E219 - How He Built a ₹1500 Cr Food Empire Without a Single Restaurant | Jaydeep Barman, Rebel Foods

Speaker A: Joining me is Jaydeep Barman, who is the founder and CEO, uh, of Rebel Foods, India's and the world's largest Internet restaurant and much more.

Speaker B: Even today, 90% of restaurants close down within three years because of the real estate cost.

Speaker A: Biryani across certain regions should be the same versus in other regions should not. How have you thought about some of these?

Speaker B: No biryani is made on order. It'll take two hours. But I believe as customers will always love more convenience, I think the quality can be maintained. There is no reason why quick food delivery would not happen.

Speaker A: As consumers, we get to eat the delightful food, yet we don't get to understand what happens on the back end.

Speaker B: As a company, we've never used artificial color, artificial flavors, preservatives in our food. Maybe our gross margin is slightly lower, but we'll never compromise on it. Today we have about nine national brands. All of them are doing well. Not because we've done something extraordinary, but we killed the ones that, that didn't do well early. Today we have six brands, more than 150 crore each. So the way we think about it is the experience has to be same. That's how brands are built. But there can be regional nuance and I think out of everything, you know, people can copy technology building a kitchen and supply chain, but copying a culture at scale is the hardest.

Speaker A: Hello. Before we get started with this episode, I quickly wanted to share that we are now a part of the Zerodha Media Network. Thank you so much for watching. Welcome to the Indian Silicon Valley podcast. I'm um, your host Jivraj and today I have with me an extremely special guest. Joining me is Jaydeep Barman, who is the founder and CEO of Rebel Foods, India's and the world's largest Internet restaurant and much more. I'm going to very, very excited to be chatting with you Jaydeep. Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker B: Thank you, thank you for uh, having me on your podcast. I've been a big fan of your commentary and your podcasts and uh, so glad to be here.

Speaker A: I'm so, so glad to hear that because that means a lot coming from you. It was two years, two and a half years back when we first spoke and I was asked to chat with you then as I am today. You're not a very common person to find on the Internet, uh, to hear from either. But uh, what you have built is absolutely marvelous and an inspiration to so many founders. Uh, I'm hoping we can learn a lot from that today. Um, where I want to start Jaydeep is, um, today, you know, you spent more than a decade building Rebelle. Um, if you had to share learnings for future founders who are building in the food industry because food is one space which feels very easy to build in, yet is extremely complicated given the nature of your business. I would love to just summarize at the top of mind what learnings for food businesses are and then we can go into nuances of, you know, different kinds of brands that you have built, how you've scaled, etc.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think, uh, you know, first of all, uh, before Rebel, I've never been a restauranter. Uh, nobody in my family has ever been a restaurant. So I'm just from Calcutta where people grow up on food, you know, and uh, uh, and then the, and then the Calcutta roles and things like that. So that's. So my understanding has always been, has over the years been around, uh, how our business went from one place to another. It is less about. I don't have figures and surveys and data around this, but I think couple of things. So one is, and this is common knowledge that every 100 km food changes in India. And I have, we've seen it, uh, you know, over the last 10, 15 years, every day of our, of uh, our lives, you know, so like today is Makar Sankranti. Okay. But there are three different food occasions that are happening across India. At least three, maybe more. One is Pongal, which is South.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Second is Makar Sankranti which is like west etc. Lohari and all of that. And north, um, again a combination of Lahori and you know, a couple of other things. And then the food is totally different. Now we have a brand called Lunchbox which is now celebrating all three, um, today nationally. So in south, if you open Lunchbox, you will see the Pongal specialties. In west and north you'll see Lahori specialties and, and things like that. So this is, this is why I, I believe our business, you know, can meet the customer where they are. You know, most food businesses are built around brands. Like one brand. Yeah. Okay. And you build that brand over 50 years, 100 years, uh, McDonald's, Starbucks, uh, Domino's, etc. Etc. But the way India operates, you know, unless you have a platform, you don't meet the customer where they are and the customers are all, you know, different places regionally, festival wise and all of that. As a Bengali, I never knew there were two Navratris in India, you know, uh, because I've never had vegetarian Durga Puja meant you know actually uh, you know, meat eating for us. Uh, but later on you know at Rebel, I realized that uh, 70% of India which is otherwise non vegetarian become vegetarian during Navaratri. And it happens not only you know, October, November, also March, April and you know again we had being a platform we've been able to cater to that. So that's a big theme you know, across India. Different, you know, different uh, region. The religious festivals, non religious ones, like Valentine's Day is a big one. You know we sell heart shaped pizzas uh, in like thousands during Valentine's Day, you know, Christmas, we sell you know, plum cakes again in hundreds of thousands during Christmas. So religious, non religious festivals, regional etc. So that's, that's one. And if you build a platform you are able to sort of cater to all of these occasions. Uh, uh, you know, uh, so that's one. Secondly you know food is the only consumer good where people move between value and indulgence. Single serve and group serve all the time. Every other consumer goods you are either driving a Mercedes or a Maruti, right? Not at the same time but you, you know either wearing an Armani or ah, like a ah, 200 rupee T shirt depending on whether you're a premium customer, mass customer. All of that you are either using fancy soap or lightbulb. And that's how FMCG businesses have been created to target a particular segment of customers. Premium, mass, somewhere in between, all of that. But food is the only consumer category if you think about it, where you have that 20 rupee chai and also go to uh, a fine line restaurants, you know, in the same week or sometimes in the same day. So the way we realize, way we thought about food is like on one axis you have single sub to group sub, the other axis value to indulgence. So your weekday lunch is your single sub value. You don't want to splurge a lot, you know, couple of hundred bucks, you know, quick meal between M meetings, etc. So that's your you know, bottom left, your top right is your group serve and indulgence which you weekend you want to go splurge with your family friends. All of that group serve value is you ordering samosa or pizza at office, you know, single serve indulgence. Sometimes you want to have an AI goreng or a you know, something fancy or a sushi or something fancy and people move between these four boxes all the time. It's so as a result in food customers are not Segments, their use cases are. So, and that has been the big insight in our business, that if we create a platform, we can be in all these four boxes. You know, food businesses have these troubles or struggles like Monday afternoon empty and Saturday night, you know, full. But if we, if we are able to cater to the four boxes, we are as relevant on Monday afternoon as we are on a Saturday nights, you know, so that has been the big revelation for us over the years. So I would say. And when you put these two things together, you know, different food, different culture, different festivals and these four boxes, it's a concoction of uh, a terrific industry, you know, where innovation is like, should be your business as usual. Like, you know, our teams are always thinking about what is the next festival that is coming, you know, what can we. And sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. But the process, process of, you know, addressing this variety both in terms of uh, the regular eating, indulgence, eating, you know, festivals, etc, uh, it's, it's a fascinating place to be. Sorry, it's a long answer. But you know, every time I get talking about food I get a little uh, sort of carried away, you know.

