Full Transcript

Dhruv Sharma: Hey there listeners, it's the middle of the week and our first guest today is Dharmesh Ba. I don't know if you've read something written by him before, but many people call him Indus Valley's unofficial ethnographer. So we're very, very excited to have him on the show.

Utsav Somani: I think Sajid Bhai calls you the anthropologist, which you connected to ethnographer, right? Yeah. So let's start off with that. What does an ethnographer mean?

Dharmesh Ba: Ethnography in academic sense is the study of people's, their lives. What I do, I take a lot of those principles and apply in the business context. Probably our engagement with the consumers are not as deep as a typical ethnographer or anthropologist because they go in the days, in months and years. So what we do is shorter studies, but we go deep in a specific sort of context. What I'm mostly interested in is why people make decisions, how do they make decisions, what's the motivation behind them and what's the general attitude towards life, money, healthcare, all of it. I'm really excited about it.

Utsav Somani: And is that what you're doing at your lab and you publish all of this thing and you work with some of the big names like JAR, CREG, what were working projects with them like?

Dharmesh Ba: For most of them, typically there is an assumption of who their typical consumer is. So there is an implementation model of a builder. A builder is usually thinking this is how the app is and this is how my consumers will typically use. And then there is a mental model of the user and there's always a delta. And my work always lies in figuring out what's the delta. And this happens through a lot of conversations and primary data. And it's always about attaching all my work to some sort of a metric. Now it can be engagement, retention, drop-offs, referrals, brand perception, loyalty, trust. It keeps going on.

Dhruv Sharma: Dharmesh, my guess is before you started doing this work and when did you start doing this work, by the way?

Dharmesh Ba: For the first five years of my life, of my career, I was one year UX designer. So from 2015 to 2018, 2019 is when the ship happened. It's pretty accidental. I always wanted to do a lot of this work. Nikhil, who's the co-founder of Setu, called me in and said that I don't have a design role, but I have a role which is at an intersection of design, FinTech and community. Are you interested to take it up? It sounded challenging. I picked it up. Then I started this lab called D91 Labs within Setu, where we started writing financial journals of people. And one thing led to the other and I went deep into behavioral finance.

Dhruv Sharma: Oh, wow. By the way, there was something in the water at Setu, I think, between Sahil, Nikhil, yourself. Just a very special coming together of people. But, you know, the question I was going to ask you is, so, you know, what's very interesting about that period, 2018, 19, is before that, almost all of the literature that we had as first time founders to go by was coming from the valley, right? There was hardly any primary research that had happened over here, mostly because the ecosystem was also in its infancy. And since then, people like you, even people like Utsav, he's out with a book, by the way, the tickers on the screen as well. So now there's increasingly this body of work that focuses on primary research from within our ecosystem. You probably are very close to what else is happening. So we'd actually love for you to surface some resources that just completely go unknown. Give a shout out to your friends and tell us what would you like reading.

Dharmesh Ba: Actually, before 2018, there's always been work that's done in the non-tech space, like FMCG space. I got very inspired into getting into this entire domain because I used to follow Rama Vijayaprakash and all her books. So she has written a phenomenal book called We Are Like That Only, and her recent book, The Lilliput Plan, both of them are phenomenal, right? So I got a lot of inspired from that. And then I wanted to appropriate a lot of her way of life to tech, right? So what I primarily read is a lot more in terms of behavioral psychology in books. I really love reading Nudge, Richard Thalle's work, and all the behavioral economics books is what is my main frame of reference. I've not gotten enough time to read a lot of the current modern day newsletters much. Books is what I fall back to, and I really love reading some of the academic papers also. Microsoft Research has a lot of interesting papers, especially with respect to HCD in the context of India. They used to publish a lot of, there's this person called Indrani Meenakshi, and if anybody's interested, you should read a lot of her paper that is published in Microsoft Research.

Utsav Somani: Awesome. So I'm going to dive a little bit into some trends with you. I think you've written about this also, but we've had recently the founder of LOLO on our show. And they've got, I mean, different live streaming game show, they've got something to do with educations and micro dramas as well, which I think is a big trend from last year. So I read somewhere that watching a 30 second clip about starting a business gives you the same dopamine hit as actually starting a business. So what do you make of this trend that's going forward? And also, I think a layer two to this question would be that UPI auto pay was a big trend as well. And sachet subscriptions between 100 to 250, I think became a big, big trend, especially in companies like SICO and all of these micro drama companies, including the learning ones as well. So dopamine hit and sachet subscriptions. Let's go a little deeper into these two trends.

Dharmesh Ba: So the last two years, when I started doing a lot of ethnography, I keep asking this one question, what's your throwaway money, right? So throwaway money is nothing but a quantum of money that I'm willing to sort of experiment on things, even if I lose it, right? Now, that has been around 200 rupees, so where did that 200 rupees equate come from? So if you ask most people, they'll say, even if I go and drink a chai and a puff and I hang out with a couple of my friends, that money is anywhere between 100 to 200. So if I want to try out anything new online, throwing 100, 200 rupees and getting to see whether this works out or not, people are okay with it. That coupled with you pay auto pay is one magic. Second is around, very interestingly, most people feel a void in their life just before they go to bed. Why that comes in? Because throughout the day you're occupied with different set of tasks in office, work, home, all of it. Suddenly you're reflecting a lot in the night around what's happening in my life because you're starting to browse reels. So reels, one of the interesting things that happens is reels, you see influencers. You see their success and you feel like you're not doing much. Because of their relatability factor, you start feeling that, oh, my friends, WhatsApp shaters, my reels and all of that. Suddenly in those places is where you are introducing something like a master or a seeker, where if you look at the ads, the ads specifically say you're wasting your life watching reels. Imagine you've been having this thought in the night and you see this in the feed and that's an immediate place for somebody to tap on it. Right. And this combined with the throwaway money and you pay, auto pay is something that gives rise for them to start testing out new experiences or apps.

