The Indian Dream

Sahil (@sahil071) and Siddharth (@sidbetala) host Piyush Kumar, Founder of Rooter to talk about Game Streaming & E-Sports in India. Gaming is a $160B market globally, and game streaming is one of the fastest growing segments within that.

Youtube and Twitch are the most popular global game streaming platforms! Youtube has over 40 million active gaming channels. Twitch, on the other hand, has 9 million active game channels, and On an average, there are 2.8 Million people watching a game stream on twitch, at the same time. Twitch had a revenue of $2.3 Billion in 2020.

We talk to Piyush about what's happening in Game Streaming in India and talk about the phenomenal rise of Rooter (8.5 Million monthly active users in 2021). We talk about why they decided to pivot, why is game streaming getting popular, and Rooter's monetisation experiments! 

Episode Timestamp:
(4:00) - The thesis behind Rooter 1.0 - A fan engagement platform for live sports
(10:13) - The decision to pivot from fan engagement to game streaming platform
(17:08) - Why has game streaming gotten popular? Why do people watch other people play video games?
(24:43) - Why compete with Youtube and Twitch
(30:56) - How did Rooter scale to 8.5 Million Monthly Active Users (MAU)
(36:58) - The business model behind game streaming and Rooter's monetisation experiments
(50:16) - E-Sports as a career option
(1:06:00) - Why IPL teams should buy E-sports team and create streaming content

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In today's episode we speak to Prashant Sharma, founder of Build by Skip the Line - a combination of a Cohort Based Course and Bootcamp course that takes people from ideation to launching a side-project that can make them financially independent. One of the most popular side projects launched during the Build Cohort is called LetterHunt which generated more than $2000 in revenue in the first 10 days.

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Obviously, you can see why we invited Prashant to join us on this episode of Business Munchies. At The Indian Dream, we're all about building side projects and that's our goal with Business Munchies - to help people find Side Project ideas.

Since Prashant is passionate about side projects, this episode is a hybrid - the first 15 minutes are about his journey to creating Build and the community around it. After that we discuss 3 side project ideas including:

1. A resource website to help Indian D2C Brands go abroad including regulations for different niches, CA's & lawyers who specialise in international expansion, etc.
2. Another resource website which just lists which TV Shows and Movies are available on the various OTT platforms in India. A sub-idea that came out of this is to make a content website that just provides summaries of the events of popular daily soaps in India.
3. A platform which connects data from your Smartwatch, Computer and other sources to provide a performance dashboard for your personal life.

The 2nd Cohort has just graduated with an incredible bunch of side projects - if you want to join the 3rd Cohort, you can click on this link and sign up.

Lastly - our WhatsApp group, has more than 2500+ other founders & entrepreneurs where we share the latest episodes, newsletters and other content we create. We promise you won't get more than 2 or 3 messages each week. The link is in the show notes.

Timeline:

(00:00) - Introduction

(01:55) - What was your career journey that led you to creating Build?

(05:25) - What is the difference between a Bootcamp vs. Cohort Based Course?

(07:52) - What is the secret sauce for building a highly engaged community?

(12:45) - Why do you take Coders & non-Coders in the Cohort?

(15:42) - How to think about Side Project ideas

(16:39) - Idea: Resource Website to help D2C brands go international

(22:56) - Idea: Resource Website to find OTT shows 

(29:20) - Idea: Performance Dashboard for Self-Improvement

Sahil (@sahil071) and Siddharth (@sidbetala) host Gajendra Jangid, Co-founder of Cars24 to talk about the disruption in the Used Car Market. 

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Today, we're talking about Cars24 and the $20B Pre-owned or Used Car market in India. 
In Financial Year 19-20, 4.4 Million pre-owned cars were sold compared to 2.8 Million new cars. This makes the pre-owned car market about 1.5 times the new car market. 

Started in 2015, Cars24 is now valued at $1.8B. We talk to Gajendra Jangid, Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Office at Cars24 about the challenges in the used car market, how they solved for it and scaled so big and Cars24's brand journey. 

Show timeline: 
(01:49) - The thesis behind Cars24
(08:49) - How did Cars24 build the execution model to address the used car market?
(16:42) - Used car market value chain
(24:44) - How did they enter the buyer side of the transaction and what challenges did they run into?
(31:01) - Ideal state of how used car markets should function from a buyer's perspective
(36:15) - Cars24's Brand Journey
(42:57) - How Cars24's ambition grew as they went deeper into solving the problem
(45:16) - Gajendra's relationship with Money

Sahil (@sahil071) and Siddharth (@sidbetala) hang out and discuss various ideas on this episode of Business Munchies. Support us and show us your love by buying us a some beer/chai on this link.

