How 15 Co-Founders Built an ₹18,000 Cr Company | S4E8 | Destiny Avenged | Weekend Ep.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Tanuj Shori: First day on Lehman floor and I ask a question on the floor. I am sorry, all that is great, but what is equity? I was in office at 7:00 a.m., going home at 3, sleeping for a couple of hours, coming back to office. I remember crying once in the night ke mein kahan phus gaya. Every Monday morning, HR used to call and whoever deskline phone rang means this was their last day at job.

Friday, in Hong Kong, we are out clubbing. I cannot get Squares Yards out of out mind. Monday, I quit. This year, we end up moving almost 18,000 crores of real estate through the platform. If we were a real estate developer, we would be fifth largest Indian and we are not happy and proud about that. We should have been the largest by now.

If this is not something which me and Kanika can give our life to, we cannot go and ask anyone else for capital. So, we went all in to an extent that not just selling our houses, selling our parents’ houses as well. 

[00:00:52] Karthik Reddy: What is one thing that you would still love to see change in Indian real estate?

Welcome to the season finale episode of Blume Podcast Season 4. The theme for the season, as you know, is destiny avenged. Each conversation spotlights people who fought past rejections, near failures, to earn a chapter in the book on India’s startup history.

This season is brought to you in partnership with IDFC FIRST Bank and Ultrahuman, one of our portfolio companies. More about them later in the episode. 

Today, we are joined by Tanuj Shori, the founder of Square Yards, a company that has quietly rewritten the rules of India’s real estate market, a really tough market. Tanuj’s journey is anything but ordinary. A fast-rising investment banker in Hong Kong, he and his wife, Kanika, walked away from comfortable careers, sold nearly everything they owned and poured every last rupee into a problem that most people thought was relatively unsolvable, the painfully broken real estate buying experience in India. What followed was a decade of building with extreme frugality and fierce conviction.

No splashy marketing, just a razor-sharp focus on revenue, unit economics, customer value. What began as a scrappy NRI-focused venture soon became the backbone behind thousands of real estate decisions across India. From a two-person hustle to a full-stack real-estate platform, spanning transactions, mortgages, rentals, interiors, data intelligence, Square Yards has now grown into a multi-country operation with billions in transaction value annually, all anchored by a set of founders who were willing to bet it all, endure the messy parts and outlast everyone else.

Today, we go inside their journey, the risks, the near-death moments, and the relentless obsession that powered Square Yards from what was a living room idea between a husband-wife team to an IPO- ready enterprise. Welcome to the podcast today, Tanuj. 

[00:02:49] Tanuj Shori: Thanks Karthik. 

[00:02:52] Karthik Reddy: So, it has taken a long time. For the viewers who do not know, Tanuj and me first ran into each other in Shanghai of all places. And I remember that meeting distinctly, pre-pandemic, lot more Indians used to head to China more often. It was in a conference, and it was the first time I was exposed to the Square Yards’ journey. I had heard of the name, but since then, I think we have been WhatsApp friends. I have had the privilege of tracking the journey closely for now, what, six years since then. And it has just grown from strength to strength.

It is pretty much everything you promised it would become. And so, it is a delight today to be in front of you and having this conversation.

[00:03:34] Tanuj Shori: Thank you.

[00:03:35] Karthik Reddy: So, I think, I kind of debriefed you, but we chose a very bold theme this year. The t‑shirt says Destiny Avenged. So, why the word avenged? Because basically, in Hindi mein kahawat hai ke likha rehta ha apke naseeb mein or urdu, rather is naseeb.

Did it ever feel that way for you? So, I think what I like the guests to, sort of, tell the audience is who you are growing up. Where do these influences come? What gives you the courage to become this like superstar entrepreneur? So, maybe a little bit of your childhood influences on, and at which moment in your life did it feel like this is your destiny?

[00:04:24] Tanuj Shori: Funny and ironic, you said that Karthik. So, we internally speak a lot about destiny. Obviously, hard work plays its role, being at the right place at the right time and luck, we believe, plays a very, very critical and underrated role in everyone’s journey, I think. There could have been thousand ways. Stories could have been different. I think I always tell people, I read it somewhere and very close to my heart that ​“You are always one decision away from a very different life.” Always at any point in time.

Coming back to your thing. So, I think one thing, if you connect the dots backwards, which my childhood has influenced what we are doing at Square Yards, how we built it, was the risk appetite thing. When I grew up, although my definition of risk is very different than the normal humans, but I was always an all-in guy.

In my early years, schooling, not many people know that. I do not think Kanika also knows about it, but we never discussed it. But there was a time I gave up school because I wanted to play cricket. I was all in. 

I just gave up everything. I went home, told my parents, I am not going to school from tomorrow. My training starts. I enrolled at the training. 

[00:05:34] Karthik Reddy: Which grade was this?

[00:05:36] Tanuj Shori: Grade 8. 

[00:05:37] Karthik Reddy: Wow. 

[00:05:37] Tanuj Shori: And I told my parents that, that is it. From tomorrow, this is my training academy. My whole day, next six months, I am going to be playing cricket, nothing else. I think another factor which has been very true to me is my assessment of where I am in risk.

I went there, two weeks into the training, I realized I am passionate enough. I may not have the relevant skill set to make it big. I love it for the sake of loving it, may not be my career. I corrected my decision, went back and re-enrolled. 

So, I think those things, things like in my college, in my engineering college, I led a movement against a couple of, we believed at that point in time, unfair practices by the administration and went on a hartaal. I think those leadership attributes are always there from the beginning. I think I motivated 70% of our batch to not appear for the exams and I was rusticated for that. 

Again, I was brought back in when things settled, but I am saying these factors, these attributes are always there that what do I want to do in life? Did I have a clarity when I was growing up what I wanted to do? No, nothing. 

I think I have always built my life, my career predicated on what I love, what I do not love, what gives me peace, what does not give me peace. Like post MBA, I changed 7 jobs in 5 months. So, I went, started working somewhere, realized this is not for me. I did not know what I want.

[00:07:15] Karthik Reddy: That’s crazy. 

[00:07:16] Tanuj Shori: What I realized, I did not want this. And if I do not want something, I cannot do it. And before I landed up in Lehman Brothers and then rest is history.

[00:07:24] Karthik Reddy: So, I was going to bring you to that. I thought I did 7 in 10 before I started Blume. I also felt confused, a combination of circumstances, whatever it was, 2001 to 2011. People accused me of saying, you did not know what you want. You did 7 in 5 months, that’s crazy. 

So, what made you then finally say — so two things, I was anyway going to ask you a lead up question to what did the banking career and how did you lead into that part of your life? And how did that inform you on both who you were going to become at Square Yards and what did you take away? Because you had some crazy ups and downs there as well. You went into, I think the GFC, the Global Financial Crisis in 08, and then Nomura took over that part of Lehman, I am guessing.

So, would love to hear what finally made banking stick after those 7 attempts.

[00:08:15] Tanuj Shori: May not be politically correct answer, but it is an honest answer. I think — I think probably I did not realize that at that point in time — now when I look back, people influence most of my decisions. The reason I did not stick to the first 5 careers was for whatever reason, I did not feel connected to the place, to the ecosystem, to the individuals. I think in my mind, I was obviously veering towards whether I want to build a career in finance, marketing, but it was not a calling per say. So, when I joined Lehman, I just absolutely fell in love with the place and the people and my boss. I think that plays a critical role.

