Summary

The Offline Network Episode 24: IPOs, Sustainability & Crypto (aired 2025-10-24). Guests: Sumit Gupta, Aditya Ruia, Nikunj Biyani from CoinDCX, BECO, SuperYou. Sumit: "I think the journey continues, but I think this was a good motivation for the entire company as well as for the entire ecosystem, because crypto companies in India have not raised large rounds for a long time." Sumit: "The other in terms of regions, I think we have already deep presence in India, MENA within Middle East and North Africa, we have good presence in UAE, Bahrain, we've got licenses." Topics: venture capital and funding, AI and LLMs, crypto and Web3, consumer brands and D2C. 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: Hi, listeners, and welcome to the Wednesday's stream of the Offline Network.

Utsav Somani: Wednesday's stream, that could be a good opening as well.

Dhruv Sharma: The Wednesday's stream of the Offline Network. It's a big week ahead for main board. What's happening with main board IPOs for tech companies, three blockbuster names and three guests in the Offline Network, Sumit of CoinDCX is back, and we have the founders of Beko and SuperU. So supercharged for today's show of what's happening on the main board with the tech companies going public.

Utsav Somani: It's going insane. I mean, Sequoia, which is now peak 15 in India, is making huge gains across many different IPOs. So we'll talk about PineLabs first. Lokveer Kapoor, who was the founder, is making 460 crores in profit, 450x return for him. Peak 15, of course, is going to get a massive windfall with 4, 6, 5, 0 crores in profits, man. Huge gains. And I think the question that everyone was asking that can India deliver returns to LPs. So I think that time has finally come. And you've seen that with Lenskart, you've seen that with Grow and Misho and so many others that will come, Urban Company, which was also there. So it's going to be insane. 39x gain for peak 15, targeting a 2.9 billion valuation, which was privately last valued at 5 billion, but still huge gains for the private investors. What does the company do? Do we come across it almost every day?

Dhruv Sharma: Every time you pull out your card to swipe, there's a very high chance you're going to see a PineLabs POS machine. But the company was founded in 1998, by the way, by Kapoor and Amrish, who's the CEO now stepped in around 2020. They've got two businesses predominantly. One is a more merchant focused business, which drives majority of the revenue. And then they have another infrastructure business, which helps, you know, issuers get cards into the hands of holders. They've also done a lot of acquisitions along the way. You'll remember Quicksilver, you'll remember Setu, well-loved fintech companies. They've been a part of their journey.

Utsav Somani: Who else is IPOing? Grow, raising 3000 crores in its IPO. And funny enough, Nitin Kamath was posting that 20% of all the applications for the Grow IPO came from Zerodha users. You mentioned some investors, the sovereign funds, which were investing in the Grow IPO as well.

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah, Grow has the most. In fact, you've met Lalit recently.

Utsav Somani: He's an investor in Offline.

Dhruv Sharma: He's an investor in Offline.

Utsav Somani: Oh, that's... We'll have him on the show very soon.

Dhruv Sharma: We will. But they have one of the most coveted capitals, including Ribbit Capital, by the way, which is across all great fintech companies. But another great story. And you know, but the thing I have to ask you is, what are IPOs really? Are they marketing events or are they fundraising events? Because so much of, you know, the narratives around the price, the subscription, the demand, the listing, they pop. But really, this is just a day in the life of a company, right? And the bulk of the journey lies ahead of you. So you've been around in the ecosystem for so long. What's your take on this?

Utsav Somani: I'll go back to the Zomato book, which I finished, by the way. So Zomato, they didn't go for the listing ceremony at the stock exchange. What they did was they actually gathered around in their cafeteria. And what Dipinder said that I don't want to go through all the song and dance, but then I think Mohit of Sequoia and Mohit of Sequoia then, Peak15 now, and even Sanjeev Bikchandani said that this is the biggest marketing event that the company will ever get. Like this is the singular moment where everyone's going to talk about your company, retail investors, global investors. So use this to your advantage as well. And then Eternals price fell. And that's when, like, I think Dipinder truly grew up as a founder when I think a lot of the leadership left as well. So truly, honestly, I would say that pre-IPO and post-IPO are entirely different journeys. And Dipinder also mentioned that some of his employees got demotivated when they made too much money in the IPO. So both different ballgames, but now Eternal is very strong as a company. So treat it as a milestone, like you said, a marketing event even. And also, I mean, Dipinder made like two other office executives, CFO and COO, just so that they could do the public facing pitches to the investors while he was focused on operations. So it's exciting.

Dhruv Sharma: I see debates between, you know, one school of thought versus the other, growth versus value, but it's fascinating to watch.

Utsav Somani: Absolutely. But Peak15, big winner in both these IPOs, 1.8 billion for the 20% stake in Grow. I think it's insane. And other big winners in this IPO of Bonanza have been, I think, Elevation Capital, Sunbelt. Then you've got Axel, of course, with them, they did Urban Company and then Peak15 is the name that keeps on popping up, waiting for the Misho IPO as well. And people are saying that the Grow IPO is fairly priced, Twitter, this thing. And funny enough, Lenskart reminded us that Twitter is a bubble, right? Where you see everyone saying that it's an overpriced IPO, now 29x subscription for Lenskart IPO. It's insane. Like people have locked in 29 times their money, this IPO subscription amount in just their bids for Lenskart. So it's fascinating. What this means, like the amount of liquidity there is in the retail markets. And I mean, kudos to Piyush for building such a solid business and a unique business as well.

Dhruv Sharma: People were critical of him for how he handled some questions, I think, in some of the pressers. But then he did, I think, in a day's time, just get back and clarify all of the questions people had in their mind.

Utsav Somani: All right, quickly running through cool things that we saw on the internet. Why is Google putting TPUs in space? What are TPUs?

Dhruv Sharma: So Tensor Processing Units. Everyone's trying to build their own chips. Everyone's trying to build their own, what are called ASICs, like Application Specific Integrated Circuits. And no one wants to count on NVIDIA for the indefinite future. So Google's been on this for quite some time. The other thing to think about over here is, so where are the bottlenecks in AI, right? Depends on who you are. Some people will say compute. Some people will say GPUs. Some people will say power, right? If you have a stack of GPUs in your data center doing nothing because you don't have electricity to power them, you know, what's really going to happen? So Google's sending their TPUs to space as close to the sun as possible. And a lot of people in AI are also, by the way, banking on a fusion breakthrough for generating electricity. So that is, that's interesting stuff. I see our first guest is almost here. All right.

