OTO Capital - reimagining the 2 wheeler ownership experience
Sarthak:
Hi, and welcome to another episode of Matrix Moments. I am Sarthak and today we have Sumit, founder of OTO Capital and Vikram Vaidyanathan, managing director at Matrix Partners who leads Fintech investments for us. So, let me quickly introduce our two guests.
So Sumit leads OTO Capital which is an e-commerce cum financing platform for two-wheelers. He is a serial entrepreneur; I think this is his fourth venture. He is an alumnus of IIT Bombay. Vikram, Vikram leads Matrix Bangalore office, been with the fund for I think more than a decade now. He leads Fintech and SaaS investments for us. Yes, so let us get going.
Vikram:
I am going to pause and just introduce Sarthak. Sarthak is really the lead on the deal. Has been with us for few years and is now leading Fintech and I am going to share a quick anecdote about Sumit. This is a deal many years in the making for us because many people over Sumit’s illustrious entrepreneurial career at Matrix have wanted to fund him and somehow it hasn’t happened, but the stars have finally aligned for the two of us to work with you and we wouldn’t be more excited.
Sumit:
I totally agree.
Sarthak:
Great! Sumit, so let me just start with alittle bit of background,right, so asI said this has been your fourth venture and you first started your venture when you were still in IIT Bombay back in 2010, right, like startups was not the cool thing back then. So how did you make that decision and how has the journey been since then?
Sumit:
So,the background goes I will say way long back. So, I tried doing small business activities from my school days itself. I come from a very humble middleclass background, I want to play cricket matches where we put some money to win more money and got to do that, then started selling basic stickers in the fifth-sixth standard classes and made little money out of that.
So, I will say that is where the real hunch for doing something of my own and entrepreneurship came in.
But I think IIT gave us a very strong platform. Being at IIT all the resources being available, connects being available inspired by success of Jishan, Bhavin kind of alumnus of IIT kind of given us I would say a kind of a fire that there is a possibility to do something and give it a try and obviously the blood of Marwadi background essentially adds to it, so that’s why I thought there’s nothing to lose about it. We were at IIT, great platform, nothing to lose, give it a shot, if it works well if you do not like it guys you have so many companies ready to take up an IITian who is still a failed entrepreneur.
So, I will say that was something and not easy I would say. While I was trying to do this as a venture it was not a norm, right, in 2010 that was something very usual to become an entrepreneur at college and many people were looking at management, consulting kind of jobs and my friends were having fun and playing games in IIT then and I was like really working on my startup. Four hours of startup, chemical engineering, pretty big thing, talk to IITians you will figure out, spent a lot of time there. But I think that hard work, well, I’ll say paid off in the subsequent years as I’ve been able to do a good journey here.
Vikram:
So, Sumit, one of the things that makes you stand out for us is that you have gone through lots of ups and downs and lots of times even in the OTO journey it wasn’t cool, and it wasn’t the hot startup. But whenever I have met you, you would always be up, high energy, what has kept you going for all the ups and downs in that journey.
Sumit:
Yes, so I think when you sign up for entrepreneurship you sign up for this kind of a ride, right, it is a hell of a ride. There are highs and highs while there could be lows and lows. So, I will say mentally I was pretty much prepared for it. I think second thing that keeps me going is the persistence for the thing that I keep doing. So, I always believed in the market and I think that is also almost a long career of a decade of entrepreneurship in such an age helps me out that there are times they’re not very much right for maybe the idea that you’re working upon. But if you really believe in it and if you keep hitting the nail one day the time will come for you.
Vikram:
Apna time ayega
Sumit:
Apna time ayegaright. So, I think that has been my mindset that if I strongly believe in this problem and I strongly believe that there is a big opportunity, maybe the time is not right today but it will come tomorrow, and I have to keep doing it to reach there and maybe we’ve reached now.
Sarthak:
Got it. Talk to us alittle bitabout --this is likeyour fourth venture,right, so before OTO what isthe journey been like, whathaveyou been up to?