[00:08:54] Karthik Reddy: This was in India or New York?

[00:08:55] Tanuj Shori: This started in India and, well, stint in New York, started in India and then eventually moved to Singapore. But I think the individuals there significantly influenced my choice. But coming back to your question, exactly what you asked, I think what Lehman/​Nomura termed it as the same organization, but the same individuals continued post acquisition was I think that place taught me the value part of working hard.

I think, again, passing out of that engineering/​MBA era, having some sort of a clout over the ecosystem I was involved with, whether being a cricket captain, whether it was leading, like I said. 

[00:09:41] Karthik Reddy: The student union.

[00:09:43] Tanuj Shori: I was not privileged and probably I come from a very humble background, but I was very privileged from given a position of likability in the ecosystem I was present in. I think that made me, to an extent, carefree, if I were to use the right word.

So, basically what I thought, I was always smart, but I did not work hard. I think a lot to do with very similar to the generation today. I wanted that work-life balance. I wanted to go home, enjoy with my friends at 6 p.m., wanted to enjoy various comforts. I had just moved to Mumbai, loved the Mumbai as a city, wanted to see around.

And then, I joined Lehman and I realized I was a fish out of water. I absolutely did not know 70% of what I was doing. There’s a very funny story and a lot of my old peers and colleagues would attest to it. First day on Lehman floor and I am joining Lehman Brothers, one of the biggest investment banks of that era. And I ask a question on the floor, I am sorry, all that is great, but what is equity? I did not know what is equity and I had joined Lehman. 

Do not ask how did I get through, I got through. I got through somehow, but I did not know that. And it was embarrassing in front of people. The individual who was leading me, he actually put me through the motions and he gave me an earful, he gave me 10x more than what he gave to others in terms of work. I had to work hard. I had no other option to survive. It was theoretically a dream job I could have had. 

I think there were days, weeks, I was in office at 7 a.m., going home at 3, sleeping for a couple of hours, coming back to office, no weekends, it went on for months. I remember crying once in the night, ke mein kahan phus gaya? This is not what I wanted out of my life. 

I think but before I realized it, I became blue-eyed boy of the management. And suddenly, I realized that success is addictive. I think I am forgetting who said this, but someone said at some convocation in some B‑school that it is a very tricky slope between what you are passionate about and what you are good at. I think everyone tells everyone, please do follow your passion and you will do well. I think money will follow you, success will follow you. That gentleman said, actually, the passion becomes what you are good at. If you are seriously good at something, or if you become good at something, you are better than most of the other humans, you genuinely start loving it. I think that is what happened with me. 

I think the first time that hard work married smart work, and I succeeded relatively much faster than anyone else around in the room. And those were the early days which started filling me with the notion that I could do something, and I could build something with my life, which could be extraordinary.

[00:12:51] Karthik Reddy: So, I sm guessing you put in a few years before GFC. And so, when that news came out, you had a camaraderie between you, your bosses, your peers, but still, how did you guys deal with the shock of, I think the transition to Nomura was relatively smooth.

[00:13:09] Tanuj Shori: It was smooth. Obviously, it was cutthroat in the sense, there was a lot of churning which happened at that point in time, downsizing which happened. I think we remember every Monday morning, HR used to call and whoever desk line phone rang means this was their last day at job. I think we moved down from 450 individuals at Lehman to around 70 – 80. Fortunately, I was part of 70 – 80. 

But apart from living through those few weeks of nightmare, I think it was relatively smooth. It opened up significant doors of possibility. The Lehman management moved to Nomura. I got a larger opportunity to work in Singapore ecosystem, again, reshaped my career from there, which eventually led to what we are doing now.

[00:13:51] Karthik Reddy: And five years there. 

[00:13:52] Tanuj Shori: Total, both organizations. 

[00:13:54] Karthik Reddy: No, after moving to Nomura, another 5 years? 

[00:13:56] Tanuj Shori: After Nomura, it was around 6. 

[00:13:58] Karthik Reddy: Six years.

So, now cutting over to the main story, Square Yards. So, at least our research and rumor has it that you were personally trying to go through the same experience of being a customer. And actually, perhaps buy some real estate in India, because you probably had some savings, that is my guess. But was that the trigger point or did you always see this to be the opportunity of a lifetime? Yeah, maybe we will start with that. What triggered this great idea?

[00:14:29] Tanuj Shori: So, I was not a born entrepreneur, I am still not. I tell everyone I am an accidental entrepreneur. 

[00:14:34] Karthik Reddy: Okay, it does not sound like. You were always like a leader.

[00:14:38] Tanuj Shori: I was doing well in my career. And I used to back early stage entrepreneurs, obviously, it was very early days of being an angel investor, but a lot of ideas I had back then. 

[00:14:47] Karthik Reddy: 13 – 15 years ago, it was very early. 

[00:14:50] Tanuj Shori: Exactly. My theory was very, very simple and it still is, even if I meet any young founders, that if anyone is building it for money, they are in for a wrong thing. 

[00:14:59] Karthik Reddy: Yeah.

[00:15:00] Tanuj Shori: Whatever you are building, you have to be all in. It has to be life and death for you, simple. If it is not life and death for you, I cannot back it. So, did I explore, did the thought occur in my mind, Kanika’s mind, should we do something of our own, potentially fleeting thought, but then we realized that nothing we think today can be life and death for us, simple. And if nothing could be life and death for us, we would better off not venturing out in the ecosystem. I think the careers, if you are building, if you are in the right job, in the right career, in the right space, growing the right way, it gives you enough rooms to take most of the desires you have in life.

So, I think, funnily enough, accidentally, when we were in the process of buying an asset, Kanika was exploring something and when we went through the journey, we realized this could be an interesting play at it, me being me, that it could be an interesting play, but is this something I want to do for life? No! 

Kanika, accidentally, fortunately loved the idea much more than I did. And she is like, no, this is something I want to try. And so you mentioned Shanghai, Shanghai has a very deep connect to how we started. 

[00:16:10] Karthik Reddy: How’s that?

[00:16:11] Tanuj Shori: I was in Hong Kong. So, used to be in China very often, used to be in Shanghai every month. So, there is a company in China called Lianjia. They had built this at scale, what we are trying to build in Square Yards. In 2011-12, they had around 25% market share of the city. 

[00:16:25] Karthik Reddy: Oh, wow.

[00:16:26] Tanuj Shori: Today, they are almost 12 – 13 billion dollars, went up to 100 billion market cap before. You know, they built a large ecosystem. So, Kanika connected dots with that, that if they could do it, we could also replicate the same in India. And I was partly forced, partly influenced to be the first angel investor to her venture.

[00:16:45] Karthik Reddy: Oh, that is how it started. 

[00:16:46] Tanuj Shori: So, I was like, okay, fine. You go ahead and build it.

[00:16:48] Karthik Reddy: Lovely origin story.

[00:16:49] Tanuj Shori: I will back it with the capital. But this is not something I can still be all in. 

[00:16:55] Karthik Reddy: So that was a starting point. 

[00:16:57] Tanuj Shori: So that was a starting point. I think before I realized, and obviously, I was helping her, before I realized I was significantly deeply emotionally invested, not just financially invested, emotionally invested into something, trying to hire a team, trying to see how the ecosystem looks in India. So that was the time we took a trip down to India. We met all the industry incumbents. So, that conviction grew. I think, again, connecting the dots backwards, before we realized, before I realized, I fell in love. 

