Ready, Steady, Zupee! Elevating Gaming in India
Dilsher:
Failure should matter, the more failure matters more we’re engrossed in the moment. Actions, you don’t need courage to take actions it’s the actions that bring courage. Irrespective of whichever field whether you're building, I don’t know, pain killer or vitamin I think everyone should study human motivation as all the stakeholders are humans. You said something about gamification, I think that itself is a huge thing but I think it’s one of the most poorly understood words. The joke in our company it’s like writing sapiosexual on Bumble, everyone writes it no one gets. Other thing is maybe it has to do with the upbringing, if you come from lower middleclass income household you have to hack monetization. So I’ve always been hacking monetization all my life.
Tarun:
Hi, everyone. Welcome to Matrix Moments. I'm really excited for the episode today for two reasons, one is I'm talking to Dilsher the founder of Zupee, somebody that I really, really enjoy spending time with and always learn something new when I speak to him. The second is we’re doing this from our new office in Delhi which is where Zupee is also based. So, thank you, Dilsher, thank you for taking your time and doing this with us.
Dilsher:
My pleasure, TD. I think it has been what 3-4 years being together?
Tarun:
About four years, yes.
Dilsher:
Yeah. Always been an amazing partner and mentor to me and very grateful to you and Matrix.
Tarun:
No, it’s been our pleasure and our honor actually to be part of the journey. So, Dilsher, I'm going to start with something that I think for somebody on the outside Zupee is another real money gaming startup. But I know what attracted me to first sort of invest in Zupee and partner with you on this journey was I always felt that you thought about the game and the company and the mission much more deeply. You always looked at Zupee as being in the business of providing joy and the business of giving happiness and not just as another real money gaming company. So let’s unpack given that also Zupee is I guess you haven’t really been out there and marketed either yourself or the company despite all the success. For just kind of my understanding and for whoever watches this tell me about what was the motivation to start Zupee and how has that evolved over time?
Dilsher:
Sure. I think it’s going to be a bit of a monologue and a long answer and you know me, I can only give meta answers so bear with me. So I think it starts early so always has been very introspective kid, always would like to go deeper into concepts and started reading philosophy earlier that almost caused an existential crisis. You know, those big hairy questions, you know, what’s the meaning of life, all those things have always fascinated me. So and the structure or the framework I got when I went to IIT Kanpur. I joined as a Civil Engineer graduated as a Chemical Engineer but my true passion, I found there was psychology. So there’s a Humanities course you have to take in first semester and I took introduction to psychology and I was like I have found my thing. So that's how it started, but I realized like studying human behavior is very, very convoluted, the lot of different fields of science one has to study to arrive at a deeper understanding of human mind and behavior and this is something I'm deeply fascinated with. So, I started studying evolutionary biology how we evolved from a single cell to multi cellular organism because lot of our genetic software is hardwired. And you study anthropology how cultures evolved, then you study genetics, parent child relationships, hormones, [0:04:22] [Inaudible] science. All those things and even linguistics, you know, even the language we use shapes our behavior. So all of this starts with a deep fascination for studying human behavior and you know the classification we talk about pain killers and vitamins. So being deeply fascinated by building vitamins because they’re around understanding fundamental human motivations. So this is like the background and then comes back to why do Zupee, why start Zupee, what were we trying to build or what were we trying to solve. So I think I always fascinated with this question, what’s the most important problem to solve and while there are lot of startups and businesses which have been always working on longevity, extending human life but I have always been fascinated what about quality of life.
Even if you look at the matrix through which countries measure their growth and success these are happiness index, these are GDP, right, domestic production. But what about, I don’t know, happiness quotient and other things. So that is how it started, started thinking about what do humans really want, so the thesis evolved. The start asking maybe everyone just wants pleasure then but pleasure I saw is like a short set but what about something transformative. That's when I came across the concept of flow state, so flow state is basically you're so deep engrossed in the moment and you lose basically yourself. And that has been positive, corelated all forms of wellness across cultures, ethnicities, gender. So that's when I came across gaming and flow state, I was like because no one designs flow state better than game designers. So just double clicking on what flow state is it’s basically the environment and the skills are in a certain relationship if things are too difficult we get anxious, if things are too easy we get bored. It’s about tracking the right balance between the two. And then there has to be a real time feedback and third is failure should matter. The more failure matters the more we’re engrossed in the moment. The best example of that is rock climbing so in ancient Greek times it was seen as punishment, you know, climb a mountain and then come down and you could slip and die. Why do people do that because it’s again timing patterns which pattern to find then and error matters, failure matters.
So looking at all of this then I thought gaming makes a lot of sense to tackle that problem. But again in gaming now the idea was how to do gaming. So this is very clear I'm not a philosopher, I'm a business person at the end of the day.
Tarun:
Really?
Dilsher:
Yeah. So then it’s like okay, and I think we touched upon monetization is something I'm deeply resonated with. I see monetization as one step difficult problem solve then engagement specifically in a time rich country like ours so it’s like how can I marry this. And that's when I came across the concept of pay to play gaming, that's when it suddenly clicked. So the monetization model the previous which is in a purchaser advertisement hasn’t been working. It is improving but still in terms of comparing to RMG it’s not --
Tarun:
Especially in India.
