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Raj Ganpath, a certified fitness and nutrition coach with 17+ years of experience, champions sustainable wellness as co-founder of The Quad (@thequad.in) and The Slow Burn Method. His bestselling book Simple, Not Easy (Westland, 2025), an Amazon India #1 bestseller, distills fitness fundamentals into 100 concise chapters, covering nutrition, strength training, sleep, and stress management. Rejecting restrictive trends, Ganpath emphasizes evidence-based principles, advocating simplicity through core habits over quick fixes. At The Quad, co-founded with Arvind Ashok, he’s trained 8,000+ students via in-person, virtual, and personalized coaching, blending global practices with Indian lifestyle contexts to build consistency and community. The Slow Burn Method, his signature approach, promotes gradual weight loss through manageable calorie adjustments (200-300 reduction) and accessible home workouts, prioritizing sustainability. A certified expert in biomechanics, Olympic lifting, and nutrition, Ganpath leverages platforms like Instagram to debunk fitness myths, offering jargon-free guidance aligned with his philosophy. His work underscores inclusivity, practicality, and long-term health—proving fitness is “simple, not easy.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Welcome to ELI! In this episode, we dive deep into the world of cross-border payments with Anand Balaji, co-founder of XFlow, a cutting-edge fintech startup solving India's B2B payment challenges. From his early days in engineering to shaping Amazon India's launch and leading Stripe's India operations, Anand shares his journey of building a global payment infrastructure that's fast, transparent, and trusted by thousands of businesses. ---### **
India's biggest quick-commerce apps, Blinkit, Zepto, and Swiggy, have become prime real estate not just for regular FMCG brands but also for financial services, stock-trading apps, and even real-money gaming platforms. The top three players are already making Rs 3 to 3,500 crore rupees in annual ad revenue. And that, dear listeners, is about half of what Amazon India made from ads in FY24, despite having way more users.In today's episode, host Snigdha Sharma speaks to The Ken reporter Gaurav Bagur about how quick commerce apps have become the new battleground for India's ad money and our attention span.Tune in.Question for listeners: Think of the times when you're on your phone everyday and tell us three instances where no one is trying to sell you anything. You can send in your answers to our Whatsapp number 8971108379. Also, if you have any questions for Gaurav, you can send them on the same number as a voice note or a text message.Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India's first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.
Masterclass GRATIS Amazon Ads para escritores ➡️https://www.letraminuscula.com/masterclass-gratis-amazon-ads-para-escritores/ RESUMEN: En este víídeo, el autor comparte su experiencia con anuncios en Amazon en tres mercados nuevos: México, Holanda e India. Explica los desafíos y aprendizajes en cada país, desde la baja venta de libros en holandés hasta las dificultades para transferir dinero a la India. También menciona su estrategia para optimizar campañas y su curso de Amazon Ads para escritores. ⏲MARCAS DE TIEMPO: ▶️00:13 Anuncios en México y resultados iniciales ▶️01:53 Evaluación de anuncios y rentabilidad ▶️03:28 Mercado de libros en Amazon Holanda ▶️04:53 Estrategia para vender libros en Holanda ▶️06:23 Envío de dinero a India con WISE ▶️07:59 Creación de anuncios en Amazon India ▶️09:27 Análisis y optimización de campañas ▶️10:57 Cierre de campañas no rentables
Amazon India has fallen behind in the e-commerce race to Flipkart and now to Meesho as well, in tier-2 and tier-3 markets. It is the last large player to enter the quick-commerce race in India. Everything that made Amazon largely successful in the U.S. has not fully cut it for them in India, even though they understood India is a very different market and the approach they took in the U.S. might not work well for them here early onYet, they have missed out on capitalising on a lot of opportunities because they were slow to react to changing consumer behaviour.And this losing advantage in some of their verticals makes you think, what are the other businesses where Amazon has a right to win. Is it AWS, streaming or something else? Or will they push forward to make up for the lost opportunities by pouring more money and change their fate.What does the future hold for Amazon India? And how will the company, famed for its execution, turn things around in India? Of course, there have been other regulatory pressures as well, which have halted them from realising their full potential in India and forced them to think outside the business model in which they usually function.In this episode of Two by Two, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan bring back one of our first guests, Srikanth Rajagopalan, CEO of Perfios Account Aggregation Services and a former ‘Amazonian', to discuss whether Amazon has lost the e-commerce race in India. Professor Vishal Karungulam, who teaches a breadth of subjects at the Indian School of Business, including software product management, digital innovation, and disruptive technologies, is our second guest.And they try to uncover over the hour-and-a-half-long discussion where the next big opportunity lies for Amazon India.Welcome to episode 23 of Two by Two.This is just the first 30 minutes of the conversation. There's a lot more that we got into in the discussion, including Amazon, the enterprise company, and how Prime and streaming might be moats it might want to rely on.If you'd like to listen to the full episode, you can head over to The Ken and become a Premium subscriber to catch up on everything else we discussed. Your Premium subscription will also get you access to our long-form stories, newsletters, visual stories and other podcasts that we produce. Or, if you just want to sample full episodes of Two by Two for now, you can do just that by becoming a Premium subscriber on Apple Podcasts at a really great monthly price.Further reading:Amazon is not yet in quick commerce. But it's already different from the packAmazon got rid of its largest seller only to replace it with other ‘preferred sellers'Amazon's Leadership Principles (recommended by Srikanth)—This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN did the mixing and mastering for this episode.Write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com and tell us what you thought of the episode and rate the show on your favourite podcast streaming platform.
What an intriguing conversation with the authors of the book titled - Why Vegans have a Smaller Brain. Anita, Alison and Dave share their expertise, experiences and research into the right way of eating and why vegans and vegetarians have faster brain atrophies. Get their book from Amazon. Amazon India link - https://amzn.in/d/7mh7X1m Follow their IG account for lots of fun stuff - @whyveganshavesmallerbrains
Amazon India has fallen behind in the e-commerce race to Flipkart and now to Meesho as well, in tier-2 and tier-3 markets. It is the last large player to enter the quick-commerce race in India. Everything that made Amazon largely successful in the U.S. has not fully cut it for them in India, even though they understood India is a very different market and the approach they took in the U.S. might not work well for them here early onYet, they have missed out on capitalising on a lot of opportunities because they were slow to react to changing consumer behaviour.And this losing advantage in some of their verticals makes you think, what are the other businesses where Amazon has a right to win. Is it AWS, streaming or something else? Or will they push forward to make up for the lost opportunities by pouring more money and change their fate.What does the future hold for Amazon India? And how will the company, famed for its execution, turn things around in India? Of course, there have been other regulatory pressures as well, which have halted them from realising their full potential in India and forced them to think outside the business model in which they usually function.In this episode of Two by Two, hosts Rohin Dharmakumar and Praveen Gopal Krishnan bring back one of our first guests, Srikanth Rajagopalan, CEO of Perfios Account Aggregation Services and a former ‘Amazonian', to discuss whether Amazon has lost the e-commerce race in India. Professor Vishal Karungulam, who teaches a breadth of subjects at the Indian School of Business, including software product management, digital innovation, and disruptive technologies, is our second guest.And they try to uncover over the hour-and-a-half-long discussion where the next big opportunity lies for Amazon India.Welcome to episode 23 of Two by Two.This is just 10 minutes from the conversation. But there's a lot more that we got into in the discussion, including Amazon, the enterprise company, and how Prime and streaming might be moats it might want to rely on.If you'd like to listen to the full episode, you can head over to The Ken and become a Premium subscriber to catch up on everything else we discussed. Your Premium subscription will also get you access to our long-form stories, newsletters, visual stories and other podcasts that we produce. Or, if you just want to sample full episodes of Two by Two for now, you can do just that by becoming a Premium subscriber on Apple Podcasts at a really great monthly price.Further reading:Amazon is not yet in quick commerce. But it's already different from the packAmazon got rid of its largest seller only to replace it with other ‘preferred sellers'Amazon's Leadership Principles (recommended by Srikanth)—This episode of Two by Two was produced by Hari Krishna. Rajiv CN did the mixing and mastering for this episode.Write to us at twobytwo@the-ken.com and tell us what you thought of the episode and rate the show on your favourite podcast streaming platform.
We're back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10's Chief Brand Evangelist, Bradley Sutton. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10's newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level. Amazon's revamped Alexa with generative AI to roll out in October https://www.zdnet.com/home-and-office/smart-home/amazons-revamped-alexa-with-generative-ai-to-roll-out-in-october/ Walmart Marketplace Accelerates Growth; Launches Category Expansion, Multichannel Solutions and Omnichannel Innovations for Sellers https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2024/08/27/walmart-marketplace-accelerates-growth-launches-category-expansion-multichannel-solutions-and-omnichannel-innovations-for-sellers How customers are making more informed shopping decisions with Rufus, Amazon's generative AI-powered shopping assistant https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/how-to-use-amazon-rufus How Amazon is using AI to detect fake product reviews and ensure authentic customer feedback https://www.aboutamazon.eu/news/customer-trust/how-amazon-is-using-ai-to-detect-fake-product-reviews-and-ensure-authentic-customer-feedback China fast-fashion retailer Temu soared like a rocket for two years—in just a few hours, its parent company lost more than $50 billion in market value https://fortune.com/2024/08/26/temu-pdd-stock-plunges-government-scrutiny-amazon-rivals/ Amazon India to cut down its selling fees by 12% ahead of festive season https://www.livemint.com/companies/amazon-india-to-cut-down-its-selling-fees-by-12-ahead-of-festive-season-janmashtami-2024-11724471866431.html Join Bradley and other Helium 10 Members for an informal meetup in Mumbai early in the morning on Friday the 6th! We will be in the Crystal Lounge networking and would love to see you there! For more details go to: h10.me/mumbai Catch Bradley at the Istanbul Global E-Export Summit 2024 h10.me/istanbul and at the Amazon Global Selling Community Event PH Seller Bootcamp in Manila h10.me/manila Lastly, are you leveraging Helium 10 to its fullest potential? We break down the newest features of Helium 10's Chrome extension, including the X-ray tool's suggested PPC bid column and clickable brand insights. Learn how to split-test product images and ideas with real Amazon buyer feedback using Helium 10's Audience tool powered by PickFu, and listen to a special use case from Kseniia that showcases its power in product development. Tune in for all these valuable insights and more to keep your e-commerce strategy ahead of the curve! In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Bradley covers: 01:17 - Alexa With AI 03:13 - Walmart Big Announcements 09:09 - Amazon Rufus 12:19 - Amazon Fake Reviews 12:55 - Shipping Time Settings 13:32 - Temu Trouble 14:21 - India Fee Reductions 14:54 - Meet Bradley on the Following Events 16:03 - Helium 10 New Feature Alerts 18:06 - Training Tip: How To Use Helium 10 Audience
Welcome to the Eyeway Conversations at Spark Carnival 2024. Today, we will witness a compelling panel conversation hosted by George Abraham. The panel featured four inspirational speakers, each with unique stories highlighting their attitudes, aspirations, and actions in overcoming challenges. The conversation began with Bhupendra Tripathi, Assistant General Manager at the Reserve Bank of India. Mr. Tripathi shared his powerful story of battling terminal cancer and paralysis. Despite being given only six weeks to live, he fought the disease with incredible mental stamina and a positive attitude, eventually becoming cancer-free after 12-13 months. Next, Monika Sharma, a Program Manager at Amazon India with 18 years of corporate experience, spoke about the growing opportunities for visually impaired individuals in the corporate world. She highlighted roles in training and development, HR, accessibility testing, and diversity and inclusion initiatives. Monika emphasized the importance of networking through LinkedIn and HR consultants for job seekers with disabilities. Rahul Gambhir from Union Bank of India discussed the bank's efforts to empower visually impaired employees. He shared his personal journey of proving his capabilities and how it led to broader initiatives within the bank. These included specialized training programs, job role circulars, and the "Union Access" project to enhance digital accessibility for employees with disabilities. Lastly, Pramit Bhargava, founder of Louie Voice, explained his mission to create voice-controlled interfaces for mobile apps. Pramit, who lost his sight later in life, described how his personal challenges led him to develop technology that allows visually impaired users to operate apps like Uber and WhatsApp entirely through voice commands. This episode of Eyeway Conversations showcased the remarkable resilience and achievements of these individuals, all of whom are visually impaired. Their stories highlighted the importance of a positive attitude, clear aspirations, and decisive action in overcoming life's challenges. You will find this conversation both inspiring and educational, offering valuable insights into the experiences and contributions of visually impaired professionals across various sectors.
Meghla Bhardwaj, the globe's leading expert on sourcing from India, joins us for an illuminating discussion on the current and emerging trends in India's e-commerce landscape. Discover how giants like Amazon and Flipkart are transforming the market and how tier-two cities are becoming key players. Meghla also gives a heartfelt account of her personal journey of moving back to India from Singapore, shedding light on the adjustments and opportunities she encountered along the way. We take a deep dive into the quick commerce revolution in India, where mobile apps deliver groceries to your door in mere minutes. From specialty e-commerce websites focused on categories like apparel and electronics to the impressive success stories of Indian sellers on Amazon.com, this episode covers it all. Learn how individual entrepreneurs and niche manufacturers in sectors like bedsheets and jewelry are thriving, and how Indian factories are evolving to meet the needs of Amazon sellers with improved packaging and labeling capabilities. Beyond India, Meghla shares insights on sourcing opportunities in Turkey, emphasizing the high-quality textiles and unique designs that set Turkish products apart. She also discusses the growing electronics manufacturing industry in India and the increasing competitiveness of Indian sectors like organic cotton babywear and wooden toys. With a focus on the booming handmade sector and the importance of India sourcing trips, this episode is packed with valuable tips and personal stories for anyone interested in the dynamic world of e-commerce and global sourcing. In episode 579 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Meghla discuss: 00:00 - State Of E-Commerce in India 03:34 - Rising Trends in Indian E-Commerce 06:14 - Success in Cross-Border E-Commerce 11:51 - Finding Suppliers in India - Tips 14:32 - Sourcing and Differentiation in E-Commerce 20:38 - Changing Sourcing Trends in India 20:48 - Growth of Electronics Manufacturing in China 25:04 - Utilizing Meghla's India Sourcing Services 31:58 - Exploring Turkey's Unique Products and Opportunities ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On YouTube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Bradley Sutton: Today we've got the world's foremost expert on sourcing products from India, Meghla, back on the show and she's going to talk about a variety of topics, not just sourcing in India, but also e-commerce in India and even sourcing in other countries like Turkey. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Helium 10's got over 40 tools for e-commerce entrepreneurs. I know how overwhelming it might seem to try and figure out how you're going to learn how to use everything, or maybe even to know which ones you want to get started with, so for a completely free course that's going to guide you through learning everything you need in order to become a Helium 10 expert, visit the Helium 10 Academy that is h10.me forward slash academy. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that's completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world, and we're going back on the opposite side of the world again. For the fourth time, Meghla 's here on the show. Meghla, welcome, welcome. Meghla: Thank you so much, Bradley. So excited to be here for the first time, yeah, but it's been quite a while. I think the last time I was on was a couple of years ago, wasn't it? Bradley Sutton: Yes, yeah, so just you know, if anybody wants to get Meghla's full backstory, I got a list here of all the episodes she's been on, so you guys can, you know, pause this one and go back if you guys want to, but she's been on the show since 2019. All right, that was her first time on the show, was episode all the way back in episode 84, then two, 10, then three, 31. And now we're in the 500. So, every couple hundred episodes she joins us here like clockwork, and so it's been a couple of years. I guess the last time was right towards the end of COVID there early 2022. First of all, what are you up to these days? Where do you live? Where are you calling in from today? Meghla: Well, I'm calling in from India. So, as you know, I was previously based in Singapore and two years ago I moved back to India. To, you know, focus a lot more on the India sourcing business, India sourcing trip. So now I'm permanently based in India and it's been Bradley Sutton: Whereabouts? Meghla: in Delhi. Bradley Sutton: How is it being back home? Meghla: well, it's amazing, I mean, I really like it. My son had a bit of a problem adjusting. Bradley Sutton: I was about to say like your son, never lived in India before or when he was little. Maybe or no, his whole life was in other countries. Meghla: Yeah, his whole life was in other countries China and Singapore and so it was a bit of an adjustment for him as well. He couldn't even speak the language very fluently, but now he's like totally Desi. Desi is like a local person, that's the word that we use. So, yeah, he's, he's adjusted. I'm really glad I moved back because there's so much opportunity, you know, so much happening in terms of the economy, manufacturing, exports, so I think I made the right decision to move back. Bradley Sutton: Okay, nice, nice. Now let's talk a little bit about, you know, the economy over there and I know, like you know, social commerce is big, and but what about just the traditional? You know that's been one of the larger Amazon marketplaces. How is Amazon doing, you know, versus Flipkart, etc. What's the e-commerce situation in a nutshell that's going on in India the last couple of years? Meghla: Yeah, the e-commerce situation is very rosy. I mean, e-commerce is booming. There's, you know, increasingly the tier two cities are also getting on the e-commerce bandwagon and there are more sales from, you know, the smaller cities as well. It started with mostly the Metropolitans but now it's sort of you know, the tier two cities are also. A lot of people are shopping online over there. What's really moving very fast is quick commerce. So that's something that is, you know, like for your groceries, for example, or daily use products. There are these apps and they're totally mobile based, right, there's no website that they have no browsers are only apps and you can basically order your groceries and they're delivered in minutes, like 10 minutes, 15 minutes, seven minutes. You know there's a race to like how fast the groceries can be delivered, so it's very convenient. Like since the time I've moved here, I've probably gone to the grocery store, maybe like twice or so. So, everything is ordered online by these websites or these apps basically. Meghla: So, I think that's really booming, that whole quick commerce sector. Apart from that, there are a lot of these specialty e commerce websites that are coming up that. So, for example, you know, for apparel, there are specific websites only for women's apparel, for electronics, for toys, for all of these kinds of things. So that's another trend that's happening. But Amazon is still sort of the everything store, so if you can't find anything anywhere else, you'll definitely find it on Amazon. And then Flipkart as well is sort of number two, you know, to Amazon, but it is. I mean, both Amazon and Flipkart are sort of neck to neck and they're still dominating the domestic e-commerce sector over here. Bradley Sutton: Are there more successful Amazon India sellers? You know, I remember when we first started like or around then, like in 2019, you know I was like, hey, I need some help with finding some, like, really successful sellers. And then you did come up with one, but that was about it. In those days there was, like you know, one main guy who was doing really well but uh, are you seeing more people have a lot of success over there, or is it still pretty kind of like just even like everybody's just doing okay and not many people have really made it big? Meghla: No, so there are some people that have made it really big and you know, they're doing like seven figures, eight figures in terms of cross border e-commerce, in terms of, you know, like selling on amazon.com mostly amazon.com at Amazon Europe as well. So that is definitely happening. A lot of the larger manufacturers, you know, they have established their own brands and they have, you know, started selling on e-commerce directly. So that's a trend that's happening. But, by and large, most manufacturers prefer not to sell directly on e-commerce platforms, even though Amazon themselves have been encouraging manufacturers to sell directly. But typically, the small, mid-sized manufacturers they want to focus on their core strength, which is manufacturing. They want to do large orders. That's where they really make their money and a lot of manufacturers have tried selling cross water but they have not been successful because, you know, of course shipping rates are high and there are a lot of returns and things like that. So not able to manage it. Meghla: But the people that are being really successful are entrepreneurs and individual sellers, you know, because they are good at marketing. So, they source products from different manufacturers and they sell those products cross-border. So, there are quite a few niches that are seeing a lot of successful sellers. So, for example, bedsheets. I know one manufacturer that's doing really well in terms of bedsheets being exported. They have their own factory and they're doing that. Then there's also things like marble products and jewelry. So, a lot of sellers, resellers and manufacturers doing jewelry from the city of Jaipur. So, there are niches where people have been successful. Bradley Sutton: Now, you know, speaking of sourcing in India, you know that was something we've been talking about every time you've been on the show. Now, in the early days, you know, like before 2020, it could have been said that, hey, a lot of the manufacturers I believe we even talked about this a lot of the manufacturers, you know some of them didn't have that much experience, as far as sourcing or supplying. I should say Amazon sellers you know the new ones is that go on with that, like the manufacturing time and the quantities, and interfacing sending stuff directly to Amazon. Like you know, a lot of the Chinese factories are ones who have been doing this for 10, 15 years and they know all the ins and outs and the requirements of Amazon and it's like clockwork. But, you know, in the early days, you know, I remember you had said that, hey, you know, some of the factories might be a little bit green when it comes to that, but now I think you know I hear more and more sellers manufacturing, or even ones who were manufacturing in China, you know, moving their manufacturing to India. You know, due to tariffs or whatever the case is. What's the situation now? Do you find more and more factories are almost like on par with the Chinese ones as far as experience now with dealing directly with Amazon sellers? Meghla: Yes, definitely. There are increasingly more factories that are familiar with the packaging requirements, the labeling and all of those things. In fact, I was visiting a couple of factories just last week in the city of Moradabad, where there's a lot of metal production that happens there metal and wooden production. So, I was visiting this factory that makes urns and they have a ton of Amazon sellers as their clients, and what they have started doing now like they're adapting to Amazon sellers' requirements. So, for example Bradley Sutton: urns would be something good for my spooky coffin shelf friend, perhaps. Maybe you should think about adding that. Meghla: Absolutely yeah, and they're beautiful, gorgeous urns, right. And so, they cater to Amazon sellers. And what they have started doing is because Amazon sellers require inventory very fast, very quickly. So, they have started keeping stock of just blanks, you know, because the basic shape of the urn is the same, it's just it comes in different sizes and it's basically the patterns, the designs and the finish that differentiates one earn from the other. So, they just keep blanks ready in stock and so whenever you know Amazon sellers have sort of an order, they're like okay, quickly send it into production. So, they save a lot of time. And they specifically told me this is for our Amazon sellers because they require, you know, products to be shipped really fast. So that's happening. A lot of small midsize companies, because more Amazon sellers are sourcing from India now, they are definitely getting more familiar. The one thing that I'm seeing is that there aren't too many still like freight forwarders that are familiar. Not everybody is familiar with how to ship to Amazon. So just a couple of days ago I was talking to a freight forwarder and they were like we have no idea how to ship to FBA, but the one that we work with, for example, they understand how to do it very, very well. So, I think for shipping you just