And this is again a funny story that was on Friday, in Hong Kong, we are out clubbing. I cannot get Square Yards out of mind, it is like your first crush, when you are a teenager. I could not sleep those couple of nights. Monday, I quit.

[00:17:41] Karthik Reddy: Two days it took, 48 hours of like obsession. 

[00:17:43] Tanuj Shori: Exactly. 

[00:17:44] Karthik Reddy: No, it is sad that we cannot have Kanika in the room for multiple reasons. As I told you, this season, we started bringing in all the co-founders, if we could. Second, happens to be a Wharton alum. So, I would have loved to have a fellow Wharton alum. Third, like today, you just revealed that she gave the initial spark to the idea. So, she definitely belongs in the room. Unfortunately, with you guys in Dubai, it is difficult to manage the logistics, but some other day, hopefully. So crazy, 48 or 72 hours, you decide to going all in.

There is a second part of the story, I do not know how true it is. So, two parts to it. One is, I think, you are a unique example of understanding that you cannot do this as much as, and by the way, the other reason to have Kanika in the room is people, strangely, by the way, this husband-wife teams, happens all the time in our industry, or we have not seen enough proof of this. And please keep shining, please make this a great company. So, you need more role models, that these are not formulas, right? 

Yeah, it might not have worked for another husband-wife team, but I think that can work. And we had Srishti and Tarun of E2E earlier this season, which is our portfolio company, husband-wife team, listed on the main board, started from SMB. So yeah, more power to both of you. 

But two parts to it. One is, it looks like the early financing, you were old school, right? You have never come and taken money from VCs, etc. And it os not like you were waiting for someone to come and back your conviction. You went all in, as in all in, like, you know, sell everything, whatever is required, put the money. I mean, I do not know how much of all in you went, did you sell house, jewelry, etc. But I would love to hear that.

And second is, yes, you were a leader and you were a formidable banker by then already. But building for an entrepreneurial journey is very different. Because it is not about, we debate this at Blume all the time, that are you hiring an employee or an entrepreneur?

And in our case, it is doubly more important because it is a small firm, and we are trying to build for decades, much like you are. So, I relate to that problem a lot. How did you know that you had to do all of that, like at the get go?

I have seen very few founders get that right off the bat, unless they have gotten amazingly lucky in finding a fantastic co-founding team on day one. But here it is a husband-wife team, you are trying to inspire another set of leaders. And you are saying, I am ready to go all in. What gave you the courage? How did you go about building it? I would love to, for our younger entrepreneurs who will listen to these shows, to hear that.

[00:20:20] Tanuj Shori: As you were speaking, I was thinking in my mind, I think three key ingredients, making this up as I speak, articulating this up — capital, co-founders, people effectively, and passion or ownership, however you define it — I think those three were very, very critical. 

I think capital first, going back to the philosophy of all in, theory was very, very simple. If this is not something which I can give or, me and Kanika can give, our life to, we cannot go and ask anyone else for capital. I think that remains true to our entire philosophy today as well. So, we went all in to an extent that not just selling our houses, selling our parents’ houses as well. 

[00:21:06] Karthik Reddy: Oh, wow.

[00:21:07] Tanuj Shori: To that extent. And unfortunately, our parents still stay on rent, thanks to me. 

[00:21:12] Karthik Reddy: Thanks to you.

[00:21:13] Tanuj Shori: So that was an extent. So that was the first port of call ensuring that we are fully invested whatever we can.

Second step, port of call was going back to the individuals who knew me. So, these are my professional colleagues, these are my bosses. Yesterday, someone was asking me, who are your first few investors? My first 10 investors were all my bosses, ex-bosses.

[00:21:38] Karthik Reddy: It is a great validation of what they think about your capability of building a great company. They are willing to take that bet on you.

[00:21:44] Tanuj Shori: And we were fortunate enough to have that conviction from these individuals who had worked with us closely. They gave us the capital. So, I think capital part never worried us in the beginning.

I think that those first few instances gave us enough conviction that if you are good enough, capital will follow, wherever it will follow from. But the more critical part was, how do you build it? 

Obviously, first few months when we went all in, we realized building it is tough. It is very, I think it does not follow the linear path which we had modeled in our Excel sheet. I was an Excel sheet person, being an analyst, this is not going according to the plan. And suddenly I remembered when I was on the other side of the table, I used to question management, this is what you had talked about next year strategy and it has not played out that way.

I think one gap we realized was, we were hiring people, we were not hiring co-founders. So, my philosophy when I was working for Lehman/​Nomura was, I was an entrepreneur, we use this word entrepreneur in the sense that, it never occurred to me that I am not a founder, that founder word was alien to me. I have been given a role, it is my fiduciary responsibility to fulfill the role to the best of my ability and capability.

If the expectation from me is x, I need to deliver 3x, simple, or 4x, whichever is the outlier boundary condition might be. The same theory, unfortunately, was not working in early days with the individuals we had brought in. So, I don’t know if you have seen the Moneyball movie. 

[00:23:22] Karthik Reddy: Yes, of course. 

[00:23:22] Tanuj Shori: I picked up the phone — fortunately, I built enough friendships, relationships in my life— picked up the phone, reached out to a lot of these individuals who played with me, went to school with me, engineering with me, MBA with me, whoever I could blindly trust. That was the only barometer. 

[00:23:38] Karthik Reddy: That’s a key, yeah, that’s key. 

[00:23:39] Tanuj Shori: Absolutely, like who I knew that if they are in, they are in, like it will be their life and death as well. Convinced 15 of them. 

[00:23:49] Karthik Reddy: No, it’s an interesting point. I mean, in our leadership, four of us have worked together in the past, for example, same thing, same emotion.

[00:23:57] Tanuj Shori: It took a lot of convincing, a lot of them agreed on the first phone call, quit the next day; few of them needed a few months of convincing, but in the first 6 to 12 months, I was able to bring a very strong team together. Those individuals still exist, by the way. 

[00:24:12] Karthik Reddy: All of them? 

[00:24:13] Tanuj Shori: No one has ever left. None of us have sided ourselves, none of us are angel investors, we are still all-in.

[00:24:19] Karthik Reddy: Lovely. But that in itself is a beautiful part of the story, decade in that everyone’s there.

[00:24:24] Tanuj Shori: So, we asked this question, we are in a very fragmented space, and we probably might talk about it, what we did, which was very different, what gives us right to win? And I am lost for an answer every time I am asked this question, I cannot model in our Excel sheet and forecast, but what gives us right to win is these 15 individuals effectively.

[00:24:44] Karthik Reddy: How many, about 15? 

[00:24:45] Tanuj Shori: 15. And then later on, a few individuals came via acquisition, became part of the co-founding team. But there is another theory that the way we acquired or merged with certain entities was because of the founders. For me, it was very, very… 

[00:24:58] Karthik Reddy: You saw them as a proxy for the kind of 15 you had.

[00:25:01] Tanuj Shori: Can I marry this individual? 

[00:25:04] Karthik Reddy: Absolutely. 

[00:25:04] Tanuj Shori: If I cannot, it does not matter, whatever the economics of the business are, it is irrelevant.

[00:25:08] Karthik Reddy: Yeah. Amazing.

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You talked a little bit about things not going to plan. If I may ask, like, all in with everything that you had, how much capital did you manage to put together? Because what surprised us was despite what you said and not taking venture capital, you actually started hitting scale very, very early.

