Reality ⚠️of @TechBurner ‘s watch Business? ft. Shlok and my brother Neel ❤️

Summary

Highlights

• Scho and his team made the bold move to design a smartwatch that competes with top brands like Apple. 🍏
• Their strategy involved a deep dive into product design, functionality, and exclusivity to capture market trust. 🔍
• The brand leveraged storytelling to share their product journey and connect emotionally with potential buyers. ❤️
• Their focus on a niche market segment helped them succeed where bigger players struggled. 🎯
• The use of advanced storytelling and content marketing strategies helped sell 10,000 units in just 24 hours. 📈

Key Takeaways

• Storytelling is crucial in building a brand, especially for creators venturing into product sales. 📚
• A strong emotional connection with your audience can drive product sales beyond mere viewership. 💖
• It's vital to have a unique value proposition that differentiates your product in a crowded market. 🌟
• Partnerships with credible sources (like rocket designers) can elevate your brand's credibility. 🚀
• Patents and unique designs are key in protecting and differentiating your tech product. 🔑

Overview

Reality ⚠️of @TechBurner ‘s watch Business? ft. Shlok and my brother Neel ❤️ Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Aman said that they tried very hard to succeed in the watch Market but they couldn't last year we went into a category which was watches it was the worst category we went into it became a race to the bottom they have everything possible to succeed in the market you guys don't have all the money in the world you guys haven't built a tech product as of now and most importantly you guys don't have the distribution which is perhaps the most important thing required to succeed in this category what exactly is the gap in the market that you saw which gives you the
• 00:30 - 01:00 right to win and not [Music] vote my first tech product failed we've been creating content for 10 years then we launched skins but now we jumping onto a tech product first comment China
• 01:00 - 01:30 we thought K we have to design something that beats Apple watch Neil whenever I've spoken to you and while you were designing those watch you've often said that Indian Smartwatch brands are lazy why do you say that a few years back you failed to make a speaker and today you're getting advice from a guy who worked at Marshall which is one of the world's finest speaker making companies times IND standardi Market this is assuming the sales of how many units guys
• 01:30 - 02:00 tech companies would do anything and everything to get a patent Google bought just for the patents who is things school why is he creating a course what at Brand everyone will know that it will feel I actually have a slight disagreement over here and I'll help you understand why design [Music]
• 02:00 - 02:30 hi everybody this episode has required a very heavy production and we are able to bring this episode to you only because of the generous support of our sponsor ODU ODU is an all-in-one business management software that helps entrepreneurs simplify their day-to-day business operations an e-commerce store is essential for reaching a global customer base and driving sales but
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• 03:00 - 03:30 personalize your store by dragging and dropping blocks customizing visuals adding content and conferring product options like sizes and colors the best part is that you can configure your payment methods directly on the platform itself and you can add options like UPI and Razer pay on top of that you also have shipping Partners like FedEx and DHL available so if this sounds interesting to you check out Odo from the link in the description and the first application on Odo is free for life with unlimited hosting and support Plus you also get a free custom domain
• 03:30 - 04:00 for a year so if you find this useful enough use the link in the description to check out Odo now good morning guys welcome to the Indian business podcast I am very very excited to have you over here because two days ago that you guys just ended up selling 3.5 CR worth of watches in 24 hours I was so happy because I've seen you guys work so hard towards this every single thing that you've done until now whether that was your meetings your content everything was just directed
• 04:00 - 04:30 towards this watch in fact watch content creator which is a very very big deal and because you are such close friends today I have the privilege to pick your brains and understand those things which otherwise I won't be able to ask any other founder in this category so today guys I want you to walk me through your entire Journey failures success process wisdom so that tomorrow if there's a 22 year-old kid who wants to launch his own product in the market they should be able to get a step-by-step process I know it's not possible to just jot on
• 04:30 - 05:00 everything but as much as possible so that any founder who wants to build a d2c brand in this category can avoid making the most basic mistakes and can look at a much better perspective or can have a much better perspective on how to take his or her product to the market shall we get started guys yeah 100% by 100% okay guys the first thing that I wanted to ask you and this is coming from a clip that I saw of Aman Gupta Aman said that they tried very hard to succeed in the watch
• 05:00 - 05:30 Market but they couldn't now if you look at Aman Gupta and boat they have everything possible to succeed in the market they have all the money in the world Aman has the Shark Tank Fame and most importantly they've built the distribution for the electronics that they're going to sell by default because they're anyway selling earphones right whereas you guys you guys don't have all the money in the world you guys haven't built a tech product as of now
• 05:30 - 06:00 and most importantly you guys don't have the distribution which is perhaps the most important thing required to succeed in this category and yet you had the courage to launch a watch at 7,000 rupee price point which is again something that no other brand has been able to do in India and you guys ended up selling 3 and a half crores worth of watches in 24 hours now although this is not a marker of success my question is what exactly is the gap in the market that you saw
• 06:00 - 06:30 which gives you the right to win and not boat Aman is a beautiful person and I think what he has done with boat with marketing and especially the audio segment he has done a great job and I don't know how he has done with the variables while segment but that is what he said that it was difficult for him and he had to roll back but I know from the visits I've made to China that major brands don't create their own product there are two ways to create a product in this industry
• 06:30 - 07:00 and um one ways you can Outsource the product or maybe white label the product um it's just a different um ball game so what you have to do is you have to go to China okay first you have to go to China you have to go to all of these manufacturers they will show you like redim made pieces of and you can Source these products and you can have a contract with them like this is exclusive for me in India I will the I'll be the only manufacturer or
• 07:00 - 07:30 I'll be the only brand selling this watch so you won't see the same watch with any other brand and they launch that products and it's just the game about negotiating and when it comes to India it is all about like marketing and if you can do efficient marketing or if you can cut the margins down or if you can bring more funding to sell a lot more pieces or if you can do put a ad in newspapers and all these things the problem with that approach when you're not creating a product the products that these readymade
• 07:30 - 08:00 um manufacturers have in China they are created for profit so they look very fancy from the outside they are very beautiful and nicely designed and if you put like them on U uh the website would look like a crazy product it's like Rolex and um Apple watches in like 1,000 2,000 Rupees but say they're Hollow they don't have the sensors they don't have the tracking some you would be surprised I was so shocked to hear this spo2
• 08:00 - 08:30 sensor that can potentially save lives that could have potentially saved lives during covid yeah Neil ke smart ring also I remember like three or four years back I came to Neil his Co was detected by a smart ring a yeah and Ora ring and all of these smart watches that are cheaply made or ready made they don't have an SP2 sensor why they are just showing a random number around 95 to
• 08:30 - 09:00 100% And I I genuinely felt sad um I'm not talking about let's say a particular company but if you just put any Smartwatch on a bottle you would know if it has a good sensor or not bottle2 and that was the pre-made approach and we figured that out when we went to China when we went and saw all of these things and um then we realized what these companies are not doing and
• 09:00 - 09:30 why are they doing this they're doing this because they're driven by profits they're driven by investors they're driven by is quarter grow next and we were like quarterly growth if you're willing to sacrifice health and design and Innovation I think that problem needs to be solved and the other alternative was you spend 1 1.5 2 years building a product and it might work and it might not work
• 09:30 - 10:00 and building a product takes a lot of bandwidth um it takes a lot of time it takes a lot of energy not just the money part but also the time it takes to build a new firmware a new software a new design that can be patented it's a very tough and it's a very time-taking process a lot the a lot of these companies don't go into that because it does not make monetary sense you invest crores of rupees into building a product and then it might s or might not sell
• 10:00 - 10:30 otherwise you can just like it takes 15 to 20 days to take a redimed product and launch it and you can launch like 20 30 of these and if even if it one works that like it will make up for all the profits so if it takes you 2 years to build a product and in the same time you can launch like 40 other products that are 80% of that um I think that is the primary reason they're not going into this but we because we are a new brand
• 10:30 - 11:00 and we also have a lot of freedom because we have no investors we have a profitable company and we were ready to take the risk because the problem was too big because the problem was very close to us and um we also believed he all of these Brands Indian Brands even Chinese Brands a lot of other brands also they're trying to chase Apple they're trying to chase Apple what do you mean by they're trying to chase Apple if you look look at all the smart watches that are being
• 11:00 - 11:30 sold they all look like apple watches the design is very similar to Apple watch or maybe some cheap watches might try to replace a Rolex or look like a [Music] Rolex I have been very very inspired by Apple and they create beautiful products Apple watch Ultra is also one of the best watches out there but when it comes to design it is a very functional product what
• 11:30 - 12:00 I think because design is subjective it was easy to create a product that meets these needs and also tracking maybe these products that are better than Apple watch let's say that verat kohi and chrisan Ronaldo wears there's a lot of smart rings that are better in accuracy so we just saw ke there is a playing field where we could enter and there is a potential of becoming number one got it so if I were to summarize this number one most brands in India are
• 12:00 - 12:30 chasing profit and growth and they're not chasing product what that essentially means is that they want to increase their revenue they want to show their investors that they're growing and they fundamentally don't believe in building a great product and their definition of great product is just a good-look watch and it's not a very functional watch and one example of that was SP2 the third reason is that because they want to launch too many products
• 12:30 - 13:00 at a very short span like you just mentioned that they want to launch 20 30 40 products every single month it doesn't make any economic sense for them to bring the product design inh housee which is why they just white label the products from China and then you mentioned that they chase Apple which is where you guys have a big leverage you guys are not chasing money you guys have just one product and this is your Do or Die opportunity yeah makes sense Neil can you please help me
• 13:00 - 13:30 understand the economics of this Market let's start with the different price points and where does your watch stand so Smartwatch Market in India is roughly around $1 billion so India May 5.5 CR Smartwatch B at an average order value of, 15500 rupes so if you multiply this it will be close to a billion uh what we are aiming is that we want to one out of this 5.5 crores users basically the market share is divided between firebol noise Bolt Apple Garmin Samsung Apple
• 13:30 - 14:00 Garmin you mentioned yeah Garmin Fitbit and Samsung so Apple only Apple only owns 1% of this market share that is Apple sells 5 lakh watches every year Samsung Fitbit sells another 5 lakhs so this means that 2% goes to the luxury players who are selling above say 15,000 rupees and rest of the market is consuming products from the three four Brands which I mentioned right now that is where the issue is so we are not saying that what apple is doing what
• 14:00 - 14:30 Samsung is doing or Fitbit is doing is is incorrect because if they are selling say accuracy if they are selling Fitness these are fairly accurate products what we what me and observed so Market watches that is where we saw a huge gap they are selling those watches via accuracy they are selling those watch via some claims which were highly Incorrect and that is when me and scho got surprised yeah
• 14:30 - 15:00 prom if you are saying that your watch is quite accurate S2 needs to have a red sensor if you're saying that your watch is reliable why it why most of the watches have a 3month 4month return look at the comment section of top YouTubers when they are reviewing smart watches top comments are and we felt it's nothing is wrong with the industry in general it's that market demand consumer deserves a fair
• 15:00 - 15:30 product at a fair price that's why we felt we will create something unique apart from the design Innovation we would highly focus on Smart indry major problems if you will look at some top brand and you can search these things on YouTube it's these are some highly trending videos bzel and people are highly disappointed
• 15:30 - 16:00 second accuracy literally Bott heart rate that's incorrect and thirdly every watch looks the same so we've wanted to solve these three problems what we promise we want toer what expect because we want to make Smartwatch category trust deficit I speak to Amazon category managers Flipkart category managers last
• 16:00 - 16:30 quartet and everyone was questioning me but the truth is obvious but when they got disappointed by every brand they were like we would rather slow down rather than upgrade and that is what we wanted to
• 16:30 - 17:00 solve and literally when we started creating the product we did not have the price point in mind we felt achieve let's go to our unit economics and that's where the price point came in and I very proud to say that we have solved these three critical problems expectation what we are pring weing sensors watch Ultra which is best in accuracy
