Dhruv Sharma: Hey there, listeners. Happy Monday. This is stream 144. Utsav is back, and I think we're gonna straight away dive into our first guest segment. Today, we're speaking with Pranav Pai of 3one4 Capital. Let's welcome Pranav.

Pranav Pai (3one4 Capital): Thanks, guys. Great to be here.

Dhruv Sharma: Pranav, well, so, I mean, maybe let's just start with getting a sense from you as to what's going on in the ecosystem, what's going on in the fund, what is keeping you busy most for the most part of the, you know, for the most part of the day.

Pranav Pai (3one4 Capital): Oh, yeah. It's fun times, dude. So, obviously, AI is going through, like, this whole big conversation about, is it superintelligence? Is it should it be regulated? Is it now weaponized? Which country is going to win? It's a race suddenly. Before it was not. We're all combined to superintelligence. Now we're not. So I think

Utsav Somani: We've started off straight with you. I thought we're gonna do a warm up, LA.

Pranav Pai (3one4 Capital): I mean but, you know, that's top of mind for everyone. Obviously, you know, everyone in tech, everyone in VC, it affects everything. So I think that's that's definitely an evolving conversation. It's confusing. I've never seen such a big difference of opinion on something technological, that's global at the same time. So it's a really weird time to be in tech. So it's good. Weird is good. And, of course, I think most large economies are reindustrializing. So it's, like, a whole geopolitical question of, okay, so supply chains, whole chain, sovereignty. And I think India, for the first time in a long time, is getting very serious about having its own competitive advantages tested against that very brutal reality. So we're onshoring semiconductors, specialty chemicals, pharmaceuticals, metals, rare earths. Like, we're going across layer by layer, and there's a national mission for everything now from EVs to quantum computing. Right? So the government's participating in that reindustrialization, not just making announcements and hoping for the best. That's a big change. So I think that's leading to direct effects on what founders are talking about, what the best founders are thinking of starting for the next company. So that's a profound change. And third, of course, for, VCs who've been around for a while like us, you're closing a new fund. You're getting an IPO done. That remains that that doesn't matter AI or whatever. It doesn't matter. That's part of the job from day one. So that continues. So I think we're in the midst of all of it. It's fun times for sure.

Utsav Somani: And you touched upon a very interesting topic, sovereignty and onshoring, and you've done a semiconductor investment yourself. So as a fund, like, how do you play these waves, or how do you play these trends?

Pranav Pai (3one4 Capital): Yeah. I think, it's important to be out of the wave when you're doing research. So we don't want a policy announcement necessarily to create a business that, hopefully, is a longer term thing than that. Because policies come and go. Right? The announcements come and change. Visions visions keep shifting around. But, I think we've been doing semi for, like, nine years now. So we're doing it even before there was a, you know, government announcement on on fabs and so on. So India has been good at design. I think making chips here is new. I think going full stack as a country in semiconductors is very new. I'm glad we're starting with, like, 28 nanometer nodes and so on because that's where the bulk of the market is in India. But, we also have the world's best companies having tens of thousands of people right here in Bangalore. Like, just down the street from where I work, NVIDIA Broadcom, Qualcomm, Apple's chip team, they're all Google's chip team, they're all here. Right? So I think we have the talent for sure, but now government R&D, universities, fabs, everything stepping up and slowly that vendor ecosystem gets built. That's the exciting news. So we have opportunities in metal. We have opportunities in sputtering. We have opportunities in electronics, the guys who will make the boards after the chips are fab. I I think you spoke to, Sachin at Scimplify. He's a specialty chemicals manufacturer. He's getting orders from some some of these fabs for the washing liquids and so on. Right? So you just start this whole ecosystem because you moved a dozen fabs into the country. It's a good example of how reindustrialization really kicks through so many second- and third-order consequences. So fun times. I think it's good for the country that this should have happened earlier, but it's happening now at least.

Dhruv Sharma: You've written about something called the whole chain opportunity, Pranav. Let's go a little deeper on that.

Pranav Pai (3one4 Capital): Of course. Of course. So that's the whole chain in a nutshell. Every large economy India is now a top five economy, $4.1 trillion GDP. It's going to 10 for sure, whether it's twelve years, fifteen years, ten years. That's the only question. But as you double GDP and add, like, $6 trillion in the next, you know, say, decade plus, right, So many things have to change for that incremental value addition to keep growing at that scale. So in simple words, what got us from two to four, which is my ten years in 3one4 Capital, is not the same things that get you from four to 10. You need, of course, the same things to continue consumption, growth, financialization. You also need more advanced aspects of economic growth. You need better wages. You need more specialization. And, of course, hopefully, you reduce dependencies on the rest of the world in a time when the world is like this. So I think, whole chain our whole chain thesis came out of that very interesting observation. It affects literally the thinking across the entire supply chain and multiple supply chains at once. So for example, the two biggest things weighing down the Indian rupee are not the Central Bank of India or what the Fed does. Of course, the Fed affects everything. But, it's also why we're importing a $130 billion net of oil, and then the second biggest import is $70 billion of gold when India has already the largest hoard of gold in in private citizens' hands. Right? So we have structural vulnerabilities, and that affects everything from the currency to what the risk free rate is, in a hurdle rate you when you guys are raising a fund. Right? So, because everything is interlinked, good policy, sound investments, and then, therefore, what founders build because there's so many step downs. Everything can change. Everything can go to the next level. So I'm not surprised, therefore, when we first saw the whole chain opportunity in 2019, 2020, five years later, even the prime minister is talking about space tech and semiconductors and so on. Right? It takes time to permeate, but then it becomes a clueism quite quickly. So that's a nutshell of what we're seeing and, of course, what we're deploying and how we're building companies. That's a more interesting consequence of what we wrote.

Utsav Somani: And talking about building companies, India Deep Tech Alliance is also deploying capital into serious deep-tech companies. India is having a deep tech moment right now. Tell us about the work, that you do at India Deep Tech Alliance.