Speaker A: No, no, I think this is extremely helpful and very fascinating as you mentioned because, uh, yeah, the diversity of eating and the different uh, customer journeys for the same customer. There are 21 meals in a week. Right. How can you serve all? And I think the Rebel sort of entire cohort can serve all of those. I have a behroos biryani on a Saturday evening and I also have like a, ah, very interesting, I mean oven story pizza, uh, on a Sunday afternoon because I want to indulge and similarly lunchbox good bowl meals on uh, Monday afternoons, Tuesday afternoon. So it's phenomenal what you've built. Um, I want to add some more context to the conversation before we proceed. Right. Um, uh, if my data is right, uh, Rebel is today more than 1500 crores in revenue. There are 450 kitchens, uh, across 70 sort of cities, 10 countries. Right. That's massive scale. And it's taken you more than 10 years, some 12, 13 years to get here. Can you, by sheer virtue of scale, add more context to what are the number of brands, how, how large is the entire group to begin with so that when we go deeper, there' more nuance to it.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I would say, you know, there are three layers in Rebel's business. The first one is an operating system which is basically the platform of the business. Uh, so our kitchens, our technology, our supply chain, our Culinary innovation. These are the four constituents of that platform. Uh, over time we built smart kitchens across India and couple of other countries. Uh, we connected all of them through a homegrown technology stack, uh, that is quite unique by itself. Um, we have a supply chain which can go to any corner of India today and a few other countries as well. And then finally we have a culinary innovation center, uh, which is always thinking about how to create next. Like I was talking about, uh, you know, Pongal or Ramadan is coming in March. Uh, and this innovation center is always thinking about what new dish can we launch, you know, what new dish can we scale across our network. So that's our platform. On this platform we run brands which is the second layer of our business. Now the brands are of three types. So one is our own brands, brands that we have built ourselves from scratch like Behroo's and Avestory and a couple of others. Faso is our first brand and so on. Then the second is where we've taken on third party brands on this platform M either through acquisition or through licensing. Like Wendy's, World's second largest burger brand. Now we have Pan India license for that Smur. So we now own 100% of Smur, which is uh, you know, every time I used to go to Bangalore I, I was in complete awe of that brand. And now I'm you know, Rebel is a very proud owner of uh, of Smur. So that's the second bucket. Every time we license or invest in or acquire a brand, we then, you know, put it across the platform, across kitchens and, and so on on the supply chain and so on. Also the third bucket is where we partner with uh, brands that we either don't own or we don't have license. But basically they ride on our platform. So they come onto our kitchens, use our supply chain, use our technology, etc. So couple of brands like that is ITC, MasterChef, Taco Bell, uh, you know, Anand Sweets from Bangalore, Marua, um, donuts, naturals, uh, ice cream, etc. So that's the brand layer. Our own brands, licensed slash invested brands and this uh, you know, sort of partner brands. On top of that we have the final layer which is distribution so that all these brands are distributed through aggregators in India and otherwise like Swiggy, Zomato, irctc, uh, increasingly ondc, Magic Pain and all of that. And we also built our own distribution through each year. We which is, you know, the proposition of eat sure is it is the only, let's say food delivery App where you can mix and match brands because it comes from the same, uh, kitchen platform. So these are the three layers of our business. So if I have to say, you know, as you said, you have 400 odd kitchens and so on, we run, in total about 45 brands in these three boxes. But not all 45 brands are in all kitchens. All kitchens. On an average, our kitchens have about 12 brands. Again, a mix and match of these. Yeah. Uh, and then our distribution, as I said, across, uh, quite fragmented between the aggregators as well as our own and the new emerging distribution. Uh, quick food delivery is a new distribution that is coming up. And, uh, these days I am as excited as I was in 201415 when food delivery was up happening quick food. Still, the jury is out, you know, where it will end up. But, you know, whenever a disruption or destabilization happens in an industry, it's a tremendous opportunity to reimagine the future. And we are now in a place where we can actually shape the future to some extent, I believe. Uh, I'm not saying that with any kind of arrogance, but just that, you know, based on our experience in seeing food evolve in India, uh, we believe we are in a unique position to, you know, sort of capture, uh, the new, uh, sort of way of delivering food.

Speaker A: No, absolutely. I mean, that's, that's super comprehensive. Thank you so much for sharing. I think it brings a lot of clarity to me as well, and hopefully to all the listeners. I'd love to get your vantage point on what you were mentioning. Right, so when you started the concept of cloud kitchens, that itself was, uh, a huge revelation. Right now cloud kitchen is a norm, but at the time it wasn't. And alongside that, you witnessed, I'm guessing, multiple innovations in food. You've seen the food delivery wave, you've seen the cafe wave. There's a strong QSR wave. Now, you started with qsr, but decided to cloud first. And I'm guessing there are going to be more QSR presence for your brands as well, considering a, uh, founder will always go through this dilemma of staying focused with what you're doing versus what the ecosystem is going through. So if you can perhaps, you know, summarize the 10, 13 years of you seeing how food in India has evolved in the ecosystem. Right. In your case, it's been cloud first. In other cases it's been delivery, it's been qsr. It's been, uh, a lot of these coffee brands have popped up. Right. And they are doing multiple cafes in the country. And we have Starbucks doing like 350 stores etc. In the country. How have you seen the entire landscape? If I had to ask you to zoom out and maybe talk to us about the evolution, I'd love to hear that from you.

Speaker B: Yeah, so I think the evolution happened. Um, I would say there were three stages in the last decade or so, what we have seen. So the first was the advent of sort of the international QSR. So that was between, let's say 2000 to 2012, 13. Domino's M went public around 2009, 10, you know, before that, uh, McDonald's was there. So they were like a lot of uh, these, these brands that came in, you know, Burger king came around 2013, 14 if I remember correctly. And you know, there was Pizza Hut, you know, Papa John's and all these guys. And funnily enough, India never had a, uh, you know, homegrown, maybe Haldirams was the only exception. Homegrown national chain. Right. It was all these, uh, you know, QSRs coming from abroad, you know, people taking their franchise and growing. So that was I believe, um, the first wave of organizing the industry, uh, in the beginning of uh, of this century. Then, you know, but everybody, you know, I meet, I don't know of anybody who didn't want to open a restaurant at one point in time in their life. Everybody wants to open a restaurant, right? But I think the fundamental difference between us and India, I believe, is that in the US real estate is cheap, labor is costly. In India, real estate is costly, labor is cheap. It's exactly. That's why quick commerce happens in India. Wework works in India. None of these things work in the US And I believe that is why cloud kitchens have flourished in India over the last. So that was the second wave. Delivery led sort of uh, food chain formation, let's say. That's because fundamentally how high street real estate in India is the costliest in the world. Like even for Domino's in India, which is a very well run company, the rent to sales ratio in India is double that of Domino's in the US So India has the costliest real estate in the world.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Okay, now, uh, and cheapest labor in the world. So someone was telling me the other day, McDonald's US 70% of the sales happen through, drive through. That's because, uh, you can put up big stores, you can create parking and people can drive through, etc. Etc. In India, McDowell's revenue, if I'm not mistaken, 45, 50% is delivery, which is in US. That's 10% because US labor is costly and getting food delivered is costly. So you have delivery fees and all of that in India. You don't have the space for drive throughs because the infrastructure is very costly in India.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: But labor is cheap, so delivery happens in it. Yeah. So this is what I have seen happening between 2014 and let's say 2020, where this whole delivery evolution came through. Um, and with that advent of cloud kitchens and all of these things have happened and the first national companies came through. Like we were probably the first homegrown Indian brand to become national. Right.

Speaker A: Ah.

Speaker B: And then box it did it. Cure Foods did it and couple of others, uh, did it. And you know, uh, in south there was this brand called Talakapatti Biryani. They went to like 200 stores etc. So, so that was the second way where you know, also the homegrown people with after they found an angle. Like even today 90% of restaurants closed down within three years because of the real estate cost. You know, people don't get on the hump over the hump of this big fixed cost in India. So that's why I'm a big believer of an omnichannel way of building brands in India. You know, restaurant brands in India. The third, let's say evolution came during COVID Before COVID our business and overall restaurant industry was concentrated around the top 10, 15 cities. Bombay, Bangalore and all that. During COVID youngsters went back home and they taught their parents how to use more. And we've seen in our business, every city that we opened after Covid, we were pleasantly surprised. Today some of our highest volume kitchens are in Banaras, in Patna, in Amritsar, uh, and places like that. And food reached, I believe, um, all parts of India. At least 200 plus cities in India today, um, during COVID and post Covid and now this is an ingrained habit. So every new city we are opening like yesterday we opened a second kitchen in Rachi, and then we opened Bhattinda this week and so on, so forth. So, and we are like every day we push the boundary, we see, okay, will it happen? We get surprised, you know. So I believe these have been, I know again, a long answer. But these would be the three stages of evolution. So started with QSRs, international QSRs, then these omnichannel model that came about with delivery, uh, being at the forefront. And then third. Now food business can be built at a national scale. You know, by last count, Domino's is in. I think 240 cities, you know, we are 75 just scratching the surface, you know, uh, so this is, you know it's a 500, 600 city business in India today. Massive um, opportunity, um, and you know uh, I'm more excited than ever. And the new ways of distributions are coming, uh, tech led, world's first because you know anything that requires infrastructure building in India gets leapfrogged to something digital. That's why it's very interesting place to be in, you know, uh, food wise, delivery wise, distribution uh, wise. It's very, very interesting.

