Full Transcript

Dhruv Sharma: Hey there, listeners. We are back with our end of week stream. This is number 137. And today, we have with us Kunal, who is building a company called CUNIN. Kunal, welcome to The Offline Network.

Kunal Shukla (CUNIN): Hey. Hey, Dhruv. Hey, Thank you so much. Glad to be here.

Utsav Somani: Good to have you on the show.

Dhruv Sharma: Tell us all about

Kunal Shukla (CUNIN): Thank you so much.

Dhruv Sharma: Kunal, what are you building?

Kunal Shukla (CUNIN): So I'm Kunal. I'm building CUNIN. CUNIN is a lifestyle brand. It is starting with fragrances. Fragrances that you can actually wear. So we are launching fragrances as a carryable accessory start becomes a part of your patent and an outfit that you can have.

Utsav Somani: But what does carryable I mean, all of these words mean together. Like, I mean, I'm unable to understand. I think maybe it's for a different generation. But explain that to us, because our listeners might not be aware of what the actual product is.

Kunal Shukla (CUNIN): If you see fragrance, it has been a category which has all into the hidden category for a very long time. You know? It ends up in your backpack or your wardrobe. The whole idea behind launching fragrances in a different form was how it can actually become a part of your outfit. Right? When you say that you wear a fragrance, we wanted people to actually wear a fragrance that, you know, you can wear it on yourself. You see the carriers and brand across the world, brands like CASETiFY, Bath and Body Works, even Rhode or LSM are coming out of these trends. So we we saw that there's a huge gap to build it on a bigger scale, and I think that is what's happening today.

Dhruv Sharma: In the US, I think given the relaxed gun laws, they have these two terms, called concealed carry and open carry. So I guess you're thinking about open carry of of your fragrances.

Kunal Shukla (CUNIN): Yes.

Dhruv Sharma: Do you have something lying around that you could maybe just show us on the screen what it looks like? If not, we will just describe it for us.

Kunal Shukla (CUNIN): So this is something that we have. This is something called the CANNY. It's a crossbody bag that lets you allow to keep your phone, passport, or whatever. At the same time, gives you an option to carry your fragrance on the side. So usually people cannot carry a big 50ml, you know, all the way along with them. So the idea was how can we make it a carryable accessory? So we also have something called the refill. That is like a 7ml refillable bottle that lets you allow to refill your perfume in a bigger bottle and carry it along with with you whenever you're going outside. And this is how our 50ml bottle looks like. So it is something that, you know, people can refill the smaller bottles from.

Utsav Somani: And all three of you come from NEWME. So I'm guessing you learned a lot about young consumers from that, and you're implementing many of this. I mean, some of the names that I read are, like, IM-Perfect. I am, I mean, very different. Like, IM-Perfect, DIS-Loyal, MIS-Placed. Like, those are not flattering words typically that you would use for a perfume brand. So what made you land up on those names?

Kunal Shukla (CUNIN): Even if you see the word CUNIN derives from the word cunning that somebody is trying to call you clever or whatever. But at the same time, it gives you a personality that you're really clever in the first sense of the word. What you wanna realize that, you know, what we are trying to do at CUNIN is that whatever thing has a perceived meaning, CUNIN is breaking that and creating a new form of it. So where the whole ideology behind CUNIN is something that we want to be known for supporting the opposite. Like, where the world is telling you to be perfect, to be mature, we are telling people to be IM-Perfect, to be IM-Mature. And when we say that we are supporting the opposite, opposites are something which are represented by the antonym. So CUNIN wants to own the world of antonyms where even if you see on our branding, this prefix and a hyphen. So it's not IM-Perfect. It is IM-Perfect. It's about IM-Perfect, IM-Mature. When I say DIS-Loyal, I'm not saying anybody to be DIS-Loyal to their partners or anything. Right? But you can be DIS-Loyal to your routine and do the things that you really want to do. So CUNIN is a brand. It's all about the personality. We are not trying to sell people that you wanna smell like a successful man or you smell like a beach. But, you know, we are telling people that what personality, you know, derives you or you can, you know, represent it by. It's all about that.

Dhruv Sharma: Good. Now you know, in the in the good old sort of, venture sense, a lot of software companies would think of brand always as an afterthought. Like, you had a product first and distribution next. And and, eventually, if you made it that far, you'd start thinking about brand. With consumer companies, brand is perhaps the first thing you think about. So, you're, you know, you're you're, like, nine months into the journey now.

Kunal Shukla (CUNIN): Yeah.

Dhruv Sharma: Maybe talk to people who are, you know, still on the drawing board thinking, like, about, you know, what they're gonna bring to the marketplace and everything. Talk to us. Talk to them because the the the experience is very fresh from memory. Talk to us about, you know, nine months ago, what we what we're thinking about brand, who we're working with, how do we conceptualize all of this stuff?

Kunal Shukla (CUNIN): So prior to CUNIN, me and my cofounders were the founding members at NEWME. Right? And while we're building NEWME, it was not just an idea where we wanted to just build a marketplace, you know, and, you know, platforms, sending selling products out to the people. But how NEWME can also have a personality people can rely to or resonate to. Like, so even if you see the journey at NEWME, we had a chameleon, which depicts that you can change your skin, which, you know, signified that NEWME has so many variety of options to choose from that you can change your skin every day. Right? At CUNIN also, we were very clear that it did not wanted to build a brand that is just remembered by what products we sell. But how people can be represented by it was our main goal. Because today, people do not want to just, you know, get to the end product, of the journey. Right? They're really drawn to see that how can this flow into the world of a brand. How can we be represented by a brand? So the whole idea was that it would have been a very easy thing for us to launch CUNIN in this three months of launching product, making a basic website and going live. But that was not the end goal for us. For us for us, it's always about a personality. Even if I let you know, we do not want to build it like a founder-led brand. So a lot of people do not know that, you know, it is me or my cofounders who are the cofounders of CUNIN. It's mostly the face logo that we have where people see it as a personality and talk to.

