The FUTURE Of Agriculture In India! ft. Founder of Bijak

Summary

In a riveting discussion on "The Neon Show," the future of agriculture in India comes to the fore with insights from Mukul, the founder of Bijak. Established in 2019, Bijak bridges the gap between farmers and traders in the agricultural sector, leveraging tech solutions to address key challenges. Mukul shares his journey from a farming family to establishing a B2B marketplace that helps farmers get fair prices and reduces risk. The conversation highlights the importance of leveraging existing expertise in agriculture and how Bijak steps in to fill gaps in data analysis, financing, and tech, while aligning itself with the traditional supply chain. Looking ahead, Bijak is poised for deeper market penetration and scaling services.

Highlights

• Mukul, a tech and finance professional with farming roots, founded Bijak to revolutionize Indian agriculture. 🌟
• Bijak assessed the market's need for a B2B marketplace, acknowledging existing farmers' expertise while filling gaps with tech. 🌾
• The platform addresses trust issues by facilitating informed decision-making for producers and traders. 🤝
• Bijak's success has shown that aligning with traditional supply chains while enhancing them with data and tech is optimal. 📊
• As the business evolves, expanding service offerings and geographic reach is a primary pursuit. 🌍

Key Takeaways

• Bijak is revolutionizing India's agri-sector by connecting farmers directly with buyers, ensuring better prices and reduced risks for farmers. 🚜
• The startup leverages existing agricultural wisdom instead of displacing seasoned traders, creating a complementary tech-driven ecosystem. 🌾
• Founders emphasize trust and relationship-building, aiming to solve problems without displacing traditional roles. 🤝
• The company has scaled significantly since its inception, facilitating widespread trade across the Indian subcontinent. 📈
• Agri-fintech is a massive space, with 80% of commodity trades occurring on credit, enlightening significant opportunities in financial services. 💳

Overview

Mukul, Bijak's visionary, is steering a tech-driven wave in India's agricultural sector, determined to bridge traditional practices with modern ones. With a robust background in technology and finance and a heart rooted in farming, Mukul's journey reflects both personal and professional aspirations towards agritech innovations.

Founded in 2019, Bijak operates as a B2B marketplace that promotes seamless transactions between farmers and buyers, aiming to narrow the trust deficit and mitigate risks in agricultural trading. The company embraces a cooperative approach, complementing traditional agricultural roles rather than competing with them.

As Bijak continues to scale, their focus lies in expanding service offerings, capitalizing on technological advances, and understanding deeply ingrained market behaviors. The narrative illustrates that thoughtful integration of technology with traditional expertise offers promising solutions to age-old agricultural challenges.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 03:00: Introduction and Guest Introduction The chapter introduces the concept of relationships with farmers, emphasizing that these relationships are not purely transactional. It touches upon the role of local aggregators in this dynamic, highlighting that paying higher prices isn't the only way to provide value to farmers.
• 03:00 - 09:00: Understanding the Agricultural Ecosystem The chapter titled "Understanding the Agricultural Ecosystem" discusses the complexities involved in the agricultural supply chain. It highlights the importance of timing and the diverse needs of farmers. The discussion touches on the traditional supply chain models and how they better serve farmers' needs by providing expertise developed over generations. A particular emphasis is placed on traders who have specialized in specific crop varieties for multiple generations, underscoring the value of domain expertise in agriculture.
• 09:00 - 21:00: Bijak's Unique Approach and Solutions The chapter titled 'Bijak's Unique Approach and Solutions' discusses the importance of leveraging domain expertise and the decision to allow the unorganized sector to do what it's best at. The focus is on identifying and addressing gaps in the unorganized sector, particularly in areas such as data analysis, financing options, and practical usage. The chapter emphasizes focusing efforts on these specific gaps to provide effective solutions.
• 21:00 - 32:00: Building Trust and Facilitating Trade The chapter emphasizes focusing on technology that enhances the efficiency of the supply chain, rather than areas where the current system is already performing well. It acknowledges the role of sponsors, particularly Prime Venture Partners, in supporting these efforts. Prime Venture Partners is highlighted as an early-stage venture capital fund led by Sanjay Swami and Sripati Acharya.
