Full Transcript

Utsav Somani: Hey, Utsav, nice to see you guys. Good to have you on the show. So tell us about your journey a little bit, like what inspired you to do design? Firstly, at Tern Academy, before that housing, and you were mentioned before the show started that a lot of the housing designers are now at all top places. So tell us how does this design mafia get started?

Abhinav Chhikara - Founder, 10kdesigners: Yeah, I mean, for me, I actually did computer science, so not even design, I went to Manipal. And Varun, in fact, was my classmate. And our first agency we started was in college together. But I think for me, the dopamine that I expected coming from building products, I didn't get that. And I was like, okay, so it's design. And this was, of course, last decade. Housing was awesome because, I mean, they had such high taste or just such a high vision that when I joined, they had like 55 product designers, and unheard of in 2016. But of course, didn't last very long. But those folks then ended up at every other startup out there. And so I was lucky to kind of be part of that. Unacademy was great because how I met Gaurav was, he was on the test flight of this app I did. So right after housing, we built this music app, music chat app, way too competitive of a space. But he was on the test side. And so right after we shut that down, he was like, hey, I think you should join us. And I was like, okay, tell me more. And so I got to be early at Unacademy, like I think 40 something. So I was at Unacademy in 2017 to 2020. And yeah, that's the story. And what was 10K designers? You were doing cohort based courses for designers? Yeah, so actually my last major product that I designed at Unacademy with my team was Unacademy Plus. And this was just one year before COVID that we launched it. So like timing wise, couldn't have been better. But Unacademy Plus was the live learning platform. So that was the first monetization play for Unacademy. Also, I think back then itself like, I think Shailendra had recommended Gaurav like, hey, there's like this live streaming thing in China that's really going, I think you guys should do that for education. And it was perfect advice. But so I just kind of took that and I was like, hey, I think I really want this for design. Because I got lucky being a part of that housing crew. But then even like five years later, like in 2017, 2020, like there was no real path for designers. So I was like, okay, this is something I want to do. So I ran that from 2020 till 2025. I was actually based in Copenhagen at the time. So running it remotely, just building it from there. But then AI stuff happened. And then I was like, okay, I need to go back to hands on designing. Copenhagen, great food, by the way. Yeah, the worst food, but yeah.

Utsav Somani: I mean, great bakeries. I mean, the Noma has become like this training center for chefs all across the world, right? I mean, Michelin, I mean, they're like a Michelin factory at this point in time.

Abhinav Chhikara - Founder, 10kdesigners: I love that. But it's just, I'm not the kind of person who can wait six months for a reservation. Like I need it, I need it now.

Dhruv Sharma: Speaking of factories, how do you think junior designers are going to come up in this age of AI? I mean, I don't know if I heard you correctly, but mighty, mighty MIT, if I did. Yes, yes. Koalas.

Abhinav Chhikara - Founder, 10kdesigners: Oh, nice. Oh, awesome, I didn't know that.

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah. Yes, back to my question. So, I mean, to me, design as always, it's like as a professional choice, it seemed like one of those professions where you need to come up the apprenticeship way. Would you agree with that? And I mean, how are people going to do that in this?

Abhinav Chhikara - Founder, 10kdesigners: Yeah, I would strongly, strongly agree with that. Because I just feel like it's not even a problem of there's content out there or there's not content. Like there's an abundance of content, like way too much content, in fact. And if you just kind of go that self learning route, it just, it's easy to just get distracted. Like, especially in design where people don't, like creative folks, they don't just want to, let's say, do products. They also want to do brand. They also want to do motion. They also want to do 3D. They also want to now do content. Apprenticeship is a good one because I think working with the kinds of people you would, I think a lot of creative stuff is not very legible. So I think being in that same room, watching how this person designs their life around it, like, at least to me, I started my career freelancing in Manipal. But then till I got to housing, I was like, oh, so that's how you guys are pulling this off. Or like, that's how the behind the scenes is happening. So yeah, it's really tough out there. Also because the whole intern market has cratered. Like there is no, people aren't really hiring for interns. And even if they are, they want the outlier who uses cloud code, has great taste, good at brand, good references, has used every product out there. And there's not that many folks like that out there.

Utsav Somani: Taste is a word that keeps coming up when we talk about the AI-assisted creativity and AI- assisted content creation. In your words, what does taste actually mean? How can somebody develop it?

Abhinav Chhikara - Founder, 10kdesigners: Yeah. Or you can't? So, you know, I actually have a one hour video on taste on my YouTube.

Dhruv Sharma: So we're getting the quick TLDR. Also tell us where to find it, you know?

Abhinav Chhikara - Founder, 10kdesigners: Yeah, so my channel is ABNUX. It's on YouTube. I think it's the last, one of the last five videos I've uploaded. But to me, like I would frame the problem this way. Of course, like today, let's say we're working with startups. Every start, like today the stakes are super high, right? Founders, they're putting, going all in on building something that is going to be generationally, you know, defining company. And they want the vibes to be right. At the same time, when we say vibes to be right, it's unfortunate that most folks will just go on Pinterest and they see the exact same stuff, or they'll go to chat, GPD Cloud, and they get the exact same results. Or they look at the top five startups in the space and they're like, I want that. And so that ends up creating, we all look the same. And then underlying, even on the product level, we are all using the same models. And so this positioning or differentiation problem is like crazy exaggerated now. And so how I see taste as a bit of an antidote, but kind of a mysterious one, is we can't all be just building the same the same looking stuff, right? Like our references need to be a little bit deeper than that. And so when I think of taste, I don't think it's just a design thing. Like I think even for founders, like for example, when I was working with Gaurav, he had great taste in products. Like his bar for great design was super high. But also he was always like, he was just voracious about getting the right references, like checking out all the apps in China, what's happening there. Being on the test flight of every single app that comes out every single week, right? And these set of references and how you kind of matrix multiply them towards something good. I think that's taste, like the application of your personalized references and then the positioning that you're really trying to create.

