Transcript
Speaker: I bought my first house at the age of 21, two cars at 22. Enough of banking, enough of a comfort, it was just too comfortable. Every month that paycheck used to behave like a dope that's coming into your account. So I said, need to do something more this thing.
Speaker: When I told my family that I'm going to start a business in golf, they thought I'm going crazy. They said nobody in our family had ever played golf. If you have like one of the premium credit cards, it would come with a lot of benefits. For example, you get access to a golf course or you get airport lounge or a lot of such benefits.
Speaker: Have you ever wondered how those benefits are made available to you? Do you think someone in the bank is going out and stitching up those relationships to make it work? No, not really. Companies like Thrive are the ones who do it.
Speaker: They build a large network of offerings and banks and other companies who need to provide benefits to their consumers. Come and work with Thrive to make it happen. Dhruv discovered this almost as an accident. He started his business by first offering ah subscription product for cricket and for golf.
Speaker: And this was a pure B2C product. And this is often a mistake of rookie founders to start with B2C first. But he soon discovered that the big market is B2B. And the rest, as they say, is history. Today, Thrive is an extremely profitable business with very little funds raised. And this episode is proof that it's not about raising funds. It's about finding the right market and having resilience.
Speaker: I'm your host, Akshay Dutt, and this is the Founder Thesis Podcast. You've had quite a journey, and I was reading up about you that you had to sell your house or mortgage your house at one point of time.
Speaker: Just take me through that journey. Where are you? quite a donni and i was reading up about you that you had to sell your house or morecase your house at one point or time ah just take me through that journey well I mean, you know, the first thing is that where did that itch or drive to be an entrepreneur come from?
Speaker: i think the itch or the drive to be an entrepreneur is not something which started later in my life. Very early, you know, even when I was in school, I was very clear that I would make my own pocket money.
Speaker: And I didn't realize that... I realized much later in the day when when I was in my... Late 20s and what I was doing in school, trying to find ideas to generate revenue for myself. I used to keep coming up with ideas on how can I make money out of my school ecosystem.
Speaker: But why the drive to make money? Oh, well, I, ah from a family perspective, know, lost my father very early when I was 10, from a higher middle class to a lower middle class in 14 days straight.
Speaker: He was in business and we lost him. ah
Speaker: He was in the business of exports and i remember used to have this small black diary in his pocket and ah which said he has to, people owe him about 10 odd lakhs. This is 91.
Speaker: but When we went to those guys, they said, no, no, sorry, you't we don't owe you, you owe us. It just changed, right? So my mother is a very very strong lady. She started working, then she became a teacher. and so there was there was ah i We had seen money while we were growing up in a very early early age and suddenly it was gone.
Speaker: And unfortunately within the first six months of my dad's death, my elder brother got diagnosed with schizophrenia. He never recovered and he couldn't handle the loss because it was a sudden death. So his treatment was going on. My mother was working day and night.
Speaker: it's Something triggered in my head that need to be financially independent at the age of 11. So I took tuitions. I used to sing. i used to ah teach English while singing. So I used to break down the English lessons for little kids, five, six years age. ah So it was fabulous. That journey. oh Amazing. Amazing. come Amazing. Yeah. So the entrepreneur, I think, started somewhere there.
Speaker: And from there, it just never stopped. I kept yeah trying out new things while I studied, while I did my college, while I did my my post-graduation, all that continued.
Speaker: But the entrepreneur never looked back since then. Wow, amazing. How did you pay for college and all? Oh, wow. Trust me, i heard I used to make so much money in that early age.
Speaker: I bought my first first house at the age of 21. I bought two cars at 22. i i was working part-time. i was working with ICICI, a home finance company then. was a star salesman. like ah You were sourcing loans for them? and Loans, yeah. sourcing As a commission agent.
Speaker: Commission agent. and And I was making a lot of money that time. So I remember there were months when I used to make 10,000 rupees a month. And this is, I'm talking about 2000, early 2001 too.
Speaker: It used to be good money. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I think those were the days. I still miss those days. Yeah. Okay. So you did ah like a,
Speaker: graduation and MBA, like one after another. and ah work other Then started working with a bank. 2002, I joined Standard Chartered.
Speaker: That was my first full-time gig. I was 23 then, I guess. No, I was 21. Sorry. 81 born. Sorry, I
Speaker: Now that started putting in a lot of structure in my life straight into a large bank. Standard Chartered was growing at that time. We were just about to acquire Rinle.
Speaker: So that stint of five years where I did various roles transformed them me as an individual. you Even then, ah Customer facing. For a short while, I was in the wealth management unit and I was moved to strategy, enjoyed that, did some branch banking.
Speaker: So a lot of it was customer facing. Every evening I used to come back, keep working on new ideas. I think 2003, I launched my my property aggregation platform. It was much before time. It failed.
Speaker: This is ah and online, like a magic bricks equivalent. So it was a hybrid. That thing online was just catching up. And we had seen 2001.com blast which happened. And I said, let me try a hybrid.
Speaker: so hired people used to go there in the evening, tell them what to do. had a partner who was running the business failed. thousand and then 2007, I started a stationary aggregation platform. I said I'd become the stationary king of India.
Speaker: So i we opened up a store in Gurgaon and we started supplying stationery in B2B again failed. I didn't understand the nuances of the business then.
Speaker: And yeah, every every failure taught me something new. One day I was very clear that I will keep making a lot of mistakes, but I will try not to make the same mistakes.
Speaker: So that helped and, you know, So the entrepreneur to answer the question, yeah, it's it's always been there. So you left and started to join a Company called CPP Group? or what What does that do? CPP Group, yeah.
Speaker: 2008, I said, enough of banking, enough of a comfortable, just too comfortable. but Every month, that paycheck used to behave like a dope which coming into account. I said, I need to use something realistic.
Speaker: Thankfully, I met this gentleman, Mr. Dharan Mahini, who... and We struck a chord immediately the moment we met. CPP was a startup in India. It's a very large organization outside India.
Speaker: We were coming into India. So I did small stint in the UK, understood how the business works there. the The first core team got hired. I was a part of that. We got the company into India, started growing that from scratch.