have to be a little careful. But increasingly suppliers sort of understand Amazon. Bradley Sutton: When sellers who are sourcing from China experience increases in shipping costs, kind of like. Now what's going on? Is it pretty much the same across the board for India, or sometimes they're kind of immune to those, or pretty much just hey, anybody who's going that direction over the Pacific Ocean is going to have the same changes. Meghla: So, it depends. In some situations, India does face increases, just like China. So, for example, during COVID, both India and China, that was sort of a global phenomenon overall. So, even though, I mean, China's cost increased significantly they were up to, I think, like $25,000 per container at one point, but India's cost did not increase that much. I think they were maximum $12,000 or so. So currently India's costs are increasing, but for different reasons, because it's mostly because of the whole situation in the Suez Canal and you know, because of which the ships have to sort of take a longer route to the US. So that's what's mostly affecting, you know, the shipping costs from India currently, whereas in China, I think it's a different situation, where, you know, there is sort of increased demand for certain products as such. So, yeah, it's not always the same trend, but it can be. Bradley Sutton: Obviously, you know, we'll talk a little bit about it later. You know, I think you know, one of the best ways to find factories is getting help from you and also, you know, maybe even visiting the factories on one of your sourcing trips or taking, you know, source. You know, maybe somebody can go on their own to visit certain factories. But what are you know, outside of that, what are some other ways that people can find the factories? Like, obviously, Indian factories have always been on Alibaba. Is that still a good way also, at least just to see what's out there? Or are there other websites that have emerged, maybe I don't know about, in the last few years? Meghla: yeah, so Alibaba and global sources, those are the two key global marketplaces. There are some suppliers from India and other countries, so you've got to use the supplier location filter to find factories from India. Plus, you can also just do a google search. A lot of the websites are now ranked on Google because Google is not blocked in India as it is in China. So, you'll find, you know, suppliers have websites, but of course, they don't keep their websites up to date. Sometimes they don't reply to emails that are sent to. You know email addresses on the website. So, you know, that's something you just have to keep in mind. Avoid the website India Mart, because that's going to come up very often, but that website is very domestic focused, and so there are a lot of companies that you know might not have export licenses, for example. So, yeah, I mean, there's also export promotion councils that you can go to, so visit their websites. You can download the list of their members, all of whom are exporters, but again, you have to like call them or email them to actually find out what their capabilities are. Meghla: In terms of other websites, I mean, I don't think there are any other supplier directories that have come up recently. There are some websites that have started, you know, selling products from India. For example, there's this website called expobazaar.com, which is basically they have stock in the US, which is basically they have stock in the US and so if you want to drop ship, for example, or if you want to buy very small quantities, like five, 10, 15 pieces, you can buy it from that website and then they can ship it directly. So, they have a lot of stock in the US and what they don't have in the US they can ship from India. So that concept is sort of picking up. Drop shipping is picking up for certain categories as well. Yeah, concept is sort of picking up Drop shipping is picking up for certain categories as well, and we have started offering sourcing services now like a sourcing agency. Previously we were just sort of connecting suppliers and buyers, but now we are managing the entire process because we found that a lot of people just stumble a lot. India is not easy to navigate, suppliers are not easy to manage sometimes, so we've started offering sort of end-to-end sourcing solutions as well. Bradley Sutton: Okay, all right. Yeah, speaking of that, you know, like a couple of years ago we were working on what was going to be kind of like a version of Project X, and then most of it we kind of just postponed, like we filmed a whole bunch of stuff, but then, you know, with COVID and different things going on, like we kind of paused it. But the one thing that we actually, or the only thing in that project that we saw all the way to the end, was something that we sourced. I remember, you know, I I told you about it. I was like all right, you know, we obviously know in project X how to source products. Uh, you know, from China, let's try to do a product, that would be, that would be good for India, and then it was this macrame, product, and so, um, conversations and stuff. You know, I believe Shivali went directly to you but, walk us through, kind of like what happened? Like she, she maybe, contacted you and told you kind of like the, the, the kind of product it was, and then, first of all, you had to make the decision is this good to source in India or not? And we'll talk a little bit about that. You know what is good and maybe what isn't good to do in India. But then then, how did you go about finding and vetting factories, like, did you have one exactly that went to mind, or did you, maybe you know, shop around a little bit, get some samples? Walk us through the process a little bit. Meghla: Yeah. So, Shivali basically sent us a link and, I think, a couple of photos, and she had specific requirements. So, then what we did was we looked through our database, because we have a database of vetted suppliers and we do have quite a few suppliers that do macrame, because macrame is one of India's strong points. Like anything that is handmade, handcrafted, you'll find it is you know better in India, because labor is, of course, cheaper over here. So, what we did was we spoke to I don't remember the exact number of suppliers, but maybe like four or five suppliers we sent out the product to, we got quotes from them and then we basically went with the supplier that had the most competitive quote and also that had a good experience in macrame products, because a lot of the macrame products actually are done in homes by women, they're not done in factories and they're outsourced. So, it's very important for the supplier to be able to manage quality for such kind of products. Meghla: So, you want to make sure that the supplier has control. So, we spoke to quite a few suppliers and with this supplier we've done some other products in the past and we know that he's got good control over the quality of products and he has somebody to go around and check what's happening in each of the households or the communities wherever these products are being manufactured. And I personally have visited his facility over here in Delhi, so I know that he has the you know facilities to process and he has a process of you know like a checking and cleaning and packing and processing the entire product after it comes in as well. So, then we decided to go with this supplier and we got a coat and the coat was very competitive. So, you know, we negotiated a little bit with this supplier and we went to Shivali with the coat and she was pretty happy with it. So, we didn't have to negotiate that further and the only issue that we had was for the hook. So, Shivali, wanted a specific kind of hook, Bradley Sutton: That was me. I was the one who told her about that. Meghla: yeah, you're the one causing all the trouble. Bradley Sutton: Yep, yep, I remember that part of it. Yeah, I'm always thinking about how to differentiate, and the reason why was, you know, like already. But you know, by the time we started working on this, it started getting saturated. I was like, well that's fine, I want to show what happens when you do launch in a saturated niche. But I'm always thinking about how to differentiate. And one thing I learned about, you know, from my experience with the coffin shelves and things and I do a lot of other home decor products and I do a lot of other home decor products was that something that differentiates is how much you know how heavy you can, you know put something that's hanging on a wall and there's two, two factors there it's not just how heavy, but how easy it is to install. Bradley Sutton: You know, like me personally, I hate something you know that requires like a drill to use or you have that plastic piece and you put a screw through and through and it leaves like a humungous hole you know, I might have to have a drill in my house, which I know a lot of people don't have. So, and then, plus those just screws that go straight in. You know, those always aren't the strongest, you know, unless you're going directly into a stud or something, and then I think they're called, like, monkey hooks, but that was what we started using a while back for coffin shelves, and it just like you can just put it in with your hand and then, because of gravity and physics and everything, the way it works is like the strongest, and so I was like, no, we have to have this special hook because we'd be the only, we'd be the only macrame holder that has that, and so I think, if I'm not mistaken, we ended up actually sending it from China to India right? Meghla: Yes, exactly. So, we tried sourcing those over here, but we couldn't find them. We could find all of the other types of hooks, but you know there are certain products that are just not made over here. Oh, there we go, that hook right here, yeah. Bradley Sutton: So, yeah, here's one of the listings. Like I'm using this, you know skipping to the end, you know to the end, you know we ended up getting this product from India and then I'm using it for a couple of my launching case studies, where I'm just analyzing the different effects and it'll be it'll be like a permanent product on Amazon too, but already we've been using this whole product, and then there's those, those hooks and nice little bag here that they came up with. Meghla: so, yeah, this is a real product, guys, that we are talking about here yeah, so the hooks came from China and that was a smooth process as well. We didn't have any issues. I mean our supplier over here. It was sent directly to his factory, so he was the importer. There were no duties or anything. It was very smooth process. So, yeah, that worked really well, and then the bag as well. So, the bag was also sourced from the same supplier, because he also does, cotton bags and things like that. So that was also one reason why we chose him, because he could do the bags too. Bradley Sutton: Now, did Shivali organize the shipping, or did, did? did you also find the shipper for it? Meghla: yeah, so we organized the shipping too and, because we used our shipper that you know, we're we've been using for a long time and they, they know how to ship out of India and also we used our shipper. Yeah, there was no issues with the shipping as far as I. Bradley Sutton: Now that product in particular, you know, like I just happen to know, probably from previous conversations we've had, and then sometimes I'll watch your live streams on LinkedIn and stuff so I knew that you know that was a good one to source in India. But what are some other do's and dont's Like? In the past I believe you had said, hey, you know electronics, you know like consumer electronics maybe stick to China, you know they're very good at that, but you know textiles and things like that in India. What about nowadays? What would you say are the top three or top five to do in the top three or so that maybe another country is better? Meghla: So, electronics, I would say, still China is better, especially if you want to do OEM of things like Bluetooth headsets and if you want small quantities. But that's changing. I think maybe when I'm on the podcast, like in episode nine or so, I'll probably have a different story in the next couple of years, but that's changing too. There are a lot of electronics manufacturers that are being set up over here and, in fact, a lot of the bigger brands like Apple, Xiaomi. They have set up their factories and the supply chain is growing. So, there are a lot of like Bluetooth headsets and those kinds of companies that are setting up that are supplying to the domestic market and gradually these companies are going to export as well. So, the situation is definitely changing very fast. For example, there's this brand called Boat. They make a lot of Bluetooth headsets and you know, headphones, a lot of the small accessories, and now they have started exporting under their own brand and, of course, they will start doing OEM as well and they have, like I don't know, like 10 000 or so employees and across you know, various factories. It's a really big setup that they have and the government has been promoting electronics, but anyway. So, unless you are a big large, many you know brand electronics is still in China. Meghla: And then I would also say in terms of dont's, a lot of the very low value products. You know something like for example, recently somebody came to us with the you know these curtains, polyester curtains that are blackout curtains and they're selling for I don't know like ten dollars or something or $15 online and we were not getting them in India at a good price. So, something like that that is very mass produced and suppliers and manufacturers in China can sort of get you know scale by producing in high volumes. Those sorts of products are still better in China. A lot of the plastic type of products as well, I would say China is still better, although again, there is more manufacturing of plastic items happening here, bigger factories being set up, but still, by and large, China is better for plastic items as well. In terms of the items that are good, of course, textiles, any kind of fabric, especially cotton and organic cotton. So organic cotton is really a really high quality over here. We're seeing a lot of growth in baby wear, very high quality, organic cotton, kids and baby wear. That's a very fast-growing category. Also, toys so there's a lot of focus on the toy industry in India. Because what happened a couple of years ago, Bradley, that there was a bit of a tension between India and China at the border I'm sure you must have heard of it. It was probably around COVID times and so you know. China did a couple of things to you know, sort of in defense, and then India sort of retaliated and one of the things that India did at that time was impose very high import duties on toys being imported from China. Bradley Sutton: A toy Cold War. Meghla: Yes, a toy Cold War exactly, and so because there were these cheap toys that were flooding the market over here and of course, that was, you know, affecting the toy industry. But what that has done is that it's given a boost to the toy manufacturing. You know industry in India. So now, for example, a lot of wooden toys are coming up, and not only in, you know, like the traditional mango acacia wood, but like steam beach wood and pine wood, and very high quality and prices are very competitive. In many cases we've actually been able to beat China prices as well for you know wooden toys. Then there are a lot of factories being set up for you know regular like dolls and action figures and you know guns and sort of those types of things. Well, so that's a fast-growing category and a lot of local brands are also coming up and they are in fact exporting. So, there are a couple of local brands that do STEM toys, like India is really good with engineering and mathematics and all of those things. So, STEM toys is another huge category. There are some brands that in fact, we are helping launch them in the US and other markets, so that's another good category. Then I would also say, of course, all the entire handmade sector. So, there's wooden products, metal, ceramic, glass, all of those home decor items. That is still a very big category, especially for Amazon sellers and most sellers we know are finding a lot of success in those categories. Then there's leather, so a lot of beautiful, different types of leather. There are equestrian products, you know garments, shoes, accessories, bags, all of those things. And then I would also say, to add one more, eco-friendly products. So, if you're looking for anything that's made out of maybe cotton or jute or a lot of R&D is being done in alternative materials. So, for example, cactus material or banana fibers. Those are being converted to fabrics and they are used in bags and other kind of accessories, but of course they're not mass materials yet because there are niche and the prices are much higher than a normal material, but still that's an emerging category. Bradley Sutton: Okay, interesting. Now, guys if you guys want to you know reach out to Megla to you know, perhaps you know, utilize her sourcing services, just like we did with success, as you saw. You know, one of the easy ways to remember is go to hubhelium10.com and then just type in India and then it'll come up right there, India sourcing network, and you could, you could connect her with her right from this page, right inside of Helium 10. Now I noticed also here on your Helium 10 hub page, it talks about India sourcing trips. So, are you still, have you still been doing, or did you start doing those again after COVID? Like what's the? What's the? You know? Like the cadence, is it once a year, twice a year, once every other year? Meghla: Yes, we're still doing the trips there twice a year, and we started after restarted the trips after COVID, and the one that we did after COVID we had 70 people on the trip, so that was amazing, and since then we've continued to do. The next trip is coming up in October. So, you know for people who don't know much about the trip, it's basically an eight-day tour to India where we teach you all about sourcing from India. We take you to a trade show that has almost 4,000 export-focused manufacturers, and then we also do some cultural activities and, of course, there's a lot of networking. You get to meet all the different service providers. You can also do factory visits. We can customize the trip so that you are able to find the products that you're specifically looking for, and it's just a very fun experience. And, Bradley, what are you. Bradley Sutton: What are some of the fun things that you that you do, because I still have been saying for a long time I'm going to go. What do I have in store for me the first time I go on one of these? For the fun side. Obviously, I know the work side, what's going to happen, but what about on the fun side and the food side that's very important to me, as you know. Meghla: Yes, the food side is amazing because we choose the menus and the restaurants very carefully because India has so much variety in terms of you know, the different food, um sort of flavors and items, like each state of India has a different type of cuisine, so we try to mix and make sure that you get a flavor of all different types of Indian cuisines, we do a Bollywood night. I would say that's the most fun night on the trip. You can basically wear an Indian dress. For men it's the Kurta, which is like a long shirt. Women wear Saris. We buy Saris for everybody. We have a live dance troupe. They're singing and dancing on Bhangra tunes. Bhangra is a very fast-paced band. Bradley Sutton: I love Bhangra. I have some Zumba routines for some Bhangra songs. Yes, indeed. Meghla: Yes, amazing. So, we have that, and then we're just, yeah, dancing and singing and drinking and eating, so that's a very, very fun night. And then we also go to Taj Mahal. So, I think that's also very special, because that's one of the seven wonders of the world, and especially if you come with your partner, like your better half, or your spouse, then you can get a picture in front of the Taj Mahal, which is basically a monument that's dedicated to love and romance. So that's also very special. Bradley Sutton: Okay, all right, interesting So, the next one, is in October, you said. Meghla: Yes, October 14th to the 21st. Bradley Sutton: Okay, excellent, excellent. I'll see there's a chance you know I might be going, or I am going, to Maldives, as they do every year, you know, to film one of my every 100 episodes of this podcast, and then this year, I'm actually going to be going from Turkey. I'm speaking at Turkey and I think I want to ask you a couple questions about that it's Segue, but I found one flight that potentially has like a like a set, like a seven-hour layover or something, on my way to the Maldives from Turkey, in India, I think, Mumbai, and so I had never even set foot on soil in India. So, I'm like, all right, maybe that'll be my, my first dip and then next step would be going on the India sourcing trip. So, speaking of Turkey, I believe you said you just spoke at an event there and actually you've expanded some of your sourcing to there. And, like I know, you know Carrie, who works with us here at Helium 10, she was telling me you know she went like on a sourcing trip to Turkey on her own, like last year, for her own Amazon and Walmart brands, and she actually moved some of her manufacturing from I'm not sure if it was in China or Korea, but to Turkey, and has had good success. What, what can you? How did you get you know? Linked with sourcing in Turkey? Meghla: Yeah, so I was invited to this conference. I mean, we have been thinking about sourcing in Turkey. In fact, I got the domain name turkeysourcingtrip.com last year because we were, you know, sort of exploring that and that's the first thing you do, right, when you have an idea. So, you know, because Turkey is definitely coming up as an important production hub and in fact, somebody told me when I was there that Turkey is the China of Europe. So, if you're based in Europe, if you're sourcing in Europe, then Turkey is like the perfect destination for you. So, I was speaking there at the World Deaf Conference and, you know, I thought that, you know, while I'm going there, I would meet manufacturers and we already had had been having discussions with some sourcing agencies and some sourcing partners over there. So, yeah, I mean, in terms of the products, Turkey makes a very wide variety of products. Meghla: So, first of all, textiles, like any type of towels, bedsheets, like Turkish cotton is very, very famous and I was, you know, some of the towels that I saw over there at the factories. They were so unique. I've never seen any towels like that. They had beautiful embroidery, some of them had like beads, embellishments, like very, very unique designs. Even the bedsheets were like very different from what you'd find in China or India. Then another thing is that they do a lot of cosmetics. So, there's in terms of cosmetics, it's also like skincare, or maybe shampoos, or you know, soaps, for example, things like that. So, there's a lot of R&D happening at that front as well. There are a lot of brands that I met that were doing vegan and organic. You know, like creams and body. You know body products as well. So that was another category. Meghla: And then, of course, apparel. So, Turkey does a lot of different types of apparel, whether it's women's apparel, kids or even men's apparel. There are men's suits. They do a lot of linen fabric as well. That's very popular linen and cotton. Then they do things like carpets. In fact, Turkish carpets are very popular. Then there's some handicraft items as well metal and ceramic and those types of things. But I mean exports of those are very minimal. There are also some very good packaging companies that we found so like very high-quality boxes. If you are sourcing some kind of product from there, then you can get the packaging and all done in Turkey as well. Also, the domestic market in Turkey for e-commerce is pretty strong. It's growing pretty fast and in fact Amazon is one of the marketplaces there, but it's not very popular. The popular marketplace is called Trendyol. So that's a local domestic marketplace and you know there is an opportunity for you to also sell in the domestic market on Trendyol if you are sourcing in Turkey. Meghla: I also saw quite a few like wooden products and very unique designs. I mean that's one thing that sort of differentiated you know Turkey from China or India. The designs are very unique. And then some toys, some very basic kind of toys, like puzzles, some, you know, board games and things like that. So, I mean at first, not a huge variety of products like China or maybe Vietnam, but very niche, very unique, very differentiated. And I mean, if you're in Europe you should definitely, definitely explore Turkey, because it's just in your backyard and you can save on logistics costs and of course, the deliveries can be faster and you can order in smaller quantities as well. Bradley Sutton: Okay, cool, cool. So, another you know alternative place that not a lot of people yet are sourcing from. That I think sellers should, should look into and I'll be looking forward to when you actually launch that website, because it means you're going to have some events and I love Turkish food too and I so many places I want to visit in in in Turkey, you know Bible history, a lot of Bible history there in a lot of cities and a lot of like Maldives-ish kind of places even that people don't realize on some parts of Turkey. So, I know you'll arrange something good. Just to prove, I wasn't making it up, but I found one of my old videos here of some Bhangra dancing here. Look at the skinny me going and doing some fitness right there. That's me, that's me from like 10 years ago. and even you can see my kids in that in that video leading a fitness class doing some Bhangra dancing there. But, anyways how you know, I already gave you know I told people how they can find you from the Helium 10 hub, but if they want to find you, you elsewhere out there on the interwebs. What are some good ways that they can? They can reach you. Meghla: Well, I'm on all of the social media platforms, so just search for me on either LinkedIn or Facebook and or Instagram and message me. You can also go to our website, Indiasourcingtrip.com or IndiaSourcing.net, and then Vietnamsourcingtrip.com as well. Bradley Sutton: Vietnam sourcing too. Yeah, I know that's another hot place. I see a lot of people moving to. Maybe there was just a couple of kind of products, a specialty, but I know a lot of people who are not only moving sourcing there, but even some of their operations moving to Vietnam. I spent about a week last year there and the last couple of years really nice, really nice place to visit. So maybe next time we can talk a little bit more about that. Do you have like a 30 second tip or 60 second tip you can share with the audience? Could be about sourcing, could be about travel, could be about moving to a country your son has never been to. Whatever kind of tip you want to give, go ahead and hit us with it. Meghla: Yeah, I would say be adventurous in your business. You have to explore different markets. China is not the only place where you can source products. Sometimes we get too comfortable sourcing in China and like, oh, we're sort of scared to go to these other markets. But there's a whole world out there, like whole different world, and people who are more adventurous and who are willing to take that risk will definitely reap rewards, because there are tons of unique products to be discovered in these alternative production hubs. Bradley Sutton: Alright. Well, Meghla thank you so much for coming on here for the fourth time, we'll look forward next year for the fifth time and hopefully maybe by then we can say that I've been on one of your sourcing trips, like I've been planning for years to do So hopefully that happens within the next year or so. But thanks for joining us and we'll see you back here for sure. Meghla: Thank you so much, Bradley Bye.