Utsav Somani: That's interesting. I mean, I took a look at the website, and, I think it feels like it's somewhat inspired by Off-White as well where I mean, you're trying to basically tell a story that do not conform to the norms. Like, I mean, be more direct to your consumer. Is that something that, you imbibed in your brand, philosophy? Or were there other brands that inspired your, approach?

Kunal Shukla (CUNIN): So I think the brands that really inspires your sign, you know, we really wanna be proud about to be compared by our brands like Gentle Monster, MSCHF, Liquid Death of the world. Right? And I think one of the legacy brands that we really feel that we really resonate to is, Diesel. If you remember the early days of Diesel, it was all about doing you, all about, you know, how you can stand out. So I think, yeah, those are the aspirational brands that we look up to.

Dhruv Sharma: Kunal, you you know, maybe you're a good person to ask this fuzzy question that always keeps going around in my head, which is, can material objects sometimes, you know, either signal something some something like a lifestyle or, you know, can it inspire you to, like, be the kind of person you wanna become? I'll I'll give you some examples. Right? Like, the the Harley Davidson crowd will always look a certain way. They will always hang out at certain spots and, you know, people who are in the skateboarding, that sort of culture. Again, there's a certain way they look. There's a certain way they carry themselves. Same thing with people who are, like, really into sport, like, any kind of sport, etcetera. So what is the role of everyday material objects in our life? Can, you know how do they define the person we are or we like to be seen as?

Kunal Shukla (CUNIN): So, honestly, you know, the journey does not start from the product. It is how the brand is portraying that product as. Today, Harley Davidson could have been a brand like a KTM or, like a Bajaj. Right? If they would have presented them in that way. But even if you see, in branding, what we really see in that every touch point creates a personality of the brand. So the way Harley Davidson's also used to create their content was all about those country rides that, you know, those people with bodies, big beards are driving. They're going out in a kite. You would never see a guy driving in Harley Davidson alone. It's always like a gang that they go somewhere. It's all about perception building, and product is like a byproduct of it that how, you know, the brand story and product can relate to each other. So for us, it's it's all about the brand positioning and how the brand is talking to its people and what kind of people you're catering to. One thing is very clear that, even even the case case of Harley Davidson, they were very clear that what kind of people they really want to cater to. Right? And knowing who you really wanna target to is very important because if you're trying to build it for everyone, you're building it for no one.

Utsav Somani: Interesting. And what's next for CUNIN?

Kunal Shukla (CUNIN): So we have just gone out live. Things are going pretty crazy. Right? Within just two weeks, when we opened up a website for pre-registrations two months ago, we had 7,000 people pre-registering on the website without even knowing what we said. Right? And, that gave us a very clear understanding that people really want to see and be assimilated to something that they can be represented by. We are right now one month into the launch of the brand and, you know, the love and the response has been going crazy. The way people are talking to the page is something like a personality. They're trying to come, talk to us, banter with us, pull our leg. At the same time, try trying to back us up if somebody's trying to, you know, talk bad about to us in our comments or something. So these things are happening. We are obviously coming up our very first pop up at Select CITYWALK in Saket. And, so, yeah, I think pretty pretty cool stuff happening at CUNIN.

Utsav Somani: And the idea is to stick with perfumes?

Kunal Shukla (CUNIN): So, no. We as a brand think of CUNIN to the heart. We would be growing as a BPC space where think of CUNIN as from the heart like The Ordinary, where the products and the ingredients are going to be pretty good and useful for you. At the same time, on the facade, we want to be like a mischief or a supreme where it's pretty collectible. It's pretty on the face and loud kind of brand. There'll be two kind of approaches. Obviously, we'll be growing into a lot more into the BPC space where you could see products such as hair, perfumes or moisturizers or soaps, but not in a very typical way. So think of a soap which has the quality of a Cetaphil. At the same time, it is as presentable as something how a supreme would do a drop. So I think that's how we'll we'll be doing it, but it's something that's gonna come a year down the line. Right now, we're gonna stick to fragrances, carryable accessories, and something that we say we Have It All. So and everything is a bundle pack where it's you can get a taste of everything CUNIN has to offer.

Utsav Somani: Perfect. Wishing you and the team are very best ahead in this new journey. Thanks for sharing

Kunal Shukla (CUNIN): your time. Sorry about that. Thank you so much.

Dhruv Sharma: All the all the best, Kunal.

Utsav Somani: Alright. We have our next guest with us. He's a returning guest, Manu of The Guild, formerly EtherealX. Manu, welcome to the show.

Manu J. Nair (The Guild): Hi, Hi, there. Good to see you guys again.

Dhruv Sharma: Hey, Manu.

Utsav Somani: We're seeing you in a new look, I think.

Manu J. Nair (The Guild): Yeah. I just didn't find

Utsav Somani: It's a new engine, NEWME, kind of story. Alright. So I'm gonna bring something up on the screen, and, maybe you can spend a couple of minutes just telling us what this is.

Manu J. Nair (The Guild): Yes. I mean, I think

Utsav Somani: And maybe a recap for the listeners. We've got a lot of, new listeners as well. So what is The Guild, and what is this that you've shown right now to the world?

