Summary

The Offline Network Episode 15: EV Shakeup, AI Spend Secrets & India's New Unicorn (aired 2025-10-03). Guests: Anant V Goel, Dheeraj Jain from Handpickd, Redcliffe Labs. Anant: "And I think we are blessed by the fact that for the first time in the industry, we are seeing that people are really shifting their fruits and vegetables purchase online in a significant manner." Anant: "But if you want something right away, because you forgot or some guest has shown up or you were not able to plan, then you will go to quick commerce and buy." Topics: venture capital and funding, AI and LLMs, consumer brands and D2C, health tech. The Offline Network is India's live show on startups, tech, and venture — streaming M/W/F at 4 PM IST on YouTube.

Full Transcript

Utsav Somani: All right, folks, welcome to the Monday stream of T.O.N., hope you've had a good, good long weekend. Today we are hearing from two solid operators, both of them solving very different problems in the supply chain world. One is going after fruits and vegetables. The other founder is solving the medical supply chain and specifically his company for diagnostics with Redcliffe Labs. Before we begin, Ather and Ola Electric are in the news. Dhruv, why is that?

Dhruv Sharma: I think they came inches within each other and it looks like Ather has outdone Ola in this month. Also a short while ago, Tarun Mehta put out a tweet saying that they have now rolled off something like 500,000 or 500,000 units and they've ramped up production capacity to be able to produce a thousand vehicles a day now. It's super impressive. And a lot of that capacity has been added in just the last one year. So just very impressive numbers. They're both public companies now, aren't they?

Utsav Somani: Yeah. And the stock market hasn't treated the Ather Energy IPO that well. I think it's still trading flattish. It's trading at 310. They're listed at, I think, 326, so slight premium. But one funny story that I have, I saw Ather's Tarun pitch to this group at Indian Angel Network, one of my first meetings in 2014, if I remember correctly. The entire room passed on their opportunity. Of course, in hindsight, it looks like a bad one. But yeah, I mean, crazy that he's built such a solid company. And India is a heavy two-wheeler market. So I think this was bound to happen if they're driven heavily with product innovation. So I think exciting to see where they go from here.

Dhruv Sharma: There's also a very heavy three-wheeler market. And so who's making all of those e-rickshaws? Some of them look like they've been hacked together in a workshop.

Utsav Somani: Yeah, definitely can use some work. But I mean, R&D mode for them, it's pretty impressive. For Ather, 18 trademarks, 204 designs and 48 patents registered. So pretty solid stuff. Of course, they're giving fight to TVS and Bajaj in this space. And Ola's, of course, losing some market share, but never count him out. Long way ahead. Yeah. In terms of what's happening in the world of AI spends, A16Z put out a very interesting report where they are partnered with Mercury, which is one of the most prominently used neobanks for startups in the US. They basically collected August to June to August 25 transaction data from 200,000 startups and wanted to rate the top 50 AI startups. So there are two Indian names which got a mention apart from all the usual ones on the top, like OpenAI Anthropic, Repl.id, Merlin, which is a multimodal AI assistant web extension that you can use to chat with websites or just sort of have your own private repository of information. And the other one, of course, is a crowd favorite, Emergent, where they've gone by being, I mean, they've advertised heavily via influencers in India. So you see all the big ones, Rajshamani and stuff, advertising and talking about this. But they've become a globally used white coding to production apps. So something is really working for them because they've raised 30 million total as well. And then, of course, you have the creative tools of the world. Stock market platforms, of course, one was in the news today. Dhan has raised 120 million at a 1.2 billion valuation. So we've got a new unicorn in town. Dhruv, break it down for us.

Dhruv Sharma: This is this is a very, very impressive company. It's in fact younger than all of its peers. I think founded in 2000, in 2021. You were telling me about the founder when we were chatting just before we started streaming.

Utsav Somani: Yeah, so I mean, one of the rare companies in the FinTech space that has gone from 105 million to 1.2 billion. And I think their product is geared up towards serious traders. The founder was at Paytmoney before. I think he had a bit of a fallout with Widget Shaker. He's subtweeted him also a few times. We don't know what back story is there, but he's independently now gone and built ahead a solid FinTech platform that's used by serious traders, I think. So he's going after that in 80-20 terms, that heavy 20% users. So he's building products and offerings for them specifically. And that I think is what is driving some of the 155 crore profit that they've generated this year. Expected to touch 900 crores in top line as well for this year. So I think a strong, strong player as the market goes through some downturn and navigates all of these challenges.

Dhruv Sharma: And through that time, they're showing user growth and revenue growth. And they have about a million active accounts of the 48 million all active traders in the country.

Utsav Somani: Yeah. Next one. Finance Minister is talking about stablecoins. What's your read into this?

