Summary

The Offline Network Episode 12: Dating + Interiors Deep Dive (aired 2025-09-26). Guests: Tanuj Choudhry, Snehil Khanor from HomeLane, TrulyMadly. Snehil: "While on the other hand, we have built the app for the way I always say, I think you would have heard me saying this." Snehil: "And sometimes you would have thought, okay, this is not what I want, but you would meet a person and you like, okay, I was so wrong and I was putting up these filters, which in real life actually doesn't matter." Topics: venture capital and funding, AI and LLMs, consumer brands and D2C, space 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 Friday stream of TUN. I hope you've had a good week with us. Before we welcome our two awesome founders today, Snehal, who's building in the dating space, and Tanuj, who's building in the interior space with Homelane. Before we hear from them, let's quickly run down the news. There's a tongue twister for us to start with. There's a debate that's raging in the world of AI startups and revenue, T2D3. It started off with Bessemer putting out a report called State of AI, where they said that AI companies are growing much faster. Investors are losing interest in the SaaS world of startups. So, Dhruv, what is it? Break it down for us.

Dhruv Sharma: Yes. So, the acronym is, the new acronym is Q2D3. I hope I'm getting this right. They're both, they're tongue twisters, exactly. And so, for everyone tuning in, T2D3 is to be, you grow 3x in year one and two, and then you grow 2x in year three, four, and five. And so, the benchmarks have shifted for AI native companies. The growth expectation is now you grow 4x in year one and year two, and then 3x in year three, four, and five. And, you know, so what's happening is, so the last generation of, you know, iconic SaaS companies would take about seven years, give or take, to get to $100 million in ERR. It's taking the top-performing, the hyperscaling AI native companies a year and a half to get there. And some of them with, you know, with a lot of capital efficiency as well. So, in revenue per head terms, these AI native companies are making something like a million dollars, which is four or five times as much as it used to be for their, you know, old sort of SaaS ancestors. And so, that is, that's, it's pretty cool. Mind-boggling if you think about it. Another interesting thing, by the way, at this point in time, the cumulative revenue of all AI native companies, regardless of how quickly they're scaling, is about $100 billion, give or take.

Utsav Somani: Where are you getting the stat from?

Dhruv Sharma: I'm getting that number from an interview between Jensen Huang, NVIDIA, and Brad Gertzner of Altimeter Capital. It's as recent as a couple of days ago. And they actually think it's going to go from a hundred billion to a trillion dollars in AI native revenue. They think actually we're on track to get there by 2030. Wow. Which is just around the corner.

Utsav Somani: And all of this probably also on the parallel, like Hemant Mehta of General Catalyst made a comment, right? On the 20DC podcast where he said that, I mean, going from one to three to five is not cool anymore. Going from one to 15 or, like, what was the whole debate about there?

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah, I mean, so it's, it's again, speed to scale. One important thing to point to though is not all revenue is created equal. And so this growth has to come with, you know, strong retention numbers and strong engagement numbers and with capital efficiency again. So even in the Bessemer report, if you read it carefully, there's an asterisk that says that some of these companies actually have negative gross margins. So with a pinch of salt, but it's growth we've never seen before.

Utsav Somani: And investors silently are pushing their companies to merge, I think, and they're losing interest and silently quitting the boards of some SaaS companies as well. So it's all changing very fast, right? The rate change always accelerates in the world of technology.

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Especially when these platform shifts happen. Again, I think for many in our generation, this is really the first one we're seeing. We've heard about the others. We've, you know, we've not lived through them. And so it's one of its kind. Even the mobile thing, like, I think the iPhone moment, 2006, 2007. Mobile, cloud as well.

Utsav Somani: Exciting. Talking about bumper sales. Indian festive e-commerce season is upon us. GST was, of course, welcomed with open arms. 25,000 crores of sales happened on just day one. The term is GST bachao utsav. I have nothing to do with that. But 150% growth in quick commerce sales as well. And I think value commerce sales are up 32, 35% as well. So they're predicting 1.15 lakh crores of sales in this season. So I think we're living in two Indias, right? I mean, one is trying to save and make a living with all the hardships that is there. And then you're seeing all of these contrastingly high numbers in e-commerce sales as well. So fascinating. I think fascinating what's happening in the world of India. Anyway, talking about startups, Peak15 has a program called Surge. They're on their 11th batch now. They've selected 23 companies, half of them approximately in the world of AI. They've selected and invested in 170 companies previously that have gone on to raise over 3 billion, many big names like Airalo and they invest across India and Southeast Asia. So interesting to see that AI is definitely catching on in the world of investing as well with half the batch by Peak15 represented by AI companies. What do you make of this? Is it a good program? Have you spoken to founders in the program?

