He Left His 1CR Job To Build This ft. Shashank Mehta, Founder of The Whole Truth | ISV

Shashank Mehta

No added sugar actually has 20 different types of sugar which are not declared as sugar. Or when I say low fat, it's actually high sugar because I've used sugar to replace the fat. But I'm selling it as healthy. So someone's having two X the amount diabetic friendly means nothing. Every new product, by the way, starts with me writing a blog post which never gets published. It's an internal blog. It's an internal blog post because that's our take on what's wrong with this category and what the Whole Truth's take on the category will look like. You can do better. I've seen you do better. Tumne yahan par ghas kat liye hain. Tum yeh karke aao. Doesn't matter kitna time bacha hai. Karna hai toh karna hai.

Yet ussi conversation ke baad raat ke 10 baje ke baad chalenge aur daaru pee kar ayenge.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

Now, what do you appreciate? Maybe we'll do something. What do you consume the most as a separate one?

Shashank Mehta

Oh, this is a tough one. I've never.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

Welcome to the Indian Silicon Valley Podcast. I'm your host, Jivraj, and today I have with me a very special guest. Join me in welcoming Shashank Mehta, the founder of the Whole Truth Foods, which is one of the most amazing brands of New Age India. Thank you so much, Shashank, for joining me. Incredibly delighted to be hosting you.

Shashank Mehta

Thank you so much for having me.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

Glad. I think. I've been waiting for this episode, and this is a re episode. We hosted you about six-nine months back. That was the time when the chocolates were going to get announced and they just got announced and they were getting launched. So I think it was very exciting to see what you've done across the last nine months. And what I want to uncover through the next 60 minutes is primarily things around how distinct the brand is, what you've built. There are many different things that you've done over the last three years which would not be considered conventional in terms of marketing, yet they have now, in hindsight, of course, played out well. And there is this incredible fan following for a consumer product where people love what they consume. And I want to uncover much of that. But I want to start with the truth. Truth is a big part of what the whole Truth does. It shows in your culture, in your communication, in your products, of course. But I want to understand, when you go ahead in the market with a truth such as 100% Clean label, this is a tall ask for any company, let alone yours. How do you fulfill that promise, and what is the cost that it comes along with? There is something that happens on the background that we don't see yet. You completely fulfill your promise all the time. Talk to us about those things as you talk us through the ideology of the company that is Whole Truth.

Shashank Mehta

Awesome, I think. Great place to start. Let me start one step behind 100% clean label, which is what's the mission is. So the mission is we are trying to rebuild the world's trust in its food. What that means is we believe that the trust is broken. Who broke it? We believe big food broke it. They broke it by selling us half-truths and lies for over half a century. And how did they do it? Primarily, they did it by claiming something on the front of pack which did not live up to the scrutiny of the back of pack or was misleading.

So no added sugar actually has 20 different types of sugar which are not declared as sugar. Or when I say low fat, it's actually high sugar because I've used sugar to replace the fat. But I'm selling it as healthy. So someone's having two X, the amount of sugar and diabetic friendly means nothing. My dad has three of those biscuits because he thinks it's diabetic friendly.

This is what we are fighting against. We believe this has broken consumers trust and we must win it back. We believe the only way to win it back is to swing the pendulum of truth and honesty to its extreme. The manifestation of that is 100% clean label. What that means is whatever we put in our food, we will always declare each and every ingredient on the front of pack. You will never have to turn the packet of food to find out what's gone into your body. As you rightly said, this comes with a huge cost. As one would say in the short term, it’s a competitive disadvantage. At the most basic, it is one cost is shelf life. My protein bars have four or five months of shelf life. My competition has twelve months. Actually, what that means is if you remove the pipeline time, with the inventory I hold, etc., I get two months to sell on shelf. My competition gets ten months to sell. What that means is I have 15-20% returns from trade. They have 2% or 1%.

So there's a real cost in the profit and loss that I take every day because of this decision that I made. The second big cost is flavor. It's so unfortunate, but actually our understanding of flavors today is artificial. And the best example of that is kids. A lot of our consumers who love us. We now have a chocolate factory, as you mentioned earlier. So, we call our customers over, give them a tour of the chocolate factory. They get their kids, and the kids make stuff. We get them to taste, let's say, a real strawberry. So many kids make a strange face. It is because the kids have developed their understanding of what strawberry means through a strawberry cereal or a strawberry shake, which is artificial flavor. It's not what a real strawberry tastes like.

That challenge for us is massive. How do we do flavors? Because food and packaged food sells ranges on flavors. We will never touch an artificial flavor. And real food, like, if I wanted to give you banana flavor, the only way I can do it is dry up a banana, make it into a powder and put it on the product. It's just not as flavorful as banana flavor. And then there are all these flavors which actually don't exist, like red velvet and cookie dough and stuff like that, which I just can't achieve. But consumers want it. That's a real cost. I can't do those flavors. Another cost is the speed of new product development.

Now, we've been in the industry for three and a half years, so we've seen it inside out. Food is treated. The language used for food is, I want to achieve this product. So it's seen as a science problem. You go to a you go to a food house. You can go to a food house and give them a brief saying, I want a chip which has this flavor, this texture, this much crunch, and this much shelf life. These are the parameters I want. Now deliver this for me. And the path between here and point A and point B is solved by science. You want this much shelf life? Here's a preservative. You want this texture. Here's a different kind of sugar. The point of having 20 different kinds of sugar is not just that it confuses you. A maltodextrin gives a different kind of texture and binding compared to a maltose or a dextrose, or an invert sugar. So, these are used as almost like a mad scientist would in a chemistry lab. Put different things to achieve what you want to achieve.