Utsav Somani: And any counter, I mean, given that you've studied this closely, any counterintuitive thing that we don't know, sitting behind our laptops in tier one cities about this trend?

Dharmesh Ba: One thing is that you can get them to sign up and you can make them download and watch. Right. I still believe a large part of the population believes that if they uninstall the app, the pay auto pay goes away. Right. And that's still I feel it's a slightly in a dark battle where people don't know. I think a lot of education sort of needs to be there. I feel really bad because I've seen people do that. What happens is if one person with one person, you lose the trust that spreads like wildfire. Right. The second thing is that just the content alone will not change or move a lot of need for these people. Right. You need to handhold them. You need a guide slash mentor. One interesting trend that I've observed is when we were doing this study on people studying for GE. One story that I start to remember was that there was this one person was preparing for GE. And she said that many people attempted until last two years back, one person in their community, which is in their locality, one person had cracked GE and had gone and they did IIT. Immediately after the next year, there were multiple people who did it. Right. So what this means is you need a lot of relatable examples for these people to give that confidence. So once somebody sets a playbook, other people move around it. That's where you see that in one family, one cousin brother goes to U.S. or one goes to Dubai. The rest of the people get the confidence that I can also better my life. Right. So just by reading the content, I don't think they will be able to make a meaningful change. They need some sort of handholding and coaching for them to move outside their existing way of life to the next next step. Right. Once that happens, it's a it's an effect from there.

Dhruv Sharma: Dharmesh, I think we'll return to the trends because there's many more that we want to cover, but we also want to get some timeless lessons out of you for founders. So, you know, doing this work, what have you learned about conducting better user interviews that you can share with us?

Dharmesh Ba: We need to listen. Listening is the most important skill. What I've observed while working with a lot of founders and product managers, because they have fallen in love with the product that they have built, they're always in this tendency to superimpose their beliefs there. And for you to go into the field, talking to a customer and telling and listening to say a customer saying your hypothesis could be wrong, needs a lot of humility. And that means a lot of self- reflection. You need to enter with the, get this thing saying that I could be wrong, I could be humiliated. So that patience is needed. I think that takes some time to do. Listening and your ability to say, OK, I could be wrong are just the two things. It's just very simple. It's simple, but it's not easy.

Utsav Somani: And you also described India and India as Bharat mostly in your literature as well. And we've seen, I mean, the global frameworks and models and everything, all the Western frameworks fail in India. What is one thing that Bharat PM is doing so well intuitively that we can name and export it out?

Dharmesh Ba: Specifically, when you're growing up in a resource constrained household. The mental model towards everything changes, right? What is necessity? What is luxury? And the world view sort of like changes, right? So I work with a bunch of US phones, right, who are trying to sort of expand into India. And they still find it very hard to say that why would somebody need a phone number plus OTP as a login? Right, and why would you give them a call? Why not?

Utsav Somani: I think you're talking about the work that you did with Duolingo and Meta?

Dharmesh Ba: Yeah, some of them and there are other people also, right? So for the Western sort of framework, for them to actually see some of the simple stuff that we are doing, it becomes very challenging.

Utsav Somani: But I mean, so that's the insight. Like, I mean, is there anything else you would say that this is the best practice from India that we can export apart from the login or the number login?

Dharmesh Ba: Not. I don't know if I could say a specific thing because I don't have like a really like a playbook, playbook sorts, right? But if you think what's their current alternative to do things, then you will see a lot of options sort of coming up, right? Because whenever we are thinking about products, we're thinking from our lens. But for people, they might have already be doing stuff. Let's say, for example, for example, if you want to learn English, they could be learning on WhatsApp. They could be learning on YouTube. They could be learning in a tuition center, right? Just looking at what the current alternatives is and what is the challenges for them to reach that alternative, solving that in an easier manner itself gives rise to a lot of opportunities.

Dhruv Sharma: There's this concept that surfaces every once in a while, only to again go back into the into the drawer, which is super apps. And in your written work, you've said that WhatsApp is the closest we've come to having a super app. And then you have a point of view and how it's bundled the things that it has and those things will also unbundle over a period of time. For the benefit of our listeners and ourselves, do you want to do you want to like do you want to expand that?

Dharmesh Ba: Yes, so. Any possible use cases that you can think about can happen on WhatsApp, I've seen groups where matrimonial happens, English teaching happens, business happens, school happens, education happens, everything is possibly happening on WhatsApp. This is my hunch, I haven't gone deep into it, is that WhatsApp, the fluidity of the platform itself, like, you know, allows people to be chaotic and we are usually very chaotic. Like if you go on ground, if you look at the market, how the school is run, our tuition center is run and how like a business is run, it's chaotic. And there is there is some beauty in chaos and WhatsApp sort of mimics that pattern and inherently, I don't think they designed for it, but we have picked up that as like a frame. It has become an infra, that's how I see it. Today it has become an infra to do a lot of things, right?

Dhruv Sharma: You name it, it can.

Dharmesh Ba: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I recently saw a use case of household women, like homemakers, learning English on WhatsApp. So what they do is there's one guy you send them. So he sends you how much money, so you send it via phone pay, there's no payment links, you send a screenshot. Every day he sends a PDF of a lesson, all you have to do is read the lesson and then you have to send a voice note around the practice lesson and send it back. So he has people on his side who listen to those WhatsApp notes and send back feedback around what should be corrected. So these are people, for example, this is in a Telugu speaking state, so he's giving feedback in Telugu plus English. Right. I was quite surprised.

Utsav Somani: I saw that voice notes can be transcribed now also on WhatsApp. That's a big thing for people who don't actually like voice notes. But assume that, I mean, talking about super apps, I think the original super app in this country is like the HDFC bank cap or the Axis bank cap, right? And traditional banks have lost the next gen customers. Like, I mean, UPI is on phone pay or Paytm, then we've got Cred for credit, then we've got Investing Zerodha and Grow. Suppose we hand you the keys to the kingdom, make you the person leading consumer internet at HDFC or Axis bank. What are the changes that you would do in the next 90 days to put them back as front row seat?