Pranav Pai (3one4 Capital): Of course. I think, it's another good example of industry stepping up, IDTA in the India Deep Tech Alliance. It's a bunch of private investors and strategic corporations coming together to say, we are going to invest in Indian Deep Tech. We're gonna support the that commercialization from happening, from R&D to commercialization. And then the larger companies, NVIDIA, the large IT companies, so on, who joined us, will be customers and buyers one day, hopefully. So that again, the whole chain, as you would, of private industry stepping up as the government announces national mission, Semicon 2.0, etcetera. I think it's those both both phases need to meet, for that to be a reality. And I think it's fantastic now finally after fifteen years of trying, that Indian deep tech founders have so many more interested participants supporting them from the outside. Right? So it's not just capital. It's not just policy. It's not just a manufacturer. It's a whole community. It's a whole ecosystem. And the interesting thing here is, guys, that as more Indians come back to India, right, obviously, visas and situations affect affect those decisions, the landing places that they have are much more numerous. There's much wider scope of opportunity. You know, when I came back ten years more than ten years back now, it was mostly consulting or, you know, there's a few ecommerce companies. Right? If you want to work in a Google type environment. Now it's, like, fourteen, fifteen other areas, and they're all absorbing the best talent. So I think IDD is also not just a funding and customer procurement window. It's also a talent organization that helps patch global talent coming back to India and hopefully get them running, much faster now.

Dhruv Sharma: Pranav, you spoke about reindustrialization. I mean, some company some countries are reindustrializing. Some countries like ours are industrializing in a sense, perhaps even for the first time in a in a in a, you know, in a tangible way. And then you also spoke about pressure on the rupee. How do you think startups will contribute to the export basket, you know, ten, fifteen, twenty years down the line?

Pranav Pai (3one4 Capital): Oh, yeah. Great question. So, historically, we've always had a net deficit. Right? Our biggest exporters have been value added services, like IT and, you know, engineering services being the front runners. The net deficit was always around $150 billion or whatever. Right? And that's a big hole to to patch. We actually wrote a a report a few quarters back that the deficit is now less than $50 billion because goods exports has increased. Apple is manufacturing yours. Samsung is manufacturing yours. That's a huge step up in goods export. But, also, of course, services, IT especially has been a very consistent compounder in exports. But we're also hopefully making more things here that nets off that final 50,000,000,000. Right? Because it's not gonna happen just by exporting more. You also make more here to export less. So I think all that combined means by 2029, 2030, by our estimate, you'll actually have a net off, meaning net export and net import are both, you know, near zero. Right? And when that happens, suddenly the pressure on the rupee goes away. Right? And with the central bank that has $600 billion of reserves like ours does, it's pretty healthy, widely profitable, the RBI, if it was a stock you put on. This suddenly gives them a new negotiation leverage in the market. And, you know, India's ratings, everything will from b, triple b to hopefully go to double beta and b eventually. So I think the next five years, very interesting re ratings on the positive side for India. Of course, if policy doesn't stay consistent, if, you know, leadership keeps moving, if, you know, they keep removing taxes all the time, there's a lot of invariably, unfortunately sorry, variability in the policy environment sometimes, contingent on that, obviously. But if those things stay constant and so far they have, I think we're up for a very interesting ride at 2930. So that's an interesting change, I think. And, definitely, from a startup perspective, more manufacturing going global, more Indian software, AI going global, and making more things here. Hopefully, it's not a substitution, but its capability is being installed here. Right? So you don't have to do those things. I think those will be very important trends to back.

Utsav Somani: Staying with the forex, element for a bit, you're on a GIFT City fund. How do you think about returns? Like, say, you say I mean, it's looking very positive for the Indian group team for the next five years or maybe even ten years, if we hit the numbers that you mentioned. How do you, like, I mean, have these conversations with LPs about these forex movements when they're looking at India?

Pranav Pai (3one4 Capital): Yeah. I mean, it makes sense because, see, we're VC is a unique structure where you you are ten year money, right, at the minimum. So you're not, like, trading on day to day for exchanges. But overall, so far, the rupees always usually gone down compared to the dollar. Thankfully, Indian IRRs have been reasonably high if you are in the top 20% of Indian VC funds. And the performance has merited taking that risk, let's put it bluntly. GIFT has made that structure much more efficient. GIFT has given incentives with global capital, so that's why they're coming through there. It's also given more stable policy, which means that they don't change too many things too often. Overall, therefore, the sentiment of investing in India through gift, therefore, is much more stable. But I think the rupee has to stabilize and I think it soon will. I think the rupee has to be a currency the world takes seriously, which will soon happen. And I also think this government has done very well to set up free trade agreements and so on and integrate India beyond just doing trade deals and ports and whatever, it's and visas and all that, that's fine. But long term ten year deals, hundreds of billions of dollars invested, trillion dollars of trade overall, That's like stuff you, honestly, a VC can't do, like one investor cannot do, right? That's a country taking a point of view and delivering on it. So, I think all that has very positive impacts on folks like us who bring in global capital. We're also distributing capital. So you see a lot of money has gone out of the public markets. Global investors have made a lot of profit in India investing in the public markets and the private markets. PEVC returns from IPOs is an all time high. So I think overall, it's a good sentiment for investors. I think we need to do more to keep the same IRR that high as the currency what does whatever it does. So in the end, net IRR is what everyone's investing for. Therefore, the performance pressure is clear as well.

Dhruv Sharma: Pranav, I'm gonna maybe steer sideways a little bit. So last year, I'd come to to your offices to meet your brother, Sidharth, and I noticed, like, you know, you guys have your conference rooms, rooms are named after Indian luminaries. You know, the your the choice of selection of books in your shelves, you know, just Yep. Books from around here. What what has it been like to, you know, build one of the fastest growing homegrown funds? How has your experience been mobilizing capital from the domestic LP ecosystem?

