 We today we have with us our Prameya Radha Krishnan India's local micro blogging platform. Then we have with us Rajesh Sahani founder GSF Accelerator, a leading technology accelerator in India. We also have with us Sandeep Agarwal founder and CEO Drew. Welcome everyone. So, sir, let me ask Sandeep. Top three customer challenges, you know, face by day to see companies in India today. The marketing, when you create any brand, the marketing has, you know, marketing has always been one of the most challenging part. Also, Rajesh has a seasoned investor plus entrepreneur will share with you. That's what probably he sees on every company's PNL, right? I mean, it does not matter whether you are building a brand or a SaaS company, maybe less so in SaaS company or technology company consumer net. Your marketing, your marketing is going to be in proportionately higher, at least for the first four, six or maybe up to 10 years. And unless, unless you got, unless you got very lucky and somehow hit the, hit the, you know, hit the home run with virality, FOMO and all other cool things which can proliferate your brand without having to spend money. And nowadays, you know, with our, with our D2C, you know, I mean D2C, you know, they are, you know, I think I can talk more about consumer internet, but, but in terms of, you know, D2C, what is happening is that these companies are almost like a rebellious version of old FMCG. And you know, I sometimes wonder why don't we call Nike or Reebok and Adidas as D2C? And I'm sure Rajesh will have a much more philosophical explanation for that. You know, but I think, you know, having a startup approach to creating a brand, right? And having maybe a contract manufacturing, having a marketing which is not dependent on ATL and VTL and probably thinking of new format of internet advertising could be Reels, could be Tiktok, could be short video, could be influencer marketing. I think those are the, those are the things and if these D2C brand do not take out marketing as a percentage of their gross revenue to entirely different lower level, which was right, they really can't create a D2C brand. So, you know, higher dependency on a digital distribution, new format of marketing, contract manufacturing, influencer and many other ways to endorse their brand. Those are the new way of marketing. And I think that's, that's what makes something as a D2C brand. All right. So Rajesh, what do you have to say about it? I think Sandeep just said that you must have a philosophical answer for it. No, no, it's a very simple observation. I think we will have many D2C brands. I think there's a revolution happening where the, every housewife, every student, every young entrepreneur has now the ability to create a brand. And I think it's happening primarily for two reasons. One, I think manufacturing has got much more sorted out, contract manufacturing. So you can outsource your manufacturing. You can do your formulation, you can do your brand. So you don't need from day one to create your own manufacturing. So that is one. Secondly, distribution, which was traditional, now it's become more and more widespread. A lot more new channels are available and most important, you can tell directly to consumer. And finally, I think the consumer himself or herself is not now any more on traditional media. They are now on all kinds of new media, from shared chat to, you know, Instagram to NEMET2, they're going all over. So newer forms of engaging with consumers are becoming available. Now mind these three, this is a very powerful trend where you will see more and more experiments happening. So I can see a million D2C brands coming out because people are inherently very, very creative. They have much better understanding of consumer needs than corporates who have to do a lot of research. And then they're bound by their traditional channel conflicts and legacy brands. They have inherently less ability to be agile. So a very vibrant D2C economy is coming. So now let's see, understand the consumer. I think that is the main focus. Consumer is also now more experimental than he has ever been before. He's willing to try out new brands. He's willing to listen to new age influencers. So what's really happening is this consumer is no longer a prisoner of 22nd TV commercial, which used to happen. Now he needs to be engaged in very, very different way. And that's why if you see the shape of e-commerce, which is the topic today, which is becoming conversational, which is becoming video led, which is also becoming social. You've seen what has happened on Misho and City Mall where I'm an investor. And then the engagement with the consumer, the whole paradigm is changing. So I think it's a very big thing. It's not a small thing. And some big brands out of this D2C sort of experiment are already beginning to see them show themselves out. Mama is one sugar cosmetics in different categories. So I'm very optimistic. I think it's a great new opportunity for entrepreneurs to not only invest in D2C brands, but also investing D2C infrastructure and ecosystem. I'll come back on more thoughts, but I get other panelists can also contribute at this point of time. Hi Rohit. So the question we were discussing about the top three customer challenges faced by D2C companies. So if I have to butt