Les références : Temu accusée de manipulation par des consommateurs EPIC GAMES REÇOIT UNE AMENDE DE PLUS DE 500 MILLIONS D'EUROS ! Epic condamnée à 1,1 million d'euros pour avoir poussé les enfants à acheter dans Fortnite Concerns over addicted kids spur probe into Meta and its use of dark patterns Government body pulls up Amazon India for ‘dark' practices forcing consumers to sign up for Prime membershipVous pouvez commenter les émissions, nous faire des retours pour nous améliorer, ou encore des suggestions. Et même mettre une note sur 5 étoiles si vous le souhaitez. Il est important pour nous d'avoir vos retours car, contrairement par exemple à une conférence, nous n'avons pas un public en face de nous qui peut réagir. Pour cela, rendez-vous sur la page dédiée.Pour connaître les nouvelles concernant l'émission (annonce des podcasts, des émissions à venir, ainsi que des bonus et des annonces en avant-première) inscrivez-vous à la lettre d'actus. / Interview de collectivités
My good friend Peter Everett joined me for a chat about how he's been gradually expand his small brand around the world using Amazon. Today we chat about how he got started in the USA, before setting up in Australia. From Australia, the next Amazon stop was Singapore and then onto Amazon UK. In March […] The post TAS 158 – Selling on Amazon India. Peter Everett from Australian Brand, Nanoman explains appeared first on The Australian Seller.
Les références : Temu accusée de manipulation par des consommateurs EPIC GAMES REÇOIT UNE AMENDE DE PLUS DE 500 MILLIONS D'EUROS ! Epic condamnée à 1,1 million d'euros pour avoir poussé les enfants à acheter dans Fortnite Concerns over addicted kids spur probe into Meta and its use of dark patterns Government body pulls up Amazon India for ‘dark' practices forcing consumers to sign up for Prime membershipVous pouvez commenter les émissions, nous faire des retours pour nous améliorer, ou encore des suggestions. Et même mettre une note sur 5 étoiles si vous le souhaitez. Il est important pour nous d'avoir vos retours car, contrairement par exemple à une conférence, nous n'avons pas un public en face de nous qui peut réagir. Pour cela, rendez-vous sur la page dédiée.Pour connaître les nouvelles concernant l'émission (annonce des podcasts, des émissions à venir, ainsi que des bonus et des annonces en avant-première) inscrivez-vous à la lettre d'actus.
Have you ever wondered what it takes to build a brand that thrives in the crowded e-commerce marketplace? Janelle Page, a brand-building expert, joins us today to unfold the strategies behind her success. She's the mastermind who's been turning heads with her product launches, teaming with celebrities and YouTubers to elevate brands to unprecedented levels. Janelle breaks down the art of weaving brand identity and storytelling into products that not only look good but solve real-world problems. From stylish protective eyewear to celebrity-backed health supplements, tune in to learn how Janelle's approach is revolutionizing the industry. When it comes to spreading the word about a brand, influencer marketing is the game-changer. In this episode, we dissect how to navigate through this landscape, striking genuine partnerships and leveraging platforms like TikTok and Amazon to maintain brand momentum. We get into the nitty-gritty of budgeting for influencer campaigns, the secret sauce of engaging organically with online communities, and the savvy of paid advertising to funnel traffic. Whether you've got a hefty budget to play with or you're scrappy and bootstrapping your way up, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help your brand shine. Beyond the confines of Amazon lies a vast expanse of e-commerce potential waiting to be tapped. This episode paints the transformative journey of Dolce Foglia, a brand that's soaring by mastering a clever blend of SEO and influencer marketing, with a strong B2B backbone. Janelle shares the blueprint for expanding into international marketplaces and prepping for the future of global online trade. If you're eager to discover the next chapter in your brand's story or just love a good entrepreneurial success tale, this heart-to-heart is your front-row ticket to inspiration. In episode 558 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Janelle discuss: 00:00 - Brand Building Strategies With Janelle 01:18 - Entrepreneurial Success and Brand Partnerships 08:36 - Influencer Marketing Strategies and Tips 15:27 - Choosing the Best Marketplaces for Launch 16:35 - Maximizing Sales With Amazon and Shopify 22:57 - Building Brands Through Storytelling 25:52 - Product Launch Strategy Without Revealing Secrets 31:34 - Expanding E-Commerce Success Beyond Amazon 31:58 - Expanding Amazon Brand Into Other Marketplaces Transcript Bradley Sutton: Today we've got Janelle back on. The show sold over 100 million dollars in her time on Amazon and other platforms, and now she's working with a lot of celebrities and YouTubers to launch their brands and she's going to share her best brand building strategies with you all today. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That's a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And, as we do, we start off these episodes with a serious strategy. And, as we do, we start off these episodes with a serious strategy. And one thing hope you guys know that in Helium 10, there is a full inventory management tool, and that's exactly how I am able to manage all of my accounts in just a couple of minutes a week, making sure I don't run out. I don't have too much inventory in Amazon. So if you guys want to find out more information about our inventory management, go to h10.me/inventorymanagement. And now we've got somebody who has done everything from inventory management to launching brands, to working with celebrities and whatnot. We got Janelle back. I believe this is the third time you're now on our show. Welcome back, Janelle. Janelle Hey, thank you, Bradley, it's a pleasure. I always enjoy shooting the bull with you and learning what you've been up to too. Bradley Sutton: I love it. I love it. Now. In the past, you've been on episodes. By the way, if anybody wants to check out her full backstory episode 294 and episode 401, you can hear about how she was working for companies that were doing nine figures a year on Amazon. We talked about stuff like my love for red iguana, uh, Mexican food from her, uh, salt Lake, uh, where she's at now. But we want to catch up because we haven't had you on since, like December of 2022. So you know, around that time, you were talking a lot about how you had done this crazy Shopify launch. I did $500,000 in a weekend and you were doing Kickstarter launches and stuff like that launch. I did $500,000 in a weekend and you were doing Kickstarter launches and stuff like that. So, since that time, what has been your? Janelle main things like in 2023 and now almost halfway through 2024? Wow gosh, I didn't realize it had been so long since we last talked. So last year I was saying 2023, I think I did over six or seven new brand launches and even like brand new brands and also new products, and they were all six to seven figure launches Shopify, and then we moved to Amazon. I've been partnering with YouTube, YouTube celebrities I guess we call them YouTubers and celebrities to build products and brands and that's what I've been doing. So I mean we could probably include links to a lot of those products or whatever would be the easiest way if people wanted to go check them out. But we did a power tool line Athena power tools. We've done more products with Matt's off road recovery If anyone's familiar with that YouTuber super, super fun channel. We did shop shades with John Malecki. He's an incredible carpenter, woodworker. Janelle He does like live edge furniture and those river tables We've launched these totally sexy like protective eyewear, personal protective eyewear Cause, like you know, safe is sexy and usually like the if you think about traditionally eyewear, like for people who are in the woodworking industry, they're like ugly, they're hideous, they're these big plastic goggles and nobody wears them. So you know, he even noticed in his own shop, like my people aren't wearing their protective eyewear. Heck, I don't even want to wear my protective eyewear. It was kind of a thing. So he came to me with this idea like I want to make, like you know, the Oakley or like the sexy shop shade. Janelle So maybe we'll throw some links because these products they turned out beautiful, the branding which you know I kind of love. That's why I'm seeing I want to make it super sexy. Super was a. Oh, Dr. Eckberg, we launched his supplement line, did incredible. So you've XCS. So I'll throw those links, cause I always think it's so helpful for people to see. I think when you you do a killer launch, you gotta have a killer video, you gotta have a great brand, the look and feel, the storytelling, and if they just go to my landing pages and check it out, I think maybe they'll get some ideas for their brands. Bradley Sutton: Okay, Now you know you're talking about brand building. That's actually part of your module that you recently recorded for the new Freedom Ticket 4.0. Anybody who's a Helium 10 member can go get that module. But what were some of the main points from there as far as brand building, and why do you think it's probably more important than ever before here in 2024 to talk about this subject? Janelle Yeah, definitely go check out the module, but for me, that's the only way I know how to build and sell brands. Is I build a brand Like I didn't come to Amazon, the traditional way that some people, like they use tools to look up, like what the top selling products are and they try to enter into, you know, the market and create something that already has search, demand, the customer and like thinking about, like a problem that I have. Or when I partner with, like, say, a celebrity or YouTuber, there's usually, like I was just saying with John, a problem that he wants to solve, like hey, man, I don't want to wear my personal protective eyewear because it's hot, ugly and I can't see through it and it's there's. I look like a goon and I'm on YouTube trying to look cool, so I don't want to wear this, so that's want to solve. I always tell someone if you've got a problem that you want solved, there's a chance that there's a lot of people like you out there that also want to solve that problem, and so that's how I approach a brand. Janelle Building a brand is first, let's solve a problem for a person, and I keep that person in mind Because then when you're trying to think well, which product should I launch next? It's like well, what other problems does a person a carpenter or woodworker have that I can solve? Because John is the avatar. He's intimately acquainted with all the frustrations or the opportunities within the realm of a serious or even just a hobbyist woodworker, and so you know the next product he starts talking about that he gets passionate about. He's like man, I want like a pocket chisel. You know like, yeah, you have like pocket knives that like you know like a switchblade or things like that, like guys like tools, it's like a power tool. But this is like not a power tool, it's like a cool like. Can you imagine having when you're doing woodworking, like a chisel is just kind of like a boring tool, but it's actually something they use a lot when you're doing like live edge type furniture work. So why not make a pocket ch almost like a switchblade? That becomes super cool and fun that people would geek out about. If you're a woodworker, you know, and so you have this ability to start creating stories and products to serve that person that you can geek out about. Janelle I just got off a console I was doing with a client that they own. Basically they're a wholesaler of ATV parts. You know the side-by-sides stuff like Polaris, St. Polaris, Hondas and stuff and they were asking for brand help because they're like we just feel like we're just hawking wares all day long. We really want to be a brand. So I spent the hour talking to them like how could this I haven't said the client name, but how could you become like the Tesla in the side-by-side space? That's what they want to be. They want to be the premium go-to innovation, like if, if you are into ATVs, this is the brand for you, because they have everything and anything under the sun and the way that they teach and educate and innovate is going to be, you know, heads up, shoulders above everybody else, instead of just selling a bunch of parts on Amazon or on their website. Janelle So that's what we're working to create. What's the story going to be? You know how do we convey that in our messaging. What's the look and feel like, who is our avatar? So we spent the whole time fleshing that out and you know they're excited now. Now they have a very clear direction on what type of content they're going to create, what type of ads, like messaging, to attract that ideal customer. And also we created a product roadmap for them. Like, where do we go next with our line extensions that will best serve this person that we now have in mind with everything that we do in our brand? So we create this movement kind of a thing. Bradley Sutton: You've talked about working with YouTubers, celebrities and stuff, and obviously I think when people come with that personal brand awareness, it's a leg up on the competitions. You've already got a bunch of raving fans and it doesn't necessarily have to be celebrities. Everybody might have some kind of specialty. I used to do the Zumba stuff and so I had probably a following on YouTube and stuff, and so that would have been something where, first of all, just like you said, I would have known the pain points that maybe other Zumba instructors had or people dancing Zumba, and then I already had the initial following. So I always think that if somebody does have something, yes, you should double down. Bradley Sutton: That being said, let's flip the switch. You know I'm sure you have clients who are not celebrities, so they're not YouTubers, they're not famous. So how do you and that's actually most of our listeners, you know potentially might not have a following? So if I'm just you know, joe entrepreneur, sally entrepreneur sitting out there listening to this podcast, how can I do what you just said? But where I kind of maybe don't have that headstart on the audience and the people who know me, etc. Janelle Love it? That's a great question. So, like there's people that you can hire that do this right and you can do it yourself. You can reinvent the wheel Like I have a vast network now. So when I am working with clients I usually will just be like hey, here's my guy that will build your influencer marketing program in-house. Like we're going to use him, like I have options, like we can do the training we can. I can show you how we've built it out and you know you can do this. Or I can bring in this guy and he will do it in three months and it's this amount of investment and you will have like a fully flown, blown out, like gifting program, influencer marketing program which, honestly today, like it's the fastest way to grow a brand like influencer marketing. So if you don't have the audience, you aren't the influence and you don't partner with one, you've got to build out an influencer program and you know there's a lot of people that take oh, do you use, join brands or use. You know like, uh, drawing a blank on all the 50,000 I've used over the years, but really it's, there's so many softwares now you can use and to have someone in house all day long just reaching out and doing gifting and getting influencer content Cause the thing with the influencer marketing why it's so beautiful is not only do you get these people posting on your behalf about your product, but they also create content for you that you can amplify. With paid, you can run ads behind it. That's the best type of content and the highest converting ad material that you're going to get is content from actual people using your products and talking about what they love about it Social proof built right in. So brands I think that everyone knows that that's what you need to do now to like generate traffic, generate brand awareness. Janelle And Amazon, to me, is like this ecosystem. I always think like, think of a wheel right, and there's all these different sales channels and Amazon is just one spoke in that wheel. It's a very important spoke, but your website's a spoke. You know Walmart.com is a spoke. You've got retail. You've got affiliates. You've got I mean how many other places that you sell? I don't know. Janelle I've sold on so many different marketplaces Temu, you know, TikTok shop. There's so many spokes now and I don't like to have just one that I rely on. All of these make my wheel run true, right and spin like a flywheel and I can get speed. So when I think about that, with influencer marketing, anytime we build out this influencer wheelhouse, which we need, or influencer marketing program, they're going to be driving sales on Amazon website Temu, TikTok. It doesn't matter, I am I am sales channel agnostic. What I'm doing primarily when I build a brand is I'm creating desire, demand and a movement so people can buy wherever they want to buy. Okay, so influencer marketing today is just. It's just how we market best. It's how I do it. It's been very successful. Bradley Sutton: Let's say I don't have that huge of a budget. Is TikTok the most economical way to find potential influencers? Or should I go use one of those services? Janelle Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, all those Influencers are on a lot of different platforms. I really like having a well diversified like just how I diversify in my investments. Yeah, have influencers on all types of platforms, but how to go find them? I mean, you're going to need to have. I say, if you want to launch a brand, you're going to need to have a budget to give away product or get product in people's hands, like you should plan on that. That's why sometimes you know, I see all these gurus on you know whatever YouTube or in my feed running ads saying you can make millions. You know, starting an Amazon business and you know, with only $2,000 investment and I'm just like man, that's so not true. You need money to get the product and the development and you've got to buy inventory, and then you're going to have a budget to give product, you and you've got to buy inventory and then you're going to have a budget to give product. You know, get product in people's hands to get some feedback or just some traction, or you've got to pay for it. You have to generate sales somehow. You have to generate awareness somehow. That's paid or that's organic or you can use your time. I do want to suggest and I have done this the scrappy way because I have more money than time now I will short circuit things by paying ads. It's the fastest way to generate traffic. Buy it right. If you don't, if you have more time than you have money, then there's organic strategies that work incredibly well. Janelle I mean 10 years ago, how I built my brands, when I had no influencer marketing strategy and I had no celebrities. I was partnering with is. I was literally in Facebook communities, on Reddit, and I was posting in communities that had people like me. I knew where my avatar was. So, like, let's just say, right now I'm working on that celebrity line with the Huffs they're dancers, right, let's pretend that I didn't have celebrities. But I wanted to create a supplement line for artistic athletes or dancers. I would be on every subreddit right now that has, you know, artistic athletes or dancers in their hip hop. Um, you know Zumba, like you said, salsa, cha-cha, tango, and I'd be talking about my product and what I've developed and what I'm working on. I'd start just from conception, taking them through that whole journey. I think there's been some great books written over the years, like show your work. Um, you know, build out loud, like taking them along on the journey, getting feedback the whole way, so that I start building that audience right. And then also Facebook. There's groups. There's so many Facebook groups about dancing. Janelle Right now I'm working with a brand that does flavoring right, and so we're in every group that has a baker's, confectioner's, like coffee makers anyone that's like would use flavoring we're in there. We're asking questions all the time about a new flavor we're developing, wondering if anyone has any. You know new flavors they want developed. We ask them about pricing. We ask them about bundles and people are like, oh, you can't make sales. You know posts in those groups where you get kicked out. I'm like, yeah, don't make sales posts. Get in there and ask questions, like I'm just doing. I'm like literally just put together what I call a Mother's Day bundle and I wanted to ask the group what would you pay, you know, for these products if I put them in a Mother's Day bundle? Like what would be the discount that you think would be like motivating you know to grab this and are these the three flavors that you think most mothers would like, based on, you know, the flavors that we offer? That post gets through all day long and I have all these people telling me what they think I should add, you know, for my mother's day, or the essential baking, you know, um, flavors that should be included in the bundle. You can just kind of be strategic. I think people are so like intellectually lazy or they're just looking for excuses to not have to do something. They're like, oh, that doesn't work. I'm like man, you're pathetic, like you couldn't figure out how to make that work. Like you know, just put a little elbow grease into that. So much free traffic. So now I don't do that anymore with my time, but it's one of the first hires I make is a VA. That's just my organic poster in these, in these forums, adding value. They're in there answering questions. Janelle The thing about you guys I think Helium 10 did this so well originally, um, and you still do it. You're in these Amazon groups and even in your own groups that you've cultivated on Facebook, answering questions. When somebody asks a question, you could count on Bradley answering it. I know you're not maybe doing that anymore, but you have people doing it. That's huge for the brand Any business. You can build a business like that in any industry. When I just built my marketing company. That's what I was doing. I was in chamber of commerce, answering posts, answering questions. I literally helped a guy I was dating. He was an electrician and he was like I don't have a lot of business. I'm like dude, get on Facebook in your county and every little like real estate group anyone that asks an electrical question you have someone that is just chiming in and answering and adding value, like you will have so much business coming out your eyeballs. It works, so just get in there and start organically drumming up your business if you don't have a lot of money but you have more time. Bradley Sutton: You know, let's say I'm going ahead and I'm going to push forward with this plan. You know, supplements, the supplements that you've done, the other products that you've been doing. What are your main marketplaces? You're starting off, you know, like you said, there's like 20 marketplaces probably nowadays. You know even Target now, you know, is starting something. Obviously, there's Walmart, there's TikTok shop, there's eBay, Esty, amazon, you know, like Shopify, WooCommerce, whatever. Do you have like a set, two or three that you suggest launching on, because it sounds like, unless I'm mistaken here, that you rarely do something that's exclusively Amazon or exclusively one marketplace. So what are like your two, three, four go-to marketplaces for somebody to start? Janelle Okay, perfect, yeah, so if it's a celebrity launch or YouTube or someone with an audience already like and I know I'm going to do six figures or a million dollars, it's like it's always Shopify, cause, like we control the audience, we have a list or we have a channel like a platform we're going to be posting on. We're going to control that flow of traffic, and the best place to do that is on your own website. So we drive them to Shopify. I've done Kickstarters. I do have strategies for Kickstarters that I will talk about maybe some other time. Just send them to your website. Shopify now allows pre-sales too. So even if you're like nervous, you don't know, like, will I get enough funding or I want to pre-sell it, you can do a pre-sell. The shop shades that I'll maybe include a link to that was all a pre-sell that we did. You know, we didn't know, like, how many units we'd want to initially order, how much interest there would be, but like, yeah, we, we blew it out of the water. So Shopify is number one. If, even if you didn't, if you didn't have any audience at all, then I'd probably say launch on Amazon, right, because you're going to steal keyword traffic. You're going to be like, basically, take the hotdog stand and instead of sitting it in your cul-de-sac where nobody's at, you're going to go to the state fair and put your hot dog stand out. You're going to sell a lot more stuff. So, even with celebrity launches, if you do Shopify, you know whatever or influencer, you have an audience. It's definitely Shopify or whatever. Your own website, I don't care if it's WordPress, but I really just love Shopify now because I just know, like the suite of apps that I need to install for everything, for optimization and you know, increasing average order value and my ATV, and you know I just have my little toolbox for high converting. You know Shopify sites, but I know some people like a WordPress site, fine, but go to Amazon for sure. Like we list everything on Amazon because there's just still a subset of people that want to buy everything on Amazon. It's just so easy for them. You know, and we call those Halo sales. Even with my celebrities and my YouTube launches, we still have a large portion of people that will go over to Amazon, even though it's not listed yet, and you can see that in Helium 10, you can see the branded search. Janelle So when I launched Euvexia that's a brand, new brand. Nobody had heard of it. This is Dr Sten. You know he has a pretty large following, like a couple million, on YouTube. They went and we see all of a sudden Helium 10, Euvexia has searches like overnight shooting up right. So we created that brand demand and you know we weren't on amazon yet because we didn't have products shipped in there. We just launched on our website. So, yeah, we probably lost some sales, people who wanted to buy it on amazon. Maybe you can say well, maybe everyone who wanted it actually ended up buying on your, on your site. But I I do believe a lot of people won't buy on a website. They're just like, especially the older generation they don't want to put their credit card in, they don't want to have another password, they have to whatever. So I just think you're silly to not list on Amazon and I have strategies that you know. We have one of my very large brands. We