Inside India’s $75B Travel Boom | Scapia Founder, Anil Goteti

0:00 People assume that all the travel stuff happening post COVID, but the transformation began earlier. Right before COVID, India climbed from 19th to 11th. I think when we were growing up, travel was limited. I think people didn't have that much disposable income. What was the early journey to establish awareness on the card? For the first 6 months, 7 months, I was bootstrapped. I was selling my mutual funds every month end and then paying salaries, but some people say you see this metric, then you know that it's PMF. I believe in one thing, when you hit PMF as an entrepreneur, you know it. How do you think of AI in travel? If anybody is not using it, then you're not probably thinking how to use AI. My own office uses it for a lot of research and reports. We're seeing solo trips, we're seeing offbeat locations. India is where America was when it comes to traveling maybe in the '90s or 2000s.

0:51 What seems like impossible? You can realistically dream. What may seem unrealistic to others may seem realistic to you. With the right talent, you can build it. Hello. Before we get started with this episode, I quickly wanted to share that we are now a part of 01 network by Zerodha. Thank you so much for watching. Welcome to the Indian Silicon Valley podcast. I'm your host Shivraj, and today I have with me a very exciting guest. In India, we're talking about this new wave of experiences, travel, especially since COVID is now done.

1:22 Everybody wants to go out of their home. And this man and this company is solving for that at its core. Join me in welcoming Mr. Anil Goteti, who has built Akshaypya as India's leading and fastest growing travel company. Their travel card best known for the fintech play, but they're also launching experiences, commerce. You can book via their platform and doing everything. This is built for Gen Zs and millennials, and I'm so excited to dive deeper into the travel theme, into how to build a company in this space with Anil today.

1:52 Thank you so much, Anil, for joining me. Thank you for having me on the show. I've heard your podcast in the past, and you know, really nice to sit down with you and talk about our journey and what we have to offer. Thank you so much, Anil. That means a lot coming from you. And you're a serial entrepreneur, you've built so many things at Flipkart before, then you had a stint in the middle, and now you're building Akshaypya.

2:12 I'd love to maybe start at just travel as the macro, right? Everybody knows travel is the more in thing. Everybody's talking about it, but as somebody building in the midst of it, can you give us a sense on how India's traveling? Is this rush truly real? Are people really going out of their homes as often? Are people really craving experiences? What is the reality of travel from your vantage point? And then we'll come to Akshaypya. Sure, sounds good. Actually, there couldn't be a more exciting time for travel.

2:41 Look, I think India is going through a very unique transformation, and if you look maybe 20 years ago, 30 years ago, when we were children or you know, or even what our parents did, travel was limited. I think people didn't have that much disposable income. You know, people would travel like I would travel when I was young, but mostly once a year going to my grandparents' house or some religious travel once in a while. Or, you know, I think my first independent travel was when I was I think 21 or something, maybe. That too for what? Writing a TOEFL exam, right?

3:13 So, I think when we were growing up, we had limited means. There were specific reasons why we needed to travel, mostly family or maybe some spiritual travel, religious travel, but very rarely to go see places in a way that you would want to, right? Cut to now, it's a whole different world out there. Everybody wants to go see what's India has to offer, what the world has to offer, go see all of the historic places or, you know, go after like nice picturesque locations, go spend time in the hills during the summer, go see snow, do like, you know, various activities that as kids, I don't think even we had awareness, right? So, the change is real, the transformation is real, and there are a lot of data and macros which are actually also proving that, right? I mean, you can see the number of planes that India is buying now, right?

4:06 Collectively, right? I mean, we are probably placing the biggest orders all over the globe, right? From Boeing and Airbus. We are opening airports, we are issuing passports at the most rapid pace. This is an anecdotal example, but the data also will prove this. I recently went to Africa, and then the agent who booked some of the safari asked for our passport. And it turned out my wife's passport was expiring and not within 6 months, but it was like 8, 9 months.

4:40 So, he was being cautious, and he said, "Why don't you renew your passport?" And then we said, "Yeah, sure." And then we got a tatkal appointment the day the next day or the day after, and then we got the passport the day after that. I mean, you do get it within one day. That's That's the beauty of how fast or streamlined Indian passport system and the process has become, especially after all the privatization and, you know, everything they've done with TCS in each of the passport offices. I got it in 3 days or something. My wife got it in 3, 4 days. And then this agent who was leaving there, he's like, "Most countries around the globe will not give you any new passport for another month or 3, 4 weeks."

5:19 I'm really shocked and pleasantly surprised that it's happening in India. So, it's an anecdotal example, but that's that's what is happening in India, right? So, you can see data across, and by the way, before COVID, maybe 10 years before COVID, if you looked at the number of people traveling abroad from India, and put them in a ranking order of all the countries of number of people traveling abroad, India was like number 19th on the list. Okay. This was maybe about 2010 or 11 or something, I think.

5:48 And then 2019, right before COVID, India climbed from 19th to 11th. People assume that everything all the travel stuff happening post COVID, but the transformation began earlier. And now, cut post COVID, I'm sure India will be now in the top five. Not immediately, but very, very soon, right? The number of outbound travelers, if you look at the market size of that, is about 23, 25 billion dollars. But in a few years, that is expected to almost triple.

6:26 Right? You know, sometimes it's people are joking about it, but it's also true that it's cheaper to take a flight outside somewhere than find some local place to see, you know, within a taking a flight, right? So, a lot of it has is coming from one big factor, which is India's macro economy doing very well. >> Correct. India's macro economy doing very well. Indians have more disposable income. People have the power to spend more. And when they have more money to spend, then I mean, there's only so much you will do on buying an iPhone or this and that, and like, you know, how many clothes can you buy?

7:00 People really want to spend time in experiencing new things. Absolutely. People want to go and I would say experience new cultures, you know, go travel with family or friends, you know, meet people globally all over, learn about world history. There's There's so much the world has to offer. Various food, Yeah. right? Go experience all of that stuff. So, I would say India is having fun traveling, learning, growing with higher disposable income, and all of that is coming from not only the macro, but also the infrastructure that's coming through.

7:39 Uh Like, I'm personally very excited about this phase. I I I I kind of saw this in COVID was ending that this is going to happen more and more. Uh And I It's It's It's a It's a crude example, but I think India is where America was when it comes to traveling maybe in the '90s or 2000s. I think I don't know the data, but feels like that. I went to college in the US in 2000. They are like students would just go to Europe for the summer. Correct.

8:14 Yeah. Who would do that? I mean, even now in India it's very, very difficult to do that, right? But they would just take off for Yeah, yeah. 3, 4 weeks, I'm just going to Europe. I have a break, so I'm just going to Europe. Or I got to just take a gap year, right? Or they just take a road trip. Sure. Or they'll go to Mexico for spring break. I mean, these are things that are very, very common even among students. And of course, every family gets out for any long weekend that comes in the US, right? And people travel maybe like, I don't know, five, six times a year, maybe, right?

8:40 Yeah. And that's been the culture for many, many years there, but I think India is starting to get there. get there. Yeah. Those are amazing insights. I love that. I think it reinstores the common narrative that we, you know, hear about, but more concretely. Yeah, yeah. We hosted like StayVista and Airbnb, and they sort of gave us examples from a stay lens. I want to understand that also because you're focused on Gen Zs and millennials. Are people going more outside of India, or is domestic travel the big thing?

