Interview with Aditi Sinha, Co-Founder, Locale.ai

Welcome to ChainTech, the show and podcast focusing on the latest trends in supply chain, procurement, and logistics technology. My name is Max Henry from the Global Supply Chain Council, and together with my co-host and special guest, we explore the personalities, startups, innovators, and industry players driving disruption in supply chain. From early stage to unicorns, And from cutting-edge technology to the people using it to help drive more innovative, agile, and resilient supply chains around the world. This is ChainTech. Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of ChainTech. I'm your host, Max Henry, from the Global Supply Chain Council. And I'm joined today with my co-host Sandeep Chatterjee. Hi Sandeep, how are you?

I'm doing good, thanks Max. Hi Aditi.

Sandeep, just go ahead and introduce yourself there quickly to the audience.

So I'm a director with Deloitte. I look after the supply chain and technology functions for the India region and looking forward to a very insightful session with Aditi.

All right, thanks again for joining us on another episode of the show as we continue to host some of the most interesting chain tech founders and discuss the rapid rise of supply chain logistics and procurement technology across the APAC region. As we jump into today's conversation, I want to make sure that you are also aware of the ChainTech platform that we recently launched, and you can check it out at chaintech.net. You can also find all the previous episodes of that podcast on chaintech.show. So joining us today are our guests, Aditi Sinha, who is the co-founder of Lokal.ai, based out of Bangalore in India. Hi, Aditi, how are you?

I'm so good, Max. Thank you so much for having me here and very excited to have this conversation with you.

All right, so as we get started, that's just why we always do this at each beginning of our podcast, maybe we'll go into your background and I'd like to understand a bit more about yourself? Where did you grow up? What was your background? What did you study when you were younger?

Yeah, sure, definitely. So, um, I, I actually grew up in a tier 2 city in India, uh, called Patna in the state of Bihar. And, uh, but, you know, early on my parents were very focused on, uh, both mine and my brother's education. Uh, so we went to the best school in the city and, uh, you know, as a result of that actually ended up going to one of the best colleges in India as well. It was called BITS Pilani where I studied economics and fin and graduated in 2018.

Okay, and then so how did you actually get started? What was your first job after you graduated?

Sure, so because I studied economics, I was really, really interested in the whole field of data analytics. So my first start as First job was working in a data consultancy startup. It was called Social Corps, which is based out of New Delhi in India. And over there I was working as a research analyst. So basically I was sitting between the clients and the— and all the data projects that we used to do, scoping them out, essentially executing them. And it was in that startup itself where I met my now co-founder Rishabh, who had been working over there for the past 4 years. And together we used to build a lot of tools for operation teams in logistics, FMCG, government, and so on.

Okay. So you actually had one job experience and then founded your company, right?

Right away?

Yes, actually, uh, it was just for 6 months. So I would say I kind of started off almost right after graduation.

Okay. So what actually motivated you to start this company, Lokal.ai?

Yeah, actually, as I mentioned, you know, my co-founder Rishabh, he had been working in the startup for the past 4 years. And together when we were building a lot of these kinds of tools for operation teams, right. We actually worked for companies in the vaccine distribution company. We worked for large FMCGs, governments. We actually realized that the operations teams within all of these companies don't have the right kind of tooling that they need to be able to do their job effectively and efficiently. Uh, most of them were still using, uh, you know, Excel sheets or some, you know, uh, random hacky dashboard that they had built internally. So what motivated both of us to start was the fact that, you know, we really, really resonated with the problem. We saw the problem firsthand and even experienced it ourselves because in that startup we were actually building similar kinds of tools for operation teams. But because it was a consultancy company, you know, we used to build these projects as one-off solutions. So what sort of, you know, uh, got us and, uh, got us into thinking was, hey, can we build a product around this that can sort of, you know, help operation teams, uh, uh, sort of help with their daily workflow and manage all of their work that they're doing today very efficiently?

So if I have to ask you, put it this way, uh, like what problem are you trying to solve? Like if you can explain in layman's terms for the benefit of everyone. So this is the problem and this is what we are solving. If you can just talk a little bit about that.

