The Indian Dream
The Indian Dream tells the stories of the profitable, long term thinker, risk-taker Entrepreneur because the country needs to be told that there's also a way to build long term value generating businesses in the era of VC funded hyper-growth engines. We wish to use these voices to showcase the strength of the Indian entrepreneurial spirit that forms the backbone of the nation.
The Indian Dream
How a 7 Year Old Startup is Disrupting the $2 Bn Water Purifier Market ft. DrinkPrime
Learn how DrinkPrime, an innovative water purifier company in India, is tackling the country's water crisis. With millions suffering from waterborne diseases, DrinkPrime offers IoT-enabled purifiers that adapt to varying water quality. Trusted by over 200,000 households in three cities, they are scaling profitably with support from leading investors Alteria Capital, Surge, and Omidyar Network India.
Timestamps for Easy Listening:
1
(00:30) - Intro to DrinkPrime and Water Purifier Market
(02:54) - Why DrinkPrime was started?
(07:00) - Decision to build new Water Purifier rather add Subscription to existing ones
(11:05) - How water quality in India changes across regions and in different seasons
(14:43) - The Current Landscape & History of Water Purifier Market
(17:33) - Why Celebrities market water purifiers and how DrinkPrime took a different approach
(23:40) - The challenges with doing Hardware Innovation
(28:34) - Cost Structure of the traditional Water Purifier Industry
(34:19) - STOP over-purifying your water
(37:58) - Why the traditional water purifier companies are too big to change
(40:49) - How DrinkPrime is supplying free water to government schools
(47:29) - If you're buying Water Purifier, here's how you should go about it?
Water pur repair is a 30 year old industry, right? Why do you have to reverse engineer anything? I would say it was a treasure hunt. Each question which we got, was actually a direction which we had to take. We just don't put everything and ev anything right into the water pur repair, right? Because we know the input, we know the output. No, it's just what is a function which I need to make, right? There were so many situations where we wanted to shut down, so the thought was why can't you donate your leaders what you have to the people who don't have whatever.
Sid:Hello and welcome to the Indian Dream Podcast, and today I have an exciting episode where we are gonna be talking about water and water purifiers. Before I tell you more about the guest today, let's look at some numbers like we usually do Every year, close to 38 million people, or four crow people suffer from waterborne diseases like diarrhea, typhoid, and other viral infections. It is estimated that it costs the country about 600 million or roughly 5,000 crow rupees just because of all these waterborne diseases. So access to clean water is clearly a large problem that needs to be solved for as it stands today. The only scalable and environmentally friendly way to access clean water is through water purifiers. The other ways, like package drinking water or tanker mafia's are either environmentally unfriendly or not affordable to majority of the Indians. Talking about water purifiers, India's first water purifier was launched in 1984, and in 40 years we've had many company launched many different products with innovations like R O U V, UF, and frankly many other terms that a foreman man doesn't really understand. It's a product that's marketed like any other appliance where it seems like more features are better for you, but did you know more features are not really better for you? Depending on the water quality that you get at your homes, you need to purify it accordingly. If you overtreat it, you actually make the water worse for you. Therefore, I find it very funny that in a country like India where water quality changes every four kilometers, you have companies marketing and selling the same water purifier across the country. Technically speaking, you need a different water purifier depending on the different regions. So to address all these problems with gender and Manan started during prime back in 2016, imagine a water purifier that's iot enabled, connected to your phone, that tells you exactly the kind of water that you're consuming and adapts the purification techniques based on the water that needs to be filtered. That's exactly what during Prime does. They've had a very, very interesting journey with a lot of Twist interns. They've done a lot of innovation on product distribution and marketing, and today they're trusted by more than two lack households in three cities, banked by leading investors like Teria Capital, Sequoia Surge, and OED Network. They're scaling very fast and they're scaling profitably. Tuning to this episode, not just to know more about how they build a hardware business in India, but also to know more about the water that you're consuming. And before we jump onto the episode, you know the drill. You need to subscribe, you need to light, you need to put a comment on the kind of people that you want on the podcast, and we'll try and get them. Without further ado, let's jump onto the episode. Vij, thank you so much for joining us on the Indian Dream Podcast. Um, I'll tell you a brief story about Ring Prime. I first heard about Ring Prime when I was trying to research about. Which water purify to buy. I'm based out of indoor, so you guys weren't present here. Uh, but that also got me curious about this entire market. Cause there's just so many different terminologies that are used. And as a layman you have no idea what kind of water, purify to buy. Buy. Um, and that's when I had heard about drink time. And then I think last year, sometime last year when we were talking about interesting, you know, opportunities on this podcast. We spoke about during Prime, that's when I'd done research. So, uh, very glad to have this conversation with you, to understand more about during Prime the thesis and you know, how you've grown, um, over the last few years. I wanna start at, you know, back in 2016, um, you, you are working as a, you know, hardcore engineer. Uh, that, that's where your focus is, what brought you to the water purifier market. You had no connection to it per se, right?
