Nitin Bajaj: (0:00:00) – Hey everyone, welcome to the industry show. I’m your host, Nitin Bajaj. And joining me today is Sanchit Govil. Sanchit, welcome on the show.

Sanchit Govil: (0:00:09) – Thanks, Nitin. Thank you for the warm welcome.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:00:13) – Pleasure to have you here. So let’s start with who is Sanchit?

Sanchit Govil: (0:00:19) – So I am Sanchit. I’m based out of Delhi in India. I belong to a business family in Aligarh. It’s a very small town in North India, actually very close to Delhi. Born and brought up in a joint family setup. Born and brought up with sort of dreams of starting our own business. Seeing my father running its own business for the past 35 years now and five years back, I ventured on to started my own business, post my MBA into supply chain management and operations. That’s something which really excites me. Today I’m working with a lot of msmes and artisans in India spread across ten states, trying to create an impact and create livelihoods for a lot of them through our market access and design capabilities that we have in house.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:01:11) – Excited to hear more about that. But now that we know a little bit about you, let’s play a little game before we jump into the heart of the issues and the questions. We call this the underrated, overrated game. And I’ll throw a few themes at you and you get to respond with one word on those. So let’s start with startup valuations.

Sanchit Govil: (0:01:34) – Overrated.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:01:36) – What about crypto?

Sanchit Govil: (0:01:40) – I don’t understand.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:01:43) – I guess we’ll call it overrated.

Sanchit Govil: (0:01:45) – Yeah.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:01:47) – What about inflation?

Sanchit Govil: (0:01:51) – Understandable.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:01:55) – Cash.

Sanchit Govil: (0:01:57) – Liquid.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:02:01) – And real estate prices?

Sanchit Govil: (0:02:05) – Underrated.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:02:08) – And the metaverse?

Sanchit Govil: (0:02:11) – I again, don’t understand overrated.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:02:16) – Because you work with real things, real stuff. It’s completely different landscape out there. So I appreciate that. What about something that you talked about? Impact. So what about stakeholder capitalism?

Sanchit Govil: (0:02:37) – That’s underrated. And especially in India, I would say that’s something which is very nascent nigh. I would say so true.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:02:46) – Well, that was fun playing with you, Sanchit. Thanks for the honest and transparent answers there. Now let’s talk about something closer to you. Tell us what is Lal10 and the mission, the vision, and we’ll follow that up with the size and scale of your operations.

Sanchit Govil: (0:03:08) – So at Lal10, we are building a yarn to fashion brand. Right. The concept and idea started five years back with the concept of our idea of working with a lot of artisans, people who are sort of skilled, I would say skilled labors, skilled, talented people who can make products out of raw materials, who are skilled enough to make a lot of good fashion wear goods. Right. And with a limited design, understanding and capabilities. But I think over time, the objective for Laltein has been to sort of understand and be empathetic about as to what these guys are building and how we can help them scale. There is a huge potential as to what they are building, and I think there is a huge potential as to what the platform can entail for these artisans and msmes in India. So MSME is what we call in India as a micro, small and medium enterprise, which has a turnover of, I would say, less than $10 million, and which are focused on creating a lot of employment opportunities and businesses in small towns of India. So Atlanta, we are working with tier two and tier three towns in the most rural parts of the country and where we want to ensure that we give them a lot of visibility as to what is happening around the world in India and around the world, and how we can help them scale the product. So that’s what we are doing. So the idea is to have commerce and impact goes hand in hand. So we want to create a sound business model as to working with, I would not say millions of them because India has around 1.9 million msmes, but at least to work with thousands of them and to create that business and impact coming.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:05:10) – Yeah. And as you talk about that scale, right, 1.9 million entrepreneurs and tier two. And tier three is where the heart of India is. Tell us a little more about you’ve been doing this for a few years now, but this is, I believe, from what I’ve understood from our discussions in the past, this is the inflection point for you guys. So give us a sense for what the next six to twelve months are going to look like.

Sanchit Govil: (0:05:37) – Right. Initially, we started with only working with very few products and directly working with a lot of brands in India, in Indian retail segment. I think, post Covid, we are seeing a lot of growth happening, especially in both online and offline sector. I think what Covid has made the change is to push the sector itself to come online. But I think, post Covid, there are some good both external and internal scenarios and factors which are creating both online and offline demand. So that’s where we want to scale. And we realize that with the advent of online sort of intervention happening in the last couple of years, there is a huge potential that we can tap globally as well with the product. So we’ve created a specialized sort of vertical and team which is now only focusing on taking this product to export markets. I think traditionally, US or Europe has been a predominant market for indian textile, indian handicraft, actually, and with a lot of traditional big players already operating in the space. But I think the opportunity is so huge as to how you can enable technology in such an organized sector, because it’s not something which is seen from a lens of a demand from a buyer’s lens. It’s something that you have to see from a supply lens. And I think that comes with a lot of flavor of empathy and support that we have created with the communities here in India. It’s a very unorganized supply. So I think it’s entirely a supply dependent model that we have created. And the idea for us, in the next couple of quarters to one year is we want to create and enable and execute this ecosystem that we have print out, which is more of not only providing them a lot of business opportunities and to kind of taking orders and sort of doing a lot of webinars, doing a lot of, I would say, trade shows for selling the product, but also, I think, enabling a lot of credit enhancement. So working capital is one of the core challenges that the MSMEs face in India. The fintech, I would say, and the MSME financing sector has boomed. But I think that’s just the tip of the iceberg. And we believe that with the right credit support and the right business and design support that we are able to provide up to now, we’ll be able to scale this and create this ecosystem for the first thousand MSMEs in India, not more.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:08:18) – I think the key word there that you used a couple of times is the ecosystem.

Sanchit Govil: (0:08:22) – Right?

Nitin Bajaj: (0:08:22) – You’re not creating any commerce site or a layer in between where people can come and dump their products. It’s an entire ecosystem understanding what the opportunities are, the challenges, and also plugging in the finance and making sure that the end to end delivery. So I think you used a term there that I’m trying to remember from. What was it?

Sanchit Govil: (0:08:46) – Farm to door, it was yarn to fashion.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:08:49) – Yarn to fashion. Sorry. So I think that’s extremely important, because this industry, the people that are working in this space, the suppliers, have not seen the other end of it. So to educate and uplift them is extremely important to what you’re trying to do in terms of bringing that value and break into this market. Now, help me understand, the three of you. Really good backgrounds, education, had lot of other opportunities to start any business. Why this?