Dharmesh Ba: First is we have to sort of be where the current customers are. So aligned with their mental model of how they do payments. First is in terms of help them make better financial decisions, right? So for the rest of the people, for example, if I'm a bank, if I'm able to sort of help them make better financial decision, then I have their attention, right? Second is that I have traditionally made money when people, by helping them achieve their life goals, which is included buying a car, buying a vehicle, buying a home. But for a Gen Z, their life goals have changed. So I would want to build financial products which aligns with their life goals. It could even be like, can I give them a loan to go to a Europe trip, to go to a concert, right? So those sort of things is what I want to sort of introduce to get my mindshare back in their head. Today, if you look at a lot of people, they'll also relate with KPR because for them, travel is a big part of their life as KPR got in their mindshare. KPR report will very well become a great financial services player.

Utsav Somani: And I mean, staying with that thought for a bit, like what do you think about personal credit in this country?

Dharmesh Ba: It is to be given for the people who need it, and we are repeatedly giving it to the people who, and we are bombarding it to the people who might not necessarily sort of like need it, right? So, for example, if I'm coming from a.

Utsav Somani: In this country, because the example that you mentioned scared me that somebody taking a loan to go to a concert and travel, and of course, need based usage exists where somebody's short term liquidity, but some people might be overextending also in their journey. So is scary right now?

Dharmesh Ba: I don't know because I'm also still trying to learn how how the modern generation looks at life, right? So we have been doing a lot of interviews, even again, like with respect to JNZ, understanding their money. Some of the stuff even surprises me. Let's say, for example, people saving money to actually buy a gadget worth 30,000, 40,000, despite having a similar headphone or despite having a similar phone, seeing that as a lifestyle or a milestone for them to move towards the next thing. Right. So those are very interesting patterns to me. For me, travel also comes there. Experiences also comes there. We might see it as a luxury, like, for example, in my life, it's probably not a necessary thing. In their world, it could be the most important thing. They might not even buy a car. Right. So they might not even buy a home for them. This sort of collecting those milestones or memory stones is the most important thing.

Dhruv Sharma: You know, you guys are basically talking about what we now call aspiration, right? For the younger population. And Dharmesh, you've written extensively about also the idea of dignity when you're designing products for the next billion users. Do you think that, you know, what dignity was to an earlier generation, aspiration is to the current generation? They're very different things, but maybe the most important thing that matters to the two respective generations. Also, is it really possible? I know people do it and have to do it. Banks can only have one app, regardless of whether users are old or young. And inevitably what happens is that they will induce friction or a sense of security, which, you know, which is great for the slightly older population using the app. But it's incredibly, you know, almost limiting for people who are digitally native, who are born into this world.

Utsav Somani: The mom tested, that's the word I read about it, where like if your mom has an app, then I think it should be good for everyone. Yeah, yeah.

Dharmesh Ba: So is this a specific question? I sorry, I lost the talk.

Dhruv Sharma: Yes, yes. We were talking about dignity versus aspiration and then designing products in such a way that they are relevant across age groups.

Dharmesh Ba: Yeah, universal design where you say that, you know, one product applies to everyone. I personally don't believe in it, because now we are getting into the age of more and more customization and personalization. We will have different products which will cater to everybody else. Right. So because otherwise you are putting up with products that are just built for somebody else. Now the market has opened up because we have like so much talented folks and technology which can build customized product. I think we will see more and more breaking down of it. And there's customization. I was recently seeing there is there is an entire app ecosystem just for James. So there's a James Matrimony, James Businesses and all of that. You will see a lot of these coming up, right, because you have the distribution somewhere and you want to have products which are very specific for a specific community or a specific gender or a specific race. Yeah.

Utsav Somani: And I think AI enables some of this hyper personalization at scale now. But what does AI for the next billion users look like? We've all been using global products right now. Charity, we've got somebody from Immersion coming in. So that's a fantastic story that we'll cover with them. But what does the next billion user look like on or accessing AI? Is it a voice companion? Is it something to do with, I mean, these AI companions that people are building? Or what do you think is going to be the breakthrough that gets people in? I mean, they're already in, but it goes a level deeper. It solves personal needs.

Dharmesh Ba: So today, you have access to Blinkit, you have access to Snapchat, you have access to Amazon, you have access to everything on fingertips in Internet. You have a problem and you know exactly how to solve it because you can do DIY. I can browse, I can ask, I can call someone, all of it, right? It's because of two things. One, we are well resourced enough in terms of access to technology and access to money. Today, if you don't have any of these, even simpler stuff like changing my phone number in Aadhaar card to simple stuff like downloading a bank statement, you're always relying on a middleman. I keep thinking about it. It's expensive to be poor in this country because you're always dispersing money to this middleman to get stuff done and they pile on your inability to get stuff done by yourself. I feel that's the first place where AI needs to normalize things for, let's say, someone with money, without money, with information, without information, with access to technology and without access to technology. Who will do it and what shape, what form, I still have no idea. But I think that will be the highest impact.

Dhruv Sharma: I'm also just sharing an observation. Increasingly find that embedded AI for many people is how they discover standalone apps as well. So you're using an app that you've been using all of these years. And suddenly something pops. You haven't seen it before. And it either summarizes or it renders better search results. And then you're like, wow, that was cool. This whole AI thing, you search for it and then you're like, OK, now there are these standalone apps that I might use also. So fascinating adoption curve, I think, and plenty to learn from. Dharmesh, I do have a couple of questions for you. Again, in no particular order, number one, what can all of us, you know, people sitting in Delhi and Gurgaon and Gurgaon and X, et cetera, do to come out of our echo chambers and just learn more about how things unravel on the ground? So, you know, your lessons, your field lessons in that sense. Maybe let's have you respond to that. And then I do have, you know, I'd love for you to also share learnings again from the field of what it takes to design products for women, especially in rural households, et cetera. But over to you to answer them, whichever way you want.