Utsav Somani: So let's quickly recap what's happening at Sequoia as well, and then the GLP1 stuff. What's happening at Sequoia? Change of guard? Yes.

Dhruv Sharma: The exchange of guard came out of the blue and the senior steward Rofota announced that he's passing the baiting to Alfred Lin and Pat Crady, who of course, been with the firm for quite some time now. Alfred Lin, if I'm not mistaken, was one of the co-founders of Zappos, the shoe company. Yeah. I mean, Sequoia always prides itself in these near perfectly timed intergenerational sort of transfers. Very few firms can time them and plan them and execute them. Let's see how this plays out.

Utsav Somani: And in a very weird and funny thing that we saw on the timeline, I don't know how much of this is true in the sense that will this actually play out. Morgan Stanley puts out a research report where they say drugs like the GLP1 drugs like Ozempic and Monjaro will reshape how people eat. And then one of our previous guests who was there last on last show on KIF, he tweeted that his food ordering from Swiggy and Zomato have actually gone down after he started taking Monjaro as well. So one of the bare case to make for these online deliveries, but I don't think it's going to play out.

Dhruv Sharma: Very quickly, I have a conspiracy theorist who might be funding this research. I think I think it might be Ryanair and Indigo, right? It will carry less excess baggage.

Utsav Somani: All right. But now enough of the news, Sumit, thank you so much for waiting and welcome back to the show. You're our first returning guest.

Sumit Gupta (Co-founder & CEO, CoinDCX): Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Dhruv.

Utsav Somani: Hey, Sumit. Pleasure to have you. And you've turned crisis into opportunity. So let's talk about the Coinbase investment first. What does it mean? And congrats on closing that big round with them.

Sumit Gupta (Co-founder & CEO, CoinDCX): Yeah. Thank you, Utsav. And I'm sure you know about it before others do. So I think it was interesting what the situation was. I think we've had a tough situation a few months back. And Coinbase, which is the largest and the most trusted compliant brand globally in crypto, their investment in Coinbase is one, it strengthens their trust in the brand Coinbase. It's a lot more stronger and it just gives further reinforces the work that we have done, the execution that the team has done over the last several years. It gives a lot more strength to our market leadership position. I think the journey continues, but I think this was a good motivation for the entire company as well as for the entire ecosystem, because crypto companies in India have not raised large rounds for a long time. So I think hopefully this is the beginning for that. For us as a company, this allows, gives us more firepower to invest in building more innovative products and expand geographically outside the country as well. So with this capital, we will expand both across products as well as across geos, which is going to shape up the next growth path for the company in many, many years to come. So I think overall, very exciting and interesting times.

Utsav Somani: Describe the product roadmap and what geographies are on the map as well for you?

Sumit Gupta (Co-founder & CEO, CoinDCX): Yeah, I mean like on product side, one is we have already deep in all the kind of investment products, trading products. We have also with SIP. So all those investment products are already there for different persona types. What we are also doubling down on is how can we bring the power of DeFi to CeFi? We call it CDeFi in the company, like how do these two words converge? And that's something that the company is very aggressively working on. You will see a bunch of exciting products that are not available in traditional finance, but DeFi offers that capability and we will link it with INR. That's something that we are working on and a bunch of exciting stuff on the Vectree side as well. Experimenting with a few products, the team keeps on doing their work and whenever we are comfortable, the idea is that we will want to make our customers realize the power of DeFi, which we believe is the future, especially when it comes to financial products and services, which has been very active like two, three years back, but now not as much attention goes there. But that's something that we are very, very bullish on. The idea is that we will make it mainstream in India. The other in terms of regions, I think we have already deep presence in India, MENA within Middle East and North Africa, we have good presence in UAE, Bahrain, we've got licenses. There's one license that we received yesterday, it will be announced shortly, but we continue to acquire more and more licenses in different regions where there is regulatory clarity. So the idea is that that will serve as a ground for us to learn and then use those learnings in India, but continue to diversify across different geographies, increase our revenues because the R4 there is very attractive, but India remains the heart for us and we want to use that growth and channel it back to the country.

Dhruv Sharma: Sumit, going into 2026 from an industry perspective, what are the large trends that appear interesting at this point in time?

Sumit Gupta (Co-founder & CEO, CoinDCX): Interesting trends, I think one thing that's talked about a lot is stablecoins. I think stablecoin is clear breakout use case for crypto, a lot of people have been asking that what's the open AI movement for crypto and I think stablecoins have proven that already like $300 billion in circulation, going to cross $2 trillion in just like another four or five years. A lot of that is going to come from emerging markets, with Genius Act being passed with bipartisan support. I think it's clearly giving a lot more confidence to even like large traditional conglomerates to sort of experiment with stablecoins all the way from Visa to Mastercard, pretty much everyone is experimenting with that. All the big banks are now following that, so I'm seeing a lot more momentum there. I see a lot of conversations happening around tokenization as well, like how can you bring real world assets on-chain, make the markets a lot more efficient, how can you have equities on-chain, 24 by 7 trading equities which are traded in some settlement, completely transparent, no intermediaries in between, it will just make the financial systems a lot more effective, efficient, and that's something that's being talked about a lot. Any asset class which is illiquid, how can you make it liquid, including real estate, a lot of people are experimenting with that. So a bunch of stuff happening around tokenization as well, something that we believe governments will be a lot more open to, because it's backed by sort of real world assets and something that is physical in nature, so this more like a physical, which is more relatable to them. This will start from there and then eventually we'll move forward from there. So I think there's a lot more conversations happening around that. I do believe that there's going to be a lot more conversations around other countries talking about regulations and coming up with sort of fullfledged guidelines, and I see a lot of other founders talking about that happening, a lot of stuff happening in their own countries. So yeah, largely this is pretty interesting.

Utsav Somani: And CZ, the founder of Binance, was recently pardoned. Did you have a chance to meet him in Dubai? No, I did not.

Sumit Gupta (Co-founder & CEO, CoinDCX): I've met him a few times before, I've met a few other CXOs of Binance, they are also looking at India market very, very seriously. And yeah, but not CZ in particular, very recently.

