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A Masterclass on Pivoting & Scaling in Indian FMCG | Rohan Mirchandani (Epigamia)
114 Plays4 years ago
"When you say to someone, my business plan is to create a brand, it's very hard for anyone to understand or digest... the harder it is for someone to digest, the more excited one should be about doing it." This powerful insight from Rohan Mirchandani encapsulates the conviction needed to build something truly disruptive, especially when introducing a new category to a market. It speaks to the entrepreneurial spirit of seeing opportunity where others see ambiguity.
Rohan Mirchandani (1982-2024) was the Co-founder of Drums Food International, the parent company of Epigamia, India's first Greek yogurt brand. An MBA from The Wharton School, he returned to India from the US to build a pioneering FMCG company. Under his leadership, Epigamia raised approximately $81.4 million, achieved a valuation of around ₹1,250 crore ($150 million), and expanded its reach to over 25,000 retail outlets, targeting revenues of ₹250 crore.
Key Insights from the Conversation:
- The Eureka Moment: Rohan's realization of the untapped potential for innovation in the Indian FMCG sector came from a business school lecture, which became the seed for Epigamia.
- Pivoting with Purpose: The strategic shift from their initial ice cream brand, Hokey Pokey, to Epigamia Greek yogurt was driven by observing the limitations of seasonality in ice cream sales and a rising health consciousness among Indian consumers.
- On-the-Ground Insights: Rohan emphasized the invaluable lessons learned by directly engaging with customers and understanding their preferences, even by working at their own ice cream parlor in the early days.
- Building a Cold Chain Moat: For a perishable product like Greek yogurt, Epigamia had to build its own robust cold chain and distribution network, a significant operational challenge that became a competitive advantage.
- Strategic Partnerships for Growth: The collaboration with Danone provided not just capital, but crucial operational knowledge and access to global best practices, significantly accelerating Epigamia's learning curve.
- Navigating the Indian Market: Rohan believed that succeeding in India required immense adaptability and having multiple contingency plans (Plan C, D, and E) due to the market's unique complexities.
Chapters:
[0:00:00] - Podcast Introduction
[0:01:40] - Rohan's American Upbringing & Father's Entrepreneurial Influence
[0:06:08] - Pre-MBA Journey & The "Discovery" Phase
[0:07:36] - The Accidental Start: Investing in an Indian Ice Cream Parlor (Hokey Pokey)
[0:12:30] - The "Ganti Bajge" Moment: Identifying the FMCG Innovation Gap in India
[0:17:45] - The Leap: Moving to India & The Conditions for Mentorship
[0:23:45] - From Parlor Insights to Packaged Goods: The Birth of Epigamia
[0:34:54] - Scaling Challenges, Building the Team, and the Strategic Pivot to Greek Yogurt
[0:46:58] - Funding the Dream & The Danone Partnership Learnings
[1:02:23] - Future Vision for Epigamia & Navigating the Indian vs. US Business Landscape
[1:08:24] - Rohan's Advice to Aspiring Brand Builders
Hashtags:
#Epigamia #RohanMirchandani #FounderThesis #IndianStartups #FMCGIndia #DairyDisruption #GreekYogurt #Entrepreneurship #StartupJourney #BuildingInIndia #FoodBusiness #BrandBuilding #VentureCapital #StartupFunding #D2CIndia #MakeInIndia #Innovation #Leadership #BusinessStrategy #AkshayDatt
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Transcript
Introduction and Opening Remarks
00:00:00
Speaker
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Rohan Mirchandani's Background
00:00:32
Speaker
All of us in India are very proud of second generation Indian Americans like Kamala Harris. People who have lived up to the Indian work ethic of struggling and rising high. Our guest today is also a second generation Indian American who has placed a trail of his own. He decided to come back to the motherland to build a startup. You may think I'm talking about a tech startup founder here. But today's guest is the founder of one of the toughest businesses in India.
00:01:02
Speaker
and FMCG company. He has introduced hundreds of thousands of Indians to the magic of Greek yogurt. Yes, you guessed it right. Our guest today is Rohan Mirchandani, the founder of Drums Foods, which makes the popular Epigamia Greek yogurt brand. Rohan's conversation with Akshay Dutt is a fascinating insight into how an American navigated the very tough FMCG manufacturing and distribution business in India and how his hustle and persistence
00:01:32
Speaker
led to the creation of one of the most iconic dairy and plant-based product brands of India. So Rohan first tell me this, how did the Mirchandani clan end up in the US? My dad came here as an entrepreneur with literally nothing in his pocket. We spent most of our life in Jersey growing up in New Jersey. So like what did your dad do when he came? So he actually had initially he had a business
00:02:01
Speaker
importing different types of apparel. So clothing, you know, just just a typical, you know, trader trading operation. And, you know, some of the vendors were in India and all over. And then back in the early 80s, you know, where the 80s, I guess he had gone to China and had started, you know, before everyone started doing it, had started sourcing.
00:02:23
Speaker
And then, you know, and then over time he got really good at logistics, logistics and warehousing and transportation, which are all, you know, the supply chain, which are probably the facet of every business sort of intrigued him. And he got involved and then, you know, built a logistics and warehousing business, which, you know, gave us a very decent upbringing when we grew up. So came from literally nothing and then traded a lot out of himself here.
00:02:53
Speaker
So that must have been a pretty inspiring role model in terms of the hustle, the drive to set up your own business. So did you also grow up thinking that you want to set up your own business and, you know, like was it like dhanda in the blood, so to say? Yeah. So, you know, it's interesting you asked that because for us, my growing up, you know, one thing that we were taught was the value of hard work. So even from the age of
00:03:22
Speaker
12 or 13, my brother and I used to go and most of our friends in the summer would go to the shore or go to the beach and have fun. And we would be put to work in the warehouse. So we used to go push things around and literally, as I used to joke, slave labor by my father. But I think it really taught us what hard work meant. And we started to value and really appreciate what that entails.
00:03:52
Speaker
And then I think, you know, for me, my brother, definitely my brother always had it in him and always has been an entrepreneur and joining my father. I actually had a different, you know, sort of, it was never done done the blood, but it was okay, you know, want to be a businessman. And, you know, in my career, I didn't join the family business. I actually worked outside. You were the younger one.
00:04:13
Speaker
I'm actually the older one, believe it or not. Oh, you're the older one. I was about to typecast you as the rebel younger. No, I was about to typecast the other way around. So my brother always worked for the family business. And then over time, my dad, of course, had business partners and became a very professionally run organization, which it continues to be today. But my brother always sort of worked there and I chose a different path. Even my summer internships in college and when I was
00:04:43
Speaker
You know, my first job out of college was always, you know, away. But we did try a little stint, you know, where my dad said, why don't you come? There's this sort of new division that I'm trying to kind of work on, and I think you'd be good for it. And, you know, I tried it. You know, the whole thing lasted about six months. I think we all realized that, you know, between father and two sons, we'd kill each other. So now, but to answer your question earlier, I think,
Mentorship and Career Decisions
00:05:10
Speaker
Definitely. I mean, there's no doubt. I mean, he's been he's he's more than a mentor. I mean, he's been everything for me And and even though he's probably disagreed with everything I've done in the beginning You know, I think without his support and his sort of guidance. There's no chance, you know I'd be where we are today or even jumpsuit would be where it is today. So support was always there but of course there was always like
00:05:33
Speaker
Are you out of your mind? Are you crazy? You really want to go ahead and sell the heat. Those questions. Actually, it's funny because he's a mentor and he's a father and he's a friend. And it's very rare to have that sort of relationship. But what ends up happening is you end up getting challenged. And I think the devil's advocate views that he pushed probably really helped me, definitely helped me in every direction.
00:06:02
Speaker
Yes, a lot of what we are today and I am today goes to him for sure.