• 32:00 - 46:00: Challenges and Evolution of Bijak This chapter discusses the founding mission of Prime, which began in 2012 with the goal of introducing Silicon Valley-style professionalism to venture capital in India. It highlights Prime's role as a pioneering investor in over 35 startups, often being the first institutional backer in emerging tech categories. Notable companies include quizzes, call paul, sunstone, adversity, and vinwal. For further details, the reader is directed to visit primevp.in.
• 46:00 - 54:00: Future Directions and Personal Insights The chapter discusses the potential growth and future direction of the agritech market in India, as highlighted by a 2020 study by Ernst & Young. The study estimates the Indian agritech market could be worth $24 billion by 2025. There are currently 600 to 700 agritech startups in India working to serve farmers, one of which is 'India Bija'. The startup, founded in 2019 by Mahesh, is setting examples in the industry.
• 54:00 - 72:00: Co-Founders' Dynamics and Teamwork Nikhil discusses his B2B marketplace for agricultural commodities which connects millions of stakeholders, including farmers, buyers, sellers, traders, wholesalers, food processors, and retailers. The platform, Bijak, has expanded to over a thousand regions across 28 states, facilitating trade across 110 agricultural communities. Bijak is currently handling a large volume of transactions.
• 72:00 - 77:00: Closing Remarks and Farewell The chapter titled 'Closing Remarks and Farewell' highlights the significant impact made by an individual named Mukul, who has positively influenced the lives of farmers in Bharat, also known as India. The host congratulates Mukul on creating such an impact, noting that more than 300 crores are being generated on a monthly basis. Mukul expresses gratitude for the kind words and mentions his long-time appreciation for the podcast, stating that he has been a listener for a significant time.

The FUTURE Of Agriculture In India! ft. Founder of Bijak Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 [Music] b i think the relationships with farmers are not purely transactional so local aggregator uh is essentially uh the right so it's it's not a clear equation that i pay higher prices so i'm giving more value to the farmer because
• 00:30 - 01:00 the farmer you know needs multiple things at multiple times uh so that ecosystem uh i think we thought that you know the traditional uh supply chain serves it better uh third you know given that these traders have built their domain expertise over generations so a trader might be doing a particular variety of a crop for three four generations uh it seemed
• 01:00 - 01:30 uh foolish to not leverage it right so not leverage that domain expertise um so given all these things we decided that you know we would let the unorganized sector do the things that it can uh it's good at and we should focus on things uh where the unorganized sector has clear gaps so there are gaps around data analysis there are gaps around financing options there are gaps around uh actually using
• 01:30 - 02:00 tech so we should focus on that and stay away from things uh which the current supply chain is doing a good job at [Music] hi everyone i am your host siddharth aloo alia before we dive deep into this week's conversation i would like to thank our sponsors prime venture partners for constantly supporting us prime venture partners is an early stage vc fund led by sanjay swami sripati acharya namaste prime was started in
• 02:00 - 02:30 2012 with the objective of bringing silicon valley style professionalism to venture investing and building world-class companies out of india prime has invested in 35 plus startups and is often the first institutional investor in category creating tech startups such as quizzes call paul sunstone adversity and vinwal you can check more about prime venture partners on primevp.in today i have with me
• 02:30 - 03:00 an erston young 2020 study pegs the indian agritech market potentially at 24 billion dollars by 2025 and there are about 600 to 700 agri-tech startups in india serving the farmers the india bija is one of the startups which is leading the forefront and setting examples for the others founding in 2019 by mahesh
• 03:00 - 03:30 nikhil is a b2b marketplace for agricultural commodities that connects millions of buyers sellers traders wholesalers food processors retailers and most importantly the farmers bijak has scaled in more than thousand regions across 28 states and facilitated trade of over 110 agri communities bijac today is doing transactions of
• 03:30 - 04:00 more than 300 crores on a monthly basis so first of all congrats mukul for creating such an impact for the real bharath which we say a 70 of the bharat are farmers or kasans and you have certainly made a dent in their lives thanks a lot siddha thanks a lot for the kind words and really happy glad to be uh on this podcast i have been a listener for a long time now uh so this is one podcast that i look look
• 04:00 - 04:30 forward to every week thank you so much would like to understand from you uh how did you identify the problem you are solving before starting this up right right so i think it's a mix of uh a couple of things right so one is of course the rational thinking right what's what's the market size what's the you know severity of the problem so agree has been massive uh
