Summary

The Offline Network Episode 25: AI Films, PhysicsWallah IPO & Pepperfry's Next Play (aired 2025-10-27). Guests: Ashish Shah from PepperFry. Ashish: "And that was a time we realized that perhaps India is now ready for something which is unorganized and non-standard." Ashish: "No, we, like I said, you know, see, frankly, we taught India how to, you know, I'm a bazzi.com, eBay, you know, you know, person, right." 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: Hello folks, welcome to the Friday stream of T.O.N. Today we're going to talk about a bunch of interesting things. Our guests are going to cover the Mumbai AI Film Festival, which is concluded, and our next guest, Ashish Shah, is the founder of Pepperfry, so we'll dive deep into his business as well. But before that, let's quickly run down what we saw interesting things on our timeline and also the world of IPO, which is ever exciting now. So Physicswala, opening on 10th November, and they are raising at a 31,500 crore valuation. The interesting thing about this IPO that stood out to me, the founders still own 80% of the business. It's uncharacteristic to what we've seen typically the other IPOs where founders are much lesser, and even in the OFS segment, they're only selling approximately 1% of their holding. And Westbridge Capital is the big investor, along with Lightspeed India here. And Pine Labs, which is on their day one, is attracting strong interest from all the mutual fund players. So I think that should be a good one. And there's some grey market premium to this IPO as well. None of this is investment advice, but just exciting things, unlocking value for their investors, stakeholders, and employees. I think it's a big boost for the ecosystem. Dhruv, what's happening in the world of deep tech? How are you doing, Utsav? I'm well, I'm well. Rested? Yes. So, you know, a few episodes ago, we'd shared with our listeners that a new alliance had formed. It was, in fact, a cross-border alliance. Some investors from the US, some investors, a couple of investors even from India to invest in India's deep tech story. And it looks like, you know, that pool is growing and it looks like more people are, you know, coming in. And so I'm seeing three names here, Qualcomm, Nvidia, which I think is coming on as a strategic advisor and also Activate AI. Is this the Activate AI that Akrit is associated with? I honestly am not sure, but it could be, could be. We'll confirm with him. Yes. But big money coming in. Yeah. Into a sector of interest. Yeah. All right. Fun things on the timeline. Are you a gamer? Hardly. I've never been good at them. So stay away. Age of Empires, which I used to play a lot, Halo. And then Counter-Strike were my favorite games. And now, I mean, GTA 6 was one that I'm excited to, I mean, finally get my hands on. But I think it's been a while since this has been in the making. Apparently, there was a game which is, I think, Doom or one of them holds the record for the longest delay from announcement to release. And I think GTA 6 is going to come close to that. They've announced that they're now releasing on 19th November 2026. And funny enough, we'll have the first year anniversary TUN special stream of that before GTA 6 comes out. How much do these, since you're a gamer, how much do these games change from like from GTA 4 to 5 and 5 to 6? How much difference does one see in the graphics and the experience? A lot. A lot. And it's mostly to do with hardware and the capabilities. And I mean, GTA is known to have this whole real world feel to it, where I think the physics and all of these things improve just because of the GPUs and the technology that you bring. So the realism of these games keep on increasing and the size of the worlds that you play in also keeps on increasing. And it's fascinating. And even Elon Musk, I think, thinks that AI will be generating all of these worlds on the fly. And I think XAI is going to focus on some of that also. So gaming is definitely one of the gateways into like awesome technology as well. I saw a take from someone on Twitter the other day which said like, you know, it was one of those spicy takes, but gaming is a whole lot better use of your time than doomscrolling. Could be. Like, I mean, a lot of people, I mean, man, I don't know, we should get somebody on board on air to just talk about the in-app purchases like Roblox and all of these stuff. Like kids these days, even in India, are spending so much, not just time, but money buying these small, small ingame like digital goods that there's a thriving market for trading of all of these as well. I mean, separate from the NFT mania, but yeah, a world like that exists and will be interesting to see where it all goes. DPS Archipuram, my alma mater, was in the news, so we're catching up late. Exin Club there has generated some awesome companies, Snapdeal, Sugar Cosmetics, Boat, Cartesia recently, Whisperflow as well, the tool that you love. So yeah, have the guys launched a fund yet? They should, they should. But the thing is, man, they have thousand people in one batch. So the sample size is so huge that if you throw a thousand darts, of course, you land one or two every batch. Same as YC, I think. Uber free cash flow is increasing and that chart is looking beautiful. When I think they were just about to turn positive, the market cap was 40, 45 billion. Now it's a 191 billion. This thing, you want to talk a little bit about Dara's execution? Is it one of those hang in the loop charts? Dude, this new company called Quarter has been going viral on X as well. Beautiful posters for earning calls, like I mean the Ferrari one, the McDonald's one, the Airbnb one, they're all looking so good. Even the chart that they've done for this Uber free cash flow thing is solid. I really love the design. I don't know if that has done a good job, but people are also now talking about maybe Travis making a comeback. Yeah, there was an article that said that he might be making a, I mean, a Steve Jobs kind move again to come back. Elon Musk, what's happening? He's apparently, the vote has gone through. It was a happy Elon vote day for people who celebrate that. And apparently his compensation package has been approved. And if he delivers according to the promises that are baked in the paper, he gets to be the first person to be worth a trillion dollars. Many people say it's less about the money and more about him consolidating control of the company, which is something that he likes to do. Did you read the news? I did. Some of the numbers that stood out is he'll have to take Tesla to 8.5 trillion valuation to get that one trillion package. I mean, huge value creation, right?

