Mohit Gupta
69 posts
@mgupta0807
VP of Growth @Chingari_IN
🚨Massive traffic jam on Bengaluru's Outer Ring Road; traffic police issues advisory to IT companies @blrcitytraffic @Jointcptraffic @DCPTrEastBCP moneycontrol.com/news/business/…
Today @Chingari_IN is 8th most top grossing app in the social category in India - We are finally profitable and will do business with our monthly revenues now on. Not burning VC cash anymore or need to raise to sustain business. We still have few million USD left in the bank, which we have kept aside for the rainy days. Had to take some very hard decisions, had to let a lot team members go, had to cut down costs everywhere, become lean and frugal again. Key Lessons learnt in the last 3 years - 1. We tried to copy the spending culture of our competitors, who had raised 10x more money than us, without realizing its a road to no-where. In the Early days of Chingari, my focus used to be growth, growth and growth at all costs, we spent a lot of cash on in-organic user acquisition, without thinking about monetization or a solid business model, thinking if we show growth, money will come. In 2022 Markets turned, mid of 2022 even though we were growing at 500K downloads a day, no VC would take a bite as there was no clear monetization plan. I realized this wont lead us anywhere, reduced all inorganic media buys, focused on quality user acquisition, users who can be monetized. Today we are spending less than 1 crore a month on user acquisition with LTV to CAC at 4:1. Its still early as we turned on this monetization around May 2023. However the early numbers are good and it will only get better from here. Profits from every month will be invested back to growth. 2. Hiring Super Fast - When we raised funds, specially around GARI launch, we had raised lots of capital. We thought oh now we will become a big company, we need to hire professional people across the board, this was our biggest mistake, along with the good guys, we actually hired a bunch of corporate bozos who just came, did nothing , gave corporate Gyan and warmed chairs all day and left. I later realized hiring at that speed was a big mistake, these corporate guys only gave Gyan like they will change this world, but delivery of work was 0. Trust me these people are everywhere, they will talk like they are the smartest of folks, very polished and smooth talkers, but end of the day you will realize they are only good for talking and will deliver nothing. Eventually we fired them but learnt lessons the hard way. I would recommend to be slow and careful while hiring people, even when you have raised excess capital, we overspent on a lot of these people only to realize we could have done better. 3. B2C is Hard - Building a successful B2C business is hard man :) That too building B2C is india is really really hard. Hatsoff to all the Indian founders who have pulled it off from India in the B2C space and built large companies. Figuring a viable business model is super hard, first you pay Google/FB to acquire users, then you pay Google/Apple 30% tax on all the store billed payments , then you also pay 18% GST on your income from users, you have to manage your business expenses from whatever is left from this and become profitable, like Chingari is today :)
We are super excited to announce that Chingari is now integrated with the @Aptos_Network blockchain. New users on the app will enjoy the #Chingari Wallet enabled on the robust Aptos Blockchain🙂 Experience seamless transactions and unlock a world of possibilities🚀