• 04:30 - 05:00 for a long time now so there's nothing new about agreed being a 300 billion dollar or a 400 billion dollar space uh what has changed though is you know now it has become crackable right so there's a lot of internet penetration there's a lot of mobile penetration that we have seen in the last few years uh which means that a problem which existed for a long time now can have tech or tech enabled solutions so so the timing felt right the market size
• 05:00 - 05:30 was big enough the other aspect is of course the emotional part right uh if you want if you're going to spend the prime years of your life solving a problem uh that problem better be very close to your heart right so uh i come from a farming family so i was you know born and brought up in a place called mp right so we're the primary source of income for the family was farming and farming the light activities we did you know tractors cultivators
• 05:30 - 06:00 that sort of thing um so i think you know for a lot of folks it's it's uh it's not ideal but for a lot of farming families the goal is to get their kids as away from farming as possible as far from farming as possible um that's what my family also did so you know i after my schooling i joined bits pilani did my engineering from there uh joined an investment bank uh immediately after
• 06:00 - 06:30 worked with jpm for some years did my mba from the university of virginia so um did a lot of things to move away from farming right but by the time you have spent those years right so you realize that you know um you you essentially want to go back and you know uh solve a problem that your family faced and the people around you faced uh so that was the emotional connect
• 06:30 - 07:00 with the problem right so i wanted to do something in the agri space there were just two two industries that shaped my life right so one was edu technology tech right so education allowed me to uh experience uh other parts of the world allowed me to you know meet smarter folks and agri tech allowed you know agriculture allowed my family to actually invest in my education so these those were the two problems that i looked at
• 07:00 - 07:30 when i was moving back here uh education i felt that you know with or without me uh the industry is doing well right so there were so many smart entrepreneurs uh who were already trying to solve the problem so the marginal utility uh seemed pretty low for myself right so i agree that's that's how i you know decided to do something in the agri space and then within agree i think you know there are
• 07:30 - 08:00 ways of identifying top of the mind problem the problem that can have massive impact right to me there are so many things which can be improved in the agri ecosystem right now uh but the top of the mind problem for every farmer for every trader is to be able to sell their produce uh at a good price right so uh getting better realization for the crop seemed to be the core problem uh across the board and so
• 08:00 - 08:30 we decided to do something about that and uh when you were identifying this problem right of creating a b2b marketplace what are the other adjacent problems that you choose to say no to because like doing something right is as important as choosing it as important as saying you know five other things or ten other things so i think the other adjacent uh paths were around you know some of the pre-harvest things that that are uh
• 08:30 - 09:00 really exciting uh so you you can increase the farmers income in two ways right so one is uh help them grow better crops help them get better yield and once the harvest is out help them get better prices for it or reduce wastage uh so the most logical adjacent problem was to do something on the input side do something on the crop
• 09:00 - 09:30 advisory side um we decided against it uh and decided to you know go go for the problem that we are solving right now uh because we felt that you know it's it's sometimes um very common uh for us uh people including us to assume that you know farmer needs help uh with what he's doing right uh where then we come in and it it's almost
• 09:30 - 10:00 some uh sort of arrogance that we have uh that we can teach him to do farming uh which which seemed incorrect to us right so we realized that we should focus on things uh that we can be good at we didn't feel that you know crop advisory is something we could really be good at the other thing that you know led to the decision was it becomes very
• 10:00 - 10:30 easy to change behavior when you have uh when you are able to give assurance of liquidity right so i i can come in and ask the farmer to grow pulses instead of sugarcane because the you know soil quality as such or the you know water availability is such uh but doing that is much more difficult by just educating the farmer versus actually creating an
• 10:30 - 11:00 infrastructure where pulses have as much liquidity as sugarcane does uh have as much price consistency as sugarcane does right so if if there's a sugarcane mill a sugar mill 20 kilometers away from a farm and pulses have some sort of uh opaqueness in terms of how much liquidity you'll get after the harvest that that decision becomes difficult so we have seen that you know it's if i can
• 11:00 - 11:30 consistently give a higher price for a particular variety of potato to farmers because i have create my created marketing linkage infrastructure for that the farmer automatically in a couple of years moves to that high yield variety uh because he can see that you know there's there's some clear market demand there's enough liquidity and there's uh predictability when it comes to prices uh so that's that's what led us to uh
