Laws of Hype Creation : How Comet engineered Hype to build 167 cr Sneaker brand?

(upbeat music) - People staffed to the CEO for Star. You went to LSE, Bane, Kellogg. And yet you came back to start a sneaker brand. (upbeat music) What exactly is your strategy to crack Instagram? - Our drops are extremely sought after. So only on Instagram and people will put alarms at 6PM and by 6.15 almost all of it will sell out. - Oh wow. I think we can decode what is cool. - Yeah, what is cool? - I have a principle in my marketing team. We will never use a skateboard and a basket wall to ever make this brand cool. - Asli make cool, mango juta, scribble, - You choose not to scale on Amazon or Flipkart. - I want you to take the Apple strategy, which is (beep) - Oh, unfortunately we could not sustain that. We even flew down people from Taiwan for that. - How do you price your product right? - If you price it lower, you're losing money. If you price it higher, you're losing customers. - My philosophy is here, the first digit of the pricing makes up 90% of your decision. 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, if somebody decides to enter this business, what are the biggest traps that they must avoid? - Number one is (beep) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - You know while we were talking to Uttkarsh about comment shoe, I realized something very important. Every time they launch a new shoe, there's a huge line of people waiting to grab it. The staff is running around, the boss is constantly ringing, and for those few hours, the entire store feels like madness. And that's when it occurred to me that running a shop is insanely hard. You are tracking orders at the counter, managing staff schedules, handling cash and UPI, and trying to make sure that not a single customer walks out frustrated. All of this leads to missed sales and a constant sense of chaos. This is exactly where Odu comes in. Odu's point of sale shop helps you manage your offline or retail business very, very easily. Products are neatly categorized with color codes to help you organize better. And you can get full details of the product from the product list. You can run product combos, set prices to handle rush, and the power shop stores the details for every customer so that you can run marketing and loyalty programs like discounts or rewards. It lets you track and update inventory in real time across multiple locations so that you never run off stock right when demand is at its peak. Odu connects with payment terminals to streamline payments and also gives you a clean view of daily sales across cash, card, and UPI. If you're running a franchise, you can pre-configure stores and centrally manage their stock and payments. If you want to automate payments, customers can sell for all of them from a cost. And the best part is that you can get started with Odu for free using their link in the description. And as your business cares, you can access the full suite for just 580 rupees per user per month. So if you want to manage the madness in your shop, click the link in the description and get started with Odu boss today. - Hi, Othkarsh. For today's podcast, not just me, my entire team is excited to have you, which is why, as you can see on the set, we've got your shoes here. They are some of the most beautiful pairs of shoes I've seen. So thank you so much for being here on the podcast. And I'm just fascinated by a brand for multiple reasons, A, as soon as I told my team that Odu, Odu, is going to be here. They didn't have a reaction. But as soon as I told them that you run, comment. They were excited. And I also read this story where there were 200 people standing outside your store. The Apple store guy came out and was like, "Guys, our app is not selling." So he said, "Hey, brother, don't sell your app." We're going to buy a comment sale. That's a testament to the kind of brand that you build. And for all the people who are watching this episode, I want them to learn how to build a cult following in a crowded market. That's the agent of our today's podcast. Shall we get started? Sure. Yeah. Thank you for having me. With Kush, firstly, when I looked at your history, I saw that you were the chief of staff to the CEO of Hotster. And yet, you came back to start a sneaker brand. Now, do you realize you were already successful by every Indian metric? And yet, you came back to build a sneaker brand in India. Why? So I've always wanted to build something of my own. If you look at all my decisions that I've taken, they've sort of led to this moment. I joined a consulting company from my undergrad because I was like, I want to learn how business is done. When you're in college, you don't really understand how the work, you know, environment works. And so I got this job at Bane, got into consulting. Then I wanted to go closer to a founder of a startup. That's why I took the chief of staff, Gagan at Hotster, learned a lot from Ajith Mohan, who was the founder, CEO of Hotster. And then I went to business school to Kellogg. And I always joke that I ended up doing an MBA in sneakers instead. MBA in sneakers. Yeah. How my roommate was a Canadian guy? Big sneaker, I used to feel ashamed saying I know sneakers in front of him. He only came to business school to get a job at Nike. And he only applied to new balance in Nike, got a job at Nike in Portland, even till today works there. So it's been four and a half years. Both of us used to just live, breed, shoes in the community of Chicago. And Chicago is a fantastic place for this. It's the hotbed of sneaker culture. That's where Michael Jordan used to play basketball. That's where Kanye West started his career. And of course, like, Adidas's answer to Jordan's was he's East by Kanye West. So the sneaker culture there was very strong. And I used to think of myself as a fly on the world. I could not empathize like them about Michael Jordan, about Kanye West as much. You know, I was just finding them, but not those emotions that we feel for our stories. So what I used to be super fascinating, I used to be like, why are people lining up? Why are people like putting alarms and like buying sneakers? And put most importantly, what I saw and what I was missing when I would go back to India was like this fascination of storytelling of on shoes as a canvas. You know, you can take a story and you can fit into on a t-shirt. And that's abundantly visible. You can see this everywhere. But to take a story and put it on a shoe is so rare. Because it's so hard to do. And that was completely missing in India. So when I came back, I honestly started indulging myself. I was like, what if I had to build a sneaker brand in India? And I would do this as a side project. I would just start writing stuff now. Like, what would a sneaker brand in India look like? And all the mean-- like, meantime, I'm like trying to think about my tech startup, my tech startup. And then one day I was like, what am I doing? This is the part which excites me the most, the sneaker part. Why am I indulging in tech? Like, why? Just because I decided three years back. This is where my passion is. This is where I can see a gap in the market. This is where just like me, I know a lot of people would love this. So then I went into sneakers and it took us like a year and a half. I want to understand what is so special about sneaker shoes are a commodity. And I still remember there's this video of Steve Jobs from 1996, where he speaks about Nike's iconic branding. And that's where he says that Nike sells shoes. They sell a commodity. And yet, when you think of Nike, you can feel something. My question is, where does that feeling come from? And what's the logic behind it? Everybody gravitates towards powerful stories. And generally, a medium on which a powerful story can be told, which is rare. And can still do justice to will be more interesting for people. Now, you can take a very different type of story and put it on shoes, which is a pop artist, music. You can take a restaurant and put it on a shoe. And these are all unexpected things that you don't think about when you think about a utility product like shoes, which was just supposed to be a commodity that you would wear on your feet and walk. The second thing is, everybody in society is looking for signaling. You want a signal to people around you that you're doing well, or you're part of some subgroup, or you understand some part of culture very differently to somebody. And people use accessories for that. When I was growing up, then people used to wear polo t-shirts. And the logo used to keep changing. And the logo would signify how much money you have in the bank balance, because the polo t-shirt is the same. Over time, clothing, branding has become minimal. Now, a unique load thrives. Silent luxury. Silent luxury. But signaling has to happen somewhere. So it tends to happen in shoes. It tends to happen in watches. It tends to happen in bags for girls. It has to happen somewhere. And the best way of signaling is not-- this is the money I've paid for it-- then you would buy a one-lack to be Louis Vuitton shoe. But why are people lining up for that $15,000-rupy Nike shoe globally? Because it is more powerful than just a price tag, because it has a story attached to it. Because it has some associations attached to it. It has some depth attached to it. And therefore, it is more interesting now for me to signal it in my community than just putting a price tag. So it beats that. Right. So you're telling me that a commodity goes on to become a badge of honor, because storytelling helps people signal something that is beyond just money. Yeah. Two questions. Help me understand the sneaker market. And in the presence of Nike and Adidas, where did you see the place for comment? Very good question. If I ask you the top five brands in the world, sector agnostic, you will say Apple Nike, Apple Nike, Apple Nike. Correct. So now you're in the industry with a Nike Naredus. That bigger brand. But if-- If