Sanchit Govil: (0:09:24) – Interestingly so. Actually, as I said, we have been born and brought up in business families. And by business families, I meant where we have seen our fathers actually starting their own business. And sort of creating a good amount, a fair amount of scale, doing good for the family, doing good for himself. And that was something I think I had in mind and even my co founders had in mind where we wanted to do something of our own. And I think the kickoff that happened when we were working, so after my post graduation in Bombay, I happened to work with Flipkart. So Flipkart is what Amazon is to us. So I spent close to around 18 months in Flipkart. Right. And that was the time when Flipkart was. Flipkart launched its first big billion days and they were actually ramping up and scaling very fast. So I was fortunate enough to work with a global team and a very senior, talented team there. And the culture was pretty amazing. I think they really supported the ideas that we had and really helped me to sort of think outside of the box as to how I can start my own business also. And I think I got great support from my mentors and from my seniors there, along with the support that I had from my family and that really sort of kind of accelerated sort of my journey, starting my journey of doing my own business. And that really helped me until today. I’m in touch with all of these guys, and they are sort of all my mentors and advisors who are always available to hear, actually, as to what we are doing and help them in their own capacities.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:11:15) – That’s really amazing. Now, let’s talk about so far in the journey at this point, what’s the biggest challenge you’re facing as a business?

Sanchit Govil: (0:11:27) – So the biggest challenge that I’m facing is in terms of, I would say, both supply and working capital. What I understand is, obviously there are a lot of players who want to create an ecommerce website. There are a lot of players who want to create a platform that can enable the transactions for these people and make it more of a global product. But I think the challenge that we have today is in terms of having those right resources. So I’m launching my own production centers now in seven cities in India. And so the biggest challenge there is in terms of having the right set of people to cater to a much more organized supply, I would say, and at the same time, enabling working capital support for these people. I think that’s one of the biggest challenge I would have for the next couple of quarters. From now on.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:12:22) – On the flip side of the challenge is the most exciting opportunity. So what’s keeping you most excited about this?

Sanchit Govil: (0:12:31) – So I think the challenge brings a lot of excitement. Actually, two months back, we were 30 people. Right. Today we are 50, and I think in the next couple of months, we would be close to 70, 75. So I think there is a lot of excitement which is there currently in the office space, in the clusters that we are operating. And I think I’m taking this challenge as more of an opportunity and learning, sort of, I would say opportunity for myself and the team where we know that if we are able to sort of execute our plans in the next six months of time, I think then we can have look forward to what we dreamt of, be the fair of us or be the Alibaba of the world. So that’s what we want to create.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:13:17) – That is truly exciting. Now, as you look back, I’m looking for two examples. One where things really worked out and you hit the ball out of the park, as they say, and the other one where it did not, and it was either a failure or it became a lesson. So would love to hear one example of each.

Sanchit Govil: (0:13:41) – Right. Okay. So basically, I’ll start with one of the lessons I had, and I would say failures and learnings that I had in the last couple of years. So obviously when Covid struck. Right. And that was the time when obviously, the demand got impacted, everything got dried up, and we had a very disorganized supply chain at that point of time. So we sort of started investing in a lot of technology initiatives. We can build our own back end infrastructure in house. We can have our own application in house. And that’s something that we did for almost a year just after Covid. But because of a lot of pilots, we could not run, because I think what we did was not taking the feedback at the right amount of time and started building with our own punch and with our own sort of learnings that we had previously, that product did not work out well. That was something that came as a learning where obviously we spent both our time and resources. I would say we spent our money and we learned that it was important for us to have that feedback of all the stakeholders in the supply chain as to what we are building and executing. That was, I would say, hard eight months to one year of sort of back time, or I would say failure that we had, but we capitalized on it in the later half of the year. I would say post 2021, post the second wave in India, where we realized that we need to sort of, kind of change as to our thought process and to change what we are building. And then we started taking a lot of feedback. We started traveling again. Right. I think talking to a lot of stakeholders taking their feedback and today as to the product that we have is exactly what an MSME in India would use. So I think yes. So there was this initial hiccup, I would say, but a good lesson learned as to how we can keep all the stakeholders engaged as to how we are building the makes sense.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:15:49) – Now, I also want you to brag a little bit, something that blew your expectations.

Sanchit Govil: (0:15:56) – Okay. So when I call it as more of a yarn to fashion brand, I think the experiment that I did last year was to introduce, started aggregating a lot of yarn supply to my MSLA span India, especially in very year three. And the local, I would say local parks, that’s something that really kicked off well, right? I think there is a huge potential and we were able to sort of ensure a good quality product. We made sure that when we talk about this ecosystem creation, we made sure that we are there for an MSME for providing raw materials as well as to vendor MSME nature. And I think that greatly, greatly improved the response time of the entire supply chain. So that’s something that I think the last year that was a positive and I would say a white light for us. And that’s something that we are able to scale much more this year.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:16:57) – Now that is amazing. Now that brings me to my favorite part of the show, which is the one line life lessons. We’d love to hear a few of those from you.

Sanchit Govil: (0:17:12) – Great. Basically, I think I would have a different thought post. I would say pre Covid time, but post Covid, one thing that I realized is I am doing this for close to six years now. And as to when the idea started, as to what we are doing today, since 2016, I think for me right now, it boils down to the perseverance and patience part. I think where the sector is very tough. Growing business in India is definitely tough when you’re talking about MSME space. But I think at the end, it all takes a lot of perseverance and patience to build it. I feel that I might be able to sort of scale and create a lot of impact in the next three years, even not one year, I would say. So I want to keep that patience. This is something that this engagement has sort of given me a lesson, has sort of taught me that I can build more patients, I can build a lot of perseverance around it. And I think that is what is helping me drive the team as well.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:18:32) – So perseverance and patience and I think just staying relentless right in the face of all the challenges that keep getting thrown at you right do you have any other lessons you would like to share with us?

Sanchit Govil: (0:18:49) – No, I think that goes well.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:18:53) – Stay focused, stay persistent, and stay patient. Love that Sanjit. Thank you so much for sharing those online life lessons for our audience. We have an entire collection on onelinelifelessons.com and wherever you socialize digitally. Sanchit, thank you once again for being here and sharing your journey with us and really looking forward to seeing how you guys scale over the next few quarters and the next few years. Thanks a lot.