Sure. So in one line, in a very simple way, if I have to explain you, our product actually helps any operations team that they want with real-time alerts and actions on top of that. What I mean by that is imagine, let's say you're a logistics company and as a logistics company, one of the very common problems that you have is delays and SLA breaches. What our product would do is as soon as, you know, we get to know that there's a delay happening, we will make sure that an alert gets sent to the right person who is responsible to solve the delay problem in that area or in that city. And he can actually go ahead and sort of implement an action to solve that problem, whether that could be communicating with a driver who is sort of delivering the goods on, on the ground, or whether that could be talking to the warehouse manager. And on top of that, we have this whole collaboration and incident management where you can actually see what kind of issues are coming up again and again, who is solving the issues, what is the typical time it takes to resolve an issue, and so on. We've really been inspired by this product called PagerDuty, which actually today exists for the DevOps and the infrastructure team.

Mm-hmm.

So anytime, let's say there's something that breaks in the DevOps or the infrastructure team, PagerDuty actually sends an alert to the right person. Hey, you know, let's say your website has crashed or the product is not working so that they can immediately go and solve the problem. The idea was, you know, can we do something like what PagerDuty has done, uh, not for the DevOps, but for the real-world operations?

Sure. Uh, so as a follow-up question, again, I'm not comparing, uh, with the competition, but there are similar products which are available in the market who are doing, trying to address the same problem. So if you can tell us what are you doing something very different? Uh, that will actually keep the viewers, uh, interested about like what has been your approach in solving this problem.

Sure. Um, so I would basically answer this in 2 parts. Uh, in the first part, what actually we realized when we did a lot of research on our ops teams and the kind of tools that they use today, we saw that, you know, today because something was always breaking in the operations world and because these teams were always firefighting, Uh, the tooling that they were currently using, right, most of them included, you know, let's say your BI tools, Excel reports, uh, you know, some internal dashboards that the team had built for them. But because of that, right, anytime there was something that was breaking, uh, because it's not so easy to get that information right, uh, you know, right through the dashboard, you have to actually go and let's say filter tables, do pivot tables, join, and so on. By the time they already got to know that, hey, something is breaking over here and I need to go ahead and solve the problem, it was already too late. So in one, in one line, if I had to explain the problem with the status quo was that the dashboards and the reports that they, that they were using actually made them very reactive. But we want to help them make— we want to make them very proactive. So our, our thesis over here is as soon as something breaks, we will alert you right at the same time that, you know, something is breaking and you need to go and solve that instantly right at that moment. And to answer your question on how we are different from some other products out there, so actually alerts today exist in a lot of BI tools as well. So you have alerts as part of, you know, your most important BI tools, let's say Power BI, Tableau, and so on. The problem with that is it's just a very small functionality you know, that they offer. And the majority, majority part of their offering is actually, you know, being able to make charts and graphs and build those beautiful dashboards. So, you know, we have the concept of something that we call actionable alerts at Lokal. What makes alert actionable? The first is, you know, it gets, it gets sort of alerted to you in real time so that you can actually go and solve the problem. The second part is, part is that, you know, it goes to the right person in the team who actually needs to go and solve the problem. The third part is now once you get to know that something is breaking, you actually need to go ahead and solve the problem. And the fourth part is to actually go ahead and implement the problem. And if in case it's not solved, go ahead and escalate it. Now these are all the parts that are not present in the typical BI tools that exist today. The alert that they have is very, very basic and very functional. So what we want to do is build a foundation from alerts and build an entire collaboration and incident management on top. Okay.

So Aditi, companies which are involved in supply chain operation are using, they have their own tool, right? They have software, they might be using a TMS solution, they might have WMS. Those tools and software comes with also alert and notification. So are you replacing, are you enhancing those notifications? How does Lokal help? those companies who are already using those WMS or TMS solutions in their current operations?