Dhruv Sharma: Well, I'm glad she is. And in fact, finance ministers and central bankers around the world, if you pay attention to the news, have been talking about stablecoins over the last month or so. And if you go back in time, a lot of traditional bankers have always drawn a distinction between cryptocurrencies and the underlying technology. They've always said, we don't really understand how crypto works. We don't know if it's good or bad. Some even say it's bad. Blockchain is good and it can be put to good use. And so the way stablecoins work, for those who may not know or who are wondering, if I go to a bank and I deposit a dollar with them, by the way, the other thing that's also happening in the world of banking globally is that the traditional banking world, as everyone knows, is take deposits and then lend them out in net interest margin, etc. The lending, a lot of the lending globally now is also being done by private financiers. And so the emergence of this new asset class called private credit. So banks around the world are also without a business model. That's oversimplifying it a little bit. And so which is why this turn around and this sudden awakening that stablecoins might be great. So stablecoins kind of act like that. You go to your bank, deposit a dollar with them. They give you a stablecoin that's worth a dollar. You go use that to buy whatever you want. Whoever you buy that stuff from gets that stablecoin. They can go back to the bank and redeem it against that dollar. It's expected to bring transaction costs down significantly because you're operating on the same technology, operates 24-7, interoperable across the world. So all of those technical conveniences that blockchain brings without the volatility that the crypto world sort of also delivers.

Utsav Somani: Awesome. And I mean, the statistic to note here is that India receives over 125 billion in remittances annually. And with costs going down, I think that's significant savings for people. And Indians using crypto, it's a huge number. And Sumit, I think mentioned some of this as well. In the tweet that he's done recently, there are over 100 million users in India. And that's why Coinbase is also launching their crypto offering in India. They've started sending out early invites. But interesting thing to note here is that this digital rupee which they launched earlier, the RBI has piloted this digital rupee. It's not a stablecoin. There are 6 million users using it, over 1000 crores as of March 25 in circulation. But that is different from this stablecoin. Although it mirrors the one-to-one aspect of a stablecoin, but it is not considered a stablecoin per se. Polygon CEO said that he's 100% sure that India will launch its own INR stablecoin within three months. And Sumit echoes that thought. Will be interesting to see what comes out of it. All right. The final exciting item for today, Electronic Arts. It's a game that we've all loved playing. I used to play FIFA. And I remember that tagline that they have, it's in the game. They've gone private in a $55 billion leveraged buyout, the largest in history. Interesting people behind it. Silver Lake Partners. There's the sovereign wealth from some Saudi Arabia and Affinity Partners, which is led by Jared Kushner. Dhruv, you know him well?

Dhruv Sharma: I mean, I don't know him personally, but this is a super interesting transaction. It's also the largest ever leveraged buyout. It values the company at $55 billion. 35 of that is the equity component. The balance is debt. The debt financing has come from JPMorgan Chase. And then that consortium of private equity players you named, you know, three of them have put together the 36 odd billion dollars of the equity component. The largest obviously would have come from PIF, which has about a trillion dollars in assets. Silver Lake is about a 10th of their size. So roughly $110 billion in assets. You know, with the last company, Silver Lake took private on its own. Which one? The whole core for UFC. So gaming is super interesting to all of them. And why are they doing this? You know, so, well, different people say different things, but it's a great legacy business. And in that quarterly sort of reporting cycle, etc, you know, they've just had to care about things other than innovation. By the way, there are a collection, a group of 20 gaming studios. And so, you know, in a transaction like this, of course, if you go back to being a private company, you don't have to do the whole quarterly earnings and, you know, the reporting, and you can just go back to the drawing board and rebuild the company in a sense. However, all of that debt, that $20 billion you've got from Chase, you've got to pay it back. So it's, you know, that's where you start then optimizing for efficiency and really looking for solid cashflow in the company. You know, the other thing that's super interesting about this deal before we welcome Anand, it's like, BF can't get enough of EA. They hold 10% of that company anywhere as a shareholder. And they've put up, you know, the largest amount of money in the equity component of this transaction. And then they're also anchor LPs in Affinity. So they're just showing up, they're holding in electronic arts.

Utsav Somani: One funny thing that's going on around the world, there are reports that are coming out where people are just spending more time alone. Like I think gaming is one aspect, there's content consumption across the world, scrolling on social media. So the world is becoming a little bit more alone. And gaming, I think, will be one of the benefactors where people spend a lot of time on these gaming consoles. And that's why I think a position like this might be good for IRRs. I mean, getting exit from a $55 billion transaction will be pretty tough.

Dhruv Sharma: BF is also a significant shareholder in Nintendo, by the way. So what you're saying totally makes sense.

Utsav Somani: All right, let's welcome our first guest. He's solving hard problems after hard problems. First was organizing the milk market and now he's organizing fruits and vegetables market. Sir, why do you have such difficult problems in the supply chain?

Anant V Goel (Handpickd): Hey, what's up? Hi Dhruv. Hi Anand. Hi Anand. Man, difficult problems are fun, right?

Utsav Somani: So for our listeners who are tuning in who've not heard of Handpicked, just give us a two minute summary of what the business is doing and where it stands today.

Anant V Goel (Handpickd): Sure, what's up? So Handpicked is nothing but an online version of, you know, multi-decade old practice of somebody going and handpicking their fruits and vegetables from the local shop, the Rediwala, the Mandi. I think we believe that fundamentally the supply chains that have been created to solve for fresh, they were all inspired by the FMCD supply chains which were in turn inspired by, you know, your books, your fashion, your electronics, which work on standard product and standard pack sizes. When we look at a consumer, when we look at our household, we see that, you know, the people who care about us, when they go and buy fruits and vegetables, they buy it very differently. It's almost like picking your life partner that you do once, but we call it matchmaking. It's like, yeah, when I buy this papaya, I'm going to eat it today or tomorrow. You know, it's very subjective to every instance of buying. Every time you're doing this matchmaking and that's called handpicking. So handpicked is nothing but an attempt to bring that thought process online. And I think we are blessed by the fact that for the first time in the industry, we are seeing that people are really shifting their fruits and vegetables purchase online in a significant manner. So it's no more a top-up, emergency top-up. It's actual real buying which is happening online.