Utsav Somani: Unimaginable numbers. What's the market cap of Tesla right now? 2 trillion? Should be. I think it's 2 trillion. Yeah. And it takes Elon Musk's ownership from 13 to 25% as well. So big bump for him. And he always has this thing where he puts these Easter eggs or like these fun jokes. So Tesla Roadster 2, which Sam Altman, of course, famously pointed out that he wants a refund for and was denied one because the email didn't exist. That reveal is now set for April 1st. Fun day. Of course, chosen for deniability issues also, probably. All right. So let's welcome our first guest. We've had fun. Let's learn from these two people who hosted this amazing film festival. It's called the Mumbai AI Film Festival. And I'd love to learn what went down there. Chandan, welcome to the show. Hi, hi, hi. What's up? Hi, Dhruv. Hi. Very nice to meet you. And what's up? Nice chatting with you after a month, I guess so. Yeah. No, no. Thank you so much for joining us on the show. And Harjit, welcome to the show as well. Yeah, thank you for having us. Awesome. So tell us what is the Mumbai AI Film Festival? Yeah. So the idea of the Mumbai AI Film Festival was really that like AI filmmaking has gotten very advanced. The video production quality has gotten so much better than it was. Just like. We can finally eat those spaghetti noodles. Yeah, yeah. And and it's gotten really, really better. And we realized that we think we can actually like host a hackathon of sorts where people actually just show the world, show the audience that just what the possibilities of video generation are. And even in a even when you like try to produce something in a short amount of time, like three days. So really, the idea of the film festival was before the film festival, like people were given five days amount of time to actually work on their films and like from start to finish. And then we had the screening of the films at the film festival, amongst other things at the Royal Opera House. We try to make it grand. We try to go all of the things. And really, that was the idea overall. See, to add one thing the other day while we were discussing on the way how someone can tell a story, the bar for telling a story is so high. Like you will need to know someone to get into the production house and then the production house. There's a wait period. There is like to get the right resources into this. It's a huge endless cycle. So we had just one goal. That is, can we democratize storytelling? Can someone from tier two or tier three or anyone doesn't have to be. Can they just come? They have an idea. They have a dream. Can they make it possible with AI? Yes. Right. So as you said, those spaghetti scene, which Will Smith video that you're referring to close to a year and a half ago, it was traumatizingly bad. It was unusable. But now it's very lifelike, right? The pace at which we are developing is so cool that we felt, you know what? Now is the best time to do this. And one of the areas or one of the ideas that we had is that, sure, we can do this on a Google Meet screen. We can do this at a small scale. But our goal is to do this at a scale where the country looks up to. We want to bring in the pinnacle of the best of the best property, the 120 year old Royal Opera House. So we went, yeah, so that's the venue where we organized it. Where is AI being used in filmmaking right now, guys? There's a couple of places, like, for example, the biggest use case of AI in filmmaking right now is in VFX. Most of the VFX costs are being cut down because people just use AI to now make VFX videos. That's like one of the biggest use cases. To be honest, it's still not being adopted in most of the things that are being produced on mainstream media, like Netflix or even just like the actual shows that are online that exist right now, like they're on live TV and so forth. How long do you think it will be before we can go to a PVR and see a full feature length film made using AI? I really don't think it's going to be that long. Like, we were talking to Ashish Chakraborty about this like last, like two weeks ago or so when we were just onboarding him as a judge for a hackathon and for this festival. And he said that things are changing so fast, it's nearly impossible to know how fast things are changing. Like, we could have the first film actually on a Netflix and actually like on the cinemas in like anywhere from six months to one year. And it's just like very hard to tell because these models are changing so fast. And when you guys talk to the artists, what do the purists have to say about this? Sorry, what do the purists have to say? So we did get a lot of backlash on the exact same point. Yeah, I mean, it was an unfathomable amount of good and also bad that is there. Sure, there is this friction point when the industry is not open for something. I mean, the initial hiccups. Yeah, that is definitely there. People are a little, people are definitely concerned with the thought that their jobs are on the line. But the message that we were trying to propagate is that, you know, this is something that will help you steroid your imagination, get to the MVP stage in the fastest way possible to just visualize and then show in a way. So that is what we were trying to propagate. And I'd love to see like Tom Cruise, like doing all the stunts and himself and like enjoying the process. And you can see that on screen. But a movie like say Avatar, or like even Guardians of the Galaxy, where I mean, it's more imagination driven, right? I think those will be really getting boosted by this technology. What was the outcome that these people were producing