Utsav Somani: So you're saying basically it is through exposure. Is that the summary or it can be acquired in different ways?

Abhinav Chhikara - Founder, 10kdesigners: I think exposure a lot of times is seen as an unintentional thing. I think it can intentionally be applied as well. Like for example, I would love to take a China trip sometime this year, mostly to just see in person on ground, like, hey, what are the tools that I have available to play with? Like what's my building blocks out there? So then I feel like creatives and then even founders need to intentionally do these trips or like meet these people where they're building this library. Like to take the Noma example, by the way, I did meet some chefs in Copenhagen who did that. And they were like, yeah, I came to Kerala last year and I tried out this, this, this. And I was like, dude, even I don't know about all this stuff, right? And they're like, no, it was a taste trip because we were literally tasting all of this stuff. But then I didn't know that they use these ingredients in these specific ways. And now if you guys come to my restaurant, like I have that one particular chicken. I was like, oh wow, that's awesome.

Dhruv Sharma: I mean, now that we've gone in the meta zone, let's stay there for a while. Abhinav, on this topic of taste, right? So one question I have for you, by the way, is when people use the term opinionated in the context of design, what do they mean really? We had the founder of Gully Labs on our show and he in fact brought this up and he said, you know, our design is opinionated and that's by choice. So that's one. And speaking of references, so I get it, right? Like Gaurav is going looking for references in the digital world, all around the world and you'll find plenty of them. But Utsav and I keep chatting about how, keep chatting very often about how in the physical world, there's, you know, you find lesser and lesser beauty now. And so if you're a digital designer, all of your references are also digital or maybe you go spend time in nature. Where do you go looking for inspiration? And then my question about what's opinionated in the context of design as well. And then maybe we'll check out of the meta domain and get more concrete with our Q&A.

Abhinav Chhikara - Founder, 10kdesigners: So the opinionated thing, I definitely agree with Arjun because it's kind of like if you're just consuming these references, then you're a consumer, right? You're a consumer of taste. But then I think the opinion here comes of how am I going to remix this towards the products I want, towards the people that I'm doing this for, towards the culture that I want to propagate. And so that remixing is not just obvious, as obvious as A plus B plus C, right? And so that I think requires real opinions on no, we will eliminate this, this is something we want to do, or even seasonality, right? Like with our drops or with our, whatever we put out, there's a certain narrative arc that's being built. So I think that's one thing, I definitely agree with the opinionated part. Where to get references, I get your real world references because like the cafes, for example, they're starting to look similar, like all around the world. And I don't even think it's a recent thing, right?

Utsav Somani: Except like, I mean, before the show started, we were discussing Alienkind and Mano. I think those two, I think which recently raised funding, both like very unique designs.

Abhinav Chhikara - Founder, 10kdesigners: Yeah, yeah. And it's like a must have at this point because I'm sure every cafe owner is looking at Pinterest and they're like, they're getting the same aesthetics. And so you do have to now kind of counter signal. For me, where do I get it from? I think these days, of course the usual places online for sure. But I think for me now, it is going back to the real world, which is I want to get stuff from a place and from a time. Like for example, let's say New York. Now there's certain references or elements that only somebody who's been there or seen there would get it. And it's not just the cliche, like the Metro signs and all of this. But I think a sense of time and a sense of place. So place being New York and then time, I'm like, okay, let's slightly go back in history. And if I'm able to pull some references from there, it evokes a certain emotion in like the person. And like that to me is like the magic of design, right? You can make somebody feel something. And nature is a big one for sure. I feel like we can't just be in offices all the time.

Utsav Somani: And I want to talk about 10K Designers for a bit because you pioneered sort of these permissionless projects and they're going to become more and more important as we go along because rightly, how you mentioned that internships are going away. So all the junior level stuff is going to be taken away by AI and automated away. So for junior designers to get noticed, they'll have to start preparing what you did. At 10K Designers, I think these real briefs for like even Gully Labs and other stuff. So how do you do proof of work? And how should a designer think about proof of work? I mean, there's so much noise and content out there. You can't just put up a beautiful website and expect work to come your way.

Abhinav Chhikara - Founder, 10kdesigners: Yeah, and you know, the briefs are getting harder as well. So it's like, I remember a couple of years back we would do like, I would go through the Y Combinator directory and like pull out 20 briefs and then that becomes the assignments. But now it's like the first or second result with Cloud Code and you're like, oh wow, like this is kind of good enough. Like how do I go beyond this? But at least my observation on this is I'm seeing designers go multidisciplinary as a solution. So it's like, yeah, we're going to do websites, we're going to do apps, like that's digital products. But then you also kind of want to see, hey, now that the cost to creating stuff is kind of going down, like the time spent, you know, assisted by these tools, what more do you make? And I think that what more gets into new mediums, it gets into new interests, it gets into like, like I know a lot of now designers who are like, hey, I actually just want to start a brand now at this point, like, I don't think the, I don't think just websites and apps are going to do it anymore. But clearly that's going to be a part of any physical product out there. So I think there's a lot more mixing that's happening. And so proof of work I would say is, today to kind of stand out, you need to kind of be seen as an outlier. And I think that outlier would then be like, hey, what are the kinds of projects you have that kind of cut across your interests, your references, but then also mediums maybe. Yeah. Interesting.

