Getting to Aha! with Darshan Mehta

In this episode of Getting to Aha!, Darshan Mehta is joined by Karthikeyan Selvaraj, Founder & CEO of Dunkel Kitchen, a successful cloud kitchen chain! They delve into why passion and business are two different but essential things in your entrepreneurial journey and why you should always find different ways to succeed, as well as outlining the importance of mentorship in business.

Karthikeyan is India’s leading cloud kitchen coach, entrepreneur, author and motivational speaker. With over five years of experience in cloud kitchens, QSRs and fine dining Restaurants, he’s supporting aspiring food entrepreneurs across the globe to achieve their vision and unlock their full potential. Not only is he the Founder and CEO of Dunkel Kitchen, but he’s also the Founder of Biryani 2 Home (B2H), a biryani-specialized multi-cuisine restaurant!

KEY TAKEAWAYS

👉 Karthikeyan started in the corporate world, but his love was always for food, so he decided to jump into the food industry with all hands on deck. For a first-generation entrepreneur, things are never going to be easy, and unfortunately, passion alone isn’t enough to get you places in business. One day, it had gotten to the point where he was ready to give up, but his wife encouraged him to find ways to succeed, and it worked out!

👉 Although passion is good for an entrepreneur, it shouldn’t be the sole thing you rely on to succeed. Business requires a lot of different factors and moving parts, but it all needs to be done with some passion. Karthikeyan believes that, if making money is your only goal, then you will surely fail because, if there’s one thing customers care about, it’s what your values are; if you’re doing it for shallow reasons, then people will be able to tell.

👉 When you start off as an entrepreneur, you will find that you have a huge lack of financial knowledge; this won’t necessarily be your fault, because not everyone is taught about it. It will be a hurdle for sure, but you will be able to overcome it. With a bit of self-education and experience, it will all come together. 

👉 Mentorship is incredibly important. Karthikeyan says that, to this day, he has a business coach that helps him through the process. It was because of them that his life became easier and he gained more clarity on what he should be doing. He spent half a decade of his entrepreneurship journey putting everything as a blueprint for his online courses so that he can support aspiring food entrepreneurs. 

Getting to Aha! with Darshan Mehta is hand crafted by our friends over at: fame.so
Previous guests include: Luca Popovac, Senior Executive, Abhilasha Sinha of Open Secret, Laura Beavin-Yates, Stephen Griffiths of Level 2, Kristin Luck or ScaleHouse, Melina Palmer of The Brainy Business, Nicolas Zeisler of We’re Doing CX Wrong and How To Get It Right, Pricilla McKinney of Little Bird Marketing, Brooke Sellas of B Squared Marketing and Joseph Michelli of The Michelli Experience.

Check out the 3 most downloaded episodes: 

• Changing the Direction of Customer Experience with Luka Popovac, a Senior Customer Experience Executive
• Innovation, Curiosity, and Being Human with Abhilasha Sinha, Chief Growth Officer at Open Secret
• [Greatest Hits ] Emotions & Consumer Behavior with Laura Beavin-Yates
  
  

If you are interested in joining Getting to Aha! as a guest, please complete this form

In this episode of Getting to Aha!, Darshan Mehta is joined by Luka Popovac, a Senior Customer Experience Executive. They discuss why businesses need to change their way of thinking when it comes to customer experience; why businesses need to be more straightforward with their customers; and how to make customer experience the key driver of your decision making

Luka is a Senior Customer Experience Executive of a leading agribusiness and food ingredients processor who proudly connects with customers and rural communities, delivering value through both innovation and expertise! Prior to this, however, he was the Head of Customer Experience at Mcdonald's (a fast-food company that needs no introduction), and was also a National Customer Experience and Capability Manager at Volkswagen Group Australia for eleven years! 

He’s a passionate person who fully believes in the customer experience, something which becomes evident right away during the episode!


KEY TAKEAWAYS

👉 Like many other in customer experience, Luka first started off in digital marketing. He claims he saw customer experience as a tactical thing, something you do to help customers when things go wrong. It was when he was presenting to stakeholders that he realized: the customer experience needs a shift and a change in direction in everything they do. The thing is, everyone has their own definition of what customer experience really is, but for him, it’s the concept that helps the company orient towards truly serving the needs of its customers, not just making sure people are well trained. It starts all the way at the mission and vision of the company. 

