing, yes. But we treat influencer marketing also as a performance channel rather than a brand channel, which means we look at it from a very strict lens of how many people watch the video, how many came on the website, how many projects.
01:27:46
Speaker
Is it easy to track how many leads come from one influencer? Yeah, not very direct, but I mean, there is a link there. The problem is that you cannot strictly follow or make decisions based on the linked data because it's skewed, it's a narrower vision of what's happening in reality.
01:28:12
Speaker
But over a period, we've built formulas on how to look at success versus failure within influencer campaigns. So yes, influencer marketing is something that we do. We've also, for example, started our What the Health channel on YouTube.
01:28:28
Speaker
completely organic where we just invite people from different health experts, doctors, and we talk about health and that sort of hit 100k in about six months of launching the channel. So that has become like an interesting organic channel also as we build it further. So we're sort of focusing more on
01:28:54
Speaker
building the brand and getting people to know about trial and what trial is through more organic means than rather just doing video views.
Future Plans and Growth Targets
01:29:08
Speaker
You know, if you are able to crack adherence, then, I mean, hair is just one of the ways to monetize adherence, right? Do you also look at it that way that you would, like, for example, say diabetes, even diabetes reversal needs you to crack adherence and so on? So what is the way you look at your future path?
01:29:29
Speaker
100% with you. We also believe that the concept, like, so I'm in love with the concept of mixing science and at your hands, right. And we try out with someone else. I want to take this to multiple, multiple disease line. And I feel that that is adding value to the society and the people in the society.
01:29:52
Speaker
We do believe that we are the front runner and we can take it up with different parts of it and we eventually will get there. We are doing few pilots right now in few diseases but still not there where we want to launch it. We will probably not do it under the same brand.
01:30:14
Speaker
because I feel there is an advantage of having single brand, single solution. Like a simple understanding is let's say if you have a knee pain, you will go to orthosurgeon. If you have a chest pain, you will get go to pulmonary x. Similarly, here also what we are assuming if you have x, this is your x-expert and if you have y, then you go to the y-expert.
01:30:38
Speaker
Okay. Amazing. By when do you think you will become like a billion dollar valuation company? I don't want to be there. Because I mean, if you crack a deal, there is no end to how many products you can launch, right? I agree. I think like not just for this conversation, but Sanoni and I, we have never actually looked at the valuation or been inspired by valuation.
01:31:08
Speaker
We do get motivated by the number of consumers that we have, the revenue that we have. And sometimes it doesn't directly correlated with the valuation. In fact, I think valuation creates a lot of pressure.
01:31:24
Speaker
When you are just valued at like 5 crores, you just don't have to worry because you will always go up. But when you are valued at let's say 10,000 crores or 7,000 crores, the pressure is constantly there where you want to be like, okay, I have reached here. And the worst thing is...
01:31:40
Speaker
The summer has put in your money at 1 billion. Now I have to get him at least 3x, so I have to go to 3 billion. I don't want to take money at 1 billion. Yeah, I get it. What are some revenue targets you have, say for 25 or 26? By 25, we want to reach around 80 crore per month. That's what our target is.
01:32:04
Speaker
I think if we crack few of those things, we should be there. It is one of those companies which shouldn't require ideally a big, big, big fund. It should require a little, because it's not a platform, right? It's a product company. At 80 covers a month, you'd probably be among the top five D2C companies in India, right? Like that's a fairly large number. Amazing, amazing, amazing.
Listener Engagement and Feedback
01:32:31
Speaker
And that brings us to the end of this conversation. I want to ask you for a favor now. Did you like listening to the show? I'd love to hear your feedback about it. Do you have your own startup ideas? I'd love to hear them. Do you have questions for any of the guests that you heard about in the show? I'd love to get your questions and pass them on to the guests. Write to me at adatthepodium.in. That's adatthepodium.in.