Full Transcript

Dhruv Sharma: Hey there listeners, how is Friday going for you? Today we're sitting with Akshay who's building a women's wear company called Mlada and in fact he's joining us, hi Akshay, he's joining us straight from his manufacturing setup and just before we went live he was describing to us what's on his left and right and in front of him, great to have you on the show Akshay.

Utsav Somani: Thank you so much Dhruv. Welcome to the show Akshay, so let's introduce the brand to our listeners, how can people describe Mlada in the best possible way?

Akshay Jain (Mlada): Yeah, so you know Mlada is a brand where you'll get most clothes made of 100% cotton or cotton lycra, you see to it that we use very less polyester, stretchable fabrics, better fabrics and that's it, that's what we speak about in our ads as well, people connect with it and buy it. We have been lucky that we have our own manufacturing setup and I think we'll sell 1 lakh pieces this month and do a revenue of 5 crores.

Utsav Somani: Wow, wow and you're building this out of Ludhiana, like most people, I mean of course, given that you're vertically integrated like you mentioned, you have your own setup, most people try to do this as a brand like other players in the space like NuMe and few others try to do this out of like the tech centers usually, how is the experience building it out of Ludhiana, like what are the limitations, what are the benefits?

Akshay Jain (Mlada): So benefits is that obviously your operations cost is less, right, so I can buy a huge warehouse that can dispatch 1 lakh pieces and my rent of that warehouse is just 1 lakh rupees a month, that would easily be 4-5 lakh rupees a month in a city like a Gurgaon or a Bangalore. Obviously my operational HR costs are less, finding talent can be a little difficult but we are not a tech company, we are a fashion company, we see to it that we have good tailors that we employ for making high quality garments and that's it.

Dhruv Sharma: Are there advantages like structural or otherwise of being in a very dense cluster like Ludhiana?

Akshay Jain (Mlada): Sure, so what happens is in a place like Ludhiana, how we make our clothes is we buy yarn from yarn manufacturers, we give it to a knitting company who will make fabric for the clothes, then that will come to us, then I will send it again to a dyeing factory, they will dye the fabric, that will again come to me, I am only a stitching factory and I will cut that cloth, I will make the cloth, I will stitch the garment, I will iron it, I will check it and then I will send it to the customer. So all of this process becomes easy, finding workers also becomes easy for us, we employ around 200 tailors in this factory currently, so it's easier for us to get tailors than probably let's say I was in a Bangalore or a Delhi.

Utsav Somani: But you are still an internet first brand right, I mean I guess most of your sales come direct where Shopify is one of the biggest channels for you, you are still an internet first company.

Akshay Jain (Mlada): 100% we are.

Utsav Somani: In Ludhiana, talent, I mean how does that work when you are building with an internet first mind, you are pretty active on Twitter as well.

Akshay Jain (Mlada): So Utsav, most things are already taken care of by Shopify, right, on the tech end, on the website end, we don't have to work anything, I mean I don't have any person working in tech right now, we have just taken a Shopify subscription. On the ad side, I do have a photographer, I have models coming who make videos with me, I am also part of the videos, we have editing, but nothing as if tech is required. I handle the ads myself, the ads manager myself, I have a team member who handles with me, other than that there is nothing else required, most of the things are easily available, let's assume for AI customer support, we are using an app called Sagepilot, right, it's a subscription based company. So we have all such tech enabled with Shopify that helps us do the work.

Utsav Somani: Man, you are making it sound too easy, like for the revenue scale that you are at, like I mean we try to overcomplicate things by saying that I need somebody to manage return on ad spend and agency and people are always looking for the best performance marketing hires, so these are super impressive numbers, but let's talk about the numbers, you mentioned on Twitter that 75 lakhs in 2024 and now you are almost over 5 crores a month?

Akshay Jain (Mlada): Yes, yes, yes.

Utsav Somani: That is insane, like what was the inflection point?

Akshay Jain (Mlada): So Utsav, we understand our customer much better, obviously this is a very generic term that everybody uses, but so everybody is going after a Gen Z consumer today, a consumer who is, let's assume in the age of 16 to 25, who have different passion needs, I think Yuumi is going after them, Littlebox is going after them, but nobody is going after a consumer who is probably, you know, 25 plus or 30 plus, their body types are different, their purchasing habits are different, things that they want to buy is different as compared to somebody who is 18, right, and nobody is building for them, so I think there was definitely a white gap that we found, we also talk to our consumers in languages that they understand, so I will talk to them even in Hindi, right, so a model of mine will actually say a pant and say in Hindi, oh this pant is very good for you, you should wear it, no western wear brand will do it because they will say, oh this is beyond our brand image, we can't speak in Hindi in front of our consumers, right, so we challenge those norms.

