[CTQ Smartcast] How to build a brand based on the value of TRUE? With Sreejith Moolayil
Sreejith Moolayil is the founder of True Elements. As first-generation entrepreneurs, he and his co-founder Puru Gupta have seen multiple pivots before zeroing down on what they are doing now. But there is one thing that remained common during these pivots. Being and remaining true to the values you believe in.
In this Smartcast, hosted by CTQ co-founder BV Harish Kumar, we have talked at length about positioning, e-commerce, building a business and startups in India. This conversation also has some valuable insights on how to build your company’s culture around the values one holds dear to their heart.
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(Read the shownotes below or skip to the transcript)
SOME OF THE THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT
Sreejith background and his entrepreneurial journey
How to stay true even though other avenues around you seem attractive
How can one incorporate true in their company’s culture?
Check and balances to remain true to the values
Investors’ perspective on this moral standard
How can one build a brand around the value of true?
PLUS
Future relevance of hyperlocal delivery and fitness start-ups in India
AND
Future relevance of Indian street food
LINKS TO BOOKS AND PEOPLE MENTIONED IN THE SMARTCAST
BOOKS
Start with Why by Simon Sinek
The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout
PEOPLE
Puru Gupta, Co-Founder and CEO, True Elements
John Grisham, American novelist
Steve Jobs, American business magnate
If you enjoyed this Smartcast, you will also like How To Build Social Capital - Brand 'You' Online, With Karthik Srinivasan
TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
00:00:00
Harish Kumar: Sreejith Moolayil is the founder of True Elements. As first-generation entrepreneurs, he and his co-founder Puru Gupta have seen multiple pivots before zeroing down on what they are doing now. But the fun part is they were always true to the purpose they started with, of providing clean and healthy packaged food. Just that instead of selling other products they have now found their true calling in making great packaged food themselves. But the overriding value has always been to remain true. True to the consumer, true to the planet and you will get to know what else they are true to. Today, True Elements is the only Indian food brand globally recognised as both 'Clean Label' & '100% Wholegrain'. So we caught up with Sreejith to understand how this positioning came about, how it gets propagated to every aspect of what they do, the challenges they face and what they have learnt over this journey. The conversation became Business 101 for a founder to learn about how to think about positioning, e-commerce, building a business and startups in India. If you are wondering how to build your company's culture around the value you hold dear to your heart this is an absolute must-listen. But before you go ahead in the interest of full disclosure, I and my kids are super fans of the dark chocolate granola by True Elements. There is something that Sreejith said during the conversation which we considered editing out later but we realised that we should retain it in the interest of being true. So here is the conversation in full glory, editing out only the parts that got affected due to audio lags due to poor internet connectivity.
00:02:00
Harish: Welcome Sreejith. Welcome to the CTQ Smartcast.
00:02:03
Sreejith: Hi Harish. Thank you for having me. We have been talking so much and I've been following your podcast and readings. It's a privilege to be among the rest of the luminaries you had in the past. Thanks for having me.
00:02:16
Harish: So let's start at the very beginning as they say. So before we go deeper into the rest of the things that I want to talk about, how did you start with your entrepreneurship journey?
