you're a multi-billionaire European founder who's moved to Gandhi nagar yes why did you choose Gujarat in India we have a ruler to do is we never go to tier one cities we always go to Tier Two Cities because that's where we can have a better Redemption of G play no one's ever said that on this show they should tell me from the perspective you had before you actually went to China why did you choose that country and what was the reality check before we went to China I saw China like India but the
n the problem is in China is that first you cannot in China a company in China has to be owned by a Chinese person if you have to choose one country to invest it is India and if I have to choose a second one I would pick India too really yes there is no other country with that level of opportunities for the other Foreigner Founders you know Founders from other countries who want to expand in this country what's your advice to them book a flight ticket and come there a few weeks meet people and I
ndian a very entrepreneur mindset so you will find good relationship that you can start using and developing you're a very memorable guy guy like if you've done so much in life and you're so humble you know I find that very crazy man because I don't like saying this but you don't see too much of that in India as I'm recording this intro Mr Fabian Punker has just left our studio after a 3-hour conversation I rarely stretch conversations up to the 3-hour mark unless I truly feel like I'm extractin
g value out of my guest created a business conversation on the podcast after a very long time because this business story is very very interesting as you saw in the trailer it's about a self-made billionaire who now finds himself in Gujarat in India because he's trying to expand his business operations while he sits in Gandhi nagar so of course we spoke about expanding business within India but he's had the experience of Living in America of trying to expand his business in China so it's a it's
a very Global business oriented conversation if you're an Indian viewer you're going to learn about your country once again but from a Foreigner's perspective from a very very successful Founders perspective and if you're someone who's looking at India as a possible place you'd like to expand your own business ventures this is the ultimate 101 that I could bring forward for you all the questions were centered around extracting value for business owners and people who want to learn more about Int
ernational markets it's a very deep podcast it's also a lot of fun because fabian's personality is very easygoing he is one of Europe's youngest billionaires ever but he speaks from a very humble very practical Place enjoyed speaking with him and I'm sure going to enjoy on the special episode of the renir show [Music] Fabian hello how are you I'm good uh I need to be very honest with you before we start talking I love talking to foreigners on my podcast it's a lot of fun and Forest it's good too
for me it's the first time in India so but you've been here for nine months yeah I'm living in India but I've never done a show I was focusing on my business I will begin this podcast with a very simple question kcho maama I find it so fascinating that you know Gujarati dude uh just a little bit how long have you been in Gujarat nine months and you've been in Amad h nagar Gandhi nagar how you liking life in India uh it's amazing yeah I really love it it's it's an experience not everything is ea
sy things are difficult but they are really good things so I really like it dude what I find crazy about you is youve had a 20y year entrepreneurial career then you've traveled all over the world and now you're targeting India as a place for expansion and you're the founder of your startup but the founder himself is now sitting in India to try to expand into this Market yeah even the people so I come from Belgium even the people of Belgium don't understand why I came to India I had to explain th
em they are calling me the Slum Dog billionaire because they Imaging India like because they don't know of course yeah um but I'm really glad I did it because uh the business has been amazing experience has been very good as for the family so really good okay what else tell me about your life how's a day in your life in India uh it's great depending there are some good and bad stuff the worst is the weather I mean the summer is just crazy in India to it's way too hot for me you know in Belgium t
oday it's like minus 10 degrees celius so when you get the summer at 45 50 plus in India it's it's very hard very difficult um but um what I like about India is you know you live with natur nature with animals in Europe you don't have animals in the street anymore even even um of course you don't have cows and and dogs but even Birds there are so less Birds compared to here so it's nice feeling to to live with nature and and and animals that's what you notice here that there's more yes the first
thing you notice in the street when you walk in the street second thing is there are way too many people yeah Fair yeah but I think you get the opposite if you go to Europe you probably feel alone yeah and in danger because there is not that much people around you danger depends on where you are and your but you do feel in a very positive way isolated which actually calms down your head like it's it's one of my favorite places to travel to because I know when I come back I'm going to be very re
laxed so it's a very relaxing place that's what I say Europe uh I find it crazy that you're actually thinking about staying in India for a long time yes what's in your mind what's in your heart about like staying here uh so I came for the business um we went to a point where foro um what we get in India was not mature enough we had a lot of activities lot of Partners we had something like 40,000 developers on our software on oo in India but they were not selling on the Indian market they were sa
y in the in the US and in Europe so it it was for me like big opportunity that we didn't tapped in you mean all your developers your cers not only ours because we only have 4,000 employees but we work with Partners who are companies offering services on our product and we had a lot of Partners in India but they were not addressing the Indian market they were just looking outward to S they were selling development services in the US and in Europe um and I wanted to refocus that on the domestic Ma
rket because India's smes is Big GDP is growing at 8% per year so it's a massive Market one fifth of the world population so you cannot close your eye to to such a big and future economy so I came here in order to develop the local market you know in order to understand you better why don't you introduce your own life's work a little bit before I ask you more questions about India and Europe okay wait it's probably the right way to start yeah because people especially business oriented audiences
which is a big chunk of YouTube audiences now are very interested to know about how the world looks at India and about how you want to sell in India and why do you want to sell here because honestly Indians if you look at it from a mass scale are not easy customers they're difficult customers to win over so I want to get into all those tangents about all your challenges you faced here etc etc but let's begin with a little bit about your story yes you began as a coder yeah I was a developer uh e
ngineer I started to and I I I I loved business so I was reading two two three books about management psychology to develop my business every week um I did a lot of things and this one which is a do work better than the others so I started alone after two years I had one emploee after three years three four five this is in 2004 you that was in 2002 yes when I was still a student and then I grew organically bootst the company I started to sell services on this software so the software is a manage
ment software at the beginning I was selling services so I asked C what do you want and I was developing everything and I did that until to 2010 and at that time I had a software that had a lot of features because I developed everything the customer was asked for so it was full of feature but ugly complex and everything and at that time I had 100 employees um so I decided to do a pivot in the business model and say we cannot do service and develop everything people need we need to focus as a sof
tware vendor and develop a clean product uh um and not develop for customer but develop what's good for the MTH so for eight years you got requests from businesses they asked you to develop softwares which would help their individual business problems and eventually you developed so many softwares that you real is hey hold on I can actually turn this into a tech product and probably make it more profitable than what we're doing yes um it was bet because I from one day to another I decided to sto
p Services stop all revenues I had 100 employees and say okay now we'll focus on something else we'll create a network of Partners they will do the service and we will sell maintenance so from one day to you will sell what maintenance service so support bu fix upgrades and that was risky because we would stop all activities from one day to another to refocus on something else so I raised two millions of Euro with French VCS at the time uh so that we can do the pivot in the business model and say
okay no let's refocus on making a clean product and um that's when the the adventure of foro started the mindset has always been the same is to develop business apps to help companies be more efficient more productive corre from a firsttime entrepreneurs perspective what I'd like to say is that a first time entrepreneur has a lot of random business challenges that you don't anticipate in like accounting like uh HR management and the list goes on so I your software handles all those miscellaneou
s business problems as well yeah so the what is a do today uh it's a suite of business apps we have applications for pretty much everything smmes needs like you need an accounting software we have one a CRM we have one you to create a website we have a website builder you need a inventory management software with Barcode Scanner and you receive deliver we have one app and if you put all these apps together you have fully integrated company and um and that's what we do we offer tools to small and
midsize companies so that they they can perform better what I find crazy about this is that you have a lot of data with you also so you'll be able to understand how different countries go about business in different ways yes yes we have 12 millions of users so it's probably the most installed management software out there Erp at least um so and we are active in we do accounting for 150 countries so we are one of the largest spread in terms of different countries you're a brave guy uh I'm just a
good worker as you're just a hardworking guy I'm hardworking for the first seven years I didn't get a single day of holiday for seven years and I was working like 14 days 14 hours a day it's not anymore the case no Saturday and Sunday I walk less but getting older you think that plays a role I think I don't have the same level of energy yeah I I feel that already between 22 and 30 how old are you I'm 30 oh you have time but I feel a difference in the energy I felt when I was 22 Yeah I wait for
40 it's going to be horrible I'm 44 really yes how do you look so young dude um I don't know it's good to know that I look young good genetics yes God you're a happy guy on the inside I'm super happy I love my job I love my company I love my product I'm really happy in life what are you the happiest about from a business perspective about your whole business career um so what I do like is that what we do as is super important because it help companies uh it help people we don't do management sof
tware for managers or for managing companies I'm not interested in that's not interesting I do tools so that every employee in com in the companies can do their job better can save time do less administrative task less boring task so we really help millions of people having a better life because if you think about it you probably spend 30 40% of your time at work so better do it with good tools so that you enjoy doing rather than doing boring administrative recording of data and I feel like we h
ave a massive impact on on the society because of that we do it with we didn't talk about it but with a special business model which is open source so a lot of people can get it for free download modify and so we are reaching countries that could not afford that kind of software because it's free uh so the impact is really big of what we do can you explain what open source means one and two why did you make it open source because it's a very different mentality like if you have built out a produ
ct if you've built out a software uh there has to be an intention behind turning it into an open source software yeah open sources you have kept the software available for the public yes so open source is a license that says instead of constraining the software and say when you buy my software you have minimum 10 user maximum 10 user you have this this this this instead of putting constraints we put rules so that we guarantee the user that they will be able to use the software for free um get th
e source code of the software so they can learn it modify it for free and all the things will be free forever so it's like a prote for the user and the reason I did open source is because I'm passionated about open source since I was a student I only use myself open source software so when I developed software I did it open source because you get a template from which you can build upon no because I I I I didn't want it to do another model it's was something I was I'm passionate about that I'd l
ike to I think software is knowledge and knowledge should be shared and I think software is like knowledge should be shared to the world um and I think it's better it was very hard because when you do a software for free getting money out of that is really difficult so it took me maybe 15 years to understand the business model what is the business model um nowadays so I tried everything I started as a service company as I explained you then I moved to maintenance selling service like support upg
