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Dhruv Sharma: - Hey there listeners, it is a privilege to be back with Stream 101. Utsav and I are recharged and raring to go.

We've got three very very interesting founders for you today and the first of those founders is Vishal of V-Rise. Vishal, it's great to have you on the offline network.

Vishal Chopra — Co-founder & CEO, WeRize: Pleasure to have you, you know, be on the podcast.

Utsav Somani: be with us. No, thank you so much. And this is coming at a special time, we'll start our sprint towards the next 100 episodes.

So thank you for joining us. Congrats on the recent milestone and raising a pre-CDC as well. Can you introduce what WeRise does for our listeners?

Vishal Chopra — Co-founder & CEO, WeRize: So in one line, we are trying to build India's largest AI led social distribution fintech geared towards the small towns and city India consumers. That's like in brief.

Utsav Somani: What kind of products and what kind of financial products are we talking here?

Vishal Chopra — Co-founder & CEO, WeRize: Sure. So all kinds of financial products, secured unsecured lending, insurance saving products, but they're all geared and built specifically towards the middle income, aspirational middle class of the small towns and cities, which we call India too. That's the name we call them.

But that does the focus here for us.

Utsav Somani: I think a more philosophical question for me to like just start this off with you is most people choose like these tier one app native fintech purchasers and consumers, you went the other way. Like, so what made you choose that other end of the spectrum? Because people believe that segment is very hard to sell to.

Vishal Chopra — Co-founder & CEO, WeRize: Yeah, so, so essentially, you know, so I'm not somebody from financial services. So I, I actually started as a techie working us for a couple of years, came back to India MBA, then I was lucky to be the first out of Amazon India. And at Amazon, when I worked there in the launch team, I really understood the power of marketplaces and network effects.

So that was something pretty cool. I learned. And then I had a stint in financial services, I was CP of lending card.

So and then I decided to start with Himanshu, who's my co founder in an AI and a data science expert. Now, coming from outside, and we were able to see some gaping holes in Indian financial services. So a very important metric that we saw was that while thanks to all the stuff that are hard and the gender accounts, etc, happened, the whole jam Trinity, almost everybody in India had a bank account.

But the penetration of credit insurance, wealth management, saving everything was in the top 5%. So we call India in three layers, right in terms of income levels. And people say there is India and Bharat, but nobody knows what is Bharat, right?

Bharat is the people who are like really poor, is the Bharat people who are the middle class people, then who's India, nobody knows, right? So we kind of have a slightly different connotation in terms of PPP income levels. There is UK, Brazil, and Sub Saharan Africa.

That's the way we, you know, think of income levels in India. So the UK of India is the top five to 6% population. And 60%, 70% of GDP comes from this white collared, or the, you know, the Amazon Internet Market, that's the customer for your Swiggy, Zomato, those people like these are digital native, white collared or slightly larger business owners living in the larger cities.

Most of the fintechs, as well as the big private banks or insurance companies or mutual funds, they all cater to this because this is very high ARPU, very high, you know, profitability if you do it right. And then you have the Brazil of India, which is the middle income consumers in four or 5000 towns and cities, which is always focused on. And then you have the Sub Saharan Africa equivalent in terms of income levels, which is the micro finance and the poor people.

And that's where all the government schemes, like your MNREGA, or, you know, different schemes primarily focus on, you know, helping those consumers, that 75% population 10% of GDP. So we stayed away from India one, because there is too much competition. We stayed away from India three, because there is no data and no money.

Right? And it's okay, you know, people should serve that segment, but not for us. You know, like you need to be somebody working with closely with government to deal with that segment.

So there is this 20% of population 30% of GDP. And they need these customers in 5000 cities, they need everything lending, insurance savings. Now, what we realized is, that segment of consumers, the problem is the right go to market strategy.

So pure digital does not work at all. So if you go and try to acquire these customers only with the digital channels without any human touch, that completely fails. The convergence don't happen.

Like there are some very large payment companies, which have been in business for 15 years. And they've not turned even a rupee of profit, because the whole I bought an app model, basically, where pure app does not work. See, this DIY fintech does not work for India, too.

They need somebody who can, you know, work with them, they need some level of assistance. And case in point, right, like some of the largest payment companies in India, despite running a fairly large business for 15 years, have not turned in a rupee of profit, because the hypothesis was, you burn billions of dollars, you, you, you, you know, acquire these customers, and then you cross sell various products that are not really happened the way probably a lot of people earlier imagine. So because in India, the real India to need some level of assistance.

So that's what is going to our business model. So what we are is a three sided marketplace. So companies like Amazon, like my previous company is a two sided marketplace.

On one side, you have the one side you have, you know, like the sellers and then the other side, you have the consumers, and the more sellers you have more product, more selection, better customer experience. And then this is called the Amazon flywheel. The similar flywheel is there in Uber, where you have more driver, more consumer, more consumer, more driver, and then you add new products.

Right, if you go to us, then you pretty much buy your food and grocery, everything on Uber, right. So, so we wanted to apply that kind of a business model on financial services, right into this large under penetrated segment. So what we are is a three sided marketplace.

So on one side of the marketplace, we have these consumers, which need all the financial products. The second we have these freelancers who want to sell, like LIC agents, etc, who want to sell and make money, right. So we give them the products, customized for India to customers.

And on the third side of the supply, where we have banks, NBFCs, mutual fund insurance companies, bond platform, etc. Either old school or fintechs, even fintechs are taking our help to reach these into customers because they are not able to do it themselves. So we work with them. And with all the data that we have in our AI platform, we co create co brand financial products, and sell to our freelancers. So I'll repeat three sided marketplace, one side consumers, second size manufacturers, where we co manufacture and third side are these freelancers who want to sell and make money. So these are LIC agents, these are banking correspondents, there are 60 less such people in India, but already doing some level of financial services and intermediation.

So we give these freelancers the AI platform. And then freelancers basically with all the insights are able to customize and create the right products for the India to consumers and sell. It's been working really well for us.

Our numbers are in public, we are at $60 million of gross revenue run rate, $32 million of net revenue run rate, $15 million of EBITDA run rate, and $7 million of profit run rate. These are the numbers that are public. And we are hopefully, you know, be able to go public with much better numbers in a few years.

Utsav Somani: I see the smile on your face. I love it. Congrats on this journey.