00:02:35
Sreejith: We have seen all of our phases since the beginning. You were a veteran in this space and I remember the first entrepreneurial meeting we had was beyond both of us were at your office near Aundh Road. This bug was there from the campus days of MBA. But coming from the socialistic, communist state of Kerala, I had a non-profit idea while I was doing my MBA. But MBA and one and a half years of experience was a blessing in disguise. My first job helped me narrow down on what I wanted to do. My first job was at TVS and they had an amazing library. I don't think I ever read in my life in a structured way apart from academics. The only exception was John Grisham because being a law student in graduation that's all I have read in my life till I passed out of MBA. So TVS library helped me and that one book which I still remember is Straight From The Gut. That was one of the many books I read back then. And then business came in and that's when my non-profit became for-profit and the evolution started. That was around 2004-05. 2006 is when my current co-founder Puru and I were having our coffee and some discussion started. So he told me I want to see a brand evolution from incubation till exit. Even I wanted to do a brand and that's when the idea of doing something from social profit to what not to do came in. This was in late 2006 or early 2007. He was doing his MBA. 2006-11 we thought about all the ideas. We had a black book which we shared and it had got all the ideas. We were going all over the place - education, consumer, tech. But 2010-11 is when health came into the picture. Puru lost his father to cancer and that is the time when everyone in the family was discussing health. So we zeroed down on health and interestingly we wanted to do something related to health in China. I was with Cognizant and in 2009, I moved to China. Puru, during his MBA, did an exchange program in China, so he convinced me that China is the place to start something. When I went there, he was supposed to join me. But within a year I realised that what we have read about China in books and news articles and what the real China is, we realized both are two different worlds. It is a black box and being a law student from Kerala, has a lot of drawbacks. I cherished my democracy and freedom of expression and it was scary for a person like me to see what was happening there. If you want to start a business, you have to be in a level-playing field. Then we moved back to India, which was in 2011. In the same year, Puru quit his job and we worked on the idea of providing healthy snacks and drinks to corporates that can be consumed between meals. The thought behind choosing corporates as our audience was one, it is a captive audience and two, our CAPEX is zero, no marketing is required. We thought of making it a million-dollar business and went live in three cities, but we hit rock bottom in ten months. What we did not realise was that not everyone in that building prefers consuming healthy food. So, this business model was not viable. We pulled back, but we had offline teams in these three cities and food products to sell. So, we thought of distributing these products. We went ahead with modern trade and started predominantly in Delhi. But again, we had to shut down Delhi operations within 7-8 months. We moved back. Corporates have money to spend on health and wellness. Under corporate wellness, they were doing medical check-ups, ergonomy sessions, etc. But there was no structure. So, we thought of putting all these in a structure and came up with a score card-driven health for corporates. This was in 2014-15. But, soon we realised that this might not fuel our hunger to do something big. It is a cash positive business with a life cycle of 12-18 months, but we will never be able to scale it. In 2015, we pivoted to a health food marketplace called Healthy World, where we were selling all the products that we have accumulated all these years. But, since day one, we wanted to start our business in the health and food sector, but we never intermingled them. The reason for starting this business was clear. If we look at the e-commerce evolution, people went to e-commerce first for value and privacy. In 2014, consumers were comfortable buying products online. In that era, we did not sell sexual wellness products, health supplements, etc., even though our peers were selling these products. We fundamentally believed that this is not a healthy way to live. If we did that, we could have reached a different level, but we never agreed upon that. At that time, we were struggling financially, but thanks to a few mentors we continuously got assignments. And that’s how after three pivots we started Healthy World. In 2015, we raised our angel round, which was a small amount, but we soon realised that unless we are an Amazon, we won’t be able to be profitable and for this, we need to raise a lot of money. So, in early 2016, we started True Elements as a brand within Healthy World for products that are fast selling. So the products which had a sizable market share on our platform, we converted to our brand to improve our margins. Eight nine months down the line, our margins improved and the acquisition cost was less, so we thought if we were to go to Amazon and sell our products, we would probably be able to scale faster. In 2016-17, we ran Healthy World and True Elements. Early 2017 was when we realised that it is True Elements that we want to do. Healthy World is still there and is churning out 19,000 unique businesses a month, it’s a content marketplace. Four pivots and a lot of screw-ups later, we reached here in 2017. At True Elements, we knew the canvas to an extent that we are 100% clear on what we want to do and what we do not want to do. A thing which is still missing and we have to figure out, what is that one thing that will help us in making money, so that we can stick to it day in and day out. But we are clear that we are a clean label food. And how we came up with True Elements as a name is an interesting story. After the angel round, we thought that we have to come up with a great name for the brand. So there was a design guy that I hired in 2007 while I was working with Cognizant. Vivek told us that whatever name you come up with it must have the word ‘True’. He gave us a few options and we went ahead and started building our company around True Elements.