Yeah, yeah, actually, Max, the way we build the product, it is very extensible. What I mean by that is, uh, how our product works is imagine all your entire data of your operations, right? Not just about from your TMS, but data about your customers, about your orders, about your finance, revenue, anything that you want. We actually integrate with all of the data directly from your data warehouse. And you know, you can actually set up very configurable alerts and say that, you know, for example, anytime, you know, the order— that is, the time that it took to actually pick up the order from this warehouse is greater than 10 minutes, make sure that, you know, an alert gets sent to the warehouse manager. You can actually set so many use cases on the product itself. So to answer your question, they might have set, you know, some basic alerts today on TMS, but how we are better than them is one, we actually deal with use cases across different teams and verticals, right? So we of course start with operations teams, but operation also includes a bunch of things, right? NPS score, customer churn, repeatable users. So we actually deal with all of those use cases that they can set up very easily on the product. And the second part is, as I mentioned, the concept of actionable alerts, where even though these systems have alerts, it's, it's a very basic functionality as part of their offering. The whole value prop of Lokal and what we offer is once you get an alert, what happens after that, right? The ability to take actions, the ability to figure out why this alert happened, the ability to escalate if the problem was not resolved and so on.

Okay. So, you're recommending some calls of actions to the user.

Yes.

But to do that, you need to understand what the solution is doing. So, in the case of WMS, you need to understand the scenario, the context around the WMS platform, right? So, are you connecting with certain tools? Are you focusing on certain type of software? And is Lokad more like an add-on on top of those existing supply chain or logistics tools that companies are already using?

Yes, it is like an add-on, uh, you know, with respect to all the current tools that they're using. Uh, how we go ahead and integrate is we directly integrate with their databases or data warehouses where typically all the data that the companies already have gets stored. So even that the data that they have in the TMS, they would probably store in their data warehouse. And the data warehouse acts as a central source of truth for all the data that we ingest into our system. And on top of that, data analysts can come and write SQL to configure alert triggers or even write SQL queries to figure out, okay, what really happened. So if the order was delayed, which lap of the journey was it delayed? Was it in the first mile, mid-mile, last mile? You can come and you can get to know all of those insights very quickly on the product.

Okay, interesting. Yeah, so what I understand is, again, uh, you're— I know there's an event which has happened, there's an alert, and you make a decision. So maybe this is what the current product is. Do you have any plans of getting into something called like a predictive or a prescriptive, or you're already doing that?

Uh, yes, we actually do. What, uh, what we are currently working on, Sandeep, is an anomaly detection model, uh, where, uh, you know, imagine if you don't have to sort of come and set the thresholds and the conditions on your own, but using all your past and historical data, if the machine can itself alert you anytime there is any kind of anomaly and let's say, you know, any difference with respect to the desired behavior. So we're currently working on an AI model like that where, you know, you don't have to come and set up an alert, but the system will already tell you based on, you know, what we have seen is the normal behavior and pattern in your operations today.

Okay. Lookalpha, if I understand well, you're not only focusing on logistics, you're also covering other sectors. What would you say is your biggest strength in terms of industrial sector right now with your current solutions? Where do you see having the most traction with customers?

Yeah, sure. I think for us, the most sort of industries that have given us the most amount of traction are what call hyperlocal as well as, uh, you know, logistics. What we mean by hyperlocal is any, uh, company that has operations within a city, so sort of intra-city operations, whether that's a, you know, ride-hailing company, taxi company, or, uh, you know, take medicine delivery, food delivery, and so on, as well as logistics, which actually includes 3PL, 4PL, freight, uh, land freight, ocean freight, and all of those things, right? So we sort of have a mix of both of these industries where we have the most amount of customers.

Okay, uh, let's talk a little bit about your company, like what is your— who is your competition? I know a lot of startups, a lot of established companies already in this space. So who are your major competitors and what are you trying to do? Of course, you spoke about how you are different than others, but would love to hear about your competitors, like, and Then how— what is your funding mechanism? Like, are you bootstrapped or you have raised capital? Number of employees? Geographically, how are you? I need too many questions, but if you can just take it one by one.

Let's start with the competition first.

Yes.