9:10 Where are pockets of higher travel? Are people from the north traveling more? Do you have any like specific data points on some of these bits? See, 80% of our travel is domestic. Okay. What we see. Yeah, I think some of it is got to do with uh the expense when people go abroad. It's a bit more expensive sometimes. Uh but sometimes it could be just the choice of location and where they are. They want to see something specifically in India. I mean, some places like Goa and all that stuff is evergreen, super popular. I think outside the globe also can beat something like that, so you can't compete with that. So, I would say we see a lot of domestic travel. We're seeing a lot of offbeat travel. Mhm. We're seeing, for example, uh locations like Spiti Valley and also probably unknown 10 years ago, right?

9:58 But beautiful location where people are like, you know, going and exploring. Like Northeast, like for example, Meghalaya, like Kaziranga and, you know, Shillong and all these kind of places before access may have been difficult, awareness also was very, very difficult, right? Um when you look at countries abroad, for example, you know, like Japan is becoming super popular. Right? Lot of it is coming because of I would say some of it is social media. Yeah, yeah. Lot of the content which comes, you know, and people go to Japan, then they come back, then they post, then 100 more people go to Japan seeing those 10 people, then those 100 people post. So, it becomes like a cyclical effect where people get to know about a place and without that, I mean, you don't know what Japan has to offer unless you see it somewhere. And then you see that Indians are traveling there, some people are probably vegetarians, they're worried about food, you have all these misconceptions, okay, I got to go out and eat, what will I do, how will I manage all this stuff? But then you see these videos that are going to comfort you that says, "Hey, I went here and I had this food, that food, it was great. I tried this, you know, I'm vegetarian." Gives people a lot of confidence. Also, seeing other people like you travel and doing solo and all this stuff gives a lot of, I would say, it let makes people overcome their inhibitions on some of this on safety, on going solo, trying new things. So, a lot of that is playing out. So, we're seeing solo trips, we're seeing offbeat locations. We're even seeing very offbeat hotels, not regular chains. People are looking at alternate stays. Big groups want to go into like villas or, you know, homestays. Uh people are willing to experiment with, you know, small, small boutique ones where they get a different kind of experience where it's a bit more natural, where, you know, there's probably a chef or a cook who knows the location who probably help them with, you know, what is there nearby. So, a lot of it is changing across the board.

11:56 Last year, for example, we saw a lot of spiritual travel, like to Prayagraj, you know, for and I think this year also we're seeing whole bunch of this like Dev Deepawali, for example, in Varanasi has become very, very popular. So, there are various events like this around the country which are also getting a lot of awareness and people are people are going and I would say looking for these and exploring them. Yeah, so, yeah, yeah. Abroad, uh like I spoke about Japan, but you know, wherever there's a new plane which like a new new route that takes off from India, that probably opens up a whole bunch of new locations for Indians to go and see, right? Obviously, before you know, there was a lot of folks going to places like Singapore, Dubai and I think Thailand and all this stuff are very popular, but now we're seeing a lot of Georgia and Azerbaijan and, you know, like I said, Japan and all this stuff. Now, China recently has opened up again. So, a lot more folks now looking for places like China. So, uh the world has a lot to offer, but I think geographical distance helps in saving money, so a lot of nearby locations come.

13:09 Places like Europe and all this stuff are uh quite exciting, but Schengen is a bit difficult for Indians and then there's a lot of paperwork and application and all this stuff, but despite that, it's got its charm. US though is like a long haul flight, so and more expensive. Lesser people go, but more people go there for family reasons than anything else, but of course, there are youngsters who want to go and make it happen, but I'd say far fewer than what it could be. I think more older folks go end up traveling that far and that long, yeah. Got it.

13:40 Yeah. Well, that's amazing. That's super comprehensive. Thank you so much for sharing. I think we've at the onset covered why travel is exciting and where the trend is. Now, let's get to the company itself, right? You started about 2 and 1/2, 3 years back or at least launched about It's been almost 3 and 1/2 now. It'll be 4 years in January 22, actually. Yeah. >> Okay. Um tell us like how you got here, right? Like now it feels like you're full stack, you're trying to solve multiple things, but it started off as this, you know, credit card, co-branded travel credit card. Um how do you go from there to everything else? We'll tackle like one piece of the pie at once, but maybe what is the quick TLDR on this is what we do at Scapia?

14:18 See, what we do at Scapia is we give customers a credit card working with banks. We can't issue credit cards ourselves, we have to work with banks who issue these credit cards. Uh where the customer comes our card for getting the best benefits for travel. It's a daily use card. People come and get our card and they can swipe everywhere and they tap everywhere, they can travel anywhere with those all those coins and the loyalty rewards that they collect with us. Not only can they use those coins to make their travel cheaper, but they can travel better and travel more in style. For example, uh they can get unlimited lounge access in all the domestic airports in India, provided they spend a little bit on our card every month.

14:56 Uh we are also the only card in the country where you can get something called airport privileges. Like let's say you don't want to go to lounge, but you want to eat at a restaurant in the airport. We offer that across 100 airports, whereas lounges are only available in 30 airports. So, that's what I mean by traveling better, right? We our card also has other benefits, for example, zero forex when you're going abroad and tapping or using the card.

15:17 Typically, cards have markup and uh not only is that painful for the customer because there's more value, you also don't get to see the transaction or the statement 30 days later and then you don't know what rate you were charged. We show it real time to give you trust and confidence. So, all this comes with zero joining, zero annual. So, we are a holistic card where the customers come and use us for traveling. To redeem the points, they have they can use our app to buy uh products across seven categories now. We have flights bookings, we have stays, we have buses, we have trains, we have travel visas, which is a very difficult proposition to offer and also make sure that customers can get a very trustworthy experience, but we have built that ground up. We just launched two more categories. One is experiences, which is if you want to go to, let's say, Universal Studios in Singapore, right?

16:10 Then you can book in our platform. Uh we also launched our own Scapia store. So, let's say you want to buy a travel luggage or you want to buy a travel charger or you want to buy specific hiking gear for your next adventure in your hiking. Uh we've just launched a whole set of curated products from D2C brands to be able to get the customer to. So, all of this comes cheaper because you saved up your own coins using the card, uh but also comes to you with the best value proposition. Our prices are uh service and all of these categories is uh if better, if not at par with all the other players who are there in the market. So, we may we because customers have a choice.

16:56 They can go book a hotel anywhere, they can book a train anywhere, they can book a bus anywhere, but we want to make sure that for every category, we're doing the best that customer can get anywhere else and not just because they have coins here and then we can offer whatever it is. So, this is in a nutshell what we offer. This was uh obviously um much lesser in terms of what we had in our head when we started because you have to start small and start building and then keep adding to what you can uh bring to the bring forward to the customer. So, that's what we've been building and adding and making it better and better over the last 4 years, yeah.

17:33 Well, that's amazing. I think I I love how holistic this is. In fact, like I mean, I've known of the company and I have a card, but I remember I I saw a trail of yours on Twitter when you launched the commerce store and I got like rekindled on seeing that, okay, this is becoming extremely holistic and that's super exciting. >> yet. We're just starting. We have we have a lot more to offer. We're still scratching the surface. I believe, you know, we have more innovation to do over the next several years.

18:01 Uh what we pride ourselves in is shipping fast, but with very good product and very good delight for the customer. So, we're just we're just very early in our journey, but thank you for the kind words, yeah. Well, that's amazing to hear. Let's maybe unpack one piece of this at a time, right? Like one of the things that, I mean, happens with credit cards is just initial awareness is challenging. How do you sort of build that GTM, acquiring a customer in some of this like feels very costly, right?