• 17:00 - 17:30 and lastly design we just felt whato also said design every Smartwatch we felt was pretty much boring it's very transtion let's make it cool let's make it friendly for every occasion mold
• 17:30 - 18:00 and because it needs focus it needs time it needs investment on one particular SKU which most brands afraid to are afraid to do H very interesting so you mentioned accuracy expectations setting with regards to design and lastly you mentioned quality as in the durability of the product break down like major um a breakdown there are three major problems to primarily
• 18:00 - 18:30 design tracking accurate andart and the third thing was there was a gap in the market consumer is there smartone if he wants to go and buy a smartwatch V smart
• 18:30 - 19:00 watches Android does not work uh Android watches do not work with iPhone and then there is other smart watches they don't give accurate results they are just fancy show pieces on your hand and um there is no other alternative for an apple consumer so these were the three problems we saw like these are the major things design accuracy and a SE watch that works on all platforms with every other smartphone and connectivity there's no
• 19:00 - 19:30 issues all the expectations that we set are right so these problems we went out and solved got it so compatibility design and accuracy yeah okay understood bro what's the scene with this compatibility issue you mentioned that there are certain watches which are not compatible with apple and your watch is compatible with apple right yeah so how is that how what did you do different so um the thing is ke there's two major brands there is Google and the they are like with Samsung Google has a
• 19:30 - 20:00 very Clos nit partnership with Samsung and then there is Apple and both are trying to fight and to create their own ecosystems like Google is trying is trying Google friction it is harder to jump from one ecosystem to the other ecosystem so because and they all have their main fight to win they want to become number one by defeating the other one M we like we are not here to defeat anybody we can just work with
• 20:00 - 20:30 both of them so we created on an we took an open source firmware and we designed over it so it works with Android and it works with iOS so we didn't have a big fight to play we didn't want to uh we are not working with apple neither we are working with Samsung so it was easy for us got it got it so trust deficit Market this is just like the insurance market right A lot of people today do not take insurance because they feel like
• 20:30 - 21:00 insurance I might as well not take an insurance at all which is what you're saying is happening with the Smartwatch Market whereby because of lack of accuracy because of terrible design because of less durability a lot of people are choosing not to have a watch and when they decide to have a watch they would rather have a watch that is accurate and better looking and is durable rather than go for a cheap stuff okay Neil whenever I've spoken to you and while you will designing this watch you've often said
• 21:00 - 21:30 that Indian Smartwatch brands are lazy why do you say that and I still believe that that's true I am nothing against Indian Brands I feel when we did our research fir U design and distribution and when I researched because if you know we have decided to create a product and I need to figure out market and what do why will we win it was a pretty easy journey and earlier
• 21:30 - 22:00 I was overwhelmed but then I realized most of the companies are distribution companies they have what do you mean by that like the these are marketing companies I'll tell you how because out of these four pillars they were only having leverage on one particular part that was distribution okay because that they had deeper connects with marketplaces uh they had great marketing budgets they could spend more on perform marketing and
• 22:00 - 22:30 since because they had money to scale that was The Leverage which we did not have in those words we had our own way in terms of content and that that made our job really easy fir so that's why I call it a lazy process and 90% of the brands are not even doing testing
• 22:30 - 23:00 testing what we did we created our own firmware on a flagship chipset that's the risk we took but but that becomes our leverage now chipset and Fir second UI UI lastly most important design and
• 23:00 - 23:30 Hardware
• 23:30 - 24:00 and they don't do that first you create this structure for us this will be RP we will patent this create appr and now you will not find similar
• 24:00 - 24:30 looking watch or this watch anywhere in the world and it took efforts and that's why I when I say that I feel most brands are lazy because ination but that was not a priority for
• 24:30 - 25:00 them exactly because if you have all these four things under your control your confidence level increases that is distribution got it because if I were to break down they don't own anything they're just playing commodities they're
• 25:00 - 25:30 taking same exact exact and in India also some Brands even don't take exclusive rights Brands what our process was starting to break down the major point of view because I come
• 25:30 - 26:00 from a design background and starting say layers was a design company we were designing skins for smartphones and we have designed clothes and we have sold crazy and this uh suit also we have designed Indian belyy and all um but we thought K why we have to design something that beats Apple watch you Apple watch we saw it is a functional product and we are not out here to beat like any
• 26:00 - 26:30 other smart watches it was just like apple beat design it is a subjective call it is easy and tracking we were like scared but we do not know so we went out there we'll figure out everything we'll figure out the tracking we'll figure out the design we were just like we want the best we created so um we our Target was Apple better design watch had a functional design we figured out they
• 26:30 - 27:00 design watches so that people can track and do all these other things they like ads May if you also see they would show people surfing and tracking and going on Himalaya and all of these things so we realized it is a functional product if we create a product that people can wear to parties because you cannot it does not look cool when you wear an Apple Watch to party the like the perception is like a fitness functional product so we wanted to design a product that comes
• 27:00 - 27:30 from a different area it comes from a lifestyle it comes from a very um functional but at the same time it looks beautiful and um we took that approach we try to and the challenge was I'll tell you because most of Brands they don't own the product we went to India a lot of these design agencies we talked and we asked I patent banana and uh design everybody was they were shocked
• 27:30 - 28:00 like design patent tech company when it comes to a tech product when you're competing with all these other big Brands having a patent is a most difficult because tech companies would do anything and everything to get a patent Google bought Motorola just for the patents they bought Motorola what took all the patents and then they sold Motorola to Lenovo yeah they bought can you pleas explain
• 28:00 - 28:30 this so what uh Google did was Google wanted a lot of patents because Motorola is a very long-standing company Google wanted to build their own mobiles they were like yeah we need patents so they bought Motorola just for the patents so there was a lot of patent Mota they used to be a dimple on the back of the smartphone correct it's not there anymore because it's with Google so they bought them for the patents and sold them for a minuscule amount like if you compare what they bought at and what they sold I'm not good with numbers but it was very low and then they sold it to
• 28:30 - 29:00 Lenovo so patents are very valuable when it comes to technology and having a patent for a design of a smartwatch which is like a huge category where everybody wants to compete was the most difficult task to finding a designer who can design something that we can patent and throughout all the country it was a difficult challenge so we figured out all these agencies in India it couldn't work out then we went to International uh we tried to having all these agencies
• 29:00 - 29:30 and vision was B which is minimal which anybody can wear and um which is also functional and it looks different all these three things combined is very difficult from a design standpoint being minimal and different at the same time is very difficult because everything is already done and um all of these watches now uh there's Rolex and pek Philip and all of these things so you cannot make anything that is similar to any any other Smartwatch in the world so that
• 29:30 - 30:00 was a huge design challenge for us we found a company sear uh they London based design firm they have designed rockets for Virgin Atlantic and um they had made these crazy crazy designs which were very futuristic Rockets are something that is very very futuristic but it's also functional you cannot have like design elements on the side of rockets because it has to be very functional so um they St their design brief very well and uh they were they
• 30:00 - 30:30 also had created watches before so um we aligned with them it instantly matched and then we had like multiple variations I can also show on my mobile yeah we had like we started with like I I'll show you once again we start with with these like crazy experiments we had these like as a perforated um W straps and then like some fidget Spinners type watches and some watches which can dislocate
• 30:30 - 31:00 which can rotate okay these are watches this is like a fidget spinner watch and uh this is like a diamond shaped watch with the straps coming out of the sides this is like a tilted watch this is like monolith it's like a wristband but like a like very exaggerated wristband this is like a Breck on a phone we had these like 50 60 hundreds of experiments and we try to figure out what could
• 31:00 - 31:30 be a design that everybody can wear and it still is different that was the hardest challenge I feel having being it minimal and exaggerated and different was very difficult so we found out this design it is um it was a little rectangular it was very edgy it is designed by like thinking of a diamond u in mind the cuts and all of this is like very diamond is and um why people were
• 31:30 - 32:00 not able to do this is this type of design because it is very hard to create something with edges that you wear on your body okay why so because and if you have a flat if you have have a flat back on the watch having it fit perfectly on your hand is very difficult because side maybe there is Edge side there is Edge
• 32:00 - 32:30 and uh there is edges on the top also and the most round thing on the watch the crown it also has these edges so creating a watch that is edgy and that is also comfortable was very difficult so that is why most brands didn't do it and that is why they didn't sign a patent for it also got because most watches if you see they're rounded now what is so special about this design that out of the 500 designs you chose only this one yeah that is Instinct okay
• 32:30 - 33:00 yeah that was pure Instinct like yeah that was like some decisions have to be emotional the decision to design a smart watch was was an emotional decision it was not like a logical decision how this this is um logic came afterwards but the decision came first so this was an emotional decision uh a lot of people did not agree with me uh when we designed the Smartwatch I think the ratio was 3070 what do you mean like like 30% was me okay like 30% um
• 33:00 - 33:30 agreeing side and 70% not agreeing side with your design yeah not my design with my selection yeah s designed this um I had the brief in mind this is how we want it to be we wanted to be like it comes out of like Mars and some other planet so um that was all Instinct that was all Instinct and I think that came because I've been designing my whole life I've designed my studio I've designed clothes we have designed skins we've designed almost everything we've
• 33:30 - 34:00 designed apps we have designed communication almost everything I've designed so I think it is just the Instinct you main thing was like with this design we were able to patent this so nobody can sell this design bro two questions over here first because they've not designed it now so they don't have the design why don't they design it by themselves so takes time
• 34:00 - 34:30 understood one question that I had about
• 34:30 - 35:00 all of these design and patent procedure is the cost Neil would know the numbers to the better let's start with the most important
• 35:00 - 35:30 costs which a person has to Bear which a company has to Bear to enter this Market which are the major cost can we break this down deal 20 lakhs tell me about this Chinese fair that you just visited so there's a Hong Kong Fair hktdc which hktdc yes Hong Kong trade something like that full form I think it happens between September to
• 35:30 - 36:00 October because Hong Kong is a global City Chinese manufacturers Bo so you get to see the entire power of China Under One Roof and it's really good if you need to build a product even
• 36:00 - 36:30 me that is available across the world and you might not have a what's easily accessible to anyone out there and mostly indan entrepreneurs so if you want to understand what exactly is happening in the market regardless of which product which category you are in you should go to China attend this fair and understand what's happening in the market because cutting and you also understand which product is
• 36:30 - 37:00 selling in which part of the world correct got it because you're saying that a large part of what happens across the world stems from this Fair yes to 200 manufacturers under one Ro you get to seein manur
• 37:00 - 37:30 it is all optimized for profit got it so Chinese [Music]
• 37:30 - 38:00 India exclusive UA exclusive Asia exclusive got it got it understood so if somebody wants to launch a brand in India and they don't want to put in a lot of capital they can just invest 20 lakh rupes go to this
• 38:00 - 38:30 hktdc get a few products from there and sell it via Amazon of flip question and this is just out of curiosity what is the cost difference between the selling price in India and the cost price in China bro it's very consistent across at least bootstrap Brands funded brand
• 38:30 - 39:00 but if you need to scale a d2c product and this is common across categories uh you take a 3X margin uh 35% Cog for you to make sure boot 300
• 39:00 - 39:30 350 usually but yours is an extraordinary case because you've got after two months we need to anyway invest in marketing right we need to have that buffer got it 25 to 30%
• 39:30 - 40:00 marke if their investor says burn this 2 million and 10% got it so 300 to 350 Rupees is the marketing cost I'm just assuming that the cost of the product in the market as in the selling price of the product is 1,000 rupees correct out of this 1,000 rupes 300 rupes to 350 rupes is your product cost which is where you will go to China and buy a particular product yes so 250 to 300 Rupees is your