Dilsher:
Yeah, especially in India it’s not there, we’ll dig deeper why is that later. So but at the same time this concept of failure matters. And that's what I resonated in my childhood days as well. You know, when we used to plays gulley cricket and I used to be a super competitive kid, you know, the guy who’s telling all his teammates “seriously khelo, pheli bat pe kyun ball ghumara hai, dive mar” all those things. That's when I realized when they were like small, small skin in the game like in tournaments the engagement and excitement was altogether at a different level. So that's how all of it kind of came together and we ended up launching an RM chip…
Tarun:
I love the point on skin in the game because I know one thing, I’ve been a – I'm still a maybe not a daily active user but I'm a weekly active user of Zupee. The thrill of winning even though the amount may be small that skin in the game really 10x as exciting. So, I Know what you mean.
Dilsher:
Absolutely.
Tarun:
So I know what you mean. So I'm going to double click on one thing you said, you spoke about human motivation and if you're remember last month when we were here we had Sanjeev come over and he made this line which is a very simple line statement to make but it’s so insightful. And he said the best businesses in the world are built around a simple consumer insight.
Dilsher:
Yeah.
Tarun:
Right. You’ve spoken a lot about human motivation. Tell me a little bit about given we all talk about gamification as applied to every business but you're running a gaming business itself. How have you studied human motivation, human desires, human sort of moods, different chemicals and how they influence behavior. How has that – give us maybe one or two examples of how you actually used your study and depth of research in this to build a better gaming company?
Dilsher:
I think it’s irrespective of whichever field whether you're building I don’t know pain killer or vitamin I think everyone should study human motivations as all the stakeholders are humans. Your customers are humans, your investors are humans, your team mates are humans, your policy people, regulators are humans. So studying that and we don’t actually have that culture in India, Humanities is still not very mainstream. So I think anyone and everyone should study that first of all. Now talking a bit about that so I think it flows into anything and everything we do like let’s talk about the game choices that we make. I’ll maybe touch upon that at a high level. So when we were starting we were like three games that were really working in RMG space, there was sports, rummy and poker. By working I mean like having a hundred million dollar kind of skill. And that also whenever something works it also causes like bubbles. So what we saw a lot of these people were going on Playstore, taking the most popular game and integrating payment gateways and thinking voila we have also did that. So we saw why these three games worked and why others like whatever 250 had failed. What was the common theme in these games and what not in others. So decoding that, absolutely to the first principles like why this works why that doesn’t work, what are the meta game mechanics in each of the formats that worked. So that's where we came up with the thesis like we see in RMG there are three major segments, there’s fantasy sports, there’s card games and casual games as a category was not there at all in the RMG set.
Tarun:
So what are those, you said when you broke it down you said there are underlying sort of things that made these games successful.
Dilsher:
Yes.
Tarun:
Just tell us a little bit like what did you find?
Dilsher:
So it’s in a way comes down to – see, any engagement or monetization is a byproduct of user personality in game meta times, they meet and some magic happens. So it’s about really understanding at that level why certain games work, what kind of personality traits people have. Why do some people play PUBG kind of a game, why do some people play Candy Crush kind of a game, why do people some play quiz kind of a game. And all can actually be broken down into personality traits. So that is the approach we took like casual gamers are still even at that time it will be 300 million casual gamers in India, we were very curious why has no one been able to crack a casual RMG model. Again by crack I mean scale of 100 to 200 million and profit. Yes, so that really fascinated us so the idea is always not building a plane but to understand why things fly because then you can build a spaceship or whatever you want to do.
So just looking at those fundamental game mechanics like let’s take an example, let’s take any game like chess so break it down all the pieces that are there. So what is there, there’s a board, there are different kind of pieces, there is a start point, end point, how rules are what is the sequence you move in, how the points are scored, how that piece can – so break it down everything and now reengineering it in a way that the final format is actually better than the older format. And that's what we’ve done in our premium game Ludo and it’s not just RMG. Even though our free to play I think you guys would have seen the status report. After PUBG free fire we were the third highest time spent game. So not just RMG, the free to play version had much higher engagement and retention compared to original formats as well. So it actually comes down to those pieces, break it down everything and then rebuild it again seeing what works.
Tarun:
So let me ask you one question, over there are actually two questions. When we invested, when you and I first met I remember Zupee was a quizzing game, right, and very successful one at that. Very engaging, people loved it, there was a lot of top line scale. You were still figuring out how to kind of monetize it and sort of build around it. But very quickly you took what I thought at that time was a very hard con to say I'm going to build something very different. And then you moved to Ludo and obviously today now you're a platform with multiple games, several of them then did well. How did you think through that pivot it was a hard call at that time?
And second is Ludo as a game multiple people like you said, right, it’s not about building the plane it’s about understanding why things fly. Multiple people have tried to replicate Ludo success or the Zupees Ludo game they’ve tried to replicate that. Nobody has really been able to scale it as much as you have. Without revealing your secret sauce what can you tell me about on both these?
Dilsher:
Yeah, you rightly said we started as a quizzing platform and you know, there was a massive scale in terms of spend, it’s some crazy numbers. But what we figured out was that the unit economics or the margin there were some issues in that. That just wasn't happening and that again goes back to the fundamental game mechanics. What we realized was hey, this game can get massive scale. But in terms of long term redemption, high LTV it’s going on high margins, so it’s going to struggle a bit. So again, without going into details we realized that again in the journey of understanding why things fly there were some missing pieces and those might have been very difficult to fix. But at the same time we identified this gigantic opportunity untapped.
Tarun:
And nobody was doing it at the time.
Dilsher:
Nobody was doing it and one of the –
Tarun:
So in some sense you were – do you think first to market too played a role or is it something else?