VJ - DrinkPrime:Yeah. Uh, first of all, thank you so much Si for having me here. I mean, it's a pleasure, uh, to have a nice conversation with you. So, yeah. Uh, coming to the point, uh, so yeah, uh, I am a computer science researcher, so I was there, I passed out from is c Bangalore. And then I was working in my core technology. I was part of AMD processes company, working on the next generation processes, which, uh, which, which the world needs, right? So that's what was the thing. But, uh, I would say it was, uh, a basically a hobby kind of a project where we started off with, but it ended up being such a big company, which is Drink Prime, right? So, One of the things, my life was almost set like it was good because I was working for a good company. I was paying well paid well, and everything was sorted right? But ironically, if you see the, one of the major problems, which, which I had personally was drinking water. Because the thing is, uh, we were not having access to safe drinking water for my personal, um, home, right? Which I was staying. So there were only two options for me. Either. First option was kind of go and buy a water can, which is available in every mom and pop store, where I'm sure we don't have much more, uh, much more trust on that bottled water that has, uh, issues on there. The second side of it is we have to buy a water purifier. There are only two ways of getting pure water, right? But for me, when I started my career, I was not clear how many days I will be there in Bangalore. So I did not, uh, wanted to go and commit and buying a water purifier because wherever I shift, I have to take the water purifier and go, right? So that's what my thing, and that's where I started off with bottled water. That's what it was. Comfortable, but again, for the obvious reasons of quality. I, I kind of started, uh, flickering and getting scared that what is the water I'm drinking? That's when the whole idea was, uh, came to my mind that why can't, why can't, there is no service where, which gives a water purifier from a CapEx to an OPEX model, right? Where I don't have to pay the upfront investment for the CapEx because I, I don't know, I'm not clear how many days I'll be there, so that's why I'm dis I, I'm clear that I don't want to do an investment. But in a way, uh, in a way I want good water. Right? So that's where the whole ideology came in. Where let's, uh, give, there are a lot of people like me, they were, at least in my analysis, they were close to four crow households in the 2020 cities, which we are present, right? Who wanted a substitute to, uh, bottled water because they were using bottled water. Because they were not ready to buy a water purifier. So that's where the idea was why can't we give this water purifier on a subscription to those four crow households who are using water water so that we can solve that? Right? That was the core thesis, and it all started with my personal problem. It's not someone else, it's mine.
Sid:That's actually a very interesting, uh, point because I think I've lived in six, seven cities over the last 10 years and. Most of the places I've ended up buying a lot of purifier and then selling it in the same city because, as you said, it makes no sense to carry it to another city and, and install it there. Right. Um, so I, I identify with the problem, but in order to solve it, Did you have to really build a new water purifier? Because, you know, you could try and build a model with the existing water purifier is where you give that out on subscription. You buy it upfront, you do the rentals, right? That's one way you could potentially think about it, but what led you to sort of, you know, building a completely new water purifier, uh, IOT led, AI led. Tell me a little bit about that sort of, you know, that journey.
VJ - DrinkPrime:Uh, sure sir. So as you rightly said, I mean, being a, being an engineer and being a person with logic, right? It makes absolute sense to just buy it from the market and give it on our end to the customer, right? So definitely, and also to be frank, we started doing the same thing when we are early days, right? We, we thought that, see, Water purifier is a 30 year old industry, right? Why do you have to reverse engineer anything? Let's give it and increase the access to, uh, bot water purifier by giving a non-subscription. That's the thought. But to enable the subscription, also, we, we had to build a little more of iot technology because, We need to make sure that the purifier, uh, kind of checks the water quality, dispenses the right amount of water, how much a customer subscribed to. So that was a small innovation. We have done it, uh, in the things and we have put it, and we also launched 2000 water purifiers like that. But then later what we realized is, uh, the first thing is what we thought was, can't we can't, they associate with a brand, connect with a brand, and then automatically we go to the market together? Right. But with that thought process, we approached a couple of brands, but one of the things, what came out very well, very strong to us was Branch was not interested to even change their model. They, they just, just because they, they kind of sell their products with their dealers and distributors. Everything was sorted for them. Right. It's just that they want to do a 20% growth. They don't, uh, they don't care whether water is, people are getting good water or not. They just want to do their top lines properly. They have a good channel where, uh, where they can sell their water purifies and there is no need of innovation itself. Right. That's what was the whole context. And when we come and talk something like this, subscription brands were saying that key. Are you crazy? Why do we want to disturb our, our whole things, right? So that was one reason. The second, uh, then that's when it came to the point that we had to build our waterproof. But the second important reason, after doing the 2000, uh, purifiers by, uh, buying it from the market and doing it, what we realized is, Uh, we, we also, as an IOT rate, we started putting sensors with our iot subscription IOT bot, which I've told right to enable the subscription. With that, we also put in sensors about water quality. We put in couple of sensors in the IOT solution where it starts measuring the input water quality and also the output water quality. Right. Once we installed these 2000 devices, we started getting different patterns of water, uh, water qualities, right? There were too many insights which was happening. One of the core insights which came to us was every three kilometers, water quality was changing. I mean, that was, that was a really shocker to us, because no one even thought about that. The water quality kept changing, right? The second input, what we came to the point was every season in the same area, the water quality was changing. So, so then that was kind of really shocking to us saying that, Keith, what is happening in this market, right? I mean, why is this happening? Why, why is the water quality changing so much? Right? So then we decoded back, uh, basically we ran the company completely like, uh, I would say it was a treasure hunter. Each question which we got was actually, uh, a so, uh, a direction which we had to take from the inception of the company from 2016. I would say it was always a treasure hunt. The treasure hunt started with my personal problem, but as in when we went into detail, there was another question which came, then we, it took us to another route. It was. Just like a treasure hunt. Like, uh, for example, if there were hints given to us and then we were taking that direction, right? So that was the company that, the problem in phase was the water quality was changing. Now, when we went back, we saw that the source water was not constant because in every city, in every part of India, right, there is not a single source of water. There are multiple sources of water, right? Like some people have tanker water. They use tanker water for their apartments. Some people use bowell water. Some people use, uh, moons party water, which they get from the government, right? So the sources were different, right? So that's where the water quality was changing area by area. The second season is, the sources also changed depending on the seasons. Like for example, in summer season, moons party water is not too much available, so people buy tankers. So once they buy tankers, the water of that area is already changed. So this, this was pattern was happening, right? But when, when we saw the traditional water purifiers, they were so dump in the sense like it was a one size fit all solution, right? Whether you are living in Delhi, whether you're living in Mumbai or Chennai or wherever in the country, the production happens somewhere in Mumbai or uh, Pune. From there, the device comes to across India and get installed, right? Without even understanding what is your water quality of your area. So that led to the point that giving a one size fits all solution, is this the right solution? That's when we got into water science. We started developing the water sciences. It took like two and a half to three years to build the product and then with, with the help of water science and what is the right purification for each of the areas, then we came to the solution that we. We have to give a customized solution for each of the, each of the areas which we presented. We started tailoring the water purifier. We started customizing the water purifier and give. As of now, all the water purifiers are. Tailored to your, each of your water requirements and water input quality, and then we give this on a subscription. That's how we ended up building the whole water purer from scratch. That's very
Sid:interesting. That's an interesting insight about water quality changing not just by region but also by season. Right. Uh, does that also mean that your water purifiers and how the purification happens changes by season because it is a subscription business, so I'm assuming that's part of the service.