I can't do that, right? I have to work with 100% natural ingredients. The raw material changes by season, changes by geography, and behaves very differently at different temperatures. So the result of that is, I can't say today, let's say we are hypothetically, let's say we are also going to make chips. If I start work today, I can't say that in three months this will be ready. It might take six months; it might take twelve months. Chocolates took us 18 months. We really thought, because Rachna, who does new product for us, is a chocolatier. She's done chocolate for like 15 years in her life. We thought ki yeh toh Rachna dus pandra din mein nikal degi. But the constraint we'd given her was that humko dates se sweeten karna hai chocolate ko. In chocolates this smooth, and decadent texture important thing. Dates are fibrous and coarse. Even if you churn them into a powder, they're very coarse because they have fiber. How do you achieve that smooth, decadent chocolate using dates? Rachna thought haan haan kar denge, and it took us 18 months. In the process, we had to set up our own factory, and our own processes. So that's a real cost, right? Like, I spent resource for 18 months. I couldn't put a new revenue stream into the market for 18 months. Where my competition could just go to some third-party service provider and say hey, give this to me and you have to deliver in three months. So, a lot of increased costs. These are just the top three which we live with every day.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

Got it? No, I think that's insane to hear because I think you're living with those costs and you continue staying true to the mission. Because I'm guessing the easier and the more gratifying thing in the short run is to be like we'll compromise. But that's the promise of the brand, that you will never compromise and it'll be always true.

Shashank Mehta

You're absolutely right. It's short term versus long term and the game we are playing only pays off in the long term. In the short term, it only has costs. But the love that you see for the brand would not have come if we were a 99.9% clean label brand. It all started with trust. What breaks trust is doubt. 0.1% doubt hota hai, Hindi mein uske liye word hota hai vehem. Zara sa vehm hai agar apko, then it’s lost. When you pull it to 100, the costs are very, very different from 99.9. Also, I am telling you, I can put one drop of preservative today and it'll make my PNL 18% better today. But doing that and honestly, if I do that next two years, nothing will happen because it'll take one or two years for consumers to realize that, oh shit, these guys have also started doing what other brands do. But once that trust breaks, then the brand gets lost.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

Then there's no difference between your brand and others.

Shashank Mehta

Then it doesn't matter that on the 99 other things I'm still making the right choice. It doesn't matter.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

Yeah, that's so true. I think somebody once said on the podcast itself that brand is nothing but trust delivered over and over again in the absolutely right fashion. And that's a testament to it. I think this is very interesting when we talk further about some of those things. One thing is new product development and it looks like with every new product launch, while there has been time and effort gone into it, the benefits of it definitely show. Everybody loves it. I'm a core and huge believer and consumer of the chocolates myself. There was a new launch, badam with multiple A's. There are many product ranges. There's peanut butter, and the protein bars which are the flagship. Talk to us about what happens in the background. Some of this looks like a lot of effort, yet there's a lot of ease into consumption. But a lot of thought if you can give us an entire not playbook but maybe formula to how this happens in the background and what are more importantly factors that you have to go through, stages that you have to go through from which product you decide to manufacture and then to ship.

Shashank Mehta

So I'll answer your question in three parts. The first part for me is how do we decide what product to launch? And the second part is actually two subparts. One is whatever we do launch, and how will we ensure that the unique take of the brand, and the ethos of the brand and the principles of the brand remain alive and in fact, get furthered in this product? But B, how does that ethos and that principle translate into this category of food which has existed for donkeys’ years? So it has certain category codes. There are certain ways in which people perceive a chocolate consumer to a protein bar consumer, which is the other extreme end of the spectrum.

I will answer all these three questions. So how we decide what to launch that one is actually quite simple for us. It's a venn diagram. If I draw three circles of a category of food where incumbent big food brands have been selling half-truths, that's circle number one. Circle number two is theoretically, can we create a product which lives up to the whole truth philosophy? And circle number three is, is it tasty? Because food needs to be tasty, and it's not by market size. It's not what sells the most, or nothing like it.

Of the that's a prioritization after this, after it qualifies. But the long list of what all will we make is the intersection of these three circles. It's a very long list. Like, there are a lot of categories. In fact, there are 90% categories qualify as categories where correct consumers have been sold half-truths for a long time. And we believe we can create 100% clean product, which by definition, because the ingredients are so good, will turn out to be tasty. That's the long list. Then we order it according to two things. The first ordering principle is not market size. It is adjacency because we believe that itt has to when you extend brands, brands are when we talk about elasticity of brands, you should think of it actually as an elastic and think deeply about when do elastics break? When you either pull them too far apart or you pull them too fast. So both of these things you should be careful about. Suddenly, if your chocolate brand brings in a chip which is savoury, it might be too large a jump. We think deeply about what's the transition and what is the transition that got you to buy chocolates from your protein bar brand? Your protein bar brand first went to Musli, then went to Nut Butters, then came to chocolates.

So we slowly transitioned to the chocolate. We didn't directly jump to the chocolate. So we think deeply about, okay, this long list, which are the next four adjacent categories that we want to move into, and within those, what's the market size opportunity? But having said that, we start usually on all three or four. Because, as I said, we can't time our NPD. I don't know which of the three will get out of the door first. So I can't be working on one product at a time. I work on three or four products at a time. And then it's a lottery. Whichever product we are able to achieve the fastest is the one that we launch the fastest, right? So that's part one. The part two ka two parts.

What's clear is that the brand's take on the world is very clear. There are some baseline rules. Whatever we make, each and every ingredient will be declared on the front of pack. And hence you can't put anything that you're ashamed of. That's a very ground level rule. And that automatically rules out 95% of the ingredients in the market, right? Hum toh yeh karenge hi nahi. Then comes the question of, okay, and let's take dark chocolates is a great example for it is super indulgent category. Till now, we'd operated in, you can say nut butters, and museli protein bar. These are all, you can say healthy, inherently healthy categories. Chocolate is an indulgence. And that too, we entered with dark chocolate. And that was also a very conscious choice. That just like the brand. We believe that any category you enter, you should enter from the top end of that category, build your credentials with the experts, with the connoisseurs, and then move down. That's why we did milk chocolate later, which is the larger part of the category. But we did dark chocolate first to set ourselves up as chocolatiers that listen, just because we are making it 100% clean, we can't give you a shitty chocolate. It's your indulgence. You deserve a beautiful indulgence without the guilt, right? So, we had to put in the work to make a damn good chocolate we could have launched nine months ago with a slightly coarser texture because we had dates in it. And dates are fibrous, right? But we're like, you should not feel that you're being shortchanged in the name of health.

