today we have a jth Goin Sati LinkedIn connection and co-founder and CEO of craved craved I was looking through your LinkedIn you have lots of experience I was wondering how would you classify your work and yourself in general I think of myself as an entrepreneur from day one when I started working I started off with being a computer sence graduate I loved coding I started getting into coding when I Started Loving games I used to love playing games and there was this day where I I saw this game online and I thought why cannot I
create a game and then I started coding and started creating games that's how I got into coding and in college I pursued that and from day one of my job I always wanted to do something of my own I would class CL ify myself as an entrepreneur of course in the early days and computer science graduate but then I got to data science and analytics I would say is like another classification and from there I went deep into data science Bas networks at the core I'm an entrepreneur but I love technology obviously and I believe
that we can make this world a much better world with the help of Technology that's how I would classify myself in a nutshell that's fantastic I personally am studying computer science as you may know I'm fourth year as well I think with technology we can make greater and help people have easier lives in general you think there will be with new ideas we can do that is there any ideas you have in mind I know the question will come up but in the last nine years you created co-founded three different companies yeah you're pretty active
in that space is there any more ideas Brewing currently great question sadra everybody has ideas right there's there's so much we can do I've had ideas from day I started thinking about how can we for example how can I be an entrepreneur right from the very simple idea of giving out books renting my books out renting my cycle bike out I had this very initial idea about even delivery way back in the date 4 2005 where that was not there of course I was too young to execute any of that but the idea that I'm
working on right now is something of course which I'm extremely excited about in the last four to five years I think life has become very hectic for everybody everybody is extremely busy with work and with activities and everything and cooking is becoming more of a hobby than a day in day out activity nobody really wants to cook day in day out for their households right if you think about any household like I was brought up in a household where my grandom would cook every single day and she loves it and she loves to take care
of family and everything I think that's really diminishing right now I don't think there are many households left who can say that as a as a statement and craved is basically the idea which solves that problem that okay you don't want to cook on a day in day out basis but at the same time you have all the needs that okay I need to follow this kind of diet I need to have this kind of ingredients I need to have it at this time and I need to be healthy so there's a huge gap between
these two problems and that's the Gap that craved is trying to bridge by letting you book home chefs will come to your house and cook in your kitchen that's the idea that I'm extremely excited about there are parallel ideas around that idea uh for example grocery shopping the last thing that I want to do on a busy days is go to Costco Walmart and pick up stuff it's the last I want to do that's where home shfs can also so pick your UPS scrav allows the home chefs to pick home groceries as part of the
monthly subscription so essentially three problems cooking groceries and the dishwashing or the cleanup all three are taken care right as a service that's the idea that is brewing right now we believe we are on a very large problem we very excited for that that's fantastic I definitely agree because I sometimes find myself just too tired or just don't have enough time realistically to cook anything and I go on Uber eat order something I think I don't order anything healthy in say as well if you have a chef coming in he knows my diet and everything
in that sense that's a Nob brainer absolutely yeah and the challenge with eating out is that you cannot do it more than once or twice a week then it BEC very expensive and it's not healthy if it's a single person like a student or a bachelor it's still okay right when I used to live in Austin I used to have a single Chipotle burrito bowl for two days right I could do that but I have a family now like four people and it's just impossible to do any of that right and it's not even healthy
and when you're younger you're not that healthc conscious and as you keep going to your 30s and Beyond I I think you become more health conscious you start seeing the effects of having unhealthy food Big Time 100% another question that I have craved is it a fully new idea do you guys have competitors what's the price point that you guys are going to I know Uber s food to home it could be expensive is there a price Advantage for maybe transferring to craved or how is that that's a great question let me tackle the first
question we do have some competition in terms of exact competition there are a few competitors who are coming up and this space is getting hot and there are companies who are getting funded in the similar model I would say there there are lots of other competition like exactly what you said Uber Eats is definitely a competition restaurants are a competition that's like the indirect competition why people would choose craved I think there are two or three reasons first reason I would say is that they have no time think about our best customers are families who
are working more than 10 12 hours a day they have a kid or two kids and they have no time to take care of cooking for them they are very happy to spend let's say $500 $600 in a month that's the average by the way for the craved service where they would get the weeks worth of food get uh cooked in about two sessions a week the home Chef comes to you on Monday creates meals for 2 days 3 days and then they come again on Thursday or Friday they cover the next 2 three days
this is the standard model of course we have customers who want it every day who are ready to pay extremely high premium they are paying well over $1,000 a month for the service and that's because they have that disposable income they feel that the need is very high for them where they would have a of five six people and they would also be very particular about their diet they would have a dietitian they will be like everyday here the portions that we we we will give you so they portion it accordingly to the home chefs
