Groww: If Your Customers Don't Love It or Hate It, You've Already Lost

Most of the time like you would not build what customer is [music] directly asking but you read between the lines okay you know what so customer did not say okay show me all the products and then show me all the products in transparency and make the payments frictionless and so on. When I learned about grow first, you were in the winter 18 Y cominator batch and um you you guys sort of had a pretty simple vision and it's one that you know it's actually one that I resonate with uh pretty significantly. You and I built similar along similar visions which is to enable everyone in India to be able to invest right and you know fast forward to today uh you know you've experienced astounding growth and in November um you went public uh you're now a public company um what what an amazing amazing journey um I I guess I want to open you know by saying that this what part of what we've learned a lot about building product um you know at YC predominantly a lot of it in the US has been B2B but you've built a generational consumer fintech company and so I want to focus our conversation on how to build really good consumer fintech um but let's rewind the clock a little bit um you know how as you were perhaps the age of some of the folks in the audience today what was going through your mind like what made you want to build a company was that always your your vision Yeah. No, first of all, uh John, thank you so much. Uh we owe a lot to YC and great to be here and such a great energy and special hello to all the grow customers out there. So, uh so yeah, so coming back to this right so I think um if I uh if I got it correctly like how do we think how do how I started thinking about startups and so on. So I uh I grew up in a uh small city in in central India and um uh my my grandmother always wanted to wanted me to become an is officer. Uh do you guys know what is an IS officer right? So uh in fact she coined a blessing. So when in India you touch the feet of your elders when uh every day basically we used to touch and she coined this term called is bhava basically become an is right so it's like that so I think a lot of people here will have that context and I was in that frame of mind and I think somewhere I got to know about uh Apple about Steve Jobs right and that kind of uh kind of wired my brain very differently but somehow I did not know about startups at all. Right? This is we are talking about year 9798 and so on. So startup was not the word that I knew about but then I came to IIT Bombay and that [clears throat] was the time of 99 or 2000 right you know that was the com boom and everybody around me was doing a startup right maybe somebody is printing some t-shirts and shipping to customers and so on and I was like yeah this like you know being independent doing your own stuff this this sounds fun so that's how I think that seeds of startup kind of uh uh I mean startups got exciting for me. When you first started was grow the first kind of iteration of the idea or did you were you guys sort of tinkering and and building other things? How how did that evolve? No. So uh grow uh it's lot of tinkering and that's something that what we have learned like you know lot of times when you start you have some very broad idea in your mind but you know how do you kind of arrive at that by the way grow is not my first startup it is my second startup and if you count my student startup it will be like a third startup right and all of them failed before even grow the first idea that we started with actually failed which was uh something very different from what you see grow today, right? And uh what we started with was like a robo adviser, right? In 2016, robo advisor were getting very very popular in the US, right? Wealthfront, betterment and so on. And uh when we uh when we uh in 2016 when we started thinking about this problem, we saw that you know in a country of billion plus people and uh even what at Flipkart where were we are like hundreds of millions were kind of buying online and the number of investors was like low single digits right 20 less than 20 million investors and it did not make sense. So we thought okay let's do a robo advisor for all these customers and lot of customers will come and so on and guess what it did not work out uh and uh and then the iterations started okay what is what what actually works and what we realized is that when customers use the product they would always ask why this product why not that and so on and that led us to kind of thought process of selection which is like what Flipkart stands for, right? You go to Flipkart, you choose all the things that you want, full transparency and so on. And that's how like the new the the the grow in the current format is came into being. Yeah. And and I think that's particularly interesting. Um you know, obviously I know the robot advisory products well. Um but but it's particularly interesting in this case because you made a decision very early on that maybe was somewhat counterintuitive um when people were building consumer products or maybe even some of the advice that you got early on at YC which is you opened up the platform like you showed people everything and you you know full transparency. Um, I'm curious, you know, what led to kind of that that initial insight, but also why were you leaning into it so hard? Because I think that is a bit counterintuitive, right? You want to charge the customer and get get, you know, and with the recognition that you might not actually have revenue for some period of time. Yeah. So, um, uh, I think that's always a question, right? How, so one thing was very clear, Robo Advisor is not working. Now the next thing is what will work and then you create a hypothesis. Okay based on the customer signal which is like okay customers are always asking like why this why not this and then customer asking about a specific product like that product is not on the app but they are talking about it and so on. So one hypothesis was okay let's put the put the product that customer customers are asking and now if you have like thousands of customers they asking all different products. So let's put all of them and then we also try to connect it with what we have learned in the past right customers Indian customers care about uh choice and they care about transparency and then uh are almost almost after an year of starting so we started in 2016 uh which was April 20 May 2016 we'll become just completing 10 years now uh the the the grow product which what you know was launched in May 2017 so like exactly 1 year later and the with this hypothesis that let's open everything with full transparency and and very seamless payment very seamless onboarding and we launched it we thought