you go deeper, you can almost make it 2x2 here. You can make your y-axis as aspirational cool brands on the top, brands that you want to signal with, like we just spoke about signaling, and then unaspirational commoditized brands at the bottom. And then you can make your x-axis as on the right side, attainable and affordable, and on the left side, very expensive and unaffordable. And you would see the whole Indian market sits on two quadrants, top left and bottom right. Bottom right is your commoditized Indian brands that are selling the same undifferentiated product on the same marketplace, with slightly different packaging with the celebrity on it. Butter Action Campus. Yeah, and then you can just, I don't want to name names, but like go on, Winthropy and like all the brands you see there. Even formula, same product, same pricing, no signaling value whatsoever, no edge in marketing whatsoever, commoditized. On the top left quadrant, which is very expensive, yet aspirational cool, is your global product portfolio of Nike and Adidas, not the local, the global product portfolio. And here there's a double click. And double click is number one, their stories are not our stories. We want the Western stories as Indians, because we all aspire to something larger than us, but deep down their stories and order stories. Number two, they don't even think about us. Chicago as a PNL for Nike is according to my estimates, three times bigger than the entire India PNL. Just Chicago, where I used to live. Right? So why in their bedrooms would they think about an Indian story? And number three, they don't send all their products, right, variety of products and all to India. So you don't even have a lot to choose from. So the double click there says that these brands are not doing justice to what would eventually become India's Nika culture. And they double click on the bottom left, a bottom right quadrant, which is your commoditized affordable brands is then they're very good to make revenue to build up the market to get people shoes. However, they're not doing the job of a sneaker brand. They're a footwear brand. They're a footwear company. Let's say they're not a sneaker brand. You can't use them for signaling. So now in my opinion top right is where you need to be. You need to be as spiritual cool. But yet I would not say affordable because then you can't do much with your product, attainable. I should be able to grasp and get it right. I should be sitting in a price point where I can still do aspirational marketing, very high quality product, differentiated storytelling on product and yet make it attainable for you. That price should unlock all of these things for me. And then I saw that you know there is honestly nobody playing here in India. And therefore the whole sneaker culture of India was empty. And this is where we come in. This was our why do we exist understood. So comment falls in aspirational plus attainable category. Correct. Understood. Can you help me understand how do you decide on your core TG because you mentioned that sneaker culture was almost nonexistent in India. As far as my understanding is concerned to educate the audience you require a lot of money. And you need to burn that money to educate people. My question is when you see Chicago, you know that they are fans and those fans can also become early adopters for your brand. And from there onwards your brand can catch up. But in India there was no sneaker culture apart from a bunch of folks. And how did you penetrate this market? Walk me step by step from plan one which may have been the worst plan of all to the plan that actually succeeded. Very interestingly like the stuff I put down on paper is actually what's still playing out pretty much it has played 80 percent. Oh wow. Which means that the insight was very intuitive and like out there for everyone. It wasn't some Urecha moment very honestly. So what was it? I think the first thing I saw was sneakers as a macro trend are growing. And the second thing I saw was that the amount of content being consumed in India by Indians on people sneaker closets on what sneakers are selling on resale value. And you know these were millions and millions of views. And for most of these people these shoes were not even accessible. For real like watching. Yeah. Like you are watching influencers sneaker like look at my sneaker closet today guys. And these are like 25 shoes I have. And you're like oh wow like this is so cool. I want to want to have a sneaker closet. Right. So this aspiration had reached India. And it was a very latent aspiration that could not be tapped into because of like I explained the offerings that were available in India. Right. So this was existing. Then there was another thing that I saw personally play out. This is anecdotal. My co founder the shant he is an IIT Bombay engineer urban company Harvard B school. Never been into fashion. Never was into shoes. I just love interacting and working with him. So I convinced him on the sneaker idea and I was like he'll be fantastic partner for me. Within two weeks his Instagram was completely full of shoes. That kind of a person. Why because I just think this category when done well with storytelling is semi addictive. So now it feels like there's going to be a lot of chatter on this category in general. And you can convert people with right storytelling right distribution. Right. So then came the next step. What is the right distribution. He saw the market as Malav Agarabh honest he now if you look at most D to C brands today. Like three years back when I saw everybody was playing the same thing. Same product. A little bit of packaging. Do the same marketplace. Go to a celebrity. Go to the beach. Right. And why was this happening. I'm going to just take a detour here. But just explain this. Right. Why was this happening for centuries centuries. Malav for decades for decades. Distribution was everything to sell a consumer brand product because shell space is limited. It is unreachable. So many cities so many shelves. So very large companies could only reach it. And therefore product could be standardized. But distribution was your way of victory. So brands could not come in that because how will they get distribution. So Kola do you know which in the chips. We do you know all of these things are player with internet and especially with Instagram with then Shopify coming to make your website with you know these logistics partners putting up your whole warehousing system and delivery system and now the whole thing becomes easy for someone to come and plug and play. People realized here distribution solve over. But they started adopting the same playbook. Some of the same product will be reaching it. We will also package it with a new age. But we will sell the same product. But our distribution was solved. We could have passed. But what they did not realize was that you can do as thousands of the same. Can you give me an example without taking a name. So let's look at the beauty industry. It's a very fascinating industry where so much action is happening. But I honestly think most of the companies like I really respect a lot of brands there. But most of the brands, most of the new startups are putting up the same. And the product selling on the same quick commerce or Nica right was packaging could have a little bit of a little bit. With perhaps the same contract manufacturer rules. Exactly. So why should you exist? You have not answered that question as a good. Because you have a beautiful logo. Yeah. Because your packaging is like fascinating and yellow. Like why? Why should you exist? And why will that scale? And why will somebody else not come with a better packaging and beat you? So I think this had been playing out for a long time. And the next phase here had to be, can you have to go back and understand your distribution? And you have to differentiate on a product. Because you keep a lot of work and same things already. That is the next phase of consumer brands. And that's why we find brands like Whole Truth very interesting. You know, because they have differentiated product and they've understood their distribution. When you are a brand, the first thing you would say is you want to go and talk to customers where you can actually tell them the story. Marketplace is one here. So you have to now build your own distribution. Which means you have to sell on your own website. Which means you have to acquire customers probably on Instagram. Which is what we decided. And therefore you are now going to differentiate on Instagram. And how do you crack Instagram is going to be one of the key pillars of this brand's strategy. Really? Yes. So some things to think about here, right? Most brands on Instagram use it as a catalog Yeah They will have let's say 100,000 plus followers But when you see their posts Without a collab post Without boosting it They will have 20 likes 50 likes Generally 10% of people who view posts like it One comment, both thumbs up Yeah Two thumbs up Yeah So if you are getting 50 likes That's possibly 500 people have seen it You have 100,000 followers You don't have a distribution You just have a catalog sitting on the internet But you are using Instagram from an Instagram ads perspective Which is a paid channel That's a paid distribution channel So we thought what is it That will make people look at our brand on Instagram And how does it coincide with our brand philosophy And it worked very well It was that we will And we will spend time on product We can talk about that separately But we will create a fantastic product Very high tech Very like tested out Properly the whole base will be solid And we'll do really good colorways on it But once in a while We will put out a very eclectic shoe As a colorway But as a drop with full of stories So the first shoe we ever launched Was a mango shoe And why we launched a mango shoe I think the thing I thought about Instagram was You were schooling it so much that you were so