Dhruv Sharma: Hey there, listeners. It's, it's Friday. It's time for Friday fun at October 16. This is TON one five two. We are live with our friend Rohit Taneja, who's the founder of Decentro. Rohit, welcome to The Offline Network.

Rohit Taneja (Decentro): Thank you, bro. Good to be here.

Utsav Somani: Good to see you, Rohit.

Rohit Taneja (Decentro): Yeah. What

Dhruv Sharma: is what is happening at the company these days?

Rohit Taneja (Decentro): A lot of things. I think there are a lot of things that, obviously, you know, I'm excited about. One of the first things I would say is, the cross border. So we just went live with. I think a lot of people might be familiar with. But at a very high level, it's basically a new jurisdiction, you know, in India, that gives you access to multiple things when it comes to cross border, with a lot of tax benefits and a bunch of other stuff. Very similar to the DIFC in Dubai. I think that's what they're trying to learn from. And, we interestingly, and I'm proud to say say that we are the only Indian payment gateway which has the payments license in GIFT City. Like, the full license, you know, not the invisible, the full and final. So I think that's something which is very exciting. Really looking forward to, you know, like, taking volumes there, being one of the frontrunners and the leaders, you know, before this catch up. So, yeah, that's one of the key things that's really keeping you occupied. We also went live in the offline space. So now you will start seeing some decent recruiters, you know, spread around here and there.

Utsav Somani: Yeah. Go MDR.

Rohit Taneja (Decentro): Yes. Absolutely. With MDR, it becomes very attractive, you know, for everyone. So, yeah. And so these are, like, two... The key things on top of mind. Of course, there are a bunch of other things we're doing in AI. I'm happy to to talk about that as well. Yeah.

Utsav Somani: Let's stay with the GIFT City thing for a bit. I think many of our listeners, we've had... We've done one fifty one streams before, but nobody is talking... I mean, spoken about GIFT City in a, sort of a lengthy manner. So maybe... Can we spend three four minutes talking about what GIFT City enables people to do? Like, I mean, how is it different for investors? How is it different from Indian, Indian fintechs? Like, just give us a lay of the land

Rohit Taneja (Decentro): and what's

Utsav Somani: the activity like there.

Rohit Taneja (Decentro): Yeah. Absolutely. So, I mean, a lot of it is still very early, like, in the sense that, I'm not sure how how many people remember, you know, how stock market used to be in the nineties. You know? I think a lot of this stuff might be very young to remember that, but I think we just go back in time and, you know, study the whole stock market history. Like, they'll put paper trades like you used to, you know, write trades on paper, and then there were stock brokers who used to deposit bank guarantees, you know, and credit receipts, on paper, you know, with respect to brokers by the stakeholders. So I think it's just like that. It's literally like that where a lot of banks are still setting up their foundations. There are, I think, 40, 50 banks which have already set up shop in GIFT City, and 200 or 300 odd institutions as well, including, you know, brokers, insurance companies, and all. And I think it's like they're still at the foundation level of setting up Internet banking, the banking one zero one applications because they cannot take the same technology. Right? It's considered outsourcing. Like, it's a foreign jurisdiction. So you can't just... Like, ICICI Bank, for example, cannot just go to ICICI Bank India and say, yeah, I want to use the same net banking app. No. It doesn't work. You know? You're like, you literally have to rebuild it and maybe license some of the IP, you know, and those kind of things, because it's a foreign jurisdiction in a way. So there are a lot of complexities there, but I think that foundation gives, like, an early mover advantage if somebody wants to build, you know, the pipes, which is the business that we are in. Right? So we're in the business of infrastructure and pipe building. So anybody who's at the... At that level, like, you're building infrastructure for financial services, any kind of financial services, I think it's the right stage to really enter that. Overall, I think from macro and government perspective, GIFT City, is attracting a lot of talent investments for overseas. One is the tax benefits, you know, that you get. The second is the freedom and the flexibility to set up an institution very quickly. Like, within just $100,000, which is, like, nothing from a large institution perspective, you can go and set up a shop and take a license, like a full functioning business license. You know? So I think that's that's really what is attractive, you know, at this stage for GIFT City. At a certain point, you will also notice, Celeste, a lot of, I would say, a lot of money, which is already happening to some extent. Like, your overseas stock investments, education money flowing through GIFT City. Right? So that's another large shift that's happened. Yeah.