at your film festival? Sorry, I stopped you there. But so to add upon your point of imagination, like Guardians of Galaxy or Avatar sort of movie, the winning team has made a film very similar on the similar lines of what is not so easily possible, even by production. What is so wild to think is what they've come up with. And this is beautiful team of three people, Sagar, Prasad and Anurag. Yeah. And what you said is exactly what's happening. Yeah. And to add on to that, like, I think the biggest thing we have learned with AI is that sure that it's democratizing video filmmaking, it's like making it way easier to actually make videos and make films. So that's why like a lot of the industry is getting mad because now you don't need a lot of those big hefty budgets anymore. And it's saying that like it's just going to kill the industry. But our opinion is that sure, it's democratizing it, like the way it's making it easier to make like a high end movie for a normal person. But at the same time, we were very highly convicted that because of this, the quality of films and videos that are. Tell us a little bit more about the competition, like who won the thing and what was the outcome? Like, did they have to do like, I think Dhruv was asking before the show, was it? So it's like a hackathon for AI films. Was it like a mini film like those mini dramas? Those are going viral. Was it a five minute thing? Was it a one minute thing? One hour thing? Wanted to be the Pixar? When people are approaching them for like jobs, so many people are approaching them to actually recruit them into their production studios. We were actually just hosted an after party yesterday with like some of the participants of the organizers and volunteering team. And we met with a team that won the first place. And they said like they're kind of overwhelmed with the amount of like inbound they're getting from like folks like Netflix, Jio, Hotstar, people from like some of the biggest Bollywood. Dharma, excellent entertainment and a lot. And in fact, yesterday in the after party itself, there was someone from SS Rajamouli sir's team and the director of Bahubali on discussing on a potential collaboration. And that's it. That's what we were super, super happy about. And like one thing to add is something that makes us go really crazy is the fact that even for the people who didn't win and some people who didn't even make it to the actual competition, because the competition to actually just application process was so stringent, like 1265 teams applied and only 15 of them made it. And many of them even actually told us that just because they posted their video online of like their portfolio video that they used to apply to us, they got jobs out of those of like one person we met, he got a job 40 lakhs per year, just based on that video, which is insane. The person is like 21 years old. Yeah. Do you have any final closing questions? No, no questions really. But, you know, what was coming on my mind when you were when you were speaking, so I mean, right now, filmmakers are using it to make films. I can't wait for a future where fans can make, you know, sequels and end them the way they like. I remember having to be like 20 years, I think something like that to do. I had to wait 20 years for Tom Cruise to come make Top Gun 2, which is a movie I absolutely loved. And had this been, you know, possible, I could have made like that. Of course, we copyright issues and IP issues, but that might be a very, very cool future. On that note, actually, a good point. If suppose somebody makes this fan generated stuff, and given that everything is happening with open AI and the licensing stuff, a 10 minute film with these copyright approvals and all of those things, how much would it cost? Like if it's an AI generated one? It's it's really broken, everything like whatever you can imagine. Yeah, let's do it this way, without copyrights and with copyrights, because copyrights is an unravelling battle that we ourselves have been in discussions with multiple boards in nationally and internationally in the last two, three weeks. So, okay, if someone would like to make like a 10 minute film, let's say VO3 and the top of the line. And our next guest is here. So we have to wrap this up quickly. I wish we could go on longer. That's all good. Honestly, it probably cost like it really depends how much you regenerate the shots, but it costs like anywhere from 500 to $800, somewhere there. But again, it really depends on just like how much a person keeps going and regenerating because the cost can always go up. Yeah. Okay. All right. Awesome. Solid and all the best. Second edition soon. Yeah, let's see. Let's see. We're getting lots of inbound, lots of folks are reaching out to us to actually make this happen within their own companies or as like a really big festival globally across even other countries. So we're definitely exploring and we're excited by just the amount of hype that's created in Mumbai. And we'd love to have you Utsav and Dhruv. Thank you so much for coming with the talent there. Thank you so much, Chandan and Harveep for joining us. Thank you so much. All right, listeners. Our next guest is somebody who's redefined how India buys their furniture. So let's welcome him and learn about the world of furnitures and our home decor. Ashish, welcome to the show. Thanks Utsav and thanks Dhruv for having me on the show. Yeah, Ashish. Really excited. Great to see you. Amazing. I mean, the name is very synonymous with the industry that you operate in Pepperfry, but why not for the first time listeners tuning in, just introduce the business.