Dharmesh Ba: The tougher answer is that, you know, we'll have to go and meet different kinds of people outside our circle. But easiest way that I have found a hack is that I have an Instagram account and a Twitter, sorry, a YouTube account where I don't watch the usual stuff. I watch only regional stuff. So this could be regional Tamil YouTubers. I've customized my feed to see stuff that I would otherwise not see. This could be like cringe reels or some local business owner putting up things. So that feed, I just keep observing, just in looking at what do they talk about, what are the comments like? And I keep pulling up and I have like this entire note of how are people commenting, right? And those stuff is very fascinating to me. I've been recently following this one guy. He goes to all these smaller towns, takes photographs of those kirala stores, creates an AI video on Google Gemini, like a bang on introduction AI video of that particular store. And he's used one of those AI music generation apps to make a song. And he tags that store there and he has some hundred, hundred and fifty followers. It's fascinating. It's fascinating for me.

Utsav Somani: Wow. And I think the second question was designing for female users in the country, in rural areas.

Dharmesh Ba: First is to understand their dynamics and their family dynamics of what is allowed and what is not allowed for them. So if you look at their country, if you design business models around their country, so for example, they might be available to do anything productive between, let's say, eleven o'clock or ten o'clock in the morning until five o'clock in the evening. Right. So if we start building business models around their availability of the time, a lot of the unlock can potentially happen. So assume they are human capital and everything around it needs to be taken care of. Right. So I remember five years back, we had gone and interviewed some women in Tumkur, 40, 50, 60 kilometers from Tumkur. All these women, very enthusiastic, very aspirational, but their availability was only for five to six hours. The only people who were employing them was a nearby factory would send a vehicle to that area and take them and bring them back. And they were paying them peanuts. Right. Because now for them to actually go to a bus stand was like one and a half, two kilometers. And because their husbands had already gone to work, nobody was there to take them. And they said, this is something gives me a contribution to money. And in fact, that money contribution is not just saying that, oh, I'm contributing to the family just because she's earning, she gets respect in the family. And she can make her own decisions. So understanding their lifestyle will give rise to a lot of business models.

Utsav Somani: I want to bring up a personal point that you've written about before in December, I think 2025 was the year that broke you. You raised money, built a business for business, you know, hired, sold, pivoted 10 months. The whole journey was completed. And the line that stuck with me was someone obsessed with consumer research couldn't build a product that consumers wanted. Can you walk us through that journey and how was it?

Dharmesh Ba: No, every time I kept criticizing, saying that our founders are too attached to the product, I think when I became that founder, I was attached to the product because I took all the weight of for my employees, for my life, for my investors on my head. And when I was trying to see that vision, it was not very clear, it was too narrow. And that's what I reflected upon. All of this was after I shut down and I was starting to reflect on it is when I realized that, OK, I was getting way too much weight, I was getting way too much expectations. But if I had kept all of them aside and looked at only what the consumers want, I probably could have made changes at the right time.

Utsav Somani: And you were trying to build WhatsApp agents for voice?

Dharmesh Ba: Yeah. WhatsApp automation, like for me, the idea was that because WhatsApp has become this entire chaotic environment where it's all free flowing, what's the best way to put an AI and pull out the right context and give the right set of insights? Right now, you're trying to do that in terms of marketing for CRM, etc. A bunch of stuff we were exploring.

Utsav Somani: What were the learnings? I mean, I would buy this tool instantly.

Dharmesh Ba: For me, there's still the opportunity sort of exists. I imagine WhatsApp like Play Store where, you know, you can build apps on top of that. But WhatsApp does not look at it that way. It still sees that as another channel for advertising. Right. So the kind of ecosystem that Play Store has enabled, WhatsApp does not enable. But I still think, you know, one of the most asked use cases from business owners, I just need a bot which will follow up with my employees every one hour. Ek kaam kho gaya hai? And they were willing to pay me for that.

Utsav Somani: Funny enough, I actually I mean, the OpenClaw founder came up with the WhatsApp CLI and it's on my to-do tonight to play around with that. So I think hopefully that should, I mean, I saw the functionality list. I think it can solve much of these things with some implementations and stuff. So I think it might be time to go DIY again tonight.

Dhruv Sharma: Micro-management agent.

Utsav Somani: Micro-management agent, yeah.

Dhruv Sharma: Dhruv, any final closing question? Well, I think we have covered a fair amount of ground, but I do have one, Dharmesh, which is, so I want to challenge you a little bit about user studies, right? And so when we do these user studies and we get back with input, more often than not, it's incremental from where we are. So if that's what user studies typically yield and you feel free to challenge this assumption back, then how can one use them as the basis for building something truly transformative?

Dharmesh Ba: Dhruv, it depends on what is the lens and how the study was approached. If we are using the study money to say, hey, that is my search button, is my UX better? Of course, yes, it's incremental. But if you keep it at an abstract level, you're trying to understand the world view towards money, you can build million dollar businesses or billion dollar businesses based on that, right? It completely depends on the lens and how you approach the study. And second is that as a researcher, I can only tell you stories to inspire you, right? The founder should also be at a position to absorb new data and take it inside them and interpret it. So it's a combination of both.

Dhruv Sharma: It's like Clay Christensen of HBSU, right? I can't teach you what to think, but how to think. And that's perhaps the best gift that, you know, a researcher can give. Yeah, yeah.

Dharmesh Ba: My goal stops at inspiring you, not beyond that.

Utsav Somani: Awesome. And I believe you're doing some of this on your YouTube channel as well, which I think you've mentioned as a goal for 2026 and the field school, where I think you're teaching some of the insights that you pick up across your journey.

Dharmesh Ba: Yeah, yeah. Both of that is in my to-do list soon.

Utsav Somani: All right. Looking forward to it. Thank you for coming on our show, Dharmesh. Thank you. Thanks a lot. All right, listeners, we're moving on to our next segment and our next guest is ready. And here with us, let's welcome Bharat from Emergent. Bharat, welcome to the show.