Speaker A: That's again very, very fascinating. A lot of like foundationally strong understanding around the food business, um, on quick food delivery or ondc, some of these more emerging trends that aren't out there. How much of the job of an entrepreneur like you is to maybe predict or if not predict, be in tune with these trends? Right. We keep hearing maybe Korean food is a trend, etc. Right. How do you as a founder respond to these trends versus let's say forward looking, have an assumption that this is how uh, food will play out and that's how we will build the business. How have you sort of made these choices over the years?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think uh, that's a great question. And you know it's uh, my job these days is uh, primarily that. And there are some areas where we want to be followers and some areas we want to shape like for example whether Korean would be big or not. We want to be a follower, we want to see what happens etc, and then follow because we have the innovation machine through which we can build a Korean brand, we believe and etc. And so on. But then there are areas where we believe we can shape like for example health, uh, and we believe that it's at that intersection point where we not only should be a taker but also shape consumer behavior by being more responsible because we can do it with our supply chain and all of that. Uh, we can actually take like what has happened on uh, let's say on packaged foods, like for example what Whole Truth has done and a couple of other brands have done. I think that same wave is coming now in food and we are in a good position to actually shape uh, that future. We have a brand in UAE called 500 calorie project and it is doing tremendously well. And the same store sales growth of that brand has been 200% for the last year for us in Dubai in a market where world's most renowned brands are there. So we feel very confident to bring that brand now to India and then scale it. So there we want to shape the market and we want to be in the forefront of that change in terms of distribution seek. You know we, in business school we studied this uh, innovators dilemma concept. Okay. Where basically what happens is if there is an incumbent, uh, which is at a certain quality, a new guy comes at a lower quality. Mhm. But with a higher slope of quality improvement and then eventually this new guy disrupts the incumbent. Like if you, if you think about last hundred years this has happened in all India. Like for example camera we used to, we used to have Nikon and Canon and all these like really fancy DSLRs, etc. Smartphones came lower quality camera, but they become good enough and now only the you know, photographers use uh, those uh, and today we have some of those cameras here. But 90% of the people are uh, using smartphones and people used to say it's not going to happen because you know, smartphone will never be as good as a Nikon or a Canon or you know, so on. So not only every, every industry this has happened. Like if you think about restaurants, QSRS came exactly. You know there used to be chef led restaurants. MHM QSRs came and said lower quality but the quality became good enough along with convenience that all value in the last 50 years was created in QSRs, not in fine line restaurants. Uh, like McDonald's came disrupted earlier used to be like gourmet pizza. Domino's came and disrupted. They start at a lower quality but the slope of quality improvement is higher. And, and then that is how disruption happens. Like fundamentally people will always love more convenience if you can match the quality or be at the ballpark. So people are talking about quick food delivery, cannot happen because it's not fresh, etc. But if you go to a McDonald's you want your burger in one minute, you don't say it's not fresh. M because it's being made in front of you. It's always made in batch. You know good cooking is made in batch. Like you go to paradise biryani. If you walk into it, you ask for a biryani, it gives it to you in 30 seconds because it's already prepared in a batch. They have prepared a 100 kilo batch there. Uh, so fundamentally there is no like if it is given quickly doesn't mean it's not fresh, it means it's been prepared in batch. Some things will always be made fresh. But I'm saying there's enough depth in that. Made in batch and served quickly category. And people will always love convenience, otherwise QSR won't be there. Mhm. I believe QFD will have its place. Quick food delivery, maybe not for sushi or you know, some like really fancy cuisine, but for biryani is made in batch. That's when the biryani is best. When you make a 100 kilo batch, no biryani is made on order because then the biryani is not good. Because if you ask for a biryani and I start making biryani, it's not good. It'll take two hours first of all. But if it is made in batch at 7pm, someone comes at 7:30, you give it like just like that. Right. So fundamentally, and there is a lot of talk about whether uh, you know, whether freshness is compromised, etc. Etc. But I believe there is. As customers we'll always love more convenience if the quality can be maintained. I believe there is no reason why quick food delivery would not happen again. The jury is still out how exactly it will happen. And I'm the last one to promote, you know, bad quality food because you know, when I go home and if I see my daughter is having an avesturi pizza, I feel good and I don't want to put anything in that pizza. Um, you know, and my daughter is having it, I feel guilty. You know, that's the last thing I want in my life. And as a result as a company we never used artificial color, artificial flavors, preservatives in our food. Right. Maybe our gross margin is slightly lower but we'll never compromise on that as long as we are true to that mission. We believe quick food can happen and we can play a role now in what shape and form, etc it'll evolve. But it's a very exciting time. Again, very long answer. Uh, but it's fascinating what can happen.

Speaker A: Loving the long answers. Please keep them going. Um, looking forward, are there any things that you like beyond health that you feel will be um, a ah, doubling down force within food? Like do you think uh, the QSR wave is back because many food brands are now going QSR first irrespective of going, you know, let's say even cloud first. Right. That's a trend that's coming up. Health you focused upon quick food delivery is one. But just to bring a closure to the sloop. Are there any forward looking things that fascinate you as a company that you are focusing on more than the others?

Speaker B: See uh, one thing is that uh, this concept of. So basically when I said that there are areas where we want to shape the industry. Those would be areas where we have a right to win. So if someone tells me that if we open a bunch of pizza stores. Exactly. Like Domino's, do we have a right to win? Maybe not. But uh, can we bring 10 brands on the high street together? Which has not been done in the past. So that's not only QSR but a food court on the high street. So basically you have a burger brand, a pizza brand and ah, biryani brand and a momo brand all together in one location. You uh, go as a family. So like this has happened in malls. Like you go to a mall, sometimes you go to individual restaurants, sometimes you go to the food court. Right. And this is a shaping that we want to do because we have a right to win here. So we've started last year. Today we have about five, six of these locations where you walk into a, like a high street store, like a QSR store, but you get multi brand. Multi brand.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: You know, and I've like yesterday I was, you know, I was, I uh, was in one of our stores, uh, and I saw a family come in. Husband, wife, two kids. Uh, the father ordered a biryani, mother ordered a burger and the kids ordered pizza and at, you know, and everybody ordered an ice cream at the end. I m believe that we have a right to win here. To bring like choice in front of the customer. Mhm. Without replicating the infrastructure. So we didn't have to put like five different places. Right. And how can we do it? Because this uh, this food court is attached to one of our cloud kitchens. So there we have a right to it. I don't know whether it's a trend or not, but this is a trend we want to shape. We want to create an offline sort of offering where a family can, or a group of friends can go somewhere and can have food by their individual choice. Uh, rather than going to a Chinese or a North Indian or a burger joint, uh, you know, all together. So that's something that we are working on and we believe. We don't know whether uh, it'll catch on or not, but something that uh, we want to invest behind because there we have a right to it.

Speaker A: Got it. That's super helpful to hear. Um, I want to get to some of these, you know, fundamental, I wouldn't say trade offs but decisions that you've had to make over the years. Right. So I'm guessing in the early years it was establishing brands. Um, now it is about scale uh, over the years, it's also been about, okay, which cities to scale versus which cities to go deeper into, how to go international. Right. Um, on the brand itself. Right. The brand concept that you've come up with, having, you know, Behrus, faasuz, uh, oven story, all of these, you fundamentally maintain that you want to own these brands from the scratch and you want to build it out nationally. One brand mostly. Right. Talk to us about that philosophy, what it means to start a brand. What is the research that goes into saying that this is a category deep enough for us to actually launch something in, and then the formula to sort of like, launch perhaps. Right. You start with a kitchen, you scale it to a couple. I think that'll be super helpful because a lot of this knowledge is not out there. And of course, you now know the playbook. So to the extent that you can, if you can share that thought process, it'll be very, very.