into the discussion, I think there are two points that I have seen. The question also comes down to who's the customer. If you're talking about the top 100, 200, 300 million people, the challenges are very, very different. If you move on to the next 500 million people, the problem is entirely different. The last 500 million people are just not connected. I think that again has been a very important question in terms of who really is the consumer because the problems change drastically from one set to the other. You call it India, Bharat 1, Bharat 2. I think we can keep naming them in whatever ways you can form. But I think the larger problems across the board can be categorized into digital infrastructure, connectivity, reliability of it, affordability of it, etc. That is one big constraint slash challenge that exists across the board. The second is, and as Rajesh said, there's a possibility of a million D2C brands, but the second problem that starts with a million D2C brands coming in is the discovery of it. How do you discover relevant brands, products, discover relevance between the products, so on and so forth. So discovery always becomes one big part. And then the third also becomes the trust factor of it, which always continues in any kind of D2C shopping, e-commerce, so on and so forth. When Amazon aggregates a million brands, we trust Amazon, but as the D2C brands start coming in, we still have to sort of go through the trust journey of each one of those brands. So Aapramya, what sectors would be in high demand in post-COVID era? What do you think? Healthcare across the spectrum will become high demand just because health has become so preventive healthcare before COVID. I think much fewer people were so bothered about keeping themselves healthy on a everyday basis. I think post-COVID, everybody wants to be in the best state of health. So I think in healthcare, preventive healthcare will definitely grow big time. And of course, whether it is keeping a track of your health, how do you monitor your health? Booking tests or even startups like Ultra Human, I think, based around the funding, which is real time tracking of your health. So one is preventive health, one is tracking of health. And of course, if you do fall sick, more innovation on how to get immediate help from doctors or whoever else it is. So healthcare is a broad word, but all the sub-segments of healthcare will definitely do very well. Information, new communities, platforms, which not just do transactions for health, but also allow people to come together for information on health and exchange of ideas on health. So all of this will definitely do well in my opinion. So healthcare would be a big bet. So Sandeep, despite the boom in consumer tech and you talked about discovery, is there a deficit in tech which needs to be plopped in? Absolutely, Puneet, this is a very early age, early days in technology. Right in 1750, industrial revolution happened in Europe and that tilted the wealth for the next 200 years from China and India, which accounted for 70% of global GDP to less than 5% and Europe probably from less than 5% to 40%. Similarly, digital economy, new set of technologies are changing the world. And internet, the way we know is only 27-year-old and while it has brought very profound impact, it is still early. We are talking about maybe some categories have significantly moved online, such as travel or jobs, which are 70-80% penetrated. I run room where categories less than 1% penetrated and then you have various type of categories in between. But this is very early days, right? And so within internet, we just discussed D2C. D2C is a very brand-focused business, but it would not have evolved in its own current avatar without what internet has to offer. Whether it is ability to sell on marketplace, ability to have discovery through the internet and bloggers and bloggers and influencers. So I think it is just in the early days, you know, a pramaya mentioned about some of the things which have become more important after COVID, which I completely agree. But you know, you literally, I would say almost everything is up for grabs where technological innovations can bring, you know, wonderful things, right? I mean, this is a, so I would say, you know, I don't want to go into terms of, you know, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, IoT and crypto and so on. But all I'm saying is very simple enough, very simple manner. If you look at everything we consume as a consumers, everything is going to have its own share of digitization, right? And this is just in a nine inning game. Maybe we are just talking about the second inning. And you know, most of the traditional businesses, right, right in for first 15-20 years, you know, when the internet revolution was more pronounced in America, they could not even tell what just happened, right? From a bookstore to electronic store, one by one, everything changed. Who would have thought a 60 year old, almighty Walmart, this quarter, Amazon officially in terms of revenue became bigger than Walmart, right? And, you know, I'm seeing now, you know, I'll complete 10 years in India, I founded two companies, and I think now the India is there where US was in 1995, 98 in terms of dot com, right? So I think it's just a, I'll let other to