Journey to Entrepreneurship
00:06:08
Speaker
So there's like a six-year period after your graduation and before your B-School. So you spent like a couple of years at Duff and Phillips, half a year with your dad, and then you went to business school? Yeah, pretty much. Okay, got it.
00:06:23
Speaker
And like, what did you think that you do after the B school? Like, was it to get a better paying job? Was that the goal? Or was it that you wanted to have some time to think and figure out and B school was a good way to have that time or like? So I think I was I was one of those discovery students. You know, I think I think so. We, you know, I always say there's three
00:06:49
Speaker
And I'm in no ways a proponent of business school. I always say it's not for everybody and I very much stand by that. In fact, I've discouraged a lot of people and their parents have gotten upset with me for discouraging them from going to business school. But I still stand by that, not to be a hypocrite because I did it. But I think, you know, the sort of three areas, right? So you've got your career switchers who want to come in and change their careers. You've got the career dancers who want to
00:07:15
Speaker
become MD at the bank or the consulting firm or whatever it is, and they need to go to vSchool for that to get the stamp. And then I think the third is the discovery, where you're just trying to figure out, you know, not necessarily change careers, but like what's next in life, you know, just explore sort of options, as you rightfully said. And I think I sort of in that bucket, you know, and that was my way. The only thing was right before business school, I had, you know, I don't know, I had sort of invested in this,
00:07:44
Speaker
Ice cream parlor in India, which is how drums would have actually started and I'll tell that story I guess as well so right before business school I had made a trip to India and this was more of a it was completely a social trip it was to for a distant relatives wedding and And this is where I've met people and I'll talk about that shortly, but and then in business school You know I had never had any intention or any connect to you know sort of be in India or do business in India I'd never had any exposure, but
00:08:13
Speaker
It's it's crazy how things come back full circle and this sort of side hobby investment is something I pursued as a career. Thanks. I paid a lot of money to business school to tell me this is the. OK, so tell me about that first trip to India. And that probably wasn't the first trip, I guess. It wasn't the first trip. So my grandparents lived there in Mumbai and we used to visit and they used to live with us. So we used to visit every few years. And, you know, typical sort of the NRIs that used to come
00:08:43
Speaker
And now I get annoyed when the NRIs come and eat up our traffic in Mumbai and flood the restaurants. Hopefully we'll get back to that life soon after this COVID crisis. But it's such an innocent life right now you think about it that that was. But yeah, so we used to come back to the typical when there's a school or college break. And even when we were younger, we used to come.
00:09:08
Speaker
But again, it was more just for a few weeks or max three weeks a month and then come back. But one of the trips I did take was right before business school. So I went to be school from 2010 to 2012. In 2009 or so, I had taken a trip. And I had a really good dear friend of mine who actually was living out in California. So Bombay guy born and raised in Bombay. And he was living out in California. He had gone to Stanford.
00:09:37
Speaker
And he wanted to come back to India to start something. And I actually had a wedding to attend as well. And this is the time when I had just taken my GMATs. I was going to apply for B-School. And I said, I'm going to come out there anyways. Let me spend some time with him and catch up and see what he's up to. And he had this idea to do this sort of tech venture. And without going into too much detail, I sort of pursued that with him. We talked about it for a little bit. I had some calls before I went out to India. Then when I went out to India, I met him.
00:10:05
Speaker
And then I also, of course, like I said, I attended a distant relative's wedding. And then during that time, the two of us, during the research for that venture, we met this local chef in India, Chef Ganesh, who's one of my co-founders. And he sort of had this idea to do an ice cream parlor or an ice cream lounge, as we called it. And it was like a great meeting of minds and me being a big food person and fashionist food across the board. Anyone who talked to you will tell you
00:10:34
Speaker
Um, I, we just thought we'd, you know, something fun and cool to invest in. And honestly, I had no, we had no clue what we were doing. Um, and it was, there was no, there was no business plan. There was no unit economics. There was nothing thought through. It was just, you know, it was something that it was passion driven. Um, it wasn't a significant amount of money when we started it. It was just a few of us. And we just all, you know, so my, my friend Milap, uh, who I mentioned from Stanford, myself, Uday was another one of my co-founders and then chef.
00:11:00
Speaker
We all just pitched in some money and chefs set this thing up and we hired, you know, a local pizza hut manager to run it. And that was just a, like I said, purely passion driven. And this is, I guess, part of my discovery, what I want to do. And I said, okay, this will be something nice on the side and then I'll go to business. And that's how that whole thing sort of, sort of started. That's how drum food actually came to be.
00:11:21
Speaker
How much stake did you have at that time? Like how you must have been a very minority stakeholder? I don't remember the exact numbers, but we were equally distributed at that time. I mean, because everyone had sort of something. And then of course, over time, you know, when I decided to put, you know, when I decided to do this full time and put more money behind it for myself and whatever I had saved. And then then, of course, I took on a lot more shareholding.
00:11:43
Speaker
Okay, okay. So how did this hobby investment become your full-time gig?
Founding Epigamia: Challenges and Vision
00:11:52
Speaker
Yeah, the big shift in life, career shift. So as I mentioned, I invested in this and then I went to vSchool and the idea was to sort of discover what to do next. And honestly, I had gone with a very open mind, starting from, but to be very true to that, I didn't think I was going to start something of my own.
00:12:14
Speaker
But I had met some very cool people in business school, and we talked about potentially working with them and starting something up. Everyone who goes to some business school or even undergrad, I guess, always has that conversation with their buddies. But this venture was a little different because it was remote. I was all the way across here and at that time in Philadelphia. And then this was in India and Mumbai and whatnot.
00:12:37
Speaker
And, um, I actually came, uh, in, in December of 2011, I remember very clearly. So it's going to be, it's almost nine years ago. I had taken a class, um, through business school, uh, in India, it was called marketing to the Indian consumer. Um, so, you know, we had all these modular courses at business school. You had like an exchange program within India. It wasn't, it wasn't an exchange program. It was like a week long immersion program. It was more of an immersion. So you would, you would come during your break.
00:13:04
Speaker
And you get half a credit for the class. And what you would do is one of our renowned professors, Professor Jagmohan Raju, who teaches marketing. And it was like a week-long course. And then they had it in different countries all over Brazil, China. I took two. I took one in India, one in South Africa. And it's just a great way to sort of go around, meet business leaders and things of that nature.
00:13:29
Speaker
And of course, some of the most amazing guest lecturers that came in. And I was always intrigued by, I was in a marketeer by profession. I was a finance guy, but marketing always was core to my heart. I always loved it. I always enjoyed it. I just understand it. And then when I took this class, we had two amazing guest lecturers. One of them was Damodar Malu, who is now the CEO of Reliance Retailers, as everyone knows. And the other one was Sripad Natharni,
00:13:59
Speaker
used to be the CMO of Coca-Cola India, and then consulting practice called Marketgate sold it, and then started investing in startups and then actually ended up doing his own investment in his own startup called Mavericks platforms, which has been around for some time for two, three years now. So, and both these guys sort of talked about the consumer and again, mind you, this is December 2011, when wasn't
00:14:25
Speaker
Probably was not the most exciting time to be there. You know, we were at the height of our scandals in the central government. There was the 2G scandal and coal and all that other stuff going on. But I, you know, I think both of them talked about the advent of consumerism and what the coming decade would bring or the coming decade would do and then what would happen in the 20, 30, 40 years to come. And Sripath especially, you know, really talked about, you know, seeing, you know, that when you go to a
00:14:52
Speaker
a store, a food store or so, whether it's a Kirana shop or a grocery store. And at that time, to be honest, Modern Trade hadn't even started yet. It was just about the start in 2011 and said, you know, when you go to these stores, you can literally count on your fingers all the companies that own these brands, you know, whatever they are. And, you know, said, and the other thing that I remember him very clearly saying is that in the next decade or two, we will see brands that are created that will stand the test of time.
