IIT, IIM, Harvard Grads Helping India Get Healthy with Snacks

India if you look at numbers obesity diabetes lifestyle health issues we are up there your health condition is largely driven by what you eat so can you solve for those conditions using food the package food and beverage space is projected to be 886 billion category in 2026 I was clear that I wanted to build a brand in India now what had absolutely no idea there are enough people who are who have a need at least They're aware of a need feeling here I should probably get into something like that so it can't be solved by

one entrepreneur two entrepreneur 10 entrepreneur I would actually want a halam to come up with an unjunk version or a low version if you truly want to stick to your mission where you want to impact 100 million Indians the big boys need to step in the post Geo world is so different because lot of consumers are online and there is no information a Symmetry game what you're playing is essentially to get attention from the customer who already has an option we're going to go from a three trillion economy to a 10 trillion economy so middle

class is going to drive a lot of consumption so I want to start from consuming off first this is New India they want to look better they want to eat better they want to feel better to own healthy your protein on Amazon will require millions of dollars today if you Look at these keywords I own 60% of the search results on sui and zato that's why my cost of acquisition usually is very very less there is a growth in the category but you still can't find the unit economics or profitability if you are building for

the bigger purpose it doesn't matter how low is the low [Music] so this episode is uh in continuation to the work what we do at rain matter Health the idea is to talk to Entrepreneurs and innovators who are Building Solutions to help Indians stay healthy Eat Right Move more and sleep better so I have uh two amazing Founders who are building products and solutions to do exactly that I have aana Gotham the founder and CEO of Open Secret I have Sudan gangrade the founder and CE of di smart and low Foods welcome to the podcast

we spoke earlier and I was thinking that there's a lot to talk to you guys but at the same time there's a Lot which is common between both of you guys you went to I Bombay Howard business school so you went to I kakur uh I am Bangalore I canteen food was the reason I started eating non wage so so let me start with that um but actually it's my you know I come from indor and indor is really known for a lot of the snacking and food uh street food and otherwise right and what

Indians really tend to snack love snacking and which is I think probably the biggest driver for Why my first range of products were in the whole numen space I remember when I was starting off that time everyone was into bars and cold press juices and you know a lot of stuff and here I was trying to make some mixture and B and save so I think that's that's really my Genesis so IIT or chemical engineering I would say if you would have met me uh in the first year of I both of you would not

have recognized me I was uh while growing up uh I was a very very Overweight kid I was 3x my current size I'm not exaggerating of course that was a result of eating all those Bia and G and just sitting and eating all the junk snacks so definitely I think that junk had played a a big role in my life and I also realized you know honestly when I was in IIT I wasn't very focused about what I'm eating uh it was only when I was in the US um and I still remember I was

you know we used to sit in the classroom and then I had a seatmate Called Marcus and I was telling Marcus you know I'm going to the gym every single day why am I still gaining weight and he said hey Hana do you notice what you eat so I had two cant and two coffees because we used to have two classes so that was the time when I really started looking at what I'm eating and of course the visit to Whole Foods just seeing the world of healthy and the world of better for you and

I became very passionate about this space And my personal fitness journey journey also started from there yeah so let's um let's Deep dive let's unpack a lot the two different uh stories why you started where you are but I think the reason uh I was very interested to have this conversation was to essentially establish a toolkit for for uh let's say entrepreneurs who also want to go out and build uh you know I mean India if you look at numbers obesity diabetes any lifestyle uh you know health issues uh We are up there right and

nothing less than 100 150 million people in each of those lifestyle health issues so it can't be solved by one entrepreneur two entrepreneur 10 entrepreneurs and it will take probably hundreds of them or even more to help Indians stay healthy so the idea is to have this conversation to establish a toolkit uh in terms of what you guys have done in terms of your zero to one and perhaps now one to end Journey uh and also to tell the world uh The reason why you're doing this right so we'll start with open cigarette in simple

terms if someone has to come to Open Secret today what is that they can expect in terms of products yeah so at Open Secret we say our mission is to unjunk and we call it un junking snacking for every Indian family I personally believe that you know if you think about a eating habits in India our meals are very spiritual We Eat Fresh Foods we eat vegetables Dal rice then Where did the junk enter in our households we are not making roties of mea we are not using palm oil in a cooking so all of

this trans fat all these junk came in the form of packet snacks and that's how we became very excited that this is a big problem it was a personal problem I grew up eating all these junk Foods um in fact my sister-in-law my niece is also type 1 diabetic um and she also could not find a brand which could help her daughter And imagine a generation has passed and as a country it's not that we don't do Technology Innovation you know from 2G we are on a phone we have 5G so it made me wonder

why in a country which is known for Innovation is not able to solve for basic access so that's the motivation that's the mission and um and I think whatever snacking comes to your mind our hope is that we can give you an unjunk version with the promise of both taste and health okay so if let's say a 10-year-old uh or a 40-year-old has to come to you right now what are the key products they can expect in terms of the snacking category yeah so we actually play in three main verticles of snacking categories we decided

that we really wanted to play in the Deep snacking formats I think something similar to what you were mentioning that you know we believe that the niche categories or the smaller categories will take take a lot of time to grow in India and we Wanted to build a brand which resonates with both India and bat for a family in Bombay but also for a family in batur where I grew up so the most penetrated or the most love snacking verticals one is biscuits and cookies so we have products over there the second is the Savory

snacking which is the chips and the munches and the buas and then third is the chocolates and the brownies and we have products ranging from rupees 20 to rupes 400 500 across three main Vertical so essentially like you said covering the spectrum of the tier one to perhaps tier three and Beyond that's right that's right so Russian low foots uh what is that people expect when they come to low foods and unpack the family of Brands what you've got you just not one brand perhaps you have few more than few yeah I think the one

single thing that will connect everything is we are low cab so that's a philosophy that we've had from the day we conceptualize The company which is that everything that we will build is going to be low on carbohydrates um why and that's again coming from what you started off with in terms of uh India as the diabetes capital of the world and diabetes the whole Downstream impact is cardiac issues retinal issues renal issues right uh cataract the leading cause of cataract and glaucoma is diabetes so the whole premise was that India over indexes on carbohydrates

and that is What I want to solve for which is provide a very Indian kind of an option but in a low cab format and when I talk about low carab it doesn't necessarily mean a keto for M obviously one of our Brands skaters to that but it is everything that can be loc up so our core chassis remains uh Loca product so we have lines which are low car but high on fat low car but high on protein low car but high on fiber so in essence what we built is a low carab infrastructure

And then on top of it is what we build out various product lines for the specific audience you know when you're starting out a you went to academic institutions which are you know a grade maybe five odd years before the category didn't even exist there was a snack ing category and it's a massive category right uh but healthy snacks is not something which is already establish so when you start out uh what parameters and what factors are you looking is it More the market opportunity or is it more the problem I want to solve and

therefore there is a market opportunity because at the end of the day you also have investors on the cap table right so you're building not just for one stakeholder but multiple stakeholders yeah so here let me take a step back and tell you how did I think about un junking so when I was in IIT um I was very clear that I wanted to be in the consumer space I loved the consumer Space I loved Brands and that was the main reason for me also to join and work at Proctor and Gamble and I still

remember this was 2014 where I could see that consumers were demanding better products uh they were demanding better quality products but there was zero to no innovation done by the big companies it was still a very price point driven Market and I was clear that I wanted to build a brand in India now what had absolutely no idea and that's the reason Went to us did my MBA from Harvard Business School and then the entire us experience really shaped me and became and I became very very passionate about food but also you know you have

to put your business hat on and you started thinking about the numbers so if I have to just talk about the the size of the category the package food and beverages space is projected to be $186 billion category in 2026 snacking is 28% this the Indian we talking this is India this Is only India and snacking is 28% growing more than 20% cake or year on year so from a Time perspective huge market now the SO size of prices was solved and I was thinking about this category second thing is the right to win can

we win this category and if you think about snacking the trend is towards the better for you and of course Co has accelerated that Journey um before Co of course it might have taken a decade to be where we are Today but uh postco I still remember you know I was taking an Uber and I was taking a call with my team and of course we were talking about health and all those things and the Uber driver after the after my call says hey by the way I also take Vitamin C supplement now can you

imagine an Uber driver talking to you about vitamin C supplement and I became very curious and I said why and he said you know during covid there was so much information I also wanted to Build my immunity and you have to take it every 24 hours because the body flushes it out so now why did this happen of course there was this phenomena which was Co but the other movement which happened in India and which we should give credit to is Geo the post Geo world is so different because lot of consumers are online and

