Summary

The Offline Network Episode 32: Legal & Compliance Tech (aired 2025-11-12). Guests: Shivam Singla from Leegality. Bhuman: "Came in India 2016, started TGL, the premium tea and coffee brand, exited to Ness Wadia from the Wadia Group and now building Wicked Good." Bhuman: "I spoke personally about working capital, because that's a big, big, big, big challenge for all young." Topics: venture capital and funding, AI and LLMs, consumer brands and D2C, B2B/SaaS. 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

Speaker 5: This is a test.

Dhruv Sharma: Hey there listeners, it's good to see you. If you're a regular on the show, it's great to have you back. If we kept you waiting, we apologize. Our first guest is a busy guy. He got pulled into something and so we couldn't start on schedule. But our second guest was kind enough to come in a little bit early. Utsav, what are instant noodles doing on your desk over there? What are you doing?

Utsav Somani: I'm going to have them during the show. It's my midday snack and Bhuman was kind enough to send over some samples. I've been a regular consumer of his pasta. My entire home loves it. So I'm glad that we have him on the show to talk about his company and the brand that he's built. I'll try a bite when I'm not speaking because apparently they're very, very spicy. Something that we'll take to test today, basically.

Bhuman Dani (Founder & CEO, WickedGud): You and your family have got taste. What can I say?

Utsav Somani: Wicked good taste. Awesome. So for our listeners, please describe the brand portfolio. What is it? I'm going to spend a couple of minutes talking about what Wicked Good does.

Bhuman Dani (Founder & CEO, WickedGud): Firstly, extremely excited to be here. To all the people who are listening, thank you for making this community what it is today. And thank you Utsav and Dhruv for this entire knowledge session with various founders in the ecosystem. Really, really, really required for all budding entrepreneurs. So Wicked Good, this is my second venture. If some people don't know me, just a quick background on myself. Did my undergrad from BITS Pilani, went to MBA at INSEAD, worked at the Boston Consulting Group, London office, did a lot of consumer goods cases across Europe, but always wanted to be the entrepreneur. Came in India 2016, started TGL, the premium tea and coffee brand, exited to Ness Wadia from the Wadia Group and now building Wicked Good. That's me in a nutshell. Basically, our food is crude, all the empty calories, the sugar, oil, the carbs, the mystery of artificial elements that one can't even pronounce, made us think twice before consuming them, let alone our family. And when we realized we weren't alone, we thought we should change it. If you look at any consumer packaged food today, it's dominated by four ingredients, maida, palm oil, sugar and chemicals. I think our families deserve better, which brought us to the mission statement, Unjunk India, one kitchen at a time. The brand promise became Wicked taste and good ingredients. So anything that lies at the confluence of the two, we'd like to enter in terms of categories. The problem we're solving is a problem in every household, including mine. I have a four year old and a two year old. My wife and the four year old keep quarreling on what to eat and what not to eat. Kids end up dictating consumer behavior. Mothers end up domesticating junk. So if there is a way to create a win-win where kids get to eat the junk and mothers get to give it to them without two thoughts, that's the problem we're solving at Wicked Good.

Utsav Somani: Awesome. And you had a meeting, I mean, before we kick things off with like the actual brand story and the business itself, you had a meeting with the finance minister as well?

Bhuman Dani (Founder & CEO, WickedGud): Yeah, that was insane. I got this call from someone from the Ministry of Finance. They were curating this 20 or 15 to 20 startup founders to talk about the pre-budget. So they typically do this before every budget just to understand pain points. And each of the founders were from different sectors. I think I represented consumer goods. And yeah, she was very, she heard, she heard all the problems. She's extremely sharp. It just makes you feel that the country is in the safest of hands possible. And then of course, she took all our insights. I spoke personally about working capital, because that's a big, big, big, big challenge for all young. I mean, there are these CGTMSE schemes out there. But trust me, none of the bankers will give you that loan without 50 to 70% collateral, which means it's not really a loan. It's just, you know, taking x and getting 0.7x. That doesn't make any sense.

Utsav Somani: Dude, they're not spicy. They're not that spicy. I think you can increase the spice level a little bit more.

Bhuman Dani (Founder & CEO, WickedGud): Okay, so then you're the Korean, you have Korean noodles much more often.

Utsav Somani: Yeah, I mean, maybe the Americans and the Europeans might find it spicy. But yeah, I'm good right now.

Utsav Somani: Yeah. So your request was on working credit, working capital credit as well. But what were the other requests that came through in the room?