Dilsher:
I think definitely and the other thing is like I said like you touched upon again understanding why Ludo RMG wasn't working. Like one simple insight is the biggest problem is uncertainty about the endpoint. Now you might want to start a game and it might go on for two hours. No one wants that specifically when you have invested money, right, you just want quick, I want certainty. The example I give is there used to be power cuts when I was a kid and I had to watch Pokemon at 5 pm. So there were announced powercuts and I used to be okay, 5 pm current is going to come and then I was fine like turning the light on and off. So there’s lot of anxiety when there is uncertainty. So this is like one simple insight that we took and we’ve changed lot of mechanics along with that, so I think it goes back to neuroscience like there have been so many studies about this that when there is 100 percent clarity you're going to get a reward or there is a 75 percent probability of you getting a reward versus 50 percent of probability of you getting a reward the highest dopamine it is when they’re 50 percent. So again understanding the mechanics how we’re wired, what causes what, so the law is very, very clear and the game has to be dominantly skilled but not pure skill. So how do you balance that while also delivering a great experience but also ensuring your game is dominantly skilled. So that's where designing a state of the art quantitative framework for defining what is game of skill and what is game of chance were super helpful because then you know which side you're playing on. And we’ve built that framework, the industry has accepted that framework and we have worked with all the top professors incorporated them into a first of its kind. So again it goes back to understanding the first principles what is that, if you understand that then you can tweak, make changes, rather than blindly doing anything.
Tarun:
Yeah. And coming back to the previous question I don’t know if we completely sort of did justice to it Ludo worked really well, it continues to scale and grow very profitably. How did you think about eventually making the platform shift, lot of your peers had made the platform shift much earlier but for whatever reason haven’t been able to I guess see as much success as you. How did you sequence this in your head and with the benefit of hindsight I guess what have you learnt through that journey?
Dilsher:
I think the analogy to give would be that you want to build a Spotify just an analogy that you need to have hip hop music, you need to have rock music, you need to have Sufi music, rap, blah, blah, blah. But the idea is really understanding what are the uses coming for and if you're just offering the same dish packaged at 6-7 then you’re just cannibalizing the revenue that you're getting from the one game format. So two big things, really understanding which game – every game is like a beacon that attracts certain kind of users. So being very, very careful that whatever you're designing is actually addictive in nature and it’s not cannibalizing in nature. So having that understanding otherwise most of the times what happens is you're just offering the same thing, so you're not actually creating net incremental revenue and that's not platform then you're just cannibalizing. So that's where we took that --
Tarun:
It’s a treadmill because basically you just need to keep giving them new.
Dilsher:
Yes. So it’s not net addictive because then your conversion is same like same user persona is only going to play certain kind of games, your LTVs are stagnant. So and the other approach we had taken very early was like we won't spray entry, we won’t carpet bomb, we will really go deep into and that's okay if we never had more than 10-15 games, that's okay. But we will only do games which we believe has a blockbuster potential and has to be net addictive in nature. So and then when a user comes how do you hyper personalize that experience, right, so let’s say we have cricket games as well, we have board games as well. Now you come on the platform and you're like, yaar, I don’t care about board games, I just want to play carom, so now how do you hyper personalize that and not create a choice paralysis for you that being very clear the moment you enter a platform how do you solve that cold start, that what is the right game for TD versus somebody and just hyper personalizing that journey. So there are lots and lots of nuances that go into that but I think the key insight would be addictive designing something that is net addictive or just cannibalizing the existing.
Tarun:
As you look out say the next five years India is at a very unique point in where it stands with gaming. There’s a lot of positive sort of stuff happening on the recreatary front and we’ll talk about that. But before that I want to know what’s your outlook on the future of gaming, what’s your thesis on how does this market look five years from today, what are the non-obvious games that you think can become or not even individual games but just like what sort of thesis do you think can have potential to reach substantial scale which are beyond the non-obvious ones like fantasy has scaled, rummy has scaled, poker has scaled. I guess Ludo you had a big role in scaling and making it sort of mass now. What’s your outlook on the future of gaming?
Dilsher:
I think it’s a very good question and we’ll try to do justice to this question. You said something about gamification I think that itself is a huge thing but I think it’s one of the most poorly understood words. The joke in our company it’s like writing sapiosexual on Bumble, everyone writes it no one gets hit. So we’ll talk about that, so and it goes back to the mission of Zupee as well how can gaming and technology can be a tool to create joy or eliminate suffering that goes back to that. I’ll give an example that will show what gamification is and what is the power of gamification. Look at the games even our kids play or the kids today play, hide and seek, tag, chuppa chuppi, pakad pakdi, and where do they come from. These were designed by our genius hunters and gatherers, where they gamified the most important life skills which was how to hunt and how not to be hunted. That is power of gamification. If you tell a kid run 100 meters in the morning he’s not going to.
Tarun:
That's super insightful, I had never thought of it like this.
Dilsher:
And they have survived for 500,000 years. That is the power of gamification, how do you take something which is super essential to you and make it fun. And that is the one example and gamification is not just doing leader board, streaks --
Tarun:
Which is what unfortunately it’s been reduced to.
Dilsher:
Yes. It’s about really deep understanding how do you create flow states and that can be done through anything and everything like I just gave the example. They gamified what was the education at that time, that was education. So we do believe it has a huge role to play across all aspects and this is where we at Zupee are very excited. So wellness as a theme like I’ll give an example, everyone knows they should meditate, everyone knows they should workout, everyone knows they should eat healthy. But it’s very hard to do, these are then very, very hard to do. And then dieting is the one industry which has abysmal success rate and still like a whatever – I don’t know, hundreds of billion dollar industry, something like that.
