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Episode 109 / March 22, 2021

Inside the mind of Mamaearth Founders, Ghazal & Varun Alagh

39 min

Episode 109 / March 22, 2021

Inside the mind of Mamaearth Founders, Ghazal & Varun Alagh

39 min
Listen on

In this episode, we chat with Ghazal and Varun Alagh, Co-founders, Mamaearth.   

Ghazal & Varun’s entrepreneurial journey began when they were expecting their first baby and were on the lookout to ensure that they could use the best childcare products to keep their baby safe. But what came up as a shock for them was that every product out there had some or the other form of harmful chemical component. This experience drove the duo to create then a babycare brand: Mamaearth.  

Mamaearth is Asia’s first brand with MadeSafe certified products and has recently crossed Rs.500 crore revenue run rate.  

During the podcast, they talk about how they initially started interacting and understanding their future customers and their concerns. They also share how they built a closely-knit community of parents with a newborn where prior to every product launch, they would take feedback from them, and then they’d launch the product after working on their suggestions.  

For anyone looking to start up a D2C brand, this conversation can be of great value. From building a close connection with your prospective customers to earning their trust to building your brand, to differentiating your brand vs other players, this podcast has it all.  

Notes – 

03:13 – Their personal experience which led to founding Mamaearth

04:30 – Career prior to Mamaearth

07:42 – Things to prioritise early on to build a base for a D2C brand

11:28 – Top-seller product categories at Mamaearth

13:36 – Journey & Challenges from 0 to $1 Mn ARR and beyond

15:34 – Major milestones and fundraises

17:43 – Difference in Mamaearth’s growth strategy vs other D2C brands

21:47 – Future plans with Mamaearth 

23:38 – Connecting & Understanding with the first few customers (mothers)

26:51 – Identifying vendors for packing, shipping, and production

29:02 – Bringing Shilpa Shetty on board as a Brand Ambassador & Investor

33:11 – Leveraging Influencer marketing to propel growth

35:01 – What they admire in each other as Co-founders & life partners  

Read the full transcript here

Siddhartha Ahluwalia  0:06  

Hi, this is Siddhartha Ahluwalia, welcome to the 100x Entrepreneur podcast. Today we have with us the husband-wife duo, cofounders of MamaEarth, Ghazal, and Varun Alagh.

 

Welcome to the 100x Entrepreneur podcast Ghazal and Varun.

 

Varun Alagh  0:21  

Hey, Thankyou

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia  0:25  

You guys have been great friends. We’ve both known each other for the last five-six years, it’s tremendous to see you know, your journey.

 

I’m so glad and you know, it’s just close to my heart to see you know how far MamaEarth has come.

 

Varun Alagh  0:42  

Hey, Thank you. Thanks. Thanks. And I still remember us meeting where your office Babygogo was. And we hadn’t even launched at that time. We were just trying to understand how to get the community besides. We were learning from you. But yeah, been some great good old days.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia  1:07  

And it’s still fantastic to see, you know, the current scale of MamaEarth. You guys recently shared, I think on the Yourstory article, that the current net revenues yearly have crossed 500 Cr, you have some fantastic investors, you know, Sequoia India, Fireside, Stellaris, Titan Capital. MamaEarth is also Asia’s first made safe certified product, and for our listeners to share about how you got started on your journey. You founded MamaEarth right in 2015. That’s the timeframe?

 

Varun Alagh  1:43  

 2016 Yeah

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia  1:52  

And how you got started was your son Agastya, was allergic to some ingredients in Indian baby care products. And you did market research for eight to 10 months on creating toxin-free products, How do you conceptualize this idea way back in 2015 and 2016?

 

Ghazal Alagh  2:17  

I think it started with a, you know like you said a personal journey of not being able to find the right kind of products for our son. And you know, we were relying on importing a few products from outside of India. And that was a pain. And when we talked to a lot of people around us, we figured that this was not just us who are facing this problem. There are a lot of other parents around us who were actually doing the same and we’re not too happy which is where you know, we realized that there was a gap in the Indian market, which could be on soil. And rather than I think waiting for anyone else, we thought let’s let’s pick up our research glasses, let’s figure if we can do it or if it’s even possible to do the same in India or not. And we sort of did that. We realized it was possible if that’s how we launched MamaEarth in December of 2016 with six baby care products at that time.

