 We are so delighted to have Mr. Anupam Vintil here with us today. He is, of course, as I got in the original shot, because even before Shark Tank came to India, he was shot even before that and he done enough amount of investments and insights from startups to understand this entire play of startups, investments, exits and helping startups to scale up, probably in one of the finest manner. Welcome Anupam Vintil, such a pleasure having you here with us today. I'm always good to see you when we are at the norm in India, because of the opportunity and that's what we all do and it's our purpose for the week. It's such a pleasure to always hear you and your thoughts on what are the investment opportunities that exist in large India and also creating major investments and major runs coming out of India because we talk about India becoming a five trillion dollar economy and that's only going to happen when investments go in and at the same time when main brands will create it. It's one of our overarching theme here in the conference today, as we know how well trade brands get ready to go public and when is it the right time and of course as an investor, you will be evaluating startups and you will help a lot of companies to grow and become actually mid-sized companies. So do you think India and Subway is ready to have startups now with the ideal as a coordinated investment that they always see where they grow? Yeah, look I think we should, if I can answer that question, let's try and set some context. We call you guys here in India already called a four trillion dollar economy. We have a five trillion dollar economy. So we are now ahead of UK. Who's ahead of us? US, China, Germany and Japan. That's it. So with the continuing pace I think in the next year we will be ahead of if yours be should be number three. So the reason I set the context is because as you move up on the rankings what happens is your capital markets become deeper and wider and if you go back a few years ago we were highly dependent on foreign capital keeping our capital markets buoyant. But if you notice in the last two, three years wherever there's been an exit of foreign capital particularly after the Fed and the US started raising interest rates our markets are being buoyant and that's because not every year but every month two billion dollars every month this record has been going on for now more than couple of years. Two billion dollars of SIME funds that is domestic capital is finding its way into the stock market. So that gives you an indicator. So couple of things I've said. One is India going up in the rankings in terms of global GDP going far ahead in the rankings of immersion markets. Three being more resilient because they are now dependent on local capital to SIME's and so on. So what it does is it builds a very liquid public market it builds a lot of liquid capital markets and that's a good environment for companies to go public and so you know like you've seen in the last you know just recently when I saw Mahmoud and public they're now trading above their share or opening price and I think all these are great indicators for the next couple of years as economy keeps strengthening I think you should see more and more liquidity in the market more and more depth being created and so I think it's a good time in fact private market they should melt down more last year particularly we are not seeing that in the public markets a lot of companies are now choosing to go public because they're getting better valuations at least maybe in the public markets that they're getting in VC and BE markets. So I think they have the greatest turn in the field of public markets and next year we don't want to pause it after there's still a few companies going public but I think after the elections next year you should see the floodgates open again and there's a line of companies several of a few of mine we are waiting to get out of the go and hopefully I'll have it next year and we have Mr. Rinal here today we wanted to not stress enough about how important good media is for startup founders you know it helps them to bring their own brand as well as their company at the same time when they're growing but you know when you're actually going public you need to become more silent you also need to be more sort of when the company is everyday working of the business becomes very different versus in what you have in the startup so you think that founders in some sense are ready for this to cover this crossroads we've already seen some outside we've seen some back home they're all sort of put up in the web of you know somewhere between the person brand and their businesses going across the road so how do you see that getting happening and you know how do founders need to probably come work out towards both sides that they're trying to manage I think it's a great question and the concept that you keep founder brand and company brand different it is not possible ultimately founders at least in the startup world are extremely integrated with their company and business brand and you can't subrate them today you'll see let's not talk about the deep of Zemaito but until the stock price is below what it opened up if you don't know anything about the social media what it means it's really, really mean today we're Vijay of PTM on social media it's told all the time because the stock price is still below the ideal price so if you think that you somehow are going to get out there and manage your brand differently with a classic marketing type of strategic assessment my brand stands for this and my company brand stands for this these are the values I will represent in my company this is not happening these are old times where communication was one side where there was no social media you could communicate to the world what you wanted using broadcast media and all that made sense today you put yourself out there hoping that you will represent certain value but very soon that conversation is out of your hands today brand means what what are people saying about you not what you are saying about yourself that is what a brand is so I think it's a double-edged sword in my personal view unless and until you as a founder have a clear focus on why you want to build a personal brand you shouldn't venture out into that zone it's very dangerous you know to use an analogy it's like sharp infested waters if you go in for a nice swim thinking you are going to have a fun frolic in time and pretty soon there are sharks circling you because you know as they say you guys are going to arrest you whatever you say can and will be held against you so social media is a low burden and people say that people on social media are not adding any original content they are simply ripping apart everybody else's main content so they are waiting for this opportunity so as I said you know the benefits are what as a popular company especially you can mention a lot in PR you can your brand profile was higher higher image is usually a big problem becomes a little easier you know particularly if you have a founder branding you can attract more people people respond more to human beings and they generally respond to companies and brands so I think all that are divided