Transcript: Vikas Malpani: Co-Founder of Leher & Ex-Cofounder of Commonfloor.com

Host: Hey Vikas welcome to the show. Thanks for being here.

Guest: Thanks for having me Natraj looking forward to an exciting conversation.

Host: Yeah, so I want to first start with, you know, where we are, where you are in the Leher apps journey. And we've seen an incredible traction, you know, recent past couple of months in terms of growth. And you know, even the general chatter in social media. So how has the growth been in last six months? I know you can't give the absolute numbers, but in just in terms of scale.

Guest: I think uh uh we have been growing like doubling last month itself on week on week and on new number new people joining the platform.

Uh last six months we have gained more users compared to the previous two years uh again in a exponential scale. And uh overall I think most important growth growth that matters to me is the happy users and happy customers.

The number of people who are either reaching out to us and telling us, um, how they love our platform uh compared to everything out there on the people who tweet about us, tweet people who are writing on LinkedIn.

Uh that has at least gone uh 10x plus in uh last few months that people are getting delighted about the platform, they are coming and using it in creative ways.

So for example, some one person comes in the morning at 5:20 a.m. every day and does a live yoga and conversations along with that. And I am not even sure who actually wakes up in India to watch watch them. But this is what what's been amazing.

The way people have responded uh to the whole new paradigm of open discussions, democratic way of connecting. And both in the terms of qualitative and quantitative, we are exponentially growing in the terms of user feedback and user happiness.

And that's what matters to us.

Host: Yeah, you know, I am very fascinated because uh most startups when you compare and look at their journeys, uh there is one invisible factor which is the timing of, you know, the product and the idea, right?

And when I see Leher, it's almost like you're there at the right time when all the factors and, you know, the timing aligned.

And be it, you know, having, you know, great data at cheap levels to uh factors like people being in a pandemic to people are now opening up. Uh you know, the whole mindset that changed because everyone is right now on Zoom doing work and discussion.

So people are more open to have good conversations on digital space. I think I feel this is uh the timing for an app like Leher to succeed is sort of aligned in like last six months to one year. What you guys think about it?

Like uh are you guys seeing that timing being aligned or uh is that a fair judgment from for me as an outsider?

Guest: I think it's fundamentally correct what you're saying without timing being right.

And I was I think one of the uh good uh startup leader had once presented something I think in YC saying 40% of the startups fail because they get timing wrong. Not because everything else, but just timing 40% of times.

So we are we believe we are incredibly uh lucky to be here today, but that's not by chance by the way, that's by choice.

Host: Yeah.

Guest: So when we started Leher in 2018, we said we will have you'll have to have a timeline of at least three years for us to be at the right place at the right time because being lucky is not a strategy.

You can't just plan to be lucky and be lucky at that point in time. a good strategy understands the the direction where the market is going and works proactively towards that with patience, belief and the larger vision.

And after putting all of all of it, hopes that they get the timing right uh by staying there for a long enough time for people to realize. And that's what happened with Leher.

Uh we had seen the trend that none of our social media platforms or the social networks as we say today are technically social networks. Uh socializing by default means meeting new people and having great discussions and conversations.

None of the platforms were built for discussions and conversations. They weren't natural in the sense that they were predominantly had text as a way of conversations, uh not audio video, which is the non most natural thing that we do as humans.

So we had seen all of this, we had done our own research, we had figured out that loneliness is going going to be a massive kind of a pandemic which we don't really see.

Uh in 2017 18 data, loneliness in US adults alone was 40% as per a survey from Statistica. Today if you just Google this uh loneliness in US, it's 60% as per scientific American and npr.org service. 50% increase in three years.

This is something that we had already seen. 50% increase more than half of the people in US are lonely. 25% of uh Bootswannin Bootswanis people are saying they are lonely.

And that's ironical given that we have the highest number of humans on the planet ever, more than 7 billion of us. Why is this and we are most connected uh civilization ever.