Dhruv Sharma: And I mean, if we switch the perspective, right? So we were talking about how design talent will cultivate itself. But I want to talk about, you know, founders who are so early that they have no option but to DIY their way through design, right? All of us have been there your first year in business, maybe you haven't raised a large round, et cetera. You're a professional designer. What would be your advice to people who are DIYing their way through design? How do they make a design system that's machine readable? How do they set up their own workbench today?

Abhinav Chhikara - Founder, 10kdesigners: Yeah. It's a good question because yeah, you're right. I think all the design work we do now, like whether it's on the brand side or the product side, it needs to be consumable by the agents, not just by the humans that are running these companies. I would say one like very actionable tip actually for founders that want to do this is, you know, there's thinking divergent and then there's convergent. I think a lot of non-designers, they only think in terms of convergent where they're like, I want the perfect answer. Like I want the perfect website. And they're just using Claude to just like get that convergent answer. But I think I would urge these founders to think like a creator where you have to allow yourself to go divergent, like go wide, as wide as possible. Mood board, like collect these references, put them all on a, you know, like a whiteboard or just like a big jam or something. And so go wide before you go narrow is would be my practical suggestion there.

Utsav Somani: All right. So I'm going to ask you an AI related question again. So there was this Figma config 2026, which just happened. So the founder said, AI lowered the floor. Designers will raise the ceiling. What are your thoughts on this?

Abhinav Chhikara - Founder, 10kdesigners: Wow, I like that quote. Yeah. I think it's kind of like, it's easier than ever to get in and make something. And I think that's where the dopamine comes from. But you then end the risk, you have the risk of looking like everybody else, right? Like it's, and looking like everybody else means being forgettable and not being memorable enough. And then your positioning as a company is weakened. I would say raising the ceiling here means, and it's like, it was always the game, like do crazy stuff and like be the outlier. But like now it's kind of like, it's a non-negotiable almost. But you do have to counter signal the average, the default. So the ceiling, and so then I think it's also a good thing because then you now have this army of agents who can just like quickly get you through these early versions. And you can really just focus on the unique thing that cannot be, not in the training data or cannot just be done by the machine, yeah.

Utsav Somani: Maybe a related pointed question, in your personal workflow, what workflows have gone away because of AI and what has become 10x easier for you? And what are the tools specifically?

Abhinav Chhikara - Founder, 10kdesigners: So as of Jan, me and all the designers on my team started using Cloud Code really heavily. So that's when it started for us in January this year. What went away is like this, like the long process of, oh, we're gonna marinate in these ideas and one week later, two weeks later, we have something to show. Like this, like the archetype of this creative which just goes away and then comes back with a brilliant idea. I don't think that's very relevant anymore. I think it's more about, I guess very prototyping based process now, where it's like, hey, okay, you spend a day or you spend a couple of hours. And then the first thing you show needs to be as good as the first thing you would have shown last year, but then what you can now do in three hours is equivalent sometimes to what you could have done in three days or sometimes three weeks. And so if you're not doing that, then it's like, oh, okay, so you've not fully started using these tools. For me, the tools we use, I mean, on the creative side, we use a lot of Higgs field, Image2, NanoBanana, some of these directly through the API Cloud Code. Some of them, like let's say Higgs field, MCP and things like that. In W2, we still use a lot of Figma, like a lot, lot of Figma. So Figma, I don't think is going away anywhere. In fact, even more now, Figma motion and stuff, my team was just showing me some stuff. It's fantastic. Like you can just prompt really good motion now. But what has gone away is definitely like silos as well. Like now everything that a designer is working on is on GitHub, which wasn't a thing pre-Cloud Code.

Dhruv Sharma: It's almost like that designer to developer handoff is permanently gone.

Abhinav Chhikara - Founder, 10kdesigners: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're like pushing direct to client GitHubs now. Like we're just direct to production a lot of times. And I'm like, oh, damn.

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah. So speaking of clients, Abhinav, how can one become a better design client? In other words, if someone decides to work with your agency, what are the three things they should come prepared with so that they can get the most out of working with you in a very short span of time?

Abhinav Chhikara - Founder, 10kdesigners: Yeah. Bring your markdown files is the big one, which is I would love, and some of our best clients right now they're doing this, but I would love to see like a positioning.md, personasicp.md, trustandproof.md. And a lot of this is just context that's already in the company. So just like take that effort, bring these out. Beyond that, I think a lot of it is just, you have to be willing to put up with the creative parts. Like it's not just like, oh, I get something good. It's like, for example, our typical clients we work on, typically we kind of get involved like maybe six to eight weeks before a major funding announcement. And so usually that's like, oh, we need to redo everything and then create the systems for everything. And so that's not really a very hands-off process. Like we do get in these workshops with these founders, talk to them, like really, you know, Rick Rubin, this thing where we're like, oh, so what does this make you feel? Or like, how do you want to do this? A lot of it is like so non-obvious, but then once it happens, you're like, oh, capture that, capture that, put that in the MD. So it's a very human process, but bring those MDs, get ready, bring your context together and then be willing to put in the real human hours. Yeah.