18:29 What was the early journey to establish awareness on the card? And also a lot of earlier players have tried to, you know, come up with an interesting card or do some innovation here and there, but you've now been able to build an ecosystem. So, what was that zero to one like, especially on the demand side? I'd love to recall. >> Zero to one is always the hardest, but I think it's also the most enjoyable when you look back. Once you cross it, there's no going back. I mean, you're over the zero to one. Uh look, you know, I incorporated the company in Jan 22, but we didn't launch the product till June 23. Okay. So, 1 and 1/2 So, 1 and 1/2 years we were at zero, not even in the zero to one journey because we had not launched. I think it was uh but that discipline in terms of how we utilized that time is what uh I would cherish the most and I I I feel most proud of, actually.

19:22 As an entrepreneur, uh the first four, five months, we were just talking to customers and saying we didn't even build anything. We would go with a Figma page of one-pager and I would recruit customers for Zoom calls. Omicron was just ending and people are still very uncomfortable going and meeting in person. And we would ask, "What would make you take this product? Would you like this product? What would make you take this product? Which feature do you like here? Which feature do you not like here? And we experimented with a lot. For example, at one point we were thinking, should we give extra baggage for people who use our card when they are flying?

20:03 We thought it would be very big. But most customers said, "No, it's not useful. Like I don't want it. It feels like a pain point, but it's not." Sure. People wanted vouchers, right? For hotels and you know, though that became very exciting. But then when we put some other features, like zero forex and all this stuff, then it went down in their heads. So um See, when you're a company, in fact, not even a startup, any company where you have to be uh sustainable P&L, responsible business, uh where you want to be profitable longer term, you have a lot of constraints.

20:40 You need to do top line, but you also need to do bottom line, right? So you have a certain pool of money. Customers will obviously want a lot, but they'll also be understanding and reasonable. Now, how are you going to marry your constraints with what the customer wants and design a product that you think would be loved by all the customers and then be used continuously. So that's where the art and the science comes together. Uh so we spent a lot of time crafting that. Right?

21:07 Then after we got the basic card, that's what we wanted to going, we went and pitched to banks. I knew from the get-go that if we want to make this sustainable and make it better for the customer, we had to build our travel in-house. Okay. So from the get-go, I was building two companies. So I was building the fintech part of it And the commerce. >> and the travel part of it, the commerce part of it.

21:29 It was very, very hard. In fact, for the first 6 months, 7 months, I was bootstrapped. So I was selling my mutual funds every month end and then paying salaries, but uh but but I knew it was the right call. I knew it was the uh right decision because when travel is integrated inside our platform, the experience is more delightful for the customer. >> Yeah. Because then you're not handing off the customer to some other platform.

21:52 We don't know how they will treat them. It all not come together. Plus, because I'm building the second P&L also inside, I'll be able to get more money and hence I can pass on more to the customers. Correct. So then the feature set could be richer for the customer. Mhm. So uh it feels quite obvious, but it's very tough because uh it's very tough because you're trying to build two things at the same time when you don't have zero-to-one product market fit. Correct.

22:22 Mhm. Without demand established. >> Without demand being established. Like this is a bold strategic call to say I'm going to build this out because this will make sure that uh it will be sustainable longer term. And then let's put it in the hands of customers uh with this proposition, right? But what gave us confidence was the research that we did. Uh we did play small pilots before we launched. So in the zero-to-one journey, uh we uh I would say I don't remember the exact date, but maybe September '22 or so, we put out flights to some small friends and family. We said we're going to launch a card, but we're building a travel platform as a precursor to that.

23:05 So we want you to try our flight bookings and we gave them the proposition. And the repeats were fantastic. People loved our travel flight booking and said, "This is the cleanest flight booking experience you've seen so far." So at least we got confident that okay, flights to chalega. Then December we put hotels out. Mhm. >> And then we got some customers to test the hotels out. It's a very difficult category, by the way. Extremely difficult to get going, get it right.

23:33 In fact, I don't think we got it right for another year after that. But we at least built all the basics, we got all the supply, we tied up with a few aggregators, we got the right product proposition in terms of how to at least get the booking right and all this stuff, but getting a booking right versus making a customer giving the customer confidence on a hotel to book is a is a different ballgame. That's where we invested the following year, but uh by March '23, we got our travel platform going. We built out the uh credit card product with uh Federal Bank was the first partner and uh we got into CUG with CUG, closed user group testing with a few customers and we put the card out for those few people, but we didn't launch. Okay. All this while, I was very, very clear that the customer launch has to be loud and has to be attractive. Mhm. Because that's when you get the most marketing ROI when you're zero-to-one. Otherwise, I mean, otherwise you'll spend like tens of crores or hundreds of crores to be able to speak to all over India, right?

24:33 And there will be a time for all of that stuff. But when you're small, when you've raised seed money, uh you need to play differently. You need to play creatively. So in fact, my entire team, by then we were probably 30 people, 35 people. We all had not put anything on LinkedIn. We had not put anything on social. For 1 and 1/2 years, I was also very silent all over. Yeah. Uh in fact, people when they came to interview with us would not even know who we are.

25:02 They were like, "Who are you?" Lot of it would be through our phone books. >> Sure. But then we would explain, we would show what we're building. Then they would ask, you know, uh "Yeah, when are you launching?" You know, all of that stuff, but now to a lot of people have a lot of validations for all of this stuff before they can evaluate the company or get in, but at that time everybody just came with pure conviction that this team will do it, this product will work, you know, we we trust this set of folks, right? So June '23, we created a video to announce our product and we all decided to launch on social media ourselves that we're working on on this and this company, including me making my first personal post uh in public for 1 and 1/2 to 2 years or so, uh saying, "This is Kepler." That just went viral. That that video we were not prepared for it. We made a mess of that.

26:00 First 1 week where we didn't expect so much demand. We were just working. That 1 month, we were all just working very, very hard to work with the bank to figure out all the onboarding >> onboarding issues, this, that, all the things. But these are good problems. Like I say in life, there are good problems and bad problems. When you're not getting any demand, it's a bad problem. When you're getting good demand, when you're getting demand, but you're figuring out how to solve for it, it's a good problem. Still a problem.

26:25 It's not the right thing to do for a customer, but it's still a good problem. Mhm. So that just That was our zero-to-one. So uh a video, a product which we spent a lot of time nurturing, building, crafting for 1 and 1/2 years, uh being in stealth, but coming out together to make the loudest noise. Uh video built uh made in-house. I think we just took music rights from somebody outside, but it was complete the product talking.

26:56 Uh and that did that did its job. So the product has to talk for itself if it's a good product. Yeah. >> And then everything else, the magic will follow. So I love that. >> That was zero-to-one. I think within 1 to 2 months, it's very hard to determine what is PMF, what is whether you've whether your product is working for people or not. Uh Some people say you see this metric or you pull off a product or people are unhappy that have you pull off your product, then you know that it's PMF.

27:27 I'm not sure. I don't believe I don't believe in all this stuff. I I believe in one thing, um when you hit PMF, as an entrepreneur, you will know it. >> That is it. Yeah. Actually, some entrepreneurs will attest to this. You will know when you have hit PMF. That you know this is it. Yeah. Uh that feeling came very quickly, actually. I was lucky in the first month or 2 months. I was just like, "This is it." I didn't know, just going after it.

27:52 Yeah, that was that was zero-to-one. Yeah. >> That's amazing. I love it. I think that's a very, very interesting playbook to sort of get initial traction. I'm going to quickly like close the loop on this. Uh are there like two, three specific insights to say that this is why the customer came into the door? You mentioned like a couple, but because credit cards are just like a such a loud space, >> Yeah. everybody's telling you that you should buy this credit card, including all of the marketplaces, all of the banks, etc., right? Yeah. Like is it is it because products like is it because the product was great from a reward standpoint? Is it because features were many? Is it because the ecosystem was a lot? Like was there like one, two things that, you know, the customer was coming to you for and saying that this solves a huge problem?