• 11:30 - 12:00 work on the output side and i think you know b2b marketplace seemed the right way to crack it and how are you different from traditional offerings or your uh you know more aggregated competitors so i think in terms of uh difference when it comes to traditional offerings um so a lot of so a lot of startups have taken you know uh slightly different approach in terms
• 12:00 - 12:30 of disintermediating the uh middlemen right so this intermediating the traders uh we believe that the problem is so complex the market is so fragmented uh that you need the support of the existing ecosystem all right so you cannot go in and try to you know just disrupt the existing ecosystem and be a replacement for it right so you're talking about thousands of regions hundreds of crops being able to do farm to fork there or
• 12:30 - 13:00 farm to retail there uh is is difficult uh b i think the relationships with farmers are not purely transactional right so local aggregator uh is essentially uh the guy who would you know in hindi right so it's it's not a clear um equation that i pay higher prices so i'm
• 13:00 - 13:30 giving more value to the farmer because the farmer you know needs multiple things at multiple times uh so that ecosystem uh i think we thought that you know uh the traditional uh supply chain serves it better uh third you know given that these traders have built their domain expertise over generations so a trader might be doing a particular variety of a crop for three four
• 13:30 - 14:00 generations uh it seemed uh foolish to not leverage it right so not leverage that domain expertise um so given all these things we decided that you know we would let the unorganized sector do the things that it can it's good at and we should focus on things uh where the unorganized sector has clear gaps so there are gaps around data analysis there are gaps around financing options there are gaps around uh actually using
• 14:00 - 14:30 tech so we should focus on that uh and and you know stay away from things uh which the current supply chain is doing a good job at right so that that's the approach we took so we took we you know uh doing a do a job in a very enabler kind of a mindset right so we work with all this agree other agritech startups uh on a regular basis we work with traders
• 14:30 - 15:00 we work with processors and we try to enable each participant of the supply chain rather than competing with them and nicole can you take an example of how a trade is facilitated at whichever you know and connecting all the parties yes so i think you know the current way of a typical supplier who's you know can be
• 15:00 - 15:30 a source monday trader or a local aggregator who works directly with farmers at farm gate level uh works with less than 10 buyers throughout his lifetime right so he he knows that there are you know millions of other buyers out there but he continues to trade with the same same set of guys because he has built trust with them right any 11th buyer for him is a major risk now this trust deficit because all
• 15:30 - 16:00 the transactions happen on credit because price discovery more often than not happens at destination there are uncertainties around how quality would be assessed uh so all these uncertainties where they you know force a supplier or a local aggregator or farmer to trade with the same set of guys uh actually forces them to you know leave money on the table right so it's the inefficiency comes from trust
• 16:00 - 16:30 deficit rather than from information symmetry a trader in kanpur knows that he can get better prices in guntur instead of hyderabad but would he take the risk to supply 5 lakhs worth of produce to gundu to someone who he has never met with where the paperwork is minimal right so what the platforms platform does for the trader is solve for this trust deficit
• 16:30 - 17:00 right so we essentially track the transaction history of all our users uh how much is the price that you paid the supplier how much was the delay in payments what kind of what's the quantum of quality deduction that you have what's the behavior when the market crashes how many times do you refuse to take delivery uh so all on all these parameters we rate these buyers so that supplier can actually make a more informed choice and
• 17:00 - 17:30 actually have enough enough information to trust the other guy uh and when the transaction uh actually happens so you know when buyer and sellers speak to each other we then constantly track uh everything that goes on whether the produce was dispatched on time how much was the shrinkage in transit uh what was the you know delivery timeline then so it creates an incentive for our users
• 17:30 - 18:00 to behave in a fair way right so a buyer who meets his commitments all the time or a supplier who meets his commitments all the time uh gets access to the best buyers and suppliers on the platform right so they are able to increase their volume they are able to get better prices get better payment terms because they have been consistent uh in their behavior right and they are close to the commitment that they gave
• 18:00 - 18:30 so which essentially allows our users uh to you know see better prices better payment terms so this is what happens the supplier comes on the platform looks for buyers looks at their ratings uh based on where the supplier is located and the grade and the variety of the commodity that he's trading in bjec recommends a set of buyers these buyers we have history built for them supplier decides to sell to them all the transaction documents are shared