rade um didn't work that well it worked but after 500 tempies I couldn't I was I had I've had like seven years close to bank bankruptcy so at some point I okay I to change my passion about open source is good but at some point it's good to remain alive too um and so now the business model that works is what we called open core and an open core business model is where you have 80% of the applications are free in open source and we add 20% of application where you have to pay for freemium it's lik
e a premium but it's like two different product some people can just use the Open Source One and others uh can use the what we call a do Enterprise which is the full version that's the one which is working for you right yes for example if you need a CRM it's open source is free you need a website free in open source you need inventory sales purchase it's free in open source you need accounting you will have to pay the accounting version because it's only in the paid version so people gain trust
in your software from the free part and then they're this is a good software design is great functionality is great let me pay for like this additional uh yes some do that 10% 90% doesn't pay never pay but the best is the world of moth you know when you build a company the most difficult part is marketing world of mod building a big audience of users and and the good thing when you are free is that you quickly get millions of users and even though they will never pay some of them what they will
do is bring you uh more Customer because they will tell to their friend this software is great I'm using every day you should check and maybe one of them will pay So based on those 10% parts of your software that are actually premium which people pay for you're supporting the whole business yes including the 90% which is free yes for me it was a very philosophical problem because I was passionated about about source and I did not wanted to sell propriate S software I was against that but it was
a very bad decision it was a very bad mindset because at the time I had something like maybe 100 developers maximum I couldn't pay more um and now that I have 10% non open source or 20% non open source 80% open source I can afford paying hundreds of developers uh so I contribute way more to the open source world than what I did before even though I'm not 100% open source today so it's something I didn't understand took me years because I refused that but once I did that I switched the business m
odel and then the company started to Skyrocket you know there's a lot of lessons that Indian entrepreneurs young Indian entrepreneurs can actually learn from this in terms of your selling to the world here we a lot of us have dreams about selling to the world as well but I don't think we're educated in that aspect in terms of if you've built out something in India how do you ensure that someone sitting in Britain or Nigeria or Brazil would actually use your stuff so you you've had an expansion o
utside your own country right yes um you know we are belgians Belgium is nothing it's 10 millions of people so by Nature if you want to do business we are forced to export because our Market is nothing um you don't have the same issue in India but you have also lot strong incentive to export in software it's easy it's just build the best software the reason ODU works is we have the best you have we have the best we have a modern website builder much better than WordPress or or zo or or Shopify a
nd we build the best took us 20 years but once you get the best software is like compound interest you build and you build and you build everywhere it gets better and better and better and the revenue you get from the software increase exponentially based on what you build it's like creating a massive asset that is generating more and more Revenue over the years but it takes time it takes a lot of time because in order to be the best uh you have you have to develop and develop and develop especi
ally in open source in open source it's very hard because you know in proper software when you sell the software on a license you can have a lot of competitors and they will all differentiate themselves open source is like a transparent Market um It's like because it's free everyone will test before buying so they test they play with it and so everyone will choose the best product so in the open source it's a Winer takes all Market Market there is one winner but no second player and that is very
hard so it requires for you to invest a lot in research and development um in order to build the best product and before you you are not the best you you get just small amounts but once you be once you are the number one you have like a consolidation effect where everyone looks at you and you grow faster and to further your consolidation and your profits you basically have to play a numbers game you need more and more people to use your free of cost stuff and because it's open core model I cann
ot charge as much as the other you know the the big erps like Microsoft Dynamics SCP Oracle net Suite they charge a lot like $180 per user per month they can because they charge for the full amount of the software for us it's different we have 80% which is open source and only 20% Which is proprietary so if we charge the full amount people will say oh for 20% less I can get everything for free so I won't buy that our main competitors is yourself is your open source product so we have to charge a
t 1/5 of the under because we can only charge a small layer which is for fee which means we have to compensate with big volumes which is also partly why India um no and yes for me up to no so it changed one year ago the role of India for us changed one year ago before India was like the service provider for the world so the local market in India was nothing we had only a few users but they were selling development services to all our partners all around the world because in Europe in the US we a
re lacking developers so they were all subcontracting to Indian partner so India at the beginning helped us a lot to provide services we couldn't afford in the other countries now it changed since one year that's the reason why I came here uh our main focus is the local market because they are like old school software like Tali that we need something modern to replace and the local market is Big growing fast so now since one year we decided okay now it's time to focus on selling on to Indian com
panies in rupes how much does your uh so o do is the way we work is that one app is free so you need a website free forever unlimited users with domain name everything free you need a CRM free you need an accounting software free you need a electronic signature to sign the contract free but if you need more application if you need all of them so all the application is like something like 80 different applications to run your world business that's 580 rupees per month that's it that's 580 rupees
per month per user yes per User it's cheap yeah it's still very cheap so in a company how many users end up depends on the company you could have a company of 50 people 10 users H so one fth of the company the price is not an issue yeah it's 580 Rupees is pretty much nothing for what they get for what challenge are you facing with expanding in our country um the main one is marketing it's um um because we were known from developers but we were not known from businessmen so ODU had a lot of devel
opers in India but business were not using because developer were focusing on selling to Americans um and so now we have to say hey we have we are here so we are ready to support and serve you that's one the other one is we had to adapt the product uh we had to put a price in rupes decrease or price I we really had to do a lot of things to adapt to the Indian market um like we have to change our accounting to be GST compliant TDS TCS damn all the things so we did that last year uh to meet all th
e Indian needs uh as an MNC owner like a multinational company owner what have you learned specifically about the Indian market um it's very price sensitive uh you know when you work with an American they will want the beautiful software and they will pay whatever the price they want the best beautiful clean software in the end they ask the price first how does it cost without having seen the software so it's a very price sensitive Market you you you could have the best software in the world you
have to be at an affordable price um it's um fast deciding market so like in Europe or the worst is Africa Africa they take months to decide Europe it's okay India is a little bit faster um you know what we do transform company so it's massive impact on the companies so we have sales Cycles could be one three months for small companies India it's a little bit reduced um yes so Indians want to move with speed and they'll go for the cheapest option yes that's that's how and one of the main issue
I have with Indian customer is that they think they can do everything on their own they never want to buy services so they say I'll just buy the software I will do myself but you know when you change your accounting you change your inventory management when you change a purchase s your website you do a new website it's even though our software is super simple it's better if we help them with service but most Indian companies try to do on their own first and then they call only if they have issue
s where in the US they will say I need someone that does everything for us I will do nothing and just buy a lot of service to be sure that we do the job for them one layer deep psychologically speaking why do you think that difference is there between America and India um I think it a lot comes down to price if they don't want to Services because they don't want to buy service I believe um I'm always surpris when you go to a shop in India you want to buy I don't know KitKat chocolate bar there i
s always a 10 Rupees KitKat the 20 rupees kit cat the 35 rupees kit cat um it's all about price and I understand I mean it's not the same level of quality of life Americans have so much money and credit they can buy everything on credit um here it's more more rational I would say people are more practical about going about they are more um savy they for saving money more yes and something that changed a lot is um sometimes in India you throw humans at the problem you know where in the other coun
tries you try to automate to have less employee less Cost Less in India the some worker are so cheap that sometimes you just put more workers to solve the issue one of the example I had is or accounting of software um it's you know accountant they rece their job in the morning they get a pile of bills and they to record data in the in the system it's a bit shitty you record data every day it's not very interesting no is artificial intelligence all this is processed automatically you don't need t
o record anymore you just put that in the scanner and 9% is recorded automatically for you only 2% you have to check um and so we do that in Europe in US massive success everyone loved it because they have less time to record more time to validate uh the accountant can do tax optimization interesting things rather than recording data and then I came to India and showed that to accountant and accountant were doing the met or system at the time were costing six rupees per bill which for me was not
hing and then they do the m one accountant cost me this and then they do how many it cost me three three Rupees to record manually in the system why would you would I use your artificial intelligence that cost 8 rupees so they prefer to to pay people to record manually and that's one of the example where we have to change I had to say okay no this this is free artificial intelligence or youor builds to record automatic we have to put it free in India otherwise they will just put more hands doing
it I'll give you like the Indian startup entrepreneurship perspective again it's about cost saving because I think Indians have learned now that uccessful startups are built out of being profitable and not just raising money everyone's trying to bootstrap and we know that our advantage is that there's a big population so you can get work done for cheap through human beings I think that's the big uh mentality difference yeah you have this capacity of having affordable jobs yeah yeah but um what
what Americans are understanding in Indians don't is that sometimes having the right tool like a beautiful website instead of a it or quotation that looks nice improve your conversional rate on sales these are the things that sometimes India are too sensitive to the cost and Miss uh The Leverage to sales things that they could do that would improve their sales yeah I I agree with this like there's too much of a focus on saving money yes and not focus on like creating a beautiful front or an effi
cient service service support or efficient operation h it's probably also cuz like just generally so I feel we've got independence like 75 years ago and only in the last four five years am I really seeing a drastic change in India Because the Internet reached the rest of India so people are getting education about how the world Works M you know even with this podcast I'm sure we are going to have listeners who don't speak English but understand English and they're just tuning in to see what a Eu
ropean is saying about the country so that they can learn so India is like learning all these things but the focus is totally about saving money yeah which in in some point is good that's the reason why they can afford development service to the US and Europe but in some point they have so much to win to understand how to make an efficient business uh with quality support quality tools good website if if Indian companies understand that then they can Skyrocket because it doesn't cost too much to
day yeah also if Indian companies follow what you're saying in terms of efficient service good looks in terms of the UI ux we'll be able to sell abroad mhm and I think that's what a lot of Indian organizations are not being able to do yes like in terms of our websites don't look great the uiux quality in India as of now is not at the world standard no no it's not yeah but in Europe when you see Swedish companies when you see you know British companies the the look the quality and feel is very ve
