Proven Tactics of Drawing Attention to Product Launches by Lenold Vaz

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You are excited to launch a new product but need to sort out tactics, and strategies before launch and post-launch for making it amazing. We dive into the same with Lenold Vaz, a growth and product consultant for SAAS and DTC companies.

Lenold Vaz: Launch is just day one. There's a lot more going after that. Right? I keep telling founders, don't worry about the launch that much, and think about the entire journey, but if we do have to do a launch, the first thing that I would do is look at the customer data that we have, who are the customers that we, who we think make the best segment and cohort that would really go after this product and really niche down on that.

Aashish: Let's go on a DTC drive today with Leonard Vaz growing and pretty much likes scales, SaaS, and DTC brands. He also is the founder of Beandeck, which is India's largest marketplace for everything Coffee.

Lenold Vaz: Thanks, Aashish. Thanks for having me, man. I'm really excited to chat with them.

How are you doing today? Hey, I'm good, man. How is all good over here? How's it going with you?

Aashish: Pretty, pretty awesome. Then why don't you give the listeners a bit of background on, you know, what you've been doing for the last decade? What have you been up to? How did DTC come onto you?

Lenold Vaz: Yeah, well, that's it's a, it's a weird story in which like, I don't have a definitive way in how I got into DTC, but lemme give you a quick background of the past, like 10, 12, or more than 12 years now, I've been in technology marketing, you know, like working on various products, started off with things like accounting software, like Thalia was actually my first job.

And everyone in India knows that. But other than that, moving on from there, I started working for a lot of startups in the domain name industry, which was completely global. Learned a lot from there while at the same time, I was super interested in startups in e-commerce and especially with the domain name business, I started getting into e-commerce because we were selling domain names also about two,  three years back just before the pandemic actually decided, Hey, it's time to dip my hands into building something of my own and decided let's go out.

I was obsessed with coffee. So I decided to go out and build a marketplace with coffee because I couldn't find the coffees that I was looking for. And that's how Beandeck came about. And Beak is like, yeah, it's, it's a marketplace with coffee. Anyone who loves coffee should definitely go check it out.

We have. 500 plus coffees listed from the best roasters in the country. But apart from that, what I really realized was I love this business. And at the same time, when I was building my own business, I was also helping a couple of other founders, a couple of other guys build out and test out ideas that they had, where I really.

This is how you actually build an MVP. I've done it a hundred times before in a business, but I never really called it that, right? So this is how you build an MVP. This is how you push, and take it to market. And  I really started enjoying the direct-to-consumer route and started consulting a couple of bigger names in direct-to-consumer from India to the states, to a couple in Europe, stuff like that.

So I got my hands dirty all around, and I realized very soon that I loved the journey. Taking an idea and actually bringing it to market. What is that first phase? How do you build that MVP? I absolutely love that piece. And then from that one to 10, how do you grow that? So yeah, that's like a quick run-through of what, what all I do, and how.

Aashish:

Yeah,, I checked out your store as well, the marketplace. So really amazing design. It shows a lot about who you are and the kind of products you're building. And the experience was amazing. I mean, when I saw that website, I was like, this guy is someone who shows what he talks about.

So let's go back to the zero-to-one journey. So any entrepreneur right now in the DTC space, if he has to start, let's say building a small store with some good experience, with some connection to the consumer. And also showcases a great experience for people. What are the tools? How do they go about it? How do they go about building the MVP?
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Lenold Vaz:
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I'm gonna let you in on the secret sauce area. Like that's. It's what I do, but basically how I think about building an MVP and how I think about starting a new business is you have to understand some key things.

And the first thing is, why are you doing this? We all are doing it from the money. Let's keep that aside. We wanna build, we wanna get, make money, but that can't be the real reason, why are you doing this? Why are you building this specific product? Why will someone want it? What does the customer need?