Pranav Pai (3one4 Capital): Yeah. Of course. Thank you. Thank you. Of course. We're not the only ones. There's so many good firms. I think, you know, there were a lot of changes in the last ten years. So when we launched, we were operators ourselves. We didn't see too many operators in VC. We saw a big gap in the culture between capital and and the founder. So we we set up this firm to patch a lot of those things. Right? And I think we did quite well. Obviously, it led to better performance. I mean, it would have been pointless, to do all that work if it didn't lead to better net IRR, and it did. So the starting thesis was good, and we were able to execute and deliver. I think two things that stood out for me, with respect to the question you asked. One is there wasn't much local local capital, investing in the winners. Right? The ecommerce, food, ride hailing, food delivery, all the good stuff that came out of that 2010 to 2015 bucket, before we started. So one of the most important things that didn't get discussed very often is why isn't India Inc participating in the creation of the next big corporations. Right? Startups have become, large public companies. I think there were many structural problems there. There were also many human problems because a lot of the best VC firms in India were global. They weren't raising in India. How does a bank or an insurance company are participating if the structure is in Mauritius or whatever else? Right? So, like, starting problems there, cultural problems, of course, because these are all very different teams. The thesis were written somewhere else in a different time zone. So I think, therefore, you took a long bet also that, India would have to have large homegrown firms, not just global VCs. Of course, they're important. But homegrown firms that take a point of view and say, we're going to build these kind of companies, and we're going to do it every vintage in a disciplined manner. So I think that's what we had the privilege of doing. Ten years later, I think that top 10 list of Indian VCs, the homegrown firms, etcetera, is all well established. What I'm more interested in is what keeps the top 10 to stay top 10. I don't think a lot of them the partners are aging out. Their LPs, you know, the LB composition has shifted. A lot of them have to come to India to raise now, not just global. Lots of funds of funds are merging up and so on. So there's a lot of change in the global LP pool as well. So I think things don't stay constant over decades. A lot of things change. I think in the next ten years, we're going to see three very important things. I think many more smaller firms start up in India. That's true. You see micro VCs and so on. And that's good. Founders get more options. You also see a lot of concentration in the bigger platform. So both is true at once, which is therefore tough to be in the middle. And third, I think, Local Capital now has seen these companies go IPO. They understand their governance, their reporting. It's not just you know, college kids building toys. They're building proper cash flow businesses. So I think that evidence is now laid down, and I will see much more serious India Inc participation. They'll launch their own corporate VCs. They'll acquire companies. They'll take, you know, strategic positions in the company much early. What for example, he wrote it with Ather. And today, Ather is such a great example of a good engineering startup going public. You see a lot more of that happening in other startups as well. So I think, overall, it's a good opportunity. I would say it's also tough enough to be a VC, much, much tougher. Monday meetings are much more competitive. Founders having more options obviously means winning the best deals is harder, not easier. But that's all good I think that's all good for the country. Right? And I think good for founders overall.

Utsav Somani: And you as a fund have always pushed for transparency also. Like, you mentioned your IRR numbers and, MOIC numbers from Dhan and Darwinbox as well. Mhmm.

Dhruv Sharma: As

Utsav Somani: a fund, how do you think about rightsizing the fund? Because that becomes your strategy. Right?

Pranav Pai (3one4 Capital): Yeah. I personally don't like putting those numbers on a blog, but, you know, other words are usually loud for inside three one four. So it's good. I think it's good to show that when it works, it really works. We also publish downside. Right? When some things didn't work out, some things go wrong, you know, be honest. So both it works both ways. I think from a, from a what's changing and to answer your second question, we believe, you know, a little bit about the outcome of India the outcomes in India rather, is still not as publicly transparent as it should be. You'll even see some global platforms very recently, last four, five days, come down in fund size. I don't wanna name them, but you saw that in the news. I think, number one, just the sheer orbital velocity of the US market because it's you know, that's the largest market on the planet. The c round is at a billion dollars pre. They're talking about IPOing at a trillion dollars, when they go public. I think it's just another stratosphere, man. You can't come no one can compete with that, not even the Chinese. So we don't therefore size funds for those kind of outcomes. What you can underwrite in India is still good companies go public between 2 and 10,000,000,000. Right? They can become profitable in seven to eight years. They can grow to we are seeing companies get to 100,000,000 in three to four years now, revenue, not GMV and so on. Real revenue. So I think, therefore, what's changed in India is positive. It's better. You're able to underwrite faster growth. You're able to underwrite profitability. You're also able to underwrite a sensible public market. Right? They're not pricing with a 100,000,000,000, on on no revenue no no cash flows, no profitability. They're also not going to crush you and say 500,000,000 for something that should be at 2,000,000,000. Right? So you get a sensible window, therefore. And, therefore, at IPOs between $2 billion and $10 billion, we think a sub-$250 million early-stage fund does phenomenally well. Above $400 million is when it starts becoming, okay, multi stage and so on, the pressure starts. Also, you know, we get a thousand deals a year now. If if I don't know if Anurag has spoken on your show, but if he has, he'll tell you just the sheer velocity of innovation being attempted. When, first year was thousand. Today, one month is thousand. Right? It's it's another level entirely. So being selective in a tidal wave of innovation being attempted is also challenging. So I think, therefore, if we're hunting for the top 10 deals of the year, if we're building that two to 10 range, I think the fund size we're at, around $225–250 million, that's perfect for what we do.

Dhruv Sharma: Pranav, can you possibly tease out some of the startups that are pitching? Like, what are you seeing in physical AI in robotics? I know I'm gonna paraphrase a little bit, but you have this view that if you can solve for India, you can actually, like, constraints for India. You can really build a globally competitive business out of that. So give us a sense of what gets discussed in, you know, Monday partner meetings and so on.

Pranav Pai (3one4 Capital): Yeah. Of course. I'll give you, like, hard examples in the physical side. So, let's take robotics. A lot of the robotics talent in India has worked in auto before, specifically. And because the auto industry in India has roots. Right? We make 40 to 50,000,000 million, you know, two wheelers, three wheelers, four wheelers, all of it put together every year. We're third only to the US and China. So it's it's really scale industry. Now twenty twenty five percent is exports, two wheelers especially. So now that the world's biggest companies are manufacturing the entire auto supply chain in India, right, from components to the finished product, the engineers who've worked in those supply chains, the manufacturing line managers, the tier two vendors even, they've all reached this global capability, global spec. When they look at now humanoid robots, drones, you know, these servo motors, these aluminum hinges, all kind of weird new composite materials being needed because lightweight performance, etcetera. They all they're not starting this with ground zero. They're starting with this. Okay. We've seen the best. What does the best in this new area look like? Right? And so when they attempt innovation, it's not starting from zero. It's very important. Like, you you guys are like me. You'll remember when the best founders started in twenty fifteen, sixteen. They're mostly mostly IIT, MBB, whatever. Right? Starting on zero saying, okay. We're smart. We'll figure it out. In deep tech, in in in robotics, in physical AI, you can't just be smart guys who figure it out. You you have to come from some domain experience. And finally, that's available in India. That's available at the seed stage. It's available in the founding pool. They have the confidence to go raise a $2 million seed round and try and be the best whatever they want to be. So I think that's a fundamental shift. Right? And I'm seeing that in all these areas. I'm seeing that even in AI-led, you know, manufacturing QA, which is like this horrendously boring, difficult manual process in the entire manufacturing line, which is literally look at the ice cream, the biscuits, the gearboxes, whatever's coming out of the line and see if it's okay. Right? That's what human beings are employed to do still all over the world, not just India. How does that work with vision and robotics and so on and so forth? How does that work for a faster line where it's no human beings, dark factories, etcetera. Right? So fundamentally, new challenges being brought up and Indian founders stepping up to solve them for Indian companies first, not for a European company, not for a Japanese company. So I think that's a big shift. I didn't see much of that ten years back. In fact, I didn't see any of this ten years back. I'm seeing a lot more of it now, and the founder talent base has also changed. So both turning at the same time, the market needing this and the founders being available. That's a fantastic, observation to see.