00:15:39
Harish: So a lot of things to unpack here Sreejith. One is the fact I think before we go further I would like to tell you that True Elements is the first and the only Indian brand to be globally recognised as both 'Clean Label' & '100% Wholegrain', right?
00:15:55
Sreejith: Yes
00:15:56
Harish: So something like that doesn't happen by accident. It's not just some coincidence that happens. There is a lot of deliberate effort that has to go into the whole thing. You walked us through the pivots and how things evolved. But I think, it comes back to what the designer told you, that ‘true’ is something that I associate with you and the second word is what you guys can pick but in all your dealings and everything that you had done till that point, even though you didn't mention the word and used it, the truth was coming out in the way you operated, which is why he also had a takeaway. So it may sound like connecting the dots later and you are just trying to make the story now to make it sound attractive and all of that. But if you can walk us through some of those times from 2011 to 2016-17, now when you look back, what were those instances where you held true to your beliefs even though other forces were more attractive asking you to do something else. Now if you look back to those times do you say that is why I was ‘true’. What were those things? Can you look back at those points?
00:17:23
Sreejith: So there are multiple instances. For example, when you are coming to a decision-making process there will be something that drives it. Now people call logic or data analytics, but at the end of the day, as all of us know we usually get into a decision we try validating the decision is right using all those tools. For example, we never sold any non-food items even in Healthy World, we only sold healthy food. The reason was the purpose for which we came into this. The other thing that we need to see is a brand because all this journey of three failures and coming in, what we were left with was a lot of confidence and some belief system that worked throughout. By the end of the day, we went back to corporate many times and some corporates gave us business after three screw-ups, because of that same reason. Because you guys stand for something and they will do that. So, we could not articulate what that is. Or for example, one classic conflict we had. So as I told you that we are India's first Clean & 100% Wholegrain Label, but globally we are looked up for another stuff which is traceability. That is, we are the only food company which provides information on what ingredients are packed. So I have a bunch of food technologists who come from the food industry and both of them come from Pepsi, where the formulation of the product is supposed to be protected. Even today, I am told that Haldiram seasoning is bought by the founding team. I am not from the food world so I don't understand this, but we know that we must inform you about the ingredients and our processes to the customer who is paying to buy your products. So, this became a huge conflict and our product and quality teams told us that it will become easy for the competition to copy our formula. This came back to the values of staying true and this helped us in taking a lot of decisions. For example, when a quality guy has to reject a raw material at the point of entry even 5% compromise is not possible for him. There is another aspect to it. I have worked with Tata Motors, TVS and Cognizant where there are on roll as well as contractual manpower. And we started following the same example. So once, one of my production guys asked me that when you follow being true to the product, why have you hired a few on a contractual basis. And I did not have an answer. So we decided that whoever works for our company, even if he/she is an intern, will be an on roll employee. It adds to our costs but we will stay true to all aspects, whether it is product or hiring. So, it helps in making decisions. And how did that word come into existence, it came from someone who saw us for some years. He could have just tried a marketing gimmick on us to sell a nice word. But now when we look back, we were able to live up to that. We are not struggling to stay true to what we offer. We are comfortable hiring a person, comfortable with putting up the formulation, comfortable with getting one-star reviews from customers. It is not an easy decision but it doesn’t hurt us emotionally or financially.
00:23:47
Harish: The other interesting thing, Sreejith, is the fact that, yes, you are selling organic but you have sort of almost created a new category called True. I mean if you look at the example of cranberry you are clearly saying so it's true to your category, true to your positioning that you are taking. If it happens to be not organic, so be it, but you are true to true. Whereas a lot of people who have to be true to organic will then end up having to make these compromises saying that we are organic but we are not organic. I think that semantics is also working very nicely for you guys.
00:23:34
Sreejith: Yeah correct. So another thing is at this stage, it is not the two of us who are driving all the decisions. 99% of the decisions are made by the team and each one of them should be able to live up to the word true and make a decision. And luckily, we have a bunch of freshers and a few laterals who came in and we didn’t churn them and, all of them whether it is hiring done right or at a cultural level or being lucky or whether. So we did not struggle at all when they decided with the same philosophy and values. It’s they who come and challenge us at multiple points that this is what we are and why did not follow them in a particular situation.