and they'll say hey make these dishes right I would say That's The Sweet Spot for us in terms of the kind of customers eventually as the supply side which is the home chefs become more and more I do see a point where the cost comes down and it becomes more affordable you can think of it almost like uber right in the very early days it was a very premium service Airbnb very very premium service but as it becomes bigger supply side goes higher and higher then I think the cost will come down eventually definitely I
feel that's the same with any kind of business as Supply increases price the internal competition to get the most Alliance yes exactly that's fantastic I wish you all the best on Cade it's only in Canada or is it North American right now right now we have launched in Toronto it's been 5 months we have been growing 50% month over month we have about 12K gmv and we are about to launch in the Bay Area end of August that's the plan it is applicable to any city in North America which is having a a population which
has high income and is extremely busy has no time right that's the kind of cities that we are targeting think about New York La Atlanta all of them you guys got to come to Vancouver man we we fit all those boxes absolutely Vancouver is definitely I think on the list for sure I mean Seattle Vancouver fantastic moving on as I mentioned earlier you founded two other companies in the past if you could briefly go over what they Sol and what was the purpose between between each company the first company was called dextr analytics we were
first time entrepreneurs we were understanding how this works how do we set up a business how do we acquire clients lot of firsttime learnings right for the first 3 4 years we had this idea that we could create an AIML company and we could then start Consulting and then come up with a niche where we could build a product that was the idea behind X2 and we did do that we worked with multiple Industries banking fin Finance uh fraud detection multiple different sorts of Industries and finally we came to this problem about R&D formulations that's
where it mofed into this company called a steering Labs which became a B2B SAS company where we worked with companies like proen gamble Pepsi cpgs to help them improve their formulations so that was a very interesting Journey we started from scratch we got into Y combinator which was a great turning point for us we raised our seed and series a grew along those lines we helped 15 of the top 20 cpgs to launch their products go to market faster reduce the the costing of their formulations improve their margins that is a great journey as well
that's fantastic you keep mentioning wi is it a group of friends that are doing all this or who is wi exactly that's a great question with craved I found my co-founder and CTO his name is is Avinash after 10 years we have a 17 years relationship and we were College mates I'll just slip in a quick story about this he was the best coder in our University at that point of time after four years we lost touch for about a few years and then I reached back to him through one of our common professors who
was common mentors who was a professor he connected us back and he joined touring and we worked together in touring for 3 years he led the engineering in ml and we almost instantly knew that we have to work together we have to create something amazing as a product and it's so coincidental that when I started having this problem for homecook meals like I came to Canada 3 years back my wife was pregnant that's how I realized that there is this huge need for homecook meals he went through the exact same story and he became a
dad a second time and he also had this need for homecook meals and we were talking about this in Legoland in Dallas we were just talking about this and there's this large group of women just ahead of us and they were discussing this in in a very heated manner so they were saying we need help with food we don't want meal kits how can we find home share we kept hearing that over 25 minutes and we both just looked at each other and we were like okay we got to do this so it was just
very clear that's such a cool story it was almost God signaling you guys to do this it truly was like that absolutely and I think we are on something very special hopefully the beauty is especially for people who crave authentic food one of the biggest challenges I have personally is I come from the southern part of India and it's not easy to find that kind of food in Canada in Toronto and in anywhere North America basically and even if I do find that in a restaurant one The Taste is not that great it is not
that authentic second it's very expensive and actually the only option for me to to have that food is to find somebody who is from that state or region and that person cooks that food for me as a good home chef from that place that's the only way I can access that food I've heard this so many times I was talking to somebody from the barrier and she's Chinese and she's from this place called nanging she has the exact same problem and there's only one restaurant in entire West Coast and that is in all the people
from Baya go to that one restaurant to have nanging food and I was like wow that makes sense that's personally very exciting for me because I can now try all kinds of authentic food from home shf that we are on boarding I came across two questions one you can maybe choose which chef to have and can you mix and match or do you have a contract with that Chef as of now we are focusing on the Indian Community just to start with the reason for that is because we know the community very well growth is
very easy we know we have referrals from both sides both home chefs and customers as of today we are focusing on that one Community but we have waiting lists from more than 15 different types of communities and everybody wants to come in a in the process of building a world-class product before we open the gates up for everybody to answer the second question as of now mostly there is one home cheers match to a customer that's a home Shi that goes for the month but we are now starting to see requests where they would say
hey can I see this other Home Chef on the platform can I have that person for this next week just for a session just to taste So eventually I see a model where I could just go into the platform as a customer I'll be subscribed to craved as a platform and then I could just choose a Mexican home Chef for this next session and then an end Chinese and then could be the J Japanese Chef eventually we not there yet but I do see that happening this could be a very big idea the execution is
hard as well and it'll take time patience doing it right is very absolutely going back to your second company can you tell us more about that one we came across this challenge that R&D teams have of launching products it takes a long time for companies to launch the laundry detergent takes about 15 to 18 months it's a repetitive process for them to test the product let's say the Marketing Group comes to them and says hey I need to launch a product they immediately know that okay if I have to keep the cost same and if