00:15:22
Speaker
And, you know, I think that was sort of the, that was the, the Eureka or as they say, the Ganthi Bajge moment that I had in that class. And, you know, as usual, the class ends and, you know, all the students bombard the guest lecturer. So I got in the queue, I got his business card and then, and then I stayed in touch with him. I reached out to him and then I don't know, just something struck me. I had that, you know, feeling that there was a calling here, you know, of what he just said. I've got this small ice cream parlor. Sure, we haven't done anything with it and it's not making any money.
00:15:52
Speaker
What we're really doing is paying rent to the landlord, but that's not the point. The point is that there's this opportunity to create a brand. And for me, it just became more about what he said, where creating a brand or a name that could be around for much longer than you are on planet Earth. And I think that really, really spoke to me. And that sort of really drove me. So I stayed in touch with Tripad. He had just started to sell his company to the publicist group, which he did at that time.
00:16:21
Speaker
And he just invested in a startup, his first startup investment, which was a hectare beverages paperboard. You may have heard of them. That was his first investment who also in the original would be a friend now happens to be a working grad as well. Two years, my senior. And then, and then ended up sort of, you know, being in touch, I actually went to India again, just to meet with him because I actually wanted, I asked him on a call, you know, from here from the United States that,
00:16:49
Speaker
Could you help out with this? And honestly, at that point, I was still like 50, 50. I knew I wanted to do something with this. I didn't know what it was. I thought maybe I'll get them to help, you know, advise or consult or invest. And I could get, we could do something and we could create something. And it was always a finance hat thinking, right? Oh, we could go and raise some money and hire a CEO and all this other stuff. That was always the initial thought because, you know, it was a side hobby investment. So I had a call with him and he said, look, why don't you come to India and spend some time with me? So I did. And we spent some days together. And he said that, look, I'm going to give you
00:17:19
Speaker
Um, I think what you're doing is really exciting. Um, there's, there's something massive to be done here. Um, there's an amazing opportunity and, uh, but I've, I've got two conditions that I want to work because I'm not going to be a consultant because my fees are way too expensive. You won't be able to afford them. Uh, but I'll work with you under two conditions. And the first condition was that, uh, he would invest in the company and have equity as an angel. It was very clear that if I don't have equity, I'm not interested.
00:17:45
Speaker
And the second was that I had to move from the US to India and do this full time. I couldn't just get a job in New York and then do this on the weekends and half in half out. And so I told them, look, I need some time. Let me think this one through.
00:18:02
Speaker
So this was in 2012. One clarification here. So this was for an ice cream parlour, like a chain of ice cream parlours or for an ice cream brand? No, so the idea wasn't about ice cream parlours. The idea was to create a fresh FMCG brand that would focus on fresh food, cold chain driven food. So without getting into too much nuances. And then the idea was to convert this into FMCG. So FMCG was always the place.
00:18:32
Speaker
That was the idea. So the idea was to convert it into FMCG and then do it like there are products. But yes, the initial product line was ice cream. And we'd always talked about doing other products, which I'll get to as well in my story. And then for us, the way we looked at it was, as I mentioned, this parlor was not making any money. It was just to be
00:19:01
Speaker
candid, probably the worst business one can get into. You can work as hard as you want, but at the end of the day, the economics always favor the landlord. And we've seen it. I mean, we haven't seen anyone sort of, unless now with the last few years, we had the malls come up and do rental revenue shares, and we've got these big global brands coming in. But to create that business from scratch,
00:19:27
Speaker
Um, it was a really tough one. I mean, we're still seeing so many, you know, QSR companies struggle to figure that model out. Um, and especially an ice cream when you're, you know, it's a dessert, you know, people don't come lunch or for, for that night of breakfast to eat ice cream. So you have to pay, you have to pay rent 24 hours, but your sales are only happening at that finite time after, you know, let's say 9 PM to midnight.
00:19:52
Speaker
So your landlord doesn't care. He doesn't, he's not, I can't tell my landlord boss, I'm just going to pay you between nine and midnight. You know, you divide my rent. I have to pay him for the month. Um, and it was just a, you know, just a, not a, not an easy business. And you know, and I know a lot of people have tried and we got into some other areas, but anyway, long story short, it was a, it was a very tough sort of bowl, but you know, I, there was a calling that spoke to me and the calling was FMCG to convert this and seeing scale there. And again,
00:20:20
Speaker
Now, of course, when Sripath told you you had to move to India, was that like an easy decision to convince your family on and face the pushback? Not at all. So I mean, that was going to be my next thing. So pushback was crazy. So I never said yes to them. I said, give me some time. And I spent about six months going back and forth between. So I graduated in May or June 2012 around that time.
00:20:47
Speaker
And I think it was me. And then I spent about six months going back and forth, you know, really sort of seeing, is this an opportunity I want to pursue? Is this something worth doing? And just, you know, seeing what it was and then trying to talk to everybody I knew, including my family. And everyone said, you're, you know, you're literally out of your mind. I mean, this is insanity. You know, to go first of all, you just, you know, you went to this business school, you've got a nice degree. And now you want to go and run a small little ice cream parlor.
00:21:15
Speaker
And that do a one that's not making any money and you're trying to figure out, you know, and you're not a, you know, a food, you know, you've no, you have no career in food. You've never had anything in food. You've never worked in India in your life. You've never been, you've no idea what entrepreneurship means. So now you want to check the boxes on everything. You know, so normally you see a lot of folks that have some functional expertise and then, you know, reach out and become entrepreneurs there. I had nothing. I had, I had zero on everything, which I, you know, continue to, in some sense they do, I guess.
00:21:43
Speaker
But I think one thing that I did have, which was always there, was passion. I mean, it was very clear that this is something that I wanted to pursue, and I wanted to pursue it for myself. You know, I think everyone sort of tries to convince themselves they're doing it for other reasons. You know, I think that my sort of take to any entrepreneur listening to this or any, you know, soon to be entrepreneur, just remember it's always for yourself. It always will be, you know, it's not for anyone else. Yes, you make your family happy and they'll be proud and all that is there, but remember you're doing it for yourself.
00:22:11
Speaker
And therefore, it's not just that, it's the sacrifices that everyone makes, you know, your family makes. My wife, of course, I didn't mention I was married. So I got married in that journey. And then, and then, you know, just to... Why you were at Wharton, you got married? Right before, right before business school, right before business school. And then, so yes, while I was at Wharton, in fact, I was at Wharton and she was studying at NYU getting her master's. So we were playing throughout different cities.
00:22:39
Speaker
And then convincing her then to come to India, that was the toughest investor I got to invest. That was a tough one. And then of course, the story was always, it'll be three years, and then three years became four years, four years became five years, and then that kept going. But kudos to her, because I think without her, this would not have been possible either. And then coming back to what you said, it wasn't just, it was friends, family, my father and his friends that
00:23:07
Speaker
just sort of didn't see the nuance here. Like what is it that, you know, and, and again, you know, when you say to someone, my business plan is to create a brand. Um, it's very hard for anyone to understand or digest. Um, you know, and I think that that's what, I guess the harder it is for someone to digest and more excited one should be about doing it. And, and, and that's what sort of led me. So I, I then took me six months and then, uh, against pretty much everyone's advice, January, 2013. So.
00:23:37
Speaker
It's now been eight years, eight years ago, I took a one way ticket and I moved to India. Okay. So you land up in India and there is an ice cream parlor, which you are running. So how does that morph into an FMCG company? Yeah.
From Ice Cream Parlor to FMCG Company
00:23:55
Speaker
Yeah. So I lined up in India. There's an ice cream parlor, which is let's repeat not making any money. Uh, you know, economics are horrible. I have zero experience in doing any of this.
