Ep 10: Brewing Success in a Competitive F&B Market with Jyoti

Customer love is great, healthy numbers are great - but your ability to become an integral part of your local community and empower them truly makes a business successful.

- Jyoti Bharadwaj, TeaFit

Key Takeaways

  • It's true that if you get your product right, only then everything else will fall into place. But if you don't get the product right, everything else could be right and it will definitely never fall into place. Being visible as a consumer brand is critical, but everything else has to be backed by a solid product.
  • Most of the time we get carried away thinking our customer is me. Like if I like it or if people in my circle like it, then that's a great product. But having the insight of who is your customer and if your product is made for him or her, then getting the insight from him or her about the product will take you a long way.

Episode Transcript

Kausambi
‍All right, so I'll start with a quick intro, Jyoti, and then we'll dive in. Yeah? Yeah, we'll keep it informal. All right, welcome back to the fourth episode. And well, I'm personally super excited because I'm talking to someone who is my classmate and now Darlng of the Shark Tank, India Season Two audience, and also founder at T-Fit. A little bit of a background before we hand over the mic to her. Jyoti is Mumbai-based and T-Fit, I mean, you would be under the rock if you haven't heard about it already. It offers functional, healthy, and no sugar beverages. And today what we're gonna do is we're gonna dive into her backstory, being a solopreneurbeing a mother and also how she's managing to scale up such an amazing business with a very, very lean team. So let's dive in into how Jyoti is brewing success in a competitive market with her homegrown tea brand, TeaFit. Before everything else, Jyoti, welcome. And, you know, I love tea, as with a billion and a half of us, I guess.


But it's one thing to love something and another to give up a steadily growing career and put your busy, busy personal life into turmoil almost with your own business and your own tea business. Talk to us about it. Why tea and how did it all happen?

Jyoti
For sure. First of all, thank you so much to you, Andrea, for having me on the show. It's an absolute pleasure to see a classmate thriving, doing so well, and absolutely my pleasure to be here today. If you ask me for the backstory, there is, I feel like it's a perfect storm of a lot of things that kind of came together. It wasn't predestined. I don't come from a business family. I'm probably the only person in both my family's combined to have kind of stepped into entrepreneurship. So there is no, you know, family orientation towards business. We are from service class people where they say, are you crazy? Why would you give up a career to pursue business, which is so risky and that too after kids and it is just takes such a toll on you. But I feel more than me choosing it. I think it shows me a fairly successful career after business school. And I did get some time to travel to Japan. And I do come from a diabetic family where we were not exposed to sugary beverages while growing up. And I was blown away with what I saw during my time in Japan. So many healthy beverages, grew from traditional Japanese herbs, teas, their own plants, and very proudly showcased on every beverage aisle, every vending machine like for every cola or an energy drink or a fruit based beverage you would find so many of these tea based beverages that were really healthy, flavorful and you could just tell that you're having something nice and what kind of really got my attention was that a lot of these good for you brands were owned by Cola majors and while here they were kind of still giving us the bottom of the pyramid products and I had no experience honestly in Babuji. I think I was crazy when I look back. That's why I started.


But I had paid off my expensive education loan. We come from the same business school, so you know how it is for a middle-class person. So it took me a couple of years to do that. I was doing well at housing, but I had spent a good three years at housing.com, which was a funded startup here based out of Mumbai. And honestly, in three years, I had seen everything. I had seen the big, you know, like founded exit and then stabilizing the company, then the whole acquisition process, all of it. There wasn't much for me to learn like after that. And that was my second startup when I felt a little courage, like, I don't know if your audience is fully English speaking or Hindi, so if I keep switching between languages, you can correct me. After that, I felt a little confident that, okay, if I've done this two times, maybe I can do this for myself.

It was crazy to get into beverages. I don't know how I managed to come here today, but I literally started from scratch. Like, how do you brew tea in a factory? Like, that's how I Googled and I kind of started. Glad to see that I've made it this far and very committed to taking it ahead.