👉 Yes, your customers are important and you need to ensure that your employees are interacting with them appropriately and to the best of their ability, but something you need to ask yourself is this: are you doing the right thing by your employees? If they’re not happy in their roles, if you’re not setting them up for success or paying them right, then they will get burnt out, which means they won’t be able to provide excellent customer experiences.

👉 A lot of companies still don’t understand how to approach customer experience properly; they tend to get stuck in the analytics and numbers of it all, that somehow they can measure a customer’s happiness through data, but that’s not true. You need to go all the way back to the mission and vision of the company - What do you stand for? What’s your purpose? Where do you want to go and how do you envision your customer persona? If you can figure this out and use customer experience as the number one key to your decision-making, the rest should fall into place.

👉 You need to strive to understand the customer; you’re never going to understand them a hundred percent, but you need to develop a deeper understanding of them through the experiences they’ve had. Usually, customers are striving for something that is not often done in the corporate world: balance. In fact, customers are looking for strong values in a company, whether that’s through the environment, good employee relationships, a focus on customers - anything. You can’t just give vague statements that somewhat allude to particular values, you need to get specific.

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And connect with the host and guests here:
Darshan Mehta on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/darshan--mehtaIResearch Website - https://iresearch.comLuka Popovac on Linkein - https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukapopovacGrain Crop Website - https://www.graincorp.com.au
Getting to Aha! with Darshan Mehta is hand crafted by our friends over at: fame.so
Previous guests include: Luca Popovac, Senior Executive, Abhilasha Sinha of Open Secret, Laura Beavin-Yates, Stephen Griffiths of Level 2, Kristin Luck or ScaleHouse, Melina Palmer of The Brainy Business, Nicolas Zeisler of We’re Doing CX Wrong and How To Get It Right, Pricilla McKinney of Little Bird Marketing, Brooke Sellas of B Squared Marketing and Joseph Michelli of The Michelli Experience.

Check out the 3 most downloaded episodes: 

• Changing the Direction of Customer Experience with Luka Popovac, a Senior Customer Experience Executive
• Innovation, Curiosity, and Being Human with Abhilasha Sinha, Chief Growth Officer at Open Secret
• [Greatest Hits ] Emotions & Consumer Behavior with Laura Beavin-Yates
  
  

If you are interested in joining Getting to Aha! as a guest, please complete this form

In this episode of Getting to Aha!, Darshan Mehta is joined by Gail Conn, CEO at PhiPower to discuss the importance of customer insights for business success; the best practices for designing effective surveys, and what to avoid; and the importance of staying open-minded in your data analysis. 

Gail is the CEO of PhiPower, a market research consultancy that works with big name organizations, such as Apple and Disney, who need nuanced information to inform their business decisions. Prior to this, she was Co-Founder of MindClick, an online market research company, and a Senior Account Executive at Yahoo. She is also a volunteer Worker Bee Extraordinaire at Big Sunday. As a psychiatrist for business, Gail has provided consultation, marketing, and strategy for major corporations.

We can’t wait for you to hear what she has to share with us!

KEY TAKEAWAYS

👉 Surveys are boring, and participants completing a boring survey will not be engaged and share how they really feel. You need to create a storyline through your survey, but keep it short and snappy. Add in images and audio to keep your participants engaged. Gail describes creating a survey where each question builds upon the previous one, but is short in itself, and in the end the participant has made their perfect advert. If a respondent isn’t engaged in the beginning, they are just going to keep clicking through for speed.

👉 Gail shares her top tips for developing a quantitative survey. First - understand your sample, if the right people are not doing your survey, it does not matter what you ask. Second - work with people who know how to write a good questionnaire, that way you can ensure it will be engaging. Third - keep it short, people don’t have the attention span for a long questionnaire. Designing it in the best way will produce the best results for a corporation.

👉 With so many tools for creating them, there is now an overabundance of surveys out there. Thus, it is crucial to be distinct in your survey. With tens of thousands distributed daily, you don’t want yours to get lost in the ether. Gail’s team never repeats a survey, each one is unique, to combat this problem. Part of the job of a survey writer is to keep engaging your people, and keeping it insightful to the group, otherwise there’s no point in doing the service.