ry different yes I think that's the big weakness we have in India I see it changing a little bit like we have uiux designer influencers now who teach UI design but that's one person yeah and that's why I think oo has a role to play in India because that's what we are bringing to the Indian companies is tools all of these getting a beautiful website automating your accounting efficient CRM or help desk Tool It's All About tools when you have good tools you can perform better in a more efficient w
ay and that's exactly what we do so that's why I relocated myself to India is to say okay there is a big gap there will be a big need because Indians are growing fast and understanding very quickly so a lot of these companies who are doing everything on spreadsheet today they will need better tools uh tomorrow and that's why we are focusing on this market today what have you learned in the last nine months have you been able to educate people a lot uh you know when I arrived we were selling 10 n
ew clients per month one year ago and now the Rhythm Is We are acquiring 350 new clients per month and it's growing like that so I'm wai waiting six months we will be at 1,000 new clients per month and this is just word of mouth it's just Word of Mouth in my eyes I think you're doing something very brave because it's not easy to expand a software business in India for a foreign brand no you're wrong it's easy it's easy really yes think I I'll tell you where I'm coming from all my Foreigner frien
ds who are trying to set up business in India they have trouble uh in understanding the Indian market oh that's for sure you have to understand them that's why you need to come here it would have never worked if I wouldn't have relocated myself here like you learned it you need to learn but Indians are very open compared that to China or very open it's a democracy it's uh very International a lot of people are speaking English I mean all the check all the checkbox are green in India what what ar
e the checkboxes for you but that English speaking country uh very open to international business uh big need of growth expansion GDP growing and so on these three alone think 10 years ago everyone was talking about bricks you know the Brazil Russia India China the big countries where you need to invest Brazil inflation are killing everything Russia is in war and rupees have been divided by three because of the war China impossible for foreigners because everything's close and even if you succee
d the government will catch your company and acire it the only missing country is in the brick today is India so if you have to choose one country to invest it is India and if I have to choose a second one I would pick India too really yes there is no other country with that level of opportunities wow okay very good perspective yeah uh it's honestly something that Indians love hearing was Indians love hearing foreigners talk about India but uh I don't know how much the world knows about what you
're saying because when I go abroad and I talk to people about expanding the businesses in India they always say something like yeah but we're not able to understand the Indian mind completely no they most of the world don't understand because um so our company we do 400 Millions turnover uh 550 this year um India we were doing five Millions so when I said I will go to India because I bet on this country people were say we do five Millions on this country but and we do 500 in the group so why wo
uld we focus but it's because people don't see the opportunity if you do it right you can I mean the biggest companies in the world like tataa 700,000 emploees it's crazy uh the largest in in Belgium is probably us with 2,000 3,000 4,000 but only 1,500 in Belgium you're the largest Belgian software company uh software for sure and one of the largest uh every sector you're one of the largest companies in Belgium and the founder of that company has moved probably one of the most valued to or at le
ast in the top 10 most valued you're a multi-billionaire European founder who's moved to Gandhi nagar yes that's why the my friend calls me the slum do billionaires how does it feel being a billionaire it's not like people think uh you know in my bank account I'm not rich in my bank account it's I don't have a lot of money in my pocket uh because uh everything I own is just shares of a company um it's just the value of do that is big um and because I'm the main shareholder um but it's not like I
have money to spend I'm not buying big cars I'm not buying big houses I I live in very small house in in Ganda actually um so it's not like people think um my richness is to have a great company which is a do and I don't plan to sell my shares so it's not like I will convert that into cash I will always keep it that way you'll just want to grow business for the sake of business I think yeah because there is nothing less interest there nothing more inter than that I mean I could go to the beach
or I could go to that's boring in the other hand I can change people work at the life of people at work could have an impact of millions of people doing great software where they reward us every day telling oh software is good thank you thank you thank you I mean that is great it's much better than what I could afford with money um if you're son you have a son yes if your son comes up to you and says hey billionaire dad I want a Ferrari what are you going to tell him uh no I would say get the mo
ney to buy it yourself are you in your will are you going to give all your money to your kids uh I will give them a company not money you'll give them the company yes and then it's for them to do if I die when I die h i I find you I'm saying this as a compliment yeah okay but you're very eccentric you're like a crazy guy like not sure about no I mean coder to founder to pivoting to all almost going bankrupt and then you're a multi-billionaire now and you choose to live in Gandhi nagar ah yeah ye
ah but I mean it's all about the experience I mean living in a country you don't know learning from a new culture new people is way more interesting than driving a new car go on yeah it's for me it's all about the experience and there is also a lot something I'm convinced about is you know what makes happiness people think money makes happiness but I think it's not what you have that makes happiness it's how you evolve so if you are here you get that you super happy or if you are here you get th
at you are super happy but when you are there what you do to be very happy you cannot buy more cars more it doesn't work so it's good also sometimes to level to to um slow down or decrease your quality of life so that you get used you don't get used to Big richness and so on and you get very happy you know when I come back to Belgium and I eat meat super happy because I I eat V veg for months or like as in your expectations from Life are very simple yeah and if your expectation is low it's the b
est way to be happy in life damn how do you look at money what is money for you it's a mean for me it's money is a mean to develop a bigger business like it's a means to to a goal and for me the goal is to develop a bigger business and so that we can do software that helps more and more companies um so money is very important I need to that's why we focus on selling and like that but you know not as a goal in itself but as a mean to uh develop the software we want to develop okay uh I can it can
not be that the other way because if your goal is to make money you won't be happy or you won't succeed your goal but if your goal is to make a great product uh then if your product becomes great then money will follow damn has Gujarat taught you anything about money specifically because guat they told me about yes negotiation I was very bad at negotiating I thought I was good and then I came to India these guy are so crazy in negotiation that I I learn from them what did you learn uh to be more
pushy you need to be more pushy yes Indians are very pushy when they negotiate negotiate very very hard even in weddings they played you know this negotiation game during weddings um you you get the shoe of the bribe and you have to buy it back everywhere they negotiate but and specifically Gujarat I think is a negotiation Center of India maybe maybe gu maybe it's Gujarat yes they have the best business skills them and Maris these are the two communities which are known as the business communit
ies in India no they are very good at negotiation and it's good it's useful for the for all activities actually suppose you go back to Europe or America you'll be using these Gujarati negotiations skills there yeah I will train the team there but you'll be it's already done because you know when you have a group of different countries they all work together so initially I I asked a Belgian team to train Indians um for instance the influencer marketing team the the Belgian team trains the Indians
how we proceed and then they do call together and then they notice that the Indian person is negotiating way better than them so they learn from the c um and working together we all learn from the strengths of the other which is which is good yeah which is why in club football every player has different nationalities everyone brings their own strengths to the table do do you look at International Business expansion in the same way that Indians have a role to play in international businesses but
they should be played to the strengths yes um you know we have a big company in Dubai 600 people something um the director come from Gujarat too he went there and um so the way we we do what to do is that we have a rule every employee can switch from one company to another country uh if he has two years experience you just have to ask and we say okay he can work in any country of the group that way we push people to travel and discover and learn from that experience and which countries are you
spread in uh we are in San Francisco Buffalo United States Dubai Mexico Spain Italy Germany Australia Belgium of course um Hong Kong um I probably missed a few but how are you so humble after building all this uh I don't know do you look at yourself as humble uh I don't look at the past I don't care too much about what we built what I do focus on what we should build um if you look at doday even though it's exploding we are the best management software you can get on the market growing like craz
y it's still 1% of the market 0.1% of the market market is so big every company in the world small to large every Industries we are still 0.1% of the market so when I look at when I when I look at it I'm not saying yeah we succeeded I'm looking at it like we do 0.1% of the market or we go to that from that to 5% and so I'm focusing more on the future what we should do and continue to do in order to keep this growth rather than what we have succeeded man uh uh I'm really enjoying talking to you g
enuinely like I'm glad I get to do this for a living I was telling you I have a great job you know meeting people yeah but how often do you meet a European billionaire who's staying in India you know and there's so many questions I just want to ask you for myself about your life about business lessons about what we can do better because I truly believe that Indians who can speak good English mhm should be thinking about selling their stuff abroad mhm you know there's a lot that our country can s
ell abroad but in order to sell abroad we need to understand the Foreigner mind much more how do you look at India how have you sold things here this is a very important business conversation so this is a conversation I would have with you anyway uh so I appreciate the time you're giving because I am 100% sure you're a very busy guy but you know you're coming to Mumbai for a day speaking to me I I don't even feel like I'm talking to like a 44y old guy I feel like I'm talking to a guy who's just
my age and you're talking like a brother so no thank you it's good thank you for being so open firstly uh what's been the most fun thing you've done in India I think building a business is fun yeah really it's lots of problem solving challenges it's uh um setting up things it's creative it's uh so the best I did is to to to scale hypers scale the company in India yes the scaling has been the most fun thing yes so okay let me reframe the same question when you first got here in the first week and
in the first month what were your set of learning so what did you learn in your first week about this country what did you learn in your first month so the first week when you so when you want to um transform a company first week you just learn you work with people you learn who they are who are the best who you can leverage to make the company skills what are the weakness what are the strengths so that you can rely on so I would say the first weeks I didn't do a lot of things I just worked wit
h people help them on small details but more it was more a process of learning for me you understood your teammates yes correct say and you trying to absorb what situation you're in yes you help them when you know things but it's better to more listen than talking and after that then I can replicate all the good practice we had at to do and uh and some of them I had to adapt because it didn't work in thean Indian market others I just replicated what I used to do in other companies and it worked
here like what can you can you break that down both the ones that didn't work and the ones for instance one of our marketing strategy I to do is to do what we call Road shows it's events in different cities and when I arrived here Road show had like 40 attendees which is nothing when we do Road shows in Africa we have thousands of people in Europe we have thousands of people and we had 40 on such a big country on large itties didn't work so I did the usual marketing tactics uh Facebook ads linke
d ads uh mass mailing and so on and then I went to 600 attendees I was like starts to be good okay and I came to the management very proud of me were they coming to meet you no no no it's not me it's um or say people who do demonstration of the product the Odo Community work together presentation of customer anything like that so you use digital to create a community online yeah we already have a big Community to do we leverage this community and try to bring more people and we do events that ar
