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Reinventing online commerce | Sachin Bhatia @ Bulbul.tv
130 Plays5 years ago
This week on Founder Thesis Akshay Datt is in conversation with serial entrepreneur and investor Sachin Bhatia. You may know him best for his stint as the Co-Founder and CMO at Make My Trip. However Sachin is also the Co-Founder of online dating site TrulyMadly.com and, his latest venture, Bulbul.tv
Bulbul is a revolutionary video commerce platform that is redefining online shopping by making it fun, engaging and social. At Bulbul, their network of ‘‘experts’, showcase and explain various products and the features in different Indian languages!
In this episode, Sachin shares his journey from his first job as a sales executive selling water to being a serial founder. Tune in to get inspired and learn from one of the best brains in marketing.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
HD Smartcast You are listening to an HD Smartcast original
00:00:24
Speaker
Hi, I'm Akshay. Hi, this is Aurob. And you are listening to the Founder Thesis Podcast. We meet some of the most celebrated sort of founders in the country. And we want to learn how to build a unicorn.
Meet Sachin Bhatia
00:00:41
Speaker
Hi, I'm Sachin Bhatia. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Bulbul, India's first video shopping app.
00:00:48
Speaker
We have been familiar with the boon of online shopping for quite some time now, and we don't see ourselves shopping anytime soon. However, what if this online experience was redefined in a way that helps you not only to understand the product better, but also gives you a real-time demonstration about what you're buying. Sachin Bhatia has made the shopping experience refined, reliable and efficient by live-streaming a language that completely suits you.
00:01:15
Speaker
His company Bulbul has only been in the market for a couple of years, but it has most certainly made a bold mark in the industry. All thanks to Sachin's vision. This time on Founder Thesis, we have Akshay Dutt in conversation with the founder of Bulbul. Sachin Bhatia, tune in.
School Days and Academic Choices
00:01:35
Speaker
you studied in dps arkipuram right that's right so what was that experience like i mean i'm a dps arkipuram product myself and i know that it's like a unfortunate route
00:01:50
Speaker
School was school. I mean, I personally don't have, I mean, I found memories of school. I think, you know, you have friends and I'm still, my closest friends are still my buddies from school. I got up to a lot of mischief, you know, studied a bit, had some fun. But when I look back or when I look at the kind of schools my kids have had the opportunity to go to, you know, it could have been so much better, right? I mean, one reflection of like a really good school is the Alumni Association that a school has. And since you're from DPS,
00:02:19
Speaker
I mean, I don't know how it is now, but we never had, have a strong alumni. I mean, I'm in touch with four or five of my school friends, but that's because we were friends in school. So there's no opportunity to kind of connect. And I think that that's just a reflection of the kind of school it is. Okay. Okay. And you had science in your plus two. What did you do? No, I did commerce.
00:02:40
Speaker
Okay. So, you know, in DPS, my personal experience is like, maybe 10% of the kids there have like a really good experience in terms of participating in debates or whatever, and the remaining 90% just like get by. So were you in that 10% category or in the 90% category?
00:03:02
Speaker
I was at the constant sounding boastful in the 10% category. So I was part of the quizzing team. I was part of the dramatics team. I was in, I don't know if they still have it and if they continue with it, which was a very classic system of labeling sections by ability. So I was in the ability section in commerce. Yeah.
00:03:25
Speaker
semi-abilities and then there were some friends in non-abilities. And that's how it was called. It was officially known as that, which of course wouldn't pass muster today in these politically correct times. But that's what it was. But I think the good thing is one didn't stop us from mingling with each other. Actually, some people used to wear it as a badge of honor that they were in a semi-ability or a non-ability section.
00:03:52
Speaker
But yeah, no, I was, I was in the
Passions and Early Responsibilities
00:03:55
Speaker
10%. So academics was not what drove you. It was like more non-academic team kind of stuff. Like you wanted to work with people rather than sit and study. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it was also a function of what I studied. So I think I would have been happier if I'd taken, you know, political science history, which was called arts and which was obviously at that time totally looked down upon and probably
00:04:20
Speaker
I think if I had taken arts, I would have been much happier, I think, because that's what kind of comes to me naturally. If I look at my reading habits today, or for the past many, many years, the kind of stuff that I read is either history, if it's fiction, it's historical fiction, it's politics, it's economics, things like that. But I think one never had that sense.
00:04:50
Speaker
you know, at that point in time, so obviously many, many years ago. But yeah, I think if I'd taken arts, I would have been happier. So yeah, it was a function of my choice also that I wasn't particularly thrilled doing accounting. So how did your mother influence you as a child? And I read somewhere that at the age of 12, you were helping her in her business.
00:05:11
Speaker
Wow, where did you get that? You've obviously done deep research. No, that's true. I think I've always seen my mother work, and obviously everyone expects their dads to work, and this too back then, right? I passed out of school in 1990, so I'm 48 today.
00:05:30
Speaker
So even back then, right from my childhood, I saw my mother work, get up in the morning, take a bus, go to Connaught Place to deliver flowers or to do flower arrangements in office, et cetera. But she always came back before we kind of got back from school. So I think that was a really good balance because she was away when me and my sister were away at school.
00:05:57
Speaker
9 out of 10 times I guess she was back before we were back or when we were back but I always saw her working right and then I you know started helping her on the side on the weekends when I could start driving I was doing some deliveries for her I mean not hard stuff honestly it was like labor but you know it does give you a sense of responsibility very early on it does showcase that hard work can
00:06:23
Speaker
kind of help you better your own life and the life of your family and people around you. And she still works, which is amazing, right? She's in her late 60s now and she's still at it. And now she of course does because she does weddings and things like that, which require her to stand on her feet, super wide stuff, but she still does it. She loves what she does.
00:06:44
Speaker
And that's the other big learning. I think she never looked at it as a job. I said she used to come back on time to be with us and a lot of her clients are her friends. She genuinely enjoys what she does with, you know, very few of us are kind of privileged to experience. So I think that that's a big takeaway for me.
Career Beginnings and Early Jobs
00:07:01
Speaker
So what were you thinking as a kid that you'll also be an entrepreneur as you saw your parents or did you want to get a good job? What was the plan at that time? But honestly, I don't think I had a plan. I mean, I can make up a nice story around it.
00:07:17
Speaker
But I don't think entrepreneurship even was a word. You were either a businessman or you were in service or you were in the sources or you were a doctor, lawyer, professional, whatever. I honestly didn't look at it that way. Even my dad obviously became an entrepreneur much later in life. But it was a very different kind of entrepreneurship.
00:07:38
Speaker
right what he did it wasn't like today it wasn't about startups it wasn't cool it was a you know way of kind of making a living so I don't think any of that kind of inspired me from that perspective no I guess I just wanted to finish school the idea was that I'll do I'll do become do
00:07:56
Speaker
do an MBA and then figure out what happened. But I think some things get instilled in you very early on. And I think being responsible for yourself, being in control of stuff and the desire to kind of work for yourself. I think all of those kind of got ingrained fairly early on. I mean, this is now going to look back, right?
00:08:17
Speaker
experience or feel a lot of this when I was growing up. So I don't think I had any specific kind of ambition. I guess I always knew I wanted to do well. I always knew I wanted to work hard. I think those things were clearer in my mind and those things I remember thinking of that or discussing those things with friends or family or whatever.
00:08:38
Speaker
So where did you do your become from? I did it from Bhagat Singh College, South Kapoor. Okay, so that must have been fun. I mean Bhagat Singh has this reputation of being a party college, you know, South Delhi and all that.
