Make In India. 

The three words that will define the future of the country. 

We have a trade deficit of close to $100 Bn with China. That's Rs. 83,000 Crores that leaves the country and isn't used for our own development. 

Virtuoso Optoelectronics is a manufacturing company that started in 2015 with the idea of making electronic products in India. Started with circuit boards, then manufactured LEDs and now for the last three years, they've been manufacturing Air Conditioners. 

I talk to Sukrit about this fantastic journey of scaling to Rs. 330 Cr in Revenue in 8 years! 

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Movie Production. It's something that most of us don't know much about. I host Ashi Dua, Founder of Flying Unicorn Entertainment to talk about her work in producing movies like Lust Stories, Bombay Talkies, Paava Kadhaigal and More! 

Episode Timeline: 
(01:09) - Introduction of Ashi Dua

(03:39) - Why did Ashi move to Bombay?

(07:12) - Ashi’s introduction to movie production

(10:10) - Anurag’s role in Ashi’s career

(11:53) - Anurag’s style of making movies

(14:42) - What does production entail?

(17:23) - Producer’s involvement in the finances

(18:27) - Producer’s compensation

(19:15) - Bombay Talkies and bringing 4 directors together

(22:17) - How do producers put projects together?

(24:20) - Skills needed to be a producer

(28:37) - Is the industry segregated for producers?

(31:05) - Predicting Bollywood’s trends

(35:17) - Choosing the right platform for a movie

(38:01) - How does someone find their footing in the industry?

(39:45) - The Dhoom Dhaam Company

On this episode, we talk to Prateek Shukla, Co-Founder and CEO at Masai School

Prateek is an IIT Kanpur Graduate, a Teach for India Alum and Ex-Founder of Grabhouse, a real-estate tech startup that was acquired by Commonfloor and subsequently by Quikr. He’s a second time entrepreneur who is picking up his first love of teaching. 

India has 444 Million People that are in the 0-18 Years Age Bracket. That’s 400 Million people coming into the workforce over the next 15 to 20 years. For them to be contribute to India’s economic growth, we have a mammoth task of giving them the right skills.

We have over 45000 College and Institutes in the country and you would think we are slowly but surely building capacity to educate and train the 400 million people over the next 2 decades.

But, the grim reality on the ground that a large majority of students graduating from these institutions have NO employable skills. For example, of the 1.5 Million engineers that graduate, only 3% secure high paying technology jobs. The situation is even worst in Business and Humanities courses. The education industry is a money-making, recession proof business that’s being run purely on the fact that every parent wants their kid to hold a ‘degree’. It doesn’t matter if it’s useful or not, the societal shame from not having one is good enough reason to pour money into getting your child through college for 3 to 4 years.

The lack of employable talent coming out of college is HUGE problem to solve if we want to achieve The Indian Dream of becoming a large developed economy with a high per capita income. And to solve this problem, whatever we done so far isn’t working. The core reason why colleges suck in India is because there’s no incentive alignment. The college gets their fees regardless of the fact that the student might not even get a decent job after graduating. But, what if colleges got paid only after the graduating students earned.

And that’s where I find the model of Outcome driven education or Income Share Agreements very very interesting. It’s a model where the institute only gets paid after students start earning a baseline salary. What this also does is it opens up education to talented students who previously who couldn’t afford high fees of these colleges.

On the episode today, we have Prateek Shukla, Co-Founder and CEO of Masai School who is pioneering the Income Share Agreement or outcome driven model of education India. Masai is a 3 year old startup that helps students learn coding for free in a 6 months, military style coding bootcamp. They work with students with no coding or computer science background, and train them through their rigouros program. They have an income share agreement where they can make up to 3 Lakhs as a cost for the education, only and only if the students get a salary of more than 5 Lakhs per annum.

There’s no doubt Vocational Training is key to make large sections of society employment ready and productive. Only on the back of skilled talent, can you build large industries that contribute significantly to the GDP of the country. We’ve seen this play out in China where they used skilled labor and technology to build the world’s Manufacturing hub.

For India, a similar opportunity lies in being the Software hub of the world. And for that to happen, we need to train millions of students every year. Over the next 50 minutes, I talk to Prateek about the thesis behind Masai School, how they teach students, what are the execution challenges of training 7000 Students, and about their partnership with National Skill Development Coloration.

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If you want to support us, you can contribute here.  

In the episode today, we host Nishchal Shetty of WazirX to talk about the world of Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies. We avoid speculating on bitcoin prices and instead focus on the fundamentals of blockchain. 

Blockchain and Crypto are often misunderstood. In order to understand it better, Nishchal broke down the four primary blockchain use cases: 

• Asset: These are store of values, deflationary in nature. Bitcoin is the perfect example for this. 
• Currencies: These are equivalent to digital currencies, inflationary in nature. A Digital INR will fit into this category. 
• Utility: These are blockchains that are used to run various different programs and smart contracts. For example: Ethereum is a blockchain used to run different blockchain programs and Ether is the token used to run these programs.  
• Security: This is when the blockchain is used to back real world securities like stocks and properties. 

We also discuss the various applications of Blockchain from Decentralised Finance, NFTs, and Supply Chain Traceability. 

And we touch upon the regulatory environment of Crypto and Blockchain in India and the future of this technology. 

If you're curious about the world of blockchain, highly recommend you listen to the episode. If you're not curious, well, this IS the future, might help learning about it now! 

Sahil (@sahil071) & Siddharth (@sidbetala) hang out with the folks from Dine With Data, Vedika & Armaan, to discuss some great new ideas that we wouldn't have thought up on our own.

Dine with Data is an amazing daily WhatsApp newsletter that introduces you to a new startup everyday so that you're always aware of the latest business trends.

Join Dine with Data WhatsApp newsletter here.

While you're at it, join The Indian Dream WhatsApp newsletter as well!

