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A Techie’s Tale Of Spirituality | Prashant Sachan @ AppsForBharat
239 Plays3 years ago
Bhakti and Bharat are inseparable. Finding its root in Sanskrit, Bhakti means spirituality and encompasses community, mental well-being, and philanthropy. Being a uniquely Indian concept, the market for this space remains hugely untapped.
Prashant is an Internet entrepreneur who created a spiritual-tech app to serve the emerging devotional needs of Indians. He tells Akshay Datt about his journey of building this engagement lead consumer platform.
Know about:-
- Finding cofounders for the first venture
- Genesis and evolution of Trell
- Model of AppsForBharat and the flywheel of growth
- Community features and virtual darshan
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Transcript
Introduction and Zencastr Promotion
00:00:00
Speaker
Before we start today's episode, I want to give a quick shout out to Zencaster, which is a podcaster's best friend. Trust me when I tell you this, Zencaster is like a Shopify for podcasters. It's all you need to get up and running as a podcaster. And the best thing about Zencaster is that you get so much stuff for free. If you are planning to check out the platform, then please show your support for the founder thesis podcast by using this link, zen.ai slash founder thesis.
00:00:27
Speaker
That's zen.ai slash founder thesis.
What is Apps for Bharat?
00:00:31
Speaker
Hi, I'm Pishak. I'm the founder of Apps for Bharat.
00:00:45
Speaker
Bhakti and Bharat are inseparable. Bhakti is not just about religion, but it is a much broader term that includes mental wellness, philanthropy, community and the fact that it is such a uniquely Indian concept means that there is no Silicon Valley startup with an app for Bhakti.
00:01:03
Speaker
Most Indian startups have also not seriously looked at tapping this market and this is what makes Apps for Bharat such a unique startup. Prachant Sachan, the founder of Apps for Bharat is a serial entrepreneur whose first venture was the social media platform Trell. He founded Trell with fellow IIT Bombay alums with a focus on powering creators with tools to share video content and drive commerce.
00:01:26
Speaker
In the journey of raising funds for Trell, he spent time in China, which drove a shifting perspective for him and led to his next startup, which is apps for Bharat, the publisher of the very popular devotional app Shri Mandir.
Building a Strong Team
00:01:39
Speaker
Listen on to this masterclass with Prashant about building engagement-led consumer apps. What I was doing was every two weeks, I was living on my campus. Now, one of the learnings from my previous attempt was that you need to have a very solid team in place.
00:01:56
Speaker
a team which is committed to be able to build IIT. So I was actually going back to the campus to find my performance. Now that was a, so I was actually frequenting IIT Bombay campus for almost a year. Let's say I used, I would have made at least 10 to 15 visits over that year.
The Birth of Trell
00:02:14
Speaker
That is how I actually would get, went and met, would get, which
00:02:20
Speaker
you actually became my proof on reset trail. So essentially, you know, they were working on something. I was also figuring out what is it that we can do and what not. And I've, I've known them. I've known them. There was a, there was an introduction that was made by one of my professors who said that there are a bunch of these graduates who are, who are, who are figuring this piece out and they're putting something in this particular space and looking for somebody who could build the product, uh, design it and whatnot. And you're also thinking of finding all this credit being made
00:02:44
Speaker
was the time when we started chatting, we kept on chatting and we kept on working together in Thailand and we used to brainstorm. Almost every evening we used to have Skype calls and keep talking about what we should build and what not. Back in the day, we had called it something called as Project Express. So the idea of location based social network
00:03:04
Speaker
was what we were thinking of building. We didn't have to think of this as a full square or a swab. It was what we tried to build. It was the initial idea and then it kept me wondering. But 2016 was a time mid. It was a time when we said that, hey,
00:03:19
Speaker
Now is the time when we should all get together. And this was the time when there was one more person who was there with us, and then it was Khaal. One of these guys had graduated by then, and we were like, let's just now start building it. So I left my job, Biman left his job, Dhaval was there, Pukit was there, Arun was there. We all got together in a small 550-square-foot apartment in front of IIT Bombay Y-Gate, and that's when
00:03:43
Speaker
the old journey of Trell started.
Market Gaps and Evolution of Trell
00:03:45
Speaker
So I think June, July of 2016 was when we all worked together and started attempting this more seriously. So you had one experience of product market misfit, which would have meant that you would have given more thought on what product you want to build now. So what made you shortlist that space of Trell? And what was the version one product that you wanted to build? Tell me about that product journey.
00:04:12
Speaker
Got it. So you know, the first one was the geo impact. So everybody was talking about, and we were ourselves an option that geo was able to break. So it was mass movement on the internet that we were able to see that people are now having access to smart phones that they are now using internet and whatnot. The other data that we had was that people are now willing to explore their neighborhood, their city, travel and whatnot. So there were these two clear intents that we had.
00:04:41
Speaker
One was that more people have internet access. Two was people are willing to explore their neighborhood, their city and their country and the world. Now, clearly, that one entirely relies that TripAdvisor wasn't really cutting it. It was very textual, review-based and more. And we said that it is not meant for a great mobile user experience, I would say. So we said that, can we reimagine
00:05:10
Speaker
TripAdvisor. Can we just make a product which is where people would come and they would share their experiences. They would learn from other people's experiences. So that was the first version that we started thinking about. Now, if you see, everything was making sense. What was making sense was travel. Everybody wants to travel. So it sounds like this is a large enough market space that we could capture and so on.
00:05:38
Speaker
two number of people on the internet was increasing and there were projections that that point in time that by 2020 500 million people will be there on the internet soon today. So we think that there's enough number of people would want this and we clearly think that TripAdvisor wouldn't be able to cut it. So let's attempt this and TripAdvisor was a large enough company so we thought let's let this try making something in this particular space so that
00:06:04
Speaker
So when we thought that we can actually imagine this local experiences, travel experiences, discovery at the space, we said that there's something that we can build here. But the attempt that we wanted to have in this particular space was that we would not want to build a
00:06:22
Speaker
a team of bloggers who are writing this content and people reading this content, we'd not want to put it as a blog. We wanted to build this as more a social product, where we wanted anyone, everyone to share their experiences.
Trell's Growth and Strategy
00:06:34
Speaker
And we learned that in a more scalable way. So we realized that blog approach is fine.