Sumit:
Yes, it has been aninteresting journeyI would say, started from an energykind of industry from my college days, pivoted to an Edtech company, moved to used two-wheeler industry which iskind of an e-commerce, came to OTO which iskind of a Fintech lending which is economy. So, Igenerally sayI’ve covered allthe Esthat stand for a country’s growth,right, energy, education, e-commerce, economy. So,everything has beenkind of covered across but againthe journey has been exciting fundamentally being anentrepreneur who strives to connect totheproblem.
Verycustomer centric mindsetthatIhave, andI try to associate with aproblem and take it forward so my personalexperiences andtheproblems thatI mighthave faced andI’ve seenpeople facinghave alwayskind of given methat insights,theright insights to keep building arightbusiness on it and Ithink hopefullythat has helped in makingeverythingsomewhere lead to a certain conclusion. So even all the four ventures I would say fortunately nothing kind of went off, it’s been somewhere they have succeeded or kind of picked up by someone else to kind of lead it forward.
Sarthak:
Yes. So, you spoke about like how you try to relate to the problem, right, and the passion for it. I know like CredR was also two-wheeler, OTO is also focused on two-wheelers. So how do you get, like what is the story behind you associating yourself to this problem.
Sumit:
I’ll say, see, I come from Udaipur City, right, it’s a tier 3 city, pretty famous though but it’s a tier 3 town. We have seen two-wheelers all across our life, like I would not say -- I could not even remember when I sat in the car for the first time, right. So, my father used to have a Bajaj Chetak scooter, he used to have a Lambretta before that. So, I have seen scooters, I have seen motorcycles in my life, like first the friend who became a friend for me because he had a motorcycle.
So, we have seen vehicles like two-wheelers was the life for us and as youngsters we were passionate about it. So, when we came to Mumbai kind of city and came to the world of entrepreneurship, I saw that this category has been hugely ignored. Like not many entrepreneurs have tried to pick up this particular category. I would say all the startups that talk about the auto industry have focused on cars, the four-wheeler has been the core category.
Even the stories outside India have been global stories have been successful in that category, but I could clearly relate to the -- boss, you have more than 100 million two-wheelers in the country, have such a big problem across different journeys of the ownership period of a two-wheeler yet no one is trying to solve it. I think that association to this thing has really kind of kicked me to start different startups at different stages in this category.
Sarthak:
Talk to us a little bit about OTO, right, what are you building. I mean you come from like -- at CredR you were building like a used two-wheeler marketplace. Now what is OTO and I think for the benefit of our viewers if you can explain what is OTO?
Sumit:
Yes. So, I will go back to the way the industry is today, right, so what we are seeing here is -- and I will take an example here. I’ll take an example of my own brother, right, so my brother used to work at TCS in Gujarat at Gandhinagar. He bought a Susuki XS there, it is GJ number he bought it there and came to Bombay started working with me at CredRthen and where to sell this bike. He transported his bike through a train to Mumbai. How to get a paper transfer done, never did it. Then he moved to Western Union to Pune, what to do with the bike, took the bike again to Pune and then from Pune he shifted to Bangalore at SAP Labs then what to do with the bike, he brought the bike again, the scooter to Bangalore.
Right, so this two-wheeler Susuki XS has been with him with the same GJ number traveling around the cities like he is traveling.
Sarthak:
That is why allthe models of unit economics of Suzuki excel.
Sumit:
So,this is my ownexample and when ifyou seetheproblem isthat today’s generation the customer does not want to go through the painful experience of ownership, and it has gone through it they don’t want to repeat it again. So, if you see what OTO is trying to do here is this age-old way or the concept of ownership where a customer has to go through multiple places to figure out which is the right bike for him, have to apply to banks if he wants financing, go through a lengthy process, 4-5 days of waiting and multiple signing and then get a bike and once you get a bike like everyone has gone off, like paisa dediya bank mein, now it’s your choice.