add, but you know, this is a very big revolution, similar to industrial revolution. And in next 30 years, it's going to change almost everything, how we manufacture, how we discover, how we buy and how we consume. That's really a wonderful insight. Thank you, Sandeep. We also have with us the Naveen Joshua. Hi, Naveen. Hi. Hi. Yeah, so Naveen, would you like to take ahead the conversation with them? Thanks for holding forth in the meantime. I have had a conversation with at least most of the panelists prior to this. So I'd love to. Yeah, I mean, I just had another question from Sandeep, you know, more from the room experience in terms of, you know, COVID and the impact of, you know, high value purchases. And, you know, what have they seen because, you know, I see there's a lot of data science driven in the marketplace. So since the topic is more, you know, tech enablement and the consumer moving in that direction, I hear great things about how room has brought in more transparency for the consumer that instead of a challenge, it's actually become a big benefit in terms of your AI engine for fair pricing, or, you know, the 1100 point checklist, or the database of the history of the vehicle that actually gives more empowerment to the consumer. And so tech could actually not just be a challenge to surmount, but actually a big boost for the used car or automobile segment. Absolutely. So, so Navin, you know, look, the way Droom offers automobile buying and selling. That's not how human being bought automobile for last 140 years. I think maybe India had its first car maybe around 1980 or 85. Right. I mean, this is not how people bought and sold car. So obviously, this is this is a big challenge. And it's a and it's very, very early stage for this category to move online. So everything that you just highlighted, if we had not done that, there's no way we would see even us, you know, denting even a little bit in terms of our ability to accelerate digital adoption of automobile buying and selling. Let me just quickly say three things. Number one, yes, this is this category has five or six characteristics, which make it very different from buying a mobile phone, electronic computer, clothing shoes and accessories online. Number one, it is high touch and feel second is a big ticket item. So third is it is, it is low propensity to buy. Fourth is the regret of going wrong is not just a cancellation of an order, but it is a losing your peace of mind. And one more is that one more is that in long run, everything is reversible in life, but in short to mid term, if you bought an automobile and you want to reverse it. It is not a good news because of that it is much more harder for this category to move online. Right. But if you look at India has a very high cost of capital. So anytime you do touch capital expenditure or working capital, you can lose your shirt. If you are not mathematically inclined, or you are not into high margin business, or you don't have like, you know, or you don't measure everything. Right. Second is India has a very expensive real estate. Like, you know, we feel that everything in industrialized country got to be more expensive because of her capital income. But reality is if you look at the retail, almost every retail category if you look at the rental paid by an Indian retailer, divide by revenue generated from the same physical center is so much higher in India. Right. Third is independent of what you're willing to pay. India does not have a large format modern retailing. Right. I think nowadays see Zara and couple of other retail stores, which can be really big, but they are still, I don't know, 10,000, 20,000 square feet. But India does not have a half million square feet where even you have 3000 visitor car parking and you can spend next three hour even have to buy a pizza to because you spend so much time buying so India does not offer all those things. Right. But because now you see, you know, one is India does not offer this but then you have this category where people are high touch and feel. So how do you solve it? And you know, the technology is the only way to solve it. So we created a marketplace where we are harnessing inventory by 20,700 auto dealers. And that is like roughly one million listings. India's largest physical retailer also will not have more than 3040 cars. You can get 1.1 million listings. Right. And then if I'm selling you a car, I have incentive to sell you at a high price, right, because I have to now solve for higher gross margin. But when a marketplace sells you an item, they focus on trade velocity rather than higher margin. So that means you can get low price. And then, you know, when I started shop clues, the problem was last mile, merchants did not know how to ship an item, how to pack, which courier company to work with, what is a, you know, a tracking number. None of these were there. So I sold that problem. But in room, there was, you know, how you mentioned, like, you know, pricing our all item is like pulling a number from the hat. Right. Second is how do we know the exact condition of the vehicle. It's not brand new. Third is what about the documentation, right, but what about is to has a and I don't did not know about it. I buy it and then HDFC shows up that that card belong to me. We used just