Utsav Somani: Almost every agency or design owner ends up complaining on the client feedback. It's like, it's not fun, make it pop a little bit. As a closing question, Abhinav, there's something in our YouTube chat. When will the next 10K cohort take place?

Abhinav Chhikara - Founder, 10kdesigners: It's not happening, guys. You know, we have a lot of demand for it also because it's gotten way more uncertain. But for me, I mean, the problem with the cohort-based course is it was a four- month thing and a four-month live thing. And I would teach every week, six hours a week. I think now it's like, if you do a four-month course, by month two, everything changes. And month three, everything changes. And by month four, you feel like you're just getting started. So I don't, I think the format is what's broken. I think I might bring it back in a different format, but.

Utsav Somani: There's one more super chat question. Can you ask Abhinav how to start UIUX in college and what timeframe to keep in mind if it is working for me or not?

Abhinav Chhikara - Founder, 10kdesigners: Okay. I would say go beyond just UIUX. Like, think of yourself as a general creative. So definitely go after the thing that you're most interested in. UIUX could be a part of that. What timeframe? I would say from the beginning, you need a paid Cloud Code or Codex subscription. So like, start with that as early as possible. And timeframe would be, you need to be making a product a week. If you're not, a minimum, right? Like, fun stuff, for example. And if you're not able to do that, it's like, are you really... Because in the end, it's not about UIUX, it's about what do you, it's about the process and then what you create at the end. So definitely would suggest doing that. Do you think we should focus on distribution also?

Utsav Somani: Because that also becomes a bottleneck. Because if creating is so easy, then getting market feedback and actual paying users becomes the tough part.

Abhinav Chhikara - Founder, 10kdesigners: True, true. And you know, it's not even as, like, it just feels like, oh yeah, we should create content or whatever. But like, it's not an identity thing, like content creator or not content creator. It's more like, if you are taking all this effort to make something you care about, you do also care about putting it out there in the max volume possible. So yeah, I agree with that.

Utsav Somani: All right, Abhinav, thank you so much for coming on our show. Thank you. Thanks guys. All right folks, moving on to our next guest. We've got Mohit Sudhani. Mohit, welcome to the show. Thank you guys. How are you? Good to have you with us. How's life after exit?

Mohit Sadaani, Co-founder - The Moms Co. & Managing Director, DeVC: Life is good, man. It's been a while now.

Utsav Somani: It's been a while.

Mohit Sadaani, Co-founder - The Moms Co. & Managing Director, DeVC: Exited at 21. Catches up at 24. Yeah, it's been a while. What is happening since then? Life is, well, experimented with being an angel investor, which continues, that you know. Thank you for being an angel investor. I'm a senior at Offline Network, which is very cool. What else? Tried my hand at VC with DVC. That was for about a year and a half. Figured that I really want to go deeper and build a few brands. Now I'm back to a combination of working with two, three brands deeply, building a lot of stuff with AI, very close to what you guys are doing. So I have my agent running around doing stuff, building, deploying, going back to my engineering roots, which is very exciting. I have no idea how to do distribution after creation, which is interesting when you point that out. Otherwise back to investing and working on more ideas. So it's a nice mix of things that make me happy and excited.

Utsav Somani: A lot of the VC knowledge, or at least people say that you need operating knowledge to become a good investor and become a VC. And that's what most founders actually end up doing. So, I mean, from your perspective, what's the real answer why you did not like investing?

Mohit Sadaani, Co-founder - The Moms Co. & Managing Director, DeVC: My personal answer is very different. So why I went in was as I did my engineering investing, I had done about 30 deals by then. I found that what I really enjoyed doing with founders was thinking through strategy, brand building, how do you set up, how do you fundraise and so on. That was exciting. And then as I started in venture VC, it started with the same thing that I was getting to work with founders on all the right topics. And over time, it became a lot more about the fund. So how do we deploy the fund? How do we get returns? And I found that there were consistently many moments where my founder self was at odds with my investor self, because the right answer for the founder is very different from the right answer as an investor. And so that was in conflict consistently. Second was the DVC model in particular, where the idea was we will invest with lots of companies in the front. So we had done over 100 investments by then, and then we double down and work with a few of them. In that I felt like I wasn't getting to go deep with any company. And that model, I didn't enjoy as much. Again, I really enjoyed depth with a few people. So because of those reasons, it wasn't working as much. Third was that family's in Delhi. I want to be in Delhi. The entire team and office and construct was in Bangalore. And I wasn't excited to move to Bangalore yet, even though that seems to be the right answer for a startup in India. So I'm also happy to be here and do more exciting stuff, very flexible time, do what I like. I've played around with content and AI and brand building. So it's more about having free time now and thinking about what I like to do and then going and doing nice side projects to figure it out.

Dhruv Sharma: Mohit, when you think back to the early days of the Mom's Co and everything you see around you now, what's changed? Like how's the landscape different?