Dhruv Sharma: I have. And it's also an interesting question that was actually an open question until a few years ago where vice would say vice is the vice of India. And we saw plenty of homegrown programs very methodically and intentionally thought through and presented. And there are key differences as well. Vice is oriented towards the demo day. That's the big moment towards which everything else leads up to that moment. It's also mostly young founders, mostly technical founders. You might say selling to each other at least in those first two or three months. Search codes tend to be a lot more varied and you don't get a cookie cutter standard deal at the end of it. I mean, there's capital available up to a certain number, but they're incredibly collaborative. They'd invite angels such as yourself and some of their other partners to co-invest and build the round in that sense. It's also an immersive program where cohorts of founders are taken across a bunch of different geographies. So I'd see it as like just an interesting product and venture, an interesting and innovative product and venture. And it's like 11 years, not 11 years in the making, but 11 additions and 170 companies graduated. So it's very cool.

Utsav Somani: And fascinating. But also I think I want to mention my circular economy joke as well. Why see people go to YC and sometimes most of the revenue comes from other YC companies as well. So world is full of these circular economy examples as well.

Dhruv Sharma: Right, by the way, we also have in the ecosystem, some double graduates, people who went to YC and to Search. We should get some of them on to actually answer this for us and our listeners. Yeah, do an Apple by Apple comparison.

Utsav Somani: But the final news item, simple. It was one of the last standing Buy Now, Pay Later participants of the ecosystem. They were recently asked, according to an Economic Times news, to shut down. This happened due to a few reasons, but I think they were into payments and settlements without a certificate of authorization. They had raised 83 million and they were in violation of PSS Act, which was payments and settlements as well. So yeah, interesting to see, because I think 26,000 merchants were involved with them, including Zomato, Big Basket, Rapido. So I think RBI is taking a strict stance on fintech companies. I hope they leave some room for innovation as well as these fintech companies need support to grow and bring these innovative offerings to their users.

Dhruv Sharma: As a global category, by the way, BNPL has, I mean, one of the largest incumbents is Affirm, Max Levchin's company. And you know, what's so interesting about that company is it was built around leaving no room for these gotcha moments, you know, like when a credit card company says we got you. And so Affirm, you know, believed in leaving no fine print. Everything was written very, you know, in bold, legible terms. And you were never given a big APR numbers to what you might have to actually pay back. It was always the dollar amount that you would pay back. And of course, exactly, clarity and transparency. And what's interesting is it's not like people who would use Affirm for their services, you know, took pay overtime options because they were struggling with money or anything. They were just, they were a class of educated consumers who wanted to use credit to their advantage. And Affirm's delinquency rates were like, you know, a fourth of what's the industry average for the credit card industry. So unfortunate that BNPL couldn't really work out for India in its first avatar, but hopefully.

Utsav Somani: Some chatter on WhatsApp group says that it could be possibly because that RBI is going to make a big push via the banking partners to do credit on UPI. So it could be sort of laying the foundation for that and clearing the space up. Let's see what happens. But anyway, enough of speculating on that. Let's welcome our first guest. He's our Indian version, Indian online version of Seema Antti. He's building in the Indian dating space. We've known him for a while. Snail, would love to hear your thoughts on the dating world. Welcome to the show.

Snehil Khanor (TrulyMadly): Thank you, Utsav. Thank you, Dhruv. Thanks for having me.

Dhruv Sharma: Hey Snail. Hey Snail. That's a lovely background, by the way. Can you see Steve Jobs over there, Utsav? Yeah, I love it. Nice. This is not a virtual background, right? This is your actual office space.

Utsav Somani: Beautiful, beautiful. So I'm going to get started. So Snail, dating space was crowded. Bumble, Hinge, Tinder, all of these names have come to India and tried their ways of capturing the Indian market. But you've made a space for yourself with Truly Madly. What is the landscape now and why is Truly Madly better than what came from these international players?