Timeline:
(00:0) - Introduction
(2:00) - Detailed account on how we bought a US based e-commerce business from India
(25:43) - What are NFT's?
(40:00) - Sales Processes for B2B SaaS

Business Ideas:

1. How to Buy a US Business from India - our personal story - 
   • Buying a small business in the US has become a lot easier for Indians than a few decades ago. 
   • Deal sourcing has become easier with websites like MicroAcquire, Flippa, and others. 
   • Sending capital to the US has also become easier with the Liberalised Remmitance Scheme. 
   • However, the process of buying a US business is still quite complicated and we lay down the entire process in the first 20 minutes of this episode. We will probably write a detailed article on this entire process as well. 
2. What are NFT's?
   • NFT's or Non-Fungible Tokens are the hottest asset class on the internet right now. Along with different crypto coins, they're both misunderstood technlogies that are seeing huge increases in value over the past few months. 
   • Learn more about Blockchains from our previous episode with Nischal Shetty, founder of WazirX.
   • Siddharth delves deep into the world of NFT's, he himself has bought a bunch, and the future opportunities that lie in this area of the crypto world. 
3. Sales Processes for B2B SaaS to Legacy Businesses
   • Sahil discusses a person who met who was not able to sell his CRM/SaaS product to the biggest Pharma companies in India and then had to completely pivot in order to scale the business. 
   • We talk about different sales models that he could have used in order to sell his SaaS products to Legacy Businesses. 

In this episode, we host Ryan Valles, Co-founder of Interview Kickstart to talk about Marketplace Businesses & Ed-Tech Roundup. 

(00:51) - Ryan's Professional Journey as an Entrepreneur, Operator, Investor
(10:27) - Different Kinds of Marketplace Businesses
(18:00) - The Marketplace Cold Start problem & scaling marketplaces
(24:40) - Growing Marketplace using performance marketing
(30:13) - Product & Founder Market Fit
(35:47) - The role of Venture Capital in building Marketplaces
(39:20) - Wholesale or B2B Marketplaces
(43:08) - The State of the Edtech market in India and the commonalities with E-commerce
(51:09) - Taking Edtech businesses from India to the world

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
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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.

Sahil (@sahil071) and Siddharth (@sidbetala) hang out and discuss various ideas on this episode of Business Munchies. Support us and show us your love by buying us a some beer/chai on this link.

Timeline:
(00:0) - Introduction
(1:28) - Drone Market in India
(25:43) - Account Aggregator Framework of India Stack
(37:42) - How to get rid of Annoying Cold Calls for Loans and Real Estate
(42:34) - Business Digitisation Course Update

Business Ideas:

1. Drone Market in India - The regulations around Drones have changed and I have not been more optimistic about any other market in a long time. The drone market is on the brink of explosion. 
   • "During the next six months we expect at least a 40-time expansion in the number of drones." -  Aarav Unmanned Systems CEO Vipul Singh 
   • The Drone Rules, 2021 came out in July 2021 superseded the previous rules from March 2021, Unmanned  Aircraft  System Rules (UAS Rules), 2021. 
   • Global drone market seen exceeding $24 billion by 2022 - banned in 2014 after an entrepreneur attempted to deliver pizzas using a drone.
   • The Drone Rules 2021, which deal with drones of up to 500 kg, has introduced clarity to the industry - Number of permissions have been dropped from 25 to 5
   • Endless Opportunities
     • Checking electric lines, gas pipelines, etc. for leaks or faults. Give example of reliance using helicopter for this work.
     • Mapping - will make mapping of tough terrain much easier.
     • Installation of equipment in tough terrain.
     • Defence applications.
     • Content about Drones!
     • 3,000 drones will be needed to implement government mega-projects like SVAMVITVA, which involves creating and digitising land records for India’s 6.6 lakh villages.
     • huge numbers of drones will be needed for schemes like the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bhima Yojana, the government-sponsored crop insurance scheme.
     • You’ll see the first drone prototype air-taxi being built out of India in less than 12 months
     • drones delivering medicines to rural areas and ferrying 200-300 kg of cargo between adjacent cities like Mumbai and Pune
     • new rules could also result in India becoming a drone manufacturing hub. Says Singh: “The government’s saying you can use India as a manufacturing location. If you’re manufacturing a drone that’s not meant to be operated in India, you don’t need any permission or certification to do it.”
     • Airspace map - interactive map where they can and cannot go. Red, yellow and green zones. This is going to be accessible through API's - business opportunity to build stuff using these API's. 
       • These maps will keep changing as per government requirements.
       • Business Ideas - 
         • use the api to build the backend for a drone delivery service, will be needed in the future.
         • simple community project - use the API to send push notifications if a place close to them has opened up for flying.
     • Drone pilot licenses will be required to fly drones - 
       • start a drone training school - there will be a huge demand for getting drone pilot licenses in the future.
       • Get a drone license for the higher levels and become a high level drone pilot.
       • service business - Corner the market on the people with drone pilot licenses in India and start a service to rent out their time for whatever is required.
     • Get into Drone Insurance. This is going to be a brand new market where traditional players will be confused and you could have a first mover advantage
   • Drone manufacturers in India: https://tropogo.com/india-guide/drone-ecosystem-india

While preparing for this episode, I kept wondering - How do you even think about bootstraping a video production business? Equipment rental by itself is almost unaffordable in this industry - you have to rent video cameras, lenses, lights and much more. Despite this, Advait and Akshat still managed to bootstrap Supari Studios from a seed capital of just Rs. 75,000 to ride the wave of content production in India to become one of India's largest content production houses.