• 18:30 - 19:00 through the app the payment flows through the app uh so it gets paid on time so we process i think you know close to up upwards of 300 million dollars of payments right uh through the platform as well uh so that's the typical way and at the end of the transaction we rate both suppliers and buyers objectively on uh all these parameters um so that's that's that's how we do uh business i think our users have seen
• 19:00 - 19:30 have been able to supply to more locations now because of bjec have uh 3x 4x their volumes uh through the platform uh they are able to get discover better prices uh and are getting paid faster so all all that kind of you know creates that stickiness on the platform where users want to continue trading through the platform again and again god and can you outline the challenges you
• 19:30 - 20:00 have faced from the initial journey till now like as you mentioned trust has been one of the biggest issues how did you create that trust in traders farmers so i think you know there's there's no shortcut for building trust right so we we brainstorm around hacks for it so many times but at the end of the day it just comes down to uh delivering on the promise consistently every day for a long period
• 20:00 - 20:30 of time right so this this uh it sometimes takes months sometimes years to build that trust um and so that's what we have done uh i think the other challenge to do that was you know for for our recommendation engine to work well uh we need to get have enough data about our users about how they are transacting what kind of uh what's their transaction behavior uh and all that data is
• 20:30 - 21:00 unavailable right so agree historically has been a pen and paper uh offline payments kind of an industry uh so getting our users to do transactions digitally uh to payments digitally uh allow us to create a transaction trail uh i think that was a massive challenge right uh fortunately for us what worked was the problem was so big for our users
• 21:00 - 21:30 that they were willing to adjust willing to you know slightly change their behavior uh for the hope that this problem of being able to identify identify the right counterparty that problem gets resolved and uh what happened when you are starting up let's say in raising capital in in identifying the first set of geography that you want to operate in and building scale in that geography right so i think uh
• 21:30 - 22:00 so when it comes to raising capital there's a the thing that becomes a challenge is uh there's an understanding of what a good agritech company would do and that understanding comes from international markets in terms of what has worked uh in the west or what has worked in china so get put investing that time to
• 22:00 - 22:30 get uh vcs to understand that you know uh all these assumptions might not hold true for the indian market uh the clear journey of disintermediation might not be the best approach or there are other approaches to actually solve this problem now that was challenging initially right and so we are very fortunate to have people on our cap table who you know took the time to understand the problem to understand the solution spoke
• 22:30 - 23:00 to our users and then you know showed that belief and took that leap of faith with uh for us very early on uh now that is something that we struggle even today so even today uh getting uh out there and telling that you know we are building a business which does not eliminate middlemen uh that actually works with them given all the pr around middlemen given all the you know hype around i agree laws it
• 23:00 - 23:30 sometimes becomes challenging to to do that right so it takes more time it takes more of effort it takes uh a consistent conviction uh in saying that you know this is something that i believe in and this is the way we are going to solve the problem so that was on the fundraising side and there was you know getting the initial traction uh and you know getting identifying the areas right so for us we we knew that you know getting people to adopt
• 23:30 - 24:00 to a mobile app for uh would be difficult right so a lot of for a lot of you are users uh in fact for most of our users bject is the first business app that they use this is the only apps the other than the they use are for entertainment or communication right uh so getting them to use uh their mobile phones to transact was going to be difficult so we started with you know uh the knowledge region of up right
• 24:00 - 24:30 where we realized that you know if it works here it would work in other parts of the country as well uh because the literacy rates uh kind of look better in other other angry output regions right so we started from there didn't have any assumptions you know a cto uh chitandar worked from there all of us work from there you know kind of just scammed there for for months together um to understand that you know
• 24:30 - 25:00 what is the user doing with the app right so it had to be an iterative process we just kept working on it uh to finally give one value prop that you could really use very well uh and then the idea was to build on that slowly so now we do financial services we do we do logistics uh we do global uh we run a global platforms as well but initially we had to keep things very simple we had to find just one thing
• 25:00 - 25:30 that the user cares about and find the best way of actually delivering it on the app and what was that one thing that the user have done so one thing was uh party chore hacking right so you know to translate it to how good is my counterparty is it worth taking the risk right so that that was one thing that the user was looking for that i have request for you know