Manu J. Nair (The Guild): In fact, to begin with, EtherealX was a brand name. It was just lazy work from my end when we started out. We just thought, you know, just put an x, and it'll be obvious what we're building. Eventually, in the first one and a half, two years, we, rebranded to The Guild. And yeah. So what we're building essentially is the world's first fully reusable, medium-lift rocket, a rocket that can carry up to 24.8 tons in, expendable configuration, about 22 tons in partially reusable and about 8 tons in fully reusable configuration to low Earth orbit. That is up to 400 kilometers. Now, and we cannot we also have geostationary transfer orbit capability and trans-lunar injection capability as well from the vehicle. We did we didn't build it because, you know, we had to do, one better, but because it was necessity. I mean, we couldn't it wasn't a viable decision to go ahead and build a partially reusable launch vehicle solely because the amortized cost per kg will never make sense at such a high frequency, because if you want to do three launches a week or, you know, even forget three launches a week. Even if you want to do three launches a month, you need to have a giga factory that or or a mega factory that can produce three upper stages a month. So the balance between launch frequency and cost per kg will never make sense, until and unless, you vertically stack like our counterpart in the US is or until you are heavily cross subsidized with the US, or or with the government, like, in the US it is. So it was important that to build a standalone launch vehicle business, it was important for us to ensure that a rocket can be flown at high frequency even if it is not full profitably. And the only way to do that was to recover the upper stage. And the fundamental challenge with an upper stage was also, is the re-entry heat. And we observed different kind of, approaches as we started out, in tackling the re-entry problem. It's not like people didn't think about that before, but the heritage approach has been with, various kinds of thermal protection system like heat tiles and whatnot, but, our ablators for that matter. But we've, we we took we took inspiration from, what is called an expander cycle, which essentially use the, engine heat. But we we saw this, you know, version of an expander cycle with actively cooled heat shields. And the limitation with that or that cycle in by nature is, it limits a certain kind of chamber pressure inside your rocket engine. And it also, in a way, compels you to bleed hydrogen, relying on something called a narrow spike effect. Now that is super efficient in atmosphere, but the moment you hit vacuum, you lose efficiency. So when you lose efficiency in vacuum so what was once a flame like this kind of becomes like this so that you don't get enough thrust. So what it means is that you can't carry as much payload as you would ideally want to. And even if you want to carry meaningful payload, like, like how because when you're building a rocket, you don't want to be just relevant for the next five to seven years. You want to make sure that you're relevant for the next fifteen, twenty years. So the next decade or so is going to be cyclic up mass of a lot of satellites, which need to be in orbit, you know, deorbit and put back in orbit again and so on. So we knew that to carry meaningful payload, if you rely on something like an expander cycle, it becomes kind of, so what we did was we built the FSCC, a Full-Flow Segregated Cooling Cycle, which instead of fighting the re-entry heat, we kind of utilize it. It's an, it and this is for the first time actually in a in the history of rocketry. Rocket engine feed cycle was purpose-built for reusability. And we and and this is, in a way, also very different because it isn't this cycle is not just about the propulsion, but, it doesn't just stay in the propulsion, but also the vehicle architecture itself. Because, it behaves differently during the ascent condition and the, descent condition. In a sense, because of how, how, like, how we use both, the pro it's a bi-cooled, engine bi-propellant cooled engine, and we send both the propellants in supercritical, you know, condition into the chamber. So it's it's highly efficient in ascent while while coming down. We use the re-entry heat to, increase the enthalpy of both the propellants and send it back. So, it's, in a way, what it does is, it's like, how you're boiling water. You take a paper cup, you fill it with water, you light it up. You know, as long as there is water, the cup is not going to burn. It's in a way, that's a oversimplified version of saying it, but there's a lot of, you know, thermal management that goes behind it. So in our case, we are just using, RP-1, which is, highly refined kerosene. And we have, a specific version of RP-1, which is built based on our self fit content that we need. And that, so, basically, it has better heat-sink capacity because even if you're in on a break for a long time, if you're coasting, and even if it is if there is something called gelation of RP-1 when you're in orbit. And, because majority of the energy also is in a way transferred, in changing the phase of the propellant, and then it becomes gas. So the, it it it just has better heat sink capacity. So we chose to do that, but at the same time, it also has a disadvantage. If you reach you know, if you hit coking condition, then you end up, putting soot into your turbines and your channels of the engine. So we we innovate transfer that enthalpy into our liquid oxygen, through a heat exchanger and then push it through our turbines and then run the engines. So we don't fight re-entry heat. We utilize it to our advantage. So that is a nutshell of, the FSCC.

Dhruv Sharma: Solid. Tell us maybe the shortest masterclass one could have had in the subject. Manu, again, like, it is great to have you back. By the way, it was, episode it was stream 50 the last time you, you were with us. Now we're at stream 137. So

Manu J. Nair (The Guild): Oh, wow. That's super cool. Yeah.

Dhruv Sharma: I I know. Yeah. Yes. And the other thing we've come to realize is that our listeners absolutely love, hearing from founders like, like you, and, they love they love it when you really go deep. I think maybe for this for the second question we have for you, Manu. You obviously have a have a very bold vision. Talk to us about that. What how will you, you know, get there? How much progress has already been made? What are the, you know, next upcoming milestones? And, also, you just described to us something you you're doing which has never been done before, but I would assume you're also doing certain things the way they've always been done. Right? Because what's the point of reinventing the wheel? So maybe let's just spend some time on that question as well.