We have like multiple devices in US, I think at least there are on an average 2. something devices per household which is fully connected to internet.

Host: Hm.

Guest: Right. You are the most connected, highest number of people on the planet. How can loneliness increase? Doesn't make sense. But fundamentally it is increasing because the way the world has been structured and technology to a certain part has made made this worse.

Host: Yeah.

Guest: And we wanted to solve for this. We decided to work on it.

We and whenever you're doing an innovative thing that has never been done before in the world, you require an additional amount of time or enough amount of time to iterate and see what really sticks.

What really solves the problem because you'll it's just like you have a lock, you don't have a key for that. You will try something and see if it opens, then you will again hammer that piece of metal to see if this opens the key becomes a key.

And for that you need time. So we actually planned for that.

Host: Yeah, like every overnight success requires 10 years, right? You have to be there for 10 years to get an overnight success. Um but you bring actually a very interesting point and that is something I personally experienced.

For example, if you want to meet likeminded people on internet, social media really doesn't work.

Uh Twitter came a little bit closer in terms of, you know, you can um curate and find interesting people if they are open to it, but even they didn't actually prioritize it, right? Even their DM feature, for example, is not actually prominent.

Like half of the uh Twitter users don't know that DM exists on Twitter. And the same thing with LinkedIn, you know, there's another product called Lunch Club, I don't know if you've heard.

Uh what they do is they just match people based on interest to have random conversations, right? Um and when I saw first Lunch Club, what I thought was why isn't LinkedIn, you know, have thought about this like five years back?

Because you know, the network has established what for now 10 years, right on net on LinkedIn.

But they never really monetize that network, not monetize in the sense of making money, but really capture the value that is there. you know, it's a it's like a lot of potential energy is there in that network which is never converted into kinetic energy and um and making these new connections, right?

Uh when you have a such big network, you could optimize for making new connections and that connection doesn't necessarily has to be, you know, a link in the graph by adding a friend. It has to be a bit more than that.

Um and Lunch Club sort of did it and when I encountered Leher and, you know, other audio apps, this aspect of serendipity is really high.

And that and when I experienced uh Leher and, you know, other apps, it really made me realize the fact that how you can create serendipity on, you know, a social app.

And I think Leher is also doing a great job in terms of creating that serendipity effect.

Um and you know, you get into a room on Leher, you don't know who you're going to meet, uh you'll meet someone interesting doing something completely orthogonal to what you're doing.

And you know, that creates actually that social network, you know, as a real network. You know, uh and you rightly said that we really don't have network or socializing uh happening in today's social networks.

And I think we are obviously seeing a very positive trend of that being changed with, you know, apps like Leher and I'm super excited about it. Uh, I want to little deviate about uh deviate and talk about uh how are you thinking about monetization.

I know you're early uh you know, you're still very early to thinking about monetization, but uh I am really frustrated about seeing just one single ad based model across um you know, all internet products, right?

And I'm wondering like apps like Leher have an opportunity to actually create new monetization models and not depend solely on incentivizing certain kind of behavior, right? So I'm curious how you are thinking about uh monetization on Leher.

Guest: So as you rightly said, it's a little early to really, really have very concrete models in place, but there is a fundamental belief uh that I have about the new internet for this decade.

This decade is going to be about value exchange and value capture. And that's where the monetization will happen. So uh people are now more than ever.

So today we went from a information deficient society to information surplus or overwhelming information society kind of, right? And there is just so much noise that's wasting so much of your time.

And your mind is literally getting clogged by so much of FOMO that you have had that this decade is going to be defined by you wanting to get your mind at peace by bringing right kind of conversations and right kind of people into your life using a social platform.

And this for this you will be able to pay. And now there could be variety of payments. It could be a uh could be a subscription driven model, it could be a transaction driven model, it could be a delight driven model.

But fundamentally this value exchange that is going to happen and value capture that is going to happen is what is going to get monetized.