I know maybe the starting thesis was NRIs like us are not able to invest in India, and we should cater to them. This is like, by the way, when Deep was on our podcast, their first five years was spent trying to cater to NRIs because there was no domestic market, which was as populous on planes and was a very low margin business. It was Air Deccan, Kingfisher era, right?

So, NRIs obviously has seen as a source. Did that hold out for very long? What gave you the courage to say, no, no, the Indians are ready now, and we should cater to them? And you went to multiple cities. There was a lot of expansion activity in the early years, which you do not expect a startup to do and doubly so you did it with no backing of like fat venture capital. So, just trying to understand that part of the journey.

[00:27:16] Tanuj Shori: And a lot of tuition fees as well.

[00:27:19] Karthik Reddy: That always happens. 

[00:27:21] Tanuj Shori: So, I am an eternal optimist as an individual. 

[00:27:25] Karthik Reddy: All of us entrepreneurs are.

[00:27:28] Tanuj Shori: It takes a lot out of me to find fault with a business idea, with a business model or an individual. I believe my usual theory in life is sub accha hi ho, eventually. As long as you are doing the right things, you are going with the right inputs. You theoretically should not fail, but you do. 

I think a lot of these early years expansions or moves were driven by, I think less from the hunger from that we need to become all powerful in two years, more driven from the eternal optimism that this should work.

And again, I think blame it on my psychology that I believe you cannot test anything out on an Excel sheet ever. You need to be on the ground. You need to start building it. You realize where are you going wrong? You need to course correct. You need to course correct fast. You need to learn fast and rebuild that again. So, it’s not as if we did not have access to capital. We had. We were fortunate enough to have access to private capital.

So, these were all significant individuals who brought in sizable experience, I think drawing board, leadership, LPs, GPs in private equity, public market funds, and we were fortunate enough to have access to them and fortunate enough to convince them to back us. So, we have raised enough capital. It is just that we did not raise it in a traditional format.

But I think capital was never a concern for us. But you are right. I think never in our last couple of years have been great, touchwood. Business is making significant cash flows, but till about a couple of years back, we were never at a stage where we had visibility on more than three months of salary.

[00:29:17] Karthik Reddy: Crazy.

[00:29:17] Tanuj Shori: But we had insane amount of confidence of being able to raise capital as and when we wanted. Again, hamara ek bahut hi famous dialogue hai internally ke uparwale né pet diya hai, uparwala bhar dega, to tension kyon leni. So, we go to sleep peacefully, thinking, believing that we will be able to solve it next day. 

[00:29:36] Karthik Reddy: That is insane courage. And we have not seen that much in entrepreneurs. So, it is not as common as you make it out to be. So, more power to you.

But again, of course, you started seeing success in that model of raising from private individuals, etc., it came because they knew that you were executing well and they would back you up if required. Was that it? 

[00:29:58] Tanuj Shori: Part of that was that, part of that was history. Part of that was confidence in our execution capability, but we were also very honest at any point in time. We were very, very clear to external stakeholders as well as internal stakeholders. I think first couple of years, what I was saying about tuition fees, we realized very early that it’s a very, very tough segment to solve. It is a very, very tough category to solve.

[00:30:21] Karthik Reddy: I am going to come to that because, this ecosystem has been, of course, there is these co-working space ideas like the WeWork, BHIVE, IndiQube, etc., which have done well. But broadly real estate tech, as we call it in India, has been a straggler for a segment that otherwise has like so much of our GDP going into it. And so, in those early years, as you said, you paid your tuition fee, but what did you arrive at in terms of your degree and diploma, in the sense that what felt like product-market fit eventually, I am just curious? What is the first product-market fit in your business?

[00:31:01] Tanuj Shori: We were fortunate enough to have global experience. So, I think we saw what did not work in the global markets. 

[00:31:09] Karthik Reddy: You had the China example.

[00:31:10] Tanuj Shori: China example, a couple of UK examples, one Australia example, one US example. And they have gone through their own journeys of doing certain things right, not doing certain things right. I think one thing which was very clear to us that global developed and emerging markets work differently for these models.

But everyone in India was trying to build unilaterally was a pure search and discovery platform. And it was tempting. I still remember a couple of VC meetings. We were told that, why are we reinventing the wheel? We should just blindly go and build another search and discovery platform.

Our theory was that if for whatever reason, five players have not succeeded, the sixth will not, the market is not big enough. Just for pure search and discovery, not just for our category. I think that is true for across categories.

[00:31:58] Karthik Reddy: True, the value that you can extract from that business model is not enough.

[00:32:03] Tanuj Shori: So, then, we went deep into the business model. We realized, and this is a thing that internally and externally, we came to a validation that this is going to take decades to solve. Because we were trying to solve for becoming an organized player in a very, very fragmented market.

Fragmented market of principles, fragmented market of distributors, fragmented market of consumers, very integrated value chain, each part of the value chain broken. 

[00:32:30] Karthik Reddy: Correct. And in India, while it is unified, it is still 20 different markets. 

[00:32:35] Tanuj Shori: And more so in this. Obviously, we have grown up hearing that you need to find your niche. Build your success in that niche. And it is not that thought did not occur to us. We also thought, okay, should we find our niche in the entire ecosystem?

I think the answer was very clear to us. Writing was on the wall that you will struggle to find a niche and build a niche in this ecosystem because the ecosystem is married to each other. And fortunately, unfortunately, no one had solved for other parts of the ecosystem.

So, the question in front of us was, are we ready? Do we want to? Do we even want to attempt to solve the entire ecosystem?

[00:33:12] Karthik Reddy: It is very daunting because as you said, classifieds was the way to go, but that is very web 1.0 in that sense. And in India, as you rightly said, the value chain is not deep enough for you to do fragments and become billion-dollar companies.

[00:33:23] Tanuj Shori: So, I remember having a board meeting with our co-founders, I think, showing up at someone’s house for a nice dinner and drink. And we were talking about that. Our spouses are irritated, by the way. And eventually the spouses also come and join Square Yard. They hear so much of Square Yard. They are like, ke hamari life mein wase bhi Square Yard se Square Yard mein hi kaam kar lete hain.

[00:33:43] Karthik Reddy: Dus saal se sare mil ke ek hi bacche ko paal rahe hain.

[00:33:48] Tanuj Shori: So, this was a very valid question. And we genuinely asked that. Theoretically, this is what it looks like. Karenge to humen sub karna padega. With very fair assessment, we will not succeed doing only single thing. Each one of us raised their hands up. I will do this. You take care of this. So, there are X number parts of the ecosystem. Each potential co-founder raising their hand. I will solve. I will build a venture in this ecosystem, irrespective of what you guys are doing for the other parts of the ecosystem. We practically became an accelerator.

[00:34:23] Karthik Reddy: Internally to build multiple businesses that can be strong enough.

[00:34:28] Tanuj Shori: Multiple businesses in multiple geographies at the same time.

[00:34:29] Karthik Reddy: We see this in some of our businesses. Like if you see Spinny or you see Leverage Edu, if you have met these founders, they are effectively having to build all of the components to come and make it stick together. Same thing. Super fragmented markets. Customer wants a solution. You have to figure out how to solve for that and make it frictionless.

But real estate was like the nightmare that nobody could conquer in some sense, right? 

[00:34:52] Tanuj Shori: Exactly. So, all of these had to go right. They took their own sweet time, their own version of scale economics to go right. Fortunately, I am not saying we have solved for everything. We are still probably in the journey in very early days, but we are progressing towards it. And now things have started to make sense.

