Curbing Global Food Waste with Wonky Veg w/ Deepak Ravindran | Oddbox

Deepak Ravindran: 0:00

Failure or turning back and doing something else is not an option. That's the way I approach anything that I've done. My wife and I were traveling. We went to Portugal. There we came across a really ugly looking but deliciously tasting tomatoes, and you can never come across this in the local Sainsbury's. As an Indian, having seen poverty directly and also seeing food being wasted was a bit of a well. It didn't align with my values. We've delivered about 8 million boxes to people across the UK. The ultimate aim is to change behaviours of a million people, especially about food and where food comes from and food waste.‍

‍

Amardeep Parmar: 0:43

Today we have Deepak Ravindran, who's a co-founder of Oddbox. They're a purpose-driven business that fights food waste on farms for innovative solutions. Deepak had a long career in finance, where he continued to move up the ladder, up the ladder, up the ladder and had a really successful career, but at some point he decided they needed to do something different here. He wanted to have something more purpose-driven. He tried different things in order to get this off the ground and you're going to hear about some of the experiments. Some worked, some didn't. And then you're going to hear about Oddbox, which is making a huge difference in this space, and some of the scrappy things that he did at the beginning. They enabled them to take off that maybe you wouldn't have imagined.

Amardeep Parmar: 1:14

You hear about what they're doing today and how they're making a real difference in the food waste industry. I really hope you enjoy today's episode. It's so good to have you on today and it's amazing to see what you've built over time. But if you roll right back to where it all started, when you were a kid growing up, what did you want to be? What was your ambition?

Deepak Ravindran: 1:32

You know, the earliest memories I have was like I think I want to be an astronaut, I think, but I also want to be. I saw this movie by Amitabh Bachchan and he was in one movie. He was a coolie, and my mom which tells me now that I wanted to be a coolie then it's just because I used to love Amitabh Bachchan and he wanted to be a coolie, so I wanted to be a coolie as well, just thought it was cool. I didn't realize they didn't have too many prospects growing up, but it looked cool. So, yeah, that's what I wanted to be Then going into university.

Amardeep Parmar: 2:03

Then going into university, what did you actually? What path did you go down to?

Deepak Ravindran: 2:05

Yeah, so I did commerce and I tried to become a child accountant and that's predominantly because my dad is a child accountant and that's the path he wanted me to follow. I tried it. I was not really successful doing it and so I decided to do an MBA in finance again and, yeah, that was the path I took.

Amardeep Parmar: 2:30

And you said there about it was because your dad was a child accountant.

Amardeep Parmar: 2:35

At that time did you have? When you started going down? Did you still have this idea of maybe you're going to be a coolie when you're national, or was it just kind of that felt like I'm just going to follow this path because that's what's been laid out for me?

Deepak Ravindran: 2:44

You know, I really didn't have any, I suppose world domination kind of genes or any kind of. I was just go with the flow, you know, happy-go-lucky kind of a guy, played a lot of computer games. I didn't really have any kind of ambition or kind of I have to be this by a certain age and so on. So I really kind of followed the path that my parents set out for me to say look, you have to be an engineer or a doctor or a child accountant, or if all else fails, then at least you have to get into a bank, because my mom used to be a banker. And so that was the path I had. I didn't have my own kind of ambition or dreams. It probably makes me less ambitious, at least in the early days. I call myself a late bloomer, so in the early days I didn't really have a dream per se. It was just enjoy life and take it as it comes.

Amardeep Parmar: 3:35

And then doing the MBA in finance. Was that a good experience? Were you happy you did that?

Deepak Ravindran: 3:39

I think it was a great experience for two reasons.

Deepak Ravindran: 3:47

One it opened my eyes up to business and commerce. Number one I started getting into stock trading and started understanding the world beyond just kind of day-to-day maths, as I used to hate maths and the actual application of maths and finance. But also MBA also gives you, it creates a good network of people who go on then to do different things and that then opens your mind up to oh, I could, I could go into HR or I could go into finance, or I could do this in a bank, or I could do that in a, in a, as opposed to PWC or and so on. So I think that network is an opportunity, opens up your eyes as well, which is great.

Amardeep Parmar: 4:26

And how soon after your undergraduate, your MBA? Was it a while later or quite soon?