00:06:41
Speaker
I mean, that just will not be enough people who will be creating this and has less discovery and whatnot. So we said that thing, let's just make it create and get this volumes of content because we like that it took 10-15 years for TripAdvisor to get that kind of volume of content if you can and because
00:07:02
Speaker
And that content was being created on a desktop. So if people are actually checking their phone store at times a day, so which means that we can create that one of the content in a year. How are you thinking about it? What did the product look like? Was it like an app in which you have a plus button, you press the plus button and then you can record a video or click a photo? Yeah, pretty much. So the format was anything like if you post a video, you can post a photo, you can write on top of it.
00:07:30
Speaker
So we actually did a lot of work. So this was before stories became popular. So we had something which was in the form of stories where you can actually click multiple photos, make one of a slideshow where you can add keywords and whatnot. That was the first product. And everything had to have a geotag. Like that was the USB. Everything has to have a geotag. So that was the key product.
00:07:53
Speaker
we did that we scaled that way but then that's when you know i think i think this was a time by 2018 mid when we had raised a seed round from weeks and the bhv chips goes around a million uh a 1.2 million round that we had raised back in the day right to the seed round how are you sustaining
00:08:10
Speaker
Like, were you monetizing this? No, no, no, no. So 2016, towards the end, was the time when we started going to the market and saying that, hey, we would want to read an art, initial target was let's raise a million dollars and so on. So that was an initial idea. But at that point in time, the ecosystem in Bombay was set up sort of coming down. So we were not able to, we were getting a lot of no's. So we actually changed our strategy.
00:08:37
Speaker
Now i want to mention this guy's name is ramish visa senior from i.e. who used to advise on a startup so we went to it and we're almost on the other words of shutting down so we were six six months into building and we had exhausted all our personal capital that we had put in.
00:08:52
Speaker
and we were in the market to raise some money but we were not able to raise that money because of n number of external factors so what happened was we went to him and we said that hey Ramesh the company is going to get shut and we would need some help from him and so we asked him that Ramesh can you give us 13 activities.
00:09:08
Speaker
And Ramesh was like, he said 20 lakh rupees won't save, won't change anything for you guys. And this was me and Phuket in Hawaii, sitting across the table. It's something I forgot the full name. LTQ, hey, we actually where Ramesh used to sit. So we met him. We are on the verge of this. Can you help us? And he was like, are you stupid? You know, two 20 lakhs won't do anything to you guys. First of all, be honest to yourself and calculate how much money would you need to run this show for the next year, year and a half.
00:09:38
Speaker
And there is that, that one with capital. So we actually did the map and we said 10,000 rupees a month, we'd be able to, we would need. So we went back to raise 1.35 CR in the market. Now this, this time we actually went and said, and we also realized that we should go to the areas who have more appetite.
00:09:57
Speaker
So do things which are experimental, plus you can understand social. So through one of the mutual connections, and one of my colleagues was running, his name is Karsh Prathar, who was running Boho, who actually introduced me to Aparme and other Krishna and me and Kulkit in front of Bangalore to meet him. And we were meeting Aparme in IDC Gardenia, and the first half an hour of the discussion, Aparme said, I'm investing. So he committed to P-Lax to us.
00:10:24
Speaker
Deep that didn't go to, to, to, to our premier for giving us a portrait to build. With his check, we were able to initiate our Congress process, put together a lot of angels. I think, I think, and you know, I haven't seen with a two-way to us that it hadn't not competent students traveling and we were trying multiple doors and whatnot. He said that I'll lead the round. And with that, we were able to get this 25.
00:10:45
Speaker
put 5 lakhs, 10 lakhs and also working some very good grinds. So some of the very good guys who are very good friends now invested in that round and so on. So essentially we got this opportunity to build something because of his cheque. So that was the first cheque that we were able to put together. It was 1.5 CR of Indian round I would say. And the pitch to the investors was TripAdvisor for India.
00:11:08
Speaker
We used to say it's a local discovery, it's a local discovery platform. You get to understand what's near you, you get to discover what's near you. I think the process of understanding how this market works is, in some cases, when you are trying to build their references, it's always good to take references.
00:11:34
Speaker
where you're building something which is normal and you need to show numbers. I'm thinking of different approaches of raising capital. Now, we were young and I think we had our own learnings. So back in the day, we used to say that, hey, this is what we're building. It's truly unique. We did not use any benchmarks. We did not take names of four square quadrip advisor.
00:11:55
Speaker
We changed a lot of things about our pitching style over the next years, but the first year, we did not leave anything and said, it was a complete new concept and we are doing this and getting that involved. Okay, got it. And by the time you raised that institutional round, what was the pitch by that time? Okay, so I think by that time, we were pitching Tipperizer. Okay.
00:12:17
Speaker
And yeah, you're saying something, sorry. And but throughout this period, there's like no monetization strategy at all. I mean, that must have been a question, like how will you monetize? Yeah,
Pivoting to a Lifestyle Platform
00:12:27
Speaker
so you know, I think our strategy was always distribution first. Now there are these words quite for it, but we used to say that getting any money for this volume of users won't really add up. So the first thing that we should do is we should get large volume of people using our platform.
00:12:45
Speaker
And then we monetized. But in parallel, we were running a monetizing. I think we did not talk about it much. But thanks to one of my partners, his name is Bimal. So Bimal is now the CEO of Trell. And he actually started running this agency sort of model within Trell back in the day. This is 2017, 2018, where we were actually serving restaurants, serving hotels, being there, social media for sentence and whatnot. And also community. So essentially, we were doing that in parallel. It was our B2B app. And the B2C app was a Trell app.
00:13:14
Speaker
But we also wind building it. It's not a scalable model. It's a very efficient marketing business and so on. So we actually did well. We were doing good revenues, I think. I'm not sure of the numbers right now. I don't remember them, but I think we had 30-40 clients like Marriott, good restaurants in Bombay and Bangalore were our clients. But we realized eventually that this is a hard-grained business and it's not going to
00:13:40
Speaker
scale up. So that's why we decided to fold it, but trail kept going. Okay. Okay. And like subsequent to that institutional route, like how did the product evolve further? Yeah. So, so I think the first, the first one year we were just into photos. We were just, people are posting photos and people were adding tags on top of it. What we brought
00:14:03
Speaker
I think in 2018 mid was people can now post videos. We also give them a lot of tools to vlog. Now vlogging was a new concept back in the day. In 2018 was the time when vlogging was picking up. So we actually vlogging tools for people where anyone can do the vlogging using the app as well. So those are the tools that we actually made. Now the format was not a dry set of photos that you can browse through. This was an engaging content that we built together. So that's how the project went.