00:24:05
Speaker
And I think the first thing for me was to really understand and spend time on the ground as to what's really happening. And for me, when I say what's really happening is before we start thinking through the operational side of the business or the operating model, I think the idea is where is this demand going to come from and what is this demand? So of course we had very nice, fancy macroeconomic papers that I read while I was sitting in business school half a world away. But frankly, that's, you know,
00:24:33
Speaker
it's nice to read one of those things and maybe it gives you some convincing, but that means jacked when you come on the ground. You can read all the reports from all the big banks and the consulting firms and honestly that means nothing unless you're on the ground trying to figure things out. So my first few months I actually just sat at the ice cream parlor. I served ice cream and I think
00:24:56
Speaker
You know, frankly, till date, I would say, you know, a lot of people tell me, oh, you've got a good insight into the Indian mindset and how the consumer thinks. And I say, sure, I may, but whatever I know today is credited to those few months I spent in that ice cream parlor selling ice cream. You know, literally sitting there scooping, serving.
00:25:18
Speaker
And then having tons and tons of conversations, just talking to people. Why do you select chocolate? Why did you prefer mango? You chose chocolate last week. Why did you choose mango now? You always have chocolate. Why did you choose vanilla today? And just understanding the different psyches, right? And like I said, it's one thing to read in the newspaper or a blog, but it's a whole different thing to speak to live consumers in front of you.
00:25:45
Speaker
who are actually taking out rupees in their wallet and paying you for products. And that's where the first nuance that really hit was that there was this fundamental shift, and I'm talking about 2013 now, towards healthier lifestyle eating. I remember, even in those few months, I remember some of those clients that literally used to come in every single night. We had a parlor in Bandra. Every single night, I found a few, you know,
00:26:13
Speaker
a few months later had stopped coming because they were trying to lead more balance, or are coming a lot less frequently. And that's when I realized that there was this sort of fundamental play in more lifestyle-based, healthier eating. And I say healthier very carefully because I think health is very much defined. Every individual has different needs and every individual, and science is proving more and more that health is not a one-size-fits-all type of love. I think it's really dependent on your body type or your genetics or whatever it is.
00:26:42
Speaker
But I realized that healthier products were something that we were seeing are more and more in demand. And that really was the first footprint was to come there. And then the second footprint was to look at moving and trying to leverage whatever little goodwill we had created with the parlors, the social media following we had, et cetera, et cetera, and then convert it into an FMCG play. And that was sort of the second footprint. And there was a lot of times
00:27:11
Speaker
during that first, I would say the first three years, but the first year was the toughest, just sort of banging your head against the wall and saying, what is wrong with you? Well, what are you thinking? You know, we had our office was behind a CNG pump in Curla on LBS Marg in Bombay, for those of you who are from Bombay. And it was literally, it wasn't even an office. It was, we had our kitchen downstairs, you know, thousand square feet where we made ice cream. And above it, we had created a mezzanine
00:27:41
Speaker
where anyone above five feet tall would have to literally duck their heads. And only when you were seated could you actually put your head up. And we were there for a very long time and we were there till 2016. So three years we spent there until we raised some money. That was our office. And a lot of times when things are going well, you're happy and excited and you can live with it.
00:28:06
Speaker
When things are not going well, you think to yourself, what am I doing here? I mean, I have to do squats to get inside my office every day. Is that what I want to do for the rest of the few years? Those are fun times now that we look back. So you did the manufacturing all in-house, like you didn't like go to a contract manufacturing? Well, in the beginning, because it was just downstairs. So in the beginning, it was all done in-house. And then I actually remember
00:28:31
Speaker
in 2015, no, it was 2014 actually. No, no, 2015, sorry. 2015 was the same year we launched Epigamia. Earlier that year, we had done a deal with Reliance, Reliance Fresh to sell ice cream.
00:28:48
Speaker
And we done like a whole gamification drive with them where we'd gone to all their locations across the country, especially in the major cities, and done this gamified deal where consumers bought XYZ, they would get some off and discounts and stuff like that. And I remember doing that and we sold out in like two days what we projected for like a 10 day campaign. And I remember that's when we said, all right boss, this is not the little leagues anymore. We need to sort of step
Growth and Market Strategies
00:29:15
Speaker
it up.
00:29:15
Speaker
And that's when we decided to move out of there and then start working with a co-packer at that point. So the first two years was all in-house, was all done ourselves. When did packaged ice cream get launched, like as a product? 2014 was packaged ice cream. And then how did you get it on the shelves? Oh, so two things. So one was, as I mentioned, we
00:29:41
Speaker
And we, when I first moved there, we were able to get Shippa to come in as an angel investor. And then we had my professor, one of my friends for best professors from NYU came in and we got some really interesting folks. And then, and then through them, we were able to get some introductions to some of these modern trade guys. And I love telling everyone this story because I've, you know, I've been advising entrepreneurs now the last few years. We just got really ripped off by modern trade. I won't take names.
00:30:07
Speaker
But you know, and I realized I thought we were so excited. Oh, they gave us space, but they just wanted us to pay the listing fees. So, you know, we paid up. I mean, and therefore we could only start a few locations because they wanted listing fees for each location. But whatever little capital we put towards that. And then the other way was the good old fashioned way of going door to door, getting down on our knees and folding our hands and saying,
00:30:31
Speaker
And I personally did that. I've gone to many kranashabs. Rahul, my co-founder, my other co-founder came later. And I think that, you know, I think just the resilience of us and the team, and just literally begging. And even when we started, I mean, I remember, you know, there was Nilam Foodland in Bombay. There was, you know, there was a couple of stores, my home, Super Shopee in Malad. There's another store in Kandivili. I remember these are some of the first stores we started.
00:31:00
Speaker
And they thought we were just the craziest bunch of people they've ever seen in their lives. They must have been wondering who's this American sounding guy who's selling ice cream in India. And sitting, and this guy is like, he's lost it when two cups of ice cream sell. That was a fun one. I remember there was my home super shop in Malad and I used to go there in the beginning a lot.
00:31:29
Speaker
from the first places that agreed to keep our ice cream, that itself was a big deal. And then I remember on the shelf, he had a small chiller in the corner. It wasn't even a shelf. It was like a small chiller freezer in the corner. And over there, the quality, he had Amul, he had, I'll tell you right now, quality, Amul, have more, and us. These are the four ice creams we had. And I remember him keeping, and literally we, in that chest, you must have had, I don't know,
00:31:59
Speaker
70, 80 tubs of different brands. And we probably had just five tubs kept there. So if you think about it, you know, in five times 200, so even if we sold out in a day, which wasn't possible, it was a thousand rupees of sale, right? And for this, even though he's a Kirana shop, you know, okay, that's nice, but it's, and he's like, this mad fellow is sitting here all day long, just what is wrong with him? He's like a freak. Anyone coming into the shop,
00:32:24
Speaker
He's looking at them, he's trying to figure out, and anytime anyone would walk towards that freezer, I would just run up there and jump and start having a conversation. So at one point, a guy there was very cool, the boy who ran the shop, but his boss, who was the main owner, he kind of got annoyed and said, okay, we don't want you here every day, like if you're preparing our customers.
00:32:47
Speaker
Because for me, the fact that they were going, I just wanted to have conversations. I wanted to know why are they, why do you eat ice cream? This is part of your like on ground research. Absolutely. Well, at this point it had gone beyond research. It was actually.
00:32:59
Speaker
trying to validate assumptions at this point. So there were assumptions that we had made based on the research and certain pockets we wanted to place the product. What were those assumptions? So there were different types of stores we had placed in and there were different stores. So there were different formats. So there was a modern trade format. There was the, you know, like I said, we call it sort of the higher end GT, you know, general trade shop, a GT shop and a Kirana shop. So across the four, so for example, in modern trade, we had put promoters who would sit there and make people sample.
