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Kanwaljit Singh - Managing Partner, Fireside Ventures
U • Business
Kanwal has decades of experience from Intel to Hindustan Unilever, to leading investments at Carlyle, Helion and now Managing Partner at Fireside. He knows what it takes to build brands in India. In fact, he’s invested in some of my favourite brands like Mama Earth, Epigamia, Paperboat, Boat headphones to name a few. What makes Kanwal uniquely awesome is that he’s a straight shooter and you’ll hear that in today’s episode. Our chat is peppered with real life examples and useful data points like Boat headphones’ super interesting pricing strategy and how brands like Mama Earth have scaled to clock over INR 100 crores of revenue.
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Tanmay Bhat - Creator
1 hr 13 min 15 secTanmay Bhat is one of the most well knowns creators in India. This episode is incredibly funny and insightful especially if you’re interested in the creator economy, new platforms, tools and mediums. We talk about one of 2020’s best ad campaigns which is Cred’s Not Everyone Gets It campaign that featured Bappi Lahri, Daler Mehndi and more fantastic faces. If you’ve got questions, suggestions, ideas and feedback to share, email us at openhouselbb.in. You can find us on Twitter on FromLBB and Suchita on suchitasalwan
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Varun Duggirala - Co-Founder, The Glitch
53 min 57 secVarun Duggirala is coFounder of The Glitch a digitallyled creative agency that’s worked with clients like Unilever, Netflix, Nokia and others, and is now under the WPP group. Varun is also the host of the podcast, ‘Advertising is a Dead’. Each week he discusses the changes and developments in the business of advertising and marketing.Varun has had a fascinating career path an engineer turned PR Marketing student, he worked at MTV and Channel V before starting The Glitch. In this conversation, we run through all things brand, content, experience, and creatorled marketing. We talk about the gradual morphing of advertising into becoming part art, part science. We were also curious about his point of view on podcasting and where the medium is headed, and his experience building his personal brand through his podcast.There’s a lot of tactical and applicable advice in this episode enjoy
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Vivek Prabhakar - CEO, Chumbak
56 min 14 secVivek is the cofounder of Chumbak, one of India’s leading lifestyle brands. What started out as a souvenirs company with kiosks around India is now a force to be reckoned with They’ve got over 75 stores across the country, and have products in over a hundred categories.In this conversation we dig into the impact of Covid19 on retail Chumbak’s made a couple of super interesting changes to adapt better to the current environment, and he talks about categories and channels he’s excited to build out. Covid aside, we also talked about changes Chumbak’s made to position itself as a brand than just a product, and what’s coming up for them including an international launch, hopefully soonOpen House is recorded as a live session Make you check out LBB and sign up for our live chats, where you can ask my guests questions in real time. Head over to the LBB app or www.lbb.in and search for Open House to sign up for the next one.
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Presenting LBB’s 2021 Consumer & Marketing Trends Report
56 min 58 secIf you’re a brand owner, brand marketer, a D2C brand junkie, an LBB superfan or just hella curious, you’ll enjoy this We recently released our 2021 Consumer and Marketing Trends Report find it here https://lbb.in/trends2021 if you haven’t had a chance to browse through it already. On LBB, we engage with over 25 million Indian millennials and have over 100,000 businesses recommended on our platform. Through 2020, we saw consumers shapeshift what they consume and where they consume products and brands. We’ve consolidated data points and learnings across our platforms into our super comprehensive report that covers all the consumer and marketing trends that brands should be on top of And in this episode, you’ll catch a live recording of Team LBB discussing our report. We deep dive into data behind our trends prediction, examples of brands we see incorporating these trends well, and what we’re going to be doing on LBB in the coming year. You’ll hear from vertical heads and leads at LBB. The session is moderated by Suchita cofounder of LBB the Consumer Trends section is covered by Aakanksha and Akshita, and the Marketing Trends section is covered by Abhijeet and Tanvi.
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Varun & Ghazal - Founders, Mamaearth
1 hr 4 min 35 secVarun and Ghazal are the CoFounders of Mamaearth, which is Asia’s first Madesafe certified brand that offers 100 toxinfree natural baby care, skincare, and hair care products. In just 3 years, Mamaearth has launched a range of 80 natural products, with over 1.5 million customers in India and is amongst the fastest FMCG startups to hit 100crore run rate in India.The brand started from a personal painpoint Ghazal not being able to find toxin free products for her new born and how they’ve taken an initial hunch from product to market to scale is truly incredible Masstige products are a huge opportunity in India and if you’re looking to start up in consumer products, were sure you’ll thoroughly enjoy this chat.Open House is recorded as a live session Make you check out LBB and sign up for our live chats, where you can ask my guests questions in real time. Head over to the LBB app or www.lbb.in and search for Open House to sign up for the next one.