Kausambi
Haha, absolutely. So tell us a bit about the early stages. I read about it. We, of course, haven't had the opportunity to catch up. But you launched offline and very quickly shifted online. Over the last couple of years, you've launched many different products, including your recent viral, I would say, team mix. I saw it on BuzzFeed. It was trending.

So how are you taking all these decisions? What signals are you listening to from your consumers to almost take these leaps of faith and kind of be where you are today?

Jyoti
So I wouldn't say that I'm very long term in that sense. I was very committed to the first line of products that we started with, which is these beverages. And then I kind of learned from customer feedback. I learned from our shipping online, how expensive it is if it's a liquid beverage. So that kind of study your business while you're growing it. A lot of ideas kind of appear from there that okay I need not ship liquid I need to find a formulation that can take the water out of it so that I can do this profitably and sustainably. So that's how the idea of premixes came to be and I tried almost everything that's on the market as far as premixes go and they were so loaded with sugar and about 55 to 60 percent sugar in a premix sachet.


So when we started to rework that, we knew that we have to completely revamp it in a way that the flavor doesn't get compromised, the mouthfeel doesn't get compromised, and we can cut the sugar out fully. So we very proudly made a range of beverages in premixed form that deliver that, that deliver by high quality, and I think the virality kind of comes when you make a good product. And so we have always focused kind of on the fundamentals. We were never in a hurry, I feel like that also worked in my favor that I was not in a hurry that I have to get to this place in six months and this place in one year, we wanted to build long-term value for customers. And I feel that really helped us keep our focus very, very strictly on product that if it's going out of the table, it has to be world class. So and keeping that kind of ethos in mind, we are developing all our line of products. We are currently working on some extracts that are like ready to deliver in water. And so that's the kind of product mixes that we're going ahead with.


A lot of it is consumer insights, a lot of it is just spending time in trade with your distributors, with the shopkeepers, just standing in the aisle and watching what customers are buying or just talking to them outside the mall and seeing how they like it, what is it that they don't like in current pre-mixes or in current beverage aisle and then you will get the ideas from there. So it's not a lot of kind of research based but it's more on the ground feedback from customers from trade, from shipping online.

Kausambi
And I was, you know, that definitely that goes to this heartwarming story I saw about Sushant, they, right, who actually you were the secret, the secret customer who was ordering tons on Amazon and who found you. I think for the listeners, you've got to repeat that story.

Jyoti
I'm not sure like this, yes, to repeat that but before that I also have to repeat the Harsh Maharewala story is that I bumped into him at an event for which his team graciously invited us and we were talking about tea and his love for tea and he's like I miss good tea when I travel and he named the tea brand which is the dominant leader right now in the pre-mixer space and he said I am quite satisfied with that and so I took a leap of faith let me send you mine and I did and then he was so kind enough to send me a mail saying I have tried one of your products it is it is on par with what currently I am drinking which was a great sign for us and then the next day he sent us another mail saying I tried your second one and might I add that I have replaced my existing assortment with all your products and I'm currently traveling with it and he sent me a picture so that kind of validation really made my day and earning customers like Sushant to I feel like when you build a brand from grounds up and when you kind of done it brick by brick, I feel like customers also resonate with you. They don't treat you like a brand. I think there's somewhere brand gets a lot more humanized. So they reach out to you in ways like this. And we're very, so when you get customers like this, it kind of validates all the effort that you put in product development. Like I could have launched this on Cosh like nine months ago with six iterations, but we were not happy. We could have launched this with a maltodextrin fill with a filler. So there are all kinds of chemicals that are there that make up most of these, but to your eye, they look very nice. The flow is very nice because there is a non-anti-kicking agent to it. So when you pour it in your cup, it just flows beautifully, but it's thanks to chemicals. So in the absence of all of that, it took us a really long time, but when you get customer validation, like from Mr. Sushantu, in fact, after that, he sent me a picture from a flight in Air France saying your product is traveling with me and so it's incredible the kind of love we get from customers.