You do what you want to do with this vehicle, no one is caring about it and as a customer I do not know what to do and that is what we see is not an experience that a customer should have in the 2020s kind of a world. This was okay in 1980s, this might be okay in 1990s not in 2020s and this is what OTO is trying to change. OTO wants to make a 10x simpler affordable and convenient way of owning a two-wheeler. Starting from the discovery, you think of buying a two-wheeler you should think OTO and OTO is going to help you and give you the sleekest experience possible to get your bike and own it for the next tenure that you want. So that is what we are doing at OTO.
Sarthak:
Got it.
Vikram:
Sounds really cool. But no one wants to do it, right, and no one wants to do it for this two-wheeler user consumer because they thinkpaisa nahi hai. So how did you think about the fact that paisa nahi hai
Sumit:
That is a fair point. I think one thing -- so important to understand here is two-wheeler is indigenous to India and hence the model to operate in this category has to be indigenized. If you are trying to crop up or copy a certain way of model have worked in a country like US or China or Japan that cannot come directly and be used here. So, if you talk about our concept as well, right, outside India if you talk about -- speaking starting from OTO’s early days leasing has been common across the country but why not India.
India is one of the big consumers of the auto industry, right, yet financing is also pretty big, but leasing has not happened. Because maybe the model cannot be just copied from Japan or US and bring it in India. You need to have indigenized way to one, give that customer a comfort and acceptance, second, build the model in a way where you also have enough money to make because these are both the things are equally important for the success of the business that the scale has to be large and then in that scale, you’re able to make your own money.
So, I think important for the model has been indigenization which I think at many places people have not tried wholeheartedly that I would like to say and that has been our effort that pick the problem where there’s a real pain point for the customer or other stakeholders and hence in the process solving that problem in a right way will also give you your money to make across.
Vikram:
I just want to point out for our listeners a few things that we look for in founders, right, and deeply passionate about the problem and you can see he’s obsessed with two-wheelers and but then thinking just about every user pain point and as you think about the pain points it then leads you to a journey of sort of figuring out where the value is for the user and if you keep trying to solve that problem wholeheartedly I think you can get to a business. But I think the last thing most important and maybe you’re going to go there is that then you can figure out how to extract value because as you said it’s a large enough market and then you’ve delivered value prop, I think there are ways to extract money.
Sarthak:
Actually, I’m going to get into that only because this OTO at some point as we say e-commerce plus financing, right, and obviously there’s ownership management as well. But like, Vikram, you have been championing these whole cases around e-commerce, commerce plus lending, right, and I think we see at least we believe here in Matrix that a lot of this is possible in both B2B side as well as B2C side. Why don’t you just give a flavor of what is the thesis, why do you believe in it so much?
Vikram:
First,Ithink it’s wrong to saythatI’m championingbecause whenI talk to my friends whoare distributors and so on,they sayyeh toh hum bhi kar rahe haithat’s whatthey’ve been doing forever.They saythey’re always doing commerce plus financing andthat’s truebecause every big transactionthatthey’re doing has some commerce in it,there’s a commerce distribution margin butthey alsohave financing margin,I’ll give it toyou after 10 days,I’ll give it to you after 15 days orI will give it to you in these terms, all of which isactually financing. So,this issomethingthatpeoplehave been doing for hundredyears and now we’ve sort of discovered it.
Now,Ithinkthereareopportunities in certain markets for you to do commerce with the financing and the way we think about it is, one, in a consumer’s life there are important big purchases. Like buying a mobile, buying a two-wheeler, which they keep for sufficiently long and then they think about how they are going to own it, how it is going to impact their life, so it’s a big purchase in their life. That big purchase cannot be made without financing, so it is just interlinked to how I will buy and how I will use it.
So, companies that can optimize their total cost of ownership as you already said, how do I own it over the life of the asset? how do I buy it? how do I own it through the life of the asset? how do I resell it? how do I upgrade it? Companies that can solve all of that in an integrated manner are the companies that can do commerce plus financing. So, of course globally in China we invested in a company called Cheetah which did that for mobile phones.