Tarun:
Yes.
Dilsher:
So again looking at fundamental human motivations like all people have this need to be engaged but it’s a bit like giving people what they need versus what they want, what they want in a way designing something which will actually serve them. That's where we believe the power of gamification is going to come in and we’re very, very excited about that. That is one like segue of gamification and if you just talk about games again I think there’s no doubt all the data says it’s very obvious that this future of entertainment is the only interactive source of entertainment and others are just passively consuming. So and again humans have this fundamental need to be engaged, we have an anti-boredom drive, the hardest thing for a human is to sit still, that's why it’s really hard to meditate.
Tarun:
So meditation is also a multi hundred billion dollar industry.
Dilsher:
Yeah, because we’re not wired that way. Our ancestors who were more anxious and better planners survived more than happy go lucky who will eat and sleep. So we’re wired that way so there’s always going to be that need for engagement and I think everyone would be paying attention there’s a big revolution that is happening with Chat GPT, the innovations in AI. And if you have been following that, you will see creativity is going to explode because everything is getting democratized. It’s actually from text you can create a movie, the same thing is going to happen to gaming. It’s all going to be that simple like dead to an extent but that's still very, very complicated. What we believe the future of gaming is going to be and even if you have creativity you’ll be able to design games as well. So that is where we’re very, very excited.
Tarun:
Without the need for necessarily doing illustration and all the other stuff that will take time.
Dilsher:
All of that is going to be just like feeding a text to create a movie that's where you will be seeing all those Hollywood writers and all are doing sets and all.
Tarun:
Do you see how soon or what are you already seeing in terms of how AI is changing things on the ground at gaming, like at Zupee for example what are you all doing already today?
Dilsher:
So right now we I won't say we’re leveraging it fully, I’ll say we’re still understanding, we’re doing the basic use cases like without a doubt the developer productivity is 10x. Anyone who is not doing that is doing massive disservice so and like personally for me it has been great like who has been a researcher or a philosopher all his life so that's a great tool to have. But to really harness that we’re still coming up with the exact use cases to be honest. So just coming back to the non-obvious definitely massive democratization of gaming is going to happen. A guy sitting in I don’t know tier 2, tier 3 town will be able to design brilliant concepts and it’s like a bit like Tarun designing his own gaming universe, Dilsher designing his own gaming universe and that's where the Web 3 and block chain is going to come in and all of this is going to be interoperable. So it’s going to be fascinating because that digital assets NFTs all has been solved. So that is some area we have to absolutely look out for how that's going to get shaped. The other is no brainer again play to earn which --
Tarun:
So some of these things it was there was a lot of hype last year, right, Web 3 gaming and play to earn and all that. And maybe it was all blown out of proportion and maybe we all sort of got too excited too quickly. Are you still a believer and do you still believe in stuff like Metaverse and like do you still see like Web 3 gaming like do you still see it as something which is real?
Dilsher:
Absolutely. I think it happens with everything like whenever new tech comes everyone gets maybe too excited and you look at history there has always been bubbles whether it has been railways, industrial revolution, internet, crypto, whatever and now hundred percent AI it’s going to happen. So but the underlying concept is very, very solid like just look at the --
Tarun:
Yeah, if you unpack it, right?
Dilsher:
Yeah, just take the example of play to earn. So it’s no brainer if you're investing time you can monetize your time. Why would you not play on that format versus just a premium mode like you're not getting anything out of it? So it’s a no brainer but the nuance there is I think people got over excited just like through NFT tech you can't create Mona Lisa, NFT can enable it. But the underlying concept is still the underlying concept, the art and creativity still remain, you still would have to design great game concepts. NFT is like a tool that you can only augment it can bring other realities. But what happened in the hype was you were just again the real money gaming ad which was just going on Playstore taking popular games and integrating payment gateways just the integration bit does is not solving anything for the user. It has to be fundamentally resounding concept that attracts users but if you have that on top of this this can be absolutely revolutionary. And we don’t see any reason like in a way the way gaming evolved with Web to mobile to premium there’s no way that this the next logical step is not play to earn, it just doesn’t make sense. But again it will take time, it will take refinement. Some people will burn their fingers and ultimately that is going to be the normal stream.
Tarun:
I’ll touch upon regulation there’s a lot happening. What’s been I guess the biggest positive in the last say 6-12 months on what’s happening in regulation with real money gaming and where do you think more needs to be done to really unlock the potential. Like we all talk about India becoming 10 trillion if that has to be realized gaming will have a big role to play in that. We have several hundred million youth who are spending hours a day on this, right, it’s a big tax pool, it’s a big revenue pool, it’s a big part of the time spent. Where are you happy with where how things are evolving and where can more be done?
Dilsher:
I think to start with we all should be very excited with all that has been happening just to quickly rewind. 12 months earlier what were the challenges, what ambiguities that existed in the gaming.
Tarun:
Actually now that you think about it so much has happened in the past 12 months that didn’t happen in the ten years before that.
Dilsher:
But like that weeks in which decades happen so it has been a bit like that. So, A, there was an ambiguity about overall what is online gaming, what is game of skill, what is game of chance.
Tarun:
Is it like gambling or is it.
Dilsher:
Is it a state subject, or a center subject, what are the TDS laws, what is the right rate of GST, so there was so many ambiguities. So again the center and we’re very, very grateful to that, the entire gaming community. The central government has seen how gaming is going to be an essential part of a trillion-dollar digital economy tree and they have come out super supportive of the ecosystem building a very responsible ecosystem that is also the need of the hour. So MeitY has been appointed as a nodal ministry, we were like orphans, we didn’t have as a gaming industry no central ministry, MeitY has come out.
