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How Fynd Powers the Global Retail Industry
82 Plays3 days ago
In this episode, Sreeraman "SMG" Mohan Girija shares how Fynd became the retail technology backbone powering 2,300+ brands, 20,000 stores, and 20 million consumers across India. From nearly dying as a touchscreen kiosk company in 2015 to being acquired by Reliance Industries in 2019, SMG reveals the pivotal lessons about building at the transaction layer, optimizing for customers over engineering bandwidth, and why conversational commerce powered by LLMs will kill traditional e-commerce homepages. He also opens up about the brutal first year of cultural integration post-acquisition, scaling a 100-person design organization, and why Fynd is now exporting India-hardened retail infrastructure to global markets like GCC, UK, and Canada.
He shared this candid journey with host Akshay Datt, exploring everything from hiring for empathy over skills to why beautiful products often fail without proper business fundamentals. If you're building in retail tech, SaaS, or preparing for AI-native commerce, this conversation is essential viewing.
Key Highlights:
👉How Sreeraman Mohan Girija pivoted Fynd from hardware failure to becoming India's largest unified commerce platform powering Reliance Retail
👉Inside the ₹295 crore Reliance acquisition: selling 87.6% equity while retaining operational independence and achieving 60x revenue growth post-deal
👉Why conversational commerce and LLMs will fundamentally reshape shopping UX, killing traditional e-commerce homepages by 2030
👉The design philosophy behind scaling from 1 to 100 designers: hiring for empathy, optimizing only for end customers, and preventing "engineer's MVP" syndrome
👉Fynd's complete retail tech stack: from AI-powered catalog generation and AR try-ons to omnichannel POS systems and marketplace integrations across Amazon, Flipkart, and emerging ONDC networks
👉Strategic lessons on B2B SaaS pricing innovation, the cold start problem in marketplaces, and why sitting on the transaction layer is non-negotiable for retail technology companies
Don't forget to subscribe to the Founder Thesis Podcast for more deep-dive conversations with India's most ambitious builders. Follow Akshay Datt on LinkedIn and X for behind-the-scenes insights and updates on upcoming episodes.
#RetailSaaS #IndiaEcommerce #QuickCommerce #ONDCIndia #StartupAcquisition #MADeals #FashionTech #IndiaUnifiedCommerce #RetailInfrastructure #POSSystems #WarehouseManagement #StartupPivot #FounderThesisPodcast #AkshayDatt #IndiaStartupEcosystem #B2BSaaS #EnterpriseRetail #AICommerce #LLMShopping #FutureOfRetail #RetailAutomation #DesignLeadership #ProductManagement #ScalingStartups
Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the speaker, not necessarily the channel
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Transcript
The Evolution of In-Store Shopping
00:00:00
Speaker
The in-store shopping experience it has not changed much ever since malls and stores came into
Target Audience: Brands vs. Retailers
00:00:06
Speaker
existence. Are you serving the brand like say a Mama Earth or are you serving the retailer like say a DMart Reliance? We worked with Being Human and the model on the screen was Salmantha.
Find's Journey and Acquisition by Reliance
00:00:17
Speaker
SMG is design first founder of Find, a company he started straight out of IIT Mumbai in 2012.
SaaS Revenue Models: Challenges and Innovations
00:00:25
Speaker
Find raised $10 million dollars before it was acquired by Reliance and is the backend intelligence powering the retail empire of Reliance and many other Indian and global brands. This is not going as fast as we would like it to go
Balancing Supply, Demand, and Engineering
00:00:38
Speaker
as founders. There would be very few SaaS companies offering a like a revenue share approach towards pricing.
00:00:44
Speaker
ah Fairly unique. You only optimize for the end customer. You don't optimize for your engineering team's capabilities, what comes first, the supply or the demand.
Design Leadership in Scaling and Optimization
00:00:52
Speaker
Both need to scale almost at the same time. That's sort of the challenges most design leaders also
Introduction to Founder Thesis Podcast
00:00:58
Speaker
face. What is the dark pattern?
00:01:07
Speaker
Welcome to the Founder
Find: A Unified Commerce Platform
00:01:09
Speaker
Thesis podcast. um You are the co-founder of Find. It's a venture that you started in 2012 with your friends from IIT Bombay.
00:01:20
Speaker
First, help me understand exactly what is Find. And just for clarification, this is Find, F-Y-N-D, not with an i So what exactly is Find?
Technology Solutions for Brands by Find
00:01:31
Speaker
What does it do today? And then we'll talk about the journey of reaching here. you know We started back in 2012. In very simple terms, Find is actually unified commerce platform.
00:01:42
Speaker
ah Let's say you are a small brand. looking to sell online or even events start a store of your own offline, Find has the technology that can take care of all the end-to-end needs
Partnerships with Large Enterprises
00:01:55
Speaker
for you.
00:01:55
Speaker
ah You can build a storefront like a website on Find. You can run your store operations, which includes a point of sale system, endless aisle, and all the other technology that you would require in a store on the Find platform.
00:02:14
Speaker
Thirdly, if you want to list your products and sell them on a marketplace like an Amazon or a Mindra for that matter, the Find actually provides you technology to do that as well.
00:02:25
Speaker
Now we work with brands of all sizes, brands that are just starting out, to brands you know at enterprise scale, including Reliance Brands Limited.
00:02:36
Speaker
Okay.
Find vs. Shopify: A Comparison
00:02:37
Speaker
ah One part of what you said that if you want to open an online store, this is, I think Shopify is pretty much the market leader in this space. Is that really a core ah offering for you or is the core offering more on the offline side? where i I don't think there is a dominant player on the offline side the way there is say Shopify for allowing direct to consumer selling?
00:03:03
Speaker
Yes. So we offer both while the storefront is used by a large number of brands in India, especially if you're a brand with an offline presence or looking to expand a lot more into offline retail, then find becomes the natural choice for you as
Omnichannel Retail Solutions by Find
00:03:23
Speaker
a brand.
00:03:23
Speaker
Because instead of having to depend on multiple vendors and multiple platforms and products for all your retail technology needs. You just have one point of contact, which is fine, which will take care of your end to end requirements.
00:03:36
Speaker
So that's what sort of, you know, what differentiates us from the existing players. Okay. Then plus the fact that in India, um you know, retail happens in, know, multiple formats and multiple structures and things like that. So we've built our platform over the last 13, 14 years to sort of,
00:03:55
Speaker
serve all those edge edge cases. So out of the box itself, you get a platform that satisfies most of the requirements a retailer in India will have. Okay.
Scalability and Integration with Find
00:04:06
Speaker
So omni-channel is really ah something which you are the... I mean, you dominate when it's an omni-channel requirement, from what I understand. ah so this would not essentially be ah an offering for a small merchant, right? This would be for, say, somebody who...
00:04:25
Speaker
let's say like a Mama Earth, somebody who does like say 500,000 crore kind of top line has offline, online, own store, selling through general trade, selling through ah like the organized the modern trade channel, selling through quick commerce. So for a brand like Mama Earth, you would have the ability to stitch all of these different channels together one platform. Am I correct in my understanding?
00:04:50
Speaker
ah Yes. ah So the beauty is that If you are, let's say, a brand starting out, you obviously, most of them would start with a marketplace integration or with their own website to begin off with. What it allows is that because you know we have been doing this for over a decade, we have seen brands that start with just that offering. And then when they have to expand into stores, they say, you know they they start using more and more of our technology.
Flexible Pricing Models and Revenue Sharing
00:05:16
Speaker
So while today, if a large brand, let's say like a mama comes,
00:05:20
Speaker
for a retail technology requirement. We have a wide array of products that they can pick and choose from. They can stitch together multiple solutions that the platform has been built in such a way that it's very modular and composable. So while you might have existing vendors for certain technologies, we sort of sit well with any other you know vendors in the space as well.
00:05:43
Speaker
So it allows that sort of freedom for a large enterprise. while allowing a smaller brand also to come on the platform, you know, improve, increase their business and then start using the rest of our technologies.
00:05:56
Speaker
Okay, got it. What's your average contract value? ah I mean, it's it's more like ah the the bigger ones run into a few lakhs a month.
00:06:08
Speaker
ah The smaller ones start as low as, you know, 10,000, 20,000 rupees per month as well. The way we structure is that even for, let's say, smaller brands, there are models in which their sort of upfront investment would be lower.
00:06:23
Speaker
But as and when they scale, then we charge them something on top of the transactions, which they are also you know happy to ah spend when they are also doing more business. So we give that level of flexibility in our pricing for brands.
00:06:38
Speaker
So you're saying it's not a fixed SaaS fees, but you also offer a transaction-led approach. Is that like a revenue share or just number of sales which happen or something? It's usually a percentage of GMB.
00:06:54
Speaker
okay That's how it works. Okay, very interesting and very unique also. There would be very few SaaS companies offering a like a revenue share approach towards pricing.
Omnichannel Retail Evolution and Indian Market Focus
00:07:08
Speaker
Fairly unique. I'll dig deep into how you came about with this model.
00:07:13
Speaker
What's your ARR currently or how much do you expect current year revenue to be? i think we are around on track to do at least 300, yeah. Around, right around 300, 350 here this month. to be ah we We are actually a deemed public company. So our numbers are fairly public. They are available, you know, online as well for you to check.
00:07:37
Speaker
What does that mean, deemed public company? Is that like you're on the path to IPO? No, no. So we are part of Reliance Group. So that allows, you know, that that means that we are deemed public.
00:07:49
Speaker
Okay, okay. Because your parent company is publicly listed, so they have to break out revenue by subsidiary. You are a subsidiary. So therefore, okay. Got it. Got Got Okay. Understood. And ah what's your headcount today?