00:08:50
Speaker
Yeah, my uncle used to call it hoodlum college. So we thought all hoodlums came from Bhagatning, which wasn't true because it had a really good B.Com program. And we used to like say that, hey, it's number two after SRC. I don't know if it's true or not, but at least we like to believe that. But it generally had some really good profs for B.Com. But yeah, college was, you know,
00:09:13
Speaker
similar, it wasn't intense, it was fun kind of three years, you played a lot, played a lot of sport, I mean off-campus, not for the college team as such, but you know, just your cricket, soccer, etc. Went to college, came back, you know, it was just innovative for the waste of time, but it's time, it's that time of your life that you can probably afford to waste, right? So no complaints on college. I think I started getting very serious after that. I immediately started working after college, because I
00:09:42
Speaker
Then by then I had this desire to be on my own money. My friends were doing their MBAs. I thought I'll do it probably a little later. So yeah, but that college was, that's how college was. So that must have been around 93, I guess. 90 you finished school. So by 93 you would have? Yeah, 93, 94. Yeah. Okay. So what was your first job? And, you know, tell me about the career path.
00:10:08
Speaker
Yeah, so I joined as a sales executive in a company called Nukem, where Nukem were among the first guys to start providing bottled water, the large water which you see now inverted over your water coolers. It was a new, totally new concept for India at that point in time. So there was a brand called Hello, I remember, and there was us.
00:10:28
Speaker
It was called Crystal with a K. It was a free dabad based company. So they gave an ad in the paper or something and I went for the interview to free dabad and I kind of got in. And I think it was again, I mean, now when I look back, probably the challenge of something new and novel, it wasn't just like any other sales job because nobody
00:10:50
Speaker
was buying water that time, right? It was like a crazy thing to sell. I remember going to these factory owners in Faridabad because that was my beat in the early days. And they had said, and that was pretty much. So it was more like a concept sell. It wasn't just, hey, buy this water, it's the cheapest in the market or it's the best quality. It was, you know, selling them hygiene, selling them cleanliness, selling them convenience, you know, bunch of things.
00:11:17
Speaker
before you even got down to talking about the product and the process and the reverse osmosis and all the cool stuff. So I think those are the kind of things which have always I guess attracted me, something which is new, something which is novel. And yeah, so that was my first job. I did that for a few months. Then I got promoted. They shifted me to Delhi. I worked there for more than a year. So yeah, that was my first job. Okay. Then what next?
00:11:44
Speaker
Then I joined Viscraft, which was an events management agency.
00:11:51
Speaker
And again, I wanted to do something different. I think I was still figuring out what I really wanted to do, right? I was in two pints, what I'd done, put in a year, year and a half at New Chem. I think maybe there was pressure to do an MBA from the family. I still like getting that paycheck at the end of the month. I bought myself a bullet, you know, so.
00:12:15
Speaker
had expensive taste for that time. I didn't want to, I think, give up on that. So I joined this craft and so I worked there for some time. It was a fairly short stint, but I think the exciting part of that stint was that they used to manage a nightclub.
00:12:33
Speaker
in in Gurgaon and that time Gurgaon was really back of beyond and it was called Fireball it was probably India's fanciest nightclub and I think even today India probably hasn't had a nightclub like that it was huge based on the Star Wars theme you entered through Darth Vader's mouth it was pretty crazy stuff so I used to kind of get to work there and hang out there as part of my
00:12:54
Speaker
So I did that for 6-7 months, but that was just pure fun, right? That wasn't, that was just chilling between jobs kind of thing. And then I think I finally got serious, decided that, hey, I've done sales, marketing is something that naturally kind of comes to me, appeals to me, and I didn't have
00:13:11
Speaker
theoretical grounding in marketing and I figured that maybe I need to join advertising to understand marketing a little bit more. So I worked at, I got a job at Trichaya Grey Advertising which was Trichaya Grey that time. I worked there for two years, put in a year in Delhi or put in another year in Bombay which again you know I consciously chose to kind of move to Bombay just to get more exposure and Bombay really was the heart of the advertising industry.
00:13:39
Speaker
Delhi was still a little, you know, old fashioned when it came to advertising. All the magic was happening in Bombay, so managed to connect. You were doing client servicing then? I was doing client servicing. Luckily, Trikai was one of the few agencies which had a lot of divisions. So I got to work in, except I think PR, I pretty much worked in direct marketing, I worked in financial advertising, I worked in regular brand advertising, I worked in events.
MakeMyTrip Journey
00:14:04
Speaker
had a lot of work in events. So got some fairly rigorous exposure there on the ground stuff outdoors. So managed to put in two years, but got a lot out of that stint. And then I joined AMF bowling, which was where I met Deep Kalra and then make my trip. Deep was the promoter of AMF? No, AMF is an American company and Deep was heading AMF in India and
00:14:34
Speaker
I was looking at moving back from Bombay. I'd done two years at Trichaia. I figured I'd learnt whatever I had to learn in advertising and realised, I mean, it's not a career I wanted to make. I mean, I wasn't happy just servicing clients. I wanted to be more in control. So I thought I'd work on the brand side, but you know, I didn't have like a classic, you know, MBA, et cetera. So obviously,
00:14:58
Speaker
I mean, I'm sure I applied to a lot of FMCGs and guys like that. And I'm sure they probably never even called me for an interview. But Deep was obviously, we both enjoyed discussing stuff when we met. And I joined AMF as marketing manager back then. So we used to set up bowling centers. So yeah, that's how I met Deep.
00:15:19
Speaker
And what was your learning from the AMF stint? AMF eventually didn't really continue. Is it still around? I mean, the American entity is around. I think, see, again, if you see AMF, bowling is something totally unique or something totally different. I'd probably seen bowling in a movie or two. I have myself didn't know much about it. And this is pre-Google days. Information wasn't so readily available. But whatever I could read,
00:15:49
Speaker
This was, I think, probably the time when pool was also like a big craze. It just about. I think bowling came first and maybe pool came together, but pool maybe came like a few months later, literally. Right. Typically bowling and pool go up behind it. And because the companies which make both the equipments are the same, at least in the US and then in China. So it was very interesting. I think that's where I got exposed to working with. I mean, I had obviously worked with fairly big brands.
00:16:18
Speaker
done a lot of product launches, et cetera. But at AMF I could, you know, I wasn't just a consultant. I wasn't just a client servicing person. I was responsible to implement stuff. But given that budgets were fairly tight, it required one to work with, you know, a lot of sponsors.
00:16:36
Speaker
Right. So I worked with Coca-Cola very closely about the Pepsi. So that gave me insights into how big, bigger brands work, how they think, how they look at advertising, how they look at, you know, spending money across different media. So what were you doing with Pepsi and Coke?
00:16:53
Speaker
Yeah, so at AMF, see you, a bowling center is not only about the sport, if you can call bowling a sport, but it's also about all the fun and entertainment, right? So the food, beverage, all of that. And then you have all these leagues, which amateurs can kind of participate in, you need sponsors for those leagues, you need prizes. So I think the big thing was bowling was supposed to be the next big thing in India.
00:17:20
Speaker
Unfortunately, I think people didn't realize that real estate is extremely expensive in India, right? In the cities, unlike in the US where bowling centers are a little away from the city, but then driving is not a problem. People can easily drive. That doesn't exist in India, right? So that's why you don't have big Walmarts or whatever here too. But I guess we were too young and naive to kind of realize that.
00:17:39
Speaker
So real estate was very expensive, but there were some optimistic businessmen who set up really large centers in India. We set up a huge 20-lane center, which was the biggest one in Bombay.
00:17:53
Speaker
where Lower Perel is today. We set up a largest bowling center at Essex Farms. We set up one in 30 second march rooms all over the country. And Pepsi, Coke, all these guys were sponsors. So they used to get rights for the beverage because people consume a lot of beverage while playing bowling, right? Whether it's beer or soft drinks or whatever. So yeah, work fairly closely with their kind of marketing teams back then.
00:18:22
Speaker
And what was your impression of Deep back then when you were reporting to him at AMF? Deep's obviously super smart, super impressive, very very analytical and he's still the same and extremely enthusiastic I think about work and what he does and that hasn't diminished even one bit. So I think my impression of him, what it was probably on day one which was you know I think now 12 years ago hasn't really kind of changed
00:18:53
Speaker
So, how did the exit from AMF and the move into MMT happen? Yes, so Deep left, so I was still at AMF and Deep left, he left to join G.