[00:35:10] Karthik Reddy: Would you say today you have grown up to become India’s largest organized real-estate brokerage firm?

[00:35:16] Tanuj Shori: How do we define our business model?

[00:35:18] Karthik Reddy: I mean, anyway, you now have to say this in your sleep. You are planning to go public within a year or so.

[00:35:27] Tanuj Shori: So, it is not just the brokerage. Brokerage was the focal point in terms of how we captured the fragmented market. Became relevant in the supply chain. Let us put it that way. But it is an entire journey. So we help people search homes. We are the largest search and discovery. I think a lot of people do not realize that.

[00:35:46] Karthik Reddy: So, you have become that naturally.

[00:35:47] Tanuj Shori: We are larger than all the incumbents who existed in the market before us. I think the difference is we do not monetize that part. We are very, very clear. That is $150 million revenue pool. We sacrifice that $150 million revenue pool to fight for a $4 billion revenue pool.

We built the largest transaction ecosystem. We are probably 10x larger than any other player. We move just to put some numbers in perspective. This year, we end up moving almost 18,000 crores of real estate through the platform. If we were a real-estate developer, we would be fifth largest in India and we are not happy and proud about that. We should have been the largest by now. 

Another very good example of the ecosystem which started as an ancillary business in helping individuals get financing has become the largest animal in our entire playbook. Urban Money, which is our subsidiary brand. This year, we will end up moving 70,000 to 80,000 crores worth of loans through our platform.

[00:36:46] Karthik Reddy: How many?

[00:36:46] Tanuj Shori: 80,000 crores, which practically means we are de facto the largest independent financial services distributor in the country. 

[00:36:53] Karthik Reddy: And in that, you are predominantly a lead generator or you actually do more of the value stack?

[00:36:58] Tanuj Shori: We do not underwrite credit, but we are the entire end-to-end origination player.

[00:37:03] Karthik Reddy: Crazy.

[00:37:05] Tanuj Shori: Which practically puts us in the same league as the largest private lenders, purely on the volumes. We are building one of the first…

[00:37:12] Karthik Reddy: So that product has overtaken the ability for you to sell. It has nothing to do with that.

[00:37:16] Tanuj Shori: It has nothing to do with that. The captive business is only 10% of the overall Urban Money’s pie. That has become… 

[00:37:22] Karthik Reddy: So, these are your two big sort of top of funnels in that sense? 

[00:37:25] Tanuj Shori: And now we are building home renovations piece. We are building property management piece. These are again very large TAMs, part of the same ecosystem because the same consumer goes through the journey. So, the mandate to every co-founder is very, very clear. You need to build category leading. We do not get into any vertical just because we think we can earn another X amount of million dollars of revenue or profitability from that. The question is very, very clear. Can we become the category leader? 

[00:37:54] Karthik Reddy: Otherwise, don’t do it.

[00:37:54] Tanuj Shori: Otherwise, don’t do it. So, do we have right to win? If we do not have right to win, do not do it.

[00:37:58] Karthik Reddy: That is crazy clarity. That is amazing. So, you are not building adjacency. You are building almost standalone businesses. 

[00:38:03] Tanuj Shori: Which is what has happened. So now there is a healthy competition internally, kon phle IPO jayega? Which segment will unlock value first?

[00:38:11] Karthik Reddy: Oh, really? So that ambition is also there? 

[00:38:14] Tanuj Shori: That ambition is also there.

[00:38:15] Karthik Reddy: Amazing. So, give me a sense of…you are a relatively quiet founder. You have not been in the venture process, VC process. So not too many people know of how the trajectory of this business has taken off. So, I am asking you a difficult question in the sense that you have to play it back in your head and walk me through what it felt like. 

But if you have to give a sense of what your equivalent of seed, series A, B, C was and how much capital is this business absorbed. You have also been very clever in addition to knowing that you have the audacity to raise capital whenever you want. You also actually levered the business almost perfectly in this growth path as well as you could have. Not too many folks have the courage to take leverage even seven years in. And you have been building with that. So, maybe we should break up two parts. 

But you have already talked about how the teams have evolved into almost leaders and CEOs inside the firm. So, we will not touch upon that. But on the capital journey and alongside that, if you look at the revenue journey, how have you grown from 2015 to now?

[00:39:30] Tanuj Shori: So, let me rewind. So early days, like I said, the validation came early. I think success is the wrong word. I do not think we are successful yet. 

[00:39:40] Karthik Reddy: That is the spirit, Tanuj. We need you to think 10x from here.

[00:39:45] Tanuj Shori: We were able to raise one of the largest angel rounds actually. So, the first round was around $12 million. We had practically nothing on the table. So again, that was a very strong validation from a lot of individuals who backed us. They continue to remain. So we have never had a secondary in our life cycle. Everyone still continues to back us. 

[00:40:03] Karthik Reddy: That is insane. Not even in the recent round that you announced?

[00:40:07] Tanuj Shori: Not even the recent. 

[00:40:08] Karthik Reddy: Oh, wow. 

[00:40:10] Tanuj Shori: So that gave us enough, obviously, capital, food for thought, conviction to go and make mistakes. I think the tuition fees, which we spoke about. The first few years, were like I said, tuition fees. Then fortunately, Reliance came in at the right time. So, that capital helped. That was the first equity capital we ever raised actually. 

Before that and for a large part of the journey after that, our cap raise, like you mentioned, has been in the form of structured instruments, us leveraging ourselves up, either largely coming from the thought process we grew up with, that equity is the most expensive thing in the world. You do not give up equity unless you absolutely need to and parallelly. 

So, I think for us, capital has not seeded the business, the business has brought in capital. I think for us, every year, we would look at where we are, what are we planning to do in the next few months. The goals have been very short-term. There is a large long-term animal we want to build. But what do we want to achieve? What do we want to solve on ground? What are the problems? For example, I go to sleep every night listing down 10 things I want to solve next day. Very, very simple. 

[00:41:21] Karthik Reddy: You do it every day?

[00:41:21] Tanuj Shori: I do it every day. This is what I need to do tomorrow. That is what I tell all my peers to do. The future will take care of itself. You solve for the next day. So, we do that. And based on that, the capital requirement which we have, like I said, we have been fortunate enough to go and tap the door, knock the door to XYZ individuals. This is the capital requirement we have. This is a structured instrument.

Fortunately, that capital has always been available. In fact, a large portion of that came in the demonetization week, actually. So, we were not worried on the business side in terms of what is happening, but we were worried that it might hit our plans, perfectly laid out plans.

[00:42:01] Karthik Reddy: I was going to ask you all the roadblocks.

[00:42:01] Tanuj Shori: But we were fortunate enough to be able to get there. And that has always been the journey, even today. It is business first, the business plans first, and what we want to raise on the capital side to solve for the next six months. And then the next six months, and then the next six months. So, to all put together, Karthik, till date, we have raised 175 million. Out of 175, 150 has been retail.

[00:42:29] Karthik Reddy: Wow. 

[00:42:31] Tanuj Shori: Practically the rest of it. But these are, again, the same, most of the same individuals, same families who have come in and backed us at every point in time.

[00:42:38] Karthik Reddy: Lovely. I think the only other story I have heard of this kind was maybe Nykaa. 

[00:42:47] Tanuj Shori: Yes, very similar.

[00:42:47] Karthik Reddy: Took institutional capital much later, like kind of what you did. I know you had one reliance kind of infusion, but broadly that is a drop compared to how much you have raised in that ocean. 