Sanchit Govil: (0:19:21) – Thank you. Thank you. Nitin.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:00:00) – Hey everyone, welcome to the industry show. I’m your host, Nitin Bajaj. And joining me today is Sanchit Govil. Sanchit, welcome on the show.

Sanchit Govil: (0:00:09) – Thanks, Nitin. Thank you for the warm welcome.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:00:13) – Pleasure to have you here. So let’s start with who is Sanchit?

Sanchit Govil: (0:00:19) – So I am Sanchit. I’m based out of Delhi in India. I belong to a business family in Aligarh. It’s a very small town in North India, actually very close to Delhi. Born and brought up in a joint family setup. Born and brought up with sort of dreams of starting our own business. Seeing my father running its own business for the past 35 years now and five years back, I ventured on to started my own business, post my MBA into supply chain management and operations. That’s something which really excites me. Today I’m working with a lot of msmes and artisans in India spread across ten states, trying to create an impact and create livelihoods for a lot of them through our market access and design capabilities that we have in house.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:01:11) – Excited to hear more about that. But now that we know a little bit about you, let’s play a little game before we jump into the heart of the issues and the questions. We call this the underrated, overrated game. And I’ll throw a few themes at you and you get to respond with one word on those. So let’s start with startup valuations.

Sanchit Govil: (0:01:34) – Overrated.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:01:36) – What about crypto?

Sanchit Govil: (0:01:40) – I don’t understand.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:01:43) – I guess we’ll call it overrated.

Sanchit Govil: (0:01:45) – Yeah.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:01:47) – What about inflation?

Sanchit Govil: (0:01:51) – Understandable.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:01:55) – Cash.

Sanchit Govil: (0:01:57) – Liquid.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:02:01) – And real estate prices?

Sanchit Govil: (0:02:05) – Underrated.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:02:08) – And the metaverse?

Sanchit Govil: (0:02:11) – I again, don’t understand overrated.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:02:16) – Because you work with real things, real stuff. It’s completely different landscape out there. So I appreciate that. What about something that you talked about? Impact. So what about stakeholder capitalism?

Sanchit Govil: (0:02:37) – That’s underrated. And especially in India, I would say that’s something which is very nascent nigh. I would say so true.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:02:46) – Well, that was fun playing with you, Sanchit. Thanks for the honest and transparent answers there. Now let’s talk about something closer to you. Tell us what is Lal10 and the mission, the vision, and we’ll follow that up with the size and scale of your operations.

Sanchit Govil: (0:03:08) – So at Lal10, we are building a yarn to fashion brand. Right. The concept and idea started five years back with the concept of our idea of working with a lot of artisans, people who are sort of skilled, I would say skilled labors, skilled, talented people who can make products out of raw materials, who are skilled enough to make a lot of good fashion wear goods. Right. And with a limited design, understanding and capabilities. But I think over time, the objective for Laltein has been to sort of understand and be empathetic about as to what these guys are building and how we can help them scale. There is a huge potential as to what they are building, and I think there is a huge potential as to what the platform can entail for these artisans and msmes in India. So MSME is what we call in India as a micro, small and medium enterprise, which has a turnover of, I would say, less than $10 million, and which are focused on creating a lot of employment opportunities and businesses in small towns of India. So Atlanta, we are working with tier two and tier three towns in the most rural parts of the country and where we want to ensure that we give them a lot of visibility as to what is happening around the world in India and around the world, and how we can help them scale the product. So that’s what we are doing. So the idea is to have commerce and impact goes hand in hand. So we want to create a sound business model as to working with, I would not say millions of them because India has around 1.9 million msmes, but at least to work with thousands of them and to create that business and impact coming.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:05:10) – Yeah. And as you talk about that scale, right, 1.9 million entrepreneurs and tier two. And tier three is where the heart of India is. Tell us a little more about you’ve been doing this for a few years now, but this is, I believe, from what I’ve understood from our discussions in the past, this is the inflection point for you guys. So give us a sense for what the next six to twelve months are going to look like.

Sanchit Govil: (0:05:37) – Right. Initially, we started with only working with very few products and directly working with a lot of brands in India, in Indian retail segment. I think, post Covid, we are seeing a lot of growth happening, especially in both online and offline sector. I think what Covid has made the change is to push the sector itself to come online. But I think, post Covid, there are some good both external and internal scenarios and factors which are creating both online and offline demand. So that’s where we want to scale. And we realize that with the advent of online sort of intervention happening in the last couple of years, there is a huge potential that we can tap globally as well with the product. So we’ve created a specialized sort of vertical and team which is now only focusing on taking this product to export markets. I think traditionally, US or Europe has been a predominant market for indian textile, indian handicraft, actually, and with a lot of traditional big players already operating in the space. But I think the opportunity is so huge as to how you can enable technology in such an organized sector, because it’s not something which is seen from a lens of a demand from a buyer’s lens. It’s something that you have to see from a supply lens. And I think that comes with a lot of flavor of empathy and support that we have created with the communities here in India. It’s a very unorganized supply. So I think it’s entirely a supply dependent model that we have created. And the idea for us, in the next couple of quarters to one year is we want to create and enable and execute this ecosystem that we have print out, which is more of not only providing them a lot of business opportunities and to kind of taking orders and sort of doing a lot of webinars, doing a lot of, I would say, trade shows for selling the product, but also, I think, enabling a lot of credit enhancement. So working capital is one of the core challenges that the MSMEs face in India. The fintech, I would say, and the MSME financing sector has boomed. But I think that’s just the tip of the iceberg. And we believe that with the right credit support and the right business and design support that we are able to provide up to now, we’ll be able to scale this and create this ecosystem for the first thousand MSMEs in India, not more.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:08:18) – I think the key word there that you used a couple of times is the ecosystem.

Sanchit Govil: (0:08:22) – Right?

Nitin Bajaj: (0:08:22) – You’re not creating any commerce site or a layer in between where people can come and dump their products. It’s an entire ecosystem understanding what the opportunities are, the challenges, and also plugging in the finance and making sure that the end to end delivery. So I think you used a term there that I’m trying to remember from. What was it?

Sanchit Govil: (0:08:46) – Farm to door, it was yarn to fashion.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:08:49) – Yarn to fashion. Sorry. So I think that’s extremely important, because this industry, the people that are working in this space, the suppliers, have not seen the other end of it. So to educate and uplift them is extremely important to what you’re trying to do in terms of bringing that value and break into this market. Now, help me understand, the three of you. Really good backgrounds, education, had lot of other opportunities to start any business. Why this?