00:19:07
Speaker
And I was still at AMF then, and then Deep left G to start make my trip. I was, you know, I'd done two years at AMF and I was looking at, you know, and I realized AMF was a nice small little thing. I probably won't scale beyond that, but I'd, you know, done my bit. I'd learned whatever I had to learn. It was time to move on.
00:19:28
Speaker
and I was doing a part-time MBA then so I think that had also kind of culminated so I mean I didn't have a big degree with me but you know whatever theoretical stuff I needed I think I kind of had that so I actually approached the for a ref check I was applying to a few places and then
00:19:46
Speaker
I knew he's doing something on his own. I wasn't and I knew it's in travel I wasn't entirely sure what it is because we generally you know kind of kept in touch and Yeah, so then I went to meet him. I remember in Okla told him hey I'm moving on and I just want a ref check blah blah blah and then he said hey, you know This is what I'm doing. We're looking at somebody to head marketing You know, why don't you consider this? So yeah because it was the because again it was something totally new exciting I didn't even know much about the internet
00:20:16
Speaker
none of us did honestly back then. It seemed like extremely, extremely exciting to me. Didn't realize it would be like a 10 year journey. But yeah, that was pretty much how it started. So I went to actually look for asking for a reference and ended up joining.
00:20:34
Speaker
You joined as a co-founder with equity and zero salary. No, no, no, no, no, no. So Deep was the sole founder of the company. I joined, I think the company was incorporated on the 1st of April, 2000. I joined in.
00:21:02
Speaker
I joined as head of marketing. But then all sorts of stuff happened.
00:21:08
Speaker
the dot-com bust and investors kind of going off, et cetera. So we then kind of got designated as co-founders because we were the only guys among the senior management who stayed on. Rest of the guys bailed or moved on or whatever. We were still bullish on the business. And then we got designated and we got a little bit of equity for that. So yeah, we were not original founders or co-founders. We were kind of designated co-founders.
00:21:36
Speaker
which is kind of sexy to do now and kind of fashionable but I don't think it was like the thing back then but yeah fortunately that's how it panned out. So when you joined how long after that did the first fundraise happen because I assume it would have taken a long time for it to become cash flow positive so you know how did you sustain in those initial years was it deep putting in his savings or you know like how are you getting a salary?
00:22:05
Speaker
Deep got funded pretty much on day one. Deep had already raised $2 million back then, so we already had money. But I think we went through that money over a period of time, say one year or so. But then the dot-com bust happened. So there was more money to come in from our investors, which was eVentures. But the investors themselves shut shop in India.
00:22:28
Speaker
Then we sustained on internal accruals. After that, obviously everyone took cuts. We came down to, I think, 20 people from 40-45 people. A lot of them got soft landing in a company called e-bookers, which we helped set up Deep Brother. I wasn't involved really. Deep helped set up a call center.
00:22:47
Speaker
For them and a lot of our senior executives kind of got the soft landing there and we got some money for that kind of help set up they took over some of our assets and things like that and then we You know kind of rebuild the company from scratch
00:22:59
Speaker
So in what sense do you mean rebuild? What was it previously? And how did you rebuild it? Like tell me about those early years, you know, like, okay. So when we started, we were looking at doing everything in travel, right? So we said, we'll do inbound, we'll do outbound, we'll do domestic. And once small part of the business was looking at NRIs traveling back home. But I think very quickly we realized that India still wasn't ready for the net, you know, credit card penetration was low, internet connectivity was poor. There were hardly any low cost carriers that time.
00:23:29
Speaker
anything. There were no low cost carriers that time or there was hardly an airline, so there was hardly anything to really sell. So we realized that if you want to sustain, and we were obviously hopeful that all of this will improve over time. We were just not sure by when. So one small part of the business was NRIs coming back home. So we said, hey, let's focus on that and let's see when the market changed. And we actually ran that for five years, right? So for five years, we just ran NRIs travelling back from the US to India, actually turned the company into a
00:23:57
Speaker
You know, we used to break even actually make a little bit of profit and we were just waiting it out, right? But, you know, that's the time we build the muscle on running a call center, running customer service, understanding travel technology or understanding travel, you know, in its entirety, except KU who had a short stint in travel before make my trip. None of us go from travel, you know.
00:24:17
Speaker
or even tech, right? Deep is not a techy, neither am I. So I think that five years was a fairly interesting learning curve. And also, we were very young, right? So we also kind of developed as managers, leaders, leading teams, leading products, etc. So I think utilize those five years for that. And then in 2005, things started to
00:24:38
Speaker
change, low-cost carriers got launched, cut penetration increase, internet became a little more robust. And that's when we said, hey, now is the time to actually relook at India and launch for the Indian consumer. And then, you know, since we had the experience, since we had the team, we had the infrastructure. That's when VC started getting interested in the market and in us specifically. And we got funded in 2005.
00:25:04
Speaker
First five years was essentially you were targeting people in US who want to travel to India and you were helping them to buy tickets, airline tickets.
00:25:12
Speaker
Yeah, NRIs, mostly NRIs. We had some cost arbitrage and we had a time arbitrage. I think the big thing was that when US travel agents were shut, we had a 1-800 number from the US to India, probably one of the first guys to kind of set it up. And we used to answer their calls in the night here, right? So day or night, we used to be on 24 by 7. So when it was night there, that's when we were really useful to them because there were techies, there were people
00:25:37
Speaker
professionals in the US, they would come back from work, look at options to fly back to India, look at our website. And it was an expensive purchase, so they would call us up.
00:25:48
Speaker
How did you get leads? I imagine you would have to spend money to get leads, especially American leads. Did you have the funds to do that? We used to market in the USA, so we used to do a lot of hacky stuff back then. We obviously didn't have a lot of money, and performance marketing didn't really exist back then. But we used to tie up, for example, with a lot of universities there.
00:26:11
Speaker
each university has an Indian club right so I used to email them get in touch with them tell them about us used to hire brand ambassadors used to call them campus gurus which is like thing today to do for any startup targeting young people in India so used to do it back then but remotely right
00:26:27
Speaker
I never even traveled to the, I'd never even gone to the US. I used to do that remotely sitting here. Google used to be fairly slow, but used to search for, you know, made a list of universities, search for their India clubs, write to them, sponsor events over there. There were some India specific magazines we used to
00:26:44
Speaker
So you know small stuff but we were pretty much the only game in town right now for them and that so there was a lot of virality around what we did because I think the one thing we were very clear about was offering great customer service right and I think that endeared us to these customers and they kept coming back. And how did things change post 2005 once you had the fundraise?
00:27:06
Speaker
Yeah, so then I think it was a all new kind of ball game because then we were targeting India and as soon as we got funded within the next few months competition also kind of got funded or competition kind of came about.
00:27:20
Speaker
There was Yatra and the Yatra clear trip. So within three, four, five months of us launching, these guys also launched. That was a whole new volume. We have much, much bigger market, so much more to do. We had some money so we could spend on advertising. We could set up bigger call centers, hire more people, and then obviously look at stuff beyond air tickets because the US India business was an air ticket heavy business. There were some inbound tours we tried to do just to understand how hotel bookings work, et cetera.
00:27:49
Speaker
So that knowledge came in handy, started selling holidays, started selling hotel, but that happened much later. I think the initial few years after 2005 was still predominantly air ticketing based.
00:28:00
Speaker
And that time, tickets were still written by hand. They were not e-tickets. So, you know, just setting up ops to kind of manage that. It was pretty interesting. So how did the ticket reach the person? Was it like sent by post? Post, yeah. Hard to imagine today. Yes, it was all by courier.
00:28:23
Speaker
I think the day we launched in October of 2005, we got over and we never expected to sell so many tickets. We thought we'll sell a few and we obviously had our call center agents who were sitting ready to kind of write tickets. But India hadn't seen this before. It was super convenient. Things worked very well online.