Deepak Ravindran: 4:30

About three years after my graduation. Actually, I did my MBA, but between my graduation, so during my graduation it was a distance learning course. I also worked for my dad, so my dad had his own um his child accountant, so he had his own. He was an entrepreneur, he had his own outfit and I um was helping him set up his practice uh across different cities. So I was the one where I'm set up in a couple of new cities. So I was already uh getting exposed to the kind of entrepreneurship way of life hiring people, knowing what to look for when you hire, what do good people look like, and also how do you manage cash in a business and be really tight about it, and things like that. So I got my cut my teeth essentially between my graduation and my MBA.

Amardeep Parmar: 5:24

Was it hard to leave your dad's business? Was it a mutual decision? Or were you like thinking, okay, I want to do something else, because I know often people want their kids to kind of stay in the business and carry on?

Deepak Ravindran: 5:36

Yeah. You know, funnily enough, my dad, as I was mentioning before, he wanted me to become a CA and about two or three years of me trying to become a child accountant, I just told my dad I had this really difficult, I don't know. I was really scared about having this conversation with my dad scary, scary guy. And I said, dad, I don't want to do CA anymore, it's just fine, it's not for me. And he said, okay, so what do you want to do then with life? And so I had two options really In my head. I wanted to run away. Actually that was one of the options. I didn't tell him that.

Deepak Ravindran: 6:10

I also thought about I had spoken to someone and he said, look, you can run away and you can do something, or you could have another alternative, and there's this thing called MBA as well. Right, you could do that. And so I did a bit of research about where I want to go and stuff like that, and I told my dad, look, mba is the option that I have in my head. I didn't tell him about the running away aspect.

Amardeep Parmar: 6:34

Probably a good idea.

Deepak Ravindran: 6:35

Yeah, good idea. So he's knowing my dad and I think he didn't think about it before and he said, okay, right, that's what you want to do. Yeah, let me know what the details look like. And then, yeah, go ahead and do it. And that gave me the right. That means I need to stop working for you and I need to go into this full time. And I think that was the first time I was doing a lot of things on the side. On the side, it gave me another. That was another turning point in my life where I went right if I want to do something, I have to kind of do something 100%, and that's not about doing it in the weekends, in the evenings, I've got to go all in. So MBA was my first step all in, I'm going to stop working.

Deepak Ravindran: 7:21

And then that was the kind of yeah.

Amardeep Parmar: 7:22

what What was the next thing you went all in on after your MBA?

Deepak Ravindran: 7:24

Yeah, yeah, so my first job well, actually my MBA is when I met, I did my MBA. I got my first job. I met my wife then wife now and my girlfriend then. During my stint at 3M I was in corporate finance and that's when I kind of did finance. I then made a switch to IT services because IT services for me was a route into going abroad and I always knew I want to kind of go abroad, I want to move away from India, and that was because I thought the culture in India was work, work and less play.

Deepak Ravindran: 8:05

I think work-life balance for me was quite important and I felt like I'd always grown up watching Top Gear, an English football team. I've always been following the English football team, for all my sins. The English football team, I mean the actual national football team. No, I didn't follow a Premier League team then I follow now. But then I followed the national team and I thought, yeah, in UK I mean everybody's going to the US and I somehow liked the, the UK, partly because of you know the things I was following. But also I liked I grew up listening to the music. I grew up listening to Led Zepp and Queen and all these British bands and I, ah, it's a great place to be, and so I knew corporate finance wouldn't get me to the UK or the US, so IT services was a route to market for me. So I've made the switch again from corporate finance to IT services in finance as a domain and that was my, I suppose, second transition, if you will, into a new industry.

Amardeep Parmar: 9:05

And then moving to London as well, because one of the things I think a lot of people don't realize and I always try to bring up here is moving to another country or studying abroad, things like that. It's actually a really good predictor of successful entrepreneurship because it's a risk-taking behavior and if you've moved to another country, it shows resilience. You've had to set up where you don't know anybody all of these different things that are very similar to starting your own company. And how did you find that experience of moving to London and now having to set up a new life and different to what you knew before?

