Summary

The Offline Network Episode 20: Goyal's $25M Fund & Lenskart IPO (aired 2025-10-15). Guests: Soumya Kant, Chirag Taneja from Clovia, GoKwik. Soumya: "So in apparel for fashion, you do end up making a compromise on a lot of things just because you like the product." Soumya: "I think Klovia has played a big, big role when it comes to making the conversation about lingerie cool." Topics: venture capital and funding, AI and LLMs, consumer brands and D2C, B2B/SaaS. The Offline Network is India's live show on startups, tech, and venture — streaming M/W/F at 4 PM IST on YouTube.

Full Transcript

Dhruv Sharma: Hello and welcome to Monday's stream of the Offline Network. Today we're going to be discussing all things commerce with two founders. We have Soumya of Clovia with us and we have Chirag of GoQuick. So one has built a formidable brand in her category and the other is an enabler and we'll be welcoming them in just a moment. And before we do that, we're going to very quickly go over a few interesting pieces of news. DP Goel had an announcement to make Utsav. It's almost like he's putting money to its best use possible. What's the most recent announcement about?

Utsav Somani: So 25 million towards health and longevity. I think every billionaire is trying to buy time and health and I think it's great that he's funneling some of his gains from the public market listings, Zomato's been on a tear, into this. Like I think it's going to benefit the ecosystem in general and he's doing two things. Health and longevity where he's put 25 million, it's called continuity research, continued research and he's going to fund global scientists for biology and aging research and aim is to extend healthy human function and do long-term decision making for the society in general with the perspective on health. And he's doing something exciting in the world of aerospace as well. You were mentioning something about engines being unique there?

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah and I'd love to love to chat about that. By the way, did you read the manifesto for continued research? It's a fascinating document, encourage everyone to go just look it up. And you find these principles that we live by in the sort of tech world, right? Like just open sourcing something that's too important for humanity and in this case it's not structured as a company, it's not structured as a not-for-profit, it's a research lab really with an open invitation to the best and the brightest from the world to come and work. I think this is, like I said, right, this is the best way you can put money to use because some of these big bold bets play up too far into the future. There's a very high risk of failure. You would expect the government to sponsor, you know, initiatives like this but then they're always answerable to taxpayers if things don't work out, funds but they're answerable to their LPs. So I think this is perhaps the best use you can put private wealth to. The other initiative, the other companies, I don't know how they internally refer to this company but it's either LAT Aerospace or LAT Aerospace. They've got teams in Delhi and Bangalore and the Bangalore team is focused on building perhaps one of India's first gas turbine engines. Now, you know, it's unique.

Utsav Somani: Is it hard?

Dhruv Sharma: It's hard. It's hard to get a gas turbine engine, right? And a lot of times people will ask this question. Hey, how is it that you can send rockets up in space and have an engine for those rockets but we can't do like a gas turbine engine for aircrafts? Well, there's of course a ton of nuance here but think about this for a moment. A rocket goes up, you just need to sort of manufacture one explosion and then very often it's not even carrying like a human payload, right? With an aircraft engine, aircraft engines do in their life, they do some five, seven, ten thousand sort of cycles and you need something that works in an environment which is high temperature, high pressure. You just need it to work and you know, it's, this is really a test of great technical design of precision sort of machine tools because you have to make, manufacture hundreds of small components down to the, you know, micrometer in the case of gas turbine engines and this is going to be a big win for aerospace, like our indigenous aerospace industry. DRDO has been on it for their Tejas program and they've had some successes and some setbacks but to see a private entity sort of rise up to that challenge, it's very, very inspiring.

Utsav Somani: What does it mean for the Indian consumer? Like, is my transport from like Delhi to Gurgaon become, becoming faster with this?

Dhruv Sharma: It's too soon to say, but you know, it's, like I said, it's a very, very long-term bet and that's the thing with sort of urban transportation. There are just so many layers to it. Just because there's mass rapid transportation systems doesn't mean, you know, you don't need cars and just because you have cars doesn't mean you can't have like flying taxis at some point in the future.

Utsav Somani: No, no, but what will be exciting is to read behind his operating style in the new book that's coming out called Unseen. Megha, who was an ex-journalist has written it, so I'm sure it's going to be a fascinating copy to pick up. I think that's coming out next week, so looking forward to that. Coming to another public market gains, Lenskart going for an IPO. They're raising almost a billion dollars from the public markets with majority of it going into OFS, which is offer for sale and the founders, Piyush Bansal is amongst one of the many promoters of the company, is going to make 100 million from this IPO and he deserves all of this. He's generated returns of over 5x to 17x for his investors. Many of them are top name brand investors like Kidara, Softbank, Temasek and Premji West, which owns 5% of the company and he's also managed to up his, we mentioned Lenskart when we mentioned how founders are boosting their stake in the companies. He went from 13% to 20% in the lead up to the IPO as well and he's brought on RK Damani, who's one of the titans of the stock market industry to buy in a 0.13% stake in the company and just in the pre-IPO round. Exciting, they've turned profitable as well. Dhruv, are you excited and have you used any of their offerings?