Utsav Somani: But quick commerce, we thought, I mean, I mean, just trying to break it down for our listeners as well. And for my understanding also, quick commerce, you buy all of these vegetables anyways on demand. So handpicked is plugging in supply to them or is it sourcing? I mean, the full stack entirely itself.

Anant V Goel (Handpickd): See, I think we have been buying fruits and vegetables online, not just in quick commerce. We have been buying since the with the launch of Big Basket in 2010. And then Milk Basket was there. Then Grofers was there. Peppertap was there. We had enough injuries and enough pivots in this space. Everybody has been selling. But then internally, we believe that everybody's selling, nobody's buying. And when you look at the data of a household of what a household spends on fruits and vegetables, and if you look at what these portals have been able to capture so far, it's very less. It's under 10% of a household buy, which actually gets transferred to an online. So and primarily majority of it is also what we call the onion, tomato, potato. We call it OTP, which is basically the FMCG of fruits and vegetables where quality and size and the frequency of buying is very different as compared to when you buy your bhindi and karelas. So see, people are buying. People are not moving. People are not shifting their actual spend. I think that's the core thing. The way we look at handpicked is that for the first time, you are able to buy exactly what you want. And we are seeing the outcome in the data where customers are spending money as if they are buying their stock up, their full-fledged month, weekly or two day or a three day supply. Now, is good commerce there? Good commerce is there. The way we look at it is that handpick is your destination to buy quality fruits and vegetables. But if you want something right away, because you forgot or some guest has shown up or you were not able to plan, then you will go to quick commerce and buy. It's like you used to go to Mandi or your fruitwala once or twice a week to buy your stuff. But you used to go to your local mom and pop shop for your quick top ups. So quick top ups would remain because as a human, we forget things. But our focus is on the long tail. Our focus is on the significant wallet share that goes into buying quality fruits and vegetables.

Dhruv Sharma: Anant, can you take us behind this? Yeah, sorry. No, no, go ahead, please. You were saying. No, I was saying we will all coexist. That's very simple. It's a huge market. And it's like you said, I mean, people have only scratched the surface. I'm wondering if you could take us behind the scenes. Now, how have you built this operation in terms of things that we can't see? Where are you sourcing from? Are you storing it? How are you sorting it? How are goods physically moving? Take us behind the scenes.

Anant V Goel (Handpickd): Behind the scenes is messy. As behind the scenes should be.

Utsav Somani: You've raised 15 million, so there will be some improvement.

Anant V Goel (Handpickd): I think it will become messier. It will become messier because we are just going to deal with things at a larger volume, at a larger scale across multiple geographies. So we have kept it very simple. It's a first principle based thought process. And when I say very simple, we do not store. We do not forecast. We do not go and buy in advance and then keep it in our warehouses or dark stores in a hope that a customer is going to come and buy. Technically, everyone else is doing that in today's world, online or offline. If you go to offline, they buy in the morning and then they hope customers to come throughout the day and sell it to them. In the online also, they buy in advance, keep them in their warehouses, make packets out of them, then move them to dark stores. And then you are hoping for a customer to come and buy. So we have dealt with the problem differently. We look at it as a perishable produce, which becomes unfresh, quote unquote, very quickly. And if it is not unfresh, the particular ripeness of a product or the freshness of the product decreases or increases with time. So as soon as you start plucking, the timer is on and now you're artificially managing the freshness. If you take one day, two days in the supply chain, which most of the players are doing today, you're just degrading the freshness, but then you're artificially maintaining using plastic packets, LAP, MAP packets, or you're doing cold storage to keep them. We said, why are we doing that? And the biggest problem in the industry becomes wastage then once you do that, because you're buying something which is not sellable after 12 hours, after 18 hours, after 24 hours. So what do we do differently? We said, let's take the order in advance. So we take orders in advance, like all day, you will place an order. Based on those exact orders, we go and buy exact quantities from the farmers. Now, why are we able to do that is because these farmers are doing harvesting anyways, right? Whether you place an order or not. And they're bringing it to a central point in the city. We call it Monday, right? So we go there and buy it from the farmers, exact quantities, then sorted, graded, and then move it to our city, city transit stations. At the city transit stations, each individual orders are put together. Again, the entire supply chain is made on So no plastic is being used. No packets are being created. You have the freedom to buy one mango, and it will be delivered one mango if you want one mango. If you want 300 grams of bindi, you will get 300 grams of bindi. There is no half kg packet or a one kg packet. There is no forced buying happening. And you can decide your grade also. You want, you know, one for Dhruv and one for Dhruvs. I don't know your wife. And let's say one of you like crunchy and one of you like soft. You can buy one Guava soft and one Guava crunchy. As I said, again, from a consumer side, it's very simple. That's what people are doing offline. We are planning to do it online. It's very much like the offline network. Offline to online is the case here. And from a supply chain, it just gives so much comfort to make sure that you have zero stock at 8 o'clock in the morning and everything that you have bought for your consumers being delivered to the consumers. So we assimilate orders, we buy on demand and we deliver it to the customers.

