LBB Open House

If you’re a brand owner, brand marketer, a D2C brand junkie, an LBB superfan or just hella curious, you’ll enjoy this!   

We recently released our 2021 Consumer and Marketing Trends Report; find it here (https://lbb.in/trends2021​) if you haven’t had a chance to browse through it already. On LBB, we engage with over 25 million Indian millennials and have over 100,000 businesses recommended on our platform. Through 2020, we saw consumers shape-shift what they consume and where they consume products and brands. We’ve consolidated data points and learnings across our platforms into our super comprehensive report that covers all the consumer and marketing trends that brands should be on top of! And in this episode, you’ll catch a live recording of Team LBB discussing our report.  We deep dive into data behind our trends prediction, examples of brands we see incorporating these trends well, and what we’re going to be doing on LBB in the coming year. You’ll hear from vertical heads and leads at LBB. The session is moderated by Suchita (co-founder of LBB); the Consumer Trends section is covered by Aakanksha and Akshita, and the Marketing Trends section is covered by Abhijeet and Tanvi.

Arjun and Hanif are co-founders of St+art India - an organisation dedicated to democratising art for the public through street art.   Starting out as a project in Delhi’s Shahpur Jat, St+art India today has scaled their street art projects across India- from Chennai and Goa to Mumbai, Hyderabad and beyond. It’s a mammoth project that involves multiple stakeholders from local governments and municipalities, communities, sponsors and artists, and that they’ve been able to transform quaint spaces in India to vibrant art districts is truly commendable. This episode is a little different from other Open House episodes. Let us know your questions, suggestions, ideas and feedback to share, email us at [email protected]. You can find us on Twitter on @FromLBB and I'm on @suchitasalwan

Tanmay Bhat is one of the most well knowns creators in India.  

This episode is incredibly funny and insightful - especially if you’re interested in the creator economy, new platforms, tools and mediums. We talk about one of 2020’s best ad campaigns - which is Cred’s "Not Everyone Gets It" campaign that featured Bappi Lahri, Daler Mehndi and more fantastic faces.   If you’ve got questions, suggestions, ideas and feedback to share, email us at [email protected]. You can find us on Twitter on @FromLBB and Suchita on @suchitasalwan

William Bissell is the chairman of Fabindia - one of India’s largest & leading lifestyle brands with over 200 stores across India that just celebrated its 60th anniversary.

In this episode, we talk to William about how to think long term, and differentiate static from signal while building your brand. He gives a really interesting statistic around how the life-expectancy of corporates is declining and we dive into what it takes to build brands that can out-last trends. FabIndia has evolved a lot over the past couple of years - with Fabcafe, their experience centres & more. Given the impact that COVID’s had on retail, William shares his point of view on what the future of retail is, and where lifestyle brands should be investing to reap long term gains.

William’s humility and honesty is really inspiring - you’ll hear that throughout this episode! We learnt a lot from this conversation - and we hope you enjoy it

Arman Sood is the co-founder of Sleepy Owl - a new age coffee company that’s making good quality coffee accessible to consumers through their cold brews, ready to drink cold coffee, and an array of such coffee-based products.

We’ve known Arman and his co-founders ever since they started Sleepy Owl, as fresh graduates from Law school, that too; and it’s so great to see them grow and expand their portfolio. In this episode we talk about competition, and how at times a rising tide lifts all boats- as it has with the “coffee movement” in India. Arman also talks about the research and development that goes into launching new products and subcategories for Sleepy Owl. It takes A LOT to build a consumer product, that too one with a limited shelf life; from fundraising to hiring, your own personal growth as a leader - our conversation covers this and more!

If you’re early in your startup journey, you will thoroughly enjoy this episode. Arman is refreshingly honest and upfront.

If you’ve got questions, suggestions, ideas and feedback to share, email us at [email protected]. You can find us on Twitter on @FromLBB and I’m on @suchitasalwan

Varun Duggirala is co-Founder of The Glitch - a digitally-led creative agency that’s worked with clients like Unilever, Netflix, Nokia and others, and is now under the WPP group. Varun is also the host of the podcast, ‘Advertising is a Dead’. Each week he discusses the changes and developments in the business of advertising and marketing.

Varun has had a fascinating career path - an engineer turned PR & Marketing student, he worked at MTV and Channel V before starting The Glitch. In this conversation, we run through all things brand, content, experience, and creator-led marketing. We talk about the gradual morphing of advertising into becoming part art, part science. We were also curious about his point of view on podcasting and where the medium is headed, and his experience building his personal brand through his podcast.

There’s a lot of tactical and applicable advice in this episode - enjoy

Mona was the first female engineer at Airbnb, and led product and strategic growth for the company in the US and then for APAC. She’s been an advisor to us at LBB for the past 6 years - I often go to her for advice on marketing, product development and hiring. 

On this episode, we deep dive into one of my favourite topics - marketplaces, and all that goes into building them. What part of demand / supply should one tackle? How do you navigate customer and merchant churn? Which qualitative benchmarks are needed while chasing quantitative outcomes? We cover all this and more. 

I think this is one of my most enjoyable conversations on Open House so far. I hope it helps you learn something new.

Taru is the General Manager of Match Group in India, which has a portfolio of dating products that need no introduction - such as Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid. Taru has a wide ranging career- having worked with BCG, Sequoia and then Match Group, where she was the 1st employee for Tinder in India and has grown the product from strength to strength. 

In this conversation, we discuss Match’s full stack product approach for companionship, what Taru has learnt about Indian customers while building Tinder, how dating products - specifically in the Indian context - have created agency, and how she’s grown as a manager and leader over the past 8 years.

Kusha Kapila is one of India's most beloved content creators. Over the last few years, she has found a way to create content that's relatable and scalable. Content creators are entrepreneurs themselves and Kusha delves in to how she has scaled to having a following of over a million people with high engagement and sustained relevance. 

This conversation is a great insight in to the business of being a content creator from one of the best in the game.

Open House is recorded as a live session! Make you check out LBB and sign up for our live chats, where you can ask my guests questions in real time. Head over to the LBB app or www.lbb.in and search for Open House to sign up for the next one.

Varun and Ghazal are the Co-Founders of Mamaearth, which is Asia’s first Madesafe certified brand that offers 100% toxin-free & natural baby care, skincare, and hair care products. In just 3 years, Mamaearth has launched a range of 80+ natural products, with over 1.5 million customers in India and is amongst the fastest FMCG start-ups to hit 100-crore run rate in India.

The brand started from a personal pain-point- Ghazal not being able to find toxin free products for her new born; and how they’ve taken an initial hunch from product to market to scale is truly incredible! Mass-tige products are a huge opportunity in India- and if you’re looking to start up in consumer products, we're sure you’ll thoroughly enjoy this chat.

Open House is recorded as a live session! Make you check out LBB and sign up for our live chats, where you can ask my guests questions in real time. Head over to the LBB app or www.lbb.in and search for Open House to sign up for the next one.