Full Transcript

Dhruv Sharma: It's Jan 16. This is The Offline Network and we're streaming live. Hey, what's up? What's happening? 10th anniversary of the National Startup Day. 10th anniversary of the National Startup Day 2016. Wow. We've come far. A decade in the making.

Utsav Somani: So should we run down the news today before we welcome our guests? We've got three. Let's do it. Yeah.

Dhruv Sharma: We've got three guests.

Utsav Somani: Exciting industries. Like, I mean, somebody's doing factories, somebody's doing housing, somebody's doing publicity. So I think we'll cover a very broad set of topics before we head into this weekend break. Supercharged. All right. So the first one, Tiger Global is in some trouble. They exited from Flipkart by kickstarting our Indian startup ecosystem with LeafXL coming and investing in Flipkart and many other startups over the, I mean, the decade that we've had, like longer than a decade. They've run into some trouble with the tax authorities, a fund based in New York, investing via their entity in Mauritius in a company called Flipkart, which is HQ'd in Singapore, but was operating, of course, the e-commerce landscape in India. And now they've been asked to pay capital gains on their exit, which exceeds actually the gains that they've made. They made 1.6 billion from this and now have been asked to foot a bill of 14,500 crores. What's your read into this through?

Dhruv Sharma: So this has been going on for a while, by the way, this dispute is now a few years old. It's already gone through, I think, three, four levels of adjudication. And so what everyone should try and understand is when foreign investors typically invest in a country like India, they would obviously set up investment structures that involve an offshore element. And then India, like many other countries, has treaties with several other countries around the world. And so, so far, it used to be that many of these foreign investors would come, produce a tax residency certificate and use that to claim treaty benefits. The Indian Revenue Department's position was that that tax residency certificate is not an automatic magic pass to claiming treaty benefits. And we want to reserve the right to examine each case on its own merits. And that's exactly what's happened in this case. This is, in a sense, the Supreme Court, the Honorable Supreme Court, giving India the judicial backing to assert its tax sovereignty, as it were, on things like this. And we'll really have to call an international, you know, sort of treaty law expert to come and break this down in depth for us. But, you know, this case is going to be, you know, will have ramifications not just for investors in India, but everywhere around the world, because there's almost like jurisprudence that sets the bar for.

Utsav Somani: I mean, most of the VC funds investing in India, like Sequoia, Axel, everyone's basically educated in Mauritius. I think that tax treaty, the double TTA, as it's called, I think came off in 2018. So most funds were, I mean, still investing through Mauritius, but I think the tax benefits came off, I think, April 1st, 2018, if I'm not mistaken. But this definitely has ramifications for everything that's been invested into since then.

Dhruv Sharma: I mean, there are these look-through jurisdictions. There's even an Obama joke about this. I'll say one part of that joke, maybe leave the other part of that joke. But, you know, there was one building in the Cayman Islands, which happened to be the HQ for some 12,000 companies. And so Obama famously said that this is either the biggest building in the world, or it is a ta-ta-ta.

Utsav Somani: Yeah, I mean, interesting. Do they have any next steps that they can take to avoid this? I mean, I would say Tiger Global is literally single-handedly given the boost that the Indian startup ecosystem need. And yeah, yes, this treatment to them, amongst many other investors who've invested with them, I think is going to be a big blow to the ecosystem. Yeah.

Dhruv Sharma: I think this is like, I mean, this is when things just happen in silos, right? I mean, the people who were working on this case, for instance, I'm not sure to what extent they have full context of how, you know, the Indian ecosystem was born and how it's come, all this, like the, for instance, the domestic private capital ecosystem, it's taken a while to mature and get to the stage where it has. Now we can sustain companies entirely on our own, but a lot of the early risk capital did come from, you know, elsewhere in the world.

Utsav Somani: Yeah, it's been crazy. Anyway, switching gears up a little bit, OpenAI invests into the $250 million round in Sam Altman's new company. It's a brain-computer interface startup called Merge Labs. So Sam Altman is stepping into Elon Musk's territory and- All over again. I wonder how he feels about it. Has Elon Musk tweeted about this yet?

Dhruv Sharma: I haven't, I haven't checked, but maybe we could check live or somewhere to the show.

Utsav Somani: Yeah. Explain the company to me as if I'm five year old.

Dhruv Sharma: So Elon's company, right, let's talk about that for a second, Neuralink. I mean, both of these companies talk about establishing a brain-computer interface, but the way Neuralink does this is they actually do an invasive surgery, crack open your cell, a skull, I'm sorry, and then embed like a fine electrode in order to establish that interface. And from at least the readout that Merge Labs has put out, they want to go the non-invasive way, maybe use ultrasound as the underlying technology to be able to get humans to, again, communicate with machines. That's us oversimplifying it a bit, but basically that.

Utsav Somani: And I mean, I mean, related, but Black Mirror announced their latest episode, I think season, and what they said is that we're not going to be too far away from reality. So yeah, I mean, reality is becoming stranger than fiction, to be honest, with all these progresses.

Dhruv Sharma: And there's an old post from Sam Altman, where he talks about what like the merge, the quoteunquote merge, where humans and machines become one. And in classic Sam Altman fashion, he says this will happen sometime between 2025 and 2075, like a 50-year-old, 50-year-long window.

Utsav Somani: Yeah, but I mean, open air is in the news again, dude. They've pulled back two co-founders of Thinking Machines. And it's crazy. I mean, the company raised 2 billion seed. It started by Mira, who was the ex-CTO of OpenAI. They raised 2 billion for a seed round at 10 to 12 billion valuation last year, sometime in the middle of the year. A16Z, NVIDIA, Axel, everyone was in the round. And they don't have a product. And now it seems like they don't have a co-founder as well.

Dhruv Sharma: There's an old Indian saying, right? I think AI is going to see that repeat itself over and over again.