Speaker B: Yeah, we made a ton of mistakes here, you know, over the years. Our first brand outside of Fastos was a continental brand. Okay, okay. Um, called, uh, Olive Trails.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: And, you know, because we, we said, okay, this will be very nice to do. And this is, this is how restaurants are built. You know, people, somebody thinks, okay, let me do some, you know, fancy thing. And then when it goes to the marketplace, you have no takers. So many other mistakes we made, uh, over time, but I won't go through each one of them. It will take probably a couple of hours if I go through all of them. But in the end, our learning has been. And again, it's an evolving thinking has been that if a category is large and if it is fragmented, no incumbent, that's the great place to build a brand from scratch. So the way we. There are a lot of two by twos at Rebel, by the way. Ah, so if you think about size of category and extent of fragmentation, then your top right is highly fragmented. Large category, which, like biryani, Chinese, North Indian. These are everybody, South Indian. Everybody in India knows what it is. But, ah, there is no incumbent. You can't name anybody who is like, Pan India. Right. Ah, there. It makes sense to build a brand because you don't have to fight an incumbent or an oligopoly even. Right. You can, you know, build it from scratch and you can ride on, uh, the category recognition and build up. That's how Beru's happened. You know, in fact, we have two biryani brands. Yeah. And, you know, that's how Fasos happened. You know, there were no, like, Everybody new roles across India but there was no Pan India like it was fragmented. It's hindsight because Fasos came even before we came on to this uh, you know, realization but that's why we doubled down on FaaS and you know built it. Then there is, there are categories which are large in size but consolidated like pizza. We built oven story even before this realization. So we kept on but today if we have to again build a pizza brand we probably won't build our own brand would probably license a brand like burger is an oligopoly. That's why we didn't do our burger brand and we licensed Wendy's because we are fighting with McDonald's and Burger King because consolidated large category but not fragmented national chains are there. Right? That's how we that that's how we think about whether to build a brand from scratch or buy a brand or license a brand or partner with a brand uh, and so on so forth now within these brands. So one is which brands to launch. Like health is now growing and becoming large but no incumbent fragmented. That's why we would be building our own brand. We're bringing 500 CP and then you know we'll be building it now you know now within brands, what products to launch etc. The way we do it is today we do million plus orders on our own channel but in a month. But we also have tens of millions of searches. M Like for example we saw uh, just as a uh just to bring the philosophy to life we saw a lot of Sarma searches in Hyderabad. So we launched Shorma in Hyderabad under faasus. So what product to bring in and what product to attach to which brand comes from. Now that we have a large zone distribution comes from what the customers are searching for, what the customers are asking for. Earlier it used to be like anecdotal uh let's see, let's launch this and see what happens. M But now it has become over time it has become more scientific where we can actually see what customers are looking for. We also run regular surveys with our customers saying that what new brands do you want in your locality? Uh and we give some options Marua donors naturals and we then show this data to our partners and say okay, let's launch in these locations. Um, so it has become more scientific, more data driven over time. But that's how we think about it. Let the customers define what we should do because then we don't fight for product market fit. We don't have to literally or pun intended shove things down. Customers Throat when they don't want it, and so on, so forth. So that's how it has evolved. Uh, for us, a great example is burger wraps that we launched, uh, in, um, Faso's. We saw a lot of customers come and look at Faso's menu and then go and buy Wendy's burgers. So we saw that there is an affinity between wraps and burgers like people, because it falls in the same quadrant of quick, convenient meal. So we said, let's launch a category of burger wraps. And that has become like 10% of Faso's incidence overnight. People just loved it, uh, that we put, uh, burgers within our app. And because non messy, etcetera, we created some wacky commercials around it. But yeah, so that's how we think about it. And then once we say, okay, this is what needs to be done, it comes to our culinary innovation center, uh, led by chef Vijay, uh, and, uh, we keep, you know, every Wednesday is. Every Wednesday at Rebel is a tasting day, you know, and that's why, um, you know, our attrition rates are pretty low because of this one particular fact that we get to taste a lot of things, uh, on Wednesdays. And then it goes into, uh, pilot launches and then getting customer feedbacks and then, you know, scaling up and so on, so forth. But that's how the journey has been. And the learnings have been super interesting.

Speaker A: Super interesting. Had I known, I would have come on a Wednesday. But, uh, next time if I, if I have to double click on the brands which have, let's say, done well, I'm guessing there's also revenue concentration across, let's say, the top five brands, let's say Behru, Fasoos, etc. Right. Uh, would you attribute certain things that have gone well in these bits, apart from category selection versus, let's say, brands that have not been, uh, scaling as well, etc. Also foundationally, you made this decision, uh, and of course that's evolved over a period of time, that there should be national brands as opposed to regional brands. Right. And that's. There's always, let's say, a conflict between either of these. Right. One may argue that, okay, biryani across certain regions should be the same versus in other regions should not. But of course, Behrooz has proven that antithesis, which is that, hey, a national brand in biryani is very much possible to scale successfully. Uh, how. Have you thought about some of these? What is the replicating success to, uh, a food brand? That's one. And maybe some foundational decisions across Food that have worked well in the long run.

Speaker B: See I think uh, on the first point we have a unique ah advantage here which is we don't have to scale our brand before it reaches product market fit. Because we launch a brand or even a product in five locations, five kitchens, there is no extra money that we have to spend. We don't have to. Cost of experimentation is low, is zero. Um, like marginal cost of adding a brand or adding a product is zero for us. No marketing investment, no capex, no nothing once it reaches product market fit, defined by whether customers are loving it and whether the unit economics is good enough or not.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: When these two boxes are ticked, then only we scale. So we scale only those brands that have met these two criteria. So as a result we don't have a brand which is skilled and not doing well. But there have been many brands which got killed at PMF stage.

Speaker A: Got it.

Speaker B: That's the uh, advantage we have.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: We don't put up new stores to experiment with a brand. Right.

Speaker A: Fair enough.

Speaker B: So that's why you know all the brands. So today we have about nine national brands. All of them are doing well. Not because you know, we've done something extraordinary, but we killed the ones that didn't do well early. So in a way it is like uh, an experiment factory. And only the ones that have done well and you know, got customer love and unit economics, got scale.

Speaker A: Got it.

Speaker B: And marketing comes very late, you know, uh, so that's how we build. So that's to answer your first question. So actually we don't have a very deep concentration. Like it's not that two of our brands drive 60% over revenue or something because we only scaled brands that Today we have six brands, more than 150 crore each today.

Speaker A: Got it.

Speaker B: Annual um, uh, revenue. So that was on the first part. The second part is, you know, first of all we believe that food brands are built through ubiquity. Like if you think about globally, McDonald's, why it's a brand because you can depend on it. Uh, in New York, Singapore, London, Delhi, wherever you go, you know, you can depend on a McDonald's. Same with Starbucks, you know, same with Domino's and so on. So there is no, you know, different McDonald's in India. But what is different in every region they would have some products that are specific to that region. India would be Alutiki or whatever. We followed the same formula. So today if you go to Chennai, Behruz has a south variety. But we believe the overarching brand should stand for the Royal Biryani. Um, experience. That's why people working in Whitefield, living in Indiranagar, traveling to Delhi, they can all enjoy Behrus and they know what to expect and they get that uh, product when they order. So the way we think about it is the experience has to be same, that's how brands are built. But there can be regional nuance based on particular uh, profile of the customer or the taste palette of the customer etc.

Speaker A: Etc.

Speaker B: Like for example I'm letting some secret out but in south people are rice eaters. In north people don't eat rice to, to that extent. So the proportion of rice and meat are different for Beirut between South and north because in South India people eat, you know people love eating their rice. So we, we have a higher portion of rice uh, in south so there are these changes that we keep m. And then the other thing that we can do, unlike ah, any other probably brand that we can launch regional varieties. Like for example as I was saying, today we've launched pongal within lunchbox for south during Onam. We launched Onam for in south within lunchbox. So we keep doing such things.

Speaker A: Um, yes. So I'd love to hear from you Jaydeep on the kitchen part of the story because as consumers we get to eat the delightful food yet we don't get to understand what happens on the backend. And that's perhaps the brilliance uh, of the infrastructure that You've created across 400 plus locations. Now which are these cloud kitchens. Talk to us about how the kitchen brilliance happens, what are the nuances, how attrition in kitchens is low, what is the innovation in kitchens with a lot of the smartbots, et cetera that are coming up. Would love to hear from you on that.