 

Varun Alagh  3:19  

We actually work very intensely when madesafe.org which is a not-for-profit organization based out of the US that certifies products to be completely free of harmful toxins. And our formulation journey and r&d journey was helped tremendously by the guidance that they provided us.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia  3:41  

And Varun what was your background prior to MamaEarth and what was Ghazal’s background prior to MamaEarth.

 

Varun Alagh  3:48  

So, I’d spend about 10 years in the CPG industry. So, I started my journey with Unilever in sales and a bit of marketing in the deodorants category, have moved on to managing and marketing Smirnoff for India. And then for the last four years of my corporate career ,I was with Coca Cola I was heading brand Coca Cola for India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and managing marketing brand launches, etc. for them

 

Ghazal, why don’t you share yours?

 

Ghazal Alagh  4:29  

I’m otherwise a computer graduate. I was working with Infosys in collaboration with NIIT back then I used to be a corporate trainer post which I went to the New York Academy of Arts to you know, further take up my passion for painting. And I was honestly very happy I was painting. I was exhibiting nationally internationally. I was selling my work as chosen as the best, you know, amongst the top 10 best artists of India as well.

 

That was my, you know, comfort zone, I thought I’d figured out what I need to do for the rest of my life, which is when we got pregnant and Agastya came to our life, and very closely, Mamaearth followed up, and that’s how I’m here.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia  5:19  

How do you decide, you know, what roles Will you play as co-founders, like Varun chose to focus on distribution? And Ghazal, you led the product and the community part.

 

Varun Alagh  5:31  

Yeah, yes, I think we played to our strengths. And I mean, when you just do a few, you have to divide work, etc, okay, yeh mujhe aata hai mai karl unga yeh tujhe aata hai, you do it.

 

And of course, then once you start doing all of that, and then you start scaling, you get to, you know, start hiring people, and, and those functions itself start sort of, you know, shaping up even sharper. And, of course, over time now, there are a lot of, you know, leaders who we have been able to hire who is now taking care of large functions themselves. And, but something as critical, you know, as innovation is something that Ghazal still continues to lead, loses sleepover. And, and community again, right, that’s, that’s something which is close to your heart, and only a founder can sort of, you know, make the connection that she’s able to, because of her story. So, she continues to sort of do that.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia  6:40  

So, Varun, for the D2C, entrepreneurs listening to the podcast right now, what were the first right things that you did, you know, back in 2016, back in 2017, that laid the foundation of distribution, product, and branding on all of these three aspects.

 

Varun Alagh  7:00  

So, you know, I think from a perspective of what we did, right, I’d say, one, our whole focus on building the right brand construct and story, right? Why does the brand exist? What should people remember about the brand, once they have heard or used the brand? And if they had to tell the story of the brand to others? And what is that story that they will tell, and crafting that entire piece, crafting, then the mix, which is packaging, design pricing, in line with that story? I think that’s one thing, which has been a core success factor of what we did right, then and have been continuing to it since then.

 

Secondly, I would just say, you know, paranoia, around product quality. And paranoia around getting feedback from consumers on that quality as well. You know, I still remember, you know, especially Ghazal’s used to have, like these hundreds of calls every week, which were with consumers, influencers, who were sampling our products, and, you know, to ensure that we’re getting the right feedback, which will go into product development. So I think that is something that we had tried and that has been helping us even today because it almost becomes a part of your DNA. And then I think third, just getting the right people in whenever you can, I mean, I think I think that has, that has tremendously helped us as well. Right. So those three are what I would say, Ghazal, if you want to add any more to this?

 

Ghazal Alagh  8:55  

No, I think I think you’ve captured it all, you know, purpose-based brands, like Varun, said was something that was our focus, we just did not want to deliver products to our consumers, but we wanted them to understand why this brand over anything else, right, which is where the entire purpose and I think are very recent initiators that we’ve picked up which is plant initiative, has really helped us make that connection with our consumer. You know, it’s, for all the, you know, listeners out there plant initiator is something that we’ve picked up around three to four months back where every order that gets placed on the website, we actually link it with a tree that gets planted on the behalf of our consumers and consumers can actually, you know, track, what species of the tree have we planted, it’s geolocation, where is it planted, you know, and all of that through the way. So, what they get to know is that it’s not just a product that they’ve bought, but they also have contributed in some way to take care of the environment around them. Second, I think on-trend innovation, like Varun, said was something that you know was focused for us the quality of the product, listening to our listening tools around what are consumers looking for what they’re searching for, and coming up with, you know, products according to their wishes was something that we did aggressively and right people, I think they can make all the difference. And we realized that early on, these are the things which I would say rarely worked in our favor.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia  10:41  

or Ghazal which has been the best seller product from day one like you have over 90 products now.