00:28:43
Speaker
and people started buying and then we had to early all of us remember we used to sit in the night write tickets and we obviously missed a lot of it people never got their tickets on time travel was the next day so went through all that pain but I guess that's what you do for a new product new market or you know come out better for it and what was your role by the time you quit like you were head
00:29:04
Speaker
Yeah, so I ran marketing from, I mean, I ran marketing throughout till around 2008. So from 2000, 2005, I ran marketing, also some part of tech, in terms of website development, etc. Then from 2005 till 2008, I ran marketing completely. And then 2008 to 2010, I ran new products. So I ran all the
00:29:28
Speaker
non-air, non-hotel, non-holidays, launches, so train launch, rail launch, cars, car bookings, mobile, whatever little was happening on mobile back then, reviews and ratings. So all the new stuff, I kind of got it off the ground. So that sounds like an exciting kind of a role, no? Why did you leave? I mean, launching new stuff is like what anybody with entrepreneurial streak would want
00:29:54
Speaker
Yeah, so I think you have a far more flexibility of working on new stuff when you're not a public listed company and especially not a NASDAQ listed company. I think then things kind of change and I realized that the company had obviously become super big and I kind of contributed, done whatever I could do.
00:30:13
Speaker
You know, like I jokingly say, you know, how many tickets can you sell, right? Of course, that's not true because Deep and Rajesh are still, they can't need to do what they're doing just at a massive, you know, gigantic kind of scale. But I think what I'd done enough in travel, I think 10 years is more than enough. And it was time to be at IPO. There was honestly nothing I felt I could change for the company.
00:30:38
Speaker
I mean, I could keep doing newer stuff. I could optimize stuff which is existing, but I don't think it was personally, for me, it wasn't exciting anymore. I wanted to kind of move on, do other things. So you felt that you were not making enough of an impact.
00:30:53
Speaker
Absolutely. So I think my days of impact, at least the way I looked at it back then were kind of over. I mean, I could have stepped back, you know, reconsider, done probably a bunch of things and then make my trip obviously did a lot of stuff. But if you look at the period from IPO for the next couple of years, it was more about consolidation, right? It was just improving, optimizing, bettering what they had achieved. There was nothing dramatically new that was happening. So I think in hindsight, it seemed like a good decision because I put
00:31:21
Speaker
From a personality perspective, I need to do new exciting stuff, work with smaller teams. I think at least back then, that's the way I used to think. So you quit post the listing? I actually quit a couple of months before the listing. Okay. I mean, we knew the listings happening in August. I quit in March or something, I think three, four months before listing, but I was there. I was there to get threshold to stick around.
00:31:48
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, once I decided, then I think listing was just a milestone. I knew I'll be invited for the listing on NASDAQ, which I was. So there was nothing I could have kind of changed in those three, four months. So once I decided, I kind of moved on. But yeah, I was there with Deep and graduation came at the Bell on NASDAQ. So that was exciting. I mean, that's, I think, a once in a lifetime opportunity and was fortunate enough to be part of that.
00:32:16
Speaker
Mm hmm. Okay. So 2010, you are now like without a regular nine to five thing to do. So what did you do then? Yeah, so I that was one of the I mean, I can kind of say one of the mistakes. I mean, I think I put a lot of pressure on myself and I tell a lot of younger entrepreneurs who either exited or looking at exit. I put a lot of pressure on myself to start something very quickly. Right. And there was no pressure from anyone, not from my family or
00:32:46
Speaker
my peers or, you know, I wasn't a public figure where people were waiting with bated breath that, what is such an body going to do next? You know, there was, there was none of that. I think it was just a needless self-inflicted kind of pressure that, hey, I must, you know, I'm still young. I need to get on with stuff. One of the things I was very passionate about even at Mi'kmaq trip was the outdoors, do a lot of rafting, climbing,
00:33:10
Speaker
And I always felt that there is a space for, you know, folks who want a slightly more luxurious outdoor experience, who don't want to stay in tanks on the ganges or wherever they're after, who, you know, want to do a day's work.
00:33:26
Speaker
in the outdoors, but then come back to, you know, an air-conditioned room, a hot bath, nothing very fancy, but day six. So I kind of kept, you know, when I was at Mi'kmaq trip also, I used to do a lot of, like I said, outdoor stuff, but that's what I felt. So I actually tied up with somebody I knew well to set up India's first, what we call an active hotel, which is an activity-based hotel.
00:33:52
Speaker
where, you know, the idea was to offer a bunch of outdoor activities through the day, but you came back to like a resort-ish kind of place. So I did that, I set that up from scratch for two years, but that kind of didn't really pan out well. I mean, we set up something very spectacular, got covered in probably every travel magazine in the country and even overseas.
00:34:16
Speaker
I ran that for a few months, but I think that partnership wasn't meant to be. So decided to kind of move out of that. You know, obviously learned a lot. I've never done construction myself. I mean, not physically, but never supervised construction, especially at a, you know,
00:34:32
Speaker
resort hotel kind of scale trained the staff which was basically village folks to really a three-star kind of customer service without obviously they didn't know English but everything else in terms of making beds, cleaning loos, serving food, managing guests, checking them in, out etc. So I think laundry everything that a typical resort does
00:34:59
Speaker
And you put in your own money in this? Yes, I put in a fair bit of money in this and so did the folks I kind of partnered with, luckily managed to get all of that out by the end of it. But yeah, it was in a way two years wasted, but it was again two years of fun. I think building something and this was pretty remote. It was like 30 kilometers, even from so.
00:35:21
Speaker
It was funny, I think, you know, and was involved in everything right from branding the place to building it. Was it like you felt that this doesn't have that kind of scope to grow, like in terms? No, I was actually very bullish. So my idea was that I set this up, run this to understand this better and then offer this more as a service to a lot of mom and pop resorts across the country. Right. So I saw a lot of resorts, like, for example, in Quebec, which are really well located, et cetera. But, you know,
00:35:49
Speaker
They're not managed well because the founders started with a lot of passion but have either grown old or got bored or they're not able to pull in the kind of customers they should. I obviously had my network in travel. I knew every tour operator. I knew how to sell travel. So I got all that on board. So the idea was to actually take them over.
00:36:08
Speaker
improve them in terms of you know quality training of staff in terms of the whole experience but keep it to the very outdoorsy kind of experience right those kind of places so no the idea was to actually scale that yeah but then you know since this didn't work out I said let me then kind of go back to what I know best which is the internet
00:36:27
Speaker
And yeah,
Founding Truly Madly
00:36:28
Speaker
so, so I did that for a couple of years. And then after that's when I started looking at coming back to the, to the internet space. So how did you discover truly madly?
00:36:39
Speaker
So I think what I did first was since I'd been pretty much off the grid for a couple of years, obviously the internet space had kind of evolved in that time. I started talking to younger founders and I started actually investing and more again to learn what is happening, how are things, what is the quality of founders.
00:37:00
Speaker
what are the kind of problems that they are solving, et cetera. So I started, you know, just as a small angel investor, very, very small amount just to more get, you know, get back into thick of things. And then, you know, started looking at internet businesses, older internet businesses, which hadn't really evolved with time. Right. So, or, or just look at old internet businesses where one could, you know, with all the new tech with, you know, social media was just about happening at that point in time.
00:37:28
Speaker
how to use that as a marketing channel, how to use that as a distribution channel. So I looked at jobs, I looked at real estate, travel, I didn't want to do.
00:37:37
Speaker
looked at matrimony. So those were some of the things I was looking at and seeing, Hey, how can these be disrupted again? Right. One round of disruption had happened 10 years ago and they obviously up for disruption again. And that's when I met Rahul, who used to be with me at Make My Trip. He was one of our product managers. He was looking at, so he'd left Make My Trip too. He'd started a QSR chain called American Hot Dogs. And he was doing roles and stuff like that.
00:38:05
Speaker
And I got introduced to Hitesh, who had just exited Let's Buy back then. And I was discussing the thesis with them of looking at existing businesses, which are ripe for disruption. So that's when we went through a lot of these businesses, went back and forth, met many times. And that's when we realized that, hey, matrimony seems kind of interesting.