You have to really understand that. So I think that's the first and foremost thing to nail down. And that's where basically your brand strategy, your brand messaging comes from the second is what am I doing with that? Okay. I know why I want to, I want to solve problems for people who are overweight, cool, or that's the problem, but what, how do you want to go about solving that?

So you find the product, then you actually go about building that product into a website, which most probably will be on Shopify, WooCommerce, the commerce, any of these, we would see most of them on Shopify, but there are tons of others. And then comes the part, which somehow a lot of people forget about, which is the data and marketing and going to market.

They're like, okay, if I've got a product, then I build a website. That's good. But no, that's just like the start of it. And that's where we really help out a lot of thoughts to understand, you know, you got this, this is how you take into the market. This is the kind of data that you look for. So yeah.

Think about your, why the, what, how, and that's, that's pretty much how you should look about building and taking a new product to.
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‍Aashish:

So when entrepreneurs come across your door, what kind of questions do you ask them? What kind of questions are thrown at you?
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Lenold Vaz:

Sure. Yeah, that's a really good way to ask me that. I think the questions that usually I would ask a founder are. Is again the same thing, right? Like why, why do you want to do this? Is there a personal motivation behind it? Have you discovered some pain points that you really wanna solve in yourself or with others that you've seen? Where does this pain point really originate?

And what motivates you to actually build this? That'll help me understand who the customer is. It is the founder of the customer, him. Because quite often that is the piece or is it a whole new set of customers? So that's the first thing, the second piece that we really get into after we've understood.

Why and what is the product and stuff is the business model. Pricing competitors. How do you do this? The questions that founders quite often ask me is like, how do I go about doing this? Okay. What product should I price at $5 or $10 or $20? Or if it's an, it's like 200 P or 500 rupees, what do I do?

How do I go about doing this? And that's, that's a whole new piece that we need to think about. I. when most people, when they're going to college and stuff have been thinking about, you know, cost plus pricing value-based pricing, but we've never really experienced putting that into practice. Right? Yeah. So, so we, we actually, this is one of the questions where founders usually ask me, how do we go about pricing and the various ways.

But we will then break it down into where we are competing. Who's the customer, it again, all flows into the same. Why and what? So that's the next question. The third question very often is how do I go about putting this out there? Right. Like, do I build a Shopify website? Do I just put it out on Amazon?

I mean, for DTC is primarily Shopify, but we see a lot of Woocommerce too. Should I just do, should I just start off with the Facebook marketplace? That's what we get here in North America. Like, should I  just put up something on Facebook? Those are questions that we get asked quite often, and again, various ways to go about it.

But having your own property with the Shopify website is absolutely critical. If you do, do you want to grow and scale? But for a quick MVP, yeah. You can try other things for sure. Awesome.

Aashish:

You're a product guy. So let me go on to ask a product question. What are the features that you think a good DTC store needs to implement before they go out there?
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Lenold Vaz:
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No, absolutely. That's a great question. And I think the way you put it, whether it's a feature or an experience.

I think of them as one whole thing, because just, if you're building a feature for a feature, just don't build it. If you're building it to enhance the experience, then let's talk about it. So from an experience, point of view, from the products or from saying example, a Shopify website, I would definitely think about how you can enhance a customer's experience based on knowing some data.

Are they new customers? Are they repeat customers? Do you have insights into what kind of products they like? And can you personalize that experience based on that in some way, I know that this guy has bought? Say, for example, they've bought a protein shake with say, for example, Nia in it, which helps with weight loss.

So can I show you a little bit more, some more products which are based on weight loss or health and stuff like that? Can I, can I do that? Can I really personalize the experience? So I think the number one feature for. For a website apart from the normal e-commerce flows is the personalization that you can build on top of that based on real data of the customer. I think all the other features that you're talking about fit into this bucket itself because personalization can be done in so many different ways at so many different touch points, but as a brand new brand, as a brand new DTC website, the first thing that I would look at. Am I able to actually capture that data?