 

Ghazal Alagh  10:49  

Yes, yes. So I think from day one, there have been a lot of hero products if I have to call them out. I mean, we started with the baby category where our first hit was 100% natural mosquito repellent spray, which you know, caught the eyes, did really well created a lot of buzz because it was the first of its kind product that came in India right. That was followed very closely by a baby cleansing range where shampoos and washes did extremely well. You know even in the baby category, our toothpaste is our best seller which is a fluoride-free toothpaste which is strawberry flavor, gets love and we are sort of winning hearts through that. If I come to the hair category, and we have we are into hair, we are into skin, we are into a body, each of these categories has their own hero product and hero ingredients. Right. So here we have the onion range, which targets on reducing hair fall. And in that, I think our shampoo and oil and our, you know, the best sellers. In skin as a category we have a vitamin C range with almost nine different products, you know, in which our face washes and serums are doing really well followed very closely by our face creams. So there are a lot of hero products, but I’d say you know, onion and vitamin C in the adult category is doing really well. And then baby the cleansing as well as the toothpaste, including soaps, etc are doing really well.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia  12:27  

And Varun if you can share your know, your initial journey from zero to one Cr of monthly net revenues and then one to 10 cr and 10 to now 50 cr off monthly net revenue. How would you split that up? What are the things that you did for distribution especially right? What are the channels you tapped into?

 

Varun Alagh  12:52  

from a purely a distribution perspective, zero to one was largely led by third-party channels like you know, Amazon, Firstcry, Flipkart, we were fairly new, then we were also sort of, you know, largely bootstrapped in terms of the funds that we had raised. And from that perspective, hence, it was very important to get efficient P&L going and which is where all of these channels where traffic was already there people were already looking for such products. And hence largely the focus on zero to one was the was the eCommerce platforms and one to 10 is where we strongly started focusing on our D2C channel, we realized that you know, one control over your own data experience for the consumer is far higher when it comes to the D2C. Secondly, your ability to scale is far higher because it’s again 100% market share channeled, and thirdly, your dependence is reducing on others, which is also helping your de-risk the business. So that was our focus from a one to 10 journey perspective. And 10 to 50 is when we also started focusing on offline as a segment. And we have expanded to almost 10,000 stores now. And that has driven a lot of growth during that journey. You know so that’s how I’d say distribution was found out.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia  14:36  

And can you share with the fundraisers like when did you raise from Fireside when the next round with Stellaris happened? And what milestone did you raise from Sequoia?

 

Varun Alagh  14:47  

So, Fireside we raised largely, you know when we were seeing what you call product-market fit. So I would say we were at revenue run rate about 45-30 odd lakhs a month when about six months into our journey, seeing really good feedback on our products, and now wanted to execute a few things and go out in the market, get some, you know, marketing at scale going, which is when Fireside and Titan came on board, right, give both money as well as guidance in terms of how do you sort of, you know, do things in the right manner. And then,  the Stellaris round happened when we had hit the one crore a month kind of mark. And we are again, then we were looking for growth capital to sort of scale to the next level. And, and we were also looking at scaling and building the D2C channels, we were also looking at someone who has more technology orientation and skill to sort of come in and partner with us. And then Sequoia happened once we were closer to 100 crore run rate, which is where we saw you know, them as a great partner who’s got strong learnings around taking, you know, building companies from 100 to 1000 crore kind of run rate, and secondly, strong Global Connections, as well as learnings and they, can open doors and also, there are large funds so they can actually partner through your journey for the next few years, decades, etc. So, that’s how we looked at it.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia  16:33  

And Ghazal, What do you think, you know, what, what were the traditional brands that lacked you as MamaEarth leveraged in your journey and became the fastest-growing D2C brand of India?