Bharat Pinnam (Emergent): Hey Bharat. Hi, what's up? Hi, hi Dhruv. Great to be here.

Utsav Somani: So let's dive right in. WipeCon just finished. 20,000 applications, 300 selected winners get access to YC directly. What are the builders in 2026 building now with Emergent?

Bharat Pinnam (Emergent): Yeah, I think it might be like if you're following the space, right? For the last one, one and a half year, you know, wipe coding has taken like a very different shape altogether, right? And today, I think the capabilities that every platform is like building upon, primarily in terms of like just not building product prototypes, right? We moved beyond that. And like now today, you know, people are able to build fully functional apps that are out there with users and as well getting monetized, right? So I think the idea with WipeCon was fairly simple, right? I think, you know, we launched it back in 2025 in San Francisco and then, you know, brought the version 1.0 to India, you know, in March, where we did like around the time of like the conference, the AI conference that was happening. And then I think we went big when YC was coming to India, right? The primary, you know, reading was like there are a lot of, I think, builders, smart builders out there in India, ambitious builders, I would say, right? Who are always technically gated, right? They didn't have like the right tools or the platforms to sort of like really go put across some of their craziest ideas out there. We said like, you know, let's make WipeCon as like one of the strongest signaling hackathon, right? Which could directly feed into like YC, right? That was one of the key aspects that we were trying to solve. It was just not like one day or like a two day hackathon, but we were trying to see how we can make this as like a strong signaling for, you know, people to really build just not prototypes, but go about like building companies out of, right? And I think the most interesting part with what we did this time in terms of scale is the kind of partners we managed to get on board, right? So it was pretty much ecosystem that we got access to, right? From like OpenAI to like, you know, Entropic, some of these big names, 11Labs, etc. All of them like came on board, right? Said, hey, we'll support, right? Like and unlike like other hackathons, this was like gated in terms of a process, right? So we ensured like, you know, we are picking like the top 300 who deserve to be there, right? And I'm sure like a good number of these people, you know, will go about like at least attempting to build something meaningful in the coming few months, right? And most interestingly, I think the biggest signaling was like they moved beyond the prototyping aspect, right? These people were like building real stuff. These people were like sort of like solving some interesting problems that they've come across lately, right? And I think our vision is like we'll continue to sort of like, you know, grow VypCon from just not from an India context, but to sort of like take it globally across different parts of the world, right? And I think that's that's where we would want to start.

Utsav Somani: Any projects around VypCon that you'd like to highlight and give a shout out to?

Bharat Pinnam (Emergent): Yeah, I think there are a couple of them. I think, you know, one was like, you know, was trying to sort of like build a marketplace primarily around like a pet segment, right? So you sort of like comes either dog like your pet level, etc. And, you know, I said, you know, I want to build like a marketplace. I want to sort of like build a, you know, e-comm plus like, you know, services entailed around it. And that is one of the, you know, I would say, and he brought that design essence as part of it, right? When I say like design, he was primarily like a designer turned like, you know, builder, right? So he said, like, you know, let me just go and like try to solve for a big, you know, market that's growing in India, right? Which is a pet market and sort of like build like an e-comm plus like a services platform, you know, that can sort of like enable, you know, pet parents in the community around, right? So that was one. And then there were people who are building SaaS primarily for their own, you know, businesses. A lot of SMB use cases also started to come in as part of the process, right? And this is something that I also want to highlight is like, this is a segment that was like, you know, left behind if you really look at it from a point of view like technology, right? They were always dependent to sort of like grow either their website, landing page or sort of like building, you know, internal tools, right? Which is much needed for them. So we had like people building like different kinds of CRMs, right? Specifically for their own use case, you know, a manufacturer who sort of like, you know, you know, come and, you know, he was like, you know, I'm spending like X amount of money out there, you know, giving it to developer, trying out other platforms, etc. I want to just leverage it, you know, white coding and see if I could build something internally, which cost me like a fraction of what I'm even like spending out there, right? So I think people, the kind of ideas that are coming across and the kind of things people were building, I think it was very varied. We had people building marketplaces to like building internal tools, or the fact like even attempting to build like SaaS platforms, right? And I think the most interesting use cases were like problems that were very deeply rooted to these builders, right? And I think the biggest takeaway for us, you know, when they sort of like came and told, hey, it was unimaginable for me to like even go and like attempt something like this, right? Or builders, right? Because I always were looking for like, you know, technical, you know, co-founders or sort of like, you know, technical friends who could do this along with me. But, you know, it just like open gates where you can just start going crazy about the kind of, you know, ideas you would want to really bring out to the users, right? And I think this is just not restricted to WipeCon today, but across the users that we have today in the platform, right? Across the globe. There's a similar trends that we're seeing, right?

Dhruv Sharma: And you've got users around the world. So how do your power users vary country to country, country by country, region by region?

Bharat Pinnam (Emergent): I think the biggest segment today is still for us like the North America, Europe, right? These are like the people that were serving IT services for the longest time. And now they have like sort of really started to go deep and like explore, hey, can I just like, I'm a manufacturer or sort of like I'm a, you know, white, like a blue collar guy, right? I'm running like a construction gig, right? A small construction gig. Can I just go about like building my own internal tool, right? Which I can engage with all my gig workers, et cetera, and stuff, right? So in terms of power users, you know, the way we sort of like look at it, these are people who are continuing to sort of like build multiple apps, right? They just don't limit themselves like just by building like one piece, but they're like, hey, there are two ways to look at it. I want build for my own use cases, but then there's also a bigger opportunity that they're able to unlock, which is, hey, can I serve this to external use cases, right? I'll give you a very simple example. Imagine like, you know, when you go deep dive into domains, like, you know, manufacturing or for the fact like, you know, construction, you know, a lot of these segments, right? They're a very close knit community, right? Or for the fact SMBs, right? If you look at vertical SMBs, right? These are very smaller communities that are like operating in different parts of the globe. Now, what we've started to see is like, you know, a person who has managed to build something for himself has now started to become more confident, hey, now I can serve this to my community, right? So let me take it as like a more of a service-oriented approach as well, right? That I can monetize, right? Because I have sort of like gained enough, you know, I've cracked the code of how to go about like building, you know, using. Can I start like really helping the other people around there, right? And that's a very interesting trend that we've started to like observe now, right? Specifically, when we go into, you know, SMBs and, you know, specifically the founders, et cetera, right? We've started to really consult, you know, other founders in terms of how can we really quickly, you know, get white coding done, right? So the simplest of the simplest tasks.