will hold back certain products that we don't list on Amazon because we still want that consumer to come to our website ultimately, so that we can capture their information, we can pixel them, we can remarket to them and so some of our best used or like our limited editions won't ever go on Amazon because people have to go buy that on our website. So there's different strategies you can use, but just make sure the halo sales that you will get on Amazon especially as you incorporate influencer marketing, you start doing paid media, even you know, creating some organic like where you're blogging or you're doing YouTube and you're just driving your own traffic You'll have people that will still go to the Amazon looking for your product, that halo sales, and you want to be there to capture it. So, website, amazon those are the top two. If you didn't do anything else, you'd probably be just great. You're probably capturing 80% of the market. Janelle I then will usually move to other Amazon places. First I'll go to Walmart.com. Usually it just depends A lot of my brands because we're in the beauty space. We can't be on Walmart if we also want to be in Ulta or Sephora, so we have to keep that in mind. So Walmart.com is not always where I can go, but I do like to go to Walmart.com if I can. And then it's expanding. Amazon Canada, amazon UK those are my order that I go to. I haven't played around with many other marketplaces. I know it seems that everyone starts being like oh, you should do Amazon India, and there's Amazon Japan. I tried a couple of those. It was very minimal return. I'm not saying it won't ever work, but for me right now no, I don't have anyone on Brazil, Japan, so yeah. Bradley Sutton: You mentioned Shopify being the first place to go, so obviously the beauty about Amazon is it's got that existing traffic Shopify you won, remember, I think before I was even a Amazon. Janelle I don't want to say, I don't want to refer to myself as an. Bradley Sutton: Amazon guru. Janelle People always call me Amazon guru, but before Amazon was like a big thing that I spent a lot of time teaching people how to do well, Um, YouTube was my thing and I still love YouTube. I still do. Uh, in fact, today I do a consult for YouTube channel strategy. I've done a lot, built a lot of channels and brands on YouTube and I think YouTube is one of the greatest ways to drive traffic. And same thing with blogging. You do that with content articles you can write. So a strong SEO strategy where you're bringing in traffic to your website. So I'm a I'm a big content creation junkie because it works. So people will say, oh, I mean, I tried YouTube. I didn't get any traffic. I'm like you have to understand YouTube is an algorithm, just like Amazon, and you know how. Helium 10 has great courses teaching you how to understand the A9 algorithm. YouTube has the exact same thing. There's courses. I have courses and we teach, we consult. There's lots of people out there that do that and teach you how to build a YouTube strategy to drive traffic to wherever you want them to go. Strategy to drive traffic to wherever you want them to go. Usually it's your website and a lot of that YouTube strategy also will carry over to Halo sales on Amazon. So that's probably my favorite way influencer marketing and content creation, your own content creation. The brand should always be creating content and educating to drive sales. That's how you control your destiny. You add value. You teach people why they should use your product. You help them solve their problems. You help them scratch their itch. You become the go to person and the trusted brand in your, in your space. Bradley Sutton: You know you mentioned some steps as far as finding that, these pain points and stuff. You know going into Reddit and going into Facebook groups, but but talk more about your process before your, before the actual product is made. You know, like you know, are you doing a lot of samples? Are you just getting some? You know like 20 samples and actually testing it in the market. Are you just deciding that on your own? Are you getting focus groups, like? What's your entire process about? That goes from, hey, finding that initial pain point to validating it and then all the way up to actually having a product. Janelle Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is funny because I don't do. I mean I do now because I understand the value of creating the story, but I guess I've been in marketing long enough that I know the power of a story and a story well told. So I always just say story, sell right. And so I guess I know that I can tell a story that will be compelling. And when I first started, my very first brand was a toy brand and I just knew I would crush it because the story was like kids were sitting around on their iPads and playing video games all day. And this was like in 2014, when everyone's like there was no e-sports team, there wasn't kids making millions of dollars, you know, playing video games. It was like grandma and mom were so, so, deathly concerned that their kids were all going to have their brains turned to mush. And so I create this kick fire classics brand line and the whole story is just going to be like good old fashioned fun get your kids off their butts and outside of playing. And I knew that if I ran ads in front of every mom and grandma about these classic toys, that they could get Johnny to get them off the iPad and you get outside, you know, flying a kite or playing with juggling balls or you know the Diablo, it would sell. It was just I didn't need to do market validation that that that whole sentiment existed. I was a mom and I hung out with moms and they were all having the same, you know, battle cry of like our kids are, you know, they don't know how to get outside and have fun. So that that was. I launched the brand, I told that story and it crushed, you know. Janelle And then my second brand was a weight loss supplement and I'm like I understand, as a woman living in America, like everyone wants to be thin, you know, and you have to bust your butt to stay thin and and if you can create a weight loss, a meal replacement weight loss shake that tastes good, that helps people lose weight, and you tell that story and you have, you know, results, it's going to sell. So I guess I don't really ever go into a market. I've never. Even now I'm like right now, with this celebrity supplement, like we have created the whole product line, the core four. We're doing a stack right and I work with Derek and Julianne Huff who are these beautiful artistic athletes and they're very well known in the space. I think that's easy because they have followers and they're going to, no matter what they say. You know, we could probably one of our investors is like you could just, you know, bottle dog poop and put it in a bottle and people would buy it. And that's not what we want to do. But you know that's how well-known they are and trusted in the space. But I really don't even think we had to validate anything, but because I understand the power of story and I want to build a movement and a community. Janelle I am getting people involved, I am getting their audience to. You know, we are doing what we call a pilot run, which is not everybody does. It's kind of more expensive, it's unheard of but and I wouldn't say unheard of a lot of people it's heard of but people don't do it because the extra time and cost. I want to do it as part of the story, because Derek and Julianne, this works for them. But I want to get it into the hands of their top dancers, like Derek's on tour right now and he's got, you know, he's like 50 to 100 dancers with him. What if I can get all of them using this right now and giving us feedback. You know that's going to create content, that's going to create story and I just want, on tour for the media, to see all of his dancers backstage pouring their little powder packets from the foil and being like what is this stuff that everyone's taking? It's kind of creating that curiosity and building hype. Janelle So I'm doing this strategically for my own PR, but I don't need to do this, but I want to to make the story better, if that makes sense. It's like, uh, Paulo Acosta, who does you know his secret juice? And he has that bottle and he has secret juice written on the outside. If you don't know who he is, he's a UFC fighter. Just Google it. He drinks that and everyone wants to know what the hell is in that juice that he's drinking. It's brilliant. It creates such a stir and you know what it's like. We're going to go launch him a supplement drink and then everyone's going to know what was in that dang bottle, right? So that's the thought behind a product launch. When you can build that, everyone's kind of excited. They know you've been working on something. I started posting and teasing out content with Derek and Julianne just on my own socials and they're teasing it out and that's going to be a part of the huge buildup to the launch. If you have an audience, that works great. If you don't have an audience, this also works really well to build the audience as you go along, because people want to be a part of something and feel like they're helping create this product. Bradley Sutton: What is just some other, just general strategy Can be about anything you want to talk about. That that, hey, our audience could probably learn a thing or two from your experience. Janelle Gosh, you know, sometimes we I really enjoyed your session that you did at BDSS. It was more like life stuff. I think sometimes we all talking about you know business, business and you you talked about your like near death experience. I'm going to say near-death you died. You literally died and got brought back to life, right. So I think, just like the longer and maybe this happens as we get older, like we're more generative, we start thinking about, like what kind of legacy do I want to leave? Like I know, like earlier, when I was in the grind, I mean I was a single mom with four kids under the age of five, like hustling, working like four or five jobs, like I had to bust my ass to get where I am Right. And now I feel like I'm really just so blessed or lucky or I mean whatever it is. Janelle I've been very fortunate in my career. I play a lot of pickleball, I get to travel the world, I spend a lot of time with kids, I work with incredible brands, incredible people and I think, just remembering that, you know what like there's, I don't know, you do have to pay the dues, you have to work hard, but we're doing it all for a reason. There can be joy. I've always been happy. I can look back in every phase and it's not like I was like man. That period of my life sucked. It was like that building was super incredible, and to be where I am now and to look back it even makes it such an even more happy memory. To be like I busted my ass and I'm here now and it was all worth it and I love what I'm doing. I even love the hard part shoveling manure in the trenches and so I just maybe reminding people that, like, remember why you're doing it and if you're not enjoying the doing of it, when you get to where you're trying to go, it won't be all of a sudden beautiful, like there has to be that magic along the way. I don't know. Janelle I just think if you wake up too many days in a row thinking that I don't want to do this, like you're not doing the right thing, and then I don't know what comes next, I don't know if there's another life and I mean I just want to be able to say this life I lived my best life and so Whatever that means to you. Maybe just take a moment to look at your life and how you're living. Is this your best life and are there any changes that you need to make? Because you almost didn't have a second chance. You know, and it was over and I think you have a new perspective. I have a new perspective. I lost a lot of people I love just in the last few years to cancer. They died young and I'm so grateful I'm alive and I don't take that for granted every day. I'm just like it is a gift and I just I love making money. Bradley Sutton: Always got to remember the more important things. You know like, like we, sometimes we can get caught up in the whole business and an entrepreneurial journey and stuff and we forget about what really what really matters at the end of the day. So that's a good, good advice. I like that. Janelle Favorite end of the day. So that's a good um, yeah, good advice. I like that favorite helium 10 tool. I'm like magnet. I'm just like. The keyword research tool for me is just like I go look up all the time. I think this is the one I use the most and all my employees is like did you do the keyword research? Like what does it look like? And you get ideas too. Like when I'm doing keyword research, I can see like whoa, this is a good product extension. Like you know, in the search, in the search results, when I see like like the other day I was doing you know, with Glamnetic, we're doing some press on nail launches, and I was just like, oh, like, people are looking, they're calling them false nails. Like I never really even heard of that, you know word. I thought it was press on nails or fake nails, but false nails. So I just think it's a, it's a treasure trove, not only to you can get product ideas from there. And it's like, okay, well, I'm going to do a whole new line. That's like optimized for faults, that whole word Cause there's like hundreds of thousands of searches that can, you know, aggregate on that right there. So I think it's important. Bradley Sutton: You know, you mentioned, uh, you know so many different, different things that you've been working on. How can people, maybe you know, find you on the interwebs out there or see a couple of these projects you're working on, either in social or just websites out there? Uh, throughout some, websites. 0:30:23 - Janelle Okay, so janellepage.com is is my website, and then there's also on that website you'll see like I probably should update it, but there's a lot of projects I've worked on on that website. So it's j-a-n-e-l-l-e-p-a-g-e like a page in the book.com. You can go there and then, like shopshades.com. Euvexia is E-U-V-E-X-I-Acom. Athena Power Tools let's see Vital Kind. We don't have our website up yet, but in a couple months you'll be able to see Derek and Julianne's brand that we'll be launching, working right now with some really big pickleball pros. We're launching a pickleball line, so that'll be exciting. Don't have the name yet, the name yet, but I'll start posting about that as we develop it. We have our kickoff meeting on Monday. Um, I don't know if we put anything in the notes. Oh, matt's off-road recovery. You can check out that. Robbylayton.com, um, oh, m1 motorsports that's our motorcycle line. Glamnetics a great line, gee, is that. Is that good enough or they can all be like that's good, that's great stuff. Bradley Sutton: I'm sure people get to be able to get some ideas and take a look at what you've been working on. Janelle That one's a hard one to spell, but that one and flavor frenzy. They're beautiful Cause they were originally Amazon brands that didn't have a clue about DTC and I helped them build out their DTC strategy and we're crushing and B2B, so we built out that whole thing. So Dolce Foglia is like D O L C E Foglia is F O G L I A com, and you will see the beautiful website we've built. Just think how fun because if these if a lot of the listeners are Amazon only brands, I want them to see like what you can do. They went from Amazon. Now they have a true e-commerce where we have full build out of like SEO strategy and influencer marketing and we built out the B2B side. It'll link you over to their B2B flavor frenzy and maybe just get you excited about the potential. Let's was like literally just an Amazon brand that's now crushing on all different platforms and we're moving into like Temu and all these other different I guess I didn't talk about any of those Like a lot of other countries have marketplaces that are like bigger than Amazon, as we start to list there. Bradley Sutton: So that's maybe something we can see in a year when we have you back on the show and see how those marketplaces are doing. I know a lot of them are making a lot of noise out there, so it'll be interesting, all right. Well, Janelle, thank you so much for joining us. It's always a pleasure to have you on the show and look forward to where we can hang out in person soon. Janelle Awesome Thanks, Bradley.
So, here's the deal - live shopping in India has been a bit of a rollercoaster. BulBul and Moj tried their luck but had to pull the plug on their live shopping features to cut losses. Now, Amazon is giving it a shot, but only time will tell if they'll make it in this tough market. In other news, there's this ongoing showdown between IIMs and the government, both wanting more control. And in today's episode, we're also talking about Latin American gig workers and their viral genre of music. Tune in to The Signal Daily to know more! The Signal Daily is produced in association with IVM.The episode was researched and written by Dhruv Sharma and Anup SemwalEdited by Dinesh NarayananProduced by ManaswiniMastered and mixed by Manas and NirvaanSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In episode 502 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Swapneel discuss: 00:00 - Selling on Amazon And Scaling Rapidly 14:18 - Product Launch Strategies and International Market Approaches 12:47 - Scaling a Multimillion-Dollar Business Solo 17:52 - Product Research and Potential Products 20:39 - Issues With Suppliers and Product Lifespan 23:42 - Product Launch and Maintenance Strategies 34:40 - What's Next For Swapneel? 38:52 - Swapneel's 60-Second Tip ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On YouTube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Bradley Sutton: Today we've got a very unique seller. He sold over $10 million over the last couple of years, has 60 products in over 10 marketplaces and launches a new product every month. Guess how many employees he has? Zero. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Black Box by Helium 10 houses the largest database of Amazon products and keywords in the world. Outside of Amazon itself. We have over 2 billion products and many millions more keywords from different Amazon marketplaces, from USA to Australia to Germany and more. Use our powerful filters to search through this database for pockets of opportunity that you might want to get into with your first or next product to sell on Amazon. For more information, go to h10.me forward slash black box. Don't forget you can save 10% off for life on Helium 10 by using our special code SSP10. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the series sellers podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That's a completely BS free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world and from the other side of the world. We've got a serious seller here that is joining us for the first time in the show. Why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself, since it's your first time on the show. Swapneel: Hi, my name is Swapneel and I'm from India. Been selling on Amazon from the year 2014 and, as a full term, from last four years. Bradley Sutton: So yeah, were you born and raised in India? Swapneel: Yeah. What part Rajasthan, Jodhpur. Bradley Sutton: Okay, all right. And have you lived all your life there or have you moved around at all? Swapneel: Yeah, so when I was like 19 years old I went to New Delhi like for my university for five years and then right now I'm like kind of digital nominate, so I don't really live here anymore, but just maybe like two, three months a year just to visit my family, because my family still live here. Bradley Sutton: Okay. Well, what did you go to a university for? Swapneel: I did law so. Bradley Sutton: I wanted to be a lawyer. Swapneel: Yeah, so I did law for five years and I specialized in intellectual property rights. Bradley Sutton: How does one go from five years studying law and then all of a sudden, e-commerce? Not a natural transition there? Swapneel: No, I was doing part time, like other than focusing at university. I was working as well All my university years. Any commerce yes, I was selling on Amazon from 2014. And yeah, so, and I did. Well, how did that? Bradley Sutton: happen, though, because that's still not typical. It's not like okay, yeah, during the day I'm going to study law, during the night I'm going to sell on Amazon. I mean like especially in 2014, when hardly anybody was doing it, so how did Amazon even get on your radar? Swapneel: So, even before Amazon, I was doing a lot of other platforms like eBay, and there are some other local marketplaces like traders shop clothes, so, and you know, in 2013, amazon entered in India, but in 2014, they opened for everyone, and I knew that Amazon is a really big e-commerce company and I should be there and yeah. So, but, like, even before I went to university, I was making, you know, some money like some, doing some other stuff like flipping goods from online to offline. Bradley Sutton: So, like you've always been like kind of like I had an entrepreneurial mindset in one of those early age. You trying to make some action, okay, now it's making a little bit more, a little bit more sense, okay. And then things started getting bigger so that when you graduated from university, did you just go full time into into e-commerce then yeah. Swapneel: So that that time, like for me the money was pretty big motivation thing. So in my first year of the university I wasn't sure how much I would be making as a lawyer. But on the second and third year I got to know from my seniors like what is the actual situation and I realized that man like I need to put like at least 10 years in law if I really want to make some serious money in this field. Bradley Sutton: Now back in 2014,. I'm assuming you were selling an Amazon USA. Swapneel: No, I just did in India. That's where Amazon. Bradley Sutton: India was active in 2014. Yes, yes, I didn't even know that. Okay. Swapneel: Interesting, yeah, but it was very new. It was really new they didn't do reselling or private label. Yeah, so I was just doing reselling. I used to buy a lot of stuff from USA, mainly from Amazon.com, and then selling in Amazon India. Yeah, Interesting. Bradley Sutton: Okay, yeah, at what year did you first hit the seven figures? Swapneel: The 2021, yes. Bradley Sutton: 2021 okay, and at that point were you one hundred percent private label or were you still doing like some reselling and things? Swapneel: I was doing both and like I feel like so, in 2020 I launched a lot of private label products. During all the, like you know, doing the first lockdown, I was just focusing on all the products launches I will be making, doing product research and my first product has really contributed a lot for my private label journey, like I started with one product and then just my. Bradley Sutton: You're still selling that product now. Swapneel: Not anymore, because the demand is okay. Bradley Sutton: Can you tell us? Swapneel: what it is, then, yeah, sure. Bradley Sutton: I can show. Go ahead and send me the link over in the chat and let me pull it up on my screen. Let's see here. Okay, I see what this is, so let's pull it up here so everybody else can see. There we go, all right. So this is like a, like a USB capture card I'm looking at here. And how did you find this Like? How did you even decide that this was going to be your product? You just got it randomly, or? Swapneel: what. So for me, like one of the criteria to search the product is checking the new launches of my competitor or and see like if I can have that same product in a very less turn around and can enjoy the party. So that's what's my like, I mainly do. And during that time I saw like a lot of people were seeing selling this product but they were doing MFF, like they were not doing full fill by Amazon and like, even though the product demand was there, but they were, I don't know why they didn't did FPA. And I knew one thing like as soon as I will do this FPA, the product doesn't have any. Like you know, any of my computer doesn't have a lot of reviews and if I will do full fill by Amazon, then I can, you know, sell a lot of goods as well. So how many? Bradley Sutton: how many at the peak? Like? How many units of this were you selling a month or a day? Swapneel: I was selling like I was selling like a month I was selling more than 1500 units in India. Bradley Sutton: Wow, wow In Amazon India. And yeah, okay. All right so then you're like, okay, wow, yeah, this is definitely better than reselling, or I have to get a little bit and stuff you could just Well. Did you manufi, did you get it from China, or did you get it from there in India? Swapneel: Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, I got through some of the suppliers in China. Yeah, but the best thing about this product is not just selling, but the margin I had. So I was buying this product like for $5 and was selling for like this product for around $40. Bradley Sutton: Wow, very nice. Yeah especially in India you're still living in India that the money goes even farther. Swapneel: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Bradley Sutton: How long until you bought your parents a house? Swapneel: So I bought the like. You know, as soon as my business started picking up in doing COVID, my family was already super excited. So they already finalized, you know, like don't worry about being a lawyer anymore. Bradley Sutton: No, forget that you know like, hey, this Amazon is good, huh, okay. Swapneel: Yeah, but that you know definitely I was in a bit of stress situation. It's a really big thing, you know so, but that stress really motivated me to push myself further and focusing every small details of my finance, my product. So, yeah, I was a stress, but at the same time I was able to, you know, do better in those situations. Bradley Sutton: So 2021 hit that $1 million mark. How much did you sell last year in 2022? Swapneel: I did $5.4 million. Bradley Sutton: I mean, getting to $1 million is impressive enough. How did you go from $1 million to $5 million just in one year? We're just launching tons of products, or you had some products go viral Were you launching to other marketplaces. How did you increase so fast? Swapneel: So, like I was doing some international markets before in and out, like you know, kind of drop shipping back in 2018 in UK and some EU market also in USA but it was not, like you know, full time or doing throughout the year. Sometimes my accounts were also suspended because of drop shipping. But back in 2021, I started again focusing on the international markets, but still was not doing like a full-fledged business. And back in like 2022, I expanded my business in a very serious manner, like in whole of EU UK, Canada, USA. I know everything how to do an average because I had a lot of experience. And also in 2020, I did my business in Austria as well. So that has really helped me a lot. You know, like provided me enough money to expand in those other markets. Yeah, so that was one of the things