 

Ghazal Alagh  16:52  

I think there were a couple of things to start with, I think the D2C model that we picked upright, which was online first, gave us a lot of advantage, we were able to reach a wider base of consumers in a short span of time, they were, you know, spread all over India. I think that reach and that kind of targeting on what is the kind of consumer that you want to reach that was, that was the first advantage that we got in terms of getting out there. Second, we’ve talked about the fact that you know, having a purpose behind a brand rarely builds and adds to the story. And from day one, I think we were very clear that we are here to build a brand that has a purpose, then I think I would, I would say, again, the way we innovated and the way we understood our consumers and what they were looking for and gave them solutions through our products, you know, that worked to our advantage really well.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia  17:56  

And from our, you know, from a mom and baby care brand, now you have extended and opened up another brand called the Derma company. How has this transition worked what was the idea and insight work on you know, these different dimensions?

 

Varun Alagh  18:12  

I think for us, you know, we started realizing, Sid, that, clearly, we were building the Center of Excellence, right, we were building certain playbooks and because of what we have learned on MamaEarth. And once we sort of, you know, had comfort around some of those playbooks, and we started looking at, you know, the consumers that we serve as, which is the millennial cohort, and started saying hey, what else are they looking for? What kind of either propositions or products or problems are they going through, which we cannot solve, because of the way the Mamaearth brand is constructed. And which is where we realized that, you know, there was, of course, a large cohort of people who are looking for natural as an option. But then there is also a large cohort of people who are struggling with problems like acne or pigmentation and are looking for the science-based, you know, solutions which are potent enough to sort of solving some of those problems and, and are comfortable applying, you know, acid peel or something like that, which will actually solve what they’re going through, and which is when the whole idea of building the Derma Company as a separate brand, sort of, you know, came in and using the strengths that we already had. And, you know, we now after seeing the success of TDC we’re fairly confident that this is an ongoing strategy that will continue to execute over the next five years.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia  19:55  

On as you shared, what do the next five years of Mamaearth look like? The most important question from the listeners would be, when are you going to IPO? What are the other new brands that you are launching?

 

Varun Alagh  20:09  

So from, I wouldn’t say next 5 years just of MamaEarth that probably then talk about because it’s the company, not just a brand, and who were the household brand strategy would be implemented. So from a company, perspective, I think we just will continue to focus on serving the consumers in the right manner, growing our consumer fraternity and hence growing the brand, you know, disproportionately, then. But from a company perspective, I think, yes, we are looking to launch or build more brands, which connect well with our cohort of millennials. On the IPO question, I really don’t have an answer right now from a company, you know, readiness perspective, I think we would be ready. As of yesterday, also from our size, the fact that we have been profitable, but we just don’t feel that we need to raise from public markets as we speak. And because the businesses are fairly strongly funded from the private markets that we have raised, and we would want to focus on getting growth, getting our narrative, and building some of these new brands are also going over the next five years. And then as in when we feel okay, now we’re where we’re sort of in a position where we have been able to set all our narratives, right? And is when we probably think about an IPO as well.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia  21:49  

Ghazal, How were you able to, you know, relate to the first set of mother’s, let’s say, the first set of 1000 mother’s, because now you have billions plus consumers, and I think the first set of 1000 mothers would have played a big role in MamaEarth’s journey.

 

Ghazal Alagh  22:03  

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think when we were starting out, even before launching the brand, I was talking to a lot of moms out there just to understand their problems, right, just to understand how they’re feeling. What is it that will help them further ease down their journey of, you know, raising a kid, all of that? And just from that perspective, I think there was that first connect that that got established where, where people just felt that there’s someone who’s listening, right, there’s someone who’s trying to get to know us better, and trying to understand, okay, what are their difficulties. And as we went on in the journey of, you know, launching the brand coming out the proposition of toxin-free, the education around our toxin-free, because at that point of time, this was a fairly new concept, and nobody was talking about harmful ingredients. And, you know, we started out by educating consumers, on what toxins were, why were they, you know, why, why should you avoid them? How should you read labels, I think that acted as a value add, which people really appreciated. And, with those, you know, first set of 1000 moms, we were so closely connected with everything that we were doing with every product that we were about to come in, you know, sending them samples, taking their feedback, reiterating the formula bases, their feedback, they just felt that they were part of this entire process of creating the brand.

I think that is something that still connects a lot of us together in the community. And that’s how we’ve been able to grow because we do that even today, you know, before launching the product out and going to our community for testing. They are the ones who give us the first round of feedback basis, which we iterate till the time they don’t give us approval that yes, this is the kind of product that they want to use, the product doesn’t get launched. So

I would say that personal connection and taking their inputs was something that brought us really close together. 

