S03 E07 |Revolutionizing Make in India: ft. Akash Gupta of GreyOrange & Mohit Kumar of Ultrahuman

[00:00:00] If I remember early days of hardware journey, I think 2012, 2014, I think India didn't have any kind of ecosystem with hardware.

[00:00:11] And also, I think even from talent perspective, I think people who have built hardcore hardware from scratch was very less and even fewer who would come and join a startup who's trying to kind of do something in this space.

[00:00:29] That from a consumer perspective, there are probably three core learnings. One would be what is missing, what is a misconception and what is essential, right? These three buckets from a consumer manufacturing perspective.

[00:00:43] Missing is quite obvious. I think the vendor ecosystem, even for CNC, for example, something as basic as CNC technology, like the vendor ecosystem has not really evolved.

[00:00:55] If you think about injection molding, that still takes like eight to 12 weeks. Prototyping talent does not really exist.

[00:01:03] ID talent is very hard to find, industrial design talent, etc.

[00:01:09] And most of them wouldn't have worked on electronics hardware. So all of that is the missing bucket.

[00:01:15] So here we are at the beginning of the first episode and feels like decades since I've actually had my founders back on the Bloom podcast.

[00:01:41] So welcome to a new episode of the Bloom podcast. Mohit Kumar from Ultra Human, Akash Lupta from Gray Orange.

[00:01:50] Lovely to have both of you here. Just for the guests.

[00:01:55] I know it's taken a long time to get you onto the show.

[00:02:00] As I was telling you, it's been a while since I've gotten Bloom years on the show.

[00:02:05] We've had lots of luminaries and we're waiting for the right opportunities to get some amazing founders.

[00:02:13] And this theme and what you guys are building at Gray Orange and Ultra Human just made it like a perfect situation.

[00:02:20] So today I'm thrilled and privileged to welcome two extraordinary Bloom years who fundamentally redefined what it means to build hardware companies from India.

[00:02:28] So joining me are Akash, CEO and co-founder at Gray Orange.

[00:02:32] All the way from Bloom Fund 1, we've been partners in crime for like over 12, 13 years now.

[00:02:41] Mohit Kumar, co-founder and CEO of Ultra Human Fund 3 company, but we've known Mohit as well as a fund 2 alum.

[00:02:47] He quickly came back with a new idea and of course we had to back him.

[00:02:51] So more of all of that later.

[00:02:53] What makes their stories particularly compelling is how they achieved something that most people thought India just couldn't achieve,

[00:02:59] which is like building world class cutting edge hardware product led companies in India that now command global respect and market leadership.

[00:03:07] As someone on the team said, they've not just crossed boundaries that just erased them.

[00:03:12] So Akash through Gray Orange has revolutionized warehouse automation, building very sophisticated robotic solutions.

[00:03:18] But as the maxim goes, he's become a bigger believer in software eating the world.

[00:03:24] And the solutioning obviously is built around the original hardware, but now we're becoming a software giant as well in the warehouse automation space.

[00:03:33] And no less than giants like Walmart, H&M, Nike, they're all customers of Gray Orange in the United States of North America.

[00:03:41] And from writing the first lines of code in India to deploying thousands, I wish I could say hundreds of thousands.

[00:03:47] We'll get to that point, hopefully sometime soon.

[00:03:50] Those robots are running around in warehouses globally.

[00:03:53] And it's been an inspiration for a lot of founders in robotics to aspire to what Gray Orange has shown and paved the way for.

[00:04:03] Mohit on the other hand, you know, has surprised everybody by pushing the boundaries of what's possible in personal health monitoring.

[00:04:10] So by combining, you know, cutting edge biosensors with sophisticated software,

[00:04:15] Ultrahuman has brought like laboratory grade, you know, health insights into daily lives like, you know,

[00:04:22] and they have people who love them all the way from Silicon Valley to Tokyo.

[00:04:26] And we hope to see many more people supporting Ultrahuman like I do.

[00:04:30] What's particularly meaningful for us at Bloom is that we've had the privilege of partnering with them when most people, you know, thought this was not possible.

[00:04:40] They just had an idea. The grand visions were a vision at that point.

[00:04:44] More skepticism than support.

[00:04:47] Big site, Carbon Clean, who also we've had on the show in the first season and Gray Orange as examples of how these companies,

[00:04:55] Mohit, you don't know this, but these companies have never raised the dollar from Indian shows after Bloom.

[00:05:01] So that's been the level of confidence in our ability to build globally.

[00:05:04] And we've watched them navigate these unique challenges, hardware development, global supply chains,

[00:05:11] reorienting supply chains, building global distribution networks, all while maintaining their engineering roots in India.

[00:05:17] So let's dive deep into their journeys, understand the philosophy of how to build these phenomenal businesses and uncover some of the lessons that hopefully inspire,

[00:05:27] you know, generations of, you know, deep tech founders in this country.

[00:05:32] So welcome again, Mohit and Akash.

[00:05:34] Thanks, Kaltik. Thanks for having us here.

[00:05:36] Yeah, we'll start with Akash only because of, he's probably younger than you, Mohit, but from seniority in the portfolio,

[00:05:43] we've known him for even longer than you have straight.

[00:05:46] I mean, he was still in college, I think that we met him at Bits Pilani.

[00:05:49] So you developed Akash an interest in 3D animation coding very young age.

[00:05:55] You were a part of the acute team in Bits Pilani, which is quite legendary.

[00:06:00] How it began, became the foundation of like, you know, building this hardware club in Bits Pilani, which the legacy continues 15 years later.

[00:06:08] How did these influence your journey? And, you know, I know Samay and you started it and he was a senior in college.

[00:06:14] But like what, what got into you that you thought you could actually convert like this little robotics project out of college into entrepreneurship and, you know, world class company.

[00:06:24] What just walk us through. I think these set of companies will come more from college campuses.

[00:06:29] So speak to the, the young kids in 17, 18, like you were and walk us through that journey.

[00:06:36] For sure. Yeah, I think I would say in the very early days, it was just, at least for me, a lot of fascination on what you were learning.

[00:06:45] Right. Like, you know, I think pretty much till your J and coachings and then to coming to the college.

[00:06:53] Right. The whole concept was you read books, you learn from books and then, you know, you write exams and you get marks.

[00:07:00] And that's pretty much what the learning process and kind of validation process looked like.

[00:07:04] And I think I hadn't tinkered with hardware in my school days, but the day I first tinkered with hardware, I think it felt so, so good that you could physically look at things.

[00:07:16] And I remember thinking about this pretty much in early days of Akkyot was that, you know, this whole DC motor that I used to draw in my, in my books.

[00:07:26] Now I can play with and I can really understand what does that really mean?

[00:07:29] I think, I think all that, at least early days was all that fascination and, you know, I was lucky enough to get my hands on Bitspinani CMC machine, which is, you know, which was only, I would say, kept for demos to student.

[00:07:45] And, you know, we were able to get that to manufacture things. I could, you know, work on PCBs. I could work on kind of making hardware move and things like that.

[00:07:58] So I think the kind of satisfaction of, you know, building something, putting some electronics on it and coding something on it and then getting it working.

[00:08:08] I think that was very, very fascinating, you know, for me and the amount of learning you would have to, you know, while going through that journey.

[00:08:16] I think so early days was all about that. And I think as we build Akkyot for a couple of years and, you know, spend a lot of time in participating so many competitions all around the world.

[00:08:28] There's a lot of hunger around how do we now, you know, use this for a particular application for solving a particular problem. And this is 2009, 2010.

[00:08:40] So I know humanoids are, you know, again back in the game, but 2009, 2010, we were kind of building humanoids almost a meter tall.

[00:08:51] And I think while the initial thought was, can you really do something commercial with that?

[00:08:56] And it was like, no, I think technology is way too early in the game to do that.

[00:09:01] So I think both then, both me and Samayi were thinking, how do we kind of bring this whole software, hardware, the passion that we had,

[00:09:09] in kind of bringing, you know, and solving a real world problem. And I think that's all that is.

[00:09:16] And this was, again, we were doing this from almost end of my second year, third year in the college.

[00:09:23] So getting, applying robotics and software to supply chain was almost like, I think third or fourth gig.

[00:09:30] You know, the first one was robotics education.

[00:09:35] You know, second one was kind of online robotics, e-commerce and likes of that.

[00:09:42] And third one was robotics for oil and gas agency, which we've figured out in India is extremely regulated.

[00:09:49] So you can't just run a startup on it.

[00:09:51] And then, and then, and then, and then, for the supply chain and kind of that excited us enough to say, okay, yes, this is the industry, you know, that, that is ready for disruption.

[00:09:59] Also, again, supply chain in 2012 was not as sexy as it is, you know, today, it was still a very back-end function.

[00:10:06] But I think we got a good feel of that there's a lot to disrupt using software and robotics in this industry.

[00:10:12] And kind of that got us there.

[00:10:14] So just to give you context, acute was this humanoid robot.

[00:10:18] I remember one of them, Samaya or Akash showed us their passport.

[00:10:22] And it had more stamps than most of us would have in their thirties.

[00:10:25] And these were like two teenagers.

[00:10:27] And so they had gone and won a whole bunch of global competitions.

[00:10:31] And then somebody like, you know, they got referred in and actually built it, built a haunted house with, you know, all these gadget trees in the US, which is quite a legendary story of theirs as well.

[00:10:43] And when we first met them, literally in the basement, there was this clunky, looked like a whole bunch of wires sitting on a couple of metal plates.

[00:10:51] And that was the first floor robot of this housing idea that we saw.

[00:10:57] We have never seen the haunted house in the US, but supposedly it still lives.

[00:11:01] So, I know we started off on a very different note.

[00:11:05] Here you are building this road runner was our first name for what we backed.

[00:11:12] So Akash, you should know first investment in fund to road run.

[00:11:16] So Adit finds these young folks from Ola and Flipkart, and they're all putting together a team which is around what today is Zomato's online delivery.

[00:11:26] So I'm not simulating this.

[00:11:28] It was actually the truth.

[00:11:30] So Roadrunner became a runner because of copyright issues.

[00:11:33] And then Runner became our first exit and Zomato's acquisition to compete with Swiggy.

[00:11:38] So today, what you see is the two mega Dekacons fighting it out and slugging it out.

[00:11:43] They were probably 10,000 deliveries a day and Mohit and team land up and reshape and retool Zomato's online delivery to, I think when they left, it was what a million deliveries a day?

[00:11:55] Two mil at peak.

[00:11:57] Yeah.

[00:11:57] Crazy.

[00:11:57] So that was the kind of scale 200x growth in three years.