Utsav Somani: And you mentioned consumers. So there is no B2B element to your business right now? We do not supply to businesses or restaurants or any Horeca chains.

Anant V Goel (Handpickd): No, we do not.

Utsav Somani: Okay. And the other question that popped up in my head is you will never, I mean, you work with farmers, but to control the quality, you never want to get into managing farms yourself to get captive capacity?

Anant V Goel (Handpickd): See, Utsav, this is a very tricky business. See, the old school says the farm to folk school, we are entire farm to folk, if you ask me. The school says that go to the farmer, manage the farming, get the produce and then deliver it to the consumer. The problem is that this is not a manufacturing facility. This is a field. At the end of the day, you are dependent on the nature. Sorry. And every day when you look at your supply, you will find your supply sitting on what we call a normal curve, which means one day you will have 70% of produce which can go into detail. The other day you might have 90%. But the third day you might have 60% because, you know, no two potatoes are same, no two onions are same, no two apples are same. So every day the the retail level product is different, right? Now, what happens in traditional supply chains is you buy the entire produce and then you are worried about what do I do with the balance? 20%, 30%, what is something that I cannot sell in retail? And then you find alternate sources to dump that. Or you just circulate it in your supply chain and give an older produce to the customer. I mean, it's no offense, but go to a shop nearby, and go and visit them at 10 p.m. in the night. Do you think the shop is empty? The shop is not. So what do you think that happens with that produce? The fresh produce comes in the morning, gets mixed with the old produce and then you go and buy it. So that old produce is getting circulated.

Utsav Somani: But tell me this, so in a business like Handpick, like how much wastage have you accounted for? Or what have you seen in the last three months ki wastage kitna percentage hota hai?

Anant V Goel (Handpickd): So the industry average for wastage in this space, in this category is around anywhere between 17 to 20 percent. We have systematically brought it down to around 3.5 percent.

Utsav Somani: Wow. And that I'm guessing is forms a bulk of your margins as well.

Anant V Goel (Handpickd): That's where the margin is because everybody makes the same margin on the top. But the moment you take out 15 to 20 percent of wastage, you are left with nothing. You are actually making loss on every transaction. So, yeah, so that 15 percent directly hits our CM.

Dhruv Sharma: And Anand, in perishables, if you're really focused in quality and if you dial up that lever, are you able to reduce, I would imagine you're able to reduce returns significantly.

Anant V Goel (Handpickd): Yeah, so returns should be negligible. So see, returns can only come from what we call the mismatch, where I expected something and you delivered me something else.

Dhruv Sharma: And quick comment, like from your milk basket experience also for perishables, how much was the return rate?

Anant V Goel (Handpickd): So I would say anyway between 3 to 5 percent. Yeah, there are two reasons behind return. One is that I don't like the produce. Second, there would be a problem with the produce, which means I got a packet and within that packet, like let's say one tomato was crushed and is not what I wanted. I would never buy the tomato when I go. And the third is the logistics damage. The last mile logistics is really poor when it comes to existing supply chains of fruits and vegetables. It's a very fragile item that you're not able to put in a cardboard box because the cost is too high. So what you end up doing is supplying them in plastic packets or put them in a backpack and then deliver. So I always take the example of imagine a Domino's pizza coming in a backpack. There's a reason why Domino's has its own last mile supply chain because they believe that the Swiggy's and the Zomato's of the world cannot handle a pizza supply chain. And truly so, because it's a very unique product, which needs a very, very specific handling. So...

Utsav Somani: And milk basket you mentioned, what were the learnings from there? Not mentioning any of the investor stuff that happened. I think a lot has been written in public about that, but you chose milk before and now you're choosing fruits and vegetables. I'm sure you've picked this industry after some learnings from there.

Anant V Goel (Handpickd): I would say a lot of learnings. First is that, you know, a consumer is buying, it's a high frequency buy and consumer is always willing to try. It's us who, who I'd say screws up. You know, it's our supply chain. It's our internal thinking of running a product on existing supply chain to try to deliver something which is very different and very unique. And that's why Handpicked came up with very, very unique proposition on the entire supply chain. We are not using any component. Our last mile is totally unique. Our middle mile is there. We don't have any storage. Milk basket we used to have 500,000 square feet under warehousing across multiple cities. Here there is zero. It's like we don't store, we don't make a packet. The biggest learning I would say from a startup to a startup, if I say, is a long list of not to dos. I think that's true with possibly every second time, third time founder is like learning what not to do. Learning what not to do. That's a big list. And just be very sure about that. Hey, this is something that the trial and error is not required because we already know because we don't learn from other people's mistakes. We only learn from us. And that's true from investments. That's true from supply chain. That's true from marketing. That's true from what type of offers you roll out. So yeah, having a good not to do list is, I would say, is the biggest weapon for us.

Utsav Somani: And for founders out there. Dhruv, anything to close us out?

Dhruv Sharma: Anand, which problems are you personally focused on right now while building this business?

Anant V Goel (Handpickd): Dhruv, there is a big laundry list. Let's refine it.

Utsav Somani: Where is the 15 million that you've raised and announced a few weeks back? Where is that going towards?