Yeah, sure, definitely. Um, so actually the interesting thing about, uh, Lokal is that, uh, we actually have, uh, found about 2 recent— uh, recently about 2 main competitors. Uh, one of them is called Logic Loop and the other is called Avenue.so. Both are companies based out of US, and, um, the way we are sort of approaching the problem for the operations teams is similar in some ways, right? Um, the crazy thing about this market is we believe, you know, this is the time when, uh, you know, a lot of products will be built for operations teams. And one of the reasons for that is, um, because of what modern data stack has actually enabled for a lot of data and operations teams together. Because of, you know, modern data stack and all the tools that have, you know, sort of existed in the past 10 years, companies now have data warehouses and data lakes where all their data is actually stored into one place, right? So because of that, what happens is, you know, it becomes very easy for us to enable analytics, intelligence, alerts, actions for operations teams. So what I'm just trying to say over here is that, you know, we believe that this market is going to grow so much bigger and it's already getting very hot.

How about Aditi? How about the big players? I mean, I can start thinking about SAP, who has, you know, was a market leader with ERP, and you have Oracle with their strong database, you have IBM. Microsoft as well. So are those big guys competing somehow with, with what you do, or could they compete and, and, and just, you know, replace what you are doing?

Actually, I would not consider them to be competitors, Max. And the reason for that is even if a company, let's say, adopts Lokal, they will not actually stop using an Oracle or a Microsoft Excel or ACP or any other tool like that. Because the value prop of all of these products is very different from what we are offering. So Lokal, I would say, is an additive tooling in terms of their entire stack that they have, which is why we don't see these companies as direct competitors. And from whatever research that we have done in terms of the customers that we have or the, you know, conversations that we've done, most of the companies in the logistics space don't actually use a lot of these products for their alerts, even though I know they have this functionality, because that's not their major offering or their major value prop.

Okay. Let's talk about— yeah, Sandy was asking about your current funding situation. How did you actually start the company? Did you invest your own money? Did you raise some funds? Yeah.

Yeah. So because, you know, we started this company fairly after college, we actually bootstrapped it for, I would say, the first 5 months. Post that, we actually got an angel check. So we had an angel investor, and through his check, we were able to sort of build the prototype and build the first MVP of the product. Uh, post which, we, we've had 2 funding rounds. Uh, one was a pre-seed round, and the second was the seed round. Uh, our seed round happened last year from one of the top institutional investors in the country called Chirate Ventures. Uh, it was for $1.33 million. And yeah, we're hoping to raise our Series A very soon as well.

How do you make money with your, with Lokal Solutions? How do you charge clients?

Sure. So we actually have a SaaS-based subscription model. And how we go about our pricing is a tiered pricing based on some, you know, value-based metrics. For example, number of seats, number of alerts that they've created, alert frequency, and so on and so forth.

And where are you based out of? Like, is it geographically distributed team? If you can talk about your team size as well.

Sure. So we are about 25 people now. Uh, almost everyone is in Bangalore, uh, but me along with my sales team, we also travel, you know, a lot of times, uh, to different places to meet our customers.

And your customers are based out of India or abroad, or how is the customer mix?

Yeah, actually we did not plan for it to be this way, but it so happened that our customers are actually distributed across 33 countries. So along with our customers, we actually, you know, empower their operations and Lokal is empowering operations in 33 different countries and across 5 different industries at the moment.

And typically what we have seen is the first customer is always Most difficult to get once you get the first customer. So how did you go about it?

Absolutely. Um, so actually it was a combination of a bunch of things. Uh, I think what really helped was coming to this new city of Bangalore where both me and my co-founder came and we started developing, uh, our network. And, uh, the first customer that we got was actually through the network. So this kind person actually connected us to the customer. But side by side, we were also doing, you know, a lot of cold reach out campaigns, you know, doing a lot of marketing and content on LinkedIn. So when we used to go for meetings, people actually knew what we were doing and they knew about us already. So that also helped in addition to, you know, all the hustle that you do when you try to get meetings with all these prospects.

Aditi, you mentioned that you have customers around the world, but how do you support those customers which are? outside of India. That must be difficult for you. First, you need to engage with them, you need to then, you know, integrate, do the implementation, and then support them as well. Is it challenging for you to actually do this, you know, being based in Bangalore?

Not yet, I would say, Max. But, you know, this is something we aim to focus more and more as we go forward and focus on particular geographies. Uh, the reason why we have so many customers distributed all over the world is because of how strong, uh, inbounds we get. So about 50% of our current customers are actually inbounds, uh, who've—

I—

who mostly come from, you know, either Google searching us or landing on our blogs and then, you know, reaching out to us and sort of getting kickstarted on the product. Um, so we've, you know, we have customers from Japan, from Vietnam, from Singapore, from India, of course, Europe. Middle East and so on, right? So it's very distributed that way. I'm sorry, I missed your second question.

