The Indian Dream

We have Dhimant Parekh on the show to talk about building an Audience First D2C Brand with The Better Home.  In the episode today, We discuss the journey of building TBI, how they were able to leverage the community to build out their D2C business and what it's like to work with your significant other as a co-founder. Let's jump in.

Links:
The Better India Website
The Better Home Products
Audience First Products Newsletter

For our next edition of Trends, we are covering a new way of building consumer brands: by going Direct to consumer or often referred to as D2C. 

Direct to Consumer is a business model wherein you cut out all the middlemen that exist in the traditional supply chain - your wholesaler & retailer primarily. You leverage the internet and build your presence online to directly sell to the consumer. You save up on the margin that would've to be distributed across the supply chain and can utilize that to build your brand and generate traffic on your website. 

Pure D2C is hard to find in India. Most D2C brands leverage online marketplaces to reach their customers because building traffic for your own website can be extremely challenging. You need to pour in a lot of marketing dollars to make that happen and that often eats up all the margins you saved by going Direct to Consumer and ruins the unit economics. 

Which is where the guest we have today on the podcast has an interesting point of view to share when it comes to building their D2C brand. We have Dhimant Parekh, Co-founder of The Better India and the better home. The better India is a content production house that focuses on positive happy stories. They feature stories on topics such as Agriculture, Education, Health, Environment from across the country. And the concept of Positive Journalism is very fascinatng for me personally because I actively avoid reading newspapers and following current affairs. I feel like most of it so negative that it hurts you more than it helps you. That's where something like TBI has been a go-to source for me to read feel good stories from the across the country. 

Dhimant and Anuradha, co-founders of TBI are also married to each other. TBI started out as a Blog in 2008. In 2011, Anuradha quit her job to focus on this full-time and in 2013, Dhimant followed suit. They have had an interesting journey of building out the content business focused on Positive journalism and are present across different social media channels along with their own website. Cumulatively, they clock-in close 50 million views in a month for the content they produce. 

Now, you must be thinking, how is this a D2C play. Well, enter The Better Home, the D2C arm of TBI. Over the years, TBI has been able to build a community of like-minded individuals. This community cares about the good that's happening in society. The community also believes in sustainability and that's where Dhimant and Anuradha got the idea for The Better Home. 

The Better Home sells Eco-Friendly Home Cleaner subscription service. It has 4 products, Dishwashing liquid, toilet cleaner, laundry cleaner and floor cleaner. I'm not going to kill the suspense of how they came up with this idea, but I do want to share how this D2C line has scaled. So in 4 months of starting post the lockdown, The better home products achieved a monthly revenue of Rs. 1 Crore in 4 months! Now that's some quick scaling up.  A big reason for this was the community that they had built over the years. A classic case study of building an audience first and then subsequently building a product or service to meet the need of the audience, in this case, it was  D2C Home Cleaner product line. 

In this episode we have Himanshu Arora from Social Panga which is a 360 degree Digital Marketing Agency. The pandemic has accelerated the digitalisation of traditional brands and has led to the growth of many D2C brands. All of us are now our own tiny digital marketing agencies, trying to build either our company or personal brands in the new digital world – just like us with this podcast.

Join Our WhatsApp Group
Himanshu Arora LinkedIn
Social Panga Website

In this context, understanding the functioning of a digital marketing agency and how social panga was scaled up was an enlightening discussion. In the last 10 years, starting a digital marketing agency has almost become a cliché. However, Himanshu and his Co founder Gaurav, focused on hiring and training the best people to differentiate themselves. The team is the essence of any successful service based industry and thus we talk to Himanshu in detail about his hiring practices and how he builds a culture of excellence. All of this focus on hiring and cultural fitment has led to Social Panga scale up extraordinarily fast in the 6 years since their founding led by customer satisfaction and thus strong referrals. 

In this episode, we scratch the surface of digital marketing and we're going to go deeper into digital marketing for Direct to Consumer brands in a future episode with Himanshu. Join our whatsapp group to know more about everything we’re doing.

Music by Ben Sound

Altigreen is an electric vehicle manufacturer that was started in 2011 with a retrofit product to convert light commercial vehicles to hybrid. Today, they sell their own 2,3, & 4 Wheel Electric Vehicles. We talk about this journey and the kind of opportunities (a TON!) that exist in the EV space.

Altigreen's Website
Dr. Amitabh Saran's Linkedin

Trends #6: Electric Vehicle Newsletter

We talk to Bharat Goenka, Founder of Tally Solutions, maker of ERP and Accounting Software for SMBs since 1986. We cover the journey of building Tally, go deeper into their unique point of views on Customer Empathy, Distribution, Piracy and some philosophy across the entire episode :)

We also go through the ups and downs that the business has gone through in the last 30 years and how it weathered the different storms to build a business that's thriving today.