Dhruv Sharma: Thank you. Vishal, you know, when we drive away from the major cities, towards relatively smaller cities and towns, etc, obviously, the cost of living is much lower. The aspirations are different.

So what can we learn from you about, say the, you know, the the savings behavior of your user base, India too, as you put it, and also what are their short term and long term investing goals, if anyone else is building in the same space as you, and they want to learn from your experience?

Vishal Chopra — Co-founder & CEO, WeRize: Oh, so essentially, you know, one thing that, you know, benefits both me and my co founder Himanshu is we come from India too, both small city, lower middle income households to start with, and then obviously got educated and then moved to India. Right. So we being lived through that experience really helps.

Now, if you look at these people, when it comes to their saving and investment behavior, they they are not able to understand something like a mutual fund at all. Right? Like, after so many years of mutual funds, how many people have invested in mutual funds in India, it's four and a half crore people, that's it.

Right? How many people have health insurance, again, in single digit, single digit percentages, right? So the thing is, somebody has to customize the right products for them. Right? So what do they do right now? Why did they keep money in some and the banking is with your PSUs or corporate banks.

So those customers currently keep their money, and we have a lot of data. So we have data of around 50 lakh households in 5000 towns and cities, their banking of the households, like 12 months of banking of the households, their credit bureaus, their property papers, utility bills, like and whatnot, at a household level, like we have the richest data in small town cities. So we can pretty much we are one of the biggest authorities when it comes to the data in small towns and cities.

And what we have realized is and even the UPI behavior, we are spending the money that also is available to us. What we realized is very, very small percentage invest in mutual funds. So that is not really something that they do.

They put money, they keep money in either their PSU or corporate banks, or they invest in chit funds. That's where the money goes. The chit fund gives them 12 to 13%, 14% of returns.

But the unfortunate reality is there are a lot of frauds. In fact, I've lived through one. So I remember my father, like we lost our entire life savings in the funds.

Right. And we basically had a lot of trouble because of that. So what we are trying to do for that segment is we have recently launched bonds, fixed income bonds, and government also wants the same.

So the fixed income bonds, which gives anywhere from 10 to 14% enlisted, well rated companies, it's a much, much, much better product for the consumers, as opposed to, you know, buying in chit funds. I think that that's what we're pushing. So it's a new product for us, we've recently gone live with it, with the help of some fintech platforms.

And we are, you know, going to push that product really hard with the help of our freelancers, because somebody has to tell these consumers that these are good companies where you're buying the bonds, these are rated, you know, approved by SEBI and stuff like that, right, and help these consumers not put money in some chit funds, and rather put money in something much better. So, so yeah, like, we're basically creating an entirely new market, we call ourselves a category creator, like India too, is completely shielded away from fintechs. You can't sell pure digital through these people.

And what the biggest innovation, what we have done, apart from the AI platform is our ability to manage these freelancers and run this network without any branches and sales team. If you look at LIC, they have 40 lakh agents, and to manage those 40 lakh agents, there are 2 lakh employees, and 1000s of branches. And that's why their opex is very high.

And despite the size, the profitability is very low. The reason why we became profitable so quickly, while we started in 2019, we had COVID. So we kind of, you know, hibernated for two years.

So our company started in 2021, second half, we are less than five years in operations. 2023, we were profitable. And I when I say profit, this is proper, you know, TAT, not like some adjusted ABIDA, community ABIDA, all that stuff, right?

Bombay wala profit, we call it the Bombay wala profit, not the Bangalore wala profit. Sorry, so we have removed that layer of managing. So we have these freelancers with the help of our AI platform we manage, and we save that cost.

So we build this distribution and we are able to do it at a lower price.

Utsav Somani: Sorry, this layer that you created, like I think so between a product and the end consumer, there is a human sitting in the middle, right? And you said that you AI led features and education as well, which you use to sort of manage this network of 20,000 people, that's what's listed on your website. So can you tell us a little bit more about how do you prevent misselling from happening on your platform, because incentives can vary across different product lines as well, right?

Vishal Chopra — Co-founder & CEO, WeRize: So one thing is that we do have a direct in, you know, connect with the consumer. So because there is a customer app also. So the way this whole network works is we have these 20,000 or so right now, actually, there are many, many more in waitlist.

So we are very selective in whom we bring and there's a lot of checks that happen. So what happens is, like, think of Amazon or Uber, right? Like, finally, it's the ratings and the feedback, etc, that, you know, help you churn out the bad folks and keep on promoting the good folks, right?

So we also have some similar stuff. So if there are reports of misselling, then we obviously take those people out. Right?

There's sometimes specifically when it comes to lending and all there are people who will take money from customers, etc. Those things are explicitly banned from the platform. So we also check such people out.

Now, what we do is the customer has their own app in the local language. So once the freelancer onboards a customer, and how do they find customers? So either let's say I'm an LIC agent in Latur.

And I already know this customer, because I've sold an LIC policy to this customer. And I will say, okay, this customer now needs a health insurance, or they need a bond or they need a home loan or a loan against property. And then the freelancer can put the details, but then the customer has to download the app, give us all the consent.

And the KYC happens directly with that consumer, because we also work with regulated institutions, we are a regulated institution ourselves. So we have to do the KYC. So one sort of fraud is where the freelancer can impersonate somebody else, and take the money on the behalf of consumer and cheat somebody.

So that gets taken care of because the customer has to download the app on the phone number that is linked to the Aadhaar. So that KYC happens through us, or through the partner financial institutions. So the impersonation problem, you know, of duping somebody that goes away.

Now comes the miss selling. And that's where we educate the consumer also. So there are a lot of videos, all the data, all the insights on what is the product that is the right thing for you.

And then the freelancer helps in pushing the case. But the customer is also told in the local language with the help of videos and the creatives, that this is what you're buying into. So we provide in the local language, all the things to the customers.

And then there is typically, if it's a high ticket purchase, there would be some kind of, you know, information that you are okay, and satisfied, you know what you're buying into. And that's how we prevent that. But but some, some of these things, you will always have bad actors.

And then there are bad actors, when we have feedback, and we have enough of those feedbacks, then we chuck them out. Same as Uber, like if you, you know, have a driver, and there are a lot of negative feedback coming about a driver, then you chuck that driver out of the platform. So we follow those kind of rules where it's a self-correcting mechanism.

