LBB Open House

Sakshi Chopra is a Principal at Sequoia Capital India.  She focuses on growth stage companies and has advised on investments across a range of Consumer, D2C and Fintech companies including Five-Star Business Finance, Indigo Paints, Wakefit, Faces, Go Colors, Healthkart, Hector Beverages and B9 Beverages.

From Paperboat’s positioning centred in ‘nostalgia’ to how Mama Earth grew into a brand with a 100 crore turnover- you’ll hear about how some of India’s most fascinating brands went from 0 to 1, and now are treading the path from 1-100, by finding their business moats.

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.

Kunal is the founder & CEO of Cred, and has been the founder & CEO of Freecharge, two of India’s foremost ‘fin-tech’ companies. He’s seen it all- 0 to 1, scaling to tens of millions of users, selling a company, starting up again; and has been an angel investor and mentor in a bunch of fantastic startups including Go-Jek, Razorpay, Zilingo and others. If you’re on desi tech Twitter, there’s no way you haven’t heard of or don’t follow Kunal- where you’ll often find him sharing his notes and learnings.

In this conversation we talk about the target addressable market in India, understanding Human motivations, how to take feedback- and the importance of twitter trolls, we get into it all. Kunal’s a very first principles thinker, and his responses to our questions reflect the same. 

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.

Vivek is the co-founder of Chumbak, one of India’s leading lifestyle brands. What started out as a souvenirs company with kiosks around India is now a force to be reckoned with- They’ve got over 75 stores across the country, and have products in over a hundred categories.

In this conversation we dig into the impact of Covid-19 on retail; Chumbak’s made a couple of super interesting changes to adapt better to the current environment, and he talks about categories and channels he’s excited to build out. Covid aside, we also talked about changes Chumbak’s made to position itself as a brand than just a product, and what’s coming up for them- including an international launch, hopefully soon!

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.

Rohan Mirchandani is the co-founder and CEO of Drums Food, the parent company of Epigamia. You have surely seen their range of greek yogurts, ghee spreads and smoothies on the shelves in your nearest trade store. Epigamia started out as an ice cream brand; and in our conversation Rohan covers their pivot into Greek Yogurt, finding product market fit, raising over 50 million dollars, and how they think about their target market. Rohan’s passion and energy is palpable- and our conversation has plenty of real life examples to learn from.

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.

Kanwal has decades of experience - from Intel to Hindustan Unilever, to leading investments at Carlyle, Helion and now Managing Partner at Fireside. He knows what it takes to build brands in India. In fact, he’s invested in some of my favourite brands like Mama Earth, Epigamia, Paperboat, Boat headphones to name a few. What makes Kanwal uniquely awesome is that he’s a straight shooter; and you’ll hear that in today’s episode. Our chat is peppered with real life examples and useful data points like Boat headphones’ super interesting pricing strategy and how brands like Mama Earth have scaled to clock over INR 100 crores of revenue.

Deepak is the Global VP of marketing at India’s home-brewed beer brand, Bira91. With over 14 years of experience at beverage companies such as Pernod Ricard and MillerCoors, he has led brand development, marketing and sales, and helped emerging and established brands find success across international markets.

In this conversation we dig into: what it takes to launch a brand internationally, how Bira’s been able to scale across consumer segments through its ever evolving catalogue, and trends to make a note of if you’re in the alcobev space. Spoiler alert: women drink beer & are an audience to reckon with!

Matt and Namrata are the co-founders of Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters - one of India’s leading coffee brands. They talk about how they built Blue Tokai - the journey from starting with an online presence to making it a cult coffee brand in India with plenty of physical locations. I really enjoyed learning from Matt and Namrata. As a coffee lover, there was a lot of insight for me into how the industry works and the challenges a new brand can face. I am very impressed by their strategic decision-making, and they gave me a lot to ponder over in my own business. This episode can help you understand how to start a business, adapt, and stay relevant with changing times.

Nidhi has decades of experience working for some of the biggest companies. Currently the Director of Partner Marketing at Microsoft, she is also the force behind making India the largest consumer base outside the US for GoDaddy. What I find most fascinating is her outlook to marketing, which is predominantly from a B2B lens - businesses are customers too. Keeping that in mind, I chat with Nidhi about her experiences with identifying and implementing the right B2B marketing strategies. I really enjoyed learning from her, particularly how to think about marketing through first principles. Thanks to the wealth of knowledge Nidhi has, this episode will help you understand consumer psyche and how to effectively drive consumer engagement. Hope you enjoy our conversation.

Welcome to LBB Open House - a podcast on how to build brands better. My name is Suchita. And I’m the co-founder of Little Black Book (www.lbb.in). 

We’ll be taking a deep dive into all things brand building - marketing, customer acquisition, distribution, and more; through candid conversations with founders, CXOs, and investors behind India’s most interesting enterprises. 

From fashion to alco-bev, software to greek yogurt, you will get to hear from people who’ve built multi-million dollar brands across industries. I am privileged to have access to some of the best in the game and I bring them on the show to ask them the questions that keep many young entrepreneurs such as myself or young business leaders up at night. How to best set up your sales team? What is the future of marketing? Can distribution be the moat around your business? I have learnt so much from my guests through my conversations. And I hope you do too.

Oh and before I forget, these episodes are recorded as live webinars, so if you want to watch me have these conversations live and ask my guests any questions, please log on to the LBB app or go to our website www.lbb.in