00:33:29
Speaker
And and they would sample and they would see and then they would taste and then they'd go away In Kirana's it was a little harder to sample. There's not much space to sample So here it was more about what kind of visibility we would need and what the message the core message should be That would excite the consumers. So this idea of you know, freshly freshly made homemade Indian made ice cream Yet we also had very innovative flavors. So the idea was that we were doing
00:33:55
Speaker
things that no one else was. We didn't have the plain chocolate vanilla flavors. We had things like double chocolate therapy, which was like a funky creation. So we were coined by one of the blogs, India's Answer to Ben and Jerry's. So there was a lot of assumptions like that we wanted to test and sort of look at. And for us, it was just a massive dessert experience in an ice cream tub. It wasn't just a chocolate or a vanilla ice cream. And these are things that we wanted to ask people and talk to them about. And then, of course, at that time,
00:34:25
Speaker
there were also a lot of thoughts in our head about how this, you know, one of the thoughts was do we go into, because a lot of the feedback was people are eating healthier, or at least from a permissibility perspective, thinking they're eating healthier or wanting to eat healthier. And the idea was that we take ice cream into a healthier avatar, or, you know, as our second innings taught us was Greek yogurt, which took us to the next level. And that's where all of this work on the ground is where most of these insights ended up coming from. And then, you know, it took us in that direction.
00:34:54
Speaker
So 2015 is when you launched Greek yogurt, right? Correct, in June. So what was your top line by that time? Like the year 14-15, which ended, how much did you do? We were probably at a 6 or 7 crore run rate, so maybe 60 lakhs a month, I would say. And this was largely from metro cities?
00:35:21
Speaker
This was mainly metros. I think it was just Bombay, Delhi, Bangalore, honestly, at that time. And Bangalore, I think we had just started. Okay, okay. So then, how did Greek yogurt come into the picture? So the idea was, there was twofold. One was from launching FMCG in 2014. We learned that, and again, these are your highs and lows. So we had this sort of period in
00:35:47
Speaker
you know, the peak season, which is basically between March and June for ice cream, which is a very seasonal product. We had a great sort of run. It was our first time with FMCG and we just thought we were kings of the world. We literally thought we were unstoppable. We'd become invincible, you know, from all the madness that we had of learning and how bad the ice cream parlors were to, you know, running those cold chain trucks to the office. You shut down the parlors or they were...
00:36:15
Speaker
At that point, we still had them, but then we shut them down later on, of course. And we saw in that literally from May, June to July, August, the sales just got desecrated because seasonality, especially when monsoon comes in, there's always this fear that my throat's going to get spoiled. And that's when we realized that there was always a vision to do more products. It was never going to be a single product play.
00:36:44
Speaker
And one of my favorite products when I was in college, and that actually was born when I was in college in undergrad, was Greek yogurt. And Greek yogurt in some sense isn't the cousin relative space to an ice cream, right? It's sort of dairy and flavors and things like that. And one of the things we found was that this was a space that some large guys had sort of attempted, but they just hadn't really figured out the taste and the permissibility
00:37:13
Speaker
how to sort of play it. At least that's what we had thought. Those are our assumptions that we've made. And the first season when we saw ice cream sales really dip, we said, okay, this is something, and we actually spoke to a lot of ice cream brands and companies and spoke to people. And we even found that some of the larger ice cream players hire folks just during season. And then in the off season, they let them go. They have people they keep on their rolls just for that time period. And then we said, okay, that's not, how do we do that? I mean, we're a startup.
00:37:41
Speaker
So initially, the projection that we wanted to achieve in four or five years, we could get there, but it's going to take us 10 years. And on top of that, you're trying to build distribution, as I mentioned to you. You're going on your knees and begging these guys to put you on the shelves. And even if they give you a chance, they tell you, I'll be an e-season male. And that means you have this very finite period of time when you have to build your distribution and do your sales. And it was just not very feasible. And of course, the digital sort of e-com
00:38:10
Speaker
Disruption that we've seen the last eight nine months was not there back then Very different different way of building businesses from scratch the old-school way So so the way we sort of went about it was We looked at a few different products that we wanted to look at and Greek yogurt as I said was always there and my co-founder chef You know, he had a good idea. He was he's been trained in sort of gelato making and ice cream making and he You know a lot of similarities in terms of the sourcing of ingredients, right? so using really good quality mangoes and
00:38:38
Speaker
strawberries and then just, but, but coming up with an innovative process to sort of handmade Greek yogurt, which took him some time. And honestly, when we launched it, you know, and this is, this is sort of, I think every entrepreneur I think has this story as well. You know, we, we did it with the intent that it would compliment the ice cream business. Never in our, in our lives, we ever thought that this was going to be just go to the next level and scale the way it did. And we're just over-consume us to the extent where we had to sort of let hokey pokey go.
00:39:06
Speaker
Um, even though I don't know if you know, we, we actually brought Hokey Pokey back a few weeks ago after years. Thanks. Thanks to our direct to consumer channel. Um, but that, that, that's where the culmination came from. And, uh, and also I think all the learnings on the ground, the learnings from the ice cream parlors up until this point, we still had the ice cream parlors. So Epic Amia was actually first launched in the ice cream parlors as well. And a lot of it was to those consumers. We actually reached out to those consumers that stopped coming or were coming less frequently because they were leading this quote unquote healthier lifestyle.
00:39:36
Speaker
Um, and we started getting that to give us feedback and, and, and see where we took it from there. And then, you know, I think as an entrepreneur, you keep throwing darts and the second dart we lined up perfectly. So, uh, initially you would have like in your parlors, you would have had a tub where you would scoop out and serve it. Like that was how you started with the Greek yogurt. Yeah. Yeah. So we actually had, it wasn't, it wasn't scooping, but we had packs. So you would, you know, you open the pack for it and then, and then serve it. And.
00:40:04
Speaker
In the initial days, we even used to do some parfaits and musli and things of that nature. But the idea was to just get people to try and like it. A lot of sampling happened at the parlors. A lot of sampling. And you also then rolled it out to your FMCG distribution. Immediately went into FMCG distribution. So like how much did that year end at? Like you did six crores the previous year. So like, you know, what was the growth you saw because of epigamia?
00:40:32
Speaker
If I'm not mistaken, so don't, don't quote me. I don't have my other financials in front of me, but that's like roughly grows with the second that you're after that. So we triple amazing. Wow. That's phenomenal. Big growth surge there
Funding and Expansion
00:40:45
Speaker
for us. I remember that. How did you cope with it? Like a three X jump in top line is like, it means massive logistics to deliver the product.
00:40:57
Speaker
Yeah, no, it was a, it was, it was a hair pulling experience. So, so one of the, one of the big things that happened during just right before this time period was, um, you know, so chef will tell you that when I moved to India in January, 2013, I brainwashed him to join full time. So he joined later that year. Um, and he took sort of took over and, and then they was there too. And I convinced him to join. And so they sort of took over the compliance and the legal angles. Whereas, you know, chef took care of production and operations RMD and I took care of.
00:41:25
Speaker
all, you know, sales, marketing, finance, that's how we sort of split the roles. And, you know, more and more, we realized that Chef had to really just take care of production and R&D, nothing else. And then operations started coming to me. And I realized, you know, and I mean, I, 100, there was no such thing as sleep, that those two, three years, I didn't need it. I mean, you suddenly could, it wasn't like, you know, there was no, and then, you know, I started getting really friendly. So we had this, this, um,
00:41:53
Speaker
Thai group, the TIE in Mumbai, there was a food committee or a food group that was created with them, and food entrepreneurship, and there was a group that we started calling ourselves the foodpreneurs, and got friendly with some of these guys, all sort of starting off their journey at the same time. So there was Chef's Basket, and Baker's Dazzan, and Raw Pressry, a whole bunch of all Mumbai-based guys.