Sanchit Govil: (0:09:24) – Interestingly so. Actually, as I said, we have been born and brought up in business families. And by business families, I meant where we have seen our fathers actually starting their own business. And sort of creating a good amount, a fair amount of scale, doing good for the family, doing good for himself. And that was something I think I had in mind and even my co founders had in mind where we wanted to do something of our own. And I think the kickoff that happened when we were working, so after my post graduation in Bombay, I happened to work with Flipkart. So Flipkart is what Amazon is to us. So I spent close to around 18 months in Flipkart. Right. And that was the time when Flipkart was. Flipkart launched its first big billion days and they were actually ramping up and scaling very fast. So I was fortunate enough to work with a global team and a very senior, talented team there. And the culture was pretty amazing. I think they really supported the ideas that we had and really helped me to sort of think outside of the box as to how I can start my own business also. And I think I got great support from my mentors and from my seniors there, along with the support that I had from my family and that really sort of kind of accelerated sort of my journey, starting my journey of doing my own business. And that really helped me until today. I’m in touch with all of these guys, and they are sort of all my mentors and advisors who are always available to hear, actually, as to what we are doing and help them in their own capacities.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:11:15) – That’s really amazing. Now, let’s talk about so far in the journey at this point, what’s the biggest challenge you’re facing as a business?

Sanchit Govil: (0:11:27) – So the biggest challenge that I’m facing is in terms of, I would say, both supply and working capital. What I understand is, obviously there are a lot of players who want to create an ecommerce website. There are a lot of players who want to create a platform that can enable the transactions for these people and make it more of a global product. But I think the challenge that we have today is in terms of having those right resources. So I’m launching my own production centers now in seven cities in India. And so the biggest challenge there is in terms of having the right set of people to cater to a much more organized supply, I would say, and at the same time, enabling working capital support for these people. I think that’s one of the biggest challenge I would have for the next couple of quarters. From now on.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:12:22) – On the flip side of the challenge is the most exciting opportunity. So what’s keeping you most excited about this?

Sanchit Govil: (0:12:31) – So I think the challenge brings a lot of excitement. Actually, two months back, we were 30 people. Right. Today we are 50, and I think in the next couple of months, we would be close to 70, 75. So I think there is a lot of excitement which is there currently in the office space, in the clusters that we are operating. And I think I’m taking this challenge as more of an opportunity and learning, sort of, I would say opportunity for myself and the team where we know that if we are able to sort of execute our plans in the next six months of time, I think then we can have look forward to what we dreamt of, be the fair of us or be the Alibaba of the world. So that’s what we want to create.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:13:17) – That is truly exciting. Now, as you look back, I’m looking for two examples. One where things really worked out and you hit the ball out of the park, as they say, and the other one where it did not, and it was either a failure or it became a lesson. So would love to hear one example of each.

Sanchit Govil: (0:13:41) – Right. Okay. So basically, I’ll start with one of the lessons I had, and I would say failures and learnings that I had in the last couple of years. So obviously when Covid struck. Right. And that was the time when obviously, the demand got impacted, everything got dried up, and we had a very disorganized supply chain at that point of time. So we sort of started investing in a lot of technology initiatives. We can build our own back end infrastructure in house. We can have our own application in house. And that’s something that we did for almost a year just after Covid. But because of a lot of pilots, we could not run, because I think what we did was not taking the feedback at the right amount of time and started building with our own punch and with our own sort of learnings that we had previously, that product did not work out well. That was something that came as a learning where obviously we spent both our time and resources. I would say we spent our money and we learned that it was important for us to have that feedback of all the stakeholders in the supply chain as to what we are building and executing. That was, I would say, hard eight months to one year of sort of back time, or I would say failure that we had, but we capitalized on it in the later half of the year. I would say post 2021, post the second wave in India, where we realized that we need to sort of, kind of change as to our thought process and to change what we are building. And then we started taking a lot of feedback. We started traveling again. Right. I think talking to a lot of stakeholders taking their feedback and today as to the product that we have is exactly what an MSME in India would use. So I think yes. So there was this initial hiccup, I would say, but a good lesson learned as to how we can keep all the stakeholders engaged as to how we are building the makes sense.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:15:49) – Now, I also want you to brag a little bit, something that blew your expectations.

Sanchit Govil: (0:15:56) – Okay. So when I call it as more of a yarn to fashion brand, I think the experiment that I did last year was to introduce, started aggregating a lot of yarn supply to my MSLA span India, especially in very year three. And the local, I would say local parks, that’s something that really kicked off well, right? I think there is a huge potential and we were able to sort of ensure a good quality product. We made sure that when we talk about this ecosystem creation, we made sure that we are there for an MSME for providing raw materials as well as to vendor MSME nature. And I think that greatly, greatly improved the response time of the entire supply chain. So that’s something that I think the last year that was a positive and I would say a white light for us. And that’s something that we are able to scale much more this year.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:16:57) – Now that is amazing. Now that brings me to my favorite part of the show, which is the one line life lessons. We’d love to hear a few of those from you.

Sanchit Govil: (0:17:12) – Great. Basically, I think I would have a different thought post. I would say pre Covid time, but post Covid, one thing that I realized is I am doing this for close to six years now. And as to when the idea started, as to what we are doing today, since 2016, I think for me right now, it boils down to the perseverance and patience part. I think where the sector is very tough. Growing business in India is definitely tough when you’re talking about MSME space. But I think at the end, it all takes a lot of perseverance and patience to build it. I feel that I might be able to sort of scale and create a lot of impact in the next three years, even not one year, I would say. So I want to keep that patience. This is something that this engagement has sort of given me a lesson, has sort of taught me that I can build more patients, I can build a lot of perseverance around it. And I think that is what is helping me drive the team as well.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:18:32) – So perseverance and patience and I think just staying relentless right in the face of all the challenges that keep getting thrown at you right do you have any other lessons you would like to share with us?

Sanchit Govil: (0:18:49) – No, I think that goes well.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:18:53) – Stay focused, stay persistent, and stay patient. Love that Sanjit. Thank you so much for sharing those online life lessons for our audience. We have an entire collection on onelinelifelessons.com and wherever you socialize digitally. Sanchit, thank you once again for being here and sharing your journey with us and really looking forward to seeing how you guys scale over the next few quarters and the next few years. Thanks a lot.