Utsav Somani: And what's your take on WazirX starting up again? That's good for users, but will they be able to come back in a big way or users have lost trust?

Sumit Gupta (Co-founder & CEO, CoinDCX): I think trust is something which is, again, very, you know, I think it's something that takes years and years to build. CoinBCX has built trust over the last seven, eight years because of the actions we did. And it's something once broken, it's very difficult to get it back, right? I mean, it's like that. So I doubt if users will trust WazirX again. And the way they are trying to get your trust back, it can't be forced. Like you have to give users freedom to do whatever they want to do. I think there I am a bit doubtful, but in terms of WazirX starting the platform again, I think it's net positive for the ecosystem because a lot of money was locked there. Roughly $300 million or so will get unlocked as the platform starts up again. And I think it's good for the customers because now they'll be able to use that money. And it's good to see the faces of customers that they are able to access the money back and then they can do whatever they want to do with that. Last one and a half years must have been tough for, you know, all the users have been impacted by that. But I think at least good thing is that customers are sort of getting access to the capital. And second thing is hopefully other companies will learn on how to sort of deal with such situations and hopefully it never happens again.

Dhruv Sharma: Sumit, when we think of Indian investors who've been all this while just sitting on the fence, waiting for the right time to seek their first exposure to crypto, from your standpoint, what's the right way for them to be thinking about crypto at this point in time, about volatility, about risk, about new clarity that has emerged?

Sumit Gupta (Co-founder & CEO, CoinDCX): Yeah, I think excellent question. And a lot of people ask this question. I think there's one simple straightforward answer. Just start with SIP. Nobody is smart enough to time the market. Nobody knows when to enter. But if you are a long term investor who is in it for the long term, then I think SIP is a fantastic way to enter, you know, weekly, just put in small, small chips of capital and then continue to stack up your Bitcoin holdings, limit your exposure to top quality crypto assets rather than looking at the next 10x, 100x. I think, you know, very, very few people will get that.

Dhruv Sharma: So I think in all terms of money, the rupee cost average them over a very long period of time.

Utsav Somani: Yeah, I know you keep posting your SIP screenshots on Twitter as well. Sumit, two final questions. The Bitcoin white paper turned 16, October 31st. When was the first time you read it? And also you posted very recently about Dipinder Goyal being a mentor. We were discussing his book as well. And I believe you also have a copy and you posted a screenshot, a photo of that and also a picture with Dipinder. And you call him a mentor as well. So when was the first time you read the Bitcoin white paper? And what's the relationship like with Dipinder? What have you learned from him?

Sumit Gupta (Co-founder & CEO, CoinDCX): Yeah, yeah. So first time I read the white paper was around 2016. That's when I like properly, properly sort of read it. And before that, I heard about Bitcoin when I was in Japan in 2014, but did not sort of spend time. But yeah, that just blew me up. And like, OK, fine, this is phenomenal. Honestly, if you ask me, I did not expect it to become this big. And it took me two years after that moment for me to start up fully in crypto. And with Dipinder, I think Dipinder is a very interesting story. So in 2021, when we ended up raising our round at like 90 million dollar round at like a billion dollar valuation, obviously Dipinder is something that I've always looked up to, solid entrepreneur and bit contrarian, like, you know, very different. You're just chatting about how they sort of, what they did during the listing time, right? In the cafeteria. So he reached out to me on LinkedIn. Hey, Sumit, let's catch up on Zoom sometime. I was like, oh, is that a real profile? And then I responded to that. And then he gave me his number. I gave mine and then got a WhatsApp from him. And then we ended up doing a good Zoom call. After that, I had a chat at his like, during the COVID time, three hours long chat with him. Very informal, candid chat. The company just went public. I asked him like, you know, what's it like? And then he shared a few things. I think those were also very, very interesting. And then since then, we've been in touch, keep exchanging messages every few months. And yeah, I chat with him about general stuff, about Bitcoin. Also, I pitched Bitcoin to him. Yeah, a lot of conversations around the industry and startup in general. So a solid guy to learn from. And yeah, I mean, what I learned from him is just the mindset to continue to do bigger and better things and continue to strive for sort of taking bold bets. I think that's something to learn from.

Utsav Somani: Sumit, thank you so much for coming on the show. I'll leave the listeners with the fact that if Sumit Gupta book is happening, I will, I think, contribute at least 30% of the content, at least around CoinDCX. The journey that I've seen and the company that you've built and the hard work that you and Neeraj have put in, it's just phenomenal. Kudos and thank you so much for coming on the show. All the best after the Coinbase investment.

Dhruv Sharma: You guys should quote your book already in 2026.

Utsav Somani: I mean, the journey is still left. I mean, the journey is still left. Write the first chapter. But that's the greatest thing. We'll write it together with Sumit. All the best, Sumit. Thank you so much. Thanks for your time, Sumit. See you. All right. Our next guest is here. Let's welcome Aditya from Beko. Aditya.

Aditya Ruia (Co-founder, Beco): Hi, what's up? Hi, Dhruv. How are you guys?

Utsav Somani: All right. Thank you so much for joining the show as well. Please, for our listeners who are hearing from you for the first time on our show, please describe what the business does for them in a couple of minutes.

Aditya Ruia (Co-founder, Beco): Absolutely. So we're a clean label home care brand, a D2C brand that started off actually in retail. Doing GT, doing traditional stuff. Back in the year 2019, just before COVID. And bootstrap business initially. Just graduated from college for a chance to work at McKinsey. Then said, you know, this is not fun. Can I do something different? And the whole D2C space was blowing up. But more than that, I thought there has to be a better way to serve the consumers. And I think HUL, Rekke and P&G sort of weren't doing a good job in just giving the right products to the consumers. Got, was initially into consumer tech. So loved tech from ground up. Been in the whole startup ecosystem at Bitspilani. And then, you know, just felt that the whole consumer business and the consumer goods business was growing up in India. Consumerism was at a high. And if I can just give better products to consumers, that's just the winner right there. And no experience in FMCG overall, Utsav Indru, but learned the hard way.

Dhruv Sharma: Which product did you start with, Aditya? And which, what did you launch with?

Aditya Ruia (Co-founder, Beco): So we were actually in China. I was my father there. And when I was flying back, I actually came across bamboo tissue papers on the flight.

