 Hello and welcome to D2C revolution by exchange for media. You will be surprised to know who are in conversation with today. We have with us Priyanka Gill, group co-founder of the Good Glam Group. Welcome Priyanka, how are you doing? As I say, PG always, our favourite. It's fantastic to be here and welcome to the Good Glam Group daily office. Yes, I have seen the Rajasthan run and this seems like heaven. I am loving it. When it came to establishing such a big brand like Good Glam Group, what were the challenges that you faced in the beginning of the years and how did you tackle those? The Good Glam Group is interesting because why are there brands at the corporate level? We also have many other brands, be it MyGlam, Selona, Organic, Alessane, Botanica, Mom's Co, which are our DTC brands that we run. But then we also run brands on the media side. Perfect. So Scoop, Pooper, Smiling, Tweak. And then we have the Good Creator Co, which is one of the largest influencer brands out there. So it's interesting how we woven together a bunch of very, very well-known brands and then they all come under the Good Glam Group umbrella. You asked me what the challenges of doing that. I think the first most important thing is we recognise that each brand, each platform has to stand on its own. At that time, all the good principles for brand building come into play. What is the brand voice? What does the brand stand for? What are the brand values? Who is the brand addressing? What need gap is it solving? How is the brand talking to consumers? So that gets solved at an individual brand level. And then when we aggregate it and when we build the Good Glam Group story together, how do all these brands tie in? You have the Good Brands Co where our beauty and personal care brands sit. You have the Good Media Co where our media brands sit. You have the Good Creator Co where influencer brands sit. And then of course you have Good Community, which basically kind of ends up being this one-foot thread that ties all of it together. So I think we've had a lot of fun over the past. We just turned two this year, by the way. I think we turned two yesterday. Congratulations. Thank you. So the Good Glam Group is two now. So we've had a lot of fun over the past two years putting all of this together. And I think it's been a privilege to be the co-founder of the Good Glam Group because I don't know anywhere else where you're able to raise $220 million in a year and then go out and acquire 11 companies in a year and then aggregate those 11 companies to form a single brand that is the Good Glam Group. So it's been a real privilege and just to see it all happen. Talking about money now that you've mentioned, speaking of numbers now that you've mentioned, I saw that last year the group went under some losses. But then there was also very aggressive acquisition happening around. So how did that happen? How did you manage that? What was the plan behind that? All the aggressive acquisition happening all around? So honestly last year I think we were a lot less aggressive than the year before that in terms of acquisitions etc. And our acquisitions are always very very strategic. So we have this matrix if you will of the types of brands we'd like to build for the types of consumers we'd like to reach. And if we find a brand that basically fulfills a gap in that matrix, that's when you go and acquire. So there's a lot of thought that goes behind when we acquire a brand. So I think our strategy is now well known and we've of course spoken to you guys many times about it now. So yeah, it's basically acquisitions happen on a neat gap basis and there has to be a really good fit between the founder, the vision that the founding team has and how does that align with our vision here at the Good Lam Group. And also what is that special multiplier that the Good Lam Group ecosystem can add to the story of the brand that we're acquiring. So once that that's a lot of criteria to fulfill by the way. So once all of those things fall into place that is when we actually go and acquire. So I think we've frankly done one of the best jobs that I've seen maybe even globally. I don't know if there's another story where 10-12 companies have come together and all those 10-12 companies are still there and doing really well. All the brands that we've acquired have grown over 200%. Which is a fantastic track record to build, especially at our scale. Yeah, definitely. And I feel that one thing which really impresses me personally about this brand is that every segment of your brand caters to a different target market and they really get deep into it. So if there's Mom's Core, there's Baby Chakra, there's St. Botanica, they just cut through the market and reach the consumers problems which is really nice. It personally impresses me a lot. But the one thing that really comes to my mind is how do you maintain a seamless consumer experience all across channels because the age group that you cater to, the product that you offer, everywhere it's very different and it's not easy to maintain that kind of a uniformity all around. See honestly at a brand level there is a high degree of uniformity that gets maintained across channels. So then say a MyGlam product is being sold and be it it's been sold offline, it's been sold through the physical stores or it's been sold through market places or it's been sold through our own DTC platform that we have for MyGlam. There the continuity of communication is always maintained and that's the secret to building a brand. So regardless of the channel you need to tell the same story. While the communication for MyGlam might be diametrically different from what we say for Cesarona, right? But again within the channels for Cesarona the brand we will maintain the same tone of voice and the same communication and it need not be the same that we might do for another brand as such, right? So we actually