Dhruv Sharma: Shraddha, I want to understand one more thing about, again, the behavior, right, consumer behavior, which is like, we get it, you're telling us people find it hard to buy financial services products from an app. But the same people are using WhatsApp for so many things, day to day, the same people are on Instagram, in fact, they make very entertaining, very amusing content, which flows around the same people also using UPI for day to day purchases, and everything. So I want to understand the role of the freelancers.

Are they there to bridge like trust deficit really? Or are they there to kind of, you know, provide the activation energy that the consumers need to purchase a financial product or service? Both, both.

Okay, and one more question while you while you elaborate with an answer. What's the proposition for the freelancers like working with Veeray's? How does their book grow?

And you know, how does their life transform?

Vishal Chopra — Co-founder & CEO, WeRize: Second one is easy, they make money. So, so what's the profile of people?

Utsav Somani: Like, are they I mean, I mean, sort of like, this is their sole income source? Or are they doing something else? And this is something on the side for them?

Like, what's the typical it's, it's a mix, it's a mix.

Vishal Chopra — Co-founder & CEO, WeRize: Very similar to LIC, right? Like there are people who do that for a living, right? And they only sell LIC policies.

Sometimes they will also empanel few more employees to, you know, make a business out of it, like small proprietors who are just selling LICs. So now what we do is we give them various financial products that LIC does not have, right? And they make more money.

So there is one profile who's doing this for a living. And then there are people who are doing something else, like they are they have a day job. Like if you if you remember ever meeting your LIC uncles, a lot of them would be working in a PSU during the day.

And over the weekend, they'll be taking a side income. So we have those kind of people also that there are people who are retired from doing a full time day job, and they see this as more lucrative. So there are all kinds of people we have seen.

And that's where our AI Power Platform, you know, helps where we are able to, with all the data and the insights, we are able to tell this freelancer what's the best product for this particular consumer based on the data of that consumer. For example, if for that consumer, we have the banking, we have the property papers, we have utility bills, credit bureau of the households, we are able to tell this freelancer that this is what we'll sell. And then it becomes much easier.

Utsav Somani: Are you able to say a number on air about the medium earning of one of these 20,000 people? Around 7,000 per month. Around 7,000 per month.

Vishal Chopra — Co-founder & CEO, WeRize: Similar to LIC right now. And this is when we have, frankly, a limited product suite. They're adding new products every quarter.

Utsav Somani: Okay. As a final closing question, Rishal, our next guest is already here. But tell us a little bit about lending via your NBFC.

I believe you have one also. So how does the process work? How are you thinking about NPAs and stuff when you're bringing somebody on to the first formal credit cycle of this?

Vishal Chopra — Co-founder & CEO, WeRize: So for us, NBFC, primarily, we don't do a lot of balance sheet lending. So NBFC, primarily, we use for co-lending activities. We work with other partner institutions, banks, or NBFCs, and we basically co-originate, we underwrite, we take the collections, but we also have a risk sharing mechanism based on the RBI guidelines.

So for that, we primarily rely on our AI underwriting model, which is trained on almost 50 lakh households now, 5 million households across 5000 cities. We have this AI scoring, which has almost 5000 data points per consumer. And that scoring tells us the probability of default, which is all in-house developed.

So our AI philosophy is everything is built in-house. So above the model layer, everything is built in-house. We have almost 150 people in technology product and data science and AI platform, and everything is built ground up in our own IP.

So our underwriting model helps us, a lot of them are new to credit customers, or very, very thin file customers, like 80 to 90% customers have never had a, you know, proper formal loan in their life, right? So we are able to underwrite them, and our GNPA is best in class. So our GNPA right now is around 1.5%, which is pretty much best in class. And that's the performance of that is one of the reasons why we are so profitable. As I mentioned, we are at 7 million ARR of profit. So that's working.

Utsav Somani: Wishing you all the best. And I hope all these numbers grow. And thank you so much for coming on the show.

Congrats on the recent milestones as well. Yeah, thank you. All right, listeners, we're moving on to our next segment.

We've got Niharika from Bombay. Did I get the name right, Niharika?

Niharika Goenka — Founder, Boombay: Yeah, you did.

Utsav Somani: I'm very bad with pronunciation. So the line of yours, which I'm trying to pull out, flavor satiates, food never does, right? I think you've said it before.

So can you unpack it for us? Before we introduce?

Niharika Goenka — Founder, Boombay: Yes, absolutely. So, so I think what that kind of means is that typically, when you're trying to eat a healthy, clean diet, what you're not really what you're not looking for is that you're not looking for like a huge quantity of food. You're looking for flavorful food, you're looking for food that really excites you that gives you variety, that engages you.

And I think that if you have a little bit of that, then typically you will end up leaving satiated. I think that there's this misnomer today that clean food or healthy food has become boring, or has become unappetizing. And I think that that's pretty far from the truth.

So flavor satiates, it's not the food that does it.

Utsav Somani: And what does Bombay do?

Niharika Goenka — Founder, Boombay: So Bombay is India's cleanest condiments company. And by that I mean that don't just stop the buck at no additives, no preservatives. We are actually one of the first brands in India and definitely globally as well to commit to using whole pressed oils in a packaged food format.

We also have no refined sugars. We have really pushed the envelope and trying to source sustainably, package sustainably, also 100% vegan. So what I like to often say is that no additives, no preservatives, nothing artificial is really just the tip of the iceberg and what it really means to be clean.

Dhruv Sharma: Which one is the hero product? Which ones are the bestsellers? It's hard to guess because India has such flavor profiles and you know, palettes.

So we need that answer coming from you.

Niharika Goenka — Founder, Boombay: So it's a five chili oil. That's very much our best selling product across all platforms.

Utsav Somani: Nice. And I mean, but clean label must be hard because all of the sources and brands which are out there have a shelf life that can of course allow general trade and modern trade to happen for them. But like in your case, do you think that's a problem and a limiting factor?

Niharika Goenka — Founder, Boombay: So shelf life is not a problem for us. And I mean, this is something that I worked on myself. I don't think that this is a secret, quite frankly, in the food industry, especially in this category.

It's just that it requires a lot of effort, a lot of consistency, a lot of dedication to product. But today across most of our products, we do have a nine month shelf life at ambient temperatures. And we need refrigeration only after the product is opened.

So in that sense, we really are kind of, we really, I mean, GT, MT, all of this stuff is really not a problem for us in terms of scaling. Yes, once we, you know, go to export, and you know, whenever we do decide to do that, we will have to push for a nine month shelf life. But today within India, we're good.