• 40:00 - 40:30 marketing cost yes right then what do we have so is marketing make disclaimer Facebook and gole but if you're selling into Market places to 15% commission and 15% market so this 30% marketing either can go to your marketplaces or for your d2c 18% GST 7%
• 40:30 - 41:00 approximately shipping salaries or payment G commissions combin combin salaries salaries shipping payment Gateway commissions this is assuming the sales of how many units guys 5,000 unit 12 to
• 41:00 - 41:30 % scale marketing C so that we have already invested around 4.5 CR as an R&D cost to make this happen why cash flows and if you get it from the Hong Kong Trade Fair you don't have to do that that will only be your inventory cost so simply by going to Hong Kong you can say 4.5 crores in
• 41:30 - 42:00 upfront Capital cost so if I were to take an example let's take apple and some other brand let's say any other smartphone
• 42:00 - 42:30 Building Products we also take the same philosophy one mon two month three month C the money we have put up we have to recover all of that in first two three months only after that we start making profit only after we cover the
• 42:30 - 43:00 research and development cost and we are able to do that and a lot of other brands are not able to do that because hamara initial marketing is kind of free because we are promoting it through our platform so profit margin initially is a little higher so we can essentially the investment can be covered um that is also one reason why we can build products because we can take the risk marketing zero and initially and we
• 43:00 - 43:30 would be able to cover that so this unfair advantage that you've got is over here in this 250 Rupees to 300 rupees of marketing cost which in your case goes down to a minimal level if not zero which is what gives you the unfair advantage to be able to recover the capital that you've just put in which is 4.5 crores is that correct uh I think there's two leverages I would say um one is definitely marketing um I think second one would I would say we have a design leverage um design is something
• 43:30 - 44:00 it cannot be taught that easily it is a very creative process and if you see most of the founders they do not come from a design and Aesthetics background they're very functional logical profit all of that monthly quartly Bing when it comes to design they're not they don't know what design would be nice what design would work for the mes so I think and because we have done a lot of life style things we've build a lot of Lifestyle products so we
• 44:00 - 44:30 have an edge Ed okay how did you figure out that your design will do very well because I have a very different way of looking at design to me design is also extremely calculative in terms of every aspect of it to me design is here's a problem and this needs to be solved and here's how you solve it so when you say that a lot of these Founders do not have a design leverage but they do have design teams which have a design leverage they can go to the streets and find out what exactly Works what doesn't work and more
• 44:30 - 45:00 importantly they can also ask a question do we even need something you know Steve Jobs says that great design is not about having everything it's when you have nothing to remove right so my question is when you say that you have a design leverage what do you mean by that design leverage I would call it just an instinct okay you can never hire a team of 100 people to make a song better than canest because canest is canest he knows how to create music he knows the Melodies he knows how the human mind
• 45:00 - 45:30 will like react to every each and every sound and that is why never a Big Brand like let's say any Big Brand can hire a team of thousand people and make better music than theit or Kula because it is a creative process you need to have a lot of instinct to be able to do that and I think that is in a lot of cases it is a gift and because I have been inclined in that way towards design so I think it is very it is not logical you cannot yes
• 45:30 - 46:00 maybe a thousand people can make one better song than Kara but it would be very difficult and challenging and so I look at it that way has been creating content for 10 years years he has engaged with approximately more than a billion people comments
• 46:00 - 46:30 when you are directly connecting with them and interacting with them cont whereas as a Creator might know audience
• 46:30 - 47:00 because he knew the consumer and the audience really well because otherwise for a new product at a new price point to fail is very easy if you don't know exactly at a mass level like selling this these many units on day one is purely because City figure out
• 47:00 - 47:30 because Lage of creating content for more than a decade H got it what I'm trying to understand over here is um the bridge between what you understand about your audience with respect to your content and what you understand about your audience with respect to your product because both are completely different products one is a YouTube video which can have comments and every single data point that you've consumed whether that is comments or people who people walk up to you or even layers for that M overlays for that matter all of them
• 47:30 - 48:00 have been with respect to a particular product now with this understanding that you've collected for your YouTube video for layers and for your jackets my question is how do you apply that to a watch because I don't see a bridge over here what people say about your YouTube video and the feedback they give you about the YouTube video may not give you an understanding about what they would want in a watch so how is that bridge for you so firstly the at the end of each product let's say if
• 48:00 - 48:30 it is layers or if it is overlays key jackets or some other product or if it is a smartwatch at the end is the consumer which stays the same and at the end what we are looking for is consumer Behavior what kind of colors they like what kind of designs they like what are their interests are they more interested in masculine stuff or are they more interested in very minimal stuff or are they more interested in uh let's say metallic things so if you can understand consumer Behavior we're never about
• 48:30 - 49:00 understanding a single product we're always about understanding the whole consumer behavior and because we align perfectly because we create Tech content and um we are creating a tech product it aligns completely well and because we understand the audience and their instincts it is a lot easier for us and when it comes to creating something new it is very difficult you cannot base it completely on data analysis okay you can collect all the data you want but
• 49:00 - 49:30 when you're creating something new it is very difficult to ask people and ask them for like do you like it or not let's say if I take yea shoe for example if I went out and asked people before he made the shoe do you like this would you buy this I think most people would say no because there is a journey through which that product was developed I I I would say the same thing for cars also when people were riding horses if you came to them and as show them a car like you have to drive this I think they
• 49:30 - 50:00 would be very hesitant so unless you have created the product itself it is very difficult to tell if people will like it or not it is I think it is primarily Instinct guys I actually have a slight disagreement over here and I'll help you understand why see when it comes to horses versus cars that's an extraordinary leap in efficiency it's an extraordinary leap in terms of speed in terms of utility in terms of dependability in terms of Maintenance also so and the same thing applies to
• 50:00 - 50:30 our phones also like had we gone 10 15 years back or 20 30 years back and somebody had told me that you know you would have this one which would have all these utilities along with the flashlight it may not make that much sense but once people get used to the functionality of a particular phone they would never go back same applies to computers as well when clerks resisted the rise of computers they primarily thought that it's going to ruin their life only to realize that it made their life so much better that they can't ever go back so from horses to cars that's a
• 50:30 - 51:00 drastic shift in efficiency number one number two when it comes to products like Yeezy and Jordans the primary variable that sells is not the product or the functionality it is the story when it comes to Jordan if I were to ask 100 people who bought the first Jordan shoe when Michael Jordan was a rising star and if I were to keep two products side by side the tangible value of Jordan was far less but the pursued value of Jordan was Far bigger because
• 51:00 - 51:30 it was Michael Jordan and he was a rising star and today Jordans are become a thing because of the snowball effect of both Michael Jordan Last Dance for that matter now after last dance came out they saw that Jordan's shoes were again selling primarily because people understood the story of Michael Jordan they understood the story of the Chicago Bulls so when it comes to Yeezy it is the story and that particular category when it comes to horses it is efficiency my question is what applies to watches and how does it stem from content yeah it's I think it's a mixture of both um I
• 51:30 - 52:00 think it's just like if people wearing skinny jeans you came up to them and showed them baggie jeans and you asked them like would you wear baggy jeans they would say no we we were used to wearing skinny jeans and maybe 6 months later they would be wearing bagag je because everybody else is wearing it is just instinctive it's like either it is a story or you understand the Instinct of the audience better Yeezy has created a lot of products they have created clothing but that didn't work the shoe worked because it was perfect alignment the people wanted it but they did not know that they wanted it but what are
• 52:00 - 52:30 the variables that uh made yey shoes of success and clothing a failure so I would if I were to break it down from a design perspective so when I take the clothing okay the clothing was a little too ahead of its time when I look at the shoe there was already a lot of experimentation and people were ready to try a lot of things when you take the yezy shoe for example there is a huge story that goes behind the shoe so he researched ke what a shoe should
• 52:30 - 53:00 be like and he took the most Primal examples he took okay what is an animal that runs the fastest on two legs ostrich so the sole of the easy shoe uh the first EZ 350 it was designed like an ostrich leg and the top of the shoe where there is a slight um where there's a weave in between um it is designed like the first shoe that was ever made so they took like leaves and then they sued it from the top so it's a mixture
• 53:00 - 53:30 of both so the story and the functionality came together because it was functionally a great product you could wear it and it would not come out it was functionally a great product but at the same time it had a story and the design was unique got it when all of these three things came together that is why it worked the clothing didn't work because the design was different but it did not add much functionality it was not like something that people would show off and uh there would be a lot more reasons but these are the three
• 53:30 - 54:00 things that why I think if if someone wears a u shoe it is a lot more comfortable than what anything else was out there at that time so same goes for the watch this watch has a story we have built this we have gone against the tide to build this design we have made sure functionally and logically the tracking is is nice and the UI is nice the connectivity matches with Apple and Android so logically all the markers we have ticked and we have tried to outdo what is already there in the market by I
• 54:00 - 54:30 would say multiple folds and then there is design and the story behind the design I think that is more Instinct and emotion and that is a journey that people can connect with I think it's a mixture of w got it got it now I want to go back to the unit economics and here we were talking about what exactly is the cost price in China and what is the selling price in India so I'll just give you a quick summary and if there's anything left there we can just patch it up and then we can move on to the next segment so Neil um just to give you a
• 54:30 - 55:00 summary 300 to 350 rupes is the cost price then you have 250 to 300 rupees that goes into marketing 180 rupees goes into GST assuming 18% then we have 70 rupees 7% going into salaries shipping as well asay payment Gateway charges uh with 120 to 130 rupes left which goes as your profit and like scho mentioned here you need to have some leverage um if you can keep this capital for the next 3 months considering that this is going to be a working capital then that's great
• 55:00 - 55:30 if not then you need to have extraordinary leverage with you guys it was The Leverage ofo's distribution and the story that you putting out which by default gives you this initial push and this is something that's very similar to any celebrity restaurant as well in fact I was speaking to the founder of Biryani by kilo and he mentioned something very fascinating he said that most celebrity restaurants fail because they're not good enough yeah exactly um and they they all get initial traction but celebrities are good enough only for customer acquisition and they're not
• 55:30 - 56:00 they cannot give you customer attention customer retention can only come from great food which is why Shilpa is wildly successful not because it not because she's Shilpa shetti but because the audience that she got in then spread the word further about her restaurant that this restaurant has great food and same is the case with Virat Ki also for I've understood this is there anything else that you would like to address in this unit economics there is one major cost your that is the cost of reputation cost
• 56:00 - 56:30 of reputation but this doesn't apply to a guy who's just starting out right so this is for somebody who's going to China putting in 20 lakh rupees and buyes sense okay now I'll come to you guys which is your in-house production because I want people to understand what exactly is the difference between Outsourcing and in-house product building so Neil can you please tell me which are the four or five most important costs of your 4.5 CR investment yes since we were entering into a mass
• 56:30 - 57:00 premium sector we wanted to make sure our brand logo brand story Brand Packaging website design social media assets what basically overall brand messaging premium we hired a branding agency so and since we wanted to enter a mass premium sector we hired one of the best agencies approximately can you tell me their name design thought over
• 57:00 - 57:30 designu Tru wonderful thought over design so branding website packaging BR assets physical and digital cre we are very close toos that resonated with us because we
• 57:30 - 58:00 genuinely believe in that and that came out of the conversations had no idea how to do it we just decided we are going to do it is good I'll be honest like the designer was good he had designed a few products