Manu J. Nair (The Guild): Awesome. I I I'm actually glad you brought that up as well. In fact, you know, one of the things that we we realized when we were conceptualizing the vehicle early on was that, if you if you look at our vehicle, we are going semi-cryogenic. You know? A lot of people still prefer, you know, obviously, because of the efficiency reasons and, better cleaner combustion reasons go for fully cryogenic systems. But we we decided to go with cryogenic, semi-cryogenic systems even when we started building out, because we wanted to already, we are doing something new with with reusability. And on top of that, we it was a compulsion to be able to bring an upper stage back to run an economically viable standalone launch vehicle business. I mean, if you think about it, how many, not vertically stacked or cross subsidized launch businesses across the world do you see, that, are operating, you know, profitably in launch? And but at the same time, you see the irony where only the larger rockets are successful. So it had to be a balance. At the same so we knew that it the complexity or the challenge we've taken up was in the reusability of the upper stage and the reusability of the vehicle already. So we didn't want to do a lot of things. We didn't want to overcomplicate by doing a lot of things new. So for example, one of the reasons why we didn't go for fully cryogenic systems was also in the sheer complexity of build, building and, you know, building complex cycles or engines for that matter and the supply chain, predominantly. I mean, rocket-grade methane is not very common, in India. I mean, it's quite difficult to, source it out. And the test infrastructure we'd have to build out for that would also take a lot of time. And the sheer scale of the vehicle would mean that you're I mean, we are building a 1.2-meganewton engine for the booster, and we have nine of those. So the test facility that we have, in fact, it has 11 meter deep flame trench, just for the for that engine, and it operates at over, you know, 430 kg per second of flow rate for that engine. So when we build out one of the few challenges that we faced with when, that we, saw coming was the infra. Though we are a country with rich heritage in space, one of the key things is that the test cycles that, that are demanded in the r and d journey of rocket engine is very different from the test infrastructure that you would, require for an ideally already developed engine. We have the latter. We don't have the former. So we had to build a lot of these in house, and that's probably, you know, one of the poor like, we had to to give you perspective. We had to put new regulations in place, to qualify, the pressure ratings of our cryogenic systems. So, in PESO, you would ideally have up to 200 bar, but we needed a 400 bar system to pressure test our Pegasus engines. And so, you know, we it is capacity building for the nation as well. And, thankfully, we've managed to do it even within four years. It's, you know, it was a a quicker thing to do. But, it took us time to build certain capacity of that scale, because the sheer, requirement and necessity of the, demand of the, engine development cycle. But, apart from that, if you, if I come back to the, difference between what has already been done versus what we're doing. I mean, you look at, the most flown, reusable vehicle, it has gone with semi-cryogenic in existence. Right? Now one of the reasons why they didn't go cryo in the beginning, it was also because of, complexity and the scaling capacity. More than complexity is the complexity, not the complexity of building a single engine, but the complexity of productionizing an engine of a complex cycle or a complex complex propulsion system. So we didn't want to spend a decade and a billion dollars figuring out how to productionize a complex cycle, but rather build, what was necessary at that point to fly and get to orbit as quick as possible. Now there is a fine line that, between what is a viable business and what is a very awesome engineering project. And we wanted to get to the latter after we get this done. Right? And the larger vision of the company anyways is to solve for the hardest problems our civilization will face. We've just started with space because that's what we knew best as a team. And we are keeping an eye out very clearly on, other challenges as well. That is definitely engineering, based. But, the CUNIN goal is to steadily get to launch in a way operate on our fleet model. And it is imperative that we change the narrative of setting up mass manufacturing rocket facilities rather have a lean setup. I mean, the whole idea should be that you fly rockets. You should be able to get to orbit like how you get from one city to another. Right? You should be able to operate rockets like planes. Not I don't mean in the simplicity of the engineering complexity, but in the simplicity of operation. So what that, essentially also requires for you to do is, you know, figure out how you can, change your revenue model from revenue per launch to the life cycle of the rocket. So these these were the core concepts when we, you know, started out. And, what what we're doing that has not been done before is this one small part of it, which is, the critical part to recover an upper stage. But majority of it in terms of, you know, the we use a simple gas generator cycle for a 1.2-meganewton engine. We use RP-1 locks. Because just because of the sheer scale of the vehicle, there are a lot of other challenges we have to, anyways, tackle in building the infrared required to test it. Right? So we don't want to add another layer of complexity because this works.

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah. And and what and when one thinks of, you know, partially reusable versus fully reusable, I mean, it's not enough to bring back the tanks and the boosters because the upper stage is by far the most expensive, you know, stage in the vehicle. And if you, you know, if you're gonna leave that behind, then what's the point of even, you know, thinking about reusability?

Utsav Somani: Alright. Tell us a little bit more about this testing facility based, 001, that you've set up in Andhra Pradesh as well. I think you've mentioned it briefly because the public facilities or the existing facilities don't allow you to test out new stuff. But what is that 150 acres doing for you?

Manu J. Nair (The Guild): Yeah. Just to clarify, I mean, upper stage may not necessarily be the most, expensive bit. It's probably about 25, 30% of the vehicle cost. But, the the the cost is in productionizing the upper stage. So the amortized cost of building the upper stage is, is the more complex bit. And coming to the, facility side of it

Dhruv Sharma: Yes.