okay u like if we get like 100 customers in this month we I think we will be happy and then we got 600 customers so we got a very strong feeling about this PMF what is product market fit right that I think customers are liking something and then you dig deeper on the fact what they are liking and keep doubling it down and it's like an iterative process and the more you keep doing it your customer acquisition cost goes down your engagement goes up your retention goes up and then customer love which is like NPS score NPS stands for net promoter score so basically you ask customers out of 10 uh you know how much u how what is the kind of you know how much would you to promote it to your friends and then what what do they say and we got like crazy crazy customer love like it started word of mouth people started talking about it and so on there was only one question mark which is about monetization and and that is the biggest lesson that I have kind of learned that in a startup there will always be uh multiple question marks and if you can reduce it to like one question mark I think that's like reducing risk and especially in consumer business and this advice is specific to more consumer business that uh you know if uh if there if there are no question marks then then I think it's kind of not uh you know it's not like a consumer bet I feel yeah I I love the the early days um and and this early sparks of conviction that it gave you was a very few set of customers um I'm curious is what kind of what are what did that feel like for you to just see a very small group of customers? Were you sort of thinking about oh we got to we got to now get more of them. Were you thinking about hey we got to really do the unscalable thing and and talk to those customers? Curious how you guys built up from a very very small base. So one thing is like um uh we used to talk to customers like a lot like so we created like lot of WhatsApp groups uh we would go in Kora Kora was very popular at that time in India we would go to like you know sometimes me and my co-founders will go to like uh movie theater before people are watching movies right talk to customers there so I think customer signal if if you have like 20 20 people on your apps it's very tough to kind of just get insights from those 20 folks. So you need to kind of expand your horizon and then as soon as customer signs up you put them into a personal WhatsApp group so that you are accessible and then kind of continue chatting and then try to get some signals from there. You know most of the time like you would not build what customer is directly asking but you read between the lines. Okay, you know what? So customer did not say okay show me all the products and then show me all the products in transparency and make me like you know uh make the payments frictionless and so on. But then you have to kind of understand that that is the actual elephant in the room. That's the thing that you need to need to remove and all. Yeah. And and so how long did it take you guys to sort of reach a moment when you think oh this is like this is growing this is going to work. Yeah. One year. So as I said like 2016 May 2016 we started in 2016 17 May 2017 we launched the product and I think within like 10 15 days or so we got this aha mean aha kind of feeling yes this is working because you could you could see the like you know the buzz you you could see customers talking about you and then in so organic growth which is like when you don't need to pay to acquire customers right when customers are coming themselves That is like the product market fit and when you see them retaining over day over day uh and then engaging more and more talking about you I think that then you kind of get a kind of Yeah, I think this is a really important point like how how many how much of your growth early on was people talking about it with other people versus you having to go out there and sort of spend almost almost 100%. Wow. Right. It was like full fully on by the way even today for example. Right. Most of our growth is organic growth. Most of it is word of mouth. Like all the folks who raised uh hands like if you ask them how did you come to know about grow most of our customers we'd say they were kind of uh recommended by their friend or their you know their cousin or their and and and some of them like you know uh some of the older folks their kids recommend them. Right. I think we've seen uh earlier talking to um to Harsh from Razer Pay, you know, there there's in regulated industries that we work in in sort of investments and fintech, there's often these really, you know, either good or really bad sort of tailwinds, right? Or headwinds. And sometimes you really have to be nimble enough to catch it. And I think you guys did. I'm curious how you navigated all the different regulatory change over time because you know and again like I think folks may may not remember some of the the stuff uh from uh from a while ago but but I'm curious how you put yourself in that position um to to really leverage that. So so we make we made some very uh strong strategic choices early on and one of them was that we will play only in regulated zone. So basically now when you talk about regulations there are some areas which are not regulated at all. There are some which are regulated and then there's a gray zone. Gray zone and not regulated is like 40% of the thing maybe. But we thought okay let's play in regulated zone that means going and taking the license and then doing the business right. So I think with that mindset uh once you have that kind of so and that's what I believe like when you start you should have some very strong choices because uh basically removing the variables right and once you remove the variables then kind of it becomes u uh like you know the decision making and the and the execution becomes much easier and over time as you grew I'm curious you know you had left this sort of pin monetization How did that play out? So uh so by so I'll I'll tell you about monetization right. So when we started we started with uh mutual funds and there we used to get some commission actually uh which is like you know which was not very high but then we saw customer demand again another one important pivot that we made on our WhatsApp groups customers started asking why uh so grow is a very good platform very beautiful UX and all but why regular mutual funds uh why not direct mutual funds which is like zero commission mutual funds and all these were power customers All these are very vocal customers. They would talk about you and so on. But the problem is if you have uh if you move to zero commission then how do you make money right? And then uh this is how we thought I mean back uh many years back that you know uh if we look around