Dhruv Sharma: I have and super excited about this. By the way, Jeff Bezos makes a very interesting point around founders creating wealth. The last time he made this public statement he said, look, Amazon is a trillion dollar company and I hold 20% of Amazon, which makes what I hold worth about $200 billion. However, I have generated $800 billion in wealth for other individuals and institutions and that's the nature of this game. It's very often people are focused on the gains made by just a single individual, losing sight of the fact that they've created value for just several other people along the way.

Utsav Somani: 100%, it's an ecosystem play and talking about ecosystem play, we've got two of the prominent investors who are investing into India announced an alliance, much like the Deep Tech Alliance. Excellent process. Dhruv?

Dhruv Sharma: Yes, these two legendary firms have come together and they've announced a partnership for early stage companies. I think pretty much formation stage companies. We're seeing a lot of focus shift to call it a zero to one or minus one to zero, that kind of stage and firms and funds trying to form relationships with founders earlier and earlier and earlier. And I think there's a standard deal in this case where founders can raise commitments ranging from $200,000 to $2 million. And the focus is going to be on companies that are sort of leap tech companies, again, taking these moonshot bets.

Utsav Somani: And I think why this is interesting is because most of them, I mean, excellent process, they focus on different stages. So I think for Axel, they run this very early stage program called Atoms and for them to hunt for companies and nurture these companies at very early stages and partner with process early on, which has the capital stack. I mean, it's one of the very rare investors that is listed and they have, I mean, typically they've not raised external capital, so they have capital under perpetuity. So it's like going to be exciting for the full stack play here as well.

Dhruv Sharma: The respective partners in both firms are busy right now because they've just announced, but we should soon have them on the show to come talk about what this is.

Utsav Somani: I was chatting with Ashutosh, so hopefully he'll come on the show and give us a sneak peek into what's happening in this alliance as well. Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, of course, you can't take the government out of the picture. With the world of AI and all the deep fakes that are going around, they want to build rules and regulations around this. I think it's going to be for the safety of the consumers. Everyone's generating a ton of content and I think AI data labeling, ensuring that any AI generated content is also tagged properly is, I think, going to be a key task that the regulator wants to get ahead of. What's your take on this?

Dhruv Sharma: Highly important. I think we're in a very interesting time right now where you can't always believe what you see. People are always asking the question, are we really in a simulation? So this is super important and we have seen this, right? Even on YouTube now you will see AI generated platforms have just been proactively doing this. Everything that's generated on Sora is labeled Sora. In fact, in day one, 80% of the stuff on Sora had Sam Altman in it and it's not like it's really funny videos. But you know what I found most interesting about this announcement is there are rules about how much screen space has to be occupied by the label, the sticker that says this is AI generated.

Utsav Somani: Man, super hard to enforce. I don't know, platform has more power or the government has more power. In this case, I think that's to be seen because they've been trying to get WhatsApp in many countries to release customer data as well, but their end-to-end encryption sort of prevents them or even WhatsApp or Meta from accessing this or sharing this with others. So I think Telegram founder was of course famously behind bars or caught in France as well for this. So it will be exciting to see if the platform is bigger or the government or the regulator is bigger or the regulation is bigger. I think it's always a problem.

Dhruv Sharma: Which reminds me, it's now been a week, a few weeks since Adatai launched and we covered in the show. I think maybe for the next stream, we'll just check how it's going in terms of adoption and usage.

Utsav Somani: Hard to say. I personally don't know anyone using it, but I can see how many people would have tried it for the first few weeks and then dropped off because network effects are very hard to build. All right, let's welcome our first guest, Soumya of Clovia. She's building in a very tough industry and she's managed to make her mark there. I want to welcome Soumya and ask her the first question. How does lingerie sale online differ from a regular apparel sale, Soumya?

Soumya Kant (Co-founder, Clovia): Hi, thank you so much for having me.

Utsav Somani: Thank you for joining us.

Soumya Kant (Co-founder, Clovia): I think the biggest difference is the number of sizes that a lingerie has. A bra usually runs up to 54 sizes and any apparel sector is, you know, five sizes, six sizes. At best, you will do excess to three XL or four XL or whatever. So the number of sizes really makes it complicated and it's the most intimate product. It's the first thing to go on, it's the last thing to come off and comfort is everything. You can't have a digging wire, you can't have a, you know, irritating fabric and so on. So in apparel for fashion, you do end up making a compromise on a lot of things just because you like the product. I'll wear a lace product just because it looks nice but when it comes to lingerie, comfort over everything else.

Dhruv Sharma: Soumya, could you give us a sense of what the value chain of the business looks like? That'll sort of lay the sort of foundation for all the other questions we'll have for you.

