E1 - OkCredit: Powering millions of small business owners in India with Harsh Pokharna
Transcript
Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of the SaaS Universe Podcast today. Joseph Abraham, founder and CEO of SaaS, industry and Uber Saga has a virtual sit down with Harsh Pokorna CEO and founder of OK Credit. Now Hush is a believer of the OK philosophy that at the end of the day. It's all OK. Let's dive in as those explores harshest philosophy and journey in founding. OK, credit, enjoy.
Hi Harish, welcome to this show and we are so happy to host you on SaaS. Found this podcast. So how is it going harsh with you?
It's going great. I'm in Jaipur right now and it's hot here. I wish I was Angela.
Yeah, I I. I'm sure you must be missing Bangalore and and the the climate. There, right so?
Yes, yes.
Yeah yeah great.
So we have.
This customary, you know ritual that we have. And we try to like keep it hip to it. So what's your favorite coat? Something that inspires you, wakes you up in the morning and gives you the. Kind of boost.
OK, OK, maybe OK. So like my answer here is that very frankly I do not have a favorite food, no what what? What me gets out of the bed. You know every day is of course you know. Like my team, you know, because we are solving so many you know, like challenging things together and you know the excitement of meeting him every day. Ideating seeing how things are progressing is like what gives me the kick and especially you know, like when we deliver that to our users and then like we see that. User feedback real time here in terms of how they are using the product. You know when they're coming to us and saying thank you, giving us ratings. So these are the things that you know like which really give me the energy and the motivation to wake up every day and get to it.
Yep, nothing better than that. I mean. I mean, if your product inspires you like I mean nothing matters that so great. Let's talk a little bit about OK credit. So what's this product all about? Who is it for and what does it really solve?
Good so helica there are around. You're a 60,000,000 or you know up to 100 million micro businesses in India, right? Like the unorganized businesses. And the way and and these businesses you know, like typically give credit to their consumers, right? Like they use credit as a sales tool for their customers, because the customers has multiple options to buy from. But if I am giving credit, you know it's a sales tool. They'll possibly come to me retail much more. And now the way they maintain records of this credit that they are giving of their receivables, in a way, is like in a copy, right which is typically called Bahia khata. Right, right? So what we do is like we essentially like we tell them to not use that copy, but to use the OK credit app to keep a track of all their receivables. The the benefit of that is, you know, like of course you know like they do not have to do calculations. Calculations are automatic. All the data is stored on cloud so they don't have to worry about you know loss of data, loss of books, someone you know changing. The main important thing is you know, like it builds trust with the customer because the customer you know whenever they make an entry on the OK credit app, the customer on the other side gets a notification on SMS on WhatsApp. It's it builds that transparency builds that trust.
Right?
And and and broadly, you know the main value proposition for the shopkeeper here is that they're collections get faster rate earlier, they would not know. That you know how much money they have given the market, or you know how much money they have given to a particular customer when they wouldn't remember. You know, like when did this customer tell me that I should collect back to maintaining those duties, maintaining everything like it becomes very difficult and with OK credit because it's an application and its intelligent. It takes care of all of that stuff, sends regular reminders to your customers.
Right?
Sense transaction updates give you reminders on. You know when you should ask the particular customer gives you option to collect online by just sending payment. On WhatsApp to your customers so they don't have to come to the shop to pay. So these are the advantages that a merchant gets, which essentially leads into, you know, like more trust with the customer and faster collections for them.
Awesome, so if I were to ask you like. How many customers do you have right now and what are you looking at you? Know in the. Future, yeah so.
You know, like. Today, like so again, you know, like we do not follow the industry definition of active users like because the industry like what they say is like anyone is active who comes to your app and you know opens the app. Does an app session.
Right?
Very frankly, doesn't make a lot of sense for us because, you know. Adds a lot of noise than signal, right? So for us you know like we have strict type criterias on whom we consider actors, right?
Right?
