 Thank you Vikas for finally making it because Vikas was stuck in traffic for quite some time and we were been waiting for him for last almost 30-35 minutes. I apologize for the same, I'll make it up from here. And I'm sure, so you know Vikas, when I was told that I have to do this session with you, I went through a lot of videos where you've been talking and it's really been a very, very inspiring journey, I was personally very inspired how you believed in the idea that you had and what you have built for yourself and for the country. So you know, we want to start with your journey, you know, how did the idea of Happelo come to you and when you started, did you think that you'll build a 500 crore company? Thank you so much, Nazia for having me here and apologies for the delay to start. I think, yeah, Happelo was born in 2016 in September, October, so we are in the 7th year of the journey now. When we started, yeah, we always did, you know, took small steps, never thought what we wanted to become in terms of revenue or in terms of brand and valuation and all. We always wanted to do the small things right. I think we always knew that we'll make it big, but time is the only, you know, matter. So we are confident in that space. In terms of why the dry fruit and snacking space, basically I was a retailer before that. So I founded a retail chain which I expanded to around 15 stores. So during that time, the availability was a problem in terms of, you know, branded dry fruits and snacks and healthier alternatives to people. A lot of dependency was there on international brands from across Southeast Asia or US and availability was a problem. So I thought, you know, why can't Indians create global brands of recognition? That was the inspiration. You know, I wanted to take India to the globe and that's what Happelo was born. You, in one of your interviews you said your father was a farmer, you know, he was from a farming background. What was he into? Like what kind of farming was he doing? Yeah, see, I come from a, you know, remote place called Sakhleshpur. It is around 200 kilometers south of Bangalore. It's largely a very scenic place. People go there for home stays and all. It's quite scenic out there. And my father was actually, you know, doing a lot of farming practices there. He used to grow a lot of coffee and pepper largely. So my childhood was always going on the weekends to the farms and the estate is all they call and look at how the cultivation is done, how the harvesting is done. So father was largely into farming practices of spices, largely cardamom, pepper and coffee. Nothing to do with the dry fruits? No, I think dry fruit was not relevant but then but the idea of trading, the idea of farming, harvesting and all those things actually played a key role in me understanding the nuances quite early in terms of agricultural practices. And also father also used to, you know, opposed farming used to also aggregate, you know, a lot of stuff from nearby farms and also then sell it to the processing center. So I saw business happening very closely in my younger childhood. I think that shaped up a lot of my instinct to do business and learn a lot from my father. You have started a digital first company and it has become a huge success. So for the beginners, what would you describe as the biggest challenges that you faced in your journey in the initial years? See initially, if you see large brands always have stronger distribution in terms of offline. For example, Hindustan Unilever must be available in more than a crore outlets, right? That is the GT potential what we have, the offline, there are one crore outlets in India. And even Hindustan Unilever might be present in 70, 80% of that. For any young brand to build distribution, even to for say 1 lakh stores is very, very difficult because it's very expensive, we have to hire a lot of people. But for younger brands, it's easier to learn something online because they have to just convince the category manager to launch the product and you are visible to millions of Indians online. So for any brand, I think e-commerce first approach is always better because they don't have to focus on distribution and this acts like a pilot for your offline strategy as well. I think that's how we started and initially when we launched, first time we launched it on big basket, then moved on to Amazon and other platforms. And that's where we got decent success in terms of the customer traction. We did a lot of experiment in terms of how do we launch a product. If something was not working, we were quick to change the product and things like that. So that's how it started and e-commerce give you a platform where you can actually do trial and error. And once you have a little bit of traction, what the product market fit is done, you can actually go expanding in the omnichannel strategy where you can go offline, you can go to modern trades, you can open your own stores, which we actually done all of them. In fact, not only e-commerce, we are largely now present across 15,000 stores in India. So that's where we're able to expand. But initial traction happened on e-commerce and I think we were a large beneficiary during the COVID as well because everybody was at home and nobody was able to go out. Everybody was depending on e-commerce and we were actually at that time trying to be one of the largest brands out there and eventually it happened that we became that number one brand in the category and we