Utsav Somani: And do you think the algorithm rewards you for this? Definitely, definitely it does. So authenticity over perfection when going direct with customers.

Akshay Jain (Mlada): Yeah, 100% that helps, even in my ads, I am also part of it, I actually, I am not sure you see it, but I think the audience can check Meta Ads Library, I actually wear a measuring tape in my neck and I act like a tailor, a measurement expert and a model will come and I say, oh you are looking so nice, did you like the fitting and the model will say, oh yes, it's perfect texture, I will just show, I will also sit on this table and show everybody, that's how, yes, we did this, we did this fabric, that reason it's looking good on you, we also have plus signs available for our customers, so you know, it's a much better connection with a consumer than a consumer watching an nth reel on Instagram by the same influencer who was promoting something else just a week back under the brand, so we are quite close to our customers, we talk in a very homely way, the way I would talk to my mom or my sister, that changes very much, we talk in a very different way to our customers.

Dhruv Sharma: Akshay, the revenue growth clearly means that the products are working for the customer, I am sure you have thought very deeply about what's working for them, is it material, is it fabric, is it designs, is it price, is it a combination, talk to us about that.

Akshay Jain (Mlada): I think it's a combination of this and everything, we always take a fabric first approach, okay, so let's assume, you know, we want to, let's assume, make a top for a moment, okay, we will first say, okay, you know, we want to launch this top at a $9.99 price point because that is something that an Indian consumer who is watching ads sitting at home is comfortable paying, we don't want to this product to be an $18.99 product, then we decide, okay, you know, that means I'll have to probably make this product in a 50 rupees to 300 rupees range, I can't make a 400 rupees product and then sell it at $9.99, my margins won't allow me to do that, then we see, okay, what fabrics am I allowed to make it that is good for her body, it won't itch her in that price range, then we research on that, then we make dummy products on it, then we research how that fitting is going on and then we launch it, so fabrics are very important.

Dhruv Sharma: Can I ask you a fabric related question?

Dhruv Sharma: Why is it that, you know, for the longest time, our elders always wore natural fabrics and then somehow as a country, we fell in love with synthetics and now, you know, there's almost like a resurgence of natural fabrics, people are finally getting around to the fact that sure, those are easy to wash and they're quick dry, but, you know, it's not good to have them on your skin for a very long period of time.

Akshay Jain (Mlada): It's the, this is just a commercial question, that a lot of brands took, commercial take, is that obviously, artificial fabrics are cheaper than natural fabrics, right, polyester is cheaper than a cotton, so they'll mix more polyester blends than cotton and then they'll try to sell it to you, that's the only, they want to improve their margins. In the longer end, what we feel is that, okay, can I price my product in a way, so that when she receives the product, she feels really happy about the product, I think, okay, I'll repeat my purchase again, so my cap goes down. Right, so yeah, coming to your question, yes, every brand started selling blends which are not good for your skin or which are cheap, after washing, the product will become bad in a year, you'll have to throw it off, we are taking a contrarian approach, the only reason that happened was because it was cheap, the fabric is actually 70 to 80 percent of the product cost.

Dhruv Sharma: It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, now there's enough science to support that some of these fabrics actually endocrine disruptors.

Utsav Somani: I think it's the same thing which is happening in food also, right, I think we started off this thing and then now people are getting conscious about like the ingredients and everything, so I think same thing will happen for fabrics but actually one key characteristic which I think I read about your brand and your philosophy of operating the company is that you don't allow returns, is that true? Yes, that's true. I mean, most of women's fashion online must be like, I mean, high doubledigit percentage in return, so why take the contrarian view fully?

Akshay Jain (Mlada): So, what I understood was, sir, is that we allowed returns first, once we say returns means we don't allow refunds to the consumer, okay, if you have bought from us, you can come back to the website, take any different color, take any different size, take any other products, let's assume you bought a kurta from us and you were like, I don't like this kurta, buy some other shirt, you didn't like the shirt, okay, return that also, take some other pant but we won't refund you the money, once we start refunding the money, Indian consumers actually start targeting consumers who just want to do this, you know, they'll buy a pant, they'll use it in a party and then they'll return it to you, right, so we want to target consumer, a consumer base which has that money in their pocket in which, you know, okay, if I didn't like this product, I can probably take something else from this brand and we have actually not received backlash about it.