Utsav Somani: Talking about white coding and trends. You did, I mean, you were heading education earlier as well. You were heading the Gen AI engineering program at I think Rhodes School before this. And now you're at one of the hottest AI consumer startups globally, not just in India. What, I mean, so I want to get your thoughts on what happens to this world of like Stanford graduates who've learned computer engineering or people, all of these people at techs that were selling, learn to code courses before, like, what does that segment look like?

Bharat Pinnam (Emergent): Yeah, I think just to give you a perspective with Rhodes School, right? It was since ChatGPT came, right? We just got into like the mode of like going deep into AI education, right? I think we were one of the early players out there, right? We're teaching AI and it started off with ChatGPT, right? And as ChatGPT like evolved and the models started to like evolve, a lot more new models came into picture. We realized the AI literacy segment as of today itself, right? It's very, very huge, right? And we try to apply that from education standpoint within emergent as well. Hey, don't think about like platforms like emergent to be like, hey, just come and like type something and like it will get it done, right? That is a start point, right? But there's a lot more that you have to like put across. And with respect to that, I think we have realized AI literacy in general, right? Understanding, you know, deeply in terms of how prompting works, right? Going deeper into prompting techniques or for the fact like understanding agents deeply. Because a lot that's going to happen, you know, if you've seen emergent or for the fact any of the, you know, platforms, there's a lot of things that agents are doing beside, right? But there's hardly people know like what's happening there, right? And we don't know. You'll never move beyond like the prototyping stage. You'll always be thinking of like just shipping. Hey, let me just ship like a very simple, you know, stuff, right? But once you start understanding what's happening in the backdrop, you'll start architecting things, right? You'll sort of like go more deeper. And I think that's a realization that we started to have at growth school, right? Particularly.

Utsav Somani: And just to interrupt you, there's a question from a community that our team has just sent how to learn and how not to learn in brackets during this unprecedented pace of AI innovation without burning out. What are the aspects you are most bullish on skills, MCP, agents, etc?

Bharat Pinnam (Emergent): I think that's a very interesting question. But the way it goes, right?

Utsav Somani: The question of anxiety, I think, is on everyone's mind. If I go for a one week holiday, I don't know if the world would change. That's true, that's true.

Dhruv Sharma: Walking around with their laptops partly open in SF and around. Because multiple agents are running in bracket.

Bharat Pinnam (Emergent): Right, right. And I think, you know, the craziest part is like the agentic world that we're seeing today, right? It's fairly fast. A quick example that I would also want to give is like, you know, the kind of speed in which, you know, we as a product company have to operate right in this world is crazy. Earlier, you know, the companies used to sort of like, the product used to be like slow, you know, the marketing had to like, you know, the marketing wasn't speed and the product had to match that. But, you know, in today's world, it's other way, right? The smart engineers are sort of like building crazy. And the speed in which we build, you know, marketing has like a very tough job to sort of like, you know, match that and ensure that you are delivering.

Utsav Somani: How does the user stay up to date with all of this? At what point can you say that, hey, I'll come back to this later? Like, what are your thoughts from the other side of the table?

Bharat Pinnam (Emergent): Right. So I think, you know, from what I've seen, like, from an education standpoint, right, two, three years that we have spent, we used to do something very interesting. And I would like to, you know, share some very interesting insights on that. We used to run globally, something called as a mastermind program, right? This was like a two- day program that we used to run for free for users across the globe, right, India as well as, and we used to just go deeper into the very important foundation parameters of like generator AI, right? We just talk about like rags, talk about like prompting, agent take, right? All these stuff. And we just started to break that down, give them that perspective, right? At least the people who managed to stick around and retain, they were able to come with much more confident use cases of how do I really go about like, you know, taking my next step, right? And what we also realized is in this process, where things are moving fairly fast, you need to be like fairly hands-on, right? One of the examples that I can share is like, for example, you know, today models that are coming, right? The newest models that are coming. If you look at it in terms of the differentiation, right, there's rarely that you could figure out, hey, how these models are like really different today, right? So what is important is like, how do I really understand this model will help me in doing some things, right? And I think the approach should be like whenever a new model comes, rather than sort of like, you know, testing, look at like how different models would play around in your productivity or like your build that you're doing, etc, right? It will give you that a lot more insights, you know, when you start playing it around, right? Because you'll see a clear distinction. Okay, when I'm using like a older model versus using the new model, what is the distinction of the output?

Utsav Somani: I think there's one that I really like. I think one new product feature that you've launched, I think a separate product itself. It's called Wingman, I believe. WhatsApp is the interface layer for most of India. I know most of your users are global, but IMS exists, Telegram exists there as well. So you cover all of those mechanisms. But what is unique about Wingman? And how can people in India uniquely use it?

Bharat Pinnam (Emergent): Right. So I think you rightly said that, you know, globally and specifically India runs on WhatsApp, right? And in our history of like, you know, building, you know, emergent, we have been building like high quality agents, right? And, and I think back in two, three months, roughly, CloudBot, Moldbot took the world by storm, right?

Utsav Somani: And we realized, It was just two, three months ago and it feels like, I don't know, it was last year or something.