Bhuman Dani (Founder & CEO, WickedGud): Multiple, people were from defense, people were from deep tech, Aman Gupta was there, he spoke about ESOPs, taxation around ESOPs, about going global, many things. I mean, there were there was someone who was from vending machine, dalchini startup, spoke about multiple issues. There was a professor from IIM, don't remember, IIM Kozhikode. And he spoke about the fact that there was very less funding and grants and incubation level funds available at the start at a government level. And then, you know, he was presented with how many funds there have been in the last 12 months. So in terms of data, in terms of collation of understanding of what is happening where, I think full marks to the Ministry of Finance, I think they completely on top of things know exactly what's happening there. And where there were issues, they were listening, they were typically listening, and there was someone taking notes. There was a chief economic advisor as well. He was also giving his input. So very well arranged meeting very well curated. And she did it with all the large companies as well. It was not only us, we were just, I mean, probably the smallest out of all the meetings that she did.

Utsav Somani: Nice. And do you expect there to be follow up from this meeting? Like, will they follow up?

Bhuman Dani (Founder & CEO, WickedGud): I mean, angel tax abolition was outcome of one of such meetings. So I'm sure there will be follow up. I'm sure there will be a lot of more interaction. And hopefully, all the points that were raised will definitely be implemented. Nice.

Dhruv Sharma: So Bhumet, you mentioned four ingredients, right, that the large CPG companies use in these well-loved products and brands. Like, when did it come to that? Like, why just these four? Why are they so important to that industrial process?

Bhuman Dani (Founder & CEO, WickedGud): Well, very simple answer cost, right? I mean, for the kind of material that you want to create and for the kind of price expectations consumers in India have. And now I think I, you know, we all are equally responsible for it. We've been spoiled for choice. We've been given things at a platter at a certain price. So we expect that from every category, whatever be the outcome in terms of health. So people are not still, large part of mass premium India doesn't, or rather is not willing to pay that additional amount for healthier products. So you see a lot of better for you brands out there, which are priced, let's say 2x, 3x in certain categories, but the volumes of those products are very low. If you really want to go mass premium in India, the thesis we have is no more than 20, 30% than your rank one brand. No one will pay more than that. So if you see our products, 15 rupee Maggi, 28 rupee Maggi atta, we are at 20 rupees for a single pack of noodles.

Utsav Somani: And that's the thing that we've seen on the show. We've had many better for you brands like super you and many others who've come and spoken about how they're not trying to replace the existing habit. What they're trying to do is like basically give you better options for that particular.

Bhuman Dani (Founder & CEO, WickedGud): I'm a classic example of this. Let me tell you how we started wicked good. The product we started with is discontinued. We started with a gluten-free pasta made out of chickpea, red lentil, brown rice, and tapioca starch. As much as I can still swear by the product, which gave you probably 2x the protein and 4x the fiber as compared to regular pasta. It did not scale beyond a point in mass premium India because the insight we got is an average Indian cooks pasta in a pressure cooker. Now you put a gluten-free product in a pressure cooker, it's going to disintegrate into a mush. So we started getting complaints around, your pasta is breaking. And then when we figured that they make it in a cooker, there's no point educating consumers at that level. It's much easier if you change the recipe, add some, you know, durum wheat semolina in it. And there's also the good stuff. So overall, it's a better for you product than a significantly better product. So it's like a very thin line for a better for you founder today between selling your soul literally and offering what consumers want. Even the noodles that we launched, they were scat technology, steaming, convection, air drying, not a drop of oil in it. They did scale, but not to the extent that we wanted. We removed it. Today our products are all fried, but instead of frying it in palm oil, it's fried in rice bran oil. So the saturated fat is lower. So these are multiple instances where we've pivoted from our product strategy and come to now a product which is well accepted by mass premium India.

Utsav Somani: And what's next for you then?

Bhuman Dani (Founder & CEO, WickedGud): Well, I think the noodle category in India is very large and it's dominated by one or two players. So there's a huge scope to sort of come in to that or penetrate that using flavor profiles. So if I were to go on head on and just offer that masala noodle variant, I will succeed because the healthier batch will probably switch to us or maybe the Gen Z batch will shift to us, but it's going to be an uphill task in terms of distribution, in terms of money spent. So the better way would be to offer flavor profiles that people haven't seen before.

Utsav Somani: So as we talk more about what's next, tell us how do you go from idea or discovery of what category to enter to actual product?