Utsav Somani: Interesting, that's a very unique characteristic on how you're building this company as well, so I mean, you seem like the guy who's studied and is doing ads themselves and I think the public number that you quoted was 1.5 crores a month on ad spend. Yes, approximately, yes. Talk to us a little bit about that, you do it on credit, how's the ROI, return on ad spend, what are the key characteristics, anything that other D2C founders will also learn from?

Akshay Jain (Mlada): I think everything about D2C brand, if you are running a Shopify website, you want to scale it, your ads have to be really, really good, okay, that's the number one thing that you should even dream about, that okay, what should be my ads tomorrow, what do I need to shoot, how much content I need to run, also that a lot of people think on, at least on Instagram or other social media websites I've seen is that, they say that okay, we want those two organic and we don't want to run ads, right, but that is not how it actually functions, a person who's seeing your organic reel on Instagram probably is not in need of a pant right now, okay, so you're showing your views to people who are not in the buying phase currently, Meta is showing your views to people who want to buy a certain product, they're searching for it on Google, on Facebook, on Myntra, on Amazon, Meta knows that, that is the reason they're targeting it, that is the reason Meta is a billion, you know, billion trillion dollar company today, right, and what is the

Utsav Somani: minimum return on ad spend that you look like for a good performing ad, what does it look like for you?

Akshay Jain (Mlada): I think we are quite comfortable above 2.5, if something is 2.5 ROAS, we consider it as average, we keep running it, we don't close it, we'll probably increase the ad spend, if it is around 2.1, 2.2, we would say, okay, we probably need to close this and put something new in this campaign.

Dhruv Sharma: All right, you know, one thing that's very unique about social media advertising is also that if you search for something or if you're shown something, you're going to be shown five other things like that in quick succession, which almost never happens in television, right, like you'll never see Tide and Surf Excel, Panch Ads strung together, so in addition to differentiating on product, how do you differentiate on the ad itself, Akshay?

Akshay Jain (Mlada): It's a very good question, Dhruv, and I think a lot of brands are getting this wrong, that is the reason that their revenue is not growing. A friend of mine had once told me that, Akshay, everybody who sees your ad should know that this is your ad, if they're watching it the second or the third time, right, so we have developed some kind of ads in which our models will come, talk about the product, so let's say all fashion ads today is a model working on the RAM or doing photo shoots, etc., right, and they'll try to show you and sell you that product, we don't do that, our model will come and say, oh, have you tried this shirt, it's really nice on me, now I can wear this in office also, I can wear this in my kitty party also, I can wear this at my home also, it also has plus sizes, it has 15 different colors and studio option is also available, so our targeting, our way of speaking is much different than others and I think every brand needs to use what is my ad format exactly that I'm targeting, that's very important.

Utsav Somani: And you have been approached by investors, I think Rahul Mathur maybe, I think you posted about investing in you guys a few times and you've always refused capital, is it because you want to maintain independence, is it because you hate the VC treadmill or is it because that you think you can just grow without raising external capital?

Akshay Jain (Mlada): I think it's not that I don't want VC investments, we are open to it but I probably want to do a 100 crore ARR number that we think we should be able to reach in four to six months, once we reach that number, I understand that you know once I raise money then it's a race where I need to raise the next round in an year then again again again, so until unless we crack offline retail where we establish a storefront and see to it that that store is profitable, there's no point taking VC money right, so on internet how much can you grow, there has to be a point if you're taking VC money where your retail offline is really really successful, so until unless we crack that there's no point raising. And have you experimented in the offline space? No not yet, it's not something that we understand, it's not something that we have any team member with, with time we'll probably you know do an experiment on it.

Dhruv Sharma: I'm thinking of like a VC apparel analogy where it's like you do a round where you're a size M company and you're given a size XL t-shirt which is your valuation then you have to grow into it.

Akshay Jain (Mlada): True true true.

Utsav Somani: But what's next for you, are you experimenting with different categories or the focus is going deep where you are?

Akshay Jain (Mlada): We are experimenting with deeper categories, this is something we understand, I think the time that we are focusing on the Indian consumer above 30 with you know spending power, there's a lot of gap there, we are like let's assume we just launched something like a flare leggings in which four colors is a very big brand, it's a listed company, now we are fighting them, we have now launched blouses which itself was a very big white space that is also successful, so we keep launching more products that our consumers want in good fabrics, stretchable fabrics, high cotton blends and yes that's it, I think we are very soon launching a very big category in dresses and I think that will really pick up for us.