00:14:31
Speaker
Now, I think one interesting thing that happened was we, by 2018, realized that travel is a low frequency use case. Whatever good we do, either we go deep into transactions like travel triangle or make my trip, or we go broad. Now that was a very important decision in our journey because we were anyway deeply married to the idea of re-imagining Kipetweiser. I think it took
00:14:56
Speaker
lot of iron walls for us, where we said that if travel is an art market, it will take many years to build this. However, what we have granted is this community of creators. Now, can we do more? And we had some data which said that people are not just posting travel and local experiences, but they're also talking about
00:15:18
Speaker
their tips around fashion, beauty and whatnot, of course, in the context of travel. So we said that, and I think 25-30% were women. So we said that this could expand, this could very good expand. So we actually took the decision, this was December of 2018, when we decided
00:15:36
Speaker
And I think a lot of this was also because of the exposure that we had. I actually was visiting a lot of these travel conferences in Southeast Asia, and that's when I met a lot of these others who are building these travel companies. And I realized that the mortality rate in companies which are around engagement in travel is very important. I was able to understand from data that are part-ships that are there in the travel business, which are focused primarily on the engagement part. So we came back, we had our data points and we decided that, hey, let's
00:16:06
Speaker
Google model. And that changed a lot for us. We were not a travel platform anymore. We're not a local experience platform anymore. We were a lifestyle platform. So the trail that you see today, which is a lifestyle content community covers platform. I think this was 2019, early when we actually took the decision that, hey, we'll move out of travel, not move out of travel, we'll broaden from just being in travel to multiple more companies. Now, it was a great decision, I would say, because the frequency of content increased.
00:16:34
Speaker
And the creator was posting one content every month, started posting five content every month.
00:16:42
Speaker
And then when they used to create, they used to share it outside. They used to bring more people. So essentially, the whole family of people creating, and people hosting, and people sharing, and then getting more people back, they started working for us. And that was a rapid growth phase for us. So 2019 was a time when we started growing very, very, I think, very, very, very. I think 20%, 30% month on month is what we were going to grow. No, you finished your third first. Then I lost. Works. No, I'm more of a dog. Go on.
00:17:11
Speaker
How did this appear to the community? You were a travel-focused sharing platform where people can share photos or videos or do a live vlog of their travel experience.
00:17:27
Speaker
But how did you communicate to the community? So we highlighted the design. I think the first tab that we kept was travel and the subsequent tabs were beauty, fashion, personal care and whatnot. So people realized that it's still travel, but there's more.
00:17:44
Speaker
I think it pissed off some people who said that this platform is not of any interest to me if they went away. But you know, I think every decision like that, every pivotal decision like that is hard. I think we stood by it and we also saw some numbers that, you know, so there was a motion decision and there was a practical decision. So what we did was a practical decision. We realized that the frequency of creation has increased, number of the one who pointed has increased, even though it has pissed off some of the super creators, it's final.
00:18:12
Speaker
So we were comfortable with that one idea. Okay. Okay. Like it brought in like a more, basically from niche it became more mass appeal. Yes. Yes. Okay. Okay. So you were telling me about the growth and how like you were growing pretty rapidly in 2019. So you were like around 30,000 creators when that institutional round happened. So by end of 2019, where did you reach it? And like, you know,
00:18:39
Speaker
Tell me about that. I don't distinctly remember, but I think January 2019, we were at around 2 lakh monthly activities. And I think we would have 2020 mid, I think we would be at around 10 million monthly activities is what we would have gotten. Also, I think that the growth has been quite rapid and so on. But I think a couple of interesting things have happened.
00:19:01
Speaker
in 2019. So 2019 was a very interesting time for us because we were growing, things were working for us, but nobody was giving us any capital. We were able to grow well, but nobody was actually because, you know, one, any tech product that you see today, right, would need a bunch of engineers and marketers and whatnot. You would need to have a market for video. So essentially, any business which is an engagement needs capital.
00:19:22
Speaker
Anything which is social needs captain, you don't need the nation captain and then there it self-sustained.
Lessons from Chinese Investors
00:19:28
Speaker
So I think 2019 half of the year was was gone and we were actually knocking doors and nobody was giving us any money and what we decided there was a
00:19:46
Speaker
that, hey, a lot of Chinese money is flowing in India. And we decided that, hey, instead of Chinese money coming to us, let's go to China. So I went to, I actually found out a financial advisor in China and I actually spoke to him multiple meetings and I went to China. The idea was that I'll return with capital or I'll not.
00:20:11
Speaker
And, and I think we just had 1.5 crores left in the bank. And I'm very fortunate to have factors like 10 Sanhok, BX, where you were about to hit the ball and he was like, and I remember we went to this grand, grand marking, in Kormang land, we gave very good sting and we met him and he was like, you don't want, I'm going to give you, say a thousand dollars more. You just,
00:20:40
Speaker
What you do is don't hit the one. So that was a good, good motivation booster for us that there's a backer who is standing by us. And then, you know, I decided to go to China and all my co-founders were doing a great, fantastic job of running the show here. I think we were constantly growing here in India. I was there.
00:21:05
Speaker
to a lot of these investors. So there is this company called Sai Aungshu. Sai Aungshu is called Little Red Book, which we thought was very similar to us. It was having a similar model. So I actually went and started finding the investors of Sai Aungshu and started meeting them, telling them that, hey, we are building Sai Aungshu for India, why don't you invest in this and whatnot.
00:21:25
Speaker
It was a very interesting journey. So the end result was we were able to raise the capital, so we got a term sheet there and then in-panel, Sequoia search happened to us as well. So both, both came together and we were able to get around four million dollars in back. And subsequently, a lot of fundraisers also happened because of that fantastic trip, I would say. But let me just, you know, I think for me personally, a couple of things changed when I was in China. I'll tell you what all changed.
00:21:49
Speaker
I was very curious, so I was one meeting investors. I was actually asking these investors that, can you make introductions to the Chinese founders? So I would have met about 50-60 founders, ranging from seed to people who have done ITUs. And I have this curiosity with respect to how these Chinese founders are able to build these
00:22:14
Speaker
new paradigms in the app business. So if you look at any new world, be it live streaming, depending on what not, all has come from China in some way or another. And I was very curious at him, what is it that is so unique about this country, where the founders are actually cracking mobile as a platform and
00:22:32
Speaker
in
Keys to a Successful App
00:22:33
Speaker
crazy ways, from group buying, community buying, whatnot, so many new models that the whole world was copying was coming from there. And not just in the supply chain games, it was also in games around engagement. So social media, gaming, community, a lot of things. Yeah, a lot of these amazing companies are coming from there. I was like,
00:22:50
Speaker
Wow, what is so unique about this nation? So I was meeting a lot of these founders and I was asking them the questions around how did this innovation give into play? How do you go about building this and building that and whatnot? And I got really crazy answers. You know, people said it's not innovation. They actually disqualified the whole idea of innovation. They said that a couple of things which are very unique to Chinese founders is one, they don't judge the user of the English case.