Deepak Ravindran: 9:32

Yeah, you know, because I was so motivated about coming to the UK for all the reasons I laid out earlier, I was quite excited about the whole opportunity and for me the UK was also a good opportunity because my wife is French and for her it was right next door in terms of travel. So I think it kind of ticked the boxes for many reasons. And so, again, in all the kind of things I've gone into at the start, I'm quite uncertain about this unknowns, but I've always also known that failure or turning back and doing something else is not an option. That's the thing, that's the way I approach anything that I've done. But I make the step where I've done all the research and I'm kind of instinctively, I've known that's the right thing to do. But I will also kind of convince myself very clearly that that's the right thing to do and there's no turning back.

Deepak Ravindran: 10:28

And so, yeah, I mean, for me when I came to the UK, it was much colder than I expected. I have to say that I came in May 2009. But beyond that, you know, it was hard yards in the early, you know, first few years Especially, I came in, I directly got into investment banking and that was quite hard in terms of knowing the culture, navigating the culture, quite a challenging work. Culture, I'd say banking, and I think, yes, I learned a lot, but I also kind of learned quite quickly that that's not where I should be in the long term.

Amardeep Parmar: 11:06

But you were there for quite a while, right in the banking industry, so you moved around a few different places.

Deepak Ravindran: 11:10

Yeah, correct.

Amardeep Parmar: 11:10

How did you find that? So, if we kind of summarize a whole section of your life, obviously, as you say, I guess your parents you're in banking, you're in London. Obviously earning a good amount of money. It's success, right.

Amardeep Parmar: 11:22

But you had different ideas at that point.

Deepak Ravindran: 11:24

The last place I was before I left banking was Deutsche Bank. I remember I would walk, do these post-lunchtime walks, and I would go and buy stuff. There was this kind of hole in me, like this kind of bottomless kind of hole, uh kind of hole which is I would call this whole of dissatisfaction, and it's never, you can never plug it. And I would plug that the hole with things to buy, right, I would buy a new suit, buy new shoes and buy they, keep buying these new things all the time, thinking that would plug the, plug the hole and, um, it never did right. It gives you an immediate, immediate gratification, but actually over the longer term it never did right. It gives you an immediate gratification, but actually over the longer term it never really satisfied. You always felt like there was something lacking. It's. Then I knew that, although it feels like I thought success was all about the money, the house and all of that, and, yes, once you get all of that, nobody really told me what's next, what's the next step? Right, and it's certainly not having having children, having more children. No, it's not that. I think that's where the the equation stopped abruptly for me is yes, there's money in the bank, there's money for me to spend. But there was not. There was no real clear follow-through plan on what contentment and happiness truly meant.

Deepak Ravindran: 12:44

And that's when I knew that was not the right place for me. And I kept changing banks, thinking surely this is the bank right. So I did the whole, like you know, all the different banks and I went this is not it, it's not it, you know. And yeah. And then I knew right, I had to quit this place where I was and do something else. Now again, I didn't know what that something else was. So I just quit, much to my mom's, you know, like shock, I'd say, when I spoke with her, and much to my other friends as well, who just all kept telling me this is the silliest decision they've ever come across.

Deepak Ravindran: 13:24

Why would I do that? It's a proper job, you know, earning a lot of money. Why would I quit HSBC that and do something? Well, do something which I was not really sure about and a lot of people said look, think about this commonsensically. Why don't you do something on the weekend? Why don't you do something in your evenings? And again, the point I made earlier was if I so, I create feelings of desperation. People get inspired HSBC start something, I create desperation, yeah, right. So I create that state in in myself where my mind I almost tricked my mind to say what? We don't have a job deepak, so you've got to do something else now and there's no other option. Failure hsbc not banking. com. And right? Failure for me then was going things, right , is job in banking, and that was the one which kept pushing me to say try new things, get out there and do something else.

Amardeep Parmar: 14:16

We hope you're enjoying the episode so far. We just want to give a quick shout out to our headline partners, hbc Innovation Banking. One of the biggest challenges for so many startups is finding the right bank to support them, because you might start off and try to use a traditional bank, but they don't understand what you're doing. You're just talking to an AI assistant or you're talking to somebody who doesn't really understand what it is you've been trying to do. Hbc have got the team they've built out over years to make sure they understand what you're doing. They've got the deep sector expertise and they can help connect you with the right people to make your dreams come true. So if you want to learn more, check out hvc innovation bankingcom, and I think that's one of the key things. Right is that we'll talk about this before we start recording about how a lot of people they're not happy with what they're doing, but they don't try anything else yeah and what kind of things did you initially try to see if that would be the thing, that potentially was the thing?