there is no information as symmetry you know a family in Bombay and a family in batur where I grew up now has the same Information so the the problem was earlier that Brands used to face that how can we talk to Consumers about a product about why you should switch I think that definitely that barrier has gone away because of social media and uh the time is there uh the consumer shift is there uh if you think about big incumbents their expertise is not to do the zero to one that's where New Age Brands come

in which are more closer to Consumers can Innovation can innovate Fast can cater to their needs uh with more agility so I I strongly feel that you know it's not a winner takes all Market uh 10 years down the line the Isles will look very different it has already started to look different if you go to dmart in Bombay you'll see open secret next to a big incumbent Brands and 10 years down the line I'm sure there will be many more new age Brands soan coming to you I mean of course another common Beyond IIT

is both of you Went to B schools but something common in B schools is to kind of you know draw the Playbook of Tam and Sam and opportunity but also P yeah and I heard last there was one more enough of them yeah but you've also got an unusual background I don't know how many people would know about it you also were running a nutrition uh coaching company before right so how much of that uh engineered what you're doing today or if at all it did and what Prompted you to go out and build in

this category yeah I think uh that was really the reason why I built why I mean why our products are the way they are right so before before low Foods I was running a company called lean science with a co-founder and uh it was all about offering you know diet consultation nutrition consultation that's where I really understood the science of the body nutrition in Fair bit of technical depth and that's why if you see the Product lines that we have I mean you spoke about the fact that you know there are these large segments and

there is a healthier for you version and an opportunity there I vent it from the consumer side so while there is this horizontal part that there is the segments I looked at it in terms of what are the problem statements that are there because um you know diabetes for example 100 million 110 million and another 120 million obesity is about 11% Indian males and 14% Indian women are obese um and cardiac and all of those things they're innumerable medical conditions and for me it was can we provide a product line to solve for those problems

so which is why our product lines are built around solution um so if you look at the Spectrum of how the foods and health foods works out you know there is the regular Foods then there is a healthier for you version and then they will move to you know home Remedies kind of Aura and all of those things and then they move to the functional foods where you are solving for a particular functional problem and then eventually you move to neutraceutical and then Pharmaceuticals is the final you know if you look at the Spectrum from

that perspective so we played we play in the functional food space because we said look there are these large problems and can you because food like you also mentioned right food Finally decides most of what your health condition is largely driven by what you eat so can you solve for those conditions using food and that's how then I for me it was more about there are these large 100 million 200 million uh segments which are facing a certain issue and can my products solve for that issue so that's why if you look at it we

are more solution driven in terms of our foods are like we've got a diabetic range for that reason right to your Question on why we have Brands because the diabetic condition requires a certain way to solve for it I can't take the same product and put it for everyone similarly a protein problem uh will need to be solved in the way in terms of a household and protein from that perspective and similarly obesity has to be solved in a different manner if you're solving for the problem and then of course there is a larger part

which is healthier for you when you're trying To upgrade it so for me the time came from the size of the problem statement which are very very large in India for both of you I think this is relevant that the category what you guys are building as such uh from SKU point of view the category existed like people would eat buia they would eat namkin they would eat M you know those categories are still there it's an alternative of the existing SKU right it's an healthier Al alternative and I'm Sure you know you will Deep

dive into how they are alternative my question is that this is not a category where the proposition to the user is price it's a category where you're telling them why it's important to you and therefore education becomes even more important you're not selling the feature but you're selling why you should consume and there's a benefit to it right and when you get into a category like this which is marred by Very big heavy lifters right you have the hams of the world and pretty much all the big guys of the big onair I mean these

are the old school which are more relevant in the tier two tier three but in the tier one you have all the pngs and NLS and everyone there right so when you get into that category uh what is that priority which you think has to be the narrative for a product like this is it price is it like I said the feature that this is better than this or is it Generally educating the audience why they should consuming an alternative what worked for you yeah so I think firstly I would say that I feel very

privileged that I'm part of this part of India shining or India building know we're going to go from a 3 trillion economy to a 10 trillion economy a lot of growth is going to come from consumption I remember when I was at Proctor we used to talk about top 1% driving uh a majority of the consumption And now it's going to be hexagon so middle class is going to drive a lot of consumption so I want to start from consumer first that you know these this consumer is a different consumer this is New India they

want to look better they want to eat better they want to feel better so let's start from there and there are also signs in other categories you know we all watch movies now we have multiplexes initially they were not we were talking about Ola and Uber right Initially they were not and you can see how Indians are demanding better value now coming back to food is Health a value that consumers are seeking absolutely yes and it's not not just a Metro phenomena UH 60 to 70% of our sales come from tier 2 and tier three

so that also has to be very clear that it's both for India and for bat so Indian consumers I strongly believe are very very Vol value conscious they I will not call them price conscious of course you Need to have products at the right price point so that there can be trials uh there is accessibility all those things of course we can talk about when we talk about GTM but the major important question that we need to answer is Health a value that people are looking for and the answer is absolutely absolutely yes now coming

back to your original question we don't have to create the knowledge and I'll tell you why the categories where I'm present in Whether it's your biskuit which is full of mea whether it's your chips which is fried and potato whether it's a nen which is again fried and made with palm oil when you were eating those products you knew that this is great tasting product but this is not good for me so in our case it was a very Supply constraint Market where the big companies failed to give them the product to a certain section

who were looking for better for you products and We are actually just coming and Bridging the supply and in fact that's the name why Open Secret we are not here to tell you what you should be eating what is good for you our thesis is that consumer knows what's best for them they want health and taste and we are there to bridge that Supply Gap in fact I'm a a big fan of Novel and he said that older the problem older the solution the problem of um you know this eating has it's pretty long pretty

old and the Solution also existed so it's not complicated it's not super complex and we just want to keep it simple and give people what they're looking for so the better for you uh example what aana brought in right so when you look out uh to go out and tell customers your reasons of existence right is it for those people who are conscious about their health the way they want to be in the future or is it for someone who has a clinical problem so do you look out as A market an opportunity where people

are already intrinsically motivated and conscious or there has to been intervention where they're forced to look for an alternative yeah so the the to your original question in terms of you know right now we're too small to get into the category education part right mean we can't create that entire movement of educating people why they should buy these kind of products so I think our given the sh size we're Talking about hundreds of millions of people there are enough people who are who have a need or at least they are aware of a need and

who may be actively seeking out or passively feeling here I should probably get into something like that so that's really the slice of the TG that we looking at but given the size sheer numbers we talking about that's a very large TG so it has to start from a place where people are already looking or at least aware that they should be Looking for a solution so we start from there uh not someone who we have to educate that you know this is a solution that you should be going for now within that like we

said you know um we since we are going after problem statements be it obesity or be it diabetes or be it protein deficiency within that you have to find the customer who's actively looking for that product um actively or passively and then often you have to tell them that look this is also a Solution that is available and uh you know we obviously have Staples but we also have so we have snacking but we also have Staples we also have deserts because you need to cover the entire Spectrum I mean if you're being low car

you can't be having you know Loca biscuits and then in the night be going you know overboard right if you're diabetic you are diabetic through the day so which is why the solutioning that we have to provide has to cover all the Me locations and which is also the reason why we also now have Cloud kitchens so uh we build the largest network of loc up Cloud kitchens for that reason because you not need to cover all the meal locations otherwise you can't uh just take care of snacking alone I'll get to how you're trying

to broaden uh your GTM to it uh we spoke about India being a value cont ious uh economy right uh but we are also uh price sensitive but we are also subset Of value is price and taste like snack uh de facto it should taste well and that's the reason people grab their hand onto a snack right they should feel their crunch whether it's the Savory or whether the sweet it should feel that they're eating that for a reason uh now both of you don't come from a foot science background right so an entrepreneur who

comes from that background trying to build in into a category where these are extremely an Important factor how do you go about and build that Mo around you where you have to eventually build a product which like I said has to taste well so how do you go about and build those strengths so I think the answer it may sound very cliche but just follow your consumer and I'll tell you how how we do Innovation um we have um our own in-house manufacturing um and we call it that this is a 0 to1 uh plant

and of course the beauty of being a d2c brand That you have a direct access uh to Consumers and at Open Secret whenever people ask me or you have great tasting products who's a chief Innovation officer um and I said it's basically has been the consumer the mothers mostly and what we do um we will take a Jun category which is a big category which uh and when I say big category it means High fre like biscuit biscuit penetration in India is 99% almost every household eats a biscuit almost every Single day of course you