Dhruv Sharma: You know, this should have occurred to me earlier, when you guys were talking about flavor satiating, you know, when the Artemis 2 mission happened, Niharika, like the astronauts who just got back from space, they said that even on the International Space Station, one of the most coveted things they have is this huge carton full of hot sauces. They're ready to eat meals, and of course, taste bland in space. And so every incoming spacecraft brings with it like a fresh supply of hot sauces.

Maybe you should speak with SX and NASA.

Niharika Goenka — Founder, Boombay: I must.

Utsav Somani: What is happening to the supply chain during the war?

Niharika Goenka — Founder, Boombay: Yeah, yeah, we've been we've been trying for sure. It's affected everything, right? It's affected.

It's affected packaging material, raw materials. Now, we're really worried about the rains being delayed, that'll affect crops. And we have nothing to hide behind in the product.

It's literally just the ingredients. So if we go through a cycle when there is bad crops, that affects our prices, that affects availability. And, you know, we have to kind of make do and figure out how we're still going to supply quantities, even necessarily without that kind of supply.

So, so yeah, building a clean label brand in India, that's reliant on ingredients, is a super huge challenge. And I imagine it's going to get tough over the next few years as climate change kind of really accelerates.

Dhruv Sharma: Talk to us a little bit about the brand itself, right? The choice of name and how you've been intentional about, you know, the brand language and everything else. Yes.

Niharika Goenka — Founder, Boombay: So, um, so I'll take you back to when I was actually a student. So I studied nutrition and exercise physiology at Columbia University, came back to Bombay in 2015. And at that time, I had a professor who was 87 years old.

And she really taught us about how our food systems are impacting climate change and vice versa. And I was really inspired by that, came back home to Bombay, realized that I didn't want to make a career out of becoming a nutritionist per se. But I kind of, I think the question that I started asking myself a long time ago was that what if FMCG companies built products that were truly good for you and truly good for the planet?

And if we could do that as a large FMCG company, how different would our world look? And that was really the starting point and went through a whole bunch of iterations. And I think finally, in about 2020, 2021, decided to do the customer research, do it right, hired a brand strategist at that point.

And, and I think a number of things that we realized is we wanted a name that was really easy to remember, easy to pronounce, we knew that we wanted to export eventually. And so we knew that, you know, that we, the name had to reflect India in some way or another. And the truth of the brand is what we kind of landed on is that we are trying to help people, we're trying to help our customers move away from boring food.

So we want excitement in our food, we want creativity, we want to inspire people. And that's where the boom came from. So it was an explosion of flavor.

And, and plus, it was trademarkable. So that ended up being obviously a very key concern. And that's where boom came from.

Utsav Somani: And how do you think about flavors, global, Indian, different parts of India consuming different flavors? Like, what is the research for that look like?

Niharika Goenka — Founder, Boombay: Um, maybe should not say this in a podcast, but I'll say this anyways. But I think one of our key customer insights in terms of what we've been experiencing is that in India, garlic and chili is, is like at the forefront, you put garlic and chili and almost in multiple formats in multiple different ways. And people just tend to lap it up.

So it can be an Italian sauce, but it could be super high in garlic and chili and people will love it, right? It could literally be like, I don't know, like a Thai sauce or an Asian sauce, and you put plenty of garlic and chili and people will love it. So like, really, I think that India is getting a lot more experimental, we're getting a lot more interesting in terms of what we choose in terms of our flavors.

But we do like bold flavors. And we do like those flavors to be expressed in the format of garlic and chili.

Utsav Somani: There's a question from our live audience from Theo. What percentage of your sales come from QuickCommerce, BlinkIt versus your website?

Niharika Goenka — Founder, Boombay: So we're not listed on QuickCommerce as yet, actually, that's the big shift that we're making right now. But I mean, going forward, we will expect that to be at least 70% of our sales. Oh, wow.

Yeah. As an F&B brand, I mean, the model has to be QuickCommerce first now.

Dhruv Sharma: And talk a little bit about the inputs, Niharika. I mean, we're talking spices, we're talking condiments, you know, different parts of India known for different things. Where are you sourcing from?

How have you gone about constructing that entire supply chain?

Niharika Goenka — Founder, Boombay: Oh, it was a lot of research. And, you know, I often like to say that Bombay, I think at the heart of it is really a food anthropology brand. We are really inspired by Indian ingredients.

And, you know, my favorite story is that we were looking, we knew that we wanted to build a range of salad dressings, we still see that as a white space in India. But what we did is that we looked around and there were no real native souring agents in India. And then we stumbled upon kokum.

If you guys have ever heard of kokum, it's like this little fruit. Yeah, and it's a little fruit that's kind of grown on, you know, the western coastal regions of India. We sourced it kokum after it's a fruit, it's dried, and then it's either salted, or it's sweetened.

If it's sweetened, it becomes sharbat. If it's salted, it becomes agal. And so we sourced the agal.

And that is a souring agent, essentially, and we created a salad dressing out of it. So for us, it might not be what we call a scale skew. But it's definitely a brand skew.

And it's something that I think really helps protect the voice, the integrity, the intention behind the brand. We sourced about 70 odd ingredients from across India. We've sourced about, I mean, we use only two peppercorns today.

But in order to use two of those black peppercorns, we went and we sourced 11. We've sourced about 14 native chilies of India so far. We've used only about five or six, I think now.

You know, and each of these chilies, they have a history, they have a heritage, they have a culture. And that's really the thought process and the excitement behind the brand.

Utsav Somani: And what was the one that was there in Darjeeling? The one that they sourced? Was it the dragon chili?

Or was it something that like, I mean, can literally kill you, I think almost?

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah, I think we were talking about Bhujolika. Oh, Bhujolika, yeah. Maybe that's what you say, you know.

I think every region has this one chili which could kill you if you have it in the proportions. But speaking of Niharika, do you think we can have this, we can have something as ubiquitous as like Tabasco ever, like in India?

Niharika Goenka — Founder, Boombay: Yeah.

Dhruv Sharma: You have often wondered who's going to make India's Tabasco?

Niharika Goenka — Founder, Boombay: You know, I think that we will. And I think that chili oil is a very interesting and emerging category in that sense. I mean, today, the amount of revenue coming from chili oil across India must be at least 70 to 100 crores, I would say.