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia  24:18  

I remember you know, back in 2016, and even in 2017 coming on to some of the Babygogo physical community events, interacting with mom’s sharing some samples.

 

Ghazal Alagh  24:34  

Absolutely, absolutely.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia  24:36  

So that’s a wonderful tool to see the founder, you know, deep connection and to the customers.

 

I think that’s one of the key successes as you mentioned, in the journey of MamaEarth. Varun, If you can share you know, with the D2C entrepreneurs listening, who was the first set of the right partners for you in shipping and logistics in the packaging in marketing, right?

 

How did you identify these partners? Because from 2016 to 2021, today, you know, building a 500 cr net revenue company would have required a lot of help in sales that it takes a village to raise a child.

 

Varun Alagh  25:19  

So, um, so honestly, you know, this ecosystem was also evolving when we were building this right. So I think ship rocket has been one of our early partners, and then we continue to sort of work with them today as well. And on the packaging side, we’ve worked with multiple folks like, you know, bizongo and moglix, who have helped us, you know, source, the packaging.

And then, you know, so now, of course, this ecosystem is far more involved, right. And in each one of your sort of sub-functions, there are partners who are available, who can make the life easier, but in our case, you know, we had to set some of these things up, like, you know, large owned warehouses, we still continue to own and operate warehouses and own tech stacks, we believe that, you know, we’d rather build strong custom own tech stack then that only rely on SAAS based tech stack as we scale. So we did that, right. But before that WooCommerce is where we were early on, operating WooCommerce, Shopify are both great platforms. And on that then there is of course an ecosystem of a lot of great partner tools that you can use to get things going. So yeah, I mean, those would be the right names that I would say on the marketing side, we have always done everything in-house. We always believe that you know, marketing and product are our core competence for a company like this, and hence, that strength should lie internally.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia  27:04  

And, you know, how you got in Shilpa Shetty. The story is really interesting to me, at what point in the journey you reached out to her? And how did you convince her? I heard that it took her six months to say yes. How’s the journey been with her?

 

Varun Alagh  27:22  

Ghazal should sort of share that whole piece and how it sort of shaped up.

 

Ghazal Alagh  27:28  

It’s actually a little crazy, right? We were thinking of getting a brand ambassador face for the brand, right? And we did not come up with a better name, than, Shilpa with her way of living with the values that she, you know, was standing for was very close to us as MamaEarth. We reached out we met her in Delhi, you know, which was a first meeting where we sort of pitched her what my MamaEarth was all about in taking the small bag of products just to show her, you know, how we looked.

 

And I remember, you know, we had like a decent 45-minute conversation, the way she raised a few concerns, questions around the brand around the ingredients. And she was well informed. She actually knew some of the ingredients that should have been avoided. And, you know, after that 45-minute session, we just left the back there, we, you know, requested her to try out and we came back. And for the next three months, I think we were very eagerly waiting for her word, which did not come. We followed up, nothing happened, right. And we were like, see, this is not happening. We haven’t heard back and we lost all votes. And I think it was after nine months when we got a call where, you know, she sent us this message that she had been using the product for all that while to see how they did on her son Vian and you know, she loved the products and that’s how she wants to come on board. And I mean, the surprise was that she didn’t just want to be the face of the brand, but she also wanted to invest in the company which was our first you know, I think the solid, you know, interaction with her where we said that, okay, whatever we are doing, we are headed in the right direction, and there are people who are believing in us, and that’s how we got her on board 

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia  29:29  

This year 2016 or 2017?

 

Ghazal Alagh  29:33  

2017 

 

Varun Alagh  29:37  

Yeah. 17 end is when this really sort of took shape. 2016 December is when we launched said so 16th of course there was nothing right. So 17 is when she came she sort of started interacting and 18 is when she finally came on board.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia  29:55  

And what has been a journey been right? How is she able to add value as a brand ambassador, MamaEarth?

