My guest today is Nishchay Ag, founder and CEO of Jar. In the last conversation we had on Return on India, we spoke with Nithin Kamath, the founder and CEO of Zerodha. In that conversation, we focused on how tier-one India is advancing up the maturity curve with respect to financial literacy. Today we explore the opposite. We explore the rest of the Indian landscape. How do non-tier one Indians think about investing, spending, and saving? And there's nobody better than Nishchay to help us understand.

Jar was founded two years ago and has over 10 million users today. The product is super simple and has a unique characteristic that resonates with mass India: when you use Jar, you invest in gold. We covered a bunch of topics in this one. Why gold, how a simple product is actually incredibly complicated to build, the psychology of India's consumer class, and the fast-changing behavior patterns of India's next generation. Please enjoy my conversation with Nishchay Ag.

 

For the full show notes, transcript, and links to the best content to learn more, check out the episode page here.

 

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Show Notes

[00:02:40 ] - [First question] - What the financial products landscape in India looks like

[00:04:15 ] - The opportunity set for financial products in the hundreds of millions

[00:06:32 ] - Describing the average Indian consumer’s relationship with money

[00:08:04 ] - What rich looks like in India compared to the West and how American media influences cultural norms in the East 

[00:12:34 ] - An overview of what Jar is and why he started it  

[00:16:38 ] - Thoughts about changing behavior in a product like Jar

[00:19:02 ] - Designing a product for one country that houses thirty smaller countries 

[00:21:48 ] - How purchasing gold happens today writ large versus with Jar

[00:23:41 ] - Building a product on top of the philosophy that 99% of people are good

[00:27:10 ] - Getting their first five thousand users

[00:31:06 ] - Thinking about investing as a consumption experience 

[00:33:49 ] - Creating trust in a low trust ecosystem

[00:35:24 ] - Business model arbitrage and what happens when Indian businesses expand beyond their borders

[00:37:58 ] - Outsourcing from versus to India is the next coming trend

[00:39:47 ] - Indians are hungrier than ever to build the next global company 

[00:41:15 ] - The bear and bull cases for India over the coming decade  

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