It's a new category that's kind of emerged over the past three, four years, which is decently sizable, let's put it that way. I do think that that's going to accelerate a lot more. But I also do think that we will have a lot more, we'll have a lot of different formats that kind of come about that fulfill things like, I don't know, a sriracha, hot sauce, our own version of it.

But, you know, the question today is that, do we really have VCs and founders as well, who are really willing to create that market for it? Because in a country where people normally eat chutneys, and you know, something basic, the only two, three condiments, Western condiments that have kind of made it that that have kind of become staples in, in India today, perhaps a ketchup, maybe a meal. And that's about it.

Everything else is long tails.

Utsav Somani: But these taste profiles of a country change, like I'm guessing it's a very long process. But is it a marketing campaign? Or is it like those one off like iconic marketing campaigns?

Or is it like some chefs who get together and decide like, this is what the next trend will be?

Niharika Goenka — Founder, Boombay: Yeah, so I think it's multiple things, right. And we talk about this a lot at Bombay, because on the one hand, it's a lot of flavor experimentation that's happening naturally. So the highest ordered item on Zomato and Swiggy is I think first it's a burger, and then it's a pizza, which is super interesting.

No, first it's a biryani then burger. Yeah, sorry, my bad. Yeah.

Biryani, burger and pizza, something like that. But like that sort of data really tells us that we are, we are willing to move outside what we call it Bombay DRS, Dal Roti, Samosa, right? We are looking to experiment. I think that there are a lot of things that have to align in terms of, in terms of us truly changing flavors, we of course have to continue to experiment a lot more, which helps the palate. We have to also be able to make those formats at home. Because the reality today is that when you eat a food outside, it's created and formulated very differently.

So let's put it this way, that a pizza made in a restaurant is going to be very indulgent, it's going to be, you know, it's going to have a lot more fat in it, it's going to, it might have actually a lot more sugar in it, a lot more wheat in it. But something made at home is going to have a cleaner finish or cleaner taste, especially if your intention is to eat clean. And if your palate starts to adjust to a cleaner, to a cleaner diet, which it seems that of course, clean food, health, wellness, all of that, that, let's call it a desensitization from salt, sugar and fat, seems to be really happening across the board.

And I think that that will, the healthier and cleaner we get, the more sensitive and the more we understand what actual flavor is. And true and actual flavor can only be driven by true and unprocessed ingredients. It's never hidden by salt, sugar, fat.

So I think it's both. It's like it's a curation, it's an experimentation, it's a desire to eat more interesting food formats. It's of course, chef driven, AI driven now, in fact, more and more so.

Utsav Somani: So yeah, AI in is our food. But one final closing question to you, protein snacks, you mentioned savory are the next big trend. Will it be a reality?

Like, will India catch on?

Niharika Goenka — Founder, Boombay: Protein snacks? Yeah, I think if you put protein in anything right now, it'll catch on.

Utsav Somani: All right, Nihalika, this was fun. Thank you so much for coming.

Niharika Goenka — Founder, Boombay: Thank you. Thank you. Bye.

Utsav Somani: All right, folks, we're moving on to our final guest. We have Shreya from SolarSquare. Shreya, thank you for coming on our show.

Shreya Mishra -- Co-founder & CEO, SolarSquare: Hey, hi, what's up?

Utsav Somani: I think I've troubled all of your other co-founders to give us this time. So I'm truly, truly appreciative of you making this effort. Sorry to keep you waiting.

I mean, it's a big milestone that you announced yesterday. I mean, a big round double digit billions 53 million if I'm not mistaken. But for our listeners who are hearing about SolarSquare for the first time, can you introduce the business and also the importance of residential rooftop solar, I think, and then we'll unpack yours in it.

Shreya Mishra -- Co-founder & CEO, SolarSquare: Absolutely. So I'm the founder of SolarSquare. We are India's leading and largest residential solar brand.

Simply put, we help homes switch to solar. Our model is unique in the sense we are one of the few fully scaled end to end platforms for residential solar. When a family is looking to power their home with solar, it's not as simple as going to a chromium, you know, like buying a television and plugging it into your home.

When you look for rooftop solar for, you know, for your home, it's a full solution that's customized for your home integrated on your rooftop. It's not a ready to plug and play solution, it's integrated on your rooftop, there are government permits required for it, there is often financing required for it. So we are the full end to end platform that does everything.

We procure the right components more than 70 that go into your solar, then we do the designing, we do the installation, we get your government permits, we help you get a loan if you want it. And then, you know, the real job starts after that, we also do the maintenance and monitoring of your solar system. So that's briefly what we do.

As a company, we're in 25 cities of India right now. And we have helped more than 50,000 homes powered by SolarSquare now in the country.

Utsav Somani: And when you talk about these 50,000 homes that you serviced and provided your products to, how long does this relationship last? Is it 20-25 years?

Shreya Mishra -- Co-founder & CEO, SolarSquare: Yeah, absolutely. So once a family switches to solar, it's a one time investment that gives you free, the rooftop solar system gives you free electricity for 25 years. So it's a more than two decades of relationship that a consumer has with this solar system, and more than two decades of after sales that's required on the system.

This is where the major trust breakage happens. And this is where the major consumer anxiety also stems from. So that is why, like I said, we do the end to end.

So when a consumer onboards with us, we give them five years of after sales. In fact, we are one of the only companies that also gives a performance guarantee with solar. Once you have a performance guarantee on your solar, it eliminates all the risk from your purchase as a consumer.

And as you know, we are a very mileage obsessed country, deti kitna hai. So when a family is installing solar, the biggest concern is how much electricity will this produce? How much savings will I get?

And so when you give them a performance guarantee, a savings guarantee, it eliminates all the risk for the consumer. So that's what we do. And then after five years, a consumer is sort of free to renew their five years of maintenance package, you know, going forward.

But yeah, the relationship is for more than two decades with the consumer.

Dhruv Sharma: In fact, Shreya, could you help us understand the math of it all? Say for instance, what you're about to say if this was being heard by a consumer who's weighing going residential rooftop solar, how should they think about the costs? Can they take advantage of certain rebates to bring the cost down?

How should they think about savings, payback? When do they start, you know, just consuming free electricity?