• 25:30 - 26:00 20 tons of potato from sita madi should i take that risk right of dispatching the produce so when we started our rating was just sim uh binary good bad right that's all now now we have a more exhaustive system but but the users were willing to give uh that solution a shot as well while it was overly simplistic but uh they just wanted to know you know whether it's
• 26:00 - 26:30 okay right are there other outstanding with other suppliers that this particular buyer has or has defaulted on if you could give me that information that's good enough so that was the one thing surprisingly and uh for for the user uh because he was paid let's say x amount of days later after the dispatch that became really critical and it was not paid on on the date of the transaction no so 80 of uh agri-commodity trades are
• 26:30 - 27:00 on credit right so the 300 billion dollar space that we talk about 80 percent is on credit right so i think from a fintech perspective agrees a much bigger space than most industries combined uh plus there are a lot of uncertainties right so once the produce leaves the premises of the supplier or the farmer he has absolutely no control over it right when the produce once the produce reaches the destination what would be
• 27:00 - 27:30 prices then how would the price quality be evaluated there is typically a 10 uh quality deduction uh on an average outside the platform right so the uh agreed upon price is three lakhs but on an average the you know price actually paid to the farmer or the supplier would be 2 lakh 70 000 sometimes it would be you know even 50 percent of the value would be deducted based on you know qualities not as per the expectation
• 27:30 - 28:00 right so that kind of uncertainty uh is is very difficult for a supplier to handle uh so we have seen that you know of a local aggregator of all the money that he makes 85 percent of it is just risk premium say if it's going to make 10 000 on a transaction he actually wants to make just 1500 rupees on it right so he's happy to do the whole job for 1500 rupees provided all the risks are eliminated right so
• 28:00 - 28:30 what has started happening now is because the risks are lower uh on the platform uh suppliers have started reducing the risk premium which means that buyers are getting a better price because that risk premium which was involved in every transaction which was 85 percent of the overall margin that the supplier was making that goes away and if you can describe the funnel for
• 28:30 - 29:00 yourself you know i know i may be repeating the question again but just want to uh get more clarity from you uh so when a farmer is using beacher he's using to compare the price of this produce in various markets right what are the other use cases you solve for a farmer besides the price comparison so i think it invariably starts with comparing prices yes right across different geographies uh
• 29:00 - 29:30 now that and these prices change every day right so uh today you know lucknow could be a could be the best market for you tomorrow given the you know supply that lucknow is getting uh kanpur might be a better option for you right so uh it's it's a dynamic thing uh now once a supplier identifies the region that he wants to trade in uh then the next thing is which buyer to trade with all
• 29:30 - 30:00 right so once you have identified kanpur there are hundreds of traders in kanpur who should you you know supply two uh that's second uh so first it starts you know users come in they just keep checking the prices right then they keep check seeing that you know their buyers that they are supplying to uh there are better options available out there um once they you know that that's our discovery funnel right so them discovering a counterparty once that
• 30:00 - 30:30 counterparty is discovered then the other uh things come in wherein you try to keep the counter party more accountable right so somebody has committed a seven day payment cycle so i should get paid on seventh day so how do you keep the counterparty accountable that our rating system takes care of uh so this is where users start now invariably as the volume grows so because suppliers are now able to do more volume or supply to more locations um they they
• 30:30 - 31:00 feel uh so they run out of working capital that's when you know our partner banks come in and we start financing those transactions uh through invoice discounting models also what happens is typically our power users realize that now they are they are ready to supply to regions where they never supplied before uh and they don't have logistics partners for those destinations right uh so that's when the user moves
• 31:00 - 31:30 from uh discovery accountability uh services to financial services to logistics services and that's how the whole spectrum of uh services gets utilized now once we have enough data on a supplier in terms of what kind of grade what quality does that suppliers uh provide what's the capacity how much volume can he handle uh in a week then we start recommending you know
• 31:30 - 32:00 picking those suppliers and choosing them for export platform right because we have a clear demand on the global side uh the challenge there is to be able to identify the right suppliers who can actually meet that demand in a predictable way uh so that's when the users migrate to the final leg of the platform which is the global offering so that's how the funnel is it starts with monday rates and ends up being you know