And uh given that the people are making enough money per capita and that is that has been increasing trend and predominantly they will be the first ones who really get most value out of platform where they can really have these delightful serendipitous experiences, building new connects, finding orthogonal views, um, they would be more than happy to pay for this because all their alternatives to this will actually be more costlier right from going to a very very high high paid event to finding clubs in physical world with high membership to driving and traveling to places where they can find interesting people.

Uh being part of a network like this would be much cheaper, much more efficient and much faster as well as have more variety uh at your disposal uh in your pocket all the time. So we think uh value uh exchange is where we'll monetize.

We just need to get it to a scale where it becomes so obvious for you to do this that you don't even question in fact the question would be why are I'm not paying for this?

Host: You mentioned scale which leads to me uh to another other question because you're obviously growing at a very fast rate and you know, the app is exploding and everything is happening, but I see there there are definitely potential problems in terms of unwanted conversations, bullying, uh you know, rooms uh with especially when you have video, right?

Uh how are you thinking and are you actually facing any problems in terms of uh content that is restrictive uh that shouldn't be on the app that is getting creepy or how are you trying to enforce sort of basic fundamental rules of uh having uh you know, content.

Guest: I think there are three parts to this equation, right? And what you pointed out is a it's going to be an always evolving challenge. I don't believe this challenge has a single pointed solution.

Host: Yeah.

Guest: Uh this is a evolving challenge and continuously you keep fighting for it. But fundamentally one, making content less disseminatable right away or retweetable or shareable all the time, you are controlling a lot of it there itself.

Host: Yeah.

Guest: Only the people in the room get to uh be part of that, right?

And unless certain and like unless you really really so for example the way you are recording this podcast, unless you pay for it and you are going to record it and then do a lot of effort to distribute it yourself.

By by itself, we are not treating uh this like a content. So we have to come out of the whole social media mindset per se.

A social media mindset was all about generating content, being a creator and it generally literally screwed us over because what it did was it democratized broadcast, which was limited to governments and uh media companies and hence social media, right?

Democratization of uh content. We have to move away from the content thought process to conversation thought process.

A conversation every conversation have will have some content per se because well anything you say is content that way. but the predominant reason you are there in that conversations or discussion is the fact that you want to represent your thought process or be enlightened about others and check out the perspectives.

So the expectation also is that to a certain extent you will know that this room is going to have contrarian takes.

Host: Yeah.

Guest: As long as the basic human civility that you have in the physical world when you meet random people into a in a location or event etc with different views and disagreements, uh you don't go at their face or start calling abuses.

The same same uh thing or the same behavior needs to be replicated online. Yeah.

Which we believe is going to be a combination of the culture that gets set in on running the rooms and clubs and an ability to uh provide people a way to report this, proactively create champions from the community itself to be able to self-regulate the way the world self-regulates itself uh and on a daily basis you don't come across these kind of nasty situations.

Once in a while you might come across. But because the world actually has this unwritten rule about these nasty situations, people behave.

Host: Hm hm.

Guest: So empowering the citizens of Leher or rather empowering all the citizens on Leher and creating a culture will have much larger impact than just creating tools to control that.

Host: Yeah, yeah. You're absolutely right. I think it's it's how you incentivize users and you know, how to create that culture, I think will take care of most of the problems. And obviously you'll have tools, but the tools only go you know, a certain length. Um.

Guest: Right.

Host: So obviously there's another app, you know, which is uh sort of creating a buzz uh and you're aware of it, which is Clubhouse which you know, which started in the US and uh how is Clubhouse, you know, the effect of Clubhouse uh affect your point of view or did it enforce certain things that you believed for Leher because obviously Leher was the first one actually, right?

Uh and and not many might have know this, but you guys were doing it for three years and uh Leher, you know, came out and became popular last year.

How would the rise of popularity in Clubhouse like sort of enforced or you know, uh changed or what are you taking away from this Clubhouse phenomenon and uh and obviously it is partly driving uh even, you know, Leher, right?