And revenue-wise, I know we have come to where today is and where the future is, as you think of listing. But did you unlock? So, we have seen certain businesses where it takes a long time to unlock the operational efficiencies, and suddenly it starts taking off. Did you have those moments?

[00:43:14] Tanuj Shori: Precisely that happened with us. So first, we built multiple parts of the ecosystem, but the toughest part, the toughest learning has been building retail distribution. I still tell everyone, I think out of building a deep tech side of it, the discovery platform, if the difficulty level of building the retail distribution is there, everything else is there. There is no comparison. How you build people, how you manage distribution teams, how you unlock sales interventions, how you unlock productivity, it is a daily struggle. You never settle. 

I think for the longest period of time, from 2014 to 2019 – 20, that was our learning phase on ability to build scale and economies on the sales distribution side. COVID helped. I think COVID helped from the industry digitization perspective, availability of talent perspective, but effectively 2021 onwards when the pace of scale really took off. So, just to put some numbers in perspective, FY21, we were at 30 million revenue, I think.

[00:44:20] Karthik Reddy: 30 million?

[00:44:21] Tanuj Shori: 25 to 30.

[00:44:23] Karthik Reddy: This is net revenue to you?

[00:44:24] Tanuj Shori: This is net revenue to us. We will end this year with around 220. 

[00:44:29] Karthik Reddy: 7x in four years.

[00:44:31] Tanuj Shori: Right. So, it has really taken off in the last five years.

[00:44:33] Karthik Reddy: That’s okay. When I met you, and even then people were saying this is the best story that is going to happen. I wish I had more capital to play you at that point. It is quite amazing. So, 7x. And it came predominantly from one particular driver, which is just retail. Which revenue drove this?

[00:44:53] Tanuj Shori: I think all the levers, moving parts, which we were speaking about started contributing. It is just that all these moving parts take a few years to take off before we solve for operational efficiency. So, we believe what we have learned and done very well internally is the ability to scale.

We can scale when we want, however, fast we want. What we try and solve for in the early years in any business we are building is the perfect combination of growth and profitability. I think partly because we never had access to large VC pools or large deep-rooted multi-year capital. We were always very capital efficient. We knew that hamre pass teen mahine ke baad salary dene ke paise nahi hain. We cannot burn.

But at the same point in time we believe and we have always believed that you need a certain scale to achieve certain operational efficiency. It is just a combination of both. Do we need to grow at 100%, 150% and burn a lot or do we believe our sweet spot is a 50 – 60% growth and then you become profitable?

So, all the businesses which we build across geographies go through that curve in the first few years. Once we realize that we have cracked the economics code, then we press the accelerator on growth. It has happened in all our businesses. The growth has become far easier, far faster as we scale. 

[00:46:14] Karthik Reddy: In the later stage.

[00:46:15] Tanuj Shori: In the latest stage.

[00:46:16] Karthik Reddy: This is a good time to talk about IDFC FIRST Bank, our seasoned partner. IDFC FIRST Bank has earned its reputation as one of India’s most startup-friendly banks through its FIRST Wings program which provides dedicated mentorship and tailored financial solutions to help early-stage ventures scale effectively. Coincidentally, many of Blume’s portfolio companies, much later stage, also partner with IDFC FIRST Bank for their banking and financial needs.

If you are well-funded and scaling, they are great lending and banking partners and our portfolio companies would attest to that. 

How much of the business is India versus international trade? 

[00:46:47] Tanuj Shori: India is now 85%.

[00:46:49] Karthik Reddy: 90? 

[00:46:50] Tanuj Shori: 85%. 

[00:46:50] Karthik Reddy: 85%. The rest is Middle East?

[00:46:53] Tanuj Shori: Middle East is 12%. We are still in Australia and Canada around 3 – 4%. 

[00:46:56] Karthik Reddy: So, you do have some and we will come to your future ambitions. Actually, I missed a question, two sets of questions related to people. You talked about retail distribution being the biggest challenge. What is the magic sauce there, and how big is that workforce today for you? At a group level, how many folks actually belong to Square Yards as opposed to being partners of one kind or the other? 

And what has worked in terms of getting that culture right that this operational efficiency kicks in, and they feel like married to the idea that they are a part of Square Yards? And what is the difference between having that, does that culture have to be uniform when you are dealing with a fragmented market of brokers etc. who do not want to be employees, who are all solopreneurs versus your employee base?

So, I am just curious. It is not like we did not try. We also tried a couple of plays in real estate, did not go anywhere and I felt like this always used to break. Nobody got this right and you somehow seem to have got that scale right especially across different sub-geographies because the Tamil Nadu operation was very different from the Bombay operation which is different from the Delhi operation. So, what is the magic sauce there?

[00:48:13] Tanuj Shori: To answer your first question around 6,000 employees today, family members, employees. We do not call them employees. 

[00:48:19] Karthik Reddy: Sorry, team members.

[00:48:20] Tanuj Shori: So, 5,000 of them would be in retail distribution across verticals, across various businesses, across geographies. I think and I will talk about culture and culture has been a story for us. Again, we have gone through various peaks and troughs and change of thoughts, but purely, I think, we believe the secret sauce there is everything was on to the people. 

The age-old legacy of you build people and people build businesses is more true in the retail distribution. Your ability to retain the top talent. Your ability to ensure that these individuals work for a unified goal for 10 years. You continue to bring in those products, operational, sales, efficiencies on a daily basis. How you run these teams. How you mingle with these teams. For example, our iteration rate at the senior management level is almost zero. No one has ever left us. Not talking about the co-founding team, the leadership team.

So, I mean, a lot of personal effort goes into that, a lot of connect goes into that and I have always believed people work for people. 

[00:49:28] Karthik Reddy: Yeah, you started from that. 

[00:49:30] Tanuj Shori: So, that plays out. That has also defined how we built culture. We did not get culture right on day one. In fact, I believe we still have not got culture right, is an evolution. At certain point in time, a certain culture made sense.

[00:49:45] Karthik Reddy: That is right and this team grows you have to adapt. 

[00:49:47] Tanuj Shori: When we grew, we realized that culture is not the right fit for today’s scale or today’s aspiration or today’s generation, so we evolved. The good thing with us is we evolved. I think hopefully we wake up on the right side of the bed and we believe this is the right thing to do and we do it we. If we decided something and we believe that was something we should not have done we go back and change. There are no egos. There are no cons, internally. 

So, that culture is a continuous evolving process, to answer your question. That culture also gets driven by the individual leading that culture. There is unified organization culture you want to build. That you want to give a gold standard experience to the consumers. You want to do right with every single employee, so on and so forth. 

But it is as good as announcing something, the implementation by who are running the teams on the ground is the most critical thing. And that is where basically our flag bearers have supported us with the change. That is very critical. And it is easy for me to wake up one day and say that sub ka culture change ho raha hai aaj se. Aaj se hum ye karenge.

In this industry, we realized at some point in time that to attract the right talent, to retain the right talent, we need to move to five days’ work. The industry works on six-day work weeks. I was, I still work seven days a week. I am a workaholic. 

So, jub humne announce kiya ke we are moving to five days’ work week, I got some 200 messages. Impossible! ye rumor sahi hia ke Tanuj Shori has announced five days work week, ye to ho hi nahi sakta. This is impossible. 

But what we realized, we looked at a lot of data, a lot of science, we realized that the amount of productivity we can drive in five days’ work week and the amount of talent we can retain and help us to grow will far exceed the number of extra hours. That was the best decision we ever took.

