We’re thrilled to present the latest addition to Afluencer’s content lineup – our podcast series featuring insightful conversations with influential brand owners. In this inaugural article, we have the privilege of introducing Rahul Bhatt, the visionary founder of Indiashopping, as our esteemed guest.
Meet Rahul Bhatt: The Mind Behind Indiashopping
Rahul Bhatt, the innovative mind driving Indiashopping, takes center stage in the Afluencer podcast series. With a wealth of experience in the world of influencer marketing, Rahul shares captivating insights, challenges, and triumphs that have shaped his brand’s journey.
Podcast Premiere: Delving into the Indiashopping Universe
Join us in exploring the enchanting world of Indiashopping through the eyes of Rahul Bhatt himself. We’ve embedded the riveting YouTube podcast video below, offering an exclusive glimpse into the transformative power of influencer marketing.
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Key Takeaways
00:00 🎙️ Introduction and Background of Rahul Bhatt
– Rahul Bhatt’s personal background and career in fintech,
– His motivation to launch India shopping and its uniqueness.
02:06 🍛 India Shopping’s Uniqueness and Popular Items
– The diversity of Indian food culture and the challenge of finding authentic ingredients in the US,
– India Shopping’s role in making diverse Indian food items available worldwide,
– Popular items, including Kaju Katli and Pan mouth fresheners.
05:16 🍲 Food and Democracy
– The relationship between local food preferences and what grocery stores offer,
– The impact of consumer choices on the availability of food.
07:04 📢 Marketing Strategies for India Shopping
– Word of mouth as an effective marketing tool,
– Paid marketing on Google and Facebook,
– Influencer marketing and collaboration opportunities.
09:25 💼 India Shopping’s Collaboration Opportunities
– Explanation of two collaboration options for influencers,
– Details about compensation and sales commissions.
10:07 🌍 India Shopping’s Growth and Future Plans
– Expansion to 27 US states and four countries,
– Goal to increase the customer base, improve logistics, and achieve profitability,
– Maintaining authenticity and competitive pricing.
Transcription Insight: A Peek into the Conversation
Gain an insider’s perspective as we burrow into the transcription of our engaging conversation with Rahul Bhatt. Discover the strategies, anecdotes, and wisdom that have fueled Indiashopping’ success, all captured in this in-depth transcription.
In Conversation with Rahul Bhatt, Founder of Indiashopping:
Brett:
Welcome to the Influencer podcast. Today our guest is our neighbor down the road here in the San Francisco Bay area, Raul Bot, who’s the founder of India Shopping. We’re going to talk about all of the great snacks, sweets that India shopping provides, the partner opportunities for ambassadors for influencers with the two collabs that Raul has posted in our app. But first we’re going to get a little background here. So Raul, welcome and can you kick us off with that? Give us a little background about yourself personally before you launched and started India shopping.
Rahul:
Welcome to the Influencer podcast. Today our guest is our neighbor down the road here in the San Francisco Bay area, Raul Bot, who’s the founder of India Shopping. We’re going to talk about all of the great snacks, sweets that India shopping provides, the partner opportunities for ambassadors for influencers with the two collabs that Raul has posted in our app. But first we’re going to get a little background here. So Raul, welcome and can you kick us off with that? Give us a little background about yourself personally before you launched and started India shopping.
Brett:
That’s great. And can you take us through, we got into this when you and I met Raul. What makes India shopping so unique? And I’ll say as someone who’s lived entire life in the US but loves Indian food, it is tough to get the authentic, authentic. We have friends who are actually down your way now, they used to be in the Folsom area here and down in the, I think Sunnyvale area. And they’ll hook us up with, Hey, we’ll go to their house and have a nice meal and then here’s where you can get the ingredients. And of course it’s only a specific Indian markets. It’s very hard to find. I don’t think we’ve been successful finding it ourselves. So we’ve had to go through friends. So what makes India shopping unique? Share that with our audience, especially for our other lovers of Indian cuisine.
Rahul:
Sure. So if you think about it, all the food items and food things that is prepared back home is very authentic depending on that area. India has a very diverse food culture every 40 kilometers and sorry for American friends, but every 40 kilometers you move your food test change and India is a very big country. So there’s a lot of food test and the quality that is changing over time. And the idea is to how do you make it available in the same store? Think about a store that is running grocery store or a street store running in Fremont, California. That’s where I live. It’s very hard to find those many varieties of options out there. That’s where the India shopping company picture, whatever you could think of, we are just a logistic company who do provide you option to give it available, make it available to you anywhere in the world within five days.
Brett:
That’s excellent. That’s awesome. So what’s the most popular right now? What’s moving in terms of the snacks, sweetss types of foods? What are you seeing especially getting a lot of traction with?
Rahul:
So it’s very, very weird. So I’ll just share the last month statistics. We have helped people ordering the normal personal consumption. Most of the item is the kaju. Kali goes like up, Kali gets sold like a hot cake. There are people out there who are doing big events like they’re doing a birthday parties, they’re ordering a bunch of cookies. Last time we sold 200 boxes of cookies cake that got delivered for a birthday party. There were a lot of event management companies. There is one company who’s doing the event management for some Indian woman life in the Hollywood and she wanted to order some aquatic Indian snacks. So she ordered a bunch of cookies and snacks from there. So I would say most of our item are Indian sweets and there is something called mouth fresh Indian mouth fresh. We called pan, I don’t know if you heard right, but it’s more like a butter leaf and some toppings on top of it. It actually give you refreshing flavor. So we do have a lot of pan items available. A lot of people order those items as well.
Brett:
Is that very thin then? Like a thin
Rahul:
Brush? Yeah. Okay. But because we cannot shoot the per item the way it was like no, it’s kind of dried out. But when you put in the mouth it get melted. And Brett, I would be more than happy to send some across your way.