content It's full of noise In that same Steve Jobs Speech when he spoke about the whole Nike thing He said this world is full of noise He only got a very small chance to put your word out there Correct He said that That was a fantastic speech by the way So in that same speech that you spoke about That Steve Jobs gave He also talked about In this world there's a lot of noise And you get a very small chance to put your word out there Right, so there's a fantastic speech there So in the same way on Instagram There is so much content being thrown at people When you're scrolling You have to put something out there That will make them stop And I know for a fact However good a shoe I make in terms of technology In terms of materials, deserve Like you know like basic nice brown shoe Very hard that you will stop with all this noise in it Right I will make a very solid brown shoe with really good tech But that is going to come in later in the customer journey The first part is How do I get you fascinated about the brand And therefore comes the mango shoe It's an emotion that every Indian thinks what I'm used to smile Mango arm, bula everybody's like Yes man mangoes like it's a it's an Indian-wide emotion It's an emotion in India Yeah just like cricket Just like cricket It should be part of the whole Bollywood cricket mangoes So you know like what we did was We made a box that looked like a new age Arm keep a tee like a mango box Open it and just like that it has the grass inside The hay inside You remove that and then you reveal two shoes Can you pick those two shoes? I'll just explain it So it's got Thank you Yeah Tell me what's happening So is me I if you see we got the whole gradient of a mango on the shoe And then we went another step If you see some of the shoe is green here and yellow there Back is green here yellow there And then if you flip the tabs open at the back This will say kachchaam And that if you flip the tab open will say pakkam Right so you go the next level of distance You don't just stop at the air I have printed Gradient will be a very fascinating at chasafood bread Banadia put in a nice box You go like the next level of like let me give you a small If you know you know thing You know like something very interesting So this was our first shoe And the idea was that can we keep putting out such stories On shoes that you've not seen before That will truly appeal to your Your own upbringing or your own experiences As Indians as our society And that should fascinate you And make our Instagram make our channel exciting Make our brand exciting So today by the way comment has 350,000 followers And I think we can check the data But the data I've seen is it is one of the most I think the top three most engaged brands Instagram handles on India Wow Right and when we put out a product We will get like 10,000 likes of 12,000 likes No money spent on it But we will get 5,6,000 shares And that is so hard for a product Because the product is not a product anymore It is a story You are reacting because Instagram is also a story Story is a story Right, product is a story That's an ad So you see the product as a conduit You're using it as a conduit to story tell Right and you're peeling to people in that sense So if you think about it Sneakak Alcho Story telling And now how do you crack your distribution Instagram It all makes sense So it all made sense for us that You have to figure out your own distribution If you want to build a brand It has to be an aspirational cool Which will happen if you create a fantastic product And then do really good storytelling on that product Right the way we doing these drops And it has to be Your Instagram to build a brand You have to build your own community Your own Customer base on your website You have your you have their data They're talking directly to you on Instagram On your DMs on your comments You are interacting with your customer Yourself versus via marketplace which you then can't So and then you're doing this for India Which is Indian emotions Right and it all sort of connected for us And this is how we started And we put our faith in this strategy When we launched mango You know drops in the US Get people get lines People putting alarms When we launched mango In three days we sold two shoes But we did not give up on the strategy Because the idea was We have to do this five six times Right now people don't know you They've not noticed you But we have to make them notice us So can we keep putting our products That are so different and unique That will help And the other thing we will do is We will put our brand front and center on the product So if you see all our shoes have a big shooting star So shooting star is a comment Comment is a synonym of a shooting star And it's very fascinating why we named our brand comment We can talk about that separately but So we we realized when you go to a cafe And you see somebody wearing a book in stock You can know it's a book in stock And that makes you think I should also have a book in stock Right this this is not just word of mouth It's like power of sight So we put our logo front and center That if you truly make a great product Very comfortable great fit great materials That people wear every day And they will wear it every day also Because it's a fascinating brand to wear every day And signal with All of this works Then you will start seeing it around you And when you see it around you It will be a shame if it's not marketing for you True A lot of people put their logo on the corner On the side While they're creating a brand An aspirational brand Because they feel like in the beginning People will not adopt it Because the logo is so big and prominent And nobody knows about the logo But yes go across that hurdle Solve that hurdle Because it's so important in the future That your logo does so much If you're story-delling Like the logo of the crocodile on the cost It has to be there Because it is doing so much heavy lifting Because that logo has been seen so many places So we did that And we banged on these two very important things And we were put out a lot of this Like the soul strategy on Instagram And then people will start seeing our shoes here and there And that should create a flywheel of adoption Understood So why should you exist Because You want to build aspirational, cool A tenable brand for India And create the sneaker culture that people are craving for Got it And in a world that is full of noise With the same product With the same contract manufacturers With the same distribution channels You will have to build your own distribution That is unique to you And by own distribution You don't mean Amazon By own distribution You mean How can you directly Interact with your customers And not see them as a black box So that you can collect data You can talk to them Understand them And build a connection with them Exactly The way to go about doing that Would be to tell an amazing story And One of the best instruments to tell a great story Is Instagram Where you don't just have a brand page You have a page that can build a community for you And that requires two things Storytelling And thumb-stopping products Yes In your case The Kacham Pakam was a Thumbs-stopping product Which made people stop Because in this world full of noise You'll have to do something wildly different You'll have to break the pattern Like making a thumbnail To make people stop And then Ponder over your product Because there's the exact same problem that we also face YouTube is flooded with content There you'll have to do something so different And in fact you'll have to keep doing something different every three months Because the moment there is a popular thumbnail Everybody else will also start copying it Yeah And then YouTube looks the same So again you'll have to make something Pattern-breaking Which makes people stop Because unless they stop They're not going to buy Yeah they won't know about it Got it Uthgush now tell me Before we get into the post First tell me What exactly is your strategy To crack Instagram High level And then we'll pick Post one by one And study and do be called why did those particular posts do very well? - Lot of people take the strategy here, roach dalogaj, put something every day. Why? You know, if you don't have something to show to people, if you don't have something unique to tell people, why are you posting every day? The reason you should not do that is because the algorithm is gonna keep punishing you. The algorithm is gonna say, you have 50,000 followers, you are posting stuff, nobody's interacting with it. I'm not showing it to more and more people. And therefore every time it's taking out a bunch of people from your followers from your reach and not surfacing your posts also to them. So there's no point to just be like, you know, just have frequency and quantity. Have frequency and quantity, when you have something you need to tell people. So like when you look at YouTube, like Mr. Beasts is putting out content every day. But he has every time he has something unique to show to people. He's not putting out content which is substandard ever. You know, he's worked on a month, like for the economies he's worked for a month and then he's finally got it. And now he's like, I'm gonna put this. Now he's like a machine though who can put out content every day. But that's only happened with time. It's not like he was doing this in the beginning. A lot of brand social media strategists here put content every day or every second day. It's very important. It's not important. I know for brand, you can Instagram this brand called Koties. It is a fantastic street by brand out of the UK, crazy card following. They will post once in four months. And that post will go, it'll blow up 'cause people will be like, man it's back. Something is back. Some new product is back. And it'll just blow up. You know, 'cause that's what the value they provide in on the Instagram society. So what our strategy is is very simple. It's, I