• 58:00 - 58:30 before that and he used to work in product design also and we had designed cases and all of these things but we realized designing a tech product is a completely different ball game and we realize then when we came down to actually designing the product because there was a lot of like it is not just how it looks but also how it functions because how the strap fits in it it is in such a way that the strap should not come out it should look good in all
• 58:30 - 59:00 angles so there's a lot of things so we couldn't do it in house there was no way so s Powell s y m o u r p o w e s crazy crazy
• 59:00 - 59:30 good atan Rockets so again 55 to 60 laks and month process espe
• 59:30 - 60:00 usually from Hardware to chipset to
• 60:00 - 60:30 display expensive silver Y and black but what is the use of this Mark this Ed layers this is just a
• 60:30 - 61:00 which so we wanted some signature but because of this our Hardware challeng because the color is different
• 61:00 - 61:30 up around 70 to 90 lak my God yeah so damn
• 61:30 - 62:00 lify comprom we were treating and comping our we wanted it to feel it's a 30,000 R Smartwatch 40,000 rupees Smartwatch that's why and we took that risk as being bootstrapped founders that we will go all in this comes at a cost because we are not experienced in
• 62:00 - 62:30 creating a perfect product design we are not experienced and this was definitely expensive froming anden but
• 62:30 - 63:00 right price and that's why we hired the best people in the world got it understood shuk tell me something when it comes to the athetics of the watch there are always certain aspects in every product that makes the product look premium okay because you must have seen a lot of products that are very very costly but they don't look premium at the same time there are products which are extremely cheap but when you look at them you will say that you know
• 63:00 - 63:30 maybe this cost 10,000 rupees and it ends up costing 1,000 rupees a very simple example is this office itself mhm a lot of people have walked into this office and when I ask them for the cost they often tell me 3x the cost of what it actually is M and when I made my interior designer sit down and I asked her about what exactly is the variable that drives this perception she mentioned lighting which is is by far the most important aspect which helps you perceive something as more valuable than what it is the second
• 63:30 - 64:00 thing that she mentioned is the paint and for each added rupe for the paint it gives you significantly higher value in terms of perception when it comes to perfumes like bellavita perfumes Akash mentioned something very interesting Akash said that the perception of bellavita perfumes is not built when the perfume is applied it is built when you open the box and it just opens with a slide and
• 64:00 - 64:30 then you open it you see four bellita perfumes my question is when it comes to a watch Steve Jobs says that when you get an Apple product and when you open it it will by default open very smoothly it will not open all at once and that gives you a very premium experience the way the box is made my question is I don't have Steve Jobs to ask that question to but I've always had this question when it comes to a watch what makes a watch look premium so I would say um I would break it down into three
• 64:30 - 65:00 things when it if you want to make a product look premium it is presentation it is Association and then there is the product okay just give me a second presentation Association and product product including like the packaging and all okay let's break this down into two variables product and packaging because we can go deeper into this yeah you can break down to two things okay so firstly how you're presenting it like Neil said like
• 65:00 - 65:30 there's a lot of agencies that we could have worked with we selected the best ones we selected the ones that had that 5% extra that knew how premium brand should look like and um I think that was the presentation part how we presented the product how we presented the video how we presented and showed the product in all different lightings and all of that I think that matters a lot but can a little deeper into this what do you mean by presentation because
• 65:30 - 66:00 random but if I call a skilled guy who can shoot the product in a certain way it suddenly looks very premium you've seen a lot of YouTube videos that show that you know let me do a free video shoot for this restaurant and suddenly this guy comes in takes a few shots and it looks like this is a Marriot Hotel so what exactly is the process of making something look premium on video I think it's majorly everything like the lighting I think lighting is 80% is the lighting
• 66:00 - 66:30 because the lights we used it is used in Hollywood C Cinemas it was very big sky panels and uh for the video lighting and a lot of photo lights we used I think that makes a lot of difference and then there's the right selection of models you like it is very important because premium for my father is not premium for me for let's say let's say a gen Z brand might be very premium for me genzi clothing brand but it would be cheap for
• 66:30 - 67:00 my father so it depends a lot on the model also okay can you give me an example for this let's say Supreme for example Supreme is a US based brand Supreme would be very cool to me when I walk in I would feel premium but if my father sees it he like huh just another brand he would not care too much but what makes the difference because his perception of Premium is very different from my perception of Premium okay can you break this down further it is aspiration now at the end what is premium is aspiration aspiration is come comes down to two things what
• 67:00 - 67:30 that person wants to achieve in their life if they see that that is premium for them okay just say if everybody wants to be like Shah ruk Khan so Shah ruk Khan becomes premium okay it is not about Shah ruk Khan let's say he might be wearing a plain white T-shirt but he would still be premium then any other guy on the street got it so I think it's more aspiration but um when it comes to the product shoot I think it is majorly the backgrounds the lighting and how the
• 67:30 - 68:00 product is showcased and in what use cases it is showcased is it showcased while doing like things that a guy aspires to do let's say for example Apple showcases their Smartwatch when a person is climbing Himalaya or something that is aspirational so um you can always use that um and second would be associations what are you associating the product with so we Associated the
• 68:00 - 68:30 product with our own brand with our own vision and with the people that are around there so I think that helps a lot because our perception is very high when it comes to the tech industry when it comes to everything we've done the clothes that we sell the skins that we sold every single product that we have created has surpassed expectations and people keep buying so I think that Association adds a lot of value and the third thing is the product I think when you talk about design um and
• 68:30 - 69:00 premium design it is not about how it looksi there's a lot of good-look watches out there there's a lot of watches you can buy for th000 rupees which would look amazing if you look at website bco I think it is more about how it feels because good design is when it is original if I put a wallpaper of a marble on this wall and if I put actual marble
• 69:00 - 69:30 they might look the same but they would not feel the same one is one is very premium and one is like fake so I I think that is the same with watches also a lot of these watches are made out of plastic they have like cheap frames the plastic would come out they would look nice but when once you wear them you would not feel premium our watch is made out of solid stess steel frame the even straps are made out of solid staleness steel and just that design choice of
• 69:30 - 70:00 using staleness steel was very expensive because they give aluminium only in the premium models they give stainless steel because working with stainless steel is very expensive and when it comes to design a lot of things make it expensive which are the things that other brands can't do so sorry can you come again let's say um what makes things expensive is if nobody else can do this and you
• 70:00 - 70:30 can do this it makes it premium okay so um because creating an edgy design was so tough because creating a design that looks so good and also functions the way it does was difficult that is why it also becomes a lot more premium because nobody else in the price segment or under 20,000 was able to create a St steela mold that looks this cool that is why or also is premium because nobody else can do this if if let's say if we
• 70:30 - 71:00 reverse the roles of gold and aluminium and if aluminium was so scarce and gold was around everywhere aluminium would be more premium and expensive so it is also about like what people are not doing in the price segment so I think these the three things and of course packaging and the experience and small little details what the vision is on the stickers and the lines and the story I think it is a mixture of all these things but if I were to break down it is associations it is presentation and then it is a product
• 71:00 - 71:30 and the product if it is if the design is real if it looks tailess steel and when you wear it it feels taal steel then you feel it is premium got it how does this uh apply to Supreme the brand they don't make things that are rare um I don't know what Supreme is associated with and what exactly Supreme trying to achieve which drives aspiration for genzi I I would give another example A lot of people might not know Supreme uh I would
• 71:30 - 72:00 take LV Louis Von okay so Louis Von when they create clothes or when they create bags so I bought a bag uh that LV sold for 3.5 lakh rupees and it had this perforated design pattern on the back of the bag and we tried asking factories to create that design because I really liked it I wanted something very similar we asked every Factory in India we asked every Factory outside of the country nobody was able to make it
• 72:00 - 72:30 because it required a lot of expensive equipment to be able to create that design and that is why it is 3.5 L and because nobody else is able perforated you mentioned it is I cannot if you show if you see the photo it's like it is puffed and it is puffed and perforated pattern I don't know how to say it cubes yeah cubes cubes well it if you see it you will know because like I don't know what name to put it so does that make the bag
• 72:30 - 73:00 look magical yeah it lookss different it looks different it does not look like you would not have seen something like that anywhere else in the world and because they are the only ones who can do it that makes it 3.5 LS so I think it's the exclusivity of the product and that is the same for Supreme they can sell bricks for $200 $300 why do they need to do that it is very different and they able to do that I think that makes them different but what's the story of supreme that's what I'm trying to understand because you
• 73:00 - 73:30 mentioned that if Supreme is premium for genen Z it is not premium for the father and the only difference between both of them is the story so my question is what exactly is a genzi thinking while they buy a supreme what's the story in their mind for example when it comes to Nike everybody knows that Nike is about execution it's about inspiration it's about Kobe Bryant it's about the Stars like Selena Williams who wear Nike so so these kids when they wear Nike they feel like they're wearing something that the Legends have worn my question is how
• 73:30 - 74:00 does Supreme what is what is the blueprint of supreme so let me give you a breakdown so let's say there is a 13-year-old guy he sees a YouTuber that is let's say or a film star or a YouTuber that is 20 years old that is doing quite well for his age he has 100,000 subscribers so 13year old guy would look up to that YouTuber okay if he has 100,000 subscribers you like oh this guy's
• 74:00 - 74:30 aspirational but his father who's already 50 who has made crores of money if he would look at the same guy he would not look at that guy as an aspiration got it so when if you look at Supreme they're targeting the hip hopa crowd the skateboarders all of these things so when it comes to skateboarding tricks it might be cool for a 16-year-old kid or maybe 20 30 but maybe not for a 50-year-old M so their
• 74:30 - 75:00 associations with skateboard hip-hop culture all of these things are very cool for a certain crowd and that makes it and because it is an aspiration of a guy um to become a skateboarder and become cool and Hip-Hop and S but a 50-year-old guy would not find that interesting okay I could be wrong there would be some 50y olds who love skateboarding but for majority of 50y olds they would not find that aspirational so the targeting
• 75:00 - 75:30 has to be very exact like what you're creating and audience you're targeting for premiumness got it so it's Association aspiration and Rarity you said for Supreme it's about Association and aspiration not Rarity but when it comes to something like let's say Louis Von it is about Rarity for Supreme also is Rarity they just m guys now I want to come back to your
• 75:30 - 76:00 content marketing strategy yeah and I know that this has been absolutely BR the last time when we had this conversation you mentioned that you sold um I don't know how many jackets in the first 24 hours we were able to sell around 10,000 jackets the aov was 2400 I think the conversation we had we assumed the AO has 3,000 that was got it so 10,000 jackets yeah and this is in the first 24 hours right yeah first 24 hours okay so guys just to give you better context to everybody who's listening so scho deployed a marketing strategy using
• 76:00 - 76:30 his content and content alone this is through reels shots and YouTube and he run he ran a six- day campaign is that correct bro um yeah for overl before the launch it was 6 days after the launch also we made some okay before the launch it was just a 6 day campaign and they were able to sell 10,000 units with an aov of 2,400 rupes by the way just to give you an idea about how difficult ult it is to achieve this aov when it comes to blinket swiggy and zepto they have
• 76:30 - 77:00 struggled for 2 2 and a half years just to increase Theo from 300 rupes to 700 rupees as you've seen in the case St I'll just attach the link in the description so how did you manage what exactly is your content strategy bro because you've done this consistently you've done this with overlays you've done this with your jackets I don't know if they are different categories but you've done this for overlays you've done this for skins and now you've done this for watches and the beauty is that whatever you done um he's kind of replicated a very similar blueprint of
• 77:00 - 77:30 telling a story of uh presenting that emotion and even though I don't meet him very often I'm able to understand what exactly is Neil going through even though I have never seen your factory um I saw that you got this machine and the way you're narrating the story and the way you presented it was not it did not have a serious lighting serious tone serious music nothing but there is something about the storytelling something and it's not one piece of content I knew that for sure it's not one piece of content these are multiple
