The Indian Dream

Private communities are being built across India and globally as traditional communities built around religion, physical location and trade are being disrupted. New age digital first communities focused on hobbies and learning interests are gaining traction.

Leap.Club is one of those exciting private communities that is shaping the landscape of India. Only a year after its founding, Leap.Club has 1000 paying members and more than 8000 people in the waitlist. 

But this is not a one-off phenomenon.

The Quorum, a Members Only Club in Gurgaon, has more than 700 members paying them Rs. 75000 per year. Makerpad, an online paid community of No-Code enthusiasts was recently acquired by Zapier for millions of dollars.

Private Communities Newsletter

Leap.Club

Ragini Das, Co-Founder Leap.club

Well, to dig deeper into the world of Private Communities, we have Ragini Das, Co-Founder of Leap Club, a Private network for Women. 

An Army Kid, Ragini traveled the length and breadth of the country before starting her career at Trident. She then went on to work at Zomato and was part of the team that conceptualized Zomato Gold. Last year, she co-founded Leap Club and has had an interesting journey scaling Leap Club to 1000 Paying members and with 8000 more members in the waiting list.

We talk to her about the workings of Leap and the opportunities in this space.

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Sahil (@sahil071) & Siddharth (@sidbetala) have some fun discussing the helicopter rental industry in India and how it's shockingly profitable. We have some exciting business ideas that we discuss on this episode of business munchies.

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Timestamps:

(0:45) - The Indian Dream Fund for Bootstrapped/Profitable Businesses
(11:05) - The Economics of the Helicopter Rental Business in India
(26:25) - Wealth Management with Social Commerce
(37:00) - Opportunities in the Carbon Allowances Market

Topics we discussed:

1. The Indian Dream Fund for Bootstrapped/Profitable Businesses: Our primary goal at The Indian Dream is to promote entrepreneurship and as part of this Podcast and the community we're trying to build - we meet many people who're on the verge of starting their own business or have just started one and are looking for new ideas. Our thought is that once our audience is large enough (10x - 100x of the current size), we can raise a fund to help people start their own profit oriented businesses (instead of VC funded hyper growth machines). There is a big gap in the market for people who want to & can build profitable businesses but don't have the capital to do it & can't raise that capital for banks. We are envisioning a fund that would bridge this gap.
2. Blog for Crypto Accounting in India & How People can Invest Abroad
3. The Economics of the Helicopter Rental Business: Sahil spoke to a friend who works in the helicopter rental space and got all the numbers about the economics of this business. They cost anywhere from 2cr to 25cr to buy, maintenance is ~8,000 rs. per flight hour, fuel ~ 20,000 rs. per hour, take off/landing charges ~rs. 10 - 15,000 & pilot salaries are ~3,00,000 per month. Apparently, 150 hours of flying time per year is the break even point for helicopter rentals. There are some big players operating throughout the country with some having revenues of 10 crores per helicopter. Siddharth is optimistic that this industry will grow as India gets richer.
4. Wealth Management with Social Commerce: Wealth Management advisory is a broken industry with broken incentives. Wealth Advisors only recommend products that give themselves the highest commissions instead of products that would actually be best for the client. Is there a way to make this industry better through social commerce. Perhaps social marketing like meesho combined with content creators to ensure that investors are getting the right information.
5. Opportunities in the Carbon Allowances Market: Carbon Allowances in the EU alone is a €200 billion industry in Europe itself in 2019 and this grew substantially in 2020 - in 2021, the prices peaked at €40 euros - up from just €15 a few years ago. Tesla earned nearly $500 million from carbon allowances in 2020 - this was one of the major contributors to its profits in 2020. Along with this, California and the US as a whole are experimenting with the idea of setting up a carbon allowance system. This system is only going to grow in the near future as climate change becomes a bigger threat with a high possibility of a global carbon allowance system. Entrepreneurs in India have already started buying up forest land and other resources that count as carbon sinks so that they can sell these allowances to companies in Europe and other parts of the world. 

Jatin Modi, a serial entrepreneur whose latest venture FrogIdeas is one of the leading B2 B marketing companies in the world with world class clients such as Tata communications, SAP, HCL and many more. 

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FrogIdeas
Jatin Modi

Our conversation with Jatin starts in his college hostel where he starts his first venture. after that he tries many ventures before starting MadeinHealth.com, one of India's first ecommerce companies which was eventually sold to healthkart. after playing a pivotal yebhi.com, another ecommerce player,  Jatin was an early entrant into the space of digital marketing - so early that even his family couldn't believe his career choice. Now, Frog Ideas is India's first and only LinkedIn creative partner out of only 7 globally. 