VJ - DrinkPrime:Yes. Yes. It, so basically that's what, right, we, it's an iot device, right? So we know what is happening in the water quality. There are some, uh, there are ways inside the purifier which automatically changes the pur purification flow. There are some things, and then if there are, if it is beyond that capability, then we send a technician to kind of, uh, change the purification, right? So we take care of that, we take care of that, and we customize it according to your input water quality of that season.
Sid:Interesting. If you go on, you know, any electronic store or Amazon, wherever you go, there are, and if you search for water purifier, one, the price ranges are, you know, like it's a large price range. It starts at 10,000, goes up to 30 to 35,000. Right? And then there are so many terminologies that are used, uv, copper, r o. That as a, as a person who's trying to buy a water purifier, I have no idea what I need to be buying. Right. It actually takes a good, if you want to research, it actually takes two hours of research just to figure out what kind of water purifier you want to buy. Is that problem solved then by drink Prime? Because, um, it automatically, you, you sort of customize it per region, per season automatically. Is that, is that part of the problem that's being solved?
VJ - DrinkPrime:Yes, uh, Sid, that's what is one of the claims, but let me tell you why this happened, right? The why are there so many options and
Sid:yeah, actually, yeah, I'd love to understand the market landscape because I'm assuming this industry has been like that for decades now, right? So why is it like that and, and what's changing now?
VJ - DrinkPrime:Yeah. So I would say in this industry there were definitely product innovations. Like for example, rivers Osmosis came, they were UV came and all right, so they were literally, there was not much marketing innovation done in this whole industry, right? Because they used whatever the marketing worked for other appliances, right? Like for example, AC or TV or fridge or whatever, right? How the marketing, uh, uh, where strategies were there for the appliances industry, right? That's what was the same. Strategy used for even water purifies. Right? Because in their mind the people thought, I mean the, the companies thought that water purifier is also applying. So let me use all the logic of appliances and then, uh, put that industry right. So in appliances, what happens? A CRT TV at this cost. Then you have an little TV at this cost. Then you have a 55 inch of at this cost, then you have a 57 inch of at this cost, right? So that's how it is. Even in water purer, a UV purifier is this much. Then an arrow purifier is this much. Then an r plus UV is this much. Then r plus UV plus copper is this much, right? So in the whole marketing message, right, it is just, it is just the strategy of an any appliance. There's no innovation, right? So, and also if you see no one even talks about your input water quality. So it, they were always talking about the output water talking in the sense, right, like, this will give you this copper water, whether this will give that, right? But never, no one even talked about what is your input, right? Whether do you need really a copper, whether your input water may already have copper, right? If your input water is already copper, why do you need to give a copper of this thing, right? So the, if you look at the lens of input water, Then the whole game changes suddenly. So that's what is the reason why these many varieties came in. Right. And I would say we are the first company who are actually trying to do what is justice to the water purer industry by talking the water purifier terms, right? Not talking about the appliance terms or these things. Right? So we are talking water because people are buying water purifiers for not for water pur. They are buying for water. Water is the output, not water purifier. That
Sid:actually makes sense. And, and uh, I was just checking the website and. There's just one SKU U Technically there are, there's a lot of, you know, customization that happens for, you know, depending on the different regions, but it makes sense to just have one SKU U, right? Because everything inside that my end output needs to be pure water for my household. It doesn't matter if it can solve a problem in Bombay or Chennai. I want pure water in my household and indoor, right, and, and it needs to be customized accordingly. That makes complete sense. Um, I wanna double down two things that I wanna double down, but we are on the topic of marketing, so we are gonna go down there. But I also want to talk about the hardware innovation, right? Because this seems like a, an interesting challenge in itself on, on all the customization, but, uh, going down the route of marketing, this is traditionally a market where a celebrity would come on, um, a television and Ken, right? Like that's a, that's a cult ad that everybody has gone through. Is the, is the segment that you're targeting different, first of all, I think that's one of the questions. Second, what kind of marketing strategies have you used to actually take the name of Dream Prime out there? Right. Because, um, I, the reason why I ask this is because when I speak to my parents or other people, there are a few brands that come up on water, purify, lato, you know, take a trusted brand. Now that trust is actually very important in a product like Water Purify, because you know, you're talking about water. How did you go about building that trust? I know you're present in three cities, but if you can talk about how you approach marketing in general and how you approach trust building, that'll be,