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Kunal Shah - Founder & CEO, CRED
1 hr 6 min 44 secKunal is the founder CEO of Cred, and has been the founder CEO of Freecharge, two of India’s foremost ‘fintech’ companies. He’s seen it all 0 to 1, scaling to tens of millions of users, selling a company, starting up again and has been an angel investor and mentor in a bunch of fantastic startups including GoJek, Razorpay, Zilingo and others. If you’re on desi tech Twitter, there’s no way you haven’t heard of or don’t follow Kunal where you’ll often find him sharing his notes and learnings.In this conversation we talk about the target addressable market in India, understanding Human motivations, how to take feedback and the importance of twitter trolls, we get into it all. Kunal’s a very first principles thinker, and his responses to our questions reflect the same. Open House is recorded as a live session Make you check out LBB and sign up for our live chats, where you can ask my guests questions in real time. Head over to the LBB app or www.lbb.in and search for Open House to sign up for the next one.
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Rohan Mirchandani - CEO, Epigamia
1 hr 10 min 41 secRohan Mirchandani is the cofounder and CEO of Drums Food, the parent company of Epigamia. You have surely seen their range of greek yogurts, ghee spreads and smoothies on the shelves in your nearest trade store. Epigamia started out as an ice cream brand and in our conversation Rohan covers their pivot into Greek Yogurt, finding product market fit, raising over 50 million dollars, and how they think about their target market. Rohan’s passion and energy is palpable and our conversation has plenty of real life examples to learn from.Open House is recorded as a live session Make you check out LBB and sign up for our live chats, where you can ask my guests questions in real time. Head over to the LBB app or www.lbb.in and search for Open House to sign up for the next one.
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Episode 0 - Build Brands Better
1 min 49 secWelcome to LBB Open House a podcast on how to build brands better. My name is Suchita. And I’m the cofounder of Little Black Book www.lbb.in. We’ll be taking a deep dive into all things brand building marketing, customer acquisition, distribution, and more through candid conversations with founders, CXOs, and investors behind India’s most interesting enterprises. From fashion to alcobev, software to greek yogurt, you will get to hear from people who’ve built multimillion dollar brands across industries. I am privileged to have access to some of the best in the game and I bring them on the show to ask them the questions that keep many young entrepreneurs such as myself or young business leaders up at night. How to best set up your sales team What is the future of marketing Can distribution be the moat around your business I have learnt so much from my guests through my conversations. And I hope you do too.Oh and before I forget, these episodes are recorded as live webinars, so if you want to watch me have these conversations live and ask my guests any questions, please log on to the LBB app or go to our website www.lbb.in
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Matt & Namrata - Founders, Blue Tokai Coffee
43 min 6 secMatt and Namrata are the cofounders of Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters one of India’s leading coffee brands. They talk about how they built Blue Tokai the journey from starting with an online presence to making it a cult coffee brand in India with plenty of physical locations. I really enjoyed learning from Matt and Namrata. As a coffee lover, there was a lot of insight for me into how the industry works and the challenges a new brand can face. I am very impressed by their strategic decisionmaking, and they gave me a lot to ponder over in my own business. This episode can help you understand how to start a business, adapt, and stay relevant with changing times.
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Nidhi Hola - Director of Partner Marketing, Microsoft
43 min 50 secNidhi has decades of experience working for some of the biggest companies. Currently the Director of Partner Marketing at Microsoft, she is also the force behind making India the largest consumer base outside the US for GoDaddy. What I find most fascinating is her outlook to marketing, which is predominantly from a B2B lens businesses are customers too. Keeping that in mind, I chat with Nidhi about her experiences with identifying and implementing the right B2B marketing strategies. I really enjoyed learning from her, particularly how to think about marketing through first principles. Thanks to the wealth of knowledge Nidhi has, this episode will help you understand consumer psyche and how to effectively drive consumer engagement. Hope you enjoy our conversation.