[00:12:01] And we used to keep in touch with Mohit and Mohit used to say, someday I think I need to go and pursue my passion.

[00:12:08] And the next thing you know, he says like, I'm taking a break.

[00:12:11] I'm going to go off this island off Thailand.

[00:12:14] And why don't you tell the story from there, Mohit?

[00:12:16] So what happened there and what prompted ultra human?

[00:12:19] I know you were obsessed about health, but from there to get to ultra human was a little bit of a journey.

[00:12:24] Yeah, no, I think the road runner runner journey was very different and intense.

[00:12:32] Very lucky to be a part of it.

[00:12:34] But then like, I think long term goal and passion was to go back to health and to actually, as a big fan of Bruce Lee and the mysticism associated with Shaolin Temple and all those things.

[00:12:51] And, um, uh, grew up reading those books and basically, uh, always thought that I think there's a lot, a lot more to discover when you actually have an inverse journey and all that basically Eastern mysticism kind of stuff.

[00:13:02] So during my break, I, I took a break, uh, traveled to space for tiger multi, uh, train for a few months, um, practice Jiu Jitsu.

[00:13:12] Um, and, um, that was, uh, I think back then that was the beginning of what should I do next?

[00:13:20] And, um, I think initially the, the, the view that I had was, Oh, I am from a supply chain slash delivery domain.

[00:13:29] So let's do something in that.

[00:13:30] Uh, but like just couldn't really, uh, get interested again, do something again in that space.

[00:13:38] Uh, wouldn't wake me up again in the morning.

[00:13:41] And then second one was, um, and what's the rank issue, but so he's my co-founder and we keep chatting about, we kept chatting about like, what should we do next?

[00:13:48] And the next idea was surprisingly like a video chat tool, uh, which we started working on.

[00:13:54] Um, and then, uh, um, on that video chat tool, which we quoted first, um, we, we kept talking about health and fitness basically because I was at a martial arts camp and, and we were trying to figure out patterns.

[00:14:07] And we said like, look, we're using the tool to chat about something that we're not pursuing.

[00:14:12] So maybe it makes sense to pursue that instead of this.

[00:14:16] Um, I think the first thing, I think the first product name was cosmos.

[00:14:20] I think the first tool we built, we never told the world about it because it's just a shitty idea, bad idea overall.

[00:14:27] So, uh, this is pre pandemic.

[00:14:30] So who knows cosmos might have been a mini zoom, but, uh, yeah, yeah.

[00:14:36] But yeah, I mean, um, uh, gladly we started, uh, ultra human, um, back in 2020, um, and just before pandemic and, uh, yeah, world has been different since then.

[00:14:48] Uh, we've been getting surprised every year.

[00:14:50] And, and so, you know, just an extension of both those questions.

[00:14:53] Um, I know you've stuck around with hardware.

[00:14:56] You folks have become loyal to hardware.

[00:14:58] I know more even in the health journey, hardware came a little later, uh, from the outside, it feels very daunting.

[00:15:04] And most people say, how can India be like a champion and like, you know, hardware technology of any kind, uh, whether we, do we have manufacturing chops?

[00:15:12] Do we have the electronic chops to build the best PCV boards?

[00:15:15] And it's not about building the PCV board, right?

[00:15:17] It's about power consumption.

[00:15:18] It's about battery usage.

[00:15:20] It's all the complexity that comes with, you know, hardware.

[00:15:23] And, you know, you, you have different levels of sophistication, different use cases, but, uh, why don't you walk us through a little bit of a, the journey, both of you committed to it, but what kind of challenges did you, you not foresee?

[00:15:37] Uh, which did you think, uh, you know, immensely possible from, to solve from an Indian context?

[00:15:43] And, uh, what did you have to iterate to get out of the Indian context, if at all?

[00:15:49] Okay.

[00:15:50] So maybe you can go for it.

[00:15:51] Yeah.

[00:15:51] Yeah, no, absolutely.

[00:15:52] I think, um, if I remember early days of hardware journey, I think, you know, 2012, 2014, um, I think India didn't have any kind of ecosystem with, with, with hardware.

[00:16:05] And, and also, I think, um, even from talent perspective, I think, uh, people who have built, um, hardcore hardware from, from scratch was, um, you know, very less and, and even fewer who would come and join, um, uh, a startup was trying to kind of do something in, uh, in, in this space.

[00:16:24] So I think, uh, from talent to kind of figuring out how do you do the prototyping, um, large part of prototyping for even, um, our first version of bots were done in house through our own CNC machines and through our own machines.

[00:16:39] And so, uh, I remember this was a big decision that we were, um, and this is before, Karthik, you guys invested.

[00:16:46] This is, uh, the angel funding from Volgang, um, right?

[00:16:50] Which was, um, uh, I think at that point of time and it would sound funny now, but it would, that point of time was 40, 50 lakhs.

[00:16:56] I think some, some, something like that.

[00:16:58] Yeah.

[00:16:59] Yeah.

[00:16:59] Yeah.

[00:17:00] Yeah.

[00:17:02] Exactly.

[00:17:02] Exactly.

[00:17:02] So, so the first was, um, working 40, 50 lakhs and a decision that, um, I remember starkly with some and, uh, me saying, okay, are we going to put 25 lakh of this in a CNC machine?

[00:17:16] You know, so you're going to take half of your funding and you're going to put it in a CNC machine so that you can kind of do prototyping and things like that.

[00:17:24] So that was pretty much, I think Gurgao or Manasar had an ecosystem, but that was only built for car manufacturing, right?

[00:17:32] So nobody was, you know, entertaining a bunch of kids coming and saying, can you make, you know, three parts of this for, for, for me?

[00:17:40] So I think in early days, um, you know, a lot of this was done in house for, you know, for, for us.

[00:17:46] Um, and slowly we got exposed to different kinds of ecosystems, not in India, but, but in, in China, I think, uh, later in the past,

[00:17:54] in 2015, 16 is when we started kind of building more and more kind of ecosystem for manufacturing in India, where we started developing vendors, um, you know, in, in different parts of India to do that.

[00:18:07] So I think initial part was literally just trying to kind of get, um, the first few versions up by building them or prototyping them yourself.

[00:18:18] And, um, you know, I remember, uh, 2013, 14,

[00:18:24] you know, we have done three sortation systems till then, right?

[00:18:28] And, and we are really trying to figure out, is this something that we should have done or not?

[00:18:33] And comes 2014, we get from three sortation systems order to 47 or something like that.

[00:18:40] And we, and this was all the second big billion days.

[00:18:43] So it was like, you know, everybody prepping for the second big billion days.

[00:18:47] So everybody wants a sortation system.

[00:18:48] Um, and, and I think we had like six months literally to scale up from being able to produce three sortation systems to 47 sortation, um, you know, systems.

[00:18:58] And, and that's where the first time we caught thought of, okay, let's put a kind of assembly line ourselves and, and, and things like that.

[00:19:04] So it was, I would say, uh, a lot of hands on work that, um, that, that, that was done, um, at that point of time.

[00:19:12] And of course, later, um, you know, when, when, when we started scaling lot more on, on robotics perspective, we had more vendors.

[00:19:19] We still, um, do assemble our own robotic technology, whatever we do.

[00:19:23] We do a lot of third party as well, but you know, things that we do ourselves, we do still assemble a lot in, in, in our, um, you know, Gurgam, uh, plan.

[00:19:32] So yeah, I think it was a lot of hands and work, both from manufacturing perspective, but mostly for talent as, as well.

[00:19:38] Like we were, you know, instead of, um, being like 20 year experience folks, I think we hired smart folks for, from college who are just kind of figuring out with, um, with us.

[00:19:49] Yeah.

[00:19:49] Fascinating.

[00:19:50] So I'm going to touch upon a little bit about, you know, the complexity of the supply chain talent, and, uh, also the gradual evolution from being kind of known for hardware to almost making hardware redundant as you, as you advance and why that's important in the evolution of a hardware company.

[00:20:09] You don't want to be seen as like, you know, dumb nuts and bolts and smart engineering alone, but also what, what, what does the, what does software do to be able to change the trajectory of that hardware?

[00:20:20] And I think, uh, uh, green orange is evolution has been that.

[00:20:23] And I'll, I'll save that for a little later.

[00:20:25] Moit in your case.

[00:20:26] Uh, I know there was a, a little bit of a step function to get to, uh, what is today the ring, which are most, you know, known for, but it wasn't your first product.

[00:20:35] Uh, this is not going to be a last product I'm sure.

[00:20:38] So I know you're on the verge of announcing one, but, um, when you think about hardware and you think about the challenges, you know, what daunted you back then?

[00:20:47] And how have you overcome them today?

[00:20:50] And like, you know, what gives you the confidence that you can go head on against a whole bunch of players out there, all different form factors, right?

[00:20:56] There are watches, there are bands.

[00:20:58] Now there are other rings that you compete with, uh, you know, there are CGMs that you compete with.

[00:21:03] So like where, and you know, how does that trajectory, how has it evolved so far and how does it look going forward?

[00:21:10] Sure.

[00:21:11] So, so our journey was, um, very much around, um, looking at, I think, how do we get more of health data from the ecosystem first?

[00:21:22] And then, um, I think, but on 2021, we sort of like felt that that'll be really hard to do because all ecosystems in health are extremely tight and closed.

[00:21:33] And nobody wants to give you raw access to healthy raw data access to, uh, in case of health, because, uh, once you have the raw data, you can actually train your own algorithms and you can probably build a better score of a better model of health.

[00:21:46] And access to raw data was emerging to be in some ways a competitive advantage.

[00:21:51] So somewhere around end of 2022, we decided that, um, or mid 2022 actually, that we need to own the full stack.

[00:22:01] We need to actually verticalize heavily and, uh, control the entire, uh, end chain experience.

[00:22:08] And, uh, this was actually weird timing for us because we're right in the middle of COVID, um, supply chain was completely choked, uh, whichever supplier we were speaking to of components, uh, manufacturers, um, some basically, uh, vendors and all of them, but mostly, most of them would actually tell us that the lead, lead times would, could vary from like six months to one year to probably forever, depending on how the market shape.

[00:22:35] Um, we had heard of horror stories where everything was ready and the factory just shut down.

[00:22:42] So people can't really take the goods away from like a Chinese factory.

[00:22:46] So because of all of these things, we, as a forcing function, we decided that, um, if we have to control our future, evolve the product, um, for the launch new products in the future, we have to do it ourselves.

[00:22:58] There's no other answer.

[00:22:59] Maybe it's the harder answer.

[00:23:01] Um, but we have to learn the laws of physics and understand how does it really work?