Tarun:
Actually that's a big one. The fact that somebody has actually now made it their --
Dilsher:
Yeah, we’ve been adopted, we’re very happy. So and then the rules have clearly come out, it’s a light and very innovation friendly so like even a small time developer sitting out of small cities will also be able to create those games and India can become like a net exporter for the games. And we have that like we’ve got amazing talent pool, we have amazing culture as well, we have amazing stories, cultural games that are there. So like that’s what I used to say if you go on or any tool if you look at the top games only one would be Indian which is Ludo King and all of these would be Chinese, USA. It doesn’t make sense like you said there’s so much talent, there’s so much culture we should be main exporter. So I think the clarity that has come out on there’s going to be -- and SRBs self-regulatory bodies governing the gaming that has been amazing. Also the TDS clarity has come out, this is again phenomenal for the ecosystem. So you being an investor, you know, I know, like we’ve had these discussions, everyone says hey, this is a gigantic time, it’s amazing unit economics but what about regulatory. Now I think you are going to see --
Tarun:
I think the floodgates of capital will just really -- and innovation as a result.
Dilsher:
Hundred percent. So it’s a very, very exciting time and we have been very grateful for the government and the entire industry that has come together for building a very responsible and doing our part in supporting India.
Tarun:
What more can be done, or do you think everything that was like the big demands are already been taken care of?
Dilsher:
I think so there’ll be lot of things that will still need to be done so one obviously is the state advocacy so there is still like I said a lot of awareness that needs to happen. You see in media reports as well online gaming and gambling are used interchangeably in a single paragraph. So that definitely is not okay, so there’s lot of awareness explaining understanding what is game of skill, what is game of chance and that yes, there is an objective way of determining what is game of skill and what is game of chance. So that will be very, very useful to the ecosystem and the other thing I’ll say is setting up these SRBs in a very structured transparent and democratic way but at the same time they do their job really, really well so that we have very responsible gaming companies out there. The problem for the longest time was there wasn't one centralized body that was laying down the guidelines, what is responsible gaming, how the KYC should be done, what are the dos and don’ts. So because of that what happens is one, two bad players they ruin the entire ecosystem so it’s absolutely phenomenal that these SRBs are going to be there and going to have an extended charter which every gaming company now has to adopt.
Tarun:
Honestly it’s been when these things happen they really, really positively surprise you and the fact that technically we’ve had fantasy industry for a decade, we’ve had rummy for probably close to two decades and finally now it’s actually getting clarity, it’s been a big, big positive.
Dilsher:
Yeah.
Tarun:
I'm going to pivot a little bit because while we can talk about gaming and RMG industry for a long time I think one thing I personally really, really enjoy is just talking about you as an individual. There’s a lot that I wish I was even doing ten percent of what you do today when I was your age. So tell me a little bit about I guess your own personal work ethic like you don’t talk too much about it but I know – I work with enough founders, I work with enough other people I know what I myself was at like your age. I just find your personal work ethic incredible just in terms of your discipline, your focus, so what is like for somebody who doesn’t know you like what’s your day like, what’s your personal work ethic like. Somebody that you want to hire what should he or she expect?
Dilsher:
I think if we were to summarize in two three words it will just be always on. So which is good also and times could be not so good. So I think never seen it as a work because I just love it too much that’s what I'm doing today, I'm just deeply, deeply passionate about deciphering human mind I can do it my entire life 24 hours 7 days a week 365 days a year. So it’s just a deep passion, fascination for what I do, so honestly I’ve never thought about this it just comes so naturally tap dancing to work.
Tarun:
I guess for you it’s not work.
Dilsher:
Yeah, it’s a very cliché line, right, find something which is fun for you and work for others you’ll never lose. So I think I was just lucky in that way I tapped into something and it’s just that I never honestly thought about this it’s something very natural to me.
Tarun:
So I’ll tell you what I have observed, I think the few things that for me really stand out is for you personally and this is not blowing smoke up your arse it’s what I really believe I think one is the always on which I’ve seen but I think the second is the curiosity to apply first principles to every problem statement. And I know and we should talk about that, you have this sort of group of people that you rely on and any time you're faced with a problem it’s like part of your problem solving toolkit where you almost crowd source solutions and crowd source ideas but it’s not because you want somebody to tell you what to do, you're just basically crowd sourcing everything, applying pushing it through your own framework of sort of solutioning and then coming up with something which honestly surprises us several times which is oh, my God, how did he come up with this at such a young age. So I think one that really, really stands out, I think the second is just the willingness to be very intellectually honest about where things are at like rarely do I – there’s a lot of good news that always comes from you and the company but that's never been like I know that when there is bad news like you will always call first, you will always share that first. And you're always mildly dissatisfied with where things are at which is a good healthy kind of balance. So you're not over celebratory when things are going well, you're not over upset when things aren’t going well. I think that mildly dissatisfied is a great trait. I want to pick up on one more thing actually, I should have covered it earlier when we were talking about gaming and I’ll come back to your personal journey as well.
I remember you had gone to China once and you had told me about your biggest take away from that trip was you met a lot of gaming companies over there, most had either raised no capital or had raised very little capital but were insanely profitable and sort of throwing out cash. And I think that was the turning point in your journey as an entrepreneur where you came back and said there is no need for me to build this the way some other companies are doing this where they’re raising and burning hundreds of millions, like gaming is something that one should be able to monetize from day 1. What was the real takeaway beyond this, like what did you see, how is that one exposure and that one I guess experience shaped Zupee into what it is today?