the world and if you look about uh look at all the consumer products if a product has very low uh CAC which is like almost organic zero CAC you can say if it has very high retention if it has very high engagement and very high customer love and and other thing is if you are moving lot of money right it's kind of very hard to find a company that does not make money. So we took this bet for first four years we were like a zero revenue company and then again there was lot of customer demand that you know there are mutual funds why not stocks and that was the that unlocks the monetization lever for us. Yeah. and and as you've been experiencing sort of a significant amount of growth obviously um how did you change what how you approached how customers really love the product cuz you know I think what's really inspiring about this is the core the central um thesis that you guys had or the central execution plan was to make a product that people really really love not just are okay with not just that they have to come back to but really that they must love and how has that changed over time as you've had to scale in the number of people. So, so we so by the way we have one commandment. So we have 10 commandments but one of them is obsess over design. Design is very very important for us and uh although like um uh you can have n any number of frameworks to kind of uh think about product quality and so on. But one another thing is that uh be the power user of your own product. So Paul Graham says right that if you're building a consumer product uh build for yourself. So so at least you will have one customer right even if you don't have too many customers. So uh so every release or every app that goes out like we use it a lot. So personally I use like my product more than 2 hours a day right and then around 2 hours a day I talk to customers about who are using the product and so on. So although there will be QAs and there will be you know quality folks and so on but then the real feeling comes when you are actually user of your own product and then you're in direct touch with the customers and especially the power customers. It's better to be in touch with like super super power customers right because they catch things they they I mean it will be me. So one one thing that we look at when we launch any feature or something and I tell my team that I should start getting uh two kinds of messages either two kinds of messages some people should say oh this is just awesome I love it or they should say this is terrible I hate it right both of these are okay if it is don't care that is the problem right because then it means that customers does not care about what you launched that's I I love that so even at the size that you are now you are still talking to customers. That's insane. That's that's fantastic. No, Paul Graham says right do things that don't scale. Yeah, absolutely. And and that is no matter how big you get, I think uh that that holds true. So as as you look at the new wave of consumer products um certainly people are using AI a lot more, some to to figure out what they should invest and sort of make decisions. How do you view competition or the competitive landscape as as people are building consumer AI products? We uh I mean from grow perspective we are always paranoid because like some of uh younger folks sitting there they kind of understand their generation much better than us like we are getting older. So so what we try to do is we try to be in the company of younger folks as much as possible. one of the reasons I came here right uh and I think in consumer world it's all about understanding the customer and it's very counterintuitive that the more you worry about the competition the more kind of you go away from the customer and the best way to kind of deal with competition is to like not worry about the competition but focus on the customer and understand their preferences how they are changing how trend are changing, how the tech is changing, like how AI will impact the customer experience, how productivity will go and so and that is how we think again we might be wrong but uh we are always kind of uh paranoid about uh about disruption. Yeah. And and when we were talking earlier um you you're personally playing with cloud code quite a lot. I think you're I would consider a power user. Um has that shaped your view on how you should run the company or build? Yeah. So I I think I love playing around and uh and when you do it yourself, when you dirty your hands, uh then only you can imagine like that it's something similar to what we talked about talking to customers, right? So when you actually on the are on the ground and talking to customers, you get the feeling of how customer is thinking, how how do how do they live, how do they talk and so on. Likewise, if you're talking about technology and you are far away from it, not directly dirting your hands, it's very difficult to imagine. And now so when I started using uh like you know all these coding tools and I started coding myself I used to be a coder before but been many years and now again you get this uh tech where you don't have to worry about lot of housekeeping stuff on the in coding and and uh and then you realize oh this is possible this is possible and then uh and then you kind of start promoting it within the company and so on right so I think uh that is uh that is a side effect but the primary thing is you just you just kind of get like you know engaged. You kind of get addicted to something some solving problems. Yeah. And I'm sure um folks in this room are looking at potentially building AI consumer experiences in many different fields. Um having built a really successful one, do you think that building AI consumer experiences has changed? What what what do you think needs to change or what maybe stays the same? um for you. So what stays the same is understanding the customer need and want. Of course you can use lot of AI tools to understand that but you have to nail that but then once you have figured out what needs to be built the how part is now so like much much easier. So earlier in our world like you know I call internet world as like past world our world how how would you build a product? You would hire maybe engineers. Let's say three engineers. Then you will hire a product manager who will tell engineers what to do. And then you have to tell okay how should be the design. So you'll hire a designer right and then uh if it is there's some operation involved then you will hire operations folks and then oh who will look at the P&L revenue cost and so on. So let's have a business guy and so on. So by the like to just to build like a startup you have like 10 15 people and so on right but now what happens like now one person who thought about what