Utsav Somani: Pranav, as a final closing one, I see, you've got some posters from space, and our listeners love

Pranav Pai (3one4 Capital): Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Utsav Somani: Talking hearing about space founders. But Yeah. We've done reusable launch vehicles. We've covered, I mean, people building satellite imagery and many other things as well. So what are you seeing? What will be the next wave? Are we gonna start mining, on asteroids very soon from India or making factories?

Pranav Pai (3one4 Capital): We don't have much rare earths in India. We have few. Not not all of it. So So, hopefully, you'll catch a few satellites. But, you know, this is these are, patent drawings from the first patents from the 1970s. Three big lessons. I walk into this room every day. I remember, IP matters. It matters that you own the IP. It matters that you build on top of it. It's an ecosystem compounding. We didn't have it. Unfortunately, India was a poor country, etcetera. You guys know the details. But it reminds me that, you know, it's never too late to start. Right? And I I'm so glad in space, especially, we built on top of the legacy of ISRO and now 400 space tech companies. Only the third country in the world to have a private company that can go to orbit after US and China. So I think so many firsts. What I'm hoping is more government business for the space tech companies, more government procurement. NASA famously gave $14 billion of revenue to SpaceX in their first ten years. If you get even $1 billion of revenue over ten years for our space tech companies from government, I will consider it a big victory. So I think technology is there. The founders are there. The customer has to come. The government has to come. I think that's gonna start this year. So very, very optimistic that we'll see many of these verticals like space being built out in the next ten years.

Utsav Somani: Awesome, Pranav. Thank you so much for coming on our show. Very inspiring, note to end the segment on. Thank you.

Pranav Pai (3one4 Capital): Good luck. Love what you're doing at The Offline Network, and, hoping to hear many many bits of good news from you guys as well.

Utsav Somani: Thank you.

Pranav Pai (3one4 Capital): Alright. Take care.

Utsav Somani: Alright, listeners. We're moving on to our next guest, Keshav of Ginteja and Shyam Steel. Keshav, welcome to the show.

Keshav Beriwala (Ginteja / Shyam Steel): Hi. Hi, Utsav. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Utsav Somani: So you're from a traditional business background, but now running, in something in insurance distribution. So maybe you can tell us about that transition and what Ginteja is doing now.

Keshav Beriwala (Ginteja / Shyam Steel): Yeah. Of course. So I'll just briefly describe what the company does, the the traditional steel business. So we're basically a 1.5-million-ton integrated steel producer. We have four integrated plants in West Bengal, and we have a pan-India supply. Our main market is the retail market where we are supplying directly to individual house builders. And the problem that we're, solving for, which is also our USP and how we differentiate ourselves from the market, is that traditionally, construction steel has been sold completely as a commodity. So if you're an individual house builder who needs to buy steel for your home, you would buy it off a trader who bought it off a trader who bought it off a trader who bought it off from, like, some small rolling mill in your state. So there's a problem of provenance where the customer doesn't know where the steel came from, the quality of the steel, who is behind the steel, and the actual pricing of that steel. And, essentially, that is the that is the problem that we solved for, and we've disrupted the market. We're the fastest growing branded, construction steel player in the market where we directly reach out to the customer, removing all the middlemen. And, today, we are at 1.5 million tons of steel production. And over the next five years, we plan to take it up to a 3.5 million tons of steel production. So that is a bit about the family background. I personally I was born and brought up in Calcutta, and, I went to California for my undergrad. I went to UC Berkeley where I, double majored in computer science and economics. And so I always had a knack for, doing something in tech and specifically the finance market in India. So once I came back, you know, I the idea was that I wanted to build, like, a financial super app, and especially, beyond metro cities because I saw that the kind of democratization that was there in the US where every person was investing any amount of surplus money that they had into the markets, They had access to all the credit that they needed. They had access to all insurance products at, like, their fingertips. I wanted to replicate that because I feel I feel that, that was present only to a very small extent and that was present only to a very small extent in metro cities in India. So, you know, I and my cofounder, who's now my wife, we started off building, like, a financial super app. And very soon into the journey, we realized that, you know, this is not going to work in India because we used to have, different seminars with different strata of people in order to be able to convince them to start investing their surplus money through our app. And one such strata happened to be the truck drivers who are coming into the plant because, you know, we wanted to that that's the level that we wanted to operate at. And when we were talking to them, the kind of moment that we had was that, you know, let alone investing their surplus funds into even small amounts into the financial markets, the mandatory insurances that they needed for their vehicles, they didn't even have that. And so the question arose that, you know, while we're operating at this level that we want to build a super app where we can have people invest their money, get loans, get insurances at their fingertips, we realized that that's a very far away journey because there are a lot of problems that needed to be solved along the way. And we dug deep into this and we, you know, the idea was that, you know, what is it that's causing this problem where people in tier 2, 3, 4 cities in India are not getting the access to the right insurance products. And we we came up with the realization that it's an ecosystem problem. Today, when you're sitting in a city like Bangalore or Calcutta and you want to buy insurance for your your health insurance or insurance for your car, how would that work? Typically, within a five-kilometer radius, you would have an agent who your family has worked with for many years. You would have probably more than five insurance companies who have their branches within the five-kilometer radius. And you would have garages within a five-kilometer radius so you can send your vehicle in order to even either buy an insurance or get your, vehicle, serviced. Now when you ask your agent or your guy, you know, you send me quotations or your dealer, He has access to all the insurance companies in that radius because they all have physical presence there. They have their branches, they have their people, and they're in constant touch with these people. So within a matter of 10–15 minutes, your agent is able to generate all the quotations from all the insurance companies. They know what is the best insurance in that area for your kind of vehicle, and they are able to service you in the quickest possible time. This is an ecosystem, this is a function of the ecosystem that you have in tier one cities. Now as you move beyond tier one into tier 2, 3, 4, especially to villages and rural areas, this ecosystem completely breaks because the whole supply chain essentially becomes fragmented, and the and the dense concentrated ecosystem that you have here is just not present there. And there's a structural reason for that, which cannot be solved for. See, insurance as a product needs to be underwritten by the manufacturer who's the insurance company. Underwriting of an insurance is a very, dynamic thing. Today, let's say a Tata AIG might be underwriting a certain kind of asset in a certain district in West Bengal. You know, they start out underwriting and they're taking on business. In two to three months, they realize, you know, that this business is probably not profitable for us. So they shut shop. Now if they had been present there physically, if they had put up all that fixed capital, they recruited people, they've got that business, and then they realized that this business is not profitable for us, and then you shut shop. So it's extremely loss making. Then again, let's say a year from now. Again, if you wanna do it again. So you again, you put up that money, you get that distribution, you kind of get the people on board, you and then you get business again. So this is a problem that is structurally there in the insurance industry where because commercial activity is not concentrated beyond tier one, you cannot have these companies put up that money and have that presence there. That is the that is the problem that we're solving for in Ginteja, where we are creating the physical ecosystem of tier one cities in insurance, and we are replicating that in tier 2, 3, 4 using technology.