like really helped me. And like I was just using my suppliers, which I'm already using in India, and I know that, whatever I would be selling the same product in USA, I would be doing 10X more at least. So that has changed a lot. And also my negotiation skills really helped me because a lot of my suppliers started giving me credit and I utilized those that credit in a very efficient manner like, yeah, you get loan and if you just spend on yourself, then it's not a good idea, but if you utilize pretty well in the business, then definitely it helps. So that's what helped me in 2022. Okay, All right. Bradley Sutton: Now it's coming up. We're now here in Q4 in 2023. Are you going to do better than last year? Same Worse. What do you think you're going to end up with this year? Swapneel: So this year it would be exactly the same what I did last year, because the situation has changed a lot this year. Firstly, I'm traveling whole of this year and it's just maybe like 40-50 days. That was in India. Other than that, I was traveling full time. I was just came, like three, four days ago, from like a four month of trip. I was in North and South America. So this year I was like pretty relaxed and also a lot of things happened at Amazon as well. So Amazon is, I think, are really not smooth at Amazon, so trying to fix those things as well, all right, so now you've got this five months, you've got this five, six million dollar business. Bradley Sutton: You're traveling, enjoying yourself, not working like 100 hours a week, so you must have 20 employees supporting you, huh. Swapneel: Oh, not at all. Bradley Sutton: How many total employees have you had the last few years? Swapneel: So in India I just had one accountant and one person who manages, and then there is one guy from at Veros. That's it in India. But I never had any employee anywhere else, even though my Indian business is not even like 7%. If I compare to my last year's sales revenue, my Indian business was just 7%, but for the rest 93% revenue, I never had any employee. So for your Amazon. Bradley Sutton: USA business and in Europe you have zero employees, just you. Swapneel: Yes, yes. Bradley Sutton: Well. So I mean, people listening to this might ask a question well, like, maybe that makes sense. You know, like if you're working like 90 hours a week and have no life and just stay in your basement and work all day, but how in the world do you scale a business so much? And you're the one who has to answer the customer service, you're the one who has to find a line of their products, you're the one who has to do the keyword research, you're the one who has to make the listing, you're the one who has to fight with Amazon if customer support, if something happens, how in the world can you run a five, six million dollar business just by yourself and not even working really full time? Swapneel: So the one of the best thing with Amazon is their FPModels. So a lot of customers, don't you know, reach out to you if they have any issues with the delivery and all the stuff, and that is one of the reasons why customers, you know, contact to the seller at first place, other than the warranty and all the stuff. And also I was doing a lot of reselling as well in US market, so the brand has to take care of those stuff. So a lot of time was saved for sure, yeah, so, and I had really good partners, for example, with the Logistic thing. I have a really nice shipping agent and that really, like you know, eases my work a lot, just sending the details of the labels and everything and just telling you where to ship which market. They take care of everything. So for me, the main goal was just to, like you know what I can do to improve my revenue, and also sometimes I used to use some freelancers if I was not really good with something. So, yeah, that's it. Bradley Sutton: So how many marketplaces now are you in? So right now I'm in USA, Canada, UK, whole of the EU, UAE, Japan, Australia, India, but more than 10 marketplaces, probably, and are you selling the same products across the board, or, like, some products are only sold in EU, or some products only in USA? Swapneel: Each market is different. For example, in India I can sell mostly a lot of products, but not very high end products and which are technical. Each country the situation is really different. Sometimes there is a really low like maybe a local company who is doing really good and have a lot of reviews, and maybe you don't have any kind of competitive advantage, even though I will try or push, try to push. So for me it's more like market specific strategies, because not all markets are same and every market is completely different. Bradley Sutton: Okay, now what's your, what's your process? Like, how many products are you launching or actually until now active? Approximately how many skews, different skews, you know, like if you're selling the same one product in USA and Canada and Europe, just count that as one. But just roughly, like you know, 20 skews in all marketplaces, 100, 300, like roughly. What do you think? Swapneel: So, like beginning of this year, I was also doing a lot of reselling, but now I'm not doing business with one of the company I used to do and that has definitely contributed a lot to my last year's venue. But things have changed. Bradley Sutton: So private label. Then how, yeah, how many skews are you doing? Swapneel: So currently I'm launching like every month at least one new product in private label and so and some I also take off the old you know, which are not really performing really nice and not what my efforts or the you know margin is shrinking a lot, so I just cut off, you know, those products. So right now maybe like 60, 70 products 60 or 70 products. Bradley Sutton: All right, walk me through. Have in mind your last product you launched. Like, when was the last product you launched this month? Last month? So have one product in mind. You have it in mind? Mm? Hmm, you got it in mind. Ready, yeah, yeah. Swapneel: Okay. Bradley Sutton: Yeah, Now was it July that you launched it. Swapneel: Yeah, oh. Bradley Sutton: I guess that one product you have in mind. What month did you discover it, or what month are you like? All right, this is what I'm going to plan to launch. You know we talking January last year. You know what was it? Spring when was it? Swapneel: So in April and May I was in China and I was looking around some products and then I found some product which is doing good in the US market and I contacted some suppliers. When I was in China I visited the factory. So it was in May, in the month of May. Bradley Sutton: But which came first. You found the product, or, like you found the idea in China, or you had done some research when you were still in the USA and then went to China. Which one was first? Swapneel: Sometimes, you know, because of some advertisement or anything if I find I just keep on. Like you know, at least every day when I'm doing product research I spend at least one hour on Amazon just browsing and doing really nothing, checking what's going on and if I can add something value on that product. So then I just found one product and I was doing more and more research and then seeing like I do check, like you know, if any product is launched recently and the rank is going crazy, it means this product could be a potential. So this is one of the reasons. And then to validate, I check the data how much volume it says in a month and other than that. Bradley Sutton: What are you looking for? Like are you checking how many do you have, like a limit? Like oh no, there's already 30 people selling this, so it's too late. Or like what's your what are some criteria? Is that you're looking for when you're doing your validation? Swapneel: So I check if this product is a really advanced, then how the product you know like before generation did, for example, like which was not that innovative enough. It was a basic product, but how much that product was doing, how much is the reviews for that product. Is a really really established and do I have chances of getting success or not? So I do check all these things and I also do the search result how much is a search volume for this particular product? And to check whether this product is seasonal or not. Bradley Sutton: So okay, so, so then you did all that with this product, and then your next step was you actually went to China to like check some suppliers for it, or what was the next step after you're like you know what, this looks really good, it passes my test. What was the next step for you? Swapneel: So I was already in China during those time in April and May and I felt like visiting the factories and you know it's a really good idea rather than just chatting them. I visited factory and I did all the customization with them and, yeah, so ordered like I can also negotiate better. For example, they gave me a price for 10,000 units but I said, hey, it's a new launch and you know, then I try to get the same price for like maybe four, five thousand units and at the same time I make sure that if this product is not really doing good or it's very new in already UK or the U market, then I make sure that I launch the same product in all across the market places all at once. Bradley Sutton: So this one product that you launched in July, the one that you have in mind was that only for USA, or was that one that you had launched in other places? Swapneel: Yeah, at the same time I was launching UK and U for that product it was Enslafrom. Bradley Sutton: On the subject of suppliers, have you ever had issue with your suppliers where they sell your product to other people? Swapneel: Oh, A lot of suppliers do that a lot of if not that, then how do you handle that? That is one of the reason, like why a lot of my products don't have a long life long life in case. Like you know, like people do a lot of drop shipping like tick tock products and Instagram, really, you may see so most of my products are also related to that as well. Not all, but at least 30% of the product. So I sell it. The trend is going on and, yes, then eventually the trend dies, or so it's not like I can sell the same product for another 10 years as well. Bradley Sutton: Interesting. Yeah, so you. So you don't get really emotionally attached to the product because you know that. You know, like now are all these products you're launching similar brands, or or you always starting just different, random brands. Swapneel: So I have some products, specific brands, and some brands are just used for any miscellaneous products. Bradley Sutton: Okay, all right. So then, this product. You were there in April and May. You happen to be in China. You were browsing Amazon. You found it. You found a new supplier for it, got it ready, 4,000, 5,000 units, shipped to Europe and to US. What's your, what's your launch strategy? Like, like, like, how do you, how do you what some techniques use? Like, how are you getting to page one? Are you just using, you know, ppc? You have any special techniques that you can share? I? Swapneel: Use very basic first of all. Obviously, your product should have really nice photos, should classify why your product is better than any other product in the market. Bradley Sutton: How do you get nice photos? Do you have like a studio? Swapneel: You do business with or what. So I first will try to work directly with the supplier so that I don't have to spend a lot of money upfront For these photos, even because I'm not sure whether how the product will gonna do. And then, if I cannot get anything, then I try to look at fiber to find some people who can do for me, and Then also do the nice a plus content, make sure the bullet points are really good, everything this is a really basic thing to start with, and then, since I launch a lot of products and a lot of market, I Utilize one of the best tool of Amazon, that is, amazon wine, because that really help you. And If you will launch a product in a lot of market, then you get a lot of reviews as well, for example, in the US. Bradley Sutton: My view just oh and all the reviews are stacked together, then you be Like you get 20 vine reviews in USA, 20 vine reviews in UK in the same ascent. Now you've got 40 reviews instead of I mean, I'm sure many people do that, but you know, it's just kind of just dawned on me like that's a good, that's a good strategy to have and another reason why you should launch on the the same ascent, okay. And then you find the keywords from helium 10, like you use Cerebro or what tool are using. Swapneel: So for me, because some of the products are really new in the market, there are no competitors as well, so it's really difficult to focus. You know which would be the keyword. So I just use Amazon automatic ads to check all the keywords which are performing and by or but. Maybe every week I try to optimize and seeing if some of the keywords are element, trying to put in the negative list, so, and trying to make sure that those keywords are on the product title bullet points. Yeah, yeah, to improve, to improve, so like just very basic, to like no things I use. And Once, like initially, you always get very good reviews because of the wine, because normally people don't put a lot of negative reviews, they leave mostly positive reviews. So you already got initial pull, you know, for your product. Yeah and Then it is totally depends upon the actual customers reviews. If the actual customers are Giving me good reviews, then I can be sure that this product is really doing good and Then I can have that as a long-term product as long as there is a sale for this product. And then I started improving more of my ASIN by putting videos, doing, you know, whatever things I can improve for this product, then putting some Warranty-related things, making sure the customer is always happy. Yeah, I feel like if you sit on Amazon, you should always align your values with what the values of Amazon are. Yeah, so I just make sure that and I take every detail of the customer to further improve the product as well, like checking voice, you know, a voice of customers. Bradley Sutton: Yeah, so now you know, thinking back then, from April, your product research phase to Negotiating, negotiating with suppliers, you know, getting samples and doing your customization, like you said, sending it to the marketplaces, creating the listing in the different marketplaces, managing those PPC campaigns in the first few weeks to launch that product that you launch in July, up until, let's just say, august. You know, so one month into the launch Approximately, how many hours do you think that you spent doing all those things? Swapneel: Oh, one of the so one of the most interesting time for me when I launch the product is the first sale. I look at the velocity of then another cell, how fast I can. I'm getting another cell. Then you know, checking the performance each day and whether it's improving or not. And, yeah, I closely check every detail during those time and for me, whenever it's my first launch, my goal is not to make profit at all and I will focus on that. Yeah, for me, the main focus is just to see how good is the product and how is the demand actually, because if your product reviews are good and you are early, more Than you can make money for years for sure for this just one product. Bradley Sutton: Okay so, but then how? Same question like the how long do you think you spent up until you know, after those first few weeks of spending a lot of time checking the sales? You know like, do you think it took you 50 hours from April to July or to August for that product? Was it 10 only, or or approximately? How long did, uh, did you actually put actual work into that product? I must say like maybe, yeah, for 30 hours at least okay, so about 30 hours of work for the one product, and then now, like, let's say, a product gets mature. You know, now you are making profit. Now it's kind of taking care of itself. Like how much time in a month do you spend on that product, would you say you know because I'm you know, you're probably having to do your ppc and, and you know, check reviews, customer service. Is it like one hour a month because you almost have nothing to do? Is it five hours a month for that one product? What would you say? Swapneel: so if the product is really doing good, then the first important thing is to make sure that I have stock for this product, sure? So I negotiate with the supplier and, you know, try to to make sure that I have stock, and then I'll look at the competitors if there is something innovating they are trying to do and if I can implement the same as well, you know, as soon as possible, maybe one of my suppliers putting some new product as a free or, you know, trying to value add, then I also make sure that I do some value addition as well, because, just because of this stuff, I don't want my product rank to go down yeah, so how long does it take? Bradley Sutton: you know, like, what is your maintenance phase for a product? For that, for that? We're talking about that same product, you know. Now you know it's October, that product you launch in July. Thank you, how much time are you spending on that product? Swapneel: so right now I felt that this product reviews are not really doing great and I'm not motivated enough right now to do further, even though even without advertisement right now I'm getting sales for those products. But if I'm trying, this is a low value product. So if I'm trying to invest a lot in the advertisement it's not really giving me a lot of fruitful results. So right now I'm like, okay, once this product is sold I will not start again, but then, but, but still. Bradley Sutton: How much time is it are you spending on so? Swapneel: every day. I always wait for the helium, then emailed about my performance, and it gives me all the units I sold in each of the market and that really give me a lot of idea. If something is going interesting, then I try to figure out why it's going like that. And, for example, yesterday I definitely checked on that product and I was saying like, okay, I'm getting sales, not doing anything. And then I checked the reviews are there any improvement in the reviews or is there a possibility of me I take that as a possibility if I can, you know, sell this product for a long time. But yeah, I see that I still have some stock left and the other variation is that really go good, I didn't have that, but I'm still wait and watch. Right now I'm not trying to buy something. You know more from us at first yeah, let's see. Bradley Sutton: So you think maybe less than one hour a month you spend on it now yeah, maybe two hours yeah, so so now we can, we're getting a little bit clearer picture of how you, you know scaled up and still can be by yourself. Is, you know, like, hey, maybe to find and and vet the product and and all the work to launch it only took you 30 or 40 hours, and now that it's in maintenance mode maybe you're only spending one or two hours, you know, per per product a month but, I remember you telling me you know that you're leaving money on the table, probably because you're not using, like, all of the tools, or you're not doing all of that, the analytics, since you're by yourself. But still, even with not doing everything that you could be doing, you're, you're, you're doing millions of dollars. And then what? What is your like profit margin, would you say, after your expenses for for your business? At least 15, 15, 20 percent so always want to make 15, 20 percent. If it dips lower then then you go ahead and cancel that product. Swapneel: If it goes less than 8%, then definitely not worth it at all. Bradley Sutton: Yeah. So what's the future hold for you? Are you just going to keep doing what you're doing, like this, and just do stuff by yourself, launch a product once a month and things like that and then put on maintenance mode, or are you going to like you know what? It's time that I need to start delegating some of my tasks and maybe take some employees on? What are you going to do next year, in 2024? Swapneel: So ever since I was at our BDSS event, that has completely transformed how I see things and how better I can do, and from that time on was obviously I was struggling, so not focusing a lot during all those months, but right now I'm just thinking like every day. Once in a while I have thought about the delegation and what all things I expect from someone, and I'm right now in phase of hiring people, because I know one thing that I can do a lot better what I'm doing right now If I have people. For example, I have a lot of products in Australia. They do really good for me, but I feel I'm so stupid that I'm not sending the inventory on time there. A lot of my products are mostly on outdoor stock and if some market is doing really good, then I don't focus a lot on the market which don't perform well. For example, my USA and UK and EU market do such so better especially Germany, UK and USA that I don't put a lot of efforts in Canada, Australia, Japan, India and also I feel it's really bad because I have all the resources, all the infrastructure. All I need to make sure is ordering the right quantity and making sure that I have stock for those products. That's it. Yeah, so I'm losing just that. Bradley Sutton: That's the first thing that you're probably going to want to hire for is like, hey, I need somebody just 100% managing my supply chain, making sure that I'm not running out of stock anywhere. Okay, All right. So what would you say is your I mean, I'm assuming USA is your number one marketplace what would you say is your number two, three and four marketplaces out of all those that are going on UK? Swapneel: UK, I feel, can do a lot better as well. I really I'm very happy with UK market, a lot better than US market, because I feel the competition is less, the margin is a lot better than US, but overall sales it's number two. Bradley Sutton: You're saying next to USA. Swapneel: Yeah, yeah, right, okay, so far. Yes, so UK would do better than US maybe for me. Bradley Sutton: Oh really, wow, that's pretty impressive. Okay, interesting, all right. So, yeah, you got inspired by going to Billion Dollar Seller Summit. You can see all the strategies that people are using, and these are strategies probably your competitors are using and you're not you know. So, yeah, it's like when you go to events like this, it can open your mind as far as as you know, seeing what, what is possible out there. Okay, so, other than hiring, finally, some help. What are some other goals for you for next year? Swapneel: Focusing on external traffic, because this is a huge thing, really really huge thing, because I see a lot of products on Amazon having 30, 40 reviews and then there's a competitor having 20,000 reviews and they are on the top five products. Why? Because they're getting external traffic. So external traffic is a really huge thing and I think I should have some strategies to work on that thing. Maybe TikTok release, Instagram release, and I'm really like focusing a lot to get some people on board related to marketing, because that's where I feel I'm really not good at all. So, trying to work on that and, yeah, I think that can be really big thing for sure. Bradley Sutton: Okay, all right. Well, I wish you all the best of success. You know I've seen you already at a couple events this past year and hope to see you again at some other local events. And yes, please definitely start hiring people and get some help that you need, and then you'll be able to travel even more, you'll have some more time on your hand and you can enjoy what's your favorite place that you or craziest thing that you have done living as a digital nomad the last couple of years. Swapneel: So I'm kind of and really in juggy right now. So I do skydiving, mostly a lot of sports, mostly a lot of sports related to air, you know. So when I was in like just a few weeks ago, I was in north of Washington and I did some being walking on a plane, like almost eight years old plane. I was walking on that plane and that was one of the craziest thing. Bradley Sutton: Like on the wings and stuff. Swapneel: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was really a show. Bradley Sutton: No, thank you, thank you. Swapneel: For me, like selling on Amazon is just giving me freedom to do what I love the most. I just need financial freedom. That's it, Because that's it Like it. And such a beautiful thing like selling on Amazon you can work and travel at the same time. Bradley Sutton: Yeah Swapneel: Whenever I'm traveling still not many people very rarely meet someone who is selling on Amazon, to be honest, especially of my age group and they're traveling because either they quit the job or they just got two weeks off from office. Bradley Sutton: That's yeah, yeah. And they have to go back to work but not you yeah. Swapneel: So, yeah, this is a really like, really nice life, you know as a digital moment. But only bad thing is that when I'm traveling, I cannot focus a lot on my work. So I feel like, from going forward, maybe next few months or years, I would like to live at one place a lot more so that my work doesn't hinder. And obviously, if you will, if I want to approach eight or nine figure in coming years, then I cannot do by just one or two hours a day. I need to put more efforts and really need to be very cease at work, because big money comes with big responsibilities as well, I guess. Bradley Sutton: Yeah, all right. So why don't you leave us with a 30 second tip or 60 second tip? It could be either like an Amazon strategy, or maybe it's a strategy for traveling, for how to live as a digital nomad, a strategy for Amazon India. It could be about anything, so go ahead and give us your strategy. Swapneel: So I feel like there would be always a stress when you are selling on Amazon and you always need to have a patience, because Amazon will not fix your stuff in five minutes, even if your listing is gone, your account is gone or whatever. So the most important thing you can focus is on your mental health and you should prioritize that thing, because in life you may make a lot of money you can on the other day, if your account is suspended, you are bringing your nothing. So, but one thing can always help you is your mental health, and I think exercising is one of the best things, because that has changed completely me. I still remember how I was doing the first lockdown and how the journey from last three was not at all smooth at all, but not at all, like you know, not very smooth at all, but going workout and not stressing that helped me to not to stress. So I think, yeah, everyone should do this if you are especially selling on Amazon, because you don't have a lot of social life as well when you're selling on Amazon, except traveling, Okay, all right. Bradley Sutton: Well, that's good for everybody to follow. I wouldn't follow the having zero employees for $6 million business, but everything else is kind of you know, something that I think a lot of people can do Well. Again, thank you so much for joining us and I hope to see you in person sometime next year. Swapneel: Absolutely Can't wait to see you again. Thank you so much, Bradley.