Mohit Sadaani, Co-founder - The Moms Co. & Managing Director, DeVC: A few things have changed. I get to say this a lot, right? So we started the Mom's Co exactly 10 years ago, 2016. What changed? E-commerce as penetration didn't exist. So when we started the Mom's Co, there was an inkling of an idea saying, maybe on e-commerce, brands can be built, right? It hadn't happened yet. So DOC wasn't a term. People didn't think of direct to consumer. We had fancy things like DNVB, digitally native vertical brands. That has started popping up, right? So D2C didn't exist. There was an inkling of an idea that says, hey, maybe social media will get you enough brand building distribution. So you can start to actually get to consumers digitally first, which was very new. And because with that, the rails hadn't been built. So I spent three months sitting in my IT team's office trying to get a website up and running. We had to build our own warehouse before warehouse services came. We had to convince contract manufacturers that, hey, take a bet on a small company now because they weren't running after you. So that, the positives of all of that was that we didn't have competition as much, right? So just being available on Amazon meant that we got sales. Doing a little bit on social media well meant that we got eyeballs and we got distribution. I think fast forward to today, what's happened is all the rails have become commonplace. So today, anyone can wake up and actually get a contract manufacturer list on one of these platforms, build up a website on Shopify, get Shiprocket on their shipping. So launching a brand today has become very easy, but breaking through the clutter has become extremely hard. So in a sense, you've gone back to 30 years ago. 30 years ago, I would say what you really needed was great product and distribution. That was a hygiene, great brand, but really you had to crack everything on top of the rails. And so we've come fast forward almost. In between, you had this marketing arbitrage, marketplace arbitrage, tech arbitrage. All that has now gone away. It's gone back to, if you are building in D2C today, you need to have great product, great communication, great portfolio, and then you can have a successful brand and really start and be different from all the rest of them. So the bar on founders has, I think, significantly gone up from 10 years ago.

Utsav Somani: But I think, I mean, the common truth around D2C brands in India is that your advantage typically used to last maybe a few years, which is now, I think, compressed to maybe six months. Because it's so easy to start a brand, like you said. So what in this new age of consumer brands actually becomes the moat for them, apart from a good product, apart from a great story to start off with, when anything can be replicated within five to six months?

Mohit Sadaani, Co-founder - The Moms Co. & Managing Director, DeVC: The good news is not everything can be replicated. And you will see examples in everything, right? So take Snitch as an example. How Snitch scaled up is very few people can replicate inventory management at the scale that they're doing it, despite the massive assortment that they have, right? They manage their own factory, their own cloth, et cetera. So from manufacturing all the way to the many stores that they have, they do a phenomenal job of inventory management. I think that is really hard for many founders apparel, and most people tend to get stuck with unscored inventory. If you look at brand building as an example, very few people built a brand like The Whole Truth and Shashank, right? Or in Moxie and Hecker, right? They took a very sharp positioning, and they really kept building it for their target audience. So despite the product being not that differentiated, or even if differentiated, easy to copy in a few months, the brand building is in such a unique format that it's very hard to copy. And you'll also see like that, I think we're both in dream span, right? Dream sleep, dream span, that actually it is now creating mattresses that solve for sleep. It took them two years to get the product out. Now that product is going to be very hard to replicate because there's a lot of technology, not just in the mattress, but into the app, right? And so they need to do a lot less on the brand or distribution, or the inventory management of it, but the product itself. So I say you have to be hygiene on at least two of product brand distribution. And that hygiene is now D2C hygiene, right? Which is really high cost, but you need to be able to spike on at least one, if not two of those, right? So that's the only way that a moat actually sustains and even with that, you have to keep innovating. The innovation cycle is today far faster and accelerating with AI.

Dhruv Sharma: And when the word brand gets used, of course it can mean everything, it can mean nothing. Now, the thing is everyone has access to the same tools, your distribution advantage also, people have reduced it down to a science. And even if you're a laggard, you can catch up pretty fast. So again, within the realm of brand building, what are the differentiators? I have one other question for you. I think the conventional wisdom right now is that all brands have to be like, the founders to be the face of the brand. Do you think there's any possibility of founder actually anonymously building a great brand today?

Mohit Sadaani, Co-founder - The Moms Co. & Managing Director, DeVC: Yeah, it's actually on founder brand building, I'll go the opposite route from what I said earlier. I think the Momsco was one of the first founder brands in the country, right? And we, back then took on AME and made it, we didn't ask Malika anything. She was the face of the brand. She was asking, responding to constant questions. She wasn't in the advertising, but she was very well known as the face. And the reason we did that was because the Momsco was built out of her genuine need. She was solving for moms like her. And so there was very authentic communication when she started talking, right? We even did this big ad campaign, which went on TV with Malika as the face. So again, that time it was pathbreaking, clutter breaking, and so it made sense. Fast forward to today, everyone is building a brand. I think what founders tend to miss is it works if as a founder, you really stand for what the brand, what it stands for, and you can then start to scale it up. Otherwise, no. If you are a founder who is saying, hey, I need to founder content because I have access to content. I have an agency who will do something for me. It doesn't work as much unless the voice is authentic and the virtuous cycle of, hey, this person really solves for this brand and that's why I trust the brand. That makes sense, right? And then on top of that, you can create clutter breaking content. Fantastic. Then it works. Then everything you put out there actually justifies and builds the brand. But that's very hard to do, right? Typically, I don't think, if I go back again to my brand examples from earlier, and I had Momsco in there. Momsco, Wholetooth, Moxi, all founders at brands have a very sharp positioning of the brand, which is almost equal to the value that the founder stands for, right? All of them are saying, actually all three started by saying, the current package good did not work for me and my family. I have higher standards. I think we as Indians as a society should have higher standards. And look, here's me promoting the same, right? If you can create that very tight linkage between, not just the look and feel, but also the value system, then it tends to work. And otherwise it's much harder.