Anant V Goel (Handpickd): So I think all of us spend money on three things. Means I can give a fancy answer, but the simple answer is the real answer. Yeah, the technology, the talent and the territory. It's like, how do we increase our territory serviceability area? That would be the major focus. Technology, we are quite there, but a significant chunk will go into tech. We are also integrating AI in multiple parts of the business. Especially we are looking to solve one problem that is very dear to me personally is what to cook next. You know that our moms and our wives have been asking and we have no answer for and can we help a consumer figure out what to cook next based on their buying history and our data. And the third is talent. It's like we have to hire people, we have to grow and the right people at the right position at the right time makes all the difference.

Utsav Somani: Awesome, Anand. Thanks so much for sharing your journey with us. All the best.

Anant V Goel (Handpickd): It's a pleasure, Utsav. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks, Dhruv.

Utsav Somani: Awesome. Talking about tough supply chain problems, our next guest is also solving one with Redcliffe Labs. He's raised 110 million to become the third largest B2C diagnostics company in India. And let's welcome him on the show and put him on the hot seat. Dheeraj, welcome.

Dheeraj Jain (Redcliffe Labs): Hey, thanks, Utsav. Thanks, Dhruv, for having me.

Utsav Somani: All right. So diagnostics, what's been the journey and why choose such a hard industry? I know. But margin of error is literally, I mean, next to zero.

Dheeraj Jain (Redcliffe Labs): No, no, absolutely. I think I have a personal story. You know, I've been sort of reading and researching about genetic testing for like almost two decades. And I was in London, 2003. I found that the first genetic sequence, you know, took a billion dollar to do and took 20 years. So it's been very fascinating for me to find out what is this exactly supposed to do, you know, for humans when they come into, you know, an illness or even even for a wellness. So it's been a research for 15 years. But then when my first cousin's daughter was diagnosed with the Down syndrome, I asked the couple that, you know, what really happened? And they said they wanted to do an NIPT, a non-invasive prenatal test and got a sample, send it to Switzerland. Sample got lost. They didn't really got to know anything. And there was a baby who was born Down syndrome. You know, they have to live with her for throughout the life in that situation, which is very, very sad. And that sort of triggered me, you know, is there anything we can do in India about this? And I was like in a transition from moving, leaving my lavish buyout fund in London and coming to India, becoming an early stage investor and realize it's clearly an opportunity. But till the time my sister-in-law got diagnosed with breast cancer, we wanted to do a test called liquid biopsy, which wasn't available in India, which was barely launched in the US. And that sort of triggered me. Is there all these dots are connecting, you know, my fascination towards genetic testing to situations at home. Is there anything I can do personally? And, you know, I was in Delhi. I decided to rent a space, went to Hosca's first floor, you know, picked up a 5000 square feet, got machines to references, hired a team of scientists. And, you know, six months later, we were the company to launch a 10,000 rupee NIPT test to Delhi and NCR, soon to Hyderabad and many other places. And then also we launched this liquid biopsy test, which wasn't available earlier before. And the whole fraternity was surprised how suddenly a test which was supposed to be sent to China, US, Germany, all over is now available in middle of Delhi. And and that was a starting point till the time COVID happened when Aditya Kandoye, also in our offliner, also joined me as a co-founder. And that was sort of really the trigger. Let's sort of build up for the masses. You know, we were the first company to sequence the COVID virus. And we realized, you know, when we are going home to collect COVID sample, and we did for so many hundreds of thousands of people, actually, in a matter of one year, we realized why don't we build up the supply chain, which the conversation we were having before and build up the tech around the diagnostic, which is, I think, has been missing. And I think our simple motive and remains still the same, that the non communicable disease in India is very, very big, is the biggest problem. Then the largest number of deaths happens in globally, but also in India is through NCD. And is there something we can solve that for consumer, for them to do at home without consuming, without really stepping outside? So and can we build up the tech around it? So I think that was the whole starting point, the second starting point. And and today, you know, cut short, 25 labs, 250 cities, almost 20,000 patients a day, go to 10,000 homes a day. You know, and offering some 4,000 complex tests from solving gut microbiome to, you know, organ transplant at the hospitals to, you know, a full body checkup for a lot of consumer, you know, who want to check their kidney, liver and all kind of lipid profile at home.

Dhruv Sharma: How many different tests can a consumer order have done with Redcliffe Labs today, Dheeraj?

Dheeraj Jain (Redcliffe Labs): Sure, the menu offer 4,000 tests, but I think their limitation, their regulation, for example, NIPT, the non-invasive prenatal cannot be done at home. It has to go to a gynecologist, which is a PCPNDT regulated clinic. And the sample could only be picked up from from that place and then come to the lab. But as an offering is around 4,000. So but I think to end consumer, honestly, I think for somebody who's more, you know, do quite twice a year, full body, you know, checkup, 150, 180 other sort of the biomarkers sort of want to look for. But I think what's happening that with Gen Z's and where, you know, parents, good sleep, good diet, you know, body, larger fitness, you know, all of the other thing, gut, for example, all of this become a lot of new things have come up. So I think there's another 50 you would sort of add on top of it. And then if somebody is a sports freak and really want to test the sports gene, for example, then another maybe another 10 of them. But I think I think 300 tests, I think normal human being would sort of do it if they're looking both preventive and kind of managing chronic wellness. But otherwise, the rest of them are very super specialized. They would require, you know, somebody have a cancer, want to do a somatic tumor, cancer profiling. He would need maybe another 100 tests, you know, looking 100 genes, 250 gene, depending on the cancer type. So but 300 is sort of the right number in that way. But again, and you cut down this to a day to day, somebody just want to look their lipid profile, you know, 20 key biomarker and then HbA1c, you know, clearly a couple of biomarker on that. I think day to day, somebody who's really, really fit, I think would not need a 40 to 50 sort of biomarkers, you know, once in six months to sort of find out what's happening.