In this episode, Mukesh Bansal (Founder Myntra and Cult.fit) is in conversation with Mukesh Prasad Singh, an IIT graduate who went onto MIT only to know that he would drop out of the prestigious university a year later. An early participant of the first wave of Startups in the 90's, Mukesh has been a part of some of the most prominent companies working today. ‘ZopNow', one of the first few online e-commerce platforms in India was founded by him in 2011 which kickstarted his entrepreneurial journey.This episode sheds light on his risk taking appetite and how he has cultivated a strong will power over the last 25 years working around Startups. From being a member of the core team of Amazon India to serving as Chief Technology Officer at Make My Trip, Mukesh aka Mukri's journey is nothing short of an inspiration to the young entrepreneurs out there!We also get to take a deep dive into Mukri's love for marathons and his influences behind an impressive long list of passion projects. If you are someone who wishes to know more about the experiences of Startups in Silicon Valley or anecdotes of JEE toppers, this episode is specially curated for you. Watch till the end to know for an engaging conversation between these two!00:00:00 - 00:01:18 Sneak Peak of the Episode!00:01:19 - 00:03:09 About our Guest: Mukesh Prasad Singh aka Mukri00:03:10 - 00:05:36 From IIT to MIT00:05:37 - 00:08:35 Mukesh's time in Boston00:08:36 - 00:10:33 Dropping out of MIT00:10:34 - 00:16:52 Mukesh's first startup: ‘Oasis'00:16:53 - 00:22:14 Where does Mukesh's risk taking come from?00:22:15 - 00:25:50 Hoping for a brighter future: India's road to being a developed nation00:25:51 - 00:30:57 Mukesh's anecdote about the JEE exam00:30:58 - 00:33:47 'The Art of Planning': Perfecting your plan00:33:48 - 00:39:39 Learnings from being an employee at eGain00:39:40 - 00:41:31 Prioritising learning and experiences00:41:32 - 00:47:37 Mukesh's passion for marathons and his learnings00:47:38 - 00:52:51 Cultivating a strong Will Power00:52:52 - 00:59:58 What made Mukesh move back to India?00:59:59 - 1:05:20 “Is this India's time to shine?” Insights on India's development model1:05:21 - 1:11:17 How to brace through the early start up years?1:11:18 - 1:13:03 Internal Satisfaction Vs. External Success1:13:04 - 1:18:40 Mukesh's experience working at Amazon & MakeMyTrip1:18:41 - 1:23:15 The famous Ganesha-Jeff Bezos Story!1:23:16 - 1:29:10 Boom of E-Commerce in India1:29:11 - 1:32:42 Mukesh talks about building ‘ZopNow'1:32:43 - 1:38:46 Handling the Co-Founder Dynamic1:38:47 - 1:43:00 “Working well past your 80's”1:43:01 - 1:58:31 Overcoming struggles building ZopNow1:58:32 - 20:01:18 Beyond Entrepreneurship: Mukesh's love for farming20:01:19 - 2:04:34 ‘Summarise': Mukesh's passion project2:04:35 - 2:08:45 How does Mukesh find time for his projects?2:08:46 - 2:10:35 Outro: Thanking our Guest2:10:36 - 2:11:21 Outro MusicAbout SparX by Mukesh Bansal SparX is a podcast where we delve into cutting-edge scientific research, stories from impact-makers and tools for unlocking the secrets to human potential and growth. We believe that entrepreneurship, fitness and the science of productivity is at the forefront of the India Story; the country is at the cusp of greatness and at SparX, we wish to make these tools accessible for every generation of Indians to be able to make the most of the opportunities around us. In a new episode every Sunday, our host Mukesh Bansal (Founder Myntra and Cult.fit) will talk to guests from all walks of life and also break down everything he's learnt about the science of impact over the course of his 20-year long career. This is the India Century, and we're enthusiastic to start this journey with you. Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sparxbymukeshbansal/You can also listen to SparX on all audio platformsFasion | Outbreak | Courtesy EpidemicSound.com
Household savings fall to a 50-year-low at a time when borrowing and spending are touching new records. The new mantra of lenders is to bank on Gen-Zers taking the lead on loans and spending. But with the demand, comes debt and default. Unsecured lending is booming at a record pace, with the market expected to top Rs 4.5 lakh crore by this financial year. Meanwhile, credit card default tops Rs 4000 crore and retail debt stress rises. Host Anupriya Nair explores whether India's demographic dividend is turning into a demographic debt disaster with Ritesh Srivastava, Founder of retail debt resolution platform FREED, A M Karthik, VP & Head of Finance Sector Rating, ICRA You can follow our host Anupriya Nair on her social media: Twitter & Linkedin If you like this episode from Anupriya Nair, you can check out more episodes of The Morning Brief Cheeni Kum: The Bitter Truth of Aspartame, Battle of the bikes: Harley Davidson vs. Royal Enfield, Tomato Tangle: Deciphering India's Tomatoflation and more. Catch the latest episode of ‘The Morning Brief' on ET Play, The Economic Times Online, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, JioSaavn, Amazon Music and Google Podcasts. Credits: Pine Labs, Amazon India, MobiKwik, ICICIdirect See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Sameha was waiting for her labor to begin as she was already past 10 days of her estimated due date. Little did she know her labor would be a quick one and she would have labored majorly at home only rush to the birth center when she felt the first pushing sensation. Her water had already broken and there was meconium .Now you may want to know if her hospital was close or far off. What happened when she reached the birth center? Was everyone worried about the meconium and reeled her into an emergency?Tune in to listen to the entire story now!Sameha Arora is a mother of a 15 month old baby boy. She is a technical product manager at Amazon India , Hyderabad.A very passionate mother and a close friend.Prepare for Birth, explore Prenatal and Postnatal Preparation Classes, visit www.birthagni.comSupport the show: If you like what you hear, leave us a rating on Spotify app and answer the question at each episode! a review on Apple podcasts. Share on Whatsapp/Insta/FB Share on Insta and tag us @divyakapoorvox Support the production by making a donation at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/birthagni. This ensures the continuity and quality and a good coffee on sleepless recording nights! Subscribe to the FREE newsletter at https://www.birthagni.com/#subscribe and receive DISCOUNTS, SALE updates and GIFTCARDS on our premium 'Own your Birth' program You can book a 20 min FREE Discovery call at https://www.birthagni.com/bookfreesession ...
We are thrilled to introduce our next guest, Vikas Bagaria, Founder of PeeSafe, who is revolutionizing women's wellness and hygiene with his innovative line of products. From reusable menstrual cups to panty liners, intimate wipes, and toilet sanitation spray, his company is empowering women and giving them back control over their bodies.In this conversation, Vikas take us on a captivating journey into the evolving landscape of women's wellness and menstrual care products. He will shed light on the future of these products and how the field of FemTech is embracing innovation to meet the unique needs of women.One of the highlights of our conversation will be Vikas sharing his insights on how PeeSafe's products are disrupting the market. He will narrate the incredible journey that led PeeSafe to be recognized as The Best SMB Brand of the Year by Amazon India, an achievement celebrated in the presence of none other than Jeff Bezos himself. This recognition is a testament to the dedication and vision behind PeeSafe.Beyond his entrepreneurial pursuits, Vikas is also actively involved in assisting Indian Defense, Aerospace, Power Transformer, and Energy companies through his other venture, SRV Damage Prevention, founded in 2002. His expertise in conditional based monitoring systems is making a significant impact in these industries.Join us in this conversation with Vikas Bagaria, where we will delve into the intersection of innovation, women's wellness, and menstrual care. Tune in, catch-up with our conversations, and don't forget to share your valuable thoughts!
Amazon discontinues celebrity voice feature; Amazon India tests dine-in payments The latest feature from instacart.
India's state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corp. (ONGC) has announced plans to invest Rs. 1 trillion ($12.1 billion) by 2030 to increase its renewable energy capacity and reduce direct emissions. The company aims to scale up its renewable energy capacity to 10 gigawatts (GW) by 2030, a significant increase from the current 189 megawatts. The world's biggest AI experts have captured in one sentence the risk of AI. Blackrock, the world's biggest money manager, has slashed the valuation of BYJU'S by 62 percent. Also in this brief, the C919, China's challenge to Airbus-Boeing takes flight. Notes: Some of the world's top AI experts, including Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, have signed a short statement to make it easy for everyone to understand that the risk of extinction of the human race due to artificial intelligence is very real. “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” the statement reads, published by the Center for AI Safety. Among the other signatories on the list, which runs into a couple of hundred experts from around the world, are Geoffrey Hinton, Emeritus Professor of Computer Science, University of Toronto, A pioneer in the field of deep learning and neural networks; Yoshua Bengio, Professor of Computer Science, U. Montreal / Mila, a leading researcher in the field of deep learning and co-founder of the deep learning framework, "Theano"; Demis Hassabis, CEO, Google DeepMind, an influential figure in the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI) and deep reinforcement learning; and Dario Amodei, CEO, Anthropic. India's state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corp. (ONGC) has announced plans to invest Rs. 1 trillion ($12.1 billion) by 2030 to increase its renewable energy capacity and reduce direct emissions. The company aims to scale up its renewable energy capacity to 10 gigawatts (GW) by 2030, a significant increase from the current 189 megawatts. ONGC's chairman, Arun Kumar Singh, said that while fossil fuel demand in India may continue to grow until 2040, the company is committed to balancing its portfolio with green energy projects. Amazon India has launched a limited introduction of bill payments at select restaurants using Amazon Pay. The feature, currently available in certain areas of Bengaluru, allows users to make payments using various methods such as credit/debit cards, net banking, UPI, Amazon Pay Later, TechCrunch reports. China's domestically built passenger jet, the C919, completed its maiden commercial flight, on May 28, marking a significant milestone in the country's ambition to challenge the aircraft manufacturing duopoly of Boeing and Airbus, Quartz reports. The Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (Comac) developed the C919, which flew from Shanghai to Beijing with approximately 130 passengers on board. Despite facing delays and design flaws, Comac has signed contracts for 1,035 C919 jets with several dozen customers. Blackrock, the world's biggest money manager, has slashed the valuation of BYJU'S by 62 percent to $8.4 billion in the March quarter, down from its previous valuation of $22 billion, The Hindu Business Line reports. This marks the second markdown by Blackrock, which holds a 0.9 percent stake in the company. The funding winter and worsening macroeconomic conditions have prompted private investors to reduce valuations of several start-up unicorns, with cuts ranging from 30-50 percent, according to the report.
Dev Gadhvi was born in a humble family and his father was a truck driver. He went from being born and brought up in slums to becoming a multi-millionaire. He is India's First Passionpreneur Mentor, twice best-selling author with more than 2000+ reviews on Amazon India, and a TEDx speaker. He is on a mission to transform 1 billion lives. Top 3 Value Bombs: 1. Right now, we're living in times that what you love can be converted into business. Why not make money from your passion? 2. Serve others and serve selflessly. When you give selflessly, you get back tremendously. 3. You start a business by serving others, and when you start serving people, you start loving it and that will become your passion and purpose. You will become unstoppable. Follow Dev on Instagram! - Dev's Instagram Sponsors: HubSpot: HubSpot CRM's powerful tools will help marketers WOW prospects, sales teams lock in deals, and service teams improve response times and overall service. Get started for free at HubSpot.com! Elite Singles: Busy, successful professional looking for a partner who shares your drive and values? Then Elite Singles is the perfect dating platform for you! Sign up at EliteSingles.com/fire, complete your personality test, and start making meaningful connections today! FranBridge: Many EOFire listeners have launched franchises in a variety of industries outside of food – and FranBridge Consulting has guided them to these premier opportunities! Sign up for a free consultation with Jon - or get a free copy of his book, “Non-Food Franchising” - at FranBridgeConsulting.com!
Dev Gadhvi was born in a humble family and his father was a truck driver. He went from being born and brought up in slums to becoming a multi-millionaire. He is India's First Passionpreneur Mentor, twice best-selling author with more than 2000+ reviews on Amazon India, and a TEDx speaker. He is on a mission to transform 1 billion lives. Top 3 Value Bombs: 1. Right now, we're living in times that what you love can be converted into business. Why not make money from your passion? 2. Serve others and serve selflessly. When you give selflessly, you get back tremendously. 3. You start a business by serving others, and when you start serving people, you start loving it and that will become your passion and purpose. You will become unstoppable. Follow Dev on Instagram! - Dev's Instagram Sponsors: HubSpot: HubSpot CRM's powerful tools will help marketers WOW prospects, sales teams lock in deals, and service teams improve response times and overall service. Get started for free at HubSpot.com! Elite Singles: Busy, successful professional looking for a partner who shares your drive and values? Then Elite Singles is the perfect dating platform for you! Sign up at EliteSingles.com/fire, complete your personality test, and start making meaningful connections today! FranBridge: Many EOFire listeners have launched franchises in a variety of industries outside of food – and FranBridge Consulting has guided them to these premier opportunities! Sign up for a free consultation with Jon - or get a free copy of his book, “Non-Food Franchising” - at FranBridgeConsulting.com!
OnePlus' latest Nord CE 3 Lite launched in India earlier this week with a sub-Rs.20,000 price tag for the base variant. The smartphone has a stylish design and has some decent specifications that make it a good value for money. It also has several competitors in the segment. Gadgets 360 reviewer Pranav Hegde and senior reviewer Sheldon Pinto join Orbital guest host Roydon Cerejo to discuss the newly launched OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite and the competition. The OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite offers a pleasing design and decent specifications for the price. OnePlus Nord smartphones have done quite well in India, and according to the company, the Nord CE 2 Lite was the best selling 5G smartphone on Amazon India. Will the Nord CE 3 Lite from OnePlus also sell like hotcakes? How does it perform? What does it offer, and how does it fare against its competition. We discuss this and more on the latest episode of Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Follow Gadgets 360 on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Write to us at podcast@gadgets360.com Chapters Intro (00:00) What's New With Nord CE 3 Lite (03:15) Design and Camera (05:27) Software (13:17) Display, Performance, and Competition (21:37) Final thoughts (30:15) Outro (34:06) Cover: OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite. Photo credit: Pranav Hegde / Gadgets 360
In this episode, we hear from Kunal Rohatgi, the Founder of Fos Lighting, about the journey of his third-generation family-run business. Launched in 2010, Fos Lighting designs manufactures and supplies decorative lighting using locally sourced raw materials and a team of artisans from all over India. They were one of the early adopters of online marketplaces and it paid off - today, despite having three offline stores in Delhi NCR, their online sales surpass offline sales. Tune in to learn how Fos Lighting managed to successfully blend family tradition with e-commerce innovation and how it helps them to scale and operate their business. About Open For Business Series: In this five-part series, I bring you stories of some of the homegrown small and medium businesses. These stories are representative of the countless SMBs in the country that plays a key role in the overall economic growth of India. By celebrating these businesses, I hope to inspire you to start and scale your business. In each episode, you'll hear the stories of building businesses, strategies, and innovations that are helping these brands to grow their revenue and impact the lives of people associated with them.
Our guest today is Roopa Pai, one of India's best-known writers for children. This Bangalore-based author has written over 25 books, ranging from picture books to chapter books and fiction to non-fiction, on themes as varied as sci-fi fantasy, popular science, maths, history, economics, Indian philosophy, life skills, and most recently, medicine. Many of her books are bestsellers and are enjoyed as much by adults as by children. Her best-known books include the 8-part Taranauts, India's first fantasy-adventure series for children in English, Ready! 99 Must-Have Skills For The World-Conquering Teenager (And Almost-Teenager), the award-winning national bestseller The Gita For Children, listed by Amazon India as one of ‘100 Indian Books To Read In A Lifetime, and its ‘prequel' The Vedas And Upanishads For Children. Her TEDx talk ‘Decoding The Gita, India's Book Of Answers' has received over 2 million views to date. Her most recent book for children is ‘Leeches To Slug Glue: 25 Explosive Ideas That Made (And Are Making) Modern Medicine'. She has also co-authored fitness evangelist and supermodel Milind Soman's memoir, Made In India, and is currently working on a book of poetry translation, in which she is translating 100 poems of the much-acclaimed Kannada poet, Padma Shri K S Nisar Ahmed, into English. Her most recent book for adults - CubbonPark: The Green Heart of Bengaluru – was released a month ago. When she is not writing, Roopa can be found leading groups of children and young people on history and heritage walks across her beloved Karnataka, as part of her job as director of a company she co-founded, BangaloreWalks. Listen in as Roopa shares her philosophy of life & her journey to becoming the popular author she is today. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-third-eye1/message
It's me! Hi! (I'm not the problem, just the podcast's host, here to bring you the latest greatest in startup and tech news this fine Monday morning). Welcome back to Equity, the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. And for those of you who hummed the first sentence of this post, extra points to you.I'm starting things off this week as a test run before Alex heads on paternity leave. We have lots to get to, so shake off the holiday feels and let's remember how this ecosystem works?Here's what we got to:The markets are broadly down, due to COVID-19 protests breaking out in China. Blockfi filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Our crypto reporter Jacquelyn Melinek has more on what happened - and she explains just how intertwined this universe is. I'll also get to notes I took from our recent crypto conference and how the reality may be looking like Web 2.5 before it looks like Web 3.0.We also talk about Amazon's three-pronged retreat, and the common thread of India between them all.After that, some good news from all-women led venture firm Pact and its debut fund. More funding for climate startups, please. Tim keeps writing about really cool ones.We end with a note on Pipe, a $2 billion fintech that announced all of its co-founders are stepping down from their roles last week. Soon after that decision was announced, rumors and allegations began flying about tensions under the hood at the fintech. Mary Ann Azevedo has the story and keep reading the site today for the follow up. As I said on Twitter, on one end, when three founders step down in a single moment, people are undoubtedly going to talk and worry (out loud) about the stability of the company.That was fun. Thanks for letting me spend a bit of your Monday with you. More to come! You can follow me on Twitter @nmasc_ or on Instagram @natashathereporter. Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday and Wednesday, and at 6 a.m. PT on Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!
Amazon India closes a lot of businesses in the country.Janne k liye sunte rahiye Namastey India!
Expect rivalries in the logistics business to heat up because Amazon has entered the arena with a new plan. The company is looking to open up its delivery services for non-Amazon e-commerce orders in India.In other news, Google now wants you to keep scrolling from the comfort of your living room. YouTube, the Google-owned video platform, is bringing its YouTube Shorts to television screens.You can listen to this show and other awesome shows on the IVM Podcasts app on Android, iOS or any other podcast app.You can check out our website at https://ivmpodcasts.com/.Do follow IVM Podcasts on social media.We are @IVMPodcasts on Facebook, Twitter, & Instagram.Follow the show across platforms:Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Prime Music.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
A study by UC Berkeley concluded that being grateful has a lot of amazing benefits for individuals and families. Marci shares 5 reasons to be grateful for your late talker out now on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. --- Sign up for Marci's newsletter here: https://bit.ly/3P7suod If you are in India, you can order Marci's workbooks through Amazon India or Notionpress: https://bit.ly/3NhlJQb https://amzn.to/3N84sJD Order your language facilitation workbook on Amazon in Paperback or EBook versions the USA https://bit.ly/11-WeekJourneytoSpeech Order Updated Title from Amazon UK in Paperback and EBook versions worldwide https://amzn.to/347r2AN Order the Kindle version for Delivery NOW to your device https://amzn.to/3gotTI1 Check out Marci's first book “If it isn't FUN it ISN'T fun - Teach Your Child to Talk Faster Than Speech Therapy” on Amazon here: bit.ly/MarciFUNbook --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/wavesofcommunication/message
What REAL VALUE do you get from your speech therapy appointments? Marci shares 5 ways that language facilitation is more valuable to parents and caregivers than speech therapy, as well as how your choice to invest your time and energy in LOW-VALUE intervention will affect your family's happiness as well as your child's future. --- Sign up for Marci's newsletter here: https://bit.ly/3P7suod If you are in India, you can order Marci's workbooks through Amazon India or Notionpress: https://bit.ly/3NhlJQb https://amzn.to/3N84sJD Order your language facilitation workbook on Amazon in Paperback or EBook versions the USA https://bit.ly/11-WeekJourneytoSpeech Order Updated Title from Amazon UK in Paperback and EBook versions worldwide https://amzn.to/347r2AN Order the Kindle version for Delivery NOW to your device https://amzn.to/3gotTI1 Check out Marci's first book “If it isn't FUN it ISN'T fun - Teach Your Child to Talk Faster Than Speech Therapy” on Amazon here: bit.ly/MarciFUNbook --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/wavesofcommunication/message
Is your family hooked on tech? We all receive a lot of influence from our devices and the content we watch every day. Why not take advantage of your love of tech to connect with your late talker and facilitate the speech that will help them share the ideas they are learning with other humans in the world? --- Sign up for Marci's newsletter here: https://bit.ly/3P7suod If you are in India, you can order Marci's workbooks through Amazon India or Notionpress: https://bit.ly/3NhlJQb https://amzn.to/3N84sJD Order your language facilitation workbook on Amazon in Paperback or EBook versions the USA https://bit.ly/11-WeekJourneytoSpeech Order Updated Title from Amazon UK in Paperback and EBook versions worldwide https://amzn.to/347r2AN Order the Kindle version for Delivery NOW to your device https://amzn.to/3gotTI1 Check out Marci's first book “If it isn't FUN it ISN'T fun - Teach Your Child to Talk Faster Than Speech Therapy” on Amazon here: bit.ly/MarciFUNbook --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/wavesofcommunication/message
"We need to have a meeting about your child's behavior....” Many parents of late talkers receive this note after only a short time in a new learning environment. Learn why it happens and what you can do if your child is "not fitting in" with the school or daycare you have signed up for. Sign up for Marci's newsletter here: https://bit.ly/3P7suod If you are in India, you can order Marci's workbooks through Amazon India or Notionpress: https://bit.ly/3NhlJQb https://amzn.to/3N84sJD Order your language facilitation workbook on Amazon in Paperback or EBook versions the USA https://bit.ly/11-WeekJourneytoSpeech Order Updated Title from Amazon UK in Paperback and EBook versions worldwide https://amzn.to/347r2AN Order the Kindle version for Delivery NOW to your device https://amzn.to/3gotTI1 Check out Marci's first book “If it isn't FUN it ISN'T fun - Teach Your Child to Talk Faster Than Speech Therapy” on Amazon here: bit.ly/MarciFUNbook --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/wavesofcommunication/message
Speech imitation is one major hallmark used by therapists and parents as proof that the late talker is listening and learning to say words. Tune in to today's coaching video to learn 5 things every language facilitator needs to know about speech imitation and 5 strategies to motivate your late talker to try more natural speech imitation and practice. Sign up for Marci's newsletter here: https://bit.ly/3P7suod If you are in India, you can order Marci's workbooks through Amazon India or Notionpress: https://bit.ly/3NhlJQb https://amzn.to/3N84sJD Order your language facilitation workbook on Amazon in Paperback or EBook versions the USA https://bit.ly/11-WeekJourneytoSpeech Order Updated Title from Amazon UK in Paperback and EBook versions worldwide https://amzn.to/347r2AN Order the Kindle version for Delivery NOW to your device https://amzn.to/3gotTI1 Check out Marci's first book “If it isn't FUN it ISN'T fun - Teach Your Child to Talk Faster Than Speech Therapy” on Amazon here: bit.ly/MarciFUNbook --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/wavesofcommunication/message
Our guest this week on the Absolutely Write podcast is Savio D'souza, Director at Adidas. Savio D'Souza leads Adidas India's direct-to-consumer programme and is a part of its' Senior Leadership team. Savio is responsible for defining and delivering Adidas India's consumer strategy across its own website, app, omnichannel and direct-to-consumer marketplaces. He also oversees Adidas India's omnichannel customer service and omnichannel consumer membership programme. Prior to Adidas, Savio has launched and scaled various key initiatives across Amazon India. He was a part of the founding team of Amazon Business and led their online to offline push across key categories such as Medical Devices and Wireless Mobility. Savio comes in with 18 + years of experience of which the first decade was spent globally across EMEA and APAC in leading and scaling large, multinational teams across Retail and Wholesale. Aditi analyses Savio's handwriting and talks about some interesting aspects of his personality including what makes him a successful professional & leader. Savio shares some great takeaways and shares a story of how an incident at a young age changed the way he looked at life. Keep a notepad handy to make notes.