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah. Fantastic. Rohit, I mean, you guys are off... You're now a multiproduct company. Mhmm. You've got payments products. You've got banking products. You've built out a whole bunch of this core infrastructure, and now certainly a multi licensed company as well. I'm curious how you've set the team up internally such that you can be doing, you know, all of these things in a way that you want to do them. And,

Rohit Taneja (Decentro): Yeah. Mhmm. Yeah. Absolutely. That's a great question. It's it's it's not easy. You know? I think, especially, considering the... Like, my own mental bandwidth, I think that is where I didn't optimize for every day. But I think just, like, fundamentals of having, great individual functional leaders, that really goes a long way. So I try to be as hands off as possible when it comes to just day to day execution, and, really make sure as long as those decisions that these leaders are taking are in line with the overall, you know, principles of the company. And we have, like, proper codified principles. It's not like some abstract thing. They're, like, five, six very well defined principles, you know, that we follow, and we, of course, reiterate them, you know, during our town halls and meetings so people remember. So I think that is one of the basic foundations that we have put in place. I think the second thing is a lot of the stuff that we are doing, like, for example, the GIFT City stuff. Right? It's still at a zero to one stage. Right? So it still get to, reach a revenue generation stage. Right? Well, of course, the payments in the KYC business has matured because that has been, you know, the breadwinner for the last, you know, five, six years. I think, in zero to one, you can, like... I would say, keep, like, a very small HR team, which is what we've done. Like, there are just three, four people driving the entire cross border piece. And, of course, that's... You achieve

Dhruv Sharma: that team from everything else that's going on in the day to day so that they can be totally focused on the new initiatives?

Rohit Taneja (Decentro): We do, actually. Yeah. So that is absolutely... I think that's one of the key things that I would say company leaders should take care of that, you know, there's no distraction happening, to the actual executors on the line, right, with vis a vis, what's the other department that are doing. Yeah.

Utsav Somani: And give us a sense of numbers. Like, how many APIs do you have? How many partner banks do you have? How many licenses do you have? And how much money is your pipes and APIs?

Rohit Taneja (Decentro): Sure. Sure. Absolutely. In total, we have three licenses. One is, of course, the RBI payments license or the payment navigator. There are two variants of the domain offerings, so now we have taken both of that. The second is, of course, PSP, you know, the GIPC license which just came in. And the third is more of a certification, but we can call it a license. It's like the UIDI OBSC license. This is also new one, by the way. A lot of people might not be aware of it. It basically allows you to do offline KYC verification. Right? So I'll give you a very interesting use case. I'm sure we all have checked into hotels where, you know, people take our Aadhaar and photocopies. Right? Which is, like, one x. Like, a privacy will say there's this photocopy that's lying there, you know, forever. And more importantly, why do you need to do that? Because everything is on digital. Like, you can just verify the identity. Like, you can do a face match literally. And most of these hotels, at least, you know, the tier one hotels have tablets or some sort of a smart cell, yeah, at the reception. So that's one of the great use cases where we are trying to enable digital verification, offline verification, you know, without, the person needing to do anything else, like, to take out the Zapad power, take out the spam, those. So, yeah, so there are, like, three licenses that we have. In terms of payments volume, it's become pretty large. I think now we're doing roughly close to, close to, I think, 1,500 CR or so. Yeah. Somewhere around that per month. Yeah. That's the average. So some some months, it grows up to 2,000, 2,500. Yeah. That's exactly it. Yep. That's true.

Utsav Somani: And how many partner banks?

Rohit Taneja (Decentro): Oh, partner banks would be... I think now we are at, what, six. Yeah. Six partner banks, which are life and couple more coming, but six are life. Yeah. Yeah.

Dhruv Sharma: Rohit, you know how, like, there's always a lot of young people who are just fascinated by fintech? I think this is a great option to create, like, a short one zero one kind of capsule for them as to, like, you know, what the core infrastructure components also are. Like, why are ledger so important? Identity, you know, the the escrow, the nodal accounts, and then the payment rails. I mean, yeah, let's do it for them. Like, a quick one one.