Bhuman Dani (Founder & CEO, WickedGud): A lot of research, a lot of talking to category managers across the platform. So we enjoy a very good relationship with Reliance and BMart. We speak to them very often, especially Reliance. We're there in, I think, 1676 stores. That's the latest count that we have. So we speak to the category team to understand what's the need of the hour. We do our own dipstick at outside stores or outside large public areas to understand the need of the hour when it comes to noodles, when it comes to pasta, when it comes to price points, ingredients. And then we cater to a certain profile basis that we use a lot of universities that come for collabs with us and use their ecosystem to do research work for us. So for example, if there's a university in Pune, we'll ask them for Maharashtra region, if you can give us what kind of flavor profiles are accepted by mass premium India in lieu of certain amount of time that we generate and give their entrepreneurial section, etc, etc. So we've done this and we've gotten a lot of data. So for example, the next product that we're launching is the Korean chili cheese and the Korean chili chicken version. And that's because the Korean version, which we just tasted and the pack version combined are the best sellers in the company today. In fact, if you go on Blinkit today, right now, as we talk, we've taken over the page, you'll see our banner on the homepage with the Korean product.

Utsav Somani: Awesome. But I mean, another question for you, a more cultural one. Why are these Korean things taking over? Like, I mean, Boabhai also has a Korean range. And like, I mean, K-pop is taking over India, like what's the, how is it?

Bhuman Dani (Founder & CEO, WickedGud): The cultures are very similar. Second K-pop, Netflix, Gen Z's liking for Korean really shot up in during the lockdown. So if let's look at Samyang and Nongshim, because I'm in the noodle category, I can talk about them better. Until 2019, they were really non-existent. I've spoken to the distributors and importers of both. Very, very small, very, very non-existing, growing nonetheless, month on month, year on year. Come COVID, come the lockdown, come people stop going out to restaurants for consuming, wanted to have the same kind of food at home. And that's when players like Nongshim, Samyang, many other brands now as well. I see current, for instance, from Nepal have really shot up and people have started to consume it much more than earlier. And then of course, the entire Netflix, K-pop, drama, that angle really helps. There are so many Korean influencers now in India who are doing crazy amount of content and very similar cultural influences in India. Yeah, so many of them. Yeah, absolutely.

Utsav Somani: I'm really outdated. Do you know this trend?

Dhruv Sharma: Which one about Korean influences?

Utsav Somani: Yeah, Korean influences in India.

Dhruv Sharma: Not so much. I mean, I see Korean influence in retail going through the roof, but I didn't know this. Here's a question for you, really from the point of view of young founders who want to build brands like yours, when we read reports, there's all sorts of customer segments, people come up with really fancy things to call them. But on the ground, in practice, how does it really work? How do you go and segment customers? How do you decide these are the people we're going to go after? These are people we just simply cannot sell to. How does that process work in practice?

Bhuman Dani (Founder & CEO, WickedGud): There's no hard and fast rule for this.

Dhruv Sharma: There's no rule book. That's number one.

Bhuman Dani (Founder & CEO, WickedGud): Yeah, that's number one. I mean, don't try to make a rule book. Okay, I'm only going to target say, India 1 or 18 to 24, you'll fail, because you don't know at the start who's going to consume what. I think with time, you realize with the kind of repeats that you get, when you start talking. So as a founder, again, I love to talk to consumers, probably once a week, pick a call, whoever ordered last on your website, randomly pick, choose across profiles, just to understand what did they like about the product? Where did they see it? What flavor profiles do they prefer? Would they buy it again? At what price point? If they bought in a discount, would they buy it at full price? If they bought it at full price, do they feel it was they overpaid for something? Or do they like it? Why did they like it? You just have to talk to people. And if you have, you know, presence in retail, like Reliance, as I said, 1600 stores, we have about 50 promoters servicing these stores. So also talk to those promoters in specific to certain regions. So as Utsav said, he didn't find that noodle spicy, you go to Northeast India. And if you get this noodle, they won't they'll drink the water as if they're drinking normal water. They didn't find it spicy either. So I'm coming up with a version, which is a, I don't know, 5x spicy version just for Northeast India. Even the Korean chili chicken is mainly catering to the Northeast of India.

Utsav Somani: So really cool colors on the branding, by the way, love it.

Bhuman Dani (Founder & CEO, WickedGud): That's entirely elephant design. So 30 year old design agency based out of Pune. Srini Deshpande is on the cap table that sort of really helped us initially to build this brand. And that's the magic of elephant design. They break the clutter. Shilpa Shetty on the pack you know, trust among consumers, etc. So yeah, I mean, everything is thoughtfully done. It took a lot of time. If I were to say, oh, I already knew it because of ABC, I'm going to be lying. Everything is trial and error. It takes a lot of effort. But you need to I mean, a mistake is a mistake when made twice. Otherwise, it's a learning. So go by that thought process and don't make more mistakes is all I can say.