Shreya Mishra -- Co-founder & CEO, SolarSquare: Absolutely, absolutely. So, you know, the math is very, very simple. Like I said, it's a one time investment gives you free electricity for 25 years, the initial investment breaks even in India, anywhere between four to five years, right. So different states of India have different electricity tariffs. So Maharashtra, which has an electricity tariff of 12 to 13 rupees per unit, the payback period post subsidies, literally three and a half to four years, but UP which would have a tariff of let's say seven and a half rupees, which is on the lower end, the payback period would be five years, you know, or so. So that's broadly the math.

Once it breaks, even you have basically 20 plus years of free electricity that you enjoy on your rooftop solar system. This is the math from an economics perspective, how much solar a family needs depends on how much electricity the family consumes. Now, what we do is typically when you book a solar consultation with Solar Square, one of our experts will visit your home, they'll survey your rooftop to understand how much shadow free space you have, because solar requires shadow free space where, you know, we can install the solar system.

And then we also study your electricity bill. Typically, what we study is 12 years, 12 months of average consumption, your electricity bill typically has, you know, last six to 12 month electricity consumption pattern. And depending on how many units of power you consume on average, we design your solar system.

Now, a typical solar system, a kilowatt of solar produces roughly 1400 to 1450 units of electricity per year in India. Now, this can vary slightly some cities like Delhi, which have more fog and pollution and aerosols in the air, the production will go down. And you know, in some areas where they have a lot more cloudy, you know, a lot more cloud, this may go down slightly.

But roughly speaking, most parts of India, 80% of India, like Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, all of these, you know, major states of India, you will see roughly 1400 to 1450 units of power produced per kilowatt per year from your solar system. So now let's say family uses 4000 units of power a year, we'll give you a three kilowatt system, you need to use 5000 units of power per year, we'll give you a system accordingly. We also study a family's expansion needs.

So for example, if the family is looking to put up air conditioners or looking to buy an EV, accordingly, we size the solar system. In terms of space required, usually space is rarely a constraint. This is a fairly space efficient technology, a one kilowatt system just requires 80 square foot of shadow free space.

The average size of solar purchased in this country is roughly three and a half kilowatts. That's the average size. And so you can say that in, you know, even less than 300 kilowatts, you can fit this solar system.

For bigger homes and bigger villas that consume more power, let's say you need eight kilowatt or 10 kilowatt. Accordingly, you know, you will have more 700-800 square foot of space required. But usually we've seen as consumption goes up, usually the house would also be bigger. So space is rarely a constraint, you know, that we've observed, I mean, 90% homes are able to buy solar and still have a lot more open space. In fact, people love their roof space in India. So we do elevated solar solutions, so that people can walk underneath it, you can still, kids can play, you can dry your clothes on the roof if you want.

So people in India love that, and don't want to let go of their roof space. So it's a fairly space efficient technology.

Utsav Somani: What do you think was a tailwind for this industry? I mean, you've been doing this for 10 years, but there were many milestones in the middle that happened, like the BM Surya Ghar rebate system, the initiative, or there were like other things like, is awareness a concern? Or is cost a concern?

Or the subsidies? Was it? I mean, what was it?

Shreya Mishra -- Co-founder & CEO, SolarSquare: I think this industry, I mean, it's safe to say that India is undergoing a solar revolution right now. We have become the world's fastest growing residential solar market. In the next 12 months, we'll be the most solarized country in the world, in the sense that in the next 12 months, India will have the most homes powered by solar for any country in the world.

Today, we must be fifth or sixth. But in 12 months, we're going to be number one. That's how fast we're adding homes in India adding solar.

And guess what, even after that, it'll be less than you know, a 10% penetration in India, because we have more than 280 million or 28 crore homes in this country powered by solar. And in the next one year, roughly India will have about a crore homes powered by solar. So it will still be a fairly underpenetrated, will be fairly underpenetrated as a country, but you know, it's massive population.

So the awareness and the adoption has seen many curves. We started getting into residential solar in 2020. This was the very, very early years, less than 1 lakh homes a year were going solar in the country.

So it was very nascent. Most of this adoption was in Gujarat, where Gujarat had better ease of doing business, the solar permits were streamlined through a local, you know, portal that the DISCOM had developed. So it was very early years, 1 lakh homes a year going solar.

And guess what, 80% was just in Gujarat. So rest of India, this was not even a phenomenon. From that point, we started where you know, we started from Madhya Pradesh, then we entered Maharashtra and Karnataka. And those were the days where we had to lead with consumer education, we had to help people work solar, they had, they conceptually knew about solar, but they didn't really know the benefits, the economics, the payback. And so you know, we had to lead with a lot of education, and cut to today, where now you know, at that time, 1 lakh homes a year were going solar. Today, 1 lakh homes go solar every 10 days in the country, five years in.

So this category has seen a massive adoption and awareness. But like I said, it's still very under penetrated, right? 28 crore homes with a power connection in the country, 40 lakh homes have gone solar, 1 lakh homes are adding solar every 10 days in the country.

So adoption is rapid, but it's still early days. And I would say India is still a solar curious country. Most people still don't exactly understand.

So we lead with a lot of education. And we invest a lot in training our solar consultants, you know, who are experts who help a family demystify solar understand the math. And there's just so much that a family has to consider, right?

I mean, when buying a TV, you simply make one decision, right, you go to the shop, and you decide, okay, I want a Sony or a Panasonic, or an LG or whatever, and you bring the model home. In case of solar, there are more than 70 components, you have to make sure that you get all your government permits, right, you have to make sure that, you know, the design is proper, it's not installed in shade, that none of the components are B grade, none of the components are compromised, that the warranty papers are real, that your water, you know, your roof doesn't start to leak because of a solar installation, that your installer gives you after sales service that you actually get the savings that you thought you would get. So it's a fairly involved decision for a family.

And so that and every family is a first time buyer, because this revolution is very new in the country. So everybody is a first time buyer, it's a big investment for the family, there's a lot of good things to be considered a lot that can go wrong. So leading with trust and transparency was the only way we knew we could build a brand in this category.

And that's what we did. But yes, PM Suryagar has been a huge tailwind. And Government of India does give you a subsidy up to 78,000 rupees.

So it's a fantastic time to put up solar and the subsidy is available for about 1 crore homes, out of which some 35 lakhs have already adopted it. So still 65 lakh homes to go. But like I said, 1 lakh homes, you know, going solar every 10 days and availing the subsidy in the country.

Dhruv Sharma: Offer valid while the stocks last is the same.