00:08:02
Speaker
We are at around 1,100 people. most of them are like you know I think around 600 700 odd would be actually engineers and it would be very product heavy sort of organization like you add engineers designers and product managers and things like that so it accounts to almost like 80% of the workforce okay okay what's your revenue split like and I'm asking this from a couple of angles one angle is
00:08:37
Speaker
what is the SME revenue versus enterprise revenue, just to get a flavor of what kind of clients are largely driving your revenue. Second angle is, what is the revenue from Reliance and its group businesses versus non-Reliance revenue?
00:08:52
Speaker
So I can give you the split of SME across enterprise. I think enterprises, the large companies would be giving us around 80% of our revenues. The 20% would be the SMEs.
00:09:04
Speaker
ah Yeah, that's that's a number that I can, you know, sort of disclose. You can't break out Reliance versus Non-Reliance. Yeah. Okay. okay no No problem. No problem. Got it. Okay. um So...
00:09:17
Speaker
Now, I'd like to ah kind of understand the journey now. So we've kind of broken down what the business does. You essentially are the default choice for people who want to do an omni-channel retail experience. I have a follow-up question there, though. Are you serving the brand, like, say, a Mama Earth, or are you serving the retailer...
00:09:41
Speaker
ah like say DMART Reliance, who's the primary customer for whom you've built this? Both actually. So the way, is right, when we started,
00:09:53
Speaker
you want to cover maximum number of brands in the and Indian ecosystem, right? And if you look at how retail is actually structured, there are a few major retail houses that house a lot of these brands. Lions Brands is one, then Madura Group, Aravin.
00:10:06
Speaker
So that's how we sort of, KKCL is there as well. So that's how we sort of, you know, approach it. It became easy for us to actually approach the leadership of these organizations, which are solutions. And then once there is a buying from the top, then it gets essentially, you know, pushed down to the bottom. So, which means that when you sell to our Alliance brands, then that means any brand under that house, ah sort of, you know, you get access to those brands as well. So, I would say ah by choice, we go for the larger groups and then the brands come as a result of this.
00:10:40
Speaker
Independent brands are also there on the platform, smaller brand houses, I think, i think Second customer was for the ShopSense days, the old days was Anida Dongre.
00:10:52
Speaker
So they had like Global Desi and Anida Dongre, two brands under one group. So that's how it usually worked for us initially. So essentially your primary customer is the brand, not a retailer.
00:11:03
Speaker
exhale ah Like the DMART kind of a business would not really be the customer you're targeting. It has now expanded. So we started with fashion and lifestyle as a category, but now we do grocery things as well, which means that because again, that's under the part of, you know, Alliance retail, there's grocery also, fashion and lifestyle also. So we learned to expand our platform over the last six years.
00:11:29
Speaker
to sort of serve all categories that exist under e-commerce or retail, which means that today if you if a DMART comes and asks us, you know we want to explore your technology, yes, why not the platform supports that category as well.
00:11:43
Speaker
So for a retail business, you would help them with the store point of sale ah And the store inventory. Yeah, yeah but fashion and yeah even even a DMART has an online presence. DMART has a quick commerce angle, right? These days, they obviously have store is a big thing.
00:11:59
Speaker
They have warehouses. So we have technology for warehouses as well. They have massive logistics network. So we have a transport management system as well. So it's entire suite actually. ah Okay. Okay. Can you break down the various modules in in Find?
00:12:15
Speaker
Yeah, so ah you know ah while we started with the online store friend, then the the store you know technology, in-store technology, things like that. Which is like the POS. Yes, the POS, the Endless Isle, those solutions. Yeah, we used to call it. What is Endless Isle? Let's break down these a little bit. Endless Isle. So let's say you walk into a shoe store today and you're trying on shoes. You could like a particular model, but let's say you're size 9 and it's not there in the store.
00:12:44
Speaker
ah Earlier, before endless aisle and all existed, the store used to say that, you know, come back next weekend, I'll get it ordered from the nearby store, keep it here. You come pick it up, pay then, and then take it take the order, right? With endless aisle, what it allows is that the store rep has access to the entire inventory of the brand across multiple warehouses, stores. So that at that point, when the customer understands that the particular product is not there, he can place an order right then and there itself, and it will get delivered to your house. So that's the simple, you know, in simple terms, what an endless aisle is.
00:13:18
Speaker
ah Then there is obviously... Visibility across ah different in places where inventory is kept. Like 360 degree inventory visibility yes is what that endless aisle is. Okay, got it. Yeah. yes yes and attached to that there is obviously this whole client telling piece uh which is when you know uh you if you're let's say a regular in a particular store each store will have you know a catchment area and the certain set of customers that walk in regularly into that store and certain certain customers who walk in once in a while and things like that so uh what is it that the store rep himself can do
00:13:53
Speaker
to ensure more people walk into a store, especially when he's running an offer. How do you do that communication seamlessly in a single system rather than on like calls or WhatsApp, which will get sort of disintegrated from the existing tech stack that the brand has. So that technology is also, it's all built into one single device, one single screen, and you can run it on an iPad, Android tablet, or even on your phone for that matter. It allows it it actually brings together the point of sale, the endless aisle, and the clientele solution into one application, essentially.
00:14:25
Speaker
So that's sort of the second bit. right Now, before a product sort of comes into a store or gets delivered to a customer, it actually stays in a warehouse, which means that there should be a proper warehouse management system ah that you know ah that connects to your order management system.
00:14:43
Speaker
Your order management system could be you know the the is actually the system that collects all orders from your store friend, from your marketplaces, and even from your stores for that matter, into one interface, essentially. Now, once that order comes in, somebody is looking at that order and you can see, oh, this product was ordered, needs to be delivered.
00:15:03
Speaker
How do I send it to my warehouse? So the warehouse management system is where the order goes for a pickup. And from there, it is integrated to your transport management system because now you're probably depending on other third party logistics players to essentially pick that product up, deliver to a customer or you know or move a lot of inventory from a warehouse to a store and things like that. So the transport management system sort of you know works there.
00:15:29
Speaker
So this is, yeah. You would like be having an API integration with a ship rocket or something like that. Yes, we do have. We have a technician with them. Yes. Okay. Okay. Okay. yeah And what about people who are not working with these tech savvy logistics providers? Like if I'm working with an old school logistics provider?
00:15:46
Speaker
We do have integrations with a lot of smaller partners, players as well. And one of the things that we have realized is that everyone wants to work with you know sort of the best ah players in terms of capabilities and coverage and things like that. Let's say you're starting even a brand in a small town, right? You want Pan India coverage, which obviously the bigger players will be able to you know provide. And then, of course, for the last mile, ah these players themselves have now really good networks where they make use of small time partners in those places as well as their own delivery partners to do that. So the whole journey gets connected that way.
00:16:22
Speaker
So this is the transport management bit. right Then obviously, Once an order is placed, let's say on your website, the customer ah would have questions around where is my order? why is my order not delivered on time and things like that. So this whole customer support piece that comes in e-commerce. So we have sort of built a platform called Kaylee, which is sort of customer support, but with a lot of the help of a lot of AI in it so that there is no burden of having a large customer support team.
00:16:55
Speaker
And most of the times if you see in e-commerce, the customer support is very you know periodic, right? When you're running sales. There's a lot of ticket backlog. Then and in in in sort of dry periods, there isn't much work to do. So this sort of AI system sort of allows these brands to plan for such peak in demands and things like that.
00:17:15
Speaker
That is on the front side. On the back side, we have started now building a platform called Find Create, where we are actually working with a lot of brands in the fashion category to help them design products and get them manufactured.
00:17:32
Speaker
ah with the help over that with a lot of help from AI as well. so me You still have fashion designers, you still have those same ah ah sort of people running the show, but enabled a lot by AI, which means that the timelines are getting crunched significantly. And if you see in fashion, especially, right, things are very, you know, pop culture is very, very um prevalent or strong when it comes to fashion. And the old sort of the system that exists, it's like ah probably a three to five month design cycle for products. How can we sort of compress that design cycle and allow brands to sort of cash in on you know really the latest things that are happening? So that's so the sort of thought process we're going to find create.
00:18:20
Speaker
Now, when you join the whole thing, we have everything from a brand requires from planning their season to designing the season, to getting it manufactured, to getting that product that is manufactured into your warehouses, to getting it listed on your store, in your marketplace, in your own website, and then getting it delivered to the end customer, to supporting the customer queries. So you see the whole chain.
00:18:43
Speaker
We have over the last 14 years built technology for each part of this chain. Okay, fascinating. ah So when you say it starts with planning and manufacturing, this is the find create that you're talking about yeah to plan and manufacture. ah how do How do you make that happen? Like, how does that help a brand?
00:19:04
Speaker
ah So ah let's say ah let's say you're a small brand, ah a D2C brand that is you know starting up. Obviously, there is constraint of minimum order quantity, having a limited team of designers, having a limited team of vendors or the government providers.
00:19:27
Speaker
And this also works a lot because they all work with brands that can provide them full capacity. And with us, the sort of fractional capacity becomes available to these brands. So the first step, how can we augment your current fashion designers, your current design team?
00:19:46
Speaker
to collect more ah to sort sort of collect more signals, whether it is social media reports like WGCN and all those things to allow them to you know design more what you could say collections essentially. So with AI also comes into the picture there, helping you design mood boards, line sheets and things like that. So once that part is done,
00:20:09
Speaker
how do I design, get my tech pack designed? Now there is obviously the design tech pack and the production tech packs. This is where you know you get the whole measurements. it's it's It's a PDF document with all the detailed measurements and things like that of how a garment should be manufactured, which gets passed on to the garment or the manufacturer.