Manu J. Nair (The Guild): More than being allowed to test it, for example, it is the availability of, the technical requirements or need for us in itself. So, the most of the semi-cryogenic, engine test facilities that, you know, even ISRO has, which we are free to test in, is built around the SE 2,000. Right? And this this is a very high powerful engine, of course. But, what we are using is RP-1 and not and I'm talking about the facility that is not for ATF, but for RP-1. And that is built up for the SC 2,000, and it's a very large engine. But it's also a predetermined and predeveloped engine. You have certain metrics like, you know, the the, for example, the RPM, rating or whatever. It is just enough for you to match the pressure curve of what needs to be, and then you know how to qualify that at all. And you know what the flow rates are. So it's in a predetermined state. And you can't test, very efficiently, a 80-kilonewton engine on a, you know, a two meganewton engine facility or, so the requirements in a way are very different, and the pressure rating requirements to test a pressure-fed mode. Because the the kind of data we need in the development cycle of, because particularly, in our case, because the Pegasus operates on a completely new oxygen cycle. We have very specific requirements of what kind of data we needed. And the 1.2-meganewton engine in a way, we and the dependency that we wanted, externally was very minimal because the test cycles that you would want to operate is in a way that you test, fail, repeat, right, until you are able to perfect that. And that kind of freedom to, fail and not worry about what's gonna happen to the facility, is in a way, also a drive for us to have the our own facility, beyond just the fact that the infra simply doesn't exist. And because now we are out we've already, you know, commissioned this 150-acre, what it hosts. It hosts the capacity to test our Pegasus engines, which is 80-kilonewton as an engine and 40-kilonewton just as a pristine assembly. We have a VTF, a vertical test facility, that is, not the Pegasus facility will be already mid this month. I mean, fourteenth, we are, initiating our campaigns there. And, VTF, which is, designed specifically for the Stallion, that's, beauty. I mean, like I said, she has a 11 meter flame trench just being dug out just for it. It's, rated for the 1.2 engine. We call it the VTF. And then we have a battleship test, a program set up there, which is, which is also commissioned, which is basically an integrated stage test before, for our for the booster stage before the launch. So this is in the phase one and two of the facility. The phase three, bit would be, scaled manufacturing. And we didn't want to, invest, in manufacture in manufacturing before we test it because we you need to exactly know what works for you, in the engine and what doesn't before you actually, you know, fire it up, before you actually set it up. So we wanted to fire it up, look at the data, and already based on specific manufacturing techniques, we want to be double shot before we invest huge amount into setting up a scale manufacturing for the engine. And, we are setting up our own tank manufacturing, which is, a learning that we had over the last few months that the lead times are ridiculously large for a scale of the size. So, for

Dhruv Sharma: How long is a test harness, unusable after you've conducted a test?

Manu J. Nair (The Guild): Come again?

Dhruv Sharma: I'm saying a testing facility for how long the if you conduct a test, for how long is it unusable? Like Oh, like you could take.

Manu J. Nair (The Guild): Yeah. It depends on how well the test test goes, really. We've definitely built, the test to be, you know, the test stand. I mean, there are three methodologies. Right? You build one is build to fail. The other one is build to rebuild. So we knew that, you know, the we we have to tackle a lot of challenges when we're building, you know, the the scale of an engine, and the our facilities have been built to rebuild as well. So, in the case of a failure, depending on how nasty the failure is, it'll be the but every we we if everything goes well as as it should, then we should be able to, you know, it's about mostly to take time in doing the leak checks and purging the lines and then, you know, again, thermal cycling the, you know, cryogenic, cryogenic tanks and filling it up. So give or take, twenty four hours, to, you know, come back and

Dhruv Sharma: Get back online here. Interesting. I mean, later this year and then the in 2027, what are the milestones coming up? I believe there's a there's a hot fire test schedule and then the demonstrator flight next year as well.

Manu J. Nair (The Guild): Yep. So the hot-fire is, where we our campaign has, promised we are, in fact, beginning, doing our hot-fire on November 14. The campaign will, begin. Already our cold-flow tests, one of the things that we've also actively practiced is, you know, not put out the incremental progress that we make because that is not for the world to see it as a part of your intent, you know, because, I mean, universities in the US are doing two hundred two hundred kilometer launches. So the incremental progress doesn't really, matter. Though it is new in the country, it is globally. It is, what we wanna show is of, just meaningful progress. But to put it in perspective, we've already done our cold-flow, tests on the single channel chambers and, our turbo dry runs are done. So the the hot-fire would be a meaningful progress that we would want to put up. At the same time, the next few months, how it looks like would be, that after our hot-fire campaign in number 40 starting number 14, we will have the, Stallion, be unveiled, towards the last week of December or the first week of Jan basis, when we receive, the, you know, engine and then we've done our, checks and everything. Then we go to, our VTF vertical test facility and we'll, our the the VTF would be commissioned in November. We'll show one version of it in November, but the fully fledged version would be towards the end of Jan, in early Feb. Then our, in January, we begin our, test campaign for the VTF and the, firing, seek so there is one thing about a, high thrust plus engine like the Stallion is that, just figuring out the start sequence is a complex task. So you, you have to spend at least, you know, four, six weeks just figuring out the start sequence, and we have a very specific kind of fitting ladder system as well. So we'll spend about six, seven weeks doing that. And, hopefully, by March, April, you will see the Stallion roof. And then we have, the the battleship, the integrated stage test facility, which would be ready by then. And by July, August, we you should have our, you know, battleship test, up and running. And then q four twenty seven or Q1 based on pad availability will be for a demonstrative vehicle launch ready. So though it took us time to get to the fighting, it was for very specific reasons. And, I mean, of course, we want to get to fighting before anybody else does. Right? But, the thing is that there are certain challenges with this kind of scale, and we've been able to get through it super well and get build that info that is required. But I can guarantee you we'll be one of the quickest to launch globally.

Utsav Somani: Awesome. And how are you thinking about numbers? Because you mentioned amortization a few times, and you've also publicly quoted some numbers per ton, of, payload as well. So you've obviously thought about it from a future perspective as well. So give us some numbers on when does this become a business where you can reuse these rockets? How many times can you reuse these rockets? How have you amortized them across the life of that, particular rocket?

Manu J. Nair (The Guild): Yeah. So the the the thing is when you look at launch economics, a lot of people don't understand that, you know. Launch economics are complicated not just from a launcher perspective, but also from an end user requirement perspective. You like I said, that's why I keep repeating. You want to be relevant for the next fifteen years, not next five years or next seven years. You want to enter the market once you start in the next five, six years and be relevant for the next fifteen years after. So the that is the scale of the way that you want to build, and then you want to see how you match between the CUNIN demand and what your future demand is going to be. So if you see, the counterparts in the US, like, you know, SpaceX and, New Glenn, they already have their own version or, you know, their own fleet of satellites that they wanna put in orbit. Like, you have the Starlink, you have the Piper. But the thing is

Utsav Somani: we've And Starlink is becoming a bigger business than the launch vehicle for them. Right?