Utsav Somani: And I mean, the category that you were operating in, I mean, that's a very high trust category, right? I mean, mother care and baby care products. So how, I mean, other examples that you've seen maybe across the D2C universe where people are operationalizing trust in different and unique ways.

Mohit Sadaani, Co-founder - The Moms Co. & Managing Director, DeVC: There's a bunch of them. So I mentioned Nikita and Moxi. It's not such a high trust category. Right, in hair. People have been doing shampoos and hair products for a long time. She's building out by saying, hey, I have curly hair, which was unsolved, right? So yes, little less on the value, but very sharp. Hey, here is a visual look and feel of what I think you should do. I think that is working well. Actually, it's an interesting question. I have to think about who are the people there. I would say underneath, obviously Kushal's done a great job. She has done it on the back of humor and distribution, her own social media distribution, which works well. Right, so it may not be very values driven, but it is a personality I can associate with, right? Kirti, they've used very well with Hyphen, who's done that. Again, not so much values-based, but here is a personality. Kirti is someone who's out there, ambitious, and these are ambitious products. So they've used that. It's not as much there about the value system, but really at least a personality, right? So if you have, I think, personality with distribution, that could be another lens that you can take. The reason I don't bring that up for founders as much is because very few founders have that kind of distribution unless you're an influencer already.

Utsav Somani: And what about influencer-led brands? So recently, I think there's One8 by Virat Kohli and Abhishek made a lot of noise. I mean, the sales were crazy apparently.

Mohit Sadaani, Co-founder - The Moms Co. & Managing Director, DeVC: Yes, but I mean, it's a disservice if you put Virat Kohli as an influencer. I mean, as a famous celebrity-led brand, basically. Yes, I mean, also very to his core, right? So you're saying Virat is an exceptional athlete who demands performance, and so we are going to create a brand that demands performance. Works well. Even HRX, I think, with Hrithik has worked well. I don't remember the brand, but I know Tiger also has one, which is not doing as well. And so there, I think the association is far shorter. You need to have that cultish personality work really well with the brand for it to get to scale. Also, One8 has had great products and an amazing big bang to start. TBD, right? How it does in the future, we don't know. It is a tough category to be in.

Utsav Somani: Yeah, I think the repeats will sort of define it, but do we think that India will produce like a Kardashian-level scale of a celebrity-led brand soon?

Mohit Sadaani, Co-founder - The Moms Co. & Managing Director, DeVC: I think that's much harder because we don't have the Kardashian-level fan following. I am shocked when, you know, I've traveled to US a couple of times now, you see the amount of coverage that the Kardashians get or the celebrities get. I think there are people that are far more celebrity-obsessed, and it is also a very, you know, sort of monodimensional culture. Other than the blues and reds, you have the same cultural practices, same language. So you'll have one celebrity over there who is massed across the entire nation, and it's 350 million people who is a spending population, that everyone can spend almost, anywhere from 10 to 100 times what Indians can spend. And in there, I was saying, yes, we have massive population, but it's also almost 30 different states and union territories, celebrities who are there with multiple different languages. They have different, unique aspects. And so even the best celebrity in India, if you drill that down to add a category level, how many consumers you think they have who will be willing to spend for that category, yes, you get to create brands, but it will be limited by how big brands can become in India. And brands in US can become much bigger, much faster, because there is such a higher spending population.

Dhruv Sharma: I think maybe it also has to do with the innovation engine. So I'll give you an example. Like everyone's now talking about how Nike has faltered in the recent years, right? With their over-indexing on D2C during COVID, snapping up retailer relationships and that temporary pivot to athleisure away from their sports heritage. When they did that, they lost all of their best designers for a good two, three innovation cycles and On swooped in and Hoka swooped in and they just pulled those designers and now they're innovating a lot faster than Nike is and can because those designers are gone. But even on the athletics brands, I think it's incredible that we have HRX and then we have Barnet because otherwise you'll see Jordan, join hands with Nike, you'll see Dwayne Johnson work with Under Armour, but here we have an entirely different model coming up. Yeah.

Mohit Sadaani, Co-founder - The Moms Co. & Managing Director, DeVC: I mean, it's incredible, right? I think we do finally have, you do have celebrities and brands who are taking bets on each other. So this will grow. I have no doubt you will get big brands. If you are able to create a category where there is a very sharp understanding between the product and the brand, I think it can work better. Like some of the most successful brands in the US have been celebrities and alcohol brands. I don't know if we'll ever see that. Just as a culture, we don't look as highly upon alcohol brands in general. So I don't know that'll happen. Makeup people have tried with Katrina and Kay. That's doing okay. So we'll get there. It's a question of how soon.

Utsav Somani: And you've spoken about D2C infrastructure. I mean, selling like picks and towels during the gold rush. So any key new infrastructure developments for the D2C brands that you wanna highlight? Any cool companies?