VJ - DrinkPrime:that'll be very interesting. So let me, uh, start off with what happened, because I always am a fan of what happened in why, why, why are we where we are? Right? So that's, that's, that's very important, right? So when all the brands started, right, like when there are big celebrities coming, right? That point of time, the problem was, People were not even using a waterproofer. So the problem there, it was awareness, right? See, people were thinking that whatever I drink, water is good, right? I mean water. Because if you don't see anything in water, they used to think that it is good. I mean, if you don't see dust or uh, mud bread, because microbiological things don't, are not visible. So at that point of time, the trust building process was always with celebrities because that point of time we had to build the trust. Uh, push that, right? Because people even didn't understand that there is a need for a waterproof fair. There was not even a thought that came. No, my water is good, right? Why do I need a waterproof fair? That was a scenario I would say 20, 30 years back. Right? So that's where all the brands did their parts. How do, how do I increase the awareness of the thing? And one of the easy ways of doing the awareness was having a celebrity endorsed and then pushing it. Now, fast forward to the current markets, right? See, now we are a generation who, I mean, to be frank, we know that okay, there's a celebrity coming, right? What is our thought is. Celebrity has made good money. I mean, they would've, this brand would've given a big money to the celebrity, and celebrity is talking. Because our generation is basically more logical generation, right? We want more logic and data to be convinced about anything, right? We are not at a point of where when someone comes and says that, you take it and say, dude, let me go and check the reviews. That is the generation we are, right? We don't just follow for us, the celebrities, just that, okay, it's a big brand. I mean, if he's able to afford an or some money, it means that it's a big brand. So there are, so this is one level of trust factor, right? But our trust is only happens with data and then the reviews. So now the way you have to market start marketing things has to change because the kind of people are different. Right? Now that is where for us, right? I mean, when we're at double click on drink prime Journey, one of the things we started doing is let's put facts and figures upfront. Let's not talk about, uh, having, I mean, uh, what we said before, the old generation used to say that your WA water is very good. Now, I, I am saying that how, how good is my water? So just put a number to the fact, put reviews to the fact, put everything onto the table, right? Like for example, currently, if you see the buying decisions, Are data driven. They're never, they're never, I mean, obviously there is an emotional connect to the brand and all agree to that. But the point is that barrier will only come first. You complete your base barrier, which is data. Once you do your research, once you are re read the reviews, once you have enough data in it, then you'll go to the emotional attachment. Whether should I buy that or not? Right? But the first barrier for us is data interview. Right? So that's what is the strategy we took. The, that was a clear case of building the trust for us, right? We showed that, so we actually cracked the trust with some, one of the very, very innovative ways saying that, right? We started giving our water purifiers as a seven day risk free trial. We said that take our water purifier for seven days for free of cost. If you like the water, then you start paying the subscription, right? Otherwise, no questions asked. We will take back our waterproof fair. And then we started showing the data that this is how sea water purifier is working. This is your input water quality. This is your output water quality. See, it is really doing something. The water purifier is acting onto your input water and reducing the impurities. And this is the quality of output water, right? So that data. Was directly showing the trust for the consumer, right? And then our confidence of giving a risk free trial to the consumer was also helped us a lot, right? So that was a growth hack, or I would say the confidence we had on our product where we were able to easily build trust. Interesting.
Sid:So now that I think about it, there's obviously product innovation. The, the entire product is different. There's marketing innovation, but there's also the go-to market innovation, which is traditionally the way this is sold. Dealers and you know, suppliers. And then there's, there are, there's a third party who takes care of the, the servicing and there's a lot of. Murky things that happens in the servicing industry where the filters are not really changed. Uh, but you're, you're sort of built for the entire amount there. There are a lot of, you know, uh, stories out there about that. Um, but by doing all of this, you've given a completely different experience to how people consume, um, water through a water purifier. That, that's very interesting to know. Um, coming back to the point of hardware innovation 2016, you know, you don't come from this industry. You realize that the problem is actually the purifier itself, not just subscription. We need to go out and build, uh, water purifier, building. Anything in the hardware industry comes with its own set of challenges. Right. Tell us about that journey. How long did it take to actually perfect the hardware? How many ions did it take, and how did you fund that? Did you raise capital back then because this is, this is an endeavor that requires a decent amount