will not show you things you've seen before. I will, you know, I have two types of product in my portfolio. I have a core product which a lot of those shoes we've had for two years, they make up most of our revenue. They will go on ads. They will not go on Instagram because you've seen them. You know about them. There's nothing new I'm adding to your life. And then I have these drops or I have these like designer special shoes that we do one-offs of, right? They are eclectic unique designs on products. That is where we focus our Instagram primarily on our organic Instagram. That is what Bill's chatter breaks through the clutter, gives you some new information you've never seen before. Now, when we launch a product, we have a slight, I would not say formula, but a pattern of sorts. What we do is, by the way, it takes us six to seven months to build out a drop, three, four months of designing, figuring out the story, figuring out the materials, prototyping, all of that. It's a long process. And then three months of it being manufactured. And that requires insane amount of oversight because we're doing some crazy stuff on these products, right? And then they finally reach us. And that's when we have to think about the proper way of marketing and putting it out there. So we already start with the story when I'm designing them. But I know this shoes are mango shoe, obviously. I know what I'm making. But what will be the final marketing campaign? So the pattern that it tends to follow is you start with some kind of a teaser or an animation or some kind of a film that establishes the mood around the shoe. But before we get to that, to first question is, how do you decide on a particular design? Because design is very subjective. Correct. Let's look at the orange shoes. We have any of these shoes that we have. Orange shoes? OK. The first shoe we launched was a mango. And I, honestly, wanted to do a fruit again. And it had been one and a half, two years. And in the back end, we made a watermelon shoe, with seeds on it and all of that. We've done a lot of interesting things. We made a jam on shoe, purple and very interesting. But it was never off that level where I would see man, wow, what a shoe. Then one day, literally while eating oranges, we had a design meeting, I was like, man, what would an orange shoe look like? And then we started thinking about it. And then this whole idea came, said, what if you could peel a shoe? What if you could like an orange? Like one of the most fascinating things about oranges. Like you peel it in your own hands. You don't use a knife and all of that. So this came from that. And the idea was, if I have to make an orange shoe, and not just make it orange in color and have just this print that sort of signals the orange, what is the next step I can take? So we went and found like this material, which has the graining of an orange, if you see, a small part. But the most important thing was, how do we peel a shoe off without damaging the second layer? And think about it. This is a technical thing. You have to put two shoes in one shoe. It's not as easy. Nobody needed ever made this. We literally had to first principally crack how would you make a shoe where two layers would come on a shoe and you would peel it off. And it would be peelable and it would not peel the second layer and it would not destroy the structural integrity of the shoe. And it can be made without many errors. And this is how we started the whole orange shoe DNA. And this is like what we came out with that you could then peel it off. And then you go the whole way, right? You say, this is an orange shoe, but it should come in a shoe bag that is like the grocery-wala bag. When you take fruits, you need to take a net-wala bag. And you have to use it. Not in a normal shoe bag. So we went to a sorcer who makes grocery bags, not shoe bags. And we said, I want 800 of these. So we got those nets as the shoe bags. And we tested them out that it should have enough strength to take a shoe. And then we made a whole box that looks very beautiful, has the scent spray in it off the orange scent. So that you get the whole vibe to our test everything, right? It's not just the shoe. It's the packet. It's like the whole unboxing experience. And you get the whole thing. And then you have this very fascinating shoe. So this was the story of the orange. The story of Scribble is slightly different. But tell me something. I hear Ruth Kash. So I do cut you off. Yeah, that's OK. I want to understand, why is this a story worth telling? For example, if I'm wearing this shoe, what exactly am I trying to signal? Because when I'm wearing a Jordan, I'm signaling that I'm a Michael Jordan fan. And Michael Jordan has a fascinating story. If I wear something that Michael Jackson has-- Yes. --then I'm trying to signal the fact that I'm inspired by Michael Jackson. Correct. Now, if I were to compare Michael Jordan's story or the Chicago Bulls story with the orange peeling story, my question is, what are we trying to signal here? So not every story is about association with the celebrity. Got it. I think that is very powerful. But I think it's a very expensive way of building a brand. You can do that. You know, there are a lot of very fascinating people in our ecosystem who you would associate with, and it would be very like an aspirational should wear. But you can also build coolness, talkability, all of that when you put something very fascinating on a product. What you're equipping someone with is not just a wow factor when they're looking at this on Instagram. Oh, wow, the shoe peels. Wow, it's like an orange. This is crazy. It's also-- you go to a party and you show to someone. Do you know my shoe peels? Do you know how peel the shoe? Do you know, like, look at these threads. I can like take them off. This is an occupancy. So it's an occupancy. Yeah. And now, your customers are marketing for you, you know? And they have a way to talk about it. So it's like a two-way thing. I am helping you. You're helping me. I have equipped you with something that you will feel cool about in your society when you wear it. Because it is-- everybody is chasing uniqueness. There are a lot of people who are chasing uniqueness in their lives, especially when you're signaling. Right? So it is an important part. Uttksh, I am wondering what the idea to understand what exactly is a signal worth signaling. For example, when it comes to a political revelation, let's say there is a deep sense of frustration in the society towards the politicians in the country. People would find all sorts of symbols to use as signals. For example, journalists who speak about rebellion will go viral. Speeches on rebellion will go viral. Rap songs, again, will go viral. So people tend to use these instruments to express something. And that expression is very, very powerful if it is a rebellion, which is built on an underlying feeling of the society. Now, I'm trying to understand, where does this coolness factor actually play out? So I can imagine the expression of rebellion. I can imagine the expression of inspiration. And you tell me that coolness is also an expression that people would like to signal at a party because it's remarkable. Does that make sense? It does. Yeah, what is cool? What is cool? It's such a lifelong, like this question has also been fascinating for me. I think there are two types of cool. There's a passive cool and there's an active cool. Okay. A passive cool is when you see someone on a skateboard wearing headphones, dunking a basketball as a marketing campaign. That is cool by association of something that is, you know, we think skateboarding is cool. So now let me show you skateboarding and now this is passive cool. This is not real cool. What is active cool? What is real cool? It is when you go and do something different that nobody expected you to do and that makes you go, oh, that's cool. Which is a lot of things, a marketability. Yeah. That's cool. Oh, the whole iPhone, the key is a tadia. But as green that's cool, that's something new. That's different. So apniku is risky. You took a risk and you did something so different and now you're cool So think about a person now. I dress differently I have long hair as a guy with like a let's say a bun. I have tattoos I am chasing cool by doing something different from what normally you expect someone to do and I'm taking a risk while doing that But I am trying to be cool Active cool. You could also be cool if you you don't have to look that same cool that just because you have tattoos doesn't mean you're cool Right, you could also do something that is like Wily different from everybody around you as let's say career paths let's say you start riding poems and You love it and it's not expected out of you and you are Building your whole personality around it and you are truly pouring your heart and soul in it. You are cool Like going to abroad was cool going abroad was cool because a few people would do it So then you would do it you would be cool because you abroad you have a Right so in the same way we know people chase cool some people chase cool and we have to be cool for them And the way to be cool is to take that risk and do something that you've not expect so basically We're all playing the game of thumb-stopping each other sort of You know, I have a principle in my marketing team. We will never use a skateboard and a skateboard and a basket wall to ever make this brand cool We have never used a skateboard and a basketball comment He Actually, we make cool. There are mangoes. They make this Scribule, they make something like this and the people who think what they made it and who they That is cool When you make a store the whole store looks like as if a comet is crashed into the store. It's all broken Then when you enter there are rocks suspended from the ceiling Like it's a crash site and the whole shelves are cracked now that is something you've never seen before It's cool and then I take you even