28:33 >> Yeah, good question. Uh this is a very uh important one to think about if you're playing in this space. Yeah. See, customer has a lot of options. Like you're saying, you know, everybody's calling them ki ye le lo, wo le lo, ye credit card, all of this stuff, right? So customers have a lot of choice and probably hundreds hundreds of cards, if not thousands of cards, maybe even thousands if you do the scoping of all the cards that exist in the market. Um so you need to really stand out. Mhm.

28:58 When And for us, standing out from the beginning meant two things. One, we'll put delight in the hands of customers. We'll make the product look very nice. We'll make the unboxing very, very good. I don't know if you've seen our unboxing or how our product looks, how our card looks, right? You also had a waitlist initially. Yeah, waitlist initially. There was a little bit, little bit. Uh we we didn't play on that for too long because I think making customers wait for too long on something is is not a very good experience. It creates some FOMO. It's okay if you do it for a bit, but you can't keep doing it for too long, right?

29:33 It Don't tell the customer to follow. >> Yeah, not just I think they'll feel very pissed at the end of it ki you kept me waiting for so long, right? So uh but we played always on delight, making sure the customer just enjoys using the product. Even today I get a I got given yesterday I got an email last night saying, "Anil, thank you for creating this product. I just unboxed it. I just love using the app and so these things don't come from just putting money on the table or whatever.

30:01 It comes from good design, good product thinking, thinking about the brand in a way that you know this is what customers are looking for and I want to make them have fun. Yeah. The The brief that I have for my teams is that you have fun on the product the customers will have fun with. All right, so yeah, so that one one dimension is delight. The second dimension is value. Value I mean like I mentioned it's about making sure that you know we're able to bring the ecosystem of travel together along with the card and then giving all of this stuff of zero forex and the lounge and you know airport privileges and the coins to be able to redeem.

30:40 That value is important, right? Delight is one make someone super happy. Value is what will probably help them make a decision when they're thinking rationally about it. So one is the irrational part one is the rational part but both have to come together for some magic, right? I mean if you're playing only one part, if you give if you're giving no value and you're giving delight customer will ask okay I've had this fun unboxing this that card looks nice app looks nice but what am I getting in the end?

31:07 If you're doing the value but you're not playing on the other part, then is it really sustainable? Are you like delighting the customer or someone else can copy you and then say okay I'll give you the same thing I'll give you then you come to me, right? Then you're becoming replaceable. So you need to marry the two and that's what we do. No, that's amazing. I think that that really helps. Out of curiosity when I was researching on the company one of the questions that hit me was that these rewards come from some amount of value that has to be accrued from some place, right? How sustainable are they especially because you know there was this trend of credit cards getting devalued and rewards getting suppressed because you bring rewards to get the initial traction and then you sort of sustainably like you don't sustain it for a long amount of time.

31:55 How does that work in your ecosystem? Very good question. See, if you have to build good trustworthy brand, you can't play these spiky games like like let me get customers for one thing and then once I become very very large, I'll remove some of these, right? You have to play it thoughtfully and say let me try to do this in a way where I might be growing a little bit slower but then I'll be able to manage it long term.

32:25 Not that you may not do it ever. Sometimes the market conditions may make you do that, right? Sometimes it's out of your hands and you will have to probably pull out some feature which you had originally say because you thought it would be used a certain way but let's say there are learnings along the way after one two years of launching it that it's being used too much or you felt that it would have been better off it were come came with you know some criteria, right? So I always knew for example lounge was going to be a difficult offering it.

32:57 In fact when we launched we offered it at 5,000 rupees per month being spent, right? Then we realized after one year of launching that this is not going to be super sustainable unless we increase it and we made it 10,000 rupees minimum and then now we have 10,000 rupees when you spend on Visa or 15,000 rupees if you spend on RuPay you get unlimited lounge. Now customers are asking why have different thresholds on both the cards can we combine it? So we're looking at how to make that happen but point is you have to think about what will come at you in the future and be prepared for it.

33:32 Like a lot of people ask us why don't you give this feature why can't you give this feature? I'm very open with them and then say, "Look, this is all we can afford. We can't give beyond this because it's not sustainable for us. There's a cost for it." Can you explain the value chain of the economics here? Like I mean from a supply lens like every time a customer gets a reward which is either zero or zero forex let's say lounge access or something, where is it coming from? Can you explain that supply? See at the very highest level I'll keep it simple so that everybody can understand but at the very very highest level it is a credit card, right?

34:08 The bank has to make money on the transaction. On the not just on the transaction on the on the overall portfolio of all the cards which are there. Because it's a credit card product see the where does bank make money? They make money on the money being lent, right? So let us say there are 1,000 cards which are issued. In those 1,000 cards 1,000 customers are using it every month and there are three types of customers there. One type of customer could be I'm taking it only for the credit free period. I'm going to pay my bills on time and I will repay it before the statement day or on on the statement day and that is one set of customers. So no interest from that so there's no interest from that on the customer but the banks earn what is called the interchange which comes from the merchant. Let us say you go tap your card at a pharmacy.

35:05 The pharmacy for giving you the convenience of paying through the card pays the ecosystem and pays pays a certain amount of fees to the the the POS machine person who's coming and the bank that's coming and giving that facility, right? So that fee there are various players in the value chain across. There's the network like a Visa or MasterCard or RuPay. There's basically you know let's say there could be a Pine Labs you know who's going IPO today.

35:38 There's there's you know the bank on the POS machine side, you know, the acquiring bank. Then there's the issuing bank which actually is giving you the credit card and there's the customer. So everybody takes a little bit of cut tiny tiny tiny tiny cut along the way from the money that the merchant has paid. The customer gets a lot of the rewards funded by some of the interchange that is paid by the customer by the merchant in the transaction.

36:05 That is one type of customer where they're paying on time. The second type of customer is someone who is forgets to pay the bill on time or doesn't have the means to pay this month but decide to pay the next month for whatever reasons and they have genuine sometimes it could be medical issues sometimes it could be some educational thing sometimes sometimes it could be forgetfulness whatever it is. There you have to be responsible as a brand to remind the customers often but despite that people do what they have to do.

36:31 When they don't pay and money is money at the end of it so if they're not paying the money on time then they people have to pay interest. So that interest actually then comes as profitability income to the banks, right? Okay. The third is you you don't mind paying the bills on time. You do pay the bills on time but you want more affordability in your pocket so you may convert some of your transactions to EMI, right? So that's also interest bearing.

36:57 So all of this collectively the bank earns. As a partner we earn some of it along with the bank. A lot of it actually goes to the customer back in the form of rewards. And that's how that's how that's how credit cards work. Now in our case it's a bit unique because not only are we getting income from the bank on the credit cards because we've built the entire travel platform we also get the travel income when the customer decide to when they decide to book any of these whether it's a flight or a bus or a flight.

37:31 And so we're able to bring both and then give them money so there also there's a big value chain. Which is why you can do a zero forex zero annual fees because we are able to bring some of these together. Even travel there's various players. There is aggregators then there's the suppliers like you know like you know we don't we are the OTA here because we don't work with any OTAs but I'm saying like you know there could be the airline. There's also the GDS. You know there could be aggregators in between who aggregate all these airlines and then offer it to players, then there's also the payment gateway there because you have to pay using the card so there's again there's a value chain there.

38:12 Every part of it there's some companies playing and everything comes together delightfully for the customer. You have to figure out a lot of the supply. There are so many stakeholders that you have to align all together and bring in one platform. Correct correct correct. And then you have to build the entire full section there. It's not just about bringing the flight, right? I mean like you know every category it's a full stack commerce platform there, right? You have to make sure customers are able to search, are able to see the supply, they're able to see all the right pricing, they're able to book, they're able to transact, they're able to cancel, they're able to reschedule, they're able to get 24/7 customer service, they have to do it with confidence. Sometimes you need to see reviews, ratings.