VJ - DrinkPrime:of cap capital. So, I mean, uh, to start off with said it was not a small journey for us. It was a really, really painful journey, and I would say during 2016 to 2020, there were so many situations where we wanted to shut down. Because the point is, uh, what happens is, I mean, coming from a, a traditional background, I mean, uh, not like having too much backup. Uh, from your right, and also because what we have built ourselves, right? Whatever, Manus, Manus is my co-founder, Manus and me built, right? We were all stood down our legs, right? I mean, we never had any support from anyone, right? So obviously we were very true to our problem statement, which was. So giving clean drinking water to everyone, right? That was a problem statement, right? But building hardware was a very, very, very difficult, uh, uh, kind of situation to be in, right? See, for me, being a computer science researcher, I know for sure I can build or I can spend some more time and learn more skills of ai, ml and whatever, and then start sitting and coding and build things, right? But, but it was very, very difficult because the first thing is I'm not from a hardware background. The second thing is hardware takes real money. It is not over, over. And see, for example, software, I just don't go to aws. I get a free instance and I start coding, and then I start deploying and making things right. But hardware is not, uh, not like that, right? You need to really have something in the, in the way, uh, basically. To fund it. So what happened is, uh, first thing we manen may have put in our life earnings completely into the company where we went. I mean, it, it helped us to, from 2016 to 2017, and maybe I'm with digressing the topic, but it is the general our journey, right? So we have given up everything, right? I mean, whatever savings, even there was a point that we have broken our, uh, FDS and also peer. That is the money is what we have broken, put in everything. And then we, uh, after that is over. Then we went to our parents and then saw that, uh, can, can we lend some money from them? Right? I mean, we, we took their help a little bit. The third important aspect, what happened is seeing our struggle, right? I mean, we went to this struggle of up, uh, completely down, not even ups, right? I completely down there were lot of many. Many good people around us, right? I mean, who were trying to help us, who were seeing us struggle and, uh, saw our fight to give water, right? They started coming to together, right? So it was not like a fun fund. They wanted to invest, but they started spending more time with us, be it some r and d guys, where they said that I will, don't pay me for the r and d. I will help you build the whole water purifier. I will give you per, per week, like 10 hours to you. Uh, just, just don't, don't, uh, because they liked our product. They like our passion. They liked everything. They just said that, okay, we will figure out how do you pay me at a later point of time, but right now, let's solve your problem. They, they invested their teams. They have put in, uh, people. Out of their pocket and then started helping us, right? To build the product then. Then that's where later as we've scaled it, right, we got some good dealers and distributors of water purifier industry who were not brands, right? Who really saw that this is going to be the future of the water purifier. They, they started investing on the water purifier, right? And they said, I will give you water purifiers with whatever you want. You put your iot and you go to the market, right? And let's do a revenue share. They started speaking about the outcomes. They said that input, we both will take care in the outcome you give me as a revenue share to, uh, which you are earning from the market. You don't have to pay any upfront investment, right? So like that, I would say to sell 2000 motor purifiers in 2016 to 2020, we took four years technically to sell just 2000 water purifiers. That's how the journey was. Little difficult, but the good part about this man and me, we come with a, a special power, which is resilience. We don't give up. So we are, uh, so there were many situations where in the night we decided that dude, It's done. I mean, I can't, right? But somehow the next day we were in a thought process that let's try for another week. Let's try for another week. Right? That's how we pulled, pulled, pulled. And then all the four years, when, when we came back in 2020, we did it finally. And then we got, uh, big notable tire one investors across globe to command investors, right? So that's how it was a difficult journey. I can,
Sid:I can completely imagine kudos to, you know, how far you've come. Um, the last number I saw was there are one lack active subscribers. So one lack water, beer replies that have been deployed. I'm sure the number is much more. Um, so from, you know, spending four years to get 2000 to, to getting two lack in the last, you know, few years, last couple of years, um, getting one lag in the last couple of years and bitta positive, that's been some journey. Uh, Vijay, that's been, I mean, uh, thank you so much for sharing that so candidly about all the, the struggles that you went through. Um, I wanna double down now on the cost structure of this industry, right? There's traditionally, this was a one time cost that people incurred anywhere between 10 to 25, 30,000, depending on what they needed. Um, appliance like marketing, and I'm sure a lot of rich folks actually ended up buying things that they did not need. Probably hurt them more than it helped them because they got, you know, UV and RO and UF and MF and you know, all of those terms that are there, but you probably don't need them. Um, but, and then on top of that, there's a, you know, yearly maintainance charge of, let's say, four or 5,000 in, in terms of filtration that comes in, how does that change with a subscription model? How does the cost structure change with the subscription model and whatever you can share on your end in the entire value chain, where does the cost generally get distributed in the traditional industry, and how did that change with you guys?
VJ - DrinkPrime:Right. Uh, so to answer this question said, let me first change your glasses first, right? The way how you look things, right? Because that will completely change the perspective of the, the, the answer which I want to give. Right? When you come to the point that you are not selling water purifies, come to the point that you are selling water. Now when you keep that lens of selling a water, right, then you can start seeing what we have done in the whole industry. Right? So, makes sense. First, let me just summarize the industry, how it worked traditionally, because the whole concept, what the industry was, how many s I can sell. Yeah, that was the whole idea, right? So now just like fridge
Sid:fans, whatever, how many units can I sell? Yes.