00:20:28
Speaker
Now there, obviously, the problem is that as a brand starting out, I'll have a limited access to these garmenters based on my credit history and things like that. I can only work with a few of them, right? What if we give you capacity, almost like on-demand capacity as a brand to know manufacture products really fast?
00:20:48
Speaker
So that's the sort of, you know, the garmenting as a service layer that comes in. And you give a credit period also? we do give credit periods. That is because we are working with the government, it allows us to have our of accounts there.
00:21:02
Speaker
That's how happens. So that that that's how brands find it you know useful to get it out. And so you would also need to do your own risk underwriting with the brand because you're giving them a credit period.
00:21:15
Speaker
Yes, yes. we We do have to do all those. you know the The other business aspects, you know, sort of remains the same. It's just that for, especially for smaller brands, ah time is money.
00:21:27
Speaker
So how can I get more products out? How can I get better collections out? In that journey, this, you know, sort of compresses the timelines for a brand. Okay. Okay. So, okay. So that's how you help them manufacture. Then once it is manufactured, it goes to a warehouse. So you have a warehouse management,
00:21:44
Speaker
system which helps them manage the warehouse then you have an order management system that order management system is collecting orders from the own store so that own store again you only provide a brand like you have a Shopify like products which helps the brand build their own store do you also have like a unicommerce kind of a product where you connect to all the marketplaces Yes, we call it Find Connect.
00:22:08
Speaker
ah In fact, that was one of the hero products that we used to have back in the days, back in 2016-17. ah Because marketplaces were becoming really popular in India during that decade. right And every brand, even before they ah you know wanted to sort of scale their own online store, they wanted to put their products on marketplaces to get as much demand as they could from these marketplaces. So we actually built out that ah whole layer. So it's like, it's almost like a plumbing, you know, for e-commerce. Right. So we built it out back in 2016, 17. It's one of the hero products that we used to have at that point. We've sort of renamed, rebranded it into something called Find Connect.
00:22:50
Speaker
A lot of brands use that as well today. Yes, we do have that similar cap but capability. I'm a little curious about this space of e-commerce plumbing. Um,
00:23:02
Speaker
I imagine the the marketplaces would have some desire to get the brand owner to come to their own website also and not have everything flow through a Find Connect kind of an intermediary product. So are there restrictions on what you can connect, what the brand owner still needs to log on to his Amazon seller panel or whatever and do um on the Amazon seller panel directly?
00:23:29
Speaker
ah So they obviously can log on to the seller panel to see their order analytics, things like that. But i think I think marketplaces also encourage this sort of ah integrations. If you look at even Amazon has something called Amazon Smart Connect, where they list the vendors that these brands can use.
00:23:48
Speaker
And they are ranked based on no Amazon standards. I think we get ranked number one the last over the last two ah know rankings that were there. So brands and the marketplaces do actively encourage this sort of you know integration layers as well. the fact that so the es the the The brand can do everything from listing a new product to running a sale on it. to whatever photos are to be uploaded, in description, the ah quantity available, etc., etc. yeah What if the brand is using the fulfilled by Amazon the service where Amazon is handling the warehousing and delivery and all that? even then find Still can use it, right? Still you can integrate it. That's the next part of the sort of journey, right? Okay, okay, okay. And ah all the major e-commerce platforms are... like API friendly, they allow you to like even quick commerce, like say a Blinket, Zepto, all of these also are API friendly, like you are able to.
00:24:49
Speaker
I don't think we have any integrations right now with these quick commerce. Okay. They have their own, I think right now they have their own, you know, plates full with their own challenges. I'm sure in the future that might open up, but quick commerce works very, you know, slightly differently in the fact that, you know, these products are already in these dark stores and things like that. So I don't know how, how valuable that level of, you know, integration would be.
00:25:16
Speaker
Okay. Is it that in quick commerce, maybe fashion is not the, like the flagship product, whether it's for you, fashion is your flagship market that you're serving. So maybe that's also another reason. So, you know, what the that's a very interesting question. You know, the whole premise for us, when we pivoted from B2B to B2C, right? This was back in 2016, 17, that time. ah So we built this marketplace.
00:25:46
Speaker
called Find, essentially. And that was actually doing hyperlocal quick fashion. Hyperlocal was the word at that point of time that was sort of in vogue, right? So what we used to do was that because we are delivering directly from brand stores, the products could reach you in probably two hours, three hours. So we used to provide that quick commerce as a service back in that time. Obviously, the logistics network at that point of time was not ready to support that scale of you know operations.
00:26:18
Speaker
Thirdly, I think we we had a feature called find a fit where you know the biggest problem in fashion is fit, right? Online commerce is fit. You buy a product, oh, it doesn't fit me, to return it back.
00:26:30
Speaker
So when customers used to place order on the find app, ah they could place orders for two sizes, essentially. Let's say I'm buying a jeans today. I'm not sure whether I'm a size 34 or 36 in this brand.
00:26:42
Speaker
So I get the option to choose both. The product gets picked up from the store. Both the products come to you. You can try what what's you know what fits you and keep it with you while returning the other product. So we enabled that. And I think to you to you to your question, that's one of the real problems with quick commerce in fashion as well.
00:27:01
Speaker
ah the sizing bit. can you really can Can you really ensure that a purchase is full and final? if If a product is being you know sent to you and you're returning it, the the unit economics really don't work out in the long term.
00:27:18
Speaker
what and like Unlike grocery where you're buying, you're keeping it. You're not returning products. like It's no broken or expired or things like that. So that's one of the things that we found challenging even at that point of time with sort of you know this quick commerce model for fashion. the the When you really look at the unit economics for the logistics or operations costs to be minimal,
00:27:44
Speaker
you need to first of all operate at scale and then you need to also aggregate, be able to sort of aggregate orders before you start you know dispatching them. So that's one challenge that we had in the hyperlocal model. So that's why we also slowly, slowly pivoted to like a pan India model and the advantage remained that you're still getting authentic products. Counterfeit products was also a problem long time back. I think it's fairly solved now in market basis, but earlier that problem existed.
00:28:12
Speaker
because for us uh it is getting directly delivered from the brand store the chances of there's zero chance of you know counterfeit products reaching so yeah fascinating i'll go into that journey uh let me just continue that chain so okay so you have an order management system which collects orders uh even from offline detail you have a poise like a point of sale system which yeah is again giving you an update on inventory requirement and what store needs a replenishment of what SKUs and things like that. And then you have transport management for if the brand is shipping on its own or if it's working with third party logistics companies, all of that integration you have done. And then you have a customer support like AI powered so that customers can chat and find out status or request for a return and
00:29:02
Speaker
probably the chatbot will trigger the return process, stuff like that. So ah we we covered the full spectrum of what Find offers. Okay. So now tell me about the journey. So you mentioned this hyperlocal experiment you did. What did you start with? Let's go back to 2012. What were you doing when the idea came to you?
00:29:24
Speaker
So I was actually doing my master's in you know in interaction design, essentially. ah So that's when i actually met my co-founders, Harsh and Farooq. Both of them are from IIT Bombay. We did not have any overlap in our timings in sort of IIT Bombay. It was Harsh actually who reached out to me saying that, hey, ah I saw that you are you know from IIT Bombay, you are thinking of starting you know something, but we have a couple of ideas we wanted to sort of sit with you and discuss and you know that you have some sort of you know entrepreneur background before that as well as you being a and a design product designer. Let's meet and discuss. So when I met them, we actually discussed three ideas.
00:30:08
Speaker
One was around health tech. ah Second one was around construction, some technology for construction industry and things like that. Because i am a civil engineer, my co-founder Aarug is also civil engineer, at least education-wise. so then And then the third idea was around shopping and retail.
00:30:29
Speaker
Now, at that point of time, I was actually doing a project as part of my know masters on shopper shopping behavior, essentially. So we used to go to places like Alibag and even in Mumbai for that matter, we used to go sit in shops, observe how customers interact with the shopkeeper. have interviews with shopkeepers to understand you know how shopping is actually, commerce is actually done in in small cities as well as in urban cities. So then at that point of time, this idea clicked more for me. And I told them, you know, guys, let's do this. it At least if if if nothing comes out of it, at least I learned little more about you know the whole shopping journey.
00:31:10
Speaker
You write it up as master's project. Yeah, I'll do something like that. So that but that that's what that was the idea. So then then we thought, you know, ah what is it that would be sort of interesting problem to work? So one of the things that we looked at was the in-store shopping experience, right? Has not changed much ever since malls and stores came into existence. It's pretty much shopper going, talking to a shopkeeper or looking at products themselves, deciding to... try it out or not try it out and buy and move on from the store. And this was also the period when the marketplaces sort of, know, exploded in India and they were sort of eating into in-store sort of sales.
00:31:50
Speaker
So we thought, you know, from both from a customer perspective as well as from a brand perspective, is there something interesting and with technology that you can do inside the store that will sort of increase the engagement time for customers, that will give more reasons for the customer to walk into the store,
00:32:07
Speaker
ah So we we we actually designed this application that runs on a large 40-inch touchscreen where there was a model on the screen and you could mix and match clothes on top of the model to see what goes well together before you take it to the trial.
00:32:22
Speaker
ah Then if a product is not there the it will tell you which store it is available in. The first brand that we piloted it was Diesel. ah So we had this large kiosk sort of thing set up inside the Diesel store. And we ourselves sat in the store for almost 30 days to help customers to understand how they are you know using the device and things like that. The second brand that we worked with was Being Human. And the model on the screen was Salman Khan.