created the category with e-commerce players. You've given a wholesome thing, but you know, if I'm very interested in understanding what were a few initial months like, you know, how many customers did you have initially? How did you grow it? If you can share more details. So I actually, you know, started with very meager amount, you know, initially it was very tough. I rate 10,000 something. Yeah, yeah, actually, you know, it's very hard to believe for people that I only started the company with only 10,000 rupees. How did you spend that 10,000 rupees? See, 10,000 is what I had, you know, and I actually wanted to, you know, do something big and, you know, start happy, you know. So what I did, you know, initially just put the plan in paper. In fact, and I requested my wife actually to support me for the initial funding. What does your wife do? She was working for Indian Oil back then. She was an HR manager in Indian Oil. In fact, we did our MBA together and she was in HR and I was in marketing. That's how we met. We were in Pune, CMHRD for the first time. And then we fell in love and got married as well. We have two lovely daughters now. So I think a lot of success also is instrumental to her in supporting me in my early days when it was very tough for me to manage the finances. I think she was handling the entire household course, you know, she was paying all the rentals and paying for the grocery bills where I was trying to focus on my dream and trying to build something large. So I think it doesn't happen without, if you don't have a support system in place. And I started at 10,000, but I was fortunate enough that wife actually gave her entire life savings of 20 lakhs to me, you know, to proceed with the venture and that's how it started. Then I was also a beneficiary of a government program called the CGT-MSC where small scale enterprises, you know, can apply through the Startup India website and get up to one crore of capital without any collateral back then. Now the limit has been extended under the new government for two crores. So I was a beneficiary of that, it got 75 lakhs of, you know, collateral free loan. That was a stepping stone and it helped us not to, you know, dilute equity at a very early stage. In how much time after you took the leap of, you know, starting the thing, when you realize that what you have done is right, you're in the, you know, you're going in the right direction and you've arrived? No, I personally feel we are still work in progress. I think, you know, it's always a learning curve for us. We learn every day. But I remember you said that you had 20 rejections. Yeah, see, largely that was related to fundraising, right? We started the company in late 2016. For the same idea, for happy lonely. Yeah, for happy lonely, I have met many investors. I should take an early morning flight, meet two, three investors here in Mumbai and go back again to Bangalore not to spend more money on staying back here and things like that. So I always had this approach of, you know, trying to meet investors, trying to pitch the idea to them. But initially there were not many takers because they felt that what has not happened so far, how will you do it? You know, in India, I don't think, you know, a dry food, healthy snack brand can actually exist. So there were a lot of challenges initially because when you try to build a category from scratch, creating category is very tough. It's expensive and it's also tough to get accreditation from a lot of people. So I think that that was the phase where from 2017 to 2020, I had met almost 20 investors and everyone turned me down and said this will not work. And that is the beauty of it. Are you in touch with any of those investors now? Yeah, yeah, they're all in touch with me and actually we are great friends now. In fact, we have happened to meet a lot in events and all. So they always say that thanks for proving me wrong. So that is what they have. So how is building a digital brand different from building a non-digital brand? See, I think in today's world, the line is very thin. For any brand to be of scale, they have to have both the strategies of being online and offline. Any brand cannot only say that I'll only be digital first, I'll not go offline. But it depends on where you start. You can always start as a digital first brand and go to offline later and vice versa. But as I told earlier, it's very expensive to start from the offline piece of it because India is such a large country with such a massive population and the tastes and preferences changing every 10 kilometers. It's very difficult for you to actually, you know, able to crack the distribution strategy in the early period. But it's always easy to, you can go to a big basket, purchase manager or a category manager, vice versa, an Amazon or Flipkart. You're actually able to convince them of the table if the product has that good, you know, clarity in terms of brand positioning, product taste and price points. If you're able to convince them, you're immediately live and millions of customers can actually see you. But when you want to start the offline channel first, there's a lot of manpower required, right? One single manpower can cover, say, 20 to 30 stores per day and even maximum 40 stores per day. But 40 stores is not good enough in terms of volume and revenue. So you have to maybe employ 100 of people and maybe pay 4, 5 lakhs salary per month to start off. In the initial phase, that is not going to be