VJ - DrinkPrime:How many units, how many boxes can I sell? Was the thought process, uh, basically when you see the, right now go back to the manufacturing part of it. Right? So what was the, uh, the kind of input to the manufacturer was also saying that key, make as many boxes as possible so that I can give those boxes to my next dealer. That guy will go to the next distributor, then that guy goes to the retailer, and that's how the whole supply chain happens, right? Again, same traditional appliance strategy where I make a tv, I sell it to the dealer distributor, and that's how it goes, right? So the same, uh, thing was followed, right? So if you see though, the product was manufactured at 5,000, 6,000 rupees. By the time the product came to the customer, it was somewhere around 15,000 because everyone has to survive, right? In the whole supply chain, there is a dealer who has to serve, survive. There's a distributor, there's a retailer. There is like all these channels like econ, everyone has to kind of, uh, fit in their costs, right? So that's where, that's where the whole traditional industry, and this is true for any appliance, that's how the appliance industry is there, right? So the coming to the point, the idea was to sell purifiers. Now coming to the, our point of think about that, how many water leaders I've sold. When you look at that lens, right, then this all doesn't come in. So now when you want to talk about the water quality changing, and when you're talking about the giving the right water, right, the dealers and distributors are not going to support because as a company, you need to have connection to the customer. Because unless you, you have a connection to the customer and you don't know the problems of a customer, right? So you don't know how to solve the problem because your proposition is what not water purer. My proposition is giving water, right? So to give water, I need to know what is the situation of, uh, of, of the input water in that customer place. So that's where our company need to be a direct to consumer product. So we, we cannot build a dealer distributor network, right? We had to go direct to consumers where we started talking to the consumers via Facebook, getting leads from them, understanding where do they stay, what is their water quality and all these things, right? And then once we understand the water quality, we were able to backtrack saying that now the water is this, the out output water should be this. Now what should I do to this is the input, this is the output. Now understand, let me put, what is the process? To get there. So when you see water as a lens, right, this is the impurities in water. This is the output water where the good water should be there. Now what should I build it in the middle? So that's point of time when you look at that, right? So we started building water purifier to each and every consumer. Now, when we started building the things right, we will put only what is needed. We just don't put everything and anything right into the water purer, right? Because we know the input, we know the output. No, it's just what is the function which I need to make. Right? I, I talk more on maths than engineering because I'm an engineer, so what is the function I need to build? Right? So that's where, that's where the idea is we need to build a waterproof fair, right? So the cost structures, if you see. It is not the cost structures of whatever the traditional market is, because the traditional market, since they don't even know where the water purifier is going, they have to build a water purifier, which is working from Kashmere to Kanya Kumar, which also
Sid:means that it doesn't work for 50% of those people, right? Because you, you have a one size fit, fit all
VJ - DrinkPrime:approach there. Yes. It's a one size fit all approach, and if it is not right, the other point is it is overly featured. Oh, for sure. The, the other problem is see water is, is a way that you cannot over purify also, nor you can under purify. Yeah. So one of the, again, at this point the over purification is also much more, uh, bigger problems. Right. See what happens. I actually want you
Sid:to double down on the over purification problem because somebody told me this, I think one of the technicians told me this, that if you over purify water, you actually take out all the good parts of the water, all the minerals that are, that are there. Is that true? Tell me, tell me a little bit about over purification.
VJ - DrinkPrime:See the water, right? I mean, if you see though, it is not a major source of, uh, minerals and all, I mean, I'll, I'll put it minerals and all come from food, minerals and vitamins and all come from food. Water is a definitely a good, uh, thing, right? But point is when nothing is there in water, right? What happens is water is equal into pure H two, which is actually not drinking water. It is called solvent. Like in the, in the research labs, right? Like for example in your, uh, maybe in your early BTEC or something, you would be in, uh, in the chemical labs, right? There is a hedge two. They don't call it as water, right? So when that is a pure hedge two, it doesn't have anything, right? When you drink that solvent, I'm not calling it as water, it is called solvent. When you drink that solvent, right, what it body doesn't observe that water. Because, uh, intestines are the things which kind of observe the water. It doesn't get observed. Uh, the intestines don't observe water because what intestines need something in the water to be observed, right? So though you are drinking three to four liters of water, the water is actually not hydrating your body because you are taking in, it is just going out. The body is not observing. The cells of the endocrines are not observing water. So if you're not observing, then your body's actually not getting hydrated. Interesting. Very interesting. So if it is not hydrating, that's where you get the problems of A C D T. Then there is this joint and knee problems, which all come, right? I mean, this is prevalent in lot of markets where the water quality is good, but you put too much technology like A O U V U of everything inside the water pur repair, which. Everything in the water gets over. I mean, there is a term called tedious, right? Tedious is like total dissolved solids, right? It is like the measure of, uh, whatever is there in the water measure of dissolved solids in water, right? So, uh, anything which is around about 52 200 is good for drinking. Anything less than 10, right? Is actually a solvent. And that's where it is not the right water to drink. Right? And also another thing, if you see the other angle, right, the pH, uh, there is something called pH, right? I mean, pH is the, to determine any liquid, whether it is acid acidic, or whether it is neutral, or whether it is base right? For any human body to drink water, you need to have a neutral pH water. But when you have the TS going very less right, it becomes acid acidic. So you are actually drinking three liters of acid. So went into your body. When nothing is there in the water. So that's where the whole idea came to us is, should we really over purify the water? Right. And that gives us to the point that why do you have to have some special filters, which are not needed? Let's kind of remove those filters. Right. And that's where we gave exactly what is the right filters to be given to the consumer.
Sid:Interesting. That also makes your, uh, go-to market that much harder. Right. Which also explain why you are in three cities right now. Right. Because it's not, it's not put it on Amazon and sell it to the entire country. It has to be a region by region problem that needs to be solved. You have to go activate regions, uh, to make sure you are, it's customized to that particular region. Interesting. Very interesting. Has that, um, since you've, since you've started and now scaled, how has the traditional industry. Taken to this change. Right. I'm sure they're aware that there's something called Ring Prime. They've moved to subscription. I did see there are a couple of other subscription players that did come up, but how is the traditional, you know, the, the ones that have been there for decades, how are they reacting to this? Are they still, you know, focused on manufacturing the, and selling that data?