Ashish Shah (Co-founder, Pepperfry): Yeah, so, you know, we started as a, so, you know, way back January of 2012 is when Pepperfry came about, you know, the third of January, we opened Pepperfry to the customers. We started Pepperfry as a lifestyle horizontal, you know, prior to this, you know, both Amrish and me were with eBay for around, you know, a decade selling brand new fixed price products. And that was a time we realized that perhaps India is now ready for something which is unorganized and non-standard. And frankly, that is where the monies are made. And we therefore, you know, started as a lifestyle e-commerce, you know, horizontal. You know, in a couple of years, we saw many more, you know, vertical players coming in and we thought that we need to focus. We were getting great feedback about our products and especially in the home and furniture space. And that's when, you know, we thought that we will become a home and furniture player in the country. Since then, you know, which was around February of 2013, since then we have been the largest player in our space, never looked back. So, yeah, so that's about Pepperfry. We are a managed marketplace, which means we bring the entire supply of the country, you know, you name the brand, they're on Pepperfry to customers across the country and the world. Right. So, so we are the only vertical marketplace in our space in India today. And, you know, very happy to service customers for 14 years now.

Utsav Somani: When you just got started, Ashish, did you choose to focus on just one particular customer segment?

Ashish Shah (Co-founder, Pepperfry): No, we, like I said, you know, see, frankly, we taught India how to, you know, I'm a bazzi.com, eBay, you know, you know, person, right. So we kind of taught India e-commerce, you know, starting from, you know, getting products from Karol Bagh to putting them on our mannequins, ourselves and taking pictures to making the listings live, you know, I'm from that era. Right. So, and, you know, Amrish and me, you know, when we were running, you know, Amrish was the country manager of eBay India, Philippines and Malaysia. And I used to run the eBay motors business at that time. And frankly, we were the largest players, you know, we also turned eBay operationally profitable, you know, way back in 2010. And we realized that, you know, selling cameras, laptops, mobile phones, etc. could get you a large business, but would not make money. And we had started seeing that fashion is coming to India. And that's how e-commerce has evolved across the globe. Starts from, you know, books, music, media, you know, moves on to brand new fixed price and then moves to non-standard categories. Right. So we thought that we'll make lifestyle horizontal business. So we started doing jewelry to apparels to shoes. We did everything, by the way, Dhruv. So, and furniture and home was just one of the things.