• 32:00 - 32:30 users using the whole spectrum of services and uh can you share what what does 2022 looks like for you yeah so uh it should look exciting uh so we have uh we have surpassed the projections every year so far uh we would love to continue doing that uh in 2022 as well so there are a lot of um so
• 32:30 - 33:00 first two years was spent mostly on getting the product right uh building the initial uh credibility in the market you most markets we went to and there was no user who was using that product right so there were no references there were no there was no word of mouth uh so now we are at a stage where we have presence in almost all markets uh there's credibility around the brand uh around
• 33:00 - 33:30 the platform uh we have now financial services and logistics services in place so i think 2022 would be for bjerg a move from just uh gmv to you know a deeper penetration of all these services across our universe if you can share your journey how you evolved as a founder what was looking like in 2019 you know when he
• 33:30 - 34:00 started what doubts assumptions he wanted in 2022 interesting so i think i think one major change that so there's a mandate for change right so uh we we talk a lot about companies evolving and staying nimble uh but i think that's true for founders as well as founders have to evolve uh with the company
• 34:00 - 34:30 right so things that made us uh good founders for the zero to one journey uh might actually be the things which would make us terrible founders for the zero to one journey right so the very qualities that allowed us to scale pj uh to this stage which was you know disruptor mindset style of working where we get involved in every aspect of the business and you know try to do things ourselves so that
• 34:30 - 35:00 changed in uh last three years we started from doing all aspects of business ourselves for till our seed round we had no employee right it was just the founders right uh we were doing sales we were doing you know pasting posters and everything then we you know got team on board and but we were still kind of recommending or
• 35:00 - 35:30 driving the solutions right so now uh we have reached a stage where we just have to drive the vision uh but the team actually solves a lot of problems uh on their own right so that is a transition where you have to you know uh let go of a lot of things that you were doing and focus on uh more strategic aspects of business um the other thing that that has changed is you know when you start you you have this
• 35:30 - 36:00 romantic idea of you know you are getting everything done right it's like you know i i'm building the company uh the five of us uh now after three years you realize that you know uh most of the success and most of the failures there was a limited contribution that you had you had a contribution in all those aspects but there are so many things that uh happen which essentially you can not
• 36:00 - 36:30 take credit for uh at all right uh so it it actually um makes you karma right when when you know there are things uh which would grow uh even without a lot of contribution from you right two days if you are off work uh it will not be end of the world it it it's a it's a good feeling so i think you know for the first two years we we used to sleep in our cars because uh
• 36:30 - 37:00 we didn't have time to go back home take a shower and come back so we are saving that time as well right parking we'll go and you know take a nap and then come back uh now we have started taking sunday off right so we have realized that you know we are moving away from that sprint culture to a more marathon culture uh to your key learnings during the last two years
• 37:00 - 37:30 uh you know be it you know in operationalizing a company be it scaling a company or be on setting the foundations right so i think uh so one of the key learnings has been that you don't over optimize for things too early right so it's this this that you know temptation of getting every aspect of
• 37:30 - 38:00 operation right uh from day one um because the problems are evolving because there are so many things that would go wrong which you happen uh for scene uh it's better to just you know keep working uh keep making small progress without worrying too much about perfection uh at that time right so processes evolve uh when there is a clear need for it right uh so that that was one i think
• 38:00 - 38:30 the other thing that we you know um learn through through the business is you know our users are very very smart right so they have been running profitable business for decades right so this is especially true for b2b companies right so um in most of the cases our users have a better track record of success than we do
• 38:30 - 39:00 right uh they understand um their p l uh very very well uh so it's you have to drop every uh assumption and it's basically your users will teach you how to run your business uh than any p school or a any high profile higher boot right so that's that's i think the second part
• 39:00 - 39:30 and look uh what are the resources you you go to what are the books to you know sharpen your learning as a founder so i think i uh read i i don't read for actually self-improvement right so i i should maybe uh but i think reading for me has been a you know it's it's a way of de-stressing or it's a way of actually enjoying some
• 39:30 - 40:00 time alone rather than you know learning anything new uh so i i stay away from uh books that are very relevant to my business because that feels like work uh in some way uh and i i read things which you know are essentially just fun all right so i i am reading the prize right now which is um this is almost like a biography of all