 

Varun Alagh  30:05  

Of course, of course, right? So, as Ghazal said, I don’t think anyone could have been a better fit from just the value systems perspective, right. And if you follow her on her social and her Instagram, you’ll see, she’s fairly careful about what she eats, what she is, the kind of life she lives a yoga wellness ambassador. And from that perspective, it just, it just fit in really well with the brand ethos, right. And she started using her, you know, social strength and the reach that she had to spread the message around what we were doing at MamaEarth, you know, building, you know, and we could be had now had a face to go with ads or to put on our website or to take to the partners that we’re going to, which made the credibility of the brand, you know, increase a few more notches, because someone like that, who has strong imagery was connecting and partnering with us in our journey gave us that credibility boost, so of course, a lot of help.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia  31:15  

And Varun, you have been able to leverage influencer marketing really well, in the journey of MamaEarth, if you can share, you know, what are the different stages that in 2017, 2018, 2019. And in the last year, how you leverage influencer marketing, branding as well as distribution 

 

Varun Alagh  31:37  

more than, you know, stages. And I think, I think since day one, we’ve been committed to the sole insight that millennials trust other millennials, right? So it started with the insight that moms trust other moms and, and then of course, as we continued to scale our portfolio, it went into the brow larger inside of millennials trusting other millennials. And, you know, we have been sort of, you know, building our, our influencer programs on the top of those insights, we, we sample extensively with influencers, get them to try our product, share our story with them. And that’s how that whole channel has been built. And, and over time, as the influencer ecosystem in India expanded, right. And I remember when we were launching, at that time, the blogging ecosystem was far bigger, and other ecosystems are far smaller.

 

But over time, then blogging became less. So Instagram, influencer became bigger, and then vlogging became bigger, which was video blogs, etc. And so wherever we could execute that communication inside that we had, and we just followed, how the ecosystem was shaping up.

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia  33:01  

And, you know, being co-founders and partners was the best habit, you know, you admire each other. And what’s one habit you don’t admire or wish you could change in each other?

 

Ghazal Alagh  33:15  

I think the flip side, which I do not admire could change can be a long list

 

Well, I think this entire journey, you know, of building something together, you know, going through a lot of ups and downs, and figuring stuff out has just brought us closer, and that, I would say up bond has only strengthened since we started out. You know, one thing that I really admire about Varun is his problem-solving attitude, right? Be it as a co-founder, be it as a life partner, you know, if there is something that’s bothering you, right, and you’re not honestly looking for a solution, but you’re just wanting to share it right, wanting to express that okay, this is something which is disturbing, the way he thinks is that he needs to solve that right, he will, he will continuously start thinking of ways to make that situation better or overcome that. And, you know, I wish I had that a little bit of that in me because I still spend a lot of time just thinking and you know, getting sad or Okay, there is this problem, we have to do something about it and, and, you know, just waste about six, seven hours just thinking that, okay, this needs to be solved while he thinks that Okay, let’s overcome it, okay, what are the ways you know, he’ll give you three options right there and then that just completely changes and shifts your mindset to something positive, rather than just, you know, contemplating on what’s going to happen, so I don’t think he’s ever heard that before. But yeah. 

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia  34:58  

And Varun what about you you know, what do you really find the aspirational habit or the lookup to in Ghazal as a co-founder first. Yeah.

 

Varun Alagh  35:09  

So I think as a co-founder, she’s very patient and empathetic. And when it comes to dealing with people and, you know, managing her relationships, and I sort of lack that, to a certain extent, and especially patience and, and I do admire and aspire to have some of that sort of, you know, in me as well. And I still remember, during early days, right, we had to sort of, there were no agencies, nothing, right, so we had to talk to all of these influencers or bloggers or bloggers, whatever they were at that time and, and tell them about our story as to what we are doing and how things are shaping. And I remember Ghazal did about 700 conversations in three months, which were direct conversations selling and telling our story. So, that level of patience I surely don’t have,

 

Siddhartha Ahluwalia  36:16  

It’s amazing, you know, what, what can partners like? There has always been a bias that partners should never be co-founders. But you guys have demonstrated right? How can partners leverage each other’s strengths and grow such an incredible brand? This is the brand almost every millennial looks up to. Thank you so much Varun and Gazhal. You guys have been an inspiration. Even I and Nansi are co-founders of this 100x entrepreneur podcast and the fund as we look up to you ever, you know, there is any fight that, you know, these guys built such a huge brand, right? We guys can stick together to co-founders definitely as partners but co-founders too. 

 

Varun Alagh  36:56  

Super. Thank you so much for having us on the podcast.

 

Ghazal Alagh  37:01  

And thank you so much for those kind words. Means a lot. Thank you so much.

 

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