Rohit Taneja (Decentro): Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Why not? I think the fundamental thing about infra is, it's like an age old business. Right? I mean, this is something that banks and other companies have been building, you know, for the industry for a while. And even if you look at fundamentally, IT in India, which has been, of course, you know, one of the largest sectors in the stock market in India traditionally, and one of the largest capital GDP generators, of course, you know, for India as well. It has been in front, right, that they are literally been building your banking operating systems like core banking systems, and I'm sure a lot of people might know, but some might not. Like, a lot of the core banking systems which you use for your ATMs, you know, just bank transfers, you know, banking applications. It's all built by Infosys CCS, you know, most of it, right, and some of those. So I think, that's really the foundation of where your next generation or your next interest or other application flow can happen, you know, once you build this underlying infrastructure. And there are multiple components. I think you were, of course, you know, due to that earlier, I think at a very broad stage or a good way to analyze this infrastructure is just look at the consumer journey or your own journey in, you know, a banking flow or a lending flow. Typically, you start off with, say, you know, KYC onboarding at the top of the funnel where you're trying to identify yourself, using some sort of ID verification like Aadhaar, pan, digital code, you know, etcetera. So that's, like, basic identity one zero one. And then the advanced identity verification, like video verification, you know, physical verification, biometrics, etcetera, etcetera as well. But that's really the first bit. Like, you have to get that right before you can do anything else. Right? Otherwise, your top of the funnel is good. Then you get into the middle of the funnel where, okay, once you enter the banking ecosystem, like, the bank has approved you or the lender has approved you or FinTech has approved you, then you get into, okay, setting up your payment focus. Right? So then you think about, okay, Am I eligible for this loan? Right? Then you go into underwriting, which is where bank statement analysis, those campaigns come into play, and account aggregator, you know, again, which is a very hot topic nowadays. Then we reach to phase three where, let's say, the loan is approved or the account is opened, you know, and writing is complete. Then you start thinking about, okay. How do I get money in and out? Right? Like, how do I get the loan disbursement? How do I set up a UPI handle? How do I get a credit card on the bank? And then I spend, you know, money on the credit card. And then once all that is done, then probably for... From the institution perspective or the bank perspective, they start thinking about the phase pool, which is collections. Right? Let's say, you know, you have done all this, but then you default. Right? You don't give my money back. So how do I get money back from you? Which now, thanks to AI, is becoming super easier, as compared to how it was earlier. So that's Facebook. Right? So we cater to, by the way, all four of these in different forms and factor. Yeah.

Utsav Somani: And whenever there's money involved, I mean, fraud also is a thing that tags along. Right? So how are you thinking about fraud detection, fraud prevention, and then, I mean, protecting your customers?

Rohit Taneja (Decentro): Yeah. Absolutely. This, by the way, has become extremely important in the last, like, just few months. I'm not sure if, but I'm I'm sure you would have read the news, of course, but there are a lot of these hidden attacks, you know, that keep happening, like Mitel's attacks, you know, like, just AI agents going rogue. One is on their own, which is, of course, rare, but then actual rogue actors using AI agents the wrong way. Right? And I think in the last one week alone, almost all the payment companies have seen some sort of variant of, you know, these kind of attacks. Right, so that's one kind of fraud, of course, which is, like, externally induced. And then you have, of course, internal induced, which in the sense, you know, like, some of the customers, you know, are trying to do for the system. You know? They're trying to do identity, you know, fetching from somewhere else. Right? Or identity masking from somewhere else. So I think that one is still easier to catch because you still have some sort of trail, you know, and, you have some parameter to benchmark or match it against. You know? So it's easier to catch very quickly. But the first one is really hard, right, because it can come from any angle.

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah. I think one of the common observations most fintech founders have in in India, right, or even elsewhere in the world is you're better off being aligned with the innovation agenda of the regulators and other statutory bodies and just coming up with, you know, vile ideas of your own. So what is your sense of what's on the innovation agenda right now with the RBI and NPCI? They're, of course, they're always very liberal in sharing what they're up to the organized, hackathons, etcetera. What's the nature of that conversation right now?

Rohit Taneja (Decentro): Yeah. Absolutely. No. You're right. I think, thankfully, I think RBI and NPCI both are, like, very... One of course, they're very concerned about Indian citizens, Indian data, which... As it should be. You know? So I think that's a great place to be. And even though some of their policies may seem restrictive, but, you know, ultimately, if you drill down, it's all about consumer protection. Like They're

Dhruv Sharma: coming up to voice agents, by the... Sorry to interrupt you. But Yeah. After voice agents because now those are very... Like, for people who are susceptible and vulnerable, I think that's the other threat factor. Right? Sorry. You were saying Too cool.

Rohit Taneja (Decentro): No. No. Absolutely. You're right. Absolutely. I mean, that's a good example. I mean, everything from, you know, like, two FA. Like, I mean, people ridicule two FA, you know, sometimes, but they don't realize this is one of the easiest, simplest, fundamental things that is stopping fraud in India. Like, if you eliminate two FA, you will not imagine the level of fraud that could happen. You You know? It's like tomorrow. Like, that that faster. You know? So, and, of course, now we have the West which is trying to emulate, you know, and try to make two FA into their payments. You know? And they have been on one of their percent forever because they realize the same thing. You know? This is the easiest thing.

Utsav Somani: I think the Indian regulators always been more, production heavy, right, from get COVID.