👉 Market research is really structured curiosity: learning about your customers through observing and asking questions. Ultimately, you are trying to understand what is driving their decisions, getting a glimpse into their subconscious. But they’re human beings, they’re complex, there are so many conflicting factors affecting their decision-making, so you need to be open-minded in understanding the data. Look for the hidden, seemingly unrelated factors. 

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And connect with the host and guests here:

• Darshan’s Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/darshan--mehta
• IResearch Website - https://iresearch.com
• Connectqik Website - https://www.connectqik.com
• Gail on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/gailconn/ 
• PhiPower Website - https://www.phipower.com/ 

Getting to Aha! with Darshan Mehta is hand crafted by our friends over at: fame.so
Previous guests include: Luca Popovac, Senior Executive, Abhilasha Sinha of Open Secret, Laura Beavin-Yates, Stephen Griffiths of Level 2, Kristin Luck or ScaleHouse, Melina Palmer of The Brainy Business, Nicolas Zeisler of We’re Doing CX Wrong and How To Get It Right, Pricilla McKinney of Little Bird Marketing, Brooke Sellas of B Squared Marketing and Joseph Michelli of The Michelli Experience.

Check out the 3 most downloaded episodes: 

• Changing the Direction of Customer Experience with Luka Popovac, a Senior Customer Experience Executive
• Innovation, Curiosity, and Being Human with Abhilasha Sinha, Chief Growth Officer at Open Secret
• [Greatest Hits ] Emotions & Consumer Behavior with Laura Beavin-Yates
  
  

If you are interested in joining Getting to Aha! as a guest, please complete this form

In this episode of Getting to Aha!, Darshan Mehta is joined by Melina Palmer, Founder & CEO of The Brainy Business. They discuss Melina’s aha! journey; the intricacies of human psychology within Behavior Economics and business; the contrasting views of behavioral economics and behavioral science; why your tone matters more than what you say; and the different methods of behavioral experimentation within your business, opening you up to invaluable insights. She also delves into her ten-year journey of searching for a career in Behavioral Economics.

Melina Palmer the Founder and CEO of The Brainy Business, a company that provides behavioral economics consulting to businesses all around the globe. She is also an Instructor for the Applied Behavioural Economics Certificate, a Columnist at Inc. Magazine., and an Author of What Your Customer Wants And Can’t Tell You. She is an incredibly passionate speaker whom audiences of all sizes and industries have praised: “Her fun, conversational approach is bringing behavioral economics out of academia and into application”
KEY TAKEAWAYS

👉Behavioral Economics is, essentially, the psychology of why people do what they do, why they buy what they buy, and how our brains actually work rather than how we think they should. Melina explains that the main problem of traditional economics is that it assumes everyone makes rational decisions in everything they do, but if humans are known for anything, it’s for their complex emotions and often irrational decision-making. Behavioral Economics takes both psychology and neuroscience into consideration, resulting in a more accurate, empathetic approach to economics and insights.

👉Melina’s first ‘Aha!’ moment, and possibly the most prominent one, came to her when she was studying in business school and came across a small section within a large textbook that spoke about the psychology of making decisions. For the next ten years, she searched high and low for a Master's course in that very topic and was greeted with only disappointment and rejection. It wasn’t until she attended a talk on Behavioral Economics that she found what she was looking for!

👉What’s the difference between Behavioral Economics and Behavioral Science? Some argue that the former only comes into play when money is involved, but Melina believes that there is always an exchange happening, it doesn’t have to be monetary. Behavioral Economics is all around us, even if it’s something as simple as swapping desks at work or reporting to someone new, there is always some sort of exchange.

👉A key tip that Melina mentions is ‘how you say something is much more important than what you are saying.’ How something is presented to us influences the way that we feel about it, and she believes that businesses could really benefit from this lesson. Sometimes, the reason a product might be a flop could be as simple as a poor choice of wording. 

👉 Behavioral Economics isn’t just the future of businesses, it’s the future of everything; businesses are made up of people, and it’s important to remember that. Don’t treat the people working for you as data and numbers, treat them with empathy and genuineness/

👉Melina discusses an anecdote about a team that was meant to design a nuclear power plant but was hung up on building a bikeshed first. At first glance, this seems ridiculous and unimportant, but think about it for a second: if they couldn’t build something that simple, how could they confidently begin work on a huge, scary powerplant? 