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William Bissell - Chairman, FabIndia
45 min 3 secWilliam Bissell is the chairman of Fabindia one of India’s largest leading lifestyle brands with over 200 stores across India that just celebrated its 60th anniversary.In this episode, we talk to William about how to think long term, and differentiate static from signal while building your brand. He gives a really interesting statistic around how the lifeexpectancy of corporates is declining and we dive into what it takes to build brands that can outlast trends. FabIndia has evolved a lot over the past couple of years with Fabcafe, their experience centres more. Given the impact that COVID’s had on retail, William shares his point of view on what the future of retail is, and where lifestyle brands should be investing to reap long term gains.William’s humility and honesty is really inspiring you’ll hear that throughout this episode We learnt a lot from this conversation and we hope you enjoy it
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Arman Sood - Co-Founder, Sleepy Owl
52 min 59 secArman Sood is the cofounder of Sleepy Owl a new age coffee company that’s making good quality coffee accessible to consumers through their cold brews, ready to drink cold coffee, and an array of such coffeebased products.We’ve known Arman and his cofounders ever since they started Sleepy Owl, as fresh graduates from Law school, that too and it’s so great to see them grow and expand their portfolio. In this episode we talk about competition, and how at times a rising tide lifts all boats as it has with the “coffee movement” in India. Arman also talks about the research and development that goes into launching new products and subcategories for Sleepy Owl. It takes A LOT to build a consumer product, that too one with a limited shelf life from fundraising to hiring, your own personal growth as a leader our conversation covers this and moreIf you’re early in your startup journey, you will thoroughly enjoy this episode. Arman is refreshingly honest and upfront.If you’ve got questions, suggestions, ideas and feedback to share, email us at openhouselbb.in. You can find us on Twitter on FromLBB and I’m on suchitasalwan
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Arjun Bahl, Hanif Kureshi, St+art India
50 min 41 secArjun and Hanif are cofounders of Start India an organisation dedicated to democratising art for the public through street art. Starting out as a project in Delhi’s Shahpur Jat, Start India today has scaled their street art projects across India from Chennai and Goa to Mumbai, Hyderabad and beyond. It’s a mammoth project that involves multiple stakeholders from local governments and municipalities, communities, sponsors and artists, and that they’ve been able to transform quaint spaces in India to vibrant art districts is truly commendable. This episode is a little different from other Open House episodes. Let us know your questions, suggestions, ideas and feedback to share, email us at openhouselbb.in. You can find us on Twitter on FromLBB and Im on suchitasalwan
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Mona Gandhi - Founder, Upraised
50 min 31 secMona was the first female engineer at Airbnb, and led product and strategic growth for the company in the US and then for APAC. She’s been an advisor to us at LBB for the past 6 years I often go to her for advice on marketing, product development and hiring. On this episode, we deep dive into one of my favourite topics marketplaces, and all that goes into building them. What part of demand / supply should one tackle How do you navigate customer and merchant churn Which qualitative benchmarks are needed while chasing quantitative outcomes We cover all this and more. I think this is one of my most enjoyable conversations on Open House so far. I hope it helps you learn something new.
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Taru Kapoor - GM India, Match Group
53 min 1 secTaru is the General Manager of Match Group in India, which has a portfolio of dating products that need no introduction such as Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid. Taru has a wide ranging career having worked with BCG, Sequoia and then Match Group, where she was the 1st employee for Tinder in India and has grown the product from strength to strength. In this conversation, we discuss Match’s full stack product approach for companionship, what Taru has learnt about Indian customers while building Tinder, how dating products specifically in the Indian context have created agency, and how she’s grown as a manager and leader over the past 8 years.
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Kusha Kapila - Content Creator
58 min 38 secKusha Kapila is one of Indias most beloved content creators. Over the last few years, she has found a way to create content thats relatable and scalable. Content creators are entrepreneurs themselves and Kusha delves in to how she has scaled to having a following of over a million people with high engagement and sustained relevance. This conversation is a great insight in to the business of being a content creator from one of the best in the game.Open House is recorded as a live session Make you check out LBB and sign up for our live chats, where you can ask my guests questions in real time. Head over to the LBB app or www.lbb.in and search for Open House to sign up for the next one.
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Sakshi Chopra - Principal, Sequoia Capital India
1 hr 2 min 13 secSakshi Chopra is a Principal at Sequoia Capital India. She focuses on growth stage companies and has advised on investments across a range of Consumer, D2C and Fintech companies including FiveStar Business Finance, Indigo Paints, Wakefit, Faces, Go Colors, Healthkart, Hector Beverages and B9 Beverages.From Paperboat’s positioning centred in ‘nostalgia’ to how Mama Earth grew into a brand with a 100 crore turnover you’ll hear about how some of India’s most fascinating brands went from 0 to 1, and now are treading the path from 1100, by finding their business moats.Open House is recorded as a live session Make you check out LBB and sign up for our live chats, where you can ask my guests questions in real time. Head over to the LBB app or www.lbb.in and search for Open House to sign up for the next one.
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Kanwaljit Singh - Managing Partner, Fireside Ventures
1 hr 6 min 24 secKanwal has decades of experience from Intel to Hindustan Unilever, to leading investments at Carlyle, Helion and now Managing Partner at Fireside. He knows what it takes to build brands in India. In fact, he’s invested in some of my favourite brands like Mama Earth, Epigamia, Paperboat, Boat headphones to name a few. What makes Kanwal uniquely awesome is that he’s a straight shooter and you’ll hear that in today’s episode. Our chat is peppered with real life examples and useful data points like Boat headphones’ super interesting pricing strategy and how brands like Mama Earth have scaled to clock over INR 100 crores of revenue.
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Deepak Sinha - VP Marketing, Bira91
55 min 53 secDeepak is the Global VP of marketing at India’s homebrewed beer brand, Bira91. With over 14 years of experience at beverage companies such as Pernod Ricard and MillerCoors, he has led brand development, marketing and sales, and helped emerging and established brands find success across international markets.In this conversation we dig into: what it takes to launch a brand internationally, how Bira’s been able to scale across consumer segments through its ever evolving catalogue, and trends to make a note of if you’re in the alcobev space. Spoiler alert: women drink beer are an audience to reckon with
Language
English
Genre
Business
Author
Little Black Book