00:25:25
Harish: Sreejith I will interrupt you there. I will not take that answer and face value. I wouldn't say that you are just lucky there has to be something deliberate that you are doing to be able to attract those kinds of people who are buying into your philosophy.
00:25:41
Sreejith: Is it because you try liking people with whom your wavelength matches, whom you understand more, whom you can relate to more at a macro level or you can tell there is a cultural match or is it because we could hire and meet people for interview. I still believe that it is difficult to evaluate if a person is true or how much will a person stand for in a 20-30 minute interview. We will try connecting with the instances in his life which resonate with what he stands for. But in an interview, everybody is at their best and I still think that it is luck, to an extent. I mean we know what to look for, but if we knew, we would have hired rock stars who could have taught us to a different level. In 2019, we only had this bunch of people who started careers with us in our earlier business. In 2020, we got a bunch of second-level people who could challenge us. We have to get them from outside because these guys were not challenging us to an extent. I am just countering you here because if we were this perfect we could have managed that, but we could not. We had to hire experienced lateral people to challenge us. So, I will still consider a luck factor here.
00:27:22
Harish: But you would need to take more credit is all I would say.
00:27:28
Sreejith: We will take it as a feedback
00:27:30
Harish: On that note Sreejith, again the true positioning in the current climate, it can be very easily seen as they are just saying it, they are not too true and all of that. For whatever is said and done that is the way it is assumed. So given that, as the condition, how easy or difficult was it for you to indoctrinate these people that actually what I am saying is what I believe in and this is what we want to do. It's not just for the sake of saying. How did that process go in terms of convincing these people like the example that you gave about the product development person challenging you about putting out the formulation? How easy or difficult was it at different levels of people at True Elements?
00:28:23
Sreejith: Internally each decision is driven by ‘true’. Everybody is true, every food packet out there on the shelf is true, otherwise, nobody will buy. So, is true a really strong differentiation for us concerning other brands, no it isn't, as long as we bombard a lot of marketing around it and we own that space. And we don't have the privilege of that kind of money as we have not raised that much money to do that and we don't know how to spend and do that. That's a great area of improvement for us. But that means anybody who has come close and tried understanding us, knows what it is. There are multiple instances of trying to tell that as stories out there for people to see it. It's already been demonstrated, any person taking a product would see that image of the pack, what we have put up, we are driven by four pillars - true to people, true to the planet, true to our work and true to food. What does each of those mean? For example, nobody thought that there could be a zero plastic packaging solution available for food until we put that true to the planet and what can we do around that. So answering your question point-blank, it is still not clear for a consumer as to how our true is different from any other true out there. Because that is one area where we have work to do. We’re talking out loud all the examples of stuff we are doing or as simple as we are the only product company that has put the formulation and the complete journey out there. I'll tell you about last week, one of my vendor suppliers who supply dried fruits into our muesli called to inform us that his capacity is multiplied by four now. Machines are up, I have extra bandwidth and my EMIs are not being met, I need additional business. I said, I can not go 4x in 2-3 months, so let me connect you with competitors. For a moment he was surprised. So I connected him to Yoga Bar and The Whole Truth founders. The next day he called saying that nobody has ever connected us with their competition. He asked for more business, he never asked me to connect him with the competition. Such decisions are emotional decisions. I even asked Puru. He suggested we must introduce him to our competitors because if we don’t he will approach someone else. If we help him now, he might improve margins for us. Indirectly, it will be in our favour. So it is a selfish reason for which we did that, but the reasoning was triggered by a thought, why not. So, if we would have gone guarded against day one, we would not have thought in such a manner. Coming back to the consumer, does a consumer know about our values? No. Will a consumer know what drives this company? That needs to be told and experienced. Every month around 220,000 households are experiencing it, but we are not talking out loud because we have built the brand without spending much or not at the level at which competitors have spent their money. Because of that, we have not entered Delhi till this August. Second, as our earlier example, we have not entered modern trade. As of now, we are not available in D-Mart, Big Bazaar, Star Bazaar, because we believe it is an expensive channel to go in and be present in front of consumers. The cost-efficient channel is to go to category stores in all the cities, mostly tier 1 cities. But if we would have gone to those stores more consumers would have reached us, the experience must have been known, the brand would have been known. That is not there now. So, it is purely what we can do with limited resources. You live the story and start telling the story to whoever you come in contact with, try amplifying with limited resources. But as long as we are living to tell the story, people will see the story someday, right.