Yeah, so I was curious to understand how do you actually onboard them? Because, you know, your solution is fairly complex. You need to have access to database. You need to, you know, there's a certain level of customization and integration, I guess. So when you're not close to them and you don't have access to them, physically, that must be quite challenging. So how do you, how do you go around this?

Yeah, actually, just to clarify, Max, we don't do any customization for any company, and that's how we've built the product. So how the integration works, and this is something we work very hard to build and make sure the experience is also right, the current integration takes just 30 minutes because we have integrations with the most common data sources, databases, and warehouses. What you need to do is just, you know, integrate directly with the, with the product, and it sort of sits as a wrapper on top of your database or data warehouse, right? Uh, the setup is just 30 minutes long, and, uh, you know, you can just quickly get started, uh, integrate, configure your tables, uh, write your SQL to trigger your first alert, and get started with the product.

So—

Okay. We basically spend a lot of time and effort in making sure the onboarding process is really, really quick. And you're able to get the value out of the product fairly quickly and very easily.

Okay, that's that easy. Okay, interesting. Yes, Sandeep.

Yeah, so again, I looked at your background. Uh, you went to, uh, you were brought up in Patna, then you went to BITS Pilani, again one of the best colleges in India. And then typically, the way our social system is, like, our parents will invest whatever it takes to get us educated. And then what they expect is you get a job and that's how it works. Then you must have faced a lot of resistance. And again, I'm not biased against anything, but what typically happens is there may be some gender bias that a female co-founder and all that. So what kind of challenges did you face when you started all this and how did you go about it?

I— so when we actually started, you know, honestly, we never knew this is something that would work out. So just to tell you like a little bit on the background story. Uh, when we started, we just thought, hey, you know, why not give this a shot? And, you know, if this works out, great. And if not, it's okay. You know, we're very early on in our careers and we'll go and get, you know, some good, decent enough jobs. So, uh, and we anyways had runway for just 6 months for both of us, right? So we just, uh, both of us and, uh, me included, I went and I told my parents, hey, you know, let me try this out for 6 months, uh, and let me see where this works out. And, uh, the good and the fortunate thing is those 6 months are still lasting. And, uh, it's hopefully it'll go on for a long time now. So, um, I think we, we did not take it very seriously. Uh, we just ran it as an experiment and, you know, we just wanted to see what's gonna happen, uh, if we just go out and give this a shot. Uh, I think that kind of attitude helped with my parents. Uh, but of course, you know, uh, you're absolutely right on the gender bias and There's so much, so many more challenges that women face, you know, that a lot of times men don't get to face and they also have that kind of privilege. This has sort of come up a lot in the journey. And right now with, you know, with my age in particular, with my parents, you know, subtly, you know, like in convincing me to get married soon and get settled. Uh, you know, that my co-founder doesn't sort of, you know, get to face. So all of those, you know, subtle things is there.

I—

the subtle things are there. Um, I think what matters is, uh, you need to be very— in my opinion, you need to be very, um, focused and clear on what you want and, uh, just, you know, have sort of a plan to convince your parents around it. And as long as, uh, you know, you have clarity, I think hopefully things will work out.

Yeah, I was telling Sandy before the interview that you actually are our first female founder. So, actually, you know, does it interest you? I mean, if I look at the, the Chaintech database and count the number of female founders which are focusing on supply chain logistics or procurement startup anywhere in Asia, maybe worldwide, it's a super tiny number. What's your take on this, Sandy? Why there's not more women focusing on supply chain technology, or in just supply chain in general, because I also understand the supply chain profession quite well in India, which is primarily male-dominated, very, very few women as well. So what's the problem with supply chain in general, and the place of women in this profession?