Utsav Somani: Awesome Akshay, wishing you and your brother all the best in building this company out, amazing and commendable growth on everything that you achieved, thank you so much for coming on our show. Thank you so much Utsav, I love doing this, thank you so much. Cheers, wishing you the best. All right listeners, we're moving on to our next guest, he's joining us from I think Bangalore, Vinit, is that where you're from right now?

Vinit Sarode (Wavelength): Yeah hi, HSR Bangalore.

Utsav Somani: Awesome, so let's introduce Wavelength to our audiences.

Vinit Sarode (Wavelength): Basically, Wavelength is an AI dating app where our AI speaks to you, understands everything about you and does the same with everyone else out there and then recommends you people, exactly those people who fit your intent, your vibe, your type, so you are not wasting your time meeting the wrong people on the other swipe based dating apps. Much more for intentional dating, so yeah.

Utsav Somani: And you started this as a WhatsApp first experiment and I think WhatsApp blocked you and you still right now I think launched a full native app where you're doing this but how do you think that you can be the internet version of Seema aunty?

Vinit Sarode (Wavelength): So that was the premise earlier, Seema aunty is not on an app right, like she's on your WhatsApp, she calls you, she sends you links and LinkedIn links of people, so can our web also send you LinkedIn links and WhatsApp messages? But then 40% of our users were on Android and serving them on WhatsApp got a little bit difficult, so that's why we ended up becoming, building an app for now, but yeah that's the premise.

Utsav Somani: And what's the AI native thing in this? Like I mean, apart from the AI, I mean the voice part, like is there other steps of the processes that you've automated as well?

Vinit Sarode (Wavelength): Yeah of course, so the way we understand you is of course through the voice conversation, but then you do upload about nine pictures of yourself, so through that we try and understand what is your fashion style, what does your vibe look like, do you travel a lot etc. And then when we do recommend you to people, say WhatsApp gets a recommendation, we will create a Ghibli image of WhatsApp and the other person that was recommended to show a promised future of how you both would look together. So initially we had a collage made of your pictures both, but then that got a little weird, so then we made a Ghibli image and then inside when you click on the card, they tell you why this person is recommended to you with much more detailed reasoning, which is very specific to you and that person. So yeah that's a bit, and then of course we have a few more things in pipeline where Wave can get on call with you and be like hey, so I have a few people I've been talking to, I just want to walk you through them, what do you think of them? And then on the call it sort of learns, it asks you questions, you ask it questions and you give it feedback and sort of learn from that. What if the person actually falls in love with the Wave itself? That is interesting, that will be very interesting.

Utsav Somani: That is a use case where like, okay I'm like getting to know you better, I'm falling in love with you like an AI companion.

Vinit Sarode (Wavelength): Surprisingly not, but people do asking, Wave can you tell me gossip of what other people are talking to you about? So Wave has become that buddy to people to get gossip on how other people portray themselves on the platform.

Dhruv Sharma: Can you humanize like Wave's success stories for us with some real world stories of like, yeah?

Utsav Somani: So in December, for any dating app would mean people drop off basically, you lose a customer. I didn't get you, can you repeat? Successful means that they lose, I mean you lose them as a customer.

Vinit Sarode (Wavelength): 100 percent, but the way we see success is right now dating is such a small industry, just a 10 billion dollar industry. Why is the industry that is so widely spoken in pop culture, day-to-day language, still such a small industry? It needs to be a more than 100 billion dollar industry. So success for us looks like if we can, by showing good outcomes, expand the market a lot more and get a lot more people to start using dating apps, that would be a much better success defined for us. And success stories, Dhruv, as you asked, in December one of our friends, we in fact matched them both together and they will get married by the end of this year as well. There are a bunch of our friends through our circles itself who are in a long-term relationship through the December matchmaking. Still fairly early to see results of what happened. We started matchmaking after December now in April, April 10th onwards, so to find out how the voice has changed matchmaking.

Dhruv Sharma: You know as a category, Vineet, this is one that actually has plenty of incumbents. Everyone has a point of view on why the incumbents are not working and therefore people are trying different approaches. Do you have a working theory as to why the incumbents are not working out for people on the ground?

Vinit Sarode (Wavelength): The business model of the incumbents was based on keeping the user engaged, right? The more you swipe, the more you send roses, the more you send superlikes, they make money. And that way they were not incentivized to give the user an outcome, which was get them off the Here, what if we build our business model towards outcomes? Can we probably charge the user much later in the journey when we have provided value?

Dhruv Sharma: And because of this, a lot of success feed and not substitute.