Two things to watch out for in this episode: 

Firstly, Jatin’s vision of where B2B Marketing & Enterprise Sales are heading in the next few years – this is important for anyone who works in or is looking to get into a B2B enterprise. 

Secondly, Jatin describes his experience while working at the venture funded Yebhi.com and the troubles that sometimes come with taking VC money.

Please follow us on the Podcast app you’re using and if you’re on Apple, please give us a rating and a review! We’ve also crossed 1000 members on our whatsapp groups – if you don’t want to miss out on regular updates, join the group through the link in the show notes.

We hope you enjoy the episode!

Sahil (@sahil071) & Siddharth (@sidbetala) have some fun discussing how Siddharth made $1,000 in one week by trading NBA cards. We also have some interesting business ideas in this episode of business munchies.

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For the first time ever, we were not too lazy to provide timestamps.

Timestamps:
(0:00) - Introduction
(0:33) - Final Conclusion to Practo for Lawyers and CA's
(2:35) - Summary of two the ideas of the podcast
(3:32) - Sikkim Tourism centralised marketing agency for adventure sports + local franchises in villages.
(16:48) - What are Non Fungible Tokens and what are the future opportunities in this space?
(40:22) - Cyber crime insurance

Topics we discussed:

1. Final Conclusion to Practo for Lawyers and CA's: We got a lot emails from Lawyers and CA's about this - there are a lot of regulations that prevent lawyers and CA's from marketing themselves. This was the clarification we got about CA's from Anshutha, "A Chartered Accountant is prohibited to solicit clients through advertisement, circular, personal communication or interview or by any other means. However, you as a Chartered Accountant, can give a classified advertisement in the Journal/Newsletter of the Institute (ICAI)." 
   • Based on the last line of this clarification, Anshutha mentioned that a business could be built along with ICAI but I would not trust a regulatory body such as this. They could easily change a law and your business would be dead. 
2. Sikkim Tourism centralised marketing agency for adventure sports + local franchises in villages: This is an idea that's really close to my heart - I absolutely love the outdoors and have spent a good deal of my life hiking, climbing, running, etc.. I was recently travelling through the mountain state of Sikkim and realised that a lot could be done to improve tourism in the state. Our specific idea was to have a centralised marketing agency and drives a digital marketing campaign. This marketing arm then flows the customers to outdoor focused franchises that are built in villages across the state.
3. NFT's or Non Fungible Tokens: Huge topic. Here are a few links:
   • Non-fungible token Wikipedia
   • Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT): Beginner's Guide
   • Nifty Gateway
   • Crypto Kitties
   • Neer and the Patent Drop Newsletter
   • We discuss a lot about NFT's in this part of the discussion - from digital displays for your new digital art to the eventuality of the Metaverse and the possibilities of the Metahuman Creator by Unreal Engine. 
   • IPL or the Pro Kabbadi League should totally start an NFT based trading card company as well. Dream 11 will definitely buy up a company that does something like this.
4. Cyber Crime Insurance: Cyber crime is spiking these days and the way its taking place now is ransomware. The ransoms for these ransomware attacks can be in the millions of dollars nowadays. Cyber crime insurance for small businesses or different niches can be a lucrative business in India if done well.  Siddharth was not convinced by the idea of cyber crime insurance and building a business in insurance in general. Let's prove him wrong.
   • A16Z Podcast Episode about Ransomware 

This week, we're covering Hi-Tech or New Age Farming. There are tons of niche farming opportunities that can be turned into massively profitable businesses. We wrote about them in our newsletter last week. We also released an episode with the largest seaweed producer in India.

In the episode today, we talk about large scale Mushroom farming. We are joined with Avdhesh Kumar, Co-Founder of CEO of Jiwa Foods, which produces over 100 tonnes of mushroom per month! And they're just getting started.

We speak about the challenges in setting up large scale, hi-tech farms, the distribution channel and the export potential. We also talk about the various opportunities that exist in the world of Hi-Tech Farming and Agri Supply Chain. Lastly, don't miss out on the heartwarming stories of the social impact of Mushroom farming in particular.

If you have any interested in setting up a business in the field of Agriculture, I highly recommend you listen to the episode.

 If you like our content, please please Follow us on Spotify and Rate us on Apple. I have a bet with Sahil that I'm close to winning, and your support will make that happen.

In this episode of Business Munchies, we explore  some interesting business ideas and how they can be leveraged in order to build new businesses. We hope you like them!