Soumya Kant (Co-founder, Clovia): Yeah, sure. So the value chain in terms of, okay, how do I put it? So it's a very complicated supply chain because obviously, it's a technical product. There are about 28 separate raw materials that come together to build and construct a bra. Every millimeter makes a difference in terms of tolerance of the garment. But in terms of manufacturing, machinery used for say apparel or a nightwear or a loungewear or activewear as a bra or a brief. So in terms of that, it's pretty consistent and you don't need too much capital invested in a factory setup. What you need is experience in terms of the technicality of the product.

Utsav Somani: And in terms of overcoming, let's go back to your starting days when you thought of this category. I'm sure you must have tried to answer the question of how will you overcome social stigma or taboo in a country like India? Those must be really hard questions to answer and you've come a long way since.

Soumya Kant (Co-founder, Clovia): Yeah, absolutely. I think Klovia has played a big, big role when it comes to making the conversation about lingerie cool. And we went about it in a very organic manner. We decided that it should always feel like two women are talking to each other. It should never feel preachy, it should never feel boring. When two girls are speaking to each other, it's always a fun conversation. You'll just observe two girls sitting next to each other and they'll go, oh my god, I love your hair. Oh my god, I love your dress and so on. So that's the vibe that two women always create when they're speaking to each other and that's the vibe we wanted to have with our customer when we're speaking to them. And lingerie needed a lot of education. So much of education on sizing, fit and so on. And education can be preachy. So we thought that we're going to create the brand around the keyword joy. That when a woman interacts with anything related to Klovia, she's able to find joy. So education can also be joyful. So when we spoke to her about a problem that she may be experiencing, we had fun while speaking about it. We made memes on it. If we couldn't solve a problem, even then we made memes about it and had a very fun vibe on that conversation and never made it preachy like, oh, you don't know this as well. So it became easier for us to walk away from the taboo and make it a cool conversation. And we were able to celebrate the fact that the joy you feel when you walk into your house at the end of the day and you take off your bra, the joy you feel at that moment, we were able to even celebrate that while that's obviously a very antithesis to what we were selling. So I think what we did was very organic conversation and very joyful conversations around the subject.

Utsav Somani: And this must be via social media, but were there any different tactics employed to get this point across to consumers, offline meetups or how does, I mean, a person starting a brand now fight this thing or fight the social stigma or the taboo?

Soumya Kant (Co-founder, Clovia): Yeah, so a few very small things like because we started online, we had this private mode that you can even shop in your office and you can just switch on the private mode and everything will go sort of dark and people will not see what you're browsing. When we were delivering packets, it was always discrete packaging. So, you know, you could be living with your in-laws, you could be living with your, you know, anyone and they will not know that what the courier partner is delivering to you and what you've received if you've received a parcel at your office. When they would interact with a customer care team, it was always a joyful conversation. It wasn't ever, we would accept returns for anything and everything. As long as you're not happy with us, we will accept a return and ensure that you go out happy. Then we created a fit test wherein we asked some very basic, you know, fit-related questions and we saw that when a woman was able to buy via that fit test, we had almost 80 percent acceptance of the garment that they bought and we had a good success ratio of via that fit test and it was a very easy conversation-led tool wherein, you know, we would ask, are your shoulder straps slipping? Are you feeling any digging anywhere? So, very small changes in everything we did created that vibe that, you know, we want to have fun with you, we don't want to, we don't want to push anything. If you're happy with us, please stay with us but that's all it matters and when we went offline as well, we didn't want to make an intimidating store and lingerie stores can be really intimidating. When you walk in, it's all lace and sexy and, you know, over the top but we created a very warm vibe. We said then when you walk into the store also, you should feel welcome, you should feel, oh, I'll be able to find something for myself here or when, you know, our team greets you there, it's a happy vibe. Like, we run such a small thing. Every morning, the entire offline team dances for 15 minutes in the day when they start their day. That's just to set their vibe, right? That, you know, when you're starting your day and you've picked up on energy, then you're going to translate that energy to your customer. So, very small things over the course of execution.

Dhruv Sharma: When you think about in the early days, how you positioned the brand, Soumya, like there's always a spectrum, right? If I were to say hazard a guess, in your case, on the one end, it could have just been, you know, it's a simple utility item or the other end, it's, you know, it's a luxury purchase, etc. So, how did you really pick the sweet spot for the brand you had in mind in the early days?

Soumya Kant (Co-founder, Clovia): So, I come from a middle-class background and, you know, Neha and I grew up five years apart, had very similar experiences but when it came to our lingerie, we had very different experiences and we weave that into our brand positioning to say that if I am buying, if I'm feeling comfortable buying a thousand rupee short, thousand rupee top or a 1500 rupee dress, I'm not going to spend the same amount for lingerie. But do I want the same quality? 100% yes. So, our thesis was that we want to give you the best of quality but at a price that doesn't make you feel, oh, it's a bit much. We always want you to have that feeling of wow, I've gotten a bargain. When you get the piece, you should feel that unbelievable pricing for this quality. So, we always kept Q1 quality and P2 in terms of pricing. Our pricing will always appear to be lower than the quality that we are delivering to you.

Utsav Somani: What is the average order value right now?