Snehil Khanor (TrulyMadly): So most of these international players, right, so the app was built for West. They were just pushing it here in marketing, right? But India is a very nuanced market, right? And doesn't really work beyond a top two, three percentile, which, you know, the consumption behavior and overall lifestyle is, you know, mimics the West. Beyond that, they are not able to penetrate, right? While on the other hand, we have built the app for the way I always say, I think you would have heard me saying this. We are building for the remaining 95 percentile of the Indian users, right? And if you go by numbers, in India's top 30 cities, only 10 percent population lives. Out of that, 10 percent is 4 percent slums. So only 6 percent is actually living in good houses in top 30 cities. And from our data, we have paying users from 1300 plus cities, right? And our fastest growing cities right now, if you look at our data, Guwahati, Lucknow, Ahemdabad, Gopal, Indore, Patna, Patna has grown out like we were amazed to look at the data. Last one year, while our overall revenue has grown around 6x, Patna has grown 17x for us, right? Lucknow has been an outlier. Ahemdabad has been an outlier, right? So and given that still we do 19 percent of our revenue still comes from Delhi. And this Delhi does not include Gurgaon, that is co-Delhi, right? So we are seeing very good growth all across tier 1, tier 1.5, what we have now started calling tier 1.5, tier 2, tier 3, right? So because our product, we have done, we have taken care of a few nuances in our algorithm, in our product. For example, we always used to have personality compatibility, right? And this personality compatibility, we work with a panel of expert psychometrician and psychologist and relationship experts of India. And they told us, you know, we cannot pick anything off the shelf from West because West may most relationships or marriages break because of affairs, be it a mental affair or be it a physical affair. In India, most marriages break because of parents, be it guy's parents or be it girl's parents, right? So there are a lot of stakeholders in a relationship in India other than you two, right? So we built our whole psychology and psychometric piece using the research we did from Indian couples. So we built it from an Indian context of a perfect match. And we then made it very relatable. For example, the questions are like, am I okay sharing my mobile password with my partner? Is it, do I need to take permission from my partner if I want to go once a week on a night out with my friends, right? Is it okay if me and my partner's parents are not very close? So all of these things, you get to know each other about each other after three to four months of dating. But we try and tell you on day zero, right? And then on popular demand, we brought astro compatibility, right? And we did not want to, you know, make it very matrimony, right? So we don't use words like Kundali or horoscope, right? But we have tied up with AstroTalk for a very good astro compatibility between two people. But we show that in eight different dimensions, work, dominance, mental compatibility, right? And there are some eight different dimensions. And the only subtle hint we have kept is we show the compatibility as 22 out of 36. So if you know, you know, right? Then we, you know, have tied up with companies like Cred. We have this. So in our research, we found that India is a trust deficit market, especially in dating. It is even worse. So we thought, how can we quantify trust? Can we? So we invented this thing called trust score, where you can link your national IDs like Aadhaar or passport and you get 30% trust score. You can link your social media like Facebook, LinkedIn phone number. You get 10%. You can do a selfie verification where we run a facial recognition scan on your face. And then we ensure that all the photos that you have uploaded are of the same face. Then you get 30%. And if you're a cred member, we have this exclusive tie up with cred. You can link your credit account with your truly madly account and you get 100% trust score along with a special cred batch, which signifies that, you know, your civil is also good, right? Because you can only be a cred member if you have 700 plus civil score. And if you are on credit, after KYC anyway is done, right? So a lot of these things we have built our own moderation algorithm, which is a gatekeeper algorithm, which we have nicknamed Chalk Aadhaar. And a lot of, we actually reject more than 48% of profiles who apply to become a member.

Utsav Somani: But you would be in a casual dating space or is the eventual outcome? I know you mentioned Astro and this thing, but is the eventual outcome for people to come on your platform, get married and get locked off?

Snehil Khanor (TrulyMadly): It's getting into a serious relationship.

Utsav Somani: Getting into a serious relationship. That's the...

Snehil Khanor (TrulyMadly): So we target 26 and above. If you want to do a love marriage, right? You want to date. You want to date at least one and a half, two years before you decide to get married. Right? So our proposition is start your love story. Right? And while dating has been a taboo in India, love marriages has always been aspirational. Right? If somebody will have to come and teach that there is no way to do a love marriage without dating. Right? So that's what we are trying to do.

Dhruv Sharma: Snehal, how long? So for people who find what they're looking for on TrulyMadly, how long can it take them?

Snehil Khanor (TrulyMadly): Yeah, it actually depends on see like in a relationship. It all depends on the kind of effort you are putting and what kind of patience you have. Same works on the platforms also. If you are putting in good effort, you are, you have created a good profile, detailed profile that signifies that you are serious. You have improved your trust score that signifies you are serious. You are coming on the app every day or at least three to four times in a week. Algorithm gets to know you are serious. So algorithm also rewards how detailed your profile is. What is your recency and frequency? So all of that helps you push you more. And then getting a match is directly proportional to how visible you are on the platform. So then it's a funnel, right? It's a longish funnel, not your first match may become your real life date, not your first real life date may become your relationship, not your first relationship may materialize as your marriage, right? And which is fine, right? Dating is meeting new people, getting to know about them as well as yourself, right? And Dhruv, you may relate. You have been in the dating market yourself. A lot of times.

Utsav Somani: That is one information that we're not supposed to reveal on the show, guys.

Snehil Khanor (TrulyMadly): Probably, you know, somebody will like him and you look out for the YouTube comments.

Utsav Somani: I would pretend the last 30 seconds have not happened.

Dhruv Sharma: Snehal, my question is going to get tougher from here on.

Snehil Khanor (TrulyMadly): That's okay. I'm kidding. So you would have probably seen that sometimes you have some expectation in your mind and when you have it, you realize this is not what I wanted. And sometimes you would have thought, okay, this is not what I want, but you would meet a person and you like, okay, I was so wrong and I was putting up these filters, which in real life actually doesn't matter. For example, by the virtue of our conditioning. And if you look at all the matrimony apps, first filter is cast to go through family with skin tone, right? In today's relationship scenario, how much weightage will you actually put it in there? Right? Compatibility is the most important thing because spending few hours with somebody versus spending 24, 7, 365 with somebody is completely different. Compatibility plays super important role. And earlier when, you know, just go 10 years back, Indians were getting married at 24, 25, right? When you are marrying that young, you are young, you are multiple, you are flexible and you kind of grow together. When you are marrying at 28, 30, 32, 34, you are pretty much set in your ways and you understand the importance of compatibility. Right? That's why we are compatibility first.