Timestamps:

(0:00)     - Introduction
(3:00)     - Pre-School/Day Care Industry
(15:20)  - Creator Economy
(20:42)  - Invoice Discounting
(30:58)  - Non-Alcoholic Beer

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1. Pre-School/Day Care Industry: Urbanization is increasing, and nuclear families are on the rise. Combine this with the fact that more women are now part of the workforce, the need for Day care and pre-schools will be increasing at a 20%+ compounded growth rate in the next few years. This presents opportunities to build businesses in this Industry. We speak about the niche in this space of doing Corporate Day Care and also the opportunity in Tier 2 & Tier 3.

2. Creator Economy: We look at what's happening in this space and the two core problems that need to be solved as this industry matures. First, how do you ensure that the wealth created in this space is spread across many creators instead of just the top ones. Second, how can you improve distribution for new creators.

3. Invoice Discounting: We talk about TReDs and the government's intent to expand the scope of this platform to ensure all government agencies use the platform to enable their vendors to discount the invoices raised against these agencies. This will provide working capital relief for companies working with government agencies. We also talk about the opportunity to identify niche industries in this space and develop a strong expertise in that segment.

4. Non-Alcoholic Beer: There is growing concerns over the health impact of Alcohol and the hangovers that older people have to deal with. We discuss if there are opportunities to create non-alcoholic beverages and if there's a space in creating products that help with hangovers. 

High Tech/New Age Farming Newsletter

3 weeks back, the Indian Union Budget was released and within that was a special nugget of information that got us very curious. The government had approved a proposal to spend 640 Crores in setting up a large multi-purpose seaweed park in Tamil Nadu. 

Now, our initial thought was, who is going to eat so much seaweed? Are we exporting to Japan and China, coz those are the countries that consume seaweeds in their food. We were horribly wrong. Turns out, Seaweed has tons of use cases and is used in the food, cosmetics, bio-stimulants. More on that in the episode. 

The Global Seaweed production market is ~13 Billion Dollars and is expected to double in the next 5 years. Currently, China and Indonesia dominate 80% of this market. India is less than 1% of the global market, a stat that shows the room for growth. We aren't behind because we don't have the necessary resources to produce seaweed, we're behind because the necessary focus and resources haven't been allocated to this Industry. All that seems to be changing now. 

In order to go deeper into this industry, we have Mr. Abhiram Seth, Managing Director at AcquAgri, India's largest producer of seaweed. He's had an interesting journey which started with him managing the export business at PepsiCo starting 1993. We got to learn in this episode that because Pepsi had entered the country pre-liberalization, they were required to export a certain amount of goods out of India. That resulted in them exploring the agriculture and contract farming route to export food products out of India. One such chance encounter with an international customer pointed them to the seaweed farming industry. 

Over the years, Mr. Abhiram Seth, while heading the Agri and Export initiative at Pepsi developed this market along with the government's support. In 2008, when Mr. Abhiram was leaving, he asked the team at Pepsi if they were going to continue the seaweed business. Given that the export conditions had since been removed, Pepsi was planning to shut down the initiative. That's when Mr. Seth requested Pepsi to buy this business and Pepsi happily obliged by selling the business at Book Value to Mr. Seth. 

In the episode today, we talk about Mr. Seth's journey, the uses of seaweeds, the value chain in this industry and where he does he think are the opportunities.  

Business Munchies is an exploration of business ideas and how they can be leveraged in order to build new businesses or scale up existing businesses. This week, we had an interesting line up of strange ideas, we hope you like them!

Timestamps:

(0:00)    - Introduction
(0:18)    - No Code
(9:47)    - Shopify Growth
(20:18) - Virtual Exhibitions
(30:45) - Lawyer/CA/Agencies Directory
(37:09) - Building Niche Websites

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Business Ideas Discussed on this Episode:

1. No Code: Inspired by our own newsletter about No Code - we discuss the opportunities that exist for entrepreneurs to build businesses using No Code tools like Webflow, Softr, Bubble & more. These include building ecommerce stores using Shopify, creating templates for Webflow, building affiliate websites to  generate traffic, diverting your instagram followers to Tribe.so or Circle.so to create communities. Finally, tools like Zapier and other no code ERP software like Grid will help small manufacturing units digitise themselves. 
2. Shopify Growth: Shopify  grew 2x in 2020 - that means that the Total Addressable Market (TAM) for Shopify apps has also grown by 2x. There are still a lot of opportunities for people to build Micro SaaS apps in this field. 
3. Virtual Exhibitions: Since the onset of the pandemic, Virtual Exhibitions have really taken off but we have never seen a good virtual exhibition platform. Opportunities in Virtual Exhibitions include niche virtual exhibition software (example: engineering exhibitions with CAD drawing capabilities) or creating phygital solutions that will allow a physical and digital mix once physical exhibitions reopen. 
4. Lawyer/CA/Agencies Directory: Lawyers, CA's and other professionals are often recommended from people's network. But, just how Practo created a directory of Doctors, why can't the same thing be done for Lawyers and CA's? These professionals are a heterogeneous bunch - is there a way to build trust across a large range of lawyers? Perhaps private communities may be a way to solve this issue but only for a private bunch of people. 
5. Building Niche Websites: We absolutely love niches on this show and this Tweet thread was a great example of that. John Speed built more than 100 websites for paint stores during the lockdown. He contacted more than 700 paint stores to get these 100 clients but he made significant revenues by focusing on a niche and really executing. 