Utsav Somani: But this is, I mean, just crazy. Imagine leaving a company that you co-founded to join the company that you left. So I don't know what's going on behind the scenes, but I'd love to, like, I mean, at some point, I think there'll be a social...

Dhruv Sharma: What is Thinking Machines working on anyway? No one knows, right?

Utsav Somani: Same, same for the Alia company as well, that SSI, Safe Super Intelligence. So yeah, but at least he's avoiding the drama. I think one of the co-founders left from that company as well to join Meta. Yeah. So I think they've also been in the news. But anyway, let's highlight some cool things that we saw. Red Bull kicks off the 2026 calendar with a launch of new colors on the car. It looks pretty cool. But I think the interesting thing is that global F1 sponsorship revenue, 2.9 billion. A lot of people in India are watching it. They have a tie up with Dream 11 fan core platform where people get their F1 fix. But it's fascinating. Like these F1 cars are like, I mean, this awesome place to market your companies. And they've become like a hot sponsorship, a hot spot. Tech and financial brands make up approximately 20% of this deal volume. Oracle pays Red Bull $100 million a year. And now Apple's the exclusive streaming partner after there are three F1 tracks in the US where they're paying $140 million to the league for just...

Dhruv Sharma: F1 cars are like the fastest moving hoardings on the planet, right?

Utsav Somani: Yeah. I mean, they look cool as well. And the funny thing is what we were discussing before the show, that they're the pinnacle of technical excellence. So anything that is getting experimented on or built at F1 by these top teams gets translated to consumer technology maybe a few years down the line. And we've seen that pattern repeat in many other industries. Like red light therapy, which a lot of biohackers are using, was developed by NASA for their astronauts in 1970s. And now we're using red light panels in clinics and stuff. So it's fascinating how the world of technology, I think, works.

Dhruv Sharma: It always starts with something being very inaccessible and very expensive. And then, of course, it diffuses over a period of time. And then the adoption increases, cost of usage comes down. My favorite personal example of this, by the way, is GPS itself. The first time I ever held one was, I think it was probably early 2000s. That thing used to cost like five, six lakh rupees. You had to be careful in how you held it. Now, look, each of our phones has one.

Utsav Somani: Was it a military thing?

Dhruv Sharma: It was, yes. Something of that sort, yeah. There were just very few to go around at the time.

Utsav Somani: Awesome. The culture document written by Ben Horowitz that every A16Z knew higher science, they tweeted about this yesterday. And it caught my attention. There was one particular line that I want to read out. We have an optimistic view of the future and believe that entrepreneurs, whether they succeed or fail, are working to help us achieve a better future. As a result, we never publicly criticize any entrepreneur or startup. Doing so is a fireable offense. I think that's such a powerful statement and something that we embody truly at TON, or we try to, where we say that we have to cheer the people building our future and the startup ecosystem of India. And on this National Startup Day, I think that mission is something that excites us at TON. So, yeah. Fascinating. Have you read the document?

Dhruv Sharma: I'm yet to. Have you read the books? Too many, man. Too many of these books. There's a second one now. But The Hard Thing About Hard Things is a very, very nice book. That's a famous one, yeah.

Utsav Somani: I mean, all of the partners, I think, have written books in different capacities as well. The Secrets of Sandal Road, I think, was a good one as well. It's a good snapshot of the world of venture capital. But anyway, our first guest is waiting. Let's welcome him to the show. Subin, good to have you here.

Subin Mitra (Groyyo): Thanks. It's really good to do this.

Utsav Somani: Great to meet you on the roof. For our listeners who are hearing about your company for the first time, can you spend one or two minutes talking about what it does?

Subin Mitra (Groyyo): Sure. So, we are a B2B supply chain business. We help SME manufacturers across South Asia to export. And we partner with fast fashion brands across the world to help them make their supply chain faster, more streamlined, more tech-enabled. In a nutshell, that's what we do.

Utsav Somani: Nice. Give us some stats about the business. Where does it stand? What countries do you work with? How many brands have you partnered with?

Subin Mitra (Groyyo): We today work with close to 50 brands, mostly across the UK, Europe, US, and the Middle East. Right? We are doing business in almost 9 to 10 countries. It's been about four and a half years. We're a team of about 180 folks. So, it's overall been a good run, I would say.

Dhruv Sharma: And how many factories, Subin?

Subin Mitra (Groyyo): We work with close to 300 manufacturers on the back end, predominantly across India, Bangladesh, Vietnam.

Utsav Somani: We were talking about Tiger Global on the show before. Like, is Tiger Global an investor in Royal? Correct. Tiger is one of the investors.

Dhruv Sharma: What's it like to have Tiger as an investor in your cap table?

Subin Mitra (Groyyo): Aggressive. They have been good partners. They backed us very early in the journey when we just finished a year of operations. Yeah, they've definitely pushed us to grow. And I think more recently to grow in a more sustainable, profitable manner, which has been important for us.

Utsav Somani: And, I mean, if you would run us through the life cycle of a brand on your platform working with Groyo, how does it work? The full step-by-step process.

Subin Mitra (Groyyo): So, we'll start with design. I think design is the most important, right? Which essentially involves, firstly, the brand telling us what are they looking to launch this season, right? That these kind of print, these kind of colors, these kind of silhouettes, right? Basis is that we would curate designs for them. That, okay, this is, let's say, a button-down collar, or let's say a print, et cetera, right? And basis of that design, they will then tell us, okay, we are looking to buy these many pieces. So, let's say 10,000 pieces, 20,000 pieces at this price point. And we need it by this date delivered to our warehouse in London or the US, right? And then we would actually go and map out the entire packet, that which manufacturing facility can do this, where can we get the best possible quality, and how can we ensure that it ships on time, which in today's world of fast fashion is quite critical, given everyone wants to optimize for time as much as possible. And that's how pretty much the whole life cycle would move. Hopefully, with no mishaps. Sometimes, not so true.