VJ - DrinkPrime:Yeah. So see if they, if you see their perspective, right? I mean, they really, they're become an elephant. I mean, each of these companies are like 2000 people, uh, coming somewhere to 10,000 people, right? See what happens in this, uh, kind of setup is. It is, first thing is it is very difficult to move, right? I mean, you cannot move an elephant, uh, whatever it is doing, right? The second important problem, what happens is, uh, again, from the first point, there is a mindset already there in everyone's home, right? See everyone in the whole employees, uh, chain, right? It is about how do I sell, how do I sell? How do I sell? That's the whole, uh, what do you call the DNA of the company. So that's where they're right. The second problem, when they want to do anything, which we are trying to do, right? See, we are a direct to consumer business, right? So we kind of keep the dealers and distributors aside in the whole thing, right? It's a direct to consumer. We don't want to give anyone, right? So when they have to do what they want to do, uh, what, what we are doing, right? What, what it means that they have to ditch their dealers and distributors. Now, the point is, Should I take the risk of my current business to doing something in the future, which I don't know. I really don't know whether it'll work out right. See, I may get some thousand crows from my current business. Now, should I put at stake my current business and do something which is innovative? The reason W is if I ditch my dealer and distributor, I see my dealer and distributor is not just selling my water purifies. They're selling my air purifier. They're selling my fans, they're selling my vacuum cleaners. They're selling me so many other products, right? Which I have all in the range. Now, should I take the risk of disturbing my dealer and distributor because that is 80% of my revenue? Mm mm So that is their problem though. They like the thing they need to be. Careful when doing the things right. And that is a big entry to them saying that, should I really do
Sid:this? Is that classic innovators dilemma, right? Like, they probably see it, they probably know that this is a market change that's happening, but they just can't make that change internally to completely switch gears. And they can't really run both of these parallelly unless you, you know, build a new brand and build a new team and, and do all of that. Um, very interesting. Um, Vijay. Now what I want to focus on is, um, like we were discussing earlier, we've just spoken about, you know, supplying purified water, but there's a larger vision at play. I want you to sort of talk about that vision. The, the kind of work that you're doing is very inspiring with the government schools, with the Lake re rejuvenation project. Tell us a little bit about what's the long-term vision and what are you,
VJ - DrinkPrime:what are you up to? Right. So, uh, again, as I told you, as part of our, uh, treasure hunt, what, what we realized is we saw, I was, uh, I was a customer, first customer. I did my stuff. Then I saw somewhere relevant of my customers who were the top 30, 40% of the market. I provided something, but then came to the point was, what, what about the other part of the country? Mm-hmm. What about the other 60% of the people? Let's see, because at least we came from the fundamental thought, right? Water is a fundamental right. Water is just like air. Whether you are rich, whether you are poor, whether you are anything. There are some things in this world has to be unique to everyone, right? Given the opportunity should be given to everyone. So that is a fundamental thought process. We came out saying that. Why only Rich should get the water purifiers or whatever, right? Why can't the pure poor also have it? Right? Because it's a fundamental, right? No one created water. No one destroyed water, right? It's just, it has to be given the, the world should be an equal play for everyone, right? You cannot just change the games, uh, rule games, right? That's what was the thought process, because water has is the source of life. Water is something like air. I cannot say that I'll not give air to someone and I'll give air to other person, right? And only if people have money, they have air. We cannot do that. Right? So with the same thought process, we started thinking that how can we enable people who can't afford the waterproof? Currently water pur is there, it's some one ru two rues per liter they're buying. Right? But what if people who are not able to afford the water pur, right? That's where, that's where we thought that we already have like more than one plus lacks of, uh, people, uh, of a customer base. Right? Can they come together to support other people, uh, other people who can't afford, right. That's where we started a small campaign, something called Water for All. This campaign was saying that let us give water to people who can't afford water. Right? So when in our drink pre subscription, what happens is people recharge the number of liters, but every time what happens is that every month what it ended up coming to the point that they have more liters, they would not have completed the liters. Like for example, you have to recharge two 50 liters. It would not have been over. Right? So now anywheres that liter is there again, you have to recharge. You'll get many liters again, right? So the thought was, why can't you donate your liters, what you have to the people who don't have water? So that's where the whole school project came in, where we said that we will come and install the water purifier, the current one, one lack, two lack subscribers, where we have, right, you start donating water to the garment school. So we acted in a way that instead of providing water purifiers, we started giving water, right? So people can donate whenever they're recharging their 20 liters, 30 liters of water to any government school. So that lit get transferred to the government school and then the people get, uh, water, right? So the government schools we've installed free of cost and all our subscriber base start contributing to the water, right? Because. Uh, our customers are, are actually a community we are building. It's a community where we are, we want to make water available to the next generation, right? I mean, hardly 20, 30 years we live, right? But the point is the next generation has to get water, right? So our customers come together to support these government schools, right? That's how. That's how the Water for Schools, uh, campaign started. We have more than 200 schools, more than 15, 20,000 cus uh, school kids who are the next generation, right? I mean, they are the next generation after we go, they are the people who are going to take the country ahead, right? So all the current customers start donating water to the next generation people so that they'll be strong enough. The reason being is 80% of the diseases in India waterborne diseases, right? So that's what we wanted to. Tackle and that's how it is now. That is the first angle to it, right? The second angle to it is, see, what is the, one of the insights which we got was every year there is three meters of groundwater getting depleted because we are pulling from bowell, we are pulling all that water, right? The groundwater is going, so now who will take the responsibility of putting back the groundwater? Now point is consider a situation where you don't have input to water. Then what will you do about the purification and everything, right? So that's where the idea came in. If you don't have input to water, then how to do it, right? So that's where we started saying that for the next generations we have to start generating input water. So the way to input water is you need to start conserving water. You need to start making, making sure the water tables are back to the, uh, original situation where when we were kids, right, whatever the situation was, we have to get the water tables to that right? So it means that we have to get back the lake. Uh, basically they used to say that Bangalore used to have more than 200, 300 lakes. But they're, they're, I think very down, came to double digits and, all right, so we started saying that, okay, let's put J because lakes are the very good pieces where, which will add water to the groundwater. And then if you see the traditional, uh, uh, world or something, the ancestors, right lakes, they say again, in Cara, at least right, lakes are interconnected, is what they say. When you fill one lake, it automatically starts filling another lake, right? They're somewhere connected in the ground is what, uh, people kind of say. I mean, I don't have data for that, but people say that all the lakes of Bangalore and the, the places are all connected. So we start that lake's, add ge, regenerate the lakes back, right? So that the next generation have some input water, which will be purified and consumed. Right? These were the two thought processes because I mean, we fundamental believe that if water are already the reason where. I think states are fighting, countries are fighting. Now the point is, if someone doesn't take the action and start doing things right, then the world will start fighting as, as someone told, right? The World War three will happen majorly on water. And that is what we, uh, we believe that we want to stop that.