into more parties so it's a benefit but on the other hand a slight non-step and people will review about a quarter of them is here customer come people think as a founder you are the chief customer support officer I am not kidding today even in India this is very interesting even today if a Kata founder CEO goes to a party good high-end party also I will guarantee you that many people will say sir I don't know this is very common it's very common so I think it's a double-edged sword you have to be very careful it is not you know any prior event that it is preordained that if to build a great successful company you must have a strong founder brand in fact if you look at the numbers the best of forming companies on the stock market for a long period of time do not have strong founder brands many times you don't even know the name of the founder you can look at that even in India there is Mukesh Amani yes he has a great founder brand because he is one of the richest in the world but does he have a social media game? not really he doesn't do anything on social media so I don't think these are necessary if you get attracted by the grabber alone then you took a sheep's example I mean he is the model of the bulls he had not spent all that time on social media and instead he spent time addressing this problem I mean if you want to do something then you can do something the startup decides to go into an IPO you know how IPO companies are you didn't do anything you didn't do anything so once they decide to go into an IPO you know and how and particularly I have talked about about Nike and Nike because these companies they have a great customer base very well known brands but again the profitability is a bit of an issue and when you put your brand on the most as you say the price is even less then you know what you sort of went with public so how do you balance how do you balance how do you balance I remember in many days the business used to have a smile you know in Britain you know once something has happened but now you can't do that once a company companies you don't want to get into that kind of sense then how do you change that balance you don't want to get into that kind of as you said your prices are even lower because people are leaving after you that is going to affect your public listing your you know how many people are writing about you on social so do you think at all the startups should go public which is their profit or do you think they should wait for a while more so isn't a chicken in a head situation go ahead there's only two words answer every question in life just two words you know what that is it depends so the answer to your question is it depends if you're trying to find a balance but let's get more specific to your question should a startup only go public if it's profitable or not I think it depends on many things let's take some high examples let's take Zomando or Paytm they had raised billions of dollars we found out the equity over the Zomando's Paytm's case a little more because he had to buy some back because of regulation let's say in Zomando's case 110% most of the arch unicorn companies that are going to go public have single digit holding in their companies now if human they need to raise private capital at some point they are going to be under the dust over there then what choice do you really have so you have to go public because public market the price of equity is less than private market the price of equity is approximately 13% in India if you take inflation in your account in the west it's maybe 20% here the price of equity is 30% public markets your cost of capital is 15% for everyone we need to expect that kind of income from you if you are in a situation where you are down to this in religions your cost of capital of raising private money is 30% and you have investment 30% and you have investors who go more than 10 years who have a document saying if you don't provide me equity your first call is mine then you have to go public so I think that's a very important fact if you don't have those bishops then in India I think profitability is very important to go public you are up you have started delivering terms maybe hopefully as we came to deliver the terms I think people here will be used to betting on companies where winner takes all but the gestation period is going on because we have not had digital companies that are unprofitable in public but from now if you are a startup and doesn't have all these pressures it is better to have profitability and some level of profitability before you go public having said that my personal view is that markets like consistent believable stories so if you can tell the market the truth that look like Amazon let's say Amazon's example it was in the west or even in Amazon there was no history in the west of companies saying unprofitable first of all but Jeff Bezos was very clear that we were optimized for the long term not your short term if you have to take a head on a quarterly earnings we'd rather do that but in the long term we will take market share and he maintained that quarter after quarter year after yes in the interim people might say what is he talking about in company and he will punish you but in the long term if you stay true to your story and to deliver on that you will be rewarded this promotion and that's what we've seen in the last so we are other being so I don't know continues to deliver on this which he has been doing now for a couple of quarters of showing consistent profit now he said then bring it we'll deliver profitability he continues that confidence goes up significantly I think market will stop caring less about immediate quarter profits and more about the stories telling you for the next year or two years and they will reward this promotion already you have seen that in the last two years you could have bought it in four or five years so I think these are some of the things to do now I think he may not really buy it but and again you're right that those bottom quarter means don't match up the people that sort of put you down on those things so you know do you think something culturally needs to therefore change in startup ecosystem as an investor would you want to press your startup to start thinking profit if you have to go let's say as you said next year you want to see some of your startups hitting the IPO market so you know what is to follow you've already seen some examples of startup setting fired on the line for not being able to not putting profits on that so you think this is somewhere we need to probably start really bear the startups to think you know that match up again then they use to I think that in an ideal world pre thing that you sell from day one would generate enough profit to cover up your expenses and you would take home money but unfortunately the reality is we have some dirty world called competition so competition ensures that things are not that easy for you so other you are in a market where the long-term winner takes all so there are two types of profit there are two types of losses one loss is that for every model I use money and that happens before you find product market if you are very early stage and you have just raised your capital to