(00:00) - Introduction
(00:33) - Swiggy + Tinder
(08:07) - Personal Stylists
(20:19) - "Vibe Curation" - Service business to make your cafe more instagrammable
(27:15) - Micro Private Equity
(37:45) - Memes as a Service

The Business Ideas we discussed

1. Swiggy + Tinder  - Ordering on food delivery apps these days is a chore - the Paradox of Choice makes it so difficult to choose a restaurant or an item, especially when you're in a group setting. The idea is to make Tinder like tiles where people can just swipe right or left on pictures of food that they find attractive or unattractive. If you're not able to get API access from Swiggy or Zomato - you can create a UI layer getting data from other sources and then linking the backend to Dunzo. 
2. Tinder + Swiggy - Swiggy has so much data on our eating habits - why not make a dating service which uses this data on eating habits to make predictions on possible matches?
3. AI Personal Stylists - Today, only the rich and famous can afford personal stylists - why can't we democratise this service? You can build an AI powered recommendation engine which looks at your closet of clothes and makes recommendations on clothes matches that you would've otherwise never thought of. This plays into the same long tail game that Netflix uses to always keep content fresh. 
   • You could also build this as a B2B service which integrates with existing ecommerce store and makes it easier for them to recommend clothing to existing customers based on past buying trends. 
   • A Lenskart like model which scans your body would be able to show you how different clothes would fit your body and give you exact size recommendations as well. 
4. "Vibe Curation" - Whether we like it or, the Instagrammability of café's & restaurants determines their success these days. You can build a service which helps make the physical spaces and the individual dishes more instagrammable to drive the social virality of the space. It could even be a monthly subscription where the decor is changed each month. 
5. Micro Private Equity - A new movement led by companies like Thras.io & Tiny Capital where you build a portfolio of small internet business - SaaS products, Amazon FBA, DTC brands - in a particular niche and use economies of scale on marketing knowledge, etc. to help scale up your portfolio. 
6. Memes as a Service - Inspired by a listener building Marque Berry (the website is incomplete). He has built a Meme Influencer marketing business where he'll help you make your product 'viral' on various instgram meme pages. A great marketing tool for D2C brands & anyone who's looking to reach Gen Z audiences. Send me a mail if you want to talk to him.

A couple of weeks back, we covered the Trend of Paid or Private Communities. We explored the rise of these communities amongst millenials and Gen Z and looked at the opportunities that exist in this space in our Trends Newsletter.

Today, we have Vivek Narain, Founder of The Quorum, a Member only lifestyle club in Gurgaon with close to $1m ARR. Lifestyle clubs have always existed across the major cities in India. Think the Gymkhanas and Golf Clubs. But, these clubs are now fairly saturated and the philosophy there is to now keep people out as opposed to letting them in. These clubs have been designed for quote , unquote Old Money. And that left space for likes of Quorum to cater to the needs of new money and evolving tastes. 

Quorum offers a high end luxurious space for a wide range of services, starting from Hospitality, Wellness, Cultural events and even co-working spaces. The focus is on diversity within the member community and the pricing structure has been designed to keep it more accessible for a wide range of demographic. 

This is an asset heavy business, but if done right, can be extremely profitable. We talk to Vivek about the thesis behind Quorum, the economics and what it takes to make a physical private community work. 

This was an interesting episode for us, as one of our primary goals with The Indian Dream Project is to build a community of knowledge seeking entrepreneurs to help each other build profitable businesses. And if you have any aspirations to build a community, even a digital one, I recommend you listen to the episode. 

Sahil (@sahil071) & Siddharth (@sidbetala) announce a new Referral Reward - you can be invited onto this podcast if you get enough referrals to our newsletter. Here's the link that you can use to generate your referral code!

(0:00) - Referral Campaign Thanks
(0:45) - Decentraland
(3:20) - Regional Newsletters - The New Tropic
(14:52) - The rise of Plant Based Foods & Beverages
(21:00) - PE Fund for Regional Profitable Companies

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1. Decentraland - A new virtual world that's combining two hot topics: NFT's & the Metaverse. You can buy pieces of land in the game that are permanently yours using NFT's and then you can use that land to showcase everything else you've bought on the metaverse like your Gucci bags or whatever else. This is the direction of the future and we should keep our eyes on it. 
2. Regional and Niche Newsletters - First saw this as a Tweet by Tanvi Dessai. Regional Newsletters are basically a digital version of something that's existed for centuries - local newspapers. People always want to know what's going on in our surrounding areas and there's no reason why this can't go digital. The New Tropic does $1.5 million in ad revenue just by focusing on Miami - it's now branched out to several other smaller cities in the US. There's no reason to just bifurcate by region - you can also do it by topic. One WhatsApp newsletter charges Rs. 11,000 per year for giving daily commodity prices updates on commodities not easily found in the exchanges. Another idea is to take Business Updates (government mandates, commodity prices, etc.) and just simplify it without any Business Gossip (who raised how much, etc.). 
3. The Rise of Plant Based Foods & Beverages - Amul placed a full page ad in several leading newspaper about the Myths & Facts of Plant Based Milks/Beverages. This move by Amul is an indication of the rise of Plant Based products in general such as meat alternatives, plant milks, Tofu, Tempeh, etc. Plant based milks already do about 150 - 200 crores of revenue in India and one of our community members also launched a brand called Oat MLK (please support him). Another community member is building Better - an amazing vegan food company - I highly recommend their spreads.This is a huge topic that we'll cover in a future trends series. 
4. PE Fund for Regional Profitable Companies - My favourite idea from this episode. Siddharth met a CA who invested early in several regional snack brands (like Bikaji, Yellow Diamond, etc.) and helped them professionalise and expand their reach. He is now set to make a bonanza as all these snack brands have matured and are planning IPO's. A PE fund can be built to focus on a particular sector (snack brands, industrial products, ice creams, whatever else) and tries to find regional players throughout India and help them scale up. 

This episode is a deep dive into the business of Restaurants.

Hunger Inc. 
Sameer Seth
TID Whatsapp Newsletter (No Spam)

We talk to Sameer Seth, Co-founder of Hunger Inc. They've created brands such as The Bombay Canteen, O Pedro & very recently, The Bombay Sweet Shop. 

Now if you're not from Bombay, you might not have heard about these places. But, ask your friend who lives in Bombay, and they'll most probably have good things to say about these places.

We talk to Sameer about his journey of moving from a Banking career to the F&B space, how he went about entering a new Industry and the experience that he gathered before starting Hunger Inc. 