Utsav Somani: The power to act like she-in, without them having to worry about the backend.

Subin Mitra (Groyyo): Absolutely. That is exactly right. We will enable a brand, and I think our USP to the brand is that if you want to build a fast fashion supply chain, if you want to source faster, quicker, that is what we will enable for you. And that enables them to compete with the likes of a she-in or a demo.

Dhruv Sharma: Sabina, I have to ask you a question. So, if you walk into a store, you pick something, and chances are that that same thing is available in a different store, and they've likely been manufactured in different factories, how do they ensure, how do the manufacturers, how do the brands ensure consistent quality?

Subin Mitra (Groyyo): That is actually one of the most trickiest parts, and that's where often things go wrong. A large part of it is surprisingly manual, even today, right? So, there will be multiple QC guys on the ground, multiple layers of manual quality check happening, which both the customer will do or someone like us will do, right? We are trying to integrate some of our tech there, where some of this can be done using barcodes, using RFID. But to be honest, most of the answer today is just multiple layers of manual checks. That's how they try to ensure that there are no mishaps.

Dhruv Sharma: And how do the packages move? There have been occasions, I have to say, while shopping in India, I've seen a label that says made in Cambodia, and then closer to Cambodia, I've seen a label that says made in India. So, what is going on behind the scenes?

Subin Mitra (Groyyo): So, it's actually, from what we've seen, every country has a certain USP or a strength. And where it's made actually comes from, where that kind of product is most sourced from, right? So, something like, for example, outerwear or woolens is typically something Vietnam is very strong in. So, you'll see a lot of outerwear which says made in Vietnam or made in Cambodia, right? Anything which is more embroidery-led, print-led, a lot of women's wear, is something India is very strong in. So, you'll see a lot of veromoda-only stuff which says made in India, right? So, it to a certain extent depends on where that product can be sourced best, and to a certain extent on where it can be sourced cheapest in a lot of cases.

Utsav Somani: And what are some of the brands, like the big ones or the smaller ones? Like, how small is the smallest brand that you work with? And how big is the biggest brand that you work with?

Subin Mitra (Groyyo): The biggest would be like, say, for Marks and Spencer, Next, or Mango, which are all of our customers. We don't work with a lot of small labels, to be honest. So, we typically do focus on very large big box retailers, where we feel there's a lot of potential to scale that account.

Utsav Somani: And how do you scout for these factories? Like, I mean, quality must be so different. I think being on top of these factory ops, and the productivity, and the quality, and wastage, and all of those other things that come with handling, or even optimizing manufacturing at scale, must be just something that even tech cannot solve, right? I think it's just manual labor hours that you need to put in.

Subin Mitra (Groyyo): Absolutely, I think. And we've been, to a certain extent, very lucky that we have found a great team along the way, right? So, I think talent and experience is one large part of it. I think our entire management team, apart from me, there's no one else who's under 30. I'm the only one who would be. So, everyone is someone who has spent a couple of decades doing that, has a lot of experience in that. And they have then built teams under them for their respective functions. So, all of the functions which are required to manufacture a particular product, right from, say, quality, raw material sourcing, logistics, are all functions we have built in-house, right? So, we understand there's a business which requires a lot of operations, a lot of people on the ground. Tech can be a catalyst, but we can't depend on the tech fully. That's something we have solved for.

Utsav Somani: And was that something that you picked up while you were at Zillinko?

Subin Mitra (Groyyo): I would say while I was at Zillinko, what we picked up was what not to do, rather than what to do. But something that we picked up was that getting a customer, I would still say, is the easier part. But retaining that customer, retaining that brand, getting them to trust a new company, and consistently give sort of increasing business, that is what becomes more difficult. Do you have factories of your own yet, Subin? We have recently set that up. So, we have now two of our own units. So, it's on the roadmap, and you will commit to that? Correct. We will commit to that, yes.

Dhruv Sharma: I want to just come back to my quality question again, Subin. So, where this question really comes from is something once a Noida-based garment manufacturer told me, which is that they would manufacture for, I forget the brand, but a large label, and they would ship. And he said, they're so insistent on great quality, if I ship a bad batch, they penalize me. I have to cover not just the cost of the garment, but the cost of freight, and then even the cost of lost profit, whatever that means. And so, they make it prohibitively expensive for you to ship a bad batch. But do they have QC right here in India, so that you're not shipping trash out or elsewhere?

Subin Mitra (Groyyo): So, I would say that is one, that's an area where we really come in, right? And that's something which the customer values when a partner like us comes in, that without you having your own teams on the ground in India, you will have someone doing the QC for you, someone insuring goods are shipping on time, someone frontlining design, all of that. And that's, rather than expecting the customer to frontline that, that's our pitch to them, that you can be sitting in London or sitting in Europe, managing the design, focusing on what you know best, which is how can we sell this product more? How can we market better? And you leave the entire back end to someone like us.

Dhruv Sharma: Are you guys doing something to make Indian manufacturers more globally competitive as well, as in not just selling upstream to labels, but exploring their own markets?

Subin Mitra (Groyyo): I mean, we have set up a in-house sort of consulting team, right? And the idea came from, for the fact that large companies can go to a Bain and go to a McKinsey, but these kinds of small manufacturers cannot really go to anyone to sort of help them optimize the factory floor. And that's what our team does. We work with the manufacturer to make them more competitive, help them reduce costs, help them improve profits, all of those aspects.

Utsav Somani: And would you say that India has a competitive advantage over China in apparel manufacturing or not at all?