00:42:21
Speaker
And one of the guys was Rahul Jain, who had started Dr. Mu Organic Milk. And Rahul and I, I guess the first one or two times we met, we just really hit it off. We just sort of love at first sight, bromance as they call it. And Rahul came also from a finance background. He's from Delhi, born and raised, and then had gone to ISP and started this organic milk startup and very similar
00:42:47
Speaker
issues, right? We would complain and cry about the same issues every time we meet. And part of their plan was to go from organic fresh milk into value added dairy products. And we would actually run ideas by each other. One day he told me what they were thinking was to get into Greek yogurt. And I said, dude, we're doing Greek yogurt as well. I'm just letting you know very clearly.
00:43:10
Speaker
And I think it was like the next day or two days later, I just called him up and I was like, literally, are you thinking what I'm thinking? And he's like, yeah, let's do it. And then he joined. So he joined and he became a co-founder. And that actually really helped us go to the next level because it really, it allowed me to focus. And his sort of experience and expertise is just completely different from mine. I mean, he's much more of a pragmatic, you know,
00:43:40
Speaker
operations person, whereas I'm more off the charts, you know, looking old, I'm always staring up into the sky. And I think we balance each other out really well. And that's when we, that's when, so to answer your question, that a lot of the trifle, you know, threefold growth came that year because of having some structure now to the sort of founding team. So Rahul took care of the production? No, no, no, no, no. He was, he was logistics and operations and sales.
00:44:08
Speaker
marketing and finance came to me and then Chef took Chef with our community. So you started this as like handmade, but like how long before you realized that it could like, you know, it needed to be done in a plant and like how, how did that scale up happen? Like in the building? Yeah, so we still do it in a sort of handmade format.
00:44:35
Speaker
Um, in some sense, we've, we've, we've done some scale up and because our, our, our, our Gilbert has zero preservatives, um, is freshly made. Um, and, and it has a very low shelf life. It's only 14 days and it has, and that too, if it's kept in perfect cold chain, which in the conditions in India are not conducive. Um, so in the beginning we had a lot of problems because a lot of the Kirana shops would turn their fridge off at night. Um, you know, some of the cold chain distributors we used would, would also do the same thing, would not have hygiene and integrity.
00:45:05
Speaker
And consumers would get really upset. Even today, we get complaints every now and then. But back then, it was bad because consumers, they're not going to point fingers at anyone else. They're going to point fingers at you because you're the one who made the product. But over time, I think we realized a couple of things. One is that we had to own our own cold chain. So in a city like Mumbai today, we're probably independent distribution wise. We're probably one of the largest independent distributors just because we built our own cold chain, sorry.
00:45:34
Speaker
because we built our own cold chain. We have the same thing in the major four or five cities in the country. And we realized we had to do this to protect the brand and also to expand the business because no one else was ready to do this. Today, of course, as a diamond as a distributor to want our business, but we're not really interested because now we've reached some scale. So those margins are healthier with us doing it ourselves. So we in fact chose not to produce ourselves, but to distribute ourselves. So we took that. Those are the decisions that we took.
00:46:02
Speaker
And even now, we haven't gone to some very industrialized methods of production for Greek yogurt, which are used globally. We still use some indigenous sort of ways of making it. We naturally strain, think almost like a hygienic way of using like a cheesecloth and straining and making cheese or taka or hunkard as they do in the north. So we still follow some, of course,
00:46:29
Speaker
you know, really taken up, stepped up our game and made it very hygienic and things of that nature. That's still how we make our product and our product is still very sensitive. So even now, you know, sometimes we're very clear with our consumers, if the cup is a little bit of a puff or something, just let us know immediately and we'll send replacements because at some way, somewhere along that pull chain, while the country's getting better and better, in fact, we have a huge test for pull chain coming up with the vaccines. So let's see what happens. But as the country gets better and better, but we're still not there yet.
00:46:58
Speaker
So did you also need external funding for this 3x growth that year in 2015? Or like when did you, you had an angel round initially like in 12-13. So after that, like when did you need funding? That number I talked to you about was 16-17 that we did. And then 14, sorry, 15-16 was I think the 6-7 and then the 16-17 was that number. And then we raised, we raised our series C, series A in 2016.
00:47:28
Speaker
Okay. Okay. So we were in the middle of our, yeah, we were, so we, in fact, our Epic Amio was only a couple of months old when we raised a series A. And, uh, how did the series A happen? Like who were the investors who backed you in? Uh, so we had DSG consumer partners, uh, DSGCP, Deepak Chaudhary and, and Berlinvest. Berlinvest is a, uh, institution. It's a, it's a fund out of Belgium.
00:47:57
Speaker
Okay, so but like, was it a difficult journey to convince people to invest in a, like a curd brand or like, yeah, like a yogurt? You know, so we had a, we obviously had many conversations the prior year. And I think, you know, back when we were raising capital, this was not a sector of, you know, sort of priority or something that, you know, it was always tech, tech, tech. And then, you know, there wasn't much options were sort of restricted.
00:48:26
Speaker
In the last few years, we've seen a lot of funds open up and start investing in the space, especially now that this sort of FMCG and tech is also now combined and you don't know what's what anymore. But we were very clearly a digitally third or digitally fourth brand. We were never digitally first. And as that sort of took off, I mean, there was only a handful of players that were really participating in the space. And I mean, behoove me to tell you that it was an easy journey. It wasn't.
00:48:55
Speaker
But I think the good thing was that because you had specialists like DSG and then our, in our angel round, we also had, uh, after the strip run, we did one more angel round. We had, um, fireside ventures. We participated, um, before the, the fun started, we were, I always tell, we always talk about, we were out of fun zero because fun one came later on as the fireside trust. And then I think things started moving in motion. So, um, but you had specialists and I think as long as they understood and you had the right access or,
00:49:22
Speaker
You had their ear, you know, I think Kava and Deepak were the two, who continue to be the two best in the game today. And we were blessed to have both of them. So like, how did the growth happen? Like you did 20 crores from like rough, whatever you recall in terms of how it grew from 16, 17 to this year. For those few years, we doubled the year upon year. And then as sort of, I mean, this COVID year was obviously a tough one, but we still grew about 30%
00:49:53
Speaker
35% in this COVID year as well. So I think one major milestone for Epigamia has been the Danone investment.
Partnership with Danone Ventures
00:50:03
Speaker
I mean, I personally thought that was like a game changer. Like, you know, could you tell me about that? How it happened? And do you see it as a game changer? Yeah, I think game changer may be a strong word, but I think definitely
00:50:19
Speaker
a surprise or a disruption as far as all our mentality was concerned. What was interesting with Danone or Danin, as I called them growing up, was that when we launched Greek yogurt initially in 2015, they were sort of the big enemy. They were the competitor. And in fact, we actually looked up to them. When I say enemy, I joke, I kid, because obviously they were someone we
00:50:48
Speaker
aspired to look up to and say, this is a company we can learn from. But of course, we want to come in and do something different and disrupt and not do the same old things that everyone's doing. And on the shelves, whatever it was, I kid and I joke, but we literally had
00:51:05
Speaker
a dartboard with the image of Denon and we used to throw darts at it at the office. Not Nestle. I thought Nestle would be a bigger target. They were there too. Although great, great helps. And it was sort of, you know, so if you sort of rewind the time to 2015-2016 and, you know, you tell the 2015-2016 Rohan or Uday or Rahul or Chef Ganesh or anyone on the team or Sid,
00:51:35
Speaker
And you tell them that in 2019 or 2020, or for that matter, 2021, not only is Denon going to be a shareholder, but they're also going to be partners and they're going to be, you know, sort of advisors, we would have all thought you were insane. You know, so for us to come full circle was quite crazy. And, you know, it was it was interesting because they, you know, obviously, that was the sort of
00:52:02
Speaker
you know, view we had of them. And, you know, sometimes, you know, they always say, don't don't judge a book by its cover. And I genuinely believe that. And I think, you know, that was our case with Danone. You know, I think, you know, we always looked at them as the big guys and we're the small guys. And, you know, we were introduced to them through one of our investors. And, you know, when we were raising our CBC, again, they were not even in the radar. We had heard that in New York, there was a Danone Ventures that had launched
00:52:29
Speaker
Um, and you know, they'd sort of, uh, set up this, um, you know, a corporate venture capital arm. I mean, we, we'd heard about it just as you heard about in the news, but there was never any intent or there was any interaction. There was never any, um, storyline that they were doing in Asia for that matter. And that too, you know, they were focused more on America and Europe and things of that nature. And we were introduced to them through one of our investors. And I think the idea, uh, at the time we, you know, are we, a lot of our, our, our, you know, the investors we already had were very keen on, you know, doing CDC without going to the outside market.