38:54 I mean there's a lot going on in each of these. Like if I take for example categories like travel visa, the amount of complexities that each of the cases has is just insane. Like I mean each country is different, each type of passenger is different, each type of visa is different, the amount of documents for each of these just goes through the roof. You have to be able to manage all this complexity to give the customer the right experience.

39:16 So each category is different, each business in that is very different. You have to build it. Again if you work backwards from the customer and say these are the pain points the customer has, this is what they're looking for, this is how they make decisions and you do the research properly, then you can build it well. Very interesting. I mean very very fascinating how you've been able to get all of this together. Outside in it feels like what you were maybe the customer that you were dealing with at Flipkart was different than the Gen Z millennial travel customer that you're building for right now. Yes. What was the kind of, like, maybe, unlearning that went into solving for this customer vis-a-vis solving for that value customer that buys on Flipkart? Was there a challenge? How have you, maybe, distinguished between these two personas?

40:00 Extremely different. Very, very different. I mean, when you're value customer looking for discount discount on pricing versus Long tail of SKUs and everything. for an aspirational product like travel where I want to spend so much in going, you know, to this place and that place to see new things. Uh, very different. Obviously, what I'm dealing with is also more younger, but more aspirational. Uh, what I dealt with earlier was very very different. Uh, look, I knew I had to unlearn and I had to operate very differently because it one, it was a different business. Two, it was a different customer. Plus, when you are when you are the founder versus when you're not the founder, the anxiety and how you think deeply on each of these changes in a very different way. It's just natural. I mean, not that I was not a responsible leader before in my career, but it just elevates the game to the next level. So, then, how much you spend time thinking about this matters. Mhm. And I would say that just naturally happened. Sure. Uh, I told myself I had to unlearn, but I'm not sure I did anything differently to unlearn. I I think spending a lot of time researching, being close to the customer as much as possible, uh, helped me get to the some of the right answers. And we are still learning.

41:19 Uh, by the way, some of the rituals that we have help a lot. All right. For example, every month, at least two to three teams, uh, like, a pair of two folks in the company go to different parts of India, meet customers, and they come back. Then they make a presentation to the entire company, uh, saying, "We met these four customers. This is who they are. This is the persona. This is what we learned. This is what is going good. And this is what is not is what is not going good." Mhm. And this is what we need to improve. And that discipline, in terms of being close to the customer, brings that learning. And, uh, the other thing, some of it was a little bit deliberate, but, uh, again, happened naturally is, uh, hiring a lot of Gen Zs and, you know, millennials, obviously, there's a lot in the workforce, but uh, a good mix of both were also in the teams.

42:04 So, you got a lot of input and feedback from Yeah, like, for example, when you're doing a lot of research on the products when we were very, very early, I would very naturally just pull two people from the floor and say, in my head, I knew that they were the right customer. Like, I would it's not me asking myself. Sure. So, I would ask them. Mhm. So, that's where you're also unlearning in a way, right? I'm asking them who I think are the right customer base, "Do you like this? What do you think about this? Do you like this product? Do you like this ad film? Do you like this copy? Do you like this design?"

42:38 Then you get some of the right answers. Got it. No, as an extension to that, and maybe for context on the listeners, right? You spent like almost a decade at Flipkart as one of the sort of, like, most successful, fastest growing, largest sort of e-commerce homegrown startup. >> Phenomenally phenomenally ecosystem that India has built. >> Great. Can you maybe condense like what that stint meant for sort of your startup journey? Uh, and how did that give you a head start? Because, of course, the large narrative in the tech ecosystem in India is that Flipkart has produced these number of, like, entrepreneurs. Grow Grow will go public this year. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That came out of Flipkart as well. Uh, if I had to condense very, like, succinctly, like, these are the two, three things that you learned from the Flipkart journey that you directly had as a transferable skill for your sort of Skep startup CEO journey, what does that look like? I think, some very, very clear things, right?

43:30 One, being in a journey like that, when in front of you the business is just exploding, and we are not even talking, I think, by the time I joined to the time I left, I think eight, eight and a half years, I think it was probably 100x. Oh, okay. You joined what, 2012, 2013? >> 2012 March. Then I left 2020 November. Oh, wow. >> So, roughly, it would have been >> a billion dollar valuation to, like, maybe, 15, 16 billion.

44:01 >> is different. I think, from a I'm just talking about from just the numbers and units and all this stuff. Valuation was probably 40x or whatever. Mhm. Um, but for me, uh, just seeing what seems like impossible, Mhm. right? It seems like impossible, but when you go through a journey like that, you're not scared of, uh, taking on big hairy goals. You're not you, uh, like, the audacity just gets instilled in you.

44:32 The ability to, uh, think really big and saying, "I want to go after this. I don't want to do small things. I want to do things which will go into the hands of millions of customers. I want to build a business which is, you know, worth a few, you know, billion, right? I mean, for you, scale becomes a little bit inherent in your thinking. Uh, that is quite important, by the way. Uh, unless you sit at various vantage points of scale, uh, you can't dream that scale. Mhm.

45:04 Right? Some people may be naturally born with it and then say, "Yeah, I just wake up one day and say, I can do all this stuff." But some of this exposure just Yeah, realistically, you can dream. You've seen it once. You can realistically dream. I mean, yeah. Uh, what may seem unrealistic to others may seem realistic to you. Correct. But unless you dream, there's no point, like, there's there's no way of getting there. I would say that is one.

45:27 Two, for me, I was very enamored by the talent that Flipkart always had. I think, I don't think the company could have gotten built uh, any other way. It was just Look, now there's a lot of talent across e-commerce, across various industries. You can get payment expert, you can get e-com expert, you can get cloud expert. I mean, there was none of all of this stuff Correct. >> when I was there in 2012, even before that, even lesser, right? Everything had to be built. Checkout had to be built.

46:03 Search had to be built. Uh, you know, how to be a category manager was undefined. Mhm. We all had to learn it ourselves. >> Yeah. Product talent within India was very low. Like, there was very little, right? Uh, I think it was all of us just learning from scratch because uh, we all had, I would say, uh, the learning curiosity, and there was a certain self-selection of people and the talent that was hired. Uh, I would say that was the second biggest thing. Like, with the right talent, you can build anything. I can go after the hairy goal, but you need to have the right people. Right? That is the second goal. All right. Um, third, I think, is just the entrepreneurial culture, right? I think, day one, I remember my day one, I was just given four contracts and say, "Go read these contracts and tell me whether they're good to sign or not."

46:53 But I didn't have any experience reading contracts. Sure. Right? Uh, uh, my entire eight years, I mean, it was just like that. Just empowerment. Just given, you know, a particular function to run or a business to run or whatever it is that I had to do, go figure it out. Because even the people above me didn't have time. There was just, like, so much growing everywhere. Just had to figure it out yourselves. Got it. And, uh, I would say these three probably are very big factors in my journey, uh, which helped me prepare for some of the stuff that I'm undertaking now.

47:30 But, uh, one other thing which was mostly related to what my roles were and how my career played out at Flipkart was just the diversity of roles I picked up. Mhm. I did category management. Then I ran the entire marketplace as general manager running product uh, in that as my as part of the responsibility. Actually, for 1 year, 9 months, I ran analytics for the company. Uh, then I set up some new categories. Uh, then I ran some very critical functions like pricing for the company at scale.