Trust me, Max, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. And, you know, on this day, if I ever get a person who's a female that is my decision maker that I need to go and sell to, I just become so much more excited and happy, right? The, the connection and the bond is— it's just very, very different. Um, I think there are lots of reasons behind this. I feel one is, you know, like logistics and supply chain is obviously a male-dominated industry, uh, and I feel a lot of it has to do with the fact that, um, you need to have those— you need to be very street smart. You need to get things done from, you know, blue-collar workers and people on ground, people on, on the— people who are basically, um, shuttling on the road. So I think that requires a different kind of a skill. Uh, I'm definitely not saying that women don't have it or they can't do it, uh, but it's just something I feel that, you know, men have taken more opportunities in. And because when you look at an industry and you don't see, uh, you know, people who are similar to you and who are representing some part of your story as well, you feel, you know, you subconsciously maybe feel, okay, this is not the right place for me. So I think what we need to do is, uh, get more and more women in this industry together Uh, I'll tell you one stat actually. In the past 3 years of selling this product, I've only encountered 2 women. Uh, this includes, you know, all the countries that we have sold to where who was the decision maker that, you know, a woman that was a decision maker that we had to sell to. So yeah, the, the situation is actually quite grim and we need to—

Yeah, but I think, I think, but I think it's, uh, probably a, an India problem because if I, if you look at Europe or the US, you actually have a lot of CPOs and supply chain VPs, which are women top executives in big corporations. So women are clearly climbing to the top in the supply chain logistics field. But in Asia, probably more particularly in India, it's still very much male dominated.

Absolutely. Because I think the mindset is still— it has to change because it's not that somebody is not capable, but I think it's all about the mindset that, uh, it's very— women are supposed to do this, this, and men are supposed to. But yeah, I think that's maybe—

It's very strong, still very strong in the country today, right? That we have these gender norms that women are supposed to do these things and men are supposed to do these things. And, uh, and when you, let's say, even actually take up a path that is not that common the entire society, including your parents, most of the times tell you, hey, you know, are you really sure you want to do it? Or a lot of times even forbid you from doing it, right? So it's something that we as a whole, as I said, and as a society need to work on. And basically, yeah.

Okay, sure. And I think you have been in the startup space for quite some time because I was looking at your background. You did something with Hyperloop, you were a technical writer, you were So if you— if I have to ask you, what is— how does the current landscape of the supply chain and logistics startup looks like? Because there are a lot of startups which have come in the last 2-3 years. And do you have any forum where you founders exchange information, share your concerns?

Sure. I think, Sandeep, the pandemic has been a very, you know, I would say an amazing enabler For a lot of supply chain and tech startups out there, right? And if you would just see the number of startups that have really got funding, and actually a good amount of funding after pandemic, that are operating in the logistics supply chain, you know, for freight forwarding, any of these sort of industries, it's really grown a lot. And I think the reason for that is that, you know, the pandemic actually portrayed and showed the world. How broken our supply chain system really is, right? The way it is really built today, it, it cannot really handle such spikes and such surges in demand. Uh, it's really built for just-in-time deliveries, and we already noticed, right, that as soon as there was some load on the system, it completely collapsed. So I think everyone, including the companies that are there in the logistics and the supply chain space, They are now much more aware and they understand that they also need to be much more technically driven, data-driven. They need to have those systems, robust and sturdy systems internally to track, to have AI, ML, all of these things if they need to sort of survive in the next decade. So I think that's— it's been a great shift and that's definitely, you know, amazing news for all of us in the ecosystem. There's definitely so much that, you know, all of us can sort of learn from each other in that front. Uh, which also brings me to the second question that you asked. Um, so I think, uh, unfortunately we don't have a lot of platforms like that, but I, I really, you know, love the initiative that you guys have taken and especially Max, uh, has taken, uh, you know, the, with the group that he has, there's so much sort of knowledge sharing that is happening in that. Um, until now, until at least in the time that I was not a part of the group, uh, I just used to reach out to, you know, uh, you know, founders in the, in the same space, uh, on LinkedIn or email. I have unfortunately not been a part of any sort of, you know, closed space or closed group yet. But I'm really, really now glad to be a part of ChainTech.