Then we were like, okay, dark chocolate is not just indulgent, it is luxurious. It's very gifty. It's used on occasions. It's eaten by connoisseurs. It's a finer thing in life. And hence the packaging on this cannot be just the way we were doing earlier, which was great copy, but was very subtle, and very understated. On this, we have to bring luxury. Like, it should feel luxurious, right? So, we wrote on the front of Pack, each of the six variants has a poem. And that's the fun thing about the brand. We're a very copy first brand. So, we write every new product, by the way, starts with me writing a blog post which never gets published.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

But it's an internal blog.

Shashank Mehta

It's an internal blog post because that's our take on what's wrong with this category and what the whole truth's take on the category will look like. That goes as the brief to Rachna that now, can you convert this into a product? We've done the theory of it that this is wrong with the category this is what a perfect product according to me would look like. I don't know if it can be achieved or not. Here's your brief, can you make it right? Similarly packaging also with us starts with copy. And here, when we thought luxury, when we thought decadent, when we thought gift, all of that stuff, for some reason, my mind went to poems.

So, we wrote like six poems for each pack. On the front of pack there's a small haikuish poem which is around that flavor. And then our agency thought of a design who've been our branding partners from day one. The brilliant folks that they are, they took those poems and converted them into a mood on the pack, which was done through art. So, for example, for the Sea Salt one, the Sea Salt variant, we imagined it as a ship at sea in the night. And the poem is written with that mood. And then you see the pack. It's illustrated in that same mood on the pack. And you'll see this one small ship out in the distance on the pack. Similarly for the 70% dark, actually the 55% dark, which is midway, we'd written this line around it's not so dark that it will cover your soul, but it's not so light that it'll be too bright. How do you illustrate that? So the zone became twilight that this 55% dark is like twilight and that's what they illustrated on the pack, right? And we'd never done this for any other category because no other category warranted it. This is what I meant by we started with what would the take of the brand be on the category date? Sweetened chocolate. 100% clean. All ingredients up front. It has to be super tasty. We have to be super smooth. But even from a pack lens, if this is indulgence luxury decadence, it should come out on the pack. You should not, as a consumer, feel ki mein healthy le raha tha. Phir maza naha aya toh kya hua. It's only then, when we'll deliver on the mission, you will not feel shortchanged on any of the peas. When you buy this, just have this massive upside of shit. This is not made with sugar.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

Yeah. How much of this process involves an outside thinking? This is also, to say that okay, this is what people think, and look for when they consume healthy stuff. This is what they think of when they are looking at chocolates. Is it very inward looking, or is it more like okay, let's collect data points. Do you have a process to do that? Is it scientific or is it more around your first principles process, and this is what which works the best now?

Shashank Mehta

It's both these processes in parallel. It happens in phases. It starts with an inward-looking process. Because the baseline condition is that we'll not launch something that doesn't live up to our philosophy. Once we have line of sight to it, this product is getting made, that's when the external looking part of the process starts. And we go very deep with consumer research. And thankfully now that we've existed for three odd years and we have so much love, we have consumers who are just willing to give us time. I think that's the biggest proof of the love that we have. That we literally pick up the phone and 100 people are ready to drop what they're doing in the day and give us half an hour, an hour and talk to us and tell us what they're thinking.

That's why I said, see, it's as simple as I want to make this the best bloody marketing company along with a product which is so unique because it comes from a unique product philosophy. There is no excuse to say ki abhi itna accha product ban liya toh baki ke cheezo pe itne mehnat kyun kare (if I have made a good product why do I need to work on the other aspects as well). because the people you're fighting, the big companies, are damn good at consumer research. They're very good at knowing consumer insights. I've been there, I've seen the rigor that goes into cracking it. One interesting thing I'll say is the fundamental question of if you think of marketing morally, the ethics of marketing, the fundamental question is will you go where the consumer is or will you bring the consumer where she needs to be to. To explain this I will give you an example. We see a lot of furore in the world around Fair and Lovely that they sell gorapan (fairness). It's so regressive and the ads that they show are, ki gore ho tumko Naukri milega, pati milega (If you are fair you will get a job or husband)etc. ITC one of the biggest companies. The money they made is of cigarettes. The easy big business money is in going where the consumer is. You don't judge the consumer tu kyon cigarette kyun pita hai (why do you smoke cigarettes?). You don't judge the consumer ki tereko gora hona hai (you want to become fair). I'll make the best cream jisme tum gore ho jaoege (I will make the best cream which will make you fair). And jo bhi tumhara belief hai ki gore hone par tumhe Naukri mil jati, shadi ho jati hai aur dahej kam dena padta (whatever your belief is that by being fair you will get a job, you will be married and you will have to pay less dowry) I am advertising it, correct?

That is 99% of brand businesses are built there and honestly speaking, that works. It works like a charm. Because there's no friction, correct? The consumer is there. Some of us are trying to say, listen, the whole point of doing this and having this privilege of having this big megaphone. We see money in the bank, and pedigree of education, and all of this. Can we use brands and capitalism as a vessel to shift society to where it needs to be rather than go where it already is?

And that's a struggle. Because there's education, patience, and friction involved. You might not believe me in the first go, you might not even get the message because 99 other people are bombarding you with a message which confirms your current beliefs, right? That's the tough bit. And we will not do it. We will never be able to achieve it if we are not as good, if not better than all the other 99 awesome folks who are so good at understanding you. If we are not as good as first understanding you and then finding a narrative which takes you from where you are to where you need to be, then there's no chance in hell we are winning this, right? Then we are fighting a losing battle. So we have to be as good as them on all of these and then be far better on the purpose and the product.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

Amazing. I think that's phenomenal. Especially where we need to be is a valid point.  Because I think there's actually this concept called social truth. It's actually called something else, but it affirms the fact that what we believe in as a society is actually something that we've been fed to believe that most of us in private don't believe, but we are ashamed to accept because it is the dominant logic. This is very interesting. You mentioned six p's. You also mentioned the consumer love. I want to touch upon those things. But completing this loop on maybe NPD, why don't we take a product of yours and you can take us through one by one how that came into being. And let's talk about the chocolates. You've written a lot about it as well. But if you had to explain to us, how did you identify you told us about the extension being chocolate because you had some natural progressions. But give us that entire circle once for the amazing chocolates that we all love and we'll conclude that piece.