We also talk about a wide range of topics, all within the purview of building a profitable F&B business. We talk about the thesis behind The Bombay Canteen, what it takes to start a restaurant focused on providing great experience at affordable prices, how they think about the menu, pricing and customer service and the economics of a restaurant business. At the end, we talk about the thesis on starting a Direct to Consumer New Age Mithai brand in The Bombay Sweet shop, something we've discussed in our previous Business Munchies episode.

Talking to Sameer, I realised Story-telling is a big part of getting food right and it was interesting to hear some of Sameer's stories of building Hunger Inc. If you're curious about the F&B or hospitality space, don't miss out on this episode.

This episode is a homage to Chef Floyd Cardoz, Co-founder of Hunger Inc and a bunch of other top class restaurants in New York. He passed away last year due to Covid-19. We thank him for everything that he has done and backing Sameer and Yash to create Hunger Inc.

We're doing our first Giveaway! We'll be sending the book 'Psychology of Money' by Morgan Housel to 5 people who help us get the highest number of referrals for our Newsletter. Here's the link that you can use to generate your referral code.

Sahil (@sahil071) & Siddharth (@sidbetala) munch on these ideas during the episode:

(00:50) - The Indian Dream Book Giveaway - Psychology of Money
(02:06) - Gumroad Investment & Equity Crowdfunding
(09:05) - Biostimulants & Sea6 Energy
(16:25) - Manufacturing & Warehousing as a Service (MaaS, WaaS)
(28:52) - High end locks

Li Jin's article on Passion Economy and Future of Work

1. The Indian Dream Book Giveaway - Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel - One of the best books both of us have ever read about Wealth Management & Accumulation.  We'll be giving away 5 copies to the people who get the most people to sign up to The Indian Dream Newsletter. Here's the referral link that you can use for this campaign.
2. Gumroad Investment & Equity Crowdfunding: As per SEBI guidelines, equity crowdfunding is still illegal in India - despite India overall being much more lax in its rules than the US SEC. Equity Crowdfunding is basically a chance for retail investors to invest in early stage startups - think Kickstarter but you actually get Equity in the company in which you invest. Gumroad - the creator platform - raised $5 million on the Republic.co platform which itself raised $35 million. The same day, the SEC had raised the maximum allowable capital raise from Equity Crowdfunding from $1.07 million to $5 million - expect a lot more companies use this method for raising early money but also expect a lot more fraud.
3. Biostimulants & Sea6 Energy: On this podcast, we are obsessed with anything related to agriculture and especially Seaweed. India has become the first country in the world to pass legislations about Biostimulants and Sea6 Energy has become one of the first companies in the world to receive a patent for a Seaweed based biostimulant. And Sea6 Energy is raising a $5 million Series A round right now. On a previous episode, we spoke to Mr. Abhiram Seth from AquaAgri Processing about the future of Seaweed biostimulants and he said that this is just the start - there's a lot of room for growth in this industry. 
4. Manufacturing & Warehousing as a Service (MaaS, WaaS) for D2C companies: D2C companies are good at Marketing and they try to outsource everything else. Warehousing is a growing and profitable part of this changing business model. Can you build a warehousing marketplace with a software layer on top that helps D2C companies find the best warehousing space for their products. Same thing can be done for manufacturing. 
5. High End Locks

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.

Please follow us on Spotify and Rate us on Apple Podcasts. 

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 

Mysore Deep Perfumery House (MDPH), popularly known for their brand Zed Black has built an Rs. 800 Crore+ Agarbatti Business from India. 

We talk to Ankit Agarwal, Partner at MDPH about how he has scaled the business profitably over the last 17 years on this episode of The Indian Dream Podcast. 

We talk about the following things on the Podcast: 

(00:22) - Agarbatti or Incense Sticks Market in India & Policy Changes of 2019
(05:05) - Start of MDPH in 1992 after 7 Failed Businesses
(08:26) - How Zed Black Brand Started and why it became a hit across India
(10:09) - Three most important things about the business: Packaging, Distribution and Fragrance. 
(16:28) - How Zed Black moved to Advanced Payments with Distributors to Unlock Growth
(26:20) - Why Zed Black kept uniform pricing in a business that's dominated by Regional Players with different pricing per region
(28:52) - Export Market for Agarbattis 
(30:39) - The Technology and R&D Investment in Manufacturing. World's Largest Manufacturing Plant of Agarbattis
(34:18) - Why Zed Black decided to get Mahendra Singh Dhoni & Hrithik Roshan to Endorse the Brand
(40:20) - How should Entrepreneurs take advice from experienced people 
(45:59) - Why Zed Black's Deodrant Business Failed 

If you want to stay updated about our latest episodes or just want to say hi, you can join our No Spam WhatsApp group here: https://bit.ly/3Q0To2K

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

Join our WhatsApp group here: https://bit.ly/2LgDN2n

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 :) 

We're going to dive deep into the trend of Internet of things which has seen a huge resurgence in the past few years. We have Kush Mishra with us – he’s the CTO and COO of an IoT company called Senra. Through our conversations with various people in this industry we've actually come across an opportunity for a young business leader to become the business head or CEO of an industrial iot based company - if you or someone you know is interested please send an email.

Email Us
Kush Mishra
Senra
IoT Newsletter

I know all of you guys are probably thinking that the Internet of things is more than 10 years old and these guys are stupid to call this trend. just hear me out. This market is already worth billions of dollars in India and is still growing at a rate of 20% per year across the world. there are so many use cases that have still not been solved for specially on the  industrial side of things. the government is really incentivising the entire it boom with so many different programs including the digital India mission the smart city program and so many other things. 

On top of that, before the trade dispute with China last year we were importing a large percentage of our IoT hardware from them. but now there is a large demand supply gap which needs to be filled by somebody.  

Before we delve into the episode I just want to give all of you a basic idea about of what I mean by IoT. The Internet of things essentially means that you take a sensor and connect it to some object, either electronic or not, and then have that sensor send data back to the main server through some kind of communication like WiFi or 4G or whatever else. for example, I could buy a sensor for my running shoes. that sensor will pick up data about how much have run or how I am running and then send that data through Bluetooth to my phone which then sends it back to the central server. later on whenever I'm in the mood look at my running data I can just open the application on my phone and look at all the analytics about how badly I run.