00:23:16
Speaker
So, if it is a lead, if it is a lead of a large enough frequent, you solve for it. You don't judge them. Who am I or you to judge whether it's a superior use case or an inferior use case? First part. By the language there was honesty with respect to the exact need and there was not enough bias that they had with respect to this is right or that is right. But now help me understand that judging but
00:23:41
Speaker
Like, are you saying that Indian founders were judging or are you saying that Silicon Valley founders were judging user needs? I mean, help me understand how China was different. Like, can you give an example?
00:23:53
Speaker
So I have very good shelljacked shares, too. So Farid, Bhandu, Ankush had a really hard time creating that category. They had to educate the whole market that there's a multi-million dollar portion that is supposed to be cracked in this particular space. So they actually created this whole space. But what happened was, in the early years of them building it, we were judging that phase. Is this even a lead? Does this even need to be solved?
00:24:24
Speaker
Why can't X platform not do it and so on? So what people were not able to understand that, hey,
00:24:31
Speaker
The news is that this platform, this beautiful platform was solving this, is important to Indian audience. Now they had their own hard time educating the market, preparing the market and what what? No, this is what really is phenomenal. But what I'm trying to tell you is that, what is that in this case? There are many more news cases that, that eventually developed, were originally being judged or maybe people were not able to take through that and what not. I mean, we can talk about that in multiple ways, but, but I understand that. So, so let's just spark it for now. What I, what I learned then was,
00:25:01
Speaker
that Chinese songwriters were like, hey, this is an opportunity, large enough people might use it, let's just build this. Second part was, I think if you look at the early days of the mobile internet in China, what people used to look at was, hey, there is an optional area, large enough people are doing that, can I move it online?
00:25:21
Speaker
Now, there were other paradigms to respect. If it is an engagement-first business, if it is a transactional sort of business, if it is an engagement-first business, they truly valued retention, they truly valued initial engagement for both. So there were these clear concepts. Of course, it was not in these pointers, but people had this conceptual clarity of how they should approach building a V2C business, which is engagement-first and foremost.
00:25:47
Speaker
And I thought I had lots of takeaways. And now I'm telling you fast forward what my takeaways were. I understood what are the key ingredients of a successful non-legendary app business. What I understood was these three factors. One, high frequency use case. Two, high engine retention. Third part is habit transmission.
00:26:17
Speaker
Two of these three things will make a good company.
Exploring New App Ideas
00:26:21
Speaker
Three of these three things will make a legendary company. What do you mean by habit formation? So anything like Snapchat is a habit, WhatsApp is a habit. So eventually it becomes part of the general behavior. Now, credit has become a habit, for example. And I'm just thinking that you get into the daily life of people and the product replaces a
00:26:46
Speaker
or decide the behavior in certain way, and then it becomes a repeated behavior in small. That's what I mean by that. And this is particularly true for engagement-first businesses, and I would not want to comment for commerce in what way. I was just saying that this is anything which is engagement-first, anything which is social, community-first, etc. You need to have these three ingredients, and if these three things are working fine for them, there are very high chances that this business will go on to become legendary. I'll repeat that, right? So one is,
00:27:14
Speaker
high frequency, high retention and habit validation. So I actually came back and I started thinking about this very, very deeply. And I was also thinking about, now we came back, we had 4 billion dollars in the bank. So after that, we also did this round of 8 million dollars, where KTP, this way that people in Korea put in this fund, they actually backed us and so on. So we had a good couple in the bank and this was
00:27:38
Speaker
i mean i actually came back from this long battle of seven eight months that was the sticking time just look around observe and whatnot so you know i think i think that was the time when i started thinking about you spent like seven eight months in china like like let's say no so basically i just spent two months in china but i'd say seven months were all in fundraising which was right yeah i was struggling at one point so
00:28:01
Speaker
So, you know, I think we came back and we started further building and scaling everything was going good in the company. And when I started thinking about what are the, what are these open areas, I was thinking about for myself, right? What are these open areas in the system for the users?
00:28:21
Speaker
specific needs which are still unmet. What are those so the large behaviors that have very healthy off-site attention that haven't really been drawn yet. I was just thinking through a bunch of those things that what are those key areas that are still untapped or they aren't really sorted well at this point in time.
00:28:36
Speaker
I had this fundamental clarity about what would make a good app business. I was trying to apply those insights to Drive product as well. In parallel, I started this experiment for within our company. The idea was to launch newer features in Trail and because the boys had time, it was a very small team of
00:28:56
Speaker
or design a data analyst, a backend and an Android engineer. The job was to, let's say, come up with newer concepts and ideas to improve the product. And because they had finally started thinking about, let's just try some wacky ideas and see what is it that we can build and whatnot. So I had this... Now, this will go back to my upbringing, right? So I had this deep affinity towards devotion and spirituality.
00:29:26
Speaker
as a practice, as a behavior. Because I think, you know, however far we have traveled from that state to now, has been because of hope. There was a quote that takes really fine. There will be a quote, there was a quote that takes one place. So our family and similarly,
00:29:48
Speaker
hundreds of millions of families who don't have proper infrastructure, proper opportunity, the future is not clear. They keep on walking, they keep on moving because of this thing called as hope. And this hope and this strength. Now, if you step back and think about it, right? Who offers this hope?
00:30:06
Speaker
we end up failing to replace society where we are being judged at all cogent time. And there are many things which are not right about a society, but there are many things which are essentially designed in a way that reinforces this open strength in people. One of that thing is our people believes in this larger power. And for you, it might be something for somewhere else, but there's some larger system that keeps people intact.
00:30:32
Speaker
And I was like, this is there in hundreds of millions of households. This behavior is there. A kid is a news to the idea. Until he dies, he keeps on practicing that. Can we build a digital platform that moves that behavior from offline to online? And
Launching Apps for Bharat
00:30:52
Speaker
can we build something which stands true to the fundamental of a good app business or a great app business?
00:31:00
Speaker
which is high frequency, high retention, and habit formation. So we started just looking at it, hey, cool, we have some time on the plate, and we can just experiment. Let's just look at what all things we can move from offline to online. And we were not really creating a new behavior. The idea was, can we move an existing behavior from offline to online? And we experimented and whatnot. We launched a few simple products, saw the initial traction.