are eating lot of sugar a lot of mea so we know it's a problem for families then what do you not like and I think like an engineer so I the UN junking isse engineering it's it's like an equation in my head I would say Okay taste you want you want to remove something which is Mea okay let me remove it what is nutritious for you they said oh nuts is good so we added nuts and we call it nutty cookies then they said oh but nutty cookies have Chocolate I also want to dip it

in the chai then we said said okay taste is good we removed mea and we added millets so that's our Millet biscuits which you know is also a little bit Savory taste so you can have it with your chai now this concept came very backward from the consumer now to it's it's so simple that okay taste but it takes a lot of iteration like a Kaizen process and the way we do it is um we will make these products we have an in-house R&D team in Our own plants then we will give it to our

d2c customers every single day we're going to call the customers and get feedback on the texture on the taste on everything and we run like a Kaizen process you know change this temperature change this parameter and sometimes you're able to crack the recipe pretty quickly sometime it takes a lot of time so there is no shortcuts here you really have to keep giving to the customers keep hearing back from them and then This really helps us at least in nailing a product which we feel is as tasty as the incumbent brand and I can't agree

more with you you have to taste exactly like an incumbent brand it can't be 99% if you truly want to become uh a brand which is in the household people are eating it every single day it has to be great tasting product and by the way it's not just India it's across the globe you know for Cheerios the biggest launch for them was Chocolate peanut butter Cheerios so across the globe people want to eat tasty even people who say we are very health conscious if you open their kitchen you will find the great tasting products

so that is something which you absolutely cannot ignore so once you establish the taste you know U so I also realize that in the in the world where we live today I think the biggest problem is not the lack of information but the wrong information the Misinformation so it's it's okay to surround yourself with people uh you know who don't have an answer to your question but it is not okay uh that people are giving you the wrong information and today even if you I mean it's beyond your control because the era will there are

you know empty number of people whose job is to give you the wrong information and therefore it just becomes more confusing as part of that education bit we were talking for a Brand to go out and stand out to say that this is the reason or rather I can validate and claim what I'm trying to claim right so in a healthy food category in your category solution you say it's a low calve food you say it's a high protein food because everyone does doesn't have an access to go and do a lab testing before they

pick uh know 40 bugs 50 Buck product right so how does a lay man go out and understand that what the brand is claim is actually there so Um it's a lay man so I the reason I say that is because a lot of people just assume that if a brand is available on the shelf or it's being advertised what they are saying must be true at one level so which is why most of the people go by connotations so for example if you call it digestive or you call it baked or you call it

one roasted they'll assume that it is healthier right so at one level they use these connotations to do that then of course there is a more Evolved person who's saying I want to validate that claim right uh and that connotations is where a lot of the big brands have traditionally played the game in terms of uh you know what they're offering versus what they're claiming and you know making sure that they are the um but um when it comes to you know uh more evoled customer and which is obviously the first set of people that

we would want to work with they require results so for example all Our products we publish our lab test reports for every single product uh we test the products continuously so like the Consumer Testing is there I because I'm in the functional food space I'm continuously testing it with a blood glucose monitor uh you know it's it's it's a constant um and then of course like for example the diabetic range you know we are the only one Brands so we've actually gone ahead and done a clinical trial so we've taken it to the extreme Like

the way Pharma companies do drug testing we've used the same clinical research organizations to test it and prove that it works for diabetics now that is really the you know the way we would solve for the problem because we believe we are solving a specific functional or a medical issue so for us testing goes up to that level in terms of validating the product e efficacy so that's how we look at it like there is results there is testing there is Consumer feedback and then of course there is third party uh verification so for a

lay man uh when they walk into a retail store or on the website they're not able to see or understand whether there is a clinical trial done or there is a testing done right so how do they make up make up the mind this isation so for example we launched our for example our cookies right so we talking about diabetic friendly this that all of people don't get it the moment we added The word digestive people got it because digestive today if you look at the diabetic for him the option is multigrain or digestive that's

the if you look at most of the DI diabetics that's the they if they're not having your uh standard glucose biscuits that's the closest equalent that they have from a biscuits perspective but it's also scientific right digestive fiber fiber will control your glucose Spike so but but you're right I think that chain I'm Not sure if the lay man would understand yeah so they work with connotations but that's where like I said you know uh while something is digestive but the question is digestive there's a government uh there's a government Norm in terms of what

uh so in the case of fiber you know you need to have so much fiber in the case of protein you need to have 10.8 gram and then you can call it high protein or you can call it high fiber and consequently digestive so a Lot of the brands may stick to that but whether so if you notice there'll be fiber but some of the digestive biscuits actually have MAA so there is obviously you know the connotation in terms of ke while you are meeting the criteria but is that obviously it's better than what is

there but does it meet the original uh purpose that the brand and the product is built for so that's where I think more evoled customers come in but what I've seen that most of the category Works on connotations and the consumers generally trust that okay if they're saying this thing uh must be better I and just if I could double click you know we need to understand how consumers shop and food on a spectrum of low involvement and high involvement will be towards low involvement and why is that because food is high frequency you're shopping

so many times you're shopping a lot more items so and I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing but it Is a low involvement you will be and maybe like a car would be a supremely high involvement category maybe like a serum that you want to apply on your face somewhere in the middle but food inherently is low involvement category that goes back to what you were saying that you have to make food intuitively healthy for Consumer so that's it's easy for them to decide so in both in I operate in

Staples also that's my primary business so just imagine if There snacking is low involvement and Staples is extremely low involvement yeah so I want to get an outlier uh you know consumer uh cohort here right I in both your cases you have sqs which are fairly age agnostic right from five 8 10 year-old who can grab a cookie or a chocolate up to whatever 60 70 plus who can have a Bia or you know Savory whatever the way you tell what the product stands for and why it stand for kind of varies right for that

10 year Old 15y old kid who got that pocket money and just runs to our store and say that let's go with my two friends because we played a game and we want a chocolate or a cookie how do that audience understand that I should probably not grab that ABC brand which is perhaps not healthy but this brand which is conscious to me how do you guys get to that uh audience so your question is how does the communication change as per The Shopper Yeah because the SQ the product range same but the consumer is

weing right but you're solving for both for the 10-year-old kid he doesn't perhaps today has the Nuance knowledge that it's low on GI or low on cholesterol and this is low sugar and good for me he just needs a chocolate yeah so okay I think I would say that you know as a founder also need to be humble enough to accept who we are serving and if you ask me will the entire India buy my chocolate I think The answer would be no so if this is the entire chocolate vertical this is the entire biscuit

vertical this is the entire Savory vertical of course there are certain segment of the people price is the only criteria and they will go maybe for that kid if he has 5 rupes pocket money and if he wants to eat a chocolate maybe that kid would just go for the biggest chocolate biggest looking chocolate we are serving a subsection who wants to Eat uh better and who wants to have a great tasting chocolate as good as any other chocolate so what we can do as a brand is to give them a reason to believe on

why this chocolate is uh is better for you so we would be relevant for that section and that's why we we want to uh have this positioning of unjunk so you will we will have unjunk chocolate we will have un un junk biscuit we will have unjunk buia we will have unjunk brownie everything is about Un junking and we are talking to that consumer base who really values that of course we need to launch at a price point so it becomes even more accessible to more and more people but it is definitely to that consumer

base who wants to eat better uh let's talk about positioning right I mean India is um an extremely aspirational economy right we are looking up to someone for doing anything right whether it's Health whether it's Profession the spirituality whatever we always looking up to someone and therefore chasing what they are doing right and therefore a lot of Brands historically and even today would essentially get an aspirational figure to endorse their brand how do you decide uh at what phase of your growth that someone adds value because this is a category where uh like I said