Because without that, there's no way to personalize. So number one, how do I capture that data? Number two, how do I actually pipe it into a system that I can visualize and segment that data? And number three, how do I use that data to personalize the experience at every touchpoint or you don't need to do all of it to start with, but you have to think about this if you want to scale.
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Aashish:

Amazing. Sounds good. So. I've built my DTC store. I've had my initial set of products. I've understood customer data. I'm acquiring people. I'm able to make some money out of it, but, but by understanding that data, I got an idea. A new product category, which people are needing right now. Right.

So I go ahead and manufacture it. I will go ahead and build it. I go ahead and, you know, figure out what the new product should be and all that. Now, many of them don't realize that every new product that they launch in the launching that your store needs its own way of launching. Right. So from your experience, why don't you shed some light on, if you have to launch a new product within your DTC store, how should you go about doing.
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Lenold Vaz:

It's right.

sure. There are two approaches to this, and I really love the first approach in which I don't really launch the product, but, I pretend to launch the product. And if anyone read the four-hour week or like Tim Ferris and heard him, he talks about something called the painted door test. And a lot of others talk about this which is basically.

can I show you a fully formed landing page, a fully formed product page, and a PDP. Get it completely ready. Take amazing photos, and send traffic to them. See how people will convert on that. Right? And then you might not really sell the product, but at least if you can get an ad to cut. You have the rest of the data to figure out how much of that is going to work.

Right. Can I drive people to that point and see how it can work before investing in really manufacturing the product? So that is an approach I love to take, especially with MVPs, because at this point you don't really wanna spend a lot of money. Or another thing that we can do is when, when creating a, pushing out a new product, number one launches our overrated point.

Because launch is just day one. There's a lot more going after that. Right? So, that's something which I keep telling myself. I keep telling farmers, don't worry about the launch, stayed that much, think about the entire journey, but if we do have to do a launch, the first thing that I would do is look at the customer data that we have, who are the customers that we, who we think make the best segment and cohort that would really go after this product and really niche down on that.

You know, like I'm not talking. Oh, 40% of our customers would like this product. No. What is that? 2% of that 5% who you think are the lowest hanging fruit, find that data first and then create a very targeted campaign, which should be multichannel. Email, depending on your geography, maybe WhatsApp or SMS at least, and maybe a couple of other marketing channels where you would want to target these customers, drive it to these very specific customers to see what their conversion is.

And my first thing is always if we are launching a new product, the first couple of weeks should be about getting it. Is the product good? What do you, what is missing? What's wrong with it? Is the packaging working well, especially for physical products, super important, right? Is the packaging working well?

How's the delivery, working all those, all those pieces? I presume you've done your test, but the real world is always different.
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Aashish:

How do you go about gaining this feedback?

Lenold Vaz:

let's take, for example, if you are saying whole foods are okay.

Right. Huge retailers in the states, or actually let's go back to India and let's look at someone like the whole truth by a similar name, but a huge DTC brand. If they're launching a new product, I presume they would be getting thousands of orders in, right? and wave shots in a short span.

I would definitely. Set up a team, a small task force that is literally calling up customers after we've got their permission, obviously, please take the permission list. But after we got the permission, calling them up, not immediately after they've got the product, maybe a week after, especially for the product, like the whole truth, where one week is more than enough for you to test the product and talk to them, literally talk to them, record those sessions.

I firmly believe in actually talking to the customer to understand what you can, but there are other ways,, obviously, you can't talk to a thousand customers, right? So having a good mix of quantitative and qualitative data here would really help. I always believe that qualitative data is where you receive your insights and quantitative data surveys and you know, various other forms are where you take those insights, create hypotheses, and then justify them with the data that you can get from quantitative means.

So, yeah, talk to customers. If you can talk to 50 customers, that's a lot of information that you can gather from there, right? And then send out maybe an email campaign that will run quickly.  Incentivize them and always incentivize customers. When you're asking them for their time, you are literally taking time away from them, incentivizing them.