Utsav Somani: And I think Snehal is a truly Madlini. I think he's a dating coach that we should have on the show regularly.

Snehil Khanor (TrulyMadly): We have learned all of this and inculcated in the product.

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah. In fact, related questions, Snehal. So when you were talking, you kept making references to research.

Dhruv Sharma: Which means that, you know, try and stay ahead of what the user's needs might be. But you also said, based on popular demand, we launched, I think you mentioned Astro, yes. So you're doing a combination of both, right? You're listening to users, but you're also, you know, trying to stay a little ahead of them. So now for all listeners who are building consumer internet applications, talk to us about this. I also have a very interesting question related to growth, but we'll get to that in just a second.

Snehil Khanor (TrulyMadly): So, you know, if you're building a consumer application, the name itself suggests that you are building something for the consumers, right? And consumers are funny, right? Steve Jobs used to say that consumers don't know anything. I believe even we don't know anything. You may build something you think they will use, but you will find they are using it, but for something else entirely. Right? So that's why we follow MVP approach, even for every feature that we do, right? Not just most of people think MVPs are used when you are building out your first product. Whenever we are rolling out, even a new feature, we have an MVP for that. For example, when our user calls suggested us that we need a Astro compatibility, we were a bit skeptical. So what we did, we call this shadow buttoning, right? We used to have a personality compatibility button on just beside that. We introduced a simple button Astro compatibility. And whenever somebody would click on it, a pop-up will come. Thank you for showing interest. Feature coming soon, right? Without writing any detailed line of code for the whole Astro compatibility piece, we got to know how much percentage of users will be interested in this particular feature, right? That is one hack of many that we use when we are building for consumers, right? And I think listening to consumers and one thing we have realized, especially in our category. For the first 20 minutes, users has their wall up, right? So you, I always tell my PMs, make sure that this call is going to be at least 45 minutes to one hour because real gold will only come after 30th minute. The facades are on, right? But as you keep talking with the user, you, you know, build a repo, they start sharing the things which they wouldn't have otherwise shared.

Utsav Somani: How much time does a typical active user spend on your app? Separate question, but just related to time.

Snehil Khanor (TrulyMadly): An active you see on an average in a day, 15 to 20 minutes in a day. And this is average. If we look at peak and everything, so it will be very much high and it is always generally more for female versus male.

Dhruv Sharma: One question I'm sure you get a lot, Sneha, is what about those users who want to carry the conversation on a different platform, WhatsApp or Instagram, etc?

Snehil Khanor (TrulyMadly): By all means, we don't care. But we just recommend only share numbers once you have felt some level of safety with each other. Yes, right. We see, we know that they will have to go. They will go. Right. But then again, not your first match will become your girlfriend or boyfriend, not your first girlfriend or boyfriend will become your husband or wife. So it's not that if they go off the platform, they will stop using our app. It never happens. Right. And a lot of, there was this narrative, I think, a few years ago that dating apps are designed to keep you hooked and not give you, you know, results. That is a complete lie. Because one couple who meets via the app, they tell 10, 20 other people.

Dhruv Sharma: So in fact, let's stay with this thought for a moment, Sneha, because I mean, it's not that high frequency use. So I mean, when you put your product, when you put your product hat on, you want the users to come find what they're looking for. But when you put your growth hat on, you have to think about this very differently. So talk to us about that.

Snehil Khanor (TrulyMadly): Yeah. So not really. So dating is an early monetization play. Right. And a good thing is people do realize that, see, you are competing with a lot of other people for attention on the platform. So they do pay. Right. That is one category. This is one category where people, if you have trust in the brand, they do pay. And we actually see 50% of users pay within first hour of registration.

Utsav Somani: And how do you build trust in a brand like this? Because I'm sure many people are on your platform, don't want to tell their other friends that they're on truly madly as well. Right.

Snehil Khanor (TrulyMadly): Yes. So time is the only component. Right. Trust is you can buy accelerate that by spending some money on it. For example, working with influencers, working with big celebrities. Right. But time is the only thing. And that that is the only way you pay for trust. Right. Then overall product positioning, what kind of features you have, users should feel that, you know, your features are aligned with the communication, like start your love story. It tells you that what you are. So for example, five years ago, we changed our tagline to find your forever. Right. But then we saw the tier two, tier three is, you know, emerging and they may not be able to relate with forever. That's when we change it to start your love story for simple English words. Right. So you have to align the whole product philosophy, communication, everything to the mission that you as a company are representing that small, small things add up and, you know, trust also compounds with time and all the things that you do.

Utsav Somani: And many of these vertical apps have come in where they're saying, if you're earning over 50 lakh rupees or if you're from IITs or IIMs, is there space for players like this to exist? Is there a big enough?