Speaker: from even setting up the air conditioners in the office to the phone lines to then hiring and then building it and the entire journey of how actually you build an organization that experience i got at cpp did that for four years what does cpp do what's the product yeah it's ah It's called card protection plan. Basically, we used to bundle our products along with credit cards.
Speaker: So if anything goes wrong with your credit card, any fraud, any theft, then our membership or our policy used to cover you against that. it's ah It's a very prevalent concept in the West. Now, in fact, even in India, it's a very well-known concept.
Speaker: So that's what we used to do. And it was all B2B. So we were going and knocking doors at the banks and asking them to bundle our product with credit cards. Okay, okay, okay. So that was CPP.
Speaker: And actually, that's where the bug bit me. I remember being in the UK and a little more time in my hands. So I went to one of the golf courses and started picking up golf.
Speaker: And I found this gap in the market where the mass affluent at that time was only benefit a mass affluent used to get from an organization.
Speaker: was lounges. We all had a priority pass and used to use a priority pass in a cross airports. So I thought, why can't we expand this pie? Why can't we offer golf as a benefit?
Speaker: Uh, people, and I had not played golf. remember when I told my family that I'm going to start a business in golf. they thought I'm going crazy.
Speaker: yeah and Nobody in our family had ever played golf. We were not from a forces background where we have ah access to a golf course. Before 2009, I had not stepped in a golf course ever.
Speaker: And suddenly, i want to leave everything for golf. So yeah, that that led to a different level of you know backslash All my friends said, you're going crazy.
Speaker: you You are a successful banker. You're doing well in your corporate job. Don't do this. So in fact, I did get brainwashed. I remember I was on the verge of...
Speaker: putting everything in starting. And this very fancy offer came in from Aercel. it was It was then a very large telecom player taking Voodaphone and Airtel head on.
Speaker: Yeah, it was in the top five basically. Yeah. So it's it's it's again the dope, right? It's the monthly check further increases by 2x. Now what do you do?
Speaker: ah I was counseled by my family. You know what? This is safe. Go for it. yeah yeah Went for it. Exactly spent one year. Joined them 1st of March, 2012. Left them on 28th February, 2013.
Speaker: It was just so addictive, I can't tell you. Every month, of the fat check used to come in and i used to I used to dread it. I used to hate it, to be honest.
Speaker: So yeah, that's when I said, is it that's it, I will quit everything. I hung my boots as an employee, became an employer and never looked back since then.
Speaker: Whatever could go wrong went wrong in the first two, three years, but then that's life. What was the business plan you had in mind like before quitting and starting? It was called Golfland. Thrive was er is erstwhile Golfland.
Speaker: And Golfland is ah basically a platform where we democratize golf. We bring in inventory of playing slots of golf courses across the globe and make it accessible for the end customer.
Speaker: So that was, in fact, I remember that the logo said, said, golf line connecting golfers worldwide. That was our first punchline then. And whatever could go wrong in the first year went wrong.
Speaker: In fact, alongside that, you know, I, when I was getting into entrepreneurship, I said, I will do one for the masses, one for the classes. That was my thought process. So I launched Golfland and Crickland at the same time.
Speaker: Okay. And everybody said, I'm a fool. Launching Crickland. so And I went and signed up Gautam Gambhir.
Speaker: Gautam Gambhir was then the, we had just won the World Cup. He was the KKR captain. KKR had one IPL. So he was at his prime.
Speaker: And we ah went ahead and we launched Crickland at one of the five-star hotels in Delhi. A massive press conference. This was with your own savings you were spending. Everything. if it's that no No money waged till then.
Speaker: So 2013, I'm standing in front of media and we are announcing that Crickland gets launched. and The first product, Crickland was democratizing Gali cricket.
Speaker: I wanted to create, so we built a very interesting platform then where you could come, create your own cricket team and keep playing in a pyramid format till the time you reach a stage where that, so Delhi will then have one team after hundreds of matches and then one team will play the IPL Delhi team then.
Speaker: Ah, okay. So what I said that there is so much talent in our country at a Gali level, i will create an ecosystem where I will then go and compete with IPL in terms of the teams. I think that didn't go very well with with some of the people in the crickling world. And ah I was blocked from a lot of corners. And so the choice was to then shut down TrickLan.
Speaker: And I remember Gauti was very nice. He he said, bro, I think you're little too ahead of time. So took the conscious call, had put in a lot of money in that business.
Speaker: had to shut it down. Golf land then became my my only ah source of inspiration and something that i really loved because I was playing golf actively. So i neither I had played cricket nor I had played golf professionally.
Speaker: And whatever I had learned was in those 12 months about both the sports actively. Though cricket still we played at at a gully level, all of us, every Indian has played. Shutting crit lying down was a was a massive one. It was not easy. So much money had gone in.
Speaker: you You shut it down in like in a year's time? or In a year's time, yeah. and i learned that's when I learned the saying that don't put good money after bad money.
Speaker: I learned it the very hard way. That costed me my house. All my savings were gone. how that's lin How did that happen?
Speaker: you You were trying to... ah Like you were trying to spend on marketing or what? Marketing, salaries. we See, both the businesses had started.
Speaker: Golfland had started. Crickland had started. I had a 30-member team. What was the revenue model for both of these? and That's something I didn't understand from your pitch. You said democratizing access to golf or Gullit. For Golfland, the revenue model when we started was we will create, we started with a B2C product.
Speaker: And it started selling as well. We started making money where I will give you a membership which will give you access to 2000 golf courses in one go. No need to take a membership of a golf club, which anyways was not available.
Speaker: There was a wait wait time of 20 years, 15 years. i said, forget it. I'll give you a global golf pass on a membership. Pay me that time used to charge 20,000 rupees per customer.
Speaker: and year and there were, I think, 20 rounds of golf in that across any of the courses. So that's why i said democratizing golf.
Speaker: And that that's started selling like a wildfire in the golfing circle. used to, I still remember the first customer, the first email, we used to use CC Avenue as a as a payment gateway then.