e on on site in big cities Delhi Mumbai um Amad Pune but it was a community grip through social media yes LinkedIn because we had I had too too few people when we started I had to do advertising to bring more attendees to our events this is performance advertising you dude yes on Facebook Facebook LinkedIn so that use our product yes that's it the ones who use or potentially will use the product so I did that I scaled that and it went well we went to 600 registered I thought it was very good so
like yeah I'm good uh and then only 120 people show off uh so went to went to the event actually came so the noow was huge like 80% no show like 600 people signed up for the event but only 120 came and and so that's why I noticed that in India it's different you have to do way more um and that's something I learned when I was looking for an apartment or house for me is that you you have booking with people to to visit houses and 50% of the time they just don't come they don't you arrive nobody's
there you have to call one hour before to say I'm coming I'm here and then they come and so uh I worked on how can we improve so that more than 20% of the attendees come and so we started with WhatsApp and that worked very well uh we did reminder one hour before the event one day before the event SMS marketing and that works very well and that's the kind of things where I learned in India because nobody use I I was not using Whatsapp in Belgium um but here everybody use it and so now that we au
tomated reminder we had way more people to Roose and um I learned that from India we put that in the product so now has WhatsApp in all the applications in standard for the point of sale when you have tickets you receive the tickets on WhatsApp bill you receive your bill or invoice on WhatsApp events you have your notification registration notification on WhatsApp everything and then it helped all countries too because because we deployed that in Latin America worked very well too we deployed it
in Africa they love WhatsApp too it worked very well because I learned it from India you know the word empathy empathy is like understanding someone else's emotions yes I feel that in a business person's career somewhere after you gain some success there'll be a point where you begin to lose a little empathy because business makes you very dry and mathematical yeah and you have to just like self correct I've seen this with a lot of uh business folks I've had on the show as well a lot of them uh
say that the biggest mistakes were a point where they overvalued what they were trying to sell or they were trying to chase money too hard and even here I mean three layers deep we boil it down to the same it's usually a mistake I don't do but that time I did it yeah you're right okay uh how do you look back at your 20s because you're 44 you have a nice family life mhm you have a good like material life you know your company's doing well your Europe's one of Europe's youngest billionaires how d
o you look back at your 20s I feel like it's the same for me like when I was 20 my focus when I want to build the best software today my focus is I want to build the best software and uh things changed of course uh but the strategy the long-term Vision what I like to do what I do remains I still spend the majority of my time uh making sure that too is much better than the competitor improving the software it's still the same I'm still doing what I like it's even better now because in the when yo
u are small like 50 people you have to deal more with HR stuff when you are big you can delegate the stuff and focus on really what matters so it's a bit better even for me now which is the product yes the product product or the company um the culture the improving so I focus on the if we transition we have to change department or big that's the reason why I came to India a big transition for the company so I focus about things that bring value to the company why did you choose gu in India I did
n't choose good Jarett so when you create um we we launched a lot of companies we did do in Mexico Spain Italy Buffalo and so on and so on um the key to succe a new to succeed a new company is not the location the key is the director this is the most important thing you can have a good director in a bad location it will work you can have a good location average director it's going to be painful and so the way we work it's always about people the way we work when we want to opch a new company is
never to say we want to go there or it's more about who is the best best guy we have in the company that we can leverage to create a company with so you had a bunch of employees in Europe and America and you pick out like one of the best so the way it worked is I was working with a French company who had this subsidiary in India and I was working with them and I work with manava director at the time there and he's still the director today and I noticed that this guy is very good and so I wanted
to do something with him and say okay let's create a company so we discussed with this French company I acquired 50% of the shares and then the totality because we split I get the totality uh but it was not about garat it was about manava if there was these guys that would say okay it's good enough we can build something with it and it's always the same you know we have a company in Buffalo nobody goes to Buffalo New York it's in state of New York but it's not New York it's way above uh nobody g
oes there you go to valet San Francisco New York Boston but not in Buffalo it's like a desert city old industrial city where we get there because of the director niik or director there is super good we wanted to do something with him because he went from he came from Buffalo we okay let's go to Buffalo and it turns out it was a very good decision it's amazing to have an office there but it was all all about the people not about the location so your key to expanding business especially internatio
nally is actually great leadership you pick out the best team captains because execution is stronger than strategy execution is about having the right guy that can make it happen uh is stronger than having better Market or strategy strategy is important but execution is much more important because I think uh strategy is built out of feedback yeah and strategy can evolve if you have someone who is capable of making things happen transforming companies he will evolve with the strategy so your dire
ctor chose Gujarat so I choose a director he lived in Gujarat and because he lived there we created the company there and actually he was a student so it was not a directly student who recruited a few people and he started in his student room I know he's managing 650 people how old is this guy uh I think he's four less than me 40 he's 40 years old yes okay walking with me since uh 16 years and you met him where in Europe no I met him in I came to India I met him online because I worked with this
French partner and we initially worked on some task together online and then I came to meet him in India and you prioritized his comfort yes but I I didn't know about anything I didn't know about the other cities all I knew is that okay I have a good guy there let's use him damn do you know what analysis paralysis no analysis paralysis means you analyze so much that you don't end up doing anything yeah like you know you're just thinking about the problem but you're not actually solving it this
is the polar opposite you're someone who believes in like doing things first and then figuring yes there is another way to there is a good book from in Indian actually uh how is it called it's um I forget the name sorry what's business no it's rational thinking vers versus I forget but I can explain the concept um you have two types of managers some manager will Define the goal let's say you want to create a restaurant I will do a rest you will do market analysis I will do a restaurant in this a
rea maybe a Chinese restaurant uh and I will Design the menu and it's going to be at that price and then it will cost that much money so I find fund and then I will recruit people and then then then then so some people work that way they start with defining a goal and then from the goal they decide if it's what we call traditional manager and Bs style manager I don't work that way at all I work the opposite I don't look at where I go because that changes I I cannot predict the future I look at w
hat I have I look at my environment maybe I have a good deal to have a restaurant location there I will jump there and then I will try to leverage everything I have maybe I know a chef which is super good he's not Chinese but he's Indian so I will do an Indian restaurant and the way I work is more on that is to optimize my path to optimize to ultimate goal but I don't Define the goal because I don't think it's possible for instance I never do budget in over two years I know it's not possible wha
t I do is to optimize how we spend money to be sure it's the most efficient possible so I start from what I have I optimize and I ensure we we get the best outcome out of it but I cannot predict I don't start for the prediction because it create constraint that you probably don't want puts pressure yeah rather just focus on the process and do it's more about top down rather versus bottom up versus top down you believe in bottom up much more yes gotcha uh you have to mix you still need a vision b
ut uh yes I I don't think like market analysis business plan uh budget planning I don't think these kind of things are useful in India specifically is your main Market in Mumbai Delhi Bangalore it's widely spread all over yeah even in the world our biggest Market is the us but we only do 15% of revenues in the US so it's very much spread on a lot of different countries let's first speak about India I want to know about your world game also but in India um so your team is sitting out of Gandhi na
gar yes uh and they're selling across India yes right yes uh so that has been smooth for you or do you think that if you moved to Mumbai or Delhi or Bangalore You' get better results for this country um the location is not that so what matters on the location for me we most of the thing when we sell to small and midsize company it's over the phone or video conference right so you don't need to be physically present uh so what matters um to have good Engineers you have good engineers and very goo
d engineers in you have also elsewhere but there you have very good Engineers the good thing is in Gaga or andad that you don't have Google Apple IBM there so you can get the good Engineers which is more difficult if you go to the Indian Silicon Valley like Mumbai Mangalore and Delhi so for that it's very good and you need good retention because in order to build for the long term you need people to stay long time in the company which is a challenge sometimes in India um how do you get good rete
ntion good salaries you have to pay 20 30% above the the market because it's very important for Indians and two um less competition on the market uh and three good working envirment good culture and so on and I believe that for this uh guerite is very good you have less pressure of competitors on the it Market you still have a strong universities for engineers um and salaries are a bit lower than what you can get in Mumbai or Delhi which allows you to easily pay above Market yeah and here I thin
k there's also a massive problem V faes rent for people work then for the employees cost of living of course is lower therefore salaries are way higher also yeah but it's crazy I never in my wildest dreams thought that someone like you would be staying in Gandhi nagar and building out your business no and you know the biggest mistakes I did I created a company in San Francisco big mistake because it's a tier one city and you are next to Google Apple Microsoft how can you recruit the best Enginee
rs next to these guys and the cost of living is so high that big mistake I did after in Buffalo super good and so now we have a rule to do is we never go to tier one cities we always go to Tier Two Cities because that's where we can have a better redention of the employees no one was at that on this show um they should and you know I get some I remember when I so we have a few investor VES in the board and so they they did a big market analysis for us what were the what are the best cities to pu
t the second office in the in the US and they came with a list of 50 and buffalo was not even in the list and I said no no we will go to Buffalo and why because we have a director not because of Buffalo at the time I didn't care about Buffalo all I cared was it it could not be one a tier one city it has to be a tier two and the director decided the city you're ring me a lot of the business things that I thought I knew you know I had like a way I looked at business yeah but this what and what you
're saying makes sense yeah yeah if you create a company in San Francisco you will suffer super high salaries high rent High not a Engineers not available it's better to go to smaller cities I'm asking you this because you're also a software developer yourself like you've actually coded in your life MH how good is the quality of coders in San franisco versus the rest of the world like are they significantly better no I think uh I'm pretty sure Belgium is even better yeah or at least it's compara
ble in India a bit lower bit lower the average you could get very good guys in India they are very good Engineers developers but if you take average versus average India is a bit lower average versus average India is a bit lower than Belgium but you've seen a few stars in India but the good thing is when you are in Gujarat that you can pick the top 1% of the 0.1% and these guys are very good these guys are comparable to San Francisco quars yeah I I so we we don't do research and development in S
an Francisco so we don't do development we only do development for customer service so the only two research and development center we have is Belgium and India okay your best Indian coders how do they compare to your best Belgian coders a bit lower bit lower yes like the Belgian gu is like little bit more yes why do you think that is I think it's all about education the quality of the universities do you see it changing in India um yes for sure what surprised me is that the school for my kids b