Snehil Khanor (TrulyMadly): Of course, it's a very big market. They will be if you even if you look at the ITR data, how many Indians have CTC of more than 50 lakhs? Then how many of them are single? Right. So TAM is very small, but then and for any such niche, if paying percentage is high and ARPU is high and you are able to see, it won't make sense if you are charging 20,000 and your CAC is 20,000, then it's just a, I don't know what it is. It's not a business. Right. So if your CAC to LTV is fine, right, then it makes sense. Then and different. So as I said, truly madly, we don't even say we are building for say top three percentile, even though our biggest city is Delhi and 19% of the revenue comes from Delhi alone. Right. But Delhi itself has all the, you know, different demography and different status of society. Right. So, for example, South Delhi may not be the right TG for us. South Bombay may not be the right TG for us. But we are building and what we have also identified that TG is very, what we internally call them as a club going crowd. Right. So when, you know, there is a new club that opens, everybody rushes to that club three months down the line, there is another new club. Everybody flocks to that club and the old club is kind of dead. Right. Average time a new club is able to survive nowadays is say eight, nine, ten months. Right. So that was 2017. That was Tinder 2020. That was Bumble. Today it is Hinge. Tomorrow it will be something else. Right. So that is a club going crowd that will keep hopping from one platform to another. They're not the right TG also because their intent, nothing against them. We just want that the intention, ultimately for a platform to succeed, both users intention have to match. Otherwise there will be complete mismatch. There will be nothing value that can be derived from the platform to the user. Right. So intention, matching, positioning and overall, these are the few things I think that have been helpful for us.

Utsav Somani: Dhruv, close us out. We can go on with Snail forever.

Dhruv Sharma: I know we can, but Snail, you also, I mean the brand and you personally have a very strong Instagram game. Tell us what you're learning over there.

Snehil Khanor (TrulyMadly): Yeah. So I think, as you said, learning, still learning ultimately, be it a growth hack or be it social media, you have to please the algorithm a lot. And you have to understand algorithms are nothing but a function of user and user attention. Right. So for example, you may have heard for any video reel to work, you have to work on the first three second hook, which is true for any ad also to work. Right. So being on Instagram, creating videos for Instagram allows us to learn what is the user psyche? What is that scroll stopper? You know, that you can learn, gather insight and then implement in, you know, creating ads as well. Right. Because ultimately algorithm is same because it is the user which has to engage. Algorithm is just a medium. Right. And algorithm keeps changing because user behaviors also keeps changing. So one thing we have learned pattern breakers work really well. Right. Sad part about that is that pattern breaker it itself becomes a pattern after a few days and then you have to find the next pattern breaker. Right. So it's a continuous evolution. Ultimately, everybody is constrained with time. And then every app, every product, every service is just trying to snatch away that sliver of time from you. Right. So it's just how to grab attention. And then that is the first step. Once you have grabbed the attention, transition that to value delivery. Right. So that's what we have learned from social media. That's what we implement in our growth hacks. Be it for our ads, be it for our communication. Be it for our, you know, in fact, even when I'm talking to my team, I know, right. So I have to work accordingly. So yeah, that's just allows us to experiment at scale because whatever you do, even if just 2000 people are seeing it, 2000 people, imagine 2000 people are a lot. Right. Even if you experiment, you keep experimenting something with just 2000 people, you know, okay, this word now, how can I replicate it? And today now a lot of, so for example, how we use AI also, I know that this ad script really work. I copy paste the script, give it to AI, ask it to dissect it and then make it into a framework. And then now let's create more. Right. And that allows us to test hooks, test creatives very rapidly.

Utsav Somani: Amazing. Snail, you've taught us a lot. We'd love to have you back on the show. Congrats on the 6X growth as well. And yeah, keep teaching us, keep making India believe in love again. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. So thank you. And now we've got MS Dhoni from Homelane. Oh, sorry. We've got Tanuj from Homelane. I'm just joking. Tanuj, you've spent time with MS Dhoni recently. Hi, hi, hi Dhruv.

Tanuj Choudhry (HomeLane): Welcome. Great to see both of you. Okay, Tanuj. I should have, I should have joined earlier to listen to Snail. Even five minutes was, was super, super fascinating.

Utsav Somani: Like, I think the amount that I have, like, I mean, the statistics and the science behind making people fall in love, I think it's always fascinating. But you're doing something amazing as well. Going after a hardcore fragmented industry, home interiors. Something that's very personal because a lot of people spend over 12 hours in their homes. So they're a very big emotional decision when they buy one as well and do the interiors. Why are you tackling this problem? And what is Homelane doing so well?