Utsav Somani: And globally, how's the penetration for this market? And in India, where are we trending?

Ashish Shah (Co-founder, Pepperfry): See, again, very, very unorganized Utsav and Dhruv, you know, we are now 14 years into the business. You know, we have seen that, you know, the overall industry, you know, only 9% was organized, you know, when we started, even today around 14% would be organized. Right. So it's not moving as fast, but it's a very large time. You know, India buys around $35 billion of furniture and home products every year. So it's very large from that standpoint. You know, in this journey, again, benefit of hindsight, I also realized that, you know, ecommerce penetration is actually taking time. You know, as a marketplace, you know, you can have a distinction of being the entry point of every transaction or the destination of every transaction. Today, you know, very happy to tell you that we are the entry point of every furniture transaction that happens in the country. Right. I get around 250,000 people to visit Pepperfry every day. We convert only three and a half thousand. So we are the default, you know, de facto, you know, inspiration place. You know, if you're buying sofa, you would definitely come on Pepperfry. You might not end up buying on Pepperfry, but we are the starting point for every transaction. And, you know, the hope is and the effort is towards getting customers to convert from here. Right. Because we get the largest traffic in the country. So we are the entry point. We need to become, you know, more of destination for this category. Right. So very little penetration, I would say. I think the overall e-commerce, e-furniture and home today would be around, you know, in my view, around four, four and a half thousand crores.

Utsav Somani: And you've never considered like LiveSpace or other players who are there to basically become an interior, interiors marketplace as well, like where you do these services and.

Ashish Shah (Co-founder, Pepperfry): Sure. You know, so the way we look at our businesses, you know, we, we are about, you know, the first two words that any marketplace promises to their customers is great variety and great prices. Right. And we said that we will be about variety. Right. And therefore, when you offer variety, you don't need to customize. So, for example, let's say if you are buying a bed, you know, I will have a particular variety of bed in seven different variants. Right. It could be with storage, without storage, front storage, side storage, queen size, king, et cetera, et cetera. So the variety actually solves for customization. You do not need to add more inches. Right. So therefore, we thought that we will be about loose furniture. We will be about variety. Right. And that's why we are, like I said, we are the entry point of every furniture transaction in the country today. You know, I have 18,000 pieces of furniture to show to my customers today. These furniture pieces are coming from around 200, you know, small regional and national brands. Everyone sells on Pepperfry. Right. So we beat everything out through the variety that we offer the customers. We also have our own private labels. So, you know, therefore, great prices happen because we go directly to the source. You know, in my lifetime at Pepperfry, I have directly worked with around 650 factories. And this is very close, deep work, you know, visiting them, you know, prototyping with them. It starts there to standardization, to packaging. So we go take them through the entire journey. So direct to source, therefore great prices and great variety because we are a marketplace. We don't play God for the customer. We have everything from 4000 rupees wardrobe to a 400,000 rupees wardrobe on Pepperfry.

Utsav Somani: Ashish, I really want us to pull the thread a little bit on, you know, creating private label goods. How does that, how does that work in practice? Do you notice that there's a price quality mismatch or customers are asking you for something that the marketplace doesn't have? I'd love to know.

Ashish Shah (Co-founder, Pepperfry): Yeah, absolutely. See, that's the benefit of, you know, kind of running a marketplace. You know, I know what sells, what price points sell and what quality sells, right? You know, inherently, you know, if you look at the, you know, home decor category, you know, and compare it with, let's say, mobile phones, you know, on x-axis, if you have, you know, a number of SKUs on why you have those sales, area under the curve, you know, 10% of SKUs will get you 90% of the sales, right? In our business, there is no Pareto, right? Today, there is no piece of furniture that I sell more than 200 quantities at Pepperfry, right? We are a large business, but absolutely no Pareto. 50% SKUs contribute to 50%, right? So what happens is we look at the slivers, you know, on the x-axis, we see what SKUs are offered by which kind of brand and where are the gaps, right? So we look at the price point and the design gap and then try to, you know, plug in our own private labels. Over these years, we have built six private labels, mostly in solid wood. We have only one brand that is engineered wood, which we import from Malaysia, China and also produce in India, but everything is made in India.