IoT is broadly broken up into consumer IoT and industrial iot with industrial IoT being about 60% of the global market. consumer iot are generally  your wearables like your smart watch or home automation. Industrial iot generally refers to B2b applications of iot such as adding a sensor to a machine or engine so that you know about the health of that machine.  you can also use IoT To track your fleet of trucks for example. 

 We have an interesting discussion with kush about the entire state of IoT in India right now, the opportunities that exist in this space  and this kind of skills that a young person can build right now to get ready for the IoT industry. 

Before we get into the episode, if you are interested by what we're doing at the Indian dream and are looking for an internship - don't hesitate to send an email. we are looking for someone to help with social media and distribution. you would be an early hire and would be great way to learn how Companies are built. Send us an email now. 

Thanks for listening to another episode of The Indian Dream.

Join our WhatsApp group here: https://bit.ly/2LgDN2n

We're looking for social media interns! You can email us at theindiandream20@gmail.com

As always, 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:

(0:24)    - Update on the Seasonal Fruit D2C Idea
(2:10)    - Trend of Urban people moving to build High Tech Farms
(5:08)    - Modernising Direct Selling Agents (DSA's) for Bank
(16:02) - Modernising Real Estate Agents
(24:45) -Branding
(34:26) -Zetwerk for Jewellery

Business Ideas Discussed on this Episode:

1. Update on the Seasonal Fruit D2C Idea: Sahil got an update from his friend who built this kind of business in the past. His friend said that, "Indian avocados are seasonal, I had not come up with products to sell in this offseason. There were chances of low quality produce. Last mile delivery was not as established as it is today." These problems can be easily overcome with today's infrastructure and somebody can build this business. The customer base will remain the same across different fruits and seasons.
2. Trend of Urban people moving to build High Tech Farms: Seaweed farming was discussed in the Union Budget and we dug deeper into it and found the largest Indian farmer and processor. We found the 3rd largest Indian farmer of Mushrooms as well. High tech farming of new age crops like Mushroom & Seaweeds are increasing across the country in addition to the latest techniques such as hydroponics. We'll explore all these ideas in detail in future trends episodes.
3. Modernising Direct Selling Agents (DSA's) for Banks: Siddharth has previous work experience in B2B lending and during this time he saw how far behind the technological curve Banks and NBFC's really are. DSA's, who sell unsecured loans for banks, are a market of more than 1000 crores across India, get commissions of about 3-3.5% on the loan size but operate their entire business on paper without any digitisation. There is space for a newcomer to digitise the customer relationships (think policy bazaar but for B2B lending) and streamline the loan disbursement process to make it much simpler.
4. Modernising Real Estate Agents: We were inspired by this tweet which said that "Real Estate Agent has to be, on average, the laziest group of professionals. I guess that's why the few that are highly-competent hustlers clean up." This Tweet was referring to American Real Estate agents but we feel like it applies to Indian agents as well. This is a huge market and it is ripe for disruption in the way it operates, right from CRM softwares for Real Estate Agents (all of them use whatsapp right now) to a new way to sell houses online.
5. Branding: Branding is more important than ever in today's world because it is so simple to build businesses these days. However, there is still a big demand supply gap between good branding/digital marketing agencies and what is actually needed in the market. We discuss the various branding related businesses that you can build including an automated product photography software which allows you to upload a green screen photo of your product and then automatically puts that product in more appealing settings and backgrounds. 
6. Zetwerk for Jewellery: Inspired by a Tweet by Siddharth 

We hit 50 Episodes last week! (We didn't even realize!). Consider this as the 50th Episode Special: Our take on The 2021 Union Budget.

At The Indian Dream, our goal is create a community of knowledge seeking founders who are looking to build Profitable Businesses. A big part of building these businesses is being aware of the direction the government is focusing on. It always helps to be building in industries that the government is focusing on. Consider the example of Baddi and the Pharma boom that happened there. By understanding the governments future plans and intentions, you can start executing for the future and get help from Tailwinds. That's the lens we used to make sense of the Union Budget. We host Sarthak Ahuja (ISB Alumni, CA, CS and more!) on the Podcast to make sense of the budget. 

Our focus is Businesses & Startups, but we covered other sections such as Infrastructure as it has significant downstream impacts.

Sarthak's Website
Sarthak's Email

This by no means is a complete in-depth review of the Budget, we'll be honest, it's a lot of information to put in 40 minutes, but the intent is to show that there is merit in trying to go deeper and understanding the budget to spot upcoming opportunities in sectors that might be relevant to you. We've covered the ones that have the most impact and some extremely unique ones too. Goa's having a party and Tamil Nadu is becoming a Sushi State. Have I stopped making sense? Go checkout the podcast, you'll know what I'm talking about. 

This was our first topical podcast, do tell us what we could've done better :) Email us here. 

P.P.S: We're thinking of building our team and are looking for interns. Checkout our podcasts and more about us here. If you vibe with what we're trying to do (even we're yet to figure it out, you'll be that early!), we are looking for some full-time/part-time interns. We are looking to put some fuel to The Indian Dream and see where this goes. Our biggest weak point is the  Social Media Distribution. We create way more than we efficiently distribute. Come help us fix this? 

Thanks for listening to another episode of The Indian Dream.

Join our WhatsApp group here: https://bit.ly/2LgDN2n

As always, 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
(2:06)    - AI Powered Writing Tools
(9:35)    - Productizing Your Services
(15:30) - Luxury Direct to Consumer Fruit Brand
(23:45) - STEM Toys for Parents & Kids
(25:40) - Content Website Business

Business Ideas Discussed on this Episode:
1) AI Powered Writing Tools - there are many websites already doing this like Copy.ai & Nichness and many other services. However, this is a very new field and we believe that there are still a lot of use cases for which you can build companies. For example, can you build content writing for different geographies or different industrial niches.

2) Productizing Your Services - are you already selling a service like graphic design or coding or some other kind of consulting service? Can you convert this service into a product of some kind? For example, graphic designers can make different designs and sell t-shirts/mugs/posters, etc.. A personal finance coach could make a paid online or in person course that they then sell as a product.