Dilsher:
I think, yeah, that was a great experience. I think it’s just that once you see something that can be done or you see a proof of that that is more than enough and always had this thinking that everything is first principles, a doctor is a doctor, a lawyer is a lawyer because it’s all acquired knowledge. There’s nothing metaphysical or some special blessing anyone has got. And there’s just that DNA of truth seeking and everything which is not always good, I’ll tell you that. But it’s just that understanding and having that exposure that oh, it can be done. And people being very bullish about that and understanding the journey and it’s like every problem statement has a deep truth about it so if you're able to arrive at that truth you can create astronomical impact and that problem is solved forever. So that to me was the most fundamental insight, okay, it can be done, it can be reverse engineered. What are those raw materials, processes, knowledge that goes into that and if I have that I can also do that. And just that exposure that it can be done and it has been done really excited me.
Tarun:
And I guess it was contrary to what you were seeing in India where like maybe you’ve thought that's the only way to do it.
Dilsher:
I think the other thing is maybe it has to do with the upbringing, if you come from lower middleclass income household you have to hack monetization, so I have always been hacking monetization all my life.
Tarun:
Give me an example from childhood?
Dilsher:
So it’s very embarrassing, pen fighting tournament. I used to organize, you know, had this entire setup I used to be the organizer.
Tarun:
Pen fighting?
Dilsher:
Yeah. And I used to sell pens also like ek ko dusre mein dalke, to create something, like transformers but with pens. So I got quite famous and ultimately got into trouble as well. The principal called, seized all my pens, I was still net positive without the Capex and all. So I think it’s always been that, so always thinking about reverse engineering so that comes very, very naturally to me. So again going back to the China example it’s just that A, it’s doable, B, going really deep that what are the conditions when they meet it happens. So can you also try to create those conditions and answer almost always goes into having a deep understanding, seeing the truth that fundamental principle on which everything is built. So that is like the framework.
Tarun:
It’s been fascinating. I'm actually going to pick up on something else that I was thinking of. You know, very often as investors we all invest very, very early and what we’ve seen is there are times where company is growing at a particular Y intercept and then the founder is growing at a different Y intercept and when they both are consistent it’s great. Sometimes the personal growth of the founder is even steeper than the company growth and eventually then the company growth follows. And sometimes unfortunately company growth outpaces the pace at which the founder is able to personally grow. I think for me personally seeing Zupee so closely your own growth as an entrepreneur as a leader has been fascinating to see because I remember the first time you used to hire people. I know you're smiling because there’s a long list of folks that we couldn’t make successful but today you really think about your own responsibility as a leader, as a CEO very differently from when you thought about it even three years ago. Just tell us a little bit about and this isn’t just accident, right, I'm sure you're doing a lot of work to build and make sure that you’re growing as fast or faster than which the company is growing and one follow the other and not the other way around. So what have you done, talk a little bit about some of those things.
Dilsher:
Yeah, I think I agree. So I think I myself have seen a shift. Initially used to be more like a gun slinger, assassin, leave me alone I’ll conquer the village. But definitely like I’ll give a funny example, you know, people used to ask me which is your favorite team, I never had a favorite team, I had a favorite player because of which I had a favorite team. So always this was the default nature but as anyone knows nothing great can be built without a very collaborative and supportive team. And at the same time it’s much more joyful and fulfilling so it wasn't easy that a natural segue from your default personality but I guess there’s always been commitment that is they’re doing what is required for the business even if that means like shedding your personality like a snake like moving or becoming something else. So never – I think the good thing is don’t have any attachment to any identity or self-image so just doing what is required to be done easier said than done it’s difficult.
Tarun:
What is the hardest thing you had to change about yourself, personally for you?
Dilsher:
I think honestly this mindset of like the gunslinger to being a lone wolf and expecting that you can scale. And but like I said it doesn’t come easy so what I’ve seen is that humans change their behavior either of two things, one either is some amazing insight you get or second is pain and there’s nothing better teacher than pain. So I think I'm grateful I'm not going to claim I'm hundred percent there because old habits die hard so still trying to understand that how I can be better. Just moving and this visceral understanding that how much joy there is in being of service and nurturing people. So that's a constant journey.
Tarun:
How do you see your role as a leader today different from a year ago?
Dilsher:
And I think earlier like I said it was a mindset, you know, I'm Rambo, leave me alone I'm going to do everything. And that caused a lot of problems, of course like then I realized like my role of being a coach and again even in coach I used to think the role of coach is to have all the answers. But then I realized, oh, it’s not, it’s about being in a space where people can feel they have the answers or can arrive themselves at the answers. Again seems easier said than done when you have lot of intellectual pride and the impatience also because you know what the right answer is but it’s until people arrive themselves at the derivation or the final insight it doesn’t viscerally resonate and doesn’t create equal amount of impact. So still an ongoing journey but this is something that I know is super crucial for both the kind of company we want to build and the overall health, joy of the ecosystem because we’ve been always clear we won't build a very mechanical organization, we will dedicate ourselves to overall wellbeing whether it's physical, mental, emotional, spiritual at all aspects. So we’ve been making lot of efforts on that and our goal is very clear to be the best workplace to the people across the world want to work with. It’s a long journey but we’re very dedicated to that.