Utsav Somani: Sorry, Dhruv, there's a question from the audience that I want to ask. From Udit, do they have their own manufacturing of panels or we outsource from other players?

Shreya Mishra -- Co-founder & CEO, SolarSquare: Yeah, absolutely. So we are, when I say we are an end to end platform, we do everything post manufacturing, right? So in most products, like a television, the job ends at manufacturing, because it's a finished good, you put it into a box, you ship it to the customer's home.

In this case, there are 70 components that are to be procured, you know, every component comes from a different manufacturer, then it has to be designed for your roof, installed for your roof, you know, then maintenance and government permits and all of that. So we don't manufacture, but we do everything in the value chain after manufacturing, which starts with procuring the right quality of equipment. So we do work with other manufacturers like Wari, Premier Energies, etc.

In fact, we are the country's top 15 solar panel buyers now given our scale. So we are a fairly large buyer for panel manufacturers. And we do more than 100 quality checks on every single panel that goes on a SolarSquare customer's roof, because there's also variability in the panel quality that's produced.

And so you know, we do a lot of selection. In fact, every customer gets an X-ray image of their solar panel, because it is only in an X-ray image that you get to see manufacturing defects, soldering defects, cell quality defects. And you know, so we do a lot of backward integration on quality control and partnership with manufacturers, but we don't manufacture anything to be specific.

Dhruv Sharma: And again, you know, for families who are looking to go solar, how should they think about, you know, the how should they think about maintenance over a 25 year life? How many maintenance cycles can they expect? Is some of that going to be preventive maintenance as well?

Shreya Mishra -- Co-founder & CEO, SolarSquare: Yeah, absolutely. So you know, India does not, I think everybody thinks that the job starts at adding solar capacity. India is obsessed with measuring gigawatts installed, how many million homes are powered by solar.

But the real magic is in the performance of those solar systems. So it's not in the kilowatt you install, it's in the units of electricity that solar system produces for your family. And for that, ensuring that performance and the performance of electricity production from your solar system, regular maintenance is absolutely crucial.

You can buy the best solar system in the world. But if you do not maintain it, guess what, in six months, just six months, an unmaintained solar system sees up to a 30% drop in power production. The reason for that is India is a fairly dusty country.

So there's a lot of dust deposits, there's a lot of bird, there's a lot of bird droppings on your solar system and all of those things. So regular maintenance becomes absolutely crucial. And regular maintenance has to be done through professionals, because your panels are delicate.

Every solar cell is hair thin, it has a borosilk glass on top of it. Unprofessional maintenance can crack the glass can damage the solar cell inside, you can be you know, you can be using the wrong pH of water, the wrong pressure of water, you can just be throwing water on your panels and think they are clean, but soil deposits and snail trails get created and hotspots get created. So there's a lot of things to be taken care of and professionally even, you know, doing preventive maintenance of your panels.

So we recommend professional maintenance. But there's a lot of myths in this industry, that solar doesn't need maintenance, you know, ek baar lagalo and shor do, which is, you know, which is actually a pretty big myth that we are every day, you know, creating awareness for. In fact, just the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy recently launched a report as well, which was about this, you know, which was about after sales and maintenance of solar system in India.

And even the ministry is trying to create now awareness that you know, maintenance is crucial, because it is the taxpayers money going in subsidies, it's the consumers money going in buying the solar system. But India's solar revolution and energy transition will only be successful if the millions of solar systems installed in this country actually produce power. And they're actually not seeing breakdowns or underperformance.

And they're not being thrown away by customers because of breakdowns and actually leading to electronic waste. So instead of you know, fighting combat, combating climate change, they actually start contributing to climate change. So it's very important that you know, India gets this part of the energy transition, right?

Interestingly, many countries got it wrong. Even in the US, there's a huge gap in after sales in the US, they call it the stranded solar customer. So there's actually millions of customers who do not get service or do not get warranty who have, you know, solar systems that are not producing power on their roofs.

So I think but but I'm glad that India as a country is, you know, our government is conscious about it. And you know, we are quite determined to get our energy transition, right.

Dhruv Sharma: So we're learning also love for you to educate us about the, you know, the energy transition as it will take place over the next 20-30 years, how much power do we need to bring online? How much of that is going to be renewables? How much of renewables is going to be solar?

Give us a lay of the land, please.

Shreya Mishra -- Co-founder & CEO, SolarSquare: Yeah, absolutely. So I'll say one line about the energy transition, the future of power is decentralized. It is not that a big power plant hundreds of kilometers away will produce power and then we'll transmit it over the grid over hundreds of kilometers, deal with transmission losses and deal with this really archaic and failing grid infrastructure that our country has.

And then, you know, inefficiently transporting power to the last mile. That's not the future of energy. Clean, the future of energy transition is clean energy made on site.

So made at the point where it is, it is consumed. So rooftops making their own electricity, and consumers consuming it locally. That's the future of energy transition.

So as we call it decentralized power, and rooftop solar is the only scale decentralized power, you can't make wind on your roof, you can't make nuclear on your roof, even though both of them are also clean sources of power, you can only make rooftop solar, you know, you can only make solar power on your roof. So one, it's decentralized, it avoids all the transmission losses. Number two, it's clean, like, you know, rooftop solar is the cleanest source of power that's available.

Number three, India is a tropical country. So we don't have oil, we don't have coal, we don't have nuclear, we don't have rare earth metals, but we have a lot of goddamn sun. And that's our unfair advantage, like the Middle East exploited the oil, I think it is now a time for India to actually become a global superpower based on energy, any country in the world that's in, you know, that's big on GDP, that's growing fast, that's resilient, that has high GDP per capita, if you see all of those countries have their own energy reserve.

And so India has to really, really make good with the power of the sun. Now to convert the sunshine into electricity, you need solar panels, you need solar inverters. So India as part of its energy transition, you know, the fourth thing is that we have to build a lot of domestic manufacturing, that's going to be super crucial.

And that's what India is doing. Every home that goes solar is mandated to buy a Made in India panel. So, you know, homes go solar because of the subsidy, more homes go solar, more demand for Made in India panels, more investment going on the manufacturing side, more, you know, more factories being set up, India becoming, it's a full flywheel, right?

And in terms of like you said, what's the demand of energy? So I'll give you one really interesting statistic in the next five years, India will consume as much power as the entire European Union. We are an incredibly power hungry country.