Vinit Sarode (Wavelength): I'm saying success. Yeah, exactly. And people would use it for like a few weeks, months, and then they would get overwhelmed, get fatigued, and they would drop off the app. They would see that this app is not helping me. In fact, the apps made money from people who didn't get matches. So that was fundamentally wrong with the whole form factor that was there. Hopefully voice and AI matchmaking changes it.

Dhruv Sharma: And maybe I'm oversimplifying a bit, but in order to solve the matchmaking problem, are you really solving the funnel optimization problem first? Would you say that? Would you agree? Disagree?

Vinit Sarode (Wavelength): To solve for matchmaking, I think the problem you need to solve first is to make users feel understood. Until now, users never felt understood on any dating app. It was just they had to try to be a bit more performative, be witty on dating apps, which was not themselves at all. And then even if they would match with people, go on dates, there was no sense of progress they got. The app was not learning through the dates they went on. Here the crack would be, so the aha moment where we've been seeing among users is once they go on a date or after a match, when they give that debrief to Wave, this is what worked, didn't work. And when they see that feedback they give incorporating in the next set of recommendations they've got, they're hooked. They will immediately leave Hinge or Bumble, whatever they were using, and continuously be on their plans.

Utsav Somani: And I mean, there are many other players in the AI dating space. So they might have used a different sense of technology, but talk to us a little bit about the tech stack. We've had some YCF founders come on the show as well. What provider you're using? Maybe give them a shout out as well.

Vinit Sarode (Wavelength): Yeah, sure. So we're using 11labs for our TTS, Claude Haiku for our, we're still experimenting what LLM model could work, and Deepdram of course for STTs, and LiveKit to make the whole orchestration happen. And did you experiment with other models before choosing 11labs? So yeah, currently now we're still exploring, for example, Roomic came out with Slick which is much more responsive. Would love to also try Sesame, but haven't gotten much chance over there. But sticking to 11labs for now, Smallest is also one more potential we could use. But right now we are optimizing for great quality, and the voice should also, you know, sound a bit more authoritative coming from like, you know, like an elder sister sort of a figure. And currently all the TTSs out there are optimized for sales or either for being very, you know, for NSFW cases, etc.

Dhruv Sharma: And 11labs has this amazing voice library, you know, where if you wanted to volunteer and share, offer your voice, you could actually upload a sample. And, you know, of course, download samples.

Utsav Somani: And you can earn royalty from it. So what they're actually doing, I was speaking to somebody in 11labs team recently, actually, two years back, and what they're trying to do is license voices from like some of the Bollywood stars. So whenever you use them in an ad and stuff, you can pay them royalty without actually having them as a brand ambassador or licensing this thing. So pretty interesting on what they can do once you've figured out this thing. Sorry.

Vinit Sarode (Wavelength): No, I was saying, in fact, we've been posting to asking, getting Priyanka Chopra's voice as Dave's voice.

Utsav Somani: Nice, man. That's a bomb. Like, the next round of funding lined up. But you mentioned that voice led to a 6x increase in terms of engagement for you. Is that where traditional apps fall short, where they've not been able to switch to this AI native voice first approach and text is, of course, a slightly higher effort?

Vinit Sarode (Wavelength): Not engagement, but in terms of context gathering, basically dating is basically a context problem. And earlier back in December, we had a text based onboarding and feedback collection is also text based. But people found it extremely effortful. Voice is just very natural. People end up blabbering and yapping for a lot more time. And they don't initially to everyone out there, they feel voice is very frictionful. Why will I get on a voice call? But once you're in the call, once the wave is very receptive, people end up talking, you know, by the way, our average onboarding call time, minimum required is 15 to 20 minutes, but people average has come to 15 minutes by zero. It is extremely surprising to all of us, but among 2000 about 2500 users, we've done 150,000 minutes of conversations.

Utsav Somani: So one of the other stats that you can share, like how many people have signed up average age cities that you're big on?

Vinit Sarode (Wavelength): So for now live only in Bangalore, wanna crack Bangalore properly first and then sort of repeat the playbook across Delhi, Bombay as well. Delhi is the second.

Utsav Somani: Just because like the specific choice for Bangalore is because building liquidity on the marketplace is a big problem for the date. I mean, the dating pool. Exactly.

Vinit Sarode (Wavelength): And also we had a very like our circles were in Bangalore. It was easier to test and Bangalore people are much more, you know, forgiving. They give us feedback. Most of our users are PMs and designers and tech people. So they show up to the office every single day, help us build a product. Your panel here is broken. You could fix that. So it's much fun to build a Bangalore folks, but excited to build in Delhi and Bombay as well. It'll be a completely different experience. Yeah. Other stats, I think it's still fairly early. We've just done one launch push now planning a much bigger campaign in May where we would potentially go to Delhi, Bombay as well.