Brett:
That’d be awesome. That’d be excellent. I’ll take you up on that Will thank you. Yes, for sure. That sounds great. So I got to ask you this one. As we were preparing to chat today, you mentioned that what we eat is democracy and I was going to ask you for clarification and I didn’t want to spoil it. I love your fresh take on this. So how does the food that we eat relate to democracy as a whole?
Rahul:
Yeah, so if you think about where you live is and what people around you like to eat, that’s why your grocery store is going to buy. So they’re just optimizing on shelf life. They want to make sure what get consumed, that’s why they want to sell. And the thing they consume most is most of people are eating. So it’s kind of grocery store is more like a polling booth station. If you think about this way, how many people are polling that thing is going to be bought more and there’s going to be only thing you cannot. I know Amazon and a bunch of things have changed it a bit, but still you are very much locally driven type of thing. And think about international, it’s very hard. Even domestic is tricky. Intentionally is very, very tricky.
Brett:
Yeah, it makes sense. I mean in the days where we’ll get many things ordered off Amazon or the net, and we actually try to reduce that now because you get into 2020 where you have a box showing up every day and you’re throwing out all this cardboard and you feel terrible about it. So trying to get more local, but especially the food element, I completely agree with you. That’s something that almost always it’s you just want to go to the store and buy it for yourself. You want that local aspect to it, right? Because that’s what you’re consuming. That’s what you’re eating. So on the marketing side, Raul new store, new company, new site, what’s working for you in terms of the marketing strategy, getting that initial traction, getting the word out there about India shopping?
Rahul:
So it’s something that we’re still trying to figure it out, but to be honest, so far best channel for us is a word of mouth publicity. People who like to tie it once, they’re so amazed. The type of messages I get is like, Hey Rahul, this is so emotional to me. I used to grow up this stuff from home my life and now I can order this thing with a click of button from anywhere in the world. It’s very close to people’s heart. That’s why I get so there are people out there who are just more like I would say promoter or they’re going out there and talking without any incentive whatsoever to the public and saying that, Hey guys, you should try out. That’s kind of number one channel for us. The second one is definitely we are doing paid on the Google and Facebook to recruit this more people so that you can not get to more people out there.
And of course we started with the influencer marketing privacy decently. We are trying to create content and that’s why we have put some co-op out there opportunities so that people can do that. I think I’m gladly would be more than happy to share a suites than I’m keen with people so they can try and give that honest feedback. We have sent to almost five, six people that we onboarded through you guys and those people have received their suites like today and now they’ll be putting their own reviews and videos and time to talk to their audience and trying to get more word out there.
Brett:
That’s great. That’s awesome. So hopefully a way to scale the word of mouth that you mentioned has been working for you. Let’s get into those collabs and I will get a link below the show for anyone watching this so that our influencers seeing this can apply. You’ve got two collabs out there today with us, Raul, can you take us through each one?
Rahul:
Yeah, so there are two collabs. One is in which you get a free stuff from us delivered dietary from India. I don’t have the name of the collab in front of me, but there is one collab in which you are supposed to create the contain. And then firstly you, you’ll talk to your audience and you will promote in there. Secondly, if we see some response from you, we’ll be more than happy to run digital ad on behalf of you if you’re okay with that. More than happy to run digital ad on Facebook in stock to talk whatever you guys are comfortable with. And of course every time there is a sale, you will make money on the sale. We don’t pay anything for this collab because you’re spending a lot of money on sending the stuff to you from back in India. The second collab is you just talk to the site, you go through the site and you create the contain and you talk to what service provide and which we are paying offer compensations, which you can get it. And of course when there is a sale, you’ll always get a 10% on both the co-op, on the sales as well.
Brett:
That’s great. That’s great. We’ll get both of the links again in the show notes here. So our influencers, go ahead, apply India shopping and I’m looking forward to trying out some product here with Raul. We’ll get you out of here on this one. What’s the ultimate, what’s the world domination strategy here with India shopping? What’s the goal? What are we growing towards?
Rahul:
So, so far in last, what, five, six odd months, we delivered in almost 27 US states and four countries. That’s
The idea is to keep increasing the population and keep growing the footprint in India. As of now, we are in three cities and the idea is you can choose one item from one city, one item from other city, one item for other city. And we do collaboration and we just educate inside across to you in a single order. And our main point for us differentiation is whatever you are paying to the local street shop, that’s what we are charging. We are not charging any premium for whatever, and $50 plus is free shipping. So it’s kind of easier for people to, they don’t have to think about, I have to get, they don’t to choose between price and the authenticity. We are providing both of them together as we grow. The idea is to bring more and more people on the same platform and work with the holistic company on the economic scale and try to make money. As of now, most of our all, we lose money. The idea is to bring the customer and start using it. Once we have enough volume, we’ll start making money in the backend, not by increasing price.
Brett:
Not quite our lunchtime here as we’re recording, but I’m hungry for all of our listeners, viewers who are sharing my hunger desire for India shopping products. Go ahead, give us a website and the socials as well.
Rahul:
Sure. So it’s the India shopping io and we have the same handle on Facebook and Instagram Both.
Brett:
That’s great. Okay, good. Nice. That’s a good handle. It’s a good handle. Great. India shopping, Instagram, Facebook, India shopping.io. Raul, thanks again for joining us today. It was great to hear the story on India shopping, all the great progress you’ve made in really short period of time here with the company.
Rahul:
Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Appreciate
Brett:
Great. You bet. We’ll talk soon. Thanks again.
Rahul:
Thanks. Bye.
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Reflecting on a Journey of Innovation and Influence
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