Utsav Somani: We're not like furniture experts. What's the difference between solid and...

Ashish Shah (Co-founder, Pepperfry): Solid wood is, so you know what... It's natural wood. Most of the imports that you see today are, they're not wood, you know, they are made by recycled, you know, pieces of wood or, you know, some of the waste, right? Solid wood is the wood that kind of lives, you know, which is shisham wood, mango, teak wood, et cetera, solid wood. You know, it is durable, it lasts for a decade and more, right? Again, you know, from customer standpoint, an engineered wood product, no one will give you more than two years of warranty. We give seven years of warranty for our solid wood furniture, right? So it is hardwood. It is a wood that, you know, that gets, that can get infested, let's put it that way, right? But it is very durable, right? It is what India loves to buy.

Utsav Somani: And Ashish, 2012, 2025, back then there was no Instagram, no Pinterest posts. How's India's buying behavior changed ever since social medias entered the customer's purchase journey?

Ashish Shah (Co-founder, Pepperfry): See Dhruv, again, very significantly, you know, in fact, you know, even my, you know, previous business, which I built with a lot of effort, you know, the eBay Motors business, you know, what happens is your buying cycle actually, you know, starts reducing, you know, as the, as the country gets more discerning, right? You know, today in your living room, perhaps you change your sofa once in two to two and a half years. I change it every year. I'm in this business, but you know, people change in three years now, right? People used to buy furniture for two decades, right? Now people buy furniture, keeping in mind that you need it only for three, four, five years, right? So just in terms of consumption of furniture, right, it has gone up significantly. People have got much more discerning. They have traveled the world. They have seen new designs. So I would say that there's a lot more appreciation of variety, right? You know, in a building, no one would want to buy, you know, a type of furniture. So you look for variety, you go to many places. That's why it is a very interesting category, you know, in the sense that, you know, it is going through a very, you know, I think from here on, it will hit a J curve. You know, this is the time that inflection would happen because, you know, people who are inviting many more people to their homes, they want to change their living room. They want to invite party, etc. So I think this is the time when India is getting much more discerning. You know, it is also the expression of who you are, you know, your home is your expression. So people spend a lot of time and energy and resources around it. Let's also invite your perspective.

Utsav Somani: Sorry, let's go. No, no, please, Dhruv. I was going to say that let's invite your perspective on something that we hear so often, which is just like you said, right? Because people are purchasing so frequently. Some people hold the view that manufacturers now take quality for granted. They don't, that piece doesn't need to be around for 10, 15 years. You're going to replace it in three years.

Ashish Shah (Co-founder, Pepperfry): Is that, how do you feel about that? I absolutely agree, Dhruv. You know, people are not looking for a furniture that lasts a decade. Right. And therefore, design becomes very important. You know, designs, you know, unfortunately, there's no IP, you know, copyright in furniture. So, you know, people. So therefore, in India, now you find the furniture from the world in people's houses, right? You find large sofas, you know, bar units, which were never found in India, because they can be copied. They can be made in a very different quality. And it is available at your doorstep, right? So I also, you know, frankly believe that you do not now need furniture for a decade, right? You should be changing your furniture every two, three years and therefore go for a, go for design and slightly durable furniture is what I would say. So, yeah.

Ashish Shah (Co-founder, Pepperfry): So people have, it has become an important criteria now.

Utsav Somani: Right. Yeah. I was just going to ask, you've done a large range of products, right? So inventory wastage is zero.

Ashish Shah (Co-founder, Pepperfry): So, you know, we are, we are a zero inventory business. You know, we work. So first of all, we are marketplace. So, so our model is like, you know, look at it like an Amazon fulfilled model. With the brands or the private labels that you have? So private labels also, we have a marketplace, we have a brand licensing arrangement with private labels, which means that, you know, we give them forecasts and then get their inventory into our warehouse. Once the product sells, we pay them money. You know, the beauty about my business itself is that my MOQs are only three quantities, right? Because, you know, these are produced by, by hand, right? So I don't need to buy in bulk. So we never go wrong. You know, at the end of 90 days, you know, my contract with the, you know, the manufacturers is that, that I will pay for the balance inventory. I have never had more than 5% residual inventory at the end of 90 days, right? Because you run heuristics for, you know, let's say six months period. Therefore, your forecasting is great. Second, your MOQ is only three quantities, right? If three quantities happen, three quantities can happen from three centers, three stores, right? So we do not have an inventory problem at all.