needs to be built he can sit down with some free credits and then uh you know on cl like design do uh product management coding and write some automation task for operations and you're like you know the the barrier to kind of doing something has just gone down so significantly. Yeah. And and as you look forward um give us a sense of what's coming up or what's next for grow. So uh uh I think now we are a listed company so getting bigger and bigger trust. So what happened? So we have like millions of customers now. We are the largest in the country today and um and lot of our customers are kind of becoming wealthy right so now they have lot more capital so what happens is that in a customer journey so when you start like a lot of younger folks here they start with let's say buying a stock or buying a mutual fund or you know buying some one product and so on and then as you kind of continue growing right let's say you are now uh you come on grow when you are let's say 25 now you are 35 right somebody came at 27 30 now they are 40 and so on so now you are you have lot more significant wealth wealth is directly some you know somewhere directly proportional to the age secondary grow customers are especially they they are very prudent and they are much like I say I like to think that they are very very smart so they grow faster so their wealth is growing very fast and then once you are wealthy then your needs also kind of change right so as a product in a product journey you need to continue evolving your product as the customers grow if you don't do that then then basically then there are like lot of smart folks building alternative products and so on right so I think that is the most important thing for us right now so wealth management is something that we are very very excited about and then on grow side uh like um how to kind of make it uh very very uh smart for the the younger folks. So in India you can start investing after 18 years uh and um and like how can we be like you know the most u um kind of exciting choice for them. Amazing. Amazing. Now um I do want to shift gears and talk about something that maybe we haven't talked about yet which is um co-founders. Um uh you have a pretty unique situation. you have three other co-founders, four of you on the team. You know, normally it's somewhat hard to get two people to align uh perfectly in a co-founder relationship, but you have four and everybody that's worked with you understands that you're always very well aligned and and you know, you act as um with with great urgency and consensus. So, I'm curious, how did you navigate that with four founders? Yeah. So I think uh so number one thing is right I think um if you are going for a very long journey it's very important that your value systems are aligned so what do I mean by value system so value system is like something written with a pen right and then strategy can continue changing year on year like it's like a something written in pencil right but uh but if value system is same so when we started we wrote down everything in a very very big document. You know what do we stand for? What will we do? What kind of compromises we can take or what kind of choices we'll take. So for example we the first line was we will always be customer first customer obsess. So now if there are no conflicts in decision making for next 10 years 20 years I think you are good right? So that's the so creating a very well- aligned value system so at least their conflicts don't happen. Second uh very clear uh uh clear ownership right you know so so who is uh who is owner for what now in a startup typically what happens is everybody does everything like all four of us are someday products managers someday engineers you know operations one of like hers used to take calls like you know when c customer he used to do customer support right he would do KYC sometimes Ishan is a finance guy but he used to code and so on right So it's it's and they used to make content. I nobody has created content but they will you will see if you go to grow channels and if you lick very old videos like 9 10 year old videos you will see very crappy videos done by us right so you do everything but it's about taking decision about the ownership then you say okay for tech he is the uh owner owner means he will he responsible and accountable for doing certain thing. Lastly, if there is a anyways, if there is a m if there's a very macro decision and if there is a conflict, then who is the who is the owner, right? So, if you have like these kind of things well aligned, I think it has it has worked great. So so far for us and I think we still like and okay another thing like you you need to enjoy their company right you should you should feel like okay even today like you know weekends like weekend is is the only time when we don't get to see each other but still like we have we are chatting continuously on WhatsApp okay what is happening and Monday you still feel like going to office Monday even if sometimes you know in founders journey there are ups and downs and so on but if on Monday you still are going to somebody whom you love working with I think that's like That's like the ideal co-founder relationship. [applause] Yeah, that's that's amazing advice. And and yes, like you know, we we get this question a lot obviously at YC about what to look for in a co-founder. It's always someone that you're really really excited to work with, right? Um because you're going to be doing it for a long time if things work. Um so one one last question. Um as you look at the crowd today, some folks are I'm sure thinking about building companies. What parting advice would you give them? Like what actionable advice would you give them to get started? I'll give two advice. One is don't listen to older folks like me when you do a startup because the world is changing just so fast and all the advice that is given is from the context of you know uh what we saw but you know I think younger folks have much better context now and in spite of that warning I'll again give one advice is like do something where you don't feel like doing work like you know if you're like doing something time should just kind Time should be like a blur and it should be like you should enjoy. Yesterday I was in a meeting and somebody asked me a question key okay what sacrifices have you done done in doing while doing grow and then I started thinking and I thought you know that we always enjoyed building grow right and I think I can't think about I I of course there are low times and so on but I mean everything was fun so I think that's the most important thing having fun [applause] amazing amazing well it's been such a pleasure thank you so Much everybody give it up for La Kishray from Grow. Thank you so much. All right.