48:03 Uh, helped with some fund raises, helped with some M&As. Uh, in hindsight, all of these have played a role. Like, uh, 2017, I remember I got exposure to reading some SSAs and SHAs. Mhm. And then you get to know that these are very important things as a founder to learn and do all of this stuff, right? Not that I was negotiating terms, Sure. but you know, I was, uh, yeah, I was asked to go and, you know, take over eBay India, for example, and then there was a big M&A going on. Then how do you integrate the 100 people like that? And, you know, uh, sitting in San Francisco for, I think, like, 10 days where a bunch of us were just closing on the contracts and all the structure. All All this has a role to play, right? Absolutely. Then the last couple of years at Flipkart, I was running all of Flipkart's marketing, growth, the ads business.

48:55 Uh, running the brand. Mhm. Uh, again, different exposure, right? So, all of these collectively come together, and, uh, these are the functional aspects, I would say. Like, the first three that I mentioned are more structural, which can make uh, anybody dream and succeed, but uh, I also had the luxury of playing various roles where some of these came together. So, I'm very thankful for that. I'm very grateful for that. Yeah. No, that's awesome. I think, uh, no, thank you so much for sharing because it helps contextualize a lot of how, I mean, the newer operator talent starting up the next set of companies will actually, you know, build the future of India. And I think the way you mentioned it will be very transferable to many future founders sort are watching. I think any youngster who gets an opportunity in early stages growing very fast and going through hyper growth I would say just jump on the bandwagon. Just learn, learn, learn, learn, learn. It'll pay off longer term.

49:51 Yeah. No, I love that. Coming back to the overall sort of let's say feature set, right? Like can you give us a roadmap of how do you think of when to release what? How much of it is very like sort of customer forward versus let's say internal as a part of the roadmap. I'm guessing it's a combination of the two. But also how does then usage follow, right? Like is the customer proactively saying that we also want to buy stuff on the platform. So please build a marketplace.

50:16 And if they are saying so, do you do it on step two, step 10, 5 years from now, 2 years from now? >> Very difficult. This is what most entrepreneurs grapple Yeah. as to how much to build and how much to stay focused on what you already have. Right. It's one of the probably most difficult decisions that one goes through as an entrepreneur. And there's no right or wrong here. Right. It's about how much can you manage prudently, efficiently, but with maintaining the right customer experience and I would say the product ethos. Yeah. So you push it too much, you're going to break it.

50:55 If you're not stretching enough, then you're not doing right because then you're not innovating enough or you're not pushing the boundaries. So then somebody else will come and Yeah. push the boundaries on your entire brand. Yeah. Can you contextualize with one example? Maybe like experience or commerce. >> take you to the same example that you're asking for the store. Yeah. Store. No customer asked us for this. Okay. As in it didn't come saying, "Can you please offer travel luggage and hiking and all of that stuff?"

51:24 People are not thinking of it that way because they thought okay like this travel rewards meaning it'll be flights, hotels, buses, trains, all this stuff. Right. Who thinks of a travel oriented store on a travel booking platform? Correct. >> That doesn't naturally come to anybody mentally, right? Um but uh having worked in Flipkart, I've always had this itch that you know just you know why shouldn't I play with that category? But I was very very clear I want to stay focused on the traveler and building for the traveler. Right? So the Gen Z millennial traveler which who wants all these products. So and what do they look for in a travel platform when they're you know in that mindset or that space? They look for all the travel accessories, travel products, and all this stuff. So uh but it's not just about building something like this. First you have to make sure the business is big.

52:13 Correct. >> Is it worthwhile to build something like this? Right? Obviously you know all of fashion can be big, all of the mobiles and all that can be big, but just serving travel is it going to be big enough? It's a important question to answer. So this is all top bottom that you'll do. You do some top bottom work. Okay. What are the economics? What is the size of the business? All of this stuff. Then you'll have a hypothesis.

52:32 Okay, let me approach this business this way. This is where customer research has to kick in. Mhm. So then you go bottoms up. >> Then uh I think the team just went speaking to customers saying, "How do you buy or get trip ready?" Mhm. "How do you get prepared for your trip? And how do you buy all of this travel stuff that you're looking for?" Then people get these insights, right? For example, we figured out every trip is different. And if you're going to Japan in summer, what you shop for will be very different from going to Japan in winter, obviously. And whether you're going with friends or whether you're going with family can mean very different things in terms of what are the type of activities you'll do. And hence what are the things that you may buy also be very different. If you're taking kids along then you may want very very different stuff for the kids. But if you're going with friends and like all bachelor let's say you may not even be fully prepared like go figure out there after going there we'll probably like we'll probably take some travel charges or something like that.

53:28 So that research will give you a lot of insights as to how are customers thinking about what to buy, when to buy, how they're buying. So then the next stage we actually create prototypes. Then we go back to the customer. We also figure out what is practical at that point as to what can we build, what will we not build at this stage of the company versus future. But you need to have the vision of what will I do 4 5 years down the line, but then work backwards and saying stage one I'll do this, stage two I'll do this, stage three I'll do this, right?

53:58 Right. So then you go with the prototype, go to the customers. Then at that point there has to be an aha moment. They should look at that prototype and then say, "I want They may not tell you before that I want to buy travel gear on your platform. But when you show the prototype, they should feel Oh. Oh, this makes sense. I would love to buy travel gear on your platform and this looks delightful." Nice. >> If you don't hear that feedback, then no point launching. Mhm. So that homework we do And then >> And then we jump in. What's the typical timeline for this? Like is it like a couple quarters?

54:30 Couple of months? 4 5 months typically. >> 4 5 months. Got it. Which is quite low compared given that we're launching category complete category. >> Correct. Uh so >> companies by itself. They are all separate companies by themselves. How do you demarket internal functions? Is it like I mean is the commerce team different than the bookings team and different than the experience team? Or is it a horizontal product team that will work? No, we have pods. Okay. And a pod is fully self-sufficient. Got it.

54:59 There is a business person, there's an product person, there's an engineering team, there's a design team. Everybody coming together. And then they'll design for the product, they'll build the product, they'll put it out, they'll test it, they'll They are responsible for their own numbers. Oh, that's separate P&L. It's a separate P&L. They'll drive the growth, they will make sure the product is They'll look at the customer experience. Then there are some functions which are all central like brand marketing obviously. You can't have each team screaming separate things. It has to all come together.

55:29 >> Sure. Customer service obviously. Customer cannot call 100 lines of customer service, right? HR, finance, legal. HR, finance, all of them. There's a bunch of central functions as well, right? So uh even engineering while there are pods which work on specific products, there are also common platform teams. Because there's some common infra that is needed for the company across. So uh I wouldn't say there's one straight answer to this. You'll have to figure out based on your business model and how you want to play this, how you want to structure your team. So Sure.

55:58 >> Uh there'll be some self-sufficient pods. But there has to be the company central teams and others who are helping them across. Got it. So and also different teams run at different pace. Sure. Newly launched categories will run releases every week. Correct. Something which has been around for a bit longer where lots of customers you know lakhs and lakhs of customers are using it, you would want little bit slowness to test and make sure there's a releasing with high quality.

56:26 Uh it still has to be fast, but relatively slower compared to new business lines where there is no traction at this point. We're just building, right? Sure. And the ethos with which you run both also should be very different. Like in new business lines, I don't even ask business numbers. Mhm. I just ask for are customers coming, buying? Like are they enjoying the experience? Is the customer experience good? Mhm. Bigger businesses then you look at the overall P&L in a different way. Got it. Yeah.