Speaker: And I used to, you know, I was i was in ASL where I used to have this corner office in Cyber Hub. But before going to office, I used to go to the driving ranges, used to have leaflets in my bag.
Speaker: used to put them on the wipers of Karl's Parked and the other range. So that when these guys come back, they will see what this leaflet is. And we used to say, the golfer's card, that was the name of the product.
Speaker: And it used to have all the various... This is the Gurgaon Golf Course. but this I used to go to actually Delhi, Kutub Golf Club, because Gurgaon, DLF was a private club. They used to throw me out.
Speaker: ah Now I'm a member there. Now they love me. but and that time, they used to throw me out. And yeah, so so that was the revenue model for Golf Land. but goland so You reached out to all of these ah golf courses or ah golf clubs and yeah i did ah like a deal.
Speaker: have Are you a professional golfer? Have you played golf before? I used to say no and they used to bang the phone on my face. that So I think that's the journey every entrepreneur has to go through.
Speaker: So that was a new model of golf land. Did it cost you thousand rupees for every time somebody played? Yeah. Because ah no like like what's your, so your margin is... money on that You were making a lot of positive cash flow, but later we realized that the breakage was not coming in.
Speaker: Okay. the The assumption was that people will pay for 20, but they'll use 10 or 15. So the remaining 15. So we made money in the first two years at a bottom line level. But once the concept caught up and people understood that we can play 20 times, then we started losing. But by then, we moved from B to C to B to B. So that was a very interesting transition we did.
Speaker: Okay. Okay. Okay. So yeah so that was but this was the Golfland revenue model. What was the Crickland revenue model? Crickland was even even more interesting. Crickland was that you can come on the platform, register a team, drop down, select players.
Speaker: and And for every team, we were charging 500 bucks to register. And there was um a massive sponsorship angle that I will have say 10,000 teams on my platform who will go and play matches.
Speaker: So we were talking to the likes of Adidas, Pepsi, and a lot of other consumer facing brands that and the why don't you sponsor a part of these matches. So it was it was a well thought through model.
Speaker: Just that I think IPL had just started and Somewhere we were seen as, were not be appreciated by the cricket fraternity, the professional cricketing fraternity then.
Speaker: But the only problem you faced was the last part of your promise. So you said it it's a it's a tournament that you're signing up for 500 desert registration.
Speaker: And the... The attraction here is that if you are on top of the Delhi League, then you get to play against the Delhi IPL team. Just that part, get to play against the Delhi IPL team is gone.
Speaker: But it it is still a saleable concept, right? Were there other problems? Besides the fact that you cannot play with the Delhi IPL. We wanted to get ah mentors who would be players playing in the IPL fraternity for each of the teams.
Speaker: That was blocked. We never got, we tried, we met, i remember meeting you. Like the the halmaja the board of all cricket control ah forbid players to get associated with you. It was not a said rule then, but inform believe the we can't do this.
Speaker: okay While they they all said the concept is brilliant. See, cricket needs star attraction. ah How do I get people lured to a platform? I never had the millions of dollars to do marketing.
Speaker: So for me, marketing was via the startup of these players. Yes, yes, yes. And that's why I had signed Gautam Gambhir. um And he was very good too with us. He launched, if you go and check online, if you type Crickland, you will still have images of me standing on the podium, a much younger me though, with Gautam and there was Times of India covering us, as economic, all leading newspapers talking about it.
Speaker: Yeah, so those the days. Okay. You don't think it could have still worked without... I think now... You would have needed to raise money probably, right? Because the the challenge was how to do your customer acquisition.
Speaker: The challenge was, trust me at that time, how do I bring food on the table for my family? I was the only one working at home, right? there was no There's nobody else working. So it came to a point where either I go ahead and raise capital...
Speaker: It may or may not work because of whatever restrictions we have in our country. Or I go towards a business which has already started making money and GOLFLN had started making money.
Speaker: Right. We got 20,000 rupees per sale. Remember she was up. And it was positive cash flow. So we had, had and remember in the first year, 2 crores coming in our account.
Speaker: It was not small money. Right, right, right. So yeah, I said, let's be a little more wider, which, which I think led me towards golf land and never look back.
Speaker: what What caused you to like sell your house, sell your cars? Because to pay salaries, you needed money. So you decided to do that. salaries, run marketing campaigns, survive.
Speaker: ah We never defaulted in paying salaries. We always were very very clear that the team is everything. i think the team is well attached to the ethos of the brand and money becomes an important party to it.
Speaker: the the the The saddest moment in selling things I remember was my daughter's, there was a locket which had her name. It was given to her, i think by my father-in-law when she was born. And I remember selling it off for I think 20,000 then to pay a few more bills.
Speaker: So yeah, those were those were difficult moments. And this was through manual approach? Like somebody would call you and say, I want to go to this club and then you would call the club? it all online. We had built the entire tech for it. okay So technology-wise, we were, I think, always slightly ahead of the curve.
Speaker: Everything was digital. You could choose a course, choose a time. the The website was called golfline.com and booked seamlessly. No phone calls. We never had a call center for the first four years.
Speaker: And you integrated with these golf courses to let them know that this slot is booked or to check if they have an availability. Like these golf courses use some software to give you visibility? lot them go hybrid.
Speaker: Hybrid in terms of their... technology side of things. So there was email trigger used to go to them with a button to accept or reject the booking.
Speaker: In some places where there was a slightly advanced we used to integrate. So it was depending on case to case basis we used to but it was seamless. Customer experience was never played with. Customers used to get a seamless experience.
Speaker: Okay. Okay. Interesting. I see an alternate future in which you could have ended up building a SaaS business for golf courses for them to run. We tried that.
Speaker: We tried that. bought a company called Golf Centra in 2016. and We bought another company in in US called Stay Prime.
Speaker: Both were golf SaaS. One was hardware led. One was software led. Okay. ah Like to manage memberships and memberships people coming in, people coming out, the access control. and All of it.
Speaker: Okay. In golf, we've tried everything. So, why didn't that work? Why aren't you still golf-focused business? so the other So in terms of golf, it's about 20% of what we do. What we realized in the first five years, either of you are in one of the larger markets like US s or UK.