to, you know, I'll just wrap up by saying that, you know, we use technology data science to solve all these problems. So we create a pricing engine, we create an inspection engine, we created a history engine, and now we are building massively our delivery so we can bring a car at your doorstep on a flatbed truck filled with a balloon and cake. That is the only way because the physical store can never give you what I see Indian consumer is now no different than a consumer in New York, Chicago, Shanghai or Tokyo. Right, but your physical equivalent is not giving them. So we are leapfrogging and we are offering a much more innovative solution and and still very early days, it's like, you know, less than 1% is online, but we are we are placing a bet that 5 to 7% will be online, but clearly Corona. We did not want Corona to be the reason but Corona clearly accelerated adoption of our category. Right. Thanks a ton. Very interesting insight from a different consumer tech aspect. Talking about cars and vehicles, I'll just, you know, the lighter note bring in Rajesh G. I remember and he may not about five, six years back meeting him at the office, and he was an avid cyclist at that time, you know, I'm not sure in all these years if he's still cycling, but a lot has moved in the India consumer tech space in that time. Rajesh, your thoughts if you're not already coming on that. Totally, I think what we have witnessed in last 10 years is monumental. And look, a lot of things that are injuring us in enabling commerce have got sorted out. Of course, everyone knows about geo and 14. But I think the payments was a crucial roadblock, which now is amazed at the ways in which sort of payment industry has evolved and change and continues to launch new startups right so it's crazy what's happening there across the world. So I think it's payment solving for payments micro payments has been a very, very big sort of innovation on the back of UPI, which is government enabled so those were the macro changes, but I think third we saw for the capital. I had fears when Chinese were banned last year, January, February, things for sort of three or four months. I thought they will be choking off capital into Indian but what has happened in the time is exactly the opposite. The gaps have really opened for it. There is no limit to the size and amount and with the rapidity with the rounds. Normally, when I started investing 2010, you would budget for two three years before the next round happens. I started with seed round is okay series will happen three years or 18 months from now. I think now we're talking about months, every three months companies are able to raise a new round. And if this this capital has been sold for India, both domestic and I think international. And finally, I think there's a change in consumer behavior monument to change. I think Indian consumer has moved massively online. It's not just the youngsters now. My, my wife, it tells me about new sites. Sita Gita.com. Look at the rise of Nike. I think it's an amazing market that has been built for women shopping and discovering new products. So, I think all of that has come together is an amazing feat. The consumer is the key. I think always consumer is always evolving consumer is always challenging the companies to come out with newer innovative solutions. And, and the pace of innovation is not slowing it's actually actually growing it's like even in the room space we have what six seven market places in the market is so big that it seems like that it can take one or two more. But also we are seeing which is also a good thing and look the consolidation, the finally, which is, which is a lacking right companies are not doing IPOs investors were stuck. So that is solved now. Our companies were not buying other companies in country consolidation was not happening then by users shown the way there. So I think the entrepreneurs are living in a golden era. What, what could not. What is the problem right. There's no problem. Right, so there are only opportunities at this point of time when I started Internet 1998, we couldn't hear the bits when they hit the modern. We had to build our own server. So I think we are all fortunate everyone on the panel to be living in this very very lucky and golden era of Indian digitalization. I am so optimistic. So everything is got the place from books to I think even soak will get the place I can phone. Digital box. So everything is possible today right and so some of the thoughts that I share. I think I'm particularly very excited about B2C. I think what has happened is that Indian women Indian entrepreneurship has got liberated with B2C manufacturing which has become contract is easily accessible to people. So it's now liberated the creative economy to become not be hindered by the lack of either access to distribution or access to manufacturing or access to capital. So all three things are now creating a situation where I think million new brands can come and around those brands discovery platforms can come. FinTech platforms can come which will solve the problem of that both platform delivery platforms will come which will be again new age. So a lot of new massive opportunities are being opened and face of digital and digital and the beauty of India is that only any industry you