Dhruv Sharma: I'd love to know what you were doing before this, Vinit. Like what was the path that led you here? And how did this come about? Like, was it, was it one defining moment or something? Friends.

Utsav Somani: It's like a personal experience problem. I'm unable to find somebody in the dating pool. Let me just build an app for it.

Vinit Sarode (Wavelength): That was in fact true. My other co-founder, Ishan, that was his problem statement. Cracked profile, IIT Delhi graduate, insane dancer, has gotten viral multiple times for dance videos, has worked at good startups like Front Row Stable Money. But for the last three years, he was on dating apps. He was even on matrimony apps. He went on multiple dates, but it was just extremely fatiguing, extremely effortful, time consuming. So that was his personal problem statement. He was exploring and it would last more than a year now. And then me and Jayant, my other co-founder, we were exploring consumer, we were exploring sales, personalized sales calls, where a sales agent, AI agent could call you and knowing who would serve a Dhruv and do a personalized sales call to sell a loan to you or something like that. But then realized that the same technology could help build a much bigger opportunity, create a much bigger opportunity in dating because dating was one niche that hasn't been cracked yet. So we three got together and started building Wavelength.

Utsav Somani: And one, I think, final question, unless Dhruv has something else. Antler invested in you. You went through, I think, their fellowship program as well. One line from their memo, I think, I mean, sort of expands this conversation a bit. Matchmaking is just the wedge. The deeper opportunity is an AIOS for human connection. Can you extend that for us? Like, what does it mean?

Vinit Sarode (Wavelength): Yeah. So Facebook started as a dating platform. It was earlier called Face Smash, where you could just swipe on college students. YouTube, again, started as a dating profile and then both turned out to be world's first and second largest social networks. Dating, it just gives us that. So for dating, people are willing to open up a lot more and share a lot more context about themselves. That allows us to learn the way, learn what humans need, what their preferences are, what attracts them towards other people, etc. And once we crack dating, which is a very high intensity problem statement, then we can sort of expand into much other different categories, right? Like now the Wave can help you find friends. Wave can help you find a travel buddy. Wave can help you find a co-founder, your next hire, whatever, since Wave knows you so much. And Wave has locked you in because of the context it has gotten about you just through the onboarding itself. Leave the feedback it's been collecting. But the real learnings, by the way, happen after you've gone on a date and you give your feedback. So we know so much about you that Wave is probably the best person in the world to connect you with anyone for anybody.

Dhruv Sharma: It's going to be an interesting approach, you know how people sometimes jokingly say that every app is a dating app because you'll get like unwanted answers. You'll have decided to invert the problem on its head. We have a question from YouTube for you. Yeah, which is that what's the gender split on the platform apps like Tinder and Bumble have had to actively push aggressively to drive female adoption? Are you seeing a similar challenge? If so, how are you tackling it? Good question. Good question.

Vinit Sarode (Wavelength): Yeah, that is obviously the fundamental problem building in India, at least for dating, is most women by 25 are either in a serious relationship or have been engaged or married already. And until now, by the way, our only source of acquisition has been Twitter. So gender ratio is very screwed about. We have 20% women and 80% men on the platform. Still fairly good compared to other dating apps and of course, the gender ratio of Twitter. But soon now, when we actually expand, when we do targeted marketing, of course, then we can make the ratio much better. That's the plan. That's the biggest problem statement actually we are facing. How do we sort of get more women users on the app? And that's fairly easy. That's an easy GTM problem. Using better influencers, targeted marketing, smart offline activation with better smaller communities where women go more. And I think the answer to getting more other women on the platform is women use more product when they see other women using it and they see value. Other women getting value from the product. So just we've been heads down focused on building a great product that gives great value. We in fact have a WhatsApp community of thousand women, thousand men, separate groups where they come and help us build the app. Every day they're coming on to our office, helping us. You could do your matchmaking this way. You could build your onboarding this way. Why did Wave ask me this question? Why is my profile built this way? So just building trust among smaller circles and then that will automatically spread. That is the bet we are taking right now.

Utsav Somani: I think you're taking each day as it comes, but what are the next milestones you think will take you to the next fundraiser?

Vinit Sarode (Wavelength): So right now we've gotten about 5,500, 800 downloads. Got great learnings from these. The last two weeks have just been stabilizing, fixing bugs, stabilizing the product. Now next milestones can be hit 100,000. Go acquire the next five metro cities in India. Get everything there is to learn from the tier one audiences. Build the best product in the world. By design and through even the voice experience is probably the best among all the dating apps even outside in the US as well. And then in the end it's just the best product wins. So then go to the biggest market where there is the highest revenue pool. We're now focusing just on great product building.