Sanchit Govil: (0:19:21) – Thank you. Thank you. Nitin.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:00:00) – Hey everyone, welcome to the industry show. I’m your host, Nitin Bajaj. And joining me today is Sanchit Govil. Sanchit, welcome on the show.

Sanchit Govil: (0:00:09) – Thanks, Nitin. Thank you for the warm welcome.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:00:13) – Pleasure to have you here. So let’s start with who is Sanchit?

Sanchit Govil: (0:00:19) – So I am Sanchit. I’m based out of Delhi in India. I belong to a business family in Aligarh. It’s a very small town in North India, actually very close to Delhi. Born and brought up in a joint family setup. Born and brought up with sort of dreams of starting our own business. Seeing my father running its own business for the past 35 years now and five years back, I ventured on to started my own business, post my MBA into supply chain management and operations. That’s something which really excites me. Today I’m working with a lot of msmes and artisans in India spread across ten states, trying to create an impact and create livelihoods for a lot of them through our market access and design capabilities that we have in house.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:01:11) – Excited to hear more about that. But now that we know a little bit about you, let’s play a little game before we jump into the heart of the issues and the questions. We call this the underrated, overrated game. And I’ll throw a few themes at you and you get to respond with one word on those. So let’s start with startup valuations.

Sanchit Govil: (0:01:34) – Overrated.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:01:36) – What about crypto?

Sanchit Govil: (0:01:40) – I don’t understand.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:01:43) – I guess we’ll call it overrated.

Sanchit Govil: (0:01:45) – Yeah.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:01:47) – What about inflation?

Sanchit Govil: (0:01:51) – Understandable.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:01:55) – Cash.

Sanchit Govil: (0:01:57) – Liquid.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:02:01) – And real estate prices?

Sanchit Govil: (0:02:05) – Underrated.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:02:08) – And the metaverse?

Sanchit Govil: (0:02:11) – I again, don’t understand overrated.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:02:16) – Because you work with real things, real stuff. It’s completely different landscape out there. So I appreciate that. What about something that you talked about? Impact. So what about stakeholder capitalism?

Sanchit Govil: (0:02:37) – That’s underrated. And especially in India, I would say that’s something which is very nascent nigh. I would say so true.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:02:46) – Well, that was fun playing with you, Sanchit. Thanks for the honest and transparent answers there. Now let’s talk about something closer to you. Tell us what is Lal10 and the mission, the vision, and we’ll follow that up with the size and scale of your operations.

Sanchit Govil: (0:03:08) – So at Lal10, we are building a yarn to fashion brand. Right. The concept and idea started five years back with the concept of our idea of working with a lot of artisans, people who are sort of skilled, I would say skilled labors, skilled, talented people who can make products out of raw materials, who are skilled enough to make a lot of good fashion wear goods. Right. And with a limited design, understanding and capabilities. But I think over time, the objective for Laltein has been to sort of understand and be empathetic about as to what these guys are building and how we can help them scale. There is a huge potential as to what they are building, and I think there is a huge potential as to what the platform can entail for these artisans and msmes in India. So MSME is what we call in India as a micro, small and medium enterprise, which has a turnover of, I would say, less than $10 million, and which are focused on creating a lot of employment opportunities and businesses in small towns of India. So Atlanta, we are working with tier two and tier three towns in the most rural parts of the country and where we want to ensure that we give them a lot of visibility as to what is happening around the world in India and around the world, and how we can help them scale the product. So that’s what we are doing. So the idea is to have commerce and impact goes hand in hand. So we want to create a sound business model as to working with, I would not say millions of them because India has around 1.9 million msmes, but at least to work with thousands of them and to create that business and impact coming.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:05:10) – Yeah. And as you talk about that scale, right, 1.9 million entrepreneurs and tier two. And tier three is where the heart of India is. Tell us a little more about you’ve been doing this for a few years now, but this is, I believe, from what I’ve understood from our discussions in the past, this is the inflection point for you guys. So give us a sense for what the next six to twelve months are going to look like.

Sanchit Govil: (0:05:37) – Right. Initially, we started with only working with very few products and directly working with a lot of brands in India, in Indian retail segment. I think, post Covid, we are seeing a lot of growth happening, especially in both online and offline sector. I think what Covid has made the change is to push the sector itself to come online. But I think, post Covid, there are some good both external and internal scenarios and factors which are creating both online and offline demand. So that’s where we want to scale. And we realize that with the advent of online sort of intervention happening in the last couple of years, there is a huge potential that we can tap globally as well with the product. So we’ve created a specialized sort of vertical and team which is now only focusing on taking this product to export markets. I think traditionally, US or Europe has been a predominant market for indian textile, indian handicraft, actually, and with a lot of traditional big players already operating in the space. But I think the opportunity is so huge as to how you can enable technology in such an organized sector, because it’s not something which is seen from a lens of a demand from a buyer’s lens. It’s something that you have to see from a supply lens. And I think that comes with a lot of flavor of empathy and support that we have created with the communities here in India. It’s a very unorganized supply. So I think it’s entirely a supply dependent model that we have created. And the idea for us, in the next couple of quarters to one year is we want to create and enable and execute this ecosystem that we have print out, which is more of not only providing them a lot of business opportunities and to kind of taking orders and sort of doing a lot of webinars, doing a lot of, I would say, trade shows for selling the product, but also, I think, enabling a lot of credit enhancement. So working capital is one of the core challenges that the MSMEs face in India. The fintech, I would say, and the MSME financing sector has boomed. But I think that’s just the tip of the iceberg. And we believe that with the right credit support and the right business and design support that we are able to provide up to now, we’ll be able to scale this and create this ecosystem for the first thousand MSMEs in India, not more.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:08:18) – I think the key word there that you used a couple of times is the ecosystem.

Sanchit Govil: (0:08:22) – Right?

Nitin Bajaj: (0:08:22) – You’re not creating any commerce site or a layer in between where people can come and dump their products. It’s an entire ecosystem understanding what the opportunities are, the challenges, and also plugging in the finance and making sure that the end to end delivery. So I think you used a term there that I’m trying to remember from. What was it?

Sanchit Govil: (0:08:46) – Farm to door, it was yarn to fashion.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:08:49) – Yarn to fashion. Sorry. So I think that’s extremely important, because this industry, the people that are working in this space, the suppliers, have not seen the other end of it. So to educate and uplift them is extremely important to what you’re trying to do in terms of bringing that value and break into this market. Now, help me understand, the three of you. Really good backgrounds, education, had lot of other opportunities to start any business. Why this?