00:32:48
Speaker
So that means people got really you know crazy. They were like really engaging with the device so much to an extent that... during like peak weekend sales season, the brands almost had to switch the device off at some stores because people were just hanging around that playing. yeah Yeah, they're just crowding that part of the store. It was more ah the novelty of seeing Salman in various places. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:33:11
Speaker
Exactly. But, you know, that's how a lot of the things also work, right? There is a device and people walking by the store to see, oh, there's Salman Khan. Something is happening there. Let's go and see. You might see a few t-shirts on the way. Might want to talk a little more to the store rep. So, I think top of the funnel, beautiful, it works. This was in 2012 that you got these brands? Yes, this was 2013 because almost, you know, one year passed. So, 2012, 2013, that was the period. Then we deployed it across... And these are all paid pilots? Like you said, you became revenue positive. How much revenue did you do 2013? I think this was around, I don't remember the exact number, but I remember the licensing fee was around 10,000 rupees per store, per device. And most of the store needed only one device. We kept pushing them, you have to have two devices and things like that. But this was sort roughly the number that we worked with at point of time. So this continued for a good one or two years. Then we worked with Anita Dombre. We worked with Global Desi.
00:34:08
Speaker
So we had a similar thing designed for Global Desi and things like that. Brands were loving it ah because, ah you know first of all, it's like, oh, something cool, or something new. It's a technology that they are doing. It's not that expensive for that matter. But where we struggled was that ah these touchscreen technology and devices were really expensive at that point of time. Now you have large devices, you know you can get it for really expensive cost effective methods, right? But we were operating at a smaller scale, which means that there's no scale based pricing that advantages that we could get at that point of time. So each, I think each device cost close to around 50,000 rupees.
00:34:48
Speaker
Now for a brand to invest that much amount upfront on a sort of a POC level concept became a real challenge. So in most of the cases, we had to sort of take the cost of the device upfront, then you break even over four five months of the brand paying us, right?
00:35:04
Speaker
So that became one challenge. Second challenge was that because of this device is a very interactive piece, it required almost like a like a central positioning in the store for people to see, um sometimes closer to trial rooms or wherever wherever the traffic sort of is, right? which means that the store almost had to be redesigned around the device in terms of this visual merchandising that stores do.
00:35:29
Speaker
In terms of even plug points, the stores had to no give because these devices obviously needed power and you can't have this know random wires passing through the store and things like that. So that became like another challenge for every store became like a challenge to you know sort of implement.
00:35:46
Speaker
Thirdly, while these devices that we had has it had its own memory and things like that, which means that it could load the application on the device, but any sort of update you wanted in terms of products and inventory and things like that had to be like a cloud update, ah which means that the in-store internet needs to be really good.
00:36:06
Speaker
This is pre-Jio era. Internet was not that you know ah widely available. Most of the stores had very poor connections and things like that. So that became another sort of challenge. So because of these, the the sort of ambition that we had as founders when we were starting out, when we were young, and this was the time when, you know,
00:36:26
Speaker
tiger global and all those people started pumping in money into the country. You had you had success stories of housing, tiny owl, and all these companies raising truckloads of money. A lot of them were based out of palai Mumbai and you know things like that. So we thought, you know this is not going as fast as we would like it to go as founders. What else can we do with this technology that we built?
00:36:49
Speaker
So because we were working with a few of these big brands, we had built in and we were also working with, I think, Madara Group, Arvin. And, you know, so we we had built some sort of trust with these brands. So we built entry integrations into most of these brands, which means that we knew which product is available in which quantity, in which store in the country.
00:37:08
Speaker
That's very sacrosanct data when it comes to so retail, right? So we thought, you know, what if we build a mobile app? that allows someone, let's say sitting in a tier two, tier three town in India to shop from a diesel store in Mumbai.
00:37:24
Speaker
that is something that is not enabled currently, right? Of course, you can shop online and things like that. But this sort of experience of having that feeling of the product is going to come directly to me from the store, which means that it's not some carton that is packed. You will have that cover that you usually... Diesel bag. Yeah, diesel bag and things like that packed along with your order. So it gives that whole sort of feeling for the customer as well, especially if they're very brand conscious and things like that. But this was...
00:37:54
Speaker
You first did hyperlocal you first did this tier 2, enabling tier 2? No, no. we We started with the hyperlocal thing because we our launch sort of strategy was that let's do this in Mumbai, perfect it in Mumbai before we move pan-India. So in Mumbai, when we are thinking of it, it had that hyperlocal game also because...
00:38:15
Speaker
If nothing else, we would ourselves take a scooter and go and deliver the order. So that was the mindset at that point of time. So the Hyperlocal was... yeah Which year is this when you launched the Hyperlocal? So before this, your product was called ShopSense.
00:38:28
Speaker
Yes. The company name is still ShopSense. That particular product was called ShopSense Match. Where you're mixing and matching clothes on top of the model. It was called ShopSense Match. ah Then in 2015, 2016... And Match was not just the matching, but also endless aisle.
00:38:43
Speaker
Yes, the endless I'll get us. So so that that that that's very actually interesting. on you when we We actually worked then with ah ah one of the franchisee partners of Nike. And that was mostly shoes and things like that. right So there's no matching that is happening. ah So for them, we sort of tweak the solution to more of an endless aisle solution, which means that you don't need a large screen. You can put it on an iPad or a phone as well. So that was the birth of that, you know, endless aisle sort of journey for us. So that also happened in between 2012 to 2015. So that sort of gave us ideas around how it will look on a mobile screen and then the eventual sort of transition from that into the mobile app. So we used to call that product, the mobile version of this thing called ShopSense Explore.
00:39:36
Speaker
At that point of time, we still had the ShopSense name. It was called Explore. From Explore, it became Find, essentially. we realized that you know when you go to a b2c journey the product name needs to be and it was the era where people were four letter names were all in vogue right so we said what can we find what can we find is this is a cool name so explore became almost like uh find became an extension of know that explore name and it sounded cool it had that f-i-n-d sort of a spelling as well so that's how we started obviously we didn't get the domain initially 2016 you launched the find app yes yes okay and what was your revenue by that time
00:40:14
Speaker
annual revenue rough rough estimate? I'm again guessing it would have been like a crore or so. Okay. Less than that probably. And had you raised funds by then?
00:40:25
Speaker
Yeah, we had raised money from k capital, IFL and all of that point of time. Okay. How much had you raised? oh Again, rough estimate. Rough estimate would be probably I think around a million or so, I think. okay And there were obviously some bridge rounds and all in between. So the amount was based on that.
00:40:51
Speaker
okay Yeah. So that's how it was. And then when the find sort of journey came about, So the first thing was to get the name right. And then obviously we started with Mumbai and the hyperlocal story initially, the find a fit feature that I spoke about, right? Getting two products, a product of you know two sizes delivered to your house and things like that.
00:41:15
Speaker
That went on ah decently well. Some traction in terms of people you know wanting to ah shop from nearby stores or get the products directly from the store, having this find a feature find a fit feature and all.
00:41:33
Speaker
We saw some product market fit, I would say, in Mumbai. And we said, here, we are playing too safe, too small. Let's just open up all the PIN codes and see what happens, what will happen.
00:41:45
Speaker
so And this was 2016 only? This was 2016, 2017. This is almost like transitioning between. The years are getting blurred in my mind now. 10 years. So yeah, 2016, 2017, we started opening it up to all the PIN codes. Then that means that you're almost going now. One question before we come to the Pan India journey.
00:42:11
Speaker
Most e-commerce companies have ah like a transaction-based... monetization like if you sell product worth 100 rupees the e-commerce platform keeps 30 rupees for example was it similar for you with find or Yeah, it's a commission based model. Okay.
00:42:25
Speaker
Yeah, there it is purely like a marketplace commission that currently also operates in all the marketplaces. That was the model, revenue model. And it was easy for us. One of the problems with ShopSense Match was that right ah while we had data of the in-store sales before and after the device, and we could clearly see a 10-12% uplift.
00:42:46
Speaker
it was difficult to convince a brand because the transaction did not happen on the device. Transactions are happening on the point of sale system. Then secondly, we are not ah adding, you know, there's a lot of overlap between the marketing a brand does to get customers into the store.
00:43:04
Speaker
with you know your device accounting for some top of the funnel. So that's a hard lesson we learned during that time. You have to sit on the transaction layer. okay that there There are no two ways about it. Unless you sit on the transaction layer, all these questions, all these you know disputes can come up later. And we were very clear with the find evolution also. right We have to, the transaction needs to completely happen on the device. And then just like any other marketplace, the reconciliation with the brand happens. at a later stage. So so that was a model for, you know, for a store, they weren't sure if this is a must have or a good to have, because they couldn't clearly attribute that I got more sales because of this match ah device, which I have in my store. Absolutely. You know, you could they could be running some promotions also in the store. And it's very difficult to clearly attribute. And then obviously there is a cost also attached to the device, right? So then that becomes like a question mark.
00:43:58
Speaker
And but were you seeing churn? Like, What was like typically the retention period with customers who took that match product?
00:44:07
Speaker
I don't think we saw churn to that extent. But growth was hard to come by. Growth was was slow. That was the main reason. Churn wasn't much of a problem. Even if they say, ah you know, this massive slash device is a problem, the endless island solution becomes the next step for them to pick up. yeah So I don't think there was any churn. And there were hardly any sort of, I would say, competition in the space also for brands. yeah There were many choices for the brands also to go for, right? So they were in high churn and Everyone liked it.