In the B2B space I think every transaction has financing. When the transaction is too large the people on either side are too smart and they have different cash flows and so every transaction there has financing linked to it, of course we have a company called OfBusiness which has done quite well for us and they figure out a way to extract enough value out of a transaction where people said this is a hard transaction to do and it doesn’t have money, paisa nahi hai.But if you couple the distribution margin and the financing margin, they were able to extract value out of it.
Sarthak:
Yes. I think we have seen some of the financing first players like the BNPL guys like an AfterPay or in Clarna, right, if I go on their website it looks like a marketplace, it does not look like a financing company. But Sumit, switching gears to how the journey has been at OTO I think you started back in 2018, went through a couple of pivots, and I think it really took off. Like and this took off in the pandemic era, right, post pandemic like you have grown like 4x, 5x. So, talk to us about like what was the PMF that you did there that has led to this kind of growth.
Sumit:
Exactly. See, I will talk about the way we thought of building this business. So, one we knew it is a long game. We never went into this business with a short-term mindset, we knew it will be a long game considering the different stakeholders and the different core businesses around the lending piece so the first one year, one and a half year, it was more about figuring out the process, setting up a team, doing certain kind of a product checks and experiments to figure out what is working well for us. So that was something that we I would say spent more of a time till March 2020, has been a time when kind of a time for us to hit the market and to develop and that is when the Covid hit.
Sarthak:
March 2020, we met, I remember we met that time as well.
Sumit:
So that is where we were and but by then we were confident that we have got the secret sauce of what consumer needs from the market, how OTO’s -- the concept of combining the discovery and the easy financing and flexibility to own a vehicle at his choice is becoming as a first preference for the customer, who is this customer and how I want to go about it. So, I would say that piece was pretty much solved, and we were very much ready with it and I think pandemic actually has given acceleration to our kind of a concept because post pandemic people don’t want to use public transport, they want to have their own vehicle.
In India if you want to have your own vehicle two-wheelers is the only kind of prime option for you, right, today it’s a mass product. So, two-wheeler, there is a traction which you are seeing in the two-wheeler acceptance. Second, being a utility product, we could clearly see that this is one product where the defaults have been low. When you talk about lending the larger piece comes at paisa lena asaan hai, dena mushkil haiSo that’s where again OTO has been very strong because we had the product, which is a utility today, the customer cannot even afford to get this vehicle away from him.
And hence he might default on some other payments, on credit cards or other loans but on two-wheeler loan we are seeing people want to pay it in money because this vehicle is used by his father, his daughter, his son to go to take tuitions, his son to go to take some grocery from the market and for this he needs his vehicle, so he cannot afford to lose this vehicle in the time of Covid and that’s why we see the collection performance has been much better for us compared with the other aspects of the business.
Second has been the EV revolution coming across, right, the electric vehicles coming in. Definitely that is the promise, which is the future and being a new product that’s where again we had a niche because our concept has always been built in a way that customers can keep the vehicle, use it for a certain fixed tenure and keep upgrading and hence we have kind of a strong operations being built which has not been built by anytime any banks or NBFCs being done earlier before. Our understanding of 4/2 wheeler category has been the strength. We were able to kind of roll out our products in this category much faster and better compared to others.
And just to share we have got seen the performance of EV is much better today than the normal first use scenario and that’s what it’s becoming an attraction point even for our lending partners on the platform. So again, our strategy has been to play on the strengths, the strengths are what we know and then double it down as the opportunity comes and I think Covid came up with a very right opportunity, obviously the times were tough but that tested us and kind of brought us in light to all the partners that what OTO is doing is something excellent and they should get the credit for it.
Vikram:
One otherthingthatI want to interject is if we had not done all our literature,I do notthinkwe wouldhave found OTO. We pivoted to two-wheeler and we werethinking of two-wheelerbecauseyou mentionedthe EV financing and we were talkingaboutthat with Ola Electric and Bhavin and that is why it got usthinkingthat what is happeningthere, wehave to look at it. And then wesaid --
Sarthak:
We know only one company in this space who is trying to do something here.