3) Luxury Direct to Consumer Fruit Brand - Build a luxury brand that gets you the freshest fruit from different corners of the country only when they are the ripest. This idea would require you to build the supply chains very slowly because agri products have very difficult supply chains. Maybe you can start with one product like fresh Apricots or Mangoes and build up a customer base who you can then sell the next fruit when it is in season.

4) STEM Toys for Parents & Kids - Sell STEM based toys for kids to learn more about science and technology.

5) Content Website Business - This is for people who at least understand the basics for SEO. Use tools like Ahrefs or Ubersuggest or any other keyword research tools and figure out high frequency, low search difficulty keywords where you can create significant content. For example, all the keywords associated with Shopify are very high volume but have significantly lower search difficulty. 

In this episode, we talk to Mathew Joseph. He's a 3rd Generation Entrepreneur who was the Marketing Director at Duroflex before he started a D2C Mattress Brand called Sleepyhead.

So, mattresses. It’s one of those ‘boring’ and ‘unsexy’ industries and as we’ve often discussed on the podcast, it’s perfect for building a large, profitable business. The mattress industry in India is estimated to be 12,000 Crores Industry of which 60% is still Unorganized. Traditionally, 3 players dominated the industry, Kurl-on, Duroflex and Sleepwell. All legacy companies built over decades.

Then between 2016-2018, atleast 10 new D2C Mattress brands popped up. Some of which have survived and grown to more than 200 Crores in revenue in the last 5 years! Talk about Disruption!

What makes today’s episode interesting is that we got a chance to talk to Matthew Joseph who not only is the 3rd generation entrepreneur of the family run Duroflex but he’s also the founder of a D2C Mattress brand called Sleepyhead! What makes his journey fascinating is that he saw the upcoming disruption from the online players and instead of fighting to defend the legacy brand of duroflex, he set up a completely new brand and business entity to start Sleepyhead!

In the conversation today, we talk about the Mattress industry, the value chain and manufacturing process of mattresses, the different types of mattresses, the reason D2C Mattress Industry scaled so well over the last 3 years, how he has built Sleepyhead’s brand and most importantly, which is his favorite mattress!
 
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Today's show is a result of a phone call that I got after one of our listeners heard our Business Munchies episode. As we got talking, I realised his line of work is extremely interesting and operates in a niche. As our regular listeners might know, we love NICHE businesses. As they say, Niches build Riches. 

Around 2009-10, Rishabh & Pranav wanted to start an Electronics Accessories brand and upon more research, they realized it was difficult to compete with existing brands without a solid marketing budget. That's when they came across the idea of Corporate Brand Licensing. Under this, an existing brand licenses its name to other companies that are creating products that can serve as an extension to the brand's current products. For example, JCB makes construction and mining equipments. A natural extension to it would be Hand and Power Tools. Now, JCB could invest capital, do product development for this new line of products, OR it could tie up with an existing manufacturer of power tools and lend them the JCB Brand by doing a brand licensing agreement. Under this agreement, JCB gets certain % of the revenues. This is a win-win for both the partiers as JCB didn't have to invest and do product development and the manufacturer builds credibility by using the JCB Name. 

This model is extremely popular in the western markets and is estimated to be a market of 280 Billion Dollars. This is primarily dominated by Entertainment and Films, Fashion and Corporate brands.

Rishabh and Pranav saw the opportunity back in 2011 and co-founded LicenseWorks.They pivoted from their orginal idea and started An agency that helped brands match with manufacturers in India. Clients of Licenseworks were able to generate $70 million in revenue in 2019. 

In our show today, we host Rishabh and talk to him about the Brand Licensing Market and the workings of it. If you're manufacturing products out of India, you HAVE to listen to this to understand the opportunity that it presents. They've had multiple success stories in India where companies were able to double the turnover in a couple of years. 

In fact, LicenseWorks is now one of the Top 25 Global Licensing Agencies (on the basis the revenue generated for its clients), and the only agency from India among the top 25 global agencies.

LicenseWorks represents a wide range of International brands including leading Corporate trademarks, Electronics, Fashion and Sports brands such as Stanley Black & Decker, JCB, Schneider, Kodak, Thomson, Blaupunkt, Carrera Jeans, Karl Lagerfeld, HEAD Sports, Harvard, Santa Barbara Polo Club etc.

At the same time, several Indian companies also approach LicenseWorks with specific brand requirements. In such cases, LicenseWorks team works with them and helps them identify suitable brand licensing opportunities relevant to their categories, which could help grow their business.

Rishabh's email address: rishabh@licenseworks.co 

Before we jump on to the episode, I'd like to invite applications for Internships at The Indian Dream. We have exciting plans for the year ahead and are now looking to build a team of interns who are interested in growing a business media company. We're looking for interns to manage our Social Media, community and content production. All of these are going to be paid internships. We don't care where you studied at or what your degree is, as long as you're interested in learning more about building profitable businesses in India and are open to learning new things. So, if you're interested, drop us an email at theindiandream20@gmail.com or text us from the link in the show notes. 

With that, let's jump into the episode and learn more about the world of brand licensing. 

Thanks for listening to another episode of The Indian Dream.

Join our WhatsApp group here: https://bit.ly/2LgDN2n

As always, 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
(1:17)    - Clout Kitchens
(5:50)    - Virtual influencers
(10:25) - High End Ice
(14:45) - Cohort Based Learning
(24:10) - Transparent Pricing with Car insurance
(26:51) - Jewellery Insurance
(30:41) - Legal Micro SaaS

1. Clout Kitchens: Mr. Beast Burgers launched in 300 locations across the US in a single day. Why can't the same thing be done in India? Create a brand of Biryani around SRK or Salman Khan and give them equity. HRX and Wrogn have already done this with apparel and it's easier than ever to do this with food.

2. Virtual influencers: Lil Miquela is not a real person but this virtual persona brings in $12 million in revenue every year. There's no one doing this on a large scale in India. You can also do this for different niches: music, sports, fashion, etc. and use build economies of scale in design/animation, cross promotion, etc.

3. High End Ice: Where does the ice in your fancy whiskey come from? You have no idea, nor do I. I think there's a play to build a high end ice brand bringing assurance of high quality ice to people through a consumer campaign on social media. The main means of distribution would be bars and restaurants. In general, consolidating a disaggregated market can be a large potential business.