Speaker: Just to give you an example, India has 300 golf courses, US has 15,000. So 2016 to 18, we bought three companies in the world. We bought Stay Prime, Golf Centra, Golf Greedy.
Speaker: three platforms one was b2c two were b2b and that was actually it got us to a position where we we became cash positive thanks to these acquisitions yeah thanks to these acquisitions thanks to ah We being persistent in the golf industry, it made a name for ourselves.
Speaker: 2015, we started signing organizations to give the same benefit as a mass affluent offering. So we changed the model from B2C to B2B and that really started bringing in revenues.
Speaker: So, organizations would also pay that same 20,000 annual? andron Or what was the price? Then we moved to pay-per-use. So, we went to an HDFC. They were launching an Infinia card then.
Speaker: And they said, how do we differentiate our Infinia card? We said, we'll give you a golf as a benefit. And that took off. Today, every golfer in India, I think, more or less, yeah, it has an Infinia card that they use.
Speaker: So, it became the talk of the town. We launched... How many games did HDFC give with the card? HDFC still did give unlimited games ah across the globe.
Speaker: So one of the strongest programs that I've seen ever. Okay. ah good Okay. Okay. Interesting. Okay. So, and this, ah like what, I guess this is like the the moment of product market fit, right? When you realize that this is product market fit with that HDFC deal.
Speaker: Yes, that really, again, we had to then shut down our B2C business and ah go on the other side of the bar and start the B2B and that's when realized the product market fits very well and this can be scaled up.
Speaker: So if we can go to 20 such HDFCs across India, Dubai, Singapore, because we we already had operating entities in all these markets. then this can work.
Speaker: So from 2015 to 18, we signed up almost 20 bands from, from Mashrat Bank to in Dubai, to Emirates NBD, to MasterCard, to Visa, to access to Amex, to, to HDF, everybody got signed up because nobody had a solution then where you can have such a wide, wide range of supply of courses available at the click of a button.
Speaker: So yeah, that was it. Interesting ah the how the dots connect later on. And because we had bought two companies in the SaaS space, it made us very close to golf courses because we were giving them technology.
Speaker: So they started opening up to us. We started getting preferential rates. So suddenly a new brand in the golf world had arrived. I mean, it's a very powerful position to be in because on the one hand, you are giving them business.
Speaker: For a golf course, you are a source of revenue and which then gives you the ability to also sell your software to them at prices, possibly when they would not negotiate so much because you are also giving them revenue.
Speaker: The software probably with some assurance that if you use the software, then there's tighter integration and, you know, and the chances of you getting more revenue are higher. And that's a pretty powerful position to be in. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: That really helped us and, uh, held us scale up across the region. Still the market was too small. Had you raised funds by then?
Speaker: I had. 2015 onwards, 14. So 14 to 18, we raised about $3 million. Our first investor was you put in here your 14, your pitch would still have been B2C. 14, my pitch was creating a unicorn doing B2C golf business.
Speaker: And I still remember i was looking at an old presentation of mine. i said, I will sell ah million memberships across the world in the first three years. know it it was a very forward looking plan.
Speaker: Somehow the investors bought it. In fact, who's the MD of Yorna, she's on my board as well. I think I brainwashed him over a game of golf.
Speaker: convincing the golf If you got it over there in the VC ecosystem then. So he said, no no, I like this. Let's do this. Today, we are probably one of their best performing companies.
Speaker: And he he's still, they have not exited 10 years. They have got offers to exit almost every year. ah They love us. We love them. And the relationship continues.
Speaker: I mean, that million ah customer sign up dream, why do you feel looking back that it was naive? No, it was not naive. We had to enter one of the forward looking markets, one of the Western world markets.
Speaker: So this this product was never made for only Asia. For me, in my mind, we had to enter US and UK. You didn't raise enough money. So I entered US.
Speaker: I went to the US, spent time. I remember one of the trips I drove from Miami till New York. I did the entire turnpike. And in that trip, I met more than 400 golf courses over seven days.
Speaker: I slept in the car for a couple of nights because I wanted to go and knock the doors. But the environment in 2018 was not very favorable for Indian companies because of the US government change and there were restrictions.
Speaker: Even the L1 category visas were not getting issued. And what I also realize, is US, you cannot go without a lot of money in your pocket. You need a lot of cash.
Speaker: Okay. Unlike India, where lesser money can work, you need very deep pockets. You were over-optimistic, basically. the The fault was over-optimism, right? which is the Which is, i mean the the I mean, it's both the strength and the weakness of an entrepreneur, right? ah You can't be an entrepreneur if you're not over-optimistic. Exactly. Exactly.
Speaker: So I was over optimistic. but See, one thing which I think I do it well, which can be good or bad, i enter into a decision.
Speaker: i enter into an act of doing something, evaluating something. I also exit it very quickly in case it is not working out. I don't waste too much time. So, in fact, my... which You learned the hard way, right? With the Krikland.
Speaker: Krikland and life before that, that if you made a mistake, move on. Right. And we some people find it very...
Speaker: a very, very bad trait of mind because yeah how can you be so less emotional? why How can you be emotionless about certain things? Rootless. Rootless, but then it is what it is.
Speaker: Okay. so So that trip made you realize the 1 million dream is not it. So that's why you started experimenting with B2B discovered. No. so We came back. We had a buyout offer. There was money on the table.
Speaker: a company in the US s wanted to enter India and Asia. They said, we'll buy you out. For some reason, I said, there was money coming in the bank. It was sort of all cash deal.
Speaker: I didn't like it. I said, there's some more juice left in this. So we went back to our clients and asked them, what can we do? And they said, we love what you offer.
Speaker: Why don't you, and we are taking a lot of other services from other vendors. Why don't you start offering us those services? You mean B2C client or B2B client? B2B. For me, clients. The HDFCs and this is the MasterCards and all these guys.
Speaker: And they had a wide range of services that they were offering to their customers. So we went back to them, understood the the use case. And that's when we started pivoting.
Speaker: Earlier, you know from Golfland, we first called the company Piri Street. It to be called Piri Street. It stayed there for four five months, didn't like the name much. I kept thinking what should be the name.