Speaker B: Yeah, see I think uh, I would say there are three parts to this whole uh, kitchen business. So one is people, uh, second is uh, the processes and the third is the material, the SKUs, the inventory etc. So the SKUs is the easier one. We now have a pan India ah, supply chain, same quality of uh, SKUs reaching our kitchens through an indenting system which is very automated and forecast driven based on our history of data, uh etc. I would talk about the people and process which I believe are uh, quite unique@rebel first the process. So when we started faasus, so there was this one process which is you make the paratha and you make the filling and roll it up. Fundamentally right. Later on as we kept adding brands it started requiring different processes and then we realized that it is a massive cognitive and physical uh, skill load on people. So over time we took process by process and ah, there is a uh, a dedicated team at Rebel which uh, which, which is always thinking about this. How can we reduce skill without reducing quality in our kitchens? And this team is you know, made of people from Amazon with robotics background, automation background, etc, etc. So their job is to take skill out of a very uh, you know, you know, from a culinary process. Sure. Fundamentally if you think about cooking, it's uh, it's bill of material. What do you, you know, what ingredients you use, dispensing, when to add what, in what quantity.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And third is a combination of heat and movement. Either use slow flame or you know, you know, fast flame, stir, uh, do a conveyor oven, etc, etc. So all processes are a combination of uh, ingredients, dispensing and this. So our job is to work on these three pieces and make things uh, less skill dependent. For example, today if you go to a rebel kitchen, and this has been happening for like 10 years now in rebel kitchens, we have like about 20 things to be fried like a samosa or you know, or a falafel and things like that. Now every thing you fry will, will need a different temperature, different dipping time, different taking up time and all of that. Earlier this used to be you know, through alarm clocks. Okay. You press an alarm clock, dip it, take it, etc, uh, measure your temperature over time. We now move to auto fryer. So which means you put the thing in the fryer, you press a button that you are doing falafal, the thing will automatically go down and it's Pre programmed through IoT and it automatically come. So now we can add a new thing to be fried instantaneously. Like you bring a new like chicken nugget or something and you just set the fryer on that temperature and that dipping time, it happens automatically like conveyor ovens. So for a, like giving dum to biryani, it's a core process, uh, in biryani. Right. Making biryani. How do we do dum? We have retrofitted uh, our conveyor oven through which you put the biryani from one side and it goes to a particular temperature zone when the dum happens and it comes out of the other. So nobody needs to remember how much time to give Dhamma and went to like earlier. You know, I remember my first uh, biryani chef, I asked him, he was like, you know, so he has to take off the lid and look inside and see whether the biryani is done or not. You can't do that, you know, uh, when you are across, right. So we've created process around it. Like the biryani has 36 different spices that go in like earlier it used to be like uh, chef's magic, you know, chef would think, okay, now let me put some long, let me put some Jaytri or whatever. Today we pre pack these uh, 36 ingredients in sachets. And you know, if you're making a uh, 50 kilo batch, you know how many sachets you want you have to put in. So through hardware, through process, processes, etc. So that's a big part of you know, designing uh, kitchens, so to speak. Now the, the other part is people. And I believe whatever we do on process and inventory, you know, companies that have a distributed operations fail because of a lack of uniform culture. Because you know, when someone is ordering something in Coimbatore versus Amritsar, uh, you know, the moment of truth is when someone is making your food. So if you don't have the uh, cultural underpinning, it's not going to be possible. So we've always kept the kitchen teams at the center of the company and some statistics like, you know, and these are people who are, who would be like maybe 12th pass. Uh, uh, some of them are graduates, but largely non graduate people. Today 83% offer CDO. So we call the uh, head of the kitchen a Chief Delight Officer because he or she is the real CEO of the business. He or she defines how we are serving our customers with a specific focus on delight. So that's why it's called CDO Chief Delight Officer. So today we have about 400 Chief Delight Officers, each of them, you know, sort of managing a kitchen. 83% of them started as a trainee today. So and, and today the CDO not only can manage the kitchen, the inventory, the people, the customer delight, but he's extremely financially savvy because today a CDO can draw P and L like, you know, what is his or her revenue, what are the costs, what is the variance, cost of delivery, everything. His or her career has three parts. So one is customer delight, how delighted his or her customers are. Second is how he's managing the kitchen operations, whether uh, every T is crossed and every I is dotted, you know, from an operations point of view. And third is financial delivery. So how his PNL is, etc. Or her PNL is and so on. So, so this is the part I'm if, if there's One thing I'm super proud of is, is how we have so internally, we call it transforming lives. So we've gotten people who are, you know, of that strata come to our kitchen as team members and we have changed their lives. You know, and then after cdo, there is Area Delight Manager and then Zonal Delight Manager. This whole sort of, uh, leveling up of people have happened in our company tremendously over the last, uh, 12 years. And we call it internally transforming lives. Take people when they are raw, fresh, uh, and then, you know, change their lives. Uh, and a lot of people asked us, including our investors, you know, why don't we employ gig workers? Like, you know, why don't we, why do we have, uh, permanent staff on people? You know, why do we have, why do we don't have, you know, hourly staff or, you know, who would come get paid, go away, like, you know, a lot of, uh. But we realized that unless we are creating or changing lives for these guys, we won't have that loyalty, and we wouldn't have that. Uh, at the end of the day, our customers would be as happy as our employees would be, as delighted as employees would be. That's why we made a decision, okay, this is where we are not going to compromise. Um, we are going to take people, change their lives, bring about entrepreneurship, call them CDOs or CEOs, um, and do it like that. And it has initially, uh, it was painstaking, but now if you think about our bench, so we have 400 CDOs, 400 ACDO's, ah, Assistant Chief Delight Officers, 400 management trainees. So in total, we have a bench strength of 1200 kitchen CEOs tomorrow, when we open new hundred new kitchens, these are the people who would be taking over. And that safeguards us more than anything from scaling fast and then the pitfalls of scaling fast and across. When we opened Middle East, a lot of the CDOs from India went there and opened, uh, that market. So I can go on and on this, but people talk about our FERs and our senior management, etc. But I think we've done something right, uh, at the kitchen level by creating this kedo. And I think out of everything, people can copy technology, people can copy building a kitchen, a supply chain, but copying a culture at scale is the hardest. And I believe that this is our biggest moat, how we build, uh, this team. That is brilliant to hear.

Speaker A: I remember in our last chat also you distinctly mentioned that attrition across kitchens is perhaps the lowest for us in the Industry. Ah. And your focus on culture is of course, uh, standout across conversations. So I love that. I want to get to how the team culture is also really exemplified at Rebelle. But before that I think this was really helpful and I want to understand how this extends to the international markets. Um, what Rebel has done is truly disruptive, not just in India, but externally. We often wonder that a lot of Indian businesses are, let's say, copycat models of US Businesses or developed markets. Rebel is a contrarian in that opinion. Right. Like Rebel has set out a, uh, market approach and you're scaling it further. And I'm not sure how many people are aware, irrespective of that. I'd love to understand how, how you thought about going outside India. Why did that thought come to being right? Was it a trade off between there's an opportunity versus depth of market? Right. Uh, how did you look at these two and how has that journey been? Right, Because I'm guessing food is again very diverse in different cultures, let alone different countries. Uh, how have you managed that? What is the scale of operations? I'd love to understand that piece, uh, from you better.

Speaker B: J. Yeah, see, I think not everything went well, to be honest. Like our Indonesia business, uh, we actually closed that business. So, uh, because that is exactly to your point, you know, completely different culture. We, you know, we went there, we had a partner in Gojek, which was, you know, let's say the Swiggy equivalent or Zomato equivalent of Indonesia. We went, uh, to Indonesia as a JV and we did really well in terms of, you know, scaling up to, to some extent and all of that. But in the end it was too alien a market for us. And Gojek also wanted out of that once they went public. And that has been our biggest learning, that when we enter a market, we should not be dependent on one channel of distribution, which was the mistake we made in uh, Indonesia where we were closely coupled with Gojek. And when they didn't want to pursue that business, it was too far for us to manage. So as a result, our philosophy now is when we open an international markets, we opened Middle, uh, East a couple of years back. We wanted to go non exclusive. We wanted to build the brands, be present in all channels, build our own channel. And that learning has really worked well for us, uh, in, in uae and see the, the way our ah, business is structured. As I was saying in the beginning, you know, there's a platform and then there are brands and then there's distribution. As long as the platform is strong. We can actually do any cuisine in the world. Yeah, right. We can do an Asian, we can do a health. We can do, you know, pizza, you know, anything under the sun, maybe not yet, uh, sushi and things like that. But largely large swathes of cuisine we can do from that platform, which helped us in uae. In fact, in uae, our top three brands are Mandarin Oak, which is an Asian brand, is doing really well. And last week there was a dim sum festival done by Mandarin Oak. And people just loved. We launched the crunchiest dim sum. Like you associate dim sum with like softness and all of that. We launched a completely crazy product in Dubai and people just loved it, you know. And, um, because we had the platform, we have the culinary know how we can do this. So Mandarin Oak is a big brand in Dubai for us. Second is 500 CP, you know, 500 calorie project, which has done, you know, tremendously well. The third is actually a burger, a brand that we built in Dubai because in Dubai we saw a trend where there were these mass market burgers like McDonald's and Burger Kings. And there was a very high end burgers like Pickle, uh, or things like that. Something like a Louis Burger in India. There was this at Dubai, a big burger eating market. UAE as a whole is a big burger eating market. We spotted, uh, a gap where, you know, a reasonably priced, but, but, you know, gourmet burger which tastes like real burger and not your, you know, processed patty kind of a thing. And we launched, uh, a burger called Messy Burger last year. Last year. And that brand has also done really well. So, you know, the philosophy is same like you go to a market, meet the customer, where they are, if they are. They love burgers. And, you know, and Dubai, by the way, also loves biryani. And Behrooz is one of the highest rated biryanis in Dubai and Sharjah. So this is a market which loves Asian food, loves burger, loves Indian food. So we've, you know, um, uh, tailored our offerings, uh, to that because the platform we have and, you know, that helped us do that market in London actually, which is our other market, uh, where we have three brands. Spasos, Beirut and Lunchbox. Again, Indian is a big, uh, category in London and very fragmented. There is no, you know, I lived in London and the biryani really sucked. You know, um, 10 years back in my earlier job and I had this thing about bringing Beirut to London about a few years back. And we finally did it last year. Today Beirut has about 40 locations in London doing Really? Well, again a uh, market where Indian food is a big category but there are no incumbent players. Brits love Indian and they don't get the best Indian. So it's a perfect uh, place to build a brand, launch a brand and export a brand. But still early days, we'll see how it goes. So that's how we are building one market at a time, depending on the nuance of that market, what we can bring to the table and uh, things like that.