Vikram:
That is how we stumbled back on it.
Sarthak:
Just getting going back on like Sumit’spoint ofthatpeople do not default on two-wheelers,right, which isvery peculiar,right,because VikramI knowyou have been doingthis for like tenyears investing.You were negative, we have seen like any listed player we picked up, like their NPAsarevery high. So, what didyou see in OTO versus onthe other lendersthatyou have seen before, what isthe edge?
Vikram:
I remember when you first said two-wheeler financing and I said let’s not do it and because it was just something that I’ve seen across a period of years and going back to the previous question on commerce plus financing, what is the difference between commerce plus financing and commerce? commerce you can sell to anyone and commerce plus financing you can only sell to someone, as long as you select the people where you can actually extract more value than commerce plus financing from that someone. I think that is what he’s doing and so you also educated me, and we went back and looked at multiple big bank’s books. And like HDFC has built a big profitable book in two-wheelers.
So, there is a set of people, someone said you can target, and you will be able to extract value from it and that is what he is doing and I’m not going to give away how you’re doing it, I think he’s used digital in a very smart way to figure out how to target those people that the best players in the market really want and then give them a value prop which says okay, I will automatically choose OTO. Because in some ways my cost of ownership like his brother’s cost of ownership across Gujarat --
Sarthak:
I think the transportation cost is more than the cost of the --
Vikram:
How doI optimizethat cost of ownership across multiple ownerships, multiple moves, multiple upgrades and how doI optimize it in a way whichactually is a win-win for bothyou andthe users and that’s what drew us to OTO. It is all early, its working but it is all early and we are believers inthe journeythatyou can actually scale it.
Sumit:
So just to add on Vikram’spoint,right, soI feel even ifyou seethe data,right, in last fewyearsthe digital penetration forespecially inthis category, who isthecustomer who buys
two-wheeler inIndia.The major targeted audience is inthe age group of 23-36.Right, it is a digital millennial generation Zcustomer. So, ifyou seethe Google report also it has been published,they say 9 out of 10customers who buy two-wheelersare directly or indirectly influenced by digital news and content, it’s huge.You are talkingabout 9 out of 10, right, it’s a huge number.
Vikram:
That is the digital way of --
Sumit:
Exactly. Whether the customer believes it or not the decision has been made and that’s what OTO is trying to take and take a harp upon that considering we are able to create that discovery led channel where a customer gets to get a test ride at home, do a virtual experience if you want to and then decide whether this vehicle is right for you and buy the choice because you made a decision of buying a vehicle on OTO platform you get a much more flexible and affordable financing option at comfort of home why would you go to any other channel and that’s what is working for us, right, and that’s what is working for the customer. I will not say for me it’s working for the customer.
Because if he has made a mind that he knows this is the bike I want, I am getting something where I have much more flexibility and affordability why I would go to someone else and I think that is what has evolved well, and the idea is to just double down and execute in a much better fashion.
Sarthak:
Yes., got it. So, give us a flavor of what is coming up, right, how are you thinking to scale this. I think you are in 4-5 cities now, but I think the plans are pretty ambitious so give us, give our viewers a little bit of a glimpse of what’s coming in the next 12 months.
Sumit:
So, I would say one thing connected to investors advice while the projections and everything is important, we go very simple, it’s 2x growth quarter on quarter, that’s the only thing that matters to us, are you growing 2x quarter on quarter. See, if the markets are huge, whether there’s Covid, there’s no Covid, unless the markets are completely closed, we’re still very small. We’re just scratching the surface; nothing should stop us to grow at that pace. So, it is very simple fund, the concept is simple, for me, for my team, grow 2x quarter on quarter. That has to be the growth and if we’re able to make it in a year you will always see a big difference coming, next year see a big difference coming.
I think that is the simple way we are working across and want to make sure that we keep doing it in the right way.