• 77:30 - 78:00 pieces of content going out in different intervals different formats all telling small small parts of a bigger story and when they come together what you get as a result of this is very deep connection very deep connection with the audience very high curiosity and most importantly it keeps you at the edge of your seat as to what's going to happen next almost looks like a Netflix document doumentary but run in the form of a marketing campaign on YouTube and Instagram so
• 78:00 - 78:30 help me break down and I'm saying this with a lot of Fascination because even we have products but we've never thought about marketing the way you think about marketing the the first thing that comes to our mind is obviously Performance Marketing but uh you guys are the complete opposite of that you said you know what let's keep Performance Marketing to the side and let's build an organic content strategy to be able to sell our products and what that has result Ed into is such a big hype that today any Creator who creates content on your products ends up getting a lot of
• 78:30 - 79:00 visibility which in turn creates a Snowball Effect and this is very similar to what Donald Trump does Donald Trump says things that are Sensational media catches on to the sensation which blows it out of proportion so whatever Donald Trump says become sensation and media covers it so it again becomes sensation so if you think about it it's a virtuous cycle whatever Donald Trump says gets covered by the media Whatever Gets covered by the media become sensation and Donald Trump says something Sensational right so and that is something that you guys have been able
• 79:00 - 79:30 to do with content and I've never seen anybody else do it so my question is help me break down your content strategy as discreetly as possible so that if somebody's watching this or for me also tomorrow if I'm rolling out my product how should I use my organic content to carry out a marketing campaign and generate a million dollars in sales in the very first day itself it's um primarily one thing of course we have a lot of experience we've been creating content for the past 10 years and we
• 79:30 - 80:00 have built not just Tech Channel but we have also built a lot of other comedy channels Finance channels all of these things and we also teach people how to create content bright so um but if I were to break down what it takes to sell a product it is very like views don't sell a product like you can get 10 million 20 million 30 million views but and a lot of people and a lot of content creators think about it very wrongly they feel like like because they're
• 80:00 - 80:30 getting 10 million views 20 million views they would promote a product and it would sell it does not work like that I think creators in India they don't know how to sell and that is why a lot of brands also do not get a good Roi when they work with content creators um I think we've learned how to sell it was a very difficult process but it has happened over a period of time because we've been doing that for the past 3 4 years so um I would take two things if I were to sell to a person you
• 80:30 - 81:00 have to satisfy an emotional need and you have to satisfy a logical need how the brain functions is they first take an emotional decision and then they try to justify it by Logic that is how I usually think of most of the purchases most of the purchases are kind of instinctive and you justify it by Logic we take this framework work so we take like few pointers first you have to because we create a lot of pieces of content and what we do is like there's
• 81:00 - 81:30 four five points there's um there is why of the product there is why of the brand there is why of the person who is creating the product because it is different sometimes the brand and the person who is the brand or who is the influencer is different and when you have satisfied all these three things it essentially is the story got it okay it is essentially is why you're doing what you're doing and I think that has to be
• 81:30 - 82:00 very very clear and that is a why and because we made this very clear that is why a tech Creator is able to sell clothing and nobody questions it like yeah te why is Tech burner selling clothes people don't feel off if buyer clothes they wear it and MTV hustle people are wearing everybody else is wearing you can spot celebrities they don't feel off because we have the is very very clear of the product of each launch we do we make sure we make the Y
• 82:00 - 82:30 the primary thing and there's different ways of marketing this is the first point the why of the product and the brand and the person just a second bro yeah I'll just uh finish off this segment with an example okay you mentioned why of the product why of the brand and why of the person can you pick one product and help me explain how is the why of the product different from the why of the brand different from the why of the person in this case it's you yeah 100% 100% I'll take the take this watch for example okay to first thing we
• 82:30 - 83:00 did the first pieces of content was because people are connected with me so people need to know why is he creating a brand or the product so first it comes me why is SLO creating a watch yeah why is scho creating a watch okay or why is slow creating a tech brand that was the primary question okay it was not the watch got it because firstly people don't know if it is a watch or if is a tech product or whatever it is so I told people ke because I've been creating content for the past 10 years Tech
• 83:00 - 83:30 content I've been creating and I tried creating a tech product a speaker it did not work out the primary reason I want to create Tech products is because I am very emotionally connected to these products and when I make these products and I see people using them it gives me a very different kind of connection with that person and that is my why of creating a tech product and because we tried 6 years ago it didn't work out that is why we took six years and
• 83:30 - 84:00 figured out resources out and we wanted to do the best and that is why we took six years and we coming out with a tech product so this is my why I wanted to make sure this is very clear and up because we know how to make content we knew what the hook line was like my first tech product was a failure so it is like a hook line so it gets 10 million views so people are excited now they want to know oh he's creating a tech product now what next so they're interested up they know
• 84:00 - 84:30 the my why now it is time to tell them the why of the brand got it why of the brand yeah why of the brand so um so I tell them G see um and the brand is connected to me to some extent so I tell them G at layers we were designing skins for a huge part of time and we registered this company as layers Electronics private limited we wanted to take jumps we wanted to move from Skins to cases and we thought this was a good
• 84:30 - 85:00 jump and we would expand in cases and all of these things we built actually cases we built cases transparent cases that don't go yellow and we also built fabric cases but we didn't launch them um we realized ke this is not a good jump and for layers the vision is to create something revolutionary with skins we have created the number one skins in the world uh the quality of skins that we create is number one so we took that jump to smart watches and we
• 85:00 - 85:30 wanted to create a tech product we actually told them a tech product not smart watches that is why we are creating a tech product and we want to revolutionize whatever we we want to build a beautiful product that is number one so that was the why of the brand so why is the why of the brand is in one line if you were to summarize what is the why of the brand is to create something revolutionary is to create something that is so out of bounds that people cannot understand or is to create
• 85:30 - 86:00 Innovative products and inspire people to some extent and of course all of this process very chaotic so that's why it is Chase K got it that's why you're not you might not get the same oneliner again and again it's very chaotic yeah now what is the why of the product in this case now it's a watch yeah okay so now the why my voice is clear the brand is clear he brand wants to create in aspiring products and we always have a
• 86:00 - 86:30 hookline we always have that Masala we always know how to create content so that helps because we have been doing it for a long while okay so it would look like a um we created cases but it completely failed it would be like we created cases are transparent but we stopped it so something like that so so why of the product is basically why did you choose this product no not the why of the product why of the this is why of the brand why is brand why is the brand
• 86:30 - 87:00 moving to a tech product so that people genuinely believe that why we are making this transition why we are serious about it got it so the change in perception requires a lot of effort in fact this also reminds me about something that D Gupta told me about going from vapas to
• 87:00 - 87:30 Burgers D Gupta is the founder of jumbo King and they have about 150 outlets and they initially sold vapa and then they made a massive shift to Burgers and that took a lot of efforts they had to engage in a lot of communication so that people understand why exactly is a brand transitioning from a vapa to a burger which was a big shift in this case similarly you shifted your approach from Skins to launching a tech product and that needs to be very clear to the audience Because unless you communicate
• 87:30 - 88:00 that if I'm not wrong unless you communicate that the audience might just think that you're doing something random is that correct example for example with air purifiers correct but the way we I think [Music] why he's launching
• 88:00 - 88:30 Achu friction correct
• 88:30 - 89:00 it's like launching a phone and it field yeah yeah got it because the communication has to be very clear scenar scenario scenario at least Electronics premium Point flagship
• 89:00 - 89:30 got it it's a watch yeah for I think the first one month we did not tell the audience that it isun a yeah around one one and a half months I think it is very important for us if the why is not clear now people would not accept the product even if it is
• 89:30 - 90:00 good if the why is not clear people will not purchase people would not even give you attention because they would not be able to understand and I think that is the reason why just like he's saying skin say move to just a premium Smartwatch that was a big transition for any brand and Tech clothing move is a very huge transition it is completely opposite it was very smooth in our case we never had a problem selling clothes
• 90:00 - 90:30 we never had a problem nobody questioned why are you selling clothes nobody questioned why are you selling a watch why are you creating a tech product because we made sure we communicate that why very properly and uh I think that is the why of why I am doing things why the we are creating a tech company and third thing was why of the product why of the smartwatch was designk accuracy SP2 and then there was Android pay it
• 90:30 - 91:00 was not working so this was a clear why these were the three things and of course there's a lot of kacha in the market also there's a lot of fake marketing there's a lot of um like you put something on the banner but what arrives is very different so I think that is very few companies that are doing it but yeah we made sure we clear that also so all these things is the vi very interesting great now tell me how do you what exactly is your content calendar strategy because more than what
• 91:00 - 91:30 you're putting out it is important when you put out and how you put out so you've got multiple Avenues you've got Instagram you've got Instagram you've got reals YouTube You've Got shots and then you've got your long form content how do you strategically make this divide short form long and because because contents distribution channels there is a very high possibility that not everybody may watch everything exactly right because of which it
• 91:30 - 92:00 becomes a scattered piece of story which is just lying all across the internet and because you also have your conventional pieces of content going out it also becomes very difficult for somebody to just understand the watch story from episode one to episode 100 and he's also creating content so now there are two people creating content across three channels which makes it extremely scattered so how do you like how do you how do you walk people through that Journey with such scattered pieces of contents you know what that is a very very interesting question and
• 92:00 - 92:30 only a content creator can ask that question most of the brands don't know YouTube p audience is different Instagram p is different Twitter p is different they are all different people watching and they all have different interest and at the same time you are exactly right having the story in a way where people if even if they watch half of it they would still know what is going on it is very difficult each piece of content when we create we make sure
• 92:30 - 93:00 that piece of content in itself adds value okay and if you notice any read that we have made any short that we have made any piece of content that we have made we make sure ke if nobody knows what egg burner is if nobody knows what layers is if nobody knows that we are creating a tech product even if they don't know anything they still understand every re de and every video got it and you would you always see an introduction like I created my first
• 93:00 - 93:30 tech product and it failed and then I would tell we have been creating Tech cont for the past 10 years layers is this is this and then we start the ACT got so we make sure we create the context so any new viewer that is watching they are able to understand the full story it is like Marvel movies if you see Marvel second third part Avengers car you would still be able to enjoy it you won't feel like you have not seen their part because they create the movies in such a way that even if you have not watched the first part you would still understand the whole movie
• 93:30 - 94:00 because they give context for everything got it so each piece of content needs to have enough context for them to understand everything from scratch even if they're watching your content for the first time yeah got it but then how do you shape these content pieces together in such a way that the macro story comes out very well and there's a progression in the story because a real is what bro 90 seconds and as a Creator I understand in fact I am terrible at so I'm nobody to comment but I understand that it's very difficult to you know communicate the context and then start with the story because context 30 to 40 seconds
• 94:00 - 94:30 and if you look at the watch time of reals it's what 7 Seconds 12 seconds 15 seconds 30 seconds is considered to be legendary so how does this work out so how it works out is um it depends on what we are launching if we have to shift from Skins to a tech product then it would take a month to have that communicated across and we calculate that by what the comments are saying how the audience is feeling are they
• 94:30 - 95:00 accepting us as a tech company or are they commenting we try to understand what they're feeling and the goal of marketing and content creation is just that getting the message across when we know that we have gotten the message across then we move on to the next exper got it so what you're telling me is that you upload a piece of content assuming that the audience understands let's say