00:31:30
Speaker
One of the product, it blew my mind. The kind of user feedback I was seeing there, there was gratitude, there was love, there was tactualless. I could sense the hunger in those reviews. I was like, this is crazy. So this is crazy. And there's so much of user love that is there. And this product can go places.
00:31:56
Speaker
Now, looking at that feedback and that user love, I started thinking, can we do more? And we started improvising a few things and whatnot. What was that product which got that great feedback?
00:32:08
Speaker
So this arc wireless stream undernet we had launched back in the day. This was straight what we made, which is what we launched. So that was the path that we launched, and it got what we love and what not. And we said that, hey, something can happen there. And I went back to my board, and I said that, hey, we're running this experiment now. This was a very small experiment. A couple of engineers built this. It was one of the side projects for folks. It is seeing good traction, and I would really want to build this. And then it's figured out a way that we should build this, because if we don't do that, something else will do it tomorrow.
00:32:38
Speaker
At some point in time, some entrepreneur might wake up and say that, hey, this behavior needs to move online, and he would build this. And I was like, this is an open territory. There are many companies that tried to do that earlier, but might not have succeeded, and whatnot. I don't want to get into that, but I'm saying that if you can solve it in a very first transfer way, in a very honest way, there is some work that
00:33:00
Speaker
that could be created out of this. So with that relief, with that first principle taking my board and I said, let's just do something. And then like that, of course, we had this $12, $13 million bank and realized that trail is a capital and that's a business and that's a different set of users. This set of users will be different. So these two businesses can't put in the same basket.
00:33:22
Speaker
So, and that's what we decided today. And I was asked that, Hey, what's your view? And I was like, we had this option where this project might get, maybe there's something I can do with it. So I have to decide it that way. I need to build this because it should be built. And there's no natural for it, right? So the company was doing well. We were already, I would say we were out.
00:33:45
Speaker
growing company, well, Captain Mary's app, given five, six years to get product. It was just this, this lie that I saw at the end of the tunnel where I said, some people are just loving it. Can it accept it? With that conviction, and I'm very thankful to the small bunch of people who were actually working for this, they were also bringing me a whole new idea. When I went back to my mood with the company, how would I handle this? And
00:34:09
Speaker
launch a new company around it. And we then figured out our arrangement and whatnot. And I then in November of 2020 started, which is a platform that is supposed to build
00:34:20
Speaker
A product and services that are focused on the intent is to serve people, help them get that hope and whatnot. With that, I launched that company. And these five folks moved on from trail as part of the DE. And we started our journey with AppSubharath. And she was the app that we took out of credit. And that is how the journey has been. That was the start of AppSubharath.
00:34:48
Speaker
If you like to hear stories of founders then we have tons of great stories from entrepreneurs who have built billion dollar businesses. Just search for the founder thesis podcast on any audio streaming app like Spotify, Ghana, Apple Podcasts and subscribe to the show.
00:35:08
Speaker
Got it. Take it. Now, let's talk about Sree Mandir. I'm very curious to know what is that product?
Features of Shri Mandir
00:35:15
Speaker
What did you crack in terms of those three things that you're looking for? Okay, so in the current form, the app is a very simple product. What you do is you download the app, you launch it, you see a list of words and what it says that you believe in. You choose the words and what it says. I'm going to take a water break.
00:35:38
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So this is a very simple platform where our user can install that, and they have a list of god and vortices. Now you choose the god and vortices, and you set up a temple on the phone. Now this temple is, think of it as a personal pocket shrine that you have where you can actually visit the gods that you believe in every single day.
00:36:07
Speaker
and you can do more things on top of it, let's say, Nadia to offering flowers and whatnot. That's the first part. There are many more layers to it, which is, let's say, you get to have this massive content library on top of it, where you can get all the stories and literature and audio content and everything else from whatever tools are used and might need.
00:36:33
Speaker
to feel that he has met his devotion leaders there on the platform today. So it's more of a bumbling of many use cases with a very strong hook. Give me examples. You could take any one guard, for instance. So let's say you are a believer of not everyone. So you open the
00:36:56
Speaker
what you see is this beautiful northern human on your street and then you can light up a lamp in front you can ring bells you can offer flowers different kind of flowers and if you would want you can you can listen to a story about lord human if you want to get or listen to ayman chanixar whatnot
00:37:16
Speaker
And then if you have more time, you can spend that time on going through other information. So you can read a data, you can get data information around data. So this is a journey that we have carved out for every user. So if you see it, the first use case is bundling of many use cases where we have given whatever a user might need for fulfilling his needs and desires and whatnot in a very simple
00:37:41
Speaker
in a very simply designed app that we have made for them. So you see the point is, the simplicity is where the key is today, where anyone from who is low-tech city to low-tech city should be able to use the platform and navigate through it in a very, very easy way. So first, there's this bundled set of use cases and tools and utilities that you have on this one app that you can navigate and try and whatnot.
00:38:07
Speaker
On top of it is a recommendation with respect to, we understand today's mandate, you're a believer of Lord Shiva. So we give you appropriate information around that and you can just act on it and feel nice about it. So that's the first part. We have also launched communities now. What happens on communities is you can connect with the description that you believe in and you can get daily information from there. So essentially, the idea is that can we get the entire
00:38:33
Speaker
ecosystem, the entire needs, the entire information that our devotee might or on a believer might want in one place. Okay. So a community feature sounds pretty interesting to me. I think
00:38:47
Speaker
A lot of religious involvement is essentially driven by community, right? I mean, it's just about a sense of belonging to a community that people are driven to religion and doing the satsang together. So tell me about that, like, what all is happening on the community piece? We need to get functionality on the platform.
00:39:07
Speaker
Think of it as a telegram channel which is run by veterinary priests and they give you daily information. They say that, hey, today is mandanvara, so if you are a devotee, you should get this light stream of veterinary. This is this mandanvara that you should listen to. Today is the svaas grath, so this is the tip for the svaas grath and so
Ecosystem and Future Growth
00:39:24
Speaker
on. So, essentially, that information that was routed through multiple generations that used to come to you is directly coming from the source itself.
00:39:33
Speaker
Now, if you see today, there's no credible place for you to get the right information directly from Bachelor Devi, from a cluster space and whatnot, and that's what we're trying to shock. Every believer of Bachelor Devi will be there on the app, and they'll get direct information from Bachelor Devi in one place. But why would the priest of Bachelor Devi do this?