Aditya Ruia (Co-founder, Beco): And I said, this is such a simple product. The most unsexy of the categories, right? Like they're on a podcast discussing tissue papers. You know, it's really not the most coolest thing that I think you could be building. But what we realized was that this was a very unorganized, very segmented sort of a market here in India. But the volumes were so high in India, just not the B2B side, but the B2C side is just so massive as an opportunity. We said, if there's an opportunity to serve the consumers better, build value, both for the consumer as well as for the brand, then that would be interesting. So it actually, it wasn't a flight back from China that I came across the product.

Utsav Somani: And how has the industry evolved? Like I think after COVID, sustainability, all of these topics came into mainstream conversation more so than before. What have your learnings been over the last 24 months or even longer since you've started?

Aditya Ruia (Co-founder, Beco): So it's actually more surprising because I would say post COVID, India has actually started earning a little bit more. So if you see the middle-class India, they've actually, they have more disposable income today than they did. And contradictorily, actually sustainability is not that big. So even though it's some mainstream conversation and today we can speak about sustainability, but I think India just wants, India's aspirational, they just want better products. They want a good value proper attached to it. And I quite honestly feel that sustainability is not really the reason why people buy products or buy brands. And I think that we learned this also throughout our journey that initially Bico was all about sustainability and that still remains today, but that's not what we communicate to consumers. We tell them the product is better because there's so many attributes attached to it. And hey, because we make it out of plant-based products and we don't use any harmful chemicals and hence we are better for the environment. So actually sustainability as a conversation has moved. So I've become more layered and has moved to sort of being communicated as the third proposition, but the first proposition is why it's better for them. Second is how we make it, that it's the ingredient story, why they should buy us. And third is actually sustainability. And I think most people often get that wrong and they say, okay, buy us because we're sustainable, but that's sounds a little bit more like charity and not really like why you should exist in their lives.

Dhruv Sharma: So that's actually a very interesting point. Adityan, how do you awaken the consumer to sustainability? So if it's not point number one, it's point three, but it's still important. If you care about the earth and you want to bring your consumers in on that journey to protect the earth, how do you do it?

Aditya Ruia (Co-founder, Beco): So I think Dhruv, it's built on an innate belief that people in general want to do something good, but as long as it's easy, as long as it's accessible, like when we started out doing beach cleanups in 2018, it was just a passion project. I used to stay very close to the Chowpatty Beach here in Mumbai. And I used to see so many thousands of people. So we were on a telegram group, which had 4,000 members of a beach cleanup, right? And I realized that while 4,000 sounds like a lot in terms of the entire population of Bombay, it's basically a few, it's a rounding off error, right? So the belief was that people want to do good as long as it doesn't burn a hole in their pocket, the whole journey of doing something good is made very easy. And we said, can we tell the consumer, tell people that they can create a similar impact by just choosing better and just choosing greener, right? So the belief was that today, Dhruv, you as an individual, Utsav as an individual, everyone here who's listening, wants to do something that makes them feel good. And if we can make that as easy as possible and as accessible, then that sort of will be the winner. So I think sustainability as a conversation and just creating that awareness just came from the fact that people just want to do better. If we can provide value to them as well as enable that, then that's just the way to sort of do it. But it's not going to today. People buy EVs not because for the environment, but it helps them save cost also, right? So I mean...

Utsav Somani: And what is the state of the business right now? How much capital have you raised? What are the hero SKUs? What does the scale of opportunity look like?

Aditya Ruia (Co-founder, Beco): So that's very interesting. So initially we were bootstrapped. We were running like a Marwadi business, right? Like, you know, bulk may procure retail, right? And just, you know, doing some sort of a conversion and selling to the consumer at a slightly higher price point. But I think as the business evolved, we raised a total of about $10 million so far. And we knew always this business, unlike consumer tech, will grow year on year. But, you know, the mortality is much higher. And then we would... If we do our job well, then, you know, the consumer landscape in India will always keep on growing. With $10 million, we've roughly created about 250 crores of annual run rate in terms of revenue. And, you know, we've scaled from about 60, 70 crores last year. So, you know, if you ask me, like, my plan for next year would probably be around 600, 700 crores. But that's still scratching the surface because, you know, consumer brands in India are very, very big. And then very large outcomes. You know, I was talking recently on a podcast and we were chatting about Minimalist and Gold Truth and some of these brands. And the kind of value they've been able to generate, right? And the kind of you know, the kind of consumer behavior they've been able to shape has actually been quite significant. And I think that's where a lot of the juice lies on how you shape the way people consume, how do you make them consume responsibly without the guilt of, you know, buying something and just for the sake of consumerism. And I think that's really where the business is today. It's actually just creating more awareness and just shaping consumer behavior in a way that makes them do good, feel good, look good.

Dhruv Sharma: And so you enter the lives of consumers with those bamboo tissues, Aditya. Now, how many different consumer needs do you solve? Utsav asked you the hero's cues, but how many different products are there? I know I use at least five personally, but how many options do we have?

Utsav Somani: What are the five that you use, Dhruv? Why don't we start with that?

Dhruv Sharma: Sure, the tissues. So there's also, I don't want to name the competitor, but floor cleanings, you know, the liquid. There's wipes. In fact, the floor cleaning liquid reminds me, so it's a question for you, Aditya, is does it help your cause that today consumers really care about what's in the product? Because there was always something to clean the floor with, but God knows what was in it. And when you applied it on the floor, what fumes are coming out. And today we care about something like that. So really treat that question as your own and how's that consumer awareness rising in India? How are founders like yourself playing into it?