• 95:00 - 95:30 until point a yeah you give them the context and take them to point B yeah now while they go from point A to point B you get a huge pile of data from the comment yeah those comment help you understand the sentiment of the audience exactly and based on the sentiment of the audience you create the next piece of content which takes them from B to C for example exactly let's say you make an announcement saying that you know what guys my first tech product failed then we've been creating content for 10
• 95:30 - 96:00 years then we launched skins but now we're jumping onto a tech product and the comments first comment China second comment what gives you the credibility to make a tech product how will you make a tech product so once you have these pointers your next piece of content I'm assuming is what exactly is your approach towards building your own product and how is it different from other people who just Ching it from China yeah does that make sense no what we do is um we just create questions in
• 96:00 - 96:30 the start that now this is the why of the Brand This is my why this is the V of the product and now people are interested because oh this guy is creating a smartwatch but after how many pieces of content I think this is like 20 30 reels 20 30 reels banned over yeah spanned over I think one one and a half months okay 20 it would all combined it would be like 50 pieces of content some yeah 50 pieces of content somewhere around that and um
• 96:30 - 97:00 after we have done that people are interested because all combined it is like 50 million views something now we don't tell anything else we just show them the story part by part piece by piece is behind the scenes No we like we have already told them how we making the watch now we will share I I'll give you an example we would share like we went to sim po London to design this watch we would share parts of the story we would tease them with something we
• 97:00 - 97:30 would say like we have designed this with a company that designs Rockets or we would just like when the why is done we share parts of the how got it not the complete how but like in disintegrated parts of the how incomplete house yeah incomplete house the most interesting pieces of house with a cliffhanger yeah exactly got it got it got it so if I were to so if I were to launch let's say in fact we are building a how to Startup course what we would present is and we talking to a lot of these entrepreneurs
• 97:30 - 98:00 who built 300 CR companies like Biryani by kilo or Akash Anand who built bellavita so what I'm supposed to show for my product is what exactly are the conversations that I've had with these Legends and what are the pains that I've taken to build this product is that correct no it would start with first who is think school okay who is think school why is he creating a course okay that is a question that it is like answering doubts in the mind of people you would say like I've been teaching
• 98:00 - 98:30 for this and before uh think school I was teaching professionally it was a passion of me and I want people to speak nicely that is my passion and that is why I've created a company which talks about courses and speaking and all of these things then you would talk about the company go we feel there's a problem with communication in the whole industry and we feel India is a problem like people are not able to speak passionately and properly and not able to present and that is why we see a lot of less marketing companies in India
• 98:30 - 99:00 that is that was your that is the company third thing is that would be the product these are all three wise all combined then you put that aside now show how you're creating the course so I met this billionaire entrepreneur I'm creating videos with him I would tell you how to created the course he's helping me do this and I've done this I've done that all the how so it is basically the pain that you have
• 99:00 - 99:30 taken to be able to build your product and to what length you've gone to build your product in your case you are dealing with a company that makes Rockets which is as far as it could get yeah which is as far as it could get so once you tell this people are now with you on your journey people are with you in your journey trying to understand oh so SLO has done this SLO has done that so and like you just mentioned that this people first make an emotional decision and then they justify it with Logic the way you're talking looks like the exact
• 99:30 - 100:00 blueprint of what you just explained which is you telling people about the why which very well caters to the emotional aspect of how a person things and then there is a logical justification that how not why did scho jump from Skins to making a tech product but how did scho go from being an entrepreneur who sells skins to an entrepreneur who's now selling a tech product and that's where the product design you being a rebel in the watch
• 100:00 - 100:30 Market why other brands are lazy and so on and so forth comes into play is that correct yeah understood understood so now we're talking about the how we're talking about the how why how okay what's next what next is what what that is simple it is just a simple framework why how what and if you see the final launch video also it is like a crazy video we have showcased the whole journey it is essentially the same pattern first we talk about the story we
• 100:30 - 101:00 talk about the brand Ka we talk about product Ka then we talk about how we have done it what the what are the problems we faced and how may we just put Masala like what are the bad things that happened and what are the good things that happened not a lot of it is not a tutorial video it is more like a documentary okay and because you have to compile 1.5 years into this so we don't include a lot of small small things and then at the end it is unboxing got it we just tell them this is the product we have tried to match the accuracy of of
• 101:00 - 101:30 Apple watch OB matches the design is beautiful it has this it has that feature and it is just that simple got it it is just I'll tell you why it is interesting because the framework is simple the marketing is simple it is just nobody has done it that is why it is exciting we've actually done it we've actually put in the work we've actually put in 1.5 years and when you actually put in the work and nobody else has the marketing becomes exciting because people want to see a lot more so I
• 101:30 - 102:00 think YouTube and marketing works if it is true M the SE of nothing actually believes in that if if I were to say things that I do not believe in just for the sake of marketing it would never work would fail but for the past like thousands of videos we have made MH everything we have said was true true whenever we said we going to do this we we went and did that you even mentioned the delays which is very interesting
• 102:00 - 102:30 which also show is imperfection like it's not like the perfect Netflix documentary of how you made it but it's also about the ups and downs that you're facing and this I would add one more line everything we say now in the marketing we make sure it is 100% true of course when you're creating a movie you have to put scenes together in a way that it looks a certain way yeah but people connect with it because it is 100% true we've never lied we have not created any piece of content just to create drama or hype or all of these
• 102:30 - 103:00 things we are just telling our story and I think that is why people respect us and that is why trust has been built that people are able to buy a tech product on a premium price segment at a price segment where most Indian companies have failed they've tried 7,000 SmartWatches 6,000 have they failed they have we have been able to build a trust where we have launched a smartwatch even without looking at any reviews correct no reviews are out there
• 103:00 - 103:30 we have not even reviewed the Smartwatch we have just told this is the story this is what we have bu people have and I think it is just compounding of reputation because in the past everything we have said about our products was true when we say if we are making the best skins in the world people actually buy and test and they realize oh is true when we say we make the best clothes in the world we have created t-shirts that don't fade don't shrink they're organic and nobody else
• 103:30 - 104:00 in the world can create these when people out go out there and actually try it they realize he's speaking facts so that compounds for the tech product also that is why people are instantly able to make that decision Tech making done bro just to give you an extended example of this apura may and she still has your box okay and it is so high quality bro
• 104:00 - 104:30 my mom also has that box so I'm like why do you have this box she's like the box is so high quality and I asked her do you know that this box is meant for clothes she said yes I know that it's meant for clothes but it's extremely handy because it's super stable and I can keep anything inside and I know for a fact that this will not break out that's the overlays wooden box yeah that is remarkable and you know that if something goes to the mom then the mom is never going to give it away like it's like Tupperware right
• 104:30 - 105:00 high quality very functional so it's always there so and I know that this is a trait of great entrepreneurs that they often insist on quality on things that people really don't care about in your case it's the Box uh which I really appreciate so I just want to let you know about it thank you so much thank youa amazing Neil you mentioned something about Amazon and Facebook ads you said that in Facebook the return on investment is less because the intent is low and with Amazon and other
• 105:00 - 105:30 marketplaces the return on investment is very high can you please explain this to me with numbers as to what exactly is this difference with an example I'm yet to explore marketplaces to its truest potential because purely D2 but what I try to do is that since we were entering into Electronics I gauged insights from industry Founders and we hired a very seasoned resource from Marshall who scaled their marketplaces spends from 12 lak rupees a month to 5 CR a month and he's a Marketplace expert and we wanted
• 105:30 - 106:00 to hire someone who has sold premium products not via discounting but purely via products leverage and Marshall is a premium brand and he was the first employee Marshall India hired for to lead marketplaces so what I have learned about marketplaces is as compared to Facebook marketing in Facebook marketing uh at at least Electronics as a category it it's tough to have more than 20 25% d2c sales 75% Reliance if you need to scale will be on Market places that's
• 106:00 - 106:30 why when you achieve this 25% traffic from def from face because Facebook marketing is done for d2c because you redirect that traffic to your own website beyond the point it becomes too expensive to scale why so because to for example in us us may when I when when you had to expand to us layers ski skins I got an Insight that since there are so many Brands fighting for that real estate the RAS has dropped to 1.52
• 106:30 - 107:00 whereas in India still brands are able to achieve 3 to four because brands are relatively less explain Ros please return on at spend if you're spending 100 rupees what sort of Revenue are you generating from that particular at piece in India since so many players are targeting the same audience it becomes more and more expensive and then eventually Facebook is bidding and that's why Facebook beyond the point if you need to scale starts dropping and
• 107:00 - 107:30 that saturation in certain category works really well d2c heavy but Electronics is Marketplace heavy and Marketplace why it is cheaper is because one as compared to Instagram with an intent to purchase then search concentrated if someone is searching smart watches for men then I am quite deep into my audience segregation as compared to Facebook along with filters also
• 107:30 - 108:00 yeah iPhone layers but bro doesn't that also increase competition because when it comes to Facebook like you mentioned it's quite scattered I could just be watching Instagram for time pass and I could get a smartwatch ad intent is low so roas is also very low as compared to that when I go to Amazon and I say less
• 108:00 - 108:30 than 5,000 rupees there you're competing with companies that have thousands of crores in capital and they know for a fact that even when it comes to Amazon and they know for a fact that at Amazon the intent is very high so the likelihood of purchasing is very high which is why they would pump in even more money into Amazon than Facebook but doesn't that also make Amazon extremely costly Amazon electronic sell is cheaper than d2c for sure but how is that because one
• 108:30 - 109:00 if you the 30% ad spent which at scale is not possible to maintain on Facebook marketing like up scale but coffee brands are burning more money for d2c to get the data exactly on their website and for most brands like even boat noise their overall Revenue say 5% less than 5% of the sales are coming from d2c okay because scale becomes tough in Market places though there is enough competition
• 109:00 - 109:30 but but eventually Amazon is a review based platform flip cart is not a reviewbased platform Amazon P reviews matter a lot and what Amazon team has also told us that the quality of reviews distrib 4.5 3.9 okay consumer is really smart because someone is paying more
• 109:30 - 110:00 money EV eventually you pay either for a search for example layer smart so but if good a good product can easily scale at Amazon and a bad product won't sell you mentioned something about Amazon being a reviewbased platform then what is flip cart flip cart does not promote review as a mechanism uh that's what we have
• 110:00 - 110:30 learned from their insights what do you mean can you give me an example or what I love about Amazon when I because we connected with both the teams and platform Amazon is not Amazon reviews are non-negotiable you cannot manipulate
• 110:30 - 111:00 those reviews got it and they heavily suggest the reviews will drive that eventually spend because if your reviews are good you will have to spend less money because our consumer values reviews a lot especially when there are 100 options available see either you need to have insane brand love that your consumer does not care about you know ratings and all but I am
• 111:00 - 111:30 imaginings so if I need to go beyond an audience
• 111:30 - 112:00 oal shape accurate sensors Facebook
• 112:00 - 112:30 Buton is very particular about reviews and they give that if you genuinely want to grow focus on getting good quality reviews even if you want to smell smaller units first because 413 AMS would decrease AMS is their
• 112:30 - 113:00 Performance Marketing platform so insights critical and if your product is good it will get good reviews if the reviews are good you will have to spend less money and that's why uh the beauty of Amazon is that if your product is genuinely good and value of money it's easy to scale because searches are anywhere happening rather than if your product is not good and you have to spend a lot of money ranking SE 15 20 top two pill three pillow you'll have to burn more