Rohit Taneja (Decentro): Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. 100%. So, yeah, we have to definitely appreciate that. And you're, like, it's always, good to be, you know, like, in line with the innovation question that they are taking. And the good thing is they are fairly innovative. Like, if you go deep deep into the circulars, you know, there'll be releases from time to time and SEBI as well, which is also fairly innovative. They definitely try to make sure that it's, like, the mass majority benefit, is taken care of versus, of course, you know, just optimizing for select audience. A great a great example here is just look at the various modes of payment that are happening or other various form factors within UPI. You know, like, you had UPI auto pay, of course, which is fairly popular now, you know, for everything. You also have UPI block where you can just block your funds for a specific cause, right, and then just use it for that cause. Very simple, very effective, and very powerful, you know, from an innovative angle. Then you have UPI lite, right, where you don't require a PIN. Right? Then you have UPI Circle, which is for your family. Right? And that's just within the UPI universe. So, yeah, there are, like, multiple such things. Yeah. Any voice agent that can keep the new one. Yeah.

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah. I think I'd like the global, I mean, GFC, one of the things that got people really excited was the tokenized bond issuance that they did this time as well. So, yeah, that would be doing multiple interesting possible reason.

Rohit Taneja (Decentro): Right. Right. Right.

Utsav Somani: Absolutely. Tell us maybe, like, a couple of more things that people can do to protect themselves. Like, I mean, advanced serious hackers. Like, I mean, if you want to protect yourself against, like, serious advanced hackers, like, what would you do? Like, even a sophisticated user is susceptible, I think, to falling prey to some of these things.

Rohit Taneja (Decentro): 100%. Absolutely. I think one of the things is to still make sure that, like, something as basic as the final authentication happens to you. You know, like, you literally do not outsource, like, the full payment access to the agent, for example. Right? Like, that is definitely very, very obvious thing. A lot of people miss that because they're like, okay. It's... You know, like, what's the max harm it can do? Right? It can probably do some extra shopping or speed or somewhere. But that's just the start of it. Right? I mean, they can definitely keep using that tokenized file or that card can go somewhere else, right, as well. So I think that's the fundamental thing, which is making sure just your two FFA is with you. Like, literally should be two FFA in little sense. Mhmm. The second one, I think, which is becoming very popular, and I'm thinking of implementing it, you know, in my household as well, especially with voice AI agents, is having, like, a safe word or code word, you know, which, only the humans know, you know, literally. Totally one. And nobody else knows that. Right? So unless I speak that or somebody speaks that, I know these guys are, you know, taking it. Because there are a lot of stories, you know, there where people are hearing calls which look exactly like the family member. Yeah. And, of course, if they're outside or in a high suspicion, they will not be able to, you know, gauge the difference of it, and they'll just do whatever is being told. And those are

Dhruv Sharma: like twice if you're in danger. That kind of a thing.

Rohit Taneja (Decentro): That kind of thing. Yes. Exactly. So whether you'll need that, yeah, going forward. Yeah.

Dhruv Sharma: This reminds me today, Elon, the great Elon Musk. I mean, he's having a real day, and we'll chat about that later on the show as well, Rohit. But he put he put this tweet out that if anyone loses money because of something wrong that Grokbot does, for instance, if it overspends or something, xAI will make them whole.

Rohit Taneja (Decentro): But he's Oh, wow. Oh, my. SpaceX can Good

Utsav Somani: luck recovering money from them. More collection agent like. Yeah. So I think we've got time for one more question from you.

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah. I mean, Rohit, what else are you guys super excited about that we haven't covered yet over the next... Like, near term, next three months, six months? What are the teams working on that you'd like, you know, people in the ecosystem to know?

Rohit Taneja (Decentro): Yeah. So I I mentioned The US stock investments. Right? And I think, we are going live live with that infrastructure. When I say infra, we basically will be able to power any fintech application or bank in all institution that wants to add US stock investment capabilities. Right? So let's say you are running a fintech app and you want to become, like, group. Right? Or, you know, I need one. But, obviously, you don't have the bandwidth to go out and integrate with 10 banks, which nobody has legal time. So we'll give you that in front of platform. Right? So the aim is again to make... Like, really democratize infrastructure. That's what we are here for. And, that is literally the short term one. Like, we're going live with that in December. So, yeah, looking forward to even more, you know, Indians accessing global wealth.

Utsav Somani: Love it. Rohit, thank you so much for coming on the show, and wishing you and the team, Decentro, a very best ahead.

Rohit Taneja (Decentro): Thank you so much. Thanks,. Thank you, Dhruv.

Dhruv Sharma: Thank you. Thank you, Rohit.

Utsav Somani: Alright, listeners. It's almost time for weekend. So we're inviting Vivek of Alive app to tell us what to do. Vivek, welcome to the show.

Vivek Kumar (Alive): Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

Utsav Somani: Yeah. I'm gonna open the website because I think, I think that's a perpetual question on our minds on what to do, right, in a weekend. So, Dhruv, let's pick out, things that we can do in Delhi. So I opened the Delhi page. There's be your

Dhruv Sharma: own mechanic.... Install I think that looks interesting.