Like who are really active on our platform and if I were to tell like we have around 2 3,000,000 active shopkeepers, you know throughout the country who are using. You're in a very engaged manner as of today. In these 2 3,000,000 shopkeepers. Again are you know recording receivables of around 20,000,000 unique customers throughout the country.
Wow wow great. So how did you get started? Harsh? I mean I know you discovered a pain point somewhere and you you figured that there had to be a good solution for it, right? And so how did you discover there's a business opportunity out here?
So again, you know, like. There are multiple things you which led us into this, so you're just a quick history. You know, like we Aditya, Gaurav and I we have batchmates from college. We went to IIT Kanpur together, you know like studied together the 4 years and shifted to Bangalore when we shifted to Bangalore and this was 2014. Like like Flipkart was growing like crazy Gaurav and I actually got placed in Flipkart and you know like the energy, the culture that I saw there was fascinating and you know like it.
Right?
It just blew my mind that you could build something sitting in your home and possibly millions of people could use it. I was so you know, like we quit our jobs we started, you know, like working we started learning programming. We started learning product development. We started learning everything right like what it entails to do a startup and we built multiple products right like throughout our journey, but again, you know like things didn't work out. For us, you know we got short of money we. You know, like had to resort to other ways of, you know, doing some software projects for companies to make money for ourselves, and that is when you know like we actually came across this course by Combinator, right? Like? Which was how to start a startup.
Right?
And there you know, like this actually changed our mindset, because earlier whenever we would think of a startup idea or a product, we would always go market first, right?
Right?
OK, this is the hot market. You know this is a big market there is. You know these inefficiencies in the market. We should possibly solve them. But we would never take a one user approach. What that course told us was to take a one user approach. You know, I just solved your problems or solve one person 's problem and then think about how you can get more people like them or yourself. So with that in mind, that completely changed our perspective and with that in mind, we actually started interviewing ourselves. Our friends, our families, whoever we could find to understand, are there any problems that you know anyone is facing which is interesting for? Us to solve. And you know, while you were doing that, you know like so one day Aditya. So basically we had this grocery store which was right opposite of apartment, right? Like an Aditya you know, one day came back and said, you know, like every time I go there to pay my dues. You know I have to wait 15 minutes because that guy would pull out a box of bills. You know, like he would First off all those bills, find my bills, you know, do a total, check it with the register and at the end you know, tell me an amount which I wouldn't even believe. Right, so right so you.
Right?
Know like we thought, yes, this is a genuine problem and you know like we went. To the shopkeeper we. Talk to him about you know, like hey, this is the. Problem we are facing. And he said it's a bigger problem for me because I'm doing it for 100 customers, right? Like I'm arguing with the customers I have to maintain everyone's bills.
Right?
I have to do the calculations and everything we thought yes. Like it's it's a bigger problem for you and maybe we can solve it for you. And that is. How you know like we started? Building credit very frankly, you know, like at that idea I know at that time I had no idea it would scale this. Past that, you know there was such high market pull for that, but for us you know at that time what mattered was just solving a problem for this one particular person we knew and then think about how we gonna, you know, take it forward.
Got it. Totally get it. I mean amazing. I mean one one user approach and it just blew right great. So tell us a little bit about your team. I see that you have a good strong team of, you know more than 150 people, right? So how I mean, what is the journey like and and before that one quick question is like. In the early stage, right? What is the biggest challenge and from hiring a team to you? Know, coming all the way to a place where you really have a strong team right now.
Yeah, yeah, so you know. Like again, you know just to correct like our team is around 100 people not 150 and they just like we really believe in. You know, having lean teams. So like one you know like very. Different thing about our team is like our team is completely, you know like right now totally 60% engineering. You know the rest, product managers, designers, analytics, no feet on street, right? Like which is very different if you consider any other company you know who's building. Software for business. Got it and and and that is like one of our key disruption, right? Like which we brought into this industry because like if you were to study any software company, you know like who is building software for businesses prior to OK credit like you would see everyone following a sales LED model where they would develop some software and go out in the market. Sell that software to merchants. We followed a very different approach of product LED distribution.