00:53:00
Speaker
Um, but you know, it was, we, we thought, okay, let's, you know, talk to one or two that we thought could potentially add value as we keep scaling. So we had one or two conversations and we're actually in the process of closing out one of those conversations. And I actually, you know, uh, so I was like, as I mentioned, I was introduced to, uh, the known ventures guys. And, you know, I just said, you know, just for kicks, you know, for giggles, you know, what's the harm in going and meeting, you know, and that was the internal sort of thesis that, you know, never hurts. And I, I'm one of those people that my door is always open, you know, no matter what I,
00:53:30
Speaker
never close the door. Nothing is crazy to me because I think that's the way I've lived my life as well. And so we went and I met them and I met the folks in charge. And honestly, I was really blown away by their mission. And their mission was very clear that, look, we are a big company. We are a big sort of behemoth, but we get it. We get it that the disruptors of tomorrow are these younger startups like you.
00:53:57
Speaker
And we sort of have two options. We can continue to try to do stuff and compete with you in the markets, or we could sort of, you know, band together and treat this as a global sort of ecosystem, which we can plug into and a company like yours can plug into. And, you know, we get to sort of be close to what you're doing on the disruptive side and we can help you with stuff that you probably, you know, you don't have to be disruptive about everything. You know, you can be disruptive about your brand. You can be disruptive about your product.
00:54:27
Speaker
But do you really need to be disruptive about how a truck operates? Or do you really need to be disruptive about inventory management? So these are things that really spoke to me. And then I realized that here's a company that actually means what they're saying. There was a larger mission behind what they're trying to do in terms of support and build sustainability globally. And in fact, this division of theirs, which was Tenon Ventures, is actually a B corporation. I don't know if you're familiar with what a B corporation is actually. No, I'm not familiar.
00:54:57
Speaker
It's for profit and it's a certification, it's a global certification. So it's not that it's an NGO or any sorts, of course it's a for profit, but it requires a mission that goes beyond just financial. And there are very few companies out there, Ben and Jerry's is one of them, that have that sort of B corporation status. And it spoke volumes to me that this sort of division of theirs had that sort of certification. And I realized that their mission actually was
00:55:26
Speaker
to build out a larger ecosystem, you know, not just sort of learn what the startups are doing and go and do something and replicate it. And I think, you know, in hindsight, your gut has to give you everything. I mean, I'm an entrepreneur, so a lot goes by my gut. And I think that first meeting, it was, you know, as they say, it was sort of love at first sight. And so came back and I, you know, told the team, I obviously talk to the investors, our investors who have been our best supporters were extremely wary.
00:55:55
Speaker
They didn't know if this was the right move. There's a lot of conversation. Does this mean that we're selling to a strategic? Is this a partial exit? And I said, let's not think about any of that like that, because the structure of this Denon Ventures is as a fund. I mean, they're like a group within a group that they operate independently. And they have one LP, which is Denon, which is giving them their capital. But they're operating like a fund. They have portfolio companies. They're structured just like a VC fund or a private equity fund would be with a very interesting mission.
00:56:24
Speaker
you know, when you've reached sort of the stage we had, you know, to get them to help what we saw as visibility to really take us to the next level, from a scale perspective, you know, processes, systems, back-end, et cetera, et cetera. And I think, you know, sitting here sort of two years later after we raised CVC, which they were sort of, they led along with Berlin Mess, I think that was probably the best decision we made at that time.
00:56:49
Speaker
In what ways did that collaboration benefit you? Like in addition to the money? I'm happy to share that sort of example and demonstrate. It's nice when you hear it in words, but what does that mean in reality? I think that's your question. So I'll tell you what happened is we were sitting in Mumbai at one of our board meetings and there was a discussion around
00:57:16
Speaker
Um, as we were scaling our distribution, now this is pre-COVID, so let's sort of rewind a little bit, right? So let's not, COVID of course, we'll talk about as a whole different ballgame. But in pre-COVID, you know, we, there was a conversation that took place around, um, as we were sort of expanding and scaling our distribution, for us to scale our distribution is, you know, going deeper and deeper into GT and Kirana shops, right? And as we get deeper and deeper into Kirana shops, there's a, you know, there, there's a lot of efficiency that has to be sort of,
00:57:43
Speaker
garnered because you know the drop sizes get lower so for example the larger modern trade stores or the larger more you know high volume throughput stores you're dropping off 30 40 even hundreds of cups at a time every delivery now you get to the smaller shops and you know that guy tells you you know I want five or ten you know
00:58:03
Speaker
Um, and there you have to be very efficient, you know, how much time you spend at the store, how much, you know, how you efficiently get in there, drop the, take the order, drop the delivery, come back, how you plan your truck, how you plan the operations, how you, when you load the truck, you know, basic sort of, uh, supply chain logistics hygiene, right? But when you say yes, basic, but also very, very specific to cold chain, that's our cold chain and to yogurt. Right. Um, and now at that point we had started with multiple products that we had yogurt, we had smoothies, we had a whole bunch of
00:58:33
Speaker
There's a con. And now also, mind you, you're doing it in an environment where a lot of times the, you know, Dukanwala will turn the fridge off at night and there's all these other challenges you have, right? So we were, you know, we were discussing our plan and our go-to-market strategy on how we're going to be building out our distribution. And, you know, one of the guys from Denon Ventures who was there said, you know, what we're doing, what Epigania is doing right now in Mumbai,
00:58:59
Speaker
is very similar to what our team in Egypt did 10 years ago. And we said, oh, really, that's interesting. And they said, well, let's talk more. And so they said, you should talk to them because they built their own distribution. Egypt is even more a kirana shop market than India. It's all about the global word for a kirana is mom and pop shop. That's how we sort of agree. And there is no modern trade. They're very restricted modern trade. And it's very similar, very hot country.
00:59:29
Speaker
in Cairo, it's very warm, very disorganized trade. And they joked, they said, not only do they shut off the refrigerator night, they actually turn off the electricity because they want to save on all costs. And, you know, so so we said, OK, you know, we'll be great. Maybe there's something here to learn from. So we got on the call. We were connected with the team in Egypt. We got on a call with the CEO there and we had a chat with them and, you know, we said, hey, listen,
00:59:52
Speaker
These are some questions we had and, you know, without going into too much detail, but, you know, what a market to market and how do you sort of plan? How do you do that? How do you do the supply chain? And you know what the answer was? The answer was, look, be happy to tell you, but why don't you just come here and see it for yourself? You know, and and this is, you know, and they have a pretty sizable operation there. They've built it from scratch. It's it's a 15, 20 year old operation.