I mean you can get a you know A-list uh Bollywood C you know Cel or a sportsman and Therefore it should resonate well right so in a category where you trying to tell people you should eat healthy when do you decide as an entrepreneur that you should have someone come and Endor and how do you weigh whether that's working for you or not so um one is um uh you know when are you ready to ramp up so that's really the thing when You' got the product Market fit in place you're confident that the product

is now accepted you've done enough of Iterations you the product has been there in the market for some time so that you have fine-tuned the product the packaging the communication all of that and then when you're ready to ramp up that's when you would want to see if you want to have someone come in to really amplify the messaging because in the end the endorser is doing that which is to amplify your messaging in our case the way we were looking at the endorsing was not necessarily as a typical brand Ambassador so it is more

about because we are operating in a category or we are relatively new brand so is there just something for people to say okay you brand that's the equivalent right because rather than say this is a homegrown brand or a boutique hand right you just want people to at least um you know obviously packaging conveys that in one uh key manner but you still want people to say compy product and that's really fundamentally why you would want To have a face associated with it in some forms of people assume that there is some bit of uh

credibility and some bit of um uh you know um rigor that's gone into the product so that would but you bring in at the time when you're ready to ramp up in Ence how does that go out back in your playbook that it has worked like getting an celebrity endorsed how do you kind of figure that out I think conversions is what we see in so you know an influencer posting can Only give you one small bit right but in the end when you look at the conversion rate so how many people came and then

finally converted that would be where the the face so to speak has made the difference because some people who are staying back on your brand and then clicking through and then saying okay let me just see it's not that the top of the funnel is what is going to go up it's basically you know you're getting people to stay explore your product and Then convert it so that would be the key metric when you're looking at from a somebody who's coming in and putting a face against your brand you know one thing common between both

of your brand other than the sqs I see is that you're also giving counseling and consultations to your users right you have a program where you're you know allowing users to come and get access to your nutritionist and counseling them and so do you right I don't know if both of you knew about Each other's brand but let me tell you for that yeah so we I do my research right so that's common between both of you that's very very unusual right it's a category where like I said it's impulse decision making right I just

want to grab something to eat so I just go out right why is that important how's that worked for you so I would say again you know that Insight came because I do a lot of customer calling myself and you sometimes really need to understand the Why and the why and the why and I was very interested in why people are eating healthy what is the reason why they want to eat healthy I think the answer is something which we were discussing obesity it is such a huge problem in India and it's also causing a

lot of um health effects uh because of that so and and also I realized that you know you need to provide a very holistic solution to the customer if you truly want to solve their problem so they said that You know the reason I want to eat healthy snacks is because I also want to ensure that on my weight loss journey I want to maintain a certain weight or I want to lose a certain weight um then we said how can we really help the consumer to attain the goal that they are looking for and

that's the reason we brought in nutritionist and we said okay if you this is exactly what you want to achieve and it also requires a certain Personalization and I think we were also discussing that just changing one thing will not change the entire output you really have to think about the entire day what are the holistic approach so for example you know even how do you start your day you know are you eating nuts in the morning which is high fat can help you monitor your glucose level uh the meals that you're eating um and

of course the snacks the choices of the snacks um maybe the tea that you can Have so we thought we can really help the customer in really delivering on the goals that the customer is looking for so this is only available on a d2c website and we just started with the weight loss because that was one of the biggest problem that customers came to us with so it was very customer backwards what were your because you also run a similar program yeah so very clearly because um you know um when people are going through the

Journey They have a lot of questions so the first thing would be in terms of how do they manage how do they incorporate the product into their lifestyle uh even though it's a it's an existing product equivalent and the second is inherently when someone's starting a journey they have a lot of questions and then they're very concerned that whether this will help meet the goal when will they meet the goal is this sufficient do they need to do anything else so you need to Address those questions and you can only address that much through text

and through you know videos that are already there so in essence it is to at one level just give them the Assurance also that look and having a nutrition is really UPS The credibility you know when they know that you know somebody on the other side has a technical knowledge about it and that also adds to The credibility and also it helps them to run the journey and know how to Incorporate the product lines I mean uh often people who are not as involved you know it's just they looking for some kind of a thinky

am I doing it right yeah so uh you know for both of you guys uh although you are a direct to Consumer brand but there's more to it in terms of how you operate for Open Secret you are not just a destination for the products what Open Secret is uh uh making and selling but uh you also give shelf to other brands right so what's the Narrative behind that is it a Marketplace model why just not focus on your brand uh how do you go about making those decisions this is the question I had for

you as I'm going ask you after this yeah so let's let's let's let's have all the conversation right you know I actually this this just goes back to the mission that I started with I still remember when I took that oneway flight from Boston to Bombay uh the first question people asked me was visa And I said no I do have hmen B but I want to come back and create a difference and the mission I started with was I really want to unjunk for every Indian family and um and as I was thinking and

I was was building on this journey I think couple of things which which I realized that India is a very diverse taste palette market and if this table is like $30 billion uh health and wellness space can one brand own the entire thing can one brand serve the Entire taste palette of this country absolutely not this is something which we are running as an experiment that can be become a world of unjunk where if you want to go to a trusted destination where you will only get unjunk products and when we say unjunk it is

not just like a marketing word it means five promises which we will never break so there will be no mea there will be no trans fat no palm oil no artificial preservative no artificial color and all The products that we on boarded which were there on our website um will also go through this un junking test so this was just from a very again consumer backward approach can we give them this One-Stop destination towards all unjunk world so isn't that uh builds more inward pressure for you because now although you have created a certain Persona

around what the brand stands for that also has to apply to the other brands who are coming on board to your Platform right everything what you stand for that certain brand also should stand for in terms of their creation process their existence why they are there so how do you map that template out that everyone should also have the same uh thought process so firstly see I would not say that we are anyone to say this is what everyone should be doing we came up with these five promises because when we spoke to customers these

are the five things that bothered them the most we Said okay this is a promise that we are making in any of the products that you buy from Open Secret you will not find so any partner that we bring on board should also adhere to these promises because this is again very very consumer backwards but also our main Core Business right now because we are so early on this journey is to build Open Secret the brand the platform is a very open Secret trust spased platform you know a lot of people who who trust Open

Secret they come and they bought all these other brands because they know that you know given because of the affiliation so it's an extension of um what we are building so it's extremely important to keep building the distribution muscle of the brand and then that distribution muscle is something that we going to offer to other brands as well but the focus um is definitely to keep building this Open Secret portfolio when we met first and When you were telling me what you were building my first reaction was I'm absolutely confused because you have so many

Brands and you have so many different gtms right uh why is that approach uh there multiple Brands you have got and you have multiple ways of uh having that touch point to Consumer so uh how much of that is easy and how much of that is hard at a stage where you are right now so it's it's hard um so we have a mother brand now which is The low Foods mother brand and then we have the sub Brands which are specifically catering to the function problem statements talk about those Brands yeah so for example

you have I mean you have the keto range which is specifically talking to the keto folks we have a low carb range which is talking to someone who wants to just overall cut down carbs we have a protein range and then we have the um we have the DI smart range right like I said the Core remains low carbohydrate food products what we talking to and building forest for those individual segments one is addressing obesity one is addressing protein deficiency one is addressing diabetic issues um the thing with with having a single product or a

single brand alone talk to them is that people have very limited you know mind space for brand so they'll say okay this is a this is a medical brand or a so this is not for me right so people just have a Very so which is why you have to build out much more stronger sub Brands which are talking to that particular customer about their problem statement very clearly so that there's a connect that gets established and that's the reason why the sub Brands need to exist um and as strong sub Brands not as just

an extension of the product line so that's the reason why we had to build the architecture in that in that manner so what works like instead of so there are Two options either build out the brand by yourself so in your case you could either partner with someone who is doing protein and you stick to loow up uh but you chose that that's the two areas where you want to build up but in your case you opened the platform so that what stage do you decide that do I build it myself because I have the

trust or I because that's not an area which I perhaps have an expertise I could rather partner because the audience is same I I Don't think it's a function of expertise you could always build more uh categories right your original goal is not to build a platform it's it's essentially to build a brand which stands for healthy snacking or healthy eating right so how do you decide that so uh two things first I think it really depends on what you really want to solve a customer is Seeking a trusted platform and the reason why this

trusted platform is needed going back to a previous Conversation which is the second point which is a low involvement if you go and Shop on zapto or if you go and Shop on Amazon it's very difficult for you to figure out this is healthy this is better for you or this is not and you just don't have the time and the energy or you don't want to spend that much time and energy when you're shopping for food and we were thinking can we simplify uh that for the customer so that this is a trusted destination

they Can come buy whatever they want and they can check out so that's the reason that this is a world of unjunk which we are seeing a vertical platform which can exist can it scale wellknown fact that India over 80% of the population doesn't get their protein uh intake of the day 60% people are deficient of protein right how do you decide for you specifically because although you said that I mean there is a common pallot between the customer choices it's a Different audience right there's a particular audience who only want low up there's a

