Going back to my roots
Today is not a marketing story. It's personal. When hard times hit, the layers and fluffs get pealed off. I went back to basics, the basics I knew and could do to survive.
👋 Hola! Welcome to Out of Singapore. This is Shan and I am building Xandro Lab, a longevity science brand. I test, learn, and share business and marketing insights in this weekly newsletter. Today I am going to share a takeaway from my personal story. I have given this a long thought and came to the conclusion that it holds true for everyone around me (Anyone who has gone through rock bottom).
Back in 2022, I wanted to be founder and owner of SaaS company. SaaS (software as a service) is software and applications that you pay monthly or annual subscription for, for example - Bumble, Spotify, Canva and so on. Instead, a year later, I became CEO for a health DTC brand. I can say fate happened, but it’s more than that. Let’s get into the story. This is how the story plays -
Part 1 - My past life of ecommerce
Part 2 - Aspirations leading to ugly fallout
Part 2 - Going back to my roots
Let’s start then. I will keep it honest, straightforward and quick.
#1 My past life - Ecommerce revenue
Before you understand the decisions and actions I took in 2023, you will need some idea of the time time before. From 2016 to 2020, I was leading revenue operations across a few categories and the largest brands on Myntra. Life was all about numbers, revenue, operations and daily targets.
At that point of time, Myntra would achieve a daily GMV of SGD 5-7 mn. Peak days would easily be SGD 15-18 Mn. That’s 200,000 orders everyday and 700,000 orders on peak days. This was 2018 to 2020 period. I would be responsible for at least 30% of this daily revenue. I have managed this bulk in different capacities - individual contributor and manage role. The requirements from the role remained same over the 4 years - increase revenue and increase gross margin.
I had few levers to play with - discount, coupon and visibility (store design and banners). Later on, I was given some access to push notifications and SMS. On peak events, I was exposed to TV commercials and newspaper ads.
Even when I was not doing something, I was around what was happening. For example, we used to have massive annual fights with Nike and Puma over new stock purchase and sale targets. My fondest memory was the H&M launch on the platform.
People loved me because I had control and feel of numbers. A category manager would go and promise the sun and the moon. Then they would speak to me - “Buddy, I have f**kd up. How do we now achieve these promises?”. One meeting with a brand or a business head would translate into several actions on the ground. Sometimes I also did not have the answer but I could test freely.
I don’t know why people trusted me so much, but I was given a free reign. Not absolutely though, I have had instances of Category Heads and Brand Heads looking to cut off my head because I went too far 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣. There are two fond memories -
ELCA Brands (Bobby Brown, MAC, Clinic) - They prevent any form of direct discount, only free gifts are allowed on some days. One of the EORS (our End of Reason Sale - yes that’s right, "end of reason”), my pricing file had a mistake and they were all uploaded with 25% off. Consumers went crazy as did the entire Beauty and Personal Care department. The sale started at 12 midnight and in 6 mins, MAC was one of the 10 top selling brands on the platform. I had to find a hiding place and take shelter around my boss (still my favourite boss). The entire tech team was deployed to fix the error and by 12.20 am, the prices were rectified. I cannot tell how intense those few minutes were. By the way, it was not just a few people in office. There were 1000+ people in the office that night.
W - W is a famous ethnic wear brand in India. They sell premium modern ethnic wear for working women. Like any other fashion brand, they release new styles in two seasons - Summer Season and Winter Season. New season is not discounted more than 20% (sometimes 30%). In a similar EORS night, I mistakenly put the newest season on 80% off (cheaper than older seasons). As you guessed, the moment the clock hit 12 midnight, it was the topselling brand on platform, outselling Nike and H&M. I was on the first floor and the ethnic wear team was on 3rd floor. My dear friends in the office came running towards me asking me run away and hide. Another big hoopla has happened, hahahah. It was another time I begged the tech team to save me from the situation. Damage was done and I had caused a loss of roughly 100K SGD in 30 mins.
In a sense, everyone was aware of what I can deliver and how much damage my mistakes can cause. During my last 1.5 years, I was trying to solve the massive inventory overhang in the sportswear category. The category heads had taken crazy bets on brands that India was not aware of - Solomon, Saucony, Mizuno, Brooks and so on. This was SGD 250K of dead inventory that had not sold for close to 2 years.
So yes, I was in the thick and thins of brands, revenue, operations and people. I cherish those memories but I got tired of it.
It was too much of running around, a lot of operations, a lot of stakeholders and dependency levels on me was extremely high. There was absolutely no day when something did not go wrong.
I decided it was time to move to long term work profiles like a product manager on the tech side. I would earn more and there would be less daily stress. When internal transfer did not work, I attempted GMAT and got my MBA admission. Thus began my exploration.