00:44:38
Speaker
It's just a matter of... It was hard yeah so Yeah. So in the find a sort of journey, so the hyperlocal bit, from there we started expanding. you know This is too small for us. Let's rapidly sort of expand to all the pin codes that are available. And we just opened up one day how big was your catalog because with e-commerce like the size of catalog matters right when so how many brands were you selling through this fight now yeah the these were the challenges that you know we used to have even i think when we opened up probably had some
00:45:15
Speaker
20 odd brands, then we scaled it up really fast to 100. hundred So it was like a learning journey for us also because because we were hyperlocal initially, those brands needed to to have some presence in Mumbai. And stores and all were like something that... D2C brand, D2C thing came very recently in India, right? There were very few major brands in the country. So from there, you know, we we started expanding from 20 to then later to 100 brands and then to 250 odd brands.
00:45:44
Speaker
Very quickly, we were able to do that because brands... This like an additional a sales channel also for the brands. So that we were able to do the moment we went sort of pan-India, essentially.
00:45:55
Speaker
So pan-India, the story was essentially...
00:46:01
Speaker
you know, enabling, like I said, right, somebody sitting in a tier two town to shop from a brand store based out of Mumbai or Delhi. That was very interesting for a lot of customers. But very quickly, we learned that, you know, the customers and running a marketplace is really challenging, really tough.
00:46:20
Speaker
ah There is this whole cold start problem, like the question you asked, right, how many brands should you start with? what comes first, the supply or the demand, both need to scale almost at same time. The brands won't bother listing on small platform because they'll ask you, how many orders can I get in a month from here? Exactly.
00:46:36
Speaker
and And that, i mean you need to almost see to that. you need like With a 1 million fundraise, there's no way you could have made that happen. Yes, yes, yes. And then obviously, based on that sort of journey and whatever expansion we did, we were able to raise our CDC, I think which was close to around $10 million dollars at that time. That is when Google also invested along with, I think, them. So we were all the first one of the first investments.
00:47:00
Speaker
of google in india they obviously had a thesis of next billion users and all at that point of time so that was a thesis and of their investment essentially uh but yeah this cold shot problem right of running a marketplace of getting both supply and demand up at the same time what we could get the supply thing up really fast transfer very patient with us um while we you know set up the demand side but the demand in India is very sort of and I think enough people have sliced and diced what is the paying you know capacity what is that India 1 India 2 India 3 storey and things like that right ah so ah but even in India 1 also there is a lot of a lot of
00:47:44
Speaker
sort of you know importance given to discounts and things like that everyone loves discount and that became a default expectation of the customer ah now that requires a lot more capital and people are pumping in so much money into that discounting and you were spending on the logistics also like the delivery and all was yours Yeah, the delivery we had delivery partners. We had integration with delivery partners. yeah, obviously we need to pay them. The cost was ours. You spent on the pickup, the drop out of your commission that you were earning. Yes, yes, absolutely. Unless you are at scale, that every transaction would have been a loss-making transaction.
00:48:25
Speaker
Yeah, it it was initially it was loss making. Then the journey became, you know, we need to get it somehow net zero, at least ah from a CM2 perspective. At different points, we were able to get it at CM2. But the moment you want to scale it, you need to pump in more money. So that's just standard, you know, why a lot of consumers or marketplaces have trouble scaling. this Typical sort of journey that we also, you know, went through. and We did it fairly for good two, three years. And then I think around 2018, things started changing rapidly in retail.
00:49:04
Speaker
Jack Ma had this concept called new retail, which was like a version of all our attempts till then, failed attempts or whatever you want to call it, till then. It's essentially omnichannel retail. It's not one channel, it's multiple channel inventory needs to be across you know multiple channels.
00:49:24
Speaker
ah channels and things like that so we were already building on that sort of concept called the new retail and i think for a brief period of time in basically pre twenty eighteen organizations would be in silos like say ah like say van hussein would have a separate team for ah stores and it would have a separate team for the online sales and ah the inventories for both these teams would not necessarily be visible to each other. like it was a silo based kind of an organization. structure which was Yes. Especially when we started in 2012, it was a much, much bigger silo.
00:50:01
Speaker
ah A lot of the brands still operate in that model because it allows them to attribute P&L and things like that much more easily to each of those channels.
00:50:13
Speaker
Uh, But I think over the last few years, and especially i think I think that that's what happens when a lot of brands start out. because it's also mentally easy for them to work, you know divide this into silos, look at P&L separately and things like that. And I think even with marketplaces now with the models like FBA and all, it's almost like you give out that inventory and then you don't have access to that inventory for any other channel for that matter. ah So i think I think that's sort of how everyone evolved naturally to a point where you know if a product is not selling in a store,
00:50:48
Speaker
then an online order comes for it. And if it's not that in my warehouse, I should be able to deliver it from my store. right Getting a product to store is also a lot of more expenses get attached to that. Right. So that's that's one of the reasons why brands are also reluctant to sell from in-store inventory. But, you know, based on the demand for the products, you could have a much more flexible strategy.
00:51:12
Speaker
If a particular category of products, you can as well serve it from the stores. So, yeah, so 2018, we were speaking about the whole of, you know, new retail sort of concept. And I think ah around that time,
00:51:27
Speaker
ah even Reliance for that battle
00:51:32
Speaker
would I have been thinking about this GeoMart, the whole sort of e-commerce play that they were also having. i think for a brief period, towards the end of 2018, 2019, we also became a really hot startup that has solved the you know ah multiple problems in retail. So that's when Reliance started speaking to us. And when they started speaking to us, they realized that... What was your revenue at that time when Reliance started speaking to you? you I think yearly, it would have been around five or so.
00:52:01
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. It was not a big number. so The interest from Reliance was ah that this is, I'm buying a marketplace, like say I'm buying a Snapdeal, I'm buying a future Snapdeal Flipkart, or was it that I'm buying the tech stack?
00:52:18
Speaker
Tech stack. Okay. It's a tech stack. it's It's the fact that when you actually deeply look into our business, you when you you you you realize that it's not just while the find.com and the marketplace thing was what was visible because Reliance was already working with us. Reliance Brands Limited was already working with us. They already knew what technology stack that we have in the back Okay, so Reliance Brands, what is all the brands which Reliance Brands operates?
00:52:48
Speaker
uh diesel uh super dry families uh the whole set of if you walk into let's say uh the the geo world drive uh the mall in bkc all the brands that you see there are you know under the lines umbrella so they have the whole vast collection of brands okay okay ah So they were already working with us. One of the teams, Lance Brands, was already working with us. So they were aware of our depth in terms of technology and things and like And were working for both the marketplace and the in-store match technology and the endless technology. Yes.
00:53:22
Speaker
They were working for both. So they knew this is a solid company. So there wasn't any requirement for any other reference check in terms of tech capabilities. It's already deployed. It's already tested at scale and things like that. So they were more than willing to sort of, you know, talk to us.
00:53:39
Speaker
So that's how that sort of, you know, strategic investment came about, which means that all the existing investors exited and it's just Reliance and his founders on the capital.
00:53:51
Speaker
How much is stake is with Reliance? It's around 87%. Okay. And 13% is with the founders? The founders. Founders or ESOPs or something like that? Most founders, yes. Mostly founders. Okay. Okay. Got it. Okay. So how did life change post Reliance acquisition?
00:54:09
Speaker
So I think the biggest...
00:54:14
Speaker
learning right you're talking about one of the largest employees in the country you one of the oldest companies in the country and here we are like a startup and move fast and break things attitude people uh it took us a good year to sort of get culturally adapt both ways when people are dealing from land side to us and us today it took us a good one year to you know figure out how to work with each other the ways of working of each of those enterprises so the ah the e-commerce part of it reliance wanted that to be shut down i'm i'm assuming they didn't have interest in it because i was competing they already had geomart Yeah, they they they did not have any particular interest in that ah the the e ecommo the marketplace. voila It made no sense to invest in two separate places. But the tech stack that allowed a marketplace to be built, very much of interest. essential And Adio is the Reliance online marketplace for a fashion that had already launched by then?
00:55:17
Speaker
Yeah, it was there. Yeah. Okay. RGO was also there. Okay. Okay. Okay. So Reliance already had these e-commerce places. All of the places. Yeah. It made no sense to. It made absolutely no sense to sort of pay for the same customer twice or thrice. Right. And so. What was the valuation which Reliance brought you out at?
00:55:38
Speaker
I think around 300. three hundred Yeah. is 300 odd crore valuation. uh was it uh like did the investors make money the yeah yeah yeah i think the uh i can tell you in terms of multiples i think the earliest investors is made around atex which was a decent outcome in a market that was just developing right ipos and all started happening very recently post-covid and things like that the the exit for investors at that point was either mna uh or i don't know what it was like we're all hoping that the ipo market will know develop but uh M&A was the best choice yeah for investors in that way. It's a very decent outcome for a Reliance acquisition. Reliance is famously a bargain hunter, right? so I mean, I think all companies are that scale.
00:56:25
Speaker
Yeah, true, true, truth true. yeah Okay, amazing. so okay So then essentially the vision for you and Reliance combined vision is then that all the Reliance brands, all their online platforms ah be powered by the fine technology.
00:56:42
Speaker
Yes. Okay. Yes. So, it what you know it gave ah while we figured out our ways of working. Then but but both sort of teams became comfortable working with each other.
00:56:56
Speaker
Then the build phase sort of started. While at that point of time, our text tag was limited to ah some bits of in-store, some bits of the text tag required run a marketplace.
00:57:13
Speaker
the whole sort of IP explosion. within find happened in the last sort of you know six years. Because we started, when we started working with Reliance Retail, we understood that, well, there is this case, this edge case, this use case, this format, this sort of s SOP in that format. How do you build a platform that serves all those purposes? And then soon enough, you realize... You ought to see scale, basically. like Like the advantage of working within Reliance the access to scale. You would have never seen that scale if you had continued ah as a standalone entity.