Speaker A: Got it. I think that's super helpful. I think the point to the right to win, as long as you have that platform, you have that expertise and if a market makes sense, you have the ability to launch and then scale it as per the market. I think that's super interesting. And this is in its truest form. I think people talk about how consumer is difficult to build from India for the world. But this is a very strong exemplification that it is possible if you have the right capabilities. So I love that. Um, as we conclude the conversation, I want to get to the people aspect of Rebel, uh, itself. Uh, I think a couple of distinct things that stand out and I remember talking about this previously as well. Uh, but the fact that hey, the culture is extremely strong. Uh, the people who've left Rebel rave about it like Revant of uh, Mosaic Wellness, uh, Shashank of Whole Truth. I've hosted both of them on the podcast and they have themselves mentioned about you and the rest of the team. Uh, the fact that the initial set of eirs became uh, co founders of the company and you, you know, sort of made the decision to elevate them because they've been true owners of the brand. Talk to us about how you look at some of these things. Right. I don't think they get spoken of enough but in the long term vision of building an institution they are as important as possible. So I would love to understand your people ideology, how you've looked at it over the years, how has that evolved over a period of time and why is that important to begin with? Right. And how do you truly looking at it from a long term lens. Right. It feels like you're still like, I mean as focused as one can possibly be. It's been like 12, 13 years yet like your head is down to build this long term institution. How do you look at it all?

Speaker B: Yeah, see uh, you know, again, you know, learned the hard way when we started Rebel back then Faasus, uh, my first instinct was to, to hire from food industry because that's how we started. But Then my big couple of big learnings. So one is over time, uh, my personal journey has gone from how to what to who over time. Initially I would be thinking how to do something, how to open a kitchen, how to open a market. Then I realized that I shouldn't be doing that. I should let people do that and should define the what, which is, you know, this is where we would be going, you know, uh, we'd go international and someone else will figure out the how. And then over time I realized that my job is actually to decide the who and then that person will define the what and the how. That's when, that's how I've, I have felt, you know, the empowering. Uh, you know, that's why this job is very interesting to me even today because you know people talk about business scaling but I uh, think through mistakes I have, you know, this has been my scale up journey, you know, in a nutshell that you know I, I was making people's life miserable at one point in time and then, then I realized that you know, that is not the right way to do it. So I made that change, etc. So that's, that's one, you know, evolution that, that I have gone through over time. This how to what to who. And today uh, I have another two by two to think about uh, who should do what. There are some jokes around it in the company like uh, if you think about one axis is uh, uh, lazy and hard working and then the other axis is stupid and clever. So stupid, clever, lazy, hard working. I have realized over time the most dangerous are the uh, stupid and hard working. It might sound bad because they can really harm your company. M. Because they'd be doing the wrong things but with all zeal etc. Uh, but the real pillars of your company are uh, the clever hard workings and the clever lazies. I believe if you have to. People who operate, who can operate at scale are clever and lazy because when they are lazy they are not trying to figure everything out by brute force. They are trying to create a system, they are trying to create a process, they are trying to create a leverage through which things will get done. So these are people who are tremendous to lead large teams, you know, operations or you know, business units, etc. But then hard working and clever people are the other uh, ones that can do zero to one journeys. Like when you start a new business or a new geography, you need, obviously you need people who are clever but also need hard working, will roll their sleeves up and you know, open that shutter in the morning and sweep the floor and so on. So, so again, I think maybe I'm generalizing too much, but having this framework helps me give the right people the right responsibilities today. Because as a company we have a fairly large stable business that is growing, but also new green shoots, uh, that are coming up. That's why I have tried to think about. So that's the second piece that I've learned over time how to define these. Who's the third piece about things like, um, culture building and co founders, FEAs, co founders, etc. So again, another two by two is you have experience on one axis and you have what I call founder mentality on the other axis. Now a founder mentality has nothing to do with a founder. It's a mentality. Right? So what is a founder mentality? A founder mentality is three things. So one is obsessed with problem solving. Like you give these people a problem, they are energized. You know, uh, that's a founder mentality. Most founders are like that. And founders, I don't mean entrepreneurs, I mean anybody can have this mentality. There are a lot of problems. Second is very high level of ownership. Like, feels like you give someone a problem and that person will own that problem and go to any length and treat it as his or her own, uh, business, own child or whatever. So that's ownership. A third is a frontline mentality, like customer obsession, you know, field obsession and things like the founders are like that. You know, they don't want to sit in, you know, in uh, in an ivory tower or a corner office. Um, they want to be close to the customer, close to the field, etc. When you start a company, I realized that you need low experience, high founder mentality because m. If you have high experience, the problem is you come with baggage and you come with, especially when you're starting a McDonald franchisee, maybe you need experience. But when you starting something new, unique, you need people with low experience, freshers, but with high founder mentality. Right? Beginner's mind as they call. You know, there's this thing about, thing about Zen and beginner's mind. When you have a beginner's mind, you're very receptive. You know, your mind is open. Uh, uh, you are willing to experiment. You know, you are willing to, willing to challenge the status quo. You need characters like that when you're starting, starting. And that's what happened with us with fers. You know, we recruited seven, like high founder mentality, low experience people. You know, five of Them are still here. A couple of them went out and started their own company. Revant and Shashank are great examples. So I, you know uh, I believe Kalola and I die we are like bunch of couple of lazy Bengalis. But you know one thing we've done right is we picked this group. Well and not that we knew all these things back then, but over time we realized that you know, this and then we replicated it. You know there are now many people in the ranks of Rebel who are high founder mentality but close to zero experience who m came on board with beginner's mind, picked up businesses, you know, ran them, etc. Etc. Over time I realized that there are some things in a business where you need experience like finance. There's no point reimagining the balance sheet, you know, so and then we, then we tried to hire people with high founder mentality but high experience. So that's how Piyush came on board. Piyush, our CFO is the Sherpa of our company. Now what does a Sherpa do in high altitude climbing? It regulates your oxygen. So we are this crazy bunch of guys who can go in any direction but Piyush regulates us. Piyush regulates the oxygen or the cash. Um, and he has been a tremendous addition and couple of others, our cto. Again we needed someone who really understood technology. Deeply highly experienced, but with founder mentality. It doesn't mean that we've not made mistakes. So I've had my share of recruitments where we hired people who fell in the wrong boxes. But uh, then we corrected those. I feel good about the management today and you know, a couple of layers also down the line, uh, we have a lot of people with high founder mentality and experience and non experienced both. Anyways, long answer but this is how uh, we've tried to build the company and you know one that you talked about long term vision. So I believe uh, as a business we are drawing on an infinite canvas because tomorrow food trends will change. People are having biryani tomorrow they'll more health protein rich food. I don't know if I look hundred years from now food trends would be completely different from what it is today. But people will still be eating food won't be downloaded anytime soon. So it's an infinite canvas. Right. And I would like Rebel to have these characters who are high founder mentality who can reimagine this because we're not stuck to a brand, we are not stuck to a cuisine. We are, you know, distribution will Change, technology will change. So you need such characters to take us beyond my time, beyond the current management's time, into the future and keep drawing on this canvas. That has been the endeavor. And sometimes we uh, did well, sometimes we didn't do well, but at least the endeavor has been build a company where, where it keeps on uh, this, this drawing on this infinite canvas keeps on happening.