deeper. I have a tree inside made of our shoes because the tree of life has come in after the comet crash and you Are in this space that you're like man. What is going around me? What is happening then at the back of the whole store which most people will miss is the vault It's a dark space very dark with like these lockers where all of these drops had a soda or a cap like a museum It's a dead space in retail. Preels should never have dead spaces. Yeah, basically things where you can't sell product Especially product that is out of stock It's such a good Halloween month Why are you putting things that I can't buy also? But this is where like you do something totally different because you're trying to store it all you're trying to do something that is In the DNA of the brand that you're trying to build which is cool Which is different wonderful now with gosh, I have an interesting question Why can't other brands copy the exact same design as you because you're also going to a contract manufacturer So we're back to the same supply chain right you're going to the contract manufacturer and apart from distribution On the outside that it looks like there's nothing unique about comment apart from your conceptualization So my question is why can somebody just copy the conceptualization? You're right when you say that we're using contract manufacturers But we have very deliberately from the start so We started working on comment in July 22 We launched comment in end of June 23 We thought we would launch it in three months of starting to talk about it We took a year Because we realized this product is extremely technical If you think about it, that's why most shoe brands are successful are technical shoe brands yeah, and we are not a sports Oriented performance Oriented brand but product is still very technical if you want to differentiate So today you can go to a plug-in play system Off manufacturers and get a product out from them in shoes But you will end up with the same product that I was talking about in the beginning in the bottom right quadrant Undifferentiated commoditized everybody has it But if you want the differentiated product you have to put in a lot of effort here because the supply is broken So number one everybody told us Do not make your own souls Do not invest in the tech of your soul molds. It is very capex heavy It takes too much time. It is very technical and there are very few people in India have the expertise of it But what is the benefit of having your own souls control? I have control over my product I am not reliant on some soul manufacturer in Agra Who is making souls for all these shoes are selling in India for like 2000 rupees 1500 rupees That's the average selling price the industry skater towards that price point So they are making these cheap souls they mostly make up made of something called thermoplastic rubber which is not even pure rubber And they're making all of this I have to then pick up that soul and attach it to my shoe But what is the problem with that? I don't have control over exactly what the customer is feeling in terms of comfort in terms of fit in terms of Consistency of the batches that are coming out because I do not own the mold I have not tested the mold. I have not tested the compound that's going into it because I do not have control over that Process at all, but can't you get to a Manufacturer who does it for Nike or the does the catalog and get souls from them? No, they have their every company worth their salt and footwear globally has their own soul molds only in India I have not seen homegrown brands have their own soul molds Every company has their own soul molds that is why an expert company takes out very few models A model comes once in a lifetime for Nike 5-SAL make-new model introduced what do you mean by a model a fully new silhouette with its own new soul own upper pattern Completely different not a colorway Like an F-41 or a Nike dunk or if I go to like zoom X or Vomero or in a red us if I go to Samba or Addie zero they're all models and They all take a year maybe more to R&D the whole way out and then put out there And it's a lot of time effort capex that goes into it Only in India No one does it. No one does it and we have a lot of advice. You don't do it because why you first test the market out First put out your product and see what people say but my sense is like if you truly want to test things out You should be pure in your experiments You should not be impure you can't put half-paked products out there and say I am an expert footwear brand That's coming to the market and I will truly put my heart and soul in this shoe But not give you a fully designed fully tested out shoe. I can't be that person So we launched with only one model and it took us eight to nine months to develop that model because it took us like five months to develop that soul And we went through so many different modes so much testing so much R&D here We have to crack this we eventually like we were doing things to enhance comfort and we first principally started solving it We took a full pure rubber outsole really good for your For your traction for abrasion for surfaces for environments, but rubber is not as comfortable So we hollowed it and then I put sheets of foam inside it which you can't see and then I did very small minor things When you paste the soul to the upper That's a normal thread say paste like sheets. We have made it foam sheet And then we got insulted so you know, then you're going very deep into the product and your understanding Comfort case over and then now when you're playing with foam foam can over time Squish Give way now you have to think about the density the compounding the testing of that compounding it has to be tested for 6,000 cycles And then you know exactly what my compounding is right or not we did all of that and then you have your own soul mold Your compound you know exactly what you're giving and you have to follow the same process on the upper What materials are you using we build our own material supply chains? So today the contract manufacturers that we work with Our supply is very interesting. It's all broken into different steps. It's designed in my office It's developed in a different sampling room that we own Then when it's developed it has its own material market that it's tapped into which the contract manufacturers don't know about Then it's developed using that so we've built our own material supply chain then we take that product and we give it to the contract manufacturer We tell them which Which materials to order from where because we have identified them they've not It's our design if they're not able to make it we fly it on people from Korea from Taiwan and from China to Develop that skill set we've done this four five times and they're very happy to because the ecosystem is learning and we're very happy that we have a partner who wants to learn So we are learning with them and they are learning with us and then you come to a stage where now you have a product that you've built together But with a lot of our control on it our soul modes our material supply chain our development our design Right, and then we have a team of three people that live in the factory in on our payrolls. They do QC They solve all the development issues that the factory will have they live with them. They are like You don't see that in fact generally you just give it to a contra manufacture and you receive the product. We problem solved together. Right? And now you have this ecosystem build. That's why it's so rare that we made a beautiful ice cream shoe. We made a beautiful narushu. Technically you should start seeing such products come out from other brands, but they are not coming out. Because the amount of effort we are putting into product is next level. Both me and the Shandh, we make sure the Shandh spends 60% of his week on product. I make sure that I spend 40 to 50% if I truly have to. If I don't, I feel bad in that week. That why I spend almost 40 to 50% of my week on just product. Because that is the bread and butter of this company. If you think about it, product is only making our Instagram. Product is only making our word of mouth. Product is only making this whole brand. Why do we exist this product? But product is not just the tech of it. It's also the storytelling. It's also the uniqueness. It's also the comfort and fit. You don't have to pay any money. You never see anything. So you're saying that whenever you work with the contract manufacturer, on the other side, it might look like you're going to the same contract manufacturer as others. But what can help you differentiate? Even though you're going to a contract manufacturer, is the amount of effort that you put in with the contract manufacturer to ensure that the product is high quality. You can't be like order and ghost. Yes. You'll have to order, work with them, build a partnership and then turn out high quality products. In fact, interestingly, this is exactly what Siddharth from Snitch told me. He said that it's never been easier to start a fashion brand and harder to sustain one. Yes. And the differentiation he told me was the amount of effort that you put in with the contract manufacturer to ensure that you get a high quality batch. In fact, in fast fashion, because things are changing very, very fast, most people would be okay with low quality products. But with Snitch, they try to optimize as much as possible for the cost that they're charging, the customers to give them the highest quality possible. And that he told me only happened when he worked with the contract manufacturer day in and day out to even have them problem solved. Sometimes, have them fetch your technology so that they can make great products for them. Of course, I want to quickly double-dab on the economics. Can you help me understand your unit economics and how do you decide to price your product? Because I've been studying pricing a lot lately and I've understood, especially after my performance market, it only needs to price your products higher. And then, it's a math which on the Excel sheet looks very fascinating. Ever since then, I've been reading about pricing a lot to understand how do you price your product right? If you price it lower, you're losing money. Now, for a brand like comment, if I'm not wrong, I think you entered the market with the price of 4,300 rupees. Yeah, 4299. 