00:39:55
Speaker
Because they want it today. They realize that Facebook is not a platform for them. They realize that Instagram is not a platform for them. They realize that there's so much orgs. So it's like this. Now, we may ask the same question, why can't one experience a separate app for meditation? That is a space that is meant for meditation and that is a space which is meant for a speech when being in workload. Now what happens when you run a page on Facebook is that you get
00:40:24
Speaker
everything makes them jump on up in one place. There is politics, there is Bollywood, there's cricket, there's devotion also, which I didn't see actually. Now, if you just tell them that, hey, there's a little space that is just for you, where you can aggregate all of the audience in one place, they would just love it. This is where the profile, there's some
00:40:48
Speaker
more details around that. Essentially, you're building a full stack on top of it, which is, let's say, it will help you collect durations, offer receipts, offer rebates. So it's a full stack solution that you're building for these institutions. And this is our offer.
00:41:04
Speaker
Yeah, this is basically, this is the core of the business. So essentially we are part of the audience and we are essentially competing the O&P system. And hence, you don't want to share this with the larger audience because this is where the secret sauce of the business is. And in a way, then.
00:41:19
Speaker
If you sign up, say, Western Devi or your onboard Western Devi, then they would also start promoting the app and get users. It becomes a flywheel. Because you have users, so Western Devi and other such institutions sign up. And because those institutions are signing up, so more users sign up. Okay. Amazing.
00:41:42
Speaker
Okay. Cool. So I would love for this to be included because this is really like the key insight of discovering a flywheel. I mean, in terms of, you know, my goal is to educate my listeners and this is like a amazing idea. Yeah. So I think, I think let's not, this is one part, which is, I mean, this is one, I'm just sharing all the record, right? So problem with this particular space, what it has been is people have been trying to
00:42:09
Speaker
create new behaviors. What I've done is I've tried to move our existing behavior online. So now, like I told you, right, I have a bit of a use case which is having a massive, it is a high frequency use case to attribute to people. It has healthy intentions. It is getting some sort of habit transmission happening on the play center. Now, it gives me a sticky audience, which I can take places. Now,
00:42:31
Speaker
The way this users will make sense is I did the entire system in one way. So the entire economy around devotion has to come on which one platform is the moon idea. So this is where the keen side around
00:42:47
Speaker
the key business will say it is, hence, I can share it in a different form with you. But this is where I would request you that sort of include that because this is the, I think, six months data I can do that once I'm actually far away from all the computers. But right now, it's a time when I want to be discreet. The last eight, nine years would have just built this, this part, you get users, you engage them, and then how do you build the mechanics of the product, where you get them to get more people. So that is one thing which I have
00:43:16
Speaker
which I have done over many years. So that's what we're trying to apply here as well. But this is where I would want to keep a discreet for now because once we have a deed and we have ended up filling the market, I think I'm very happy to share with you one of this in great detail. So how big is this?
00:43:39
Speaker
devotion economy, if I could call it that, like, you know, what you're essentially bringing online, like that, that money flowing from devotees to institutions, like, that is what you're bringing online, right? No. So, see, I think when you think of how does new category form, you have to look at what is the existing offline spending.
00:44:04
Speaker
And when you when you think about deeply writing lies that a people spent in many ways, right? They might.
00:44:09
Speaker
spend that money in commerce, they might spend that money in in a religious tourism plus, plus, plus, plus, and many more things will be there, right? No, it's not just like money you give to Vashan Devi, but a tell you book or a tour package or flight tickets, or even books, like people who are devoted by book CDs, assets, whatever, right? Yes. Okay. Now, now, now the way to look about it is that that
00:44:35
Speaker
you know, when you think of this, right, how, what part of it will translate online or what part of it will move online? What essentially happens is it will not be an apples to apples movement, which is like, it will not make that the same thing will move. So what, what it tells you that this willingness to pay and what you make on your platform and how do you build those hooks on your platform? So basically,
00:45:01
Speaker
it might happen that those offline panels might not move online entirely. But what it has related for you that there's willingness, but you have to build a separate service module, you have to build a separate offering to be able to monetize on that user. So, I mean, I'm saying the form will be different, but the theme will be similar. Like,
00:45:25
Speaker
e-commerce focused on devotional products or travel services or travel packages focused on devotional tourism. I think differently about it. For example, if you were to ask me, what would I choose in the early stage of the business? Would it be a strong habit formation on the app?
00:45:47
Speaker
Or would it be getting to 10 million of hiring? No points for guesses by now, but I would have chosen habit formation before the initial revenue. Because I think if you have a hundred million people using the app every single day and they're loving the app, there are hundreds of opportunities to monetize in a very fair way. So what I'm not chasing today is this opportunist, monetization opportunities that people have been seeking in this particular space.
00:46:18
Speaker
I'm thinking of building a platform that people would love. And that's my first, what I realized is that if you're able to build trust, if you're able to build love, everything else will follow. So there'll be ways that we will monetize data. Maybe we would want to do subscription, maybe we would want to do something else altogether. And this is all experimental, right? Because you're moving a behavior from offline to online, you have to figure out the path. But what I'm trying to say is that
00:46:44
Speaker
The first few steps are very clear. The first few steps are, can you solve for high frequency, high retention, habit formation, and can you scale this platform to millions of people and then see what is a very fair way of monetizing them and you have to do it there as well. In your investor pitches, you must be showing them a path of monetization. So what is that like?
00:47:07
Speaker
So I would want to avoid that right now there are some of the business insights that are there in there. So I've been studying this space for a couple of years now and there's some deeper insights that we have about how do we build our trust first platform where we can also monetize but it will not
00:47:30
Speaker
it will not cause any harm to that trust part, right? So we have some answers to that, but that's more of information or understanding that we have gathered by doing the grunt work in this particular space and trying to understand the user-cell ecosystem and so on. So would not want to disclose that at this point in time. I mean, we are very early in the business, so I would not want to, let's say, share that piece right now. Right, right, right. Got it.
00:47:59
Speaker
Yeah, this is definitely an untapped market. Like you said, in terms of probably not many founders have changed it so far because of the judgment which you discovered in China that maybe, you know, like religion is judged by a techie because I mean, technology is like considered to be the opposite of religion. So, you know, you kind of tend to judge that as a pursuit.
00:48:27
Speaker
So I
Adapting to User Behaviors
00:48:28
Speaker
don't think of our platform as a religious platform. I tell you what we are essentially. I feel like I told you, anything that offers you hope and this inner strength is essentially a meta-realist platform. So what I'm essentially building is a meta-realist platform for India. But of course, meta-realist for India will be different from meta-realist for the West. So what I'm trying to build is figure out what would
00:48:56
Speaker
mental wellness means for 500 million Indians. And that's what we are, I mean, this is what we are trying to do. Can we offer the delight? Can we offer that joy? Can we offer that? So essentially, that's the position we have taken when we are building this. The other part is I think right. People would think that this is an inferior need or superior need and whatnot. But my way is that my job is to build value for my users.