Tally's Website
Tally's Twitter
The Indian Dream WhatsApp Group

We have a long and a fantastic episode lined up today. One that details the journey of a company that was founded more than 3 decades ago and is still going strong. If you run your own business or if you've studied accounting, chances are, you would've heard of Tally Solutions already. Tally is the OG when it comes to homegrown Software Products. For those who are not aware, Tally is an Enterprise Resource Planning & Account Software that's used by 2 million customers across more than 100 countries. They've a strong presence in India, Middle East and Certain parts of Africa. Supported by a distribution network of 28000 Partners, Tally has really cracked distribution like no other software company has been able to.

Founded in 1986, by Late Shyam Sunder Goenka and his son Bharat Goenka, Tally has had a roller-coaster ride full of ups and downs. But, the strong culture and value system that's been put in place has helped the organization steer through multiple storms along the way. In the episode today, we discuss a wide range of topics from distribution, customer empathy, pricing and some philosophy too! This was one of the most interesting conversations for me because I'd seen my dad use Tally more than 2 decades! It's hard to think of many software products that stand the test of time like Tally has been able to do!

Happy Diwali to all our listeners! We hope you have a great Diwali Weekend and a new year filled with Joy. We've had great fun doing this podcast and newsletter over the past few months and hope you've had as much fun listening to it. We have some exciting episodes lined up for you - can't wait to share it! 

We'd love to hear from you - send us an email at [email protected]

Music: www.bensound.com

 Today's episode is part of a series about New Mobility which includes self driving cars, car sharing , Internet connected cars and obviously the always talked about Electric Vehicles.

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The Indian Dream WhatsApp Group
Sachin's LinkedIn
Sachin's Newsletter Car Talk
Car Talk Issue where Sachin talks about a new form of Car Ownership - Highly recommended reading.

When you think about the future of cars what's the first company that comes to mind? Tesla right? it was the same thought process for us and thus when we started researching the topic we reached out to Sachin Seth from Tesla. Sachin is the Finance manager for model S and model x, the finance manager for the new factory in China and much much more at Tesla. Sachin has an MBA from the Wharton School of Management and a PhD in electrical engineering - giving him insights into both the financial and product side of the new mobility revolution.

You can take this episode as a primer for understanding new mobility. We discuss the state of technology of the various parts of new mobility, and the opportunities that lie within the space both in India and abroad.  Sachin is able to understand the direction of the industry in the US and articulate how it will eventually affect India as well. we are still far behind Western countries and China on adoption and development off new mobility technology but we can look at these other markets as a guide for the possible direction of Indian electric vehicles and other technology. obviously India is a unique market and our own dynamics will dictate its evolution - for example electric adoption in India is most likely going to be led by 2 and 3 Wheelers where Bajaj may face a big challenge to its dominance.

Other Links:

McKinsey Report on EV in India
EV Services Based company from Chennai becoming a Unicorn
The Problems with Hydrogen in New Mobility

Ayurveda 2.0 Trends Newsletter
Dr. Vaidya's Website
Arjun's Podcast on Ayurveda

In this episode, we discuss the Ayurveda 2.0 Trend. We speak to Arjun about his journey building Dr. Vaidya's, the role of the government in promoting Ayurveda and the business opportunities that exist in this space.

Arjun Vaidya started Dr. Vaidya's in 2017, with the goal of taking his family's long history with Ayurveda and bring it to the modern consumer. Arjun's great grand father and grand father practiced Ayurvedic medicine out of a small clinic in Mumbai. Over the years, their deep research into Ayurvedic Medicine resulted in proprietary formulations that are now being packaged and marketed to the modern consumer. Dr. Vaidya's has 50+ SKUs across the Ayurvedic Medicines & over the counter products for things arthritis, diabetes, weight reduction etc.

To be honest, it was only after talking to Arjun we coined the term Ayurveda 2.0. Because the science behind it has always existed and what we're seeing now is the modernisation of it. As we already established in the last two episodes with Kiku and Stuti, there's a greater awareness amongst the modern consumer about wellness. Make it natural and organic, and have you a large enough audience who cares about this to build a sustainable business. Ayurveda has a chance to corner some of this wellness market, not just in India, but globally. Dr. Vaidya's is trying to do just that. 

Welcome to another episode of the Indian Dream Trends. With Trends, we aim to explore new markets and ideas that can explode in the next few years. We look at the Market Gap, the current players and the opportunities that exist. It comes out as a Newsletter as well as a Podcast wherein we record our conversation with Industry experts and startup operators in the Trend that we are covering

This week, we're covering Ayurveda 2.0 wherein we're seeing the modernization of a 5000 year Tradition. Here's the newsletter

Ayurveda is going through some very interesting times. The current government has been very bullish on Ayurveda, and has also setup the Ministry of AYUSH to promote Ayurveda and other forms of natural and holistic treatment. While this has happened in the last few years, Covid-19 is the black swan event that's pushed Ayurveda's popularity significantly.