Subin Mitra (Groyyo): It's a tricky question to answer, but I would say there are some advantages in terms of, I think, the quality and the skill of work we have, where we would be more competitive. But there are also aspects like technology, like quality of machinery, where we are lagging behind, where a lot more needs to be done.

Dhruv Sharma: And where are the big clusters? Sorry, let's go after you. I was just going to say, where are the big clusters though? I mean, we want to hear as of Tirupur or Ludhiana, but I mean, you tell us.

Subin Mitra (Groyyo): Yeah, as you said, so Tirupur is a very big hub. We do a large part of our business from Tirupur. NCR is actually a really large hub across Udaiyog, Bihar, Okhla, Noida, Greater Noida. Ludhiana is a big hub. Patna is emerging as a hub. These would be some of the apparel hubs at least.

Utsav Somani: What is the biggest misconception about the apparel industry or manufacturing in India?

Subin Mitra (Groyyo): I think the biggest misconception is that, in my view, that it is the front end, which is harder. And I see a lot of entrepreneurship today coming up for the front end, where more and more D2C brands are coming up, right? And it is the back end that is easier. Whereas what we see is that it is actually the back end, which for even a successful brand is more harder to master. And once they have mastered the back end, the front end actually, to a large extent, starts solving itself, right? I think that's a misconception people have that once you have demand, you can always figure out supply. But in our view, the supply that is actually a lot harder to crack and manage.

Utsav Somani: And a lot has been said about fast fashion industry being, I think, the biggest polluter on the planet as well. Is that true or that's improving?

Subin Mitra (Groyyo): I think it is improving. So we are at least with the, I think it's coming from the European labels mainly today, where there is a lot of pressure coming on compliance ESG parameters, ensuring that the manufacturing process is more compliant, is not breaching ESG norms. I don't think the US and Middle East labels are still embracing it that much. But at least the European Union seems to have started moving in that direction.

Dhruv Sharma: And by the way, so that has to do with a few different factors. It's not just that people are buying more clothes. It's also that those clothes don't necessarily have the most, they don't have natural fabrics, not the best fabrics. And also the back and forth, the shipping, right? Like I read once that Zara happens to be like a Spanish company. And so if they need cotton, they get it from Morocco, but then they do the QC somewhere off the coast of Spain. So goods keep moving back and forth a lot more than they have to.

Utsav Somani: A lot of people make a more philosophical argument as well, that the fast fashion industry, people are buying a lot more clothes than they need. And they're just dumping it also. So I think a lot of waste is generated after use also. Absolutely, that's a trend.

Subin Mitra (Groyyo): That's a trend we see as well, that brands don't want to really buy in bulk. They would rather buy smaller quantities because consumers like us are now going and buying five things versus one thing. Five things versus one thing. So yeah, that's an argument.

Dhruv Sharma: What has that done for the manufacturers though, Sabin? Like the lower MOQs and therefore being able to work with smaller manufacturers. Talk to us about that side of the house as well.

Subin Mitra (Groyyo): That's a trend we've seen over the last, I want to say four, four, five years we've been operational, but last decade now, right? That what used to be, let's say 5,000 pieces in SKU has now become 500 pieces in SKU. And that's really where the big box manufacturers start struggling. And that creates an opportunity for the smaller manufacturers. And that's something we see as, in our view, fast will become faster, right? So what every brand today wants to be the next sheen. So I think this is going to get even more compressed. And that's where a big opportunity for SMEs across South Asia is going to come up.

Utsav Somani: As a closing thought, what's next for the Indian manufacturing industry in apparel?

Subin Mitra (Groyyo): Hopefully more FTAs. I think the UK one is very well welcomed and hopefully more such and hopefully getting rid of the tariff situation. That's been a big sort of hit, but yeah, hopefully more trade agreements.

Utsav Somani: Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Sabin. All the best. Thank you, Yusuf. Thank you, Dhruv. Thanks for the opportunity.

Dhruv Sharma: Pleasure chatting with you.

Utsav Somani: Now we're ready to change industries to something that's very close to everyone, owning a home. So Abhilash is going to coach us on what the world of home buying looks like. Abhilash, welcome to the show.

Abhilash Narahari (Ivy Homes): Hi, Utsav. Hi, Dhruv. Happy to be here.

Utsav Somani: For anyone who's hearing about Ivy Homes for the first time on our show, can you give us a two-minute download on what the business does? Sure.

Abhilash Narahari (Ivy Homes): So at Ivy Homes, we are a full-stack platform. So for home sellers, we make instant offers. Somebody wants to sell their home, they can receive an offer from us in 24 hours. And for the buyer, we offer a curated, refurbished, legally clear set of homes which are ready to move in. Our idea is to make the whole process hassle-free so that buying a house should be as simple and certain as buying something online.

Utsav Somani: And it's a painful process in India, right? I mean, given that there's cash involved, there's, I mean, so many documentation, title deed has to be cleared, and so many other things that people just tend to and stamp duty and so many other costs involved, hidden costs involved. It is just a painful process. What are the top three things that you've solved in this laundry list of items for a homeowner?

Abhilash Narahari (Ivy Homes): Sure. I think if we talk about top three, right, I think first ends up being pricing. Generally, there is, you know, there is very little information. And depending on who you speak to, someone for the same house, someone can say one crore, someone can say one and a half crores also. So that is one. The second thing is in terms of, I would just call it certainty, right? Because as you said, the process is so broken between, you know, someone has to buy a resale property between how they actually go ahead and pay the token to what does dividends, you know, mean? How do you go about mortgages? How do you manage timelines in the transaction? Because people typically have all those are breaking points, right? One person might be living in the house, moving dates might be different, etc. So I think offering certainty is something which I think is a very big value add.

Dhruv Sharma: Have you noticed customers use IV homes to sell more or buy more?