00:49:26
Speaker
And who am I to judge what is a good use case and what's a bad use case? If I'm not harming anyone, if my platform is very balanced and it delights some people and gives them that hope and joy and whatnot, why not? It should be built. Yeah, okay.
00:49:51
Speaker
So again, coming to communities, I think what makes people really devoted is that bonding between you go to the temple, you meet people, and you build out those bonds. So how would you be building bonds between people? So people are actually more of a common sense of devotion around a certain God or institution.
00:50:23
Speaker
you can make bunch of things a very balanced space for people where people can just come together and enjoy their time with each other, enjoy that group meditation, group satna and so on. So that's what we're trying to create here. So we are building social layers on top of it where people put
00:50:42
Speaker
Yeah, they come together, kind of a feature. It will all be guided. So for example, what we are being set for is trust. So everything on the platform, you can't enter a template and you can't really start picking the Kanta and the Lea and start worshipping the God in your own way. There is somebody who is guiding you.
00:51:11
Speaker
for that driven space. So the whole philosophy you have taken as a guided, you're building a guided program for people where everybody goes through these broad in-laws and they change their pursuits. So you'll have like community leaders leading like a satsang or whatever other community events are.
00:51:34
Speaker
There are these not practices which are there. So for example, it's a meditation and all of that is very documented. So a bunch of these very standard practices that are not happening today at scale in groups of people is what we will do today. And these community leaders, would they like
00:51:53
Speaker
come organically out of the user base? Or would you be going and employing people and paying them a salary or what? Because I mean, typically in religion, these community leaders are not salaried, right? Like, I mean, or some of them are. I mean, I'm not really familiar with how it works. So see, I think there are many people who are anyway doing this in the upright world. Like, yes, to be honest, that's how I feel. So that's
00:52:20
Speaker
So, you know, I think for them, the incentive is to be able to touch more lines. So that's the process you're taking. Got it. Got it. Got it. Okay. Okay. So, I mean, you know, the first thing I thought of when you were describing the product was Metaverse. Do you think, you know, like, like this will eventually become a Metaverse company? I see, I think every digital company, we have to engage it.
00:52:46
Speaker
in that particular space is some sort of meta words company, right? So when it's not really a really, really space that people are in that segment of imagination or enjoying that. It's like a virtual extension of your word and you are enjoying that. See, deficient come and deficient go, but when I think of this, right? So, I do not judge our business from these lenses, I would say. When I look at it, I think of
00:53:09
Speaker
user as the center is at the center of my business and can I solve for his need and whatever it takes for us to solve his need is what is the path that we're going to chase. If it requires us to go in certain direction, given that it does not reach the trust in any way, you need to do that.
00:53:27
Speaker
But do you believe in the hype around Metaverse? I mean, I'm personally saying that I think it's overhyped. I mean, there are two big hypes happening currently, crypto and Metaverse. I think crypto is real, but Metaverse is, I think it's just an overhyped. But what do you think? I think, see, we human beings have seen these crazy changes in the way we are over the last two decades only, I would say. So
00:53:56
Speaker
2011 was the time when I bought my first smartphone. I was thinking of it as a device where I engaged casually. I never imagined that I'm going to spend five hours, four hours every single day peeping into that device. I never imagined that, but I never knew that. But see what's happened today, right? We are engrossed in that space for one-fourth of our day.
00:54:27
Speaker
I think things will change. Things will change. To what degree? Some people are trying to model their behavior in some way or the other, but I think things will change. The word in the next five years, ten years, will be insanely different from what we could ever imagine. But interestingly, when it will be there on that
00:54:50
Speaker
time zone, time trail, we'd be comfortable with the idea. I'll do an example, right? So you remember, right? I mean, the day parents used to, let's say, if they were the small kid in the house, they said, hey, just focus on eating and you don't even watch TV while eating and whatnot. Today, what happens is a kid is provided a phone on his left hand and he watches a YouTube kids video and he's having his lunch there and whatnot. And there's something which was truly unacceptable to a generation which was
00:55:20
Speaker
which we
Brand Focus and Strategy
00:55:21
Speaker
are familiar with, right? And somehow, early in the day, we were saying that, hey, this is a behavior that will not tolerate. But today, many parents are, many parents are OK with their kids using a smartphone. So I'm saying, what I've realized is my belief systems and my reservations are just an extension of my exposure. The word will change in ways I
00:55:50
Speaker
cares when I cannot imagine what are the founder or what are the technology I can do is I can keep myself updated. I can keep myself being in the epicenter of where this whole action is happening. And what actually worries me is this, I'm in my 30s now. And I think that, hey, do I sufficiently understand those teenagers? Because what really worries me is that
00:56:19
Speaker
They think differently. The age gap might be 10 years, but that's more than 10 years because of their exposure and what kind of training they have gotten to their mind. What I'm trying to say is that what really worries me many times is, will I get outdated in the next couple of years, three years, four years, five years? And that is the only way to do that is
00:56:44
Speaker
keep observing, keep looking at how people are. And let's say if something's happened, instead of being obsessive about the change, we can just welcome the change and understand why the change is happening. Because whether you believe in that or not, it's happening. It might work, but it's happening. And we can be obsessive about it. But I think the approach that I have in line is
00:57:10
Speaker
I don't dismiss a phenomena like it would be. I don't judge a behavior. I don't judge a user need, right? If that is happening, the stars are there because I observe. I try to ask the question that, why are people doing that? What are they seeking in that particular act? So, I mean, might not have answered the question, but my approach to all of this is, of course, crypto is there, better versus there, but it is appealing to some people. It might appeal much less.
00:57:38
Speaker
What I can do as a founder is I can think through why that behavior is being triggered.
00:57:44
Speaker
Okay. Got it. So, you know, you mentioned that you are constantly worrying about how teenagers are thinking, which also makes me think that your product demographics would essentially be much older, right? Like, I mean, you know, most startups and like VCs are chasing products that are catering to teenagers because, you know, they feel that that's like the next
00:58:08
Speaker
trillion-dollar company will start from a company chasing teenagers. So what do you think about that? So if you ask me what I think about my product and who its users are, I would interview a different answer. I think anybody who needs hope is my user. Now let me give you a case, right? So who are the people in this country who need hope? The people who have their lives ensured and assured. And how many of you are in this country today?