Aditya Ruia (Co-founder, Beco): Got it. So I think I would separate this question into two parts. I think on a larger note, beauty and personal care as an industry has seen a lot of traction coming from the ingredients that we put inside the product. So niacinamide, hyaluronic acid, you know, these have become like table conversations, like people understand a lot of people, larger audience sort of knows about it. The home care industry, which is very different in terms of, you know, the kind of consumer behavior that people see today and almost equal in terms of market size in India, roughly at about 12, 13 billion dollars is actually built on that we don't have this instead of that we have this, right? So I'm free from toxic chemicals. I'm free from paraffins. I'm free from sulfates. And that's actually how it's been in the West. And that's what we are seeing here in India today. And today, if you ask me a lot of the big brands without naming some of them, right? A, obviously, they don't declare the complete ingredient list, because unlike food, they are not mandated by the government. But the ones that do, they use ingredients that are actually banned in some of the Western nations. And just because it's allowed here in India, I mean, this sort of, and there's not much regulation around it, right? So I don't think that A serves consumer well, which is why our hero at Eskimos are actually now the laundry detergents, the dishwashing liquids, flow cleaners, because these are products that you interact with daily. You have kids, they are on the floor, you have pets, they are constantly engaging. Dishwashing liquid, for example, you know, for all this, right? But today you still rinse the plate or the glass or the bowl before you use it, because you're sure that maybe some residues left behind or just probably caught on something, right? So I think fundamentally, a lot of the expectations from these categories have evolved. And because there have been low involvement categories, they've seen not very high engagements as a brand, but as a business, it's a phenomenal opportunity. And I urge a lot of founders to sort of look into these offbeat categories to actually build the next big brand here in India, because I think BPC and some of these industries have already been explored. And there's always a new brand and the final brands coming up every day. But a large part of the opportunity is very related here in India and coming up from these offbeat categories as well.

Utsav Somani: And a lot of the big players like HUL and others that you mentioned have their own eco lines as well. Does that, I mean, what's the industry dynamic like? Do they exercise their heft and muscle and also cut corners in terms of pricing and stuff?

Aditya Ruia (Co-founder, Beco): I think that's a very interesting question, because none of them actually have been able to succeed so far, not just for eco-friendly products, but also for products that are sort of me-tochallenger brands. So, you know, you had you had Nature's Ascent or one of these similar names that was launched by one of these larger consumer goods companies, which was in competition with the Mama Earth. I don't think they could out-execute them on product or on strategy or on execution. And, you know, the way we look at it is, they help increase the kind of awareness around these products, but the products and the execution doesn't really deliver well for the consumers. So, and obviously, the trust level is low, right? Like, so today, if a soft drink manufacturer, which has been globally recognized, suddenly launches something that is good for you, I'm not really sure whether that's really good for me or not. But, you know, if there is a founding team or if there are a group of experts saying that, you know, this is bad for you and I have something better, I think that's really a strategy to go. So I don't think the story also lines up for consumers and consumers are very smart today. You know, our belief is that the educated know exactly what they're eating, what they're doing, and if you can help them, help create the right awareness along with them. So it's not really the larger players that sort of scare me as a business, but it's the newer incumbents with a very strong mission and, you know, great in execution that actually do a better job than the large players. They're just built on distribution and they definitely exercise that from time and again. But I don't really think that, you know, that's very long lasting given just how distribution has been democratized with QuickCommerce and, you know, so many new channels that are coming in today.

Dhruv Sharma: I also think with the emergence of folks like you, I mean, if the incumbents, you know, get a little pressure to just have cleaner products and be more transparent about what's going in them, it's a great win for the consumer long-term. Absolutely.

Utsav Somani: All right, Dhruv, anything to close us out with before we welcome our next guest?

Dhruv Sharma: Yes, Aditya, what are you excited about, you know, sort of going into 2026? What's in the roadmap for the coming year?

Aditya Ruia (Co-founder, Beco): So I think the first thing is just increasing the kind of scale and distribution that we have today. Like I said, we are at about 250 crore net in terms of revenue that we're doing annually. The idea is to take this up to about 600-700 crore. So I think that journey is really exciting. But I think more than that, just seeing the product in the hands of as many consumers, just on many more shelves here in India. And I think the next guest will also sort of share his journey in terms of how he's been on the shelf, you know, so quickly. I think just fighting an industry which is largely 80% dominated by the incumbents and just being able to create enough data there is a lot of excitement.

Utsav Somani: Do you guys know each other? Do you know Nikunj?

Aditya Ruia (Co-founder, Beco): No, I haven't met him, but it's a good chance to meet him.

Utsav Somani: I think both of you are Bombay based as well. Yeah. All right, Aditya, thank you so much. Nikunj, I see that your screen is turned, I mean, upside down, like, yes. Okay, maybe because I think Ashok, is that okay? Laptop's better, but yeah, yeah, easy.

Dhruv Sharma: This was Ashok's debut at the show, by the way.

Utsav Somani: All right. So yeah, Aditya, we have one more minute with you. What would you like to just tell our listeners?

Aditya Ruia (Co-founder, Beco): So I think, I mean, you know, what you guys are doing that offline and the kind of conversations I went through the last couple of videos that you mentioned, I think it's just the group of founders, amazing set of people, you know, each one trying to do so many different things and just so much to learn, you know, while you're talking in a forum like this, but also when you're talking offline in the offline network to actually the founders that are there and just learning from their experience, how candid and you're typically not selling, right? Because most of the time you're just out there to sell, but you know, it's very refreshing with a group of founders that are actually not just there to sell, but to connect and to learn from.

Utsav Somani: Are you coming for the Georgia retreat as well? Hopefully, hopefully, yes. You have to, I think it'll be fun.

Dhruv Sharma: It's hard for founders to switch off the sales mode sometimes, isn't it?

Aditya Ruia (Co-founder, Beco): I don't think it's possible because it just becomes your second tongue, right?

Dhruv Sharma: So it becomes your personal idea.

Aditya Ruia (Co-founder, Beco): Yeah, so I think a bit of that marketing also shows in your relationships and then you're always trying to like sell and just, you know, make everything sound so larger than life. But, you know, it's a great time to be a founder in India today. And I just think that opportunity is amazing.

Utsav Somani: All right, we have Nikunj with us. Let's welcome Nikunj. Nikunj, thank you for adjusting from a phone to a laptop. I saw your podcast with Ganesh of ThinkSchool. He's also an offline member. Amazing set of questions. I have a different set of questions from him. First, I'm ready with my bar. But, I mean, why fermented yeast protein and why whey protein versus whey protein?

Nikunj Biyani (Co-founder, SuperYou): Oh, so we're jumping right into it. Okay, cool.

Utsav Somani: Right into it.