Right?
Right? Where you know, like all of our distribution, you know, like to these merchants has been digital. A major source has been word of mouth. Right, because the product is so simple and you know it's so useful that merchants talk to each other and that is how it grows. The other big channel for us is our vitality. Right, because you know like these SMS or WhatsApp going out. For example, say I'm a supplier and I record the credit on you. Who's a retailer?
Right?
Now you get an email, you get a WhatsApp. Now you are curious what is this OK? Credit you you know? Check that out and you realize hey it's. Actually useful for me. Right and then you start using it.
Right, right?
So there's this. In product virality that we have built, there's this strong word of mouth. And then there's you know, like digital marketing, which we use to fuel this virality and word of mouth. So the the. Idea has been that you know all of our acquisitions have been digital, no feet and feet which has. It does bring down the cost of. Acquisition, right vigor in turn, has helped us focus on these smaller merchants because, you know, like any company earlier would not focus. These unorganized businesses because it wouldn't you know like justify the ROI for them because they're hiring a team who's going out giving out salaries. So it would never make sense. So in a way we democratized technology for these small businesses by disrupting the sales LED model to a product LED model. And now, because you know it's possible economically to reach out to these merchants to onboard them digitally, to service them digitally, to retain them digitally. You know when we think. So that has actually, you know, like brought them online and as now they are online. A lot of their data. Engagement is coming online which will help us in further democratizing other services for them.
Got it.
Awesome, so I think. It's really nice the way you actually shared about. I mean how you build a team, but it's based on the model of your growth and that's why you have a lean team. I mean, it's amazing, so I mean this is a question that a lot of early stage founders really struggle with, which is how do I get my first 10 customers? Probably because you have. A volume business. How do you get your first 100 customers right? So how did you go about getting your first 100 customers?
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Episode this is a question that a lot of early stage founders really struggle with, which is how do I get my first 10 customers up? Probably because you are. A volume business. How do you get your first 100 customers right? So how do? You go about getting your first 100 customers.
Yeah, so again. You know like 2 like while we are a completely digital, you know like acquisition company today. But very frankly we didn't start it that way right? And our first first 1000 custom.
All right?
Animals all came through, you know, sales efforts that we did ourselves as founders and like. Again, this is referring back to, you know, the Y Combinator advise on how to start a startup. They told they mentioned about doing things that do not scale right. Then you know achieve. So you work with scales, so you might not be able to, you know, build a scalable solution, day zero, day one, right? But if you do things that do not scale, that will help you build. You know that system which will scale. So in the initial days again, as I told you about this story. Of fruit choice, right? Like who was the grocery store? Right opposite our apartment. So we built the software for them, it it took us, you know, like 2 complete months to actually get him onboarded and you know trust our system because.
Right?
You know, like. In the initiatives, we realized that you know the duex that we have built while it looked cool. To us and trendy to us, but it was not actually very useful for that merchant because he was not aware of how to use that UX right Beaver his employees especially were not.
Got it.
Right, his employees, who are you know, like one of his employees did not even understand English, right? Like he understood only Canada, he he could not like one of his employees could not understand. Also knew like alphabets, right? He only understood numbers. So for for us it was a big challenge to you know like.
Got it.
First of all, build our user experience, which he and his employees, more importantly right, are comfortable with the second problem for us to solve. Was trust right because? You know, like in the initial days in the initial first one and a half months. He was actually maintain. All the receivables are local credit and also on the copy and every night you would check whether OK credit is doing the right calculations.
Got it.
Every other day he would check whether my data has not disappeared, right? Or the app has not disappeared my phone because that.
The profile.