Because they're not on Android. So how are you looking at Clubhouse and there are other apps even like Kapish FM and there are a bunch of other, you know, apps that are coming out in the similar space.

Um, so how are you looking that overall phenomenon that is happening around uh this audio/video based uh live conversations?

Guest: So I think first of all, I'm delighted that this is happening, right? Because if they didn't if everyone if there is not a collective imaginations imagination, nothing succeeds, right?

So you I'm personally delighted the fact that uh we are here today and we see this happening and there is this collective imagination of where the world is going to head. Otherwise innovations die. Hm hm. So uh I'm glad this is happening.

And I have a tremendous amount of respect to everyone who's trying to move the world forward along with us.

Uh, I I see a great amount of uh effort being first time put by a VC, which is which is something that I I have like uh it was mind blowing for me that someone would put that much skin in the game uh and do so much.

Host: You're talking about the Good Time show.

Guest: Right. So yeah, I think from day zero they have been doing a lot of stuff, right? So and and that's a great partnership to see. I think it's gets a great thing for the ecosystem overall uh where we see partners like shoulder to shoulder.

Uh having that said, I believe uh Leher stands on its own because of the fundamental long-term vision and the DNA that we have that we are going to uh democratize discussions and we are going to increase the empathy in the world by bringing people into a room and having great conversation with different viewpoints.

Uh so fundamentally the the the distance. So we have been obsessing it for nearly three years. The vision we see uh forward is a large vision.

Now it's more about uh two things, perception, a perception battle uh that we need to fight saying that look why this why you should see this vision. And second is the quality of product itself, right? Uh so we we would be the best product out there.

The best experience out there.

So we will have to fight both of this together and the way we would fight about is by building a community who genuinely believes in what we are trying to solve. who joins our mission and it's more important for the world to move forward and have a place like Leher where uh people can increase their empathy by having open conversations, serendipitous conversations.

The peer to peer trust is the final frontier of trust as we lose trust on the media and the governments and social media.

Host: Hm hm.

Guest: When people see each other, people talk to each other, people understand each other. Uh that's when the world will be a better place.

Host: That that's a very interesting way to put it the peer-to-peer trust generation. Um my take has always been that um it's sort of like a positive sum game, right? Um for every Uber there was a Lyft, right?

For every Flipkart there was Myntra Snapdeal. If you think, okay, just because Flipkart did e-commerce, you can't start an e-commerce company. That's not true, right?

Uh just because Leher is doing, you know, audio live so good, then no other Indian app can do it. That's also actually not true.

Like if you look at other ecosystems, like there's a scope for different apps and different, you know, ecosystems to thrive at the same time.

And we see this heavily in in fact in China actually, like there are five, you know, 300 million user apps that do almost the same, but they are differentiated by the communities that are formed, the incentives that are given and sometimes it it could be as simple as the UI that is there, right?

So I for one, I'm super excited because I've always been heavy on audio and you you guys are doing both audio and video and it's it's also like reaffirmation in terms of user habits, right?

Uh you had any new frontier of innovation, what usually is about is to actually change user behavior.

And when you have so many forces, uh it is good for Leher and even other apps to actually make a shift in terms of user behavior and participate in, you know, these communities.

So for me it's basically a positive sum game for both Leher and even the other apps and we'll probably see some new apps that will come out of India as well uh doing what Leher is doing. Uh but with, you know, a different twist on it.

Guest: I think sometimes uh the noise is detrimental for the users, right?

So what happens is people or the users are actually simple minded and they end up at uh platforms which are suboptimal copies uh without a deep mission or vision uh to make a substantial change.

And it actually causes more harm for the users and that's the only worry that I carry uh people who decide to copy and get into the business business without really having the vision to change the world.

Um but again it's our duty to ensure that doesn't happen. Yeah. So we we'll work with our community to ensure that uh the user gets the best that he deserves.