Utsav Somani: Interesting.

Keshav Beriwala (Ginteja / Shyam Steel): And how do you do that? For that, you need three things. A, you need the distribution. B, you need your data funnel. And three, you need your AI layer on top of that in order to be able to solve for the unique problems that tier 2, 3, 4 India gives you. We started operating three years ago. Within three years, we've been able to become the fastest growing player in tier 2, 3, 4 East India. And we're the largest largest player here. 90% of our business comes from beyond tier one cities, and we're, roughly doubling the revenue every year. So we have that distribution, and we are working with more than 3,000 partners. Second, the data funnel. So in the short amount of time that we've been operating, we've been able to collect more than 10 million data points. And this is the largest dataset for tier 2, 3, 4 India that we have, specifically for the auto sector where we can map, the customer type, the geography, the vehicle type, and the district. And we can use that to feed our AI less, which is the third part of the solution where you have your proprietary algorithms, and you can essentially tailor the need of the customer to the best insurance company without the insurance company being physically present in that rural area. So using a combination of these three, we've been able to become the fastest growing players and we're doubling the revenue every year.

Dhruv Sharma: Keshav, this is super interesting. It's like you must have two unique lenses. Right? One is, of course, the the giant steel producer business, which is a B2B business, which is almost like an index in on the economy. And then, of course, the relatively smaller but faster growing consumer sort of insurance financial services. Do you sometimes see, like, dissonance in in how India grows? Because very often when you hear the one headline number, you think everyone's growing at 8%, but that's not the case. Right? Someone's growing at 30, Sun's barely growing at 2%, and the economy is made up of all of those realities. So, yeah, so tell us your experience.

Keshav Beriwala (Ginteja / Shyam Steel): See, of course. Personally, our aim see, as I mentioned, in the insurance startup, we are doubling the revenue every year, and we see that we can do that at least for the next four to five years easily as you become a national player. In the steel business, our aim is, that we want to double the business once every four to five years, which is still a very good space for a steel company for of our size. But that is correct to mention that, the as the country grows at 8%, that's an average. Some people are growing at 30%, some are growing at 2%. It's not that the intent is not there. You know, why is a company? Why would you want to grow at 2% when you can grow it faster than that? So there are a couple of challenges that come in this. Coming from a manufacturing setup, we realize how infrastructure can be a problem in scaling up. Today, if you want to set up a new steel plant in any state, you need at least two years in order to get the land. Because, you know, for steel for a steel plant, you need at least 100 to 200 acres, at least for even for a, initial pilot. So just to be able to get the land requires two years of effort and resources. After that, you need to get your environmental clearances, which take another year. After that, you need to develop your infrastructure. So you need to get the road into the plant. You You need to get the electricity lines into the plant. You need to get the water lines into the plant. That takes another six months. And then you have the setup where you can start putting up the plant. So it's a three-year process where you don't even have the plant ready. You've just reached the point where you can start putting up the plant. So that is a problem that India has today, where if you compare us to other developed economies, it's relatively much easier to get the infrastructure done if you wanna start a business. If you consider a country like China or a developed country, what happens is that if you wanna put up a plant, oftentimes, it's much easier to get the land. It's much easier to get the infrastructure in place so that you can immediately start off with the, process of putting up the plan. So that is where India lags today, where any anything that requires a physical presence requires a two to three year runway where you need to put up money, you need to put up put your putting your efforts, and only then can you start setting the process. And I feel that's the biggest bottleneck. And when you look at a company like Ginteja, where it's a digital app, that is essentially all of that we are bypassing, and we're very lucky to be in this startup where, we're not dealing with any of that. So you just make your app, you enter the market, you start getting customers. So I feel like, because India is such a large manufacturing country where, a lot of the products that we make are actually commoditized products. They are not high value products. They might be voluminous, but they are fairly low value. The problem becomes that you need to put in the same effort in order to create a low-value item versus developed countries like Japan and Korea, where they put in the same effort to create a high-value item. So I feel like a way to move faster as a country is to just make the transition from a low-value item to a high-value item because your infrastructural challenges remain the same. Yeah. But essentially, the realization becomes much higher.

Utsav Somani: And staying with the insurance, business for a bit, there was a consultation paper, I think, which came out last week, IRDAI, and, affected the stock price of some of the listed players. What's your take on this? And what were the changes they suggested?

Keshav Beriwala (Ginteja / Shyam Steel): See, insurance in India is a very politicized subject. We being in the industry realize that a lot of it is sensation. But if I were to think of it as a consumer, then I would have the right to be very angry at some of the things that are going on in the in the industry, which are clearly wrong, but they are just a function of the market dynamics. Today, if you look at any industry, let's say you order something on Zomato. There is no government regulation which is forcing how Zomato operates in terms of its commercials, how the restaurants operate in terms of their commercials. So it's an open market. Zomato, if today they want to increase their business, it's completely up to them how they want to do that. It's up to them how they want to compete with Swiggy. It's up to the restaurants how they want to price their items. So there is no government involvement there. Same is the case with any daily consumable that you use. If you look at the clothes that you're wearing, you really don't care about the margins of the manufacturers or the margins of the dealer from which you bought the clothes. But because insurance is a intangible product, people don't realize it's a product. People feel like it's just a cost that they're wearing. Which is why I feel like it's a very politicized matter where the price that the retail market pays for insurance in India is seen as a pure cost. People don't realize that when you need to get the claim, the claim is the product. So that is why, a, we have this whole ecosystem where insurance in India is being regulated in the way it is, where the cost structures of all the insurance companies is managed by IRDAI. The commission structures is managed on an on and off basis by the IRDAI. Earlier, what used to happen was that the IRDAI had very strict gaps on the commissions that could be paid out to brokers and distributors and agents. Using that framework, the industry ran into a lot of problems, which were, of course, bypassed by market dynamics. They were essentially all hidden.

Utsav Somani: Like, miss selling and stuff?