• 113:00 - 113:30 money but there are so many brands for example Bo wants to expand to smart watches they they could not they pulled off they they're deep into Amazon ecosystem noise wants to expand into audio they trying they're primarily into smart watches so PESA is not the leverage it's at the end of the day consumer is really smart right place right time right but price and got it but what if what if I have an
• 113:30 - 114:00 online reputation management system whereby I could just order 100 products to the same address and then ask people to review because it's verified purchase because the product has been shipped it has been received by the customers and then they putting out reviews so can't I manipulate the review system I also as the same question and what I got to know is that Amazon Tech is so Advanced that they even track same Wi-Fi say same IP address
• 114:00 - 114:30 say seller so for example there are two ways to sell on Amazon either you go and directly list on Amazon either you can sell to a distributor okay okay if you go directly on Amazon you can try and
• 114:30 - 115:00 and you will try and do things they will give you a warning and they will Mark you you they will not prefer you to sell and communication but what if I am your competitor and I order 100 products of yours to my office will Amazon still Blacklist you that's a good question Amazon see because we haven't sold on Amazon right now it's my initial learning but then maybe but I don't know this
• 115:00 - 115:30 question and what about flip cart flip cart review prioriti marketing spend play an important role marke spend which you are doing they ask for an up friend marketing spend that if you need to sell th000 smart watches they will tell you a budget you need to commit that up front whereas Amazon Amazon let you run your Performance Engine yourself on EMS
• 115:30 - 116:00 flipart ask for an upfront marketing spend you need to have that alignment whereas Amazon you have two options either you commit that marketing spend or this is my Performance Engine no why do you have to commit a certain marketing spend if you do not commit to those marketing and what will happen then you are just waiting organically for it to sell search Google organically then you will
• 116:00 - 116:30 just list it and see but if you spend some amount seares organically grow so you need to be if you need to grow fast you need to be prepared for that and what brands usually do is like us if we have accounted for 30% marketing spent so Amazon commissions are 13 14% so rest of
• 116:30 - 117:00 the 15% I allocate for Amazon marketing AMS spins but and Amazon as a platform suggest if your product is good you can easily scale at a 15% ad spent of your total MRP whereas on Facebook marketing it's easily 30% oh so that's why since the intent is high you are spending less money and with time this spend reduces if your product is good but how do you get this knowledge from Amazon does Amazon contact you or do you have to
• 117:00 - 117:30 contact Amazon I had the privilege to hire someone like gorov from Marshall got it so because we were building our goal was that we need to we have to do least amount of mistakes if we doing something revolutionary and that's why we hired best of the best people or I learn from people around me either Founders or or the team I hire
• 117:30 - 118:00 but this is so revolutionary that um a few years back you failed to make a speaker and today you're getting advice from a guy who worked at Marshall which is one of the world's finest speaker making companies and all of this is going to all of our subscribers for free which is so interesting this is very interesting bro tell me something if somebody has to start selling should they start from Amazon only is it easier on Amazon as compared to Flipkart it depends upon AO what I have understood is that Amazon
• 118:00 - 118:30 tier one penetration is really good and if your product is not Massy it's Mass premium and premium then definitely go for Amazon a please let's talk about watches only a let's talk about watches if your watch goes beyond which price point should you prefer Amazon over Flipkart I would say 3500 rupes okay because 3500 1500 to 3500 is Mass Price Point uh
• 118:30 - 119:00 and Amazon that's why iPhones Amazon penetration is higher and when you look at datk Helium 10 can you please tell me what is helium 10 helium 10 is a software it's an expensive one but if you get that subscription you they can tell you what Amazon is selling
• 119:00 - 119:30 at how much does it cost I think 15 20,000 sub de but when I was trying to create a business plan genuinely opportunity volume then I went to softwares like helium to go deep Market
• 119:30 - 120:00 places very interesting Neil there is one question that I had this everything that you mentioned is a perfect amalgamation of Creator and product you've got a great product you've got a great Creator and when you weave the story together it results into something really really revolutionary where you've got extraordinarily less marketing spent you get this unique advantage of driving the first sales you have the trust to the customers even before you launch the product so these are all unfair advantages that a Creator brings to the
• 120:00 - 120:30 table while you have a great product if the Creator is great and the product isn't great like I said when it comes to celebrity restaurants after certain point your product might fail there's a very famous quote that that goes like best products don't rule the market the best known products rule the market in this case to become the best product you just need to have the best product but if you have to be the best known product you need to have a Creator so tomorrow if there is somebody who's got a great product with a great system for example let's take antech company when it comes to an NCH company most people think it's
• 120:30 - 121:00 the product that's the most important thing but it's actually not the system around the product which is your customer support your marketing funnels and your product all of them put together they play a very important role and most it tech companies are dying because of customer acquisition cost and a Creator can drive down the customer acquisition cost drastically but when it comes to a makeup brand how do you go about doing it I don't know because the variables are different the economics are different the scale is different and the creators are also very very diverse in terms of how they interact with their
• 121:00 - 121:30 subscribers so my question is how do you find this perfect Creator product fit see Creator Le Brands is a graveyard right now everyone will know that it will fail because celebrity maybe only hrx or by krina lied success creat so because whenever Creator hased
• 121:30 - 122:00 to create a product you genuinely first of all need to have a value proposition that if I remove Creator out of the picture is this genuinely a good product The Leverage which a Creator brings to the table is sh
• 122:00 - 122:30 watch so first of all believe and active co-founder what I see is most creators take some equity and just treated like another
• 122:30 - 123:00 brand invol inv but most of the creators
• 123:00 - 123:30 so first of all Creator now the pl second option is second second step is Creator either looks for a co-founder or looks for an already existing company which has a great product but so benefit you can look for great companies VI Instagram Pages or Amazon less than 20 reviews less than 50
• 123:30 - 124:00 reviews and maybe sh based companies less than 10 lak rupes a month Revenue you reach out to them that this is why I love your product I love your vision uh I feel it's relevant for my content and I'm willing to come as an active co-founder CMO because you will value them at what 5 CR if a even invest say 50 lakh rupes and then take comes good 20% 20% product already ready
• 124:00 - 124:30 is and possibilities either you create a co-founder you trust or you look for an already existing companies route two fast creat
• 124:30 - 125:00 and eventually
• 125:00 - 125:30 since you are a tech reviewer I also want to throw light on the mistakes like everything that Neil has said everything that you've said it's it is all about what you've done right but I want to understand what exactly have you done wrong throughout this process just like Neil was saying I would add it looks very nice and interesting from the
• 125:30 - 126:00 outside but there's a lot of Cons with it also I I would say I coming from a Creator side the biggest con of partnering with a company of creating a product of doing anything is the reputation loss if you fail the reputation loss is very high the trust loss is very high and Company brand they
• 126:00 - 126:30 know every single failure that you have is very public if you're starting a company if you're nobody if you fail nobody knows but if you're a India top influencer and if you partner with a company you help promote it and you work it is a very public failure and it it is talked about a lot and I think that makes a lot a lot harder for most creators to just like pick a company and partner I
• 126:30 - 127:00 think Partnerships I would recommend from a Creator standpoint there has to be two things a creators creators I feel there is a misconception they think views is equal to marketing and Views will drive purchases it does not work like that it
• 127:00 - 127:30 is not at all like that views do not equal sales you can get 20 million views but if 20 million views is of tier three audience of it it is of a different market and you're launching a tech product it will never work nobody will buy your product if you're selling T-shirts and your audience is very like uh they don't buy T-shirts would not work and the audience fit has to be there and plus you need to be able to tell your story you need to be able
• 127:30 - 128:00 to it will only work if you are an aspiration it will not work if you're just getting views because a lot of creators get views but you will only be able to sell products if people want to be like you so I'll give you an example of Mr Beast versus Lan Paul so um Mr Beast launched Feast tables I've seen lot of reports that he's doing 100 million per year and um Logan Paul with prime is doing $ billion in Revenue per
• 128:00 - 128:30 year and if you look at the view Gap Logan Paul gets like 1 2 million views per video Mr Beast gets 200 million views so according to the Views and the numbers it should be like like H 200 times this is but I don't think it works like that it is not about how many people watch you it is more like how many people want to be like you or how many people are connected to your journey got it so what do you think would be the fundament difference between Mr Beast and Logan Paul I think
• 128:30 - 129:00 people are not connected with Jimmy Journey as much as Logan Paul really yeah I also have to addan content is around his life his choices his aspirations his family uh Mr Beast cont Mr Beast cont Mr Beast content is around if you look at the titles you would know Logan Paul title I won my
• 129:00 - 129:30 first boxing match I'm getting married I'm getting engaged I'm having a baby it's around him Mr Beast content is $1 Hotel versus $100,000 Hotel $1 experience versus $5 million experience Lamborghini versus this so the content is around content this content is around him that and told me something very interesting about the same thing he told me that bro you will have to make the noise yeah of course if you look at things school it's exactly like that very few people know about me because I
• 129:30 - 130:00 choose not to say things out but if you look at ranir he's the complete opposite everybody knows everything about ranir because he's out there and that's when ranir told me something very interesting he said that in the conventional world you would say let the work make the noise but in the content world you have to make the noise yeah of course in the traditional World also marketing we have not I think this is more popular in India marketing deficient Nation because you have to work and make the noise at the same time
• 130:00 - 130:30 you can consider Logan like a vlogger but he's an aspirational vlogger so people young Millennials are following him but people want to be like him in India if you're following vloggers there are very few young vloggers just Aspire that I want to be like them that's why the leverage of Logan is quite higher
• 130:30 - 131:00 because even at like his Instagram likes are what one lak two lak million follower but that does not stop him from doing $1 billion in Revenue yeah uh purely because the content is around him and the conversion is quite High because the name Logan Paul sells same for Paul he's selling netfli because of the love for being Jake Paul that badass Young
• 131:00 - 131:30 Brother Mr
• 131:30 - 132:00 two because usually Tech folks are very serious person perfect balance that he's young he's he wears good clothes style plus he's a reviewer as well so that's a perfect blend for the watch as well I think the only guy who's been very very successful just like Logan Paul is buhan in India buhan is when it comes to products not products but the story yeah of course the connection that B has with the with people is just very very
• 132:00 - 132:30 interesting and I very vividly remember this because I've been following buan since a very long time he was always a subject of conversation in college and it was so interesting and from there he's gone to now producing his own um his own series that is absolutely incredible so the audacity the audacity not the product but the sheer audacity
• 132:30 - 133:00 to go from YouTube to go from creating a Content using a selfie camera to going to launch an entire series like dendor on YouTube and then to go to hot star and launch something like Taza kabar and you know when Taza kabar ended the last episode I was mind blown because it was a very heavy duty production and for that moment I forgot that I'm watching a YouTuber it almost felt like I was watching a very very seasoned star who's
• 133:00 - 133:30 created this magic and after after Taza was done I was just I was just very very I was speechless after T ended I was speechless and I was like dude can somebody go from YouTube and do something so revolutionary I mean that is absolutely incredible so if B would do something thing next I would follow that because I know for a fact that buhan is a bloody Rebel in an industry which has always built walls to not let Outsiders in and that is really really
• 133:30 - 134:00 magical which is something that I deeply connect with When you mention the Logan Paul story where people would want to be like that person like you mentioned and Bor is one of those rare creators who has managed to get the numbers as well as have this aspirational value for himself which is very very interesting and especially in a category which is not in favor of that aspiration entertainment his YouTube content is not
• 134:00 - 134:30 aspiral is not sh his personal life is not showing his fancy lifestyle still to achieve that is really good and I love buan for the fact one any Creator who stays relevant for more than 10 years hats off m because it's not easy R ran even as a mainstream Creator journey start but as a Creator he's creating content for more than 10 years I have