4. Cohort Based Learning

5. Transparent Pricing with Car insurance: MetroMile and the Good Better Best Newsletter

6. Jewellery Insurance

7. Legal Micro SaaS - A micro-SaaS business that helps take away the hassle of super basic and standardised legal documents such as NDA's, Lease Agreements, etc. so that you can just focus on the important parts of running your business. Example: The Legal Capsule

I'm really excited for this episode where we interview Vidur Gupta From stranger and sons – a brand of craft gin. This episode is a continuation of our deep dive into the Trend of craft alcohol in India. You should also listen to our previous episode with Brew Whale about the craft beer scene in India.

Craft Alcohol Newsletter
Brew Whale Episode

I'm not gonna lie, Gin and Tonic has recently become my favourite drink after beer. I was first introduced to Stranger and Sons as a birthday gift and I fell in love with it. BUT I did not believe my friend when they told me it was an Indian brand. The packaging was so modern, the taste was so good and I just didn’t think that Indian brands were making such high quality spirits – especially gin. 

Stranger & Sons has broken that mould though. In this episode, we have a fascinating discussion with Vidur on how they thought about building a gin brand, their entire process of getting the precise flavour profile they wanted and how they market the brand. We even speak about nerdy stuff like alcohol licenses, working capital and distribution for those of you who want to know more about the business side of building an alcohol brand in India. 

If you’re interested in building a new business, you should read our latest newsletter – 21 Awesome Business Ideas for 2021 – the link is in the show notes. 

We hope you enjoy our discussion with Vidur!

Welcome to another episode of Business Munchies at The Indian Dream. We explore different business ideas on this segment of our podcast.

We had a friend of the show with us on this episode: Animish Gadve from The Wandering Band, an indie video game publisher. Having worked with Zynga games & EA in the past - Animish was able to provide us with a lot of insights into how the gaming industry is shaping up in India and what opportunities still exist for people looking to enter.

Animish also gave us two Promo Codes for his game, Airborne Kingdom, on the Epic Game Store. You can get it for Free!

Don't miss out! We only have two Promo Codes and whoever uses it first, gets the game for free:

7Z824-C38ZH-LQCPM-EH6LT
MSSJB-72GU8-R5GV3-BB3HX

Business Ideas Discussed on this Episode:
1) The Toy Industry in India (1:50)
2) The Gaming Industry in India (13:41)
3) WhatsApp Privacy changes & its implications for Commerce & Micro-SaaS (23:24)
4) The model of an NGO running a business (Wikipedia, Bosch, Signal, etc.) (29:00)

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Our guest today  is an ex- Merchant Navy Officer who, through an interesting sequence of events, became an Insurance Executive and eventually an Entrepreneur. He currently runs a Global Products & Services business in the Insurance Domain with a team 1900 people spread across 9 countries. This journey began little over 7 years ago when Arun Balakrishnan was heading the Berkshire Hathway's Indian Insurance Business. When Berkshire decided to wind up the India business, Arun spotted an interesting opportunity that would eventually lead to his company, Xceedance. And he's used the bootstrapped entrepreneur playbook of starting with services and then building products very effectively. 

Arun's had an interesting journey, and it fits perfectly with the saying, you can only make sense of your life when you look backwards. He's often found himself in situations that might not have worked out in that moment, but it has all led up to him building a global business that started out of India. It all started post his MBA from IIM ahmedabad, where him and a friend of his decided to build internet businesses. Due to bad timing in the fundraising market, they couldn't get the necessary resources required to scale up their venture. The ideas they worked on would even turn into billion dollar ideas eventually, albeit executed by different people in a more favorable market. 

You'll often hear him say, he was lucky, and while there is some truth to that, he undermines the action he took and the decisions he made to get where he is today. Join me in this conversation as we talk more about his Internet business days, building Berkshire's Insurance business in India, and how he has been able to scale up Xceedance over the last few years. We talk what it takes to build a global business starting out of India, how they've been able to scale the hiring and org culture to build a team of 1900 people across the globe.  

Welcome to the 5th episode of Business Munchies. This will now be a regular segment of the show with Sahil and I hosting the show with other guests (friends of the show).

If you're not familiar with our Business Munchies episodes, I'd urge you to start with the first one 4 weeks ago. We continue a few discussions from the previous episodes.

For our episode today, we discuss the following topics:
1) Update on the E-Com business in US that we are trying to acquire (3:11)
2) Using a portfolio of entrepreneurial bets to build wealth (4.14)
3) IoT and Wearables Manufacturing in India (12:02)
4) Fire Safety Equipment (18:00)
5) Competing with Amazon in the Retail Market (24:00)

If you're keen on coming on the show as a friend of the show, would love to talk to you and see if we can make something happen. Love geeking out with people on different trends, ideas and industries. Text us here

With all that said, Execution > Idea :) 

In this episode, we talk to two brothers about their journey of setting up and selling a packaging manufacturing business in 10 years. We discuss Market Research, Positioning, and
Customer Centricity as it pertains to a Manufacturing Business. This episode is relevant for folks who have interest in Packaging as a product and/or run manufacturing businesses. For others, check out last week's Business Munchies Episode :)

Creative Stylopack Acquired by Essel Pro Pack - News Article

Reachout to us here if you're listening to us from PodLP. 

Detailed Synopsis:
We have a story of two brothers who scaled a packaging manufacturing business to close to ~100 Cr in Revenue in 8 years by focusing on niches. Bhavik, and Darshan started out their journey by setting up Creative Stylopack - a corrugated box manufacturing plant - as an extension to their family business in 2008-09. However, early on, they realized the importance of being ahead of the competition in terms of technology as well identifying and serving the niches. Their market research and the curiousity to find new niche products led them to a trade show in Germany which eventually led them to set up a Tube Manufacturing unit. These are tubes that are used for medicines as well as personal care products. They took a contrarian bet and invested in the significantly more expensive european machinery rather than the chinese machinery. This bet would prove to be pivotal in them finding marquee clients and scaling the business.

The reason I wanted to speak to them is because one of our listeners shared the news of Creative Stylopack being acquired by a publicly listed Packaging Manufacturer called EPL. It was great to see M&A activity in the SME Manufacturing space and we immediately reached out to Bhavik and Darshan to talk about their journey. 

