Founder's Backpack: Thirukumaran Nagarajan of Ninjacart

PODCASTS I LISTEN TO

* Accel's podcasts on startups like Swiggy, Flipkart are formal, but educative

* Actor-politician Kamal Hassan talks about literally everything under the sun. He's well read, articulate and has an unusual take on issues

BLOGS I BROWSE

* Product designer Nikkel Blaase talks about product relevance in everyday life, the need for more creativity to enhance user experience


* Marketing consultant Gráinne Logue explains that features are important only when you know how useful they are to target users

* AJ & Smart cofounder Jonathan Courtney on product design -- its just not about throwing money to get it done, creative problem-solving separates good designers from the best



BOOKS I'M READING

* The Subtle Art of not giving a F*** by Mark Manson

* Asura; the Tale of the Vanquished by Anand Neelakantan

* Sapiens: A brief history of humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

* The Art of War by Sun Tzu



On my desk you will always find:

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, Only the Paranoid Survive by Andy Grove, Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin and Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu.

WHEN THINGS GET TOUGH

We started operations in June 2015 as a hyper-local grocery delivery startup. But in September 2015, we decided to pivot from that to becoming a B2B supplier from farmers to Kirana stores. That was the toughest decision we took. And the reason we took that decision was we realised the hyper-local delivery model was not adding great value to our consumsers; and consumers were coming to us only for the discounts. So we conducted an experiment. One week we have 5% deeper discounts than our online competitors, our sales doubled. The next week, we offered 5% lesser discount than our rivals and our sales dropped by nearly half. Then we realised we need to get out of this game as it would not be sustainable long term.

Meanwhile, our B2B model (which was just a pilot) was doing really well. We realised both farmers and kirana stores were happy -- as they got more money and better quality vegetables and fruits once we eliminated the middleman. So we then approached our board - imagine, we are telling them we want to shut down our primary business model for which we got funding; and branch out. Fortunately, the board heard us out and accepted. How did we handle things when it got really difficult? By working insane hours. Me and my cofounders were working close on 18-20 hours a day to ensure the smooth shutting down of the first business, even as we made arrangements to upscale the second one.

LESSON LEARNT



I'd say keep listening to your customers as they communicate a lot. Another one is to be faster in your decision making. Because not taking a decision is also a decision. Deciding faster is essential. For instance, we delayed arranging for financing our farmers for the longest time. We'd only heard really bad things till then. How farmers' loans are a risk; how even the big banks stay away from financing them; the ground reality of poverty and huge indebtedness. So we kept procrastinating that. Finally this January 2018, we decided to put up a small amount Rs 2 lakh towards financing the needs of four farmers (Rs 50,000 per farmer), who grew chillies, carrots and beans. And you won't believe we made a profit of Rs 5 lakh. So we will be looking at upscaling this now. But it is has been an opportunity miss -- as we didn't start off earlier."


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