To understand what's happening in the Ayurveda space, we caught up with Stuti of Amrutam. Amrutam Pharmaceuticals was started in 2006, by Mr. Ashok Gupta. He worked with a few Ayurvedic companies before setting up his own distribution business for Herbal Products. Realising that these so called herbal products barely had any herbal ingredients and were rather full with chemicals and preservatives, he took matter in his own hand and started experimenting different types of products.

Malts, also Called Avales, focused on better health were his first set of products. Since then, he expanded into other products for brain, immunity, and other general well being products. In 2017, Stuti and her brother, Agnim, joined the business and made it into a D2C Brand with their online presence and expanded into other product lines like Personal Care and lifestyle products. They've built a community of about 1L people across the globe and are currently retailing across India.

In this episode, we talk to Stuti about the current status of the Ayurveda Industry and the various business opportunities that exist. We also discuss about Amrutam's Community and their recent launch of the consultation platform, Amrutam.global. Check out their products at Amrutam.Co.In

Before we jump to the episode, we'd like you to leave us an honest rating and review on the podcast player that you're using. It'll help us understand if we can improve on anything. If you have detailed feedback or if you'd like to colloborate with us on the newsletter, drop us an email at [email protected]

Amrutam Website
Amrtuam's Instagram
Trends Ayurveda 2.0 Newsletter
TID Trends WhatsApp Group

Today's episode is part of our Micro-SaaS edition of the Trends Series.

Micro-SaaS Newsletter

This is a story about how a 16 Yr Old's quest for pocket money lead to a multi-million dollar software business. , Based out of Calcutta in 2002, Pallav needed all the extra cash he could get to spend at the Bowling Alleys. He came across an opportunity to write a technical article and get paid for it. He set out to write the longest article possible since it paid by the number of words. That technical article would garner enough interest that Pallav would soon be working on the first version of the product which we today know as Fusion Charts. Fusion Charts is a charting tool for developers to use for their websites & apps. Back in 2002, the graphs and charts that we take for granted in our programs like excel today weren't really that common. The existing solutions had limited functionality and poor aesthetics. That's the problem that Pallav set out to solve in 2002.

If you think about it, he was the OG in the whole Niche Software game, what we today also refer to as Micro-SaaS. Going through Pallav's journey makes you realize he did a bunch of innovative things back in the day which we now assume as part of the basic playbook. For example, Content Marketing at Scale, Optimizing for Time to First Value for the User etc.

At its peak, Fusion Charts had revenues of $10M/year with extremely high profit margins. However, the journey wasn't all smooth sailing for Pallav. There were periods in the entire journey where the growth stalled and the company saw heavy attrition. In true entrepreneurial spirit, Pallav rebuilt and made a comeback. This year, Fusion Charts was acquired by Iderra Inc of the US.

We go through the journey of building Fusion Charts while going deeper into topics such as content marketing, customer support and close it out with a discussion on Bootstrapped vs Venture Funded paths of entrepreneurship. If you have any aspirations of building a technology product company, you don't want to miss this one.

Pallav's Twitter
Charts.com - Pallav's New Venture
Email us  at [email protected]

Welcome to the Indian Dream Podcast and thanks for listening!

Today's episode is part of a series about the resurgence of Ayurvedic brands over the last few years. Because of a host of reasons including increased focus on preventive medicine and Wellness, rising incomes in India and new models such as direct to consumer, the way that ayurveda has been experienced for thousands of years is suddenly changing. You can read our report for a detailed explanation on the changes and the opportunities that lie within.

Ayurveda Report
TID Trends WhatsApp Group
Shaz & Kiks Website
Shaz & Kiks Instagram

In this episode we speak to Kiku choudhary  who is the founder of Shaz & Kiks, an Ayurvedic hair care company in the US. Some of you may be thinking, “Why is a podcast called the Indian dream interviewing a founder in the US?” The answer is quite simple we believe that the opportunity to build an Ayurvedic brand in the US or other Western countries is immense. Or just simply exporting Ayurvedic products. 

What we want our listeners to take away from this conversation is that attitudes towards ayurveda are changing all over the world and that they should not restrict themselves to India when they think about opportunities in Ayurveda. 

Our conversation with Kiku is wide ranging - extending from her initial ideation, the changing attitudes and  to the supply chain issues that she faced while trying to source raw ingredients. Towards the end, Kiku also provides some fantastic ideas on opportunities that exist in the Ayurvedic space in the US. One thing that really surprised me was the popularity of these Ayurvedic hair care products with people with Afros. It just goes to show that the appeal of Ayurveda and the market size is much bigger than we might have imagined.