Alexa, what's the latest episode of the Orbital podcast about? Amazon India's Alexa chief Dilip R.S. and Gadgets 360's in-house Alexa expert Ali Pardiwala join host Akhil Arora to discuss Alexa's growth in India. The biggest challenge for any voice assistant is to make it understand its users. For one, Alexa must adapt to “Indian English” words and our varied accents. On top of that, it must also navigate the fact that we frequently use two (or more) languages in the same sentence. Still, Amazon Echo devices have been bought in 85 percent of pin codes in India, Dilip notes. Of course, it's another matter how useful they are — and how many are actively being used. For more such trends, tune into the episode. We also touch upon how Amazon pushes to integrate Alexa into non-Amazon devices and platforms, and how thanks to Alexa, voice is the first mode of interaction with the Internet for some. Follow Gadgets 360 on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Write to us at podcast@gadgets360.com Chapters Intro (00:00) 4-year India journey (00:23) How Alexa has grown (03:39) Making it useful (07:35) Echo is everywhere (13:12) How Alexa learns (17:31) Building for India (20:35) Privacy issues (22:07) Outro (24:12) Photo credits: Amazon
Swagat Gyawali is a Brilliant Tech Youtuber, Freelancer, and IT graduate who also has experience working for Amazon India. In this podcast, Swagat talks about NFTs, Network Marketing Scams, Content creation, TikTok branding, and much more. Follow Swagat on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/swagatgyawali/ Subscribe to Swagat's Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/SwagatGyawali1
On this episode of The Asian Seller podcast, Melissa Simonson and Hai Mag from Eva join us to chat about a range of topics including dynamic pricing, Amazon India, Q4 trends and more. About Melissa: Down to her last $30 and with her power turned off, Melissa started her entrepreneurial journey out of necessity. She later shifted into eCommerce private label and is now proud to represent Eva.Guru as Head of Marketing. Melissa is honored to be on the Board of Directors for the nonprofit, member-owned Empowery eCommerce Cooperative to help other eCommerce entrepreneurs on their journey and has a special place in her heart for empowering women in eCommerce. Event host, international speaker, podcaster, community builder and people connector, she was the host of the first ever event in eCommerce with an all women speaker lineup and is the current host of the Amaze on Stream Podcast.
Grab a FREE audiobook from Audible (Affiliate link): www.audibletrial.com/thesavegpodcast OUR PATREON: www.patreon.com/thesavegpodcast YOUTUBE: www.youtube.com/thesavegpodcast INSTAGRAM: www.instagram.com/thesavegpodcast In this weeks episode, we kick off with a little story time that literally had Rose out for nearly 3 days. After a casual Friday dinner with Daniel, Rose unfortunately caught food poisoning and was deathly ill the entire weekend. Luckily she recovered in time to record this weeks episode. Our first story is about Amazon India, who is in trouble for copying other brands and then rigging the amazon site so that their products showed up first in the search feature. What are your thoughts, was this fair or just capitalism? Update on Gabby Petito, which was not such a surprise but more confirmation, it was confirmed by the coroner that it was indeed a homicide. Our thoughts go out to her family at this time. We also chat about Demi Lovato and her announcement that the word Alien is offensive to Aliens; and end the episode discussing a topic we clearly know nothing about- Internet NTFs and how Tiktok is launching some NFT products. Enjoy the episode!
I was not sure, how I would have structured this interview:- a) Because I was not sure how to Approach a brand like theirs, b) they have been interviewed like a thousand times, and what else could i get from them than those interviewers with years of experience, c) but I knew I had to get him on the podcast, because it is one of those stories which I feel a lot of people would be curious about. So i decided i will not go with any script at all ( like most interviews) I am glad that after knowing for a while now, I could get him on this podcast to share stuff that is incredibly valuable, if you ever wondered what a crash course in business and marketing would be like, this is it. Along with the amazing story of Sleepy owl of course. I enjoyed a lot speaking with Arman, and if you are planning to listen to this episode, trust me sit down with a pen and paper to make some notes. We talk about the starting days of Sleepy Owl to future plans, to the core team to exploring options, the logo and the name to the controversial advert on social media. Its all in there, plus a lot of informational guidance through the eyes of an Entrepreneur ( I hope I spelt it right) So go ahead, read it, enjoy it, and also Share it : ) A little about Arman: Arman Sood was always interested in entrepreneurship since his college days. In his 2nd year of Law School, he started an e-commerce startup, along with a friend, retailing Bar & Party Accessories. After college, Arman joined Embibe, a leading tech start-up, where he worked as a Marketing & Communications Evangelist, and gained a deeper understanding of the day-to-day operations and functions of a business. An entrepreneur at heart, Arman quickly understood the need to make real coffee available at home in the most convenient format, once he studied the coffee market in India and realised the gap that existed. Pioneering the new coffee movement in India, Arman got together with his friends – Ajai Thandi and Ashwajeet Singh, and launched Sleepy Owl Coffee in 2016. At Sleepy Owl, Arman manages Operations, Supply Chain, and Institutional Sales, and ensures that customers are happy and caffeinated at all times. About Sleepy Owl Coffee The inception of Sleepy Owl can be traced back to three friends - Arman Sood, Ashwajeet Singh and Ajai Thandi, who despite their love for coffee, couldn't find a good cup when they needed it. Hence, they decided to brew their own and invented a product they loved. Today, the brand stands 5 years strong with a compelling product portfolio that includes Cold Brew Packs, Hot Brew Bags, Ready-To-Drink Cold Brew Bottles, Brew Box, Whole Beans and Ground Coffee. All of these are made with real coffee beans that have been sourced directly from the farms of Chikmagalur in Karnataka. Sleepy Owl has also eliminated the use of plastic in its packaging, and now uses 100% recyclable packaging which is sustainable. Sleepy Owl's products can be found in over 1300+ general and modern retails stores across Delhi NCR and Mumbai with additional presence across the corporate and HORECA sector. The brand also ships pan-India through its online presence on www.sleepyowl.co, Amazon India, and BigBasket. How to get in touch with them : Website: www.sleepyowl.co Email: help@sleepyowl.co Facebook/Instagram/Twitter: @Sleepyowlcoffee
Kashif Mashaikh's first book, The Mortuary Tales, released on June 14 and within a week shot up to #13 in the horror genre on Amazon India. In this episode of Footloose by Shre and Eish, he talks about writing, literary agents, characterization and how he was inspired by Stephen King, Aahat and Woh. #mortuarytales #author #debutbook #novel #shortstories #hussainzaidi #goldenpen #footloosebyshreandeish #literaryagents #publishing #stephenking #horror #aahat #sony #zee #OTT #scripttoscreen #amazon #westland #kashifmashaikh #darklit #creepy #crime #pandemic #covid19 #indianwriters #bloggers #creativewriting #fiction #nonfiction #books #booktalks #authortalks Cover pic: Kashif Mashaikh You can buy the book on Amazon --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/footloosebytidybytes/message
Since its entry into India in 2014, Amazon has known and conquered its biggest competitor Flipkart, to become India's number one e-commerce seller. But since its victory a few years ago, leaders in exploding sectors like edtech, epharmacy and food delivery have become formidable giants. With this influx of new rivals, including Reliance and regulators, Amazon is well into its new strategy to face its new reality. Story originally reported by Seetharaman G https://the-ken.com/story/the-amazon-flipkart-battle-was-over-then-came-the-war/ The Ken Southeast Asia offer: www.the-ken.com/sea/the-future/narrative Second segment: The Matrix Each edition, The Matrix serves up an unscripted and no-holds-barred discussion on the biggest tech & business stories that matter. Each time, with a new “formula”. This week, it's 3x3x2. 3 opinionated participants. 3 very important news events. And only 2 possible views - Yes or No. Rahul Matthan, co-founder and partner of Trilegal, one of India's leading law firms joins Praveen Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar from The Ken to discuss & answer the following: (a) Does India need more NUEs? (b) Is Google's FLoC a better alternative to Cookies? (c) Can India trace a few without surveilling all? Additional Reads Offline pharma's omnichannel pill to counter Tata, Reliance, Amazon: https://the-ken.com/story/offline-pharmas-omnichannel-pill-to-counter-tata-reliance-amazon/ The Nutgraf: Reliance, Future, Amazon and India proposes. Rest of world disposes: https://the-ken.com/the-nutgraf/reliance-future-amazon-and-india-proposes-rest-of-world-disposes/ The US$11-billion Byju's juggernaut heads to US shores: https://the-ken.com/story/byjus-juggernaut-heads-to-us/ Several big businesses are in fray for setting up NUE: https://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/several-big-businesses-are-in-fray-for-setting-up-nue-what-is-it-121030201183_1.html Google's FLoC Is a Terrible Idea: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/googles-floc-terrible-idea Traceability is Antithetical to Liberty: https://exmachina.substack.com/p/traceability-is-antithetical-to-liberty Host: Anushka Chhikara Segment 1 Guests: Seetharaman G, Maitri Porecha, Olina Banerji, Pranav Balan, Praveen Krishnan Segment 2 Guests: Rahul Matthan, Rohin Dharmakumar, Praveen Krishnan Music and editing by Sameer Rahat from Baqsa Studios.
Is there really such a thing called passive income? Is it accessible to creators? Dive into the nuances of the world of Affiliate marketing with an affiliate marketing veteran who's in the business for a decade and now derives all of this creator income from affiliate marketing. Reach out to Dilip and Check out his content - Affiliate Marketing Blog – https://dkspeaks.com Podcast about Podcasting – https://thepodcastinguniversity.com Tastes of India Podcast - https://thetastesofindia.com/ Instagram – https://instagram.com/dkspeaks Facebook – https://facebook.com/dkspeaks Twitter – https://twitter.com/dkspeaks Pinterest – https://pinterest.com/dkspeaks Reach out to Naga – Twitter - @n1n3stuff / @PassionPeop1 (https://twitter.com/ThePassionPeop1 ) Facebook - The Passion People Podcast email - naagasubramanya@gmail.com Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thepassionpeoplepodcast/ More about EpLog Media - You can follow us and leave us feedback on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @eplogmedia, For advertising/partnerships send you can send us an email at bonjour@eplog.media. If you like this show, please subscribe and leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts, so other people can find us. You can also find us on https://www.eplog.media/thepassionpeoplepodcast DISCLAIMER: The views expressed on all the shows produced and distributed by Ep.Log Media are personal to the host and the guest of the shows respectively and with no intention to harm the sentiments of any individual/organisation. The said content is not obscene or blasphemous or defamatory of any event and/or person deceased or alive or in contempt of court or breach of contract or breach of privilege, or in violation of any provisions of the statute, nor hurt the sentiments of any religious groups/ person/government/non-government authorities and/or breach or be against any declared public policy of any nation or state. Sound Attribution and Credits - Music from Pipo and Wowa(you should check out their music on Spotify here - https://open.spotify.com/artist/6zZPxLiRfbGUnoEAJmfJJN) from Unminus. All music other than the jingle on the episode is under the CC0 License and downloaded from freesound.org , freemusicarchive.org and unminus.com Transcript [00:00:00]R Dilip Kumar: [00:00:00] Promoting products on my niche websites, creating niche websites that are solely focused on affiliate marketing. [00:00:06] When I look at my podcasting journey and what my goals for podcasting was, I was never looking at monetizing the taste of India podcast from the perspective that most podcasters look at it , sponsorships andmaybe a merchandise or, ads. [00:00:21] So I wasn't looking at it from that perspective. My sole objective was to drive all of that traffic to my blog and then monetize my blog [00:00:30]But once you've done it, if you're able to drive traffic to it, , it's income that stays there, that's passive. So people just come visit those posts, click on those links, buy and you'll get paid a commission. [00:00:42] Naga S: [00:00:42] Hi, Dilip. Hello and welcome to the passion people podcast. [00:00:45]R Dilip Kumar: [00:00:45] Thanks for having me here. I was looking for forward to this conversation for some time, [00:00:48]Naga S: [00:00:48] can you tell us your story I know you run an affiliate marketing blog an affiliate marketing podcast, and you're also a great content creator in your own right with both you and your wife, having such famous websites and podcasts. [00:01:01]R Dilip Kumar: [00:01:01] Thanks. I have been an affiliate marketers since 2003. Okay. So is when I first learned about affiliate marketing it wasn't purely affiliate marketing. I started off with understanding what blogging was, and that was when, blogging was slowly taking off. [00:01:18]I went into affiliate marketing because my objective of getting into blogging was to use the expertise or the knowledge that I had and make money. And just to give you a context, , 2002, 2003 was a time when. People who are making a lot of money using Google AdSense on their blogs and these blogs weren't really, extremely good content. [00:01:40] It was just some content that they were putting out there. They were putting some Google AdSense in there and they were kind of making money. So that is where I actually started. And Google AdSense, wasn't really a very reliable option for me. I diversified into learning, understanding what affiliate marketing is, [00:02:00] and that's how I got into affiliate marketing in 2003 is when I first put together my affiliate marketing website. [00:02:07] But. Slowly and gradually I kind of graduated into a little more advanced methods in affiliate marketing, building, very niche specific sites that is oriented towards affiliate marketing. And that's what I've continued to do over the last, I think 14, 15 years [00:02:25] , I came into podcasting first. The first podcast that I listened to was somewhere around 2005, 2006, there was this guy, Yarrow Starack it was Yarrow from who's , small course that I happened to learn what blogging is and what affiliate marketing is all about. [00:02:41] So Yarrow had a podcast somewhere in 2005 and it was something very new, not a lot of podcasts. So that's whereI first encountered a podcast. I started my podcast on affiliate marketing for my primary blog Dkspeaks.com somewhere around 2010, 2011. Did it for almost about two years, but then, I was getting pulled into multiple directions because I wanted to focus my energy on something that I was doing for a long time. [00:03:12] And I felt that somehow podcasting was taking a little too much time of mine. One of the reason was that, , my wife started her blog that is thetastesofindia.com . [00:03:21] That was in 2008 when she started. And there was a lot of energy that we were putting in to promoting that blog, building the audience. We had a lot of issues in terms of some hosting, going down a lot of content going down. So. I was getting involved in a lot of these things that is where I took a break from podcasting on DK, speaks.com and then continued with affiliate marketing for a while until 2015. [00:03:49]When , once again we felt that podcasting could be a good addition to what we were doing on the taste of India. And that is [00:04:00] where we started off podcasting again in 2015, September was when the first episode of the taste of India podcast came out. Since then we've consistently been releasing shows on the taste of India podcast. [00:04:12] And it's been about an year that I started the podcasting university.com and the podcast there. So it's a year. Because of the COVID impact, I had to take a little break there, but then these other two podcast projects that I'm running right now, but primarily I am into affiliate marketing. [00:04:30]Promoting products on my niche websites, creating niche websites that are solely focused on affiliate marketing. [00:04:36]Naga S: [00:04:36] I understand. Let's dive right into the meat of the matter, ? So how much of your total income is delayed from affiliate marketing currently in a percentage, if I can ask you [00:04:47] R Dilip Kumar: [00:04:47] It is almost a hundred percent. Once again, go back to how we started podcasts for the taste of India. I, to talk about the taste of India right now. So, when we started podcast that is suffering the podcast, it was not to start a podcast. [00:05:02] It was to look at an alternate channel. To promote our existing blog@thetasteofindia.com. So there was another audience. Who is focused on audio. And we felt that if we could engage with that audience who were focused on audio, we can bring them back to our websites and in fact, the blog as well. [00:05:25] That is how we started with the taste of India podcast. So. When I look at my podcasting journey and what my goals for podcasting was, I was never looking at monetizing the taste of India podcast from the perspective that most podcasters look at it , sponsorships and maybe a merchandise or, ads. [00:05:44] So I wasn't looking at it from that perspective. My sole objective was to drive all of that traffic to my blog and then monetize my blog. So that's what we followed since the tastesofindia.com as a podcast started, and [00:06:00] we've mostly driving traffic back to our blog itself and our earning is primarily from affiliate marketing that we're doing on the blog. [00:06:06]So we've even stopped. Google ads on the taste of India right now, because there was feedback that we got from people saying that the ads are extremely intrusive, so we stopped and that wasn't a lot that we were earning from those Google ads as well. [00:06:21] So we are solely focused on affiliate marketing right now. And all income that we are earning, all of it almost a hundred percent is coming from affiliate marketing. [00:06:29]Naga S: [00:06:29] You guys all have your a hundred percent of your monthly income does through affiliate marketing. Okay. So let's take a few steps back. Can you explain what is affiliate marketing and how is it different from the regular marketing and why should creators be interested to know about affiliate marketing? [00:06:46] R Dilip Kumar: [00:06:46] Affiliate marketing is basically, you're promoting somebody's product, there is , a manufacturer or a service provider who already have a product, and you are promoting that product to your audience in return for a commission that they are going to pay you [00:07:03] and affiliate marketing is a small pie from the overall revenue that these e-commerce players are making, why is it that they're doing it because. No, it's a very easy advertising, medium for e-commerce companies. Now I'll take an example of Amazon, which is what we use mostly on the taste of India. [00:07:22]Now, Amazon has their own affiliate marketing program. Similarly in India, Flipkart has their own affiliate program and for Amazon and Flipkart, while they might be paying out about maybe four to 8% off the total value of a sale. That budget, the advertising budget for affiliate marketing, for the affiliates that they might be setting aside is absolutely zero because there is nothing that they need to do. [00:07:46] It is affiliates who are interested in promoting that product, who don't go there, pick those links, promote those products, drive traffic to their products and facilitate the sale. So in return for that, if they are paying about four to [00:08:00] 8% off the sale that they are making, it's worth it for them because they're saving a lot of money that they would otherwise have spent on advertising. [00:08:08]So for e-commerce players, this is a very good medium. And just to give you a context, I kind of get into details of advertise affiliate marketing when I write my posts. So you might be surprised to see that the msn.com website that also has a lot of products that they promote. [00:08:27] And they always have a note below that product saying that we are, these links are affiliate links and we might earn from a sale that happens through this link. I don't know why msn.com would have affiliate links on their website, but it shows that there, isn't a lot of effort that you need to put in there that absolutely is there when you're starting off, when you're building it. [00:08:50] But once you've done it, if you're able to drive traffic to it, , it's income that stays there, that's passive. So people just come visit those posts, click on those links, buy and you'll get paid a commission. [00:09:01] That's basically what affiliate marketing is. [00:09:04]Naga S: [00:09:04] I'm sure there's a little bit more nuance to it. Is it as simple as you're making it out to be. [00:09:10]R Dilip Kumar: [00:09:10] I take an example of the taste of it, India right now. We want to help people start their niche, blogs and run those blogs on affiliate marketing. So that's something that we are doing there. [00:09:19]Now, if you go to taste of india.com. On every post that we put out, you will find that there are, Amazon products that we refer now, for example, if there is a recipe that we are making and the primary two ingredients in that recipe for simplicity, let me say that it's organic all-purpose flour. [00:09:38] Okay. Organic whole wheat atta that link is also linked using an Amazon affiliate and. On top of that, what we're also doing is if you go to the tastesofindia.com, you will find, there are pages that are dedicated to reviews that we write about specific products. And those products are Amazon products that we are promoting. [00:09:59]Each of [00:10:00] those posts, if I get about let me say about thousand 2,500 page views in a day. People who are going there, the click-through rate, even in a very poor situation, even if it is at about eight to 10%, that's a good number of people clicking on that link, going to the Amazon website. [00:10:17]Now, one thing that you might want to note here is that if they click on that link, which for example is a whole wheat atta that link, they go to Amazon, but they're not buying whole wheat data. Instead they're buying something else. I get credited for that sale as well. So it isn't just that one product that I'm promoting, which is going to pay me, but anything that they buy once they click through from that link is a sale that has been generated from my link. [00:10:44]And I get paid for it. So to your question, is there nuances to it? To starting off with affiliate marketing, the basic simple step is that you have content, you have valuable content. And in between those content, you're providing contextual links to products that you want to promote as an affiliate. [00:11:04]That is all that is there to affiliate marketing, the second aspect is generating traffic. That is where the larger effort is you need to generate traffic to those posts or those blogs in order to generate those commissions. [00:11:18] So to your questions starting off is simple. But to build that, to generate that traffic, like, in podcasting, the amount of effort that we put into promote our shows, it is pretty much the same there as well. You need to put in a lot of effort to promote, to build that audience. [00:11:35] And only then that the returns come. [00:11:38]Naga S: [00:11:38] The difficult part is though content and then making sure that the audience comes in now after the, after the audience has come in. Is it as simple as it's going to like the amazon.com and their affiliate page and the signing up, or are there any other gotchas where they'll tell you that, , if you don't make a sale in three months, we'll deal with your account and stuff like that. [00:11:59] What are some [00:12:00] of the things that people should be aware of when they're signing up for this? [00:12:04]R Dilip Kumar: [00:12:04] There isn't anything like