Utsav Somani: So tell us a little bit about the offline business as well. There's a franchisee piece to it as well. And yes, the payback period look like how many stores do you have? And do they serve as warehouses or storage business also marketplace? Sure.

Ashish Shah (Co-founder, Pepperfry): See, I, you know, I'll start with the genesis of it. You know, there was an investor visit that we did to Jodhpur, you know, visited a few factories and they told me that, you know, who knows the quality of furniture because only when you sit on it, you realize that you are sitting on a cashier board, right? And therefore, it's very important that you start showcasing your furniture. So I came back, I opened my first store at Kanjur Mark just below my office, got lots of visits, you know, from Mulund to Thane. And we realized that this could be a model. Our worry at that time was that because we are a variety play, we cannot be selling. And because we are, you know, FDI invested, we cannot be selling from stores, right? So therefore, what will we do with the stores? So we started with hiring interior designers and architects in our stores. So we said that we'll consult, we'll make an experience center and not a store. So even today, you cannot buy from paper fresh stores. You walk in with a problem statement, you go to the store with, let's say, a two dimensional layout of your house, you know, we help you buy, right? So if you like something, let's say you like a sofa, we'll explain that sofa to you in the store and then we'll show you 25-30 more sofas online. If you are liking a certain sofa or let's say a fabric, we will show you swatches. So my stores have swatches of all the fabrics. It has swatches of all the finishes that goes on the wood, right? So these are more experience centers. We started expanding, you know, at that time, we used to spend a lot of money on offline hoardings, right? We used to paint the town at that point in time, you know, this is way back in 2015-16. And we realized that, you know, why open, you know, why have hoardings? Because you can actually open a store at the same price in a city, right? So the first store that, you know, the second store that came about in Indira Nagar in Bangalore, we thought that this is my hoarding, right? And a hoarding where people can walk in, interact with my staff, experience my products. And then we started expanding. We launched a franchising model. Today, we have around 140 stores in 83 cities. Out of these, 40 are company owned, company operated and balance of franchise stores. Again, a very limited, you know, franchisee churn. We have, you know, great model going. You know, the beauty is that a franchisee sitting in Imphal can buy 200 brands of furniture, right? By click of a mouse, right? So, and that's the network effect that we've created. Because let's say hometown would never be at Imphal, right? And similarly, the Imphal customer would not have ever bought hometown, right? But today they can buy these brands sitting at a place. Northeast, we have 17 stores, by the way, right? So we are big in Northeast. Which is the most recent city you've launched in Ashish? See, recent has been Ahmedabad, which we launched only last month. But, you know, we are at places like Raipur. We have, by the way, three stores in Bhubaneswar. We are at Indore. We are at Bhopal. Like I said, 83 cities in India. You know, we are at Mohali. We are at Pontasaheb. We are at Bhatiyala, Jammu. So you, you know, 83 cities, a lot of.

Utsav Somani: I mean, Ahmedabad, I mean, if you've launched recently, isn't that late? Like why the decision? Ahmedabad, this is my third store.

Ashish Shah (Co-founder, Pepperfry): Yeah, this is my third store in Ahmedabad. In Bombay, in Mumbai, we have 12 stores. We are nine stores in Bangalore. We are around seven stores in Delhi. So metros, we have many more stores. You know, in tier two and tier three towns, we try to partner because we do not know the local market. So most of the tier two, tier three stores are franchisee stores. And like I said, you know, big presence offline. And all of these are experience centers, like I said.

Utsav Somani: And let's come into the latest news, Pepperfry acquisition. Tell us a little bit more about that.