Keshav Beriwala (Ginteja / Shyam Steel): So miss selling is a misselling is another function. I'm saying that when the government tries to regulate how you can spend money, you will essentially fudge your books in order to show the government what it wants to see and then do whatever the market dynamics are forcing you to. This is how all the insurance companies were working on. And everyone realized this is a problem. You know, we need to make it more transparent. And in just after COVID, the government came up with the like, in 2022 or 2023, if I'm not wrong, the government essentially made all of this a little relaxed where they kind of removed a lot of these caps and let it be like an open market. And now suddenly, they've also, again, come up with a fairly structured, and strict regulation consultation paper where they feel that they can reduce, the commissions on a lot of the products, and they're trying to completely overhaul the structure in which insurance is sold in India. It has a few misconceptions. It has a few, assumptions that are not correct. And, you know, we're in touch with the government bodies. We're in touch with a lot of industry associates, and we're presenting to the government, you know, the the faults in the current in the way the current consultation paper is structured. And we are hoping that, you know, there's some sort of dialogue where we can come to a middle ground where there are real issues in the way insurance is sold in India. But the way it is trying to be resolved is not completely correct. So that is the gap that we're trying to bridge right now.

Utsav Somani: And there's still some time to submit, comments, right, on this?

Keshav Beriwala (Ginteja / Shyam Steel): Yeah. Yeah. So, the government has given till the end of October, October 26, if I'm not wrong, for all the industries to kind of just, give their comments. And we're in the process of doing that. We're already in touch with the IDAI. We're in touch with the, different, like, broker bodies and insurance companies, And there'll be, like, some sort of representation from the industry to the government. Kishore, mister But but the large idea is that we feel that you should let the market forces come into picture rather than, you know, completely putting a cap on the on how much the insurance companies can spend on commissions, how much they can spend on their management, how much they can spend on their branding. And you should let the market forces decide the cost structures.

Dhruv Sharma: Interesting. I mean, if you were given a clean sheet to do this, regulations notwithstanding, maybe two or three, ideas that come to mind which would sort this out for the entire industry.

Keshav Beriwala (Ginteja / Shyam Steel): See, there has to be a cleaner way to structure the different entities in insurance. Today, there are multiple players in India in insurance. One is the insurance company, which is the manufacturer of the product. The second is the corporate agent, which essentially caters to large companies. The third is the broker who historically has been like a regional agent in a city catering to the large families, the affluent families, the HNIs, and the companies. And the fourth is the individual agent who has maybe a small portfolio, a small base of 10 to 15 to 20 customers. He could be in a city like Calcutta, or he could be in the outskirts or in, like, tier 2, 3, 4. So there are a lot of end running entities in this industry. And there there are a lot of frameworks which kind of dictate how these different industries can interact with each each other. So the first thing I would do, given a clean slate, is that make this structure a lot more simple, which is what the government is aiming to do now. They so they're essentially saying that you in the in the consultation paper, they're saying that you're either an insurance company or you're an insurance distribution entity or you're an insurance distribution person. So they've done away with all of this and essentially come out with three entities. So that's a good part. The part that is not so good is trying to, again, enforce limits on expenditure and limits on commission because that reasoning has some misconceptions about how the market operates. And in order to if if the government tries to enforce that, all they will be doing is that they will be consolidating the business. The smaller players will get eroded from the market and the, you're essentially removing the competition in the market.

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah. No. No. We hear you clearly. You're obviously saying that the structural simplification is always welcome, but the market should be at liberty to, you know, design and deliver their own incentives. Great.

Keshav Beriwala (Ginteja / Shyam Steel): Because India is a very underpenetrated com country in terms of financial access. So the cost of distribution is very high. Today, if the thought is that, you know, the commissions are very high or the expenditure of the insurance companies is very high, you know, we have to understand why is that the case. If you're a private company, would you not maximize your profits? So given a chance, would you not reduce your cost if you had the opportunity? The way the market is structured is that in order to be able to reach the customer, you need to bear these costs. So if you put a cap on the cost that you're undertaking, that limits how how much you are able to reach the customer. That will directly hit the penetration of insurance, products in the country.

Utsav Somani: Keshav, as a final closing one, two different hats. One, heavy industries business, one, regulated financial industry business. What do you learn from each other while running both at the same time?

Keshav Beriwala (Ginteja / Shyam Steel): Very interesting question. So, see, the way I see it is that both these companies are at different stages of their journey. The steel businesses so when we talk about companies, we say that we have the zero to one, one to ten, and ten to 100 framework. Right? We feel that in the steel business, we are currently in the 10 to 100 framework, where from a regional, presence, we are now we now have a national presence. But because steel is a low-value item, essentially, if you look at it, steel is a you're buying steel at 50 rupees a kg, which if you compare, to most of the items that you're consuming on a daily basis, you'll realize that steel is extremely cheap if you see it at a per kg basis. So whenever you have, a product that is a low value product, then your costing becomes extremely important. And alongside your costing, your logistics is also a very important part where if the more you're able to save on logistics, that's your margin. So the next challenge in the steel business is that we want to have presence all over India so that we become essentially the lowest cost producer in the market where if we're servicing customers in Odisha, then we can do it from our plant in Odisha. If we're serving servicing customers in Maharashtra, then we could have some presence in Maharashtra where we're able to, provide the material from. So the challenge here is that you need to replicate the infrastructure that you have in Bengal across these different states. And as I mentioned, getting the land, getting the approvals, getting the licenses is the biggest challenge. So that is where I see the challenge here where, just to be able to reach a place where you can expand is the toughest part. When you come to a consumer tech company like Ginteja, which uses AI to increase financial access to products in India, the main challenge is awareness. Today, you don't need to go out and aware the make the customer aware in order to buy steel. But when you look at a product like insurance, how do you convert a customer who is not buying insurance today and convince them that they need to buy it for their asset, be it mandated by the government or be it for their own protection, and to be able to use technology to do that in the lowest cost. That is a challenge. But inherently, these both both of these businesses, used require different skill sets, and that's kind of fun the the fun part of the job where, there can be a good amount of context switching, and there can be a good amount of cross learning where I feel like I really have been able to use my experiences in one domain to be able to solve problems in the other.

Utsav Somani: Fascinating. Thank you so much for coming on our show and sharing all of this with us, Keshav.

Keshav Beriwala (Ginteja / Shyam Steel): Thank you. Thank you so much. Lovely too.

Utsav Somani: Cheers. Alright, listeners. We're moving on to our last guest today. We've got Vinay from Kritsnam. I hope I got the name right. Hey, Vinay.

Vinay Chataraju (Kritsnam): Hi, Utsav. Yeah. That's Kritsnam. It's a Bhagavad Gita word.

Utsav Somani: Alright. So I mostly got it right. Can you tell us what the business, does?