Speaker A: So yeah, I love that. I think that's super helpful to understand because I think you really summarized it in the best sense possible. Right. Like long term institution building requires people and uh, how. What who analogy is really, really helpful. I love how you have like a two by two for everything. And I want to come to that. But uh, the last part about this is Jaydeep, like there are these hits and misses in a founder's life, right? Um, is it possible for you to maybe summarize some things that were a surprise to you getting into this because you are a founder for the first time of such a large company. So by just benefit of hindsight, we'd love to understand what are some decisions that you went in prepared and really worked versus what are decisions that you had to learn on the go were surprising insights were things that you didn't imagine would work out the way they did and you had to just like prepare yourself as you went ahead. So that would be super helpful to summarize.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think uh, many, many such instances. I think I had, you know, 10 mistakes for one correct decision. And uh, you know, a couple of things that come to mind is we had this inkling that we have a kitchen so we can do many cuisines. Okay. But so what we tried doing was we launched pizza under Faso's. Mhm. And that didn't work out because people. And then later on the learning here is in food, people associate a brand with a product. So Domino's is pizza, Starbucks is coffee, McDonald's is burger. There is no famous multi cuisine restaurant in the world. So people didn't believe that Fastos can make pizza.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So we launched because we were very confident of the product. So we launched pizza under a pizza brand and that worked. So you know, we went in saying that, okay, this will work because you know, people move between those four boxes so they'll sometimes have pizzas, why not Fastro's? But then, you know, this was so we've been proven wrong and you know, something else was a, uh, was a surprising answer, but in hindsight it makes sense.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So there were many such. Like for example, we uh, you know, we, we we had this business called CBLD which is curated best local delights. You know where we, what we tried to do was we, I talked about these partnerships with Naturals, Ice cream and Taco Bell, etc. We tried to do okay, where our kitchen was within 100 meter radius. Are there other brands which are very nice and can we club them with our delivery? And we were very confident that this will work. But then the logistics was a nightmare, the technology building was a nightmare and then we realized no, we have to host them inside our kitchens if we want to go in that direction. So there were many such uh, things that uh, we thought something, but something else worked.

Speaker A: Uh, got it. No, that's super helpful. I think I just want a summary of some of those decisions. But this has been extremely fruitful. I think the entire business is very clear. Uh, I want to end with just a couple of questions on your founder Persona because I think that's also very distinct and uh, you know, very interesting for the viewers. One of the things there is the fact that you're a mountaineer and that's something that you've uh, you know, channelized over the years. And you just telling me before the podcast that you went on a one month expedition recently, uh, to Patagonia, uh, can you perhaps talk about like how some of the personal things that you do directly uh, attribute to the founder that you are. How do you stay focused across like a multi decade journey? This is your second decade into the business and it feels like uh, there's going to be more into the business that's going to be required. The infinite canvas as you mentioned. What are some other characteristics plus the mountaineering in you that help you become the founder that you are?

Speaker B: Well, I think uh, first of all you um, know I love mountaineering for many reasons but I think the biggest would be that when I'm on a uh, you know, on a high altitude terrain just focusing on my climb or walk, I'm just with myself and I think you know startup is a, is a team sport and you know, you lead, manage people, etc. Etc. But, and, and, but mount what mountaineering gave me. And so things associated with mountaineering, trekking gave me was time to reflect and I am, I'm a naturally a reflective person because I go on a trip every year now on an expedition or a high altitude trek. I train throughout the year and my runs are always uh, this, I'm always in this reflective mode, uh, like thinking about what will happen, what, what, you know, how the, how the industry will evolve or you know, specific problems at a particular time, etc. Etc. So I think that's how this is intertwined. You know, mountaineering, running, all these things give me time to reflect uh, on the business. I, I'm a person who is always thinking about uh, business even while I'm on in sh. Uh, but these are times where you know, a lot of my light bulbs came from, uh, summer, you know, when I'm on some uh, of this. That's how it's intertwined. You know. The second thing is, you know, I, because I'm an introvert, you know, my favorite mode of expression is writing. M. And that's nothing to do with mountaineering. But as you said, you know, what other thing that you uh, that you do. So I am a compulsive writer, so a long form writer. So I, you know, you know sometimes I would send an email to Rebel all and people have told me it is too long etc and all of that. But, but I keep, if I have a, have uh, some thought, the best way for me to express that thought is by doing a long form writing and then send it. And some of this has been you know, very like very similar to Amazon. We don't have PowerPoint presentations in our company in spite of the fact that I was a McKinsey consultant where we you know, changed the world one PowerPoint slide at a time. But uh, you know today at Rebel it's all long form writing. You know, meetings happen through uh, narratives and so on so forth. So that's uh, another way, you know, probably how my Persona and, and then the company kind of uh, uh, uh got influenced by each other to some extent. Um, the third thing I would say is there is this, uh, I'm a big fan of Howard Marks and I'm basically ah, autodidact which means that I was a very bad student. But I am, you know, I learned from reading, watching YouTube video. I learned swimming at the age of 32, uh, by watching uh, YouTube. And then I taught my daughter who became a swimmer in her school. So you know, I have this habit of learning by myself through watching reading and things like that. Um, so one of the. One of my favorite authors is Howard Marks, uh, runs Oak Tree Capital. Ah, some of his writings is tremendous. So he has this philosophy of again a two by two where he says you know, people agree with you. People don't agree with you on one axis and then you are right and you are wrong on the other axis. So when you make the abnormal return, when you are right and people don't agree with you.

Speaker A: You.

Speaker B: Okay, it's like when you invest in a stock, if everybody thinks it's a great stock, it's already pricey, you don't make money.

Speaker A: Correct.

Speaker B: But you make money when nobody else knows that stock is great and you prove to be right. Okay. And, and I believe this applies to everything in life. Like, you know, my favorite example is Gandhi and non violence. You know, when Gandhi started non violence, nobody agreed that non violence can be a way of revolution. Right. But his impact, you know, and uh, later on a lot of other people did non violence, but because he, he was the first guy to come up with it. Uh, that's, that's another extreme example. But at Rebel, I have realized that every time we took a non consensus decision, m. You know, and many times we were proven wrong where nothing happens. But the times when we proven right, it created windfall for us. Great benefit of a non consensus right decision is you don't have competitors. Like if you're in a place where everybody agreed that Cloud Kitchen is a great business, then, or Internet, then we would have 30 competitors, all funded and we would be like. That's why Bezos said, you know, the real secret of a successful business is the ability to be misunderstood for a very long period of time. And it's all that same ballpark of non consensus misunderstood. People don't agree with you, but you are right. But you are right. You know, of course, and out of 10 times, nine times you may be wrong, but that one time you are right. And I'm a big believer of that. And that's why I think at Rebel, we build the DNA in a way that these non consensus people don't agree with. Kind of projects get done, sometimes they don't go anywhere, but at times they do something and then magic happens.

Speaker A: I love that. I love that. We should have probably started with that question because I think there's a lot of depth to that, like a combination of reflection, writing and learning by yourself. And the last framework that you provided could be the secret to so much. Uh, you don't know this probably, and I wanted to mention it, but the moment you mentioned writing in my last podcast as well is since when I started writing, I still don't write long form a lot, but I try to codify much of what I do now because of that actually. So I have lot to attribute there. But I think there's a lot of food for thought for anybody listening. I think all very helpful frameworks and all something That, I mean, I was talking to Harsh of Pristine before this. Like, right before I was coming to the conversation, and he was like, jaydeep is great. And any person I mentioned that, you know, I'm hosting Jaydeep, they mentioned that you're great because of, I'm guessing, some of these reasons. So, uh, thank you so much for sharing. I think this is super helpful. Uh, I'd love to maybe on the antithesis of this love, to understand what is the Persona beyond. Like, so in a world where Rebel would not exist, what would Jaydeep, the ex consultant, business school going person be doing? Like, if you could give me an alternative world where, let's say Rebel was not that consumed all of your mind, what would you be doing? What would your friends say about you? That's maybe one thing that I'd love to know before we go to the last question.

Speaker B: Uh, one of two things. So maybe I would be a teacher.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Uh, my parents are both teachers. And, you know, and in school I was like, out of 10 subjects, I'll be pathetic in nine. But that one subject I'd be good at. I'd be teaching the entire class. Uh, people say those things to me even now. Uh, you know, I love, um, you know, uh, be in front of a class, uh, and talk to the class. I. I did a session with the Insead guys, uh, who came to Bombay a couple of weeks back. So I probably would be a teacher or, um, you know, I would do something around outdoors. So maybe, uh, maybe do a decathlon, kind of a business or, uh, a, you, uh, know, uh, high altitude trekking company or something like that. I'm trying to do some of it through my friends.

Speaker A: Oh, lovely.

Speaker B: But that probably would be the other one.