easy. So today we have more than 700 people in the company. But when it started, we are only 2, 3. So that's how the journey has been. So it's always good. I personally believe that brands should try it out on their website as a D2C brand. Then expand to market places. You know, work towards the product market fit. Once they find traction and they believe that the product is good enough and there's a fitment in the market. And the target audience is large enough. That's when they can accelerate and try to look for fundraising, try to build a like-minded team, invest in technology and look forward for distribution. Also invest in marketing. When was the time that you started investing in marketing? See, whatever money we made in the initial time, we actually always reinvested in the brand itself. In the first four years, I personally myself never drew any salary also. Because I felt that in the early stage, I would rather invest whatever earnings we have. We actually reinvest in the brand, try to grow the brand in terms of visibility, brand positioning and create that brand, number one brand in the category. So that was always the aspiration. But the major shift in marketing came when we actually raised our first fund in February of 2021. So during the COVID times, we didn't even meet the investors. Everything happened online and we were able to raise our first fund raise of 100 crores. So for a FMCG brand who has not raised funding ever to raise 100 crores was actually a milestone in itself. People actually start off with raising 2 crores, 10 crores and like that. So initially our first fund raise was 100 crores. So when we got 100 crores first three, four months, I did not know how to spend 100 crores. So that was how it was. Again, we started doing strategies and looking at things and what do Indians consume? Did you hire an agency? Yeah, we hired couple of agencies as well. But largely I am very prone in terms of marketing and creating content. That's how I've been in my background as well. So actually we happen to see in India only two things sell. Either cricket or Bollywood. So we invested in both of them. We became the title partners for Rajasthan Royals. Then we actually extended a partnership with RCBS. Why did you choose Rajasthan Royals? Was it your preferred market or it was a cheaper option? No, it was not cheaper, neither a preferred market. It was basically the only jersey available with the title partner option available. Okay, that was the only option available. Because all the other teams were taken, right? So that was only available. And we are getting massive size logo visibility on the jersey. And that actually changed the way Hapil was looked at. That was actually my next question. How did you benefit from it? I think the perception of the brand completely increased. And we became the face of the category today, right? Today very difficult for people to remember any other brand in the category other than Hapil. So we were able to create that impact. And then we also onboarded a couple of celebrities. Like we had Siddharth and Kiara onboarded before they got married. When they were actually dating each other, we actually got them, both of them separately. And things turned out we actually manifested well I think. So they got married as well. Good. You made a happy couple. So after you invested in IPL, do you feel that it met your expectations or did it exceed the expectations? No, I think definitely expectation was exceeded, right? It was a big ATL impact in terms of brand visibility, brand awareness, top of the mind recall and all those things. But you can never count your ATL spends like IPL, and you cannot relate it to the revenue growth and something. Overall things, you'll overall get a good hike, but you will not see an immediate impact in terms of revenue. But the brand awareness and the people searching for your brand, actually you think this is a lot. So you're always there in terms of top of the mind recall. And whenever they actually need a product, then you'll always choose Hapil over the first instance. Our visibility across retail chains, modern trade, general trade, e-commerce had a great impact in terms of search and clicks. So now with IPL, Hapil had kind of arrived and everyone recognized the brand. After that happened Shark Tank, and then people started recognizing you as well, right? So you invested in yourself also in a way to become the face of your brand. Tell us about, you know, what was the reasoning behind doing Shark Tank? How did the journey start? I think to be honest, Shark Tank was never thought of. It was just, you know, it just came in as a surprise. You were approached? Yeah. So, you know, they just wanted a guest shark for a single episode as well. Because, you know, they were aware of the brand and they wanted to see if that can work. So the producing team actually came down, flew down, and just wanted to have a quick conversation. We had a good half an hour chat and that's where they decided that you have to be our next guest shark. And they just wanted to check if, you know, the things could work. And, you know, end of the day, the brands want good TRPs out there and people want to give out good content, I think. I think we kind of had a synergy where they said they offered that, you know, guest shark for a single episode. So I was not keen initially. I just almost took 10 days to sign up for it because I was not sure if... Why were you not keen on an opportunity