Dhruv Sharma: Can you also talk to us a little bit about distribution cracking distribution online, offline, quick call?

Bhuman Dani (Founder & CEO, WickedGud): If you look at better for your brands today, you ask them, what's your split? They'll say 80 to 90% online, 10 to 20, 20% offline. You ask wicked good, what's the split? It's 60% online, 40% offline. So we are all those very few brands. Either we are underpenetrated online, which also I always feel I mean, a founder feels he's underpenetrated everywhere. But also we've done decently well offline. So if you look at offline, let's break it into MT and GT. For us, by definition, MT is Reliance and DMart because it constitutes 80% of MT anyway. Everything else comes under GT. In Reliance, as I said, it took us, we started with 25 stores in India. Today, we are there in 1600. With DMart, we started with three stores in Mumbai. Today, we're there in about 40. So it took time effort. It's not like we've still hit the moon there. So many issues, so much of, you know, I mean, these are all good problems to have now. But I think with time, we'll figure that out. And cracking Reliance and DMart is critical because you understand the pulse of common man in this country. They are the ones who go and shop in a Reliance and a DMart. It's not typically you. I didn't even know where the nearest Reliance was next to my house. But when you go and you just spend one hour or two hours in a Reliance store on, let's say, a Friday evening or a Saturday afternoon, that's when you'll realize the pulse of this country. And then, of course, you have, you know, the greatness of Mr. Damodar Mal. You just read his book, Supermarketwala. And, you know, it's like a crash course of an MBA in that much time. So brilliant stuff. Now, if you look at GT, again, need to know what to crack and where. Again, look at data from the likes of Nestle, the likes of an ITC. Where do they actually sell their noodles? And you will see a lot of it is in the northeast of the country because that's staple food for them. They have it four times a day. So if you were to crack the northeast, what will it take to get there? Firstly, none of the startup brands are even visible because it's extremely difficult to crack that part. You need to understand by region by region. Today, if you go in Sikkim, there are at least 500 stores that have wicked goods stocked in. If you go to Manipur or if you go to Mizoram, there are a lot of stores that at least A plus counters that stock us. So typically pick a place, pick A plus counters, start doing your sales. Don't think about ROI initially, start doing your bid. And then automatically you'll see there'll be either you have to shut down a territory or you'll have to go double down on it. So that's how again, trial and error. It's not like we've seen success everywhere. We were in Madhya Pradesh at one point. Today, we aren't other than Reliance stores. We were in a lot of Pune at one point in GT. Today, it's much lesser than what it was. So we've learned it. We were in Goa at one point. Today, we aren't. So we've picked our territories, picked our battles and fighting it every day. GT is the toughest, but GT gives you the highest profit margin.

Utsav Somani: So I know you do a lot of noodles, sorry, before this thing, because he's talking about Tetris. And if you do a trip to the hills, if you're from Delhi or visiting Mussoorie and stuff, true PMF in India would be when instead of Maggi, you're serving wicked good.

Bhuman Dani (Founder & CEO, WickedGud): Absolutely agreed. So that's my next. I mean, Himachal and Uttarakhand are, you know, the next focus areas for us. But again, I don't want to just go there and dump stock and come back. I want to do it in a certain way. So first, I'm finding the right distributor and the right manpower to service it. And then if you go to J&K, for example, especially Kashmir, even in places like Baramulla or Srinagar, etc., you'll see a lot of wicked good pasta being sold there. You'd be surprised. I thought noodle consumption would be high because of the cold, but it's actually pasta that moves really well. They love their pasta.

Utsav Somani: Something for your next trip to Kashmir, Dhruv is from Kashmir.

Dhruv Sharma: From Jammu, the neighboring territories. Hey, also a question on, Bhuvan, a question on brand positioning itself, right? Like, I think it's downstream of how well you understand your consumers, but what are people really buying from wicked good when they buy your products? Is it convenience? Is it taste? Is it novelty? Is it health?

Bhuman Dani (Founder & CEO, WickedGud): So we're a noodle company that also sells pasta and chips. That's the average conception in an average Indian head, or at least one of our consumers. Now within the noodle, I think they're buying taste. Every noodle consumer today, 70-80% of them are buying taste. They're not buying health. So the initial proposition of SCAD technology, etc. beyond a point did not scale. So we had to get the taste right. So if you have the Korean noodle, which did, it's very much in terms of the Indian part, the Indian masalas, you'll really taste well. Even if you have our masala noodle, it's very similar to the rank one brand out there in terms of aroma, in terms of look and feel, in terms of taste, etc. Aftertaste, very similar. So then if you come to know, oh, by the way, this is also healthy. It has no maida. It has no palm oil. So it always starts with taste. And then, of course, the convenience of cup noodles really helps. We have 8% category share in cup noodles in Reliance and 6% category share in atta noodles. So that really helps us.