Speaker: And that's when you know my co-founder, she came up with this name, Thrive. And Thrive with a W, where we work with the clients, we work with partners, we work with suppliers.
Speaker: And yeah, it was the euphoria moment. And Thrive was born.
Speaker: And ah when did you rebrand Toothrive? This was 2019 March. Okay. Okay. By then you had done that about 3 million of fundraise. 3 million of fundraise. We had multiple rounds. That year we were we were on the verge of becoming profitable, which we did as well.
Speaker: fact, 2020 when COVID hit, we grew 40% in COVID. we grew forty percent in covid Wow. Okay, before I come to the COVID part, so how were you making money from the banks? you The bank would pay you every time a member used that golf ah pass or played a game and you had a margin in that. Like they would pay you $100 and you would pay the golf course $80 $20 would be left for you, something like that. There was a platform fee and a service fee that became a part. So overall, for bank, it was ah very difficult and fragmented supply being made available at one window, which is what our expertise was.
Speaker: And for us, we used to charge a markup on that and make money for ourselves. Okay. ah How did you increase the supply beyond golf? So essentially, the bank told you that I want to offer more benefits to my cardholders, and I'm working with multiple vendors to get different benefits, like say airport lounge access or whatever. I don't know what and else is there, but i if you can offer me more, then you will get more share of my wallet. So how did you build more supply then?
Speaker: So we used to go and ask them the problem. so there was a So typically we used to become a part of product launch discussions. So a bank is launching a new card and they said, okay, what all should we offer on this card?
Speaker: So the summary, we used to say, what segment? Okay, if it's a millennial segment, then you should have more restaurants there. You should have more gyms there.
Speaker: if it's mass affluent card, you should have airport lounges, you should have five-star hotels, and so on and so forth. And on the back of that, we we had built a partnership team, which is to then go...
Speaker: talk to all these guys on the supply side, hotels, lounges, and start aggregating them. it was a It was far easier. actually Bringing a golf course on board was the most difficult.
Speaker: Yeah, right. But bringing an airport lounge was very easy. They are in this business. They are in this business. So for us, the degree of difficulty in in building supply outside of golf was not there.
Speaker: used to enjoy it. I used to go to an airport lounge and they said, yes, we want to work with you. Tell us what is the business. Right. Unlike a golf course where they used to, they well they they still live in a different world, a lot of them.
Speaker: The airport lounges also directly work with the banks and all, right? So... they bought them more more In most cases, they go through an aggregator. Okay.
Speaker: Okay. Okay. Got it. the biggest company in the world is Collinson, which does almost £2 billion of revenue, which is an airport aggregator. Lounge aggregator.
Speaker: Okay. Okay. And... For a bank, are you a full stop, a single like a single window solution for everything? Or you are one of two or three vendors that they work with? like Would they also work with a Collinson and you? They will. but but They will.
Speaker: We are getting there. I think more and more wallet share of a bank for the budget they have for benefits is moving to us. And that's the plan to keep having more and more supply touch points and more services available, products available with us so that these guys don't go anywhere else.
Speaker: Our wallet share with each of our clients has only increased. We have never seen a downfall. Why is that happening? Is it pricing? Is it ah and the reliability? Is it the technology? What is driving this?
Speaker: There's three key reasons for it. First of all, we've built a great tech stack. Our ability to be very agile and intuitive in offering technology and giving a seamless experience to the end customer of my client, that helps.
Speaker: Second, we have the most diversified supply today. We have over 200,000 touch points across 15 countries. I don't know of a company out of in Asia, which has that sort of a supply available.
Speaker: And number three is our ability to create products from that supply. So can we, we have products which which are called aggregating beach clubs. We have a beach club product in Dubai. We have a valet product in Saudi Arabia.
Speaker: We have an airport pick and drop in Saudi Arabia. We have a spa product in Singapore. We have a ride hailing product in Vietnam.
Speaker: So the ability to create products out of this supply and price them right is where it's what gives us the edge today with our clients. Interesting.
Speaker: ah The price them right is ah it's a non-trivial problem, right? Like, ah how do you price it in a way that for a bank, it is better than the competitor and yet it is profitable for you?
Speaker: How did you crack that? See, in most cases, we don't have a competitor because what we are taking to a bank is something new. For example, when we aggregated the Vale product, we launched the Vale product in Saudi Arabia, till then banks never thought that the Vale providers who are fragmented and spread across Jeddah, Dhamam, Khobor, Riyadh can be brought onto a platform and via technology, my customer will get a seamless complimentary Vale service.
Speaker: that use case was not there. We made that use case possible.
Speaker: Similarly, you know, many other services, Beach Club, for example, offering Beach Club to people in Dubai. These are basically five-star hotel beaches being made available to you without you staying there.
Speaker: okay Like for a meal or something like that? well To access the private beach of the hotel. Instead of going public beach, go to the private beach. Okay. Okay. Okay. Got it. um Typically, you do that only when you stay in the hotel.
Speaker: Yes. So we've always been ahead of the curve, coming up with new ideas. And in a lot of cases, we have had followers who then try to follow and replicate what we do.
Speaker: ah Okay, interesting. And the pricing is relatively straightforward. Like you pay $80, add on $20 and charge the bank hundred dollars In some cases, yes. In some cases, it can be there could be a breakage element built into it where we will bundle five, six services where the value for the end customer is much higher, but the price paid out by my client will be much lower. And then the breakage principles come into play.
Speaker: This breakage term is a new term for me. I mean, intuitively, I understand what you're saying that when you do an annual subscription for a gym, the gym is charging you ridiculously low price for an annual subscription because they know only ten twenty percent of people who buy an annual subscription are regular.
Speaker: that That is what you refer to as breakage. Exactly. exactly See, the oldest example of breakage our insurance companies. They sell you an insurance product knowing that 99% of the people will never take a claim.
Speaker: Right. but i so say The breakage model started from there and has got adopted across many industries now. ah Okay. Fascinating. Fascinating.