Vikram:
Really, board meetingshave becomevery simple. 2x.
Sumit:
2x.Everything else falls behind.
Sarthak:
Vikram, what do you think like as OTO scales so rapidly, right, and you have seen so many journeys of so many lenders? What are the things a lending company who is growing rapidly should look for?
Vikram:
I think he says it better than I do but get focused on getting the money back. And he is in a sense in an asset backed financing play, getting your money back, where is the vehicle if I cannot get the money back, and can I extract value from that and luckily, he has done it for many-many years and that has been his life for many, many years. And sometimes founders lives come full circle, all the things that he did before at CredR given the unique ability to actually be able to do this business in a way where he can resell. First locate, then get and then resell. So, I think that is going to be the biggest challenge for us as we scale and then it’s the more regular things.
Today I think every person in the team has that cost collection’s focus, we walk around in their office its palpable and now they want to grow very fast. How does each and every next employee that’s coming in imbibe that in their culture that they’re doing as fast but keep that focus, I think that’s going to be the biggest challenge, but I’ve decided to watch it.
Sarthak:
Got it. Sumit, just on team like so what doyou look for inpeople whenyou are hiring, whatareIthink two or three qualities,at least talk to us alittle bitaboutthe core team, how didyou hire them and then whatareyou looking for wheneveryou are makingthe next hire.
Sumit:
So,Ithink that is also one of the keysI’ll saylearningthatI had doing these four venturesdifferent times,different periods and also at adifferent age of myselfwhere allthelearningsarethere. Building team isdefinitely fundamentallythe one ofthe topmost andthe toughest job for anentrepreneur,right, buildingtheright team. Like team building is easy but buildingtheright set of teams is mostimportant. AndIthinkespecially atthe core team levelthe founding member level wehave beenvery cautious in a way to say who is going to makethe cut andyou get criticism also forthat if possible, butIthink that is how it has worked well for us.
Important here has been, one has beenthe complementary skillsthatyou bring onthe table.You do not needpeople whoare just yes sayers to you as a founder,right,you needpeople to challengethe perceptionthatyou mighthavebecause everyone has his own expertise andI might not likethis five years back butI can now publicly saythatthis is whatyou need to know and accept as anentrepreneurthatyou needpeople whoare smarter than you andyou might have a largest vision for this company and the best vision that you for one will have for this company but there will be people who will execute a piece much better and a sharper way than you and you need those people.
So, having a team, one, who has complementary skills to you.
Vikram:
But how do you assess if this person is smarter than you?
Sumit:
So, spend time, drink beers with them. I would say have very natural discussions; I don’t think these are interviews. Right, one thing I have realized is interactions and I made it now the kind of mandate at least in my discussions even I interview a product manager or a HR guy I pitch in first. I spend the first five minutes to say why I’m building OTO and what is different here. Because that gives him also a comfort that look, this is interaction. I am not here that someone is going to bombard me questions and I just need to answer in the best possible way. It is an interaction, I’m here to tell you what I have done, I’m doing and --
Vikram:
We were having a drink before the deal and two things stood out from that, one was you said I am going to pitch in first. And then we asked why, you said one, exactly this, that I am setting the tone for the discussion but then it is also I might get a customer. But the other thing was that interact with them in every possible sort of situation, and you said beers, walks, whatever and really get to know them, get under their skin.
Sumit:
So, coming back to it so one is you need to understand the skills that he brings to the table when you see you have maybe those are not your best strengths and you need right people. Second, connect to the vision, I think if people coming just because you are growing, you have raised funds is not going to work. You need to show them the dark side of it, right, and get them to know what is going to come on them being part of this core team and taking up a larger leadership role and how do they react to it, how do they take it.