00:38:32
Speaker
not been disrupted. They're still matching people based on caste, creed and religion. There is no verification at all. I heard horror stories personally from some people who I knew of, you know, the kind of people they met on these matrimony sites. So actually the original idea was really to disrupt online matrimony by offering verification with social media allowed you to do back then. And by doing
00:38:59
Speaker
real matching, right? Algorithmic matching versus just, like I said, matching based on class, creed and religion. So that's what we set out to do. But then, you know, from a business perspective, realize that, hey, matrimony kind of plateaus out over time, you know, LTVs are fairly low. You know, you get people in when they're 26, throw them out when they're 26, 27, 28.
00:39:24
Speaker
and therefore LTVs are low. And that's when we said, hey, maybe dating is a much larger player versus matrimony than we evolved to dating. But yeah, the original idea was to really disrupt the online matrimony. How did the venture get off the ground? Like, you know, how did you go about finalizing what is the concept and how did you come up with the name and all of that?
00:39:48
Speaker
So I think Rahul and Hitesh were very keen on working on the matching algorithm. So they had this view that we can match much better.
00:40:02
Speaker
based on people's hobbies, interests, their social graphics, et cetera. And it came from personal experience. Rahul had a lot of cousins, younger cousins in Delhi and Bombay and some guys would come back from the US who wanted to meet new people, but they did not know. And they just wanted to meet to kind of date or just to get to know people. But, you know,
00:40:30
Speaker
How do you kind of match with each other? One, there's no platform root and second even there's a platform. How do you know that he or she is the right person for me? So I think they were coming from that kind of perspective and both of them had some personal experience about this. And my personal experience was more on the verification side where I remember there was this neighbor
00:40:54
Speaker
There's just one example, and there are many, many more. There's this neighbor dermatologist from a good educated family, and they were still looking for somebody for her on a matrimonial site. And I remember she met two people, and both of them had incorrectly mentioned what they... So one guy said he's an MBA. He'd done like some one week course in Miami at some college or whatever.
00:41:22
Speaker
And the other way was a total fraud, like nothing about him was right. And that kind of struck me. And then when I started talking to more and more people, I realized that this is like the biggest problem that matrimonial sites have, that a lot of people, actually 30% of men on matrimonial sites back then were married men.
00:41:39
Speaker
who had no business being on matrimonial sites and you know it's fairly easy now you know you realize to kind of weed out such people right but nobody was doing anything about it so I think I was coming in more from that perspective and it seemed like an ideal kind of marriage if I was to use that term that hey they wanted to solve one part of the problem I was keen on solving the other part of the problem very very passionate about it
00:42:03
Speaker
And that's how we kind of gelled and kind of got to them. Like I said, we wanted to disrupt matrimony first, but then realized that, hey, dating is much bigger. So that's what we then started working on. We used to work out of a cafe, out of a Costa Cafe, opposite my house in Gurgaon.
00:42:23
Speaker
and there was you know truly madly deeply by Savage Garden playing one day and it immediately kind of struck me that hey this has to be the name and luckily both of them kind of agreed and yeah that's how the name came about
00:42:38
Speaker
We worked on it, Rahul, especially on the product side in the early days, whiteboarding the entire thing. And then we also knew, and Rahul's actually a techie-turned-product guy, which is kind of useful, but we still needed somebody to code. And Rahul was extremely fussy in terms of the kind of person he wants. So we actually spent, I think, four months looking for this person. But I think, fortunately, what that four months did is that we whiteboarded
00:43:06
Speaker
the concept to pretty much look at every aspect of what the final product would be. And I think once this person joined, it just made it so much easier because we were able to pretty much give him every screen, every page for him to code.
00:43:28
Speaker
And I think that's what helped us launch very, very quickly also. How did you verify, say somebody is actually married or not and stuff like that? We built like an algorithm. It was like a verification score. We asked you, see, unlike a lot of other dating apps where you just log on and then you are swiping based on looks and location. My personal belief was that we were the first dating app in India.
00:43:57
Speaker
Women are obviously a very, very important segment. There is no dating without women on it. And my belief was that since this will be their first experience with online dating,
00:44:11
Speaker
we need to ensure that they get a good experience, they get a clean experience, right? And therefore it was very important to keep at least the married men out. You might not like the guy you chat with or you see or whatever, at least he's verified, he's not married, etc. So I think that was very core to what we believed in and that's luckily sustained even with the new management that's running truly madly now.
00:44:36
Speaker
who have handed over the business to that court and it still is very, very strong in the team. So we built something called a trust score, but you had to provide certain information, we checked your failure
00:44:50
Speaker
That time, you could check people's Facebook profiles. They could give you permission. You could check the Facebook profile. We could check your status on Facebook. We even checked if your Facebook profile itself was genuine. So say you are a married guy, and just to get onto Truly Madly, you created another profile, we would catch that out, right? We would see how old is your profile, how many friends do you have? Do you have an active news feed or not?
00:45:14
Speaker
Then people above a certain age, we would actually go into Facebook and see if there are pictures with Mangasutra or pictures around the Havan kind of thing, et cetera. So we were able to do a lot of that. So we gave you a trust score, but we kind of gamified it. We made it interesting. The higher your trust score, the more matches you got, the higher your trust score. Women tended to like you more because they knew that his trust score is higher than the other guy. So we communicated a lot of that. And that, I think,
00:45:45
Speaker
really worked for us well in the early days. At least it set us apart, right? And I think that's helped us endure also. We're obviously nowhere even close to a Tinder, but it's the only dating business which has survived on its own steam because of the early positioning around safety and security. So women really love us. I think that's, I think, stood the test of time now. Okay. And did you raise funds for this?
00:46:10
Speaker
Yeah, we raised funders. So we raised a small seed round in the early days from K capital. And then we went on to raise around $5 million from Helion and K capital. So yeah, we raised money for the business. And what was the monetization plan? Yeah, so in the early days, I think, and that time again, it was a hey days again of internet investing. And I think we were advised and we ourselves felt that hey, let's build the community first.
00:46:40
Speaker
Let's scale this up, let it be free for the longest time. And we'll figure out about monetization later. We obviously had plans on how we would be able to monetize this. But I think then again, the market kind of slumped and went down, and then every investor. And Bylaw metrics were really good in terms of engagement, in terms of growth, et cetera, in terms of daily matches that we were making.
00:47:03
Speaker
I think investors, the feedback we got from investors here, this is all great, but you need to start making money. So then we again went back to the drawing board and so we developed certain products within the app which we would be able to monetize. Some of them didn't work.
00:47:23
Speaker
But some of them like Truly Madly Select, which is still around, which is the biggest way in which we monetize. Help me understand better. So essentially what happens on Truly Madly and most other dating apps is that only if there's a mutual match, you get to chat with a person. Which means that if I have liked
00:47:46
Speaker
someone and she's kind of like me back is only then. So if I like someone and she hasn't liked me back, you can't communicate with the person. So what we used to do is that if both of you have been matched by us, but you haven't got a light back, we could still give you an opportunity to send that message.
00:48:04
Speaker
And sometimes sending that message is the stimulus that the other person needs to kind of reply to you or like you back, etc. But I think we understood the Indian use case where we realized that most guys in India just say, hi, hello, or you have a lovely name, or you have nice eyes, or something like that. And then if a girl looks at her feet, she sees 20 hi's and hello's only. It's not really moving the needle.
00:48:30
Speaker
So what we would do is we would actually recommend what they should say. I think that was a big case. So based on your both the social profile. So if somebody some both of you like a rigid thing, then you would say, hey, why don't you talk about a rigid things later. So I mean, for the algorithmically done.
00:48:47
Speaker
But I think that really got conversations going. We obviously tried a bunch of other monetization things, which didn't work. We started matching people based on events that they like. We started organizing dates for people and getting them coupons from restaurants, et cetera. So a lot of that stuff we experimented with, which didn't really scale or work. But I think Truly Madly Select is something that has stayed on. And that's the way the company still monetizes.