Shashank Mehta

So as I said now, 24 months ago, so memory fades. But see, we were very clear from day one, ki hum Chocolate karengey. Take it. And honestly, the starting point was that Rachna was our in-house chocolatier. We are not letting that skill go to waste. But the other big reason why I was always hell bent on doing chocolates was that I wanted I had started this brand with protein bars. I was saying from day one, we are not a protein bar brand, we are not a healthy food brand. We are a truth brand. People believe us because they trust us. Mein kaal ko (I can tomorrow), I can run a newspaper also under the whole truth.

Because people believe that I will say the truth. But it was just words. So, in my head I was very clear ki hum protein market brand mein chocolate bechunga. And that will be the proof that.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

You can do anything.

Shashank Mehta

I can do anything because it's a truth brand. Rachna's expertise in chocolate for me, it was my way of proving this is the brand that we are creating, and people will buy both these things from us. By the way, today these two are equal sized businesses already. And chocolate will overtake protein bars very soon. So the intent was always there.

Then I wrote an internal blog post saying ki Chocolate mein kya allow hoega (what will we allow inside a chocolate). The biggest thing was chini hatake, refined sugar hatate hain (let’s remove refined sugar from chocolate). But it'll be a challenge because it has to be luxurious, decadent, and all of that stuff. It still has to live up to that. The third part of the brief was we had this insight that all indulgent food makers design product and pack in a way that pushes you and nudges you to have more and more. No one can eat just one like karke dikhao (show it). Why is it that every freaking chocolate in the world is just those equal size squares? All of them are like equal sized squares, tum chota kha nahi sakte ho (you cannot eat in small sizes) We are like, we will build for responsible indulgence. In my own fat loss journey, one big insight that I had do bite lo, ussi se khusi mil jati hai baki ka tum compulsive behaviour mein kahte ho (you have two bites of the chocolate to get the satisfaction, you consume the rest of the chocolates by compulsive behaviour).

And that's where I realized, actually cravings get satisfied in very little way. Many a times it would have happened with everyone who's listening. Ki craving horiti pura ho jata hai (you get satisfaction from the cravings only with two pieces). But then it's just compulsive behavior. This is attacking my dopamine centers aur hath me hai (the packet is in our hands) aur tume kahe ja rahe ho (you keep on eating). So we are like, we will design it for responsible indulgence. Ye hame pehle din se pata tha (we knew it from the first day onwards). But we said pehle product banao (first make the product). Rachna got to work. In every three months, we were like ab banne wala hai (this is going to be made now). But she would bring it for us to taste. And we're like, she already knew it. Hume bolne ki zarurat nahi thi (we did not need to tell her). She knew what chocolate feels like. This is not chocolate. So, the process was long. We worked with one of the best chocolatiers in the country, Rakesh sir, who is Rachna's mentor. He also took it upon as a challenge. He was like, how the hell will this chocolate not get made in the process? Yeh toh ban ke rahegi (this will get made in the process). He said, ki yeh koi nahi kar payega, tumhe hi banana padega (no one will be able to make, only you can do it. So we started getting in the machinery. Pele chote batches mein banakar test kia machine mein (we started making it in small batches to test it). You are committing to some capex which don't know it'll fructify or not. So on faith kia (we did it on faith). When we got to a product where we got line of sight aba 90% tak pahuch gaya aur end tak pohchnewala hai (we reached 90% of the product and it will reach the mark we had aspired for).

Jivraj Singh Sachar

This what twelve month- fifteenth month.

Shashank Mehta

It was about month twelve. Then it took us six months to get to packaging. The packaging was also so involved, right? And one thing we didn't talk about is a packaging toh bahar toh hum logon ne (we did on the outside decadent, poem, mood, etc. Itni badi chocolate factory khadi ki hai, toh bataenge na logon ko (we have made such a big chocolate factory and we should be able to tell people about it).  So that's in the idea of what if the pack opens up as a book? Uska structure banane mein jaan nikal gayi nikal gayi (there was a lot of effort involved in getting the structure right). Woh structure kitna complicated tha, chocolate factory wala casing which used to open like a book (the structure was so complicated that it had factory like casing which would open like a book). Phir humne socha ki dark chocolates bikti kahan par hai (then we thought about where dark chocolates sell). Dark chocolates actually are a very top end, modern trade sort of situation. Plus, it in airports and fancy locations, etc. More importantly, we realize this is the first time we're getting into temperature-controlled supply chain. Hamari the supply chain mein sab kuch ambient hai (everything is ambient in the supply chain we are working).

Now that we've done chocolate for twelve months, dude, chocolate supply chain! Like, hats off to the big companies like Cadbury, etc, who do chocolate supply chain across the country. There was a point of at any point of time in this country, but I'll give you one point of time. It was, I think, October last year. My supply chain head Yash was telling me shashank iss time mein dili mein itni thandi hai ki chocolate bahar padi hai (it is so cold in Delhi that chocolate is lying outside). Bombay mein dampness thi toh woh AC room mein padi hui thi (there was some problem related to dampness in Mumbai that’s why the chocolates were lying in AC rooms). Bangalore mein garmi hai toh isliye padi hai (it’s hot in Bangalore so they are lying around). In three different places it was three different kinds of temperature.

 I don’t exactly remember what it was like at that time. And then he was like abhi agar Assam se order ayega D2C se (suppose we get a D2C order from Assam).It will travel through 16 different temperature zones.The temperature variation will go from like 15 degrees to 42 degrees in the course of this thing traveling from the west coast of the country to the east coast of the country. How do you ensure that the chocolate reaches the consumers the way it left you? Super-duper tough. In retail you will send the chocolate to the shop. The shop owner might switch off the AC or Fridge at night. We had to go through all of that learning process and then the responsible indulgence of a thing had still not been delivered 15 months into it.