If you enjoy this content, please join our WhatsApp group, we are already 500 strong!

Happy New Year Y'all! Thank you for supporting us and allowing us the room to experiment with different content styles around profitable businesses in India.

Business Munchies (Yet to finalize the name) is now going to become a more formal part of the content that we create. New Business Ideas, across industries depending on the emerging trends. The idea is to look at the business ideas as an optimist and see how to make it work. Most of our ideas will probably be bad, but we are sharing a point of view on what the future could look like if these businesses work out. And it's fun developing this point of view and finding some interesting things along the way.

Sahil and I are on a journey to figure out how to build profitable businesses in today's business health and geo-political environment. We are open-sourcing our learning journey through this series. We are really excited for 2021, and while 2020 has been a tough year for all of us, we're still grateful to have to to the opportunity to build The Indian Dream.

If you enjoy this content, please join our WhatsApp group, we are already 500 strong!

And drop us a text us here to tell us what you think about the content - we'd love to talk to you and get to know your expectations better. We're still figuring out how to build The Indian Dream and all kinds of discussion and feedback goes a long way to help us think through this. So we'd love to talk :)

We explore the following topics in the episode:
1) Update on E-Com Acquisition (0:20)
2) Brand Licensing for SMEs          (1:34)
2) High Margin Businesses             (9:00)
3) IPL Trading Cards                           (29:55)
4) India's Mini So?                                (39:00)

Happy New Year! 

This episode is a pure exploration of business ideas.

Business Munchies is our attempt to explore different business ideas while discussing the underling trends that make these ideas interesting and potential go to market strategies. This is by no means supposed to be a deep dive on each business idea as these haven't been discussed earlier.

If you enjoy this content, please join our WhatsApp group, we are already 500 strong!

We explore the following topics in the episode:
1) Personal Leverage (Nate's Article) (1:02)
2) Our Journey of evaluating an acquisition of an online business (6:57)
2) Online First Sweets/ Mithai Brand (8:55)
3) E Sports (18:18)
4) Make in India Marketplaces (28:24)

We would love feedback on this episode - please email us at theindiandream20@gmail.com

In this episode we speak to Pranav Mehra, Co-Founder of Brew Whale – a craft beer brewing company based out of Bombay.

Craft Alcohol Newsletter
Pranav Mehra
Brew Whale Website
Join the WhatsApp Group

I'm a big fan of good beer and could not resist doing a few episodes about the changing environment in the beer and alcohol industry in India. Craft beer has become a huge industry in the US in Europe - when you go to grocery store there you will see a number of bears from small breweries. With the advent of microbreweries in Maharashtra in the early 2010’s, with Doolaly at the forefront of this change, the entire beer industry in India has seen a radical shift. Young people like me have many more options drink a casual beer then just Kingfisher. However the biggest hurdle holding back the shift in the alcohol industry in India is regulation. Government regulations hold back this industry at every turn whether it is manufacturing, distribution or marketing.  

In this episode with Pranav, we explore the how he first conceptualize the idea of building a beer brand in such a tightly regulated market, how he executed it and what he thinks is the future for this market. There were a few things that really shocked me through this conversation - number one, you have to build your entire brewery before you can apply for manufacturing license. Building the brewery is not cheap it can be as much as 1 crore. Number 2, Distribution is also a big hurdle where you have to apply for license for every restaurant with whom you want to partner. 

 Personally I think regulations are both good and bad for the entrepreneurs that work in that industry. They’re bad because they make your everyday life so much harder. however it's good because it dissuades people like me from even thinking of entering tightly regulated business like this. however the laws are changing and the winds are shifting - the alcohol space in India is going to look very different 10 years from now.

In this episode, we host Kavita & Anand (Co-Founders at Voiro) to talk about Ad-Tech Industry.

Technology has fundamentally changed how we can consume and interact with Sports Content. And that has resulted in a meteoric rise in the value of Sports Leagues and Sports Celebrities.

IPL, Formula 1, NBA, NFL, all these leagues have seen tremendous growth in their revenues over the last decade thanks to rising media rights, new ways of monetisation and fan connects!

All of this comes down to the evolution of Technology. Smartphones, high-speed internet, social media - everything has snowballed into positive tailwinds for Sports Content and that's the reason why the likes of Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Netflix are bidding to get media rights for these sports leagues.

In this episode with Kavita and Anand, we'll talk about the trends that have resulted in the rise of the value of sports leagues and sports celebrities. 

If you haven't, check out the Voiro Podcast! They talk about the world of Ad-Tech, Marketing, and Social Media on their weekly podcast series! 

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As I've mentioned in the last couple of episodes, there's a lot going on at The Indian Dream - some good, some bad. I talk about it all towards the end of the episode.

If you want to tune into that directly, skip to (35:11). 

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We have open positions in Content Writing, Content Research, Video Editing - Please reach out to me on 8886248842 or sidbetala@gmail.com if you'd like to collaborate on building The Indian Dream! 

This episode is a pure exploration of business ideas.

At The Indian Dream we have a dozen ideas that we discuss everyday but are not able to share with our listeners. This episode is an experiment that we've been planning for months. The idea really took off a few weeks ago when Sahil and Siddharth met up with Saransh in Goa. We started bouncing ideas off each other and realised that it would be great to record this and share with our listeners.

If you enjoy this content, please join our WhatsApp group, we are already 500 strong!

We explore the following topics in the episode:
1) Means of Wealth Creation (0:48)
2) Our Journey of evaluating an acquisition of an online business (5:10)
2) Mushroom Farming & Processing (12:02)
3) Zoom and Notion Apps (18:35)
4) Zero Fee Marketplaces (25:00)

We would love feedback on this episode - please email us at theindiandream20@gmail.com

Earn in Dollars, spend in Rupees. That's one way to build a bootstrapped, profitable business. Amazon FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon Program) is a great way to target the global consumer. We talk to Rishiraj about building his Amazon FBA business, the playbook and what is he planning next.

Listener Survey Link
Republic of Sellers

The global e-com marketplaces coupled with digital marketing reach have enabled Indian businesses to target their products to the global customer base. It presents a great opportunity for people to build profitable businesses. Manufacturers can look at selling their products in various countries via platforms like Amazon, Etsy, Alibaba. Individuals who can figure out market gaps can contract manufacture these products and sell to the global markets. 