Tanuj Choudhry (HomeLane): So, no, you're right. I think, I think the, the amount of, the amount of time and, and attention that goes into, you know, making sure that your house looks good, works well, and is that safe haven that you can kind of get back to. I think that, that use case is just becoming stronger and stronger to us. Obviously, we started in 2014, but, and a lot has changed. But I think COVID really turned that entire notion around where it said that, you know, no matter where you are, you might be traveling, etc. But ultimately, when, when we all lived to live at home, you know, a couple with the kids, with the parents, everyone together, we all figured out, you know, how important every corner in the house is. So we've really seen that, you know, take shape. But when we started Homelane, I think the problem statement was much, much simpler. The problem statement was that we had all got our own homes done. And most of us had used unorganized, you know, the unorganized sector, carpenters and contractors to do it. And while they are individually very, very good, and most of them actually are really nice people. Otherwise, they're not being involved in, you know, doing people's homes and have a good relationship, building skills, etc. But the quality of work, the amount of time that it takes to get it done, the budget overruns, etc. really get to you. So the joy of buying a new house, and then actually hoping to convert that house into a home does not remain a joy. I mean, if you meet a customer and ask them about a recent home interior experience, they will probably say, they'll probably cry on your shoulder for a few minutes and then start the conversation. So we felt there has to be a better way of doing this. And at Homelane, essentially, we help any new homeowner who's bought a house, turn it around into a beautifully designed home with a delivery guarantee. So one of the things that we have done is we've got a 45 days delivery or rent guarantee. If we don't execute your house in 45 days, we pay you rent for every day of delay. And that was just the starting point. We felt you have to put your money where your mouth is. It's been about 11 years now. We've delivered close to 45,000 homes. We deliver about a thousand homes a month now across 30 cities. We also recently acquired a company called Design Cafe, which is also a, you know, a leading home interiors brand. So we now have two brands under the umbrella. Yeah, that's where we are. So very excited to be here chatting with both of you.

Utsav Somani: What's the MS Dhoni story? He's your brand ambassador.

Tanuj Choudhry (HomeLane): MS Dhoni is more than a brand ambassador. Actually, he's an investor at Homelane as well. Yesterday, in fact, we were with him. It was every year we celebrate something called the Annual Founders Club. And what we do is we have about two and a half thousand employees at Homelane and Design Cafe now. So we invite the top 5% folks who have performed in the last one year outside of the leadership team. We get the top 5% to come and attend this really, you know, glamorous event. And for the last couple of years, we've had the good fortune of having Mahi come and, you know, talk to them, engage with them, click photographs with them. He always has like lots of advice for, you know, for folks who are looking at any part of their lives, so to say. So he has been an ambassador for the last almost four years now and an investor. He came in right after, you know, a couple of rounds of COVID had happened and we really wanted somebody to help us build a brand with us. He just turned out to be this like force of nature who's pushed us to do things that we were not sure would be possible. One of our biggest supporters and he's got some of the best studies in town. So any time spent with him is pretty awesome.

Dhruv Sharma: Dhanraj, you mentioned a thousand homes in, you said 30, was that 30 cities? Yeah. Every month. Every month. That's crazy. That is crazy. Do you have experience centers in each of those cities as well?

Tanuj Choudhry (HomeLane): We do actually. We have close to 84 experience centers across the country in these 30 cities. So they range from, obviously the top cities like Bangalore, Bombay, NCR, et cetera, all have experience centers. But we also have experience centers in cities like Siliguri, Deemapur and some of the other smaller cities in the country. So expanding that fast as well. And these studios are super interesting. So they are anywhere from a thousand to 3000 square feet. You will not usually find them on a high street. So one of the things which we realized was this is not a high street sale where you need to cross the brand every day and go and buy it. So once in eight to 10 year purchase. So we typically often take a lane behind the high street. And we get a nice sort of property. We do it up really well so that you can come and experience what a bedroom looks like, kitchens, living rooms, et cetera. You come and meet a designer. You get to interact with your own dedicated designer. Over the last few years, we built our own design software which now competes with SketchUp and AutoCAD in the interior design space, so to say. And we do a full fledged design experience with you completely free of cost. We give you a price and a design. If you like what you see, you choose Homelane and then we do up your entire house for you.

Dhruv Sharma: Utsav, go ahead. No, you go. You. No, I was saying, so Tanuj, from the outside, it's like the proposition is very clear. Like people leave, you know, and trust their home in your hands and then you deliver. But I'd imagine internally just so many different moving paths. Which is the most complex part of the entire operation?

Tanuj Choudhry (HomeLane): It's a very hard one.

Utsav Somani: What are the steps involved? Firstly, like just for our listeners to like understand, like I mean, interior design is a broad one, like umbrella of things to do. But what is underneath it?