particular let's say very active fit Enthusiast audience who wants high protein when you decide all these categories it could be keto keto or or it could be something else how do you decide that that's the category I want to go out and build for so there are two parts one is a category of products that we want to solve for and then the segments that we Want to solve for um in terms of segmenting uh it's very straightforward um um low Cav has a direct impact on a lot C on a lot of conditions right

uh it's not like for example green tea that you know you're having green tea three times a day and multiple times and you're hoping something is happening inside and you know hopefully it's good for you you're losing 10K yeah so but the point is you know that's along with a lot of other things but you Don't you can't really measure green te particularly impact is coming as against I thought it's a placebo I still think it's a placebo yeah yeah I mean so I mean people have different reasons if you are replacing your CH chai

with green then there will be some how it works is I mean whether it's for antioxidants or whether it's for replacing the sugar that's different ways in which it's working but you can't really measure that um cutting down Carbs has a direct impact I mean it's scientifically proven you do that and you the moment you slash the carbs you know obesity sugar levels and lot of Downstream I mean hypertension all of that starts to get addressed as you maintain a low Carin I'm not even getting down the keto path I'm just talking about cutting down

carbs in general and that's the stated mission of a company we want to reduce the amount Of carbohydrates India consumes to 50% today a typical Indian food U uh you know is around 70 to 85% depending on what you're eating and which household you are are if that one single thing you know that one macro comes down to 50% we believe will have far more impact on health than a lot of other food habits because fundamentally that impacts everything I mean uh your sugar levels and then eventually Downstream a lot of the medical conditions so

for us that is Really the single piece cutting down cars can impact what all conditions and that's really the way we choose that which conditions we want to go after in terms of categories uh like I said you know we are going after uh you can't you can't be you know one and at 4 400 p.m. and be somebody else at you know 7:00 p.m. so for us the idea is that you have to cover all the uh me locations but we are solving it not by going after Supplementation as a way so we are

saying that look everyday Foods needs to be handled and you know just exactly the way that they're also looking at it which is um and that's why our stated mission is that we are transforming everyday Foods that's fundamentally what we are doing that rather we are saying everyday food should be transed ative that's the way we are approaching it rather than you know the other way around and that's fundamentally what We're doing everything that you have every day you know that's that's what we want to create a Loca version for that's the simple way to

look at it so th those that helps us choose the categories so you know you're having Roti subi Dal chavel so you know you would go with that you're having numen mixture biscuits and you're having some desert so you know you would want to build a Loca equalent of all of them yeah I want to jog back to your individual Background said both of you um have a background in working in companies uh which were consumer driven right in your case PNG General Mills you were in Ola uh both of you have go got out

and build penders right uh if someone has to go out and build a consumer driven brand today a cpg brand or d2c brand right uh how important is to have that experience already uh having done that or if you're just first principal thinking about consumer that also can be your anchor And a strength to build out a company today what what weighs more I'm a big believer that you know there is no set template uh and in fact I would start by saying that you either like you neither even educational background you don't need that

um and a lot of people ask me about IIT and HBS and I'm sure I am it's neither necessary nor important to get these big brands on your resume it's also I personally believe and I think everyone has their own P perspective on This um it's completely okay if you haven't worked in big consumer companies for me I thought a certain way uh and that's why I chose that path it's extremely important uh to really optimize for what you want to learn and I'll be very honest you know I the reason I went to IIT

and the I went to Harvard Business School for me you are chasing brands on your resume coming from a very small city um I had this external validation seeking mechanism And in my head and all of these things happen but of course I'm also very grateful for these institutes because the biggest benefit is you're surrounded by the smartest people and they change your thinking and they change your uh behavior all of those things so I think life is all about compounding and when you surround yourself by amazing folks it has a ripple effect but to

answer your simple question there are definitely benefits in working with big Consumer companies and that's the reason why I work there because you can learn about being consumer first you can learn about job to be done you can learn about all these Frameworks but to be honest just follow your consumer they will teach you what you really need to learn and I'm hoping that numbers is something that you love because um if you're building a brand if you're building a business and when we talk about marketing of course there is an art but It has

to be about science it has to be about numbers whether it's a CTR whether it's a hook rate whether it's a hold rate you really need to be very strong with with your numbers uh so these are the two things I think follow your consumer be very good with numbers and the third thing which I would add at least which has worked for me and I'm just saying with my own personal experience with a big disclaimer build for a purpose because Building a consumer brand or building any business it's just so hard and then there

are these low phases and I believe if you don't if you're not doing it for a very stronger why at least for people who have a plan B it's very easy to give up and go there but if you are building for the bigger purpose it doesn't matter how low is the low because you know why you're building it you will be at it so and I will just use the word resilience so if you follow your consumer if you Know your numbers if you have resilience and a purpose I think that's just enough basic

so this is like basic things that you need I mean both of you have kind of Trail the path of 0 to one and now one to n um uh and this could be an unpopular opinion but you know most of the time I've seen is if you're building a quote unquote tech company it just easier to hire people and give them a moonshot idea which is not visible uh because everyone wants to chase a Moonshot idea here the moonshot idea is that we are we are going and taking on the big people right I

mean the nestl of the world the pngs of the world right and and you also need an Hands-On expertise someone who's built distribution someone has built supply chain someone has built marketing right so although you as a Founder can come back with the you know the ingredient of build for a purpose uh how do you go out and build a team because those guys Would have you know B School grads uh you know who are figuring out you know every small jobs but you can't get to have uh maybe not now uh very soon yes

to hire those big guys right so uh how do you how do you balance that out yeah so um I mean since we both Engineers so one and also mbas yeah I'll talk about the engineering part uh you know there's a there's a quote by I mean this video by Sam Alman in terms of you know as Founders uh I Mean we talk about never give up and resilience and all that right he talks about he frames it in a very engineering way which is you need to be at least three or four sigmas you

know uh in terms of resilience to be able to pull this off because like you said you just have to be at it right and then eventually um to taking on to her question if the time is large enough or if your product has a very strong product Market fit you have the Resilience and you stick to it you will eventually figure out a way and you will find your uh uh eventually the size and scale that you're looking for but obviously you can't do it alone and that's where the team comes into play and

I think uh for early stage companies um it doesn't matter if you're a tech company or not U the purpose absolutely is the single piece that attracts people and it will attract those kind of people for you because there will always be Some people who are uh I mean everyone is both Purpose Driven and mercenary driven but uh there will always be uh people be the life stage they at or be just the personality they are at where they will say that this is more important for me or that is more important for me and

uh as long as you are communicating that every single time uh like whenever I have interviews even with the junior most people I just even if it's a five or 10 minute uh interview All I talk about is this is what we are doing and then it automatically has to the person has to connect with it to be able to to uh come back and then and and then once those people come onto your team and as long as you're sticking to the purpose you're saying the same thing consistently uh people just get driven by

that so it's often I think very underrated in terms of how much purpose drives the team also and helps build the team as well uh game what you're playing Is essentially to get attention from the customer who already has an option and I was giving a reference of the tech of the software world where mostly people don't have an option I mean it's mostly a new product you know built from scratch you want your product to be at the same aisle or at the same shelf of of the competition here right you you want your

product to have the same branding and the marketing presence as what others are doing but those others Have maybe of course the money but also people to do it uh and you can't compromise because you also want to build out so how do you go out and pick those people because this also becomes not just the junun or the you know the dry but it's also very Hands-On exper and these people have options right they can go and work with the largest of the consumer brand companies so why would they want to go out and

you know join a company which is perhaps not having the Shelf life right now a lot of people by Nature want to create an impact and they also want to do something large I mean that's something you you just need to tap into that when you're talking to the person everyone wants to create a mark for themselves and in terms of the work that they've done for so just the fact that you're going against an incumbent or you're trying to establish something that has a larger purpose a lot of people get attracted to that So