Abhilash Narahari (Ivy Homes): I mean, just based on, just based on funnels overall, right? There are always more people looking to buy than to sell. So that's just how it works. But of course, in the business we're in, every house that we buy, we eventually sell. So it has to be exactly equal for us.

Dhruv Sharma: And so we're going to stay with the we buy bit for a moment. The first thing you said was an offer in 24 hours. Is that like a final and binding offer or can it be negotiated?

Abhilash Narahari (Ivy Homes): So it's an offer range, typically with, you know, maybe 3-4 lakhs kind of range. And the range exists because a physical inspection still wouldn't have been done. That probably takes another day or so. After which it's a final and binding offer. This whole thing with negotiation, right? We are here to provide certainty. And adding more variability means that the certainty is going away.

Utsav Somani: So give us some numbers. How many people apply to sell their homes to you at RIV Homes? And how many offers do you end up making? What percentage?

Abhilash Narahari (Ivy Homes): Sure. So firstly, you know, there's only a certain set of buildings or certain markets that we are presented. And we only make offers on those buildings. If you say take the last 12 months, we potentially would have made about two and a half thousand offers. And yeah, two and a half thousand offers about one fifth of them or so would have gone through us.

Dhruv Sharma: But people solicit an offer and then go shop with it.

Abhilash Narahari (Ivy Homes): Yeah, no, it's not about soliciting, right? Everyone is curious. So the thing is that a lot of people aren't very serious about selling their house either. I'd like to know the value. And whenever I want to sell, let me figure it out.

Utsav Somani: And there was a lot of talk about like putting land records on the blockchain and like digitizing records. And I mean, every state has different rules and regulations, I believe, for real estate. But have you come across any sort of technologically forward-looking movements by the authorities? Sure.

Abhilash Narahari (Ivy Homes): So, well, I think the good things is that the base was just so low and non-existent, right? About, you know what, even seven, eight years ago, it was literally like physical registers that people would write in. And that was essentially a record of transfer, et cetera. The good thing is that because it was such a low base and there is generally a push starting from the center to digitize everything, that is something which is now mostly being done, except maybe about four, five states or so. Every state has at least digitized the records. And I think that is step one. However, there are several steps from there because, you know, ownership ends up becoming a vague concept, right? If it is just a digital record, its record can have multiple names, there can be conflicting records, so on and so forth. So governments have tried to take efforts to fix that. In Karnataka, for example, I think it's slightly more forward in terms of it's not just about records being digitized, but they're trying to move the entire registration process more and more digital. In fact, I met someone recently where I think they want to target by April or so. They want to figure out a way to transfer property where you don't even need to go to that subregistrar office. It's kind of authenticated by Aadhaar. I mean, I think the efforts are there. It's just, it's a very big mess. So it takes a lot of time to solve.

Utsav Somani: And it's a big revenue generator, right? I mean, these registrar offices, I think the stamp duty on these land deals, I think can really add up.

Abhilash Narahari (Ivy Homes): I think it keeps the state running, yeah. Most states, that's why it keeps running. That's why that is one value which never goes below. It only keeps going higher and higher. It's like excise duty.

Utsav Somani: I just want to add a little hat on. Sorry, Dhruv, that thought, I think I don't want this thing. So you're taking, I mean, it's an arbitrage play, sort of. And we've started Open Door. I spent some time on Twitter. Keith is very vocal about the publicly listed company that you co-founded as well, right? And I'm sure, given that, I think you spent time at YC as well. So that comparison must have come in. Of course. I don't want to compare any of these two businesses together, but you're taking arbitrage risk at some point, right? Where you're buying an asset and you have to hold it. What's the holding period like for you? And have you learned any lessons along the way?

Abhilash Narahari (Ivy Homes): Of course, I mean, we have. And you're right. When we started, and even today, the comparison with Open Door are what, for the average person, that's the easiest thing to understand. However, you know, even before starting, we had some very clear thesis, right? That if you look at the real estate market in India, things are structurally so much more broken than a market like the US, right? So some of the things you mentioned, right? So in India, there's no title insurance. In India, there is no, you know, what they call MLS, where all the house transactions are recorded, all the house features are present. That doesn't exist. In India, there is nothing called like broker exclusivity. So, you know, nobody, because they don't have exclusivity, nobody ever really markets the houses.

Abhilash Narahari (Ivy Homes): So all of that put together means that the system here is so much more broken, which is why when we, which is why my belief always was that there is more value to be added with a full stack approach. And we've actually really seen that play out, right? So one easy way to look at it also is, if you look at, you know, just top level financials for Open Door, right? Open Door probably make about 8% to 9% in terms of gross margin. In a country where typical brokerages are 5% to 6%, right? In India, you know, brokerages are 1% to 2%. And we end up making about 10% to 12%. That difference exists only because they're able to add in all this value.

Dhruv Sharma: Does buying and selling trigger a tax liability on you guys?

Abhilash Narahari (Ivy Homes): No, we pay whatever income tax, GST, all the other statutory taxes which exist, right? Apart from that, in terms of the transfer fee.

Dhruv Sharma: That's on business income, but on the asset?

Abhilash Narahari (Ivy Homes): That's right. So in terms of the transfer fee or stamp duty, I'm guessing that's what your question is about. Yeah. So the way we work is, we technically don't pay 100% of the value and transfer the asset to our name. We enter into a future contract on the asset, which we then exit. So while there is a transfer fee, it's a lot lower.

Utsav Somani: Why did you choose this industry? Like we always discuss a founder market fit or a founder problem fit, which I read recently on Twitter as well. So, I mean, did you face a personal issue that you wanted to productize with Ivy Homes?

Abhilash Narahari (Ivy Homes): Sure. But actually, in terms of why this industry, it's a slightly longer story, right? Before this, I used to run a company in the e-commerce space. Where we would help small sellers sell online, make tons of mistakes there.