We speak to Vineet Gupta, Managing Director at Jamboree Education and Founder & Trustee at Ashoka University, one of India's first University for the Liberal Arts. Vineet has had an interesting entrepreneurial journey - we spend the first half of the podcast going into detail about how he started his career and the second half focused on the passion for improving India's education which eventually led him to founding Ashoka University. We actually go into the specifics with Vineet on how he founded a world class University such as recruiting professors and marketing it - a unique experience that very few people can say they've done.

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Despite his heavy focus on education nowadays, Vineet's entrepreneurial journey did not start of this way. Vineet's first company, founded in the 90's and sold in the 2000's, manufactured Styrofoam. He spent 14 years manufacturing styrofoam and becoming one of the largest producers of this commodity, supplying these products to consumer durable giants who entered India in the 90's post liberalisation.

After selling the Styrofoam business, Vineet joined Jamboree Education along with his wife to help scale it up to one of the largest test prep institutions in India. And after that, he was one of the founders of Ashoka University. So many things done in one lifetime.

I decided to dig deeper into what I think were the factors that led to Vineet’s Success that I learnt from episode.

1. Creating Optionality as an Entrepreneur: When Vineet sold his styrofoam business, he was able to make that choice because his wife had already founded Jamboree and because his brother had also founded a Pharma company. Vineet could sell his styrofoam business and join either business to help them scale it up. We also speak to Vineet about the importance of always tinkering on the side - whether that means building new businesses or new products for your existing business. Vineet tried his hands at various businesses on the side (which failed) while scaling up his main businesses and he attributes this constant tinkering to an itch for personal growth and scale as an entrepreneur.
2. Service Businesses Need Strong Training & Processes to Scale Up:  Jamboree Education was founded by Vineet's wife Akrita who was the face of the Jamboree brand. Akrita's skill as an educator drove customer's to Jamboree but if the brand were to scale up, they would need to find a way to consistently recruit teachers at Akrita's level or train new teachers on how they can teach like her. Jamboree doubled down on teacher training and Vineet attributes the sucess of the company to their ability to train brand new teachers to perform at the same level as Akrita. Service businesses always face the question of how they can replicate their founder's success - building solid processes and training programmes will allow new hires to perform at similar levels as the founder and keep the brand's quality consistent.
3. Talent attracts Talent: Service businesses, Universities are a service business, are completely dependant on the quality of people who work there. Training is one part of building a productive workforce but a new University doesn't have the time to train professors and PhD students. So what does a new University like Ashoka do? The first 10 - 15 professors hired by the University become critical to the long term success of such an institution and this is the same for any business. These first two dozen hires would attract other talent like themselves from their own network and also attract high quality students or customers. If you get your initial hires right, you can enter a virtuous circle and build a high level team that can help you scale. Talent attracts talent.

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In this week's Trends Newsletter, we covered the $10 Billion IoT Market. In our previous episode with Kush Mishra, we discussed the opportunities that exist in the overall IoT market. 

We go further niche in this one.  As regular listeners of TID would know, we love niches. In the episode today, we discuss the IoT Industry as it pertains to the automobile industry. Globally, we're now moving towards Smart Mobility, basically all automobiles connected to the Internet.

We have Sonia Bajaj with us today, AGM of Product Development for IoT & Smart Mobility division of Vodafone Idea. We talk to her about the state of this market, and the opportunities that exist in this space. If I were to be honest, I wasn't aware that the Smart Mobility Industry was as advanced as it is in India, we were pleasantly surprised by the foundational work at the infra level that has been done over the last few years. This industry will present tons of interesting opportunities to build profitable businesses - At the hardware, software and even services level. Listen on to learn more.  

One last request, if you're reading this on Spotify, please consider following us. If you're on Apple Podcasts, consider leaving us a review. This will the Algorithm Gods help us reach more people and motivate us to keep at it :)