👉Behavioral experimentation can involve something as simple as ending emails on a question rather than a statement. This can be used to figure out how customers or audiences perceive you and whether or not you should stick with it.

Listen now!

bCast - https://bit.ly/3ACsRBz

Apple - https://apple.co/3gsuA31 

Spotify - https://spoti.fi/3B0lVy6 

Youtube - https://bit.ly/3KYAHtd 

RSS -  https://bit.ly/3AFrUs6 

Episode Resources:
 
Melina Palmer on LinkedIn

Melina Palmer on Instagram

Melina Palmer on Twitter

Melina Palmer’s Website

Melina Palmer’s  Books

The Brainy Business Website

The Brainy Business Podcast

The Brainy Business on YoutubeGetting to Aha! with Darshan Mehta is hand crafted by our friends over at: fame.so
Previous guests include: Luca Popovac, Senior Executive, Abhilasha Sinha of Open Secret, Laura Beavin-Yates, Stephen Griffiths of Level 2, Kristin Luck or ScaleHouse, Melina Palmer of The Brainy Business, Nicolas Zeisler of We’re Doing CX Wrong and How To Get It Right, Pricilla McKinney of Little Bird Marketing, Brooke Sellas of B Squared Marketing and Joseph Michelli of The Michelli Experience.

Check out the 3 most downloaded episodes: 

• Changing the Direction of Customer Experience with Luka Popovac, a Senior Customer Experience Executive
• Innovation, Curiosity, and Being Human with Abhilasha Sinha, Chief Growth Officer at Open Secret
• [Greatest Hits ] Emotions & Consumer Behavior with Laura Beavin-Yates
  
  

If you are interested in joining Getting to Aha! as a guest, please complete this form

In this Greatest Hits episode of Getting to Aha!, Darshan Mehta is joined by Leslie Talbot, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Corporate Visions. They delve into whether writers and marketers feel imprisoned by SEO, rendering them unable to tell a story, how you can beat your imposter syndrome, and why storytelling is such a scientific, vital part of working with customers.

Leslie is the Senior Vice President of Marketing at Corporate Visions, the leading provider of science-backed sales and marketing training and consulting services. Prior to this, she was the Founder and Principal of G2G Sales Communications, the Director of Content Services at Pragmatech Software (now Qvidian), and a Partner/Senior Writer at Inkable! She’s also written an article titled “Marketing is Moving Further Down the Sales Funnel” - an excellent read!

KEY TAKEAWAYS

👉 We talk a lot about Aha! moments here and the external factors of what led to them, but Leslie argues that it’s the way you respond to situations that create the Aha! moments. You have to ask yourself if where you are right now is where you want to be. She says that once she realized she could make money from writing, an Aha! moment went off in her head: she could combine her love and passion for writing with her sales knowledge to start a whole new career!

👉 If you’re not careful, your imposter syndrome will be your downfall; you need to trust yourself and your work. When people are telling you that you’re good at something, listen to them and, more importantly, trust what they’re saying is true. Leslie believed that her dreams of writing were a childish pipedream and that she should’ve been focusing on business and sales, but the world and the people around her just kept pushing her to do more!

👉 Leslie says that, at Corporate Visions, there is a massive focus on storytelling because it’s our stories that drive the world; our brains operate through stories. If you don’t understand something, your brain will think up a story to fill in the blanks. If you can tell a story to your customers and make them the hero of their own stories, then you’ll have sold them on your product or service. 

👉 Business people tend to shy away from telling stories, instead choosing to lead with facts and figures. But all business decisions actually come from emotional places. It comes from thinking about what drives a customer to make a certain point, and looking into insights into how they think along with their values. Build your story around where the customer is, rather than just throwing data at them.

👉 The wisdom of conventional marketers isn’t necessarily wrong, but it is limited. There is such a focus on automation and digital marketing recently, but the reason most marketers get into marketing is that they don’t like math and science, and yet those two things are thrown onto them and it can become overwhelming and disheartening. Sometimes the story can get lost because of ‘SEO’. A lot of marketers feel imprisoned by that.

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. Instructions on how to do this are here.