take one to 20% digitalization. So it's still a lot of white spaces. Thanks a ton for that very encouraging note to all of us as entrepreneurs here representing the capital market cities. So I'll just move on and bring in Rohit at this point because I think Rajesh you also mentioned about solving for problems like micro payments etc. I think when we talk about this entire move and the latent opportunity. You know, we're also talking about, you know, so from a sugar box perspective we had a brief conversation earlier about accessibility, reliability and affordability of content through devices and the next wave of voice and video in commerce. And are we ready and the great stuff that you guys are doing in that space. So I had some really interesting thoughts from you to love for you to share it with the audience. Thanks. I think, you know, very similar to what the entire conversation has been I think they're also living in the in the golden era of telecom in India as consumers I think dirt cheap data prices. Everything is available. However, it's a golden age for consumers. If you look at the internet economy of the internet ecosystem in India, it's probably their worst year. And we don't know how long it's going to last. So the big macroeconomic challenge that's happening on the on the digital ecosystem front right now it is. You probably have the top 100 to 300 million people connected really well in India that's the those are the people that everybody focuses on those are the people that we all talk about. And that is where, you know, the opportunities are far, far larger than constraints, majorly from the spending capacity affordability of what these people can actually spend on connectivity. And also the density in the places where these people are located is easier to connect them. But the big problem that it comes to the next billion people or the next 5600 million people is they are in places where affordability from a geographic standpoint to the big challenge. And the second is, you know, let's talk about the the monumental debt of the telecom industry. Even if you say I want to increase the output from 150, 160 rupees to 250 rupees, which is what is the industry wide phenomenon of break even in the telecom ecosystem. The expectation is that probably to 300 million out of the 700 million internet users would drop off that they won't be able to afford it. And we're still just talking about the 700 million people that have come online in the last four years, you're not even talking about the remaining 3400 million, who still haven't even reached it. So this is really what we are going through from an internet infrastructure perspective right and everything that we talk about we talk about digitalization we talk about IOT coming in. We talk about agritech right more and more technology requires more and more requirements of infrastructure. The moment you talk agritech you're talking about, you know, etch cloud you're talking about etch compute you're talking about very, very low latency networks. None of this is available. So how does all of this work at a core infrastructure level. And then the most important question to always ask is, what is the sweet spot of economics, where in it is affordable and reliable for the user, as well as sustainable and viable for the ecosystem and that is where what we saw is, there are multiple problems that this really large black hole call as the internet ecosystem faces. One it has fragmentation of stakeholders right from the cloud company is coming down to the ISPs right there are many, many different entities that lie in between there. And then the second big problem that we saw was the model for the internet ecosystem to make money right so if I take a step back, you know, go back 20 years. The AT&T's and the Verizon's were the rulers, they were the hundred billion dollar companies. What's happened over the last 10-20 years is it is no more those guys who are the big tech companies it's the Google's and the Amazon's and the Facebook's that have built billions or trillion dollar companies on top of this infrastructure. And so today the big question mark is, who connects the next billion users, right? Do the infrastructure guys have any incentive in connecting the next billion users? They are actually happier getting into economy businesses so that they are able to become a Google or an Amazon or a Facebook, which is what Geo is trying to do. Or the next question that comes in is, then does the, does the onus of connecting the next billion users actually live with the big tech guys, which is what Google, Facebook and everybody is trying to do getting into infrastructure ventures of their own, right? And the opportunity that we saw is there's a two-fold problem. The first problem is the way that data is distributed in the first place. Everything lies inside data center and that in itself reduces the disruption that can be created from a low latency or an edge compute perspective. So the first thing that we did is we miniaturized the entire infrastructure so that the whole internet infrastructure itself can be distributed. Today we're talking about a micro cloud that can be installed on a train on a bus on a plane or even inside a village so that connectivity can be enabled for them via existing local area