Utsav Somani: Sold that to ShareChat, I think.

Abhilash Narahari (Ivy Homes): Eventually sold it to ShareChat, that's correct. I think during that time, I discovered there are so many things that I absolutely suck at, that I'm terrible at. There might be a couple of things that I have some talent in, so let me try and figure out things around that. And one of the things I identified was kind of digital transformation. And there were a lot of problem areas I was looking at, but real estate was also close to me because while I never worked in it, I grew up in a family where my dad was in real estate. And it's kind of how dinner table talks, et cetera, were always around it. So, that's what got me looking into it deeper and deeper. And there were a lot of very interesting things that I uncovered once I got into it.

Utsav Somani: I mean, one fine day you said, dad, I'm going to disrupt you.

Abhilash Narahari (Ivy Homes): Yeah, it's hard to explain to him how we do what we do. So, in fact, if you should tell him, right, hey, you know, we're making an offer to buy a house, he'd be like, are you out of your mind?

Utsav Somani: Have you done any transactions with him involved?

Abhilash Narahari (Ivy Homes): No, no, he's retired. He's about 73, 74 now. So, he's well past all his working days.

Utsav Somani: What were the learnings from the exit of ShareChat? And I'm just thinking about how you chose this industry and you did e-commerce before. And now you've literally chosen the highest AOV category that you can sell online. I don't think anyone can sell anything higher than real estate online, right? In terms of AOV, average order value.

Abhilash Narahari (Ivy Homes): Yeah, I mean, to give you context, right, when I was running Atlantic, our average order value was about 400 rupees. And no matter how you slice and dice it, at least for us, it was impossible to make money. And I think I was so, I was so bitten by all the pain there that I figured out better to go to the absolute other extreme.

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah, Dhruv, any final closing questions? Yes, just one. Abhilash, from your perspective, what unsolved problems are interesting in the, broadly in the real estate space?

Abhilash Narahari (Ivy Homes): Oh man, there are just so many, right? There are just so many. Okay, interesting, but worth solving. Yeah, absolutely, right? So I think there are a lot of very fundamental things also to solve. So starting with one of those things, for example, right? If you see the way our, you know, the way our cities, our houses, et cetera, are designed, I don't think that has evolved in maybe like a hundred years, right? Even today, apartment buildings are pretty much like the apartment building of earlier. Okay, yes, you know, they are a little fancier. Maybe they have swimming pools now. They didn't have swimming pools then. But houses, how it is, you know, the way you interact with your neighbor, that's pretty much how you used to interact with your neighbor a hundred years ago. The way even, you know, like, even if you look at like residential layouts, the way they are designed, I think is just very, very much like a copy paste. If it's a problem truly worth solving, right? Like how do you completely reimagine living spaces? I think that's a massively exciting problem.

Utsav Somani: Even urban planning, right? To that extent, I think cities will have this problem where, I mean, everyone's, I mean, Gurgaon especially is going like vertically. And I don't think the infra in the city is ready to handle that kind of traffic. And I mean, I noticed the same in UAE, Dubai as well. I think they've grown vertically. And I mean, some of the areas are blocked for like hours at a stretch.

Abhilash Narahari (Ivy Homes): Yeah, you're right, you're right. I think, as I told you, once you get into it, I think there's a lot of interesting design elements which had come in. And we have actually seen that with offices, right? Offices today are not how offices were like 60 years ago. It's not that you have a reception, you have a bunch of cabins, with co-working, with everything, that whole design is completely flipped on its head. Whereas with houses, it's still very much the same.

Utsav Somani: And what's next for Ivy Homes? What's the roadmap like for 2026?

Abhilash Narahari (Ivy Homes): Well, I mean, I think for us in 2026, our primary focus area is on growing more. So we're also launching new geographies. And that's it, we're looking to buy more, sell more.

Utsav Somani: What are the areas that you operate in right now?

Abhilash Narahari (Ivy Homes): Sure, we're primarily in Bangalore. We have started, our focus for 2026 is we want to launch a couple of more geographies. We're present in Bombay. We should be launching something as well.

Utsav Somani: And does the same playbook apply in other cities? Probably not, right?

Abhilash Narahari (Ivy Homes): Also, in terms of the problems that I stated, all of them are very much the same. However, goto-market needs to be different because somehow these cities work a little differently. So like our exact go-to-market in Bangalore is not the same, cannot be copied for Bombay. If you go to some other city... You'd end up having local teams, right? Yes, yes, yeah, there are local teams.

Utsav Somani: This must be, I mean, feet on the street heavy, because if somebody calls you for this thing, have you made a fully digital offer yet?

Abhilash Narahari (Ivy Homes): I mean, our offer is still very much digital, but when we sell the house, of course, everybody visits the house to come. And even, so there are several offers, I mean, especially for outstation sellers, right? It's entirely digital. They would receive something on email, they would sign there, all the documentation, et cetera, happens digitally. But of course, when we sell the house, everybody visits the house in person.

Utsav Somani: All right, thank you so much. Next guest might help you in launching new cities. So we'll definitely connect you guys. I think you're already connected via offline.

Abhilash Narahari (Ivy Homes): Yeah, of course, Vaishal. Yeah, thanks.

Utsav Somani: Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Hey, Vaishal, good to have you on the show.

Vaishal Dalal (Excellent Publicity): Hey, Dhruv. Hi, what's up? So good to see you guys. Thank you so much for hosting.

Utsav Somani: Good to see you again.

Utsav Somani: You're hearing about excellent for the first time, excellent publicity. Can you give us a twominute download on what the business does?