ut it's 10 to 12 years it's as I said better than what we get in Belgium so at least there it there are some schools that are much better uh so it's improving a lot yeah like I have some cousins who live in Delhi they're a lot younger than me they probably 16 years old now 17 years old now I remember when they were in the fifth and sixth grade they were in a good school so they were learning product design in the fifth grade mhm I learned product design when I was 25 years old myself from YouTub
e I didn't have it as a subject and when you talk to them they're way smarter than like what we were at that age that's good yeah I think it's the new generation uh will bring a lot to the Indian market yeah but you know this is like the top 1% in terms of income in India yeah but these are the ones that matter the to one person will drive everything to the top yeah you think so yes um the best way or on poor country the best way for poor countries inequalities are very good to make poor countri
es goes out of being poor um because the the top is driving the bottom to the top so yeah so the guys at the top actually need to then stay back in India and then lift the rest of the country you need entrepreneur you need successful companies in order to generate business and work for everyone we've had a lot of political content on the show lately and the political commentators said that the next time you have entrepreneurs on the show ask them about the ease of doing business in India do you
find it easy to do business in India it's very easy very easy it's the market is the country is very open I brought this up because the political commentators said that that's the representation of the government then and Indians usually pick a side Indians are either Pro Modi or anti Modi you're a complete neutral like you're from Belgium yeah and you still find it easy to do business in our country it's it's easier than in the US um Americans are very very picky if your product is not perfect
beautiful Pixel Perfect Americans won't buy it in India even if your product is not perfect they will make a way figure a way to to use it no I'm ease of doing business means as a business owner you know all the all the backend stuff I think it's easy you didn't find any you have to adapt yourself to to the people but I don't think it's difficult has there been a country where you found it very difficult as a business in China we failed I tried they invested $1 million in China we created a join
t V with a large company we failed completely failed here super when was this China face um we tried this in China a few years ago like seven years ago okay I need to expand that thought also but we'll first finish this mhm do you notice the Modi government like do you follow what they are doing in the country yes you know from a geopolitical perspective in China at least the narrative we get in India is that it's a very dictatorship oriented culture and that government wants to control everythi
ng that Chinese citizens see the way way Chinese citizens think and when I meet Chinese people it's a little mixed some of them who have lived abroad are very Indian in some ways they're very friendly you know they they like India Etc sometimes abroad when I meet some Chinese people I feel like they're a little bit in their own Zone they're a little bit away they don't want to connect not with Indians just with anyone they're a little bit in their own world I don't know I don't have experience b
ecause I only went a few days in China so I don't have that that much experience we have a company in Hong Kong but Hong Kong is so much different than China that it's difficult to for now yeah it's probably going to become a part we'll see uh but the company still there in Hong Kong yes yeah we have 250 people there do you visit Hong Kong I went a few days yes you like Hong Kong uh mixed feeling why um it's different mindset it's very exper guys uh it's a lot of about money I'm not at all about
money um in the discussions who owns what and so it's not my style you mean people show off people show off uh your status is is your salary and that kind of things which is some people like but it's not my style okay uh but you visited China as well yes you enjoyed it like being in the country yeah it's it's always good to visit the country what did you like about China uh but I don't think I could say visit it because I I went a few days it was only to work with the company so it's only the p
rofessional experience you work but they are super good host I mean they make you feel like and China is a little bit like India they for instance they don't respect contract uh but they respect the relationship you have so the first thing they do is not to write a contract like we Europeans do but it's to build a strong relationship uh between the the supplier and the customer and usually usually they succeed because of the relationship between people rather than contract and so I've I've notic
ed that they were very good at hosting us welcoming years working together for that purpose they took you out for a drink yes a lot you have a story uh I'm a very good drinker so they tried to beat me but it was the other way around you know Vons are very good in beers but no I don't drink anymore so how did they get when they were drunk uh like everyone else fun yes jokes yes but how did you communicate with them um the the people I was working with with are we're talking we we're speaking Engl
ish so what did they say to you like no nothing special does work conversation come up when you're drunk yes yes like you'll talk about the contract even over a drink and youall can be very but maybe it's my fault because I always speak about work so maybe it's me I don't know if it's was them or me but uh yes you speak about work even when you're drunk I think about I I'm not drunk anymore I don't drink since a few years because I have um liver disease I can if I if I drink I can die you got fa
t Lev I have no even more ceris you have ceris yes because I drank too much and so I cannot drink anymore since a few years which is okay I I like this um yeah but you drank a lot when you were younger yeah that's why I have Z this why did you drink when you were it's in Belgium it's it's part of the culture students drink a lot a lot of beers how much did you drink too much like say if it was a Saturday night I no no it was during the week during the week yes so I was it was a student bar which
is owned by the student and open every week and during the weekend you come back to your parents so you don't drink but during the week you drink the whole week every day every day yeah how much every day uh 30 40 beers way too much to the point where you get a CIS oh man how does sosis feel it doesn't feel anything so the liver is the only organ in the body um that is where it can regenerate itself yeah except when you get to the level of theosis um and also it's insensitive so you don't feel
anything if it has issue in the liver you will never find that thing if you discover it it's by luck and I was very fortunate to other issues they made some scans they discovered that earlier in the process of the series so I can live with that without issue for for a long time but I cannot doing at all how did you feel when you found out uh I thought I would die so because the process after it's months of examination and they told me exactly so when you look at theories in the web you are like
it's horrible like you have 10 years to leave or that kind of things but they explained me at the end that I was at the very beginning so I will just leave like that my world life without issue but I cannot transgress other than China which place have you found challenging to expand into um we I don't have a good answer because we pretty much succeeded every country we opened the only time where we failed it was not about the country it was about the person uh because we picked the wrong manager
so one thing I do to do is that um we never recruit manager uh director manager we never recruit that the only way to become a team leader at to do is to be the best of a team and so we make them grow and one time it was to open in New York I recruited an external manager director he has a good experience very on the resume he was perfect he built two startup that grew very big he Belgian from New York so he could understand us but he he developed business in New York so he went I'm sure the gu
y is great but it didn't work for us it didn't work for us because it was not it was good but not it was not what we are it was not aligned with the way we manage our business so it didn't work all the other times I always created a new country with a employee who have probably no experience of building companies and so on but he was a good employe to do uh and so we send him somewhere and it always worked sometimes it takes two years sometimes four years so the the Rhythm is a little bit differ
ent uh but if you pick someone who is good at the job even though he's not the director even though he never created company uh it's a good bet I want to go a little bit deeper into this International expansion thing okay so now say I'm an Indian company and you just need to answer this from your own life's learnings you need to talk from odu's learnings which was the first company outside of Belgium you expanded to uh after Belgium India India was the first company yes but not to sell in India
it's because I needed developers okay okay let me reframe this question my point is when you're looking at a new region to expand into for your business for for sales yes for sales okay you want to expand in that country now I am sure at ODU your management and you you have a set of protocols that when you go to that country you'll have to follow these same cultural rules but then something will change in the way you operate there something might change yeah so I want to know about that somethin
g what is the constant stuff what is the variable stuff so all the way we work is constant the way we deliver the service we have a methodology to implement a customer to trade to import his data same the way we sell which is very product focused we ask the customer what what are the pain points and we create demonstration based on the is the same um the only difference is local is how you interact with people how you party together or you do your salary structure that kind of things but the res
t a lot the majority of the what part of procedures to open a new country are the same for every country marketing marketing is basically the same with some variants so um in know marketing we have a strong we do events a lot like we do 500 events physical events 500 per year so two per day more or less um um we do that in every country it works in many countries not with the same level of success in India Mexico very successful us we have low attendance but high quality people so it's still the
same approach uh then you have online marketing Google ads and so on same in every country um we have education working because we are open source a lot of teachers and universities your use our product to teach sales CRM accounting because it's free um so we work a lot with schools and teachers University that works in every country so 90% of the marketing is U the same is the same but there are some slight difference like I explained in order to develop the events we we do LinkedIn ads email
ads uh Facebook ads mass mailing and so on worked well for India I had to introduce what WhatsApp in order to remind attendees that the event is tomorrow or in one hour so there are slight difference but it's 10% difference okay your structure effectively Remains the Same yes like your protocols your strategy and even for some of my like online marketing it's even globalized it's not per country it's one person that does all the country for all okay uh what is Africa like to to work in and to ex
pand into um that is difficult in India I feel like I could build an Indian company myself it's very easy in Africa I wouldn't be able to because you have to be African you have to be first there is not one Africa yeah between the mreb and the South and E it's so much different that uh it's different could you take a region like West Africa like Nigeria Cameroon we opened in Kenya so do we have an office in Kenya East um yes um and then you have to be you have to be African the way they negotiat
e the way they decide it's so much different from what we used to do it's slower um they have difficulties to decide they don't decide you do call and call and call decide um that's something yeah where if you don't you are not African it's difficult to to do it's culturally a difficult place to enter uh yes for foreigners yes for foreigners yeah but then it's easy to enter if you look so we we opened the Kenyan office with an African guy who who was in Belgium since a few years he came from our
company then he he went to and it's working very well I would assume that's true for any country you know you get a local guy to help you that's the most important that of course that helps but in India I have the feeling that I understand Indians in Africa I have the feeling that I don't um it's so different what have you understood about sayans for example um I I don't have a lot of experience because I I don't travel that much I um um Kenyans is great it's less there is less um corruption th
an in some other countries like Congo for instance which is Extreme um which is good in a way very good um there are a lot of good guys and businessmen but what I felt is that things are slower I never understand I always have the feeling that the customer will sign tomorrow and it don't it doesn't and then I think okay we'll sign in one month it doesn't and and it's I don't know if it's me who don't understand if it's the process that is that way but it's for me it's difficult to catch why do y
ou think it's slower um no idea I don't know I don't don't have that much experience is the way they are so some questions are not answered yet no I don't have the questions to everything but are you actively looking at African markets as a place to expand yeah yeah we are growing the good news it's just that it's not Mara I have other people who do it and I because I'm not involved in sales in Africa I let them do and I don't even watch out what they do could you name some countries that the th