Utsav Somani: What is that?... Air pistol session, silver ring making session, hands on wood making, brew your own coffee. This is, like, cool stuff. Like... So tell us, how did you discover this idea? Why are you doing this now? Who is hosting these events? And, also, how is it different from district? I'm guessing that question comes to you a lot.

Vivek Kumar (Alive): Fantastic. Yeah. So let's start from that one. You know? So, you know, the idea in building Alive was to literally produce new experiences. So the game was not about, you know, aggregate whatever exist, and there are a lot of activities, etcetera, available in many Indian, you know, metro cities. The reason I started the company was because, after doing this incubator and accelerator and a fund, I took a break for six months. And during that time, I had decent money, but there wasn't much that you could do. And, you know, you cannot travel to, you know, let's say, Malaysia, Thailand, US, Europe every weekend. I was like, hey. If a person like me with decent capital cannot do much in an Indian city, then there would be millions like me. Right? And then the question was like, okay. So what is the gap in this space? And the gap was not about, you know, just discovery of whatever exist. The gap was actually about, hey. Is there anything interesting to do? Right? And how many times can you keep on doing, you know, bowling, etcetera etcetera, you know, go to cafe, pubs? So I started the company with this thesis that, hey. India needs thousands of new and unique experiences. And during that time, every other tech platform that I could see was just in the business of aggregation. Even today, all tech platforms, they aggregate. What we do is... And all the examples that you showed, all these are the ones where where... Which were conceptualized by us. And then once we tested, we found enough demand for it. We found a partner who could deliver this. So that is the model, and, you know, that's how we are different. Also, the company is kind of... If you look at the mood of the company, it's not at all about demand generation. The mood of the company is about... We test around 500 to 600 new formats of experiences every month, and we make life somewhere around 80 to 90 a month. So now for any company in this space to literally build the lifestyle experience category, The model... I mean, the the simple playbook of, you know, I'll just aggregate demand, run ads, and, you know, I'll I'll change the game. That's not gonna work. So that's what the the mode of the company for us is like, hey. Build a company which can produce 10,000 plus experiences in Indian cities in five years. And that's what we set out to do, and that's how we are different.

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah. I actually love that mission, Vivek. I often joke with my friends with that there's not a thing that you can do in a city like Delhi even that is not gonna culminate in food and drink, and then you're gonna have to burn it off the next morning. And and it's perhaps for that reason that Zomato Zomato Suite got so successful now, right, and and now they have district, and you're, of course, building Alive. But then the thing is you're taking on a lot. And to be able to promise people that all of the experiences are going to be consistent and all of them are going to be worthwhile is is gonna be a hard call. How are you guys thinking about, you know, not biting more than you can chew?

Vivek Kumar (Alive): Yeah. I I think this question was super interesting, you know, when we started because then we had no bar to really figure out, you know, what is the expectation of customers. And by the way, on any of our experiences, if you see, we have an Alive promise, which says that if you are not happy, we give you full refund back, no question asked.

Utsav Somani: Wow. Somebody does the recce or somebody does the experience themselves from your team?

Vivek Kumar (Alive): I mean, it... It's a very detailed process. So what we do is... And and, you know, the question of, taking too much on the plate. See... And I I tell people this. If you look at the business of Alive, you'll not think that, you know, AI plays some kind of role in this. But every format that you are seeing live right now is discovered, conceptualized, and tested by AI. Only when, you know, it reaches a stage where we are sure that, hey. This is the format for which people are willing to spend, you know, somewhere between, let's say, thousand rupees to 5,000 rupees is when our operations team get involved. So our operations team... So the manual work in the business is only where we 100% sure we know that this experience is something that people in the city are going to be excited about. And and and so so that's what we do for... On the offline basis. Apart from that, conceptualization and, of course, demand generation, etcetera, is actually a complete online activity, which, you know, a lot of us have a lot of interest in. Also, the beauty of this model is that see, when you are building new experiences, the moment it goes on Instagram, there is huge buzz. You know? And and and, you know, we get around 15,000,000 plus impressions on our post on Instagram simply because people see something new. They like it. They share it, and, you know, the post goes viral. And and that ensures that a lot of demand generated... Generation part is completely online. A lot of experience building processes, AI driven, and and we are a 20 member team. Remaining team, what we do is what you just said, which is, you know, making sure that we are best of the best partners, you know, making sure that the experiences are delivering in terms of what we are promising on the page. And, of course, because of our refund policy, the moment something breaks, we have a request for a refund, and that's the opportunity for us to fix it. So it it never festers. It's it's never a case where, you know, some experiences are not getting delivered based on the promise that we made. If If something like that happened, we fix it, you know, quite fast. And so far, we have been able to manage it. We run around 550 plus experiences in six fifties right now.