Utsav Somani: As a final closing question, Burman, as you think about what's next for Wicked Good, what's your process to rule out things not to do, basically? Like, I mean, rule out things that you would not do, basically.

Bhuman Dani (Founder & CEO, WickedGud): I mean, you have to see numbers, right? I mean, the numbers are the best ways of... Like, for example, why did we...

Utsav Somani: Earlier, like, I mean, earlier, like, suppose you're doing your research as well, and you've had your hunch that, suppose Maggi is being sold at X price, and you can't get your product close by to that in terms of pricing via your product discovery roadmap. Do you just rule it out? Or are there other considerations as well?

Bhuman Dani (Founder & CEO, WickedGud): I mean, in India, FMCG, 20 rupee, 30 rupee, nothing beyond that. First rule. Otherwise, you're going to be alienating it to very few outlets. So, I mean, at a basic level, no more than 20, 30 rupees. If it's a cup noodle, then yes, slightly more is fine. 40, again, 40 rupees, 50 rupees max. Anything beyond 50 rupees, a big red flag for mass premium consumption in India. Second, go after secondary sale. Don't go after primary sale. We've all seen enough of it, enough of IPOs, enough of pre-IPOs, enough of all of that data we've seen, but I don't see any merit in dumping. It does help in the short run, but as long as secondary sale doesn't happen, primary will never happen. So, our entire focus is not to focus on primary, just to focus on secondary. So, these are two things that definitely are no-go before launching anything.

Utsav Somani: Awesome, Bhuvan. Thank you so much for coming in and giving us your insights. Also listeners, there's a special discount code. You can see it in the ticker below. It's called MEGA40. It's valid until Sunday. So, go buy our wicked good products now. Cheers.

Bhuman Dani (Founder & CEO, WickedGud): Perfect. Lovely being here. Thank you. Thanks, Bhuvan. Thanks, Bhuvan. Noodles for dinner for all.

Utsav Somani: Awesome. So, we spoke about noodles now. Let's switch gears and head to the world of finance, where Nitin is joining us, and he's going to give us his insights. I know Bhuvan was saying that the finance minister or he was talking about working capital being one of the requirements that startups face very regularly. So, Nitin, welcome to the show and let's dive in. You're dialing in from a car?

Nitin Jain (Co-founder, OfBusiness): Yeah, I am, Utsav and Dhruv. Thank you so much for having me. Sincerely apologize for the delay. It's been one heck of a day and I just said, let's stall the car somewhere. Let's have a conversation with you. So, again, I'm sorry for the delay.

Utsav Somani: Naini, thank you so much. We really appreciate the effort you made and giving us the time also. So, for our listeners who are hearing about off-business for the first time, maybe spend two minutes just explaining the business.

Nitin Jain (Co-founder, OfBusiness): Yeah, so, you know, this is a business that we've scaled for the past 10 years, and this is a business that we scaled for the SMEs. The SMEs essentially, you know, face two problems, two major problems. One is procurement of raw materials at a good rate, and the second is working capital. So, we're solving both the problems at the same time for them. And what kind of categories are you in, in the raw materials? So, we are in four major categories. One is metals and non-ferrous. So, that's ferrous and non-ferrous. So, that includes your steel, your TMT bars, your flat steels, your aluminum, zinc, lead, et cetera. The second category is chemicals and polymers. The third category is agri-products. And the fourth category is textiles. So, these are the four categories, and we're essentially trying to benefit the SMEs through working capital. So, we're trying to disintermediate the chain of dealers and distributors, right? And that's one. But the second major problem that the SMEs face is working capital. So, we have an NBFC, which essentially provides working capital financing to the SMEs to ease their burden of getting finance from local distributors, which is very expensive. So, that's essentially what we do.

Dhruv Sharma: And then you have a very, very interesting model where you go full circle, right? From helping people secure a bid and a tender to acquire goods for it, can you just walk us through that, the model?