And our guest today has been on the journey to figure exactly this out. Rishiraj started his entrepreneurial journey back when he was in his college, BITS Dubai. Rishiraj started a drop-shipping business leveraging his college friend's manufacturing business in Indore. They had multiple SKUs in the Bedding category with products like bedsheets, bedskirts, bed covers etc. After tinkering with Amazon listings and learning about how it works, in 6-7 months he was able to figure out how to make Rs. 50k in profits every month without spending too much time on the operations of it. Eventually, as competition grew and sellers started hijacking the listing, a common Amazon seller issue, Rishiraj decided to focus on his Product Management career and close the listings. He would go on to work as a PM at startups like 1Mg, Online Tyari for a couple of years. One fine day, on his vacation back home, he had the realisation that the money he was making compared to the effort he put in was actually lesser compared to his dropshipping business. And if he put similar kind of effort on the ecommerce side, maybe he'd fetch returns. And he decided to take the plunge once again and focus on this full-time. 

We talk to Rish about building an Amazon FBA business, the learnings, the challenges and the profits that he made along the way. He also runs a community called Republic of Sellers where he posts content about how to build an Amazon FBA business.We discuss the playbook for Amazon FBA businesses. 

In today's episode we have Himanshu Arora from Social Panga again bringing us a D2C Marketing Playbook. We promised in our last episode with Himanshu that we would go deep into the digital marketing aspects of Direct to Consumer (D2C) brands  and that's exactly what we do today.

D2C Playbook Newsletter
Join Our WhatsApp Group

In this episode we discuss various parts of Direct to Consumer (D2C) digital marketing  that are being used by all the biggest modern brands such as Mama Earth, Yoga Bar and others. We start by talking about the foundations of marketing and brand building for online for brands and how consumer loyalty is the key to long term success. One of the themes that we've been speaking about for several episodes is about the importance of community building for any modern brand - this is the essence of building customer loyalty. 

With Himanshu we also go deeper into the metrics that define success for performance marketing performance marketing, how we can think about organising our influencer marketing campaigns and several other topics. if you are thinking of building, or already have, a DTC brand then you should not miss this episode. 

If you’re interested in D2C, don’t forget to read our newsletter which has all the information  and tips on how to build your own D2C brand. The link will be in the show notes. 

This episode is a pure exploration of business ideas.

At The Indian Dream we have a dozen ideas that we discuss everyday but are not able to share with our listeners. This episode is an experiment that we've been planning for months. The idea really took off a few weeks ago when Sahil and Siddharth met up with Saransh in Goa. We started bouncing ideas off each other and realised that it would be great to record this and share with our listeners.

If you enjoy this content, please join our WhatsApp group, we are already 500 strong!

We explore the following ideas in the episode:
1) Leasing/Buying Vacation Homes and renting them out on AirBnB, Saffron Stays, etc. (0:50)
2) Co-working 2.0 for remote workers combining long stay rentals along with a connected co-working space. (7:32)
3) Turning online communities into physical communities in vacation hotspots or Tier 2 cities. (10:32)
4) Community Building for brands on websites just as Tribe.so (12:38)
5) Software products for Sport Teams for Scout Management and recognition of young talent. (27:49)
6) Software for Fund Managers to rank companies based on Environmental, Social or Governance metrics. (32:05)
7) Online Marketplace for Buying/Selling Small Online Businesses - Micro Acquire (32:56)

We would love feedback on this episode - please email us at theindiandream20@gmail.com

Listener Survey Link
Email us at theindiandream20@gmail.com

Thank you for supporting us on our journey of 
building The Indian Dream Project. 

This episode is just Sahil and Sid talking about Why started The Indian Dream, the journey so far and the plans for our future. 

We're focused on creating content around Profitable Entrepreneurship in India. 

We look at the past to create playbooks of building successful businesses through our Founder Journeys episode. 

We look at the future to identify opportunities to build profitable businesses through our Trends Newsletters & Podcast Episodes. 

In the episode today, we have Navjor Kaur, Vice President at a Venture Capital firm that provides growth capital to early stage consumer brands.  We go through the playbook of building a D2C Brand covering functions such as Marketing, Logistics, Manufacturing, Hiring.

D2C Newsletter

Direct to Consumer Business Model: In this business model 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.

Given the role, Navjot ends up advising and evaluating a lot of D2C companies. She has looked at D2C companies across different phases of growth and has provided us with a playbook of what it takes to build a D2C brand. We look at how to lay down the fundamentals for a D2C business and talk about functions such as marketing, logistics, manufacturing, hiring to really understand the nuances in relation to building a D2C brand. If you run a D2C or have aspirations to build one, this is a must listen for you.

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!

In this episode, we host Kavita & Anand (Co-Founders at Voiro) to talk about Ad-Tech Industry.

We’re all familiar with how big the Digital Ads market has grown over the last decade. To put some numbers, in 2012, the Global Digital Ad spend was close to $100 Billion. Today, that stands at more than 600 Billion dollars - a healthy 20% growth every year. In the next few years, $1 Trillion dollars will be spent on Digital Ads globally.

With the rise of Ad Spends, the technology that supports that industry, often called as Ad-Tech has seen an exponential rise. As we’ve often discussed on the podcast, selling shovels during a gold rush is a great way to build a large, profitable business.

Today, Voiro is a SaaS Platform that helps media companies run their Ads business, and in the last 9 years, they’ve had a ring-side view of this meteoric rise of the Ad-Tech market. What makes their journey even more interesting is that they’ve part of the team that runs the Indian Premier League’s Ad’s business! Practically from Day 1 of Hotstar, in fact it wasn’t even called hotstar back then. 

We’ll first talk about how they went from build a service business to build a software product, then we’ll talk about the landscape shift that’s happened from broadcast to digital technology, then we talk about how the entire world of Ad-Tech come together to form a value chain and lastly we talk about the emerging trends of privacy, regulation and content creation. 

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**This episode is brought to you by PushOwl.
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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 theindiandream20@gmail.com

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.

The Indian Dream Newsletter - Subscribe to our newsletter!
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.