Vinay Chataraju (Kritsnam): Yeah. Right. So so so we are in the business of water accounting for enterprises. So, we help enterprises, the, especially the larger ones, the large enterprises, and they're accounting for the water for the ESG reporting. So with the rising ESG guidelines, you need to audit you need to produce your ESG data in the same format as your financial numbers. So but the current practices are very vague. So you just put some manual data and manual logbooks that are being published, which is not being accepted for, any, an audit-grade data. So we help enterprises transform from simple manual data to an audit-grade, water data. That's a very niche space we are into.

Dhruv Sharma: I wanna understand this a bit better, Vinay. So, and maybe you could help us with an example of a factory. I don't know.

Vinay Chataraju (Kritsnam): Right. Like, where do they

Dhruv Sharma: Where are the inlets coming from? You know? Water comes from how many different sources? Do they have Right. Sort of sensors, flow meters? What's the unit of measurement? How are they taking records at this point in time, and how do things get better going forward? And then, of course, the outflow as well.

Utsav Somani: Right.

Dhruv Sharma: Is that the Perfect. So saying accounting credits, debits is like inflow, outflow, water.

Vinay Chataraju (Kritsnam): Correct. So so you you you got it right. So it's specifically, accounting is a different, journal altogether in terms of just measurement and keeping a track of where you are coming, where the water is coming from, and where the water is being used. So typically, like you said, every plant, if you take a, let's say, manufacturing plant, let's say food and beverage or a pharma industry, so you get water from finally three different sources. You can have either one of them or all three of them. Like, you have groundwater, you have a surface water, and then you have a tanker water. Okay. So most of I think, Dhruv, we lost you there for approximately all these three

Utsav Somani: we lost you there for about twenty seconds. So maybe the three points that you were mentioning, I think, can be repeated, please.

Vinay Chataraju (Kritsnam): Yeah. So the three primary sources which facility gets the water, one is your groundwater. Second one is your surface water or the municipal line. Third one is your tanker waters. So if you see from a regulatory perspective, all three are completely in independent to each other. So your groundwater department does not talk to your surface water. Surface water does not care about where do you get the tankers from. So these are all more independent bodies from a regulatory perspective. But for a consumer or for for industry plan, so for them, water is water. It's just that I will get from wherever the cheapest, the most easiest source. So we install our meters. We can manufacture our own indigenously developed ultrasonic smart water meters. These are all legal-grade water meters as per ISO and OIML certifications. These start from the visioning for the water from the different sources. Okay. And, from these measurements, what we do is we convert this into a UPI transaction, you get a receipt. So similarly, you make a water as a transaction element rather than a measuring unit. So every day we generate receipts. These receipts gets reconciled in the form of a ledger, And this ledger gets reconciled at the end of the month. So suppose, let's say, one meter was down for two, three days. So we'll use the estimation principles to say, okay, in these two, three days, what could be the possible usage using the standard, estimation methods? So from the source side, we have all the sources. It can be one source to, let's say, 10 different sources. I mean, we see plants even with twenty, thirty different sources of bore wells and various things. So all of them we account for. And in the consumption side, we account for how much is going to the production, how how much is going to the utilities for, like, cooling towers, your boilers, your ROs, and how much is going to the, domestic purposes like admin, canteens, guest houses, etcetera, and the gardening greenbelt maintenance. So this segregation is what we do using smart water meters, which we manufacture ourselves and make a water statement at the end of the month. That is what we see it as a final and the active deliverable.

Utsav Somani: So it's something like that electricity bill that we get at the end of the month, but electricity, I mean, to our residences at least has only one source. So it's easier to compile. That's right. And you

Vinay Chataraju (Kritsnam): are seeing more from a source side. So as water is little bit more complex in terms of, you know, different sources as well as different consumption points. And this segregation of source and consumption, doing a water balance is a very, very tricky thing. We have worked with more than 2,000 facilities and, you know, so almost 90% does not match their source and consumption. So your water balance does not happen easily because of the complex measurement and the, management of, water resource. That's what our expertise, comes in.

Utsav Somani: So your client list includes Tata Steel, P&G, Coca-Cola. What who do you pitch to, within these companies, and what does the pitch look like for you?

Vinay Chataraju (Kritsnam): Yeah. So we pitch to the EHS, which is the environmental health and safety, and the ESG, the sustainability teams. So the other two active teams who typically take a lead. Sometimes in some of the facilities, even the engineering and the utility teams also take a lead. So it depends on the who is the lead of water data in the respective. So typically between sustainability EHS and utilities slash operations are the, teams which do it. So our primary pitches, with the rising ESG regulations, you know, so most of, now let's say if you look at SEBI, SEBI mandated top thousand listed companies to disclose their ESG data in the form of BRSR code, if you have heard of it. So which means, let's say, if I'm Tata Steel, I need to disclose what is the total groundwater uptake from all my facilities across the Tata Steel. Probably, I'm having 10 facilities, 20 facilities. How much is the total water uptake from the groundwater from this? And this number has to undergo an assurance audit. So a third party assurance auditor should come and certify this number saying that, okay, I have taken, 100,000 kL of water groundwater from from all the 10 facilities. So that's a very complex, task and, you know, so justifying that, okay, this is the correct data. That's where most of the enterprises are finding it difficult. So we position it as a, Defensible Water Accounting System where we capture all the possible evidences for your data which is being produced.

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah. I do. And those are, like, seriously impressive logos. I think my question for you is in an industrial context, what does peak water efficiency look like?

Vinay Chataraju (Kritsnam): You are talking for me water efficiency point, is it?

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah. Yeah. Like, I mean, they will tell us, you know, don't leave the tap on when you're shaving or brushing your teeth. Use the bucket, not the shower, etcetera. What does that guidance look like for factories?