Utsav Somani: Wow. Tell us about the numbers. Like, what what are the hits? Like, how much do you make, per experience? How do you share with the creators of these experiences? And, like, what's your cut? And what are the hits on the platform, actually?

Vivek Kumar (Alive): Yeah. So so the the model is, again, slightly different. So what we do is we first... Like like I said, we are not one of those company which is looking at what the creator could do or what a business could do and then try to push it on the platform. What we do is once... So for... I'll I'll take an example of be your own mechanic. You know, the example that you saw on the pitch, by the way, that experience is right now our best selling experience in five cities where we are running it. You know? So got got conceptualized. You know, we do price testing to figure out how much people are willing to pay for it. The number ranges from, you know, 3,000 to 5,000 rupees. I'll tell you our AOV is around 5,600 rupees. You know, this is also a business in which people don't generally go alone. You know, you'd want to go with your friends, family. So AOV, you know, goes up, you you know, in a very interesting way. And and once these experiences are live, then we try to identify who is the best partner to deliver this experience. So so in the case of be your own mechanic, we will look at, you know, all the places which are, you know, training, you know, drivers, etcetera, and then we found a partner which is actually a training institute. So you find that place, you know, you negotiate the pricing. Also, you know, we are not an events company. What I mean by that is these are not one off things. So it's not like, hey. I'm doing a one day event. 50 people will come, and for that, I'll pay you x amount. These are literally experiences which are running week on week for years. And we have had experiences which we are running for more than one and a half years now. With each experience, we have been able to generate more than one probe, and there are quite a few experiences like that. You know? So so once you do something like that, then the question is, okay. I mean, when you are not doing this as a one off thing for quality becomes very important. But the more interesting thing is when people go for something like this, they love it, and they invite their other friends to go and try it out. That's how we build repeatability. So while in events, which... Business, generally, it's very hard for you to get, you know, repeatability, but in experiences, it's crazy because repeatability happens at two level. One, the person who has gone then discover something else to do. And And if they were happy with your experience, of course, you'll go and... We are a weekend product. Right? So we get to sell 52 weekends a year. Second is, when their friends or, you know, their partner, better half, etcetera, when they discover this, they actually force them to go with them. So so we have seen... I'll give you another example. We have this experience called, you know, beginner friendly go kart race. Now that experience is the only go kart race experience in which even you've... You have never driven a go kart. You can go participate and, you know, win something. The repeatability of that experience is people go eight times a year, 10 times a year simply because in that experience, you get your best lap time. So so so you race for twenty minutes. You know, you got your best lap lap time, and the people who win it, they get, you know, trophies, etcetera. People go... Book again and again. They go with their friends. They try to beat them. So that's how, you know, you end up building repeatability in that kind of business. Margins vary. I would say... I do not disclose the exact amount, but I would say given that, again, the relationship with our, you know, partners is years long, this has pretty good margin business. Second, this is not a commoditized, you know, product. So the go cart race or the be your own mechanic, you will not be able to find anywhere else. That also allows us to literally not... So we are not competing on pricing. We are actually competing on the value and the quality of experience that people want, and that makes it a very interesting business to do.

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah. It's interesting, no doubt. Vivek, when any of us think about what we wanna do over the weekend, sometimes you're seeking novelty. You want to try something you've never done before. Sometimes you're also in a phase in life. Right? Like it's your rock climbing phase or your horse riding phase or whatever phase you might be in. Do you cater to both those kinds of individuals, the ones who are looking to discover a one off experience? And say for instance instance, if I take horse riding, if you really like it, then you maybe wanna go and ride the same horse again or maybe, you know, be instructed by the same person again and again. Do you cater to both those personas?

Vivek Kumar (Alive): We do. Actually... So the way we look at this business is we are like, we, as a company, we will have the best experience at all price points for all kind of age groups. Now, of course, this is a very bold statement to make, and you cannot make everything in one go. But the idea is right now, we are serving people in the age group of 21 to around 37, 38. That represent around 90 to 95% of our bookings. Now within that, you know, each bracket, we want to make sure that our experiences are suitable for all kind of occasions. So if you don't have any plan, you just want to go out, meet people with like mind, you'll probably go for a horse riding because then you know that everybody else there would love horse riding, and maybe you can have a very interesting conversation around it.

Dhruv Sharma: Related question. Are you seeing a a live community form under the app as well because people are meeting over the same experiences and becoming friends and doing the same thing over and over again?

Vivek Kumar (Alive): Wow. How did you know this? This is... It's it's

Dhruv Sharma: it's what you would naturally expect. Right? Like, I mean, you have fun hanging out with people.

Utsav Somani: It becomes like a ritual within the community. Like, I mean, natural community forming without, you know, like, pushing for it. Yeah.