Tanuj Choudhry (HomeLane): So there are three broad sort of areas in a typical home interiors company like ours. The first one is the ability to be able to sort of meet a customer and give them a really a practical, good looking design proposal with a quote. So for that, you typically require an interior designer who's skilled to be able to understand your floor plan, understand your requirements. If it's, you know, depending on the members in the family. So we do, we spend, we have about between the two brands, we have about 900 designers on our payrolls. These are all interior designers who've either done a course in architecture or a diploma in interior design, etc. So they essentially meet customers and give them a really high quality experience. Once the design is done and this part is actually the one area which is getting disrupted really fast through AI. The kind of tools, etc. that we are building are super, super, you know, they used to be very difficult to build out because there just used to be such a wide variety in terms of the data that used to come in from customers. But now with all the all the tools available through AI, you're able to create the design experience very, very tailor-made for you. The second part is how do you manufacture all the products that are required? So this is an interesting business because this is a negative working capital business. Customers pay us pretty much the entire money in advance and we have a payable cycle with our vendors. So we have a negative working capital sort of space. Second thing that we do is manufacturing. So we've got factories across the country where our design files go into their machines, CNC machines and routing machines, etc. They produce cabinets, shutters, do all the lamination, do the painting if required. All the products get manufactured at one of our factories. Just to give you some idea of scale, we process about a million square feet of woodwork panels every month to be able to cater to these thousand customers. And once these factories have produced the products, we then ship it out to a customer site where our installers come and actually do the overall installation for your house. So at the end of the 45 days, you get back to your house with an installation that looks like the design that you signed off on and without having to pay any extra money, which you would typically have had to pay as an unorganized vendor. The hardest part actually to us has changed over a period of time, Dhruv. So I think it used to be, for us, the hardest part of the supply chain was actually getting the execution done, which means once all the products come, how do I actually install all the products? And it takes me back to, if I may, to one of the biggest learnings that we had very early on at Homelane. When we started Homelane, it was a small store in central Bangalore. And we were on a roll. We were getting orders left, right, and center because here was a brand which was saying 30day delivery or rent. That's what our promise used to be earlier. 30-day delivery or rent. We will get this done. Just come in with your requirements. And like good entrepreneurs, we didn't say no to any sort of order that came to us. You know, it's an order for interiors. I want to get a swimming pool done. We'll figure it out. I want to do, I don't know, some construction. We'll figure it out. Because orders are orders. How can you let go of an order? Six to eight months into the business, we started realizing that this is just a complete nightmare. I mean, we are doing exactly what we had set out not to do, so to say, because we were just not being able to execute projects. The kind of range of skills required to ace a home interiors project is so wide that if you're saying you're going to be master of everything, you're probably going to not just be mediocre, you're probably going to suck at everything, so to say. We didn't have prices sort of nailed down. We had all sorts of options available to customers. And at some point, we just put our foot down and said, you know, either we need to shut down or we need to just reevaluate what we're going to do with this business. Because order book is great. NPS was minus 26. We were losing money, left, right and center. That's when we took that one big decision which kind of changed all our lives at Homelane, which was that just find that one thing that we can do really, really well. Until the time we've nailed it, don't get distracted with anything else. And that focus for us was modular furniture. We said India requires good kitchens, good wardrobes, good storage units, and it's the epicenter of your home interiors journey. We actually got into it. And for the next six years, we just iterated like every week on how do you actually make this better. So in 2015 to 2021, pretty much modular furniture was everything that we were kind of known for. And that's why I was saying it was very hard in the beginning to execute. Today, I think it's because we used to offer everything in the beginning. But today, I think the hardest part is making sure that with the amount of exposure customers have to, design sensibilities, everybody knows a lot more about what they have. So the expectations are also higher. How do we leverage the human talent capital that we have with the tech that we are building to really understand what a Dhruv and Utsav really want for their houses and still give you relevant suggestions, but also make sure that we don't try and impose our designer's personality on the customer, which sometimes happens to be the case with certain creative fields.

Dhruv Sharma: I would imagine that people very often come to you thinking they know what they want, but they don't really know it yet. And that's just classic designer thing, right?

Utsav Somani: I mean, you work with a graphic designer. But tell me, is customization still an option at Homelane or mostly it's predefined so that you can meet the deadlines?

Tanuj Choudhry (HomeLane): Yeah, it's a good question. We have customization, but it's limited. So I'll give you an example. We have, supposing you want to get your bedroom done with your wardrobes. We have about 180 different shades to choose from across different material. We don't have an 181st. We are, to the point, almost willing to lose an order if it is a 181st shade that a customer wants, because we know for a fact that we'll not be able to do justice to that order at scale. So the 180 shades is a lot, and we try and build tech to be able to present that better.

Dhruv Sharma: I'm so sorry, you were saying, even if you cap the number at 180, how frequently do you change the colors? Because consumer preferences are constantly evolving. And, you know, so back to you.

Tanuj Choudhry (HomeLane): About a 10 to 15% refresh every year that we do on colors. And I mean, you know, the purritos principle just plays out everywhere. I mean, it's not fully a purrito, but like 60% of the total volume that we do come from some 10 shades of finishes. So it makes life a little bit easier. But I do feel that so that is one customization. The second customization itself that we do is we have a custom vertical where we do specific products for customers, where we have not been able to establish a design language yet. I'll give you an example of a Pooja unit. A Pooja unit in a Madurai versus a Gurgaon versus a, I don't know, Patna versus a Mumbai are chalk and cheese. You cannot sell one in the other. So there we've got a custom unit which takes in requirements, puts together customized designs. And if we see a frequency going up by four or five, then we convert it into a module so that we can offer it from next time.