Tarun:
If you don’t mind I'm going to share something which is I guess deeply personal for both of us. So we both have the same coach, we both absolutely love and adore her, she’s been instrumental in both our own personal growth journeys in many ways. And people don’t really talk about this often because nobody wants to say I needed help, I needed somebody to help me break emotional barriers that were coming in the way of my success. Nobody wants to be shown the mirror and nobody wants to feel like they’re not good enough, but both you and I have experienced that and like I want to break the barrier towards maybe talking about that little bit more openly. What is and I know you’ve been through a year of it and you're continuing on down that path which is amazing. What have been the two or three biggest breakthroughs for you through that coaching journey?
Dilsher:
There have been many, okay, so if I have to pick the top two or three I think it’s in many ways like there’s only one voice we hear from society that is like almost, bachcho ke barien mein bhi bola jata hai, zyada pyar doge tou bigaad jayenge. It’s just that always that default has been like love is weakness, like.
Tarun:
Daara ke rakho sabko.
Dilsher:
and that's where the survival mindset also comes in. It was always been that if you – love is almost equal to weakness and you can't create a great company, if you want to create a great company you almost have to rule with an iron fist, you have to be a certain way. That to me and we went deep into that, the kind of research that we’ve seen where Jim Collins – there’s lot of empirical evidence. In the book they say leaders are. So that to me was really, really insightful and to actually see the empirical evidence and scientific evidence for that. That to me was something very –
Tarun:
So love versus fear if I may just paraphrase that was like using I guess love, gratitude, making people realize their potential and helping them to achieve that potential versus using fear as a motivator. That was one, what else?
Dilsher:
I think the second one if I had to pick was it’s just that understanding fear in much more detail. It’s once again very cliché lines, you hear all those cliché lines, I mean understand viscerally, see, it’s the visceral understanding that moves things. So one, the other thing is just actions you don’t need courage to take actions it’s the actions that bring courage. So and if you have and the other really cool concept is identity goals versus purpose goals. The more your life is committed to identity goals the more turmoil it’s going to be because you're building a self-image which is going to pop at any second. So doing things more out of service and Newton’s third law, it’s in giving that we receive. So all of these are very, very powerful concepts but again it’s like we all have been hearing this one voice our entire life it’s all English and they don’t understand. First time you are hearing a different message which resonates at a very fundamental level but there has been so much conditioning the way we have been brought up. So I think that is what is really needed in organizations.
Tarun:
So you said something which I hope doesn’t get lost, you said something very important and I personally believe it a lot which is courage comes from taking action not the other way around. You need to commit to it and then in doing that action is when you realize sort of greatness or whatever it is. Can you share an example of where you’ve actually done something where there was an action that you were postponing or you were fearing and by doing that you realized.
Dilsher:
Yeah, I have a great example of that. So as you rightly said you have lot of intellectual but, arey meko kya coack ki zarurat hai. So as part of the program there’s a 360 degree feedback, right, feet forward she calls them.
Tarun:
Feet forward, yes.
Dilsher:
So which is you talk to team and which is you're basically – I remember, you know, I'm typing a message which I had to send to the group that hey, I'm connecting you with. That was almost like your curser is.
Tarun:
Report card ana wala hai.
Dilsher:
And then you're like do I send it or do I not send it. But it’s just the action of sending it just openly accepting it just moves things, like the action has that power. When you do some things that really, really scare you you do it and you see you can survive then that shifts a personality. And like I studied a lot of psychology so exposure therapy is precisely that, whatever scares you so like you have a fear of closed spaces move to your 10 feet, then 8 feet, then 5 feet, just stand inside the elevator, close the doors. Just once we do something that scares us and we see oh, wow, it wasn't only our head feel. That just open the gate, it that for me was that moment is this clicking on that send button and that just made me --
Tarun:
Drop those shackles basically that were preventing.
Dilsher:
And there will be a lot of these actions.
Tarun:
Yeah, I know that. You spoke a lot about early days and sort of what you were doing in your childhood and how that shaped you to get into gaming. When you think about your last twenty six years what have been the one or two big experiences either in childhood or otherwise that have really shaped you into who you are today?
Dilsher:
I think the couple of those that come to mind one is the competitive nature I think that comes from my elder brother who was eight years elder than me. And I used to be in second class and he used to be in tenth class but we used to compete on every sport, cricket, chess, cards, football, hockey. We both are big into sports, badminton. So obviously I was eight years younger I was going to lose most of the games and you know how kind elder brothers are, they don’t defeat you they humiliate you. So that I think really spawned the fire that now I reflect it I see that made me really, really competitive. And in my defense once I reached sixth class, I haven’t lost to him on any sport. So I think that is one experience I know just made me very, very competitive. The second thing is I think I was just thinking the other day how did this introspectiveness come. I remember so there used to be Gurudwara just in front of our home and there used to be like morning that three hours or afternoon there are three hours and there used to be really deep lines that everything is one, the concepts of ultimate universal consciousness. So I think now I reflect back I think it’s these concepts that I was passively receiving without even actively paying attention something they just triggered. And I think that's where I see now where the very high introspectiveness comes in. I think that's the second one and third I’ve already told you the monetization aspect. That's where the monetization bug started.
Tarun:
What did you do to chase that, so when you realized that this study of human psychology fascinates you I remember when we were first talking to invest in Zupee you had told me like you reached out to PhD and psychology around the world, spoken to them, understood human behavior, literally which chemical is released in the brain with which action and a lot of that has like – like how did you pursue that like lot of us have curiosity about different things but sometimes we don’t really take action into that and pursue it. But you have and I know you speak to a lot of people that really, really get you to that first principles core insight of something. How did you I guess nurture that side of yours?