00:33:31
Harish: You spoke about the consumers but I also wanted to understand how employees are resonating with this. How easy or difficult was it for you guys to propagate this, percolate this to the lowest level in the organisation that this is who we are and was there any resistance in doing so?
00:33:55
Sreejith: So at junior level actually, you can easily drive the best engagement value. I will not call any person who is habituated to the opposite of true, it may not be typecast, Even that person wants to be seen as somebody who resonates with True. So this is one very idealistic hook I need to be accelerated and that's across educated and uneducated thought leaders. Everybody wants this hook for this world. When we give the hook to junior level, they are not the decision-makers, they are executioners. For them, it's a beautiful hook to get. And thanks to that, during Covid we didn't have any of our employees going back to villages during lockdown one because that hook was good enough. I still remember in the first lockdown when doctors and essential services were at the front, I told them we also need to churn out products to be available. Some people are waiting for a product to be available and once in our retail sales group in Hyderabad, the store guy called our sales team and said that a consumer who is somewhere around 20-30 kilometres away wants our steel-cut oats, please send them by tomorrow. There was also an aged couple and our sales officer, who is supposed to take orders from our stores only, went there and delivered our products to that couple. So at the end of the day, it is a very easy hook for anybody who is associated and at the lowest strata, you cannot engage with complex stuff. There we do not have any challenges. The challenge is at the middle level or senior level where people have to make decisions and tough decisions, decisions that are not easy. For example, you need to reject this product but the product cannot go out of stock, so what do you do. You get a new vendor and get it done. There is always an easier way out, but he can not do that. So, there are multiple challenges. At the lower level, that’s the binding hook. At our production unit, we run three shifts and we have an all-women team in the day shift. So the factory inspector told me that if women employees are leaving after six in the evening they are to be escorted by a security person and if they are working overtime they must have a separate room. So we changed the timings. This was an easier challenge. At the middle level what happens is that everyone wants their work to be easier and having such strong values is going to make it difficult.
00:37:50
Harish: So you mention checks and balances. Can you mention some of the examples of checks and balances you have at that level to make sure that the business is working for you?
00:37:59
Sreejith: The checks and balances are only for the world and it is traceability. Internally, it is transparency. This means whatever is being done and we are doing, making products, getting raw materials from somewhere, processing it and shipping it. The rest is done by distribution, marketing and sales teams. I keep telling in our monthly audit that we are standing in a glass built factory and everybody can see what we are doing and what we are putting in our products. From February onwards, we will start contract farming with Satara based farmers. So the journey from the seed level to the harvesting level, from harvesting to a plant and our plant to packing and shipping our products, at every stage what we are doing is for everybody to see. These are the best checks and balances we can have. Nothing is hidden, everything is out for everyone to see. We didn't reach here to do this. Our objective was to put people to see what they are doing but that is helping us in putting beautiful checks and balances because every decision will be judged by a consumer who's going to praise it. But again, we commit mistakes and we are not running a 100% mistake-free place. As long as we don't corner people for their mistakes and make them responsible, put a process and go ahead and that has been the culture since day one. So we have not fired anybody for the mistakes. Because I too have committed a fair bit of mistakes. So nothing more than that and after spending a good couple of crores, no other mistake will be bigger than this one. I am still here. So, it's ok. But don't do mistakes that are stupid and obvious. So, Puru has this acronym F.A.I.L. Keep failing but as long as you're learning you can make mistakes. Mistakes are fine. Once that and transparency works and people know we are under observation, you are not going to be punished for mistakes. That’s the checks and balances.