If usko jana hoga toh who chaar din bad jayega, if the picture does not look rosy as he has fell for, so it is important to give him the real pictureand get his buy on it. If you get it then people come with a complete, I will say buy in that, yes, I am in for it, I believe in the theme and I’m going to be here for long run. So, I think these are the factors that we have always kept in mind and able to get good people. Like we have our CFO who heads the risk and finance. I met him when I was just -- I would say the company was not even incorporated. Because I knew that this is something that you have not done, right, obviously as an entrepreneur we are always ambitious, want to do this which we have not yet done but we need people also.
So, we were in this from day one that we need someone who understands risk, who understands finance, lease much better than us and another thing the process to figure it took us almost six to I would say eight months to kind of discover, get our conviction, get his conviction to get onboard and work. I think he has been part of it from the day and Like while officially six months later the company is started but, yes, he has been there and that shows that he is a right, not so I might be aggressive sometimes, but he will bring the things on the table where he has his perspective. Managed $150 million asset under management kind of a book so that experience helps, right, so that is another piece.
My partner, Harsh, right, he has a very different vibes and different character and I think while from a business point of view I don’t see it right but from a process point of view, from the analytics point of view, from a tech point of view that makes complete sense. So, you need to have such people who have a different view. You share a similar vision, but you have different thought process and then you come on the table to give the best of it.
Sarthak:
Got it.
Vikram:
I do not have that much to add. I told you guys I’ll ask one out of syllabus question. [Laughs] But next Fintech startup that you want to fund, not the company but the sector.
Sarthak:
You will hear about it in the next week.
Vikram:
And he is not getting offthat easily.
Sarthak:
Yes, so at Matrix we’ve done a lot in payments, we’ve done Razorpay which is online, we’ve done MSwipe which is offline payments and we’ve done Gokwik which is actually in the cash on delivery side, making cash on delivery a much better experience for the customers as well as merchants. I think one payment problem that I personally faced myself and I do not see it solved is cross border. I am pre repaying a loan in the US, I find the process it’s really hard and when I talk to people who’re doing business outside India it’s supremely hard for them. It is not cost effective; the experience is very broken, so I think something on the cross-border space either like a cross border neo bank or in the lending side on the payments side that’s something that I’m looking for.
Vikram:
If you were not doing OTO what would you be doing?
Sumit:
Yeah, again because when I started OTO, I had one more concept that I kind of was thinking of and trying to see if that makes sense, so I was working more on the retail front and I think now there are multiple startups who are kind of reaching to there in different angles but my thesis was that one side we’ve got this Amazons and Flipkarts and the other side we’re getting this Reliance and DMarts coming in a big way. But yet today the base economy has been those small kirana and grocery stores and the ideas were that how do you kind of enable them through a digitized manner so that they become as I would say proficient to compete in a localized way like the Amazons of the world.
So that was something that I was working on and again it was also full stack, so my ideas are generally full stack, it doesn’t end with just being a software, so it was also completely full stack and operational kind of a model but that’s what I believe but again it comes with a base experience. Right, you are seeing kirana stores all around and you connect personally to people there and you have the kind of trust but if they’re lacking today because of the technology, because of the branding, the marketing and they cannot afford it so what we can do to kind of bring them under one umbrella to enable and keep doing it. So that might be --
Sarthak:
Thatbusinessthe delivery is again two-wheelers, so it is like literally it all comes back to -- delivery is part of it soyou’ll be financing bikes of the delivery boys also.[Laughs].
Vikram:
Sumit, I think we can keep talking to you for hours. It has been a fantastic interaction; I think I have taken over his closing. Thank you for doing this but could not be more excited to partner with you and looking forward to the journey.
Sumit:
Same here. So, I think finally fortunate to work along with Matrix. It has been long time I have been in interaction with and very happy that finally Sarthak and we have been able to connect and then Vikram kind of brought in his bug vision and belief in the OTO’s mission and finally we’re together. So very happy and hopefully we’ll make it right.
Sarthak:
Yes. Great. Thank you so much for listening in. This is Sarthak signing off.
Salonie:
Thanks for tuning in. For more Matrix Moments episodes, you can head to www.matrixpartners.in/blog. You can also follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube for more updates.