Speaker: ah How do you... institutionalized creativity because what it seems to me is that you come up with a lot of creative products. ah Is it all like driven by you or like what is the way in which you have institutionalized this ah strength of being creative in making products?
Speaker: See, at Thrive, one thing is very clear that we have to keep going back to our clients with new offerings. We have a dedicated product team, a solutioning team.
Speaker: But across the organization, one thing is very clear. Everybody keeps saying, what new are we working on? So it's it's it's a part of the culture that something new will will come up. We will not continue giving the same service.
Speaker: In fact, how did you operation build that and into the culture? I think it's a little... Maybe it's a little top driven. I also have a great, so but I think the team is outstanding out there. They understand that the need of the market plus I am the founder. i feel I'm a little restless kind.
Speaker: I keep wanting to do something new. And if new is not happening, I get bored. you You reward creative new ideas in your team. So it encourages them to do it.
Speaker: We have a very clear culture that think out of the box. we By the way, we've launched a lot of products which which have failed as well. So it's not always that everything that we think about is taken up.
Speaker: A lot of them fail, which is okay. I keep telling them that keep failing. If you don't fail, you will not grow. failure is must. but Which is also not easy for a lot of founders to...
Speaker: Give up control. In a way, you're giving up control when you're saying, okay, you can fail. i empower you to experiment. I love giving up control. i think, and unless you don't make yourself redundant, you will not be able to grow either internally or as an organization.
Speaker: Today, I have a full-fledged leadership team which runs most of the functions at Thrive. I love that part. They take their own decisions. They they take their own calls. They are much more intelligent than me.
Speaker: I remember listening to Jack Ma once and he said, the easiest thing a founder can do is to hire better people than himself or herself and just somehow make them work together.
Speaker: So, yeah, that I follow that every day. and Hire better people, make them work better. Your role is basically the glue. Like you are making sure they're working well together. Amazing.
Speaker: Amazing. how Amazing. ah Coming back to your journey. So what kind of revenue were you doing by the time COVID hit? Like by 2019, 2020? 2019, we were at i think, odd was Thrive had just happened.
Speaker: and and two thousand how much this was from god i think eighty percent was golden eighty five percent was gone because try it just happened
Speaker: The main turn started happening starting 2020 COVID when we launched our digital product. cold During COVID, most of the banks said, what do we do?
Speaker: How do we engage with the customer who's sitting at home? So that's when we started aggregating digital services. For example, OTT, ah your Zomato's of the world, all those we aggregated, some 40 odd digital brands.
Speaker: created a product out of it and went to banks saying, engage with your customer when he's at home. remember getting fitness, cult fitness fit fitness first, all these gyms were doing online classes. So we aggregated anything under the sun which was doing online.
Speaker: Plus within six, seven months, golf opened up because that was the only contactless sport. in the world at that time. So we we grew about 45% in COVID that year.
Speaker: While every company was seeing a downfall, we were we were happy counting our cash and we also became profitable come 2019. Since then, we haven't raised any capital.
Speaker: but It's been seven years now. God has been very kind. We were able to grow on our own capital. yeah yeah How much did you dilute for that three odd million that you raised?
Speaker: Overall, between me and the leadership team and and my co-founder, we still own about 65% of the company. Wow, that's amazing. So we have a reasonable majority, which also puts us in a strong position of taking decisions, being a little more bold.
Speaker: I was very clear that I will not let this become a single digit founder equity company because then you lose control. Then you are employee in your own company, which i which which is not the story I buy.
Speaker: Amazing. Amazing. ah So, you know, what now as a credit card holder myself, i hardly know what benefits come with my card, how to claim them, how to use them. ah how Is there something you're doing to solve that problem?
Speaker: There is this is a constant education happening by us to a lot of our clients. Their communication channels have improved.
Speaker: So all the benefits, you know, you may have any financial product, be it a loan or a card or whatever, the benefits are always sent to you over an email. They always, they remind you of things, you know, of what's going on.
Speaker: It's just that the we don't we don't see those emails. We don't read those emails or they go into a job. Yeah, bank emails will will never hit your inbox, right?
Speaker: Yeah. And if you log in into any of your card accounts today and just click on benefits, everything is there. It's about educating the customer that information is available.
Speaker: Just access it. So that part is is something which I think every bank is now realizing and working on. Okay. Okay. And like your ah bank partners, their customers can through the bank app only book or claim these ah benefits, which they are entitled to? So we platforms.
Speaker: Being a tech company at core, we have built over 100 platforms and we platforms are the access point for the customers to come in. Okay. And actually, but these are like white label solutions for your partner, for your clients or apps.
Speaker: It could be apps or white table solutions that we've built for our client. Okay. And today the benefits that Thrive offers get exposed to over 50 million customers who are eli eligible for these services.
Speaker: and And a percentage of that is also a regular user of these services. Okay. Okay. Interesting. You know, considering that you have two pricing models in parallel, one pricing model which a assumes breakage and the other which is pay per use. So doesn't that lead to conflicting incentives for your team in terms of how much you want to encourage customers to use the ah benefits?
Speaker: Because when when the pricing model assumes breakage, you don't want to encourage too much. But when it is pay-per-use, you want to encourage a lot ah to the end customer to use the benefit.
Speaker: So you have to strike the right balance between the two. ah Our prepaid business is I guess 15-20% of our overall business and that's how I would like it to be. I would not like it to become ah majority contributor because then we are driven with non-usage which I don't want.
Speaker: fact, we've gone back to our clients saying on this particular portfolio, there's less usage. We are giving you an extension, use more. Because if they don't use it, they will not renew it.
Speaker: Right, right, right, right. Hence, we, at a core level, believe that there should be ah decent usage so that the clients also, so that everybody in the chain is happy.
Speaker: We are happy, my client is happy, and the end customer is happy. That works then. Okay, okay, okay. Interesting. Interesting. So a in COVID, you added on digital products.
Speaker: ah and ah After that, what all have you added on? I guess we've... No, wait, I've already asked you this question. You told me about valet and all of that. So I'll categorize that for you. So we have five categories today.
Speaker: We have the sports in which we have golf, paddle, pickle, football, ah lot of other sports offering. We have travel under which we have airport lounges. We have pick and drop services, meet and greet services.