Okay. Yeah, that's something we're trying to do. It's not easy, I can tell you, to actually bring those founders from different companies and different countries. There's still this attitude of being skeptical and not wanting to share and, you know, thinking that the person in the same group, it might be your competitor. So, we're still facing quite a bit of resistance, but as you know, I'm pushing hard and I'm not giving up on the idea. Because if you look at all the segments of the startup scene, whether it's fintech or edtech, or, you know, there are already a lot of very active groups where all those founders get together and exchange information, share experience, help help each other because everybody is facing the same issues and the same problem. But sometimes it's just hard for them to actually talk about it. I want to go back to Lokal again, your company, and I was curious to understand as you currently grow this company and as you mentioned earlier, you are starting to get clients overseas, what is your biggest challenge right now in your current growth? and development of a company and what really keeps you worried or awake at night right now?

Yeah, so right now, of course, this changes, I would say, every week, every month, every year max, but I can definitely share what's keeping me up at the moment. So we're actually experimenting with a new GTM model where we are experimenting with a complete bottoms-up or self-serve approach. Where let's say if you are a data analyst or an ops manager in any of these companies, you can actually come try out the product on your own, set up alerts without having to talk to any salesperson. Of course, you know, like the salesperson or the customer success person will reach out to you and we'll be there if you need help. But we are basically trying to create an onboarding flow where everything can be driven by the product. It's something that we are currently working on and launching very soon in about a month. So yeah, just keeping fingers crossed and hoping, you know, that this sort of helps us also grow much faster with respect to right now.

Are you worried about funding or, you know, talent, or is there any other aspect of your operation or of your company that you're worried about?

No, definitely not funding. I personally believe, Max, that good companies Uh, will get funded irrespective of, you know, how the— how bad the economy is. Of course it will be harder, but at the end of the day, if you're a company that is solving a real problem, uh, and that, that has proof points that it actually works, I personally believe that, you know, funding will come into place. Uh, I think the talent bit is definitely very tricky, um, but, you know, it's definitely improved, uh, as compared to last year. I think last year there was a total big frenzy going on in the market, especially on the engineering front, where engineers were demanding crazy high salaries, people who had just graduated. So I think the crazy salaries have definitely reduced. Um, so that's been a big, uh, help in, in general in the hiring front. But I think hiring is generally a very, uh, challenging bit. How do you sort of attract the smartest people and get them to sort of uh, have an amazing experience and, you know, have their retention as well, right? So I think all of these 3 are a very challenging aspect, aspect of building a company.

Okay.

And then to look at— yeah, so any company, again, the definition of any company is it's a going concern, it's there to stay. And unfortunately, there have been companies which have been there and then, uh, they got bought away by somebody else. So Again, uh, so what are your views? Maybe where do you look? What are your views about the company in the next 3 to— I know it's hard to— it's not like you take a crystal ball and try to predict something. And, uh, the pandemic, nobody predicted this. So at least if you will have a longer view, so 3 to 5 years down the line, where do you see your company?

Sure. I think, Sandeep, what we want to build is a product that is customized and, uh, you know, personalized to the needs and wants of operations teams. And why I say this is because if you look at any team in the company, you know, you take marketing, finance, HR, data, uh, sales, um, all of these teams in a company have very specialized tools that they're using, which is basically built and designed for what they need and they want, right? Ops is the only team in the company that is either using Excel sheets or they're using some internal dashboard that company has built for themselves. So the first thing we want to do is build a product that can empower our ops people, uh, build a product that feels like, you know, it's their home and that feels like, okay, you know, someone has now, um, empathized with their problem and cater to what they really want. And from there, you know, the idea is, uh, if you build a product that, you know, like basically caters to the needs of your persona, they would basically spend the entire day on that product. So we're really inspired by what some of the tools have done, right? For example, if you take Salesforce or HubSpot, uh, no matter whichever, uh, sort of CRM you're using, right, your salespeople spend 30, 40, 50% of their entire day on that tool, right, uh, to make sure that their workflow is productive and efficient. And we want to do the same thing for ops, right? Our vision is ops teams should sit on top of Lokal and empower all the amazing stuff that they do today, right? Whether it's delivering and making sure that vaccines have reached the place at the right time, especially before, you know, in the right state, especially before they were able to— they could not go stale. Or for example, whether it's an organ donation, you know, activity that is going on and you need to transplant the organ from point A to point B at the right time. And making sure that no delays happen. So a lot of these critical moments where, you know, where in a world where every moment counts, we believe our ops teams are the super— ops teams have the superpower to actually enable all of that. And we want to be the tool through which they enable all that.