[00:23:05] So we also got incredibly lucky back then because there was a company in, in this space available, uh, actually two member company, uh, both the founders are available.

[00:23:15] Uh, they were also pre-product and we thought that maybe both of us can do be rock companies in the mind and make a post-product company.

[00:23:24] Um, yeah, not a great plan, but, uh, uh, but then, uh, I think spent like a few, uh, few months, um, figuring out what's possible in India.

[00:23:35] And I think I would define this from a consumer perspective that from a consumer perspective, there are probably three core learnings.

[00:23:42] One would be what is missing, uh, what is a misconception and what is essential, right?

[00:23:48] These three buckets from a consumer manufacturing perspective.

[00:23:52] Missing is quite obvious.

[00:23:53] Um, I think the vendor ecosystem, the, um, even for CNC, for example, something as basic as CNC technology, like, um, the vendor ecosystem is not really evolved.

[00:24:04] If you think about injection molding that still takes like eight to 12 weeks prototyping talent does not really exist.

[00:24:11] ID is very, very, um, ID talent is very hard to find, uh, industrial design talent, et cetera.

[00:24:17] Um, and most of them wouldn't have worked on like, uh, electronics, hardware compactor.

[00:24:21] So all of that is the missing bucket.

[00:24:24] Um, the, from a consumer perspective, I think one key difference would be that the chase for finesse is also missing.

[00:24:33] Like for example, the common example that I keep giving is that, um, uh, when we started making rings with middle finish, um, most of the vendors would be perplexed that.

[00:24:45] Why would you need such a robust surface, uh, which is made of constant carbide and still sort of like the, like a middle finish device.

[00:24:55] Like what is the use case?

[00:24:56] Because most of them in the lifetime and actually only made drill bits for such a hard surface.

[00:25:02] And, um, we had to show them the file product to make them understand that this is what we are trying to make.

[00:25:08] And then it got easier, obviously, once they understood the vision.

[00:25:12] Um, this is the missing part.

[00:25:15] Um, the misconception, um, and, uh, to some extent, like, uh, you can say that, uh, this is very commonly said that, oh, you can pick a product from China and you can modify it and label it in India and actually sell it.

[00:25:31] Uh, to some extent, that's a lot of, which a lot of copycats are doing today with your product.

[00:25:35] Right?

[00:25:35] Yeah.

[00:25:36] So I think, um, it's possible across any category, right?

[00:25:39] And I think the way to understand this would be that in our category, when people are paying $300 and above, uh, or in any category where people are paying for not just the product, they're paying for the software, the hardware, the integration, the upgrades over time.

[00:25:53] They're not just buying, uh, that one product and that one price.

[00:25:57] They're buying a journey with the company.

[00:26:00] And, um, if a Chinese company, uh, or a manufacturer was able to make a journey, um, for the customer, they don't need you.

[00:26:10] They would actually replace you, which is also happening in a lot of categories now.

[00:26:14] So, um, in our category today, um, at least today, what's happening is that a lot of these companies are incredibly efficient, uh, at, um, at really making that one device 70% cheaper with that one set of features.

[00:26:32] But the moment you add upgrades, iterations, software changes, product changes, design changes, new, new version launches, then the cost structure is actually higher than or is less efficient than yours.

[00:26:45] And that's the last part, which is essential that if you're, I think in manufacturing, if you're really looking for, um, at least from our perspective that five, 10, 15 year journey where you really want to evolve the product, um, having control over the destiny of evolution, um, is, is really.

[00:27:03] Really the key, uh, in some ways, because unless you're able to solve the problem, people would not pay you, uh, a certain premium for your product or for the journey with the, with the, with the customer.

[00:27:13] And you will sort of likely commoditize in this category.

[00:27:16] Um, that would be a, um, you could say sort of like an evolving learning in this, in this category.

[00:27:21] How much, uh, just before I cut back to Akash, there are a lot of panels and the gray orange journey have been witnessed to both of your journeys.

[00:27:27] So I want him to weave like the B2B, you know, you know, proxy for your journey.

[00:27:32] But before I go there, like today, if you, uh, when you started off, uh, what is the mix of like your supply chain slash manufacturing dependency outside of India slash, uh, outside of ultra human?

[00:27:45] And today, how much of that is inside of the company?

[00:27:48] I think in that case, uh, it started that somewhere around, uh, 40% and now somewhere close to like 20, 24%.

[00:27:55] Um, is outside or inside?

[00:27:58] Outside.

[00:27:58] Outside.

[00:27:59] Yeah.

[00:28:00] And from a, if you had to like, and this is the other interesting aspect of what both of you have done.

[00:28:06] Um, as the hardware evolution happens, uh, the product gets into some sort of, uh, I might be wrong.

[00:28:14] You have to correct me if I feel I'm feeling the wrong thing, but it feels like there is a semi autonomous kind of cycle of hardware evolution.

[00:28:22] Whereas suddenly you start seeing the power of how many of these devices are out there and the power of what the software does as a layer on top.

[00:28:31] So Moit, if you had to think about how, how much both R and D work development work slash delight to the customer, uh, is happening through software.

[00:28:45] Uh, how do you think that has changed from the first string to today?

[00:28:49] And I'm sure it'll keep changing.

[00:28:50] We're talking about late 24 just for people's context.

[00:28:53] That's when we are recording this, but yeah.

[00:28:55] Yeah.

[00:28:56] No, I think the, um, the way to look at this would be that, um, the complexity in terms of hardware iteration, um, has, um, I think over time, some of these systems have become machines.

[00:29:11] Like for example, like polishing few months ago, uh, for us, a few quarters ago actually was, um, like, um, like a huge manual effort to both.

[00:29:21] You can say manually do it.

[00:29:22] And then there's a QC effort and now, uh, large part of that is automated completely.

[00:29:27] And that does not mean that we don't need people.

[00:29:29] It just means that we need less people on the ground, uh, to actually support the same end product.

[00:29:33] But I think the reality is that, um, of course, like with manufacturing complexity increases, um, uh, one example that I can give outside our use cases that, uh, for a 6 billion, uh, revenue profile,

[00:29:46] Darwin spends a billion dollars in R and D every year.

[00:29:49] And, uh, this is extremely anti Warren Buffett, uh, in terms of his way of, um, valuing a company.

[00:29:59] And, uh, I just read a book written by, uh, one records, he talks about like that.

[00:30:06] This is like, like a bad business model and a bad idea to have a company which invests in R and D so heavily every year.

[00:30:11] But then the reality is that it's always a trade off.

[00:30:13] The department has a lot of control over their own destiny, um, 35 year old company.

[00:30:19] So they've survived all the cycles.

[00:30:21] We're about 80% of their business now.

[00:30:23] Um, still fighting Apple, proving manufacturing at the competitive advantage.

[00:30:29] Um, it has the ability to evolve the product.

[00:30:31] So I think those are the strings that we are also tying in our business that as we control, uh, the business, and if we can get to the ability of making hardware, the space of software, um,

[00:30:42] um, iterating hardware at the pace of software, then that is true autonomy, uh, in terms of being able to control your destiny in some ways.

[00:30:50] Um, because then you're not, you're, you're playing in some ways, like, um, you're paying tennis and someone else is playing paddle, um, in their own software zone.

[00:31:00] So, uh, that probably helps.

[00:31:02] No, great analogy.

[00:31:04] No, I love the vision.

[00:31:05] I know even using Garmin as a backdrop.

[00:31:07] Uh, I know more well enough to think that he's thinking what makes me survive till year 35.

[00:31:14] And I know you haven't crossed year five yet.

[00:31:16] So I love that ambition.

[00:31:18] And I know Akash has been crazy enough, maybe younger.

[00:31:20] I think he was eight years, six years younger.

[00:31:22] And he said this, he said, we'll show how we can build a hundred billion dollar company.

[00:31:27] You know, I, I've always loved that ambition.

[00:31:30] And, uh, bizarrely, I'm still with both of you have always been a long term hold.

[00:31:34] So I've always held everything to start for as long as I need to, and will continue to do so.

[00:31:39] But, uh, uh, Akash, cutting over to you, we've seen a very similar proxy, right?

[00:31:44] A lot of people said, you know, how can you go compete in the rest of the world when, you know, a geek plus from China and other guys can build far more efficiently.

[00:31:54] Uh, yes, you might be in control of your own manufacturing and supply chain, but can you compete with the might of this mass production that China can bring in?

[00:32:01] And there are a lot of parallels in industrial automation robotics that, uh, what Moit was talking about in terms of personal rings and wearables.

[00:32:10] Um, you know, I would love to hear that in your words, like how's that evolution for gray orange been since, uh, you know, that 2015, 16, where you left us off last.

[00:32:20] Yeah. Yeah. No, I think, um, you know, as we started working with some of these global retailers, um, I think we very quickly recognized that.

[00:32:31] At least in B2B space, um, you know, nobody was really looking for robotics, right?

[00:32:39] They were all looking for how do we get fulfillment outcomes, right?

[00:32:43] And, you know, for different people, fulfillment outcomes are defined differently.

[00:32:47] For some, it is just reducing cost per unit.

[00:32:49] For some, it's just increasing storage per square feet.

[00:32:52] For some, it is just going to 30 minute SLAs and things like that.

[00:32:56] But I think we realized that, you know, nobody really cared about robotics or hardware or how fast a bot moved or how quickly can you manufacture and likes of that.

[00:33:08] Right. Um, you know, so of course, I think, uh, you know, you, you, you get oriented pretty quickly that, uh, you know, at the end of the day.

[00:33:17] And, and I think I remember, um, spending some time in one of our town halls, um, you know, about this topic that we are not a robotics company in a supply chain.

[00:33:27] We are a supply chain tech company using, using robotics as a, as an enabler, right?

[00:33:31] And, and I think that pivot was very important or, or that thinking was very important because, you know, most of our, our, our customers even today, um, honestly, uh, do not care about how do you give them that fulfillment outcomes, um, till you can reliably, um, you know, give them.

[00:33:48] And, and I think that was a important kind of point for us to kind of start figuring out, okay.

[00:33:53] You know, uh, of course, always constrained on, on resources.

[00:33:58] Where are you investing your dollars?

[00:34:00] Are you investing your dollars to ensure fulfillment outcomes or just to ensure robotic uptime?

[00:34:07] Right.

[00:34:07] And, and I think that understanding and that focus has helped us compete all across.

[00:34:13] In fact, you know, even today, um, some of our largest competitors sell robotic uptime and we sell some from the outcome and where it really matters.

[00:34:23] We beat them all day long because, you know, at the end of the day, that's what customer is, is, is looking for.