Speaker: uh and so on and so forth then we have digital under which we have all the digital brands aggregated then we have lifestyle where we have restaurants hotels gyms spas And then we have health, where I have doctors available for online consultation, pharmacy discounts, lab tests, all of that available.
Speaker: So these the five broad categories under which we have put our entire product line. Okay. So, you know, you've built a strong moat of supply and now you also have money. ah What do you do? ARR right now?
Speaker: like Well, this year we should be doing around 300
Speaker: um The year ending this year, we are close to that and we are growing at a decent CAGR. we We have been double digit profitable as well.
Speaker: ah And these are this is again a lot of heavy lifting because ah but revenue and margins are different different countries. Obviously, international markets do support us a lot in generating a higher margin as compared to India, which is which is always seen margin contraction.
Speaker: Right. Okay. The banks are constantly negotiating hard with you. That's like every Indian is right. We want more value out of our loans. We keep going back and asking the same question.
Speaker: but Can you to reduce the price? We can't do without it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. True, true, true. Okay. so So my question is this. Now you have supply and you have money, like you have enough retained earnings.
Speaker: Is this the right time to go after that original goal of a million customers that you sell directly to? You know, your pitch when you raised your first round to from your nest, is it time to go back to that and directly sell to customers?
Speaker: So I honestly have been very fascinated with the B2B world.
Speaker: Even if I look back in my career, only in the early, the standard charter stint, I was B2C. CPP was all B2B. B2B comes naturally to us as an organization.
Speaker: ah We don't have the required capabilities today and the DNA which can support a B2C thinking.
Speaker: And that's that's a little bit of maturity which I've got over the years. Maybe 10 years back, out I've been saying something else. ah So I feel we should continue on the B2B part. What we are now flirting with is B2B2C.
Speaker: So we are trying to look at certain product lines of ours, which we can start pricing and selling via one of the, by piggybacking on one of the channels that we have.
Speaker: For example, like say with a Paytm collaboration. We can go to a bank and say, can we do a co-brand? And in that co-brand, can you have 20 Thrive services? Or we can go to one of our NBFC clients,
Speaker: And they can sell Thrive membership to incentivize a customer to take a loan from them.
Speaker: Why would they... Thinking on those lines, it's still not very clear in terms of our strategy. So let's see. ah Okay. Okay. Though I don't see banks and NVFCs wanting to... i mean, their core business ah has enough profitability for them to not want to bother getting into...
Speaker: these kind of allied services for a little bit of margin. See, if you look at banks, CPP, for example, used to go and sell it to banks to then sell it to their customers.
Speaker: They used to outbound call the customers, say you have a card with me, I'm activating a membership predicts protection and right the entire bank assurance channel lives on this concept. yeah Yes, yes, yes, yes. So the banks have divisions which only make revenue from outside of the core banking activities.
Speaker: So as a concept, it is there. Whether we have the right product slash pricing fitment is something that we are dabbling with in terms of an idea.
Speaker: So this would be sold as a Thrive Pass or as a HDFC Pass? No, this would sold as a Thrive Pass. You will come download a Thrive app. and you would We already have ah but about half a million customers on the Thrive app as well.
Speaker: Because lot of our smaller clients, which may not be banks, don't build a platform. They just send out a Thrive membership. In fact, even some larger clients, we remember doing a big campaign with Visa, where Visa rolled out thousands and thousands of tribe memberships to their customers.
Speaker: That sort of reputation we have built with our clients. They trust us. They trust our technology. It's safe. So they are happy rooting their customers onto our platform. See, in that case, I have a negative CAC.
Speaker: My customer acquisition cost yeah is not there. I'm getting paid for downloading my app. That's amazing. that's it So I love that part. So that's why I said b two b to c so Okay, just interesting.
Speaker: ah What is the the customer breakup for you? You you said that even loan companies are... but Why would a loan company give benefit? I mean, they're already giving money.
Speaker: ah What is the need to give other benefits? Very interesting. We just launched went live with the NBFC where on the third of the month, they send out a message that your EMI is getting due on the fifth.
Speaker: Please pay your EMI on the 5th and on the 7th, the following Thrive membership will get activated with the following benefits.
Speaker: It is to improve the delinquency rate. That's again innovation at the product level.
Speaker: And this this company, actually, the delinquencies have improved by almost 0.7%. At a base of a million customers, if your delinquency improved by 0.7%, that's a straight inflow into your bottom line.
Speaker: Right, right, right, right. Yeah, yeah. ah ah What other kind of customers do The card customer, I understand very clearly, like an HDFC. We work across cards, SME customers, wealth management customers, automobile companies use us.
Speaker: we will Like BMW, premium... Toyota uses us. Skoda has worked us with us in the past. LG uses us across different product categories.
Speaker: LG. So you buy a LG TV, there's a Thrive membership that you get worth 20k. For example, you buy a LG washing machine, there could be a 10k Thrive membership and so on and so forth.
Speaker: So the use cases can be enough and plenty across industries. We are very clearly an industry agnostic brand. so Today we are banking heavy because maybe I came from banking.
Speaker: And a lot of my leadership team has come from banking. So banking comes naturally to us. Okay. Who does sales? Who goes and gets these banks? I have a chief business officer who has his own full... In fact, there's a very funny story.
Speaker: He was my client in HFBC. He bought services for me for the longest time. And finally, was able to brainwash him and tell him that, you know what, come this side, become a part of Thrive.
Speaker: ah Early days, you were the head of sales in a way, like for the longest time. Early days, I was the head of sales. Okay. So, you know, what can you teach me about B2B sales?
Speaker: Relationships. B2B sales is not not selling a product. It's building up a relationship. It's knowing your your client in and out.
Speaker: I remember even remembering when there when is the dog's birthday of my client. yeah Yeah, i used to send pet friendly cakes to them.
Speaker: Wow. So then all of that. And I remember having this Excel file in which my client's birthday, his wife's birthday, his chi child's birthday, everything was recorded.
Speaker: It's all about relationships because what a B2B client is looking for is somebody who will not ditch them, somebody who will be there when a problem arises.