Speaker A: Yeah. Uh, North Face for India or a Patagonia or India. That'd be amazing.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, no, this has been great. I think I've loved every aspect of it. Actually, I have a second last question, and this is that, uh, it's the Stanford essay, which is what matters to you and why we've spoken a ton about the business, we've spoken a ton about you, but I have to understand what lies at the genesis of it. Right. Some of which you mentioned right now. But if you have to summarize, like, this is what fundamentally drives me to do what I do today. Get up every day, um, run the ship at Rebel, grow, build on that infinite canvas. What is that answer?

Speaker B: I think, uh, you know, building something for the long term is a core, uh, let's say motivating factor. Uh, I think, but that's a very, Any entrepreneur would like to do that. But I think within that building something long term, it goes without saying, if we are known for changing something in this world, m, that would be tremendous, you know, because, you know, a long term business can be built, uh, by doing something that is already there in this world.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: For example, you know, a Domino's or a McDonald's franchisee could be a very long term business. Right. Um, or a Hamley's franchisee. I don't know. Uh, but that won't change anything in this world. But I think what motivates me and most probably a lot of people at Rebel is that we go home thinking that we are doing something that will, that will change something that will change an industry, that will change how people eat, uh, that will change the economic characteristics of a particular business or whatever. I think the intersection of building something long term, which is fundamentally very different from what people have seen in this world, would uh, be the biggest motivation factor. That's why, you know, it's interesting. You know, every day is interesting. Some days are bad, of course, but overall it's interesting.

Speaker A: And were you always conditioned this way or is it a trained, uh, muscle?

Speaker B: I, uh, don't know. I think I was, uh, I was, as I said, I was never a mainstream person. Fundamentally, you know, the subjects that I would, that I would take fascination on, the books I would read, would always be a, uh, little bit, um. Different.

Speaker A: Yeah, something different in the world. That's a great, great takeaway. I, I remember that, um, if you had to paint us a picture on the North Star for Rebel, let's say certain timeline, five, 10 years, whatever, what would that look like?

Speaker B: Like, see, I think, uh, as I was saying, those three layers of our business, the platform, the brands, the distribution, it actually also forms a circle. So the stronger our platform be, the more brands we can bring in.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: Which strengthens our distribution, which gives us more insight to strengthen the platform.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So this is the flywheel of Rebel Foods.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And lot of people ask me how many countries, how many markets, how many stores. But I actually think in this flywheel that every passing year, if your operating system becomes stronger, which could be more kitchens, better technology, you know, more culinary innovation if you can keep adding great brands. Like I'm now in discussion with a couple of US brands to bring them to India and 500 CP to India, etc. And uh, Veronica, building the distribution muscle, as long as we keep doing, I actually don't keep A number sort of goal for 5 years, 10 years if every year. If you can keep churning this flywheel, it will compound. And that's why the canvas is infinite. If you keep compounding and as they say, you get, you always overestimate the short term, underestimate the long term. You know, in 10 years this would be a, this would be something phenomenal. If we can keep churning the flywheel.

Speaker A: Any, any milestone at all, like an ipo, anything on the vision board that you think will come true.

Speaker B: See, IPO is definitely on the cards. But I look at IPO as, uh, a, as a funding event for us, you know, because if you look at our captable, you know, now we have KKR and Temasek. Yeah, Sequoia for our longest time. We already behave a little bit like, you know, disciplined custodians of capital. Otherwise we won't be here. So I don't think life would change tremendously when we become public in terms of, like we have for the last 12 years, we have audited by Bigfoot, we have S4HANA, uh, as an ERP system. So there are things from a governance point of view, etc. We believe will not change much and we would even if we become public, you know, it will be my earnest endeavor to tell the investors a long term story rather than a quarterly story. And we won't change as a company, whatever happens to the stock price, which is not under my control, uh, I can control joining this flywheel for Rebel Foods and that will be my focus and my team's focus and stock price would be an outcome. And I have told this to all my investors and that is how we will behave even after, uh, being public. But we can raise a certain amount of money and fuel our ambition, uh, further. So that's why I look at doing an ipo, uh, as a financing event for us more than anything else. And it will be, it is on the cards. It'll probably happen in the next couple of years.

Speaker A: Got it, got it. No, this has been awesome. Thank you so much for sharing the last question. Jaydeep is one that is standard across the podcast, but one where we go down memory lane. The idea is to condense all of the learnings and perhaps, you know, uh, help us with that. Uh, so we usually end up going to a distinct time in the person's history. So let's say when fasoos was starting and you started with the QSR model, this is before you came up with the concept of cloud kitchens, scaling it. If you could condense everything that you know today and tell yourself on that day. Right. What would that look like?

Speaker B: Imda? You mean the story of rebel foods

Speaker A: in a few words or the learnings. The learnings. Like knowing what you know today. If you could just give yourself the benefit of hindsight, uh, back in the day. Right. Uh, so that you could supercharge growth or supercharge the journey in some shape or form. The idea being that we want to just benefit from the last 13, 14 years and perhaps a couple of minutes. What would you tell yourself if you could? And this is not about things that didn't work. It's just about like knowing what you know today, uh, and giving yourself that benefit.

Speaker B: See, I think uh, I would probably be, uh, you know, probably putting more time understanding India as a market. That would be my first one. Mhm. Because this couple of big things. So one is this real estate labor equation I was talking about. Mhm. It was not clear to me if it were clear to me today. If we start again, it is clear to me m that India infrastructure is costly, labor is cheap, which is exactly opposite in the US So it's a very different market, number one. Number two, in India, money value of money is higher than value of time. In a highly developed world, value of time is higher than value of money. And over time I've realized in India, value of money is greater than value of time, which is changing, which is the biggest indicator that India is becoming a developed country. It's on the path. That's why quick commerce is growing. But for the longest time I have seen value of money to be higher than value of time. So I would keep that in mind when we start, I would start again. That's uh, uh, from uh, India as a market perspective, you have to start uh, the business again. Secondly, I would treat my role as a, as a friction remover for growth. Like, you know, I went to this, uh, and this has been the seminal moment for Rebel. You know, if I have to tell one story about, you know, uh, the biggest light bulb I had in my Rebel journey was this. So I went to a Sequoia conference now big 15 that time, Sequoia and uh, and Sikoa's, you know, Tendulkar was uh, the chief guest. And you know, Doug Leone came, he was the CEO, uh, at that point in time. So there were two rooms. They divided the founders in two rooms. One room was for tech companies, the other room was for consumer companies. They put us in the consumer room. That was okay, you know. But then Doug came to our room and said something that changed everything for River. He said the job of a CEO. He showed a river, uh, with like stones in the river. He said, how do we get the river to flow faster is remove the stones. You know, you remove friction from a business and that should be the biggest job of a c. You. That got me thinking. Both Kolol and I were there that night. We were, you know, we were sitting in our, in our room. We were thinking about many things about Rebel that time, you know, Fastos was uh, was there and you know how to. And then that night I realized that the biggest friction in our business was the real estate and how real estate on the high street, which was pulling our company down, the rental costs were going through the roof and we didn't know what to do. If I can make real estate redundant, then we have a future. And that led to the idea of going the first floor, reducing rental cost. Now these things are called cloud, kitchen, etc. But this is the central insight. And uh, when I start, if I, if I had this insight, then maybe, you know, the Rebel journey could be condensed in like, you know, by, by half a decade or something like that. Got it.

Speaker A: I love that. I think all of those reasons and learnings are very, very helpful. This has been such a pleasure. I think uh, uh, you've been one of my favorite guests on the show and I've had the privilege of hosting you earlier. And this conversation, uh, is a testament to that. The structure, structured thinking, the evolved thought process, the learnings to build a long term business and truly do something that is not been done before is a category leader disruptor in its truest sense. Rebel is an example that will inspire many individual young founders in the country to do something disruptive. Uh, and I want to thank you for building that, doing what you do and thank you for spending time with us. I think this has been full of learning. I have personally, you know, after all my research, also learned a ton through this conversation. Uh, and I think uh, I have you to thank for that. Thank you so much for your time. Jaydeep, it's been an absolute pleasure. I hope you enjoyed it.

Speaker B: Absolutely. You know, always a pleasure talking to you. You, you, your questions bring out things that I don't get to talk about, you know, in most settings. So uh, the pleasure was mine.

Speaker A: Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. Awesome. Hello. If you made it this far, you've probably watched the entire episode and if you've done that, I'm really grateful. I and my team try to put in a lot of effort to ensure that we can bring the best quality content to you. So if you liked the episode, if you watched it thus far, my request to you is to share it with people, to subscribe to the channel and to ensure that we can keep growing. We are everything and anything only because of you, our listeners. Thank you so much for tuning in. We'll keep bringing to you amazing content. Cheers.