Utsav Somani: Just to zoom out a little bit, suppose I have a thousand square foot place in Bangalore. A standard lux, minimal, what would it take for our listeners to know just to place the services of Homelane on a price scale? Where would it be? Like what would, I mean a standard place look like on Homelane for a thousand square feet? What would be the costing? Or whatever you categorize it by.

Tanuj Choudhry (HomeLane): A thousand square feet to BHK at Homelane in Bangalore would cost, would start from three and a half lakhs where you would actually get kitchens, wardrobes for all your rooms and something for your living room, so to say. A mid-segment would be at about seven and a half, eight lakh rupees. It would go up to about 15 lakh rupees for a premium. This is about a thousand square feet to BHK. In fact, the other dimension I would add would serve is the property value because we typically notice five to eight percent of the value of the house is what customers spend on interiors. So usually that's a good benchmark for us. And we are pretty much, we are super competitive on this segment. Customers have bought houses between a crore and four crores. We thrive on that market. Customers have bought houses which are significantly more than that or more than, or a lot more than that. Only in some cities do we have a lux option available. Otherwise, we tend not to sort of, we tend not to overcommit and kind of mess it up, so to say.

Utsav Somani: And there must be a DIY market, right? Where, I mean, IKEA, Urban Ladder, Pepperfry, all of these players exist. They've got options on their website as well. Do people like, sort of make it happen themselves? Are you seeing that as a trend that you're competing with?

Tanuj Choudhry (HomeLane): It's not actually. I mean, so our businesses are a little bit different because ours is custom furniture where we first sell and then we make versus the other brands you spoke about where they first make and then they have to sell. So usually I like to be on this side of the fence. I mean, it's got its advantages. The other one has its own advantages. But the difference is that customers do take some loose furniture from some of these other brands, maybe a sofa or a side table, etc. I mean, there are other good brands also where you can buy those from and we only cater to some of those items. Like we do sofas, but we have, you know, 15 really high quality designs of sofas. We don't have 500 today. So those brands also exist. I do feel that in this industry, we are nowhere close to any form of organized. I mean, we are very, very unorganized as a category. If I were to just take an example of China, which I look at very closely because, you know, with all the things that are happening, etc. Fact is, it's still a great model to study and see how the business, how industry is growing. For me, the furniture industry in China is an incredible study. The top three players who do home interiors in China collectively do about five and a half billion dollars of revenue a year. Wow. The top three players. The top players does three and a half billion dollars of revenue a year, only doing kitchens and cabinets. And I think that to me is, and the market has moved to an 85% organized, 15% unorganized in China. We are the flip. We are at 1585 right now. So I am just, I'm looking at the industry just as saying that, OK. Even if we get to a 50-50 ratio in the next 30-40 years, imagine what an organized player in this space can do, whether it's the brands that you have named or it's a brand like Homelane or it's a brand who has not even started yet. They're probably going to start somewhere now. There's so much to do that I think all these brands are not. I'm hoping the Saudis really become very, very large, like the ones I've spoken about, but I think we need a lot more of these to build.

Utsav Somani: So yeah, I think we're over time as well. So Dhruv, final question before we let Anuj go.

Dhruv Sharma: I have one final question for the Anuj. So who set, globally, who sets the tone for, for, you know, contemporary interior design, like colors, finishes, aesthetics, where, where in the world do you go looking for inspiration?

Tanuj Choudhry (HomeLane): Very, very tough Dhruv.

Utsav Somani: The internet.

Tanuj Choudhry (HomeLane): Because that Pantone shade gets published every year, that one shade. And for two weeks, it's the talk of town. But then, you know, we are all Desi by heart. We like to do it our way. So in India, I think there is a lot of regionalization. We see the best inspirations coming from different regions. But around the world, there are obviously large, you know, exhibitions and fairs, et cetera, that happen. But frankly, I mean, I still feel interior design is heavily, in India is heavily driven by what we have grown up seeing and what we have kind of used to seeing on, you know, even television, et cetera. I've seen, I mean, an example like China, where China seems to reflect what the world has sourced from them. So it's a lot of beiges and browns and, you know, that, that family of, but yeah, actually it's a good business model. I mean, somebody should come up with a way of being able to create these themes every year so that they can, they can monetize it better.

Utsav Somani: Very hard to influence the Eastern culture, I think. I mean, somebody that only very few people in the world can do, even if they can do it. But Naini, kudos to you for building in this awesome industry and standardizing it to some extent. More power to you. Hopefully we'll meet the China numbers soon. So all the best.

Tanuj Choudhry (HomeLane): Take care. Thanks so much, guys. Thanks for coming.

Utsav Somani: All right, folks. Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you've had a good week with us and enjoy the weekend. We'll see you bright and early on Monday. Thank you. Bye-bye.