That is a big see. These receivables, you know, are a big thing, right? Like This is Money which they are owed and it's if if they lose these details like it's a big loss for them because they don't know how to. How much to collect from home right? So so so that is why you know like solving for that trust was very important, right? Like he initially took him 2 months to trust us.
Absolutely yes.
That you know, OK, the calculations are correct. The data won't just disappear, the app won't just disappear, right? So so that but. So that is how we got our first user.
But again, we're
Like with every new user, that tasked problem became less and less difficult because there's social proof. Now this guy then referred, you know, like the brother.
Got it.
His brother, who was running a grocery shop in some other locality to use this application. Then we went to him. His onboarding was relatively easier than food choice, right? Because because he was already referred by his brother, he trusted. Already and you know he knew you know the benefits of it. The UX was already in place, so it it was so then we went to him and and so initial 10. A merchants for us came through referrals. Right, where, like, and and and and. That is how we build that trust that social proof, right that people started trusting us and you know using the application.
Awesome, I mean what a love about the whole response from your end was that you remember the first you know customer, right? Food choice, I mean it's amazing, harsh mean because a lot of times when you go through the whole journey you you really forget the the beginnings right? But I'm I'm so happy that you, the genesis of. You know where you started and all of that is still fresh, right? So it's it's amazing to learn and great. I mean UI UX is so important, the user experience is so important for people to understand and flow. So amazing pointers out there. So a quick thing there which I wanted. To ask is. That when did you realize in your whole journey that what you're solving was really powerful? There was a moment of epiphany and you said, hey, this is really amazing, right? So can you take us to a.
Yeah yeah yes yes I.
Moment like that.
I of course you know, like I very clearly remember that moment and again as I like again, a bit of a background so you know, like while we were doing these.
OK.
Restaurants and you know. People were referring us to their relatives or friend. You know, like be on the side you know like say after 50 odd merchants we on the side also thought about, you know, like why not we go into the market ourselves, you know? Do cold reach outs to people and see if they are interested in it and then we started going out in the markets.
OK.
We soon realized because, you know, earlier we had built it only for. Grocery, but when we went in the market, we soon realized that hey, you know, like no matter which shop we talk to, everyone just gets it right like they just get this idea like if. We go to. A mobile recharge store? They would understand this if we go to a pawn shop, a cigarette shop. They would understand it. We go to a tea shop. They understand it. Go to a canteen. They understand it right like we go to a you know like a Apple store. Everyone understands it because everyone is giving out credit to their customers. You know like for as a sales tool and you're keeping a track on a copy. Right, so everyone got it. So that is when we realized that hey, while we built it for a category, it's actually a birth across all categories of business. The second thing which we realized when we went out was, you know, like how like earlier we were only going out to retailers, right?
Right, right?
Soon we realize that even if we go to wholesalers or distributors, they also get it, because, again, they're entire like, especially their B 2 B businesses more on credit than B 2 C, right? So they also get it. And and now we were only and and and we were only going out in Bangalore, right? And and we understood that you know, big businesses of all category businesses across the supply chain businesses across geographies. Because, you know, like some of our merchants in Bangalore like were Rajasthani people. Right? Like who it comes from Rajasthan and you're doing business in Bangalore and we saw that they were referring to the app to their friends in Rajasthan who were then calling us because like we didn't have a sign up so the app was not in Play Store.
Right? Got it, got it, got it.
Right and we would just go to the people right? Like we would just share the APK with them through an app like share it or you know some APK sharing application and they and then we would create an account for them.
Right?
You know, write their from our system. Give them the passwords and then you know like they, they can change the. Etcetera and then you know, like use that system. So what we saw was that suddenly, you know, like this ATK sharing started happening itself and we started getting a lot of phone calls that hey, you know I can't find your app on Play Store. I got it from an APK. How do I create an account and then you know we were just creating accounts on phone?
Right and then and and and.