Eventually you know obviously out of the 10 people that you're talking about two people only May connect with that but they are all you know when you at the stage that we are it's those two people that becomes far more important I think just to add to that I think the reason why people join any early stage startup is for The Learning Experience you know that's a famous line from Cheryl Sandberg when you are joining a rocket ship don't ask what role just join that Rocket ship and I can tell from my own experience I

worked in big companies but the kind of transformational experience I had both professionally and personally today I was talking to someone I said you know for me what startup has taught me has just changed me as a person completely and I don't think if I would have worked in any big company for about 15 20 years I would have this learning so learning it's an exponential curve and that is what attracts people who Really want to a of course create an impact but B also wants to learn at a much faster pace and they find

uh maybe the corporate life not that exciting everyone can't manage a boss so every yeah corporate life and they actually come looking for so you still have a boss even in a Statum you have a boss you will have a boss but like for example you will not wait for five approvals to change a spoon TOA left May on a big billion dollar Brand Packaging Per right that's you don't want you're like let's just fast in startups in fact the Lesser that you talk to the boss the better it is usually the point is if

they are able to solve for it and then they come to you with the solution that's what really as a Founder because you have such limited bandwidth right you don't have five people who are you know specialists in each of these space so you know you just have those little time and if someone has soled for it Thought through it and come to you with two options that are there that's really what you're looking for a common question to both of you what's the what's the one thing which people mostly misunderstand about Open Secret I

think a lot of people because the name is such Open Secret uh they find it very fascinating that it's a food brand so I would I would say that um that uh and that's the reason now we're saying Open Secret India Jun Duan so that you're Very clear in we very clear that we are a food brand don't confuse it with other secret brands in your case I mean you have multiple Brands so what what what is the one thing you finding people misunderstanding no I think because we started off in a certain place we

started off as a you know focused on a specific audience so there is obviously an association with that audience but today I think as we are expanding our view Then you know just making people understand that look we are a larger company that I think is the biggest uh right now job for us you know one of the Hot Topics which we you know which most commonly asked not specifically in the health space but of course you know consumer space is um uh amount of burn what companies have got right I mean uh we we

spoke right in the beginning that it's an educ ation right uh and education comes at a cost because you're Also educating but also educating at part to what an incent is trying to do and uh also bring the best quality products right so and there was a and it's in the news all the time right uh there is a growth in the category but uh you know you still can't find the unit economics of profitability and both of you have got Market investors on the cap table right so when you go back and have those

quarterly updates or board meetings or Even the new investors right how do you put down that Vision out there that this also can be a category which can be profitable because for another large company it's just another business unit but for you it's a company it's a whole company right uh what will change in terms of a lever where a company like yours can get into the profitability path so firstly I would say that we are becoming a bit of profitable hopefully next month so we are on the on track to Becoming a profitable company

and I I'll tell you that this is my biggest learning that I've realized that you have to turn every crisis into an opportunity and that could also be an outcome because we launched this brand in Jan 2020 every summer there has been a crisis whether it's a professional crisis in my case there was a personal crisis um and I have always thought about okay how can I convert this into an opportunity and last 12 months for me Was a really transformative experience so at Open Secret we have always grown the brand um with very positive

cm2 we have always grown with profitable IND economics but definitely we were burning if I look at uh 12 months back uh there was a significant burn as compared to a Top Line and then of course the new reality came and this is actually the the right reality I feel you know the world with zero interest rate where the capital was flowing and there was a lot Of growth coming at the cost of burn I think that market is never coming back so it was a reality check that you really need to build a business

model where you can build a profitable company and we leveraged the last 12 months to not only grow a brand Top Line by 80% in the last 6 to 7 months but to cut down our fixed cost and optimize a marketing and be on this track of being a bidda profitable which we are hoping to become next month So the way to talk to investors is by showing them the trend line that you know we are moving in the right direction this is our plan and by making a a profitable business and I do feel

that it's it's our responsibility as a Founder to really understand the context and at least in our category we believe that we are solving the supply Gap we are not solving the education Gap and um our marketing is very very efficient and That's the reason I'm pretty confident that we can keep continuing to grow the business in a very Aid profitable wayant um I'm glad the funding winter came because uh that's really helped clean up a lot of the things things that you want to do but you you know you're always thinking and then you're

forced to move down that path uh but I think fundamentally the met that she spoke about you need to be cm2 positive so at a very fundamental level that is really An indicator of whether fun ly the business at some point of time can turn profitable so we've always been that and that's why the investors are okay with it because they know ke at eventually it will get as long as these are the core fundamental right you need to have a certain gross margin numbers and you need to have a certain positive cm2 numbers um

and from there of course things with scale eventually you get in the scale can come at whatever time and Pace and that's something which you're always navigating through so uh I think that's absolutely uh necessary if if you are looking to build a business of any sort so a few years back the threshold was that can this category C a 50 CR company you know that's proven then it was 100 CR company there bunch of Brands which are proven how far do you think uh you know in your road map or in your projection in

terms of the market uh we can see a 500 CR company in the healthy Food category I would say that you know there will be a better for you bitania in the next decade and there will be a build or a company for sure and there will be many Brands I'm assuming um the world will look very very different both from a macro perspective how the country um is shaping like imagine from moving from 3 trillion to 10 trillion uh imagine the trend of health and how big this is a trillion dollar Opportunity uh so

there will be a better for bitania for sure yeah what do you think yeah I agree there is good going to be large companies now um the thing with um India is that you know digital products you know in from especially food see food is very e-commerce unfriendly um because the price value equation Logistics as a percentage of the cost of the product is like is the most skewed I think among all the consumer categories you know you can Sell a 50 g tube for 500 rupees in the beauty and skincare place you can sell

a t-shirt for 500 rupees you know which is weighing 100 gram but 100 grams food product with you can't I mean you it'll end up being a 50 rupe or 80 rupe product that's the nature of the food category that food and hence from a logistics perspective it will always be a challenge and that's where I think eventually you have to go offline uh or uh the grocery Commerce or the quick Commerce you know that's the only way food will get sold from a digital audience perspective but in the end when you have to hit

retail if you're talking about 500 crores and th000 crores if you're talking about the first 50 crores First 100 crores digital can surise um so if you are talking about 500 crores offline needs to come in and offline is obviously a game of retail space where you are competing with the big boys uh And you're you know there is a turnover and for for the retailer it's how much got sold from that uh per square feet so at that point of time there will and that's why you see a lot of action between large companies

you know strategically working with new age companies and I think the benefit is on both the sides and primarily from the side of distribution because if you're talking about 500 cres th000 crores Distribution needs to kick in U without Distrib and I'm talking about offline retail distribution but I think you know this offline and Omni channel is not just true for um food if you think 90% of shopping happens in offline so whether you're building a personal care brand or whether you're building a food brand I think what you're saying Omni Chanel is the playbook

in India because that's how consumers are shopping of course it will be a little more relevant for food but it is absolutely relevant For all all the categories in general give me some insights in I mean uh when you look at consumption of course like it's a large part of consumption today still comes from the offline world yeah but from a distribution point of view uh you are both available online and offline and in the market places I think uh encouraging percentage of your sales comes also from an offline in your case so what are

the insights what you have seen in terms of having gone to offline Which you perhaps like I said in this face of your company uh won't have got if you were just stuck to let's say the tier one uh you know d2c or in Amazon so firstly as I said I think Omni General Playbook is a must is what we believe if you want to build a big brand in India and uh B I believe that every channel has a very strategic role to play and as um as we are building a portfolio we are

very cognizant of that so the SKU that we sell on d2c is very different from What we sell on e-commerce on quick Commerce and on in offline so d2c of course that's where your uh you know logistic cost the C all those things because when I'm targeting a customer the cost of acquiring that customer is let's say 600 rupees it's the same for me it's the same for a skincare brand with 80% gross margin and selling a th000 rupees product so if I truly want to make a profitable business on d2c then I need to

change my strategy on d2c And that's reason why the weight loss box and the consultation and all of that so that we can also have a high aov business which can actually survive so very different SKU mix over here more combos more solution Focus um and then the completely 180° shift would be offline where it is more like a trial pack that's where we have the 20 rupes SKU that's where we have a 10 rupes selling price point this is basically basically a penetration driver this is Uh our inhome consumption that you know once you

try it and then hopefully you will buy the bigger packs and all those things and cross selling will happen but offline is a trial pack and That's a classic case when you think of of a shampoo bottle and a shampoo session so that's what we are driving and my biggest learning has been that you really need to understand the role of Channel and then come up with that SKU which can fit into the mechanics of that Channel okay s in your case uh multiple Brands very different gtms uh what were the insights what you got

because you also build a you also have an offline business a cloud Kitchen business per se not just an offline from a you know distribution point of view so what were those insights I think we uh we stumbled onto the whole Cloud kitchen model um which I'm seeing a lot more Brands now pick up as well uh per chance um this is more than two years back and the thing We realized was because we were offering specialist flowers for example and people take flowers and make Roti parata all of that at home and they're still

