01:01:24 · Akshay Chaturvedi, Anirudh A Damani
[01:01:24] S1: No. I know that you had you had fantastic reputation. And, of course, you've you've become a much bigger celebrity now. But even in 2017, I remember when I had... I just come after meeting you. We briefly met for five minutes. I think you... Had a super busy day. But I went down to get a drink after and I I was sitting on a table by myself, and somebody just behind me... This is Kalagoda Kinicheck Cafe. I can't remember which cafe, but it was very fancy cafe. But this guy asked me that because I was dressed in a suit and all of those things, and I was... Had my laptop open and crunching Excel. He's like, [01:02:14] S0: Oh man, I didn't know this story because there is a, actually, just held all these stories for this this moment. Glad. But but let's talk about this. I know I know there's a big event, big, big moment coming up, but but quickly saying where do you see Leverage... Leverage Edu in five years? Sorry. Keep saying Leverage. I know why, but Leverage Edu.
01:02:36 · Akshay Chaturvedi
[01:02:36] S1: Totally fine. The five years is long time. Of course, in the next three years, we see ourselves we see our business in flight routes. We ourselves monopolizing at least a few flight routes and ensuring that we build a great brand, great word-of-mouth for certain segments. We had a lot of students coming in from... In the first two and a half years of two and a half years of a journey, we had a lot of students coming in from the top cities, Delhi, Bombay, Bangalore, user services to kind of go to The US. Over the last, I think, one and a half years, we have had... By the way, now we recruit students from over 700 plus cities and towns every single month. He said, we look into the platform and user services. And we have very, very long tail as well. And the first... The top 40% of business comes in from the top 50 or 60 cities. So of course, the larger focus in the next two to three years is that can we really build a very strong brand word-of-mouth and come across as a student first company, which is kind of really helping people get to certain destinations like the... In the last one and a half years between The UK, maybe expand into another region soon. For example, early next year, we want to get a start doing this for Canada. At summer and then towards the next year, we want to start doing Australia. So those are slightly more short term targets of how can we kind of get to more students, expand onto our add of services. Later towards this year, we're also launching something called Leverage Finance as part of which we'll be helping with Forex and education loan. And the larger lens
01:04:05 · Anirudh A Damani, Akshay Chaturvedi
[01:04:05] S0: Is that gonna be is that gonna be NDA or you're doing it off your own platform? I mean, if you don't... If that's something So [01:04:09] S1: right now, we have applied... On the forex bit, we applied for an FFMC license. We are awaiting RBI note. You're the first one. I'm sharing this publicly. But on the educational, we've right now partnered with a couple of banks, some abroad and some in India, and we are largely the front face for a lot of stuff that they are kind of underwriting or they're essentially using the credit algorithms to define whether this person can be given a loan or not, what percentage do they need to be given a loan at, and a lot of those terms and conditions are
01:04:35 · Anirudh A Damani
[01:04:35] S0: I think that's gonna be a game changer. I I I truly believe that consumer finance and and and unlocking consumer finance is gonna be a game changer for the Indian economy. But but specifically in this vertical, like, whoever realizing that the way to get your customer is also to provide a line of credit or a finance bit. I think any D to C entrepreneur, they have to realize that, mean, if you look at The US consumer boom, it it household debt to GDP boomed, and that's when consumer boomed. Right? And I think Label said. In India in India, we're at 11% of GDP in terms of household debt. US is at 70%. China's at 45. That's... You ask me, that's the missing key. Fix that, and I think in in the consumer economy is gonna be at another level altogether. So I completely agree. And mean, I truly, think at some point, I'm gonna talk to you about a couple of our startups also reaching scale, but I think there could be a really good partnership there on the finance and on the other angle. So that's definitely something to talk about. But in between, you know, interestingly, like I said, I don't think you can really, really keep one role for yourself. You've also become an angel, right? And a very interesting set of companies there, right? Catalyze X, Easy E, Beema Pay, Maven, Stage OTT for Bharat, Ashwatat Therapeutics, ProEase, and all in different areas, right? I mean, I, some of these companies have actually met. What's the what's the theme here? Right? What what's got what's got your agency going?
01:06:04 · Akshay Chaturvedi
[01:06:04] S1: No. There's no theme per se. I think largely it's been founders who have known for a while, and I've kind of wanted to participate in the journey and learn from them. I think I've learned massively from a lot of people on that list. And I think it was both ways. I think I was very lucky to have a lot of senior founders around me when I was on my journey. I think I spoke about Vishal, right? So I think every time something would go wrong, would call Vishal at 2AM in the night and tell him that So I think it's very helpful to have something that my friend Ritesh Malik says, who built Innovate and sold it to Oyo, that VCB, husband, BBB, teammates, founders ah but exact and I think ah if you can surround yourself with more builders around yourself, I think the journey becomes so much better in terms of how you can take better decisions. And I think everybody has blind spots, right? It just helps you kind of avoid a couple of blind spots at a time. And I think that is how I have moved about. And I don't have a lot of wealth, which means that I have parked a lot of what I've made up till here in my life into startups because I really believe in giving back. And I love this interesting approach, which essentially one of these folks in The US talks about that you can either do philanthropy or you can create jobs. And kind of investing in startups is essentially you're creating jobs, and it's in substance philanthropy as well. So you're doing good as well. So that's how I think about it.
01:07:56 · Anirudh A Damani, Akshay Chaturvedi
[01:07:56] S0: So how can founders reach out to you? I think we have to get to rapid fire. We're getting nudges from everywhere, but how do founders reach out to you and and what is it that you're looking for? [01:08:05] S1: I am at Akshay zero 01 and always up for a good conversation. I end up calling if somebody tells me that hey, Akshay, wanna chat, blah, blah, blah. I tell them to come into my office after 11PM and stay on for as long as possible, and we can have as many cups of coffee as they want and keep chatting. So either you can end up in my office [01:08:23] S0: somewhere in your office where you are also hanging out post them leaving. [01:08:28] S1: There is one, actually. But either either DM on Twitter or land up in my office Monday to Saturday, any evening.