01:00:17
Speaker
And we were like, really? And they said, yeah, you know, why don't you come? So the four or five of us, myself included, of course, we all, you know, went a day early to go see the pyramids that we couldn't see. And it helped that Egypt has a nonstop flight from Mumbai. So we went and not only were they welcoming and receptive, they let us sit on the trucks with them. We went to the market with them. We went to see the manufacturing. We saw how they loaded the truck.
01:00:42
Speaker
And I'm not saying that this is not something we couldn't have done. I think over the course of time, we would have learned how to do it. But we probably saved a good year, year and a half just by watching how to do it and then implementing it in our back. So, you know, I think that serves as a great example of the collaboration, you know, that they've sort of it's not just them
Future Plans and Market Expansion
01:01:00
Speaker
being there. And I mean, they really meant it when they said we're going to let you plug into the ecosystem. And I think I think that just helps us focus on
01:01:08
Speaker
what we're good at and helps continuing. And now, of course, there's a lot of other conversations. Of course, there's a lot of stuff they cannot disclose, which is because we are two independent companies. But wherever they feel it's OK and it warrants some form of collaboration, they've been more than happy to support and push for it. OK. So are you looking at going global and piggybacking on their global presence?
01:01:33
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, that's every entrepreneur's dream. I think, you know, had you asked me this question, even six or seven months ago, I always said, you know, it's in the cards and it continues to be in the cards. But I think, you know, we believe that, you know, the made in India stamp is going to get more and more potent and powerful as things go forward. I mean, we're seeing now the world is seeing now that, you know, made in India can equate the quality of done the right way. Of course, we believed it for a very long time. So
01:02:02
Speaker
At least, you know, neighboring markets, you know, in the next sort of eight to 12 months, we will start exploring. But it won't be a focus for us. I think right now we're still very determined. We have a lot to do in India. I mean, we just touched the iceberg. I think those will be more opportunistic, you know, expansions. But yes, a few years from now, you know, certainly that'll be a play for us.
01:02:22
Speaker
So what's going to be your focus? Is it going to be like to go down into tier two, tier three or expand product range or like, you know, what, what is it that you're going to focus on to grow the brand and the revenue? Yeah. So for us, it's, it's two very clear cut strategies, right? It's, you know, continue sort of disrupting the product portfolio, continue launching new and new products, you know, all the way from sort of premium. And now we're looking at more sort of,
01:02:49
Speaker
accessible value products that are in the 20 to 25 rupee, potentially even an extra 15 rupee price point. When I say accessible, I don't mean compromise on quality, supremely high quality products, but, you know, giving a little bit more accessibility and generating trials so people can start moving their way up to a 30 and a 40 rupee product eventually. And that's something that we're very focused on. And then secondly, just continue to expand distribution. I mean, today, if you look at where our market sort of sizes in India, we're looking at, you know, we're not
01:03:19
Speaker
looking at a billion people, right? That's not who we're speaking to. We're speaking to about 60 to 80 million people in the country. That's what we see, sort of the middle class and the upper middle class. And if you look at our penetration, we're not even two million people today. So we have a very, very long way to go. So, you know, 30 X is in the cards for us and hopefully we can get there much faster sooner than later.
01:03:42
Speaker
Okay, amazing. So my last question to you.
Business Environment: India vs US
01:03:47
Speaker
How is working in India and doing business in India different from the way things happen in the US? Like, you know, what are some of the quirks that you saw or the unique challenges or unique opportunities that you experienced?
01:04:03
Speaker
without having any of my friends and my family and my co-workers yell and scream for these comments. No, look, I think there's this... I don't want a politically correct answer. I want to take a frank, honest opinion. I mean, we all know who we are, what our shortcomings are. I don't think there are too many Modi bhakts who listen to my podcast.
01:04:32
Speaker
No, I think I think without without without being told, look, I think I think, you know, I will give you the political answer as well. But let me give you the honest, cold, honest truth first. I think the reality is that, you know, coming from this environment, you know, we're coming from sort of the American environment. I mean, there was definitely a certain level of, you know, sort of timeliness. I think I don't want to use the word professionalism because I see there's a lot of professionalism and I and I'm very proud of the organization we have and how we operate.
01:05:01
Speaker
But I think there was just a certain value for time or timeliness that is associated. And I come from New York City where traffic is worse than Bombay. So when meetings are not happening and it's being blamed on traffic, I don't buy it because New York is like that. And when someone's telling you they're going to come on Monday and they don't even show up or give you a phone call and then they come on Tuesday,
01:05:26
Speaker
And I think, you know, and I'd also have to say, you know, even when we were sort of building the business early on, just sort of being dismissed, you know, that, oh, where is this company going to go? And, you know, some of the sort of more traditional business vendors won't take names, but, you know, just not even entertaining our conversations because, and then, you know, and I'm not saying that they should have anything, you know, I think a discussion would have been warranted, at least hear us out. But now that we're of volume and size, now they're willing to give us any discounted price we want.
01:05:56
Speaker
And I'm not saying that's a difference between, you know, you know, maybe the Western world or India, but I think it would have just been, you know, maybe the decision making would have been similar. They wouldn't have taken it from them to take it from them later. But, you know, I think a conversation would have been warranted or merited. So I think a lot of that takes place. Of course, you know, you deal with the the infrastructural issues. But but, you know, actually, that being said, you know, I think one of the things that sort of helped us and again, and I'm not trying to make this a political answer, but
01:06:25
Speaker
I think I sort of, because of some of the exposure I had to India, visiting India a few times, and because of all the, some of the stuff I told you earlier, you know, being sort of advised by family, friends that you're out of your mind, you're crazy for going there. I think the bar was already so low for me that I had, I came with zero preconceived notions. You know, so when I came, I anticipated that there's no such thing as having a plan A and a plan B. You better, buddy, have a plan C, B and an E.
01:06:53
Speaker
This is not a plan A, plan B country. There better be CD and E, and you better be ready for all of those. And I think, to be honest, maybe there's a sense of naivety that was in there. When things went a certain way, I wouldn't get surprised. I wouldn't complain. When internet stopped working in the middle of a conference call or an email, I wouldn't blow my lid. I just treat it as normal practice. Now, that being said, things have changed
01:07:20
Speaker
Insanely in the last six seven years. I mean just the speed we have is obscene of internet or whatever it is But I think that sort of helped a little bit I would say I think for me it became an asset because I wouldn't let those things pop me down, you know and I again I'm not you know brutally honest here I've got a lot of friends and peers and people I know that came from the United States from other countries outside of India and Came with these preconceived notions and and then you know sort of blame that as a reason why the adventures didn't take off And I think frankly, that's that's hogwash
01:07:50
Speaker
Those are not reasons why your venture doesn't take off because the internet doesn't work or because people are stuck in traffic. Give me a break. Or because someone didn't take a meeting. So go back 15 times. Fry the guy to death to take the meeting. I think these are things that you have to sort of do. So yes, I think what was maybe sort of going into it saying, OK, this is a liability, I think it ended up being an asset for me because I didn't see it in that way.
01:08:19
Speaker
Amazing. Cool. So thank you so much for your time. Any last words to people who are aspiring to build their own brands? Yeah, I mean, my advice always is if you're on the fence, don't do it.
Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs
01:08:37
Speaker
You have to be all in or all out. There's nothing in between. Yes, you may need some time to build a plan and do stuff and get yourself financially ready.
01:08:45
Speaker
but six, eight months is good enough. Post that. If you're not ready to take it on, you're never going to be ready. Don't waste your time. Don't do disservice to your own self, to your potential venture, or to your current employer. It's just not worth it. So if that conversation left you craving for some Greek yogurt, then check out the exciting flavors of epigamia that are available for home delivery on epigamia.com, Amazon.in, or the Big Basket app.
01:09:17
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 thebotium.in that is T-H-E-P-O-D-I-U-N dot I-N for a complete list of all our shows.