searching for that same thing on on all the platforms so we realize that people are who are searching for a for a low carb FL are also looking for a low carb paraton swii or zamato because you know they can't always cook and that's how we we experimented and we realized that that's a huge way to uh uh the the Search volumes were on par and uh uh the cost of acquisition was ridiculously low compared to an Amazon or uh or any of the other typical marketplaces because here you're not competing with other brands you're

competing with individual restaurant from owners who don't have the wherewithal to optimize and to uh run lot of the SEO optimization so which is why we and more importantly it offered two things for me one is trial I mean when you do sampling right what are You doing you're saying customer he's buying something and then you're saying here's a here's a snack from my side and then go ahead and that's what started to happen and in fact today if you see you know any of our foods that are sold uh people about 25% of them

add on a snack so beat our mixture be our cookie that's exactly sampling and in fact in this case the customer is paying me for it so I drive S sampling through that the cost of acquisition is extremely low and There's huge visibility so today um you know to to own healthy your protein on Amazon will require millions of dollars today if you look at the these keywords I own 60% of the searchs on Sugi and zomato and that's really what makes it very interesting and that's why my cost of acquisition usually is very very

less interesting um so you know quick segment to a interesting segment because now also they get to see what the products are And this is uh no way a sponsored segment right we just ordered and it just came in I see common products both of you are selling bu so why don't you pick up your products why should someone choose your product for that particular Savory why your buja are not let's say the other most common vuas which are out in the market no definitely so but I'll start with this this was the first product

that we launched when we launched Open Secret and um this is all about as I said and maybe I'll open the box so that you can see the product because one thing which we really work on is we don't launch any me to product we really want to launch a very differentiated unjunk product uh that you can enjoy and as I said you know the engineer equation that I came up with the taste minus the mea plus uh the nutrition thing and in this case um it's the nuts and when you think about the Nutty

cookies uh of Course you know there are other products in the market which where you will say okay this has cashew biscuits and you will not be able to find any cashew in those let me actually show you our product um and we have three different flavors here so as you can see there is a Choco almond then there is a cashew one then there is a peanut butter one is the most selling product of yours uh yes this is one of the best sellers and this was definitely the first product that we Launched a

six cookie pack uh which you can find on on quick Commerce so you can try it out um you have to promise people who are now still watching to give a special discount code right so we link it we link it on the comment section guys that we get a special discount code both from Sudan and an and we'll link it in the description I don't know what discount code but I'm going to have this for sure no no definitely so actually here and this is true to a promise and You know because we removed

the mea and we added nuts so the claim which we talk about protein and fiber automatically comes because you know we are using nuts and let me open this one um and I'm I'm also going to be and then here you can easily like you can actually see this cookie nuts where you have the nuts and you were talking about the back of the pack you know one thing because I am that customer who wants to be on that health and fitness Journey so what is very important for me is the serving size as well

I think one thing which we don't discuss in food is even the good food you you can't eat in abundance and we pay a lot of attention to what is the serving size so for example this cookie all the three flavors approximately 50 calories so when you are want a snack which tastes amazing which is good for you in this 50 calories this is like a perfect uh along with the with the coffee you can have it In fact even if you look at from an ingredient deck perspective and now we know that ingredients are

listed in the descending order the first ingredient is the most amount of ingredient present in the product when you actually think about choco almond almond is the number one ingredient it's not that a cashew cookie where cashew is the last ingredients how do the read and say that okay this is the healthy version of the cookie I want yeah so I think two things Um one is this is the assorted box I think if you think from a packaging perspective the product looks pretty indulgent that's something which you will see across all our packaging that

we need to scream taste because snacking is all about taste so that is number one number two I think the reason to believe should be there on the front of pack so whether we say there's no MAA in it it is loaded with nuts and I think not having MAA and replacing MAA with nuts Is a big promise because in India whether it's southern part of the country or the northern part of the country there is a lot of uh trust when it comes to nut we've all grown up saying P badam CA so and

then of course when you actually see the product you can really see that there are nuts in the product it tastes amazing and that's the reason why this is still one of the highest repeat products in our categories yeah since both of you have Buas I want you to start with buia right why open secretes buia I am a Rajasthani and I grew up eating a lot of buja and um this was one of the most difficult product because cracking the taste and I don't know if you are a buja customer I I don't want

to take the name of the brand which I had the most but I am a user but uh but the most important thing so one was of course when we ask the customer what do they hate or what do they not like for example in this Case it was the mea the palm oil in this case it was they don't want the fried part of it they don't want the palm oil part of it and now how you do you bring the same texture how do you bring the same taste that was a big Challenge

and it took a lot of iterations the loyal buja customer is very is not for forgiving at all they really want that same um it's a b buja style so yeah I mean that's the like the typical yeah yeah I'm sure people are going to miss Take this uh podcast to be more of a food food podcast yeah because it's all about food tasting now but uh this is going to be fun asking a competitor to try other but I would love to understand from you do you think it is close to the buja that

you have eaten from a taste perspective yeah it's good yeah it's good yeah I've left eating buja long while uh but this is good no doubt not a sponsored bit though but yeah you got buia too so how different is your buia From this now in fact I'll probably use this opportunity to you know you spoke about toolkit and how do you build and enter into category so we've identified that we want to go after the diabetic customer now the diabetic customer is typically 45 and above uh they are creatures of habit you know they're

not like the Millennials that they want to keep trying something or the other a 45 and above or a 50 and above are people if you look at the mindset and that's What you need to understand they want the the what they've grown up with so what have they grown up with they've not grown up with protein bars they've not grown up with the new age cereals and newsl they've grown up with buia save mixture that's really the staple for them and remember mostly it's been salty Savory snacking that has been the primary driver uh

biscuits came later so then you know diabetic customer he wants what he traditionally wants he Has buia mixture and sa so if you look at the Indian Savory Market those are the three top uh um salty Savory snapking so then we choose okay let's go after buia so then we choose buia then we look at the large competitors and you know what are they offering what's their ingredient what's their nutritional value and I'm saying I'm going after a diabetic so then I'm saying how do I reconfigure the product to be able to solve for the

diabetic condition what is A diabetic condition you eat something sugar shoots up you have to have medication to bring it down so what if I were to build a buia where the sugar doesn't shoot up in the first place so then I look at what the ingredients they have what are the alternative ingredients that can go in start building and this you know uh similarly this buja took all a few hundred iterations at least so we have a clinical study that shows that this is 68% lower sugar Spike compared to a regular buia so it's

got about 55 to 60% lower carbohydrates and about a 70% lower sugar Spike compared to a regular buia diabetic can have this because when they're having this they don't need to go for a medication immediately after that to control the spike that is happen and that's how we go and sell it tell the honest truth which is tastier which is better I think I think we should say that in India The Taste palets are so Different that some buja will appeal to few some buja will appeal to some other people yeah that's the in fact

even in buja if you look at it you know ban within B will be different so you know and within that also even in from Rajasthan you know you have a ban buia style but within that with if you go to ban itself every shop has its own style of buja so it's obviously ly and everyone is Ved to it so yeah so I also want to plug in that's the new age Founders and entrepreneurs uh friends on camera and competitors outside of behind camera who are not talking you know actually to be honest I

think people think that we are competing like we are honestly in the world of a $30 billion space we are insignificant we are not competing with each other we are competing with the big giants who have the biggest market share and I'm sure the rate at which both of us are growing we are growing faster in the category if We are growing faster in the category we are stealing market share from someone we are not stealing market share from each other we are stealing market share from the big incumbent brands in fact the more we

talk about health we are creating more and more awareness I look forward to meeting with the other uh d2c Founders especially in the food side and it's really added a lot of value to me often in fact as you speaking you know another technically a competitor is you Know just message and you know we going to meet up to see exchange notes in terms of what's happening I think Market is just too large the idea has to be collectively be able to catalyze the ecosystem and that I can't do by myself she can't do by

herself and that is really how I think we look at ourselves that we are the Catalyst for the ecosystem and eventually I would actually want a halam to come up with an unjunk version or a Lowa version for me I want to build the category in a manner that they wake up and say look we also need to introduce that because when the big boys really come in and then build that's when the category will really explode today we can skim the market and still become fairly large because it's a 70,000 CR Market Market but

if you truly want to stick to your mission where you want to impact 100 million Indians or you want to create where every other person is using it the big boys need to Step in and they will only step in when the market is large enough unless it's a 200 500 CR market today they will not even touch that category so in that sense I think we are looking to be the Catalyst and eventually obviously you have to compete and you have to have a superior product but um I I actually look at them also

as enablers of the overall ecosystem no I mean I'm glad that both of you guys exist and you you're doing what you do because it just Like I said in the beginning it gives um uh the consumers Indians an alternative uh to look forward to stay healthy so you know we spoke a lot about why you did it how you're doing it uh and uh why you're doing it let's let's also now Circle back to individuals right um uh another common thing between both of you I see is that um you're also one of those