It's a great way, to improve your loyalty. It's a great way to make them happy. It's a great way to give them something extra and keep them coming back from more. And also for them to talk to you, this could be an incentive like, Hey, get, get the next order on us. Don't worry about it. It could be discount codes for the whole family.

There could be tons of other things, right? Be inventive about this, but definitely one talk to your customers, talk two, get a survey in place, get some kind of feedback if place, so which will justify whatever you're doing. And three incentivize the customers every time we do this.

Aashish:

Awesome. Thanks. I think that.

Some basics of, you know, understanding how I go about my launch? And the main crux of that is just talking to your customers and gaining feedback now, coming to technological aspects of stuff, right? Nowadays people wanna make money while sleeping. Right. Automation has created an impact on everyone's life.

And also when you go out and launch new products or new categories or anything of those sorts. So you've been working in this segment as well, where you've been helping. A lot of products and DTC brands drive automation, all of that. So give us some understanding of what kind of work they've been doing in the automation for DTC brands, where do you see them lacking?

Right. On knowledge, on or on the practicality of things, or on execution, where is the current gap in the market and how are you trying to place yourself? Right.

Lenold Vaz:

Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think there's a huge gap to be very honest about this. Automation can completely change our lives. And like, so just Beandeck is run completely a hundred percent automated.

I'm the only person and we are not a very big brand for sure. But at the same time, I don't really need to look into a lot of things. And considering it's a marketplace. We have shipping from 45 different locations. We have 45 different brands that are using the marketplace, tons of different things.

There's a lot of automation built in all that. So. When we talk about automation, I think most people get stuck and they think automation is just email automation building, building out Klaviyo flows, which send out abandoned cart emails. And when I talk about automation to e-commerce founders, their knowledge of automation is still limited. There's a lot more that can be done with automation, but pretty much any process, which requires you to take data or any information from one segment or one area and move it to another area to perform in action can be automated.

You pay for the, you pay for the forward shipment, return shipment. Sometimes, the product goes to waste. So just that has some of the brands that we've worked with. We've been able to save about. I would say three to four lackies per, per week, or just by doing this. And these are obviously much larger ‍

Aashish:

See one is about saving money. Another one is losing your customers and creating that loyalty back again because of this bad, absolutely. That you've given them. Right.

Lenold Vaz:

Absolutely. So, this is one example, another example, which might be a little bit tougher to do but is actually based on the experience of the customer.

If you can collect zero-party data, and first-party data, and be able to see what the customer is doing on yours. And actually, put those down in a very structured form. I can see that this customer has come to my website five times in the past week. They have checked out two different products, which are very similar, and have the same categories.

Can I send them an extremely targeted email, SMS, or something based on that? Or can I show them on the PDP? Can I show them other relevant products that others have bought in this segment who have done the same kind of thing? That's automation. It's more complex.

Aashish:

But let me stop. Let me stop you right there because I think let's give people more understanding of zero-part data and first-party data because some of these are technical terms. Not many DTC entrepreneurs are really aware of this. So how can we simplify talking about zero parties first?

Lenold Vaz:

So basically let's, let's just call it that any data that you collect on your own, which is owned by you see? So for example, if you're coming, if someone reaches your website, the interactions that the customer does on your website, the forms that they fill into your website, no one else owns that you own that data.

That is your data, and we can call this your first party. They want multiple ways of calling that, but that's data that is proprietary. Right. no one else owns it and there's a lot you can do with that data. So any data with interactions on your website, any data with interactions on your email, on your product pages, even the simple thing, like how much did this scroll down the page which add to cart button?

Did they click on those kinds of things? How many, how many products have they bought in the last six months? All this data can really, really. Give you a much better picture of who this customer is and therefore looking at all that data, then you can personalize very targeted messaging towards them. So, yeah.

I'm sorry. As I know, the first party data is your party. Data can get a little confusing but just think about it as data that you can collect about interactions of the customer with the brand.