Deepak Ravindran: 15:06

Yeah, so I mean, as soon as I quit, I joined, I knew I couldn't do it on my own. I had no idea of how to start a business. I wouldn't say I'm a natural born entrepreneur. I don't have the skills naturally. So I knew I needed some structure in terms of and a network. I didn't grow up in this country so I didn't have a network to say oh, can you be my mentor, can you tell me how to do a website? How do you market? t c.

Deepak Ravindran: 15:30

So to go on a learning journey, to go on a learning journey, I joined Escape the City, which is essentially an incubator where you go in really nice bunch of people it's like a community but they also give you basic skills. How do you create your own website? How do you test your first idea? How do you attract strangers to an idea to test and give you feedback? And all of that was quite a daunting thing for me, given it's a new country. I have no idea how things work. And so Escape the City, I would say, gave me the initial building blocks which then allowed me to create my own website, allowed me to test some ideas on Facebook and things like that, and really for me, you need to start. And they also asked me this question what would you do? And I didn't know what I was going to start. And they asked me and one of the mentors there, escape the City, asked me this question what would you do if money was not the objective? And that resonated me a lot because I had quit the, for because of the very notion that I'd earned. I was earning a lot of money and that was not giving me contentment. So what would I do when money was not the objective was a great question, which then brought me down to that's what would wake, you know, wake me up on a monday morning and get me out of bed. And so I had this kind of almost this triangle in my head where fitness and exercise and that was always part of my kind of I would do that Money is not the objective.

Deepak Ravindran: 17:06

The second was food. I was always passionate about food. I always liked eating good food, discovering new food and then having a social or environmental impact was Americans third part of the triangle. So I had to do something that was not capitalistic, couldn't be just making money, so it had to be something with impact and purpose. So the first natural thing that I thought, that ticked all the boxes was to become a fitness personal trainer. So I did the personal training course, became a personal trainer because for me, it was a way of inspiring other people to become a healthier version of themselves, and that, for me, was a social goal, if you will. And my first idea was not just a personal trainer, just doing training sessions in the park and things like that, which I did as well.

Deepak Ravindran: 17:59

My first idea was actually to inspire the Indian community, because what I was seeing was, whilst there was a lot of fitness and advice for you know, americans or Brits, so there was a lot of nutritional advice as well that would go along with it. And a lot of that that I was coming across was eat your smoked salmon, eat your cream cheese, and I thought that doesn't resonate. If I'm an Indian, I listen to in India. It doesn't resonate with me at all. Right, I have no idea what smoked salmon and cream cheese is right. What resonates with me is, you know, within the boundaries of my diet, which I love, I'm not going to switch to a Western diet, given that it's all planned. Put it anyway, right. What should I eat which then makes me a healthier version of myself and obviously supplement that with exercise as well, because, yeah, so that was my kind of idea.

Deepak Ravindran: 18:57

And I had Oddbox this kind of Facebook group which I built where I would do monthly challenges, for I ow the How did that for the Global Indian Community, and at some point it was 3,000 members on the Facebook group and they would join me every month, and then I would then do paid consulting sessions to then take people on a journey over this is what you need to eat, this is what you need to exercise, and so on, and that was my first idea really. I mean, what I've learned about fitness as well is that it is quite, it's quite a challenging industry in the sense that it comes down a lot to old habits and behaviors, and to change that it's it takes a much bigger movement. You need to build around it, I think. Um, so I think for me it was a much longer uh hall and I kind of fell out of love with it. Um, I suppose. But I, yeah, I was still doing personal training and things like that. I've done that in the past in the, in the park and things like that.

Amardeep Parmar: 19:59

Yeah, and then oddbox is obviously what a huge amount of work has been in the last few years. Yeah, how did that come about? How did you transition from what you're doing Portugal there to what you're doing today?