[00:34:28] And of course, I would say this journey is harder and this journey is, uh, I would say more time taking, but, but at the end of the day, um, at least we believe that is going to be a lot more long lasting because, uh, you know, at the end of the day, if you are really creating that kind of value with your customers, that's, that's what kind of kind of keep us for the long haul.

[00:34:51] So I think that's, that's how, at least we have evolved, um, you know, from, from the thinking of 2014, 2015.

[00:34:59] No, no, I think it's been amazing to watch.

[00:35:01] And as you said, it's a tougher journey.

[00:35:02] I wish, uh, you know, investors understood that you're making these tougher decisions for long term trade offs, but it's a, it's a cruel world out there.

[00:35:12] Everybody wants instant outcomes and we lived through a bull cycle where everyone was more, you know, driven by what happens next year and the year after not fundamentally seeing that you're actually trying to shift, you know, uh, a conventional thinking.

[00:35:27] And the way you think about it's, that's not as you'd actually said, no CEO of, you know, uh, H and M or a big retailer in the U S really cares about how the bots look or how sexy they are or what color they are.

[00:35:38] They're interested in all the metrics that you said, and that's the only way to measure the success of your product.

[00:35:42] Um, you know, in that way, I think it's a nice time to switch tracks.

[00:35:48] You know, we know fundamentally that when we say, uh, winning beyond boundaries, which is the theme for today, uh, the reason you're getting champion and the reason we are, we are talking about you proudly today is that the moolah comes from overseas, which means you are not selling, uh, only to Indian customers.

[00:36:09] You're selling to global customers. So the two aspects to it, one is, uh, for good or for bad, the Indian market is not deep enough or rich enough or where this makes enough of a dent, uh, for you to be, uh, India only company, but yet both of you, that was a testing ground, right?

[00:36:25] Uh, whether you started with sortation systems, uh, more, whether you started with selling the first rings or the first apps or the first CGMs in India versus today, probably 90% plus coming from global markets.

[00:36:39] Um, so we've always kind of joked at one level that if you make a product for India, you're probably going down the wrong path and you will fail on the global product.

[00:36:49] Right.

[00:36:50] And so from your learnings, A, maybe, uh, Akash, you can go first.

[00:36:55] And what prompted you to make like the full cutover?

[00:36:58] It was a bold decision.

[00:37:00] Uh, and maybe, you know, I know of the GXO deal, uh, but maybe the everybody doesn't.

[00:37:06] Uh, maybe that was the pivot to the point, maybe it was something else.

[00:37:09] So, you know, when do you make the call to say, you know, I love my country, but you know, it has to wait for me to conquer the world.

[00:37:17] And it's more important to take this kind of cool engineering and technology to win the world markets rather than India.

[00:37:22] Yeah.

[00:37:23] I think at least for, for us, it happened in two switches.

[00:37:27] Um, I would say, and I think we could have done it, uh, differently and, and, and better as always.

[00:37:34] Um, you know, the first switch, um, you know, just taking from the, the sortation journey, um, we, we did these 47, 50 sortation systems.

[00:37:43] And that's it, we could, we, we had sold a sortation system to anybody and everybody who could buy sortation system in India, literally from every e-commerce company to every logistics company to, you know, literally there was nobody left to sell sortation systems in the, in the company in India.

[00:38:00] And I think that was the first point of realization that, you know, that is literally the market which can kind of adopt automation.

[00:38:08] And, and for us, that was the least automated product, right?

[00:38:12] We were thinking about which two person systems and likes of that, which was far more kind of complex and, and, and, and, um, you know, expensive automation while sortation system was literally the, the most basic automation product that we were thinking about.

[00:38:26] So I think that was one realization that we got to kind of get, um, get outside, um, India, but also I think there is, there was this passion to serve 1400 brands.

[00:38:38] I think we were very, very passionate about how do you, you know, what does it look like to really kind of work with these world-class brands who are kind of defining the industry and, and likes of that.

[00:38:49] So there's a lot of, um, you know, I would say, uh, fascination around, um, you know, this, this whole thought process.

[00:38:56] And, and I remember, um, you know, having these discussions with the, with the team and, and, and somewhere that I think the best way of conquering retail is to go and get top three brands and each vertical and you're good.

[00:39:11] Like that, that's pretty much what the entry should, um, you know, should like, uh, look like.

[00:39:15] So I think there's also, uh, a lot of passion and fascination around how does the best look like, right?

[00:39:22] And what does it mean really to work with, um, you know, best in the world and, and, and likes of that.

[00:39:27] And, and I think, um, we were, um, you know, fortunate enough to kind of get to the point where we did start, start kind of getting that kind of exposure.

[00:39:37] Uh, but yeah, I think that decision was fairly clear after, you know, a couple of hours from 2015 to 2018.

[00:39:44] Um, you know, we, we, we, we have wandered around pretty much across the globe, um, starting from Japan, which was like, I would say one of the, uh, toughest call that, that was taken that, okay, let's, let's target Japan as a, uh, as, as a country.

[00:39:59] And, and that was one of the most, I would say learning years that we have had in our early days of, um, you know, 2016, 2017, uh, because kind of the, the expectation for quality, the process, the attention to detail, all was like, you know, you know, at level 11 from, from where we, um, we were.

[00:40:20] So, uh, very, very hard 18 months, but I think pushed us, um, pushed majority of organization thinking a lot in those 18, um, 18 months.

[00:40:29] And I think, uh, you know, that was a good milestone for us to say, okay, what does the next stage looks like?

[00:40:35] And, and I think, uh, the, the first time we kind of got our understanding of us market, I think there was a lot of clarity that the best returns we could get on, on dollars invested is, uh, is, is in us.

[00:40:48] So I think, uh, for us, it was a pretty, uh, I would say hard pivot.

[00:40:53] It was not a slow pivot.

[00:40:55] Um, if you look at till 2019, uh, 0% of the revenue came out of us and, and today there's no revenue coming out of India.

[00:41:04] So, um, you know, it was a fairly hard, um, you know, pivot.

[00:41:09] So you're pretty much building from scratch in a, in a region, but it grew like 10 times in three years.

[00:41:15] Then what India grew in like, or India and Asia grew in like seven years.

[00:41:19] So, so yeah.

[00:41:20] I think a month, uh, thanks to folks like, uh, Gray Orange and many other companies, which were targeting globally.

[00:41:26] You guys were much wiser by the time you reached there in 2020, right?

[00:41:30] You knew that you wanted to build like a sort of a world-class, uh, health company from day one.

[00:41:35] Uh, India was more like a playground to test.

[00:41:38] Um, but you know, you also knew you were up against in every space that you were getting into, you were up against, you know, existing competition.

[00:41:47] Uh, and yet you went and said, we can beat them.

[00:41:51] So what, what gave you that courage and, uh, you know, was it like a foregone conclusion or did you guys plan about like how to go to these overseas markets?

[00:42:01] I know you tried one or two markets more extensively, including your current base of UAE, but, uh, what, you know, what are the, what are the challenges been putting a consumer product globally?

[00:42:12] I mean, I think Akash did like, uh, Gray Orange did something very interesting and just like pivoted almost 100% to the Western hemisphere because they had to focus all the resources on one market.

[00:42:23] Uh, and here you are shipping rings to 150 countries.

[00:42:27] Right.

[00:42:27] Right.

[00:42:27] So, uh, it's, it's, it feels like, you know, day and night when you think about the same idea.

[00:42:32] Uh, so love for the, you know, for the audiences to hear what, what, what goes into that kind of thinking as well.

[00:42:39] No, I think the, even though we started as with, with the aspiration that, uh, we will be a global, we want to build a global product.

[00:42:47] But I think it did not hit us till 2022 when we were growing at, uh, maybe like early 2022, like a slowish single digit analyze million run rate, a few million dollar run rate.

[00:43:00] And you're like, I think I am with my team.

[00:43:05] We were just looking at some projections and looking like in the next six years, this is where we will reach.

[00:43:11] And, uh, this is what the category will be.

[00:43:14] And I think one of our team members just said, like, look, like we will, I should turn pretty old by the time we'll do a billion dollars in revenue.

[00:43:22] That doesn't sound like a good plan.

[00:43:24] Uh, and, uh, it's like, how will you live life if you like basically just find all of your like best years of your life, just solving this problem.

[00:43:34] So how do we accelerate this journey and, uh, that day, I think we, I think one realization that came was that we were uptight and overthinking on two levels.

[00:43:46] One was on people and second was on distribution.

[00:43:49] We are like, oh, this playbook, that playbook, this is this company is learning that company is learning.

[00:43:54] Uh, this is how the conversion funnel should work.

[00:43:56] All those, all that marketing.

[00:43:58] Yeah.

[00:43:58] This is how performance marketing works, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:44:01] Um, and somewhere around, we just said like, look, let's, let's try something different.

[00:44:07] That different would be, let's go all out on distribution.

[00:44:11] Um, with one guard rule, one, one, um, guard rail, which would be, uh, no performance marketing and no, um, like every transaction we should make money.

[00:44:20] That's the only thing.

[00:44:21] And now with that constraint, let's do whatever we can, whatever geography, whatever retailer, whatever distribution channel.

[00:44:30] Um, we can go for, uh, whatever languages we need to ship the product in.

[00:44:36] Let's do that.

[00:44:36] And let's see what happens.

[00:44:38] Right.

[00:44:39] Um, and then what we said was with that, the, the bar on people should be higher because while distribution will go up, uh, we could lose sight of people.

[00:44:49] And then basically both the things going off control does not really make sense.

[00:44:54] So we lifted the bar on people, but actually in some ways stop thinking about distribution as a planning exercise, but more as an, uh, action bias thing.

[00:45:04] Um, and, uh, we went after retailers, Walmart, Costco, Best Buy, Verizon, um, ship them the products, got them to test the products, launch countries like Thailand, uh, Vietnam, uh, Indonesia,

[00:45:19] Malaysia, um, basically there were a few countries which we did not really know our countries, uh, as well when we started shipping products to them.

[00:45:28] We don't understand the regulations ship the product in 23 languages.

[00:45:32] Um, and basically, um, and I think the thinking then was that every $5,000 increment in revenue actually matters because it's just another language, but then it's monthly $5,000.

[00:45:43] And it's coming at a decently good margin.

[00:45:46] So, uh, that, that was the lens that we took and we kept reminding ourselves that we decided that we will take up this mess of rent distribution and then building backwards from there.

[00:45:57] So let's see what happens.

[00:45:58] So I think that, that, uh, you can say in some ways, um, less uptight thinking about distribution that it should be a global product sold everywhere.

[00:46:11] If it's a good product, every country, every consumer should want it.