like that? Maybe... It's kind of being a little nervous and trying to be on TV. I think, unlike the celebs and cricketers, I think we are not exposed, you know, enough to be that face of the brand to carry it on national television was a little bit, you know, butterflies flying everywhere. So I had to ask, you know, 10, 20 of my friends, my investors, my family and all that, you know, will it be the right thing for me to be on national television? And, you know, we had mixed responses. What was the reaction of your family, your wife, your father? It was a lot of mixed reactions. I think basically family was like not into it completely because... But why was hesitant of initial days? But then she says, yes, we should do it. And the father was always saying, yes. Why could they be hesitant? I mean, I see it as a very big opportunity where you can go and, you know, make your brand even more popular. Yeah, yeah, I think in hindsight... It's like free marketing. Yeah, it's completely agreed. But what happens is initially, you know, beyond national television, it's a different challenge all itself. You know, you have to be communicatable in terms of how do you build the brand story out there, right? So initially, and also family requires more privacy in terms of being there. You know, the privacy gets hampered. So that's the only thing. Otherwise, you know, I was always confident enough to be there and deliver. But I think in the initial phases, we had a lot of discussions around it. I took around seven, ten days to convince myself to be on the stage. And finally, when you said yes, and when you did that episode, how did life change? Did things change? Did people start recognizing you coming to you and saying that, you know, the shark we saw on television? Yeah, I think life changed a lot after that. I think the recognition and the love what I got from the Shark Tank audience or from family and friends and from the vendors, suppliers who all knew me, I think it was overwhelming for me. And it was a great opportunity to represent, you know, as a shark at Shark Tank. And I always ended up investing in two brands as well out there. And I was alone. Shark was coming from an FMCG food background as well. So that also added a lot of new dimension to the show itself. How much did it help your brand to be on the Shark Tank? See, personally, being on Shark Tank, there's not much impact in terms of, again, revenue per se. But the brand awareness grows. And largely, the person behind the brand gets more prominence than actually the brand. You know, people are willing to look at who is the person who built Happy Low? What is he? Where is he from? So, you know, Google has all flooded with, you know, who is Vikas Jinhaar, who is the founder of Happy Low? How he founded? I think people wanted to be more curious. Don't you think it brings more credibility to the brand, you know, when you know the owner, when you have an idea about his life? See, the trust factor goes up. You know, people are willing to, you know, look at who the founder is and how he has come up, what he has done so far. I think that, you know, trust factor goes up and people actually start accepting and appreciating what has been created. And every Indian out there, you know, India is such a big potential country, right? This decade actually is one of the massive decades for India. We have already crossed 4 trillion in terms of economy as well. And I think India will definitely become that superpower. Everybody in India has that fire that, you know, India, who will make the biggest brand in the world? How will people take India to the globe? And that aspiration is there. And people want to support, you know, in today's world, you know, earlier, 10-20 years ago, if somebody wanted to do a startup, the family would say, you should not do it. It's a lot of risk. You are leaving your well-paid job and, you know, trying to do a startup. But today's world is very different, right? And we will actually motivate their own family members, kids, to actually take up entrepreneurship. That's the massive change that's come in India. And today people want to see who is doing what and want to support each other. And the community has come together, actually. And that has also helped us to build the brand to that next level. And you have also become an angel investor. You know, you are also helping people who have ideas and aspirations. So, you know, when you have people coming to you with their ideas, youngsters, how do you judge it? I mean, is it based on the person, on the idea? Like, how do you evaluate? See, I look at two to three things, largely, you know. First, the passion what the founder has, has it got in him to actually last long? Because running a startup is not easy. There will be lots of ups and downs, you know. And it's not going easy. It's not like, you know, it's a sprint that you run quickly and reach the target and it's done. It's like you have to do the same thing again and again. You have to do the right things even when nobody's watching you. So, it's a long marathon. You know, you have to keep on it. If the founder is passionate enough, I think that sticks the first box for me. And the second box would be how big the market is. You might have the greatest of product, but if the market doesn't exist, then the product will not actually succeed. I think two most important factors for me is I wonder how persistent and passionate it is. And second thing is, is the product fit