4299. My question is, how did you arrive at 4299? So it's a very good question. Price is one of the biggest determinants of what you're selling because it is also signaling what you're selling. Right? So there are two ways of looking at it. Customer first and cost first. And we have to look at both. When I look at customer first, what I see is the average selling price on Mintra at that point was about 2000 bucks and Mintra is the more premium marketplace out there versus let's say a flip card and stuff. Right? So the most aspirational stuff that was selling was for 2500 bucks. So 4000 sounds very high versus that. On the other hand, you had these global brands that were selling for 10,000 plus. So if you want to position your brand as aspirational and yet be attainable, then the number becomes somewhere between 3 to 5, 3 to 6. And we have to think in that zone. And we thought about it as my philosophy is here. The first digit of the pricing makes up 90% of your decision. 3, 4, 5, 6. The second digit will make up the remaining 8% of your decision. And the last two digit will be like 1, 2%. It matters. Actually, actually 9.99% second digit. Last digit is mattering. At this 1000's arrangement, obviously 50's arrangements matter. So we decided on 4 because we thought it is still attainable, yet it has crossed over into the aspirational category of pricing. Here 4000 rupee price signals to a customer. Here product make some damage. Brand make some damage. It won't just be like some 2500 rupee 3000 rupee which is very close to it. Commodity stuff. There is a jump that you have to make. Then you have to look at it from a cost perspective. Correct. Had this price point, what can I offer? Is this good enough or not? Right? And we realized that at 3000, 3500, we were not able to make a product which would have good gross margins with this stuff we wanted to do. Talk me through that journey from Cogs to your selling price. So did you go from Cogs to the selling price or did you come back from the selling price to go to the market? It's literally like a parallel discussion. So we are making the product on the side and we are thinking about the pricing. And when we are making the product, we are realizing 3000 to price is not possible. Yes. Who product of Cogs from Banarya product? The product that I believe the Indian market requires and needs cannot sell for 3000 because my gross margin will go under 50% probably 40%. In this market, what's a healthy gross margin to have? I think 55% to 65% you have to aim for. Today, even a mature company like Nike operates at 60%. Somewhere around there. Tell me something. If somebody today is trying to understand the right price for the market, should they always look at industry average of gross margins and then reverse engineer their pricing? I think they should honestly start from pricing from a customer perspective on what they're offering. What a customer would therefore be willing to pay and then trace back to can my cost actually work with this gross margin. But that is also so difficult to figure out because when you're looking at Mintra with the new year, we have 2000 rupees. You're looking at 2000 pieces for watchers shoes clothes, everything put together. Now during that time, it's very hard to gauge the signal and separate it from the nice to understand what would be the average order value for sneakers and that to for a new brand and that to with the value addition that you want to provide. Does that make sense to you? Yeah. I think through your process. My process was that I saw the customer and I said, I want an aspirational pricing here that allows me to create a product that they do really require. Honestly, it was that. And I shuffled between three, four and five as my first digit because the second digit like I said is 9%. Let's say first digit is 90%. So is it a 3000 product, 4000 product of 5000 product? And when I started making the product, I realized it can't be a 3000 product. And when I started thinking about the customer, I realized it cannot be 5000 product. If I want to scale and get adoption on the day one. So you said no to 3000 because the cost of manufacturing would be very high and you would be left with very less cross margins. And you said no to 5000 because you thought the customer may not be willing to pay 5000 rupees and hence 4000 rupees. So essentially when somebody is looking at pricing, they'll have to strike a perfect balance between cogs and customers expectation and willingness to pay. Yes. Okay. So this is coming from a LSE student, guys. So if you're thinking this way, it's not primitive. That's just how people think. I'm telling you pricing can be vibes because at the end of the day when a customer is evaluating something, they're also thinking slightly of vibes. You know, 4000, what are you feeling? 5000, yeah, a little bit more. You know, so you have to put yourself in the feed of the customer understood. So 4000 rupees over. Within that time, what was your cogs? Because here's where there's another confusion. Correct. When my MOQ, when my minimum order quantity is just 1000, my cogs are like 40, 50 percent of the selling price. But it feels like we can always bring down the cogs as we scale from 40 to maybe 30 percent. But deeper from DSU told me that you die with the cross margins that you're born with. So always figure out your cross margins and then enter the market. I think it's a very good insight. I don't think costs fall as dramatically as people think on the product. Especially if it is a differentiated product. If you are selling a standardized product, then generally standardized products enter a lot of pricing pressure from the industry standpoint. Because sub-logway is going to be. So up my factory as an individual factory starts entering into pricing pressure. And therefore that gets all the way to the bottom. But when you build a differentiated product and therefore the factory also has some power because you have worked with me for three years. We have a knowledge transfer to the whole thing out and now I am also valued to you. How much lower can I go on my price without you jumping ship? Because they would want to keep their margins. Yeah, they want to keep their margins. Because your cost going down is actually a function of the manufacturer losing out on the margin. Exactly. And inflation via there they also have to pay their labor more and more every year. Material cost rising every year. Right. So now economies of scale are well and good and they do help your gross margin. But if you have a differentiated product, the cost of switching is very high. I will have to find a new factory and do the whole process again of knowledge transfer. Because it's not as easy as plug and play. But therefore, there is some pricing power that your manufacturer also has. And therefore, the cost does not go down as much. You will start saving a lot of money on your CM1 cost, which is basically your logistics cost, your warehouse cost, your shipment costs, because that in bulk really starts giving you benefits. But on Gross margin, it is possible that you live and die with it also because your costs might not move as much and you will eventually come under pricing pressure also from a customer perspective. It will happen. Is it safe to assume that you must look at the industry's Gross margins and no matter how much your MOQ costs you, you must optimize for Gross margins according to industry standards. For example, if an MOQ costs you 2000 rupees to manufacture a shoe and let's say the industry says you need to have a 50% Gross margin, you will have to start setting the product at 4000 rupees from day one. 4000 plus GST. 4000 plus GST on day one. Is this safe to assume? Othkush. Yes. Okay. Othkush, now I want to come to the most exciting part of the podcast, which is Community Building. You guys have a fan base. People lining up outside your store. That's a dream come true for any founder. And like I said, you turned a commodity into a badge of honor because of which you had 200 people lining up outside your store. My question is, how do you build that community? And if an entrepreneur is watching this, how can the implement that framework to build a cult following for their brand? If you take a step back, we have the four piece of marketing, product, price, promotion, place. And we spoke about these four. Product, differentiate on the product, put some interesting value on it that nobody else is able to provide. Price, give them a price that people get excited about, but still use it as a way of signalling what your eyes are trying to sell. Promotion is wherever you're selling them, figure out what kind of marketing strategy would optimize for their distribution. In our case, we optimized how Instagram will work and therefore how our own distribution channels would function. Place, build your own distribution or figure out wherever you're distributing. You have an edge on that distribution. I want to add a fifth piece, which is people. Now technically there is a people in the seven piece of marketing, but that people is outward from a company. I will allocate people to this problem or that problem and this problem and it's more about the human capital of a company. I think the people that companies need to think about are the customers and how they can market for you and how do you enable them, almost give them ammo ammunition to go and battle for you. Outside, right? And that like people say, word of mouth is the biggest marketing tool out there. How do you give them all the ammo to create the word of mouth? What