[00:46:14] Uh, and there's no reason why we should not be selling in every cycling store, every software store, every, um, like electronics retailer, uh, every premium goods store.

[00:46:24] Uh, everyone who buys an Apple product should actually buy our own product.

[00:46:28] So how do we place the product next to the Apple product?

[00:46:30] So those are like, you can say, um, just lose frameworks that we used initially.

[00:46:36] And I think, um, the last six months actually gave us the data to narrow down and deeply focus on some of these funds.

[00:46:43] Um, that, uh, here's what's really working and then just double down, but everything else also helped.

[00:46:50] It's been amazing.

[00:46:51] I mean, uh, again, just for everyone's knowledge at one level, now more with your products sell from Costco, which is like, you know, gold standard of, you know, uh, membership based retail in the U S to soft bank launching you in Japan.

[00:47:07] Uh, and, uh, I know if Akash had more resources, he would conquer Japan too.

[00:47:12] But, uh, you know, he's, uh, you know, it's interesting, uh, you know, by, uh, wife amongst others, when you go abroad, uh, we used to walk into costs and other stories, uh, stores, the two brands.

[00:47:25] And, uh, I landed for a board meeting and I said, Akash, somewhere I still haven't seen like a gray, orange full blown warehouse in operation.

[00:47:33] He said, H and M are our best buddies.

[00:47:35] They'll show you one, uh, near Princeton in New York.

[00:47:37] So I went there and we land up there and every package is costs and other stories.

[00:47:43] There's the two luxury brands of H and M, which I wasn't aware of.

[00:47:46] And then it hits you.

[00:47:48] It's the only North American warehouse and it hits you.

[00:47:50] Everybody who's touching the package from costs and other stories in all of North America was served by a gray, orange bot.

[00:47:59] And it's like, it's a fascinating thought when you walk out of that thing and say, wow, like, you know, every, everyone who's touched this brand is basically touching what their bots touched.

[00:48:11] And, and that's when you feel like a sense of immense pride about what Indian engineering is, is doing globally.

[00:48:17] And I, more similarly, I know we'd like to change that order and make three out of four answers, ultra human soon, but, uh, we'll get there.

[00:48:26] Um, no, I think, um, I think you both brought up, uh, people, this culture.

[00:48:32] I definitely want to touch on that.

[00:48:33] I know, uh, the, the bits mafia and a gray orange in the early years had like their own hacks on how to build talent.

[00:48:41] I mean, you want, this time wasn't available.

[00:48:43] So it was almost like gray orange was like a gray orange Academy of robotics internally.

[00:48:48] Uh, and you know, that must've changed Akash.

[00:48:51] Like it's, you know, 13 years since or 12 years since.

[00:48:53] Um, but the two, three things, how do you get a, uh, uh, a set of people sitting in Gurgaon, um, to be able to see that vision, understand this level of sophistication that the American customer needs.

[00:49:10] Um, and be driven to like, uh, you know, wear this badge on, on this lead proudly that like, you know, we are, we are actually building the best product in the world.

[00:49:23] It's not trivial.

[00:49:24] I mean, you can say that you can get inspired and you can put them in lab out here, but how do you guys do it?

[00:49:29] Are there any tricks that young founders can learn?

[00:49:31] Because without that, I don't think you can build world class product.

[00:49:34] Yeah.

[00:49:34] Um, I think, um, at least in the initial days, what I always see, there's like two or three phases of building teams and cultures in the company.

[00:49:43] Um, we've gone through back and forth on, on phases as well, but, uh, you know, the first phase where you're trying to kind of build your first 20, I would say the only magic trick is spending like enormous amount of time with that group of 20 people.

[00:49:58] Um, and like, um, you know, I, I, I remember at least 2012 to 2014, 15, um, I think, uh, both me and Samai and, and some of the first few employees, we spent like enormous amount of time, um, together.

[00:50:13] Just thinking, dreaming, uh, you know, kind of talking about what's, what's failing and, and, and likes of that.

[00:50:20] But, but also kind of, um, forming this whole idea of that, what we want to be in, and, and how we want to do this and, you know, what kind of, uh, dreams that we want to conquer.

[00:50:34] And, and, and I remember at that point of time, um, I think it was still smaller than what we should have, uh, dreamt, but it was like, okay, how about building a warehouse or running a warehouse in us with 1000 bots that, that used to be like this, this whole not start for.

[00:50:50] Um, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and now, but building that group of first people, but I think there is no magic trick, but to spend just founders spending enormous amount of time, just talking, thinking, um, you know, dreaming together.

[00:51:19] I think that's, that's, and, and, and I think, um, there's a bunch of things that we did not do right, but this is something that we did do right.

[00:51:28] I think we, you know, the, the first group of 20, 25 people that we had at Cray Orange and the amount of time we spent, build a very, very strong, um, you know, foundation for us in terms of the journey we had to see ahead, right?

[00:51:42] So, um, that we had to think about the right challenges and all kind of still were, were very possible because this team was, was very, very connected with, with the vision, with the thought process and likes of that.

[00:51:51] So I think that's the first phase I'll think about.

[00:51:54] The second phase is when you start scaling up,

[00:51:59] how do you emulgate between this new set of people you're getting in

[00:52:04] and mostly sometimes more senior and likes of that,

[00:52:07] and the score group that you have built?

[00:52:08] And at least from the Orange perspective,

[00:52:11] this was literally a bunch of freshers or one or two year experienced people

[00:52:15] because nobody else really thought that

[00:52:18] Gray Orange should be the place they should be working at because,

[00:52:22] firstly, we're talking about hardware,

[00:52:24] we're talking about getting to Walmarts and H&Ms of the world and likes of that.

[00:52:31] It's like, okay, too risky,

[00:52:33] too early to think about these things in 2013, 2014.

[00:52:37] So it was literally a bunch of freshers and one or two year experienced people

[00:52:41] that was the core group.

[00:52:42] So the second challenge is always about

[00:52:44] when you're bringing that next 100 people,

[00:52:47] how do you emulgate that?

[00:52:49] How do you make sure that everybody in the core team is comfortable and likes of that

[00:52:54] and not getting worried about,

[00:52:57] okay, how are they going to work with this group set of people?

[00:53:01] And there's no right answer there.

[00:53:03] I think you just need to be very aware of that.

[00:53:05] There is a dynamics that's going to happen

[00:53:07] and you're going to start figuring this out.

[00:53:13] How do you make sure that everybody feels comfortable?

[00:53:16] And I think third thing,

[00:53:18] and maybe this is more specific to Grey Orange or even companies who are going through this kind of journey,

[00:53:24] is when you start pivoting to a market and start hiring people there,

[00:53:29] and then suddenly you'll see a dynamics in the company of US versus India.

[00:53:36] I remember, you know, we, and now HQ doesn't mean a lot because there's so much remote work happening.

[00:53:44] But I remember when we first formally shifted our HQ from, you know,

[00:53:50] Gurghound to, you know, Singapore and that to Atlanta.

[00:53:54] There was a lot of this talk about, oh, now will all the decisions we're taking out of Atlanta?

[00:54:00] What does that really mean for folks in India and likes of that?

[00:54:04] So when you're on to these kind of global journeys,

[00:54:06] these are some interesting things that you would never imagine.

[00:54:09] Like, you know, we putting up HQ at Atlanta was all about being closer to the customers and likes of that.

[00:54:15] And suddenly everybody's thinking, okay, now is the whole decision making changing to,

[00:54:19] you know, folks in Atlanta.

[00:54:21] So those are like another kind of dynamics or culture you got to kind of really be very aware of that these are all real things

[00:54:30] and you've got to kind of handle these things and balance these things.

[00:54:33] And, you know, even if founders are in other countries, how much time you're spending.

[00:54:39] I remember between 2018 to 2020, just before pandemic hits,

[00:54:45] I was religiously doing 15 days in the 15 days US,

[00:54:49] like religiously doing two weeks in India and two weeks US,

[00:54:52] because you still want your team to be very connected in India of what's happening in US

[00:54:59] and it should not become an island and things like that.

[00:55:02] And vice versa as well, you don't want to get completely disconnected,

[00:55:05] you know, from the team and likes of that.

[00:55:09] So I think those are some of the phases that we have gone through

[00:55:13] and kind of figured those things out.

[00:55:15] No, fascinating. So what you said rings very true.

[00:55:20] I think it's a generic, beautiful set of advice around carrying the core original team with the mission,

[00:55:26] not just the two founders or three founders.

[00:55:30] It's true of every sort of startup, I guess.

[00:55:33] What I think, you know, you might not have perspective because it's the only thing you've been associated with from college.

[00:55:39] But from my lens, when I look at a whole multitude of startups,

[00:55:42] what you said is like two X true or three X true when you're building a category defining company

[00:55:46] or you're building a new way of doing things.

[00:55:48] I've heard this from Aditya Ghosh of Indigo, who was actually

[00:55:54] was actually also guest along with you this season.

[00:55:56] And you couldn't have built this any differently than how a gray orange built

[00:56:01] because you were not building a clone of another airline in India.

[00:56:05] Right. You were building something brand new in India.

[00:56:08] So when you're building a category defining company,

[00:56:11] you have no choice but to build this like core sort of that trunk has got to be really wide.

[00:56:17] Right. Nothing can shake that tree culturally.

[00:56:20] And Mohit, I know you shifted with a whole bunch of, you know, people you had assimilated in your life,

[00:56:27] you know, whether it was at Rana or Vatsal and you had worked there.

[00:56:32] Was it any different from what Akash said?

[00:56:34] What are the nuances in your case?

[00:56:35] I know you've also tried like a hybrid of, you know, having someone like a boob and run around the world,

[00:56:40] for distribution, but having a base in Abu Dhabi, having one in Bangalore,

[00:56:44] you're doing manufacturing before we know it.

[00:56:46] If I recorded this a year later, you probably have three manufacturing centers across the world.

[00:56:51] Who knows? But like, how do you deal with that complexity?

[00:56:54] It's come at you at maybe two weeks or three weeks of speed as it has come to our car.

[00:56:58] Now, I think the at some point in time, this was a different thought process that again,

[00:57:07] how do you enjoy your time?

[00:57:09] Like most people want to see work as their second life, which we also saw basically.

[00:57:15] And like, how do we make work an enjoyable place for people?

[00:57:19] Enjoyable as in like essentially, yes, you can do a bunch of things in office,

[00:57:26] but that doesn't really count.

[00:57:27] The most important thing probably is like work with enjoyable people, right?

[00:57:31] Essentially similar IQ brainwave intensity product obsession, etc.