Vinay Chataraju (Kritsnam): Yeah. So in the, let's say, water, you can predominantly split into two parts. One is more from an efficiency point of view, which is more like an operational metrics. Second one is the disclosure point of view, which is more like, you know, so ensuring that your numbers are right. So operationally, their operations team naturally, like, you know, so I take 100 liters of water. How much water is used to produce my unit output? If I'm, let's say, steel or if I'm, let's say, beverage company like Coca-Cola, what is my specific water consumption? So, currently, all the enterprises are having their own independent data, and, there are few international bodies and, you know, so associations are trying to start comparing with each other. So let's say Coca-Cola has 10 plants. What is the, efficiency metrics of plant one, plant two, plant three? Who is on a higher efficiency? And then, you know, so what are the reasons for having a higher efficiency and all? So, only some of the listed companies are, actually, like, now sort of taking a big leap into, okay, I need to improve this, you know, so having their own voluntary, targets of, you know, so I need to improve my water use efficiency there. But more from a, regulatory point of view, this is missing. Like, how you have a, energy rating system, so it's a three star AC or five star AC. Nothing on the water has come so far. Government is, you know, trying to do something, but again, not very, not very impactful or, you know, it's not very active on the ground. Okay. So if I have to buy, let's say, between, let's say, Bisleri and Kinley, I mean, I just buy whichever is available readily. But rather than, you know, also looking, okay. So to produce a one liter of Bisleri versus to produce a one liter of Kinley, who has used less water? I mean, if you can start putting these kind of numbers out to the public, naturally, the public will also try to, you know, because of the natural tendency to as public is going towards sustainable products, I'll also try to use a product which is more water efficient. So we are we we as a country are yet to get there, for now.

Utsav Somani: And you've gone consumer as well, apart from serving businesses. So now people can get what's water receipts on WhatsApp?

Vinay Chataraju (Kritsnam): Yes. So we have it. That's a new product which we have, you know, so launched six months back. So it's more like a D2C product, specifically targeting the urban consumers. So, again, more more from a we see conflicts in the urban are rising on a day to day basis. If you look at most of you might be staying in apartments. So a good 30 to 50% of your, you know, you know, so comments on your WhatsApp groups or this is on the water. That's what I have seen in in in in even in my communities, what I say. So this is primarily because water, one, has become a limited resource, you know, so pre and and eventually, the cost of the water is rising very drastically in the last few years. So every other discussion the community is, like, you know, so is centered around this. So this product is more targeting that kind of an audience where, okay. So let me give a voice to your water. So we call it as Dhaara Pulse, the voice of your water. So this is a slightly different segment, which is again last few months we have been doing. Well, industrial and enterprise segment is for the last five years. We have got a very

Utsav Somani: How much does it cost and what does the installation look like?

Vinay Chataraju (Kritsnam): So if you look at the domestic, product, so that's typically should cost anywhere between ₹10,000 and ₹15,000. So it depends on your size of your pipe. So your pipe size typically would be one inch should cost you around ₹9,000–10,000, and installation should cost you another ₹1,000 for the fittings and getting the, the device installed. So once you install the device, I mean, it will start communicating to you on your WhatsApp, you know, say every day, like, you know, so this has been your consumption pattern for us today. And so that behaviorally you will start aligning to your okay. So what's my aspiration? Where do we stand with respect to the industry benchmarks? Let's say the the industry says that the benchmark says that, you know, supercapitated is one thirty five or one fifty liters per capita per day. Where do we we are a family of four. I mean, you know, so are we using within the limits or, you know, so way beyond the limits. If you're using way beyond the limits, where where are the places where it can get down? So people should will naturally be, walking this direction for this.

Dhruv Sharma: And I have one question for you. For anyone who's watching and consider thinks that they're environmentally conscious and they wanna only buy stuff from, you know, companies that are very responsible when it comes to water. What independent reports, what kind of data can they look at before they make those, choices? Also, I I don't know if you have another. I can just look this up and chat to you, buddy, but who regulates? Who polices India's water? What's what is the role of all of these bodies? The education department, the gel gel board, PCBs, NGT, etcetera. Like, who does what?

Vinay Chataraju (Kritsnam): So yeah. So it's a water is very, very complexly managed in India. So, if if if I give you a structure from the central and the state, you know, so the central government, you have one major ministry called Ministry of Jal Shakti, which has two divisions, Ministry of Water Resources and Gangari Jhunation, and the second one is Ministry of Drinking Water and Supply. So sorry. Department of drinking water supply and department of water. The department of water resources manage the large river bodies, let's say, the rivers and, you know, so the dams, the reservoirs, etcetera. So they do very, very high level water management, you know, in terms of what is my overall rainfall to water inflow into the barrages, you know. So how should I supply, you know, what should my allocation to the agriculture and all. So that's that's a very, very large water bodies. And then you have the, drinking water supply, which primarily looks after the water supply to the rural households. If you see in the urban, your water supply is coming from your municipal corporation. Let's say if you see Delhi, you have Delhi, you have BMC. Bengaluru, you have BWSSB. So these are the municipal corporations who are responsible for the urban. Whereas your rural water supply is completely handled separately. So they have, like, a rural water supply, PHCD, and other departments. So these two fall under the Ministry of Jal Shakti. You have one more ministry called Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. They manage all the municipal corporations and also all your municipal corporations and urban follow fall under the different ministry altogether. And your groundwater is a completely different subject. So, you know, so they again fall under the ministry of water department of water resources, which goes in a completely tangent to all these departments responsible for only managing the groundwater in the respective states. So we have a certain role between the center and the state. In some states, the states regulate the groundwater. In some states, the center regulate the groundwater. So it's very, very complex. On the top of it, you have pollution control board, which manage the ex the, discharge of the water into the sewer lines, etcetera. So, technically, all of them are revolving around the water, but, you know, so the if you ask me, the only connecting point across all of them is the honorable prime minister there. So because there are different ministries, so there are some interactions. But again, you know, so my common point is only the, the prime minister's office. So that's that's it's little tricky to, do it. So regulations are very, very fragmented. So a lot of discussions are on, but, you know, still as of now, it's very fragmented. The good part is from the investor side, you know, so which is the financial bodies like SEBI, you know, so because with the India committing to the net zero targets by 2070, So these regulatory bodies and the governing bodies like pollution control board, groundwater, the municipal corporations, these are like not their primary job is to give the water and ensure that the water is protected. So SEBI has taken up this responsibility of ensuring that at least the listed companies, you know, so if I can, you know, say if I can put the guardrails to disclose this data, that is how SEBI has come up with this ESG disclosures. So where the technical body will be, will be, like, you know, so a respect to ministries and all, but your energy emissions, your water waste, your fair business practices, all of these, you have to disclose in a public forum at the end of the year for top thousand listed companies. So this is the first guardrail from the financial institution side, in this, so which is getting, more streamlined specifically from a, I would say enterprise point of view. But again, if you touch base, my drinking water, it works in a completely different way. My agriculture works in a completely different way. So it's, yeah, it's just very much, fragmented.

Utsav Somani: Awesome. I think that's a good note to end the show on. Thank you so much, Vinay, for coming on TON. Wishing you the best ahead.

Vinay Chataraju (Kritsnam): Thank you. Thank you also. Thank you, Dhruv.

Utsav Somani: Thank you. Alright, listeners. That's it from us this Monday. We'll see you on Wednesday at 04:00, same time, same place. Bye bye