Manu J. Nair (The Guild): Exactly. Exactly. So if you if they're doing three, four launches a week, you want ideally, you want to also see that how many of those are actually commercial launches. Right? So what was once a solution eventually became a dependency then became a favor and now has become a problem. And so what for us worked out and what we predicted and why we were confident about choosing the 20 ton category was also that we predicted this happening. We knew that this is the direction it was going to go. We don't want to allow, fossil fuel situation happening in orbit again. At the end of the day, orbit is limited real estate. You should it we usually get to a point where it is cheaper for anybody else to just buy that service and resell it. Right? So you wanna make sure that everybody else has the access to orbit the way it it should be. And that is the future of, orbit that we we want to, we want to live in and of future of space that we want to create and live in. So, the way we look at numbers, I mean, it, it'll take us in a fully reusable configuration, to reach absolute cost, per vehicle if you look at it or from a amortization standpoint if you look at it. It'll take us around 20 not amortized. From a, vehicle standpoint, if you look at it, to hit a $500 per kg mark, you know, $500 per kg mark, it would take us about 18–20 launches. But I need not operate like that. I I it it doesn't matter because you're looking at, a model where you're now you're in a fully reusable configuration for that matter. Your revenue model is shifted from revenue per launch to revenue per life cycle of the launch vehicle. Right? So for me, what matters is, am I recovering that operation cost of the vehicle in that single launch? That is all that matters, which is super low. Right? And then you, in a partially reusable configuration. So there are different purposes. The first two, three years, you know, though we if one of the reasons why we're not even setting up super scaled manufacturing eager facilities is because that is not the goal, number one. Number two, we need to observe the market in terms of what actually is going to, make more sense in terms of scaling the production. So first year, we'll be aiming to do about 3–4 launches at an average capacity of about, eight to, 14 tons. Then, the, that's, first year after we get to the Razor Crest Mk-1. The second year, we'd be looking at doing roughly about, you know, scale that capacity to about eight, because even scaling this capacity will take eight to twelve months to set up the machinery, run it up, you know, all of that. So the next year, we'd be looking at roughly about, 8–10 launches. And then things look solid. We're going to set up, the larger scale, first 30 to then ramp up our launches.

Utsav Somani: Is there demand like this? In India CUNINly, probably not. Right?

Manu J. Nair (The Guild): Yeah. Not I mean, our we are not banking on just the domestic demand. Domestic demand is emerging, and I I can tell you that it's promising. But for the next decade, I I'm not betting solely on the domestic demand.

Dhruv Sharma: Well, let's say if there's global demand that shows up, I think one question to ask is, are we also gonna see, like, a secondary sort of ancillary ecosystem start to take shape in India? Like, Airbus will have, I don't know, 80,000 external suppliers, several subsidiaries that manufacture components, etcetera. We're talking reusability. We're talking a launch economy. Do you foresee that entire industry blossoming in India also at some point?

Manu J. Nair (The Guild): In a way, yeah. But, the way I see this is that, you know, a Boeing Airbus story is bound to repeat, in the, launch vehicle ecosystem as well. I mean, Boeing in the seventies was America's, favorite aircraft manufacturer. Airbus came in and became the world's favorite aircraft manufacturer. Right? That's bound to happen. And if you look at it, to run a successful launch vehicle business, it's not just a, you know, like I said, difference between a cool engineering project versus what is actually viable is important to identify that. And if you look at it, the the fundamental advantage that you also need as a country to have a successful launch program is important. We're also geographically blessed. Right? I mean, if you look at Europe, they can do low with orbit launches, but they have to use a French Guinea launchpad that involves maritime operations. So it, again, increases your cost per kg the moment you involve maritime operations. So India has the geographical advantage, the geopolitical advantage, and the technical advantage to be able to cater to the rest of the ma with the rest of the globe, which is massive. And not just, and you don't have to isolate yourself out of the US market because you're allowed to do commercial launches for the US. The precedence is already being set for, by ISRO. So it is a large market. You're looking at roughly over 6,700 tons that need to go into orbit in the next, eleven years. Right? And even if the top guys like us, like, you know, the already established guys and the guys who are wanting to be the part of the race, like ourselves end up launching, you're roughly putting about a 150 tons in a single launch. Right? And a large vehicle like Starship is not designed for low Earth orbit economy. So it is designed yeah. The the the economics doesn't make sense. It's it's designed for the lunar and Martian economy. It's it's just like how the complex cycles work.

Utsav Somani: Alright. Manu, thank you so much for coming on TON, and, again, wishing you the best. Right?

Manu J. Nair (The Guild): You too, sir. Thank you, Dhruv. I look forward to seeing you guys again.

Dhruv Sharma: Bye. Absolutely. Thanks, Manu.

Utsav Somani: Cheers. Alright. Listen, moving on to our final guest today, we've got Amit from Weekday. Amit, welcome to the show.

Amit Singh (Weekday): Thank you so much, Anshul. Thank you, Dhruv. Excited to be here.

Utsav Somani: Awesome. So let's introduce what Weekday does to our listeners.