Soumya Kant (Co-founder, Clovia): It's about 1100 on the website but that's also because we do bundled offers. So, we sell 4 bras for 899, 3 bras for 1099 and so on. So, that's why the average order value on the website is 1100 but on marketplaces, it is lower at about 450 rupees and in EBOs obviously because when the customer is in the store, they end up buying a bit more. So, then it goes up to 2200-2500.

Utsav Somani: You mentioned offline stores as well and the wonderful ritual that you have at the stores as well before you start the day with the employees. What part of the business is online? What part of business is offline? Because I'm guessing a huge part of the business must be offline, right? People want touch and feel as well at least to experience the brand first.

Soumya Kant (Co-founder, Clovia): I think for almost a decade, Kloviyo was an online business. We started with our website and marketplaces first and we started our offline journey just before Covid hit in 2018-2019. So, now we do have 90 stores and we have MBO presence of about 2000 stores and we have large format stores and so on but revenue split online still remains the biggest part of our business at about 60% and 40% comes from offline. Offline is obviously a growth channel. It's growing much faster than online but yeah, that's the current split.

Dhruv Sharma: So, we'd love to know about two things. One is, I believe, an internal sort of AI engine that you call Munk.

Dhruv Sharma: So, we'd love to know about that and then so that's sort of technical innovation in product but also in materials, right? Like yours is category just like athleisure or like outdoor gear, right? Where you need performance fabric and I'm assuming your company's endured over many years. I'm assuming that the fabric itself undergoes a lot of change and so please tell us about both of those things.

Soumya Kant (Co-founder, Clovia): So, Munk is basically a tech engine that we wrote in-house because back then we didn't have the likes of OneBeat and Encref, you know, doing inventory analysis for the business and because we started online and lingerie is one category where inventory either makes you or breaks you and we could have only invested so much in our working capital. So, what we did was that we would just make small batches of 250 pieces to begin with back in the day and even today when we launch a product, we launch it with just 1,000- 1,200 pieces. We collect feedback very, very fast from the customer because of our online sales channels and that engine churns out speed of sale. It churns out feedback from the customer. It tells us that is it a winning horse or a losing horse? Should we change the color? Should we introduce more colors in this fit? Is this fit working out? What are the customers saying about it? And the replenishment engine completely works on this. About 140 million data points are collected from customer every night which is churned out and is translated into what to make, how to make, why to make, what more to make of and what to drop. And in lingerie, to remain at a four-month kind of inventory is very, very hard and we were able to do that because of Munk. And we did something very cool. Designers can log on to their website and actually see live feedback for their design. So, they can see what is the speed of sale for their product, how much of it is coming as return, what are customers saying about it, good and bad both and take an informed decision. So, these are the some kind of things that Munk does.

Utsav Somani: How often do trends change in this industry?

Soumya Kant (Co-founder, Clovia): Every decade or so.

Utsav Somani: So, that's a very long time.

Soumya Kant (Co-founder, Clovia): Yeah, very long time. Very, very long time. And some things are basic in this industry which simply will not change. Like a minimizer product will continue to sell year after year after year and you can only introduce new fits in that category. But it's not going to change by much. I remember we launched bralettes as a category in 2013 and we were obviously early and it tanked. And then suddenly come 2020 or something like that, it was all the rage and it continues to be the rage. But in trends, I think every seven to eight years is when we see a genuinely a new trend which is going to...

Utsav Somani: Probably a generational shift also happening, right?

Soumya Kant (Co-founder, Clovia): Yeah, yeah, yeah. But also, you know, my age people when we started Clovia, I was what 27, 28. Today, I'm 40. And my pure group has become shoppers not just for themselves but also as mothers. So, while there has been a generational shift, the shopper has remained the same. So, it's only when Gen Z starts to shop for themselves or Gen Alpha starts to shop for themselves, that's when maybe we'll see the new trend coming up.

Utsav Somani: And what is the biggest myth about women's buying behavior that your data disproves this year?

Utsav Somani: Team asked me to ask this one. So, it's a hard one.

Soumya Kant (Co-founder, Clovia): Yeah. That women only want black, white, beige. A yellow bra outsells a skin color.

Utsav Somani: Oh, wow. All right, team, you have the answer. Dhruv?

Dhruv Sharma: Soumya, I still haven't gotten an answer to the question about materials. Yes. And how much do you spend in R&D there? And what does that look like?

Soumya Kant (Co-founder, Clovia): Now, being part of Reliance, we do have access to latest tech on fabrics. So, there's a lot that happens when you're able to integrate new fabrics like Tencel, Modal, you're able to get odorfree bio-washes and so on. And you're able to integrate it in not the obvious articles like activewear, you're able to integrate it in innerwear, bras, briefs, which people are not even thinking of doing. One latest tech that has come to India now is bonded, which we didn't have in India for the longest period of time. And it was completely China manufacturing or Bangladesh manufacturing. And now finally, it has come to India, I think the last two years. That's one big change that we've seen that bonded lingerie, laser cut lingerie, we are now able to manufacture it here. Other than that, I mean, the fabrics are pretty endless when it comes to what you can experiment with in nightwear, loungewear, and activewear. But in a bra, because of the stretchability, there's only so much that you can apply.