Dilsher:
I think to start with identifying people to get it, like Kunal has been a big influence.
Tarun:
This is Kunal of --
Dilsher:
Yeah, CRED. So I think it’s the way I think about this is just voracious appetite for collecting dots is keep collecting dots, keep collecting dots and creativity to me is more about 90 percent is just collecting dots, 10 percent is connecting dots. If you have two dots you can make a line, if a zillion dots you can paint anything. I think it’s just that, keep collecting, keep collecting without even knowing how it’s going to connect. There’s this insatiable appetite for that for whatever reason I don’t get it. So and then seeing again the first principles what are those pillars that come together like the example I gave how we react in the moment is actually tied to what happened billion years ago and what happened ten thousand years ago. It actually comes down to what you ate in the morning, so it’s a very, very complex field and looking at what are the fundamental pillars and just going super deep in that. There’s been less of a structure, there’s just been collection, collection, collection and once you have so much collection connections just --
Tarun:
They just form.
Dilsher:
They just form and I think it’s again is a deep love and passion for that I can do it 24/7 so only keeps compounding.
Tarun:
What’s been the toughest moment in the Zupee journey? When you look back what was the darkest phase, what was the – what made you go through it. Lot of young entrepreneurs obviously will listen to this, I really want something that you can share very openly, very vulnerably and say this was the toughest phase and this is how it helped me grow?
Dilsher:
I think it would be just really seeing how you yourself can become a big bottleneck to the company. And the discomfort of seeing something because if you cut and see and there’s a lot of work that goes into shifting who you are as a human being you're updating your beliefs or personality so that to me would be the toughest phase when I saw a default being is not actually serving the company. And then like it doesn’t happen like that, the patterns are very deep rooted from where they come from so actually making that effort to move from a place where me my personal beliefs or personality might be a bottleneck for the company to a place from really evolving, changing who you are that it actually serves the company. So I think that was a tough time but it’s an ongoing journey I'm not going to claim I'm some enlightened human being. It’s an ongoing journey.
Tarun:
But thank you, I think it takes a lot of courage to be so open. I don’t think 9 out of 10 people would like to acknowledge that they’re coming in the way of their company’s growth or success. And as this founder and as somebody who has honestly done so well it’s even harder to acknowledge that because it’s almost I guess the default is to actually get into a complex that the company is so successful because of me. But to have the humility to say but now the next jump is going to be I may end up being that bottleneck so thank you for being so vulnerable for it.
Dilsher:
And I think that’s where I would like to express my gratitude to you. You have been amazing, Harish has been really --
Tarun:
Yes, I know. He’s been a very big supporter, cheer leader, friend, partner, everything.
Dilsher:
So I think very, very grateful to you guys like who have always guided, supported and that phase transition that happens being really there for me and Zupee so thank you so much.
Tarun:
No, no, I am fortunate and honored to be on this journey with you. So I know you have to run so I'm going to maybe end with one last question. So what’s next for Zupee, what’s the I wouldn’t say ambition or desire or but what’s the core – when nobody is around you and when you think about next five years for Zupee what would make you happy?
Dilsher:
I think the way I thought about this was like the mission is still that, how do you increase quality of life, eliminate suffering and these are very, very tough problems to solve.
Tarun:
Do you measure this by the way, do you measure like when you talk to your users and I know you’ve told me this that even people who lose on the platform they spend more time and are more engaged than this thing but how do you measure this, that are you improving somebody’s quality of life with them being on Zupee?
Dilsher:
That itself is we believe a billion dollar or hundred billion dollar opportunity how to measure emotional wellness, spiritual wellness, mental wellness. So there are lot of ways to actually do that, I think that goes back to what’s next for Zupee. So I think the idea is just some raw materials that we started as a deep passion for this mission, there is absolute love for the field, there’s a gigantic vision and then we realized you know, there are three pillars let’s build which would be get massive distribution, build a great brand and get cash flow. So if you have these three things and other three things the example that comes to mind is Tencent. So I don’t know what the exact stake they have in Meituan which is a food delivery company. They have no business being a gaming company getting into that but our vision has always been if we’ve great brand, great distribution, you have cashflow and built a reputation that you can deliver you can pretty much own the entire ecosystem. So that is the vision and belief we go in and our mission of improving quality of life like I just said gaming is just version one of our --
Tarun:
So you don’t think of yourself as a gaming company at all.
Dilsher:
Not at all. It’s like I say it’s version 1, version 100 we say in a funny way can we design a product that leads to enlightenment, that is the kind of product we want to build. So version 2, version 3, version 4, version n, but again we wanted to build fundamental pillars on which like Reliance is Reliance because Reliance Oil, Amazon is AWS, so you need to have distribution brand and cashflow then you pretty much can control your own destiny and like I said reputation. And then a deep vision and passion for it so that to us gaming is version 1. From here on we want to become a..
Tarun:
Awesome. It’s inspiring. I think the fact that you have both the temperament and the tenacity and the long term outlook to think that far ahead and you have age on your side to go and get that.
Dilsher:
Slightly worried next two years.
Tarun:
No, it’s inspiring and it’s thank you for giving us an inside view to the journey and a seat on the table to see you as you sort of build this out. I couldn’t be more excited, I think like I said when we started I’ve learnt so much just observing you and observing your growth. I think you're one of the few founders where I’ve seen a vertical line in just your growth as an entrepreneur since the time we invested. So thank you for keeping inspiring us and doing what you do, really grateful and thank you for doing this today.
Dilsher:
Thank you, TD.
Tarun:
Awesome.