56:52 No, that's super interesting. I think outside-in feels like such a um people challenge which is so interesting to solve for, right? Like how do you structure the org? >> It is a It is a which is an org design. It's a deep subject by itself. And again some of this actually grateful for some of the Flipkart experience where you learn some of these things. I can imagine. Um to bring all of this to a close maybe taking a futuristic lens, right? Like a lot of the current theme and sort of like travel as a broad bucket is AI, right? A lot of people are talking about how like our customer experience is evolving in a world of AI. People are building different companies. Currently travel data does not talk to each other. Like I book on a different platform, I buy on a different platform. None of it talks to each other. And AI is making everything personalized. Correct. How do you think of AI in travel, some of these newer companies vis-a-vis like what will you do in frontier tech?

57:46 >> Good question. Look, I think it's a very exciting time in AI. I think there's a lot that the world is seeing. There's a lot of I would say uh learning and learning happening every month, every quarter, every week. Um I think what we are doing as a company first is building a lot of AI muscle. Sure. >> Right? I think all of us are just absorbing everything. Like you know we we do a lot of I would say talks by AI experts, you know, other companies that are building some of this stuff. We give exposure. Uh put it a little bit loosely, I have unlimited AI budget for my entire team.

58:23 I tell them if you want to go use some new tools, explore some of this stuff, go for it. Okay? Practically where does it fit best? Like are there functions where you're seeing more adoption than the others? No, across actually. >> Okay. My marketing team uses it a lot. My design team uses it a lot. My engineers are using it for coding. You know, my own offices uses it for a lot of research and reports. You know, I have to say if anybody is not using it, then you're not probably thinking how to use AI, right? So I would say everybody is using it now across.

58:55 But when it comes to how our product uh should build for AI, we are being uh what I spoke about earlier was all the productivity stuff, which is a given. In terms of how our product will think AI, uh we just launched our big AI feature in for example experiences. Okay. See, choosing an experience is extremely hard. Uh there's going to be like let's say you want to go to Burj Khalifa or you want to go to let's say, you know, um I would say dune bashing in Dubai or whatever, right? So tens of such experiences all looking very very similar.

59:31 And to be able to build it traditionally would have been extremely difficult. For example, what you would want as filters for dune bashing in Dubai could be will be very different as filters that you would want for, let's say, Burj Khalifa, right? One could be dining car combo or something like that. They're like, you know, in dune bashing it could be morning, evening, whatever. All of these kind of like various filters and let's say I start thinking of, let's say, Empire State in New York and tea tasting in Tokyo and all.

60:04 It's multi-dimensional problem. So, now a regular way to build this would be what? I would put people in catalog teams, manually going at each experience, figuring out what are the filters, build a product team which could build a build the ability to put these filters manually for each of these experiences, types of experiences, and then customers would be able to choose them and then filter them and then buy the experience. Now, this came up as ground-up innovation. Our product design engineering team figured out that we can create these filters dynamically using AI for the experiences and built the platform to be able to do this.

60:45 So, we have a smart AI filters which show up for experiences as and when they choose the experiences. So, they toggle on their own and I didn't have to do all of this manual work to be able to put this out. So, so there's a lot of ground-up innovation that's happening for us in AI where we're figuring out for each category, each type of customer, funnel problem, how AI can solve. Of course, a lot of CX stuff, we're doing a lot of AI like everybody else is doing, right?

61:17 Yeah, there's AI in compliance, there's AI in travel, there's AI in cars. So, we will touch upon each of these in various ways. We are investing very very heavily. We are putting our best of folks across all of these problems. We also meeting a lot of new companies. So, if there are travel companies are investing in AI, I would personally love to meet them at any point. And there's always new learning that comes and I'm very comfortable doing M&A's if the right opportunity comes on some of this stuff because sometimes the world moves faster outside as a small seed company versus when you become a little bit bigger.

61:51 So, we are investing heavily. We are learning a lot. We are experimenting. I think we're also very open to failure. That's a very critical ingredient in AI because I don't think outside chat GPT there's any B2C app which has succeeded in AI. The world is still figuring it out. We are also figuring it out. But what I care about most is actually not whether this product will succeed this this product will not succeed, but are we building a muscle as a company?

62:23 And that will lead to the right outcomes eventually. So, that's what I care about now. Do you have a future opinion on that because one of the things that is I mean I mean one of the future relevant things is currently if you have all of my purchase patterns in sort of travel, right? Like last 6 months I booked these kind of flights and going to these kind of places. Can my incremental travel purchase be now driven by a lot of like personalization? Can you like tell me that? That is a very good use case which can be also I think it will depend on the type of category. Like let us say it is a flight. We'll know that you're either an Air India customer or an Indigo customer. You typically take an aisle flight. And you say you want to take this day this time of the day. You don't like red eye.

63:04 It's easy, right? A flight is a flight is a flight. An airline is the same airline. You know what your preferences are. Like let's say you're taking a train. You'll probably want to take the same train from, let's say, I'm just making it up. Let's say you're taking going from Bangalore to Chennai. You'll probably take the same Vande Bharat or Shatabdi, whatever it is, and you'll say this time this train I take or I take this birth, lower birth or upper birth.

63:24 All this stuff very standard. These kind of things will get incrementally much much more easier versus me going through hundreds and thousands of options in the funnel. But let us say something has not happened. It could. We'll see how consumer behavior changes. What I know is that I'm not very good at soothsaying. So, we'll see how that plays out, but I know I I believe it it could become incrementally easier with AI, right? But customers also like to see things visually. But categories like hotels, for example, they're very visual category.

63:55 Every hotel is different. The images have to be different. Shopping also. Every shirt is different. Every All of this stuff you need to see variety. You need to see a lot of choices. You need to get comfort on those choices, right? In some of the other categories I described earlier, you don't need to see that many choices. You know it's the same thing. So, when it comes to lot of choices and variety, visual appeal and behavior, you will need to see all of that stuff versus making a decision using, let's say, a chat interface.

64:26 Now, that doesn't mean AI cannot help you with the visual interface. Today, as we know, AI is through a chat interface. But AI could also evolve there and provide you interfaces where that visual appeal also can come through using that. So, that's where the next leap could happen. If it doesn't happen, then the merger of both worlds will happen in a way that will play out. So, we'll see. I think most people don't realize it, but AI is as much a design problem as much as a engineering problem or a product problem.

64:57 Because the interfaces of AI will keep changing now going forward. And how one thinks of it will change with time. So, one has to get ready. Like when it like desktop to mobile was a design problem also. How is the mobile? And nobody cracked it like when 3G was there in 2004 3 4 it started around the world, but nobody gave it full steam until the iPhone came. Some of these will also go through their own evolutions.

65:26 It's an interesting thought experiment and considering you're at the center of it, I thought it was worth it. No, I keep thinking about this all the time. So, but these are all hypotheses. Time will tell after 10 years whether, you know, some of these hypotheses are true or as an early stage investor also I think about this and we meet teams who are trying to reimagine the future of travel because it does feel like it's one of those things that will not remain what it is and will change. Very very exciting times.

65:51 No, awesome. This has been so amazing. I just have like fun two questions more on your sort of personal persona and then we'll wrap it up. I think one of the things that we didn't get a chance to dive deeper into, but you mentioned in bits and pieces, it's talent, right? Like from your learnings at Flipkart and how you're designing the organization. If for like if there's a young person watching and they want to work at an organization, what do you think are like very paramount ingredients for success at in teams? How do you think of hiring like rockstars in your team? And what do you think makes them succeed, right?