So, those things we continue to implement, we still, I think that is an exercise in progress. We evolve every single day.

[00:51:40] Karthik Reddy: Awesome. So, coming to maybe before I come to the present day, you already covered all the shocks, DEMON, RERA, real estate is a regulated business as well. It goes through ups and downs.

And you also spoke about having built this unique culture and bringing the best talent. By default, do you have an advantage because it is not that considered such a sexy business that you can actually drive the best talent to yourself by just standing out? Has that worked in your favor, you think?

[00:52:15] Tanuj Shori: That worked on day one. It was an advantage in the early years. It is a disadvantage now. Talent is a continuous struggle. 

[00:52:23] Karthik Reddy: Because now you build the best talent, it can easily run away and get to.

[00:52:26] Tanuj Shori: To grow at 50%, we need to be able to continuously bring talent and significant amount of. 

[00:52:32] Karthik Reddy: The scale is changed. 

[00:52:34] Tanuj Shori: But obviously at the same time, what is happening is we have also changed the definition and the perception of the industry. It is like any other consumer tech business. It is just more fragmented, just more unregulated, which means more opportunities. So, you can flip the coin either ways, which means tremendous opportunities for the career growth, for financial growth.

[00:52:55] Karthik Reddy: Aspirationally, you have created a new path for somebody who wants to work in this space.

[00:52:58] Tanuj Shori: So, we are going through, I think, that cycle of our own.

[00:53:02] Karthik Reddy: And you alluded to it, and I have it in my notes as well, that COVID actually was a big force multiplier for you. Some folks who are in better positions to take advantage of the post COVID scenario just broke out big time. And what all did you use COVID for? How did you strategize around that to come out much stronger than your competition?

[00:53:25] Tanuj Shori: So, our value chain across businesses is always a competition. We are not a deep tech business. 

[00:53:30] Karthik Reddy: Yes. It is dhandha business. 

[00:53:33] Tanuj Shori: But it has a significant tech digitization element to it. The challenge is adaptability by the stakeholders. So what COVID did, allowed us a force majeure, like you said, a way to force or let us say influence the stakeholders we work with 

[00:53:51] Karthik Reddy: To adopt the tech.

[00:53:52] Tanuj Shori: To adopt the digitization.

[00:53:53] Karthik Reddy: It has happened to a few industries, but I was surprised that it happened in real estate.

[00:53:58] Tanuj Shori: It happened at a significant clip, both in the lending side as well as the real estate.

[00:54:04] Karthik Reddy: And you think your competition was not as well equipped to offer the same set of like digital services?

[00:54:07] Tanuj Shori: They probably were equipped enough to offer the digitization platform, but unfortunately, they did not have the digital platform to support that.

[00:54:16] Karthik Reddy: So, now coming to the present, as we move towards the end of this chat, going back to the first question and the theme, where in that journey, do you feel like you have avenged that original destiny of sleeping over 48 hours and quitting your job? As it felt worth it, where do you feel like you are in that journey?

[00:54:38] Tanuj Shori: So, we never have an end goal. I never had an end goal.

[00:54:42] Karthik Reddy: I have known that about you, knowing you for five, six years now.

[00:54:46] Tanuj Shori: So, it is an evolution on the goal. We need to solve for the next best thing. And hopefully we are moving in the right direction.

Has the model evolved considerably since we thought what it could be day one? Yes! The core underlying pieces have remained the same that we needed to solve for the entire ecosystem. We are trying to solve for the entire ecosystem.

But I think the larger equation today is opportunity cost. I think where we were nine years back, where we are today, the opportunity cost has become significantly higher. So, it is like an unsaid fiduciary responsibility we have as a co-founding team to our peers, our colleagues, to the industry ecosystem.

We are, fortunately again, unlike a lot of other industries, where there is a very significant competition between two or three players in our competition, practically us, we are competing with ourselves. 

[00:55:42] Karthik Reddy: Yeah, everyone has kind of dropped by, which is great. 

[00:55:45] Tanuj Shori: So, fiduciary responsibility to do good by it. So, we tell the industry is so large, India is going through the urbanization curve and go through the housing boom, that we will probably be 20, 30, 40 times larger only if we survive. 2040 mein Square Yards should exist. They will become larger. But our entire thesis of execution and ability to execute will come in figuring out can we make it bring a delta over that?

I think that is what we strive for every single day. Do we believe we could have done the job better? 100%! I wish we could have built the same scale what we have in half the time and half the capital.

Those are the learnings. It is a very long journey. I think we are very, very clear that we are in it for another 20, 30, 40 years. There is nothing else we know how to do. There is nothing else we love what to do. We just want to do the same.

[00:56:38] Karthik Reddy: Amazing. You answered the other part of my question, which is where do you want to be in 10 – 15 years. We have noticed when the founder makes up their mind, collectively with your leadership that we are ready for the next phase of the journey and we are ready to face public scrutiny and be responsible to literally indirectly or directly through mutual fund houses or the other, you are now responsible for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of shareholders. 

And it is a very bold move and I am glad you are on the verge of that. It aligns so well with your philosophy as I know you that I am hoping that there will be shareholders who will always be happy owning Square Yard stock. You have $150 million worth of that today, but hopefully that grows into a much larger pool. 

[00:57:24] Tanuj Shori: Right. 

[00:57:25] Karthik Reddy: From your personal lens on that journey, I know as far as possible you will choose to be in the majority as a team. I did get that tidbit from you that you folks collectively own the majority of the firm.

So aspirationally, and you also dropped that in somewhere, is it to build a gigantic large business that spans the world or use this, as you said, like accelerator which spawned, businesses that can be standalone very large and we will be the mothership that keeps incubating these and spinning them out into the future. Well, what do you think will happen? Just a guess. I am not asking you to be deterministic about it.

[00:58:11] Tanuj Shori: I think combination of both. Do we aspire to build a similar size scale business in five other emerging markets? Yes! I think through this journey, we realized that we have not won India first. We still have not. It is still a long, long way to go. I think that evolution happened as a human capital in us as well that you need to win something, create that right to win before moving on to another thing. If we are solving for the entire value chain, because that is needed to win, it is not because we love solving for every small thing. 

So, we believe, obviously, we will build India first for the next few years. We continue to build India. At some point in time, we believe we might get to a stage where we tell ourselves it is fine. We have built something which will outlive us as a legacy. Will we still be aspiring enough to then go and solve for it, let us say, in other parts of the world? Hopefully yes.

I think we have shown that we can build global side of it. We still exist in markets outside India. It is just that we believe there is not enough bandwidth. ​“Bandwidth” is a very important word for us to be able to solve for it in five different places at the same time. Which is why we are going public is a very important milestone for us. So, it is not a monetization event for us.

So, we are not selling them. And so, there is an internal dictate — and I hope when my co-founders see it, they will not beat me into it — but there is an internal dictate that none of us will sell anything for the next 10 years.

So, we are very clear that this will take time. Going public is more of a testament of, I think, building something which can stand the scrutiny of something which might outlive you. Simple!

So, I think coming from the public market sectors, both me and a couple of my other co-founders who came from public markets, we have tried to build corporate governance, compliances, best practices suited to public companies. We have been trying to follow that over the last few years. So, for us, it is not a significant change.