raise care to find product market so you are still within that but at that point you might be using money or everybody that is the worst part of loss because you are not in product market the second part of losses that you are profitable every time you sell but you have your corporate costs and other overheads to cover that is a more acceptable form of loss because beyond a certain scale obviously a lot of that money will flow down to the bottom line so I think and I at least saw a lot of PCs do this already they understand this better than many of us they are ensuring that their companies in the last two years you have seen how many companies have cut their workforce that is essentially the way down of this cost but a lot of companies who have not heard of this they say we are removing the poor performance they basically just cut the cost that is the reason people say that it does not happen that is essentially the cut down fixed cost so I think that is more acceptable more predictable that your profit is going and for them I think the PCs are pushing really hard to get profit very very good within this year you have seen several companies that were using millions of money have moved to you know CNP where the profitability and even Ipita where the profitability next year there will be more but the companies and there are many of those out of these hundred unicorns that we have there is a large percentage that still do not have product not infected they should be on a serious stage but this has happened these companies because of free and cheap capital and because they were all drinking their own you know you start feeling yourself you know product market has become coming and making money but you are not sitting in your unit so VCs are also drinking on the greater full thin software and Tiger so now that is not even there so now you are left already a lot of bottles of water or whatever you want to call it which you cannot recover your cost I think many of these unicorns are so far at the council in this field but the others will more than make up in terms of value creation over a long period of time so you know we have also said in the word competition so the new shark tank season just now it just happened so it is going to be boba there will be a new season now we have new sharks also so how is it going to be different in terms of the kind of companies that we take and kind of the investors the way they are going out of the best companies if you can just give us like please prove you yeah I think in sharks I mean how many of these sharks I don't know who are they but I think you know they are trying different things see I will give you an example tell you something in the US where there is such a large area they are almost closed down because they were not getting any viewers and it was not a success for sure in India we just took off timing is so good and people are tired of all this stuff they wanted something fresh so they just took off maybe reality showed them it takes 3-4 years to figure out this right model for the right audience and then have a consistent serve audience audience program so I think that experimentation is going on right now so I think you know these sharks many of you are sharks it's just marauding fundamentally mostly the same sharks we have a few test sharks that come for you know few episodes one episode two episodes so that doesn't really change the complexion that much of the show it continues to make the same I think competition is going to happen when you know 5-6 time papers competition for gales drama ladaia natural outcome I think that's going to happen I think the one thing that's different that I have seen in the show is almost over 60% companies that are coming startups that are coming are very well prepared and sharks who are putting in their money they believe in them so the level of authenticity that's a lot right so it is a business and an education entertainment show and the drama is at the second that's going to happen that is in our India there are 5 dishes 1 dal, 1 raita, 1 dosa then we eat it's not like a west chicken bridge then we eat it so I think that you will see us of course but I think you will see a much more authentic show sometimes Sir, you said that you have a lot of raita, 1 dosa, 1 dosa and you share it with me Yes, you share it What do you do with your food? Tell me I would say considering everything is made by an extension of the raita so you see a Katrina Kav she is creating a K-beauty who is the other actor a Russian who created HRX and we are not doing one interview so you know as sharks you don't think by that you don't say this is so anything you are so well known what do you want to build a brand beyond yourself which stands for any kind of merch or service you are married you have seen this timing and I am sure to tell you the truth I don't know where it started you don't have to believe last time I had a shop a couple of our brands one is Zile they are a very jewelry brand two boys 18 year old and they made me a model for them there is another brand called Snitch one of India's fastest men's fast fashion brand again they made me to a collection for them so we thought we should do something right so the brand name is a very esoteric word means we think of the brand means product launch that's not a brand you really want to make a brand to me a brand is something what is a brand how well you keep the perception implicit promise made by your product that's how I want to find it these are my own words what is the perception that people have are you keeping that promise and brands take a long time to build I often say if you have launched a product its true test is there if 3 generations know your brand if 3 generations don't know you are still in the process of making one so what is the ambitious thing I was telling you is that just now while we were waiting just to explain again we have not launched a brand but just to try something to have fun we created a few caps and this is a very early version just as merchandising maybe we do t-shirts maybe we do clothing and I don't know these are all holy thoughts and we were just going over it in fact Rohit has them so I don't know you want to give a few away free to do that but look I want you they are not that they are not that we can ask some questions if somebody wants that we have a few it's the first version so we did better but free t-shirts but I don't know as a child we will have some fun but we did not speak anything about this this just happened to happen you asked me this question and this happened so I don't know how but it happens yesterday yesterday yesterday but tell me how many episodes they are in shop and season 2 approximately many its answer is not in the comments its I don't know maybe we have 50 episodes and we have 50 episodes so what we have that's not allowed I don't know how many but I don't know it's two sizes so many episodes in season 3 how many episodes everything how many 70 no your 45 is close after say 15 great question you said 45 what is this I don't know how many shops in shop and season 3 there are so many episodes I don't know but 12 shops that's right we are born there are so many questions I don't know I don't know