• 40:00 - 40:30 the you know journey of oil from the 1800s to today um i've you know read behavioral psychology i read you know books like sway or uh the drunkards walk which are essentially very fundament they talk about fundamental mistakes that humans make or gaps cognitive biases and all but when i'm reading them or when i'm picking those books i i i seldom think about what what i'm gonna
• 40:30 - 41:00 gain from it right i do and uh end up getting learning something um new but i don't pick books uh like that i think i think that that's something that i do in other aspects of my life as well and sometimes i feel bad for it but this dessert when you talk to founders there's a lot of energy that they have uh 24 7 where you know they are constantly working for self-improvement or business
• 41:00 - 41:30 improvement networking meeting the right folks you know talking to relevant people customers investors other founders i try to spend time on sundays with people who have no idea about my business who don't care whether i'm scaling not scaling what's the retention rate what are other startups doing uh it it kind of provides a stability right so there's one aspect of my life that does not change at all with
• 41:30 - 42:00 the ups and downs of my startup right i could have a great month but the sunday discussion with my friend friends uh would remain the same right because uh this this they don't care about uh what i'm building right i don't even ask the questions about you know how has the month been so far so why while i'm missing out on the opportunity to talk to someone who who can guide me better in you know scaling the business but i
• 42:00 - 42:30 think it's it's equally important for me to find one spot in in my overall life here uh which is completely decoupled uh with what's going on in my business that's interesting and you know please provide us a list of the last 10 books you have read on various topics you would like to publish it along with a podcast share share value with you one one last question is uh having five co-founders is very difficult how do you guys you know
• 42:30 - 43:00 collaborate brainstorm and then decide who is the best solver for for that problem or that domain and how do you five founders know each other because for five founders to work today right for three years there has to be a lot of background uh understanding with each other uh throughout the startup context we right so i think the five of us have you know worked in
• 43:00 - 43:30 some capacity or the other with each other in the past right so in our past companies um sometimes as competitors right so you know we were competing against each other in the same region and as part of other companies so i think the relationship is built on mutual respect right so uh you're working with someone you you find them smart you find the work ethic right or you're working competing with someone and it's a tough battle you you gain some
• 43:30 - 44:00 respect for the other person right uh and that's what happened with us right so we work with each other and so we didn't start with friends right so when we were funding team um we felt that it was more important for us to respect each other and their style of working that that's a better adhesive for a team than just you know liking each other right so i can like a lot of people uh have great time with
• 44:00 - 44:30 them uh but i wouldn't want to start a company with them they're fun but so i think within co-founders what is required is being able to trust each other so if somebody else is working on a particular problem uh do you trust them enough to uh think not think about that problem yourself that is like if if jitender is working on something i i know that he'll saw crack it right
• 44:30 - 45:00 eventually he he'll uh sooner or later find the best way to solve that problem somehow right having that trust becomes important uh and becomes even more important when you have cooked five co-founders because all of us are working on you know different sets of problems and but we don't have the temptation to say yeah maybe i i can solve it better because we trust each other enough um the other aspect of it is i think we all have a shared
• 45:00 - 45:30 uh or a similar background right so we we all started with you know farming families went to tier one institutes uh did work outside agri-space for some years and uh then decided to come back to agree right so because of this you know similar past we we are very clear about uh we are very all of us are very excited about the problem to solve right uh it's it's
• 45:30 - 46:00 it's okay to have differences about the solution as long as we are very clear about what what is the problem that we want to solve and there can be a number of solutions to it so we are not romantically attached to the solution we are attached to the problem the other thing is we come with very different skill sets right so mahesh has spent you know a lot of time on the investing side there has always been on the tech side you know has done dairy then grains then fruits and
• 46:00 - 46:30 vegetables for last seven eight years uh nikhil has always worked on the data side of things um so that way i think we know that you know our skill sets are different so it's easy for us to just you know agree upon who will do what that's very helpful thank you so much it's been a pleasure absolutely
• 46:30 - 47:00 [Music] from here thanks a lot thanks a lot lovely speaking to you [Music]