Host: You know, Vikas, slightly shifting the tracks. uh you know, you are one of the founders who has seen an exit before, right?

You you were previously at Common Floor which was, you know, acquired by Quicker and I wanted to know how, you know, after, you know, after that seeing that exit and now starting this company and obviously, you know, being an observer of the ecosystem itself, how is the ecosystem fundamentally changed?

Like what do you like see the major difference when you guys were starting Common Floor to now running um Leher. What was the fundamental shift that you're seeing?

Guest: Well, there are so many things I can talk about, right? It's literally turned over its head. And sometime sometimes that's actually a good thing.

So uh in 20078 when we were starting, there were less than like at least less than 10 funds that we knew. A fund size was a $10 million fund. Yeah. Fund, right? And predominantly no one was investing in uh product based companies in India.

Uh no one was investing in young founders. We were 22 to 23 when we started. Uh and hiring was crazy crazy hard. Hiring is still crazy hard, but there is a different problem today. Hm hm.

Uh we have a problem of uh people uh quality of people, shortage of people uh in the terms of uh availability itself. Earlier people were not wanting to join. Today we have the wrong kind of people also joining startups. Hm hm.

Uh which is which is also killing a lot of startups. at least in my mind that is how I I I see that.

People who are not very mission driven and aligned to startups but who join startups purely because it pays well uh actually screws up the ecosystem even worse uh that way. But again I think those are the evis that happen as the ecosystem evolves.

Hm hm. But today there is a the the I'm tremendously optimistic and tremndously delighted by what I'm seeing in the ecosystem. Young founders, amazing zeal, taking up challenges from India about I could dream about doing projects for space. Right?

Space tech. Yeah. From India. You have blockchain tech happening from India, right? Uh, right?

You have uh Dairy technology for farmers, you have agri tech, you have the kind of innovation or the kind of frontiers the young founders are uh are really pushing is amazing to see.

It's so much delight to see that as an entrepreneur, the way the world is changing. Um. More people are taking more risk. Better quality founders are coming in.

More money is coming in to support these founders. uh a lot of ecosystem is developing around. Early days, a lot of inexperience is there, a lot of mistakes will be there, etc. There are multiple second time founders in the ecosystem.

Uh definitely some cultural changes has to happen. Some opening up of minds has to happen. uh things like failure should become more acceptable. things like uh a break in the career should be become more more acceptable, right?

Uh so there is always going to be this tussle that will be going on but this is a phenomenal time to be an entrepreneur and specifically in the Indian ecosystem where government wants to push it push push forward and that's where uh when when starting Leher, uh that was a dream right to be able to build a global consumer company from India.

So India has already broken the glass ceiling in the SAS world. We have uh iconic companies like Zoho and now Freshworks and like tens of new unicorns in in the pipeline. Yeah.

In that segment of building products uh for enterprises or as in in a SAS format. Uh just because one company broke out, that was Zoho. Yeah. Right? So now there is no longer SAS uh the there is the no longer this glass ceiling.

But uh even today we are living in a shadow or uh kind of a digital colony in the terms of consumer products. All the Indian internet internet has gatekeepers uh which are not non-Indian. Hm hm.

So the whole possibility that we can create a global technology consumer company from India, which is not just because of the protest protectionist regime. Hm hm.

But because we fundamentally can can build great products, we have already proven in SAS. Once that happens, that's when we'll hit the $5 trillion economy. Yeah.

Technology products are the largest uh and consumer technology products is the largest part of gold that exist. Yeah.

And making it accessible to Indian entrepreneurs, at least letting them dream and letting the ecosystem around these entrepreneurs believe that this is possible, getting more moneys to something like this can fundamentally change and that's why I believe uh we have amazing golden time.

This decade would be a golden decade for the country.

Yeah, I mean if I mean there's always obviously there's a comparison between India and China and you know, China became rich through doing massive export uh for like last 15 years um you know, through manufacturing, right?