don't see a confusion that you're kind of alluding to because for each brand voice tone message, reason to exist, reason to believe all of those are very well defined and all channels basically follow the same playbook and that need not be the same for all the other brands you might have in the company. Makes sense, quite makes sense. Also congratulations recently Dya Mirza invested in Baby Chakra, right? I would love to know what does she bring to the table and what was that decision all about and how did it work out? You know I think and you would have seen it's a pattern that I think it's successfully developed and followed now. Being able to partner with celebrities who have a very engaged social media following and not just bring them on board as say a brand ambassador that everyone else can do but get them in as a strategic partner for us for our growth journey at the Goodlamp Group because they genuinely believe in what we are doing they believe in what we will do in the future and they want to really partner with us, right? So we've done that many times now, of course starting with Manish Malhotra whose luxury makeup, I mean it's our brand, then you have Shraddha Kapoor, right? And of course you have Twinkle, Tric, her content platform. Twinkle is for what? Oh is it? Her content platform is part of the Good Media Group and the Goodlamp Group we recently announced a JV with Akshay Kumar again along the same lines so every time we've gotten brand ambassador Beat Karina Kapoor, Beat Twinkle Khanna Patrik Akshay Kumar whose JV we just announced so all these celebrities who are partners with us have also become investors in the Goodlamp Group Along the same lines there of course aligns beautifully with the ethos of Baby Chakra She herself is a mother, she believes in the brand values that Baby Chakra really strongly positions itself in be it telling mothers to read the label under the label for her campaign standing for clean products that are actually good for the baby or for the mother and so yeah so she's basically come on board as our investor and through her we want to continue to amplify the message that Baby Chakra so beautifully puts forward and we really welcome her into the Goodlamp Group family Amazing, now that you mentioned the word clean I really wonder that nowadays this term specifically clean, authentic, vegan, gluten it's like every overexposed word here so how do you feel about it that when it comes to differentiating your product I know as a brand it came well ahead of time all the other brands are using this word now but as a new user when I open the browser and I see 10 brands in front of me with this terminology how will I differentiate who's making a fool of me and who's not you know that's actually the campaign that we ran for one of our brands which is Organic Harvest so where the entire convention was that by adding two boons your brand is not natural and the idea is to actually read what's inside the product to see the concentration of the products and organic is better than natural so I think you're right there's of course an over usage of the fad words out there and as a consumer all of us need to be really aware of is it lip service or does the brand really believe in that in those words Mike Lamp for example has been PETA certified has been clean in the truest sense for the longest time so that's been the story for as long as I at least remember Mike Lamp similarly where Organic Harvest is concerned our entire reason to believe is the fact that's actually American certified organic at which not too many brands can lay claim to probably are one of the only brands for skin care and now make up in the country that can say that so the idea is the idea of certification is important so when we say that we are cruelty free we just don't say we are cruelty free we say we are PETA certified right it's not just us saying it but it's being said by a very well-known certified agency when organic harvest says that it is organic it's again not just the brand claiming it but it's actually American certified organic which is again one of the highest levels of certification that you can get similarly for mom's squares well right so when they were certified or if I remember correctly it was a Swiss laboratory that certified them to be really clean so we take these labels very seriously and as a consumer I think as consumers too I think we should really know what we're buying into and investigate a little bit more so if a brand says that they're natural it's not just we're putting two drops of lemon and collings of natural but like organic harvest certified by with an American certification saying that they're actually organic and not just natural right so it's yeah I think but the really interesting reason why all of this is the consumer in India she's a very very well aware and a very demanding consumer so she literally is expecting products that not only deliver value but they're actually good for her as well so all of these words have become buzzwords or fat words because consumers demanding them which I think is a great step because once a consumer demands something it surely makes all brands up their ante and deliver better product so the consumer today she's no different from a consumer who might be sitting in the suburbs of New York in Brooklyn say or she's sitting in Jabalpur but demands because of social media actually the same which I think is a great leveler and it's forcing all brands to become better because of that okay so we've done a lot of brand talk let's move to the consumer side in the past one year what are some of the consumer behavior shifts that you've noticed so you know the consumer is an ever evolving set of folks for us right and some very interesting shifts have been happening so one is there are two segments ring extremely well one is the high end luxury segment and the other is the value segment so in