Kausambi
And these are two, you know, when you're talking about both, they are two very extreme stories of two loyal customers, right? One is the head of Marico, and then there is, you know, a small business owner and another fellow founder, I would say. Fundamentally, they love your tea. They are your vocal evangelists, right? Any, like, what's the fundamental insight from both these different, you know, meetings and conversations you've had? Is it that the product, you get the product right, falls in place.

Jyoti
I wouldn't say that if you get the product right alone and it falls into place. But if you don't get the product right, everything else could be right and it will definitely never fall into place. So a right product alone may not be good enough, but a poor product, no matter how much you push it through marketing, you initiate trials, you know, you put $10 million behind a large ad campaign and you get everybody to try it once. But that's not, at least to my understanding, that's not how you build business.


PO that matters, it's the second purchase that matters, it's the second time somebody comes to you and says I want to repeat my order. I think if the product is fundamentally not mind blowing then it's very hard to do that. So increasingly I find...


We attempted to fall into shortcuts where you can just give it to a contract manufacturer and you can kind of just work on the great label. But if your product is not solid gold, then it's very hard that you will stay the long game. And we are in this for long, so we kind of. Everything else is around the product. So if your product is great, you've got a great visibility through platforms like Shark Tank. I think that definitely aided. We were making the same product even before, but we were not able to reach customers like Sushanto and all the other lovely customers who keep sending us such messages. So marketing visibility, just being visible as a consumer brand is critical, but everything else has to be backed by a solid product.

Kausambi
Yeah. And do these conversations, like interactions, do they also lead to like product insights, new product lines you want to launch, new flavors? Is that an everyday? It sounds like it's an everyday process for you rather than like a more structured, I do it once a month sort of a thing, right? Yeah.

Jyoti
Yeah, it is. So at one point, I think every, like at the end of every week, I was probably talking to over 100 customers myself, I still do a lot of surprise calls to customers and I receive a lot of the calls and they cannot believe most of the times that how is it possible that you are the one taking the call. And honestly, if you are not listening to your customer. Most of the time we get carried away thinking our customer is me. Like if I like it or if people in my circle like it, then that's a great product. But having the insight of who is your customer and if your product is made for him or her, then getting the insight from him or her about the product will take you a long way. It will also keep you very humble, rooted, grounded because initially when we sold our beverages, which was zero sugar, these the ones I'm drinking. A lot of the customers came back to us and they said that we didn't like it, you know, because it's unsweetened. So we thought it's zero sugar, you must have put stevia or you must have put something else to kind of make it sweet, you know, but it's unsweetened. And, you know, why did you do that? You should put stevia in it. So you get all kinds of advice, but some, some advice or some insights really stick with you, like.


One of our regular customers here in Hiranandani Paba, he used to order boxes upon boxes, and he used to say, can you introduce a larger pack? Or can you introduce a refill? For regular customers like me, I just need to put a two liter thing in my fridge so that I don't have to keep buying bottles. It also leads to packaging waste, and it was absolutely bang on. So we might be launching a refill pack very soon for customers like that. So a lot of the insights of business kind of come from the business itself.

Kausambi
Yeah, that's a very interesting perspective. You know, the example that you just gave about a repeat customer and, you know, insight into how you can repackage your products and, I mean, sustainability is already a very important thing for many of the customers today, for a lot of us today, I would say. And if someone, you know, is a T-fit, you know, loyal user, drinker. I'm sure that sustainability at some point helps sustainability, future of how the world is shaping up is also important. And so this is a very, very lovely insight there. And what about like, yeah, sorry, go on, please. Yeah.

Jyoti
So I was also going to add to it that it was one of our customers also who said that you know, shipping liquids across country has very high carbon footprints. So, would you mind taking the liquid out of this? And the same thought was reiterated by an investor I met in a friendly capacity here in Mumbai. And he said the same thing that, you know, do you have any idea how high the carbon footprint is of shipping liquids ban India?


I probably may not fully do away with this, but the goal is always to minimize or just tread lightly or as lightly as a consumer brand as we can. So we do try to keep a healthy balance of whether it is liquids that we are shipping blended with premix that have a much lighter footprint on the planet. So we try in the capacity that we can.