Vaishal Dalal (Excellent Publicity): The excellent publicity is into all kinds of advertising. So we do have 5 lakh plus advertising media, one of the biggest basket of advertising services across the world. And from 2016, we created an online platform, like just like how you can shop fashion on Myntra. Likewise, you can shop advertising media on our website. So call it like aggregator of all the advertising media available. Just filter the city media based on your industry. And you can book the advertising campaign, plan the media mix according to your needs. There are competitor analysis tools. There are a lot of great predictor tools and a lot of AI tech data insights. A lot has been incorporated to ensure that whatever is the data and insights available to only top 1% of clients, that is something that can be democratized and available to all the corporate, semi-corporates, MSMEs, individuals, freelancers, ad agencies looking for their advertising and marketing requirements. So yeah, that's what excellent publicity does.

Utsav Somani: Give us a scale of the business. How many brands do you work with? What does the account look like in terms of your headcount, business revenue, different industries that you work with?

Vaishal Dalal (Excellent Publicity): So we are headquartered at Amitabh and it was predominantly a decision that we took a long back that no matter what happens, the headquarters will remain at Amitabh. So the majority of decision makers back then, 14 years back, obviously today as well, it's Mumbai, Delhi, and Bangalore. But the headquarter is in Amitabh and we do have our sales teams and offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Surat, and Dubai. Last year, we did 100 crores of revenue and it's a bit of positive organization from the start. And this year, again, it's a growth journey continues. So it's a hundred team company because we have been relying a lot on tech. Otherwise, advertising industries are very people-heavy industry. But it has been a beautiful amalgamation of technology, people, processes since the beginning that we have been able to do a good amount of business, cover good geography with this limited count of people. In last 12 months only, we worked for around 1300 brands, which is one of the sort of record in ad industry. Because of the range of services that we have, in last 12 months, we have worked for Google, Amazon, Uber, Microsoft. We have also worked for Chunnu Munnu Jewellers and the local organizations. 150 plus agencies have been working with us for their client requirements beyond their bandwidth or beyond their expertise of geography or media. So it has been a wholesome reach that we give. So anyone who is looking for anything related to advertising and marketing, excellentpublicity.com provides them solutions with what they want.

Utsav Somani: Amazing. Thanks for sharing.

Dhruv Sharma: How do you build an organization that can serve your local jeweler and Google at the same time, Vaishal? And great revenue to, I mean, headcount of revenue sort of ratio as well, right? 100, 100.

Utsav Somani: We've not had two key startups on the show that are beta positive as well. So congrats to you on that milestone. And I mean, it's a serious achievement.

Vaishal Dalal (Excellent Publicity): Thank you so much. So right now, as we speak, the count is below 100 and we plan to reach or stabilize somewhere around 70, 80 because still more tech is coming in, still more automations are coming in. You know, from the start, we were very sure that MSMEs remain our core target. But then obviously, when you look at scalability, you need large enterprises, you need big ticket customers. So that's why we created our model in such a way that we will be able to cater to anyone and everyone, direct customers, even media owners, as well as the agencies. We do a lot of business by cross-selling the inventories or cross-selling the requirements and bandwidths across agency network because of, obviously, like I said, the large supply of media available. And also one beautiful thing that we incorporated is we are a zero-fee agency. We do not charge a single rupee from our customer because we get that benefit from our media owners and media partners whose media we sell to a customer and by doing that, we save on their energy efforts and money. So they are what will pay us. And because of the marketplace or aggregator that we have built, which is getting 4 million impressions a month. And because of that, there is a saying in limited circles of media owners that if you are a media owner and you are not present on excellent publicity's website, that means you do not exist. And because of the, like obviously, they want to showcase their inventory at the top of our funnel on the website. And because of that, the kind of offers that media owners generally offer to us, because of that, we are able to give customers better rates than prevailing in the market and thereby also being able to earn margins ourselves and work without any sort of commissions. Plus with the automations and data insights coming in, we bring back the science of media buying and planning, removing the personal and subjective bias. Also, it eliminates a lot of, you know.

Utsav Somani: But you mentioned tools like AI and other features that you use from the world of technology. But suppose I am a customer, like customer for you, I come to you with 100 rupees, how much of that goes towards digital marketing and how much of that goes towards print or out of home advertisements? Okay. So it's still a big sort of place where I think ad dollars are being spent in India, right?

Vaishal Dalal (Excellent Publicity): Yeah, absolutely. So I'll tell you exactly when, let's say a customer approaches us, we ask them five questions. First, what is the brand product or website or something? Based on that, obviously, it is easy to identify that this is the industry and this is the target audience. We ask them, what is the objective that you want to achieve? Maybe it's opening or maybe they are just looking at brand building or lead generation. Because depending upon your campaign objective, obviously, the media mix varies. Then, obviously, what are the competitors? Now, you know, from our perspective or from technology perspective, you would have XYZ competitors, but they know their business well. So they know what are the exact competitors. So we take the names of competitors and then we come to the geography or the budget or geography that, because based on the metro cities, non-metro cities or tier 3, 4, the media mix again varies based on their digital penetration and stuff. Based on this, we have created automation where we get all the market data of the actual spending by each and every player of that industry and also the communication material or the USP of the brand, because based on the communication offer, also the media mix changes. So based on this, we have devised that all the historical data of each and every, so from 5 rupee to 5000 crore rupee campaign has been fed into our systems, which takes into account that we will be able to give you media mix to that extent that you should do third page ad on every Wednesday with, let's say, sale offer in an 80 square centimeter or let's say you have to take Baman Irani as a brand ambassador. Why? Why you should take and if you are going there with Baman Irani, what should Baman Irani speak, right? So to that extent, we have been able to create that media mix.

Utsav Somani: So my next point, like, I mean, the world of social media, direct distribution, like so many philosophical things have come up where you've seen the set of this new media team as well, where they're encouraging the portfolio founders to go direct, not rely on this thing and creative economy, I think, which was a buzzword. I think that took off in 2018, 2019, but people have been putting up content online, huge following. So how does that world work? Like, I mean, content creators have existed for a very long time in different shapes and forms. Do you work with them? Are brands increasingly rely on them and have to return on ad spend on these creators adding up or do you think it's getting saturated?