Speaker: You are in a consumer-facing environment as a client. You will need partners who can stand by you when when something wrong happens and a partner who can continuously innovate.
Speaker: So relationships become the key there. And the second thing which I feel for B2B sales, you have to be very, very intuitive with your offerings.
Speaker: If you keep going back to the client with the same thing, it just doesn't work. The freshness in your conversations. yeah have to read You have to read what he would like and try and... It's on the spot solutioning, right?
Speaker: You have to be on the think on the fly, as you call it. In most times, you don't have a product available. You just sit with the client, create something, go back, put it on a drawing board, come back to them and say, yes, we can do this.
Speaker: Okay. Okay. Fascinating. oh ah You know, I would have thought that delivering value is all you need to sell.
Speaker: ah but why Why does remembering the pet's birthday matter? If you're delivering value, giving a good price, creative. See, when you are then you want a company like SAP, which has a product which has been adopted for the last 30 years,
Speaker: then I think delivering value makes sense. But when you're a new age company, which is just starting up, people don't know Thrive. Now, in fact, they do. But five years back, very few people knew Thrive. Now, how do you then make the other person trust you?
Speaker: And we're not working with small organizations. We're working with large banks who are public listed. One thing going wrong and an RBI circular with will come in. How do you manage a regulated environment?
Speaker: So that's where the trust factor has to be built in. That's where relationship relationships kick in. They have to trust you in what you are saying. Because in most cases, they will not have ah use case that they can verify.
Speaker: They're just looking at you saying, I think this guy will do it. Right, right, right, right. Yeah, interesting. I think especially in a bank, the buyer also has to do a fair amount of heavy lifting to get you in because the process of onboarding a vendor, all of that is friendly. They put their neck on the line.
Speaker: Yeah, they have to have real high conviction to hide and get you onboarded. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, interesting, interesting, interesting. um ah You know, you went through this rebranding exercise. Any lessons from that on how to do an effective rebrand? Why rebrand? ah Any learnings?
Speaker: Well, I remember early days of rebranding. People thought we are rebranding because ah we want to become ah golf neutral company. There is no real business we have. We just rebranding as a facade change while we continue doing golf.
Speaker: So one key message is don't rebrand till you are convinced of the rebranding. Don't rebrand just because you like another name. Right.
Speaker: Rebranding has to be taught through and has to be bagged with a lot of conviction and delivery. We were rebranding because we were transforming from a sports loyalty company to a multidisciplinary loyalty organization.
Speaker: Now, that cannot only be a narrative. It has to come to life in your financial statements, in your offerings, in your type of clients.
Speaker: Otherwise, people are able to see through it very quickly.
Speaker: Right, right, right, right. Plus rebranding is costly. Rebranding should not be done half-heartedly. I've seen a lot of brands, they want to do a rebranding, but they don't want to either put the number of hours or the amount of dollars behind it.
Speaker: Then don't do it. by ah What is the hours in terms of like thinking of the name? or like what Just communicating it. Just living up the new brand every day.
Speaker: And when say living up a number of hours to really make the new brand come to life. Right. See, every brand has a soul of its own.
Speaker: And the soul has to be connected to the idea.
Speaker: If most, I've seen some of the companies doing rebranding without the soul and the idea. it becomes very hollow then. And consumers are able to see through when you fall apart.
Speaker: Like typically when you bring in an agency to rebrand and as opposed to doing it in-house, you did it in-house, right? Or did you use In-house, everything. In fact, even the logo was in-house. I was i get taught this very early in the day that every critical presentation never outflows it.
Speaker: Do it DIY, do it yourself. Right. Everything critical is because when you do it yourself, the conviction is so much in there. It's like if I if i made a oh bicycle by assembling it, if anybody asks me any question about the bicycle, I can answer it end to end.
Speaker: Yes. Right. Then when I just go and pick up something outside, right? So it's it's that. You need to know every screw which which makes the whole thing work.
Speaker: Yes, yes, absolutely. ah You are also an angel investor. What kind of startups do you back? What do you look for? How do you build conviction in an idea or a founder? Is it a founder you build conviction or or the business...
Speaker: the Most investments, founder, I feel obviously the business idea has to make sense. It has to be something which is fresh. It may not be new. It has to be fresh.
Speaker: ah But I normally back the horse.
Speaker: the The founder can make a lot of difference to even ah relatively bad idea or a not so great idea. can turn it around in different way.
Speaker: You're proof of that, right? The 1 million had the one billion users pitch. Yeah, I had the most stupid ideas when I started. yeah I built it in the right direction. So I believe pack the founder.
Speaker: they talk All be a part of larger ecosystems which do the right divisions and can then you can back the idea as well. Okay. Don't go with FOMO.
Speaker: ah So much of engine investing is happening because of FOMO which I hate.
Speaker: ah And do you do this institutionally, the investing, or is it like you? No, still still at a very personal level, though I'm setting up a family office as we speak.
Speaker: And the idea is to invest in about 50 odd startups over the next 36 months. to just learn more from them. The idea is to learn learn from all these guys. There's such young talent available in our country, especially if you go to tier two and three.
Speaker: These guys are just doing some some some great stuff. So, ah you know, what's your advice to founders? And especially since you also come on board as an angel investor who's typically also a mentor for founders in the early stage, ah what are the things that you wish for them to learn?
Speaker: In fact, this is the name the the name of my family office has been conceptualized by my son. it's a very regular name, but in my context, i it's called Drive-In.
Speaker: and he said, Dad, we should call it Drive-In. I said, why Drive-In, Radha? He said, Dad, two things you've always taught me is you need to have that drive keep going and you have to keep innovating.
Speaker: So, and says yes, you're right, drive in. So yeah, drive in. You need to have that zeal and the drive and the persistence to just not stop. You will fall every day when you build a company, at least for the first 10 years, not the first two.
Speaker: You have to keep moving on and you have to be very agile and innovative. If these two things can be put together in a format, just everything falls in place.
Speaker: Amazing. Thank you so much for your time, Dhruv. It was a real pleasure. Really appreciate it, Akshay. You have a great day.