we did from day one was that firstly we interacted with people one on one because of Instagram, we have all the customer database, they DM us, they comment and we reply. So the first eight to ten months of this brand, I replied on almost all Instagram DMs myself. So even till today when somebody DMs on Instagram, my phone gets the notifications, it's like my WhatsApp does and I look at them and sometimes I'll reply if I have time or my team will reply, but our marketing team replies on Instagram DMs. There's no customer support team that's using the Instagram DMs to reply. So it's so important that you're talking to your customers as if they are people and not as if like there are some entities who are purchasing from you. Right? Talk to them as if you were talking to them, let's say if you were in a store, they're in my store and I was standing there and they came with a question. If you were standing there, I would just talk to you normally, right? I'll be like, "Row, try this shoe, this is a very cool shoe." Or like something like that, like not, "Hey, thank you for reaching out to us, blah blah." Like no, talk to them like people. The other thing we did was we built up this habit in the eyes of customers to get social validation. It's like social currency, right? We spoke about how shoes are used for signaling in their friend's circles in your society. In the same way, can we equip our Instagram to be a tool for their social validation? So what ends up happening is a lot of people put stories when they buy new things or when they, you know, they're like out and about, they're putting up stories. Very few people tag the brands that they wear. But in our case, a lot of people tag the brand themselves. Why? Because we also reshare some of those stories on our Instagram handle. And our Instagram handle is an engaged Instagram handle with a lot of cool quotient on it or an aspirational quotient on it. So people feel happy that comment is listening to me. It's a two way interaction. It's not just me buying their product and putting up a story. They're also happy that I am wearing their product. I am styling their product. I am in their product and we are happy. That's why we're resharing it. That builds up a flywheel or comment reshairs my stories. Let me put up more stories. Some other person will be like, let me put up stories. And now you have content that's being created by people who are associating themselves to the brand deeper and deeper and deeper. Right? The thing to think about is the adoption curve of a product of a brand. There are early adopters, there are late adopters, there are laggards that come right at the end. And when you're starting, you of course have early adopters. But like within one and a half to years, you have people from all over in your adoption curve. So why? They don't have to be customers. But there is somebody in the late adoption curve who knows about comment has never bought a shoe. Has a top of funnel awareness of comment. But they don't understand truly what comment is. What are we selling? What? So a lot of people today will discover these drops and discover the story for the first time, even though they must have been aware of the brand comment. Right? So they're in a slightly deeper father of adoption phase. But what is our focus? Our focus is take your early adopters and convert them into cult followers. Take people in this adoption curve who truly bad for you, who truly become those people. And therefore you have to give them things that they want that are different from everybody else. Only that is how you can tell them I'm rewarding you. So celebrate your early adopters. How do you celebrate your early adopters apart from resharing this story? So one of the things we do is our drops are extremely sought after. Right? People put alarms for them. So right now our drop launch strategy, the way it works is in on in general, it's one drop a month and on a particular Wednesday at 6 pm at launches. From Monday to Wednesday, we will market it, not put money behind it. It's only on our Instagram and then at Wednesday, 6 pm at launch and people will put alarms at 6 pm and by 615, almost all of it will sell out. So from 6 to 6 10, you will see like 60, 70% of his sold out and now only size seven is left. Size six is left. So people keep coming on the website and they're like, oh, my size is gone. And therefore it takes like another 20, 30 minutes for it to sell out. And within an hour, mostly all our drops sell out. That is the demand of the drops for all our existing customers. We open it up a day before. So give them privilege. Yeah. You have rewarded us by being our adopters. I will reward you back by giving you access to something nobody else can get. And therefore you don't have to take the fight and put the alarms and I figure out this at 6 pm and have the anxiety about it. If you truly want it. You have a full day to think about what you want. If you want it and you buy it. When we have any event at our store, a launch at a store or a store opening itself. We've had five store open, five stores open, three have had store opening events, Delhi, Bangalore and Ahmedabad. In all three, 200 plus people have lined up before the gates have opened. And this is all been done organically marketing. We are using our WhatsApp and using our Instagram stories because we have everybodies data and there are community. So you've sent them by the way we're opening a store in a city. Please come. So two or three people have now come. There's a separate line for anybody who shows up in commercials. It's like the indigo fast forward. You get to board early. You don't have to wait in line with everybody else. You have already rewarded us. We love you back. Enter the store before everybody else does. All things like that go a long way. But it's not that we are just, in those 200 people, it's not that we are just concerned about those 50 people or 70 people who've come in comments. We also care about the remaining 150 a lot. So when you have interacted with us, how do I make you feel like you belong? I have to become a hospitality company as a customer. It is generally in a restaurant or a five store hotel that they made you feel so special. When you remember that moment and you go and tell your friends, do you have to go to their restaurant? It is fantastic or that hotel is beautiful because hospitality is the best way of making somebody feel special. So when people are in line, we will always partner with a restaurant nearby with a drinks company and ensure even if they're standing in the sun, they get something to eat. They get drinks. Our marketing team will be there and they will interact with everybody as if like, He wrote like, "Thanks for waiting. Where are you coming from?" All of that. You know, not entities, you're not, you're not like just people who've come into lineup. You are becoming part of our community. We want to welcome you. Welcome to comment. Right. I remember when we opened our first store in Indra Nagar, we did not expect so many people to line up. This is the first time we're opening a store and like 200 people are in and we have so many people from our team trying to service everybody in the store and the store. By the way, like I made such a beautiful store. And when I looked at that store, when it was full of people, it looked like a fish market. And on one hand, I'm thinking, wow, what a beautiful store. The other hand, I'm like, man, what does this look like? But what a great place to be in because there are so many people here. But at that point, I was not feeling the positive of all of it. I was feeling the pressure, the anxiety. There are so many people who are waiting outside. There are 20 people who are waiting at the point of sale to just check out the product and they're just waiting. And I remember I was standing there and I have like these four boxes in my hand, trying to like service customers myself. And I looked across the room and in this point of sale line, there was this guy standing and you could see like he was visibly upset, tired. He had waited outside for probably 30 plus minutes and has now come in and tried to show somehow like fought his way through it. And then finally standing in line with the shoe and is taking 20 more people to like go through and then he gets the shoe. It's not a great experience. And I'm looking at him and I literally like looked at him and I said, bro, I'm so sorry. And he instantly looked at me and said with a smile, it's your first store, chill man. And at that point, like all this pressure just like relieves itself, you know, it's like this burden just felt like this guy just like the way he responded and that is community. I think you've very well described how we choose five principles of turning ordinary into extraordinary. The five principles are make it your own, optimize for delight, leave a mark, go the extra mile and be compassionate, beautiful. Yeah. Now with cash, I'm going to give you a problem statement. Okay. I'm going to give you a completely different product and help me apply this framework to that product. Okay. Let's take Vibhasaos. Okay. They sell sources. How would you create the same experience for the customers of Vibhasaos? They don't have their own store. Yeah. They distributed across maybe 20,000 stores across the country. As a brand, how would you create delightful moments for your customer at scale? It's a very good problem statement. I think there are two routes that a brand like this can take right upfront. And then we can deep dive into it. And I'm also thinking about it as I speak. I think the first route is you go hard into culture building and community building with your product. Okay. That will require you to take multiple different steps to what most FMCG brands take. There's a very good example in Bombay of a restaurant called Drink DRNK. Right. Very young people who run it, fantastic people. Yeah. And they have taken that small restaurant into a full