00:57:44
Speaker
But here now... There is a mandate from Reliance headquarters for all the brands to adopt your technology. So those brands would be coming and telling you, I need this feature, I need that, or solve this problem, solve that problem. And so you were able to actually see how Indian retail works and solve it at scale. Absolutely. Absolutely. At scale, how things work is, you know, post-Liance only, you know, sort of we learned it. And and that allowed us to build a lot more, a lot faster also in very compressed timelines because most of the cases, the releases were you know really fast because they were almost going to production with multiple things at that time. And we were asked to build, you know you know, what else can find provide to make this better. So that's how a lot of the technology started getting adopted. And then over the six years, we went from just these limited technologies to a WMS system, to a TMS system.
00:58:38
Speaker
to the find create that I spoke about right now. So all the the complete tech stack got built and tested at scale in the last sort of you know six years, which then allowed us to move to the next part of the journey, which is the platform has been built. You're already working with the largest retailer in the country.
00:58:58
Speaker
the The gap between the largest and the next is so huge. your market then naturally is outside India. How do you take this technology globally? So that started happening towards the end of 2022. Okay.
00:59:11
Speaker
Okay. okay How does the the price negotiation happen when you are part of the, when when the customer is also your owner in a way? ah for You're talking about the... Yeah. but I mean, you're a technology service provider to Reliance, which is also your parent company. How how did the pricing happen? Like...
00:59:32
Speaker
No, I think, you know, Reliance is pretty fair in terms of because this pricing, right? Whatever other vendors also you speak to, you get a benchmark of what pricing happens. So, ah I mean, ah of course, being, you know, companies under the same sort of parent entity, the arms length pricing and things that happen. But yeah, it's it's pretty fair and transparent okay for us.
00:59:56
Speaker
ah What all ah within the Reliance framework, within the Reliance ecosystem is powered by Find. Like say on Reliance retail, the point of sale software is that powered by Find? say the RGO marketplace or just just help me understand like within the ecosystem, where all are you powering the tech?
01:00:18
Speaker
So I think um a lot of the store friends and technology that powers Reliance Digital ah is ours, is Find, you know, Find plus Jio essentially. We call it actually Jio Commerce Platform because it's almost like running a separate instance of your commerce platform.
01:00:40
Speaker
So, GeoCommerce is like a white-labeled find. It's essentially built-in-built. It's a white-labeled find plus a lot of their inputs and additions to support the GeoTech stack, essentially. So, that's how that bit works. So, Reliance Digital uses a lot. GeoMart Digital, there is like a B2B whole platform for electronics sales and things like that. That's also running on GeoCommerce platform.
01:01:05
Speaker
Okay. ah then So, GeoMart Digital is for retailers to buy inventory and things like that. Then, even for GeoMart and all, it runs on the GeoCommerce platform. So, we don't now, there's no distribution between Find or, you know, Geo anymore. It's GeoCommerce platform. That's how it's sort of built.
01:01:32
Speaker
That's how it's sort of run. so look yeah anything and everything i think uh if there is a technology that is built on geocommerce platform then it gets used within the ecosystem it's hardly any requirement now for probably external vendors i would say for technology so geocommerce platform is used for reliance the the digital reliance digital which is like their electronics and accessories business where else is geocommerce used uh as a geo uh even netmets you know netmets is also a part of yes yes yes in that also it's used the pharma yeah the pharma and then a lot of storefronts most of the storefronts of reliance brands limited if you go to to uh uh
01:02:19
Speaker
diesel all answer space the complete if you just go to lines brands limited and see the list of brands there all of them run on geocommerce platform okay okay okay got it got it okay okay so this is uh so now as far as Indian retail is concerned you've built like a ah battle tested tech stack uh what next after that so by 2022 you said you you you built all of this out so since then what have you been doing So ah one of the things we did was the platform is now built out and tested at scale.
01:02:56
Speaker
ah Where else can we look at globally to take this platform? By 2022, your revenue was largely reliance driven, right? like A lot. of yeah Yeah, I would say. yeah large Because you're serving one use case, which is so large. There's enough. I mean, there's so much opportunity there. Yeah, enough and more work to keep us all busy, essentially. yeah But yeah, so then what ended up happening is that we started looking globally.
01:03:21
Speaker
the Obviously, the extension was to look best. US, UK were all more probably the markets for us to also go out. But we wanted to sort of test it some at some place closer to home, which is when you know the Middle East strategy started evolving. And when we started having conversations with the retailers there, one of the advantages was a lot of people who were working, especially the tech organizations within these retailers and brands,
01:03:51
Speaker
ah had some Indian connection where they moved from India to the Middle East or they were already working with Indian brands, they already worked with Lions and all those. so So it made more sense for us to sort of do Middle East first, sort of polish our pitch, sort of ensure that you know we are ready for this sort of global game. It also required the platform to be ready in terms of having more you know integrations with the local logistics players there, the local payment gateways there and things like that. So that's how that Middle East made more sense for us to do first.
01:04:30
Speaker
Started, I think, working with a few groups like FNAC, Rivoli, ah some smaller names, some bigger names and things like that with in Middle East first.
01:04:43
Speaker
um Then from Middle East what ends up happening is that you that the same brand houses or retail houses would have business in let's say in Africa also.
01:04:54
Speaker
So you get that introduced to those partners there. Then you start working, you get entered into markets, probably with not like, okay, i let me have a strategy for this market. It's more like reference. Let's build it. Let's have some reference clients in each of these markets and see how that markets develop over the period of time. That's also how we sort of, you know, ended up with in Southeast Asia also, so ah where you're working with few groups like MAP, Superindo.
01:05:24
Speaker
These are few clients that we are sort of you know working with. nos I wouldn't quote their names because some of them are like in process and things like that. But okay you know that's how it's sort of the journey sort of worked for us. And we realized...
01:05:36
Speaker
Middle East, Southeast Asia, fairly doable, shorter flights. People can fly in, fly out and things like that. are And then i think this year we said, key okay, this is good. We have sort of polished our pitches. We have polished how we should deal with you know international brands and international customers.
01:05:55
Speaker
Now let's really start moving a little more west. So then UK became sort of the natural choice. ah It's not just a larger retail market, but also gives you...
01:06:08
Speaker
access to Europe as well as access to sort of, you know, US. As well later on, whenever we want to move, but we don't have like a US GTM in motion at this point of time. But UK became sort of the next market that we want to expand to. I think of the last quarter, we've been working with a few GTM partners to get that motion rolling essentially.
01:06:32
Speaker
And you're going after to brands there or retailers there? um So, again, it's ah it's it's sort of a mix. Okay. It's sort of a, there are, you know, the large groups ah like, you know, Tesco's and Marks & Spencer's of the world there. There are smaller brands, and a lot of smaller, like, you know, brands like Boohoo and things like that. So, that we've created a lot of sort of a lead list for us to go after at this point of time. The beauty is that
01:07:06
Speaker
Whether it is an enterprise or a small brand, the technology is sort of tested. So we are not really constrained by you know the size of customer that we can sort of sell at this point.
01:07:18
Speaker
Plus the Reliance parentage would also be opening doors. Like Reliance owns Hamlet, if I'm not mistaken, which is again UK based and the M&S franchise in India is again run by Reliance. So, okay. okay yeah Absolutely. It opens a lot of doors for us.
01:07:34
Speaker
Is there significant global revenue right now? Like what percentage of revenue is non-India? it would be very less. Early days. Yeah, very early days to even call it her decent percentage. Sub 10% currently, I guess. Okay, okay, okay. Understood. Okay. So, ah you know, what is the, ah you know, like ChatGPT is trying to make a shopping happen within ChatGPT. A lot of online shopping behavior might change where brands may not necessarily need shopfronts as much but have a way to work with these AI models where their products are discovered by ChatGPT. If I'm looking for a pair of hiking boots in brown color, I might just go to ChatGPT and do my entire transaction there. how does How do you see retail shaping up now with all of these agentic AI coming in and ah ah AI platforms also getting into the space?
01:08:36
Speaker
Yeah, so I think... of shopping within, let's say, a ChatGPT app and all, right?
01:08:47
Speaker
it's It's almost like having a super app. A lot of things that ChatGPT does or Claude or any of these you know platforms do. Bringing your whole shopping you know history also into that somehow doesn't feel very very natural. It can help in the discovery phase and all, but the transaction then having to go to another app to finish the transaction and all, that's sort of the journey at this point of time.
01:09:16
Speaker
What will happen probably is that this whole technology that is provided by these LLMs essentially becomes one more layer in the tech stack for any e-commerce company, which means that if, and I i really believe that the shopping behavior is going to change a little bit in terms of conversational commerce, whether it is chat and buy or speak, talk and buy and things like that.
01:09:45
Speaker
And definitely these, um the chat GPT of the world are going to sort of create that behavioral change. As a brand, are you ready to provide that same experience on your own website, on your own mobile app?
01:10:00
Speaker
That's where a platform like Find is going to sort of help you enable that. the the while the While the technology looks like simple chat and buy, the whole journey of shopping through conversations can be designed much better than like a general chat platform would solve for. So that's where I think platforms like Find is going to help you.
01:10:26
Speaker
So as a, you know, as somebody who specializes in interaction design, product design, how do you see that journey being better within a, like within a retail platform versus just ah going through ChatGPT, the chat and via journey.
01:10:44
Speaker
I think a lot of the lot of the need-based shopping, whether it is groceries and things like that, where you really don't need to see the product image and all. Like if you're buying Ashravad Atta 5kg every month or every this thing, you really don't need to see the product. It could be just an instruction. You know, i had these products I've ordered, they've run out, please place an order.