Utsav Somani: And two-part question, because you mentioned the name Reliance, what has changed for you after the Reliance acquisition? And in terms of they have different women brands in their portfolio as well, right? So, is there collaboration that you see amongst these brands or it's mostly operating in silos?

Soumya Kant (Co-founder, Clovia): We operate in silos. There's a lot of integration that comes as part of Reliance. We're now housed in Reliance warehouse. So there's cost saving there. We're part of SAP. Again, a lot of compliances are taken care of. The opportunity within the Reliance ecosystem is massive. They have 2,200 trend stores. They have 300 smart bazaar stores. So the opportunity within Reliance to sell lingerie is just beyond what we could have imagined if we had stayed outside of Reliance. And in terms of the three brands housed within Reliance, we all operate on different pricing metrics. So, Amanda is premium, we're mid-premium, and Zivameh is mass and economy. So we all cater to different price points and hence different customers.

Utsav Somani: All right, Dhruv, something as the last question?

Dhruv Sharma: Yes, final closing question. What's next? What's next for Trovia?

Soumya Kant (Co-founder, Clovia): What's next for Trovia? Nightwear, sleepwear, and activewear is one category that we started to grow, I think, 2018 onwards. And that's been one of our biggest growth levers for the last five, seven years. It's already a 200 crore category for us and we expect it to become the next growth lever. Other than that, we want to open 100 more stores sooner the better. So we are giving out franchises now. We're at 90 stores, we're hoping to be at 150 by the end of next year.

Utsav Somani: And split into tier two, tier three? Is there a focus, specific focus area amongst these tiers?

Soumya Kant (Co-founder, Clovia): So we already have a lot of stores in tier two and tier three. So we have a store in, you know, if you know the Punjab belt, we have a store in Moga, Hosharpur, and so on. And they do excellent, because the price point and the product that we do service, it caters to that audience very, very well. And 60% of our sales anyway across the board comes from tier two and tier three. So we do, we do expect a lot of stores to come in that area. But we also want to be in malls. Now, Trovia has always been in high street. So now we want to get a few stores and malls as well.

Dhruv Sharma: Are your hands full with the domestic opportunities? Do you spend any time thinking about exporting at all?

Soumya Kant (Co-founder, Clovia): We already do. It's very small business right now. Only UAE based Qatar and a little bit of Saudi, but we do already export. We, we tried our hand at US and Europe, but the body type was very different. And we had to rejig the whole machinery, which at this point, I don't think we'll do. We'll continue to scale UAE operations, and then we'll see where it goes.

Utsav Somani: Awesome. Thank you so much for joining in. Wishing you all the best.

Soumya Kant (Co-founder, Clovia): Thank you so much. Lovely seeing you all.

Utsav Somani: Great chatting with you. All right, folks, our next guest, Chirag is a close dear friend of offline as well. And you've definitely used his product. He's omnipresent in the world of online commerce as well. He's probably powered most of your festive shopping as well. So let's welcome him and ask him some hard questions. Chirag, welcome to the show.

Chirag Taneja (Co-founder & CEO, GoKwik): Thanks Utsav. Thanks, Utsav. Thanks for having me.

Utsav Somani: Are you rested after the festive season?

Chirag Taneja (Co-founder & CEO, GoKwik): It has just started, bro.

Utsav Somani: It is just after the season.

Chirag Taneja (Co-founder & CEO, GoKwik): Marketplace festive is different from B2C festive.

Utsav Somani: Chirag, describe that for us, for our listeners. What does a festive season look like in the world of online commerce? And what are the numbers in terms of just percentage growth from last year?

Chirag Taneja (Co-founder & CEO, GoKwik): So the phenomena is actually, as a brand, you want to use different channels at different point of time. Marketplace is where the festive starts. And it immediately ends in a week or so. And then all the focus is mostly on direct to consumer, wherein you can sell from your own website.

Utsav Somani: Like Big Billion Day and other online events.

Chirag Taneja (Co-founder & CEO, GoKwik): So Amazon India Shopping Festival and Big Billion Day are the big ones. And then of course, Nika has something called Pink Friday in November. Those are big flagship events for marketplaces during festive. However, every payday is important from a brand.com point of view also now. And Black Friday, to a lot of people's surprise, is a phenomenon in India also. We are seeing that the bump, at least if I compare D2C bumps, I think it's as good as festive bump, which you get on D2C.

Utsav Somani: So in China, there is an 11-11 day also, right? Single day.

Chirag Taneja (Co-founder & CEO, GoKwik): In China, there is 11-11. But I think for different reasons, but I think we like more on various different funds, you know, right from celebrating to having more brand.com behavior, which hasn't happened in China, to a lot of other things. Largely because I think we're very heterogeneous society, we're not homogeneous.

Dhruv Sharma: When it comes to consumption, it looks like the world is a lot multicultural than you would typically think.