Utsav Somani: So you mentioned that NIPT test was your sort of wedge into this world, which is, I mean, crowded with many other players as well, right? All the traditional players, including the hospitals, have their own diagnostics chains now. Would you say that was your wedge? Or would you say that you displayed operational excellence somewhere else at Redcliffe?

Dheeraj Jain (Redcliffe Labs): I think the first two years of our start was, you know, democratizing NIPT, which was sort of gynecologists were charging 40,000 rupee to end consumer and sending to a company in China or in Germany. And that was sort of the situation then. And my kind of sense was, you know, can we really bring it to every couple, regardless they have a genetic history? Can they just not just spend this money to find out Down syndrome and other syndromes actually, you know, within sort of two, three weeks time. And that was a starting point. And their hospitals weren't offering. There were only four or five labs in the country. And we got a lot of attention because, you know, we could, you know, build in a lot of India data. We could profile more deeply in terms of, you know, we can add on more and more tests for that kind of price. But as we were scaling up, we just realized this whole genetic testing is a very great opportunity, but a very small market. I mean, we would not like five, six years back. I would say, just do a clinical exome for you and I can find out what are the mutation in your GP profiling, which you should worry about. And you would say, why? I mean, why would I spend 25,000 rupee to do something of that kind? I mean, why do I need to know if there's a mutation unless I have a symptom of a disease or anything? So that time the market was very small, but I think now, especially to the post COVID, I think people are really worried, genuinely worried about like what's happening with their health. I mean, and if the symptoms are there, I think they don't stop. Today, gene profiling, I think, I mean, a couple of years down the line, it will become a mainstream. I think most of the, you know, the Metro, the folks who focus about, you know, who look preventive wellness really carefully would actually do this for sure. But coming back on competition and I think our view was, you know, can we build up our reputation by building more difficult things, which is at that point of time, genetic testing, and can we build up research? So Radcliffe actually spent a lot of capital in the early stages building research. So we got 40 publications and we were the first company globally to find out together with a lot of universities on a hundred tumor cases of breast cancer. We could find out what are the gene mutation, what are the variants in certain genes. We could also find out rare disease for children on the Indian profile. Like today, you know, I can tell you what state in India would have, you know, on specific gene variant. I can tell what challenges, like I can tell in Telangana, Andhra, there is a high chance of the Down syndrome, for example, because their marriages happen between the community. That would be very different. I can tell more prostate cancer on the, you know, in Uttar Pradesh, for example, and that to be built of that Uttar Pradesh. So, so all that kind of stuff. So research sort of help us to build a reputation and doctors are realizing that these guys are just now selling tests. They're really building, helping clinicians, helping the community. And when COVID happened, post COVID, it was very easy for us to kind of use that reputation and say, guys, you know, another company, we really build up our understanding and we have the ability but I think our really getting mainstream was when we start going homes and we could pick up sample at five in the morning for a woman who have a PCOS issue and I can, we can give report back to her at 12 o'clock and by four o'clock, we can do a call with her. Within 12 hours, she would know things. Otherwise she would be hesitant to walk into a, you know, a metropolis center in Mumbai, for example, and, you know, take several days. And this is like three, four years back when we really got mainstream with this. And that's where I think we start building our positioning very carefully and that really worked out. And I think everything compounded after that. And the scale kicked in with all these capital we raised in and we got, you know, vertical leaders, clinical leaders who can talk about disease and both from a preventive but also through the illness, not with the patient, but also with the doctors actually. And, you know, really get their confidence. And I think, I think you need a clinical scientific edge, which sort of really got built up at the right time. And then, you know, we leverage the scale after that.

Dhruv Sharma: This is a business that obviously needs to have feet in the street. And therefore, I would imagine it's hard to standardize the customer experience, at least in the early days. How did you work around that problem?