Sanchit Govil: (0:09:24) – Interestingly so. Actually, as I said, we have been born and brought up in business families. And by business families, I meant where we have seen our fathers actually starting their own business. And sort of creating a good amount, a fair amount of scale, doing good for the family, doing good for himself. And that was something I think I had in mind and even my co founders had in mind where we wanted to do something of our own. And I think the kickoff that happened when we were working, so after my post graduation in Bombay, I happened to work with Flipkart. So Flipkart is what Amazon is to us. So I spent close to around 18 months in Flipkart. Right. And that was the time when Flipkart was. Flipkart launched its first big billion days and they were actually ramping up and scaling very fast. So I was fortunate enough to work with a global team and a very senior, talented team there. And the culture was pretty amazing. I think they really supported the ideas that we had and really helped me to sort of think outside of the box as to how I can start my own business also. And I think I got great support from my mentors and from my seniors there, along with the support that I had from my family and that really sort of kind of accelerated sort of my journey, starting my journey of doing my own business. And that really helped me until today. I’m in touch with all of these guys, and they are sort of all my mentors and advisors who are always available to hear, actually, as to what we are doing and help them in their own capacities.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:11:15) – That’s really amazing. Now, let’s talk about so far in the journey at this point, what’s the biggest challenge you’re facing as a business?

Sanchit Govil: (0:11:27) – So the biggest challenge that I’m facing is in terms of, I would say, both supply and working capital. What I understand is, obviously there are a lot of players who want to create an ecommerce website. There are a lot of players who want to create a platform that can enable the transactions for these people and make it more of a global product. But I think the challenge that we have today is in terms of having those right resources. So I’m launching my own production centers now in seven cities in India. And so the biggest challenge there is in terms of having the right set of people to cater to a much more organized supply, I would say, and at the same time, enabling working capital support for these people. I think that’s one of the biggest challenge I would have for the next couple of quarters. From now on.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:12:22) – On the flip side of the challenge is the most exciting opportunity. So what’s keeping you most excited about this?

Sanchit Govil: (0:12:31) – So I think the challenge brings a lot of excitement. Actually, two months back, we were 30 people. Right. Today we are 50, and I think in the next couple of months, we would be close to 70, 75. So I think there is a lot of excitement which is there currently in the office space, in the clusters that we are operating. And I think I’m taking this challenge as more of an opportunity and learning, sort of, I would say opportunity for myself and the team where we know that if we are able to sort of execute our plans in the next six months of time, I think then we can have look forward to what we dreamt of, be the fair of us or be the Alibaba of the world. So that’s what we want to create.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:13:17) – That is truly exciting. Now, as you look back, I’m looking for two examples. One where things really worked out and you hit the ball out of the park, as they say, and the other one where it did not, and it was either a failure or it became a lesson. So would love to hear one example of each.

Sanchit Govil: (0:13:41) – Right. Okay. So basically, I’ll start with one of the lessons I had, and I would say failures and learnings that I had in the last couple of years. So obviously when Covid struck. Right. And that was the time when obviously, the demand got impacted, everything got dried up, and we had a very disorganized supply chain at that point of time. So we sort of started investing in a lot of technology initiatives. We can build our own back end infrastructure in house. We can have our own application in house. And that’s something that we did for almost a year just after Covid. But because of a lot of pilots, we could not run, because I think what we did was not taking the feedback at the right amount of time and started building with our own punch and with our own sort of learnings that we had previously, that product did not work out well. That was something that came as a learning where obviously we spent both our time and resources. I would say we spent our money and we learned that it was important for us to have that feedback of all the stakeholders in the supply chain as to what we are building and executing. That was, I would say, hard eight months to one year of sort of back time, or I would say failure that we had, but we capitalized on it in the later half of the year. I would say post 2021, post the second wave in India, where we realized that we need to sort of, kind of change as to our thought process and to change what we are building. And then we started taking a lot of feedback. We started traveling again. Right. I think talking to a lot of stakeholders taking their feedback and today as to the product that we have is exactly what an MSME in India would use. So I think yes. So there was this initial hiccup, I would say, but a good lesson learned as to how we can keep all the stakeholders engaged as to how we are building the makes sense.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:15:49) – Now, I also want you to brag a little bit, something that blew your expectations.

Sanchit Govil: (0:15:56) – Okay. So when I call it as more of a yarn to fashion brand, I think the experiment that I did last year was to introduce, started aggregating a lot of yarn supply to my MSLA span India, especially in very year three. And the local, I would say local parks, that’s something that really kicked off well, right? I think there is a huge potential and we were able to sort of ensure a good quality product. We made sure that when we talk about this ecosystem creation, we made sure that we are there for an MSME for providing raw materials as well as to vendor MSME nature. And I think that greatly, greatly improved the response time of the entire supply chain. So that’s something that I think the last year that was a positive and I would say a white light for us. And that’s something that we are able to scale much more this year.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:16:57) – Now that is amazing. Now that brings me to my favorite part of the show, which is the one line life lessons. We’d love to hear a few of those from you.

Sanchit Govil: (0:17:12) – Great. Basically, I think I would have a different thought post. I would say pre Covid time, but post Covid, one thing that I realized is I am doing this for close to six years now. And as to when the idea started, as to what we are doing today, since 2016, I think for me right now, it boils down to the perseverance and patience part. I think where the sector is very tough. Growing business in India is definitely tough when you’re talking about MSME space. But I think at the end, it all takes a lot of perseverance and patience to build it. I feel that I might be able to sort of scale and create a lot of impact in the next three years, even not one year, I would say. So I want to keep that patience. This is something that this engagement has sort of given me a lesson, has sort of taught me that I can build more patients, I can build a lot of perseverance around it. And I think that is what is helping me drive the team as well.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:18:32) – So perseverance and patience and I think just staying relentless right in the face of all the challenges that keep getting thrown at you right do you have any other lessons you would like to share with us?

Sanchit Govil: (0:18:49) – No, I think that goes well.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:18:53) – Stay focused, stay persistent, and stay patient. Love that Sanjit. Thank you so much for sharing those online life lessons for our audience. We have an entire collection on onelinelifelessons.com and wherever you socialize digitally. Sanchit, thank you once again for being here and sharing your journey with us and really looking forward to seeing how you guys scale over the next few quarters and the next few years. Thanks a lot.