Vivek Kumar (Alive): Yeah. No. True. So this is this is one of those features which we will be piloting very soon. And the reason we have not launched it so far was if you look at experience of communities in India, like... And and, you know, we have... We... All of us have been part of many, many communities. Right? There are many issues, and the issues start with not just about people. It's also about how do you engage, who curates, all those kind of things. Right? So this is one feature where probably we have spent more than six months thinking about what is the right way to introduce this. You know, where you make sure that... Because all these people are, you know, our customers. And as a company, we want to build a very long relationship with them. For me, it's like, you know, you start whatever age it is, you start from there. When you have a partner, you'll go for couple related experiences. When you have a kid, you'll go for kid focused experiences. And when you are a senior, you know, we have experiences for seniors as well. So when you look at customers in that sense, you are always thinking about introducing anything new, will have... Should have a very, very positive impact and should not hamper the experience of people on the app or on the website. So that has led us to a lot of thinking about what is the right way to open the community to people. This is one of those feature which a lot of people have been asking and, you know, in very... In in next few weeks, we'll be launching it in a in a way which has not been introduced in India before. So it's going to be a crazy, you know, feature that we'll be rolling out in a few weeks.

Utsav Somani: Awesome. Vivek, in terms of India's experience economy, what are the major trends that you're seeing? I think post COVID, we saw a lot of live entertainment and concerts come in. I'm hearing a lot about pop up villages. Even our colleague, Yashri, was spending time at the Ed City, pop up in Goa. What are the other major trends that you foresee in the next one to two years, in the Indian experience economy?

Vivek Kumar (Alive): Yeah. So broadly, you know, I see three emerging themes. One is... I mean, all of us are familiar with which is, you know, all the live concerts. Now a lot of people think that India has crave for live concert. I don't think so. I think the live concerts are an example of you don't have anything else to do. So when something interesting comes, you know, that's the only possible option available. So, you know, we know all the concerts that different apps organize, and then you have thousands of people lining up for those. But that is not that is not how I see India's experience economy, you know, stabilizing or scaling up to be. So that's one which is live concert. Second is where you see all these short events. And the example that you gave for... Of an event in Goa, that's been happening for a very long time. But, again, those are the events where there are, you know, limited capacities, happens once every year, stuff like that. So that is, again, suitable for people who are... I mean, let's say that it's not a habit forming product. Right? Both live concerts as well as events are not habit forming. The third is where... Which is where we operate, and I think that has not been built in India, which is the lifestyle experience category. And that is the answer for, hey. I want to meet good people. I don't need to plan to go for an event. I just want to have two hours of good time. You know? And it shouldn't be the same. You know, I'll go and drink coffee or drink something else and then go home. Now the answer for that is where I think majority of Indians, you know, would want to pay for, And that's also the kind of product where you'll see habit formation, and, literally, that requires somebody to thinks... Think about not just an app. That's the easiest thing to do in this business. But to think about what are the things that people would find very interested in, we recently launched, you know... One of the things that we have in the... On the platform is, you know, generally, you have slots that you need to pick to, you know, go for any experience. Now what we used to see was a lot of people were waking up on Saturday morning, and then they were like, hey. What can I do now? You know? And then the slots are gone. You cannot plan all those other things. So we enable this feature called Alive Now, which is like... These are the set of experiences where you can just, you know, at any given point of time, you can just click book and book.

Dhruv Sharma: That... That's the tragedy of being a spontaneous individual, by the way. You always wanna make spur of the moment plans, but all the spots, the slots, I'm sorry, are taken. I also have some unsolicited advice for Zomato and Swiggy, which is they should totally have run clubs, you know, Vivek. Ratko Galleries in, Ugly Surah Galleries out. Like, guys doing this stuff.

Utsav Somani: Keep them hooked. Like, keep them hooked. Keep them hooked.

Dhruv Sharma: I have one question for you for you too, Vivek, which is... It's not about the here and now, but say everything you're doing works out well. There's a lot of inventory, a huge community forms, and your operating team gets really good at, you know, curating these experiences, delivering these experiences. Is there a Shopify like angle here as well where three, five years out, you can enable other people, good quality people to host their experiences in the live app as well?