00:40:38
Harish: So completely different level right. How does this play out when you go out to raise funds with the investors? How do they look at this?
00:40:51
Sreejith: That's the question we still don't know how to answer. So initially you don't know you cannot take such a high moral standard and then they give another 10 examples of what other brands do. So, at the end of the day either you are here for business or you are here for non-profit. You cannot be here and there right. But we believe there is a business possible with this philosophy. So at an initial meeting level, there is an amazing story at the face of the investors, VCs and PEs that there are consumers, they love all products, all this fine. But when it comes to how you will scale, wouldn’t you have a challenge in scaling this business. That's what they say that you will have challenges in scale. It would be a challenge to become a few 1000 crore company with this high model standard, it's going to be difficult. We believe it is possible. The difference is, we believe that we have a whole life span of another 40-50 years in front of us to do it. They have taken somebody's money and they don't have that time. Everyone is right in their way. Is it possible to become a 3000 crore company in the next 3 years? No matter how much money you put in, it is not possible. We are dealing with food and taste. At the end of the day, we don’t talk from the 13,000 feet and tell them we are the clean-label food of the world because the moment I do that, I am missing out on 97% of the people out there because they are not interested in clean foods. The moment we say that people assume it is going to be expensive. There is this one line that I live up to and strongly believe. It’s by Steve Jobs - ‘dots connect when you look back’. So I strongly believe that's how it happens. But the challenge is that as entrepreneurs you know beyond a small number we don't know what to do with the money that comes and whenever it comes, it is more for our mental satisfaction, it is more like a drug. Non-entrepreneurs will relate to it. It is not money. I don't think that's not the challenge. So we were working on pancakes. We thought a lot of new generation mothers are feeding their children pancakes and they have sugar, yeast, baking soda, baking powder and the rest. In the quest of making a clean pancake, the end product became so expensive that we can not compete with the other economical pancake brands in this segment. So now we are re-working on a pancake formulation to get into a comparatively economical price range. These are the things that drive us. And our objective is any packaged food that is not clean is an opportunity for us and any household which believes that the best food to be fed is packaged food is an opportunity for us. Another opportunity is where people prefer home-cooked food and think twice before consuming anything. We are seeing how the market is and will evolve. The west has already opened up. In India, consumers buy the product for taste, so we are not over positioning our product as clean. But as soon as a consumer opens the box, we educate him that the product which he is about to consume is clean. That’s what we would ideally want to reach. Here, the investor is also right when he thinks if we can achieve 100% clean with shelf life challenges and go to all the remote places and sell a 30 rupee snack. It is not possible. As of now, that is what the problem is. But we have approached VCs who we think to resonate with this kind of approach. Otherwise, it is going to be a failed marriage. So we are a little choosy here.
00:46:05
Harish: That’s great. So any thoughts on brand building per se because this is not just building a brand but you are also living the brand right so both internally and externally so how has your understanding of the whole concept of brand building evolved over the last 10 years?