And now we had to go into production planning like procuring the moulds, machines. some I don't remember the exact moment, but thought of a design again, we were pushing them. How do we nudge people to eat this consciously?  People tell us that you have made the small, medium, and large size looks nice. But it is not practical. The chocolate will not break evenly. You're absolutely right. The point is the minute you see it, your conscious brain gets switched on. You are no longer in zombieland mode when you're eating chocolate. You're consciously saying that I would eat that much. That's the point. Point is not that the medium size bar is in the middle and how will you be able to break it.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

Is key up you're consciously having what you have.

Shashank Mehta

You're responsible in that moment. So that idea these guys came up with and that also I'll share early versions of it. Maybe you can put it as B-rolls in the podcast, where the first thing they'd come up with was like it had small, medium, large, extra large, and they were arranged oppositely. In the first version, there was an explanation written to the versions. For example, ‘s’ had something related to fun and extra-large had something excess written on it. So, we'd done some fun copy, etc. Then we're like this was very complicated. Then there was the practical concern of if we write something in the copy it would be finely engraved in the mould. Rachna was like if the chocolate melts a bit, then the fine copy would not be visible. We had to come up with our own type font. So that SML that you see is not the brand font. Because if you have a very thin type font, even if there is slight melting along the way. Melting and refreezing becomes a problem, legibility becomes a problem. Plus, if you have a very sharp font, there will be edges in the mould where the chocolate will enter and stop there. So, you need to have a smooth font. There was a lot of crafting involved.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

Yeah, I can imagine but no, super fascinating. Although I don't relate to that conscious pointer because, fascinatingly enough, I've had all the bars. Literally, I'm guilty of having the entire bars every time I've ordered it. But jokes apart it's, such an incredible creation. And I'm so glad we got this out because I'm sure so many people who love what you have made now and put out into the world always wonder, how did this come into existence? And I'm glad we got that covered. Let's talk about that marketing piece.

Looks like you were elaborating on a story. And in fact, I'd love if you can share with us again. Before we started recording, you were telling us how everybody in the world or everybody who's a consumer of the product is loving it for some different reason. For instance, I just love that it's healthy and tasty and I love the experience of the pack when I open the chocolate and it's a thing that I don't have in consuming like a dairy milk or something. It was just a game changer for me. I never want to go back to that normal experience now. And now that I've tasted what this looks like, tell us what you meant by the fact that there are six marketing P's and the fact that everybody looks at things differently. But as a brand, you try to make sure everything is in excellent quantity.

Shashank Mehta

So I come from Unilever. Unilever has a six P marketing framework, which are:  proposition, product pack, price, place and promotion. And it's pretty much in that order that you think of any mix or any product that you're going to launch. First is the proposition of why should this exist? What's special about it, what's different about it? That theory should translate into product pack should be a shrine to this product, which tells the story of this proposition. And product price depends on where you put this in the market. And then you decide of place, where will I sell it? After that comes promotion, how will I promote it?

So that's the full journey of any product. We believe that to be a breakthrough brand, you need to deliver out of the park on all six P's every single time. That's when you're a breakthrough brand. There are many brands which get two out of six. Three out of six. Three out of four times.

That's an average brand and how it plays out in the world is different. Consumers have different P's which are more important to them and speak to them. I can't know which P speaks to which person. So I have to hit all six out of the park to make sure that every consumer gets a wow delivered, no matter on which P they emphasize. So that's why I have to hit all six out of the park. And I was telling you, the analogy here is this age-old Hindi folklore story of Hathi, right? Everyone believes in their own very nice kind way. Consumers write to us saying, dude, your product is so awesome, I can't stop having it. I think this is why your brand is so awesome, because your products are so awesome. Then someone will write and say, actually the unpacking experience is so awesome. That's why your brand is so awesome. Then someone will say, I find your brand exactly wherever I go. I find it at Blue Tokai at the store downstairs, and at the airport. This distribution strategy is why your brand is so awesome.

You're absolutely right. For you, that is the reason. But for me to deliver it for 100% consumers, the whole hathi (elephant) that I had to do was I had to get the trunk, the legs, the ears in the back, and the tail perfect. I had to get everything perfect. It doesn't matter which part you're touching; you feel that it's perfection. So that's how we think of all the six P's for every mix. And the challenge is how do you do all of that while ensuring that it's still consistent with the brand philosophy, the brand's design, the brand's ethos, all of that can't get shortchanged with the excuse of “Oh! I had to achieve this.”

Jivraj Singh Sachar

That's brilliant. I think goes to show the kind of thought consciousness that goes into building a legendary brand and that is very evident. And in fact, let's talk about it right from the outside. It definitely looks like there's a lot of consumer love and that is very evident. But what are those numbers? What do you think really makes it happen?

Like, how do people who consume food and beverage almost on a day-to-day level, go ahead and love this one distinct brand and then write to you about it? Repeat purchase I mean, what are those numbers? Like, how do you make it happen? Let's marry the two so numbers first.

Shashank Mehta

We have a repeat rate of some 56, 57%. In the industry for above average brand would be 35%, and for an average brand would be 25-30%.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

That's massive.

Shashank Mehta

And it shows in the NPS. Our NPS is consistently above 70% consumer NPS. And it's only going up actually touchwood, because usually you lose NPS with scale, but it's held and it's now actually again going up.

So those are the numbers, as I said, to deliver these kinds of numbers, you have to hit the ball out of the park across everything, every time. You can't have a pick and choose and then on top of that, what compounds it is the whole philosophy of the brand which speaks to you. I think the biggest reason you would get you out to eight out of ten is by doing all the six P's right. But for like I was telling you, every week we actually get either a long email or a handwritten letter or something from a consumer at least once a week, if not more.

So many people like MBA students have done case studies on the brand, on LinkedIn and all of that stuff. First of all, I keep asking this to my team. When was the last time you did this for a brand, exactly? When did you write positively for a brand? There are many people who will write negatively on Twitter. When was the last time you wrote to a brand?

To move you to that extent, eight on ten is not enough. It needs to be twelve on ten. That cannot happen through logic. That happens through magic. And magic is an emotion.