00:49:16
Speaker
Okay. Do you think your thesis on Truly Madly was incorrect? Because, so, you know, you have one line of thought of Tinder, which is making it super easy to swipe and meet. And then you have the other line of thought where you want a hundred percent trust to be built up first. And obviously Tinder has like blown up and also. Yeah. Yeah.
00:49:38
Speaker
No, no, absolutely. So, I mean, can't even defend the thesis. No, the thesis was, I think we were trying to do what's right, what we felt is right from, you know, from a woman's perspective. And that's what they said. So all the research we did
00:49:53
Speaker
Even when you read between the lines, that's what they said. But eventually, when we went back to them, they said, hey, we are smart enough. We'll figure out who the guy is. If you have to block him, we'll block him. Don't worry about it. We'll take care of ourselves. I think we kind of misjudged that. And we built this entire thing on all verified profiles.
00:50:15
Speaker
We actually did compatibility matching, which again, people didn't care about at the end of the day. So from that perspective, yes, the thesis was wrong. But having said that, you know, truly madly still around and it's known. So there is obviously a market for this slightly serious kind of use case.
00:50:37
Speaker
So now a lot of our customers or rather a lot of the truly madly customers are people in there, you know, between the 25 to 28 kind of range who are not looking at getting married immediately. But this is like the first step towards matrimony. Right. And that's, you know, an interesting niche which they are playing in. The revenues have doubled since I moved on. Actually, the internal joke is that the company is doing so much better since I moved on.
00:51:04
Speaker
You know, but yeah, I mean, in a way that see everyone else launched in India, just like Tinder, right? And everyone else is also pretty much shut down, right? But truly, madly, still, still out there profit. They've actually just raised a round of funding which they'll announce in the next few weeks.
00:51:23
Speaker
So in hindsight, yes, we could have gone the Tinder way, but then could we have beaten Tinder at its own game? Could be another question, right? So I think in a way, it's good that we kind of stuck to this and built not a very big business, but still built a decent business out of it. What was your learning from that stint? Like learning which would have helped you now with Bulbul? Yeah, so I think
00:51:52
Speaker
You know, a lot of what I've done at Bulbul actually came out of some of the experiments we did on live streaming, on video. These are things we tried out at Truly Madly actually, right?
00:52:06
Speaker
guys to post video profiles to because you know there's obviously in India there are far more guys than girls on on dating platform right so how does a guy stand out so we got guys to do video profiles so you know to make them seem more interesting we got guys to go live right so guys playing with a soccer ball somebody's doing Shirey somebody's playing the guitar somebody's
00:52:30
Speaker
reading out poetry, stuff like that. So I think one was just from a product and tech perspective, I think it gave me a fairly decent understanding of how video, and this is four years ago, right? When video wasn't the hot commodity that it is today, this is pretty much around the time GEO was launching. So GEO wasn't the force it is today. But it gave me insight that, hey, this is where the market is kind of moving. Video is interesting and exciting.
00:53:00
Speaker
And then I did a lot of research once we realized that we won't be able to take on Tinder at its own game. I thought maybe there's a use case in smaller towns for, maybe not for dating as the word connotes, but everyone wants to be in a relationship, everyone needs companionship. So I started traveling to smaller towns, getting insights from there, talking to customers from smaller towns. I think it's during that journey that I figured out this use case for video and video selling, et cetera.
00:53:28
Speaker
But that is more tactical. I think from a learning, the big learning obviously was that there was this thesis that we had, which is around what's the right thing for the customer. But I think it was a fairly superficial thesis. It was probably what we also wanted to hear as entrepreneurs.
00:53:49
Speaker
that women want verified profiles and they want that security. We had tons of security features on Truly Madly Red. Women could block profiles, they could report profiles, all that sort of stuff. But eventually, they didn't care about that.
00:54:04
Speaker
can take care of themselves from that perspective. So I think you have to read between the lines and read far deeper when you're looking, trying to glean consumer insights and not try to fit your thesis or narrative with what you're hearing from consumers. I think a lot of us tend to kind of do that and continue doing that. So I think that to my mind was the bigger learning.
00:54:29
Speaker
Did it make you more humble, like, you know, realizing that maybe your ego caused you to form that kind of thesis and not see the reality? Did you? Yeah, absolutely. So if you listen to, I mean, I don't know where you can, but if you listen to some of my interviews at the beginning of Truly Madly, they're fairly bombastic, right, about taking on Tinder, being number one, you know, the other India app before it became fashionable to say you're an India app. So we were saying all those things.
00:54:57
Speaker
But eventually it didn't pan out like that. I mean, Tinder has just taken the market and rightfully so. I think they have a far, far, far superior product than anyone else out there.
00:55:09
Speaker
And so no, absolutely. I think you have to listen to, I think all stakeholders, you have to listen to customers, you have to even listen to a lot of, I think our colleagues internally were also telling us that, Hey, this is the way to go, you know, keep it open. But I think by then it was too late. I think we got that positioning and Tinder was growing. And I realized that we won't be able to, even if we did, you know, what Tinder does, we probably won't be able to, you know, take them on.
00:55:37
Speaker
And that's when we hunkered down and said, okay, let's focus on what we've now, it's not, this is not working, right? People are paying us for verified profile. Yes, it will be a much smaller market.
00:55:47
Speaker
But things will change eventually, and that's what's happened, right? I think, like I said, revenue has kind of doubled because more and more people are seeing the value in what we do. It will still never probably be as big as a Tinder in the near future, but you never know. It's growing really well. So tell me about that decision to move on. How did you find a successor? What was the trigger that, okay, this is not what I want to do anymore?
00:56:14
Speaker
Yeah, so it was, for me, it was honestly more an opportunity cost. You know, I realized that also I was, you know,
00:56:25
Speaker
One, I think I realized that maybe it wasn't even my problem to solve, right? I was married with kids, right? And then I was solving a problem which wasn't even my problem. Though I spent, having said that, I spent a lot of time at campuses, at call centers, et cetera, with a lot of young people. And that's why we were still able to build a product which kind of at least to some extent worked for them. But you can only do it to a certain extent, right? You can't do it beyond. So I think that was,
00:56:53
Speaker
One thing which was very apparent maybe I just wasn't willing to kind of see the light. So I think that kind of happened.
00:57:02
Speaker
Rahul and Hitesh left early. Rahul also wanted to leave. And basically, I was left running the company, which was fine. I was kind of happy to do that with a small team. And then in meetings, I realized that I was contributing more from a strategic level, but I wasn't really contributing on product and on daily kind of stuff. I just couldn't make that difference anymore. And I could make that difference in the early days. So I was kind of losing out on that.
00:57:28
Speaker
So, I, but I was still very passionate about Truly Madly, not just because it is something I had started etcetera, but I still even today believe that there is a space
00:57:40
Speaker
you know, for something like Truly Madly. So I never want, so actually, our investors, especially K. Sasha Meerchandani used to tell me once, it was pretty apparent that it won't scale the way it was being run. He said, why don't you shut this down? You know, didn't run, we still believe in you as an entrepreneur. Let's do something else. And actually, he gave me a bunch of ideas. He and Naveen, who's his partner,
00:58:04
Speaker
They gave me a bunch of ideas and stuff. He said, we'll still kind of fund you. Just move on. But I think there was that bit of option to see that a lot of entrepreneurs have to not kind of give up.
00:58:15
Speaker
So that was there, but yeah, I wasn't obstinate enough to think that I could still run it. I think I realized that, accepted that, and then Snehal, who now runs, he was actually one of our first product managers. He was our first product manager, and then he gone on to do his own startup, which kind of sold. Then he joined.
00:58:38
Speaker
another internet venture, you know, doing stuff for them. So then I kind of got him back and I said, hey, you know, you are still single, you're still young, you understand the core philosophy of the business. I'm still willing to, you know, fund it myself personally, because I believe there is still some meat in this business. Why don't you come and run it?