I have to launch a new one then I have to go through all this testing lab testing Consumer Testing and 15 different types of testing they essentially wanted a digital lab like during where they could just enter the information like their formulation information and be able to take decisions that can I launch this product without a lot of testing of course they'll have to do some testing because that is Regulatory and mandatory but at the end of the day can they just simulate or optimize basically and say that let me launch this product with minimal
testing based on all the information and data that I have right so that was the the idea and we implemented that across products like laundry surface cleaners and Home Care to personal care and food and beverages that's the way that it work how did these last two ideas that you had did they go to close or what exactly happened that you switched TR ultimately so the first company basically mofed into the second one because it is essentially the same team same co-founders and we continued that my ex co-founder is working still on touring labs and
we are at the series a stage we are planning to go to the series B stage we haven't got an exit but we are growing and we are doing really well and I would love to see during go to the next stage you have lots of experience entrepreneurship it's not easy to get into it especially starting it if someone young in their 20s in general do you have any suggestions from your vast experience of different companies that You' had yeah I actually started my first company at the age of 24 and I always knew that
I would be an entrepreneur I always wanted to be an entrepreneur I think from when I was very little like 6 seven years of age so I was very sure about this path the advice that I would give to 20 yearold Founders is start early as early as possible the reason is as you keep going through the paces in your life it becomes harder when you're in the 20s and when you don't have a lot of other commitments starting up is a great idea because do take a lot of effort you cannot go into it
half-heartedly you have to go into it with full energy and passion and it will take every last ouns of your energy to make it successful and it is not easy obviously everybody knows that 95% of startups fail so you need to have that mentality to make it work no matter what the earlier you start the better is my opinion of course getting relevant experience working in a startup upfront is a great way to get started for example aash joined Turing for 3 years and he got to know how does a startup work what works well
what doesn't work well and what can you expect so joining a startup is a great thing to do before you actually start your own company second I think you need to be very clear what your strengths are if you're somebody who who loves to go out and do sales or marketing then definitely you need to be in that role then you need to find your co-founder who is a technical co-founder and vice if you're a technical person who doesn't like to do sales and marketing but you love to build a product then you have to
find your CEO co-founder personally I don't recommend anybody doing a startup alone that's a different level of courage and craziness to do it alone it is very difficult of course season Founders could do it have to many many years and decades I've seen Founders do that and of course there is exceptional stories where solo Founders can pull it off but in my experience you definitely need an amazing co-founder so that's the basis of starting a company you need somebody who you can trust who you can work with very well and you have to enjoy the
journey it's not about the outcome eventually outcome will be there but it's going to be all about the journey the outcome is probably the last 5% without that 95% the outcome really doesn't matter if you've seen the best Founders they had their personal problem like Uber or Airbnb or stripe they've seen the problem they've lived the problem and they kind of said hey why is nobody solving this I have a unique Insight let me try solving this that's amazing too I highly recommend watching YC videos about this there is a lot of advice about how
to start up why to start up and why not to start up and all those things there's this resour resource called a startup School definitely join that that's really helpful interesting we're getting to the last stages of the podcast there will be two philosophical questions first one what challenges you I think when somebody says that you can't do it or when I feel that this is truly an impossible task that challenges me and I I almost feel like that is something worth doing or worth proving it wrong that really challenges me at a personal level
I remember this conversation with my grandfather I come from a family of doctors and engineers and he was extremely against me becoming a entrepreneur or business person and when I told him that he was completely upset and he told me you should never do it and terrible it's part of my story as an entrepreneur where I feel that to do truly extraordinary things you need to be driven against it you need to show that we can get this done it's a hard journey and that's it's not built for everyone's I think going through it you
learn a lot about yourself as well in this hard journey absolutely end of the day life is very short to do something which you don't like how many years do you have it's 10 15 20 years that's it it's a very short one and you have very few years to make amazing impact you have to pick what you love exactly and that Chels perfectly to the last question what do you think is the meaning of life that's a very deep question I always think about this like what are we doing and why are we doing
all this this stuff which you're doing I I would say uh it is about leaving some sort of a positive signature on this world when we are leaving when you're 60 6 and tomorrow is the day and you look back if you remove yourself from the last 60 years is there any difference in the world I hope there is a positive impact it can be very different kind of positive impact based on what you think it is and it's purely what you think it should be it's highly variable but as long as you are satisfying
that I think that is a good way to live your life end of the day meaning of life is to make sure that you are happy being happy I I think personally like enjoying every step of the way and not taking things for granted which comes back to just enjoying absolutely AJ it was fantastic meeting you and I wish you all the best in your business Endeavor I also tell everyone watching to check out craved awesome thank you so much sadra I really enjoy speaking with you I wish you all the best with uh your
startup and podcast as well thank you so much for having me thank you have a good rest of the day great thank you bye thank you bye