I think all this extremity of love happens because A: we deliver on the six P's, so it takes us from zero to eight. And then the remaining four comes from the fact that consumers feel that finally there is a brand that a speaks the truth to me. Point B is that the brand consistently does so. So my trust is compounding. Point C is that the brand doesn't treat me as a dumb person, and expects me to understand a two laid message. And in the garb of simplification, most marketeers sell you half-truths under the garb of simplification. The consumer does not want to be treated as a dumb person. Tell me the truth. The truth is layered, like you have to unpeel two, three layers of the onion to get through the truth. So, tell me the truth and assume me to be an intelligent human being, don't assume me to be a dumb person. I think that's what pushes us beyond that's what stakes us there, and that's why consumers love us. Otherwise, six P’s can get you to consume a product high, but not to love.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

Brilliant. I think that explains it really well. Some new challenges come to mind. One of this is as you build this, which is very original and distinct as a brand. Many of the things that you have done go against conventional marketing principles, go against how somebody else would have done this. And when 99% of the spectrum is playing there and you are the 1%, is there some amount of, I wouldn't say it as doubt, but some amount of uncertainty that you have to always navigate yet keep your focus in the long term. How do you marry the two? How do you ensure that the risks you are potentially taking, although in the right attempt, although in the right tune of what your brand needs to do will pay off? How do you then ensure that everybody's on the same page? That was one I'll come to the next after I hear what you have to say.

Shashank Mehta

So I would actually rephrase what we said. I don't think that we break marketing rules. At least we never get to the table and say chalo rule todte hain (let’s break the rules). I think whatever distinctness you see on the brand is just our attempt to stay true to ourself. That's the focus that's the internal locus of control saying how can we be? We have to make sure that this is us being true to what you do. By definition, if you have a very consistent core, a very consistent purpose and everything you do is consistent with that purpose you will be unique. All of us are unique. It's like our fingerprint. We leave our fingerprint on everything we do and it turns out to be unique. It seems that oh, they went against conventional wisdom here, but we didn't get to the table thinking let's do something different. We are not some mavericks who are thinking we will be breaking some rules. We are just saying we are like this and we will be doing so and so. This is our center, this is our core, right?

And I'll give you a live example of. It's not as if we don't stray. The lure of the other side because there is comfort in averages and numbers. Like everything has been happening in the same way since the past. You take a decision which is unique to you and then you compare it to marketing like the conventional marketers do it like this. And then you have fear that you will be making mistakes by doing something different.

I'll give you a live example our milk chocolates. It was the first time that we are entering a massive category. To give numbers chocolates is a 15,000 crore category in the country. Dark chocolates make 6-7% of it, and 93% is milk chocolate. We started with dark chocolate. It was a niche top end of the market we did everything the way we thought we will do. When we got to this milk category, we were like this is the first time we are moving to a mass market category. We did not know how consumer behaves in this category. So, we thought of doing something which the big companies do.

And one example of it was how will your consumer know that our chocolate is there on the shelf. If you see there is no food photo. It's only copy, and copy Like in retail may not know it is chocolate. We went against our own core and we put a photo of the chocolate on the pack. It's been in the market for seven to eight months. The product repeats, etc, are amazing. The trial is not as good as we wanted it to be. And one of the big hypotheses after speaking to consumers is we should have actually been ourselves. Because consumers are like, I didn't see the we have a chocolate with quinoa. We have a chocolate made with dates. We have a chocolate with ragi and hazelnuts. They're like, I didn't see the ingredients on the pack. Pack allows you only so much of space. If I put a photo, I have to remove something. So, now there's a relaunch coming in a month which takes the pack back to what it would have been something true to our design sense in the first place.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

Yeah, that puts it in perspective. I think the reason I asked is because when you do things like all chocolate pieces look the same and are the same size for 99.9% of the chocolates. I don't know of any other chocolate which has unequal pieces, but when you go ahead and do something like that, it is true to you, of course, but it also has this attached uncertainty. What if consumers want it the regular way and don't want the unequal pieces? Because this is not something you can ask and check either. This is something exactly. It has to be implemented and both.

Shashank Mehta

We get a strong inherent conviction. Like I told you photo on chocolate. We had made mistakes. We thought if we are going to write this chocolate has A,B,C and D ingredients instead of photos, mass consumers will not understand what it is. Even till date we do not know whether the mass consumers have understood it or not. That does not work for us. And there's also an emotional angle here, like we always knew that this pack doesn't look like TWT and that gives me sleepless nights. That gives my team like, this is not us.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

Yeah, got it. That's again phenomenal. With every piece of answer, I think it becomes only crystal clear that how true you are to the brand promise, to what you are trying to do. The thinking that this is purely long term and in fact, that's what I want to now understand. When you talk about long term, I've been friends with somebody who works at Whole Truth, so I've had the chance to actually understand how you live it. But talk to us about how you actually think about this being a 50-year journey. It's very easy to say, very difficult to internalize, more difficult to practice. But you are of course, in a journey where you are practicing this and you are thinking of this as the really, really long game. When you do something this audacious, I guess it requires that thought. But how do you practice it? I would love to know. And yeah, that'll be nice.

Shashank Mehta

So again, see, I didn't think of 50 year either as some big statement or chalo ki aaj kuch audacious karte hain, etc. It's actually a very selfish thought with the Whole Truth. For the first time in my life, I feel that I've hit ikigai. And I didn't know of the concept of ikigai till a few years ago, but for everyone's benefit, it is the Japanese believe that if you find something to do, which you are good at, you will enjoy doing and will make you money. If you can find the intersection of these three things, you hit gold and just now do this for life.

I had a long journey with obesity. I used to write a blog about food and fitness. That's how the company started. This is a huge area of passion. This is a change that I want to leave in the world. If my legacy is this man came and did change the world of packaged food by a little bit for the better, it'll be a great legacy. This is something I have wanted to do.