Bharat Pinnam (Emergent): True, true, true. Yeah. And, and what we realized is like, the world is moving towards building the version 1.0 of AGIs, right? And if I really look at it, right, this is, I would call it like a version 1.0, right? Because you are pretty much, you know, as if you look at it, like as a segment that we tackle, which is SMB founders specifically, right? The multiple tools that you handle, and I'm sure there's a problem that you folks also tackle, right? Like, you know, the multiple apps that you're running, you're trying to look, you have like a dashboard where you get like insights, you're getting like so many other, for communication, right? Calendars, et cetera. We said, like, can we bring everything together, right? Into WhatsApp, like an iMessage or for a fact telegram, right? Where you're just like, you know, putting it across a tasky, hey, I need my Stripe data for the last, you know, two months, three months, I'm heading into a meeting, I don't have like time to really go into the app, figure out everything. Can you just pull that data for me and like give me interesting insights that I can put it across my meetings, right? Similarly, the fairest use case that we're trying to optimize over here is like recurring tasks, right? Which is a very, very big segment. There are a lot of things founders, operators spend on a daily level, where they, you know, spend three, four hours doing like a specific task, right? And juggling between like multiple apps. We said, like, can we build like this autonomous agent that, you know, that doesn't sit in your dashboard, will never open, right? Frankly, and you know, you're able to, it lives directly fairly inside your WhatsApp telegram and schedules meetings for you, writes, you know, emails for you, right? But we have also ensured that there is a layer of human loop, which means that it doesn't automatically does everything for you as of today, right? It will generate, it will write, it will create, but it will ask you for the permissions, right? Hey, can you just review this copy? Once done, I can just go and like shoot this email, right? Or for the fact, like if I have to write like a tweet, et cetera, it will have that human loop presence, which makes us more, you know, I would like secured, right? Because that's the biggest question that everyone had. And the most important piece is like when CloudBot, MoldBot came, right? It was very, very centered towards core developer focused here, right? You had to do a lot of setups, et cetera. But if you have seen that journey of, you know, emergent, you know, coming with Wingman, we also integrated, you know, MoldBot fairly quickly. I think within like few days of like launch, we integrated MoldBot with a very, you know, single button, you know, piece, right? And then we realized that you're still dependent on like other platform, right? To be able to like do things. So we said like, let's spend that next one, one and a half month and like build something of our own, right? Which we have more control on, right? And I think it's been like two weeks since we've launched Wingman. And the kind of use cases that we're seeing, right? It's just crazy. It's just, you know, the way we, at least I position it in my, you know, sessions that I do typically, right? Emergent becomes your like product developer slash, you know, manager, right? And this becomes your operating EA, right? It can pretty much do everything. And the idea is to like, you know, bring a lot more integrations, tools that people use on a day-to-day level, right? So our first set of like the version that we launched, we ensure like all the important tools that people use on a day-to-day level is fairly integrated, right? Like your Gmails, calendars, you know, Slack, etc. And then, you know, we keep expanding that horizon of tools, right? So it's, you can pretty much treat it as like your executive assistant today.

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah, you're right. And this is very interesting. You know, Hemant Mahapatra, who also came on our show in his investment note for Emergent, wrote that Emergent's cracked the code in terms of bringing intent and capability together and then delivering production-ready apps. And I think the capability gap, whatever it was, Emergent's agents address it. And this thing that you're talking about, meeting people where they are at an interface or surface of their choice is what, you know, quells any doubts about people's intent either. So even if in the moment it's a low-intent user, you meet them where they are. But Emergent is obviously doing exceptionally well. We're all very proud of Emergent just as a consumer AI success story out of India, but then it's no secret you're in a fiercely competitive domain. So we'd love to get your thoughts on, you know, what Emergent is doing differently that sets it apart. And, you know, the version of this that's evident from the outside is, you know, like Abe Lincoln used to have that saying that if I have four hours to cut a tree, I'll spend three hours sharpening my axe. So from the outside, it appears that the agents spend a lot more time planning and designing than debugging because who needs rework? But let's get an insider's perspective on what's Emergent doing differently that sets it apart.

Bharat Pinnam (Emergent): Right. So I think our approach, you know, fairly from day one had been like, you know, we had to crack the code of like agents, right? And then particularly go deeper into solving the full stack aspect of things, right? If you look at like other platforms that tend to like do well in certain areas, right? For example, Lovable, you know, I love the platform. It's very good from a UI design standpoint, right? Specifically, but it definitely comes across, you know, shorter gaps when you look at from a full stack application building standpoint, right? And I think we took that as like a strong, you know, piece to solve for. So we have like agents that do from planning to like deployment, like frontend, backend, you know, testing, et cetera. And it gives you the flexibility to building like a full stack app and have that seamless experience of like going about deploying. I'll tell you a very interesting part, right? Building is one part, right? Deployment is still a very, you know, it gives people like that level of anxiousness, you know, what's happening in deployment, right? Specifically, you know, non-tech people. We have just made it very seamless.

Dhruv Sharma: Would you have a number on what percentage of active projects actually hit deployment?

Bharat Pinnam (Emergent): It's, I think, again, it's depending on segment to segment, right, primarily. But typically we see like a good 15, 20% of the people who are building, right? They tend to like go about deploying it, right? And this I'm talking about like multiple deployments, right? It could be varying from one to like people who are building multiple apps and sort of like deploying because we made it fairly simple today, right? The reason we also exist and we want to sort of continue to grow is that we just don't want people to like build, right? We want these products to like go out to like real users getting tested, right? And that's where, you know, we started to tackle this aspect in terms of how do we really educate people to like go about deploying, right? And that's one of the key aspect that I'm also working on fairly, you know. How do we like really educate people around deployment? Because non-technical founders, when they see that, right, it gets them anxious. Hey, how does this work, right? We take care of everything, right? But is it like something that will work for me? Is it trustworthy? So there's a lot of insights and like knowledge that we have to put it across to our users, right? In terms of how, A, it works and second is how secure it is, right? Because you're taking it to like real world. You've got to test it like to, you know, say like thousands or like the millions of users out there. So I think that is an area that, you know, education specifically, I'm just trying to sort of tackle.