Utsav Somani: The Indian VC should start hosting Halloween parties instead of Diwali parties also then.

Chirag Taneja (Co-founder & CEO, GoKwik): For sure, I think it has become a phenomenon in Bangalore. If you ask, you know, all these kids do Halloween parties and all.

Dhruv Sharma: Yes, those who are 5-6 years old, when they are VCs, 15-20 years down the line, they will throw a Halloween party.

Utsav Somani: Chirag, tell us some numbers from last year. We've spoken about festive sales. We've seen GST and all of those numbers from the headlines. But what are you seeing on GoQuick? If you can do a broad analysis of consumer spending going up?

Chirag Taneja (Co-founder & CEO, GoKwik): Yeah, overall, we continue to see, at least from our vantage point, we continue to see at least anywhere between 35-40% CAGR growth across our portfolio, which is phenomenal. I've seen it across cohort. I've seen big getting bigger and seeing more new people starting up. So that also is like at an all-time high now. And we are also seeing this mid-torso part, which is growing significantly. You know, we look at number of brands with us, which do greater than 1 crore a month, has probably 8x in last 8-10 quarters.

Dhruv Sharma: How do you segment your customers, Chirag?

Chirag Taneja (Co-founder & CEO, GoKwik): We actually do merchants. So we are a B2B2C company. We segment merchants in, let's say, the definition being enterprise, SMB, and long tail. Depending on the ARR cut and the number of products used, you would want to do that classification. And every company does it. This is their ARR profiling. So, you know, it's very standard in a software company.

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah. And which merchant tier drives majority of revenue at this point in time? And where do you look for growth?

Chirag Taneja (Co-founder & CEO, GoKwik): So actually, in our case, there is no 20-80 Pareto, to be very frank. However, if I look at overall category, 50% of GMB as well as shopper base is driven by fashion as a category. Right. So all which means, and which is globally true, by the way, if you look at Misho's number also, that is true. So globally true. Just that it comes as a surprise when I tell anyone that fashion is quite big. It is a very long tail.

Utsav Somani: I was reading the Misho document. Number of saree SKUs is crazy, right? It's crazy. Yeah.

Chirag Taneja (Co-founder & CEO, GoKwik): It's actually crazy. Yeah, very much. I think it's a phenomenal company in the making when everyone went after the India 1 audience. This is one company which actually took a very different stance and said that we are going to go after India 4. We are not going to chase AOV. In fact, I have heard Vidit say in between that, he's going to bring AOV even down, which is counterintuitive. And I think they have built a fantastic India 1st business, somewhat similar to Shopee in Singapore or in Indonesia. But I think when it comes down to execution, it's very different. And kudos to them. I think the way they transitioned in between from a reseller model to a marketplace in 2021, I guess. I think it's phenomenal. And I think it's a celebration of the VC ecosystem also, finally, which we keep hearing that start-ups are not big, they are not profitable, they are not listed.

Utsav Somani: I think Zomato started that trend. Next week is Lenskart, which is going to be a big, big one. Of course, profitable as well. And big unlock for the founders, ecosystem in general.

Chirag Taneja (Co-founder & CEO, GoKwik): You know, Elevation would make three times their fund size. In Misho alone. My sense is their fund size was $350 million. They invested via that. And their position is going to be close to 1.2 billion. Isn't that crazy?

Utsav Somani: Isn't that like liquid positions are always good. So yeah, Chirag is making this into an asymmetric podcast. So let's go back into the T1 mode. I mean, GoQuick is now a suite of products, right? What are the different revenue lines and the product lines for you now?

Chirag Taneja (Co-founder & CEO, GoKwik): So we actually started with this interesting cash on delivery problem statement, which continues to be one of our important pillars. It then has become into our TO enabled checkout business also. Now we, of course, have a CRM slash engagement business. Think of it like the more engaged clever tab for D2C brands. So that's pretty sizable. Then we have a return portfolio, return management software, wherein we handle all the return nuances for D2C brands. It's an important pain area. It might not be top of mind for a lot of us, but it's an important pain area from a trust-building point of view. That's there. Then we have a unified login product called QuickPass. And then as a company, we continue to explore many other things. So we're exploring on ad size. We are exploring on how to enable our brands to do quicker delivery. Doesn't mean 15 minutes, but at least enabling them to do one day, two day deliveries. So a bunch of things. And then taking the stack internationally, we believe that there is a lot of at least gap or India is becoming a little bit China where because of our domestic demand and let's say what's adding indigenous to us, a lot of things are we have learned on the way, which the world hasn't seen. And we can actually take it outside. So it's a good position to be in now.

Utsav Somani: International markets, where are you experimenting or launching?

Chirag Taneja (Co-founder & CEO, GoKwik): So we've launched in UK. We've launched there. We are almost about 50 odd brands live now. And I would say some early signs of product market fit is there.

Utsav Somani: This is with the checkout product, which I think was to India, the cash on delivery market.

Chirag Taneja (Co-founder & CEO, GoKwik): So this is actually, we have gone there with the engaged product. We believe that what we have achieved in India by WhatsApp commerce world hasn't seen. So can we like try and be the clavio equivalent on WhatsApp in those countries?