I've worked in FMCG for ten years in one of the best marketing companies in the country. It's something that I can do, at least better than the average Joe. I have some skills in this area and given the startup ecosystem, the energy in India, the consumer who is evolving, it can actually become a large business which can make me money and which can make me a livelihood, etc. Now that these three things I know are ticked off, my entire life’s thing is how do I make sure that I get to do this for life? It’s like I've hit gold. So, few people can say that they've found that thing. How stupid will it be if I make it a five-year game or a ten-year game and lose this. What will I do then? I do not want to search another intersection like this after 10 years. I am 48 now and will live another 50 years. So that's the selfish interest that you would want to Build this in a way that you can die building this. Lo and behold, thankfully, when you do that, you start taking all the right decisions. If I take this decision for the short term it will be benefit me. Then what will I do for the next 50 years if I have to sell this company. If I have taken these four decisions, it’s let’s sell this company. So many people build and I don't judge them, it's there build with the view of potential acquirer will need. From that perspective, we are committing a lot of foolishness. So it's a very selfish thing that I don't think I'll find such an intersection again.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

That's an amazing way to put it, but also the truth. Let's continue with the final leg to conclude the piece of how you are going about establishing all of this. It's not a one-man job. There is definitely an incredible team behind it and also your leadership to make sure that this team comes to fruition.

I want to understand is two-three things. First one is if there are any special things you've identified while building a team. I would love to hear about it. But more importantly, I've had the pleasure of knowing and you wrote a mint article on this, which is to say that you can be a friend and a leader at the same time. Talk to us about what that means.

Because it's often, at least in conventional workplaces, thought of as a boss or a leader. And then you have a work personality and a separate personal life, etc, work life balance, all of that. It's looked at as different worlds and this seems like a different thing in a corporate environment, which evidently seems to be working. But radically different than, again, what 99% of the people might end up doing in startups. We talk about great culture, but this is still something different, evidently. So, talk about what that means, how do you establish it and how do you continue doing it again.

Shashank Mehta

Let me take two steps back please and give you the frame with which I look at this. What am I optimizing for in life? Happiness. I believe the aim of life is to be happy. And a happy life is equal to sigma of happy moments. This moment is happy, next moment is happy. You integrate these. This is life, right? So I am optimizing for my happiness. Money, fame, company, doing well all of those are inputs. But I think we misconstrue these high points of life to be the point of life.

Like after four-ten years there will be an IPO, and it would make me happy. But that is not going to give me happiness in the ten years from here to there. Usually, you will look back and find in life, happiness is about the people you surround yourself with and how you live day to day, minute to minute. Because as I said, life is equal to summation of one happy moment. Next happy moment, you integrate that that's life. So that's the philosophy with which I approached building the on this. I was like, dude, I don't get to complain anymore. I am getting to build a microcosm of my own in the world. I am going to build it with people and with ethos and with beliefs, and values that I hold dear. And then let's make this the happiest place to be at.

And happy doesn't mean we will not do anything we are a very driven, very hardnosed in terms of performance etc. But actually, I heard this definition recently that happiness is earned success. So, if you get success without earning it, like if you're the son of a Bollywood star and you get a movie, you will not be happy. And if you earn it but it's not successful, then you will not be happy. So happiness is earned success.

 I want an environment where I can we are also aligned to the vision and the purpose. There will be no discussion on the vision and purpose. We are aligned to it like it is gravity. I have a big belief. And that belief came from Unilever. And I had the pleasure and privilege of working with four or five very different kinds of bosses, all of whom were very effective in giving results. And that's where I learned that there are a thousand ways to be a leader. You have to find your own and that many ways work. So in the process of working with those leaders, I found my own. And one big thing I learned from Sameer, who's now the CMO of Unilever personal care. He was my first skip. He was my super boss in Unilever. He was a guy who held his team to such a high bar on performance, he was who pushed his team so much. And yet every night, every weekend, that same team would be at his home. They are working and partying at the same time. And he used to have this line of saying work is play. There is no work life balance. I have also always felt it kia work life balance bewakoofi hai (work-life balance is foolishness) because it presumes that work and life, you balance opposites, like work or life are opposite names. My life is my work and my work is my life.

So, these were the principles with which I wanted to construct this world around me, which in the first place maximized my happiness, and secondly there was a team which I could push to extreme levels so that they feel that they earned this success and yet be friends with, etc. So, with all of these principles, the first thing is then at entry point, you choose people who have these same values. And next, just like Sameer showed me, I showed them that, listen, we are in this together. This is a submarine. We've locked ourselves. We are in it right now. This is not judgment time. This is let's do it together. If you don't do it, I'm not doing it. We are not doing it.

In that context, I see that people actually love. So, in this environment, people don't have to check who they are, how they look, their morals, their ethics at the door, because now I'm entering the workplace. That just unlocks so much energy that you would have otherwise spent being something else, portraying something else, etc. And by the way, this only works with high performers. It doesn't work with mediocre performers. So, you have to be very fast in culling out mediocre performers. Because this level of camaraderie and friendship, mediocre performers start taking it as an excuse. That's a big red flag. My team will never do it.

We are the best of friends. Our spouses are the best of friends. We have a WhatsApp group with all the spouses. And there are so many times when the spouses meet up separately. I don't remember the last time I went out partying outside of my team. I learnt all this from Unilever to be honest. Unilever culture was like this. It taught me that I used to see all my friends, they were running away from work. I will finish my work and go to my friends to party and then real life will begin. At Unilever, we were colleagues and friends together. We used to work and hang out together.It was such a great experience.

But it doesn't work with there are some folks, if you made the wrong selection choices, who will try and use this as an excuse to do mediocre work and feel he is my friend. So you have to cull those out really fast. The people who are left. It's actually eminently possible to be the guy who pushes them the hardest at work. You ask my team, they will not be happy with because they know that if you take substandard work to Shashank and substandard defined by Shashank's opinion of your calibre, you will get sent back. You can do better. I've seen you do better. It doesn't matter. You take work back and do it better. Does not matter how much of time is left. You re-do the entire work well. We will sit together in the office till 10 pm, go out and get drinks after it.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

It actually unlocks so much magic happens.

Shashank Mehta

It unlocks so much energy.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

Awesome. And by the way, sorry, just to.

Shashank Mehta

To round it off, I want to work this way and with someone with whom my values align. This is what will define my life's happiness, not the IPO.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

Absolutely. That's amazing. I think just makes so much sense when you put it like that, but I'm not sure how many people actually think of it like that.