Ashish Shah (Co-founder, Pepperfry): You know, interesting phase, Utsav. You know, we are a 14-year-old business, you know, raised around $300 million till now in our life. We are category builders, therefore ended up spending a lot of money, you know, building this business, you know, from, you know, when I was building at that time, used to spend, you know, months at Jodhpur. Educating, you know, I bought the first computers for my suppliers I used to tell them open the Excel sheet if the product is ready, you know, put a red mark. If it is not ready, put a green mark. So we started there, right? So category building takes a lot of time, energy and money, right? So ended up spending a lot of money building the brand. We always believe that an e-commerce business should not need, you know, Google, Facebook as the entry onto your business. Even today, 70% of our traffic is organic, by the way. 65% of my business is repeat, right? So, you know, spent a lot of money, had, you know, investors on our side for long, very patient investors, you know, MVP, you know, Niren invested, he wrote the series A check, you know, for Purify, you know, on a business plan. The business was also not there. We just left eBay to raise money from him. So great support, but at some point in time, people do need, you know, to exit. And we thought that, you know, I actually believe that the time of the category has come now, right? There's at least a decade of work and this is day one for Pepperfry, right? And therefore, it was important to find a partner and a business that understands where, you know, this can go in the future. Like I said, I have had great investors even today, lovely relationships, all great friends, but, you know, there is life to a fund, right? And therefore, I thought that it's important that, you know, for the brand and the business that we have built, it sees the, you know, light of the day. It sees, you know, the greatness that it has been built for. And like I said, we have just got started. This is at least a decade of work in my mind. You know, this was only, I would say, initiation phase. We, you know, told India how to buy furniture online, right? That phase is done, right? From here, we need to, you know, build. We need to be the largest.

Utsav Somani: And you will stay on with the business? Yes, absolutely.

Ashish Shah (Co-founder, Pepperfry): You know, I have all intentions to stay on and, you know, fulfill the ambition that and get Pepperfry to the rightful position.

Utsav Somani: All the very best and congrats on this news.

Ashish Shah (Co-founder, Pepperfry): Thanks. Thanks.

Utsav Somani: Do we have more time with questions, maybe? Yes, I was, in fact, going to save this question for the end, Ashish, but I'm going to ask it anyway. So Amrish's passing was obviously a huge setback for the entire ecosystem. I'd love for you to share some happy memories of your time working together.

Ashish Shah (Co-founder, Pepperfry): Well, your times, you know, I see, I'll tell you, I worked with Amrish since 2006. Okay, so very long association. 15 plus years of association. You rightly mentioned he was one in a billion. You know, if you spent a few weeks or hours with Amrish, he would leave an impression. For someone who would have spent 15 years with him, not easy, right? He was a great, you know, very different, great personality. So, of course, he had a big influence on me. I had a big influence on him. You know, we are friends, brothers, everything, right? So, you know, we were each other's, you know, the best man. So, you know, we, of course, you know, we spent 18 hours building this business, 18 hours every day, right? But we also, on weekends, he would cycle to my house. I would go to his place, you know, we would go on treks together. So we have had a lot of, you know, fun memories. Very different personalities, both of us, but very common values. You know, first people to be in office, last people to leave. We will not leave any party. We'll ensure that the venue is open for at least two more hours from the scheduled time, right? So, great teams, worked hard. So, and we used to enjoy, you know, what we have built. So, of course, really miss him, but amazing, amazing times, you know, we have trekked, we have hiked, we have rode all of Leh Ladakh so many times, you know, together. And by the way, last two years, I haven't been there. So it's looking to go there very soon.

Utsav Somani: Thank you for sharing. Thank you for sharing, Ashish. I think that is as good a note to end the show on. Thank you so much for coming on air and all the very best for what lies ahead. Thank you. Thank you for teaching us how to buy furniture online.

Ashish Shah (Co-founder, Pepperfry): Yes, buy furniture only online. By the way, we want to really reposition to be the home player of the country and not only furniture. I think the furniture name is very, very, you know, closely associated with Pepperfry. I don't know if you, I want to leave you with this message. I don't know if you know, but I have 2000 table lamps. I have 400 whiskey glasses. I have 3000 bedsheets to choose from on Pepperfry. So we are the largest, even in the home decor, you know, and the kitchen space. So please look for Pepperfry more often. Thank you. Thank you, Ashish. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me on the show. Thanks.

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