e team is looking into no I I that's the funny thing if you ask me what are the future countries where we will open foru because we last year we opened five countries I think uh I cannot answer because I am not targeting country I'm searching for people and the other the only way for me to open a country is to find the right guy and if I found it you already created something so because we work that way it I would say in another way or International expansion is not about strategy it's about opp
ortunism we have to find the opportunity to of someone and then we will create a company for him fair um you've been almost bankrupt at some points in your life yeah a few years yes how did that feel feel um on the moment you just work and work and work 16 hours a week it's stress and uh um but I do believe that if oo is so good today is because of that period it force you to be efficient to not spend money stupidly it's it force you to be very very good in order to survive um that it creates at
the end a company that is much better uh that result as opposed to a VC baked uh comp will get a lot of money they they will burn they didn't learn to to make it in inefficient way that's what so many Indian startups are learning that try having a bootstrap phase for as long as possible it sets that bootstrapping culture in the company yeah and that makes the company super efficient and you know what when so I been close to bankruptcy for a few years to the point of I paid salaries sometimes a
few days late um because I just didn't have the money um when things get better when I started to have a lot of cash it was difficult for me at that time because I have I had to find the motivation elsewhere before that we nobody was thinking about what what is the purpose what we should we do we were just all trying to survive survive survive serve client get money serve client we were so much focused on Surviving that we're nothing and then from one point from one month or one year to another
at to do things started to be super good we get a lot of cash Millions we and and then at that point we were like okay now we have to find a new source of motivation and it was a difficult moment for us to remotivate the team because now we have to work for something different than surviving how did you motivate uh then it's the purpose of the product uh serving our clients making great product but it was a switch of mindset that we had to operate this was that phase where you switched into prod
uct yes um this phase took one or two years in in order to be very cash flow positive but it's that phase yes from a service company to a product company are you like a celebrity in Belgium not so much because I don't try to be I try to but I think some people knows me do you get fans coming up to you and saying that I respect what you've done and yes but that's every businessman of flash company have that I think how do you feel about that it's always good I mean what do you think what people s
aid that they like your show it's always good I think with YouTube the thing is you're putting so much of your personality and mind out there that when people are coming up to you they really know things about you mhm so it's a little different you feel gratitude but some I think I've reached a point in my life where I feel a little scared also when people too much maybe yeah I never thought I'd ever say that but it's become that yeah I I'm probably way less famous than you even in Belgium so I
don't get to that level yet do your kids know how big you are like in business yeah but you know I think most people don't understand I mean what is the value of the company today is 4.5 billion what is 45 billions of Euro no but nobody knows it's just numbers is it it seems to be a lot but what does it mean it's difficult to relate to that kind of numbers the thought of selling your business has never crossed your head no no I for sure we will never sell and I will never go public nether I don'
t want to be a public company because you don't want that you like how you're working right now the reason is that um public companies tend to refocus on the short term you know you have to publish earning CS with the the say num and if the numbers are good everyone is happy they buy the shares if numbers are bad people are not happy and your employee are frustrated because they have shares and it's but so public companies have a tendency to focus on the short term to Sal sales of the months or
the quart and so on I don't want that the success ofo is always to build for the long term and I don't want a single empe to look for the short term or the sales number of the quarter one the other thing is I'm so much focused on productivity and efficiency uh when you get public you need extra layers of reporting transparency anything like that uh so second reason I don't want that I want to be super efficient decide right away instead of asking the board of directors um and third I like open a
nd transparent communication you know just said the company worth 4.5 billions of Euro if I was a public company I could go to jail because I disclosed information uh before the earning calls like I think if I would have sent that to maybe not publicly ugly but to some employees I could go to jail I don't want that I want to be able to say whatever I want to inform my employees uh and be transparent why do you think Founders choose to go public I think a lot of them don't don't understand it's j
ust a way to get cash um but to understand the consequence of that most of them don't catch it really I don't think it's bad I think as a source of cash public is quite good it's efficient but it comes with some drawbacks like you have to have extra layers of reporting complexity you cannot disclose information and you it will refocus the mindset to the short term for some companies good some companies need to focus on the shortterm but it's not us know I would go as far as saying and I might be
totally wrong while saying this but I think there's a bit of a glamour Factor also about going it's it's a way of being recognized but it's very short term like the moment you get public everyone praise you you get a lot of price and then it goes back to reality after deal with the devil yeah like you'll get the fame articles will be published not the devil because not big deal but um I'm extreme in everything I do for me if I lose 1% of productivity it's bad I wouldn't want that foro um but bu
t it's not a devil it's a what's the best career advice you've ever got in your life from someone just do it do and it's true because a lot of people are thinking waiting for the good ID um deciding how we should do it sometime it's just about move on get the job done first get the job and maybe it work maybe it won't work but at least you move forward and what's the worst advice you ever got advice I don't know ah open uh uh no I didn't get bad ADV I didn't follow advice I don't have mentors an
d everything I was working in theodo office which is a farm in a farm quite alone not meeting a lot of people so I didn't get a lot of feedback I'm going to give you a compliment again same compliment you're a crazy guy like I've not met anyone like you on the show no I think a lot of people who bootstrap do that you start from where you are and your small things and no I I don't just mean your professional side even the guy you are it's very different P like you know I've not seen this on the s
how and I've spoken to like 600 people okay like I've not met someone who's done so much materially but is still so humble MH like I still feel you're like a coder on the inside you know you're I am that's what I love I am a c but then that affects a lot of how you look at life like someone not someone else many other people in your position who would have accomplished what you've accomplished at this point either would have chosen to sell it off and just relax or you know live a more yeah but w
ill they be happy by doing that I think different people have different life stories yeah for me there is nothing better that I can do than a do is the best I can do is to continue uh improving the software for companies it's I feel like I don't see what I can do better than that the society I mean are you changing as a person as you age not as a professional as a human being are you changing uh I become better no I think no I become slower also because of the age um but I think the vision and t
he what I wanted to do has always been the same uh not at the very beginning but after a few years it it has been there how do you look at Silicon Valley and San Francisco generally is it is it always going to be the center of tech in the world or yes they have a big advancer um for not for the reason we think the main reason is the cash they have so many VCS or all X Google employees we have plenties of millions to invest that basically any ID can can live there and when when all the ID can lea
ve some of them will be good and will make a good company do you visit I have an office in San Francisco yes and before office was in uh in Silicon valet and I Liv three years there you lived three years with the family yes can you talk to me more right now you're okay to talk to me are you getting bored no enjoying this do I feel bored no I I just I want to stretch the conversation more I want to get to know more let's let's go you don't mind me asking all these questions right like all this ti
me with go go for it how are you feeling by the way in this I I I I I I enjoy the the it's good we have a good conversation and it's fun because you're getting to think uh yes and for me it's a different thing that why I used to do so it's good okay um usually people like yourself who come on the show it's a thought exercise for them because the questions go like pretty intense so especially entrepreneurs enjoy being on this show because they get to think much more they get to reflect I don't kn
ow if you're in that zone I don't need to think that much because I know very well my subject so it's things I'm used to talk about so what value is this conversation adding to you not not not Odo just you I'm surprised that you find that the discussion is so good for you that you get a lot of value from it for me just normal okay but you are adding a lot of value like yeah but that's what I'm surprised and it's good to hear I'm sure this one's going to get International viewers as well because
you've not just spoken to the Indian audiences you know you've spoken to like like a lot of people want to expand the businesses in India yeah uh and they don't know how to my solution to all of them when I've been asked this question abroad is I think you need to tie up with an Indian partner like Indians have that team mentality also like as we value very easy to find a co-founder or in India uh so I mean that was my advice until today's podcast now I'll just send them this podcast look at thi
s guy's story M um maybe before we talk about America one small question about India for the other Foreigner Founders you know Founders from other countries who want to expand in this country what's your advice to them I think it just do it uh just uh book a flight ticket and come there a few weeks discuss with people meet people and in the end are very entrepreneur mindset so you will find good relationship that you can start using and developing just a matter of what I did is that just go to I
ndia once you once you are there things naturally developed and this whole angle about the population being really big it's a very legitimate reason to be here right like because the market size is that big and it's growing it's 8% growth of the GDP per year it's it's bigger as in a population that's becoming richer a big population that's becoming richer mhm that's the business logic about being here right because at the end of the day business has to be a little ruthless and Ma mathematical fo
r me the the initial reason I went to India is that um I was going very fast in Belgium um I was a small company like 20 employees when I went to India and when you grew fast I was signing project that was um the revenue of the project was bigger than my turnover the preceding year so bigger project more than my turnover but once you do that you quickly need to recruit and set up the team to deliver the client and the problem I faced in Belgium um if I needed I had 20 developers if I needed 20 M
or was like six to nine months to get them but I just signed a client so I needed it right away so it's not so much about the cost of the developers it was that I needed to grow faster and um and so I had this before because at the end I wanted to recruit in Belgium so I recruited Indians so that I have more times to catch up with belgians they was sitting in India with yes how did you come to know that India has this developer oh everyone knows that everyone in the tech world knows that if he's
the development center of the world everyone knows that like you've heard of infosis and TCS of course but had you heard of them before you came to India yes yes of course and how do you look at infosis and TCS uh I never work with them so I don't know but what did you heard but it's I mean TCS is 400,000 people can you imagine 400,000 D it's it's huge I saw you reading a book about the Tata group yeah I just started on page 20 or something why you reading that I read a lot of books but specifi
cally that Tata group book you're reading because you're in India uh yes but I think I would have read it before no I'm just because it's one of the book I'm writing now okay coming back to America mhm uh 3 years in Silicon Valley you lived there yes uh tell me everything man like what was your life like what were the conversations like did you actually get a view of the future did you have conversations about AI back then which year is this one uh it was seven or eight years ago so 2015 yes aro
und that time yes uh was there talk about Sam Alman open AI all this even back then no it was not nobody was talking about AI at the time you enjoyed your time in America yes very much um I prefer India because the because of the experience it's so much San Francisco is very much like Belgium it looks like a European city um so it's the closest you can get from an European city in America I would say um and India it's so much different that I like because of the experience um in the US it's very