01:11:07
Speaker
that the journey is done. But any of those other want-based shopping, especially for fashion and things like that, there is that sort of foraging behavior. Especially there is a lot of difference between how men and women shop. Like men would be more of this this is done, right? Clear filters. Yeah, clear filters, a 10-minute session. Of course, your journey then that means that inside that conversational commerce, it also understands your shopping behavior and tunes your journey for that faster sort of checkout compared to women who would like to see more products. So how how do you visually then represent within a chat interface ah instead of having the small, small double or squares?
01:11:50
Speaker
ah How do you present it in a way that is more visually appealing to buy 50,000 rupee bag? right You really don't want to see a small picture of that and end up you of buying that. You'll have more questions and things like that. You want to see more. you want to Also that the the whole dopamine hit comes when you go through that whole journey.
01:12:10
Speaker
ah So I think i think ah that conversational experience design will become much more critical. And unless it is one of ah the only problems that a company sits and solves,
01:12:27
Speaker
It'll get solved in a very generic sort of fashion and that doesn't you know work out. And so when you look at these other apps, they will have hundreds of such cases that they would want to solve across industries, right?
01:12:41
Speaker
Then you'll get an average solution versus something that is custom built for shopping or commerce. So the dopamine hit which you get with offline shopping, how do you help brands replicate that online?
01:12:55
Speaker
by virtue of product?
01:12:59
Speaker
i think the Touch and feel aspect can never be you know replicated. That has always been ah one of the things that people who love offline shopping used to say, oh, this is all good, but I never shop online because I would like to touch and feel. That's okay. there is a You can group those customers into multiple groups. They'll never come online to shop. And no matter what sort of experience you give, it's impossible. The hardware limits you to certain experience, certain thing that is there, right? So you can't get those customers anyways to shop online.
01:13:31
Speaker
The way it works in terms of online shopping is that the sort of pathways that a user takes the whole shopping journey where, oh, I like a few products.
01:13:45
Speaker
Should I wishlist them? Now to share it with my friends. I want to have their opinions. Can you get all that journey in one flow where you are sort of group shopping plus this thing? And now if you see that ah even charging really is a feature of group chats and things like that. So can I get all those sort of experiences designed around the current journeys that happen outside the app?
01:14:09
Speaker
what what What do you do these days? right you You have you wish listed a few items and you want to share it with your wife or girlfriend, boyfriend, whoever it is. It's share to WhatsApp, ask for opinion. The whole conversation happens in WhatsApp. Then you come back and then you place an order and things like that. Can I now bring that conversation within my shopping app to sort of you know complete the journey within the app? So I think those are the sort of opportunities that are there. I don't think anyone has solved it yet.
01:14:37
Speaker
I think Flipkart tried this kind of a thing, this social... I don't know if you'll call it social... Again, that time, the technology for that LLMs and those things probably did not exist. And it never felt really smooth. required yes it you know They try to certainly take one journey that is happening outside of their app, inside the app. That's probably not how it needs to be much more seamlessly sort of integrated into the flows and things like that. And and honestly, write ah with these LLMs and all, a lot of the a lot of the failed attempts, even for us, ShopSense match days, right where you had the mixing and matching of clothes, that is completely manually done in terms of cleaning the backgrounds and things like that.
01:15:23
Speaker
Today, you have models like Nano, Badhana, and all that. You just have to give your photo, give two products. show me the try on right it's it's become those ideas that failed are now perfectly executable now with a one person developer team so i think that's how uh the whole you know journey is changing now and terms do you offer this like ah this nano varana powered like try on kind of a feature so we have a platform called pixel bin uh so go to pixel bin.io you can actually see that it's more of a chat and do things on the image. We have not yet gotten that into the whole know commerce sort of ah pipeline. That's also in our sort of roadmap, essentially. How do you enable that now? Because these models are becoming really powerful. Like the Nano Banana, the latest release is so good.
01:16:14
Speaker
What will happen like ah six months down the line, the next release could be even more yeah sort of powerful. So true. It's very fast moving. So you know as the head of product, um what ah what is really your role? like like What are you spending your time doing?
01:16:31
Speaker
well I'm not, there's there are no title called head of product. It probably started as like a product. high for so Like within the founding team, you are the guy who looks after product, right? Yes, the product design bit. Yes. So what, you know, initially the way it used to work between the three of us was that Harsh was the sales guy. Farooq is the the engineer plus the visionary a person. And I'm like the design and the product design sort of guy. Yeah. That's how it used to work. And even now for that matter, ah when we started, ah we had me looking more at the product design and the general design. we had one guy looking at the UI design, one person for graphic design, one person for motion design. That's how the team was structured. Now the team has grown to almost like 100 odd designers, which includes you know product, graphic and
01:17:24
Speaker
motion design, right? So my role is now to actually enable these teams to also think at a sort of a higher level rather than just thinking, oh, my my my job is to design this one UI.
01:17:40
Speaker
How do you fit into the whole sort of, you know, the UI you design, how does it fit into the whole sort of the user journey or the user experience? Post that, once the product all gets released,
01:17:52
Speaker
Are you as a designer going and actually looking at the analytics? Are you going looking at the heat map data? Are you informing your design decisions post release with you know the customer data that you know sort of collect? So my sort of role now has morphed into more of that sort of direction setting.
01:18:11
Speaker
There are few cases where i get involved at a product design level, especially for newer products. Let's say for like FindCreate that we spoke about initially, I really get into the UI bit of it. ah That's also when I also feel more of in my natural domain. It's sort of, I've been tuned and wired since was 10, 15 15.
01:18:35
Speaker
actually look at design design of things right so yeah that's how sort of my role so it's pretty floating most of the things when i know the team is really good at it the team can run with it i don't even get involved it other than sort of a direction level then for new platforms and all i feel where i can add more value i get it involved even at a design level how do you judge who has that innate ability to be a good product designer are there things you look for during interviewing people? Because I'm sure it's not like it's not like a trainable skill that anybody can become a product designer. There needs to be some amount of innate talent, I feel, for a creative domain like design. So how do you judge that?
01:19:24
Speaker
I think...
01:19:28
Speaker
Portfolio itself is one of the first thing that can be. There are two aspects, right, for any product designer. One is their design skill, their ability to do good UI design.
01:19:46
Speaker
No matter how well you are at ah you know product thinking, strategy thinking and all of the end UI looks like 2000 era UI, it doesn't help. So that skill needs to be judged purely based on your portfolio.
01:20:01
Speaker
ah the more important aspect. What do you look for in a portfolio? Let me just zoom in here before I come to the other scale. Yeah. So I think Like attention to detail or like use of combination of colors and balances, balancing the elements. I think sort of everything. Okay. Most importantly, I try to see whether they have done something different from that is already existing out there in terms of UI and things like that. Okay. It might not always be the best solution, but have they at least attempted doing something different? Some first principles thinking.
01:20:43
Speaker
Yeah, because because I mean, these days, even these, saw the LLMs are becoming really good at generating UI. And if you look at a lot of the new wide coded products, everything looks pretty much, you know, the same. It works. It works. i mean, probably if if your end goal is to ensure that it just works, then yeah, that that helps, right?
01:21:04
Speaker
But have you really brought in any of your human lived experience into these ah products. that's That's what you look at. i mean Otherwise, why do you need a human to even do that? right Right. So that's something. and and And then probably it's like a set of filters that have formed over the years. Something you probably can't even articulate. It's certain signals that you see and immediately, oh, this is how the person thinks about a problem. This is how they think about solving the problem. That sort of immediately connects. So it as ah after looking at that that portfolio, did it fire any of those signals in my brain?
01:21:44
Speaker
That becomes like a really good sort of filter. And it's very very i mean abstract. And we have done multiple, honestly, we've done multiple versions of this over over the last 14 years where you create try to create scorecards but the scores are arbitrary what is it what is 4 versus 4.5 out of 5 right pretty arbitrary then essentially it's something that you were writing down it's a human judgment okay yeah there are a lot of human judgment that happens at that okay Then when it comes to real conversations, when you are sitting across the table and doing these interviews, ah and and a lot of the products what ends up happening is that ah they they they're never designed in silos or anything. There are a lot of people contributing to a design discussion.
01:22:33
Speaker
they might have had managers who were very hands-on, you know, arriving at a solution. So those things really come out when you actually ask few questions around, you know, the product, why this was done, why
Empathy in Design: A Crucial Skill
01:22:47
Speaker
this was made. And as the answers keep coming back, oh, my manager said that, my manager wanted that, oh, this is how it worked and all. That shows that you've not probably, you know, thought about this independently or you even agreed with some of those ah design decisions. so as You want someone who's putting himself in the shoes of the customer and using first principles thinking to make Absolutely. Absolutely. Because a lot of the time, and and and this is something also I've seen with a lot of product designers, right?
01:23:15
Speaker
They're themselves. not power users of things that they design also. Once the product goes out, are they really using these products ah themselves? Of course, if you're building, let's say, a backend, some back office thing for a retailer, you really ah don't have that use case to use that product, but you know still trying to put yourself in the customer's shoe and trying to find out ah reasons to use that product and really you know end up using that, that gives you sort of more insights.
01:23:46
Speaker
So that empathy is like a big absolutely big quality you are looking for in a designer. Yeah, they are they are they really putting themselves in the customer's shoe?
01:23:57
Speaker
Are they taking decisions or are they actually optimizing things for the customer? And that's one of the sort of rules that I have. When you are building or designing a product, you only optimize for the end customer.
01:24:11
Speaker
You don't optimize for your engineering teams capabilities or bandwidth or your design teams, you know, ah need to try out some new design tool or some new new design language. You only optimize for the end customer.
01:24:25
Speaker
So your ideal approach would be to ask someone like this design that you made, why did you design it this way? And what you want to hear is empathy for customer in the answer of why did I design it this way?