Dhruv Sharma: And the fact that they have no reason to worry about security and compliance and this is beyond everything that you do with setup and design and architecture and deployment and hosting and scaling. You do all of that, but also security and compliance. I'm curious of have any, you know, wide-coded apps cleared a third-party security audit?

Bharat Pinnam (Emergent): I'm sure. So I can talk from the perspective of like, you know, what security means for us, right? But I think that is probably engineers would be able to like give a slightly more deeper understanding on it. But how we tackle this is primarily is in two levels, right? One is, hey, there's a preview option that we typically give people to sort of like get it across, right? And there's a deployment, right? Before even deploying, you can just preview it, share it with like, you know, people around, get yourself tested, et cetera and stuff, right? Now we have started to make that as not a very default option, but a consent-focused option. Hey, this could have certain aspects that will just go out, you know, without you knowing, right? So we have started to put a lot more guardrails, I would say, in terms of how people, and these are pretty much insights that you get from user behavior, right? When people like just go sharing like reviews here and there, et cetera, right? You're just opening it like the whole box of like copies, right? Like we just don't know where it could feel. So we've started to do a lot of guardrailing around it. Hey, a user needs to like know what exactly he's doing, what could be the implications of it and how you can do it more securely today. So these are the aspects that we are trying to sort of like build. And you know, some features are already out today, right? Previewing is not as easy as it was earlier, right? And then educating users that, hey, you know, it will have its own implications. So be thoughtful about it, right? In terms of how you go about doing it. And then I think today, a good amount of time that engineers- I have a time check that is coming from a producer as well.

Utsav Somani: We're over time because we have to cover the news also. So I think maybe just a one minute final closing thought on what's next for Emergent, Bharat.

Bharat Pinnam (Emergent): Oh yeah. So I think Wigman is like a big bet that we have started to sort of like take. And I think the idea is to sort of really grow this and, you know, become the default stack for like founders, SMBs across to, you know, not treat it as like an independent product, but how you can really look at it as like a team, right? Where you sort of go about like building with Emergent. You're building features like, you know, brainstorm, et cetera, where you can treat that feature as like more of a product manager, where you can keep, you know, throwing some of your ideas, make PRDs, and then start building, right? Typically it was like earlier, you had to go to like GPTs or the LLMs to like do a lot of these things. We're trying to build that. So I think the idea is to build like that stack, you know, which can help builders across, right? It can solve for very unique problems and specifically on big segment of non-technical users that we tend to, you know, work for. How can we become like a default stack which can help you build, which can help you run operations, right? All in one place. So I think that's where we are going to double down, you know, fairly and, you know, sort of like, you know, take a like next leap or like growth, right? And then definitely, you know, you never know like how the space would evolve, right? I think like anyone who is, yes.

Utsav Somani: Changing every day and you've got to cover some AI news after this. So thank you so much for coming on our show as well, Bharat. Thank you so much. Wishing you all the best.

Bharat Pinnam (Emergent): Lovely, lovely. I think it was wonderful, you know, having this chat with Sarvendra. Thank you so much.

Utsav Somani: All right, listeners, we've got a couple of news items to cover with you. AI Forward Deployed Engineers are coming. Anthropic Forms and Enterprise AI, JV with Blackstone, Hellman and Friedman and Goldman Sachs, and they're backed by a consortium, including General Atlantic, Apollo, GIC and Sequoia. They've raised $1.5 billion in committed capital. Dhruv, what does it do?

Dhruv Sharma: I'm reading, you know, consulting's a large global industry. It's about $300 billion per estimates. And this is Anthropic's first serious attempt to replace, you know, that industry, that strategy consulting industry with AI native delivery. And, yeah, I mean...

Utsav Somani: In my opinion, what's going to happen is that distribution, as everyone has said, is going to be a key mode for all of them. Like, I think they've gone after the consumers, now they're going after the businesses. And they're front-running OpenAI in this announcement also. OpenAI was about to announce the deployment company, which is a $10 billion JV, which TPG, Brookfield, Bain Capital and Advent and 10 other people were backing. I think it's going to be big versus OpenAI in the enterprise world with AI forward deployed engineers, I think. And I think it makes a good case for their IPOs also, which I think are expected to happen this year or next year. OpenAI is apparently developing a hardware device, a phone as well now, which 2027 is when they're expected to come out of the labs from. All right, and Ola was in the news. They've also... I mean, their AI cloud business is now the new pivot from Crutim. Their app has disappeared from all the stores. And I think there was an Economic Times story where it said that the 300 crore revenue that they reported, 90% of that was from existing Ola companies. Crutim doesn't have any independent board members who do not have an overlap with existing Ola companies. So I think Economic Times was making an example where they think that better governance measures are needed or a deeper look into these numbers are required. Crutim said that they have 25 enterprise clients apart from the others that were pretty previously reported as well. And then, I mean, brutal space to be entering. Dream11, which had, I mean, so many users, like I think, what, 200 million at one point or maybe even more?

Dhruv Sharma: At the peak, yeah.

Utsav Somani: At the peak, and now they're going into wealth management with an AI-led broking platform. So what they're saying is that Goldman Sachs level power for a retail user across India 1, 2, 3. So that's the basic pitch. I think DreamStreet is the name. And I don't know when they're going live, but they've announced it. And hopefully it should come out soon. Let's see if Fantasys, both users, end up converting to stock trading as well.

Dhruv Sharma: Does that make them India's youngest brokerage now?

Utsav Somani: I mean, yeah, there's one launching every year. Like wealthy wealth, there's a plotty plot, right? I think there are more wealth tech firms being funded. I think everyone's taking a stab at it from different angles. And AI, I think, is enabling some of this knowledge sharing and I think access to information. But I think most of these will still have to fight an uphill task because Zerodha, Grow, AngelOne, and many others, including Dhan, are established names that have done their groundwork. So time has to significantly expand for these players to make a dent. But Dream11 has the users, so maybe some of them switch over and they've got the gaming knowledge from Dream11. So let's see. And with that, I think we'll wrap this midweek show up. Thank you so much for tuning in, folks. We will see you on.