different from here um the American have a totally different approach to purchasing a software in India I told you it start with the price how much does it cost and then I we look at the software if it's good or not how do you sell to an American an American you have to make an dream he wants something beautiful super clean he wants to Dream It's emotional uh and it has to be perfect if an Indian if it's not perfect you find a way to use the product he will he will always succeed to use the pro
duct for in India it's just the price point as the sell and if it's not perfect he knows you can use it he will it's okay there is a small bug there you will just turn it around and use it differently and for them it's normal in America it has to be very good super clean they are so used to have very mature software on their Market that they're used to the perfect everything and so for me it took like two three years to make the the product up to the standard of what an American expect damn um t
hat's why I relocated there because I had to understand what exactly that but once you get there then it gets easy because there are huge consumers they even buy everything on credit so they they they they can put a lot of money once they once they like the product and very quickly the way you learned about WhatsApp Marketing in India and then took it to the world I'm sure going to America for CED you to become a way better product and then you took that way better product for my challenge for t
he America was more the design the old design was not on par with the standard of Americans at the time no it's very good better than the best but at the time we were all design or product was super powerful but design was not as clean as what an American expect so we had to fix that in order to start the American Business now it's our number one country in terms of Rue and this is because of the feedback loops in America you spoke to customers they said that yeah you meet customers and you you
spend time trying to sell it's a good thing to try to sell for yourself go on the phone doing demos with customer check how they react and and then you adapt based on this way back what else life in America um for me it was very much like in Europe um it's it's good life I I've always seen America like a big Casino like um if everything is good it's a big bet if if you're good in your life financially so if you have a good job good revenues everything's perfect it's dream dream of everything you
have good education but if one thing fail could be a nightmare if um you lose your job and you get sick you can quickly get homeless um if you don't have the revenue it's very very difficult um because especially in San Francisco it's very hard if you when I was in San Francisco a lot of people had two or three different jobs because one job was not enough to sustain the family which is hard it's very hard so when you not we are you you are not in the good classes it's very difficult for instan
ce um something that always surprised me is that a lot of Indians wants to go to America and what I've noticed in San Francisco is a lot of Indians who are top developers here so they have very good salary for Indians like uh 1 point or two lakhs uh in India where you are a king when you have two lak salary India you can have a very good life you have your own driver you can your own cleaners few people working for you and then they go to America they have a higher salary but the salary is very
low compared to the housing market the healthare market education Market that actually their life is lower life quality life quality is lower that's something surprised me because I you were the king there and you go there and you are lower it was my big battle when I was in engineering College to not give the gr and go to America because Society was looking down upon me for it in India because there's societal pressure that hey you know what you're probably just not ambitious enough why do you
want to live in this country but it was my argument that I would rather be a king here than go there and be one of the crowd yeah that's a good one and um so in America if you are good good job everything is great but if you get sick or if you uh lose your apartment or something it can quickly uh be very difficult because healthare is super expensive uh education is super expensive um housing is very expensive so you need to make if you have that it's perfect dream dream life but if you don't yo
u and and everything is related for instance your healthare insurance is is related to to your work contract so if you lose your work contract you lose your healthare insurance and if you get sick in the in between two job then you have to pay everything cash and it's basically impossible could quickly be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars one kind of treatment if you have like a fracture of your arm yeah but my kid had um he had a small issue he had is had temperature or something in Europ
e when you have that you go to hospital and you pay maybe 20 or barely nothing because you have social security for a fever so we we did like good Europeans we went to the hospital uh to check if the kids doesn't have something he get an ice cream to the T so they gave him an ice cream they check temperature of thing a few medicines came back I think we went there 30 minutes uh it costed us $2,100 it was 20 in Europe and so if you are rich no problem if you have an insurance we didn't have an in
surance because we were Europeans if you have an insurance that's okay but if it happens and that's a very small thing so imagine a real accident if it happens at a bad time it could be a life-changing moments which actually happens to people it happens to people there are a lot of homelets so you would be surprised about the crime and the homeless people in San Francisco so again I don't know how true this is because I've not been to America since 2018 but we've had people who've come on the sh
ow and they've they're saying that parts of America are growing a lot like new cities Austin is coming up a lot Denver is coming up a lot but the old Power centers which is New York and San Francisco are degrading yeah that's true that's true yeah that's true people are leaving San Francisco because of cry increasing drugs increasing homeless increasing and the costs are super high so they want to relocate especially now with after the pandemic and home workking facilities people prefer to reloc
ate but it's still a big business Market it's still Google Microsoft Apple it's difficult to beat how do Europeans generally look at America is it aspirational to go there yeah I think we have a lot of things to learn like in product design they are very good marketing they are the pro of marketing service they are the pro of service uh like how they serve in restaurant or they're very good in a lot of things so they are leader for real reasons but they also drawback that's why it's a Mixed Fiel
d what I like the most about Americans are the conversations best conversations I ever hear are on American podcasts and that says a lot yeah they are very good storytellers yeah yeah they but it's because when when they get kids they my kids when they were there young age like three years or four years old they they are on the stage in front of the class and they have to present things every week so they get very early on in their teaching they teach kids to present things they had something ca
lled uh what was the name I don't remember the name of the thing but every week the kid had to bring something from home go in front of every student and explain why it show show and tell and every week and so they practice a lot of that wow which is when you do interviews because when I arve in the US and I did interview Z everyone felt very smart for me but most of them were bullshitting or trying to to to show themselves better than what they are yeah um it took me time to understand because
when you listen to them they are so good that it feels that they are really really really good the reality is a bit different is they're very good at selling talking uh so you have to look behind that how do you look behind it I think it's come with experience pattern recognition yeah you need to pick up where people are bullshitting yeah um one of the thing we do in recruitment is uh we don't discuss too much how to do we actually do real exercise so if you recruit a developer making develop if
you recruit an engineer making design architecture understand business flow to check disc about but don't talk about the resume they will just make you feel like they're the best if you talk about resume you want on understand anything yeah uh I was telling some American friends of mine these are not like indian-americans like American Americans white guys black guys I was telling them that what I admire about your culture a lot is the whole sales culture you project yourself very well like I'v
e learned that and honestly I'm using it in India I think there's a lot for Indians to learn because we are the opposite of it like for us there's a lot of people who even if they're really good they're too shy to tell yeah do you see that about India yeah Americans are much much better than that something India can learn from America of course that marketing product design they are very good on this what would you hire an American for marketing for sure especially in content content writer stor
ytelling uh they are very good because of this show and tell and I think because of the television culture also it's they n native language for us English is your second language uh so I'm pretty sure for me at least I would have better answer in French uh it helps when it's your native language what would you hire me for like now that you've got to know me um content would you hire me we we do a lot of videos I don't think I can afford you no no no I mean if if I didn't have the podcast would y
ou have hired me in India yeah for for Content it's having good people in in terms of content doing video is super important we do you know we produce at a do something like 600 videos per year so we have a huge team of content video production we have a podcast where do you put it up on YouTube mostly for maintaining your community yes so it's mostly about education we um have videos about how you can improve your sales how you can better do your accounting project management or you can build a
website with a do so it's more about tutorials thing like that um but it's very important for the community brother let's have a larger conversation you okay about content and Community because this is just a theoretical thing I've heard from a lot of people and I don't see that really happening in India right now other than with a few Brands so every brand says build your own community and then monetize it but I don't actually see too much of that happening okay now parall going back to our co
nversation about how you scaled your business you said that one of your main marketing angles is that you have an active Community uh no yes and no um developing a community is not the role of marketing it helps marketing but you we have a very strong Community because of development because we work we are open source so people can download and modify your software so even students in universities their teacher organized course on do and they go on GitHub so they collaborate with us on GitHub th
ey make what we call Pool requests so they propose feature they develop new feature on the software they propose to us we have a community because we collaborate together to build something think you don't build a community just with marketing that's not Community that's segment of a market uh customer segment but it's not marketing marketing is something where we do something together and doing something committee sorry is about doing something together we have a very strong committee we have t
wo types of committee partners and committee who are not contract don't even have a contract with us but the community works because they are generating revenues from modu um not because we Market to them um and so they depends on us we work together they develop new features for us because these communities are developers or partner or consultant who sell service on Theo and it's a big ecosystem one way one thing people misunderstood usually with a do is that they think okay it's a company of 4
,000 people the reality is not that Odo is an ecosystem with 200,000 people with full-time job is to work on the do selling developing or doing consulting only and that is a community when you people rely on your products because it's their life or their work um that becomes a community of fans and and and the way you behave with them we collaborate with them so they we develop together on the same feature they can have the source code of a product improve things send back to us for feedback tha
t's a community organization marketing is not marketing is customer segment what what is the purpose of the content you're creating uh helping this community so it's about teaching educating it's not about marketing it's not about selling it's about making them become smarter and better so that actually then they can loop back into adding value because if they are smarter and better they will sell more do service and then I will get revenues but it's all about them it's not about us it's somethi
ng lot of companies Miss in marketing is that it's all about your people it's not about you um content as a skill does it have a role to play in the future of worldwide businesses oh for sure is it's an important skill to be able more and more I mean look at influencer marketing it's exploding content everywhere is exploding and there are some areas where it's very well behind so um like b2c is very mature there are lot of influencer marketing in b2c B2B there's barely nothing there it's very li
mited so it's like we are the very beginning of B2B marketing on content whether it's video or podcast or whatever it's very early days I would say it's more mature in b2c so it means that we still have a few years of strong growth on this Market because of that because of the B2B would only start to address this if one has content related skills like editing okay if someone's a very good editor very good content creator uh you would hire that person yes and would other International businesses