Vaishal Dalal (Excellent Publicity): No, I'll tell you the way influencer marketing started, right? It was absolutely different. And now how influencer or creative economy holds at present or also in the future, that is completely different. And now, basically, influencer marketing has become like a compulsory in every marketing campaign, because now it's not just influencer marketing. Even hoardings of newspaper ads are being hyped up by doing influencer marketing or, you know, getting it distributed through meme pages or, you know, such kind of creators. So while it has become extremely important, what has also become is the companies and companies and tech like what Philo provides. I was watching Akhil's conversation with you, I guess, day before. And what he said holds absolutely true. We have incorporated Philo and obviously a lot of other APIs to provide the real engagement or the real audience of each and every influencer. So we have also created rate predictors of influencers because there are no rate cards, right? Based on their own pipeline or the mood swings, they create their own rates. But obviously looking at the category, looking at the kind of audience, the number of followers or engagement rates and through the platform that we have built, we can also tell you how many of the influencer followers are active or have not logged in for six or more months, because if there is a substantial amount of followers who have not logged in from six or more months, practically, I cannot consider that when I'm looking at pricing, right? Because I cannot, they are never going to engage with my content. So for me, those followers are useless. So we also have to factor into account the patterns of a creator posts, a lot of posts, not all of them go successful. So we have input, we have created that AI and tech in between where we will identify the pattern of all the influencer content, identify which ones are hit with the followers based on that and based on the brand guidelines, we create the script.

Utsav Somani: Because what I should be listening to all of you, I mean, we are also in touch with some sponsors for the offline network. There was a company that was sponsoring our first set of streams in 20.5 as well. And now we're in touch with other set of sponsors. Then you should do an analysis for us and mail it to us privately on what we should charge our ad spots and tickers and all that as well.

Vaishal Dalal (Excellent Publicity): Absolutely. I can definitely do that. So a lot of people, so all the brands who come with us, even before meeting them, we give them the entire market research analysis, competitor analysis, as well as their Instagram and YouTube account report. It's like it's worth 30-35 lakhs that we give just like that. Because something that we want to do for people. And obviously, that's not something our bread and butter is. Our bread and butter is once they go live with the media campaigns with us. But we want Indian organizations or enterprises to go data-backed campaigns. And not just because when I go home, this hoarding comes and this is the radio channel that I listen to. I will advertise on that. So trying to bring back the science of media buying and planning.

Dhruv Sharma: Then people take Vaishal's report and land like Donald Trump is going to land in Greenland and his first bargaining chip will be like, it's not even that green.

Vaishal Dalal (Excellent Publicity): So that definition of media buy has anyway changed.

Dhruv Sharma: I have a very basic question to ask you Vaishal, which is do large companies actually have a separate marketing and advertising budget? And if they have both, if they have 100 rupees to spend on marketing and 100 rupees to spend on advertising, how do you advise them to spend those 200 rupees?

Vaishal Dalal (Excellent Publicity): So like I said, it depends on their target audience and the campaign objective.

Dhruv Sharma: There have been, if you pick an example, by the way, you feel free to pick an example.

Vaishal Dalal (Excellent Publicity): So let's say for an example, Himalaya came on board, Himalaya wellness, for an example, they came on board that this is the budget and this is what we want to do. A lot of times in our cases, it has happened that a brand has said that 200 crore or 220 crore, for an example, is the advertising budget. And we have not utilized it fully. We have simply asked them that the target that you want to achieve or the ROI or the number of leads or awareness that you want to create, for an example, 12 or 13 crore is the ideal sum. We create the media mix and then accordingly, the plans are executed. So not necessarily the budgets that a client has given or set aside, the same needs to be consumed because it may not be required. Like I said, everything is so much data and insights back that we reduce a lot of wastage that happens otherwise in the marketing. And since we give the ROI or the potential advantages or potential returns to the advertising, which cannot be 100% authentic or accurate, but at least we can give the ideas through our intelligence that we are able to save.

Utsav Somani: So I think maybe just give us advertising versus PR. Are you thinking that it's a split? Advertising versus marketing?

Vaishal Dalal (Excellent Publicity): No, I don't think so. I feel all of them are connected because it's the entire process.

Utsav Somani: I'll close this out with two trends that you see for the next two years that a brand should focus on. Trends in terms of how they should think about marketing, reaching to their customers because content creation is becoming saturated or some people have at least defined on that. But where do you think a new age brand who's maybe five years into their journey doesn't have a massive marketing spend, but maybe has a few lakhs or 50 lakhs to spend. Where can they focus their energies on?

Vaishal Dalal (Excellent Publicity): So every time I talk to a brand, I tell them that influencer marketing becomes compulsory for everyone. But don't do so many influencers at a time or don't keep a gap. It's a simple motto. One week, one influencer. 52 weeks, 52 influencers and you are constantly on the top of the heads of your target audience every single time. And second, don't burn every money digitally. After COVID, a lot of brands went digital only. But in a country like India or wherever there is population out of home, mediums are always going to be very important for trust building, brand building. Plus for the internet penetration that remains low if you do combine offline plus digital, one plus one becomes three. And that's what I would suggest every brand going forward that use a combination of an entire media mix of offline plus digital and influencer, one week, one influencer. I guess that would do the task.

Utsav Somani: Thank you so much for sharing that. I'm coming on the show today. Thank you.

Vaishal Dalal (Excellent Publicity): Thank you so much. It's a pleasure.

Utsav Somani: Thank you so much for tuning in. We'll see you on Monday. Have a wonderful weekend.