00:58:59
Speaker
And in parallel, we'd also started separately an app for the LGBT community called Delta with another founder who kind of also moved on because I helped them raise some money, but then they just couldn't build the business beyond that. And Amit, who was the co-founder there and the CTO, so I got him together with Snail and
00:59:25
Speaker
told them that, hey guys, this is the opportunity, both of you understand the dynamics of this business. Give it a shot. And both of them really did believe in it. And obviously, I gave them equity, et cetera. I funded the business for another year myself, personally. And of course, they have thankfully. So yeah, so that's really how I decided to move on. And Bulbul is an idea I kind of explored three years back when I was still at Truly Magic, when I put it on the back burner.
00:59:54
Speaker
So it was just too early that at that point in time.
Bulbul's Vision and Growth
00:59:58
Speaker
So then once I kind of handed over the reins to them and I knew that they will kind of continue with the business because now they had enough skin in the game. Like one, they were passionate about the space and second, they obviously had enough equity. We recapitalized the company and did all of that.
01:00:15
Speaker
And now, like I said, they're running it successfully. It's a profitable company that just raised a small round of money for the next phase of growth. So things are good there.
01:00:24
Speaker
So you said that around 2017 only you had the idea for Bulbul. What was that idea? So what I noticed was that if you look at small town India, unlike the very intent driven solitary experience that you and I have on an Amazon or a Flipkart, small town India still loves to go out and shop. People go out together. It's not people don't go out alone.
01:00:51
Speaker
Even during the weekdays, somebody's indoor is going out to the market. They'll go with family, they'll go with friends. And it's a very interactive experience. People talk to each other, discuss with each other, come and be very personal, very into each other's lives. That kind of stuff, right?
01:01:13
Speaker
And then there's a lot of interactivity with the shopkeeper, you know, you know, we like to touch and feel product. So I noticed that whenever I traveled and I was hanging out at a lot of these places, and I said there has to be a far more real way of selling versus like I said, the solitary intent driven experience you have on
01:01:38
Speaker
on e-commerce in India, right? If you look at e-commerce in India, I think, you know, catalog, it's a catalog, right? Catalog selling has been in the US for maybe 100 years, then Craigslist came and disrupted that, Amazon obviously came and disrupted it further, Amazon India has copied Amazon, Flipkart has copied Amazon, so it's all the same, right? So if you are
01:02:01
Speaker
urban English speaking, even if you're semi-urban, highly literate, you know, you know exactly what you want. Amazon Flipkart are a great place to go, right? You go in search and you get out. But when it comes to, you know, discovery, none of them are very friendly when it comes to discovery and Indians like to browse, Indians like to, everyone does actually for that matter. So I think that was really the germ of the idea.
01:02:26
Speaker
And I think I remember coming back from one of the trips, got a bunch of girls from office, truly madly, ready to kind of go live. That time there was Facebook live had just started. So we bought products from the market.
01:02:43
Speaker
And we built this little campaign saying, hey, you know, you've got a date night and what will you, how will you accessorize yourself? Truly, Madly is bringing you like a session live with some experts and stuff like that. The idea was really to gauge interactivity, not really to sell stuff.
01:03:01
Speaker
But surprisingly, we actually managed to sell everything we got on because there was tons of interactivity. People were asking a lot of questions. They were asking us to bring the earring closer to the camera, show us the inside of the bag, whether it's stuff like that. So that was pretty exciting. But I think back then, I did not have the confidence to pull it off in the sense that
01:03:23
Speaker
I did not have a co-founding team which could supplement the skills that I had. I realized this will be an ops-heavy business. I realized it will be a tech and product-heavy business. And obviously, I still understand product, but obviously, clearly, ops is not something that comes naturally to me. And then, obviously, video was still very early days for video back then. GEO was just about kind of
01:03:52
Speaker
You know, it's still like I said, wasn't the force it is now. And then I think live streaming video tech was kind of hard to come by. So, you know, I said, hey, maybe this is too early. So I just kept it on the back burner. And then once I decided to exit truly madly.
01:04:12
Speaker
That's Anathip, who's my co-founder and who I've known for the last five, six years through his various startups. And then he was with SEF, partners as an investor last. He'd left SEF and he'd come to me with a bunch of ideas. And I showed him all the pilots I'd done in the business plan. I had everything ready, actually. I showed it to him. He got super excited. We, again, thread bared the idea, whiteboarded it, went back to some of the smaller towns.
01:04:41
Speaker
you know, met with customers. And yeah, that's when we decided to that, hey, this is what you want to do next. So Bulbul is pure live streaming. It's essentially like a live streaming shopping experience. It's both live and pre-recorded videos, but it's all video, video commas. It has live and pre-records both. What is the way in which you see this evolving? You know, what do you see as like a five year evolution of Bulbul?
01:05:09
Speaker
So I think we look at it like a three-way kind of marketplace of these influencers or micro-influencers of vendors, suppliers, manufacturers, D2C brands, and consumers. I think in the future we should be a credible platform and a credible brand, which people trust. They trust the influencers who are there.
01:05:32
Speaker
They trust the brands that they can buy. Eventually, an influencer should be able to directly go to a brand and say, hey, or a brand should be able to approach an influencer saying, hey, you are known for, say, selling a barrel. I sell a barrel. Why don't you promote my products? And we then take care of payments, logistics, all of that stuff. But that's still some time in the future. Currently, we obviously curate and control the entire experience.
01:06:01
Speaker
But that's where we see ourselves eventually heading towards. Anyone who's a great content creator, anyone who can sell on video. And it could be a manufacturer himself, right? If I make cushion covers in Panipat, I should be able to make my own video because I understand the product well. And if I'm confident in front of the camera, I should be able to make my own video, put it up on Bulbul.
01:06:27
Speaker
or put it up on my Instagram and then Bulbul enables the entire transaction. Tell me about your fundraise journey also.
01:06:35
Speaker
So we end of, well, rather early last year, we got into the surge program, which is run by Sequoia for early stage startups, exceptional program, probably among the most unique programs in the world in terms of the quality of the investor first, which is Sequoia, quality of other founders, and just the quality of people they let you kind of network with, interface with, content, sessions, et cetera.
01:07:04
Speaker
So we were the first companies, I mean, we were the first company in search, first company that they kind of signed on. So we raised some money then. You already had revenue at that stage? No, we were actually didn't even have a product. It was just a concept. It was just like a PPT. So it was Ateeth and me and we got Sanjay over to hit technology then.
01:07:27
Speaker
So yeah, so we got into surge, raised $2 million from Sequoia from surge and from a fund called Leo Capital. And then we launched the product in March, then raised some more money from a fund called CDH, which is a Chinese fund, and from Sequoia and Leo again. And we've just concluded another fundraise with InfoEdge and again Sequoia and Leo.
01:07:55
Speaker
So yeah, that's pretty much been our fundraiser. So we've raised around 15 million dollars to date. Yeah, that's that's been the fundraising journey so far. And the fund is the funding is for what? Like, is it for building a team or is it for marketing? I think the team is in place. It's more to, I think, build this network of
01:08:19
Speaker
influences out at scale. I think we've proven that we can do that. I think we've proven that we know how to sell through videos, how to create content. I think all of those tick boxes are done. The team is completely in place. We're not really hiring anymore now. We've set up a call center, except a couple of hires here and there. All positions are kind of done.
01:08:41
Speaker
So yeah, this is for a next phase of growth and really setting up this differentiated marketing sales channel of selling via these influencers. What does the app look like? Does it look like an Amazon app where you have products listed and you click on a product and instead of a photo, you'll see a video? Is that what it looks like? No, it's more like a GIF.
01:09:07
Speaker
So you'll see these big windows with products, with a host, with a slight description. And when you click on that, you get into a video. And in the video itself, you can buy the product. You don't need to kind of come back to a catalog or whatever. So it's all enabled on the video itself.