When people call you, you know they want to talk for a good 30 minutes, right? They'll ask you everything. Then where are you from? Why are you doing this? Why is this 3 you know? What is the privacy policy? Will you share it with tax department? You know, like how do we know if you run away tomorrow and you know everything they want to know everything? And and soon it got to the. Point where I was taking calls. You know, from morning to evening, right? I was waking up to the phone call, hey account your creative account and I would sleep with at the end by create an account and and this was the time when I realized that, you know we are not doing anything. We are not even going out and just creating accounts. Full day and there's so much demand that is coming from all across, right. All types of businesses. You know all across India. And that's when we realize that, hey, you know, probably we should stop this. We should, you know, release the app on Play Store.
MMM.
Make a self registration process where people can create their own accounts and that's and that's when we launched it on Play Store and the day we launched like we got such a high. You know, like downloads and your people you're trying to, you know like use OK credit from all over the country so that that is the day which I remember right when I send it that hey, this is something which we are built which is in such high demand and your people across want to use it. They're just sharing app as even if there's no. App on play store.
Wow, I mean, that's a. That's an amazing story in itself, right? Because it really shows the the validation of the journey, and I think nothing more satisfying for a founder than that, right? So amazing, so what's your revenue model like her so? I mean how do you really make money in this whole process?
So we are a pre revenue company Joseph and right now we do not make any revenues like our thesis has been to not charge for software because again like like we believe that software should be free right? Like for businesses to use like are.
Got it.
Got it.
Got it.
Like our belief is that you know, like in the future we will be able to, you know, provide more such value. Added services on top of the software which we have built which we will monetize but yeah.
Got it. Absolutely get it. So I think it's it's right now. The whole idea is about get as much adoption as possible so that. It works and you also have a philosophy that it shouldn't be charged, right? So I totally. Understand that great so very quickly. I do see that you raised money. You raised a series B, right? So what is the process like and what CAP did you use? And I ask this question for 2 reasons. One is to encourage younger founders. And the other is to basically understand what your journey has been.
The process right like? See for us. Yeah, I think our first institute like again. So the process for us was like to get our first investment. Our seed investment was again. This is the story behind it as so very stories was absolutely.
Right, I love stories. Please feel free, yeah.
Yeah, you know, like I was telling you about this APK sharing and you know how we launched it on Play Store and how. We then instantly got you know like a great reception and. Incidentally, that's also a time when we started running out of money because you know, like we didn't do jobs for long, and you know, like we are just using some of the money that we have saved. You know, like. Earlier, you know some of the money we are done from our side, hustles of software development, but.
Right?
You know, so this was the time when we saw this. Huge demand, you know, servers were exploding. You know, like you're sending out SMS 's? And like you didn't have a lot of money left, right? So at that time we had this decision of, you know whether we should stay in our House because we have money either to pay rent or to. You're like keep running our servers and at that time you know like so like I had this good friend like so Farid.
You got it.
From shared chat right? Like share chat is recently became by your account in India and so I asked them that hey, like you're running out of money.
If I.
Is there a way we can live in your office? Because we don't have money to pay rent and he generously agreed, right? So like we the 3 of us like we took 3 sleeping bags. We lived in shared Chats Office 24/7 for practically 3 months. You know we we had showers in their washroom. We 083 lunch, you know which was for their employees and.
Right?
And and but. But so while we lived there, right? And we could save money to you know, like run our servers, you know, like that is like during this time Farid introduced us to light speed, right? Like which was one of their series investors. So that is.
Got it.
You know, like, again, like they would have felt that you know there's something going on. He would have seen, you know, the honesty which we were working. So he introduced us to those investors. You know they they also liked what they saw and. Like they invested with us, so I think that was the major you know, like step for us to get institutional funding because after that you know it's more like a process where you know you already have an institutional fund. You know they would then introduce you to other funds and. I think that looks like post a seed. You know the series and series. We have all been, you know, introductions that we have got from our fund. Or, you know, like people reaching out to us from the PR, 's that we do.