[00:57:38] So I think two things emerged one pattern specifically, which was we started liking people overall.

[00:57:44] And those people actually started contributing a lot more who were great at conflict avoidance,

[00:57:49] basically in life, essentially not because they didn't have contrarian views, but they figured out a way to solve a conflict.

[00:57:58] And they didn't prioritize a conflict above the actual outcome, essentially.

[00:58:03] Right? So they would fight, but they will actually figure out an answer and they'll prioritize the eventual outcome.

[00:58:07] And those people actually displayed two clear traits.

[00:58:11] One is measurable. One is semi-measurable.

[00:58:14] The first measurable trait, which we started seeing was that these guys were like exceptional users of the product.

[00:58:21] They would use the product every day.

[00:58:24] We actually have a chart which talks about our revenue growth and basically our product usage internally,

[00:58:33] unprompted product usage in the company.

[00:58:36] Percentage of ultra human employees who actually use the product and number of app movements.

[00:58:41] And there is this strange and strong correlation between the two.

[00:58:47] That the months where people actually used a product a lot more,

[00:58:51] we have seen a much higher revenue lift, interestingly.

[00:58:56] And I think that we started thinking about like,

[00:59:01] would this be like an interesting market?

[00:59:02] Because it's such an intuitive product.

[00:59:04] It tells you about your health.

[00:59:06] So if you don't believe in the product, then, or if you believe in the product, then most of the other things become easy.

[00:59:11] Because if you have a problem with like something else happened in the office,

[00:59:15] something else happened in life, but you believe in the core outcome,

[00:59:18] you probably solve all the problems and prioritize the outcome.

[00:59:21] And the second one was basically people who are generally,

[00:59:25] like you can say, um, more optimistic in life.

[00:59:30] Um, so, um, in some ways we would basically, um, and this is not a screening method, but we would ask each other questions around like,

[00:59:41] you know, if, uh, you have a delayed Indigo flight, what would you do about it?

[00:59:46] And some people would say like, I'll go to Twitter and I'll rant about it.

[00:59:50] Uh, so that's in some ways we actually said like, look,

[00:59:54] things are going to go bad in life and you're about to solve it.

[00:59:57] So every time if you complain on the internet, your Twitter feed is full of such things.

[01:00:02] Uh, you have a cynical view of life.

[01:00:06] Then like we thought that like in our friend circle also, there's always that cynical person.

[01:00:11] There's always a critic person.

[01:00:12] You always want to hang out with like a good mix of these people.

[01:00:15] Right.

[01:00:15] But you also want optimism in life because you also want to like show up every day and win.

[01:00:20] Right.

[01:00:20] So, so we, in some ways prioritize more optimistic people.

[01:00:23] I know that that could be a problem sometimes because of delusion and other issues,

[01:00:26] but then this is a bias that we have acknowledging that plus basically, um,

[01:00:33] I think the usage of the product.

[01:00:34] So we're almost up on the hour.

[01:00:35] So I'm going to, uh, I'm going to touch upon two last questions and then get to a fun rapid fire.

[01:00:41] Uh, one of them is about, you know, obviously, um, you guys are pioneers in your own fields.

[01:00:48] Uh, I'm hoping that this, uh, episode ages very well.

[01:00:52] Uh, we'll be sitting in 2030 and looking at, you know, even bigger stars of like what we set out to do from the last decade to the middle of this decade.

[01:01:01] But, um, and therefore, you know, I've, I know this, uh, Mohit, I know you've begun to, uh, angel invest and I've started seeing the first spin outs from ultra human.

[01:01:11] Uh, you guys are an inspiration on one, one theme, uh, gray orange has been fascinating on the other side, right?

[01:01:17] Uh, plenty of hardware companies see them as like early role models.

[01:01:21] We've been requested many times to have Akash, Samay on, uh, you know, as angel investors so that they can, it's a way to give them a call when they need them.

[01:01:30] So I think almost every hardware company we did in the last six, seven years, I think they have a small check or one of them has, or something of that nature.

[01:01:38] So, um, and I know you folks would love to give more time and more guidance.

[01:01:43] Uh, so, but on this journey specifically, not generic, uh, entrepreneur founder journey, but if you were advising a young version of yourself trying to build, uh, the new, uh, sort of, you know, new cool hardware linked, I would say.

[01:01:59] These are not about building hardware companies, but taking on these massive global problems and saying, we can do it from India.

[01:02:06] What advice would you give and what would you do even earlier than what you both have done?

[01:02:10] Just one or two points.

[01:02:12] Whoever wants to go first.

[01:02:13] I think the first one I would gain, I think given Mohit gave it, uh, earlier, I didn't stop overthinking.

[01:02:20] I think it's not, I think it's not hard as it, as it looks, uh, you know, you can get, uh, your hands around it way quicker than what you imagine.

[01:02:32] Right.

[01:02:32] And, and also I think building a hardware startup or hardware inspired startup out of India doesn't mean that you got to, I would say, source everything from India and, and things like that.

[01:02:49] I think you, you have global aspirations.

[01:02:52] You've got to have global aspirations all around, right?

[01:02:55] Um, you know, if you're going to manufacture in Mexico, you got to manufacture in Mexico for us market that, that, that, that you shouldn't be kind of worrying about, um, that.

[01:03:04] So I, I think, uh, those two things like, you know, stop overthinking as soon as you got to get your first prototype and in, in, in hardware, you know, uh, actually pretty much opposite to software.

[01:03:16] I trading faster is even more important because, you know, um, once you put something in order, at least in B2B space, uh, once you put.

[01:03:27] 10,000 bots out in the market and you have to do a ECN or a recall, that's like, uh, you know, it's, it's, it's, uh, it's something that you really will have to think about.

[01:03:39] Will you survive that or not?

[01:03:41] So I trade very, very fast, right?

[01:03:44] I would, I would, and, and I would throw your product into, into the market very, very quickly telling people that you're doing this.

[01:03:52] I think one more thing that people, um, feel very uncertain about is, oh, can I really go with, um, early stage product to the customer?

[01:04:00] Right.

[01:04:00] To, um, to a very established customer.

[01:04:03] I think Moit can talk about more of consumer journey, but I'm, I'm more talking about the B2B journey.

[01:04:08] The answer is yes, but not telling them very clearly that where are you in this part of the journey.

[01:04:14] And if they are ready to kind of accept a newer technology and work with it, that is the right customer.

[01:04:20] Not everybody will do it, but thinking that you will perfect the product.

[01:04:24] Like you can never ever perfect a product in, in, in the lab, right?

[01:04:29] There is always so many new learnings that you will get to the customer.

[01:04:33] But I think this is a mistake we also did early on and we always used to thought, oh, how will a customer buy a unfinished product?

[01:04:41] It's like, you know, that, that doesn't seem right.

[01:04:43] But then we realized that no, there are customers who are ready to kind of innovate with you.

[01:04:47] You can go to them, be super transparent and they will build with you.

[01:04:51] Right.

[01:04:52] Because they want to kind of innovate and do something together in, in, in likes of that.

[01:04:56] So I think those are the two things I would, I would think about.

[01:05:00] Mohit, anything from you?

[01:05:01] No, I think all the things that Akash said, um, especially on the speed to market make, make a lot of sense.

[01:05:07] But two specific things could be one is maybe I would have learned to code faster, uh, learn to look at actual code faster.

[01:05:17] Um, uh, in, in, in ultra human.

[01:05:20] Um, I think,

[01:05:21] Meaning like building, building the software layers even faster.

[01:05:24] Is that what you say?

[01:05:25] No, no, no.

[01:05:26] I think, uh, you yourself looking and understanding how the code really works.

[01:05:30] Uh, and as a founder in this space.

[01:05:35] Yeah.

[01:05:35] So I think I realized that it's not like you need to code to ship faster.

[01:05:39] It's just that you start making more sense, um, um, as, as a team member and, uh, it's incredibly empowering in many ways.

[01:05:47] You just understand the company and the business of selling technology.

[01:05:51] But if we don't understand technology, uh, then we are a businessman selling technology.

[01:05:56] Oh, yeah.

[01:05:57] So that, that, that would have been well learning.

[01:05:59] And, um, I think the second one would be, I think to, to, um, if you can, um, basically, um, uh, just sort out the basics in life, which is health, uh, movement, sleep, uh, nutrition, exercise.

[01:06:17] And, um, um, I think especially for founders, uh, get a decent house.

[01:06:21] I know many founders who actually like, um, in their house, they don't have wifi working and then they feel that crugality is associated with long-termness, but there is some critical threshold to crugality.

[01:06:33] Um, which, which I think, um, and I would say that that has been incredibly empowering for me, especially to, to get to the bare minimum of, uh, what, what productivity, uh, looks like.

[01:06:44] Uh, that would be, I don't know, maybe like, like something that I would do much earlier in my life.

[01:06:49] Great advice.

[01:06:50] One, uh, obviously I haven't given you guys enough time to quiz each other.

[01:06:55] Was there a question you were dying to ask each other?

[01:06:57] And I know I asked all the questions, but any questions that you have for each other?

[01:07:01] I have one.

[01:07:02] Yeah.

[01:07:02] Yeah.

[01:07:03] Go ahead.

[01:07:03] I have a lot, but I'll, I'll, I'll stick to one.

[01:07:06] Okay.

[01:07:06] Go ahead.

[01:07:07] Go ahead.

[01:07:07] Yeah.

[01:07:07] No, I think one would be on the, um, specifically on like Walmart sales cycle.

[01:07:12] How, how hard or difficult was it to like work with some of these giants in the U S market?

[01:07:18] Because I think we, um, we keep joking that like the kind of DD that's how these guys do on you,

[01:07:25] uh, is, is incredible.

[01:07:28] Like the amount of depth that they have in terms of understanding, not just the company, but you

[01:07:32] as founders and understanding your financials and going deeper and deeper and deeper with the journey.

[01:07:37] Yeah.

[01:07:38] I think, uh, any fortune hundreds, and of course, these are some of the fortune ones and twos, uh,

[01:07:44] that we are talking about.

[01:07:46] Uh, the, the journey is always, um, harder needs patience.

[01:07:49] And, and I think, um, it needs, um, a good product.

[01:07:55] I would say, you know, the whole thing is that no good marketing can, can make the cut, right?

[01:08:02] The reason because they all go deeper in, in is because they really are looking for is the product

[01:08:07] good, is the product real, is the, is the team good and likes of that.

[01:08:12] And then, you know, at least in B2B space at some point of time, you also have to decide because

[01:08:17] the amount of influence they will have on your thinking on your roadmap on, on, on your, um,

[01:08:24] you know, bandwidth itself, right?