Nitin Jain (Co-founder, OfBusiness): Yeah, yeah. So, you know, traditionally, if you talk about B2B in India, right? So, how do you bring about that engagement and that tech play? So, normally what happens, right? So, let's talk about a user journey. Let's talk about an SME. SME typically would be deploying about four or five people, right? Who, let's say, you talk about an infrastructure contractor that is building a road in Nagpur. Let's say, they're trying to secure a 200 crore contract. What would they normally do? They would try to go to government websites. They would try and through five people that they've deployed, try and secure the contract or at least try and see which contract to bid for. Then they'll bid for the contract. They'll get the contract. Then they start sourcing the raw materials. And then they'll figure out, okay, they don't have enough money. Then they'll go and request distributors. Okay, can you give me the required raw material for 30 or 60 days credit? And then they stretch it to 90 days because 90 days is the real working capital cycle for them. So, we said that, listen, one, we're solving the raw material procurement for them. Second, we are solving the working capital for them as well. But third, how do you keep them engaged? Right, so how do you solve this using a tech platform? So, we figured out a very, very smart way in which we said that, listen, all the working capital, sorry, all the tenders that are there, we'll give it to them on a silver platter. We know their profile. We know what kind of tenders they're good to bid for. We'll give it to them using an AI platform. And once they're looking at the tender or bidding for the tender, they automatically become a potential customer for us. So, the lead acquisition for us is solved. The engagement is solved because they're continuously visiting our website. And then we are able to easily solve the raw material supply and financing aspect for them.

Utsav Somani: Interesting. So, you're basically doing demand gen using this method as well. And I think that's, I mean, quite tremendous. But so, where does the money come from? What are the big profit pools or sources of profit pools for the business right now? Because you have so many different lines going on.

Nitin Jain (Co-founder, OfBusiness): Yeah, we, in fact, have also started manufacturing, right? So, we have a lot of data about distribution of raw materials. So, we know we have a lot of demand that we aggregate. So, we know which profit pools to play in or we know which supply chains to play in. So, essentially, we end up making money in three aspects, right? So, one is obviously raw material supply chain, the aggregation platform. The second is on the financing bit. So, we have an NBFC. So, we lend at lower than what a distributor would give you credit at, right? So, obviously, it's slightly higher than a bank, but we end up helping them save much, much more because we're giving them raw materials at a lower rate. So, that's the second part pool. The third is that we analyze pockets of these supply chains and then we end up telling them that, listen, we will only supply the raw material to you. So, we end up making money on the manufacturing side, but ultimately giving them a better product and a better quality product. So, these are the three profit pools, essentially.

Utsav Somani: So, literally full stack. I mean, if you're...

Nitin Jain (Co-founder, OfBusiness): Yeah, it is full stack there.

Utsav Somani: Like, I mean, if you're going into manufacturing as well. So, what factories do you run now to make what?

Nitin Jain (Co-founder, OfBusiness): So, in fact, in all the verticals, we run factories. So, in steel, we're running a TMT factory and our structures factory. In agri products, we run a nuts factory. We run a pickles factory. So, essentially, you know, first we started with aggregation, then we realized, yeah, we can either go... We can either backward integrate or forward integrate. In textiles, we started with yarn and then we forward integrated into garments and accessories like your bags, belts. And so, we run those factories and we are, in fact, now one of the largest in India, right? Now, apart from that, we run a chemicals factory as well where we manufacture ethyl acetate. So, that's something that we... Now, we are potentially going to be venturing into agrochemicals. So, yeah. So, these are the factories that we run. And we managed to do this because we had the demand and we had the distribution set up. So, otherwise, it's very difficult to set up a manufacturing unit.

Dhruv Sharma: Never once to shy away from sort of rolling your sleeves and doing the hard work. Nitin, how have you designed the organization that's able to do so much? Yeah.

Nitin Jain (Co-founder, OfBusiness): Yeah. So, that's the power of... That's the culture that we built, right? So, we essentially, from day one, have got people who are independent and not from the industry. I think that's really worked well for us, right? So, we hire people straight out of MBA colleges. We essentially train them for about three to four years. And then they become independent business owners. And then they're able to run entire P&Ls on their own, right? So, they have a lot of responsibility that they take on themselves. And they don't come with any kind of baggage. So, they're able to think out of the box. They're able to think growth. They're able to think profit. So, that's how we essentially cater to all these guys, to all these sectors. And we've not found an issue as such, right? So, we've got, I would say, a blueprint that really scales, right? So, even when we acquire a factory, we don't really think about who's gonna manage it, right? That's the least of our worries. All we think about is, how can we scale that particular factory in a very, very efficient manner? And can we improve profitability? So, we never have to worry about talent. And that's something that we've solved from day one. And we hired talent not from the industry. And that's really what's worked for us. It's a bit counterintuitive, but it's worked for us very, very well. Nice. And how many people work at the office in this group now? It's close to about 1500 odd in the corporate office. But otherwise, if you include all the factory workers across, we've got about 33,000 people. Wow.