community. Yeah. Right. It is about those people being there, those people putting like music in, really good vibe. And then going deeper into content creation of like this whole coolness around it. Right. It's a very nice place to be in, to differentiate from so many beverage restaurants out there. Yeah. Now, do you want to do something like this? Primed with their drinks, which was KSI Logan Paul's energy drink brand. Right. It was less about the flavor and the drink itself. It was more about who's drinking it. Where are you seeing drinking it? Where is it stalked? Right. Which podcast will it be kept next to? Which creator will it be kept next to? And therefore you could potentially take that culture building route and go very different here. So now your sources could be seen in a lot of like these food shows, but also with very contrarian creators who are not in the food space. Right. Like if you've seen this podcast of the hot wings, where the guy eats wings and they're putting so many sauces, like could you do something like that with your sources? Right. And like literally put them part of like a content, but cultural experience that gets people excited and brainstorm more on that path. Right. Now it's it's interesting and cool as content and has more personality to it. That's beyond product. So now this could be one way of doing it. The other way is you forget the on ground, the associations and all of that because that takes the brand into a very different space for a brand like a sauce company and you lean in heavy into storytelling off the sauces. So if you think about it, whole truth also has a community. It is not a physical on ground community, but it is people batting for it everywhere. Whoever consumes it, I consume there, way I isolate powder and I will go and tell every video if they had like way protein once I'll need a whole truth. I will go and tell people because I love the product. I love what he tells me about the product. Now you could take a very different route here and you could then say I am going to go deeper into a particular part of my storytelling, which I believe resonates with my product DNA, my brand DNA and I'm going to put my message out so hard that everybody rallies around that message. Right. Now I don't know what that would be for a sauce company. Honestly, you don't understand that space very well. Let me throw some ideas and you tell me this makes sense. What if Vibhav partners with some of the most famous restaurants in Mumbai to cure the dish that can be very easily made but it's undiscovered and partner may be brands like drink and make that dish and rule that out as the Vibhav sauce dish. Yeah. Or Vibhav's three specials. Yeah. And they can order one of those dishes because once the customer has that dish, they will know that it can be prepared very well at home and again it has to be a limited drop in the sense that today in Mumbai in every famous restaurant like for Z Cafe or drink you will get these three Vibhav specials. So people will actually find a reason to go to that particular restaurant. They'll order for the Vibhav dish and they'll also order something else apart from that which gives the restaurant a lot of business, gives people a reason to go out to discover something and then it'll be spoken about in circles which eventually will lead to more people going there and about 30 days that dish must disappear and a YouTube video must go out saying how can you make this dish at home. Yeah. And everybody else who could not be a part of that movement can actually use Vibhav sauce and make that dish and then enjoy that experience. I think it's a fantastic idea. I would do that. So I've started seeing a bunch of people do this very interestingly slightly different but subco does this where if you go to a very nice bar or a nice cafe that is not subco for example there's a very nice restaurant in Goa called Greenhouse. When you go there it is it says caffeinated by subco and there's a subco means being supplied there and the coffee machine is subco so what you have done there is via association in a very nice place you have put your brand out there and you have basically used social proof to elevate your brand and to put it in the eyes of people that the restaurant like this uses subco for their beans therefore it must be a good coffee company. Yeah just like forest essentials partners with all the feister hotels exactly like Lila and Obiroi to say that you know what exactly if Lila has picked us if Mr. Obiroi's company has picked us then we are definitely good. Exactly. Okay. Othkush my second last question to you is if somebody decides to enter this business what are the biggest traps that they must avoid? Yeah that's a good question so I would say number one something that we spoke about right now is do not deviate from your why do you exist? If you have a core ethos or why you started the brand why you started the company in the first place do not deviate from it and take choices that will impact you in the long run in favor of your short run because there will be so many signals thrown at you so many decisions thrown at you that it is going to be very simple to chase that short term validation and immediately forget that why you even start this in the first place what was the gap in the market right so that is number one number two is I would really make it a people people business and not think of customers as entities I think that is extremely extremely important remember if somebody is paying the hard earned money to buy something that you have started you owe something to them right you owe them a lot more satisfaction than just the product that they have received so go out of your way to do that on that particular point number three is go out of your way and do non scalable things as often as you can if you think they're the right things to do right do not just optimize for process process can sometimes just kill companies and especially if you are a startup process is not always required everywhere right like we have had people reach out to us he oh my box came a little broken and I love the box and we will then send them a new box and we put a t-shirt in it and we'll put a note card and this could happen so many times in a month and when you're when you're doing logistics for so many orders in a month, this is a distraction but it is not literally like you're doing things that really make your customers into proper promoters for your brand. So it's a distraction if you treat your customers as entities. Exactly. But it's a delightful moment that you're shipping which is far more valuable. Yes. The fourth thing I would say and this is something that we say a lot in our company is God is in the details. So the phrase goes devil is in the details and that is the phrase comes from like if you go start pondering too much into something you will always find something you'll be unhappy about. But flip it and you know the Zuraver Caldera example you were giving me. God is in the details. Do not stop at 80 go all the way not just in product but in everything that you do go and ask the nth level of question and see if it's happening or not and it is exhausting. It is so exhausting as founders like I will be asking for the smallest things in the company and now my entire company has their DNA. Ask the nth level of question you want to serve fries on in the line what will it come in? How will you maintain the temperature? Where will you keep it? Where how will people wipe their hands after that? How will the dispose of the fries? This is just fries in the line of a launch where so many things have to happen. But we have to solve the fries journey out. The God is in the details. You I think that is a trap that people get into quite a lot because you think yeah, it's not so much. The last thing I would say is make extraordinary. Do not make ordinary. Do not make commoditized. Do not make standardized. Create something that is extraordinary and people will automatically notice for notice you for who you are. The distribution channels in the world today are fantastic. You can get to everybody if you want and they will notice you are doing something extraordinary. My last question to you is how did you come up with the name "commit"? So both me and my co-founder are space nerds and the first thing I started was "commit" and it just hit at that point but then we went very deep into it because we nerds. And God is in the details. Yeah. So we if you think about it in the grandest stage of all which is space universe and you look at your solar system every object does the same thing again and again with so much monotony the sun the planets the moons there is its clockwork with no deviation and out of nowhere comes a comet from outside the solar system and goes on its own journey creates the shootings are in the sky civilizations like in the past have looked up and said you know what is this because it changes the whole map of the sky which they have understood so well but what is this streaking shooting stand they it fills with them with awe they make wishes all of that and we believe like us as a brand we are like a comet that is coming to this like space of behemoths and we are disrupting at the grandest scale like a comet is then we want people to be like that who wear comet we want you to go and take that risk be cool be different go and take that risk be like a comet so that's how the name comet came that's why logo is the shooting star that's amazing man thank you so much for being here i have had such a wonderful time talking to you and this is amazing because i was able to draw so many battles to all the legends that i've heard about that i've spoken to and you know they say that good is imperative but greatness is a choice but very few people decide to make that choice and i'm so happy that you're one among them thank you so much and i'll be one of those people rooting for you thank you Ganesh this was such a pleasure thank you for having me thank you you