But if India has to even crack five trillion and then 10 trillion, I think the only way it will happen is building uh products and software products um for outside Absolutely. Absolutely.

That will basically change the game for, you know, how Indian economy will also evolve.

Uh and you you also pointed out the you know, the gatekeeper thing and we were also talking about in our previous conversation about, you know, App Store and other issues.

And there is obviously this whole moment of, you know, India must be able to, you know, control or have a say in the uh, you know, App stores that are controlling uh applications that are being consumed. In a practical sense, how can that be done?

Like what is a practical way uh like an Indian entrepreneur listening to this can solve that problem.

Guest: So I think um I don't have a challenge in the terms of uh the products that exist per se, right? Uh it's just the lack of focus or us being a second class citizen in in certain sense. Hm hm. Right?

The difference today is the same difference we had between uh when we had 1947 the option of Swaraj versus a Democratic country, right? So you can we can still have a lot of uh if you are just doing that even today, right?

There is a lot of flexibility and the best products accessibility to the best products and everything else. Hm hm. But not that depth of focus for serving the country itself, right?

We are one more geography and not the only geography, not the most important geography. Yeah. Right? And that fundamentally changes as an enterpreneur, you can understand how the cultural and day-to-day nuances of people exist, right?

The whole way the processes work, the whole challenges that exist because of multi multicultural and multilingual society and the way we operate overall.

If that can be translated into a product that can understand us much better, we will be served much better. Right? So it's more about the focus, it's more about the depth and understanding and the empathy itself, which should get us better product.

So I don't so today also we are being served with the best products. Hm hm. Because consumers always find the best products for them. Right? That's my fundamental belief.

Consumer won't doesn't want to compromise per se because product A versus product B is only one click away. Yeah. Right? So you cannot win per se by just saying that look I am Indian and blah blah, right? You have to be a better product.

So even today consumers are using the best product, but when the Indian entrepreneur start building the better product because it has a he has a better understanding of the market, that's when we'll start winning this battle.

Uh so we we're almost at the end of our conversation and since, you know, uh you've been now doing this for three years, the app is in sort of like a hyper growth mode.

Uh you know, you're doing, you know, a lot of things, handling a team and you know, you're doing podcast, you're out there promoting the app.

Uh how are you keeping yourself so that you're not exhausted and you know, you're staying focused on you know, the things that matter? Oh, that's a tricky question. I'm exhausted all the time that way.

But uh every single uh delightful experience that a user communicates to us recharges us instantly.

Just early in this morning on LinkedIn, I got a ping from someone who just attended a session in one of the no code clubs and he said wow this is amazing.

This is better than I he said I'm non-social person and this is the first time I've experienced Leher. And I am blown. I this and I came here, I actually talked to people and I I participated. I think I belong to this platform.

So this was this is something that really did really drives us and fuels us, right? As a uh as a very struggling entrepreneur per se who's still in the trenches fighting a large battle looming on their head.

Um and multiple different on multiple different fronts, um, driving a consumer delight and seeing a community form recharges you instantly. So we besides this on personal front also, you have to take care of your health.

Eat right, try to sleep as much uh so that's I only do fundamental things in my life. I uh try to sleep at least five to six hours. I avoid junk food.

I avoid so now that we have uh thanks to Covid, we have to work from home, a lot of travel is avoided.

I try to keep a little more sanity in myself by basic exercise and meditation, which uh given that less travel etc is there, we have been able to find time for.

So it's important to have your priorities of mind, body and soul in the right place and have delighted users who keep you away from a burnout and keep you so excited about the future.

Host: Amazing. um because it's been great talking to you and I've always uh you know, love your frankness and honesty in your conversation. So don't change it even if your marketing team is telling you that because honesty works. Um and I'm looking forward to more conversations in future and hope Leher will be a great success.

Guest: Thank you very much Nash. Uh thank you for having me here. it was pleasure talking to you.

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