Absolutely. So what does the future look like for, you know? OK, credit and where are you heading right now, harsh?
So the future again, as I told in the starting right. So we have started with democratizing software for. Small businesses right. Whereas now everyone have access to software. And of course like we are on our way to building more and more of that, like with OK credit. Now we have OK shop. We have OK staff.
Right?
And there's more coming in the pipeline, so the. Idea is to you. Know like democratize software like which was our first step and then the second step would be to democratize other services right? Like for these microbusinesses you know like financial services being one E commerce.
Right?
Being the other, so there's you know, like what we believe as a company, right? Like is that. You know digital economy is booming. You know it's growing very fast, but majority of the unorganized businesses can't. You know, like make benefit out of it and and there are 2 major barriers for that right? One is ease of use of technology and and the second is affordability.
Right?
Rigorous technologies are available, right? Technology is available. You know all the big businesses are using it, but it's not available in an easy to use manner. But it's not available in an affordable manner, so our mission as a company is to, you know, like break those 2 barriers by making technology so easy to use that any micro business can adopt it. And in such an affordable manner again, that you know, like these businesses can afford it and become part of the growing digital economy.
Yep, so you're saying something.
No so so that's what. So basically what. I'm saying is like. The first step has been, you know. Like to democratize software? The next step is now to democratize these other services. You know like that has still is not available to these microbusinesses financial Services E commerce enablement. A lot of.
Awesome, I mean that that's that's going to like create a whole ecosystem in itself, right? So I mean great great pathway there.
We call it the yeah we call it the OK universe.
Nice, that's really nice to know. OK universe. Yep, I mean great. So awesome and very quick question here is that. I mean, if you have to compare when you when you're starting and right now, what are the how has the challenge you know changed for you, right? So just a little bit on that, and how are you solving those challenges, right? Again, it's to encourage the young founders out there.
Yeah, again you know, let's see when we started it was the 3 of us like. It was more. About playing the maker role. Right where? You know, like. We are building stuff ourselves and we are we are makers right? As the company has grown. You know, like we have had to transform into a leader or a you know like. Manager, like different terms, different meanings, but you know like. Basically that role. Right, like not a maker role, forefront with that transformation for us. Has you know like has had its own learning curve? Because again we are first time founders. We graduated from College in 2014 like we do not have a lot of leadership experience behind us that they have led large teams etc. But during this time you know like how to build this 100 people company, how to you know, like, transform yourself into a leader rather than a maker and how to align everyone. On that same mission, and you know, like that's been, you know, like a major challenge in a learning curve for us, which which, again like we have, we have learned over time.
Absolutely. So let's do a quick, rapid fire here. Harsh, right? So the first question is, is there a book? You're reading a blog? You're reading that you can share with? Our audience.
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The first question is, is there a book you're reading on a blog you're reading that you can share? With our audience.
Yes, like one like I really like these blogs from N. Dot com OK. Like they they talk very deeply about you know how to build network effects in your business, how to build communities, which I think is very important for young founders to understand, because, like that is the one major form of defensibility that you can build. For your business, right while everyone talks about growth, I think it's important to understand how to build defensible growth, right? So like I really love these articles from an ex.com and encourage people to. Read it.
Awesome and the second question very quickly is is there a CEO or a leader you're following and why?
Yes, so so so many of them.
The top.
Like I yeah, yeah, I'm I'm really inspired by Jack Dorsey, right like? Because of square right like which has a very similar mission. As to us. You know, like where? Again they are making it simpler for micro businesses to, you know, become adopt technology. The second is again Jack Ma because of Alibaba, and again, you know like a very simple mission of.
And make.
Like basically making technology accessible for everyone, and you know like for the small businesses. So yeah, these are 2 founders that I really look up to. And you know like admire what they have done and you know follow them.
Awesome question number 3 coming straight to you. What's your favorite online tool right now?