Shashank Mehta

I think it's a benefit of experience here, to be honest. Maybe. Yes. I was not born thinking like this about work and life. I had the privilege of working at a great organization, like Unilever. From an organization lens, there's a reason why it's called the CEO Factory. It's just spectacular and it's just exposure. Here I am doing this startup after twelve years, ten years in a FMCG firm, two years at a startup. So, there are things that I've seen which now inform my worldview.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

Absolutely. But that framework is incredible, I think. Just goes to show that I love the thought about happiness and how workplaces can be done. But this is great. I think as we end, I have this interesting set of personal questions that I end up asking most guests on the show. And that's how I would like to end most conversations with you.

I thought we can do a very quick, interesting thought as well, which is to go ahead and ask you about marketing thoughts besides the whole truth. Because you're of course known for everything that you do around the whole truth, and the amazing marketing that happens around it. But maybe let's do a very quick rapid fire of thoughts where I ask you questions about brands that you love, products that you love, etc. So we'll put you on the spot and then we'll end with a couple of questions on your personal values. But I think first one, which is your favorite brand?

Shashank Mehta

My favorite brand?

Jivraj Singh Sachar

And none of these answers can be the Whole truth or any of their products.

Shashank Mehta

See, there is the stadium answer of Apple, so I won't give it. I love it for multiple reasons. The next one I would say is Starbucks. Okay.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

What your favourite food and beverage brand?

Shashank Mehta

Oh, so packaged food. Yeah. I would go with Innocent most probably. Innocent is for people who won't know it's a juice brand from the UK.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

Oh, nice. I was not aware.

Shashank Mehta

It's brilliant. Like just the word tells you what the brand will be like and just go and read the copy that they write and what they say and it's so cutely. Innocent. And they do it so consistently over so many years. It's just not like it's nice.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

Which is your favourite product in food and beverage in packaged food?

Shashank Mehta

Favorite product in FNB. Packaged food. That's interesting. If I define favourite as what I am compulsively drawn to. I might not be very happy with the ingredients of that thing.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

Then what do you appreciate? Maybe we'll do. What do you consume the most as a separate one?

Shashank Mehta

This is a tough one. I've never no worries.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

What do you consume the most? Like, besides the whole truth, which is one brand that is constantly in your fridge.

Shashank Mehta

Packaged food is very less in my fridge. Honestly, the two things which keep coming is Haldiram ka peanuts ka packet comes a I like somehow Haldirams’ gets it right. So, for me that comes when indulgence in alcohol is happening and snacks need to come with it. Then there are these Bingo Mad Angles which are just like I know why they are so addictive? They are so addictive that it's tough to stop.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

Got it. Everybody has guilty pleasures. Glad you do as well.

Shashank Mehta

I absolutely do. There are times when I really crave. I'm big on coffee and cookie. So that combo is like big for me. So there are many times I'll either have a Swedish House Mafia cookie or there was a time when I was big on ‘Chips Ahoy’ as a cookie. So I would get the from Singapore. My sister-in-law would send Chips Ahoy because like black coffee and cookies like that combo of bitter and sweet is like my indulgence. Of course, I used to be fat for a very good reason. I was a school topper at that time. In Nirula’s, there was this thing that if you have scored more than 90%, and show them the report card, they will get a tub of banana split sundae. I used to eat that large sundae alone.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

Got it. As the founder of a consumer brand in India, which is another consumer brand that you really appreciate from afar.

Shashank Mehta

The first one that came to my mind as you said, this was Phool.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

Oh, nice. Nice.

Shashank Mehta

I think very purposeful brand, beautifully designed, never strayed off course and doing some great work, I feel. Another one which is they're very good friends is Mokobara.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

You carry their bag; you wear the Indian brand. You're wearing Neeman's also? So, I think it shows.

Shashank Mehta

So it’s Moko and Neeman's. But from a brand lens I would say Mokobara even more because I love the minimalist design ethos India may usually it is missing. Like we try to fill everything up and they you know I know Naveen, who's the more silent founder. Sangeet is the guy who's the face. But Naveen is the design brain behind the brand and the amount of time and thought they spend designing the product. The product is extremely thoughtful. My bag that I carry has this magnetic pocket on top where I can put my wallet. I didn't know I had that need before I got this bag. So yeah, Mokobara would be fairly nice.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

Very nice. I think this was fun. I got a lot of interesting brands out of you. But as we conclude Shashank and we've discussed a bunch of things. But I think one trail that at least for me as an admirer of you as a founder, and for me, having done multiple conversations has been the fact that you are somebody who comes across as, of course, very mission driven. You've done so many incredible things, great product, great brand, knowing all of this. I wouldn't say wisdom of starting up, but this is, of course, by no stretch of the word being easy. It's been a steep learning curve. And you've done so much in the three years that you've been around for anybody starting out. Now, this is going to seem stereotypical, but what would you not just advise but why would you advise starting up? Or what is your thought around just starting up as a lens?

Because as you said, not everybody does it for the same reasons as you have. What were your reasons? We know, but what would you suggest? Somebody starting up is something I'd love to know.

Shashank Mehta

To I think I want to answer for someone starting up in CPG FMCG specifically. Because that's what I know about. And I think the answer is very different for tech. I actually think that if you're going to start up in CPG, go get some work experience at a Unilever or at some other big firm. See, this is a hundred-year-old business. This is not technology. This is not I will make an app and there is no friction to downloading an app. So, consumers will download it for free and try it. Try fast, fail fast, I believe, does not work in CPG because if I ship a product which you do not like, I tried fast and I failed fast, the next product I put out, you will not even try it. So, you actually have to strive for being first time right. And to be first time right, you need to know the rules of the playbook before you even try to break the rules.

And those rules can only be learnt in a large company. So, I would strongly suggest that if you're thinking of starting up in CPG, by all means do it.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

But get that experience.

Shashank Mehta

Go get two, three years of experience in a large company.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

Awesome. So, CPG is tough. It's not like the tech industry. And you should not treat is similar to tech. This has been so much fun. Thank so much for being on the show for the second time. It was as good as I imagined and much more. Thank you so much. It was such a pleasure.

Shashank Mehta

Thank you so much for having me and asking such insightful questions.

Jivraj Singh Sachar

Really glad to be here. Thanks for having me.