We are a $3 trillion economy with an aspiration to get to $10 trillion. Guess what that means? Two third of India is yet to be built.

And GDP growth, economic growth has a direct correlation with energy growth. So we are extremely power hungry country, we need a lot of power, if we have to meet our growth aspirations as a country, if we have to be a global superpower. And guess what, we don't have coal, we can't be importing it.

We, you know, wind has its own issues. It's not, it's very intermittent. It requires a lot of land space.

So solar is, you know, the real future of India's economic growth, also India's energy independence. You know, we are seeing what the world what's happening in the world for oil and coal. We saw what happened between Ukraine and Russia, the gas sanctions of Europe were cut, we are seeing what's happening in Venezuela, you know, every, you know, the whole global situation is for energy.

And as coal gets finished in the world in the next 30 years, we'll see a lot more global volatility emerging because countries are, you know, fighting and, you know, there's power play for energy. So in such a backdrop, if India has to secure its future, it has to be by securing its energy and rooftop solar is our only answer.

Utsav Somani: As a final closing one, in next three years, how do you think of solar square as a solar company, a home energy company of financing a services platform?

Shreya Mishra -- Co-founder & CEO, SolarSquare: Yeah, yeah. We like to think of ourselves as a company that will be the home energy brand of future India. So whatever needs the future home of India has solar battery, EV charger, home energy monitoring, all of that, you know, hopefully we will be providing, we also believe that we're building the whole, you know, operating system for India's energy transition.

So everything from installation to financing to after sales, to monitoring, you know, we're building the full stack. So, you know, hopefully, we'll be able to do a lot more than just solar. And that's what we're working towards.

Utsav Somani: Amazing, Shreya. Thank you so much for coming on the show. And congrats again on all the recent milestones.

Shreya Mishra -- Co-founder & CEO, SolarSquare: Thanks, guys. Thanks for having me.

Utsav Somani: Thank you. All right, so it's you and me quick cover of the news. Should I read out the first one?

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah, absolutely. Lots happened in the time that we were away.

Utsav Somani: One was a new trillionaire. There's like, Elon Musk buying a company for 60 billion. So basically, I think the headline of the decade, I think is Elon Musk is the world's first trillionaire on paper, at least, which is now almost liquid because SpaceX went public on Friday, raising 75 billion at 1.77 trillion valuation. Like, I mean, the jokes that are going around on this, like him being the first trillionaire, I think people are making jokes about how he's adding wealth of like one single the next billionaire to him in just literally trading, it's just crazy. And then they went out and five days later, they buy cursor, which is the AI coding company for 60 billion, they had options on this to get into it. But insane on what they've done.

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah, on Tuesday, so they listed and, you know, they were seeking a valuation of what 1.75 trillion. On Tuesday, the stock peaked, and they were worth almost 3 trillion 2.96 to be specific. And I believe the bankers have made like half a billion dollars in fee, there was some 22 banks in the syndicate that it you know, that that took the company public.

Interestingly, a lot of, I mean, a lot of people here at home have been investing in SpaceX. And I'm very excited about the upcoming IPOs of Anthropic and OpenAI. Vested and IND money actually put out stats that one fifth of all the trades that they have witnessed, it's it's from their data have actually been going in the direction of SpaceX.

Utsav Somani: Crazy. And I think Dhan and everyone's released. I mean, the features where you can actually start investing in US stocks to buy a gift city.

So I think you're going to see a lot more in more of that. Yeah. And did you I mean, this Anthropic news was pretty crazy. Fable 5 and Mythos 5 pulled out when I think Amazon apparently, which is one of the biggest investors of Anthropic, their lead investor reported their product or some jailbreak that was found where you can like, I mean, get access to Mythos via Fable 5. And they said that this is not something that the public should have or non American national should have. And then Anthropic said that, hey, well, the Pentagon did a rug pull and put export controls on this.

And that is crazy. And that's when Sarvam went out and raised and announced a round at 1.5 billion. So now sovereignty is literally in play after this move, I think.

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah, I think people are no longer satisfied with renting intelligence and compute. So this is their moment. This round was in the making for a while.

But I think it's this was the most opportune moment to announce it in HCL Reddit, I believe.

Utsav Somani: Yeah, HCL Reddit. And there's, I think a couple of other investors also, but I think it's just a great, great company and kudos to them for, I mean, building this from India in a very frugal way. I don't think they like the word frugal.

But I think just the innovation that went, Pratyush and his team have been at it for a while. But I think they've finally built a product, which I think has great credit standing. And I think HCL buying 10% of Sarvam, I think is a great, great validation for them as well.

Dhruv Sharma: And while that it is, while that is, I think a lot more money needs to flow into, you know, Sarvam and a lot more, we need a lot more companies like Sarvam. So just for context, I think Sarvam by now has raised cumulatively about like $400 million, I think. And DeepSeek's most recent raise is about $7.8 billion. Holy shit.

Utsav Somani: So yeah, ways to go. Something cool happened. PM Modi and President Macron inaugurated the Bharat Innovates Forum in Nice, which is France.

It was a three day showcase for the first time abroad. And I think the 120 deep tech startups from India, and 1520 Institutes of Excellence and over 350 investors from India flew down for it across 13 sectors like semiconductors, AI, quantum space, biotech. So this was one of the first ones where I think India's exposing its innovation to the globe via these forums.

And I think it's fascinating for the founders also to get exposure to them because it's not just research, it's literally hard products that they built by Agni, Sarvam, Cure, I mean, all fascinating companies from India were there across sectors.

Dhruv Sharma: We'll have to see if we've already covered some of them on the show. And yeah, I think we have.

Utsav Somani: One thing that's making the round on Twitter is India bans telegram. So well, their founder has been saying that Reliance and I think the telecom providers in India are I think making a move where they're sort of trying to block access to telegram. And the government put out a notice that until this is a temporary ban, this is not a permanent ban until 22nd June, because a paper leaked using that platform as well.

So people are debating both sides of this ban. There is some good to it, some bad to it. I think we leave that to people on X to debate and hash it out.

But I think it's not too far out. Like it's five, six days of disruption so far. All right.

I think that's it from us. It was the longest show. But good to be back.

Good to be back. We'll see you on Friday.

Vishal Chopra — Co-founder & CEO, WeRize: Back in business.

Utsav Somani: Yes. All right. See you.