Aashish:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've seen even simple brands just play up a nice quiz, you know when you open their DTC store to understand their consumers better and collect that zero-party data.

Lenold Vaz:

No, that's, that's a great example actually, especially for DTC brands, which have a larger product portfolio. The customer can get a little bit lost and being able to have these quizzes in place or simple questions that you can ask that can direct them to a specific product is super helpful for them.

And guess what? It's not just that one time that you can use that data. This person has told you that they're interested in better management of sleep and have problems with it. And they go and buy X product, you know that you already have these data points one month later, ask them, Hey, has your sleep improved or how are you feeling?

Are you stressed? If not, why don't you try this other product? And just simply small nudges of that can really help out. So that data, no one else.

Aashish:

Yeah. So this is that qualitative data that you can own yourself. And all you need to do is validate your problems. That one customer is talking to, you know, the majority of customers so that you can start getting ideas onto your next products that, you know, people will need from your store.

Could you highlight some tools that you've been loving and also highlight in terms of what's the state of tools right now and what's not there right now for the DTC brand?

Lenold Vaz:

So, so I think like this is, this is a reason why I was really excited to talk to you the first time that we spoke because I found it so difficult to build these tools out.

Like most of the times we've done this for customers, we've had to build the stack out ourselves. Because most of the tools that he found on the market were lacking in something or the other, either they weren't being able to capture all the data or they were way too expensive or they were restrictive in, in the actual database that you use behind it, or there's various, or they just don't have good ways to interact with other systems.

And this becomes, this is such a co it's a, it's quite a complex system to build out right. We've quite often had to build the entire stack ourselves where we are pulling data from Shopify. We're pulling data from analytics. We're pulling data from various other sources, blending all that data together to then give you a clear picture of, Hey, this customer is so and so has done.

This has done, all these things,  and now you can take action. There are multiple tools that claim to do it, but I've really not come across someone who can do all of it really well. yeah. I guess I'm looking forward to using the motor and figuring out if that's gonna work, right? Yeah.

Aashish:

So coming to you pointed out a lot about how you go about new product categories. We spoke a lot about automation so that means. Okay with this, you'll, you'll be able to scale at, at some point, let's say you'll be able to capture your local market. Right? You'll be able to figure out some sort of like sales coming in, retention models, coming in through using automation through using great, you know, custom building some great customer experience and all that end of the scenario right now.

When you go to investors, right? They'll be like, Hey I want you to scale across the globe. That should be your vision. Right. Otherwise, what am I doing here?  Right. Otherwise, even what are you doing? Right. So even right now, right? Do you see brands? , there are not many, many DTC brands that are global in nature.

You can find a handful of them, right? That means that there's a lot of room for people to go global. And that means that there's gonna be a lot of unbundling happening from the ecosystem for the same. So you have helped a brand scale globally as well, going to another market. So can you give us some understanding of, okay, now I'm comfortable within my market, but I'm going into this new market..

Look, I have no idea, what kind of consumer exists. How is life, and what are the lifestyles? What kind of things do you know, and what are their rituals? What are their daily routines? You don't understand all of it. So how does one go about, you know, launching in a new market? We can also talk about the aspects of, okay, if I'm building this remotely, how do I go about it?

Lenold Vaz:

This is, is something that I've thought about a lot because I mean, obviously there are some great brands in India that I want to get to North America. There are some great brands in North America that I wanna get back home to India. so this, but I've always hit this block saying that when I'm thinking about it going like this is gonna be super complicated.

We have done it in the past, and I'll tell you the couple of things that really stood out for me. Number one. Assumptions are scary. Just forget your assumptions. Leave them aside. Okay. Do not think what worked in the last market is gonna work in the new market. So leave those assumptions aside.

The number one pain point that we see when brands are moving to new markets is actually pricing strategy, because what worked in. In the South Asia and India, that kind of pricing model is most probably not gonna work in North America or Europe. Surprising strategy quite often becomes an obstacle when trying to move into new markets because savvy consumers will actually compare prices across they'll figure out.