[01:08:25] Is, is, is gonna be, um, huge.

[01:08:28] So I think that's a decision a company needs to take, right?

[01:08:31] But once you've taken that decision, I think it, it just making sure that the, the core product,

[01:08:37] the value proposition you're giving as a product is, is good.

[01:08:40] And, and you can stop kind of spending a lot on marketing and likes of that, you know, the,

[01:08:45] the kind of DD and kind of, um, detail, um, I would say conversations you would have will cut

[01:08:51] through all the marketing and you'll be at, at pretty much is the core value of the product

[01:08:55] really making, uh, making sense.

[01:08:57] And they would be thinking longterm, like, is it, it's not something okay.

[01:09:02] Let's just quickly do something.

[01:09:03] It doesn't really make any difference for them in five years timeframe is what they are,

[01:09:11] that they're thinking.

[01:09:12] They're not thinking that, okay, let's do something very, uh, very quickly.

[01:09:17] Yeah.

[01:09:17] I think, you know, it, it, it, it, it's fascinating to understand how,

[01:09:22] what does the talent in India for, for hardware look like today for you guys, like 2020, 2024?

[01:09:29] How have you guys been thinking about, uh, about the talent?

[01:09:32] I almost think I need to kind of step back and learn a little bit how

[01:09:35] India ecosystem has evolved to kind of, uh, think about this.

[01:09:39] I think I'll divide this into, um, three specific layers.

[01:09:43] So one would be firmware.

[01:09:45] Um, second would be a production engineering.

[01:09:48] Um, and, um, well, third, um, I could say more around supply chain, um, and logistics,

[01:09:56] all those things, right?

[01:09:58] Um, so supply chain logistics, um, I think we probably have like 70 to 80%.

[01:10:04] Now, given the fact that India has seen supply chain logistics of some version, uh, here and there,

[01:10:10] uh, a lot of supply chain logistics guys have moved back to India, start their own companies,

[01:10:14] are getting into B2B manufacturing.

[01:10:16] So that talent is now like compared to three years ago, um, a lot of density now.

[01:10:21] Um, the next layer is production engineering.

[01:10:25] Um, I would say that probably the area where you have people, but, um, basically, uh, they

[01:10:34] don't get understand what a consumer company was required.

[01:10:38] Um, and what, what kind of finesse, what kind of speed, why do you need a yearly release cycle?

[01:10:44] Like we get this question on our production floor that, um, uh, boss every year, one version,

[01:10:51] why it hurts your PNL doesn't make sense, keeps us busy.

[01:10:55] Uh, most companies we have worked for release one product and then they keep selling it forever.

[01:11:00] So what does it mean to like, uh, like make making a new product every year?

[01:11:06] And, um, and I think, uh, that mindset is, is different.

[01:11:11] Um, uh, because I mean, essentially you're trying to create an experience and experience

[01:11:16] cannot only be looked at from a physical product perspective because a physical product is not

[01:11:20] the outcome.

[01:11:21] It's just an enabler of an outcome.

[01:11:22] So I think that talent generally, I would say is, is there, but needs a lot of coaching.

[01:11:27] Needs a lot of coaching in terms of speed.

[01:11:30] So in terms of parallel processing, in terms of trying multiple experiments, uh, many of

[01:11:34] them actually come from a space and defense background.

[01:11:38] Um, and, uh, again, there's a lot of overthinking problem in this specifically.

[01:11:44] Um, but also like, I would say that, um, a lot of incredibly talented people, uh, getting paid

[01:11:51] very, very less in India, extremely, uh, you can say less in India, but with coaching, they

[01:11:57] could be truly world-class.

[01:11:59] That's the second one.

[01:12:00] Third one from there is a very, very early.

[01:12:04] I would say exceptionally early.

[01:12:06] We are, I would say probably at 1% of where we should be as a, uh, like most people, most

[01:12:12] application developers are emerging in Ruby on rails, Java, maybe some patent guys, many

[01:12:17] patent guys basically, but, um, like CC plus plus understanding of, um, actual, uh, system

[01:12:24] design, power efficient systems, firmware release management.

[01:12:28] Um, those are the things that we've had to grow in house in a painful way.

[01:12:34] Um, so I would say that by hundreds of where it should be.

[01:12:37] Wow.

[01:12:38] So I think it hasn't evolved, evolved.

[01:12:41] Yeah.

[01:12:41] Because he's saying I went through the same thing.

[01:12:44] Yeah.

[01:12:44] Yeah.

[01:12:44] Actually this, this whole problem statement of why releasing a version and we were releasing

[01:12:49] every 18 months and, you know, um, and, uh, our folks were coming from car industry,

[01:12:56] which is like a life cycle of 10 years.

[01:12:57] Right.

[01:12:58] And, and they were like, sir, the team salmada prototyping yogi up, uh,

[01:13:02] kya bat kar raya up atara mhini, we'll release karen ghi bat kar raya.

[01:13:05] So, so yeah, it's, um, it's, uh, it's amazing that, um, things haven't, um, evolved a lot.

[01:13:11] Actually, uh, these were exact same questions that we were answering.

[01:13:15] These are exact, like we built our own.

[01:13:19] Firmware like the bid bucket or for firmware, because we built our own, you know, releasing mechanisms

[01:13:26] and, you know, OTA mechanisms for firmware and likes of that, because we had like five different

[01:13:32] firmwares in the bots and there was no real tooling available to quickly synchronize those five

[01:13:37] firmwares and ship them to the bot and do over the air firmware of grids and, and, and things like

[01:13:42] that.

[01:13:43] So we, I think we, we have a lot to still do to kind of get this, uh, get this right in India,

[01:13:51] because, um, this is, this is still something that things haven't evolved.

[01:13:54] One would think, uh, just on that note, uh, one would think like with all these, uh, you know, uh,

[01:14:01] GCCs, some of this should be getting ported to India today, right?

[01:14:04] I mean, there's supposedly a couple of thousand GCCs.

[01:14:07] There must be some companies that are actually shifting this kind of talent of nurturing this

[01:14:11] kind of talent in India too.

[01:14:13] One would think and on your production cycles, et cetera, maybe Foxconn finally setting up

[01:14:18] monstrous outfits in India might help.

[01:14:21] They have to be on an Apple timeline from here on, right?

[01:14:24] Which is also not there in India.

[01:14:25] I mean, Apple almost didn't do anything.

[01:14:27] I think it is.

[01:14:28] I don't think Foxconn's will help.

[01:14:30] Some of these core companies doing core hardware R&D in India will help because I think where

[01:14:36] we face challenge was the prototyping cycle and getting to alpha beta phases.

[01:14:41] I think post that it was fine.

[01:14:43] I think, uh, once you get to a, like a alpha beta reliable product, like in India,

[01:14:48] uh, again, uh, I don't know how it is today.

[01:14:51] We want, we, uh, we almost struggled to do accelerated life cycle testing and we were

[01:14:56] selling a product that we said will last seven to 10 years, right?

[01:15:00] The company wasn't seven to 10 years old when we were selling this.

[01:15:04] And, um, we wanted to do accelerated life cycle testing that how do I test the product that it

[01:15:09] will last for seven years?

[01:15:10] And that was like, it was not known in India how to do accelerated life cycle testing.

[01:15:15] We had to design a method of doing accelerated life cycle testing.

[01:15:18] So I think, I think it's just a lot more, um, hardware R&D happening in India is what,

[01:15:24] what, what is, uh, what is needed.

[01:15:26] Yeah.

[01:15:26] So I'm going to do a quick cycle of, uh, uh, maybe rapid fire for fun and then come

[01:15:31] back to the finale questions.

[01:15:33] So, uh, given that the theme is, you know, hardware and both of you are like dards of hardware,

[01:15:39] uh, your favorite hardware product founder.

[01:15:42] Like if you had to pick one, who do you like role model or idealize or read about?

[01:15:47] Hardware, hardware, I think James Dyson.

[01:15:49] I think he's done some really good work on, on hardware and yeah.

[01:15:55] Yeah.

[01:15:55] We've been pitched to his family office by the way.

[01:15:57] That's how much, how, how good of, of a business wedding is.

[01:16:02] We haven't gotten anybody, but I just say.

[01:16:04] I have the same answer actually.

[01:16:06] So I was going to spell out James Dyson, but yeah, very, very hard to find good hardware founders.

[01:16:12] Any, any cool product that you guys think should exist, but doesn't in hardware or in like,

[01:16:17] you know, what do you come across, uh, amongst the things you come across and both of you are

[01:16:21] geeky.

[01:16:22] You go to hundreds of stores.

[01:16:23] I know you're building some of it because you, you don't think they exist, but still.

[01:16:31] Yeah.

[01:16:31] At least for me, I think I've been just imagining faster planes.

[01:16:35] Like why does it still take 10 hours to go from New York to London?

[01:16:38] It's still, still very, very challenging for me.

[01:16:43] I need to fill those passports faster.

[01:16:48] Yeah.

[01:16:49] I have a trivial one.

[01:16:51] I think just, um, and the world doesn't like printers anymore, but just printers and projectors

[01:16:56] that work, uh, so much.

[01:16:58] Yeah.

[01:16:58] It doesn't work.

[01:17:00] They used to buy them because they don't work and we fight about it.

[01:17:03] No, but yeah.

[01:17:04] What's the one product that you think you can't live without other than your own product?

[01:17:08] I think I would go as simple as actually AirPods.

[01:17:11] I think that is one product that I've used like a hell lot.

[01:17:16] Yeah.

[01:17:16] I thought, yeah.

[01:17:17] And I thought it made, I just thought, how could it not happen much earlier?

[01:17:21] Like it made life so, so, so damn simple.

[01:17:25] Yeah.

[01:17:26] Yeah.

[01:17:26] Yeah.

[01:17:26] AirPods.

[01:17:27] Maybe, I mean, smartphone is obvious.

[01:17:29] Um, but, uh, it's a software product, but maybe like a combination of payment devices.

[01:17:37] Like, especially how Apple day works.

[01:17:40] Uh, it's incredibly.

[01:17:41] And have some payments and yeah.

[01:17:42] Yeah.

[01:17:43] Just wireless payments.

[01:17:44] Um, anything that, you know, you wish you knew before starting up.

[01:17:48] And I know more, you're, you, you've lived two journeys already.

[01:17:52] You've been a part of other startups.

[01:17:53] Akash, you've had multiple journeys within the same startup, but yeah, one thing you wish

[01:17:57] you knew.

[01:17:58] I would say that tech is not the hardest part.

[01:18:01] I thought the tech would be the hardest part, but tech is not the hardest part.