also hire these kind of people yeah U you don't need a lot so for instance at to do over 4,000 people I have seven who do because it's not a car business you would work for a Content company that would be totally different um but despite everything we do in marketing we have seven out of 4,000 people who do content editing got it whether it's audio video U we have more designers designers we have a lot uh designer I think we have 70 something around 70 because we offered that as a service for ou
r client because we have an app which is a website builder uh and and it's part of our service to say you want to improve the design we can also do service on top of the website builder you know Naval ravikant no he's a big like uh tech influencer on Twitter and he's he's very big in America so he has a saying and he's very respected in the Tech Community in America especially but also India now uh he said that if you know how to code or if you know how to create good quality of content then it'
s likely that you will make money in the future oh yeah code everyone understands like how you can make money but do you agree with the content side of things that if you know how to make good quality content it gets more difficult I think in the early days a lot of successful uh artist or content creator um that we started five 10 years ago it was much easier today it's more difficult but it's still true um the very good best guy but it's IIT I believe it's a bit like sport only the top Su to g
o out of the crow yeah true you're talking about content creation right yes you're not talking about content cre only the few percentage that are extremely good will make it a big business have you ever thought of what makes those few very good like in your eyes what makes a good content creator I'm not a good content consumer so I don't know I can I don't watch that much things fair to say that in your eyes it's just numbers the guys because I'm assuming that that's you let's speak about a do b
ecause I have a big content team but for do not we serve a different purpose it's not about views it's about helping others but still views are useful for us um for me it's about educating so the the viewer should learn something to have fun while he learns but it should be better after having view the videos I'm not so much about entertainment there is a big business onment but as a company I really what I really like is when we provide value I used to say that developers they create value they
create the value of the in the product marketing on content they create the perception of the value you can create the best value you want if people don't understand it uh it's not a value because they won't use it so you need you need both what have you picked up about content creation today um a podcast or interview show is similar to what we used to do in Europe I feel like it's the same kind of discussion like you've done a podcast in Europe yes yes big ones yeah okay and they've asked you
similar questions uh no not similar question but the the IDS are the same if um we have to be open have a good discussions um what interest people are the same I think they want to learn F fun how do I expand in Europe as a content creator I think you are better at at your job than me I think you you better knows than me how do I reach your of VI how how can more European people who are in positions of power get to know that I exist um maybe a we rephrase that question is what do you guys need i
n terms of content I think that uh content creator um it's like product it's something you build on the long term you have to start small in aqu and AC and there is no like there is no magic formula of how can I get one millions of views directly it doesn't work that way you have to build improve improve adapt to the audience and it's because you do it for five to 10 years that it start to get big um a the audience in Europe for instance or in America is difficult because um you know the largest
B2B um YouTube channel in Belgium is 20K subscribers so you as an Indian you will be probably very frustrated in Europe in Belgium in France it's a little bit bigger but still we are not talking about the same number of uh of viewers how do you look at the future of social media from your Global Perspective um for Odo as a brand is great it's a way to educate people the way where they are some are on Instagram on YouTube but it's a way for us to distribute education and explain and teach teach
to work community so in a way it's very good um yeah it's good what do you think is the future of social media in the world have you ever thought of this um no I've never thought about this I think it's bad for kids uh so I'm not sure the future is maybe I don't know if you are at the top or if it will continue growing in term of value it provides to humanity um because obviously there is some drawbacks to it um you know the IQ um since we measure IQ like 100 something years has always increased
um and there are a lot of people who have an IQ Superior to Einstein today it always increased over the past five or 10 years I don't know it decreased uh and social media is one of the two reasons about it it's because when you always watch TV spend time on social media or play video games um you your brain is not thinking uh and you are probably losing ability to concentrate yourself do you play video games no not so much I I developed video games I developed a lot but I didn't play is there
anything you do outside of work for fun uh being with friend party with friend I like but I work a lot and because for me work is fun um I prefer to I mean work is for me is building things creating things in Innovation this is super fun it's um problem solving it's creative it's always different it's very fun I think very few people in the world find the thing that they were born to do and you're one of those lucky guys yes you're born to do exactly this job yeah and you are probably one too ye
ah yeah 100% man yeah like uh I really enjoy my job like it gets a lot quantity wise you know like it and and being happy doesn't mean easy so you have to walk a lot you sometimes do things you don't like you but all in all if you like the output of what you do then you will be happy yeah you know I have not asked these kind of questions for a very long time on the show because there was a phase with this podcast where people wanted to know personalities and it was about self-improvement and I'v
e kind of removed those questions from the show and I've made it more about culture and you know the future MH but when I meet people like you I have to go back to that original set of question sometimes because you're very rare you know you've got material success but still personality is in the right place heart is in the right place which for me is like the most important uh which is why I'm asking you this and it's probably the last question of today tell me about like the worst moment of yo
ur life or the most painful moment or the moment you felt the most shame um I have had very difficult times and usually these difficult times were very difficult on the moment but but I noticed a few years after that actually it was a good thing I I can give you a few example uh one of the very hard time is when I had company Six employees uh five employees at the time and um three developers and and one admin and uh and me and the three developers they left at the same time so from one day to a
nother I had nobody to deliver the service I had to do everything myself for four people and they did that and usually they did that by preparing a product that is a competitor to do it failed but they did that so A few months before they stopped delivering service to clients so I also had at the same time a lot of clients complaining that I have to satisfy myself when it happens I was like done very very very done so was very hard for me I was like how can I how old you go back uh I don't know
maybe 20 27 or something uh or do I get back to that and then I worked and I worked I recruited other people and after that like once the the storm handed up I noticed my actually it was a good thing I needed them to leave and to start with new employees it was very difficult on the moment but for the life in the life of the company that's been a good thing um but you don't notice that when it happens you only see it very closely like I would suffer I was already working 14 hours a day no have t
o work even more and I will have Angry customer and so on but it turns out to be a very good thing because it allows me to turn down the company start again with people with a better mindset and and do better things any other moment um no but it's the the the the the key things to to to get from that is that the most difficult times are usually what makes you better after or makes you learn something okay Fabian thank you thank you so much I asked you my own questions man like I think India need
ed a bit of a global business persp perspective first time we're doing that on the show uh I enjoyed every bit of this conversation there wasn't even one part where I got bored because you gave such different perspectives man so uh usually at the end of my podcast I compliment the guest on something I picked up about the person through the course of this episode but I've already told you all my compliments yeah you you have to stop complimenting yeah i' I've been too nice to you too much yeah bu
t uh I really appreciate your time that's the B compliment I can give you I totally know how busy you might be And all I'll say is this will add value to lives for like 10 20 years at least so thank you faan thank you for having me and we will see you very soon thank you that was the episode for today please go and follow faban on all his social media handles I've linked it down below I'd love for you guys to tell me what you thought of today's conversation I absolutely adore doing business conv
ersations I love learning from people who aren't Indian because cuz sometimes I feel like when you get to hear perspectives that are completely different from the perspectives we hear all around us it forces you to question the stuff you've heard until that point of course no one's completely right or wrong but it's very very important to get these kind of data points so throughout these 3 hours of speaking with Fabian I found my preconceived notions being a little bit challenged the way I looke
d at business definitely changed after this conversation the way I look at International expansion of my business has changed very drastically so personally for me in this podcast I gained value I hope that this reaches the right audiences I hope that every Indian entrepreneur comes across this conversation because I personally felt like there was a lot to learn as is the case with TRS always every conversation is an extraction of knowledge data and experiences make sure you keep supporting make
sure you check out our massive library of podcasts as well RS will be back soon ranir will be back soon and we'll bring you another explosive episode of the ranir [Music] show
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He made the right choice, this is India's decade 👐
WOAAH 😮 ODOO on TRS ❤! Such a treat 😊 to watch him ❤️🔥.
Mann you slayed Every level today.... Your buisness orientated podcasts are amazing but trust me this one is epic.... I mean two amazing and humble guys in one screen.... Love you mannn❤
Simple shirt, pant, humble and soft guy with Mt. Everest of business and IT knowledge. Thanks Ranveer for bringing him on the show, we need more business and entrepreneurial podcast like this in future.
I liked this guy , he is so simple . Really appreciate him for getting relocated to India . We need more people like him 😋
Came across Odoo a year back! Back then I thought it was a fraud software because of such low prices. But since Odoo 17 launch event in August 2023, I was surprised that this was an actual multinational company and I took the bet and started exploring more into this! 💯 And now I am proud that I single handedly convinced my own company to implement odoo for management! 🙌 😁 I would love to attend one of Odoo events badly and connect with you guys as well! So anyone working in Odoo please do arrange an event in Goa please! 🙏 Thank you for the great software, Fabian and Team! 💯 Love from Goa, Adarsh
Ranveer Bhaiya ❤ looking like a cute salesman 🧑🏻💻 more than a podcaster 🥰.
Proud to be the part of Odoo India!!!!!!!❤❤❤
It felt like Ranveer was cheekily soliciting business from him or looking for business strategies for beerbiceps business itself. That is bit underhanded but until that last section when ranveer did that it was fantastic and Fabian is a fantastic guy with so much honesty and integrity. A true role models of how a entrepreneur and business should be.
Super... Odoo rocks... Was looking for a one point solution for all my needs at such a steal deal. Let Odoo rock world over!
Proud to be part of Odoo India ❤ 🇮🇳
Bet guest ever on show. Amazing humble human being
Being humble is mantra to reach greater heights in career. I have seen lot of humble successfull people
He is so humble, and I wish him all the success in our country...🎉
Excellent episode! Fabian is awesome and he has given all his experience of Odoo journey. I am SAP person and came from manufacturing domain and now became a big fan of Odoo !!! I will more explore Odoo and wanted to penetrate for SME sector !!!
Such dense episodes are excellent. But as India's smartest podcast, it would be great if you can show different views about India's future too, those that are conflicting, contrarian etc. Watching your intros, shorts makes me feel that you are always painting an exciting picture about India. Don't get me wrong, I am part of the same camp that is excited for India. But it is worth shedding light on the crushing challenges of our country, the elephants in the room too. Nonetheless, I am loving the TRS team's evolution in the last few years ❤
I love this guy! Thank you for show casing his vision.
Never seen a podcast in one go and this one I watched it in one go. Thank you Ranveer
Ranveer : i wanna be a SALESMAN yeahhhhh....🎉🎉🎉🎉😂😂