Let me go check it out. Surprising becomes,, a tricky option. Why? And that's because of multiple reasons, obviously way more expensive to run operations in North America. Shipping is really expensive, much more expensive than India's various other pieces, right? That gets into it.

Taxation is very different, import costs, all that kinda stuff. So you have to look at all that stuff. But when moving, I would say the first and foremost thing is, to think about it completely. Venture and think about it as creating a new branch or a new category within your product. What we would normally do is I would set aside some budget for this and test it out.

You, you're basically building a new MVP fire product in a new market. Right. And that's the best way to go about it. Don't gointo it, but definitely don't fall back. Think about it. Talk to consumers that you think would be your right audience. You'd be surprised quite often. It's not us, we face this a couple of times we thought so and so the segment would be perfect, and then had to completely shift over because we just weren't right over there.

And also.
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Aashish:

Should you find your lookalike audiences, which have worked for you in this market, in the other market, or not?

Lenold Vaz:

So, so that's exactly where talking to those customers first makes sense, right? First, go talk to the people who you think would be your perfect audience. What has worked in India or worked in some other market, you moving to, I'm gonna take India and North America, just because I'm comfortable with those two, but.

what's worked in India. Say for example, it worked for a certain set of people. Find, look, light audiences in North America there, but talk to them about it.  Really, really see if they're interested in that kind of a product or send it out for free if you have to get feedback. So my point has always been number one, talk to your customer.

Talk to your users, get feedback and then figure it out quite often. You'll see that. Yeah, this is great. But the packaging does not really speak well to us. What we are used to in a different market is a completely different way of packaging because the earth is something that you will have to keep in mind between any two countries that have various different concerns over there.

Talk to your customer. Don't assume anything, just forget all your assumptions and think about it as a completely new MVP. That's how I would go about it. I do wanna see a lot more brands growing global including the DTC brands. I think there's a lot of scope just as you mentioned. But it is tricky for sure.

Why do you say that it's tricky because of all these concerns, right? Like  I think. Moving to a completely new market, especially something that's very different from the market that you are used to. The way that the business would pay over there is going to be very different. And if you are already used to a certain pace and you're already used to certain ways of functioning, that's all going to change.

So it is very difficult for the same team to actually operate two different entities. I've not seen it very often unless it's a decently large-sized brand, but for a smaller team, it does get a little bit more difficult when it comes to that difference.
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Aashish:

Yeah. Do you maybe have some inspirations that you look into on the kind of brands that have gone global in the kind of strategies that are deployed?

Lenold Vaz: Very recently lenskart has also moved into the buying USA and yeah, they've set up retail operations over there also.

They've been selling over there. So that's a company which I've been thinking about, like looking at quite intently. UAE, definitely. has some similarities to the Indian audience, but a lot more other different segments also. So that's one of the companies which I think is doing it pretty well.

They've been able to capture that market and they spend a lot of time understanding the market before going there. Right. So, brands like that really work well. And I've seen a lot of brands moving from Europe to North America too. But when you're going from Asia to anywhere out of Asia, it actually becomes a much more complicated process.

Just because the perception of products, the pricing strategies, and the volume of sales that you can expect in Asia versus others is very different. Right?
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Aashish:

Having transitioned from the Indian ecosystem to the American ecosystem, what's been your personal experience around that front?

Lenold Vaz:

Yeah, sure, man. So I think a couple of things that really stand out are pricing and discounting strategy, customer experience, and packaging in general, these three things.

DTC businesses in India currently are spending a lot on their discounting strategy. I think the way companies are pushing our products is a lot of discounting, a lot of promotions and a lot of sales.

If you go on any website these days, you will see a sale going on any DTC website. All right. So. I don't see that happening as often in the west. I don't, I see brands leading with a brand approach rather than a discounting approach. And there are some, I'm not saying this is a rule because you'll see, like, I think I really like the whole truth.