[01:00:10] Karthik Reddy: It is a remarkable journey because as you said, you came prepared, you know what is required. You had never wavered from this multi-decade vision. So, the public thing becomes almost like a pit stop along the way. And sort of the ability for everybody to own a part of Square Yards, and you have your own team, your team members, your stakeholders, and your customers who might say: ​“Hey, I know how valuable this company was in my journey, let me own a piece of this going forward.”

[01:00:40] Tanuj Shori: The only variable being we hope we will continue to love building it. That passion will not burn out.

[01:00:47] Karthik Reddy: Yeah. No, I think like all of us, we think about it as we are reaching 15 years and we are thinking five years ahead, in any business, yours or ours, you need to know whether you build something that people want to continue. 

[01:01:01] Tanuj Shori: Precisely.

[01:01:01] Karthik Reddy: Right. And as long as, as you said, that passion is embedded as a part of culture, that this is worth building, somebody will come and build it, as you said. You will become executive chairman someday, not in the next 10 years, after 10 more years.

But then you know whether you have built that culture of constantly challenging yourself and building. No, it has been an amazing hour. So, thanks for taking the time out. I know you drop in and out of India and I managed to grab you. This is most likely the season finale for this year and happy to have a very worthy guest who is also going to hopefully have a fantastic run to the public markets very soon. So, wishing you luck on that.

[01:01:41] Tanuj Shori: Thank you. 

[01:01:41] Karthik Reddy: And I think, as I kept saying, your journey has been peculiarly fascinating to me. Full disclosure, I am a really tiny, tiny, tiny stakeholder in Tanuj’s journey. So, I hope to be a happy shareholder after it goes public. And we have always been intrigued by ye real estate mein kiska ka dum hai to actually make a business scale. And slowly over the last five, six years, whenever, and you have also been super transparent in sharing your quarterly numbers as publicly as possible.

So, I think culturally, you were always ready to be a public company. And we have been watching that and seeing the growth and just being blown away by the journey. So, we had to have you on the podcast. So, thanks again. 

And I feel it is not just a story for your personal journey, but for the entire industry, as you said. I think it feels like real estate’s ability to organize itself as an industry got somewhat unlocked. You saw it in the manufacturing side, but we did not see it as much on the distribution side. So congratulations again. 

My apologies to Kanika for not having her here. She seems such an important part of the journey, but hopefully I get to meet her and congratulate her soon enough. Whenever you ring the IPO bell, I will try to be there. 

Quick set of rapid-fire questions before we wrap up.

So, on that Monday morning, when you quit, what was the first emotion when you said: ​“I am going to be doing Square Yards for God knows how long?” 

[01:03:11] Tanuj Shori: Light feeling. Peace.

[01:03:13] Karthik Reddy: Yeah. Very nice. And it comes from you being generally spiritual or generally being guided by just your inner gut.

[01:03:21] Tanuj Shori: So, I need to go to bed peacefully, I think. So, internally, whenever there is a crisis, and there’s always a crisis, my response to crisis is go to sleep, we will solve next day.

[01:03:35] Karthik Reddy: No, it is actually, since you brought it up, I have to also add something. Whenever we go through that with a founder in a conversation, our best solution is sleep over it. Let’s talk tomorrow. Because sleep takes care of a lot of things. 

Your biggest early misconception about real estate in India. I mean, when you started, as you said, it was not something you were dreaming of for years.

[01:03:57] Tanuj Shori: Ethics. I think very important word used very loosely in this industry.

[01:04:04] Karthik Reddy: When you have gone through bootstrapping phases, they have not lasted very long because you have always needed the money, which is harder, being free of the need to the bootstrap phases or the capital raising phases.

[01:04:19] Tanuj Shori: If you can bootstrap, it gives you more conviction, independence, and the capital can vary depending on but you have to be all-in. Simply put.

[01:04:30] Karthik Reddy: You have always said you thought of this as like a full stack solution, and it must happen very early in your journey. But what surprises you today when you think back to day one and said: ​“Gosh, I would have never imagined Square Yards to be doing this?”

[01:04:41] Tanuj Shori: We say that actually all the time internally. I think that was very ambitious for us to even attempt at doing something like this. I think 9/10 times we might have decided otherwise. That was a fortunate evening, we all decided to give it a go.

[01:04:55] Karthik Reddy: And despite all of what you have managed to unlock in this decade plus journey, what is one thing that you would still love to see change in Indian real estate?

[01:05:05] Tanuj Shori: A lot of transparency, a lot of honesty, a lot of trust.

[01:05:09] Karthik Reddy: Super. So yeah, you still feel you have to be an agent for that and there is not enough of it.

[01:05:14] Tanuj Shori: I think we are not even; the industry has not solved for even 10% of that.

[01:05:18] Karthik Reddy: And I know you are a 15-member founding team, but when it comes to Kanika and you, how do you complement each other? What roles do you play?

[01:05:27] Tanuj Shori: So, with Kanika, even with, because we go back a long way, most of the individuals who are the co-founders in terms of being friends, we are very, very clear, till late in the evening, we do not know each other on a personal capacity. We do not! Which also means we fight, we argue, but we do not carry that home. 

[01:05:47] Karthik Reddy: Yeah. And it is remarkable. I mean, it requires a different level of honesty and maturity on both partners’ part to be able to pull that off. And what kind of, I think, as you said, you said you sleep peacefully, but still what keeps you awake at night, you think?

[01:06:07] Tanuj Shori: I think, if, I hope it will not, we will not run out of energy, passion, not just in me, I think enough stakeholders who want to take it forward.

[01:06:19] Karthik Reddy: Yeah. You have set the bar so high that you are really pushing them to the sort of, I think the edge of their achievement index, in terms of where they want to be in 10 years from now.

[01:06:30] Tanuj Shori: For example, if any important part of the team, if ever they think about leaving, I always wonder that what did we do wrong? Why it was not the best place for them to be?

[01:06:41] Karthik Reddy: I went through that seven, eight years into my life, and then I have stopped worrying about it so much. I think people find their peace elsewhere. And what is the one Northstar metric for your business that you think of, that guides the entire business?

[01:06:53] Tanuj Shori: Scale. 

[01:06:54] Karthik Reddy: Scale. 

[01:06:55] Tanuj Shori: Right.

[01:06:55] Karthik Reddy: Super. Fantastic. Again, once again, thanks for joining us. We have a small gift for you as you leave our office today. 

[01:07:05] Tanuj Shori: Thank you. 

[01:07:06] Karthik Reddy: Thanks, Tanuj. 

So Tanuj, Ultrahuman is one of our portfolio companies that we are very proud of. Your neighbors in UAE, by the way. So, their leadership sits there actually, trying to build a global business. So, we hope we will be as proud of them as we are of you building for India. These guys are also trying to build for the world. And yeah, they want to give you a ring and get married to you as well. 

[01:07:25] Tanuj Shori: Thank you. So, I will move from WHOOP move to Ultrahuman.

[01:07:27] Karthik Reddy: No, you can try both and see which is better. And yeah, for special founders like you, they have actually offered to give two rings. So, you and Kanika should try and get or whoever in your co-founding team.

But they have been an inspiration for us as well to see how you can take an Indian consumer company and try to go global. So, we would love for you to become a user.

[01:07:48] Tanuj Shori: Thank you.

[01:07:49] Karthik Reddy: And this is a sizing kit, by the way. So, I am going to get your office to coordinate with us and then you will get the ring shipped as soon as you size yourself. 

A small gift from Blume. Usually we will have our whatever goodies, you will figure it out. And please share it with your team and thank you.