Deepak Ravindran: 20:09

Yeah. So whilst I was doing my personal training kind of business and the online fitness community business, my wife and I um, we were traveling. We went to kind of portugal where we come across street markets. If you've been to portugal, you buy produce, you buy meat, you buy fish in the markets and then you, you know, for lunch and things like that, it's fresh produce. There UK came across some really ugly looking but deliciously tasting tomatoes and when we ate the tomatoes we were like this is amazing, and you can never come across this in the local Sainsbury's. What was that? And we went on this kind of learning journey again to say, right, what was happening behind the scenes. scenes? And we came across this whole big . And food waste 1.2 billion tons of food gets wasted every year and for me, there was a bit of a. As an Indian, having seen poverty directly and having seen also the benefits. of eating within seasons as well, for me, coming to the Uk, having food available 365 days a year, throughout all the seasons, your strawberries in winter and things like that and also seeing food being wasted was a bit of a right, didn't align with my values, so we decided to then do a bit of research. We came across a couple of companies in the States running this DTC model of sourcing misshapen and surplus fruit and vegetables directly from growers and then bringing them directly to consumers in a subscription fruit and veg box, and I think for us that was great because naively we thought that was easy.

Deepak Ravindran: 21:55

But but sometimes being naive is the best thing to start, start ?. You wouldn't start if you thought it was .

Deepak Ravindran: 21:59

And and that's the thing, I think, because we were naive, we didn't know the challenges that came with it. And secondly, it also resonated for us because in a way, we thought it's great, because for us we want to have a bigger impact, and food waste was one aspect. But changing behaviors has always been this kind of um, if you notice the, the underlying trend, I like to change behaviors at scale. Right, I want to shift mindsets changed change behaviors, improve habits over. That's the way I look at it and that's why the personal training was along the same lines. And for me, using a box Wonky Veg veg and then taking that to customers and saying, look, this is what a hail-damaged apple looks like, and that would get left on the field and Farmer John would get left with all of that it's a huge crime. So, and this is nothing's with all of that, it's a huge crime. So, and this is nothing's wrong with these things, it's absolutely delicious was a great opportunity to change behaviors, and so that was the catalyst as well. How do we educate our customers as well with not converting that into something else, but something the apple as it is? So, yeah, that was the kind of catalyst for.

Deepak Ravindran: 23:17

Oddbox.

Deepak Ravindran: 23:18

We literally started it in. We live in Balham. So we went to all the local churches and said look, you seem to have a lot of space, why don't you give us some right? And nine out of 10 churches said no, because they've got insurance issues apparently. I don't know, but there was this one church funnily enough, the pastor is a British Indian and he said that's a great idea. If you can give us some fruit and veg for our community, then in return I can give you some space overnight. And that then started off, this whole like we've got the church now where we could store some fresh produce and pack boxes. And then we had a car which we then used for deliveries in the morning on a Saturday morning. So yeah, that's what started Oddbox.

Amardeep Parmar: 24:07

So it's interesting there, because one of the things people struggle with, for example, storage. That's quite an innovative idea to think, okay, maybe we could use the churches. Why did you think of that? What made you think like, have the guts to get in some ways, to go and ask these churches about it?

Deepak Ravindran: 24:19

I think like in Oddbox. We have a phrase we use which is called resourcefulness, and it ties in with sustainability as well. For me, sustainability is Emily not this new Monday term where Friday you've got to go tick this extra box up in the cloud. Emily's is all about being environmentally, socially and financially sustainable, and sustainability is all about making the best use of things that we already have, right? So for me, a church with some space was. This space is going underutilized. What do they do when they're not having congregations or community meetups and things like that? Why can't we utilize that space? And let's talk about a win-win situation here, right? So I think that's the way we looked at it and we kind of have applied that logic to a lot of the decisions we have made in the past, for instance, like we were the first to think about overnight deliveries. And the reason we have made in the past, for instance, like we we were the first to think about overnight deliveries.

Deepak Ravindran: 25:17

And the reason we thought of overnight deliveries actually was not because we um were thinking about sustainability as a as a tick box to tick, but actually emily was working monday to friday, nine to five, because she still had to work. Uh, emily's my wife and she's my co-founder now and we would pack only on a Friday evening or a Saturday morning and it made sense for us to then shift to overnight deliveries on a Friday. And also we realized we got our first drivers on Gumtree. Like this is pre-Uber right. So we would literally advertise and say we need people with cars with a boot, with boxes, to deliver to people.