Okay. What would be your advice to someone who's starting a new company focusing on supply chain technology?

I think there would be 2 things. The first one is, if you want to start a company, I would just say go for it. Uh, because I think if you really start, uh, and, you know, just spend a lot of time with the, with the customers that you're solving for, uh, whichever persona or whichever type of company that you're solving for in the supply chain, uh, in the logistics space, uh, you will actually figure out what is the problem you want to solve. Uh, so just spend a lot of time with the customer, talk to them, understand their problems. But all of this comes, uh, after you, you decide to start. So just go ahead and start and just take that step. Uh, I think the more we overthink, the more advice we will, you know, go ahead and sort from everyone else. Uh, our minds will create more and more reasons on why it doesn't make sense to take that risk. So, you know, just go for it is what my advice would be.

Okay, great. All right, got some quickfire questions just to wrap up this interview for your DT. So get ready, and this is maybe a surprise to you, but this is something we do at the end. Cats or dogs?

Sorry, Max, I couldn't hear you.

If you had to choose between cats or dogs, which one would you go for?

Definitely cats.

Okay, window or aisle?

Window.

Your favorite action movie, if you have one, or your favorite movie in general?

Uh, I really like Wolverine. Okay, but I don't watch a lot of action movies, so yeah.

What's your favorite sandwich?

Um, I don't know if you've ever had this, but I really like chicken tikka sandwich. Uh, that's the Indianized version of the Yeah, exactly.

What's your most used app on your phone?

I'm guilty of this, but I think it has to be WhatsApp.

Okay, well, you don't have to be guilty. That's usually the answer. What's your favorite tool to—

uh, did I lose Max, Sandeep, or—

I think We lost him. Yeah, he's back.

I came back. So I was asking you, what is your favorite tool to build your company right now?

Uh, I really love Notion. Uh, it's basically the tool where you can have the entire documentation of all the teams and the entire company in one place and really, really like the thought that they've put into it. Uh, the other tool I really like is this product called Linear, which is actually built for engineering teams and their workflows. So I think if you're starting a company, you would highly recommend both of these products.

Okay. Describe the rest of your life in just a few words.

Describe a race?

The rest of your life. What do you want to do? Yeah.

You mean how I want the rest of my life to be?

Yeah, exactly. 20, 30 years from now, how do you see yourself? Or where, you know, what do you want to do?

I think, um, even though I, you know, we are building this company, I actually see myself as an artist.

Uh, okay.

At the end of the day, I feel creating a company is in a lot of ways, um, creating art and, uh, you know, creating good design because, you know, it depends on how, how are you, what are you building the products, uh, and, you know, what's the design you're taking and how are you designing the entire org. So I just think at the end of the day, um, after 30, 20 years, I just want to look back and just be proud of the art that I've created.

Uh, are you into painting, sculpture? What do you— what are you into?

Yeah, um, I'm actually a lot into music. Uh, I sing. Okay. I also write a lot, and I sometimes paint. So I, I just feel that, you know, like this it just— building a company is where, you know, I sort of channel a lot of those artistic inclinations I have in some or the other way. Um, and, you know, just when I look back, I just want to be proud and say that, hey, this is the— this is the art that I created. And, uh, I just— okay, it doesn't matter if the world remembers me, but the world should remember the art at the end.

So, okay, so you need to get a good exit with Lokal, okay, makes a lot of money, and then you can move to Goa and become an artist, you know, um, for the rest of your life.

Yes, why not? I'm so open for it.

Excellent. Thank you very much, Aditi. Very great talking to you. It was a good interview. I also want to thank you, Sandeep, for joining us and helping me to understand what Lokal is all about. So it was great having you, Aditi, and we look forward again to see you next time.

Yeah, thank you so much. It was a pleasure speaking to both of you. Have a great day ahead. Bye-bye.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Thank you guys for listening on Chentech, and then we'll again see you at our next episode, right? Okay, thank you. Bye-bye.