Utsav Somani: Awesome. Very wishing you all the best on this journey. Thank you for coming on this wonderful weekend.

Vinit Sarode (Wavelength): Thank you. You're all too lovely.

Utsav Somani: Yeah, thank you. Alright Dhruv, now it's you and me. Let's quickly run down the news before we let people go for the weekend. So Elon of course in the news he announced that they have an option to buy Cursor for 60 billion this year after their IPO which is tentatively in September-October period. Or they have a 10 billion for joint development if they don't exercise the 60 billion dollar price. And they're also trying to do something with Mistral. And Cursor famously used XAI GPUs as well to train their Composer 2.5 model. I think they're playing catch up to Anthropic here.

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah, that could be it. The other chatter going around is also SpaceX AI has their IPO coming up and at this point it's a rocket launch company, it's a mass colonization company, it's a satellite internet company, it's a space data center company, social media company, frontier AI model company. And then there was a tweet from Elon in March where he said XAI was not built right the first time around. And so there are projects that he's scrapped, there's people that he's let go. And all this while he also has Colossus, that giant data center which has half of the world's compute. I mean I'm just joking but a lot of compute and not enough problems to put that to and Cursor has the product and the data.

Utsav Somani: Because I don't know anyone, like we discussed that anyone who's using Grok in the right way, the way that it was intended. I think they're still playing catch up in terms of the features that they're building and the plugins and stuff. By the way OpenAI 5.5 came out on Codex, I think that's a tool worth experimenting on.

Utsav Somani: Using that tool, I think that's pretty nice.

Dhruv Sharma: But on this Cursor thing, so three months to IPO, nearly not enough time to conclude the acquisition and so which is why this deferred agreement, option to buy and then of course kill switch. And he had one for Twitter too, you remember the other big deal that was like three, four years ago.

Utsav Somani: But one thing, I mean the best AI investor of our current times might be sitting behind. All the time. And he's tweeting his returns and the returns are loco because he said, I mean FTX put 200k into Cursor in April 2022 at 4 million valuation, that's a 5% stake, which at the 60 billion dollar price tag is worth 3 billion. I mean that is just insane. And not just that, they had 8% of Anthropic and they had to sell that across when the liquidation was going on of FTX assets. They sold it for 1.3 billion, which would now be worth 64 billion. So this total portfolio that he's accumulated at FTX at current price, as per his tweet, would be 114 billion. Anthropic, SpaceX, Solana, Robinhood, Cursor, Genesis Digital and many others. So yeah.

Dhruv Sharma: But does he actually have the shares? I have no idea because it would have been good enough to pay off all creditors, right?

Utsav Somani: Yes. I mean creditors got more than what they were owed. So I think during the FTX liquidation, which was going on during the court trial, they had to liquidate all of these assets and most of them got sold for face value. So that 200k into Cursor got sold at exactly 200k. But he actually had the shares. And Robinhood, I think he owned close to 10% personally at one point. So he was ahead of his time for sure. Talking about Anthropic, Mythos and Indian regulators. Our finance minister met with the banks, RBI official and METI representatives to assess the systemic risks from the Claude Mythos models. I think, yeah, I mean, people are scared of what this can do.

Dhruv Sharma: It has been an air of caution all around the world among central bankers and finance ministers and so on. And so I believe RBI is in touch with the Bank of England, with the Federal Reserve about what they know. And now Anthropic has an India office. I wouldn't be surprised if they hear from both RBI and the Ministry of Finance to come see if India can get an early preview. And again, you know, just be prepared. Cricket season and NPCI.

Utsav Somani: NPCI as well, yeah. Cricket season going on in India. So Polly Market in Kalshi, which are global prediction markets, are keeping people busy. Even though in India, of course, gaming is strictly banned, strictly prohibited. But there are bets being made on the IPL. Over 100 million has been traded on prediction markets around the IPL league. And according to the 2026 IPL numbers on these markets, Punjab Kings is supposed to win with 31 percent probability. And RCB is second, Bangalore, which is 21 percent. Do you watch any of the matches?

Dhruv Sharma: You know, I don't. But RCB is the one with new owners, right?

Utsav Somani: You know, the Armand Birla group, Times Internet. Not Times Internet, but the Times group. I mean, yeah, crazy. I mean, these valuations of these teams, 1.8 billion, and they become like these global, this thing.

Dhruv Sharma: And you're also betting on state assembly elections, by the way, on Kalshi and Polly Market.