Kausambi
Yeah, yeah. And do you think that has an impact on also, you know, your visibility on a shelf? Your consumer behavior is shifting to a point where it's instant commerce. That's the mantra, right? Like, Q-commerce really took off in early days, but still it's something that's taken off. And people are shopping at the point of discovery and, you know, no longer based on only search-based, you know, shopping, right? How has it, so together with that sort of a trend and the fact that you are also looking at like the larger footprint etc. How do you constantly think of iterating on this visibility on a shelf, your go-to-market in such a busy category?

Jyoti
It is, it is. But it's also a category where a lot of brands kind of come and go. So we have a very local first approach, gosh, it's not very glamorous, but I feel like it's very steady. So we try to do as many stores as we can in Mumbai first. Then maybe we will do like there is a chain of pharmacy stores in Mumbai, Wellness Forever. So we'll do 100 stores of Wellness Forever before I think of pushing my product to.


Delhi or Bangalore or Chennai. So I feel for a beverage brand especially within FMCG, distribution is critical and distribution not just through online or owning the you know the D2C part of it but also being available where your customer is. Beverage at the end of the day no matter how much habit building you do it is an impulse buy right. So for every customer that buys a pack of 30 online for 30 days of T-fit. I'm more than sure that there are 20 customers that just want to pick it up on the go on a hot day. So I feel understanding your product, understanding your customer, and understanding the journey and the touch points of where they are searching for it and how quickly, badly do they want it, how much are they willing to wait for it. So it is not a planned purchase like a grocery is for most people. So for us, we were very clear that since day one, that offline will be key to our growth and we tried to build up footprints offline. Coming back to we want to kind of grow locally, outwards, radially from Mumbai. So we are deeper in Mumbai and in Pune and then in Goa and then we do have footprints in Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai and other cities, but it'll always be dense or where we are and kind of then go outwards from here.

Kausambi
Yeah, yeah. And this is a category where already there are big names. But I think somewhere, being an alternate brand actually plays to your advantage, no matter how small. There's something there. Do you think technology... Sorry.

Jyoti
as long as I'm smart. I think I am, as long as I'm small, I am alive and I'm thriving. I think the day I am of a certain size, I am sure life will be tough for me.

Kausambi
Ha ha ha! No, it keeps changing, evolving at every phase. And I think you're such a passionate founder, you'll always try, right? But you are an alternate voice. You started out definitely as an alternate voice in this space, right? And I think somewhere that definitely has done good because it makes you stand out. But as a young brand, like what kind of, how do you think new age processes, new age technologies. How much of that do you think makes you more nimble, makes you faster to go out there and grab more market?

Jyoti
So as far as the D2C play goes, I feel like just being available for your customers, being able to fulfill in time, being able to just be nice to them in their interactions. If these three things you're able to do, you'll have a lot more stickiness. So there are different channels which we currently kind of tap to increase retention, to be closer to our customers, and just have less friction in their entire purchase and service journey. Through WhatsApp, we get a lot of inbound. So we have a team looking at WhatsApp. We don't have a bot on social media. We have actual humans handling Instagram system with response. Somebody thinks it's not really a bot. There's people who are responding. So we try as much.


I'm sure this will be a challenge with immense scale, but until we hit that immense scale, we try to keep it human as much as possible and not let the technology kind of be an underlying layer and not kind of take over the entire customer experience where you know, you always feel like you're talking to a bot. So we currently have tools that we are using for WhatsApp or Instagram, but all of that is at the back end.


And that has definitely made life a lot easier for people. But offline, I would say distribution building is key. You need to just be a good person. You need to put in the time to develop relationships in trade, in channels. Do the really dull, dusty meetings with distributors, and give them that confidence that you are there. If they buy your product, you're not disappearing overnight with a single PO. So I think once you receive a second PO from a trade partner or from a distributor is when you know that there is meat in what you're doing or industry trusts you and you can go the distance. So we have not ignored the offline channel. In fact, I feel like my biggest learnings have come from kind of trying to build distribution offline and it's a continuous process early days but we seem to be doing okay.