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Connect with Guest Here:

Leslie on Linkedin - http://linkedin.com/in/leslietalbotCorporate Vision Website - https://corporatevisions.com

Getting to Aha! with Darshan Mehta is hand crafted by our friends over at: fame.so
Previous guests include: Luca Popovac, Senior Executive, Abhilasha Sinha of Open Secret, Laura Beavin-Yates, Stephen Griffiths of Level 2, Kristin Luck or ScaleHouse, Melina Palmer of The Brainy Business, Nicolas Zeisler of We’re Doing CX Wrong and How To Get It Right, Pricilla McKinney of Little Bird Marketing, Brooke Sellas of B Squared Marketing and Joseph Michelli of The Michelli Experience.

Check out the 3 most downloaded episodes: 

• Changing the Direction of Customer Experience with Luka Popovac, a Senior Customer Experience Executive
• Innovation, Curiosity, and Being Human with Abhilasha Sinha, Chief Growth Officer at Open Secret
• [Greatest Hits ] Emotions & Consumer Behavior with Laura Beavin-Yates
  
  

If you are interested in joining Getting to Aha! as a guest, please complete this form

In this episode of Getting to Aha!, Darshan Mehta is joined by Pavangopal A, CMO at Nandu’s, to discuss how engineers and marketers could learn from each other; why marketing is really all about objectivity; and why you should focus on yourself, not just on the competitors!

Pavangopal is the Chief Marketing Officer at Nandu’s, one of India’s fastest-growing hyper-local omnichannel meat and packaged foods brands, where he originally started as the Head of Marketing and E-commerce. Now he leads the charge for all of their marketing, PR, and CRM efforts. Prior to this he was the Vice President for Strategy and Operations at Webenza India and was Principal Consultant at Experience Ideas! 

We can’t wait for you to hear what he has to share with us!

KEY TAKEAWAYS

👉 One of Pavangopal’s first Aha! moments was when he went into architecture and engineering and realized it wasn’t what he wanted to do at all. But regardless, he built a product with his engineering skills and no one was coming to purchase it; it wasn’t until they spoke with some senior marketing professionals that they realized, even though they’d created something that was unique, no one actually wanted it. It was there that the marketing lessons started to kick in; they started with the customer and worked towards the product, rather than the other way round.

👉 Despite the fact Pavangopal’s job as an engineer wasn’t what he wanted to do, there are things that marketers could learn from them and vice versa. It’s important for marketers to understand some of the key intricacies behind the products they sell, and engineers need to understand what the customer wants and needs. You need to start defining the boundaries of the problem you’re trying to solve and work towards an objective: after all, that’s the aim of marketing and engineering, no?

👉 Pavangopal used to throw loads of different features onto his products just to see how much they could do, but now he approaches them from the point of view of what the customer wants and whether they’ll find it delightful. He makes sure that it ticks off all the basic boxes first and foremost so that the customer is happy, and then he would add all the extras. Some people don’t realize that having too many features can be overwhelming and that people much prefer simplicity over anything else.

👉 Nandu’s never takes their eyes off the competition. When you’re in marketing, half of the job is keeping an eye on them! You need to understand the consumer behavior and why they’re going to people that aren’t you. However, consumer behaviors are notoriously difficult to change, so instead of putting emphasis on what the competitor is doing all the time, try to focus on your core values and principles – it’s the only way to grow.

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And connect with the host and guests here:
Darshan’s Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/darshan--mehtaIResearch Website - https://iresearch.comConnectqik Website - https://www.connectqik.comPavangopal on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/pavangopal
Nandu’s Website - https://www.nandus.com
Nandu’s LinkedIn
Other media: Medianews4uFinancial ExpressFnb NewsThe Week Getting to Aha! with Darshan Mehta is hand crafted by our friends over at: fame.so
Previous guests include: Luca Popovac, Senior Executive, Abhilasha Sinha of Open Secret, Laura Beavin-Yates, Stephen Griffiths of Level 2, Kristin Luck or ScaleHouse, Melina Palmer of The Brainy Business, Nicolas Zeisler of We’re Doing CX Wrong and How To Get It Right, Pricilla McKinney of Little Bird Marketing, Brooke Sellas of B Squared Marketing and Joseph Michelli of The Michelli Experience.