Utsav Somani: Dude, they're betting on everything. That was apparently like a manipulation of basically the one weather sensor at Paris airport, which is not attended. Somebody used a hairdryer to heat it up just so that the prediction market on weather would go up and down. And he basically cashed out, not a big amount, but still, I mean, rigging the game, basically.

Dhruv Sharma: There's a special forces guy on the Maduro raid who also, I mean.

Utsav Somani: Made 400K, dude. Made 400K.

Dhruv Sharma: I mean, Navy SEAL can basically. Why should senators have all the funds?

Utsav Somani: But they're trying to ban, I think, these insider trading markets, even for senators also now. I don't know if it's happening or not, but whenever Trump is making an announcement regarding the war, there's always just five minutes before that a big short or a big long opens up on the oil and ends up cashing out in a big way. So you never know what's happening in this world.

Dhruv Sharma: And of course, we must remember to disclaim all of this by saying none of this is investment advice. This is just purely for informational, if anything, for entertainment purposes.

Utsav Somani: Exactly. And Bernstein, open letter to PM Modi, where he's saying basically, or the firm is saying that India risks becoming a user or a consumer of these AI products and labs instead of being a creator. Like our major industry, which is the IT services, the BPO industry risks being attacked by the Gen AI movement, which is going on. So we have to spend more on R&D. Think about how we can bring down the subsidies and focus more on R&D and growth and more advancement in our manufacturing capabilities as well.

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah. I think on the manufacturing side, the crux of the input is that India should continue moving up the value chain and from low value to higher value processes. And also be early to do a few cycles because I think we've been caught on the short end of the stick a couple of times. We've been sort of late and then playing catch up.

Utsav Somani: I mean, catch up hard, but catch up fast, but I think it would be nice. Good word of caution. I think people should know at least what the risks are in the future. And when somebody of repute like a Bernstein puts out a report, they've studied different industries, including food delivery and many other industries and put out good, smart research as well. Like how Zomato and Swiggy were also at risk because of GLP-1 drugs losing their patent status in March as well. Of course, yet to be seen if that has any real impact, but they at least do these side thinking quests, which I think are beneficial for us from time to time to think about. And AngelList in the news, Dhruv.

Utsav Somani: AngelList was in the news.

Dhruv Sharma: AngelList is in the news. AngelList is out with, in fact, it's with a new company, or you could say, or a new public venture fund, which is called USBC. Naval is chairman of the investment committee. Ankur Nagpal is involved, a few others. And this is really AngelList trying to build an endowment of sorts for the American public, where the idea is that even non-accredited folks, retail basically can come into the fund and for tickets as low as $500, build a portfolio that will then index further into SPVs and funds and secondaries and some make some direct investments as well. And yeah, all of this is in a wrapper that makes sense for retail and not just for accredited investors from a tax standpoint, reporting, all of that.

Utsav Somani: It's sort of like the Vanguard of private market investing, just opening it up to public, even though it's not an ETF, it's going to be marked to market on NAV of the underlying holdings.

Dhruv Sharma: That is true. Yes, yes. I mean, Vanguard is maybe the closest analogy, but really, this is its own thing. It's not an ETF because you can't sell on a whim. And most ETFs with private stocks in any case will sell at huge discounts. In this case, it's a closed-ended fund. And so there will be quarterly redemption windows where you can sell up to 5% of your holdings, no more, but priced at NAV. All the other details, again, this is not investment advice of anything of the sort. It's just interesting information. This is also not open to Indian investors or international investors at this time. But if you're curious about what this is, all the information is in the prospectus, on X, and elsewhere as well.

Utsav Somani: But I think it's fascinating that the US is innovating. And I think people are getting indirect or direct access to these private market companies, because I think what the language on the website of USVC is that IPO is not the entry point, it is the exit, because all the returns in these private market companies are being captured before they hit the public market. So I think this is one of the ways that Angelus is trying to solve for liquidity, not liquidity, but access to these private market companies for the retail audience. Of course, super risky to not put anything that you are not willing to use and not open to Indian investors. And none of this is investment advice.

Dhruv Sharma: And those two big trends that we've discussed previously in the show itself, which is, again, companies staying private longer. And then finally, when they list, they list at eye-watering valuations now. And so, yes, that's what this is about.

Utsav Somani: All right. Let's wind down for the weekend. Thank you so much for tuning in, guys. Have a wonderful weekend. Stay safe. And we'll see you on Monday at 4 o'clock.

Akshay Jain (Mlada): Bye-bye. See you on Monday.