[01:18:06] Like in wave, wave more harder things than tech.

[01:18:11] Yeah.

[01:18:11] Absolutely.

[01:18:12] Right.

[01:18:13] Building businesses is more about, uh, you know, people and organizations and the complexity

[01:18:17] of, uh, Karsh is nodding his head, picking all these investors.

[01:18:21] It's so super irritating.

[01:18:24] But yeah.

[01:18:25] What about you?

[01:18:26] No, I think the, the value of discipline.

[01:18:28] Um, I think it's incredible how like just those boring daily standups, uh, 15 minute

[01:18:37] catchups, just keeping an eye on whether you're making incremental progress, it just compounds

[01:18:42] over time.

[01:18:42] And whenever I think we've almost always like made progress.

[01:18:46] So I think it's just fascinating how compounding works.

[01:18:48] Um, super.

[01:18:50] And a fun favorite, like Eureka moment in your own sort of product journeys, like for you

[01:18:55] personally, like what did you suddenly discover?

[01:18:57] I know Akash has been tinkering with the bots for a while.

[01:19:00] Uh, you, Akash, and then Mohit in the products that you've been seeing, where have you contributed

[01:19:05] and felt, wow, like I, this was my Eureka moment that I gave for the product.

[01:19:10] Yeah.

[01:19:10] I think maybe specific examples around, you know, simplifying things where you suddenly, uh,

[01:19:16] realized that all of this is not really just needed.

[01:19:20] Like we, we got into, and I think one thing maybe more generic, uh, a lot of times when

[01:19:26] you're problem solving, I see this pattern and, and now try and kind of get out of it very quickly.

[01:19:33] You're trying to solve a problem, A and suddenly to solve a problem, B, you start thinking about

[01:19:37] B and suddenly you are, everybody's solving B and everybody has forgot about A. And I think

[01:19:43] I see this happening, um, especially when you have a younger set of people who is kind of, um,

[01:19:50] very passionate about something. Um, I think just, uh, realizing that, oh, you, you had to solve a

[01:19:56] problem, A and everybody's spending time on B and then you'll realize, oh, this is not the real

[01:20:01] problem. Problem was A. So, so I think those are multiple moments that I've had.

[01:20:06] Nice. Mohit, you?

[01:20:07] I think the probably something that I keep doing every day, uh, today. And I, it just fascinates me

[01:20:14] is that I started pushing people towards chat JVD towards like, I think all life's answers are,

[01:20:20] uh, I mean, it is surprising that whenever I think of a problem, my natural reaction was never

[01:20:27] to chat JVD and that's true for a lot of people inside my company. And whenever we have like gone with

[01:20:33] JVD as a first, uh, response towards asking, looking for answers, we've always found like better

[01:20:40] answers, a faster way to like think about the framework. So it's, it's spooky, but it's incredible.

[01:20:45] It is spooky. It is spooky. Yeah. It shows, it shows some direction for the future. Favorite books,

[01:20:52] uh, if, uh, if you're getting any time to read off, of late, what is sprung out as a

[01:21:00] favorite book for each of the few?

[01:21:02] I think hard things about hard things are still kind of one of my favorites.

[01:21:07] Yeah.

[01:21:07] It's a fun. Bizarrely. I think we gave that as a, somebody who said, you know,

[01:21:12] bloom are not like kind investors. We gave it as a Diwali gift once to all of our first book we

[01:21:21] ever gave for Diwali was hard thing about hard things, but yeah, it's like, what kind of investor

[01:21:26] gives that for the body, but anyway, I'm, I mean, the, the dog mine would be like, I'm enjoying

[01:21:31] emperor of all maladies, uh, like recently, um, fascinating book on cancer. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:21:40] Yeah. I mean, uh, fascinating how, I mean, not, not just the disease, but like thinking about the

[01:21:49] disease and the evolution and all, all the mysticism associated with the disease and all that. Yeah.

[01:21:55] That's been fascinating.

[01:21:56] And guilty pleasures when you're not doing what you're doing at work.

[01:22:00] For me, it's, it's driving, driving a good sports career.

[01:22:07] I think that's, that's strangely something unique to me. I think I've probably driven with almost all

[01:22:12] my founders behind the wheel. I've done so many car meetings. It's not funny. So the last time was

[01:22:19] with Akash on the Gurgaon Delhi airport thing and we were stressed, but then Akash

[01:22:24] Akash changed his gear.

[01:22:29] But yeah. What about you more?

[01:22:31] I think like a big fan of classical music and the standing classical music. So

[01:22:35] Oh, really? I didn't know that.

[01:22:37] Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Good guilty pleasure to have. So let's wrap up and you know,

[01:22:42] I meant to ask it before, and then you threw in chat GPT into the mix more. So, you know, here you are

[01:22:49] 2024. Both of you give or take at the cusp of becoming $100 million businesses. It's amazing.

[01:22:56] Screw the valuations. We know what is blood, sweat tears have gone into building $100 million

[01:23:02] businesses of this scale from those humble beginnings. Of course, there's the Danda side of

[01:23:09] it. We see these businesses potentially at $1 billion say in five years, eight years, 10 years,

[01:23:14] wherever you get there. But more importantly, like if you have to take like a futuristic stab at

[01:23:20] where the world is going, you know, apart from what Elon Musk dreams for the rest of us,

[01:23:26] what would what would be a fun futuristic description of where you see all of us in 2030 or 2035? And it

[01:23:35] could be from your industry lenses. Like, you know, what's the cool thing about, you know, shipping and

[01:23:40] and, you know, warehouse efficiency that you see our cars or health that you see more. It would be very

[01:23:47] cool to hear. It doesn't need to be in your respective industries. But I would love for you guys who saw the

[01:23:55] future 10 years ago, five years ago. I would love to hear a review for our listeners today before we

[01:24:01] die. Yeah, I think at least if I think about this more from from what we are doing and you know,

[01:24:08] what we have been imagining, we truly believe that the overall experience for consuming kind of goods,

[01:24:17] right, is something that's going to evolve very, very quickly. And this is something that I think while

[01:24:24] ecommerce change a little bit of, you know, the experience of consuming goods, there are a lot of

[01:24:30] transactions that happens between a consumer and a manufacturer. The nature of those transactions has

[01:24:36] remained exact same in like 20-30 years. Like, you know, I think when I entered a store in when I was like

[01:24:45] eight years old versus what I do today has not changed a lot actually. You know, how I shop on a website

[01:24:52] and how I consume it has not changed very differently. But I think there is a lot happening.

[01:24:59] And I think this is all going to change. I think the way we experience things, the way we consume

[01:25:06] things, the way we try out things or how personalized it is or how relevant it is and how easy it is,

[01:25:14] is going to evolve quite a bit over the next 10 years. So I think while we still don't know the exact

[01:25:21] shape of it, but I think the technology and Cray Orange has always been a bits and atoms company

[01:25:29] than just bits companies. So the combination of bits and atoms and the technology that we see today

[01:25:35] is definitely going to change how we consume our day-to-day kind of things.

[01:25:42] Yeah.

[01:25:42] Super exciting. I know you're building a bunch of stuff, Akash and G Store and dozens of other

[01:25:46] things to follow. So super excited to see what comes from the gray orange table.

[01:25:50] Moit?

[01:25:51] I think I could say that the first time ever in my life, I'm seeing

[01:25:55] this unique pattern of different, like for example, software engineers learning microbiology,

[01:26:03] scientists learning about coding, someone who has basically very basic education. In our team,

[01:26:11] for example, like someone in supply chain logistics, very early in their journey talking about like,

[01:26:16] look, this is a firmware issue. I ran GPT on this firmware issue and this is what I found. And being

[01:26:22] able to like hold that conversation are basically some of our developers talking to doctors and talking

[01:26:29] about like from a primary diagnostic perspective, this is the kind of protocol we could build.

[01:26:34] So all those conversations just make us think that in the future, like 80% of talent will be

[01:26:39] democratized, maybe 90%. Everyone will have like some level of talent or thinking power. People who have

[01:26:46] not had great education early will have a second life for education because of being able to learn again

[01:26:51] in a conversational way through the chatbot. And then just the fact that the next five years could

[01:26:57] behave like the past 50 years, given of given the fact that people could just learn things faster.

[01:27:02] It is incredible to see some of our supply chain guys learn coding by themselves and write a macro,

[01:27:09] write a script, write basically different things coming from a no coding, broken English background and

[01:27:17] writing perfectly good marketing emails. So I think that is the future that sounds really interesting.

[01:27:22] You're saying cross functional knowledge will just make, you know, possibilities erupt in a way

[01:27:27] that we've never seen before. And of course, the opportunity sets for these people emerge

[01:27:32] automatically as well. It's been fantastic. I know Mohit's also been like a generous,

[01:27:38] you know, allowed us to generously gift all our guests, the ultra human ring and kids. So Akash,

[01:27:45] maybe there's one waiting for you when we meet next. But more importantly, given the first time

[01:27:50] in a long time that we've had two guests, I don't know what you can swap with them, but you guys should

[01:27:54] barter and you should give him some bots and he should give yourself rings for your team.

[01:28:00] And I'll buy a CNC machine.

[01:28:01] There you go. Whatever Akash is selling or making. But yeah, go ahead, barter, go to the old economy,

[01:28:09] keep exchanging notes, exchange machines, exchange rings. I know Mohit's building ultra human homes.

[01:28:15] So, you know, that maybe Akash, that's the product you want. But it's been such a pleasure. I know we

[01:28:21] overshot. But I think every bit of these 90 minutes will be a delight for the audiences, especially

[01:28:29] we haven't done something as in-depth, geeky, hardware, deep tech oriented in a long time. And,

[01:28:36] you know, India's bustling in every corner with founders who want to be at the cutting edge of,

[01:28:42] you know, the kind of things you guys are making. So thanks for inspiring. Thanks for leading.

[01:28:47] Thanks for being the first of those examples from India. And many, many, many follow and may you guys be

[01:28:52] continue to lead with the beacon into the next decade. Thanks again, Mohit. Thanks, Akash.

[01:28:58] Thanks, Karthul. Thanks, Mohit.

[01:29:00] Thank you so much. Thank you, Karthul. Thanks for the opportunity, Karthul.

[01:29:03] We thank IDFC First Bank for being our annual partner. IDFC First Bank is deeply engaged with the

[01:29:08] startup community in India. The commitment to fostering innovation and supporting entrepreneurship

[01:29:12] has made them a valuable partner in the growth journey of numerous startups, including many,

[01:29:16] many Bloom portfolio companies. This partnership helps us in a mission to back the next generation

[01:29:21] of revolutionary founders in India.