Sid:That's very inspiring, Vijay. I think, uh, that concept, I, I love the concept of donating, uh, the water, sort of, you know, to government schools because it is so frictionless. I'm going to be recharging. I can see there's an option, um, or whatever is left at the end of the month. I, I can just donate that frictionless donation. Um, I is, is fantastic and, and as you said, um, if there's no input water, then there is no concept of purification. So, um, both, both those things are very inspiring. Vijay, one last question before we go. I know you're present right now in Bangalore, Heba, and Delhi. So for the people there, you should obviously be subscribing to drink Prime. But for the people who are not in these cities, if somebody's out there trying to figure out what water purify to buy, how should they even evaluate what needs to be bought? And you know what, what, what's the process that somebody needs to go through to get the right period water purified for their home?
VJ - DrinkPrime:Right. So, uh, Sid, uh, I mean, first of all, uh, what we wanted to say is we are expanding to multiple cities. So in the next, uh, I would say at least in the next 12 to 15 months, we will be there in the top 10 cities. That's what, uh, our growth plans are where we want to grow aggressively because now we have nailed down everything. Right? It is how much access we can give it to the consumers, right? That's where, that's where we are heading to. We will be soon coming to your city. I mean, if you, if you kind of. Want to wait. Also, we will be able to solve your problem in the, in the next, at least in the top 10 cities. If you are considering your, you have a buying decision, maybe stick with your current solution because we are coming soon to kind of help you there. Right? So that's, uh, being said that, but also, let me give you the insights. Uh, how do you take a decision, right? So what I would, uh, recommend is first thing, start understanding. What is your input? Water quality? Right? So it is not just about water purifier. The important inside is the water, is also the water which you are using for shower. The water means you are also using that water for utensils. The water means that you are also using it for washing clothes, washing your home. See, water is everywhere. It's not, just don't think about drinking water, right? So what is the first thing is start? Understanding water in a bit way, right? Start understanding that what you are drinking, start questioning yourself. Key. What is that? What I'm drinking right point of time, right? With that thought process kind of, you will evolve in yourself automatically whenever you are there, right? So, Start understanding the water better. And then for that first attempt is at least you buy something called a tedious meter. There's something where, which you'll be getting in an online where 300 rupees may, you will go get it, uh, um, in, in easily from Amazon or even. You can go to any, any supermarkets or any electrical stores where you get a tedious meter, you can easily buy it at somewhere 300 bucks, right? So wherever you are, you can just check what is your water? Make sure that you drink the water, which is anywhere 50 to one 50. I mean, 50 to one 50 is the, the number, the tedious meter says that. What is the reading? That is the measure. Right now, when you are buying the water purifier, you kind of keep a small, I'll give you a simple table, right when you are thinking about right. Anything. If you are input to what a Ted Ds is, less than 500, less than 300, 300 in your home. When you put the meter and when you check what is less than 300, try to see whether you can buy something, a UV based water purifier, right? You don't need to have a high technology based r r water purifies, right? So anything post 500, if you see it's advisable to kind of do. Uh, I mean, uh, by an narrow based water purifier. Because the reason why I tell like that is when you consider 500 and all right, as the water quality is changing seasonably, right? You need to take into that, uh, consideration also, right? So that's where anything above 500 is what you need to do. But I advise you to check your water quality every, every, I mean biweekly or monthly ones, right? Put the check and check, understand. Make, make a map of water. What is the water, right? I mean, what is happening with your water? And then accordingly, if you have subscribed to amc, reach out to your service provider and say that the water has changed, right? The input water has changed, the output water has changed. Please help me and come and do the service, right? Because in the A M C, they should cover you. That is the point of a emc, right? I mean, you are paying 5,000 rupees or 6,000 rupees getting an authority that whatever happens, I'll come to you. Right? Start calling them, start asking them, saying that, okay, this water quality has changed, please come and do something about it. Right? Because that's where you have paid and you have every right to ask the AMC supply, right? I mean, that's where you should start understanding. When you understand water only, you can do all those things. So that is the right way to maintain a water purer before we are there. Till then you can manage with that. We will come and replace your existing water purifiers and make sure that we remove your headaches, uh, out, uh, from you. Vijay,
Sid:thank you so much for taking the time out and being so candid throughout the entire discussion about how you've disrupted this, you know, legacy industry that probably hasn't changed in any way in the last 20, 30 years. There, as you said, there has been product innovation, uh, but how this was being sold, how was this was being taken to market. Um, The way you've disrupted that is very inspiring. Um, you've told me to not disclose the numbers, but I've, I've kept a track on how you guys have grown over the last few years. It's phenomenal. The fact that you're a bitta positive, you've built the company in the right way, um, funded by, you know, tier one investors across the globe. All those, you know, sleepless nights in those journeys of should we continue building this or not has, has come to fruition. So, uh, really, you know, really inspirational and thank you so much for taking the time out.
VJ - DrinkPrime:Thank, thank you so much Si for having me. It was a pleasure, uh, I mean, having a proper discussion. Thank you so much.