Founders who walk the talk in terms of um uh you know giving a meaning to staying healthy right uh what's Typically your morning routine what's the non-negotiables for you yeah this is like I will use 8020 I'll start with a disclaimer that this is what 80% of my life looks like right now I I wake up pretty early so I would wake up around like 5:30 540 because uh I have realized that if I don't work out in the morning the startup founder life is uh uh it's so chaotic there is absolutely no chance that

I'm going to find the time during the day or in the night So I I go to the gym uh 6: to 650 50 minutes workout I reach uh office typically by 8:39 um and then I'm at work till 10:00 p.m. and then I come back 10:30 and I'm I sleep that's typically um my my life and um I work 24/7 um and I know a lot of people think that you have to take a break I don't think I've taken a single day off in the last four years of open secet journey and that's

because it may sound Cliche but this has given me a lot of fuel and purpose and I can't imagine doing anything else like I I just don't feel like taking a break because even though it would be a shitty day the reason why I'm doing it it just gives a lot of meaning to my life yeah what's your routine being very similar I'm just surprised I get up at 5:30 go this is not what the teaches in I by the way if you confusing with that I usually get up at 5:15 5:30 then uh usually

do the 600 To 650 class myself uh so I'm just surprised at the or sometimes 7 to 7:50 class and in which case I'll usually meditate and read up in the morning and um then post that you know hit the office and usually there till late in the evening or at least I U given Bangalore traffic I tend to come back a little early and then work from home uh uh late evening and uh yeah I mean by 10:30 11 you know pretty much you're exhausted mentally and physically and uh You what one of the

common um challenges what I've seen a lot of founders of this time this age comes out is that aspect of prioritization right Health doesn't really come as a priority to them I mean of course you guys have more all the wested interest because you're building in this category but tell me outside of the physical benefits of course what you can gain from staying active uh what are the other gains what You' have got because you've been healthy you've been Fit I am a big believer in the power of compounding and if I have to think

about what is the biggest asset that I have it's not the bank balance it's not the equity that I own it's my own body it's my own mind it's my own um health and if I don't pay attention to it every single day I think um uh that's going to be the the biggest disservice I can do to myself and I do believe that if you want to think longterm health is the number one priority when you have to think Longterm and this is sharpening your s sharpening yourself and I realized that entrepreneurship is a

long-term Journey you know it takes 10 years to build a brand it's not a Sprint it's of course everyone has spoken about be like you're running a marathon and I could definitely see a difference you know there was a phase in my life especially you know during Wave 2 uh it was a difficult period I had lost my mother I was um you you can't go out you Were just working and and I had actually gained a lot of weight and I used to feel very like low energy at 600 p.m. and um and I

think after that I just told myself that this is not going to happen again I have to go back to the discipline routine I feel very very energetic and sometimes my team ask me an how do you have this energy at 9:00 p.m. in the morning and I say you this is how you start your day and this is when you eat right and startups are Built on energy and I think the biggest fuel in at least for me is how you feel how your body is reacting and you have to take care of yourself

and 10 years down the line the version 3.0 of aana would thank this version 2.0 that today you made the right choices so thank you for that yeah no agree um you know Health in terms of benefit saw just sorry just to plug in D me you posted a video where you was in some Plyometrics which kind of tells that you are much More nuanced because that doesn't come out commonly forget even found us even to a you know regular gym goer what a Plyometrics uh means so uh what's what's the that gain being for

me mobility and flexibility is extremely important so which is why plyometric like the box jump that you saw it's about 4 and A2 ft jump or uh you know I you do a lot of calisthenics as well so for me mobility and flexibility is is how I do because as you age you know that becomes far More important uh um I'm a trained gymnast so which is the reason why I do that even now but uh you went to inter also no what are the that you might have competing I not but I'll claim that

right now I beat I Bombay okay no so but uh the the point is for me my fitness routine heavily centers around mobility and flexibility um and plyometric is obviously a core part of it um I usually do intermittent fasting so I'm usually Not eating anything till lunch and then usually I'm and that's not I mean I just prefer it that way it just keeps me extremely high on energy even though I worked out in the morning so my body is just tuned to be able to pull that off uh but I mean apart from

that you know it's generally stay low carb through the day and then evenings I usually have whatever is available so I don't really restrict myself in terms of benefits obviously there's a lot of physical Emotional mental benefits but I think one thing that I've seen is key my team's changed quite a bit so now uh uh I remember a lot of the people like we run cloud kitens and you know usually the FNB industry they're all very late morning you know they'll start their day at 11:00 or 12 sleep 3 I think a lot of

my team members have changed that I mean they're all getting up early and not because I have setting meetings but I think some where they've Really changed as well and they're happy about it as well yeah yeah absolutely and they now everyone's addicted because once you get down that Journey it's addictive right I mean and I think that's something that uh you know everyone ends up looking at you and then of course uh following some some of the stuff so overall a healthy team is a good team excellent an and Saran I mean it's been

um lovely unpacking and exploring uh Like I said your journey and uh why you're building and the toolkits what you share sh I hope uh you know entrepreneurs who are out there who want to build and solve for this Collective mission of helping uh Indian stay healthy they get a lot of cures and of course people also uh found more than one reason to go out and order the products uh you know last two bits what is this one problem which you are perhaps not solving but you could Possibly want someone to go out and

solve in the health space maybe you might be even willing to write a check for them um I think um you know we are into product um I think product plus service could be a very interesting play because in the end it has to be a very holistic approach and I do feel that in India people pay a lot of attention to what the dietitian is saying or what the nutritionist is saying so I think it Would be very interesting on how we can uh Club this together because just with a paper prescription someone is

not going to become healthier and just with product so if we can combine both these things I think it will be very interesting education category education so I think I think um um someone who can really help customers uh uh drive and understand you know how to differentiate what's healthy and what's really healthy for them partly driven towards the whole Counseling piece but in general you know if um I know there's a lot of content out there but um I we talk to people and they know but they again very what we assume is Basics

everyone would know lot of people actually don't know or are unwilling to do that so I think um education Still Remains uh and building and educating people on how to apply and use it I think that's still a uh big thing and if someone is gets that kind of content and following and People listening I would really encourage that all right great so if people are listening watching if uh two ideas you know we'll leave uh their social media handles you can reach out with their pitch decks uh I'm sure by now they're writing Angel

checks so I want you to look at the camera uh to the 10 year-old to the 50y old 60y old uh what's your uh one bit why they should consider eating healthy I would say invest in yourself And the biggest investment that you could make is your own body and food plays the biggest role so make better choices every single day it's all about the power of compounding and I hope that when you are making those better choices Open Secret can play an integral role by un junking your daily snacking all right non-sponsored sashan I

think similar to what she said which is U you know health is Uniquely Yours uh all sudden then the only asset you truly own and build is Your own body and which is why you know that's something that you have to spend time on it's not a large effort it's a very very simple effort and that's where uh you know uh how we are trying to play the part which is making everyday food transformative and uh and that's really the plug for us which is uh you should consider our product lines because uh that's the

simplest way you not making any extra effort but just converting what you're having every day every meal Uh a much better product all right so that's it uh from the podcast uh I had aana from Open Secret I Sudan from lowoods dib smart please go out check out their products send them some feedback uh about their products how can they get better if you want them to make any new products which can be healthy uh unjunk any of your favorite snack um send them their feedback we leave their social handles so that you can reach

out to them I hope you got uh enough uh ideas enough motivation enough inspiration to perhaps go out and solve for the health problems we have in our country uh maybe share it with uh one friend one colleague who might just get inspired to go out and make an alternative choice to eat healthy perhaps uh you know uh choose any of their products or any other product out there but to uh you know choose in healthy life uh that's it uh from the podcast today I'll see you in another episode with um another founder who

is helping uh solve for the health problems in the country helping people stay healthy thank you any feedback how we can get better or any suggestions from what other Founders we could get to the podcast uh would really appreciate uh to get your feedback so thank you goodbye