• 134:30 - 135:00 managed I managing creators in seven years creat man Unfortunately they not relevant correct they have seen a dip in their and still continu continu outperform or
• 135:00 - 135:30 and I get to know stories from it's mindblowing because category entertainment because that's also entrepreneurship but cont on a scale of hot star and all that's mindblowing and entertainment there were so many creators
• 135:30 - 136:00 yeah yeah I want to just add to the same thing like views a lot of people won't understand this a lot of creators are they have this misconcep does not work like that there is a whole signs behind
• 136:00 - 136:30 it correct but it does not work like that a good product and when a Creator is going for a collaboration with any to I think they know need to know how to Market themselves and it is a very conscious choice bhan just like he said it accident no one knew instr never uped comedy videos he was always
• 136:30 - 137:00 instagr and there's a lot of things that go behind to create that and it is very conscious and every Creator is conscious of it who has actually done it so I think that is very important they should know sell knows what sells and um not everything will sell if you're not passionate especially when it comes to the product
• 137:00 - 137:30 game knows in the production long and we very passionate I am very deeply involved in everything I do and if you're not involved if you're not passionate and if you're not
• 137:30 - 138:00 in it for the long run it won't work out so I think these two things are very very important for a creator
• 138:00 - 138:30 I think these two things are very important involv views are and that is why a lot of celebrities fail that is why a lot of creators fail because are not very conscious about what sells very interesting guys guys thank you so much I'm just going to summarize quickly
• 138:30 - 139:00 whatever I've learned if there's anything that is missing you can just add to this let's start with uh Neil's market analysis the Smartwatch Market in India is worth $1 billion there are 5.5 CR watches which are being sold within aov of, 1500 rupees which are primarily occupied by companies like Firebolt boat noise that's it and Fitbit and apple type companies where Apple has what 1% 1% market share which is so Apple sells
• 139:00 - 139:30 about 5 lakh watches in a year when it comes to, 1500 rupes to 3,000 rupes price point there there's a very less difference between a watch that sells for 3,000 rupees and the watch that sells for500 rupees and that's why scho mentioned that there is a dire need for a product that is accurate for a product that is extremely stylish and for a product that can last longer and here's where you guys capitalize the market and you chose a very specific price point which is 5,000 to 10,000 rupees not
• 139:30 - 140:00 because it was a great Market opportunity but primarily because that is what it costed to make a great product scho also mentioned the right to win while the likes of Bo tried to enter this Market failed and rolled back you believe that you have a right to win in this market primarily because because a you're not driven by growth or profits you're just driven by product quality B you do not have the rush to launch 30 40
• 140:00 - 140:30 products per month you just have one product and you've put in one and a half two years of efforts into just launching that one product and this gives you a lot of freedom to explore options that otherwise conventional Smartwatch companies do not explore and here's where we have two options for any entrepreneur to enter the space one is go to home Kong visit the fair buy a product sell it in India make a healthy margin and that's it and here's where Neil mentioned that there are essentially 1 two three four things
• 140:30 - 141:00 required to build a smartwatch brand firmware UI hardware and distribution most companies because they go to this Hong Kong Fair they simply focus on distribution because of which Smartwatch companies are not smartw watch companies they're essentially marketing companies which have just mastered distribution as a result of a lot of funding and uh which gives them The Leverage to hire celebrities and sell their prices at a lower price so that they can achieve penetration eventually they can increase their prices and have healthy margins which results into a lot of burn then
• 141:00 - 141:30 SLO you mentioned that it is a trust deficit Market a lot of brands have come into this market and specifically you know this better than anybody else because you've been reviewing so many products that you understand that this Market lacks trust because of which you want to build a product that can command the trust of the audience and this also perfectly Falls in sync with what he just mentioned about the Creator product fit whereby a creator has to be so deeply involved in the product that they have to know every single aspect of how it works why you've chosen a particular
• 141:30 - 142:00 thing so that they can take complete accountability and responsibility of the quality which is something that you've been deeply involved with then you also mentioned one more thing which is compatibility Gap while there are watches which are not compatible with apple you have a watch which is both Android and Apple compatible because of the choice of OS that you made which gives you a higher Target address well market and you mentioned that you don't want your watch to be yet another watch you want your watch to be better than Apple in terms of design so that Apple
• 142:00 - 142:30 could be their Fitness product but your watch has to be cool enough that it can be taken to parties and to weddings which is the thinking that you used in order to build your product then we come to the economics in economics Neil you mentioned that if I were to go to Hong Kong buy a product and sell it for 1,000 rupes the cost of the product would be around 300 to 350 rupees then I'll have my marketing spend between 250 Rupees to 300 rupees GST 180 rupees salaries
• 142:30 - 143:00 shipping cost and payment Gateway cost of 70 rupees and 120 to 130 rupees profit but in this case you'll have to keep two to three months of working capital because not everybody will have the unfair advantage that you have with scho so they'll have to keep 2 to 3 months of working capital if they can still manage to launch a great product and that sells very well well and good if not just like every other company they'll have to roll back in your case you mentioned SLO that you've put in so much efforts to build a great product
• 143:00 - 143:30 that you have this unfair advantage of having patents which is something that very few companies have you have this company that makes Rockets design products for you which gives you an unfair advantage of having a high quality product and here's where the initial Capital comes into play which is about 4.5 crores and here Neil you mentioned a breakup which is 60 lakh rupees Went to went into branding agencies and here's where you hired a company called thought over design 55 to 60 lakh rupees went into
• 143:30 - 144:00 product design which was done by seor poell if I'm spelling the name right and scho you mentioned that it took you 3 months to go through this process and then Neil you mentioned that 3D renders are extremely costly costing you about 20 lakh rupees and 2 CR rups went into getting your initial inventory with a team of about 15 people being paid a salary for about 18 months which costed you again between 70 to 90 lakh rupees essentially it comes out to be around 4 to 4.5 cres SLO you mentioned that for every product you need to have certain
• 144:00 - 144:30 aspects in mind while you Market the product as a premium product and these aspects are aspiration Association and Rarity if your product is rare in nature if your product has healthy associations and if your product is aspirational that is when it will sell very well and again this Falls in sync with the Creator economy aspect where you said that if there are creators who are pulling off a lot of views versus creators who do not pull off that many views but have this personality a story a product that
• 144:30 - 145:00 people aspire to have or a personality that people aspire to be like that is when you can command this premium in your case because you've built a very vast subscriber base who aspires to be like you that is what gives you this unfair advantage of being able to sell skins being able to sell jackets and also watches He also mentioned that when it comes to the look and feel of the product even before the product comes to the consumer the presentation is important the association is important and the packaging is important is that
• 145:00 - 145:30 correct and here you also give the example of Yeezy which is primarily selling because of the perceived value and not just because of the tangible value which again gives yezy the unfair advantage of being perceived as a premium brand then we come to your content strategy and we started with the story that you sold 10,000 jackets at an aov of 2,400 rupees with The Six Day marketing campaign and when we dug deeper you started with saying that views is not equal to product sales if you have to sell your product there have to be two aspects one is the emotional
• 145:30 - 146:00 aspect of your content and The Logical aspect of your content together they help Drive decisions of the customers because customers tend to make emotional decisions and then they tend to justify it with logic now when we broke down the emotional aspect of content we found that it is actually a combination of three y the why of the product the why of the brand and why of the person and you gave me example saying when it comes to why of the person in your case it was why is scho building a tech brand MH the second question that we answered was the
• 146:00 - 146:30 why of the brand which is what exactly is so revolutionary about layers why is there a need for another tech product a tech brand in this extremely crowded market and then came the why of the product which is how are we better what exactly do we do different as compared to other brands which gives us a right to win when these stories are communic ated through res shs and YouTube videos they give you a proper justification as a consumer as to why is scho building a tech product why is
• 146:30 - 147:00 there a need for a brand which eventually establishes emotional connect eventually helping you drive sales then we went deeper into content Whenever there are different pieces of content scattered all across social media one of the biggest challenges that content creators face is that not every time you can give context but you mentioned that every time it is important to give context it might take up a lot of time but even if the viewer is watching your piece of content for the first time they should get an idea about what exactly is the context so that they can get connected to the story at any given
• 147:00 - 147:30 point in the timeline if you've got scattered pieces of content that have got nothing to do with each other without context then a person a might follow you from the first episode but person C or D might just start following from the 100th episode and if the 100th episode does not have context they might just drop off eventually the audience retention will not stick with you and eventually the emotional connect will not be established and hence the sales will go down and also you mentioned sentiment analysis you put one piece of content understand the sentiment of the audience and you get the next thread of content which helps you understand a
• 147:30 - 148:00 what which piece of content will be put next and B it also helps you address the sentiment of the audience their skepticism which again helps you clarify a lot of questions the format that you mentioned was why how and what tell them why you're doing how are you doing what are you doing in how you mentioned that we have to throw light on the most interesting things that you guys encountered while you built the product like a company that's uh building Rockets is now doing the product design
• 148:00 - 148:30 a company that rebranded whole truth Foods is doing the same thing for you which makes it very very interesting because most people would never think that a Creator would hire these kind of agencies to be able to build a watch which is very very interesting when you tell these stories it creates an aspirational appeal it generates curiosity and more importantly generates a buzz in the market and justifies it to the people as to why a tech Creator could build an incredible tech product while there are legends like Apple and Samsung then Neil we
• 148:30 - 149:00 spoke about Amazon versus Facebook you said that when it comes to Facebook the return on ad spend is far less as compared to Amazon primarily because when people visit Amazon and they type watches less than 5,000 rupees the intent is very high they are exactly they're very sure about what exactly do they want because of which the real estate over there is far more valuable as compared to the real estate on Facebook then you mentioned that Amazon is a reviewbased platform which is very very interesting so you have to primarily have a great product so that you can get hold of great reviews fake
• 149:00 - 149:30 reviews cannot come on Amazon because Amazon is very diligent about it because of which even a small player has a very good shot at Amazon and one Nuance that you presented is that when it comes to Amazon you've got a far more premium audiences compared to Flipkart and especially when it comes to the watch Market you need to have a price point of more than 3,500 Rupees to get the best return at spent from Amazon as compared to Flipkart essentially what this means is that if you've got a mass premium product or a premium product you go with Amazon if you've got an economical affordable range of products you go with flip cart for watches this price lab is
• 149:30 - 150:00 3,500 rupees above which you should go to Amazon below which flip cart is preferred and it's not like you should choose one over the other you should do both it's just that one is better than the other when it comes to these categories of products then you mentioned that somebody wants to get hold of all the data from Amazon helium 10 is a great software you just have to pay 15 to 20,000 rupes in subscription and you can get hold of data which will give you enough insights to start your d2c brand or launch a product on Amazon crazy why the
• 150:00 - 150:30 summary was very shocked but it was very I look at it from a point of view ke if any Creator or any person who is going to Market a product or any 20-year-old who wants to start a business if he watches this podcast there is so much value youi we covered marketing we covered how the product is built we actually covered Innovation I think it would be one crazy crazy podcast whoever watches till the
• 150:30 - 151:00 end it has insane amount of value thank you guys thank you so much and one last thing that I actually missed out on was Creator economy long story short creator has to be deeply involved and if Creator is able to tell great stories you can build great products done done thank you so much guys thank you so much for flying down all the way just to share your insights means a lot and I just hope you had fun and you just go on to build a 100 CR
• 151:00 - 151:30 company but I'm very happy guys thank you so much thank you so much thank you [Music] [Music]