01:24:38
Speaker
Yes, empathy empathy for the customer. ah And have they really thought through why something was done or made? Okay, okay, okay. that's That's fascinating. Okay. How do you, is it possible to so build empathy as a capability in people?
01:24:58
Speaker
Or do you hire for empathy and then build the design skills? if I was given a choice, I would actually hire for empathy. Skills are still more, you know, any you can enable skills.
01:25:13
Speaker
And the funny thing is that, right, when I started in UI design and all, we used to design things in Photoshop. We used to do design things in CorelDRAW. And that was a time when initial versions of iOS had this thing called skeuomorphic design. And it was very difficult to get designer glossy button. We need to be a really good graphic designer to be a good UI designer. That has gone out completely now. If you see the products that are there out there, most of them have sort of adopted this minimal design. And so from a UI skill perspective that I spoke about earlier and also, it's become that game has become really easier. ah Now the question is more around can you really think through multiple layers?
UI Design Evolution: From Skeuomorphic to Material
01:26:01
Speaker
Can you think from customer's shoes?
01:26:04
Speaker
Then on top of the... UI that you've designed, what else can you add from a delight perspective? Are you going into that a corner of your you know brain as a designer? Smaller, smaller delights, right? Having these very very delightful animations when you probably click a button and or load a screen or when a ven a mouse hovers over your company logo, is there something interesting that you've done? That that sort of shows me how
01:26:36
Speaker
at you know what level you care about ah the whole design as a process or a function amazing amazing oh are there like some really well-designed apps or products that you love which you think other designers should study like what what you do what would you like designers to study like any specific apps products
01:27:01
Speaker
there are many actually there are many see yeah the the sort of i In terms of you know the whole UI sort of layer, CredApp is really no fantastic.
01:27:19
Speaker
They push the design on that you know UI layer really sort of well. ah yous the the All the sort of you know food delivery apps, Swigis and Zomato's, their designs are also fantastic.
01:27:33
Speaker
really good. I mean, you can probably start with those to understand, can you actually at least even get your product to that level to start off with before you think about the sort of, you know, the the delight sort of experience.
01:27:48
Speaker
Even with the the the chat UIs, while, you know, even a chat GPT or cloud might look really simple in terms of what the UI is,
01:28:01
Speaker
the interactions that you have there, are the simple, small interactions when you start typing, how the chat box expands. Those are things
Studying Exemplary UI Designs
01:28:10
Speaker
that people actually miss out on. It looks like, oh, this is how it should always be. But I've seen when people design similar interfaces, they miss out on these really, really small ah you know factors.
01:28:22
Speaker
Which chat tool or which of these AI tools do you like best in terms of interface between ChatGPT and Cloud and... Gemini, perplexity.
01:28:35
Speaker
They're pretty he is similar. At least app app in app level, it's pretty similar. There is this one called ah Manus. I'm hoping that is how it's pronounced. M-A-N-U-S dot I-M.
01:28:50
Speaker
They are pretty in good. What difference I see with them and the other apps is that they have optimized a lot for the ah the PLG sort of experience. So they have this credit system.
01:29:04
Speaker
If you read a reply, you'll get some free credits that you know. they they have gave sort of the whole interface to send more users to download their apps so if you really actually play around with that you really get to uh see that they really care about that end customer experience as well rather than amazing okay yeah i mean amazing okay yeah i mean One wouldn't think of Chinese apps as leading UX. One would think the West leads UX, but all these apps you've mentioned, you've not mentioned a single app from the West there, like Indian apps, Chinese apps. I do think probably India has pretty deep talent in UX design today.
01:29:48
Speaker
Absolutely. absolutely
Growth of India's UX Design Talent
01:29:49
Speaker
absolutely it was not ah ah It was probably not the same when we know started out in 2012. It was very difficult to hire good product designers, UI designers.
01:30:00
Speaker
um And if you also see, right, that During my course also, i realized started realizing this, that most of the people, while there were different courses for visual communication, interaction design, industrial design, and things like that, most people end up with careers in interaction design.
01:30:18
Speaker
This is a transition that started happening around 2012, 2013, 2014. Before that, probably, and this is also because mobile apps became really popular. Android, iOS started you know pushing the limits the beginning of 2010. So people realize that, you know, that's how the world is, that's where the world is heading towards. And then the moment the whole design sort of language shifted from skeuomorphic design to this newer, flatter design, material design and things like that, more and more people became, you know, unable to do that. You really need not be like ah like ah the top percentile graphic designer to become a better UI designer. What is the difference between these two, skeuomorphic design and material design?
01:31:01
Speaker
So skeuomorphic is essentially ah the UI replicating the real world design elements. So let's say the, the I think the notes app in iOS initially used to have this sort of diary.
01:31:18
Speaker
okay but the The leather feel and the notes used to have those lines that my sort of reminded you of actually writing on a diary. ah That requires a lot of graphic design skill to build that. Or you need to work closely with a graphic designer to build a you know sort of UI. Versus a material design is more flatter, ah more of block block sort of you know designs. like that I think Google has this material design as their... Yes, they got out this material design. ah So it's become much more easier.
01:31:52
Speaker
in the last decade, so a lot of talent also coming into product and UI design. And then obviously seeing successes of companies like Swiggy's, Romato and all, the designers themselves, you know, they started getting paid well.
01:32:04
Speaker
ah Before that, if you were really recently talented in 2010, you really wanted to reach the peak of your career in UI design, probably you would look outside India, you know, moving to the US and things like that.
01:32:19
Speaker
ah But
Balancing Design Creativity and Business Needs
01:32:21
Speaker
this sort of became a reality that, you know, UI design is also pays well as a career option in India. So that's when we started seeing a lot of them move into UI.
01:32:30
Speaker
What's the hard thing about leading product design which an outsider would not necessarily understand? Like what are the challenges? What are the trade-offs that you need to make as the person who's leading the design?
01:32:44
Speaker
um So I think two things probably I can highlight.
01:32:54
Speaker
Working with a a designer, right? it's it's It's like a creative process. And I think Jonathan and have Apple only said it very clearly. These ideas are really fragile when they start off with, right? And designers are probably not the most vocal ah people, they probably express or communicate better through their design than you know actually using words. So these ideas become really, you know the start of us really fragile and in a meeting, if you it's very easy to rip apart an idea. So essentially, when a designer is bringing up something new to a meeting and is everyone else around him
01:33:34
Speaker
let's say product manager, engineer, they're very vocal about you know why this will work, why this will not work and things like that. Probably ideas get killed off, nipped off right in the bud. So in us in our company, essentially because One of the founders is also a designer.
01:33:49
Speaker
That probably gives designers also a little bit of no leeway in terms of being able to bring in new ideas and then present it. and And then second challenge is around the sort of design to dev handover that happens.
01:34:08
Speaker
of You can design very beautiful things, but it also needs to get developed. It also needs to get built in a time-bound manner. A lot of sort of clashes happen at that point of time.
01:34:21
Speaker
As a design leader, your ability to ensure that the work is structured in such a way that you finally get the output that you require. So there is something that usually happens in these product sort of, you know, development meetings where everything good gets pushed to the version two. Version one usually becomes like an engineer's version. Yeah, yeah. An engineer's version of things. And then version two never gets built.
01:34:49
Speaker
Obviously, when you know you hit the ground, you realize the reality is probably different and you need to tweak the product and things like that. So being able to handle or manage all those sort of you know trade-offs, ah that comes when you have understanding of the customer first, then the design bit, as well as the engineering and the product development.
01:35:12
Speaker
ah Then obviously you can build the most beautiful product. You can build a product probably the customer also likes, but then there is the the business side of things, right? You set out to build something that ends up in a transaction. If that is not happening, then there's there's no point of no building the product. So then
Avoiding Dark Design Patterns for Trust
01:35:35
Speaker
later on bringing that business sort of, you know, empathy And then once you get a business requirement, how do you bring that into this design without making it the whole design look like again?
01:35:47
Speaker
you know, the 2000 era sort of design. So that's sort of the challenges most design leaders in our organization also face. And even when products probably come to my review, that's the sort of lens I look at things. It's not that because at some design background, I'll say that, oh yeah, this is how we design. Let's build it like this only.
01:36:07
Speaker
There is a lot of balancing that you need to do, especially as more people get into the design leadership level. This level of understanding is... You need to understand the the the business use case as much as the ease of customer journey, that at the end of the day, you want revenue to be driven through that product. There was this whole controversy of dark patterns, especially on shopping, like quick commerce apps, et cetera. What does that mean? What is a dark pattern? and like
01:36:39
Speaker
So anything that... ah that sort of ends up making the customer do something that is beneficial to the business, but not really for the customer.
01:36:52
Speaker
like And this is a design choice? It is a design choice. so it is it is It is always like a like all you know conscious design choice. And what's an example of this? Like a design choice which makes the customer something?
01:37:09
Speaker
let's let's say you're looking to buy
01:37:15
Speaker
atta And there are package sizes of 5 kg and 1 kg. And the moment, let's say you click add the product to the cart, it's a 5 kg that gets automatically added rather than showing all the options to the customer. You know, this product is available in this quantity also, this quantity also. Leaving those, taking those choices out from away from the customer is probably a dark packet.
01:37:43
Speaker
Yeah, so I think i think now think the government has also come up with certain guidelines to avoid these sort of phot dark patterns. It's not good business practice at the end of the day.
01:37:55
Speaker
You probably might might see some revenue today, but eventually the customer will abandon you if they find a better platform.
01:38:05
Speaker
Yeah, if you if you lose trust, then... Yeah, it's all it's all about no trust. Amazing. Thank you so much for your time, SMG. It was a fascinating job.