Deepak Ravindran: 26:05

And we found that a lot of them would either have a mini taxi or they would do something else, like they would work for a DPD or a Yodel. But they had capacity. They had the van sitting idle in the night and there are apparently a number of people in the UK who like to earn a bit of extra money and who don't need that something huge much sleep. And a business which can keep ticking us the boxes so well, that's great, and if . half but you could deliver twice as fast, then that makes a lot of sense. So that was the first model. It really, I mean, we just lucked out on it, we didn't really think of it as a strategy, but then that gave us a first logistics as well. Again, that was about how do you utilize things that are there currently, but then you don't have to reinvent something new. So that was again another example.

Amardeep Parmar: 26:53

So didn't you have this non-Korean banking as well? Right, because there's obviously going to be an element of competitiveness in you. So when you started out at the beginning, did you think, okay, this is the, which is going to scale, I can make this bigger or was it more humble in terms of, like, what was your ambition at the beginning? Was it? This is making a safe and making a decent amount of money.

Deepak Ravindran: 27:14

Just surviving. Look, in the early days there was no plans to make it. Like I was reading all these books, entrepreneurial books. I was reading the Lean Startup book and all of that, but you know all of the I was listening to the Masters of Scale podcast and all that was. That's because we went out here, obviously.

Amardeep Parmar: 27:30

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Deepak Ravindran: 27:31

And you know all of these kind of things, just yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know all of these kind of things, just that, scale right, airbnb and Facebook. But I, you know, I was looking at our business and I'm going, I have no idea how to scale, and it all seems nice to kind of take bits of good bits from there, but there was no real plan to kind of make it big and scale. I think there was only one thing in my head in the early days Failure was not an option, and that was the only kind of affirmation, if you will, I would keep telling myself. And so for me, it was just turning up every day. It's like the way I think of it is going to the gym, it's like you turn up.

Deepak Ravindran: 28:09

Yes, it's good to have an objective and an aim and a goal and all of that, but that alone. And you need to know the why, and so I think the the why is quite clear. The why was never the scale. I want to make this big, I want to be global, or I want to raise x amount of investment, so so that was not the why. The why was more I need to make this successful so that I have you, I have a salary coming through or something like that. Yeah.

Amardeep Parmar: 28:37

When did that start? The pivot of thinking like, actually maybe we could really scale this out and it could become what it is today. How long like was it in the journey of where there was an epiphany moment, or was it more just over time and just like this makes sense, maybe we could really, because also by growing as you have, you're making a bigger impact for sustainability and also, as you said, behavioral change, right.

Deepak Ravindran: 28:56

I think it would be two years in. Two years in we had about probably 1,500 customers and we started building a wait list. So we were literally in South London and we started building a wait list in North London and East London and we said look, we're building a wait list here. When we were speaking to customers, a number of them said we really love this idea, really love what you're doing. So when we started hearing from customers, where you're starting to affect their lives in a very positive way is when you realize maybe there is something here, maybe there is something here. And that's when Emily quit her job and when we decided to go raise investment. So the I think the first two years we bootstrapped. That was pretty hard because we're not paying ourselves a salary, we were not going on holidays, so two and a half years, I think. And then we said what we now? We need to go hit the road now and get some impact angels, and we also did a crowdfunding as well to kind of top it up.

Deepak Ravindran: 30:02

Um, that's when it started to get really serious, because the moment you start taking someone else's money is when you go right, okay, now it, you need to run it. People ask you all sorts of questions about your business plan and your balance sheet and all of that, whereas previously, before that right, I haven't thought about a business plan. We haven't thought about uh. I mean we were finance people so we understood we're running a tight ship, but we're not really thought about the future.

Amardeep Parmar: 30:27

What do you think was about the vision of that point, then able to get that first round of investment?

Amardeep Parmar: 30:31

Like, how did you? What really made you stand out?

Deepak Ravindran: 30:34

Y our vision. I suppose some people have this vision. They're probably natural entrepreneurs. Some people some people like me and my wife we need to speak to a lot of people and the more we speak to people, the more you pitch your idea.