00:46:30
Sreejith: Brand building thanks to whatever reading we have done, we thought that's how a brand is built and of the day that clear cut perception in the consumer's mind when they think about this as a brand and there we have an idea what can be done but is that a water-tight compartment where nobody can enter. No, it is not. A true brand is still not a water-tight compartment and for that, we need to talk out loud. That's one challenge. But the biggest learning in the last 3-4 years is we have concluded that there are consumers who are your fans and there are people who are there for a very short period and then there are people who will not stick with any brand for more than one occasion. And we need all three groups of people. It is going to be tough when you have to focus on your fans in the clean space. So we are accepting the fact that the way we need to be seen by these three groups of consumers has to be different because all the three are picking a product for three different reasons. But again, one biggest filter we have is if we have a very high Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), I cannot go to the second and the third because they might not stick for a long time with us. So, we have kept it very low so that we don't struggle to acquire these consumers and lose them. So, I told you we are not there in the modern trade space. Even on Amazon, for example, some brands get listed and on the 7th or 8th day, you will already see 40-50 reviews. I have listed one product eight months ago and I am selling more than 1000 units per month, but still, I have not more than 15 reviews. So, the first marketing guy we hired told us to do reviews if we need to do a good ranking on Amazon, but true doesn’t allow it. But that helps. For example, very recently a VC challenged us that we will be doing it. So, I opened this tool called Review Meta where you can analyse your product with the competition’s product. I told him if even 2% of my reviews are fake, I will rest my case. So, I have this confidence because of True. So, coming back to the brand part. All this has to be done, is build content, fake reviews when you are focussing on a smaller set of consumers. So, as of now, I have to be in households of all these three people. What I'm trying to achieve is that this person is right now eating muesli today, he might move to another brand of muesli tomorrow or he might move to poha tomorrow, can I have poha, or he might stop from poha and move to a dosa mix tomorrow, can I have that. So, there is another thought that a brand with such a wide range is a difficult proposition in a consumer’s mind because he is not clear what the brand stands for? I am clear that I stand for true and clean. But the consumer is not seeing it because I have not told it. That’s an area of improvement. We are clear in knowing that there is no challenge in going wide and having multiple categories under one brand as long as those stand for one and that we are clear. So, we look at the consumers and brand journeys differently. When it comes to performance marketing you have to look at it differently than conventional ways. We don’t use that typical matrix to acquire and retain because we believe all these three kinds of consumers will exist in India and as of today we are getting to let's say India’s top 4-5% population, that is, 4-5 crore are readily available and rest is getting added to that bucket and while this happens we are also working on our products. For example, a traditional family from Chennai will be least interested in muesli. They want idli or dosa. So, for such consumers, we need to have a clean dosa mix. Usually, in an instant dosa mix, there are added chemicals that ferment the mix sooner than expected. But, we have found a natural way where it can be done. So, I am looking at these 4-5 crore consumers and the next one crore consumers whom we can provide these clean products which they want to consume. I don’t think any of our competitors have kanji as their product. There was a consumer study that said that most of the consumers in Kerala are eating oats for dinner and I being a Malayali, I know that for dinner at least people in rural Kerala prefer having kanji. So why not marry those two products and have a new product. So that helps. So, at the end of the day, true and clean are our principles, but does a dosa mix consumer buy this for true and clean, as of now. No. My opinion is can I get the pricing of the product as good as the next best available option and then make him realise that in terms of ingredients, I have a better product. If I go ahead and tell consumers that my product is better, the consumer will come at a very high cost.
00:53:01
Harish: This is great Sreejith. You have unpacked and educated me and our viewers about the whole industry and how you have gone about building this. It's also a great lesson in positioning and branding. It's like what Al Ries and Jack Trout talk about, you have used all the 22 Immutable Laws of Branding as well. So coming to the end of this conversation, it’s a personal question. So, what are some of the things that you are deliberately doing to stay ahead of the curve to build your future relevance? Are there any podcasts or books that you can recommend that have inspired you in your journey and have shaped your thinking?
00:53:45
Sreejith: So I never read in any one area but all the books I have read are in business. I have not read any fiction after John Grisham. Puru keeps telling me that you need to have a mixture of fiction and this otherwise you are narrowing down. I still have not done that, so that's another area of improvement for me. So most of my readings have been in the business, startup and similar stories. But one book which I keep telling my team is Simon’s Start With A Why. I think that our philosophy gives, at least in a setup like ours, solutions to a lot of questions that come to our minds every day. It fundamentally breaks down the way we look at each instance daily. But in terms of podcasts, till CTQ happened, I was listening to anything that was thrown by Google. I am not a structured learner per se. Structural learning is only through books. So, again it is blogs and Amazon suggested top 10 business books, then you go and validate and keep adding it in your cart and then one day order it. For some reason, I cannot read on Kindle. I need to have a book. Probably true to the planet, is when it comes to plastic-free packaging, but when it comes to reading, I need a physical book. So, I order two books, one for reading and one for backup. I don’t have anything apart from this. So, I don’t have any one area that I prefer. I read anything which is thrown at me. And thanks to you guys, for the last 6-7 months, I have been getting interesting stuff being thrown at me.