Nikunj Biyani (Co-founder, SuperYou): Yeah, I mean, look, principally, we were excited to bring something new to the market. There's this very exciting new technology that's making waves around the world, which is biofermentation. And just the idea that as a brand, we could bring something new for the Indian consumer, which has quite a lot of benefits, was what excited me, honestly. Precision fermentation and biofermentation, these two new technologies, really, really massive. I am extremely bullish on the future of it. Not that, just to clarify, not that we think whey is bad or anything like that. Whey is great. And it's very, it would have been very easy for us to launch the same product, but it's also heavily commoditized today. So we didn't want to come into the market with just nothing new and just another whey protein. And hence, we had the opportunity to bring this. And we thought we'll try and do that for the vegan product. And tomorrow, we might also give the consumer an option for whey and say, look, you come to us when you want protein and we'll make sure we give you the greatest options.

Utsav Somani: And your brand was the first time I actually heard of fermented yeast protein. And people have compared it and said it's lab-grown protein. And also, you've made claims like it's better for the environment, which, of course, makes sense because cow is the ultimate source of whey protein as well. And also, I think price point, you're cheaper than whey protein as well. So those are big advantages, right, for this. How did you discover this process?

Nikunj Biyani (Co-founder, SuperYou): Very, very long story to this. I was actually in Vegas for a fair on sports, nutrition, and multiple things. And I'd come across the technology while doing some research, met some folks who were building, they were based out of California. And then the long and short of it is, through them, got connected to somebody and then got connected to somebody and then got connected to somebody and then arrived at this exciting thing called biofermentation. And thought again, I tried the product and I was thoroughly impressed. I tried it for like three months before we took the decision to bring it. And I felt that difference. I felt that it was lighter to consume. And like you said, multiple other benefits. So complete protein, but cheaper as well. And I genuinely believe in India. India needs good, affordable sources of protein as well. Whey pricing is in the control of nobody. So at least here, there's some consistency in pricing and so on and so forth. And will you put out lab reports as well, like the whole group does? We do that already. You do that? Yeah, we do that already. We've gotten a trustified, verified. We're Pink Tiger, which is Luke Coutinho. We're Pink Tiger verified now. And a bunch of other folks who've obviously done some independent lab tests.

Utsav Somani: Love it. I love the chocolate flavor.

Nikunj Biyani (Co-founder, SuperYou): That's my daily two scoop go-to. We've also, we're launching a couple of new flavors in the next by Jam Jam Fed. Which one? So we're doing one Indian flavor, like a quesada pista. We're doing one more chocolatey flavor. And we're doing one vanilla.

Dhruv Sharma: Please send a sample, sir. For sure. But so do you still have the bar? You would have it, right? Yes. Can you eat it? No, I'm not going to ask you. Yes, all right. No, can you just bring it back on for a second? Just a second. Yes. So Nikunj, I mean, the name. How do you come up with the name and the colors? And then they seem like it's the vivid colors. Very exciting. I see this. I want to pick it up. Take us behind the scenes.

Utsav Somani: And to match that with Ranveer Singh, I think, I mean, Super You, Ranveer Singh, it just all fits in together. And it's hard to imagine until you see it together. Energy, energy bars. Yeah.

Nikunj Biyani (Co-founder, SuperYou): Yeah. So again, there's a long answer to this, but the short version of it is I can't take credit for the name. A colleague of mine came up with it. The process of coming up with that, though, was just pure chaos. There was no method to it. There was no science to it. It was just chaos. We kept shooting names at each other. Nothing felt right. There was like five of us in a room and doing this process for like two months. And we came up with some very terrible names, like Thor Ford and Vi Particle and I don't even know what all, like 1% was a name that I was very excited by, but didn't love it. And then casually, in one of these brainstorming conversations, my colleague came up with this thing saying, listen, why can't we just keep it simple? Just you and Super You and Protein makes you Super You. Simple. And everyone in the room was like, wow, it just clicked. And Ranveer had the same feeling when he heard it for the first time. So in the first minute of our call, he was like, guys, it's either Super You or it's nothing.

Utsav Somani: Who came first? Was it Protein or was it Ranveer?

Nikunj Biyani (Co-founder, SuperYou): It was Ranveer, actually. I had a vague idea of wanting to build in the Better For You space because my previous experience has been in food FMCG. So I knew that I wanted to build something within that space. But honestly, it's not like we timed the market. It, of course, seems like that now, but we didn't know Protein is going to be this next big thing or anything like that. The simple thought back then was we wanted to build Better For You and we wanted to be a little more sharply defined within Better For You. And Protein was that kind of lever to help define that brand personality. And that's why we did it. So even today, I like to say that we're a Better For You brand, not just obsessed over Protein. We're obsessed over balance.

Dhruv Sharma: But speaking of Protein, how is India's relationship with Protein evolving? Talk to us a little bit about that.

Nikunj Biyani (Co-founder, SuperYou): Yeah, so I have one insight about this. So I think for most Indians, health actually traditionally started with being thin and fat, right? If you were thin, you were considered healthy. If you were fat, you were considered unhealthy. And I think from that came this whole thing of everyone just always wants to lose weight, whether it's, you know, whether you want to lose half a kg or you want to lose 10, 20, 30 kgs, right? You want to lose weight. And I think there's a lot of misconceptions around that. But that's what the average thinking was. And I think from that came these things of myths of carbs are bad for you and fats are bad for you and fried food is bad for you. And a lot of things got villainized. And in this process, when carbs and fats got villainized, the only other macronutrient that came out was protein. To say that, no, listen, protein is great for you and please eat more of it because you are anyway under eating it. Your average diet doesn't have enough of it, right? And I think that's when and especially post COVID, thanks to social media and a bunch of people who've done a great job of building awareness. I think that's when people started understanding that, OK, look, protein is important and you can get it through multiple sources, whether that's your food, whether that's a supplement or whatever. I think that's when people started realizing that, OK, look, there is this thing that you can eat a lot of and it's better for you. In principle, I don't believe carbs are bad. I don't believe fats are bad. I don't believe anything is bad. It's just balance. So anything in excess is bad for you. And I think that's the shift that's happened today. So people have realized that, OK, protein is great for me.

Utsav Somani: Interesting. And I mean, better for you. That's a term that you mentioned very recently. And Arjun Vedia, who's your friend as well, came on the show, the first one that we did. And he said that India is going to see a lot of these better for you brands. Like it's very hard for somebody to be the best for you. I mean, nobody's going to start having like very isolate proteins and assume that you will be just consuming that just to take your protein intake. But there are a lot of these ice creams like Go Zero, which was another ice cream brand, I think, which was on Shark Tank as well recently. And your brand, like, I mean, you've built these, I mean, amazing chips as well. It's just amazing. Like those pudina chips. Why better for you? And why will India adapt to these more versus, say, like the best for you or the healthiest for you option?