Dhruv Sharma: In fact, this is super interesting. Open problem statements in different parts of the world. What are these unsolved problems right now that you've been able to sort of nail down? It's early, but still.

Chirag Taneja (Co-founder & CEO, GoKwik): There are many unsolved problems. I think whenever there are new channels emerge, there are a bunch of problems which like lead to, you know, in India also, for example, when we started, there are only two large marketplaces. Today you speak to a brand, they probably at least double digit marketplaces they operate, which means that for a brand, it becomes a nightmare to manage, you know, these 10 marketplaces and a brand.com. Similarly, internationally, you know, WhatsApp, of course, the medium which has picked up and hence, you know, that will become an emerging channel. Similarly, AI calling is an emerging channel. Now it's up to our imagination what we can build on top of it, right? So newer technologies will of course give newer, you know, mediums to innovate. Now it's up to us whether we are able to figure out, go to market and adoption on the product side.

Dhruv Sharma: How do you guys feel about agentic commerce? Browsers, agent, shopping, that whole new development that's taking place.

Utsav Somani: There was also a lot of noise made about Razorpay being integrated into OpenAI as well, right?

Chirag Taneja (Co-founder & CEO, GoKwik): I think first, that's a very well done POC. I think there is, you know, like with all things Silicon Valley, there is a lot of buzz around it. At least from a data point of view, from an India data point of view, it looks like that we might be very, very ugly in terms of adoption, etc. But at least I have used it myself. I find it very fascinating. But in terms of, let's say, you know, if I go back and see that, okay, is shopping very, very linear? Do users browse in the same session? Do shop in the same session? I think that mostly the answer is no, right? It's a heavy concern. This is like money is being exchanged, right? So you would want to do a lot of consideration. You would want to do a lot of research around it. And then finally conclude. It typically does not happen in the same session. And of course, you know, I continue to hold my view. So, and also, you know, Chad Zipit is an evolved, if let's say I continue to say this, if let's say 10 people were good at doing Google search, I think probably one is super good now at using Chad Zipit. It's not easy. It comes out with such good English that it's hard to differentiate between what is right and what is wrong. So the level of intelligence is going up.

Utsav Somani: Yeah, there is a question from the audience, which I want to ask you. Varun has asked us on Twitter to the founders, what are the adjustments you make when you start seeing cohorts with lower retention and initial customer sizes? If customer acquisition slows down without performance marketing, how do you solve for new revenue? For the brands that you work with or the founders that you interact with when you're building GoQuick?

Chirag Taneja (Co-founder & CEO, GoKwik): I think it's mostly someone B2C founder should answer, but I'll make an attempt at it. Passive observer, yeah. I think there are certain playbooks which people deploy. One is let's say increasing their assortment, right? Typically, let's say if you're a beauty brand, you would start with, let's say, a face as a category and then would want to increase repeat in that. But I think SmarterZone, what they do is they have a strategy in terms of how they're going to open up different categories also for the same consumer, right? So that builds a good retention loop. Similarly, I think people have figured out more different cashbacks, loyalty programs, which work even in day one, right? Even day one, that works out. And then people have also figured out partnering with some of these companies such as CRED, et cetera, in terms of reselecting their users which have dropped off, right? So those also become channels to reselect. At least this is what comes top of mind to me, but I might not be the expert here. Thank you.

Dhruv Sharma: Chirag, you always like talking about like profit first growth, right? Do you want to spend a couple of minutes just sharing with us how you evolved how you got to that point where you could you could just sum it down to something super simple. No, you're saying that, can you repeat it for me? Yeah, I was saying whenever we hear you speak, you always focus on profit first growth. Why is that important to you?

Chirag Taneja (Co-founder & CEO, GoKwik): No, actually, we have done a bunch of different things. I won't say that I have been advocating only profit first growth, but at least one should know where the revenue pools lie, where the profit pools lie. You might do certain things just to achieve growth, but one should be clear that you're doing this only for growth and then eventually it's a means to an end, right? Otherwise, I've done this mistake in the past where I built a product, got growth, and then realized business model didn't fit. So not knowing, is this a means, is this an end? I think that's where probably most of us get stuck. So getting that clarity that the consumer spends money there, so can we tap into that revenue pool versus discovering a newer revenue pool? I think that's hard.

Utsav Somani: And when you started GoQuick, I mean, of course, the problem statement was cash on delivery. India is huge. I don't know what the numbers look like today, but are people with the penetration of UPI and many other of these, I mean, government is annealing online payments in a big way, right? And cash is going down. Do you see that problem statement still persisting?

Chirag Taneja (Co-founder & CEO, GoKwik): Online payments has definitely improved a lot because of UPI. But having said that, cash on delivery still remains the single largest payment method.

Utsav Somani: If you were to do a trend line analysis, like what does the percentage look like broadly for the ecosystem in general or GoQuick in general specific?