Sanchit Govil: (0:19:21) – Thank you. Thank you. Nitin.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:00:00) – Hey everyone, welcome to the industry show. I’m your host, Nitin Bajaj. And joining me today is Sanchit Govil. Sanchit, welcome on the show.

Sanchit Govil: (0:00:09) – Thanks, Nitin. Thank you for the warm welcome.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:00:13) – Pleasure to have you here. So let’s start with who is Sanchit?

Sanchit Govil: (0:00:19) – So I am Sanchit. I’m based out of Delhi in India. I belong to a business family in Aligarh. It’s a very small town in North India, actually very close to Delhi. Born and brought up in a joint family setup. Born and brought up with sort of dreams of starting our own business. Seeing my father running its own business for the past 35 years now and five years back, I ventured on to started my own business, post my MBA into supply chain management and operations. That’s something which really excites me. Today I’m working with a lot of msmes and artisans in India spread across ten states, trying to create an impact and create livelihoods for a lot of them through our market access and design capabilities that we have in house.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:01:11) – Excited to hear more about that. But now that we know a little bit about you, let’s play a little game before we jump into the heart of the issues and the questions. We call this the underrated, overrated game. And I’ll throw a few themes at you and you get to respond with one word on those. So let’s start with startup valuations.

Sanchit Govil: (0:01:34) – Overrated.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:01:36) – What about crypto?

Sanchit Govil: (0:01:40) – I don’t understand.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:01:43) – I guess we’ll call it overrated.

Sanchit Govil: (0:01:45) – Yeah.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:01:47) – What about inflation?

Sanchit Govil: (0:01:51) – Understandable.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:01:55) – Cash.

Sanchit Govil: (0:01:57) – Liquid.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:02:01) – And real estate prices?

Sanchit Govil: (0:02:05) – Underrated.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:02:08) – And the metaverse?

Sanchit Govil: (0:02:11) – I again, don’t understand overrated.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:02:16) – Because you work with real things, real stuff. It’s completely different landscape out there. So I appreciate that. What about something that you talked about? Impact. So what about stakeholder capitalism?

Sanchit Govil: (0:02:37) – That’s underrated. And especially in India, I would say that’s something which is very nascent nigh. I would say so true.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:02:46) – Well, that was fun playing with you, Sanchit. Thanks for the honest and transparent answers there. Now let’s talk about something closer to you. Tell us what is Lal10 and the mission, the vision, and we’ll follow that up with the size and scale of your operations.

Sanchit Govil: (0:03:08) – So at Lal10, we are building a yarn to fashion brand. Right. The concept and idea started five years back with the concept of our idea of working with a lot of artisans, people who are sort of skilled, I would say skilled labors, skilled, talented people who can make products out of raw materials, who are skilled enough to make a lot of good fashion wear goods. Right. And with a limited design, understanding and capabilities. But I think over time, the objective for Laltein has been to sort of understand and be empathetic about as to what these guys are building and how we can help them scale. There is a huge potential as to what they are building, and I think there is a huge potential as to what the platform can entail for these artisans and msmes in India. So MSME is what we call in India as a micro, small and medium enterprise, which has a turnover of, I would say, less than $10 million, and which are focused on creating a lot of employment opportunities and businesses in small towns of India. So Atlanta, we are working with tier two and tier three towns in the most rural parts of the country and where we want to ensure that we give them a lot of visibility as to what is happening around the world in India and around the world, and how we can help them scale the product. So that’s what we are doing. So the idea is to have commerce and impact goes hand in hand. So we want to create a sound business model as to working with, I would not say millions of them because India has around 1.9 million msmes, but at least to work with thousands of them and to create that business and impact coming.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:05:10) – Yeah. And as you talk about that scale, right, 1.9 million entrepreneurs and tier two. And tier three is where the heart of India is. Tell us a little more about you’ve been doing this for a few years now, but this is, I believe, from what I’ve understood from our discussions in the past, this is the inflection point for you guys. So give us a sense for what the next six to twelve months are going to look like.

Sanchit Govil: (0:05:37) – Right. Initially, we started with only working with very few products and directly working with a lot of brands in India, in Indian retail segment. I think, post Covid, we are seeing a lot of growth happening, especially in both online and offline sector. I think what Covid has made the change is to push the sector itself to come online. But I think, post Covid, there are some good both external and internal scenarios and factors which are creating both online and offline demand. So that’s where we want to scale. And we realize that with the advent of online sort of intervention happening in the last couple of years, there is a huge potential that we can tap globally as well with the product. So we’ve created a specialized sort of vertical and team which is now only focusing on taking this product to export markets. I think traditionally, US or Europe has been a predominant market for indian textile, indian handicraft, actually, and with a lot of traditional big players already operating in the space. But I think the opportunity is so huge as to how you can enable technology in such an organized sector, because it’s not something which is seen from a lens of a demand from a buyer’s lens. It’s something that you have to see from a supply lens. And I think that comes with a lot of flavor of empathy and support that we have created with the communities here in India. It’s a very unorganized supply. So I think it’s entirely a supply dependent model that we have created. And the idea for us, in the next couple of quarters to one year is we want to create and enable and execute this ecosystem that we have print out, which is more of not only providing them a lot of business opportunities and to kind of taking orders and sort of doing a lot of webinars, doing a lot of, I would say, trade shows for selling the product, but also, I think, enabling a lot of credit enhancement. So working capital is one of the core challenges that the MSMEs face in India. The fintech, I would say, and the MSME financing sector has boomed. But I think that’s just the tip of the iceberg. And we believe that with the right credit support and the right business and design support that we are able to provide up to now, we’ll be able to scale this and create this ecosystem for the first thousand MSMEs in India, not more.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:08:18) – I think the key word there that you used a couple of times is the ecosystem.

Sanchit Govil: (0:08:22) – Right?

Nitin Bajaj: (0:08:22) – You’re not creating any commerce site or a layer in between where people can come and dump their products. It’s an entire ecosystem understanding what the opportunities are, the challenges, and also plugging in the finance and making sure that the end to end delivery. So I think you used a term there that I’m trying to remember from. What was it?

Sanchit Govil: (0:08:46) – Farm to door, it was yarn to fashion.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:08:49) – Yarn to fashion. Sorry. So I think that’s extremely important, because this industry, the people that are working in this space, the suppliers, have not seen the other end of it. So to educate and uplift them is extremely important to what you’re trying to do in terms of bringing that value and break into this market. Now, help me understand, the three of you. Really good backgrounds, education, had lot of other opportunities to start any business. Why this?