Amit Singh (Weekday): Yep. Sure. So Weekday is an AI recruiter that helps companies, run outbound recruiting as a function. So just to, like, sort of double down on what that means is, so, traditionally, hiring has always happened via what we call it inbound, job applicants model. So, historically, it would be let's say you put out you are a company that is hiring. You will put out an ad on a newspaper, for example. And then people will see it. They will apply, and then you have, like, a lot of applications to sift through and hire through that. When Internet came about, it just happened that, okay. You'll follow the same model, but just do it on a, on a website. So there would be, now companies, like, for example, Naukri, LinkedIn, wherein you do a job post, and candidates will come and apply to you. And then and this broadly, this has been the model in which sort of hiring has operated for the last vast majority of what recruitment happens. Why that happens is because that's the easy way for companies to hire. If you look at, for example, leadership hires or critical hires, that is not the way hiring most of the hiring has happened. So that happens via companies reaching out to, candidates saying that, hey. These are the list of, sort of there's a talent map. This is the kind of, skills that we're looking for. This is the kind of target companies that we have. Now let's hire through that. And that is where sort of recruitment agencies, all of that enter the picture. So what we are our hypothesis is, that the sort of recruitment is going to move away from, more of this inbound job applicants model to more and more outbound where companies reach out to eligible candidates more and more because, one talent will get more specialized, as, as sort of AI sort of becomes more prevalent. And then the need for more specialized talent increases, and then more and more hiring would need to happen outbound. The other thing which happens is, because of AI, outbound recruiting is now not as tedious as what it use usually would be. So if, let's say, like, for example, if you're, if, let's say, for leadership ones, you are actually doing outbound hiring, which is reaching out to the candidates themselves, if that is the best way, then why not do for all the hiring that you do? Because it is just, a lot of manual work that is involved. You are looking at a list of candidates who might or might not be interested, in your role. And all of that is now possible, to be automated via AI, and that is basically what we're doing.

Dhruv Sharma: There's a book by Frank Slootman called Amp It Up where he makes a point, which is that, you know, the the best people you want for your company are not always gonna be available for when you go looking for them. So his recommendation is to founders is to keep a permanent recruiting posture. Always be always be looking, always be closing. AI obviously makes that somewhat easier. How do you guys, you know, sort of live track and index the top 10x, 100x, you know, 1000x engineers, who are working at some of the most coveted companies?

Amit Singh (Weekday): Yeah. So, the way to think about what, like, we are doing so, basically, if you, familiar with, like, what's more what happened in sales. For example, there's, like, Apollo. There is ZoomInfo. So there's, like, a database of, like, an entire set of talent available, which is might or might not be looking out. So we have, like, a database of around 190 million people in India, which we have, been through various sources. And now that is, like, the engine on which all of this, sort of happens. Now there are different signals that we can look for in terms of, okay, who is a 10x. And for example, like, a 10x engineer in one setup might not be tech engineer in another setup in another company as well. So a lot of factors going to play there, but, different things that we look at there is one. Like, for example, the kind of companies that they worked at, the kind of work that that they have done, What is, like, one one small factor that we look at. Okay. What is the feedback that, like, for example, what are the recommendations that their colleagues have given on them? So basically, that information and put that into a searchable, format which allows for an outbound campaign to be run autonomously by a recruiter or a company.

Utsav Somani: And give us a live example. Like, suppose I'm a founder of a very young company. I've raised just a million dollars, and has my seed round. I come to you. I wanna hire my first five engineers. Like, what will the process look like? How will Weekday be helpful in that process? Like, I mean, I don't wanna feel like I'm just, I mean, coming to another hiring agency. Like, how is weekday different? Like, how do you run it?

Amit Singh (Weekday): Yes. One is, basically the tooling behind it. So we would have access to almost everyone in India. So for example, like, on we have around 190 million. LinkedIn would have a similar set of people, available. And we would also have their email IDs, contact numbers because, we have sort of done through data purchases. People have come and applied. So we have almost all of their, contact database as well. Now what we would work with, companies on is, let's say, there's a startup that is hired. They would come to us, say that, hey. This is what I'm looking at. We would build a sort of, like, a map within that. Okay. There is a human recruiter that we would assign with them along with the AI that, runs, autonomous with them, which helps in mapping out. So we'll map out, okay, this is the this is what you're building. These are the set of 20 companies that, would be a great target set for you. This is the kind of talent that is available. This is the budget that is, that is, they are available at. And then we'll go ahead and reach out to all of these people. Typically, if you do the same thing on something like a LinkedIn, the response rate that you would get is to the like, an industry standard response rate is, like, a 4–5%. On the day, what you would get is, about 30%. The reason being, one, we would reach out to these candidates on the channels they're active on. So for example, on LinkedIn, you would be only, be reaching out to them on, LinkedIn itself because LinkedIn doesn't want you to get out of their ecosystem. We would reach out on their email. We would also reach out, WhatsApp, and we would also do their phone calls. So, basically, Indian recruiting works on WhatsApp and, phone call. So that is what we have.

Utsav Somani: Privacy and stuff. Like, can people opt out of this? Because, I mean, 190 million is a serious amount of data that you have.

Amit Singh (Weekday): Yeah. Yeah. So we have built controls in, places. For example, like, somebody wants, to be contacted, but not on, let's say, WhatsApp or what. So people have the option to choose, okay, which channels they would, I am most, sort of commonly active on. This is an end. This is what basically, what's one of our concerns there, but, surprisingly, most of most people want to to sort of that communication channel to be WhatsApp rather than email or, any other channel.

Dhruv Sharma: Talk to us about the Scout program that you run, Amit. What was the thinking behind it? Is is that program live, even right now? What's the scale? How does it help?