01:09:25
Speaker
You can buy and then it's a typical e-commerce flow till you exit. You've completed your purchase. You also use the same videos on other like YouTube, Insta, etc. Or are they exclusively on Bulbul only? We use them off-app also.
01:09:41
Speaker
So that, in a way, is also like a content marketing strategy. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So what next for Sachin? You know, I mean, you are, I think, somebody who gets restless after every few years. And, you know, what do you think will happen a couple of years down the line once you feel bull bull is stable? What do you think will be the next phase of life for you?
01:10:04
Speaker
No, I mean, it does sound like that would make my trip was 10 years. Truly, my trip was five years, not short by any stretch of imagination, not short stints by any stretch of imagination. I think this is pretty much hopefully my last gig. So I think one has to make it count from that perspective. So that kind of positive pressure is there.
01:10:31
Speaker
But what I'm doing is great. It's super exciting. I get to work with very, very young people. My co-founder is 32. I'm 48. So obviously, it keeps me extremely young and agile. And we are in an interesting space. It's not only e-commerce, but it's also content. It's also video, which is the next big thing.
01:10:52
Speaker
It's also about the larger Indian population which is coming online. So it's all converging very well, right? It's all exciting. All the pieces are very, very exciting. So yeah, I think the idea is to scale this, grow this, make this pretty much a third front to an Amazon or a Flipkart because the audience is a very video-first audience, right?
01:11:21
Speaker
guys like you and me who first consumed the written content. These guys, the first piece of content these guys have consumed is the video content, right? And that too in local languages, like we only do, we don't have any English content on that. So I think it's at a place where every, each element is kind of exciting and that's what keeps me kind of excited. So I don't see anything beyond this, at least in the near future. This is what I hopefully want to continue kind of doing.
01:11:50
Speaker
And what is it that you are currently seeking as learning? Like what kind of learning are you seeking? And I mean, you know, speaking from experience, most entrepreneurs are essentially seeking to learn and being an entrepreneur is like a outcome of that desire to learn.
01:12:08
Speaker
I mean, I don't know if they truly believe that or they just say that to sound deep. So I don't know how much of that is generally true. No, and I think I am looking at, I mean, I think learning is an outcome, right? For me, it's about building a successful business. For me, it's about building something endearing for the team that is working on this and has put a lot of effort into it.
01:12:35
Speaker
and obviously something that consumers find useful. Obviously, along the way, I learn how to build a bigger and better organization. I learn insights into consumers that probably are not second nature to me, sitting here in the city. And I've learned so much. How do local language users, how do people in smaller towns, how do they think, what do they look for? So I think those learnings will kind of happen along the way.
01:13:03
Speaker
Obviously, with experience, you become a little more resilient to outside forces, whether it's investors or what people say or what people will think, et cetera. Those things kind of matter to you less. So I think for me, the big thing is building this into something which is successful, you're profitable, successful, and scalable. What I learned along the way, let's see what I learned. I mean, one obviously keeps learning.
01:13:33
Speaker
Who are some of the people that inspire you? You know, like real life people, not like people that you read about in books. That's a tough one. I'm not, I mean, I don't want to sound, you know, it's not as if I'm not easily inspired or something. I think I, I mean, there are some people who are, you know, I don't have a mentor, right?
01:13:57
Speaker
you know but there are people who kind of I look up to people who I seek advice from but I think real inspiration this might sound a little cliche but it's true I think for me real inspiration comes from you know small kind of businessmen it could be a
01:14:15
Speaker
You know, I came across this fruit seller in Malaysia, in Penang. It's an island north of Malaysia. And this guy comes at a particular time every day.
01:14:30
Speaker
and he cuts fruit but and he does it on a cycle, right? And you know, he's wearing a glove. He cuts each fruit with a certain amount of precision. Each kind of fruit is cut to the same size.
01:14:46
Speaker
He doesn't touch the product at all. So he's wearing a glove and he slides, he cuts it on his glove and then he slides it into a packet through the glove only. And I've seen him do it day after day, every day for a very long period of time and the process never changes.
01:15:04
Speaker
And I think those are some of the things I think about, right? Those are things which are very, very inspiring for me to, hey, just show up, you know, be the last man standing kind of thing, but show up every day. I think I find inspiration in that.
01:15:20
Speaker
Deep and Rajesh who run Make My Trip, Sanjeev Big Chindani who was on our board at Make My Trip and now is on our board at Bulbul. These are people I know immediately and personally and I seek them out for advice, for help, etc.
01:15:37
Speaker
And they are truly inspirational. Deep's been doing this now for 20 years, day in and day out. And I think it takes a lot to do this. Sanjeev's been doing this for longer. And to me, I think that is a big source of inspiration that, hey, keep plugging away. And I think that keep plugging away is a big theme for me, that just keep doing what you're doing.
01:16:05
Speaker
be the last man standing, you know, that's important. What is it that makes Sanjeev Bikchandani invest in somebody? Like what does he look for? Is it like he looks at the quality of the team or is it like they do a numbers analysis and look at the market opportunity and stuff like that? I don't think I have
01:16:31
Speaker
I've gotten into his mind to know how he thinks. But what I've seen on the surface is that he likes ideas which are very grounds up. He likes ideas which are for the masses and not niche kind of businesses. At least that's my reading. I mean, he might have made investments which might seem a little niche today. But I think overall, that's what he kind of looks at. He has obviously a stellar investment team.
01:16:57
Speaker
which is run by Kitty Agarwal and she's I think more the nuts and bolts kind of person and I think he relies on her a lot. But I think Sanjeev really likes businesses which are more
01:17:13
Speaker
you know, where the market is huge, where the consumer market is huge, which is addressing the larger Indian kind of population. I think he likes, from what I've seen, he loves those kind of businesses. And obviously founders then who are, you know, either who have some experience or who can kind of, who are flexible. I think that's an important one for him. And whatever I've seen, he doesn't like people who are kind of
01:17:35
Speaker
stuck in their ways or seem to know it all. I think he likes people who are a little flexible who like to listen and who really value because he is not only an invest. I mean, he's he is obviously a very successful investor now, but he's also you need to value him for the entrepreneur that he is. And when I think of seeking advice from him, it is about that part of
01:17:59
Speaker
the learning one can get from him, which is more around the business, entrepreneurship, etc. versus his inputs as an investor. And what makes Serge select a company? Like what is their way of choosing which company to back? Yeah, I think they look at the classic thing. They look at
01:18:19
Speaker
They look at the team, they look at the business idea, they look at the addressable market. So I don't think they look at things very differently, but they just have a sharper sense given the collective experience of the team on what will work, what will not work, what will scale versus probably a lot of other guys because they've seen very closely businesses both in Southeast Asia and India, which a lot of Indian investors have seen stuff here.
01:18:45
Speaker
because of Shillendra in Southeast Asia and because of the rest of the search team in India, I think they have a very good sense of how both markets work, what will scale, what will not. So I think that's the advantage that they have as a team and that's why the search program is so successful. So search plays the role of an angel investor, like they would invest in you even before you have an MVP or something.
01:19:09
Speaker
Yeah, it depends. I think they've done it in some cases. I don't think that's the norm. But they do look at a fairly early stage businesses. Yes. I mean, they've invested in companies which are two, three years old also. But those companies are still small companies and now ready for the next kind of stage of growth.
01:19:29
Speaker
Well ladies and gents, that was Sachin Bhatia, the founder of Bulbul. Be sure his incredible journey has not only inspired you but has also intrigued that curious brain of yours about what live streaming of a product actually means. For those who are not familiar with Sachin's online shopping methodology, head to Bulbul TV now and while you explore the website, suit yourself to some exciting offers and deals. Happy Shopping!
01:19:56
Speaker
If you like the founder thesis podcast, then do check out our other shows on subjects like marketing, technology, career advice, books and drama. Visit the podium.in that is T-H-E-P-O-D-I-U-M.IN for a complete list of all our shows.
01:20:43
Speaker
This was an HD Smartcast original.