The whole truth brand. They've done a brilliant job with their brand strategy, and their brand messaging. You don't see them running sales. Very. Still so, because they're going with a brand-led approach, right? And then multiple others of that. I don't think man matters also run a lot of promotions.

So, these kinds of brands which have decided we are gonna go brand first, I think the percentage of those brands is a lot more in the west. Whereas discounting and promotions are a lot less. So that's number one. Number two is customer experience. So the customer experience is, I would say, much better in India.

We take care of, you know, like actually reaching out to the customer. Sometimes it can get a little naggy where we, where a couple of brands will just reach out to you over and over again. But nonetheless, if you reach out to a brand, you'll, you'll get a response immediately. They'll take care. They'll talk to you.

There are a lot of human touches. Whereas in the west, there are a lot of robot touchpoints. When I say robot touchpoints, I'm basically talking about, you know, chatbots, email automation, stuff like that, which will take care of a lot of the customer support. So that's another thing. And what brands don't understand is these human touch points actually build a lot of loyalty, build a lot of them to really help with retention, and really improve your customer service.

That's what people talk about. Hey, you know I didn't like this product I wanted to return. And the guy was so sweet to me that he refunded me. He also suggested a new product and I've got that. He sent it to me for free. I'm definitely going to buy from them over and over again. That's the way you got for life now versus me sending a mail saying I don't like the product and getting an automated response saying, okay, your product has been refunded.

Thank you very much. Cool. Like there's a huge difference over there. And I think the prior one is what we see in India a lot or where they'll suggest they'll talk to you and really try and understand. So that's the second piece.

So I've seen over time, India is really improving this and we are paying a lot of attention to packaging, but if you look at it five years back you didn't really see people investing in packaging.

Right. You didn't see a lot of brands coming up with innovative ways to present their product. The unboxing experience. Wasn't that big? I remember the first time that I bought my phone. Not a phone, the one plus phone. Sorry. The one plus one, when it first came out a long time back, wasn't something I was used to like getting a phone.

Had this beautiful red packaging and a Mac finish. I was just like, it's not, it's not what I'm used to. And I bought from their website directly because I was like, okay, this design looks, I think at that time they were only doing their website. They were doing DTC at that time. And It was so exciting to look at that because we weren't used to that at that point.

Whereas in the states, it's always been something that people concentrate on. How do we present our product right now? India is really catching up. And if you look at the packaging that you get in India, it's like, it's amazing. The kind of effort being put into that is beautiful. Yeah. So these are some of the differences I've seen in the brands.

There are obviously tons of them, the kind of products, the kind of messaging. One more thing that I'll do. Forward is in India. We see a lot of brands that have a large portfolio of products. that in the states we see a lot of single brand single product brands or small portfolio products.

And I'm still trying to understand completely why  I have some, I have some ideas for it, but I don't like it. I'm not too sure about them, but you do see this huge difference that says, for example, mama. Tons of products. But in the states or in Canada, you'll see similar brands which have three products.

So that's something which is, which is very interesting. And it might have to, my primary reason is number one, pricing, and number two, the volume of sales. Those are the two things that keep you down. What do I do in India? We're like, Hey, we are selling it at a much lower cost. We are running a lot more volumes.

How do I get that person to come back and buy from me? Even if it's not the same product when the states were making that incremental margin on every sale. So it.

Aashish:

Wow. I really love those insights and I hope our listeners are having a fun time listening to you. What's the last piece of advice you want to give DTC entrepreneurs or marketers hearing you right now?

Lenold Vaz:

Think the first thing that I would want to tell them is always go back to the customer. That's that's that's mine. That's what I preach all the time. Always go back to the customer. The customer knows what, why they're taking, using your product. The customer knows why they're not using your product.

Aashish: Please feel free to reach out to Lenold on LinkedIn and let him help you build your MVPs. Let him help you build your growth strategies and all of them. Thanks, Lenold for making it today. Hope you had a great time.

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