Check out the 3 most downloaded episodes: 

• Changing the Direction of Customer Experience with Luka Popovac, a Senior Customer Experience Executive
• Innovation, Curiosity, and Being Human with Abhilasha Sinha, Chief Growth Officer at Open Secret
• [Greatest Hits ] Emotions & Consumer Behavior with Laura Beavin-Yates
  
  

If you are interested in joining Getting to Aha! as a guest, please complete this form

In this episode of Getting to Aha!, Darshan Mehta is joined by Sanjai George, CEO of Double Horse, to discuss Sanjai’s Aha! moments in retail; why simplicity is the key to making a team the best they can be; and how COVID changed the way customers approach businesses, as well as how businesses have shifted their focus onto different priorities.

As the CEO of Double Horse, a family-run business turned professional organization that provides good, high-quality food for all their customers, Sanjai George has proven himself as a strategic thinker and proactive leader who nurtures and builds talent into a cohesive team, driven by a focused customer-oriented approach to achieve the targeted goals of the organization. Prior to this he was the CEO of retail brand Fathima Group of Companies, and was also the CEO of Nesto Group. 

With so much experience as a CEO, he’s the best person to talk to for this episode of Getting to Aha!

KEY TAKEAWAYS

👉 If you’re really determined and good at what you do, if you really believe in your work, then there is no way you won’t get an ‘Aha!’ moment. Sanjai says that he’s had plenty of Aha! moments, but his favorite, and the one he’s most proud of, was planning a promotion in conjunction with Black Friday. It was also the first time he said ‘no’ to customers entering his shop, which showed him he didn’t have to take on everything all the time.

👉 Retail is very simple, we just have a tendency to overcomplicate it – at least, that’s what Sanjai believes. He would put attractive offers in his shop and sell to people whilst also providing good customer service, communicating clearly with customers about what they wanted. You have to keep things simple in order to attract customers.

👉 In order to achieve simplicity in your business, you have to articulate your thoughts very clearly. By this, Sanjai means that he clearly communicates with his team about his thoughts and goals, because you won’t always be talking to a team of intellectuals, you’re more likely to be talking to a team with various backgrounds and levels of education. You have to speak in a language that they will understand.

👉 Ever since Covid, ecommerce and online strategies have become even more of a priority. Whilst online and ecommerce has been consistently prominent over the last few years, it seems to have spiked in popularity, with both businesses and customers often heading online in the first instance. In fact, some businesses are even focusing their marketing efforts more on the online side of things.

👉 Sanjai says that people and businesses are now far more focused on making sure inefficiencies and errors are ironed out and taken care of. People want to innovate and give something new to the customer to ensure they’ll stick around, especially in a post-Covid world. How are you innovating and making your customers feel happier in your business?

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And connect with the host and guests here:
Darshan’s Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/darshan--mehtaIResearch Website - https://iresearch.comConnectqik Website - https://www.connectqik.comSanjai George on LinkedIn Sanjai George on TwitterSanjai George on company website YoutubeGetting to Aha! with Darshan Mehta is hand crafted by our friends over at: fame.so
Previous guests include: Luca Popovac, Senior Executive, Abhilasha Sinha of Open Secret, Laura Beavin-Yates, Stephen Griffiths of Level 2, Kristin Luck or ScaleHouse, Melina Palmer of The Brainy Business, Nicolas Zeisler of We’re Doing CX Wrong and How To Get It Right, Pricilla McKinney of Little Bird Marketing, Brooke Sellas of B Squared Marketing and Joseph Michelli of The Michelli Experience.

Check out the 3 most downloaded episodes: 

• Changing the Direction of Customer Experience with Luka Popovac, a Senior Customer Experience Executive
• Innovation, Curiosity, and Being Human with Abhilasha Sinha, Chief Growth Officer at Open Secret
• [Greatest Hits ] Emotions & Consumer Behavior with Laura Beavin-Yates
  
  

If you are interested in joining Getting to Aha! as a guest, please complete this form

In this episode of Getting to Aha!, Darshan Mehta is joined by Ashutosh Mahindru, Founder and CEO at Foodtech Ventures. Together, they get right into some of the biggest hardships you will face when starting your first business, some of the best advice he’d give to his younger self, and how running a mobile food delivery business really works!

Ashutosh is the Founder and CEO of Foodtech Ventures, a company bringing food delivery to the twenty-first century and the world’s only baking on-the-go delivery platform. He is also a Pedal Grad - Zero to One at PedalStart, and was previously the Director of Operations at Raptor Supplies, the Director at Advanced Surfactants, and the Co-Founder at Advance Satellite News Gathering. With such a diverse background in a variety of industries, we can’t wait for you to hear his story!