Nikunj Biyani (Co-founder, SuperYou): So great question, right? So look, fundamentally, I think health means something different to everybody. Everyone has their own personal definition of health, right? And I think what better for you encapsulates is that large context, that large thing of what health could mean to multiple, multiple people, right? For some people, it's calorie intake. For some people, it's protein. For some people, it's the overall macros. For some people, it's just leaving sugar. For some people, it's muscle and so on and so forth, right? The way I say, I like to use this line saying there's too few Brian Johnsons in India. And for that matter, even around the world, where all of us are trying to get the best biomarkers, none of us are trying to do that, right? At the end of the day, most of us want to live a good, active, healthy lifestyle within the convenience around us, right? We all have jobs to do, schools to go to, businesses to run, and so on and so forth, right? And you can't drop some of those things to just optimize for health. So I'd love to be able to work out three hours a day and eat measured meals and so on and so forth, but I don't have that luxury today, right? And hence, what are convenient ways of incorporating it within my lifestyle? And I think Better For You just encapsulates that, that look, you were eating something that is not the healthiest and with a switch in certain ingredients, you can make it relatively better. And why not do that, right? So why not consume something that's relatively better if it's not overly expensive or anything like that? So I think that's why even Arjun would have said that we think we'll see a large amount of brands doing this. And in fact, I think you'll also see legacy brands doing this. You'll also see the same brands that were selling a product, let's say full with sugar and whatever else, also now doing variants that will not have it. The classic example is a Coke and a Diet Coke, right? A Diet Coke says, hey, why are you getting the calories? Just have the Coke without the calories and without refined sugar, right? But I'm not going to go into whether Aspartame is the right thing to do or not. I'm not going there. But at least for that consumer, it's, it feels like a better option for the consumers consuming a Diet Coke.

Dhruv Sharma: Nikunj, how does a brand like yours, you know, go beyond selling to urban consumers? How does that journey play out over a long period of time?

Nikunj Biyani (Co-founder, SuperYou): I mean, so I think number one is obviously how you design the brand. So like, what can you speak to? But I think the biggest layer to that is distribution, right? Sure. So the classic So if you're not available, we're not even having this conversation. And I think distribution, the biggest opportunity for brands that are being built today is that there are retailers and channels that are getting created that are helping us build that distribution. So a good example of this is quick commerce, right? So a Blinkit now has north of 2,000 stores across 120 cities. If you can get onto Blinkit and obviously sell and have good velocity, then you can get access to those many more cities, right? So I think number one is obviously just solving for distribution because doing that, the classical FMCG way through general trade is very, very difficult. That game is still for the big boys, in my opinion, not for startups, because it's very capital intensive, very inventory intensive and extremely high risk, like extremely high risk. So I would say that's a, you have to tread that path carefully. And the second thing is just how do you create awareness? So distribution, but I think today, again, just digitally, because everything has moved, right? You have at least, let's say for super you, the target audience is primarily that 18 to 35. 18 to 35 is all on their phone, like my entire target audience is on their phone and they're spending enough time on an Instagram or a YouTube or whatever other social media, right? So I think you have media that you can now use relatively cheaper and more targeted and actually create awareness as well and create top funnel. So I think today, we're in this place where you can actually afford to reach that consumer.

Utsav Somani: What percentage of your sale come from like online to commerce, general trade distributors?

Nikunj Biyani (Co-founder, SuperYou): So modern trade and general trade would be about like 15%. Quick commerce would be close to 50 ish percent. And then D2C is now growing for us pretty quickly. So that would be another 15% and then you have marketplaces.

Utsav Somani: And the only complaint that I have is when I ordered my protein or at least the minis when you launched that, the cookies and cream and mango, it took five days for delivery. Do you get that feedback from people as well?

Nikunj Biyani (Co-founder, SuperYou): So we've, yeah.

Utsav Somani: So yes, right. In this world of, I mean, quick commerce and quick dopamine hits.

Nikunj Biyani (Co-founder, SuperYou): Yeah, no. So fully agree with you. So I'll give you some interesting statistic on this. Most of our deliveries, more than 95% of our deliveries, 90 to 95% get serviced within three working days, right? We're also doing a large amount of orders way more than what we had planned. And in that case, we obviously have these instances which have gotten delayed. We have some orders that unfortunately have gotten delayed up to nine, 10 days. And that's primarily because of two things. So one is us managing inventory. So a small example of this is, let's say you order two products from us. I'm assuming you're based out of Delhi, for example. You ordered a cold coffee protein powder and the minis. If I don't have the cold coffee protein powder in Delhi, I'm forced to then ship the order from Mumbai. And that's an additional three days already, right? So these are things as a young company, we're learning how to get better at. And this is like an everyday fight internally. So how do we just keep getting better? And here is where we say, we have to look up to the HULs and the Britannias because this part of the SNOP, it's called an FMCG, they're just phenomenal at, right? So that's number one. And number two is, there's also like we're working very closely with our delivery partners because we've seen quite a few delays happen there, which is unusual. We work with Blue Dart and delivery, so we're working with good folks. But I think that's something that we're streamlining.

Utsav Somani: No, no, kudos to you. And you built a solid, solid brand. I mean, I, I mean, I feel bad when most of your chips are stocked out, especially the pudina flavor or the masala flavor on Blinkit. And I have to open other apps as well. But the scale is tremendous now. You've hit, I mean, first number that I heard was 100 crore. Then I heard 160 in a Mint article. Has that number, you crossed that mark?

Nikunj Biyani (Co-founder, SuperYou): Yeah. So look, we, we, yeah, we've scaled pretty well. We're doing slightly north of that now. And I think scale, like that part of it is exciting. But very honestly, the only metric that I end up tracking is repeat. Because I know that if repeat is good, then that, that number will, will come either today or tomorrow. So I like telling the team this, right, like in a marathon, do you get happy if you ran your first 5KM fast? I mean, yeah, it's good and we should all be happy. But, you know, you have another 37 kilometers or whatever to go. So got to be consistently doing this.