networks that are out there. And then the second thing that we did is we said, hey, can we change the revenue model in which these local transactions work and get the internet economy outside the number of subscribers in an area multiplied by the average revenue of the subscribers to start creating more disruptive revenue models that are symbiotic for the users, the applications as well as the internet service providers. So that is what the second problem that we work on. So today when we go to a village, what ends up happening is the user at the village may not be able to afford a two, three or a 500 rupee internet connection. He's happier buying a 10 rupee a day kind of a pack, but we are able to work with internet services, like OTT apps, like e-commerce apps, like social media apps, to create these user connects to figure out different ways of monetization and then sharing that revenue with the internet ecosystem so that that village starts becoming profitable from a connectivity standpoint. And then multiple different digitalization use cases come in as we go forward. So now you have a very low latency, very high availability and reliability network that's available in a particular village. How can you now start exposing this out for other IoT applications like AgriTech, how can you start outsourcing this for, you know, also becoming the last mile delivery leg for let's say a satellite company like a Starlink or a OneWeb, so on and so forth. So that's typically the wild. So whereas everybody is trying to solve it the way I put it, the front end problem of the digital universe, I think we are focused on the back end problem. Sure, you guys keep going so that you know all of us as entrepreneurs in the digital economy can continue to see it explored, you know, for users as well as businesses. Thanks for that viewpoint. I'd like to bring in Premier at this point. Sorry, it took a while to get to you. But in what we've picked up from who is never the analogies like India's answer to Twitter, the voice of India across languages. So we're talking about content digitalization you're coming from the customer or the consumer voice perspective. So content moderation, you know, that's an interesting one that I'd like to hear your thoughts about. And that is last thing last thoughts on this for lack of time. So we'd like to wrap up with your views. So one is, you know, who focuses on getting the voice of India which is not on the internet right now. So very few social networks which actually bring out the true voice of India in an open network like Facebook is a closed network WhatsApp is a closed network. Twitter is an open network but not in local languages right. So that's what we are focusing on and there are multiple countries across the world which also behave this way. And, you know, of course, we, we depend on the network to be formed and content to be generated by the folks who are in the platform, right. And, you know, 99% of the content generated has no problem with, right. Everybody's well intentioned and coming in talking and, you know, very clean in their behavior, just like on the roads of India. So most people will follow rules and some people won't. Some people want to break rules, right, they will jump a traffic signal when they see a red light. So, for such scenarios which will be 1% or so. There will be some clear case scenarios, which is black and white pornography black and white, everybody has a uniform as an universal definition of what pornography is. Nobody will say okay this is not cool and this is right so those cases are very easy to handle. You can build models around identifying it automatically and taking it right. Then there are enough pieces of content which will be you know, less than 0.5% of the total creation on the platform where there will be divided opinions on what is right and what is wrong. Now, those are places where the social media intermediary like who, you know, when the social media intermediary takes a judgment call, you get into trouble. Like, and that's why Twitter has gotten into trouble because they take judgment calls on what is right and wrong. And I think a fresh approach would be to actually, you know, see what the law of land, what the community says, and go about it accordingly. Right, so, so that you stay true to what you are, which is a social media intermediary, you are there to enable voices to come on to the internet. Now the country that you operate in does not has a rule against saying something that has to be respected, whether it is offline or online. So the lines between how you behave online and how you behave offline has to be blurred and has to be brought together. Right, so just because you're online doesn't mean you can act more low than you would do offline. Right, so I think a fresh perspective on how to treat behavior online, I think is what we are bringing onto the table. So it is beyond, you know, so it might be more difficult for a 15 year old company in social media to do it, but you know, 15 month old company can definitely bring in a fresh perspective. Excellent. Thanks for those thoughts there and maybe the event organizers could come in, let us know if we have more time, I guess we are overshort. So thanks everyone for those wonderful thoughts. Look forward to keep in touch.