OK so OK my so we are one of the tools that we have used within our organization and really loved recently. Is bubble right? So bubble is this no code?
Cool app.
A platform which makes it really easy for you to. With your users.
Right?
And we have been using it, you know, like the ability. It it has. Actually converted our product managers into Superman, right? Like because now they do not need any engineers, etc. To you know build extra dots and then if there's anything they feel they should test they can just do it themselves. So that saves us a lot of.
Right?
Considering bandwidth and you know, like gives more capability to our product managers to do experiment.
Hey, that's really nice and question number 4 is how many hours of sleep do you get?
I I see.
Every night.
Fell I see fell I I sleep 67 hours and I usually. Sometimes even more.
And this is the same stage as well. In the.
Yeah, I think like. See like I have always loved my sleep and it's. And I think sleep is very important, right? Like if you are playing for the long term, of course you know there are days you know, like when if if things are tough and if it's required. You know, like we can do all nighters we can do night outs like of course you know like we we have been trained for that in college. So all of that is done, but you know, like I still believe that in. The long term if you have to not burn out and you know like play the long term game, then sleep is actually sleep your health. What you eat. All of these things are very, very important.
Absolutely. I mean, there's no denial about that, right? So the last question in situation, you're married single? Or what's the situation like you're single?
I'm thinking.
OK, awesome and the last question for you as we come to our wrap right. Was it something that you wish you knew when you were just 20 years old? If you go back in time and and talk to.
That harsh that so many things, right? Like I. I wish
Right?
I knew, you know, like. How this tech startups are, you know like going to, you know, be such a big thing. You know, like such like a growing industry because you know, like I've always had in my mind that I wanted to a business right? I wanted to be an entrepreneur, right? Even when I. Was in college. I never wanted to do a job, but at that time I didn't have this. You know, like my mind was when I thought of business, I always thought of a traditional business of you know, all the business that were running around in family and friends etc etc. But you know, like when like this exposure to you know like how start about to start UPS was.
Right?
You know, like. Late and if I was 20 I would want that exposure to startups so that you know, like I, I would have learned even.
Right?
More in my initial years about startups.
Awesome marsh. I mean it was really nice interacting with you and there were a lot of interesting learning points as well, right? So for me it was more. About the story that connected very deeply with me. So the first story that really connected with me very deeply is that how why Combinator came and changed your life in terms of learning about how. How startups really work? That was like a game changer. The other thing that really changed was solving for that one user. Learning from that and solving it for one user and food choice. I mean I can't forget food choice now. And also you know from there you know looking at building something that users really love and you had both the viral effects there and the network effects there and as well what I loved. The whole story was the story of people sharing the apks and. Downloading stuff and then the demand just surged for you right so I mean, Lovely Lovely Story and that whole validation that came you know from there also love the way you shared about keeping your team lean because you know the way your business model really works also loved the way you spoke about software being free right. So a lot of times I think my founders go ahead and build. I mean they struggle because the struggle since they have to really like get some money for runway and then the resort to charging for the software. But I love what you shared in terms of value based pricing and having some value added services that that could actually. During the revenue, right? Yeah and also I love the way you spoke about. I mean I can't like get that off my mind. You know you you. Being you know, together as a team in the early days, taking your sleeping bags, going to your friend, 's office, sleeping there for 3 months. I mean, man, that's a journey in itself. Right, I mean. A great journey in itself and.
Yeah, that that was what convinced me that you know, like we are cockroaches. It's very difficult to tell us like we can adapt to whatever the situation is.
So true, I mean, it's adaptability. Yeah, right? And I love the way actually you you really spelled the challenge of, you know the transition from being a maker to a leader or a manager, right? It's it's a. Serious transition, a challenging transition. Lovely chatting with you. Harsh. I mean a lot of pointers out there, so looking forward to staying connected and wishing all the very best. You know, for OK credit and have a great great success ahead.
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