Utsav Somani: Wow. And what does the scale of business look like in terms of just financial numbers?

Nitin Jain (Co-founder, OfBusiness): Yeah, close to about, I can't disclose the last year numbers, but it'll be in the region of close to about 22,000 crores plus. That's the top line.

Utsav Somani: Amazing. And you've converted to a public entity as well. So, IPO on the roadmap?

Nitin Jain (Co-founder, OfBusiness): Yeah, again, I don't want to comment on that. But yeah, I mean, every company's dream is to IPO, right? So, that's our dream as well. Because we want to see the ticker on the stock market.

Utsav Somani: I'm wishing you the best.

Nitin Jain (Co-founder, OfBusiness): Yeah, it's going to be good fun.

Dhruv Sharma: How has the way you spend your time personally been changing over the years, Nitin? I've asked you this once before and possibly, I think, for the benefit of our listeners as well.

Nitin Jain (Co-founder, OfBusiness): You know, so I'm a builder, right? So, essentially, you know, of business is at a place where I'm also essentially looking for my next big thing. So, I essentially would be starting my own company very, very soon. And essentially, that's going to be in a new space. And, you know, business is in a great place, honestly. So, I'm thinking about starting something in the electronic manufacturing services space. So, you know, I spend about thinking about new verticals altogether. You know, how can I add value in new verticals? So, that's essentially, you know, that's about me a little bit.

Utsav Somani: But tell us a little bit about electronics manufacturing. I think that space has been pretty exciting, right? With the whole Make in India campaign that was started a few years ago. And any kind of schemes that are promoting entrepreneurship in this space?

Nitin Jain (Co-founder, OfBusiness): Yeah, so I'll tell you something about electronic manufacturing, which really fascinates me, right? So, it's a $100 billion industry at the moment in India. It's a $2.3 trillion industry worldwide. And it's the fastest growing in India. Third fastest growing in the world. And there are a billion plus SKUs that the companies procure all over the world. And the design changes are every six months for the components and the finished products combined. So, it's a very, very interesting space. So, this is one. And second, the geopolitical issues that are essentially there, right? With the Trump tariffs, with the China rare earth materials, with everyone trying to become, quote unquote, Atman Nirbhar or self-reliant with the wars that are going on. So, there is a lot of activity which is going on in this particular space. And electronics, you know, it goes into defense, it goes into consumer electronics, it goes into automobiles. And, you know, you stop one component, then the entire supply chain stops. So, that is what really fascinated me about this particular supply chain, you know. And we're trying to solve the entire supply chain issues, how the procurement can be done. What is the potential for manufacturing within India? Can we figure out pools? Or can we figure out certain components that we can manufacture in India, help companies buy better? So, you know, we're working on all these issues and problems.

Utsav Somani: And who are the big chip manufacturers now? I remember some announcements coming out as well in India.

Nitin Jain (Co-founder, OfBusiness): Yeah. So, India, everyone is trying to dipstick into the chip manufacturing. Chip manufacturing in India is not at the level at which Taiwan is. So, Taiwan at the moment has reached 2 nanometers. India at the moment is still thinking about manufacturing 28 nanometers because there is no manufacturing which goes on in India, right? So, India is far behind. So, the scope for innovation and growth in India is immense, right? So, we're not known as a deep tech country, but things are really, really changing. So, obviously, Gujarat and Chennai is a hub. So, they're setting up manufacturing units with top people like SGS and, you know, the other guys, the top guys, they're thinking about setting up plants for chip manufacturing. But it's going to be about two to three years before we really get there. But slightly lesser innovative components like your, you know, capacitors, resistors, thermistors, etc. I think that space is really heating up because you can easily get the technology from outside and you can easily set up a plant and really make India self-reliant. I think that's a big, big challenge that the companies are trying to solve. And government is giving huge amounts of PLIs, subsidies to solve this particular problem.

Dhruv Sharma: And isn't the demand for some of these components sort of inversely proportional to how sophisticated they are? In other words, the 28 nanometer chips, like people need a lot more of them than they need the two nanometer chips?