Chirag Taneja (Co-founder & CEO, GoKwik): I think we should have a good representative sample now. When we started, we were about 65% COD and probably close to 25%, 27% was UPI and then remaining the other payment methods were 70%. I think that 65% has gone down to 50% now, COD. UPI has, and largely because of UPI, UPI has increased to almost close to 40% to 43%. And the other payment methods is 7% to 8%. UPI has mostly eaten into net banking, eaten into credit cards now via credit and UPI. So that has happened. However, COD continues to be the largest payment method in the country and on a growing pie, right? So like three, four years ago, we were probably much, much smaller. The space was much, much smaller. That has increased. And interestingly, what we see is that it's not a trust problem so much. People who shop using COD, even if they go on a big brand, they continue to shop on COD. So it's a sticky behavior which continues to persist. I think it'll take a lot of time for us to do away with it. But I think we have to accept that this is how the country shops.

Utsav Somani: And just jamming with you, does it ever make sense for GoQuick to have a Rupey credit card?

Chirag Taneja (Co-founder & CEO, GoKwik): We have discussed, thought about it, maybe at some point of time, it might be meritful to us also to give some kind of D2C loyalty to our shoppers via this Rupey credit card of sorts.

Utsav Somani: Dhruv, anything to wrap us up?

Dhruv Sharma: Yes, how was that podcast you guys did together? Asymmetric?

Chirag Taneja (Co-founder & CEO, GoKwik): It was pretty good. I think Utsav should tell. I think I learned a lot in terms of angel investing from Utsav.

Dhruv Sharma: So you do that once a week, right, Chirag? We do that once a week. That's amazing.

Utsav Somani: Fascinating. And Raventh is the professor there who basically comes with his analysis and Chirag brings up the slides and they just like this thing. And it's a very friendly conversation. That format was very refreshing. Like we went on for two hours, didn't feel like this thing. And amazing that you guys have built it. Do people compare it with All In podcast of India? Does that come up in the comments?

Chirag Taneja (Co-founder & CEO, GoKwik): At least we get those kind of comments, yes. But the idea was not to do anything around those lines. The idea was that how do we keep up on our learning curve? And then we thought that, okay, otherwise we had so much ground in our business. How do we learn? So we thought, okay, we'll bring at least one anchor article.

Dhruv Sharma: Was it like you guys were friends and you would do this anyway? And then you just decided to put like a camera in the room? Yeah, we would do it anyway.

Chirag Taneja (Co-founder & CEO, GoKwik): Very like once in three, four months when we would get together. So we kind of started with this that, okay, can we do once a week? In fact, I was the late entrant. Shantanu and Raven started and then they pulled me in. I think they needed someone to balance both of their views.

Utsav Somani: They wanted a smart, level-headed person in the room. And Raven was the person that introduced Chirag and me also. And it's a very funny story. One of the first few investments that I did from my first fund and I got to know Chirag because Raven had sent this deck with said safeguard and blue and white deck. And I was like, man, he wants to enter the startup world. And I still have that WhatsApp chat. We were jamming. What year was this?

Utsav Somani: Chirag is, I mean, crushed it in the last five years. Household name. Yeah.

Chirag Taneja (Co-founder & CEO, GoKwik): Yeah. We'll just complete five years. And Utsav was the first one who got it like this.

Dhruv Sharma: Well, no interest in it. Anytime we put data together on medium time, medium time between rounds, right? Like GoQuick suddenly skews that in a different direction.

Chirag Taneja (Co-founder & CEO, GoKwik): So I had very less to do with it. I think it was more market.

Utsav Somani: You just being humble and what is the scale of GoQuick now before we rack things up?

Chirag Taneja (Co-founder & CEO, GoKwik): We have today 15,000 brands.

Utsav Somani: 15,000. Are there any category in hard representation like bigger pie or it's mostly split across everything under the sun? Now, as I said, beauty and personal care is 50% of this.

Chirag Taneja (Co-founder & CEO, GoKwik): Fashion is 50% of this. Beauty and personal care is probably close to from a number of logos point of view, will be less than 10%. Electronics is even lower. I think that's beauty and fashion and followed by home and care is probably the two large segments.

Utsav Somani: I have one more for you before I let you go. What is the most unusual or the quirkiest brand that you work with? If you're comfortable answering.

Chirag Taneja (Co-founder & CEO, GoKwik): Quirkiest? Yeah, I don't remember the names, but these days these oversized t-shirt brands are like killing it. I think Shantanu put it nicely that Denzi wants to own slices of luxury. So I am not recollecting actually the name of the brands. They're very niche, but they make some very good, nice oversized t-shirts, etc. Pretty good.

Utsav Somani: Awesome. Chirag, thank you so much for giving us your time and insights.

Dhruv Sharma: Thank you Utsav and Dhruv for having me. Cheers. Good to have you Chirag. We'll have you back soon again. Pleasure.

Utsav Somani: All right, folks. Thank you so much for tuning in to our Monday stream and we'll see you on Wednesday with an amazing lineup as well. Have a wonderful, wonderful rest of the day.