Kausambi
Yeah, any interesting learnings and insights from offline? I was another one of our classmates, actually, Rahul, who is the CEO at Epigamia, right? And founder CEO, rather. And I mean, they, of course, built out a very, very strong offline distribution. I don't know a single person in my team who doesn't have an Epigamia in their refrigerator at some point in time. They've done really well, and it's been a while, too. But I think, like, for him, like offline, the distribution, distributor relationships that he struck has really, at that point in time was a big differentiator for him. So he did, you know, whenever we have met, he's always spoken about, you know, the strong focus on offline and how he uses online as almost like a, when I say online, I mean, not just marketplace, but also DTC. Q-commerce, of course, is something that's working, but.


D2C is using almost as like a product discovery and a product launch sort of a channel, right? Any learnings from offline and distribution and then how you are sort of, you know, taking the learnings online.

Jyoti
So I would say it's easy to get greedy offline, especially like after shark tank. If I really wanted, I could have. Given franchises left, right and center sold, made a lot of money without having a clue on what a franchise does, because we got so much inbound inquiry. So I feel like it's, if you're building a brand, if you have that, if your brand has that pull, or if you as a founder or your team has the capacity to kind of really convince the trade, then being conservative in the face of so much opportunity is not easy, but it pays off in the long run, because then people see you over time, you build credibility and then the kind of name and trust you build in the channel, I feel it's very hard to combine by compared to let's say if you just put one million dollars in the trade and say I need my products in 5,000 stores tomorrow which could be done, but I feel building grounds up really works in your favor. It also helps to have ashelf stable product, if you ask me, the ones inside, it's very difficult to do frozen or cold chain in India. So hats off to Epidemia and hats off to Rob Preston and hats off to everybody who did that and all the Kamucha guys who are attempting that, trying that. I think it's one big pain point out of your equation if you have shelf stable product line, which we currently do. So that gives a lot of peaceful lines to your distributors.


And yeah, so that's one insight. I would definitely say that's come to our aid. We were tempted at one point to do this in glass bottles and have like a cold chain product, but we decided otherwise, and it was a good call.

Kausambi
Yeah, yeah. That's very interesting. Flipping the lens on, I think, just consumers and I think branding is you're a brand after all. How important is personal branding? And I see a lot of followers. I see a lot of love coming to you. What would be your advice or take on personal branding and the impact of it in consumers?

Jyoti
If I told you that I know nothing about personal branding, you will not believe me, but that's the truth. I am a painfully shy person. I feel my outlet is or my skill is writing. It's not taking nice reels or selfies. Everybody has a superpower or a nice gift. I feel like my gift is in written word. So I have just been myself.


I write in under five minutes every post of mine. Nothing is planned. I don't have an assistant. It comes to my mind and I push it out. And I don't know if it's good or bad, but that's what it is. And I feel that's what clicks with people. Like they see a real person. Like I'm telling you basis all the DMs that I get that I keep it authentic and I keep it real. And I think people kind of connect with that. And I'm very hands-on. So grounded would be kind of preposterous to say yourself but I'm pretty hands-on and so I think that's what people connect with that yeah stay authentic and stay true to yourself don't try to be famous like it's the same thing right when you are when you want to become a celebrity


it's not a job that you do, right? You do something and then it's kind of a byproduct of it. But if you kind of start to chase the algorithm that makes you famous, I don't know, maybe it works also for people. Gosh, I honestly don't know. I all I know that I write kind of what I feel like writing at that point. I read a lot. I'm aware, I would consider myself generally aware of politics,


So I also have a lot to share and it usually is in the form of written text and people have resonated, they like it.

Kausambi
and we see the results. In fact, in Shark Tank, I think you mentioned that your mother-in-law was a big supporter and that actually enabled you to do a bunch of things that you do. Tell us, I think, I'm sure a ton of people have already heard, but it never gets old. Tell us a little bit about that.