Nitin Jain (Co-founder, OfBusiness): Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, if you look at defense as a sector, right, they're not going to change their designs to accommodate two nanometer chips like every six months, right? So, whatever was working defense 10 years before is still working right now. So, yes, the demand for the 28 nanometer chips is extremely high because they're cheaper as well. The demand for two nanometer chips is lower, but, you know, in India, we still are one of the biggest consumers of the 28 nanometer chips or, you know, slightly higher nanometer chips. So, obviously, India has chosen to go down the path of saying that, listen, fine, we will manufacture the 28 nanometer chips. We will set up manufacturing, we will learn and then go to the two nanometer chips or the path to two nanometer chips is not easy, right? So, 28 nanometer chips, Taiwan was manufacturing in 2015. And we are getting there, right? So, we're still far behind. We are about 10 years behind Taiwan and maybe even China for that matter.

Utsav Somani: And you mentioned...

Nitin Jain (Co-founder, OfBusiness): It's a very, very interesting space. Very interesting space.

Utsav Somani: You mentioned supply chain a few times. So, I'm treating you as a supply chain guy. So, you treat everything as a supply chain problem. Like, I think, or you observe it...

Nitin Jain (Co-founder, OfBusiness): It is a supply chain optimization problem, right? So, what is a supply chain? Supply chain has multiple variables, right? Ultimately, what are you trying to do? You're trying to optimize using those variables and try and get the best possible costing for the client, right? That's what you do, ultimately. That's what we did at OPP Business as well. Now, the variables here are a lot more. So, ultimately, you've got geopolitical variables along with obsolescence variables, along with design change variables, along with price variables, along with number of components, right? So, your optimization problem contains a lot many variables. And ultimately, everything is a supply chain optimization problem, right? So, that's what we're trying to do. So, we're not trying to essentially get into manufacturing. But even if we were to get into manufacturing, it is a supply chain optimization problem. So, what is it that you want to manufacture that you can easily produce in India? What is it that you can manufacture which you can easily compete with China? Because China, the costing is super, super, super low. How do you compete with that to start manufacturing in India and start getting in the middle of the supply chain? So, everything is a supply chain optimization problem, in my opinion.

Utsav Somani: All right, Dhruv. Any final question for Nitin before we let him move again on the road?

Dhruv Sharma: Maybe it's a question on China. Nitin, what do you think is like, where are the heavily misunderstood?

Nitin Jain (Co-founder, OfBusiness): China? Yeah, from manufacturing standpoint. I think you have to be there to really understand how far ahead they are. I mean, they're just insanely far ahead of India and the other countries. I would even go to the extent of saying they're far ahead of US as well. And they don't advertise it as much. I think they're far, far ahead. To compete with them at a global stage is very, very, very difficult, right?

Dhruv Sharma: So, you're talking innovation, you're talking capacity, you're talking just the availability.

Nitin Jain (Co-founder, OfBusiness): Everything, everything, everything, right? Their ability to upskill their people, their ability to innovate, not only on hardware, but also in software, their ability to create capacities, their ability to manufacture at the lowest possible cost. Because, you know, if India, let's say, tomorrow starts manufacturing at something at 15 cents a dollar, 15 cents a component, they will come back tomorrow and start manufacturing the same component at 8 to 10 cents. And India will have to counter that by imposing import duties. That's how strong they are. That's how innovative they are, right? They know when to drop the prices. They know when to change the components. They know when to really, really hammer down a particular supply chain. You know, they're far ahead of anyone else. I mean, they're heavily underestimated, I would say. Still underestimated. Now, we think that we can decouple from China. We are playing up the China plus one story, but we are at least a decade behind. Let me just tell you that. Saying that, there is a huge opportunity in front of us as well, if we put our minds to it. But there has to be a strong ecosystem emerging which says that, okay, we are ready to compete with China. We need patient capital. We need the government support as well, because without the government support, this is not going to happen. But we're slowly but steadily getting there. I think we've been woken up with the recent events. I really hope we can get there very soon, where we invest heavily in R&D. India, R&D spend is about 0.6% of the GDP, right? China is close, about 2.5 to 3%. Just look at the R&D going on over there. It's crazy. And we're a $4 trillion economy, and they are about $20 trillion. On a larger basis. And the base is also very, very high. So imagine the kind of spend that they're doing.

Utsav Somani: All right, listeners, anyone who's tuning in, that I think is a solid motivation to get working for this week. Thank you so much for tuning in, Nitin. Hope you have a safe ride ahead.

Nitin Jain (Co-founder, OfBusiness): Thanks so much. Thank you so much. Thank you for coming and sharing, Nitin. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much.

Utsav Somani: All right, listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. Remember the discount code as well, and also the motivational ending that Nitin has given us. So let's get back to work. Let's bring manufacturing back to India. Have a good one. See you. Bye.