KEY TAKEAWAYS

👉 Ashutosh believes that, in order to succeed, you need to be able to stand out from the crowd and come up with innovative solutions to problems. He places a lot of importance on being different and doing something which doesn’t just fit into the status quo. All of his Aha! moments were rewarding and enriching, but part of him does wish he could go back and change some of them.

👉 Ashutosh acknowledges that he had a very fortunate upbringing, however, through various mishaps within his family’s businesses, the wealth and fortune they had built over four generations had been mostly destroyed. Suddenly, he found himself from being in a position of relative comfort and wealth, to having to think of where to find money for medicine and groceries. It was through this that he learned how to build something of his own.

👉 If he could go back and give his younger self some advice, Ashutosh says the biggest thing would be to have ‘belief and faith that time heals all’ and that ‘understanding that nothing is the end of the world.’ Ninety percent of getting through difficult times is getting up and motivating yourself; you have to rise to the challenge if you wish you succeed. Cliche as it sounds, you have to never give up and always get back up.

👉 Foodtech ventures was born out of seeing Dominos and Pizza Hut take the charge in the pizza delivery world. Ashutosh wanted to make sure that the food he was delivering to people wasn’t cold by the time it got to them. In fact, he wanted to completely circumvent this by making sure the food was straight out the oven and was still hot by the time the customer received it.

👉 It was super important to Ashutosh to make sure that all of their ingredients were fresh. They then make sure they’re secure in a moving vehicle as they’re cooking and eventually, by the time they’ve reached their destination, the food is piping hot and ready to be served to the customer.

👉 One of the biggest questions they get asked at Foodtech Ventures is about how they control quality. Ashutosh explains that they have CCTV inside the van so the chef can see what’s going on. Everything is photographed and checked before it’s sent out, making sure that they are providing the best quality food and service they possibly can.

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And connect with the host and guests here:
Darshan’s Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/darshan--mehtaIResearch Website - https://iresearch.comConnectqik Website - https://www.connectqik.comSanjai George on LinkedIn Sanjai George on TwitterSanjai George on company website Youtube
Getting to Aha! with Darshan Mehta is hand crafted by our friends over at: fame.so
Previous guests include: Luca Popovac, Senior Executive, Abhilasha Sinha of Open Secret, Laura Beavin-Yates, Stephen Griffiths of Level 2, Kristin Luck or ScaleHouse, Melina Palmer of The Brainy Business, Nicolas Zeisler of We’re Doing CX Wrong and How To Get It Right, Pricilla McKinney of Little Bird Marketing, Brooke Sellas of B Squared Marketing and Joseph Michelli of The Michelli Experience.

Check out the 3 most downloaded episodes: 

• Changing the Direction of Customer Experience with Luka Popovac, a Senior Customer Experience Executive
• Innovation, Curiosity, and Being Human with Abhilasha Sinha, Chief Growth Officer at Open Secret
• [Greatest Hits ] Emotions & Consumer Behavior with Laura Beavin-Yates
  
  

If you are interested in joining Getting to Aha! as a guest, please complete this form

In this episode of Getting to Aha!, Darshan Mehta is joined by Nikhil Jain, Co-Founder of Mealawe, to discuss Nikhil’s three integral lessons he learned during his entrepreneurial journey, how curiosity really benefited him in the long run, and why the process of finding new chefs and kitchens is a lengthy one, but completely worth it in the end.

Nikhil Jain is the Co-Founder of Mealawe, a food delivery service that’s redefining the industry with fresh, tasty homemade food. Not only that, he is also the Vice President of Rotaract and Founder of VIBRANCY. Some of his previous roles include being a Channel Partner at Exampil Solutions, the Founder of Sparkles Valley, and a Marketing & Public Relations Specialist at PICT Entrepreneurship Development Cell.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

👉 When Nikhil heard the phrase ‘the goal is to die with memories, not dreams’, it impacted him in a very profound way. He wanted to not just dream about something, but also make it happen and turn his dreams into real-life memories.