Mohit Sadaani, Co-founder - The Moms Co. & Managing Director, DeVC: There's a lot happening on the AI front, which is interesting. So today from the angel investing front, I'm speaking to a bunch of companies who are doing everything AI. So you will do, one I spoke to recently is doing AI-led video creation. You go from video into, we will now run ads for you and we will also do outcome-based pricing. Now, which is very surprising. So you're taking these all the way from founders who are now innovating and creating their own shops based on either OpenCore or MS, you know, or any of these solutions to shops that are coming in and saying, we will take one function of your company and we'll fully automate it as long as you have good data. And at the end of it, you don't need that entire team. We just need a small support team. So I don't know if you saw the really interesting discussion on Medvi, M-E-D-V-I. The fascinating GLP-based company in the US. It went to $400 million of sales in two years and the entire company is run by two brothers and agents.

Utsav Somani: Oh yeah, they were creating fake, it's Facebook profiles of doctors, right?

Mohit Sadaani, Co-founder - The Moms Co. & Managing Director, DeVC: Yes, they created a bunch of fake profiles for doctors. So fake videos from Hugging Face who are putting it up. All of the ops were automated, everything else was third party. So it's fascinating. I think it shows you what is possible. And then of course, you put the right guardrails around it and don't go berserk so that you have class action lawsuits. You don't need to go all the way there, but it's possible. So to me, the next wave of infra that will happen is how much of what a brand does can become AI-led. And so the first thing I pointed out, which is infra is getting common. And so there's a little bit of brand and taste. You will start to find that it's even harder to discern in the future. I'm looking at AngelDex today, everything looks like a great deck. Cloud is good at making documents. So if you can do that and you can generate insights that will at least search the internet and come up with a very good proposal, it's much harder for you to really know, even as a founder, whether what you're saying is something the consumer really wants and they'll come back or is it just because your team effectively has given you good answers. You find more conviction and you go down a path that may not work out in the future. And so it's much easier because of so much stuff that can be done by founders. Who knows how much of it is going to be high quality and have a meaningful business outcome.

Dhruv Sharma: And speaking of outcomes, Mohit, you were one of the first exits in this segment.

Utsav Somani: And now- And a massive exit.

Dhruv Sharma: And a massive exit. And then, help us make sense of the mega exits that are happening today with Katlin, Innovest, I'm sorry, Minimalist.

Utsav Somani: Nutrition, Minimalist, a bunch of them.

Speaker 6: Yeah.

Utsav Somani: And you're seeing all these large old FMCG houses come into these new age brands as investors also.

Mohit Sadaani, Co-founder - The Moms Co. & Managing Director, DeVC: Yeah. Both, right? It's a cycle that is not old or that's not new. This has been happening. A lot of these guys, for all the way from Kellogg's and Mars to Unilever globally, have all been built on the back of acquisitions. Every few decades, your new consumers don't want the older brands. So there are some brands who reinvigorate themselves and become newish, but there are a lot more that people don't want. What's also happened, if I give you my house as an example, I have me, my wife, and two daughters. We today use four different face washes. We use four different shampoos. I don't remember having any of these products also as I was growing up, right? We just use one product in the house. What's happened today is thanks to social media information and now with AI, everybody can figure out what's the right product for me. My daughter had some acne popping up, so we took a photo of hers, put it up on chat and said, hey, solve this. And it gave me a routine for her. And she's 12 years old and she already had a face wash and a face cream, which works for her skin tone and her age. We never had access to that. And so two things are happening in parallel in the consumer space. You have the younger generation who has consistently said, I don't want my parents' product, I want something newer. This happens every two, three decades, which is why you see newer brands pop up all the time. The accelerant to that is now with social media first and with AI, people are also coming and saying, hey, even within this sub-segment of people my age, I want the product that's right for me. And so you have people of their ages having multiple different brands. The third layer, if you just add on top of that, is just consumption in India is going crazy. Out of all the things that are going up as GDP per capita increases, beauty tends to shoot up. So if you speak to anyone in the beauty industry today or in the foods industry, they'll say packaged foods and packaged beauty will go very quickly from where we are now to five, 10X as the sizes of the industry. So if you say these are massive industries that are going to grow up, we as legacy brands really don't have answers for today's youth. Where do we go? We will go and see wherever people have been acquired or wherever people have got some PMF, they've got to some scale, and I will acquire them because I think those companies post acquisition have already found some PMF and have an audience which will help me take it five, 10X. That's a fantastic outcome for everybody.

Dhruv Sharma: Do you see the legacy brand taking the premiumization story into tier two, tier three India as well?

Mohit Sadaani, Co-founder - The Moms Co. & Managing Director, DeVC: They're trying. It is happening. It's, I think premiumization at a different level, right? So I'll give you an example. When we launched the mom's company, we were at two and a half times the price of Johnson's, J&J, who was obviously the mass market leader. Darbar launched at a 20% premium. Himalaya launched at that price point. And so what's happening is while we were premiumizing tier one largely, we had some in tier two and tier three, but that was a small subset of the population, right? Most of it was tier one. You had the Darbar variety of them going after the tier two and tier three and premiumizing people over there in Johnson's. Now that's happening everywhere. The premiumization story today in food, for example, is everything was organic earlier than is now protein-infused or electrolyte-infused, right, or better nutrients. And this everyone is doing, including all the legacy players. They are doing both, which is launching premium versions of current brands and launching newer brands, right? This will happen. I would argue that the biggest thing that's happening in apparel is someone like a Zodio, right, or a Vmart, who is premiumizing the apparel markets in tier two and tier three, right? The option that the local population there had was whatever I get, right, unbranded typically, but from there you're going to a much more premium Zodio, which is a 400-rupee shirt, but it's much more premium from where we are today.