00:58:37
Speaker
I would say not more than five billion. Everyone else beyond that needs, their life is not insured or assured. So they constantly need those of hope and hence you'll see that, right? When, when tier two, tier three boy goes to quota for, for, for to bail for jail, he would write over on every single paper that he would be writing today in his mocks and whatnot, because he's, because that's how he's,
00:59:07
Speaker
So that person is also my user. It might happen that he might not believe in that after five years. But I still believe that number of those people would not be more than 10 million, even five years on the line. So you asked me who are the people who are using it today?
00:59:33
Speaker
The people who have just started their families who are using it, who just have kids who are using it, and then people in the mid-age. So essentially, there's a balance of people who are using it. Of course, the frequency changes. As you get older, you might use it at higher frequency. As you're younger, you have many more others that are active at the natural frequency might be not at high. But of course, you believe in this.
00:59:55
Speaker
But if you were to make a pie chart of your MAUs with an age split, what would that look like? Like the highest color would be what age group? I think 15% of it still comes from redified. And I'm really surprised, right? We have just touched a million MU's now. And I would say a good 100K would be coming from people in that bank. And I think the power engines are people beyond 30.
01:00:24
Speaker
that's when you have families, you have kids, you have financial pressure and whatnot. And we need this constant mental well being at all points in time. So those are the powerages of a platform. Yeah, is India getting more devotional and spiritual or less like
01:00:44
Speaker
Also, I think these are phases of life. Now, I'd not buy the one, say, the point in the climate come and they change. So I look beyond that, right? I just look at who is my user and how is using the platform and what kind of value they're serving to them. So I don't think that people are getting more devotional or people are getting less devotional. These are phases of life, right? So when the second wave or the first wave struck India in a very, very bad way,
01:01:13
Speaker
what you saw was people folding hands out outside of these ICs and outside of these hospitals, people running for oxygen sediments and trying to get hospital beds. Unfortunately, we also were in the middle of similar situations. So I think the point being, these are all triggered in life. At one point in time, it extremely happened. At one point in time, you were awfully sad. Now, these are waves. And these are transient, as in
01:01:42
Speaker
needs and intensity changes and whatnot. So I would say it is here to stay. People would keep seeking hope from this larger belief system with their own frequency. Someone like you and me might be doing this practice once a day here on Diwali's. Someone might be doing it every single month. Someone might be doing it every single Monday. Someone might be doing it every single day. Someone might be doing it every single hour.
01:02:12
Speaker
So that's the bad, no spectrum in which we are operating here. And we have built a platform that might, that will serve anyone.
01:02:21
Speaker
who would do it more frequently, I would say. So let's say I leave that fight outside of this. There are so many ideas coming out of so many minds and there might have been minds who would have thought of what you have also thought, but at the end of the day, you're executing and that is the
01:02:45
Speaker
With that, let us stay right. But the point being, let me walk one of my mixes whom I will not make my ring is a way that he says that his time is your strength. Or, or his time not your strength. If time is your strength, you should keep it that way. No, you should not act
01:03:05
Speaker
in a way where type doesn't recover. Basically, if you have time, you should just focus on what you're trying to build and play the logic. My intention is very simple. My objective is to build a business. My objective is to build a value for my users. Why did you choose this name, apps for Bharat? I think when we launched the first experiment, when we made this app, when we wanted to just put it on the Play Store and see how we're reacting to it,
01:03:33
Speaker
we actually were thinking of what is the developer name and what essentially came out with I'm in such a quickly was let's let's keep it absent Bharat now that is how the the whole world was seated but but I think when we thought deeply about it right so I thought I was able to resonate well with these three words that I am building products
01:03:52
Speaker
for Bahadur. And that today doesn't mean that I'm solving for all the leads for them, but I'm solving for one important thing that we feel today is unsolved or underserved and whatnot. And if you see, the full name of the company is called First Critical, Without Many Gaps. First Critical, After Buying Down Many Gaps, Private Limited. So I thought that this time I would name the company where anyone who reads it will get to understand what we do. So
01:04:23
Speaker
So yeah, so we very clearly understand that devotion and spiritual needs of Indians is a very diverse, deep need. And you need to, you can't build one shirt that will fit on. So you need to have this beautiful approach to identify one large set of users at a time and solve for them. And keep launching more products, you'll be able to serve the entire segment all together. So the same approach we have to take.
01:04:53
Speaker
You may ask me, why Sree Madhya and why Hinduism? That's the first step. We understood that there's a large set of people who follow Hinduism, who are underserved today. Can we build up a ramp that serves the Indian?
01:05:06
Speaker
we will go and launch products in adjacent regions as well. So the idea is to regularly, right? The idea is to serve people in a way where they feel lying, simply happy. And it happens to be that for this audience, a certain approach will work. And we will launch more. The idea is that, of course, this set will be served by Srivant. The other set might be served by Srivant. That's the journey.
01:05:33
Speaker
I think probably the far Bharat part might change if you build a product for the Islamic religion that has so many countries which could be tapped for that product or a product for Christianity. Look at Indian Muslims and look at Indian Christians.
01:05:52
Speaker
On the eve of Christmas, I lived in Bangalore. So I went to this church called Karmilaram Church, which is very close to my house. And you see all the bibles that I've put in that particular church were in. And the point being, can you build for Indian Christians and Indian Muslims? So that's my view, right?
01:06:15
Speaker
So there's a lot of culture and context as well, right? So people in Iran, or people in the US, the same fate will act differently here. Of course, the pressure will be the same, but it has to be served in a way where it serves in each way. So going global is not really a priority, like, you want to first... India, it's a deep, deep ocean. You know, if you are able to solve for this particular space, where the Skurigmanjal is one of the
01:06:45
Speaker
one of the very, very large markets that we are able to get in and create value and whatnot. If we are able to serve India, we don't need to go out and it will take a good 5-7 years for us to... I'm not saying that we will not go out. I'm saying that there's enough problem statement in front of us, which we should solve first before we go out.
01:07:07
Speaker
If you like the Found A Thesis podcast, then do check out our other shows on subjects like marketing, technology, career advice, books and drama. Visit the podium.in for a complete list of all our shows.
01:07:28
Speaker
Before we end the episode, I want to share a bit about my journey as a podcaster. I started podcasting in 2020 and in the last two years, I've had the opportunity to interview more than 250 founders who are shaping India's future across sectors.
01:07:44
Speaker
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01:08:05
Speaker
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