enough for the market? Is the market large enough? Because I also was listening to one of your interviews where you said a very key part of growth is, you know, building a good team. And you started with three or four people and now today you have 600, 700 people working for you. So, would you define for us what is a good team? You know, how do you build a good team? What are the qualities that you look for in all the people that you hire? I think initially, as any startup, we also had a tough time actually to identify good talent and groom them and grow together. Initially, the zero to one was all done single-handedly by me. So, I, in fact, it was easy for me to do everything because I handled multiple departments and things like that. But one to ten journey also was able to do myself with a team size built up maybe to 50, 60 people or 80 people like that. And still, I was able to identify all the people in the company by name and where they come from, what things to do. But as soon as we exceeded that one to ten journey, then after that it was very difficult for me to actually look at all things myself. A ten to hundred journey could only happen because we built a good team around it. So, the first ten people that you hired, what were the qualities that you looked for? See, that time it was very simple, right? I was looking for people who would ask less salaries. Because I didn't have much money to pay. But actually it was like, you know, I wanted, you know, to people who had good values and were passionate about, you know, doing something large, right? So initially, they actually lived the vision with me, you know. They also felt that something large can happen. They trusted me at that time because to be honest, we were not the best players back then. Are they still with you? Yeah, absolutely. 70% of the people of the first ten people are still with me. And they are already committed five years. That's great. I also want to talk about Hapelo as a product. You know, dry fruits have always been there. Snacks have always been there in Indian market. How did you position it differently? And if you had to pitch the product to me today, what are some of the unique qualities of what you are offering? See, it's all about giving quality deliverables consistency. And I feel for any food brand, any food product, any FMCG front, for that matter, brand is the biggest differentiator, right? So for example, if you have a noodle's pack, right, you remove the logo of Nestle, Maggie out there and put some XYZ, the product will not sell. So it's, you know, the first most important thing is the brand, which will give you the first sale. So how can you create the brand producing the customer's mind? And how can the packaging, that's your first marketing material. How can that be attractive? So I did a lot of homework on how the packaging should look like, right? How the brand should be communicated. What should be the brand name? I think, you know, if you know that Hapelo is a made-up name, it's not a dictionary name, right? So that's how you could. I would also want to ask you, how did this name come? So basically I wanted some Gen Z name. You know, I cannot today name my brand, Haldiram or, you know, or Nathu's like that. You know, today's people will not accept it. It is being there from generations, so it's okay, right? Mangara wafers can sell because it's there from 40, 50 years. Today if I name the brand Mangara, people will say, what are you naming it? So, you know, we have to come, you know, work along with who the audience is. I do want to do something Gen Z, which can be expandable to newer SKUs also. So Hapelo simply means happiness plus love. Okay. So that's how the word Hapelo was born. So it's basically happiness plus love. It was your idea. It was discussed internally in the family. Yeah, it was actually, you know, my idea had branched on more than 100 names, right? What was some of the other names? I think there was happy life and there was some others, which I actually don't remember right now. But then after all these things, I zeroed in on Hapelo because I thought this is more memorable. If somebody hears the word Hapelo, the brand Hapelo, I think it sticks onto you. It's very easy for you to, you know, then rebuild on that in terms of marketing and trying to create more awareness and create that stickiness to the brand name. So I think I personally believe for any brand, somebody who wants listening here, wants to build a brand. I think the brand name is the most important part. Second thing would be the packaging because that will, what will give you the first sale. And then if the product is good, if there's consistency, then that will give you a repeat sale. So all these things, you know, work in that order itself. What are your plans for Hapelo's international expansion? Which all, have you already gone abroad or you're in process of going which all countries, which all markets are you planning to target? Yeah, we want to be actually India's global brand. We have trademarked Hapelo across more than 100 countries now. So we have global aspirations. We just started looking at international market. We have launched Hapelo in Qatar and Dubai right now. So we are looking forward to those responses, how we see. We have launched in more than 50 supermarkets there. So this will be our second month of operation. So we want to see how it goes from there. Then if we have understanding of the market, then we'll go deeper out there