Utsav Somani: And as a final closing question, Mohit, where does one go for inspiration? I wanted to ask this question to Abhinav also, but it seems like you went for a trip to China also. Yeah. Canton Fair.

Mohit Sadaani, Co-founder - The Moms Co. & Managing Director, DeVC: Abhinav, was that an inspiration for you? I did go to China and Canton Fair. I went to get inspired by what's happening to the consumer there, and I came back very excited and very disillusioned on both. So I came back very disillusioned because I figured the scale at which they are now doing technology, we are very far behind. So while we really hope to create the manufacturing plus one, and not just get a product and white label in India, I think it's going to take us some time. Also, Indian needs are not that different, right? The best cases I've heard for electronics, for example, to be differentiated in India is that we need something that works with a power supply. And we have inconsistent electrical grids. It fluctuates a lot on the voltage. And so products that are just imported can get spoiled. You need a little bit better. So you get that, you see the AI innovation and see, hey, that's not really happening. But on the consumption side of it, we are leading the way in 10 minutes everything. There's a reason quick commerce is buzzing across multiple verticals now. China is falling suit. They are now finding beating that game. So my sense is on the consumption story. There's a lot more to get inspired by in the West to see how much people consume and how much they can do, which is why it's, even if you were disbelieving brands earlier, you can't be anymore. And you're seeing it happen live in front of you. On the hardcore innovation around deep tech, manufacturing electronics, there's a lot for us to learn. There are whole ecosystems that are built up, which take time to build. And I went and met a robotics founder was giving an example of what happened with them, which is fascinating. And I think lots to learn from. So when now seven years ago, China decided here robotics is gonna be our next big wave. It went as a mandate to all the province heads or chief ministers. And so the guy I met said, I was brought back from the US where I was studying. My salary was paid for by the Shanghai government. They've given me 5,000 square feet of working space for free with free electricity. And we are now 10 co-founders and they pay half of all of our salaries. And this they've done across the entire ecosystem. So today, if I want to build a robot for a use case, it is much like smartphones. I pick up the phone and I get a visual language model. I get an actuator, I get wheels, I get a hand because there are already suppliers for all the different parts that I would need in robotics. That sort of an ecosystem is really hard to compete with. So it's gonna take us time and dedicated effort to get there. Mohit, dominating and embodying what people are doing.

Dhruv Sharma: Dominating and embodied AI is actually a part of the five-year plan now. So it's a national project and you're absolutely right. The provinces have actually been entrusted with training data for physical AI. They think it's too important to just leave it to the private sector. Mohit, I wanna get one parting shot from you because you said quick commerce and we had a headstart there and now China is catching up. Yesterday was Sunday and I went to my neighborhood supermarket and I was spooked by what I saw, right? Because this place used to be thriving two or three years ago and yesterday the scene was apocalyptic, right? Like I'm in from five checkout aisles down to two. They've reoriented, like all the shelf space is now occupied. It's almost like they're just gonna stay around long enough to liquidate dead stock, pay off liabilities and that's it. There will be a final trip to that store very, very soon. So my question being, how do you foresee the future of modern trade and even general trade in the age of quick com?

Mohit Sadaani, Co-founder - The Moms Co. & Managing Director, DeVC: Bill, see modern trade solved a particular problem, right? Which is in the 90s especially when the mall started coming up in India, they were solving a problem where we had very low good cable TV. We had low access to entertainment. We didn't have that many places to really go to and hang out. We never had public spaces. So where would people go on the weekend to enjoy some air conditioning was the mall, right? There you would end up buying, watching a movie and shopping stuff and doing grocery, right? Largely, that's what you would do. Today, in today's heat, everybody has access to and who has can spend, has a fancy car but doesn't want to travel. They have AC at home. They get their groceries home delivered, everything on e-commerce and you get great movies on OTT. So it doesn't solve for entertainment. So the number of use cases to go out that the amount of effort that you need to do needs to be commensurate with the rewards that you get. Very simple. Today, that reward equation doesn't exist. What you will see happen, I think a lot more over time is you will get far more unique experiences that people are willing to pay for. That's why this is happening that people aren't stepping out to the malls. People are spending 25,000 bucks to go to a Coldplay concert and they are spending 50, 60,000 rupees to go for a cricket match, right? Which is unheard of before. So experiences are changing too. This is going to be one memorable, maybe even Instagram or the cold memory experience which I will really pay for, I will travel. But the day-to-day occasion of, hey, I need to go buy something has become so hygiene to do it from the house. I don't need to travel anymore. I can do enough of my discovery and try and buy in the house. So why would I leave? I have much better ways to spend time. So there's no going back.

Utsav Somani: All right, Mohit, this was fun. Thank you so much for coming on our show.

Mohit Sadaani, Co-founder - The Moms Co. & Managing Director, DeVC: Thank you. See you guys.

Utsav Somani: All right, listeners, that's it from us today. There's a mini celebration for the Indian Startup Ecosystem. The seventh New Age Tech IPO went live today, Turtle Mint, it's an insurance tech play backed by Bloom Ventures and Nexus and few others. And they've had a decent listing today. So something for the ecosystem to celebrate. And yeah, we'll see you on Wednesday at four o'clock. Thank you for tuning in. Bye-bye.