Dheeraj Jain (Redcliffe Labs): You know, while I was building up the, you know, the capital conversation, capital race, Aditya, my co-founder, he comes from a tech background. He kind of said, you know, our focus has to be really building the back end tech. I mean, and I think we hired some 200 folks all across the country. I mean, our job was, you know, how do we not only solve the supply chain problem of logistics, of picking sample at 8 a.m. from, let's say, a golf course road and bring the sample back in Noida. It's just not one sample. They need to be at least 50 samples. So that makes sense from a unit economic for that rider and Flevor Thomas. But also, how do we actually process that and get the report at the right time and use the right CRM? So build up our own CRM. We couldn't get anything off the shelf. But start building all of the system architecture. I think large investment on tech and focusing on tech while, you know, we did screw up. I mean, our things were, you know, our social media escalation at some point of time was just mind blowing. I mean, we couldn't give report on time. We were late in few lab by a day when Daegu came first time. We couldn't give, you know, again, the turnaround times was extremely important. And then we realized if turnaround is what consumer is looking for and is also is price conscious and also don't want to step out of the home. I mean, there's no way we could do this, not even manually ever beyond like 500 sample a day. And I think the whole investment in 21, 22 when there's a series B, I think we told our investor that I think the largest investment we need to build is just really on the tech piece. So so that convenience that what we do today on the app. So if you just download Redcliffe app labs app, you'll see a very different experience. You would not imagine that there's not a test company is giving a very deep, detailed insights about your historical biomarker. And you don't have to have a Redcliffe lab report. You can actually use a Metropolis, healthians or LALPATH and sort of build up your background profile. We can pick up your other data. If you share your medical history, we can extrapolate and we can actually even predict certain biomarkers. So if you're worried about your heart health, we can actually give you more insights. Nobody else can give it. And that experience has been very unique. Earlier I was solving that experience of picking, dropping and giving that analysis. Now that experience shift has happened. You know, what can we do more to you? And what can I take you a few more data points, but leverage the AI back in which we are developing and literally can start managing your health, anything you have ever imagined. And that's sort of where the experience of start making it is a difference.

Utsav Somani: But zooming out a little bit, I enjoy reading the LinkedIn breakdowns that you do about the investing journey as well. Do you think that's given you a good perspective and inside a view of what's happening in the world of healthcare, especially post-COVID, single speciality hospitals, everything's like changing in the world of health now, right? Like you rightly mentioned as well before.

Dheeraj Jain (Redcliffe Labs): Yeah, yeah, no, I think, you know, investors are realized that India is, by the way, very superior. Our country is very superior in providing healthcare, not just at home, but across every possible vertical, every possible experience. And I think, and what is changing is that investors are saying, we want to go more deeper. And if you can build up a scale, even in a single specialized, you can actually, they will go and fund it. But even in that case, they'll buy out, like the largest IVF company of the world, I guess, come from which countries come from India. And the Swedish pension fund and a bearing, I think they came together to buy this thing out. So I think the money and the funds available on going more deeper on niche areas, but also building single specialty is just amazing. But at the same time, we've also have a lot of long tail cross diagnostic hospitals. So there's a lot of consolidation also happening. And like in the US, there are three or four large groups of diagnostic, three or large four group of hospitals. I think you'll see in India, maybe in a decade's time, there'll be five major brand to go in for diagnostic, for IVF, for eye care, dental, nephro, neuro, hopefully for mental health as well. And I think it's not surprising that funds are saying, guys, fine, if you don't even find operator, we'll buy this business and we'll operate. We'll find an operator from outside. So I think it's a very turning point. And Aventus did an amazing report lately on how the single specialty is sort of coming up. And because I spent time between London and Delhi, I can tell you the whole ecosystem of what India right now in the health is I think one of the best. And we are, the way we're thinking about solving this, even though it's insurance back out of the pocket, the way we're thinking solving it is completely different. And that's why large private equity investors are saying that if I don't find a founder and operator, we'll roll up the sleeve and we'll do this work. I mean, that's an exciting you haven't seen across anywhere in the world.

Utsav Somani: But there was some criticism as well that I saw online in one of the articles where they said that literally entire India's healthcare is now owned by foreign private equity or different funds. What's your take on that?

Dheeraj Jain (Redcliffe Labs): I mean, that's, that goes for pretty much everything else as well. So wherever there's a large private equity, I mean, the largest lender in the country, sorry, a real estate owner is Blackstone. I mean, and same goes for hospital because this large private equity, they're American funds and then they have a global LPs or American LPs. So I think it is what it is. I mean, the capital comes from these different large LPs and these private equity funds. But I think a lot of Indian money is sort of flowing in as well. But they are still not the dominant LPs. I mean, the Indian money is going to the more IPO market. So, but again, that's only a very, very small piece. But yeah, I mean, there is a criticism also on the multiples getting paid for some of these assets and some of the largest deal in the hospital got multiple, which is beyond imagination. So, which means it's the supply side of good quality healthcare chains are still limited. I mean, they are big brands, but and that's where the opportunity is. I mean, just to give you a sense that four out of five Indians have not done a diagnostic test before, ever in the tier two, tier three cities. Tier one is fairly okay. So, the opportunity to diagnose 80% of India in these, let's say 800, 900 million people are still available. So, you would see a lot of that opportunity to create this from scratch or for companies like us to kind of build up the lab in cities where there's never been a pathology or radiology and all of that available. Similarly, for single specialty, you'll not see an eye care hospital in the tier four city. So, or, you know, a nephro neuro transplant, all of these specialized hospitals. So, I think there's an opportunity, it's just mind blowing. And I think it is yet to be served beyond metros. And that's what I think these large funds and the local funds domestically are looking to sort of tap into.

Dhruv Sharma: Dhiraj, since you read this, pretty much the index on health, why don't you use this platform to create a little awareness around, you said four out of five people don't even have access to diagnostics. So, maybe use this platform to just educate consumers on what they should be getting tested for on a routine basis. And even beyond that.