and maybe set up our marketing office there and try to see how we can actually grow it out there. Initially we have started with two countries and within the next two, three months we'll be also available in three more countries out there. So we'll do a pilot with five countries and take it from there. What to share, which other three countries are you planning? Basically after Qatar, then we have UAE and after UAE we have Thailand, Singapore and Maldives. Basically countries with heavy NRI population? Yeah, countries with more tourist influx. You know, where the population is more Cosmo and there is a lot of travelers coming around. So for them we want to provide that convenience snack option based on dry fruits, health being that primary call out. What are your thoughts on the overall Indian market, Indian snacks market? How has it shaped in the last 10 years and how big is the scope going forward? I think today the entire world is actually looking at India, right? So yesterday I was in an investor summit for my existing investor. So we see so many interest from across the globe who wants to invest in India, right? There were 40 odd people coming from different parts of the country, even from the world. So they actually wanted to invest in India because today we are 140 crore plus in terms of size. The aspirations are growing. The household incomes are growing. The disposable incomes are growing. So people actually are looking forward to India because there is not a single market which is as big as India, right? So even for that matter the big growth, whatever the brands are getting from across the group actually are looking at India. For example, if I'll tell you a fact that India is the second largest importer of dry fruits. That itself is a big validation. Across the globe, India is the second largest importer of dry fruits. So that's how the big market is. That's how people focus so much on India. So brands like Nestle, Hindustan Levers and everyone. Everybody is actually looking at India because they don't see any consumption across the world. We see entire wars happening in a couple of countries. There are a lot of disturbance in terms of economic stability and all those things. But India as a country is growing year on year at a good rate and GDP is growing, income is growing and a lot of stability is there in terms of political stability in terms of the climate sooting, agriculture is doing good. Overall it's the best place to be. I really believe that this decade, this century actually will belong to India. Maybe in the next 10-15 years you will see that India is among the top one or two countries in the world who is going to dictate terms to the world. Vikas, this idea has worked wonders for you and you're already on the right track. We hope that you will soon make it a thousand crore and then I don't know how many zeros will you keep adding to it. Do you have more ideas that you would want to eventually in future get into? Any other market that you see has potential where you would like to invest? We always try to create newer products. For us, we believe that R&D has to be very important for any FMCG brand. We have created a massive R&D facility in Bangalore other than the production plant what we have created around 100,000 square feet. So we have just launched a dry fruit bar which is made completely of dry fruit without any sugar. The sweetness comes from dates. Similarly we have launched dry fruit based confectionaries how can you ensure that kids eat more dry fruits but in a way of confectionary? How can they go away from a regular sugary stuff what they eat? So we always believe that we will try to create newer ideas how we can ensure that the convenience is there, people can have a single serve. We have launched dry fruits at affordable price 120 and 30 rupees as well which is now widely available in the market also. So we want people to avoid eating any fried chips for that matter or going to some sugary stuff. We want to replace that habit where people actually consume nuts on the go which is very relevant in the West. People actually carry nuts in their cars and everything because they don't want to eat something junk. So and we are even one-tenth of the consumption in terms of US. Every person in US eats 1 kg per month. We don't even eat 100 grams. So that's the disparity. Is it because of the cost or awareness? It's both. But cost today is not a problem. I think today the disposable incomes have increased and people are well aware and with a lot of exposure to international market, well-traveled people, the awareness is slowly building. Maybe 10 years before, dry fruit was not part of your grocery list. It was only consumed when somebody would gift it to you. But today it's part of every monthly buying list. So that's the change that has happened. People actually want to consume healthy now. And after COVID, I think there's a lot of reinforcement in terms of eating healthy, protein-based food, high-fiber and this and that. You'll surely be very popular amongst mothers. That's really a very big challenge and I speak from experience. I think happiness exists because of the wonderful mothers out there. Vikas, your story has really been very, very inspiring and there's a lot that we would want to talk about but we are running out of time and people must be very hungry because we have lunch immediately after this. Thanks for coming all the way and talking to us and inspiring us. It is a great pleasure.