E28 - Disrupting with First Principles w/Wakefit's Chaitanya Ramalingegowda

Indian Silicon Valley with Jivraj Singh Sachar

In this Episode I speak with Chaitanya Ramalingegowda, Co-Founder and Director of Wakefit, India's largest direct to consumer sleep & home solutions company!

Chaitanya personifies the ideology Disrupting with First Principles, as they have exactly done so with Wakefit, disrupting by a rather conventional and unorganised market through the sheer power of "Questioning Everything".

Wakefit has crossed 200 crores in revenue with a 2.5x YoY growth, having served 500,000 consumers across the country since its inception in 2015! With more than 26 Product Lines, Wakefit is now by far the leading online D2C Player, widely recognised for spectacular products, and truly upholding the principle "Consumer is the King".

Chaitanya is an engineer by education, who also has an MBA from ISB, Batch of '05. He had tried his hand at Starting Up twice before Wakefit, and has multiple years of corporate experience under his belt. He never gave up and always kept feeding the Entrepreneur in him, to finally start Wakefit. An extremely structured, thoughtful, insightful and focused individual, this conversation truly brings out some wonderful insights to building a D2C Brand in India!

Throughout the Episode, we discuss the following:

1. (4:03) - Disrupting with First Principles | Question everything

2. (8:51) - The Evolution of the Indian Ecosystem

3. (10:52) - The D2C Wave in India

4. (15:40) - Doubling down Post PMF v/s Consistency & Long Term Thinking from Day 1

5. (21:01) - "Observation & Listening" in Talking to Users

6. (23:00) - Doing things that Don't Scale

7. (25:21) - Profitability as a Focus

8. ( 30:23) - Truly Practising "Customer is the King" || (WOW!)

9. (34:19) - People maketh a Company - Optimising for Employee Success & Growth

10. (37:43) - Brand as a Promise || Making Wakefit a Household Brand

11. (42:10) - Moats Matter || Competition v/s Strengths

12. (45:22) - Product Expansion Framework

13. (48:06) - Knowing Chaitanya, the Founder

14. (51:24) - Prioritising as a Founder || Inculcating a Beginner's Mindset

15. (56:53) - Tackling Pitfalls through the Journey

16. (60:57) - Parting Thoughts - "Never Stop of the Hardwork, it will work out"

17. (63:53) - Summary

Hope you liked tuning into the Episode!

This Episode is brought to you in association with the Entrepreneurship Cell of XLRI.

Please feel free to reach out to let me know you liked the episode or provide feedback or discuss more.

Thanks a ton for tuning in, I'll see you next week for another Episode!

Stay Tuned,

Keep Building!