Sanchit Govil: (0:09:24) – Interestingly so. Actually, as I said, we have been born and brought up in business families. And by business families, I meant where we have seen our fathers actually starting their own business. And sort of creating a good amount, a fair amount of scale, doing good for the family, doing good for himself. And that was something I think I had in mind and even my co founders had in mind where we wanted to do something of our own. And I think the kickoff that happened when we were working, so after my post graduation in Bombay, I happened to work with Flipkart. So Flipkart is what Amazon is to us. So I spent close to around 18 months in Flipkart. Right. And that was the time when Flipkart was. Flipkart launched its first big billion days and they were actually ramping up and scaling very fast. So I was fortunate enough to work with a global team and a very senior, talented team there. And the culture was pretty amazing. I think they really supported the ideas that we had and really helped me to sort of think outside of the box as to how I can start my own business also. And I think I got great support from my mentors and from my seniors there, along with the support that I had from my family and that really sort of kind of accelerated sort of my journey, starting my journey of doing my own business. And that really helped me until today. I’m in touch with all of these guys, and they are sort of all my mentors and advisors who are always available to hear, actually, as to what we are doing and help them in their own capacities.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:11:15) – That’s really amazing. Now, let’s talk about so far in the journey at this point, what’s the biggest challenge you’re facing as a business?

Sanchit Govil: (0:11:27) – So the biggest challenge that I’m facing is in terms of, I would say, both supply and working capital. What I understand is, obviously there are a lot of players who want to create an ecommerce website. There are a lot of players who want to create a platform that can enable the transactions for these people and make it more of a global product. But I think the challenge that we have today is in terms of having those right resources. So I’m launching my own production centers now in seven cities in India. And so the biggest challenge there is in terms of having the right set of people to cater to a much more organized supply, I would say, and at the same time, enabling working capital support for these people. I think that’s one of the biggest challenge I would have for the next couple of quarters. From now on.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:12:22) – On the flip side of the challenge is the most exciting opportunity. So what’s keeping you most excited about this?

Sanchit Govil: (0:12:31) – So I think the challenge brings a lot of excitement. Actually, two months back, we were 30 people. Right. Today we are 50, and I think in the next couple of months, we would be close to 70, 75. So I think there is a lot of excitement which is there currently in the office space, in the clusters that we are operating. And I think I’m taking this challenge as more of an opportunity and learning, sort of, I would say opportunity for myself and the team where we know that if we are able to sort of execute our plans in the next six months of time, I think then we can have look forward to what we dreamt of, be the fair of us or be the Alibaba of the world. So that’s what we want to create.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:13:17) – That is truly exciting. Now, as you look back, I’m looking for two examples. One where things really worked out and you hit the ball out of the park, as they say, and the other one where it did not, and it was either a failure or it became a lesson. So would love to hear one example of each.

Sanchit Govil: (0:13:41) – Right. Okay. So basically, I’ll start with one of the lessons I had, and I would say failures and learnings that I had in the last couple of years. So obviously when Covid struck. Right. And that was the time when obviously, the demand got impacted, everything got dried up, and we had a very disorganized supply chain at that point of time. So we sort of started investing in a lot of technology initiatives. We can build our own back end infrastructure in house. We can have our own application in house. And that’s something that we did for almost a year just after Covid. But because of a lot of pilots, we could not run, because I think what we did was not taking the feedback at the right amount of time and started building with our own punch and with our own sort of learnings that we had previously, that product did not work out well. That was something that came as a learning where obviously we spent both our time and resources. I would say we spent our money and we learned that it was important for us to have that feedback of all the stakeholders in the supply chain as to what we are building and executing. That was, I would say, hard eight months to one year of sort of back time, or I would say failure that we had, but we capitalized on it in the later half of the year. I would say post 2021, post the second wave in India, where we realized that we need to sort of, kind of change as to our thought process and to change what we are building. And then we started taking a lot of feedback. We started traveling again. Right. I think talking to a lot of stakeholders taking their feedback and today as to the product that we have is exactly what an MSME in India would use. So I think yes. So there was this initial hiccup, I would say, but a good lesson learned as to how we can keep all the stakeholders engaged as to how we are building the makes sense.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:15:49) – Now, I also want you to brag a little bit, something that blew your expectations.

Sanchit Govil: (0:15:56) – Okay. So when I call it as more of a yarn to fashion brand, I think the experiment that I did last year was to introduce, started aggregating a lot of yarn supply to my MSLA span India, especially in very year three. And the local, I would say local parks, that’s something that really kicked off well, right? I think there is a huge potential and we were able to sort of ensure a good quality product. We made sure that when we talk about this ecosystem creation, we made sure that we are there for an MSME for providing raw materials as well as to vendor MSME nature. And I think that greatly, greatly improved the response time of the entire supply chain. So that’s something that I think the last year that was a positive and I would say a white light for us. And that’s something that we are able to scale much more this year.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:16:57) – Now that is amazing. Now that brings me to my favorite part of the show, which is the one line life lessons. We’d love to hear a few of those from you.

Sanchit Govil: (0:17:12) – Great. Basically, I think I would have a different thought post. I would say pre Covid time, but post Covid, one thing that I realized is I am doing this for close to six years now. And as to when the idea started, as to what we are doing today, since 2016, I think for me right now, it boils down to the perseverance and patience part. I think where the sector is very tough. Growing business in India is definitely tough when you’re talking about MSME space. But I think at the end, it all takes a lot of perseverance and patience to build it. I feel that I might be able to sort of scale and create a lot of impact in the next three years, even not one year, I would say. So I want to keep that patience. This is something that this engagement has sort of given me a lesson, has sort of taught me that I can build more patients, I can build a lot of perseverance around it. And I think that is what is helping me drive the team as well.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:18:32) – So perseverance and patience and I think just staying relentless right in the face of all the challenges that keep getting thrown at you right do you have any other lessons you would like to share with us?

Sanchit Govil: (0:18:49) – No, I think that goes well.

Nitin Bajaj: (0:18:53) – Stay focused, stay persistent, and stay patient. Love that Sanjit. Thank you so much for sharing those online life lessons for our audience. We have an entire collection on onelinelifelessons.com and wherever you socialize digitally. Sanchit, thank you once again for being here and sharing your journey with us and really looking forward to seeing how you guys scale over the next few quarters and the next few years. Thanks a lot.

Sanchit Govil: (0:19:21) – Thank you. Thank you. Nitin.