that. , once you join an affiliate program. Like for example, I am an affiliate marketer. I joined their affiliate program. Amazon associates program. They wouldn't delist me. Even if I don't make a single sale for the next one year, [00:12:18] it's entirely my choice when I want to promote it. When I want to drive traffic, when I want to make money, because making money is what my objective is to make money out of those links. So why wouldn't I want to promote it, but Amazon doesn't have to do anything with it. They'll just say, okay, if you don't want to do it, it's fine. [00:12:32] But they will keep that account active. There is nothing like that. And that's not just with Amazon with any affiliate program. They don't delist you, and there are a couple of , exclusions to it. I'll come to that, but otherwise in 95% of the affiliate programs, there isn't any conditions that you need to make money. [00:12:53]But if you're consistently putting in that effort, you will generate a sale now when it comes to Amazon this might be a little technical for people, but then when it comes to Amazon, the only thing is that Amazon provides an API access, which basically helps you to automatically pull in the products on their website, on the Amazon website and showcase that on your blog. [00:13:15] Or your website. So if you don't generate a sale for an X amount of period, I think it's about 90 days or something, then that API access is something that you won't get, but you can still promote Amazon products. The only thing is that you need to manually copy that link and use that in your post. So that's. [00:13:31] With Amazon, but there are a couple of affiliate networks. Like for example, there is a network called commissionjunction.com, which we've been using for quite some time. Their website is cj.com. Now on cj.com. If you don't generate a sale for like 120 days, then your account becomes a dormant account. [00:13:48] You need to, once again, go and reactivate it. And only then you will be able to promote the products. So there are very few networks, , I wouldn't even say 5% of the world networks, but very few networks who actually put that [00:14:00] condition in there. But otherwise 95, 98% of the networks, there isn't any such condition. [00:14:05] You can join them, promote products as per your convenience. And that's it. [00:14:10]Naga S: [00:14:10] The reason I was asking was because I was dabbling with affiliate marketing myself, and I was trying to get some sales for Amazon products and Amazon, after a couple of months, send me a notice saying that we're delisting your affiliate account because you're not you have not made a sale or anything like that. [00:14:26] So I guess the rules are updated, I guess this was two, three years back. [00:14:30]R Dilip Kumar: [00:14:30] right. So , that isn't there because I've been using Amazon for quite some time, now it doesn't there, but then the API access they'll revoke, they'll revoke the API access. You won't get that, but your account won't be delisted. You can still promote the products. [00:14:43]Naga S: [00:14:43] At the end of the day, this comes back to Who is the the audience for whom you are creating content. Subsequently what are the kind of products that your audience will be interested to buy. [00:14:56]R Dilip Kumar: [00:14:56] Correct. So it has to be contextual because otherwise, , you might just be pushing some products that are absolutely irrelevant to your audience and you can absolutely do that. But then the point there is that conversions might not be what you are expecting, so it might just not work. So what does advisable list to push contextual products, which are, relevant to your audience? [00:15:18]Naga S: [00:15:18] Absolutely. And in order to find and push the contextual products, one needs to make sure that the show or the content that is being created as a very niche audience. Like the way you were talking earlier, right. About creating websites for niche audiences, because what it is that those specific people are coming for. [00:15:36] And especially in the context of content creators, it comes down to the premise. So what's the premise of your show, your podcast, your video, whatever it is. So that the relative products that linked to your premise can be showcased identified, and then the affiliate links for the same can be shown.. [00:15:54]R Dilip Kumar: [00:15:54] that's right. All kinds of content, because what I feel is that there isn't any content [00:16:00] which might not have a product associated with it, I'll give you an example. [00:16:03] There are books on Amazon that I usually promote. If I read a book. I go ahead and promote that on my blog or my social media on my emails, I've put an influencer page together on Amazon, where I have listed all of the books that I liked. I recommend now these links have something that I keep sharing with the website, visitors, with the audience through my emails. [00:16:25] Now, these books also generate income for me because that, again, there is, a percentage that I I earned when people can click on those links and buy those books. So then as in the number of products that are available, that you can promote to your audience, and I don't think there is any niche that doesn't have any, any product or service associated with it. [00:16:45] It is about you. Going into that depth and understanding what is it that you might want to promote to your audience, but you will definitely find something that you can promote [00:16:57]Naga S: [00:16:57] Apart from Amazon, what are the other companies, or how do they approach a particular organization asking them about their affiliate program? [00:17:05] Is it typically available on their website? Do you go, do you need to go through customer care? How, how does that typically work? [00:17:10]R Dilip Kumar: [00:17:10] It's usually available on their website. So for example, if there is a product that you like now in my case, let me take the example of the podcasting university. Now that's typically targeting people who are interested in podcasts. Now there could be podcasts courses that are available. [00:17:27] Now, there could be microphones that are available, pop filters. There could be a boom arm that is available. So now. If it is not Amazon, if it's a different product, if you scroll down to the bottom of the page and 90% of these. Products will have in, in their footer, they'll have a link to the affiliate program. [00:17:44] They will have an affiliate program. Now, assuming that there isn't an affiliate program, a simple thing that you can do is pick that product, go to Google, enter that product's name and add affiliate program next to it and do a quick search, you will find if there is an affiliate [00:18:00] program for that product, you'll be able to find that on Google. [00:18:02]Now that is a second way of doing it. A third way is to join some of these networks. Now, like the one that I said, cj.com is basically an affiliate network that has a ton of affiliate products, starting from everything, insurance, car insurance, home loans, personal loans. And, , typically as in any kind of finance products services, they have a ton of different products you can pick. [00:18:26] What is it that you want to promote? You can reach out to them. There is an approval mechanism where they there is a short intro that you need to provide them as to how is it that you're planning to promote their product and all of those things. And if they find that it is something that they feel is right, then we'll approve you and you can promote those products. [00:18:42] Now cj.com has an approval format. There are some other products, some are some other networks which do not have any approval system. So all that you need to do is just go and apply for the Affiliate program. They'll approve you and then you can promote it. So you'll be able to find the affiliate programs for most of these products and services, because today, like what I said , affiliate marketing is the easiest advertising. [00:19:07] System that is available to any product or service creator. I'm a huge fan of PatFlynn now, if you go to his website, he's put together a lot of those courses and all of those courses have affiliate programs. [00:19:16]You can join those affiliate programs and promote. So, , you will find an affiliate program. If for some reason, a product or service doesn't have an affiliate program. There is a similar service or product that might be available that has an affiliate program, which you can always promote. [00:19:31]Naga S: [00:19:31] You spoke about Pat Flynn, right. And how his courses have affiliate program links and et cetera. Now, if I'm a content creator based out of India, does it make sense for me to reach out , to affiliate programs that are based outside of India as well? Are they open to making payments for the cross border individuals or does it make more sense to restrict myself to organizations within India as a country that I am resident. [00:19:55] And so that I'm able to minimize any of these logistical foreign [00:20:00] exchange related matters. [00:20:00]R Dilip Kumar: [00:20:00] I wouldn't recommend that Naga because the sole reason why we are into this digital world is so that we can cross boundaries, reach audience that is beyond the boundary of the region. Or the area that we are located in. And if you're trying to limit yourself within that boundary, then the entire concept of the digital marketing fails. [00:20:19] I wouldn't advise it. And I 'll take my own example. There are a lot of products and services that I consume and most of those products and services are all from creators that are based out outside of India. It's not based within India. So. From within India as an Indian, if I am consuming those products and services, I don't see why , I wouldn't be able to find a market for those products and services within India. [00:20:45] If I'm promoting that as an affiliate program. There is no real logistical roadblocks there because it's. All about getting approved for that affiliate program, getting your links, promoting it contextually on your blog or your website. So from your audience's perspective, all that they are doing is clicking on that link. [00:21:06]They are taken to that product page. They go through that sales page. See if that product is something that they might want to invest in, or they might want to buy, they click buy. Now, go ahead, buy it. If they bite you on a commission, if they don't. That's it. So there is nothing in terms of logistical roadblock, and I wouldn't advise that you should limit yourself to within India until, and unless you are so focused into a niche that or a product or service that you think only Indians might be using and nobody outside might be using. [00:21:40] So I don't personally recommend doing that , the wider it is the better it will be for you from a overall monetization perspective. [00:21:49]Naga S: [00:21:49] You don't see a challenge with, to seeing look for an extent and stuff like that. Especially in countries like India. [00:21:54]R Dilip Kumar: [00:21:54] This is a question that , I was asked, there was a mentorship that I was doing for [00:22:00] a couple of these folks on affiliate marketing. And there was this question that they are saying that what if they don't pay me ? All of these systems that have been put in place, for example, if it is Amazon. [00:22:10], when I'm talking about Amazon it is Amazon India because Amazon and Amazon, you a United States will have two different kind of customer base because us wouldn't ship to India. So when you're promoting Amazon India products, it is for the Indian audience. That's something that I just wanted to kind of clarify . [00:22:27]Most of these affiliate programs there is a robust system that is put in there where. Oh, the creator or the product manufacturer or the person who's, who's put together that service cannot kind of refuse to pay you because that, sale that they generate when that sale is generated, that is an X percentage, which is basically the affiliate commission that X percentage is kind of retained by the network. [00:22:53] And then they pay it over to you. So it's just that there might be conditions. For example, some affiliate networks would say that until, and unless you've reached a hundred dollars, they wouldn't pay you. There are some networks that would say, okay, the payment will happen once in 30 days. But those are already terms that are just common with most affiliate networks. [00:23:10] So from a payment not happening, it's all a robust system that is there in place just that you shouldn't fall for something that is an obvious scam or, , a product that doesn't have credibility. That's the only thing that you need to avoid. But otherwise that is, there is no such issues. [00:23:25]Naga S: [00:23:25] That's good to know. The point on the credibility also is a really good one because it also reflects adversely on our audience and the content that we make. If we are recommending products that are inferior quality, or just because someone is giving us a higher affiliate commission. You don't want to lose that trust or Goodwill that the audience's placing in you and they're consuming content, or even when they're purchasing stuff off of our affiliate links. [00:23:48]R Dilip Kumar: [00:23:48] On that piece, something that I do right now as in there is a lot that has changed in my overall business methodology. So something that I do right now is that if there is a [00:24:00] product that I promote, I ensure that I'm trying it out or I'm using it. So if you go to Amazon most of the products that you will find, there is something that I have in some way been related to now there could be some , products, like, for example, if it's a large appliance let me say, maybe I'm recommending a refrigerator or I'm recommending maybe , a microwave oven to my audience. Then in that case, I would obviously recommend the oven that I'm using . I would put forward, all of those advantages and disadvantages of that oven at the same time, I would recommend some of those competitor ovens as well, which I would have researched before I went ahead and made that purchase. So I wouldn't just go and recommend something that I have absolutely no clue about. Because that is where, , your entire credibility can take a hit. So anything as in like what I said, , the books that I recommend is something that I have read. If I haven't read it, I wouldn't recommend it. The products that I am recommending, for example, on the taste of india.com, there is a page where we've put together how to start a food blog and make money with it. [00:25:08] Now that page has some of these products. All of it is something that we've used. . So we will recommend products and services that we try out , we are at a better position to pitch that product to my audience. [00:25:21] And it also ensures that the credibility is maintained. [00:25:24]Naga S: [00:25:24] That's a good point in terms of all of the products that you had researched, but didn't really end up buying. That's a good way of expanding the reach to products that you have not tried, but have come close to trying. [00:25:36] So Dilip as we reach the end of the episode, bottom line it for me. [00:25:41]R Dilip Kumar: [00:25:41] We got reconnected through podcasts, so something that I find. Today. And this is because, , the, on the podcasting university, I spent a lot of time researching on the podcasting industry, what is happening. [00:25:54] Something that I really found is that there is a lot that we are leaving on the table in terms of monetization [00:26:00] while we are talking about monetization a lot. On podcasting. That the point is that today we are, as in very narrowly focused, looking at only a couple of avenues of monetizing the shows, there are other forms, other ways in which you might be able to earn money monetize your shows. [00:26:17] The only thing is that you need to see how is it that you want to go about doing it. And one big problem that I've seen is that. Most of these podcasts as in good podcasts. They don't have a real estate , meaning of website on the internet. I have been a firm believer that you need to have. Website on the internet to which you will have to drive your audience, build your audience and see listeners will come and they'll go. But how is it that you're going to retain your listeners? You will only be able to retain your listeners if you drive them to some concrete space on the internet and connect with them. Continue to connect with them. In my case, , I'm extremely focused on email marketing. So , I'm building my list and I keep sending people an email with the latest episode that we release. And that gets me the initial kick in terms of the, listens for the first two, three days. [00:27:14] So, , how is it that we are retaining those listeners, engaging with them? These are some things that are being overlooked in the podcasting space, in our market today is something that I feel. And I think that there's a lot of opportunity in terms of using podcasts to drive traffic to your blog, and then maybe using affiliate marketing as a monetization method which is something that I think people can explore. [00:27:36]Naga S: [00:27:36] Absolutely. And what about the non podcast creators who are looking to evaluate affiliate marketing? [00:27:43] R Dilip Kumar: [00:27:43] Affiliate marketing and in more so in the current situation, , after COVID , there are a lot of people who lost their jobs, but. What I feel is that affiliate marketing is something that is worth exploring as anybody who can put in some effort [00:28:00] into building that business affiliate marketing can be a full-time business for you. [00:28:06] And , I'll take this from Pat Flynn's website. His website is smart, passive income, and. If you see, he talks about passive income and is somebody who's promoted, affiliate marketing so much. Then if you just go to your website, you'll be able to find that his core income source , primary income source was affiliate marketing. [00:28:25] It's something that anybody who wants, who's looking at an alternate method of earning of income can use. There needs to be some effort you will have to put in some effort you will have to be consistent. You will have to just like in pretty much every other content marketing field, you will have to put in some effort, drive the traffic. Wait for that exponential growth to happen for people to start clicking on your links, buying products for your affiliate commissions to come in. It is not going to happen overnight, but that's extremely a good Avenue that I think people should explore. It's a very good alternate source of income. [00:29:05] If you were somebody who doesn't want to only stick to maybe doing a job or maybe running a brick and mortar business. [00:29:11]Naga S: [00:29:11] That's. Phenomenal insights. [00:29:14]I'll also make sure that I include your contact information in the show notes so that people are looking to reach. You can not drop your emails and your tweet, and they can reach you for more details. [00:29:25] Thank you for taking the time to be on the patient people podcast. This has been great. [00:29:29]R Dilip Kumar: [00:29:29] thanks, Naga. It was a pleasure talking to you and, , I value be extremely happy if anything that I shared , it provides value to, to the audience. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
A #finance partner is the most critical hire for any startup, yet most founders falter when it comes to hiring the right finance team.In our latest episode of #BehindTheScenes, Raghava Rao, VP and CFO, Amazon India, shares his thoughts on the vital role a finance team can play in early-stage startups and in building the business vision. Here are some of the key points we cover:1. Impact of #digitalization for a financial professional2. Advice to founders on key finance KPI's and business metrics3. Attributes that make a great leader and a team4. Potential conflicts that can arise for a CFO#India #EntrepreneurshipWhen it comes to #startups, there is no fast track to #success. Almost all startup teams go through a variety of crises and challenges Behind The Scenes. Having been a part of many startup journeys over the last decade at Kalaari, we believe that there are valuable lessons to be gained from the journeys of others. These episodes from Kalaari come from our continued commitment to empower and encourage #entrepreneurship.If you have any suggestions, please reach out to us at podcasts@kalaari.com. We would love to hear from you.For more podcasts, visit our website- https://www.kalaari.com/podcast
On this week's The Asian Seller podcast, Davide Nicolucci from Growth Hack Consulting talks about key trends in the Amazon space in 2021 based on a comprehensive article he has published recently. We also talk about crypto currency, and why he thinks digital currencies and blockchain are going to be increasingly important with potential e-commerce applications. Here are some of the trends he talks about: Amazon is upping their game with advertising. There will increasingly be more opportunities for showcasing your products via video and other pay-to-play means Being brand registered is extremely important Amazon Live is picking up Look into influencer marketing on TikTok and other platforms Buyer and supplier messaging may become stricter Amazon exits will be a huge opportunity as more investors look to buy profitable businesses Amazon Singapore is expected to pick up Amazon India is a growing opportunity Facebook Shops is gaining traction E-commerce with Facebook Live Read Davide's article: Amazon Trends and Predictions for 2021 by Industry Experts Contact Davide: info@wearegrowthhack.com Join The Asian Seller community Facebook Group YouTube Meetup Telegram
Sid Shakdher is Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Vice President of Disney + Hotstar and previously was Head of Marketing at Amazon India for the Home / Hardlines category. At Disney + Hotstar, Sid leads consumer business where he drives business strategy, consumer acquisition and lifecycle growth, product and content strategy and more. In this episode, Sid walks us through how Disney + Hotstar's marketing engine is designed to deliver user growth and offers us a fascinating view into how data and technology drive decision-making at the company.
Dale Vaz has spent the last decade building products Swiggy & Amazon India. In this edition of #KalaariPodcast, he shares learnings from his journey. 1. Leveraging personalization to deliver customized experiences 2. Building data science capabilities for early-stage #startups 3. Importance of building tools to "AI Enable" #leadership teams 4. Career planning for #technology professionals He also shares with us how he upskills himself in a rapidly changing world. His customer obsession mindset, observations on food habits in #India along with other idiosyncrasies he uncovers makes it for an insightful episode.When it comes to #startups, there is no fast track to #success. Almost all startup teams go through a variety of crises and challenges Behind The Scenes. Having been a part of many startup journeys over the last decade at Kalaari, we believe that there are valuable lessons to be gained from the journeys of others. These episodes from Kalaari come from our continued commitment to empower and encourage #entrepreneurship.If you have any suggestions, please reach out to us, podcasts@kalaari.com. We would love to hear from you.For more podcasts, visit our website- https://www.kalaari.com/podcast
In this podcast episode, Rishi Raj K, an Amazon seller from India shares his experiences selling internationally. Rish runs a global community of entrepreneurs at Republic of Sellers and offers e-commerce training at Private Label School. In the interview, he shares the strategies he uses for product research, validation and differentiation. He also talks about how he reaches out to influencers to launch products instead of other launch strategies. Episode highlights: Introduction Rish's approach to product research: Discovery Evaluation Differentiation How to find discover niches to sell in Categories new sellers should stay away from How to use influencers to launch products on Amazon Rish's take on branding What kind of investment is needed to start selling on Amazon Selling on Amazon India vs Amazon US About Republic of Sellers Advice for people just starting out on their e-commerce journey Contact Rish: Republic of Sellers Private Label School Join The Asian Seller community Facebook Group YouTube Meetup Telegram
Shopping in India is traditionally an intensely hands-on experience, but many are now embracing the online shopping revolution. From motorbike delivery couriers to Amazon India, and bringing online shopping to rural towns, Mukti Jain Campion discovers how Indian businesses are innovating to meet the new challenges.