Vivek Kumar (Alive): Yeah. So that I think, again, like, if you think about that model, then the fundamental question again is of quality. See, today in our model, because we are literally identifying which are the best, you know, businesses or creators to do this, the quality bar is very, very high. The moment you open it up to people, it becomes extreme... I mean, it's easy to then increase supply. But then, you know, I mean, we do get a sense of...... Watered down. Yeah. Exactly. So so I don't think this is the right time, but I'll never say this will never be the case. I think as a company, probably, we will reach a stage where we will have an SOP tools and technologies for anybody to become a host and a creator. And, you know, that would become... That would be a time when you'll have, you know, hundreds of thousands of, you know, events, etcetera, that you could do. We did, you know, try out this with couple of our creators just to see what happens when you open a platform to do this. Couple of problems we saw was that, one, a lot of people try to do this at their home. Now you need to be very sure about whether this is really allowed. And, also, you know, if you... If you're doing it in apartments, etcetera, it creates a lot of problem. Then the best place to do this is people should probably, you know, rent out a space in a cafe or somewhere else where commercial activity is allowed, and then you do it there. That suddenly switches the economics, you know, far worse in a big way because then, you know, all your cafe partners, etcetera, would want to fund money, this and that. So in in our current form, we don't see that happening, But I think, definitely, in one one day, let's say, we have an Alive experience center where anybody could come, you know, launch an experience. There is a place for them to, you know, host whatever they want to host, and we can maintain quality, you know, of those events, etcetera. I think that would be the time to do this. But couple of years away from it, for sure. Yeah.

Utsav Somani: Alright. Recommend, one experience that Dhruv and I or our listeners can check out in Delhi.

Vivek Kumar (Alive): You do your own mechanic.

Utsav Somani: Be

Vivek Kumar (Alive): your own mechanic. Yes.

Utsav Somani: How long is that experience?

Vivek Kumar (Alive): It's around two, two and a half hours. The beauty of that experience is see all of us or most of us have cars or we aspire to get a car, but all of us have this anxiety that, you know, one day this will break. You know? And if somebody does not reach on time to fix it, then what I'm gonna do? And and that is the core insight behind this experience, which was that over a Saturday or a Sunday, you just want to go for a two hour session, which is nothing about you and your car. And people love it. It's, you know, one of the highly rated experiences, so you should try it out.

Dhruv Sharma: And we should because... But the EV is the other way. The experience we cancel. You can't be your only kind of people.

Vivek Kumar (Alive): Oh, actually, we we are about to launch an experience which is focused on EV. Yes.

Utsav Somani: Oh, yes, baby. That's how you keep up with trends. Love it.

Vivek Kumar (Alive): Yep.

Utsav Somani: Alright, Vivek. Thank you so much for coming on TON, and wishing you the best.

Vivek Kumar (Alive): Thank you, folks. Thanks for having me. Have a good day. Bye bye. Yes.

Utsav Somani: Now talking about EVs. Video, is it AI? Is it real? I mean, is Elon Musk back in the news again? Like, what's going on, dude?

Dhruv Sharma: Before that also, I'm I'm having nightmares. I think it test prebooking. It's game over in another two, three years. So

Utsav Somani: cars and, like, I mean, the road safe... I mean, is it actually gonna be released with these thrusters? And what are these thrusters? I saw a SpaceX collab...

Dhruv Sharma: I'm also so conflicted. Right? Like, five days ago, we didn't like Elon. I was supposed to like him because he, you know, like, always came out and and did something super cool. But they promised this car, like, ten years ago. And Elon, in his own words, he says, I make the... It's a turning sort of sci fi into sci fi. But I think what he says is I turned the impossible into merely delayed, and that's what they've done. Yeah. They put cold gas thrusters. I believe 10 of them under this car, and, it's compressed nitrogen, some... Whatever, 10,000 PSI, and there's that, you know, sort of concave parabola where it's doing a ski jump almost.

Utsav Somani: Yeah. Apparently, it goes from zero to 60 in less than a second, sub second. And, I mean, Sam Altman was, of course, in the news also when he tweeted about his 2016 or 2017 Roadster reservation, which, of course, got delayed. But seems like 2028 is when deliveries for this will start. They're taking, like, a 50 lakh deposit even in India to book one, without the thrusters. Bookings on Tesla India are on, by the way.

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah.

Utsav Somani: At least the prebooking, they haven't revealed the final price, but this is insane. It is. I mean, sci fi stuff. And, also, I think makes you wonder, like, is there a Tesla and SpaceX, merger happening or can happen?

Dhruv Sharma: It's here. It looks like he wants one to happen.

Utsav Somani: Yeah. I mean, the two companies are collaborating, and there's a joint product that they're developing. And and he sells

Dhruv Sharma: that from SpaceX, I guess. So, yeah, I think that's the angle I can see here.

Utsav Somani: This will be cool. This will be cool to see. I mean, of course, in a museum or... Not in a museum, but, like, in a controlled environment, not in the streets of Delhi for sure. Fascinating stuff. Alright. Right.

Dhruv Sharma: The Porsche chose this day to announce the car. Right? Like, just really bad.

Utsav Somani: Porsche... And and the car is also beautiful, but sad luck, man. Sad luck. And we finally have flying cars. Yeah. We wanted one forty characters, and we wanted flying cars. Now we have both. We have two eighty characters and flying cars. On that note, have a wonderful weekend. We'll see you on Monday at 04:00. Bye bye.