66:21 Like what are individual attributes? There are at least four five questions in there, but I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll answer the question as to how should one think about a role in a company and how to make themselves successful. Is that is that is that the question? See, I think one, you have to be true to yourself and see whether the startup is something that I will enjoy, right? I mean, you need to figure out whether you will have fun working in cards or travel if you want to be in Skip right. I mean, there has to be some likeability there on terms of the space in the industry and the function, right? I mean, if I'm a marketeer, I better enjoy the marketing part of it, right? I mean, not every part of the job will be enjoyable. But you should enjoy most parts of it. Or you should feel that you're learning a lot, right? I'm I'm I'm giving as much as I'm taking and then being able to maintain that balance as you grow, right? So, one is that part of it. Second, I would say, which is very very critical, is who am I working with? Are these fantastic people? Am I going to learn a lot just being around them, right?

67:28 If you're going to be the smartest in the room and everybody else is just blindly listening to you, then something is off possibly, right? You're not learning enough, right? So, you have come for learning, especially in a high-growth environment, then you need to be around extremely set of talented folks who will help you learn, but you will also help them learn. So, that again, that balance has to be there, right? Third is, I would say, the company success and how the company is doing overall matters to a certain extent.

67:54 Not always in the sense company can go ups and downs. By the way, the tough periods are where you learn the most, but it also has to be balanced by good periods where the company is doing very well, right? If you're having all success, then you're not learning through the failures. If you're all having failures, you will not be motivated enough. You will leave. So, if you're going through a career with a company, then the company itself has to do a little bit well and you have to go through the ups and downs in the company.

68:20 And you need to have the conviction to stay through the downs because that's when you will get the best learning. Everybody sticks through the ups, but few people stick through the downs. And that's when they learn the most actually. So, that is another important angle. Then, I think some very obvious ones are who's the manager. Is there the trust equation? Are they going to I would say help me when I need my, you know, I need help in problem solving, unblocking, when I'm experimenting, if I fail, will they watch my back? All of this is very very critical. The manager plays a very very important role. Many people don't think about it, but that trust equation matters a lot.

69:07 Finally, I think it's a little bit tactical, but it is important enough. Am I being paid enough? Am I being rewarded enough? Am I being recognized enough? Because some of it is uh hygiene, but also provides right motivation, right? Because um I would say if um if not getting some of these sorted then if you're not going to be happy at home, you're not going to get you know, the right rewards for some of the hard work you're putting in then you'll not probably be as focused at work. So, it is probably one of the less important ones.

69:43 But there is a hygiene thing. There's there's a hygiene to it and it has to play out in a way where value has to be accretive longer term, but sometimes people don't think about it enough longer term and they start optimizing it for it in the short term. That's when yeah, you'll start making wrong decisions. Yeah. So, but these are probably the rough dimensions of one. I mean, these are all quite obvious. But one has to just when when when one is in a very critical junction of making uh uh career shift I would say thinking about all of this stuff matters a lot.

70:19 Culture is another one which I didn't mention about within the company. It's very very critical. But all these if they're going well, usually the culture is usually good. No, I I I love that. I think it's very comprehensive. I think some of them are maybe like the foundational ones, but when they come together All of these actually they all sound simple, but the magic isn't actually how they all come together. No, I'm glad you mentioned it.

70:41 So, for folks who are watching and want to work in startups, I think this is very very interesting. For the last question, Anil, I think what I want to focus on is just I'll keep it broad, but if you have any general principles of I don't want to say success because that's like too stereotypical, but in general because you've actually had a very noteworthy interesting journey, right? Like after Flipkart you did this startup which didn't work. Which didn't work. You returned capital. So, you were very principled about it. Then you came to market. You raised a large seed, typically larger than sort of usual.

71:13 Stayed in stealth for 1 and 1/2 years. Launched and are now growing extremely well. So, it's not the typical you leave a company, build your next one, be very successful. It's a different one. Yes. If you if you were I don't know talking to your younger self and you could tell yourself something instrumental from all of these sort of learnings what is like your final maybe three four magical learnings made in life? See, I think there are some guiding principles which are quite important and I think see success is a very big word and I think we're just scratching the surface.

71:44 No, I don't know what success means also. I think you know, success may not be building a $20 billion company also, right? It could be mean it could be success means many things to many people, right? So, uh you have to define what success is for you, but I think for me a few grounding principles are important and I think uh one is just staying grounded. Yeah. Whatever is happening and whether it's something working out or something failing is to be grounded.

72:17 Like only I know what emotions I went through when I shut down my previous company. But uh when I look back, I think I held up quite well. Right? Uh I know what uh some of the early traction we got in some of these and you know, being able to go through the milestones that you have achieved in the last few years uh it's not like you know, I was jumping up and down when any of these happened because these are extremely long journeys.

72:50 And you have to figure out whether you know, yeah, you are staying focused on the right thing, right? So, staying grounded also what is right or wrong in a way is very important to me. Like you know, some of these principles of money and who is funding, why is it coming, what is the right decision, what is the moral compass and all this stuff. Like for example, we are we are we're dealing with customers' money with the bank on this on the card side. So, there trust and transparency become extremely important. So, uh staying on the right side of compliance, staying on the right side of regulation, making sure that you're dealing with all of the you know, nuances of money and travel.

73:28 For example, people are traveling for various reasons. Are you able to do right by them? So, uh this is what I tell my team and everybody you will know whether you've done right or wrong when you're sleeping at night. Like if you can sleep well at night, that means you know that you've done right. When you're doing something wrong, you also know that you've not done something right. So, that moral compass you need to get that right. That will drive a lot of things in the company and for external stakeholders and for yourself personally.

73:55 I think that is the second thing. Third is I think having a larger purpose than just making money and you know having a luxurious life or materialistic part of it, right? Uh what are you doing this for? Are you helping people? What are you doing all of this for? Is something that you need to have a deeper answer to yourself. Uh some of that comes with time and maturity, but uh thinking about that uh helps you again remain focused, right?

74:28 That's the third. Fourth, I think is I think some of it I just learned later on during my Flipkart years and I was not very good at it in my early years is to have a little bit of balance in your life. Uh for example, I don't do uh much work from Saturday afternoon to Sunday night. I pick up on Monday morning. Some weekends I I decide to then I do, but I spend time with my children. I watch my I do my binge watching. I play my tennis. I mean, even during the week uh I try to maintain my balance which I think is sustainable longer term for me.

75:04 So, um again each one to himself or herself. They have to figure out what are their guiding forces and principles that gives them the energy to be able to do these things. These are all very long compounding journeys. One has to have extraordinary amount of energy and conviction to be able to go through ups and downs to make this happen. So, these are some of the things that I I I have as guiding forces. Yeah. No, I love that. I think again, all of those by themselves so gravitationally important and when come they together And all of us are not perfect. All of us, you know, have you know, some some dimensions will be bigger than others, but you'll have to figure out what is where do you want to work on, where you want to double down, where you're doing well also.

75:57 No, I think that's that's amazing. Thank you so much for candidly sharing and thank you so much for such a insightful conversation. I think I came in thinking I want to understand all of these different dimensions of the business and I think we've answered so many of those questions and you've been so kind to structurally explain all of it. I had a lovely time and I'm sure anybody who's stayed this far will have a great time.

76:18 Thank you so much Thank you. Thank you for spending the time coming to our office and doing this. I think I enjoyed the conversation. I I I expected a lot more on the business, but I thought it was pretty holistic across various dimensions of how to build the company, the business, how to think about a career. Uh really loved having the conversation with you. Thank you so much. Yeah. Hello. If you made it this far, you probably watched the entire episode. And if you've done that, I'm really grateful.

76:47 I and my team try to put in a lot of effort to ensure that we can bring the best quality content to you. So, if you liked the episode, if you watched it thus far, my request to you is to share it with people, to subscribe to the channel, and to ensure that we can keep growing. We are everything and anything only because of you, our listeners. Thank you so much for tuning in. We'll keep bringing to you amazing content.

77:10 Cheers.