Dheeraj Jain (Redcliffe Labs): Yeah, no, I think definitely would encourage to, you know, do a full body checkup, including the vitamins, the cardiac health, at least cardiac health once in a year. But also kind of looking at the lipid profile, the cholesterols, and then clearly HbA1c from a sugar perspective, kidney, liver, you know, SPOT, SFOT. I mean, there's tons of these biomarkers, which could just give you a very clear perspective of what's happening with your various body organs and where your lifestyles need to be changed. And what else you should be doing more towards fitness and longevity as well. Because I think this longevity conversations are amazing, but without the blood biomarker, there's barely anything you can sort of find out. So, I would just encourage founders to, you know, do these tests and then also go somewhere a little deeper into what's different from the past and what are their goals on the health and then start mapping, saying, you know, if you want to be fit and I want my heart health to be in the best of the shape, but I also want to continue my lifestyle. I mean, these are the changes I need to sort of bring in. Also the supplement, the food, the nutrition, the sleep, you know, running, gym, all of that comes together. And this is where the beauty of the health in the current time is just not the diagnostic and that conversation at a very high level. I think especially the Gen Z and this is globally, we see that they've taken these things into very, very serious. I mean, we haven't like gut microbiome three, four years back, you would not think about anybody doing it, but I would now encourage folks to look your gut very carefully. There will be, you know, your food choices, which could, you've been eating certain things, not knowing it's not really good for you. And that test and that profiling could tell you a lot. Similarly, I think, you know, give your data as well. So your routine data from your variable, that's very, very helpful for diagnostic company to find out more about you, not just the biomarker. So I think those are the kind of opportunity, but one test I would definitely recommend is to do a gene profiling for the preventive health, which is an opportunity for a person to find out if there was a cancer history in the, if, sorry about that, if there was a cancer history or there's a cancer situation in the family, is there something they need to worry about? And before they find out from some of their relative, they should know more about their mutations. And it doesn't take too much of money to do this. And I think that test is moved from doing this during a panic situation versus now it's almost a wellness test. I think we have done this for maybe for 10,000 people so far in the country. And there's clearly an opportunity in that.

Utsav Somani: Dheeraj, we're almost out of time. Two questions before we let you go. Psafe, that's another company that you've co-founded with Mr. Vikas as well, in women hygiene. How is that going? And what was the story behind that?

Dheeraj Jain (Redcliffe Labs): Yeah, Psafe, Vikas and me very, Vikas has been very passionate about women hygiene even before I met him and he built up the product. And I think our opportunity was, can we really again take it to masses? And we were in that early stage of D2C phenomena and we both joined hands. And I think that company is almost, I believe, and we hear this from everyone, every girl and woman who step outside, they have a Psafe in their bag. And that makes us really, very happy because I think people have tried to solve that, but not at the scale and seriousness as we have. So yeah, I think that company has done extremely well. I think it's in the, I've looked the women hygiene move to and added menstrual hygiene and now going more towards sort of fertility and other aspects of women. I think in the space where we are, it's a market leader. It has raised a decent amount of money, but I've built up a great amount of scale. And I think it's on an absolute growth path. I think this company have actually grown 40% compounded in the last three years, which just tells how women hygiene and toilet hygiene for women want to solve UTI, want to prevent UTI, but also looking menstrual hygiene in a relatively in a different way is just an amazing opportunity. And we're seeing competitive companies in this space are also raising capital. Investors are becoming extremely excited about it. Pharmaceutical companies are looking, pharma companies selling OTC products. They're finding companies which started just as a personal passion for someone has now becoming a serious company. You know, we're backed by a pharma, we're backed by venture capital in this. And there's something more exciting happening in PSafe as we speak.

Utsav Somani: Amazing. Love the range of problems that you're solving, Dhruv.

Dheeraj Jain (Redcliffe Labs): Thank you. Thank you. And no, I, before I leave, I do say I'm also backing another company which sells the mental health for children. Well, I think Dhruv wanted to Yeah, and that is for, you know, you know, founders who are listening and also for all our friends in offline and otherwise as well. I think do look out for children. If you find a symptom of, you know, hyperactivity or short span of attention or have speech issues or have cognitive behavior, can't sit in the class, can't sit in a family setting. Don't ignore that. Bring it to someone like us. We have a brand called Continuum of Kits. We run 35 clinics just in Delhi NCR. And guys, trust me, it's scary to see the demand. And then amount of OPDs we do before we actually build up a plan and assessment for these kids. We ran out of the space in these 35 clinics. It's just Delhi NCR. Speech is a very big issue. We see the three-year-old can't speak at all. Cognitive behavior is not able to, even see eye to eye, can't sit in any setting. And somewhere in this, far from the spectrum, but if we don't solve that, it'll come into the spectrum. Autism, I think, and this is something happened with Donald Trump in the conversation a month back. I think his expert told, there was one out of 100 in 1978 or something. Now, I think it's one out of 35 or one out of 30. And it's getting worse. We think it's one out of 15, one out of 15 or 20. That's where sort of, and somewhere in the larger spectrum. But I think ADHD, we think is almost one out of eight, one out of nine. And these are things which you can't ignore.

Utsav Somani: Dheeraj, we'd love to have you back on the show to talk about this at length sometime soon. I mean, amazing. And all the best to you as you go and tackle some of the hardest challenges that we've known as mankind. So thank you so much again for doing all of this. Thank you again. Cheers. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Dhruv Sharma: Great having you, Dheeraj.

Utsav Somani: All right, folks. We're wrapping up this Monday stream. We'll see you on Wednesday at 4 p.m. Thank you.