a way we're almost seeing a polarizing towards those two ends so the middle of the group consumer that is slightly kind of in a way dissolving into either of the two so that's one the second thing is we are seeing a big shift from tier one to tier three customers as well especially at the good lamb group we've actually seen quite a significant shift towards how much we've penetrated well into the tier three tier two tier three segment two so its consumer demand is not just existing in the big networks in the big series but even for online DTC brands like ours right it's actually kind of extending deep into the hinterlands of the country too we've been talking about that for a while but we're actually seeing it physically kind of take place now and it's great to see our products kind of because we've been serving all the pin codes for a while it's really good to see our products basically going all the way across and then the third thing as I said is how aware the customer is and how demanding the customer is so she pretty much wants everything she wants value, she wants a great product she wants something that stays she wants it to look interesting she wants it to have a very distinct story this idea of personalization is very very important so at the goodland group we've always believed in co-creating with our users really listening deeply to what the customer is saying and then building products in response to what we hear so we've been kind of co-creating with the customer for a while and of course you'll start seeing some very interesting renditions of that now come forward so the customer wants to believe in the brand story and she wants to be part of that story and she's really looking for authenticity so it's hard it really pushes the bar for what we need to perform as a brand but that's also what makes it so much more fun and challenging but also coming to your IPA plans I think people are planning for the same and what are some of the things that you want to keep in mind before you go all out and all public so look and of course we've publicly stated that public markets is what our ultimate ambition is and that's still what we're building towards being public market ready is now thankfully a well defined state of affairs we've seen so many of our other startups come to market we've seen what they've done well we've seen where we can learn from them too so yeah I think it's exciting times and I think next year is going to be very interesting general elections are going to happen so I think we can expect some level of buoyancy come back to the market because of that and at the Goodland Group we are pretty much its eyes on goals and the listing in the next few years is what we're looking at sounds good coming towards the end just keeping it simple for you upcoming festive season plans this is festive O&Ds of course one of the big parts of the year for us and plans for O&D start well way before of course the season hits we're doubling down on our collaborations with our celebrities and you'll hear of some very interesting launches that are going to come out of that I can't mention any more than that right now I know but I wish I can you'll be one of the first to know when we actually release the news for that one of them I'm really particularly really pleased about so that's going to be a lot of fun and apart from that we're really kind of playing down into our omnichannel strategy where we're looking at physical retail marketplaces and of course our DDC and time campaigns that seem to be across all our channels of sale all of that is basically happening right now and I think fingers crossed this O&D should really smash how well we did in last O&D and may it be a good one for all of us definitely last question one tip that you wish you would have known as a younger entrepreneur and all other young entrepreneurs should know I wish at that time I knew that it is a marathon and not a sprint because I think that hyper enthusiasm that you have as a young entrepreneur your words not mine it's very exhausting and just pacing yourself and self care again is a buzz word but again that's a really important word and taking care of yourself right I always say that you look at it in three parts of the whole one is your physical readiness are you eating well, are you working out are you sleeping well as entrepreneurs often those things just go out of the window and once those your health are not optimized you begin to see a negative impact on all other kind of parts of the journey that you're on the second is your kind of mental wellness right are you meditating what are you doing to calm down are you taking time off in the early stages you really completely kind of forget to actually do that and then the third part is the partial part of life right I remember when I started out I think my social life was negative not even zero and luckily my friends stood by me and my family stood by me I would not have stood by me at that point but I really had no time to do anything except for and that again has a detrimental effect on how you're able to perform so yeah I also had a known early on I try and balance all three parts of kind of the whole just so that you can be a better founder a better team member a better leader and literally lead by example so I think I lost count the number of times I physically burnt out so I think we should try and minimize that as much as we can wow amazing advice I think that also applies for me even if I'm not an entrepreneur I'm still working all the time and I need to listen to this I'll replay this part of the clip again and again for myself to take care of myself I'll do the same because I can dish it it's very hard to execute this is the right time to wrap up this discussion thank you so much for tuning in with us this is Jai Neetakor, C.K. and Priyanka's Gil P.G wrapping up for you see you in the next episode very soon thank you