Utsav Somani: And R&D, I mean, you posted about the 20 gram bar as well very recently. And I think you rated it 6.5 on 10 out of, for taste. What does the R&D look like now that you've successfully built at least a brand that has good reflection amongst your users and consumers? Where does it go from here in terms of what is the R&D lifecycle look like? How do you explore new products or categories?

Nikunj Biyani (Co-founder, SuperYou): Yeah. So how long in answer do you want? Short? Medium. I'll take a dig at it. So look, I think we don't follow any formal processes. So it's not like we do these large consumer dipsticks and things like that with agencies. I have a pretty clear idea of how I want to build a brand and what products I see fitting in. And that's all come from strategy, right? Which is in super you, what do we want to solve for? So we want to solve for junk products getting a little bit better, making them a little bit better, keeping taste at the core and not making them expensive. Now, with that thesis, we know that there are large categories which are considered junk today and we can make them better. So where do we want to play first? Those are things we arrive at from a strategy perspective and then comes to finding the right manufacturing partners and then doing the development and collaborating with them and doing development, right? And then there's a long process of ingredients and what do we want to do? How do we achieve cost? So on and so forth. I think the third and the final stage to this is once we've been able to arrive at prototypes is when we do a lot of sampling. This sampling is something that I hold very close to me. So I'll go out, feed people, get feedback and it's not only friends and family. So it's a bunch of random people and keep doing this over a long period of time so that you get genuine feedback. And then a little bit of this is instinct, right? Like I've been in this space so I like to go with what me and the team also feel about it. And that's always like the last 10-20% is always going to be that. So we kind of try and do that and then arrive at saying, OK, look, with all these factors combined, do we feel that this is a short word shooting or not? So in the case of the 20 gram protein bar, we did a lot of trials. The 6.5 number is just something I made up for some people. It's a five for some people. It was a seven. But it just, it wasn't delicious. It wasn't mad tasty, like we like to say. Once we thought maybe let's put this on the backseat for now and then see if we can improve it and think of some other ideas as well. So we actually have the craziest pipeline. Like my team has to keep holding me back saying, just relax, relax, because I'm very excited for the products that we have in the pipeline. And at the end of the day, one thing that we hold close to us and goes back to the first question you asked me, we want to bring innovative products to consumer. We don't want to do the me-tos. So from the wafer, it was the first time bringing something like that to India. Even the chips have a disproportionate variance from regular chips, right? So we did a lot of work on that. A lot. It was actually pretty difficult to crack that. With the protein powder and then with two, three other products that we have in the pipeline, they're going to be very, very innovative and something that India has also seen for the first time.

Dhruv Sharma: So do we have more time with Nikunj?

Utsav Somani: We can. I mean, if Nikunj has more time, a couple of more questions before we wrap it up. Oh, we could wrap it up. Let's try something we haven't tried before Nikunj. So no, no. I have a couple of questions about Think9 actually. You announced a partnership with Nikhil Kamath as well. And of course, the Biani family is behind it as well. So what does the structure look like? You've incubated a lot of brands as well, like the Goodbug, Foodstories as well, and many others. So, and you're involved, of course, with them. What does the structure entail for the brands that are under that umbrella?

Nikunj Biyani (Co-founder, SuperYou): Yeah. So, I mean, so Think9 is a incubator and an accelerator of sorts. Which essentially comes up with different business concepts. And then is an investor in some of these brands. But just to be clear, each brand is run by an entrepreneur. And for that entrepreneur, the only thing that matters is that brand, right? So for me, I was going to say life and death, but I'm thinking of choosing a better word for it. So day and night is just super you, right? There's nothing else for me. And similarly for Goodbug, Keshav, who's my cousin, for him, everything is Goodbug. So he has no involvement in super you, I have no involvement in Goodbug, and so on and so forth, right? There's obviously my uncle who's at the helm of it. And he kind of- Do you guys not take best practices from each other? I'm sure that's a table conversation. We do. In fact, that's something that's incredibly helpful because there's so many brands across so many categories. And we share a lot of learnings with each other. And that's very, very helpful, whether that's learning on consumer or even operational stuff, like what checkout tool is working the best? Are you facing a challenge today with marketplaces? All of those things. So that is extremely helpful. And just to clarify, the partnership that you're referring to with Think9 and WTF is actually a new concept, which is called Foundry. I don't know how much I can share, but it's going to be wild. It's a really, really cool concept.

Utsav Somani: I have a feeling it's going to be like the Donald Trump Apprentice, like if I'm taking a wild guess.

Nikunj Biyani (Co-founder, SuperYou): I mean, yes and no. What's the poster made it seem like? Not entirely. But yeah, it's a fully new concept. Nothing like this exists in the world. All right. Looking forward to it. All the best. Thank you. Dhruv, what are the closing ones?

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah, I was going to suggest that we try something new in closing. Nikunj, do you want to give a shout out to three of your buddies, you know, founders of three companies you may not even know, but have a lot of respect for and we try bringing them on the show.

Nikunj Biyani (Co-founder, SuperYou): Yeah. So I'm going to do this with just who's coming top of mind. Exactly. Yeah. So one is Satyajit of two brothers. A phenomenal brand and the category that they're building in is crazy. I think, does it have to be D2C consumer? Not at all. Brand you look up to. Yeah. So second is a very dear friend of mine, Amit Damani. He runs Stayvista. And that's in the service business. And I frankly have a lot of respect for anyone building in the service business. It's so tough. It's incredibly difficult. And third, there's too many men I'd say. I'd say Keshav. Keshav's building something phenomenal with Goodbug. He's not a friend, obviously. He's my cousin. But I have some insight into what all they're building and he's building something crazy.

Utsav Somani: Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the show and a big shout out to Vishwani as well for connecting us. I'm a big, big fan of what you've built and I had to reach out to you. So thank you for the time.

Nikunj Biyani (Co-founder, SuperYou): No, thank you. I know it took some time, some back and forth, but I'm guessing lots happening at your end.

Utsav Somani: I mean, you're running blitzscaling quickly.

Nikunj Biyani (Co-founder, SuperYou): So speaking with the both of you, happy to have done this. It's a lot of fun. Thank you.

Utsav Somani: Thank you, Nikunj. Bye-bye. All right, listeners. Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you've had fun with us today and we'll see you.