#2 Aspirations of 2022 leading to ugly fallouts
After covid hit in 2020, I almost had nothing to do. I changed job, moved to Dubai, chilled and then moved to Singapore. For 2+ years, I did not do much. I was free. During this free time, I concluded entrepreneurship is the next stage of my life. I need to take some risks.
In March 2022, I joined the startup incubation program at Entrepreneur First SG. The first co-founder break up was tough. I was sitting beside a lake in NTU, and thinking about where has this come to. We had a call and ended the partnership. I still believe he was my best co-founder partner (problems of first love). Over the next 8 months, this transpired -
I got a new co-founder who quit 2 weeks before the pitch day. I was furious. (The same person did the same exact thing 6 months later at the next cohort of EF 🤣)
First pitch - I could not even pitch since the co-founder decided it was not worth his time.
After few weeks, found another co-founder from Bangalore batch of EF. Decided to have 2 bases - Singapore and Bangalore. Both of us did not want to move.
Called all my previous colleagues, bosses, senior leadership at Flipkart ecosystem. Pitched them the idea of finance reconciliation system. Everyone heard, but no one believed we would do it.
With no positive response from the ecommerce world, we got lured into the agriculture world. I never thought I would go down this route, but I did.
Travelled to farms around Bangalore, Jakarta, and Kuala Lumpur. Suddenly we saw lot more interest come in. Even from my family members. Everyone saw trading as profitable.
Then we realised the problem in the system and supply chain. So we decided to focus only on exports market. This opened up our world. Suddenly all investors wanted to speak to us.
Little did we know, they were not as interested, they were just checking us out and doing their everyday job.
We got rejected by EF twice during this period - Aug and October.
I got a third partner in the business, whom I gave 30% of the shares without a shareholding agreement or any clause of 1 year cliff. He became the biggest thorn in the system. I would call him a leech or parasite.
We had stopped getting EF salary support in June. We were both now burning our savings. One co-founder was supported by his wife, and the second one (the leech), had a full time job. I was going down under everyday. This was exacerbated by my decision to stay in Singapore. My few years of savings in India could never match the basic cost of living in Singapore.
By Dec, one of my previous bosses decided to put money into the business. Very soon, my second co-founder said he is done with this and does not want to be associated with agriculture (he wanted to make an AI or tech business).
Next, I got into a survival fight with the third co-founder. This was nasty, I blocked the person, closed the company and decided to stop entrepreneurship entirely for some time.
The last leg of this journey transpired in Dec 2022 and Jan 2022. More things happened in Feb and March 2023. Scammy things happened and I chose to join Qurio in March 2023.
#3 Going back to my roots
In Jan 2023, I joined a DTC consulting firm to advice them on growth. For 3 months, I was paid 500 SGD a month to advice. It was a fascinating situation though - I got to see the backend and behind the scenes happenings at these Shark Tank (India) DTC brands. I understood P&L, but this was the first time I saw so many P&Ls. This was the first time I saw the growth levers for DTC brands. This was the first time I saw all the operations that a brand has to go through. I never had imagined so much work being done by a tiny little team. It was quick and easy to understand DTC business after having spent so many years in Ecommerce platform.
I also saw how weak these DTC founders were in managing the P&L, agencies, money and taking risks with money. Jan 2023 to March 2023 was my crash course on DTC. This crash course gave me the confidence to claim that I can build brands during interviews.
Mind you, I was still hopeful of transitioning to Product Manager during the time. So I kept trying to get interviews as Grab. They did not even bother calling me. So I finally understood that ecommerce and DTC are the only areas I can make it.
Another area was being part of early stage startup teams. This would needed me to move back to India. I was not ready to quit, so I let this option rest.
In March 2023, I decided to take the chance with Qurio (after they decided to take a chance with me). It was a make or break year for me. Either I perform or I would be out (or thrown out) by end of the year.
Let’s take a quick break here - I realised the story became so long. I have one more long part to share about what I did during the first 6-8 months building Xandro Lab. Honestly now that I look back, it was all hilarious. Let me write it as the next post on the coming Sunday.
Next Sunday would be how did my ecommerce roots help me survive and later thrive.
Thank you so much for reading. I know today’s write up is not complete.
It’s 6.20 pm already, and I really want to go for a long run tonight. So I needed to stop writing.
It’s almost a complete week off here in Singapore on account of CNY. I will still be streaming for a few days to see if it makes sense. We have been able to maintain our numbers from November onwards. It gives us confidence to do lot better in coming months.
Cute Jisoo is back again!
Have a great week ahead. Cheers and be healthy!