LBB Open House

Arjun and Hanif are co-founders of St+art India - an organisation dedicated to democratising art for the public through street art.   Starting out as a project in Delhi’s Shahpur Jat, St+art India today has scaled their street art projects across India- from Chennai and Goa to Mumbai, Hyderabad and beyond. It’s a mammoth project that involves multiple stakeholders from local governments and municipalities, communities, sponsors and artists, and that they’ve been able to transform quaint spaces in India to vibrant art districts is truly commendable. This episode is a little different from other Open House episodes. Let us know your questions, suggestions, ideas and feedback to share, email us at openhouse@lbb.in. You can find us on Twitter on @FromLBB and I'm on @suchitasalwan

Tanmay Bhat is one of the most well knowns creators in India.  

This episode is incredibly funny and insightful - especially if you’re interested in the creator economy, new platforms, tools and mediums. We talk about one of 2020’s best ad campaigns - which is Cred’s "Not Everyone Gets It" campaign that featured Bappi Lahri, Daler Mehndi and more fantastic faces.   If you’ve got questions, suggestions, ideas and feedback to share, email us at openhouse@lbb.in. You can find us on Twitter on @FromLBB and Suchita on @suchitasalwan

William Bissell is the chairman of Fabindia - one of India’s largest & leading lifestyle brands with over 200 stores across India that just celebrated its 60th anniversary.

In this episode, we talk to William about how to think long term, and differentiate static from signal while building your brand. He gives a really interesting statistic around how the life-expectancy of corporates is declining and we dive into what it takes to build brands that can out-last trends. FabIndia has evolved a lot over the past couple of years - with Fabcafe, their experience centres & more. Given the impact that COVID’s had on retail, William shares his point of view on what the future of retail is, and where lifestyle brands should be investing to reap long term gains.

William’s humility and honesty is really inspiring - you’ll hear that throughout this episode! We learnt a lot from this conversation - and we hope you enjoy it

Varun Duggirala is co-Founder of The Glitch - a digitally-led creative agency that’s worked with clients like Unilever, Netflix, Nokia and others, and is now under the WPP group. Varun is also the host of the podcast, ‘Advertising is a Dead’. Each week he discusses the changes and developments in the business of advertising and marketing.

Varun has had a fascinating career path - an engineer turned PR & Marketing student, he worked at MTV and Channel V before starting The Glitch. In this conversation, we run through all things brand, content, experience, and creator-led marketing. We talk about the gradual morphing of advertising into becoming part art, part science. We were also curious about his point of view on podcasting and where the medium is headed, and his experience building his personal brand through his podcast.

There’s a lot of tactical and applicable advice in this episode - enjoy

Mona was the first female engineer at Airbnb, and led product and strategic growth for the company in the US and then for APAC. She’s been an advisor to us at LBB for the past 6 years - I often go to her for advice on marketing, product development and hiring. 

On this episode, we deep dive into one of my favourite topics - marketplaces, and all that goes into building them. What part of demand / supply should one tackle? How do you navigate customer and merchant churn? Which qualitative benchmarks are needed while chasing quantitative outcomes? We cover all this and more. 

I think this is one of my most enjoyable conversations on Open House so far. I hope it helps you learn something new.

Taru is the General Manager of Match Group in India, which has a portfolio of dating products that need no introduction - such as Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid. Taru has a wide ranging career- having worked with BCG, Sequoia and then Match Group, where she was the 1st employee for Tinder in India and has grown the product from strength to strength. 

In this conversation, we discuss Match’s full stack product approach for companionship, what Taru has learnt about Indian customers while building Tinder, how dating products - specifically in the Indian context - have created agency, and how she’s grown as a manager and leader over the past 8 years.

Kanwal has decades of experience - from Intel to Hindustan Unilever, to leading investments at Carlyle, Helion and now Managing Partner at Fireside. He knows what it takes to build brands in India. In fact, he’s invested in some of my favourite brands like Mama Earth, Epigamia, Paperboat, Boat headphones to name a few. What makes Kanwal uniquely awesome is that he’s a straight shooter; and you’ll hear that in today’s episode. Our chat is peppered with real life examples and useful data points like Boat headphones’ super interesting pricing strategy and how brands like Mama Earth have scaled to clock over INR 100 crores of revenue.

Deepak is the Global VP of marketing at India’s home-brewed beer brand, Bira91. With over 14 years of experience at beverage companies such as Pernod Ricard and MillerCoors, he has led brand development, marketing and sales, and helped emerging and established brands find success across international markets.

In this conversation we dig into: what it takes to launch a brand internationally, how Bira’s been able to scale across consumer segments through its ever evolving catalogue, and trends to make a note of if you’re in the alcobev space. Spoiler alert: women drink beer & are an audience to reckon with!

Matt and Namrata are the co-founders of Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters - one of India’s leading coffee brands. They talk about how they built Blue Tokai - the journey from starting with an online presence to making it a cult coffee brand in India with plenty of physical locations. I really enjoyed learning from Matt and Namrata. As a coffee lover, there was a lot of insight for me into how the industry works and the challenges a new brand can face. I am very impressed by their strategic decision-making, and they gave me a lot to ponder over in my own business. This episode can help you understand how to start a business, adapt, and stay relevant with changing times.

Nidhi has decades of experience working for some of the biggest companies. Currently the Director of Partner Marketing at Microsoft, she is also the force behind making India the largest consumer base outside the US for GoDaddy. What I find most fascinating is her outlook to marketing, which is predominantly from a B2B lens - businesses are customers too. Keeping that in mind, I chat with Nidhi about her experiences with identifying and implementing the right B2B marketing strategies. I really enjoyed learning from her, particularly how to think about marketing through first principles. Thanks to the wealth of knowledge Nidhi has, this episode will help you understand consumer psyche and how to effectively drive consumer engagement. Hope you enjoy our conversation.