00:55:48
Harish: We have come to the end of the conversation but before that, we have this future relevance section where we ask for the guest’s hot take on certain things. I give you this term or word or whatever concept and I want you to talk about what is the future relevance of that. So the first one is what do you think is a future relevance of hyperlocal delivery in India?
00:56:16
Sreejith: Hyperlocal delivery is going to be very good in India, because at the end of the day climate, travelling is difficult and these top 4-5% people who are spending for the rest, what they have is money but they don't have time. So, hyperlocal is going to be as of now for them and there also is a quick job for all the people who need quick entry-level jobs. So, hyperlocal is going to be there. As of now, it is only in the grocery segment but it will come to all the other areas as well as the areas which we never thought about. It will probably happen till the day we don’t get good people at Rs. 15,000 salaries. Till then this will be an opportunity for different entrepreneurs to come out with something or the other. I read somewhere that our population growth has flattened. It is going to be negative. That means if the rural people stop coming to the urban cities for lower-skilled jobs then there will be a dearth of such jobs. But by that time, I think drones will pick that up. That means, by the time, the habit is formed of those people who could be replaced by drones, so answering, it will come to areas no one ever thought about.
00:57:47
Harish: What do you think is the future relevance of all these fitness startups and variables?
00:57:52
Sreejith: There is no end to it. It’s a really quick evolution and people get hooked onto numbers and what these devices do is entice you with numbers, create a community with numbers. It's becoming a social status for some group of youngsters who are in it for the reasons it was not launched. So as long as people get hooked on such drivers and we want to improve your health, improve our lives and sensors will get refined. As of now only ECG and a couple of other things like non-touch sugar have come. So obviously, sensors will be refined. That means most of the tests which are done in prick, might be available without prick and also it will help food as an industry to evolve. Till now, you need to eat right, but the contribution of food in remaining healthy is not considered very highly today. If somebody needs to lose weight, the easiest thing to do is to cut down on food. But that's not the easiest thing to execute. So that's the challenge. Today, we get data, for example, an insulin intolerant person will take more time to lose weight and at a certain time when the body produces more insulin, certain kinds of activities will help him to be healthy. So, such an analytical driven correlation would help probably get us new solutions, which are not available now. This is going to get better and bigger.
01:00:18
Harish: Finally, what do you think is the future relevance of Indian street food like your bhel puri and pani puri?
01:00:23
Sreejith: I don't think it can never be dethroned, taste perspective and that experienced perspective minus the hygiene is also something which cannot be matched. The only gap here is hygiene and hygiene right now is a factor of cost at which people want it right now and that is more of a mental block. For example, you are fine to buy a 150 rupees burger at McDonald's but if the price of a samosa increase, we don’t favour it. That's more of a mental block. The day when this connects, I think street food will evolve to give a different experience which is with better hygiene. So being a food guy that's one area we have not even attempted. Matching a tomato or a tamarind flavour in a dried snack, cleanly, is impossible. So, hygiene is the only thing that will change street food.
01:01:55
Harish: On that note, Sreejith like I said this was a fantastic lesson on entrepreneurship, branding, how to build a company, staying true to your culture and values and how to propagate that. I think now we will all also know what are the secrets of the food industry that you have shared with us today. So thanks a lot. It was a fantastic chat.
01:02:33
Sreejith: One thing which is an opportunity for anybody to grab is - until I told you these are the ingredients nobody knows it. So there is an opportunity for somebody to just put in simple language, look at the back of the product and that's the problem that somebody has to solve.
01:02:42
Harish: On that note, thanks a lot. That was a brilliant conversation
01:02:43
Sreejith: Thank you, Harish. Enjoyed it!
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