Jyoti
gets old, she never gets old, she still has a fiery as she was 20 years ago. She continues to be a big supporter of what I do or what all the other women in her family do, her own daughters, me. She's a PhD, she's a highly qualified woman for her age from the background that I come from. I come from Bihar where people that time, girls 30 years ago, even if they do graduation, they're considered probably overqualified. So for that time, and that too on Israel-Palestine relations, which was kind of way ahead of its time again for the context where I come from.


So I feel like somewhere she saw a little bit of her in me, that I was a little headstrong in what I wanted to do. And she saw that I was struggling maybe financially and she felt bad at some point. And she wrote me a check because I had quit everything and I put whatever I had in the business and then COVID struck and all of that. And so then she wrote me a check and she's like, you go to market with this and I owe her big time. Like I will owe her always.

Kausambi
Yeah. And I think that's such a wonderful example to your two sons, right? You're, you know, I would say nurturing and shaping to very, very strong, I'm sure like you, minds. But they're getting a very, I think, balanced and better perspective on the world, a grandmother who supports, who herself has done things and mother who's now a very, very loved founder, I have to say. How's that experience? What are the kind of questions that they ask you?

Jyoti
I think the older one considered himself to be a co-founder. So he has a say in everything, at least he wants to have a say in everything. And I let him have that. Like I let him have his moment, but I ask him questions if I go home. And if there are questions around business, like recently I was debating whether I should do a green tea based energy drink. He's like, but why do you want to do energy drinks? Aren't they like supposed to be bad with all this caffeine and taurine? And aren't you supposed to be a healthy brand? So he thinks he has that position to kind of argue on these things. So I let him have his point. Also, gosh, a lot of times when you look at things from outside in, I think we attribute a lot. But when you're living it, you're just living it. So on a day-to-day basis, I don't. I honestly think much. I just want to kind of put one foot in front of the other, that it was a good way to maximize whatever we could have done on that day, and then go back home and see that the kids are all right. They've not hurt each other. They had a good day at school. And you know, so, but I'm sure when you add it all together, maybe 10 years from now, when I look back, hopefully it would have all kind of turned out fine. And that's the effort, put one foot in front of the other.

Kausambi
For sure. Before we close for the day, I want to ask one question about being a solo printer. I mean, it's startups not easy. Any kind of startup that you do is hard. And being a solo printer, I don't know how you do it. I have a co-founder. I have a founding team. I feel very lucky. I couldn't imagine doing all of this on my own and you do and you try. How do you do that?

Jyoti
So first of all, I don't know how life would have been if I had a co-founder. So I don't know the alternate scenario. Maybe if I knew that I would be struggling day in and day out. So because maybe this is the only truth I know, I kind of try to do as much as I can. I also have a very capable team who are like Swiss knives. So we don't have teams like in, so if somebody is looking at marketing, I would also ask her to handle 10 calls on my behalf and she would do that, of Swiss knives in the team. And that is very critical to have. I didn't have that before Shark Tank. I was doing it with me, a couple of people and a friend of mine, literally that's it. Yes, I'll send you pictures of I've taken packing boxes also. I labor yes. So but after Shark Tank it just got like I have to hire people. So we've made hires and life is a bit more sorted now. Maybe if you really ask me to hypothesize maybe if I had a co founder, perhaps I would have moved faster or maybe not like you kind of end up debating a lot of things where you could just take a faster call on because you're alone and the outcome you kind of find out fairly quickly whether it was a good call or a bad call. So I feel like both have pros and cons and if it was a tech business, I would definitely say that I would have needed a co-founder. I know nothing about technology, but it's an FMCG business. I do have very capable people outside and inside the company who are on whose shoulders I stand honestly. I mean, there's so many people who've helped me who are not a part of the company, but they're in every grain of my bank like I wouldn't be here I would like to name a few of them Amitabh Goyal from he was one of the manufacturers of paperboard.