Listen to this episode if you want to learn how to build and scale your own creative agency from scratch or you just want to know how it's done.

Timeline: 
(1:15) - Supari studios helps brands to reach their audience through video content
(01:50) - Supari studios has got the brand covered from script to screen
(03:45) - Advait left his Trading Derivatives job to join his brother Akshat to start the Supari studios
(06:23) - Advait shares his first inflexion point in this business journey
(09:02) - Supari studios differentiated themselves by solving brands' problems with high quality content and not prices
(10:32) - How did Supari studios fetched their ideal clients
(13:00) - How directly approaching brands benefitted Supari studios rather than the agency system
(16:02) - Understanding of Value Chain has led to Supari studios' evolution
(17:55) -  To acquire good employees, sell a vision and not the monetary output
(21:05) Sahil on how TID is just a passion project without any monetary expectation
(23:17) - Advait on how to manage CashFlow by working with bigger companies
(27:53) - Advait on how he named Supari Studios as Supari studios
(27:27) - Advait on why did they start Post Office: A motion graphic studio
(33:27) - Advait explains the functioning of Keeda : A youtube production house
(37:12) - Supari studios uses willingness to pay, time and effort value to ascertain their service price
(39:15) - Advait explains how the content industry is becoming commodotised
(41:42 )- How Advait transformed from a Finance Wizard to a Creative Artist
(44:05) - Online influencers are an essential part of the ecosystem and Supari studios have turned that weakness into a strength

A journey that started 6 years ago has resulted in one of the few Profitable Unicorn startups in India. 

In the episode today, we speak to Asish Mohapatra, Co-Founder & CEO of Ofbusiness, a B2B Commerce & Lending startup focused on serving the Small & Medium Businesses of India. 

Episode Outline: 

(00:00) - Introduction
(03:32) - Decision to quit a career as a Venture Capitalist to become an Entreprenuer
(06:10) - Deciding to do B2B Commerce + Lending 
(08:45) - Framework for early iterations to find Product Market Fit 
(13:00) - Creating a new market vs disrupting an existing market 
(19:09) - Convincing Investors about a India Specific business that had no global parallels
(22:32) - How the team built a Lending business without any prior experience 
(27:28) - How Ofbusiness built an incredible Sales Engine
(36:04) - Scaling Culture across different offices and business verticals
(40:19) - Focus on profitability from Day 1
(42:24) - Depth vs Width while evaluating new opportunities
(47:00) - Difference between Tech Enabled & Tech Led Businesses 
(51:33) - The Future of SME Ecosystem in India 
(57:46) - The Future of Ofbusiness 
(1:00:00) - Excellent breakdown of how evaluate value chains 
(1:02:30) - Work-Life Balance 
(1:04:46) - Relationship with Money (Professional as well as personal)

Sahil (@sahil071) and Siddharth (@sidbetala) hang out to discuss some business ideas.

Timeline:
(00:00) - Making fun of Siddharth's seed oil idea
(00:45) - AI Writing tool to summarise scientific papers
(4:20) - Webflow Development Agency
(11:50) - E-sports Coaching
(17:45) - Making fun of Siddharth's oil seed idea
(18:30) - Tool for creating One Off Surveys
(23:45) - Entre-Paneer
(26:40) - Continuous Information Diet Level Monitor
(30:45) - App to rate and aggregate YouTube, Blogs, other content

Business Ideas:

1. Making fun of Siddharth - He lives in Indore, he likes to do research (nerd!), he wanted to talk about the Seed Oil Industry - there's so much to make fun of. 
2. AI Writing tool to summarise scientific papers: Pop science articles and blogs on websites will become so much easier to write if he we get an AI Writing tool such as Copy AI or Peppertype but instead for summarising scientific papers. Science writing is already a huge industry and this could become a subset of this already massive industry. AI Writing has also gotten democratised with the emergence of GPT-3 and thus being able to easily build AI Writing tools on top of that. 
3. E-sports Coaching: I found this website called Metafy that allows novice e-sport players to get coached by experts in the field. A business in India could build the same thing with Indian players who would be much cheaper. This website also illustrates the meteoric rise of  e-sports and how businesses can be build around it. Any business that exists around traditional sports can now be built around e-sports. 
4. Entre-Paneer - High protein Paneer for entrepreneurs who want to stay in shape. Best munchies idea ever. 
5. Continuous Information Diet Level Monitor: An IoT based mood monitoring system that looks at your emotional reaction to different information in the form of blogs/videos.
6. App to curate the content on YouTube, Blogs, other content: Content curation is a fast rising industry as the amount of content on the web is increasing expotentially. We'ere putting out 3 podcasts a week and just like that there are countless other creators that are creating lots of content. Somebody needs to curate all of it.