👉 Nikhil’s entrepreneurial journey was a tricky one, accompanied by several setbacks. Controversially, the first lesson he learned was to never trust anyone, you should be prepared both legally and ethically for any setbacks - make sure agreements and contracts are always signed as a contingency for all parties involved!

👉 The second lesson he learned was to keep everything documented - this includes your plans and important documents that will be needed in the future. If none of it is written down or documented, then you won’t have the clarity that is so essential to your success as an entrepreneur.

👉 Thirdly - and this is the most important one - you must have consistency and passion. That is the key; you must be motivated by and really care about what you want to accomplish, otherwise, you will regret your decisions as a business owner.

👉 Curiosity is something that really benefits Nikhil in his career journey. Without it, he wouldn’t have figured out how to make Mealawe work as a business or, more than that, he wouldn’t have discovered the gap in the market for what he was offering.

👉 Nikhil says that the process of finding chefs for Mealawe is a very lengthy one. They have to check that everything is hygienic and clean - that all the food is safe to eat. This can take a lot of time, but without these steps, they wouldn’t be able to make the business a reality. 

Getting to Aha! with Darshan Mehta is hand crafted by our friends over at: fame.so
Previous guests include: Luca Popovac, Senior Executive, Abhilasha Sinha of Open Secret, Laura Beavin-Yates, Stephen Griffiths of Level 2, Kristin Luck or ScaleHouse, Melina Palmer of The Brainy Business, Nicolas Zeisler of We’re Doing CX Wrong and How To Get It Right, Pricilla McKinney of Little Bird Marketing, Brooke Sellas of B Squared Marketing and Joseph Michelli of The Michelli Experience.

Check out the 3 most downloaded episodes: 

• Changing the Direction of Customer Experience with Luka Popovac, a Senior Customer Experience Executive
• Innovation, Curiosity, and Being Human with Abhilasha Sinha, Chief Growth Officer at Open Secret
• [Greatest Hits ] Emotions & Consumer Behavior with Laura Beavin-Yates
  
  

If you are interested in joining Getting to Aha! as a guest, please complete this form

It feels like just yesterday when we published our Special Compilation Episode - Aha! Moments from Our First 20th Episode, and now we’re excited to show you more!
We've had the honor of hosting extraordinary guests from diverse fields, who have generously shared their incredible tips, wisdom, and insights gained from their own jaw-dropping Aha! moments. And to commemorate this incredible achievement, we're taking a trip down memory lane to relive some of the most unforgettable Aha! moments from our recent 20 episodes.
We've had the privilege of chatting with an array of extraordinary minds, and although we wish we could feature them all today, we know there will be many more spectacular moments to come in future episodes.
A special shoutout and heartfelt thank you to the following luminaries: Stephen Griffiths of Level2, Melina Palmer of The Brainy Business, Priscilla McKinney of Little Bird Marketing, Nishat Mehta of IRI, and Daniel Enson of Toluna Corporate! 
Their invaluable contributions to our audience have made this journey truly remarkable.  We've been on an awe-inspiring ride, and we're confident that this year will bring even more riveting conversations that will leave you breathless with excitement.

Listen Now! 

bCast - https://bit.ly/3ACsRBz

Apple - https://apple.co/3gsuA31

Spotify - https://spoti.fi/3B0lVy6 

Youtube - https://bit.ly/3KYAHtd 

RSS - https://bit.ly/3AFrUs6 
Getting to Aha! with Darshan Mehta is hand crafted by our friends over at: fame.so
Previous guests include: Luca Popovac, Senior Executive, Abhilasha Sinha of Open Secret, Laura Beavin-Yates, Stephen Griffiths of Level 2, Kristin Luck or ScaleHouse, Melina Palmer of The Brainy Business, Nicolas Zeisler of We’re Doing CX Wrong and How To Get It Right, Pricilla McKinney of Little Bird Marketing, Brooke Sellas of B Squared Marketing and Joseph Michelli of The Michelli Experience.

Check out the 3 most downloaded episodes: 

• Changing the Direction of Customer Experience with Luka Popovac, a Senior Customer Experience Executive
• Innovation, Curiosity, and Being Human with Abhilasha Sinha, Chief Growth Officer at Open Secret
• [Greatest Hits ] Emotions & Consumer Behavior with Laura Beavin-Yates
  
  

If you are interested in joining Getting to Aha! as a guest, please complete this form