Jyoti
I can't afford him otherwise I would have had him in the company by now but he owned one of the manufacturing facilities in which Paper Booth was made and he has been with me since day one. Anything I, anywhere I'm stuck I need a bouncing board. He's like a mentor and I have many such mentors I have kind of earned and collected over the years now. So for all solopreneurs I would say it's very hard to do all the calls by yourself. If you don't have a co-founder get a lot of mentors are from the industry not just like good friends who you kind of feel good after talking with them but real solid people from the industry. I feel workout ho rata hai.

Kausambi
Yeah, yeah, I love that. And final, what's your what's one takeaway, one advice and a view of what's the FNB category in India going towards in the next five, 10 years? What's your thoughts and view? And what are you most excited about?

Jyoti
I'm very excited about the time that I'm here in today. It's a decade old road story for India. It's a phenomenal time to be a founder. It's a phenomenal time to be an entrepreneur. Funding Winter, not funding Winter as I think, consumption story for us is here to stay. If you're a founder who's not funding first, who wants to kind of who has a great idea for a product or even honestly, I feel great ideas are a little bit overrated. Even if you just have like the grind in you to stick it out for three, four years with a regular product, another cola, another juice, another energy drink and if you are willing to give it those three four years and work out the distribution, work out your margins, work out the right price points, I didn't speak about that but critical in the growth of any in finding the right product market fit, if you're willing to give it those three four years like nothing can stop you from actually creating something that will build value for a decade to come. So I just feel overthinking about it may not or like really finding the perfect time may not be the right strategy. If you have it today is the perfect time to be a startup founder. There are just so many, like there's a good ecosystem around you now. Your shipping is sorted, your product development is sorted. And so the time and just the barriers to entry that were there previously do not exist today. That's like both good and bad that you're tempted far too easily to kind of try your hand and kind of move back. But if you have perseverance, then this is a great opportunity time to be an entrepreneur.

Kausambi
Before we shut, I think we can go back to that question. And I'll just put that question and you can answer that. We'll fit that in. About product market fit, I think that's a very, very good point to just dive in a little bit. What is the checklist for product market fit? Like how do you, specifically in your category, what is the checklist that people have to keep?

Jyoti
you have to know who your customer is. That's the first point. Who are you making that product for? Is that a luxury product? Is that a premium product? Is that a mass premium? Is that an affordable product? Once you have that clarity, the second thing to work on is the price point of the category because that is an established choice because that's an established truth that what the customer will be willing to pay for in that category. So know your customer, know the price points of that category and then create a product that is that exists, but is better. That's the easiest way to find when you first time entrepreneur to the temptation to build something truly disruptive is always there. Like you just love the glory of it that I was the one who created it. But even if you create a much better product at the right price point, knowing fully well who your TGA is and work on distribution, you will have a product market for it and you will have a winner. And the communication of like what is the value proposition clearly named. So for example, we named our brand

Jyoti
I didn't have the funds to kind of educate the customer by calling it elixir for example. You know if a bottle of elixir is on the shelf I only get the one snap judgment moment from a customer on a shelf that what's this about. So I just wanted this to be as crystal clear as tea. It's fit. It's a fit form of beverage that probably has T in it. So this was the clearest that I could get the moment I got trademarked for it. I just went for it. I didn't want a fancy name. So these small, small things, they seem trivial and they seem counterintuitive because you would say it's a very common name or it's a very simple name. If you can crack upon a simple, memorable name, find the right product at the right price point in the right distribution channel, you will get product market fit.

Kausambi
Yeah, yeah, that's a good one. Thank you for bringing that up and we got that. So thank you, thank you Jyoti for this really great chat and we had few really interesting nuggets. I think my favorite was that you have a baby co-founder. I didn't know that we would have invited him into our talk today. We should definitely do that. We'd love to have you back. We'll definitely do that at some point with you and your son. And yeah, thank you so much for this. And we are very excited to get live on this episode.

Jyoti
Thank you so much for inviting me. It was wonderful talking. I can't wait for the next time. Whenever you're in Mumbai, please come down. We would love to host you over some good food. Thank you so much.

Kausambi
That is 100% sure I'm just stopping the recording.

Latest episodes

Ⓒ 2023 Creative Sparks Inc.