Amit Singh (Weekday): Yeah. So that will actually, so this is basically what we started out with, that our initial hypothesis was that if you have worked with, like, one particular role in your mind, you have let's say, these are the 10 best people that you've worked with, that particular information is very valuable for any particular employer out there, but it's not present anywhere on the Internet. So if we basically make that available, to employers, that becomes more and more, you are judging whether this would be like a, like, as you mentioned, like a 10x engineer in your setup or not. In terms of scale of it, we basically did it around, like, one lakh. People sort of signed up, recommend to the best people that they work with. But there's one interesting finding that we found out, after basically we build out that database is that, among companies, while this works at a scale wherein you have, like, a smaller, South South system where you know, for example, let's say, I know itself, so I like, the 10 best engineers that itself has worked with, would be, sort of valuable to you. But if it is anybody else who has, let's say, worked at, offline network, but I don't know that person. But I know, it is, like, a second degree connection, that I know through. The recommendation would not be as, trustworthy or as reliable for me or as useful to me. So that is one learning that we realized, that it works when the people that you're seeing have, have, like, a closer degree of proximity to you, then it is a valuable piece of information. But what people what employers we saw valued more was access to that passive talent rather than what is it that is being said about their work. So that access was basically more valuable than universal talent is what is more valuable to employers, than a depth of recommendation if it is not coming from someone you trust. So that is when we decided to move away from that model to building, like, a as you say, like, a Zoom in football, I think.

Utsav Somani: Interesting. And, I mean, the scale I mean, the numbers must be pretty interesting. You did YC in '21, I believe. And you quoted an ARR of, I think, 3,000,000 plus publicly?

Amit Singh (Weekday): Correct. Yes. Yeah. That's right. So we were basically working. Yeah. So we work with around 500 plus, companies, yeah, out of around $3,000,000. You know, the way we work is basically somewhere in between, like, a recruitment agency and, like, a LinkedIn or a. So we would be sit we were sitting somewhere in the middle of that.

Utsav Somani: Okay. And any specific roles that you focus on? Engineering, sales, or, it's I mean, you can come, work with any company for any role.

Amit Singh (Weekday): So you can work with any company, any role. We started out with engineering product design. So those were the three, main ones because those are the ones that tend to be the biggest problem areas for startups. So that is what we started out with, but now we do our kind of roles.

Utsav Somani: Alright. Dhruv, any closing questions?

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah, Amit. Because, also mentioned '21. Right? 2021, that was while COVID was still on, I think you would have a lot of data on how many companies are working in person now versus how many companies are still remote, distributed, etcetera? Like, what have you seen change over the last, what, now five, six years?

Amit Singh (Weekday): Yeah. So in terms of remote versus, in person, like, when we started out, remote was the default. Like, we started out when remote was the only one, and there is no other. And they didn't continuously every year seeing that reducing over time. So now nine out of 10 companies that we would come across would actually be in person. And that, I think, comes from like, one, I think it also comes from, like, the generally the whatever whatever is the sort of status quo. And because these are these companies are the ones where where we work with that early stage, so that serendipity that, like, have in sort of in sort of a minority, CUNINly.

Utsav Somani: Alright, Amit. Thank you so much for coming on our show. Wishing you the best day, and have a wonderful weekend.

Amit Singh (Weekday): Thank thank you so much, sir. Thank you so much, sir. Pleasure.

Utsav Somani: Alright, listeners. Before we cover one news item, I think, we have a couple of announcement to make. Monday is gonna be a banger episode, so do tune in. We're gonna introduce you to our friends in Southeast Asia who's who are leading the launch for The Offline Network in Southeast Asia. You're gonna check out our socials tomorrow. I think in the morning or around noon, we'll start posting about what we intend to do with The Offline Network in Southeast Asia, and it's an exciting, Internet economy. And you can read up many of the reports that we put up on our website, which will go up live tomorrow. So that's to you in Southeast Asia for you, and we have another, five founders who are coming from the foundry. Nikhil Garmuth and, other people who were involved with the foundry, have created a very interesting model. And we're gonna have five founders from their batch come and talk about it on Monday with us. So do tune in on Monday at 04:00. Now before we log out for the weekend, Anthropic put out a report which said said, detecting and countering misuse of AI. This is a September 2026 report which came out just last evening. It has incidents from August 2025 up till now where they've, I mean, given some very explicit details about the kind of misuse that's happening via their models and what they're trying to do to stop it. OpenAI, I think, also put out a statement that they're trying to stop their systems from hacking the power grids in America right now. So I think these are some use cases that people are discovering of what can really go wrong when AI is left unchecked. But, yeah, I think some of the interesting use cases that people have done I mean, a Yemen based cell used Claude as an engineering team for guided rockets. They were specifically using Claude code. There was, I mean, a direct mention of the Chinese labs, Alibaba, Moonshot, DeepSeek, all were actually giving out answers from, these dummy shadow accounts created on Anthropic free, accounts and just passing off their answers, as responses, of their own and then training their models on this. And then there's Russia linked espionage. There's, like, I mean, a whole bunch of different things about bioweapons as well. So yeah. I think

Dhruv Sharma: that startups are not the only ones using AI tools to to check rocket telemetry data. You know, non non state actors are starting to

Utsav Somani: Yeah. Apparently, OpenAI is close to solving the second Millennium Prize also, and they shall be putting

Dhruv Sharma: Oh, they're doubling down now.

Utsav Somani: Yeah. They're doubling down. I think they're going this thing, but I think it's that Drake versus Kendrick Lamar moment where With the no researchers versus OpenAI is going on, this thing. And, the first Apple event also took place where the new CEO also came and announced a phone, which is, I think, getting, like, a all I mean, it's coming with the limelight for all the wrong reasons because the pricing in India is just out of whack. I mean, anybody who can afford a 3 lakh phone in this country, I think, is doing extremely, extremely well and either has money to burn, but yeah. Mean, interesting to see how it does, and we'll keep an eye out on what, the numbers look like. Thank you so much for tuning in. We will see you on Monday at 04:00 for a banger episode. Bye bye.