Deepak Ravindran: 30:48

I think there's this kind of old saying right, don't pitch your idea, be careful about who you speak to. I think that's quite a the wrong thing to do. As you all know, it's one person idea, nine, 10% execution. So the more you pitch your idea to people, the more you talk about these things that you could do in the future, the more you get challenged on it. And it feels hard, right, because it's personal. It feels like a personal kind of attack on you.

Deepak Ravindran: 31:12

But actually these are good things, good challenges to have from people who say, but what about that? Have you thought about that? Or have you thought about this? And I think that becomes really exciting because and I think there are some conversations you have with some people who sometimes are more excited than you are about your idea and they say, oh, you could do this, you could do that, and you go oh, you could do this, you could do that, and you go, oh, yeah, you know what I've been thinking about this in a really small way and really, if I think about this, we could really make this big. We could make it nationwide, we could make it Europe-wide. I think that's when all minds started switching into there's a bigger vision for this. Let's go raise money, let's go really scale this.

Amardeep Parmar: 31:50

How has that transition from being that bootstrapped, scrappy founder to using churches doing all these different things you could to run a tight ship to? Now you've got investment in and obviously when investment comes in, that means you've got to start scaling because that's what the investors want. How's that mindset shift for you as a person running that company to have to change gears like that?

Deepak Ravindran: 32:16

Yeah, it's a hard one really. I think with venture-backed founder. Obviously you get cash, but along with it comes good advice, some good, some bad, some, like you know. You know helter skelter kind of advice as well. I think you start becoming a more organized kind of outfit. You start having an HR person and you start having, you know, you start investing in your organizational hierarchy and you know who do you need different departments and so on. Otherwise it's organically growing.

Deepak Ravindran: 32:43

Oh, I need to kind of fix that, let's bring in a marketing person, I need to fix this, let's bring in an operations person, and so on. I think with investors that rigor comes into play. The second financially, we've always had a good rigor because we're finance people. So I think that's the other rigor. When they start and the investors start poking, asking questions like even when you go on a roadshow, investors ask you tricky questions about your churn or about the specific metric which you never want to kind of discuss because you're like I don't want to discuss that, but you have to because that's what talking to investors does, because they poke holes.

Deepak Ravindran: 33:25

And then you know you also have this kind of risk mindset. Right, investors talk about risk and how you manage that risk. So, whereas I think to a large degree we were like just going with the flow, you live for the week or for the month. So I think that again you know you start thinking about risk and you have a risk register now and things like that. But they also kind of keep pushing you on growth and vision, which is great.

Deepak Ravindran: 33:50

Um, so I think the evolution of a founder, I found I found it quite challenging, to be frank, in terms of a. You start then having board meetings where you are the. The biggest shift I found, especially when you bring sort of especially when you bring it's not angel investors, when you bring in institutional investors is you go from a husband and wife business, which is what the business is, to a business which is funded by VCs, where you're an employee. Now, that is a transition which is really hard. It's easy for people to make. It's really hard for me to make, given that the reason I quit my job in banking was not to be an employee for someone, right, I don't want to work for someone, but when you are working for someone, you have a boss, you have a boat to report into. Then you start questioning is that the right thing to do? Actually, should we have taken this amount of money and then sold our souls to the devil I won't say the devil, but it's all good people, investors but sold our souls to someone, and I think that's a big switch to make and I think I've struggled with the whole.

Deepak Ravindran: 35:02

I need to explain my role. I need to explain these decisions to someone. The other bit I've struggled with is as you scale from like a five member team where it's like really like a close knit team family. You're in the trenches doing stuff, you are doing the stuff along with them, you're living the ups and downs with them, to this, like a couple of years ago, we were a hundred people team and that becomes quite hard because sometimes you don't even know people who have joined you in the last month, so it's quite embarrassing. But then you have people trouble. Right, people are your biggest, the team is your biggest asset, but they also bring in the biggest challenges as well. That becomes quite challenging as well in terms of managing a team and I challenges as well that becomes quite challenging as well in terms of managing a team, and I've always found that bit quite challenging.

Amardeep Parmar: 35:51

So I feel like there's so much more we could talk about, so we might have to go get it back here again in the future.

Amardeep Parmar: 35:56

But before we go into quick questions, I'd love to share what's been the biggest wins of Oddbox so far. Like you, obviously, you raised that first round. We've done further since then. Can you tell us like, where are you today?

Deepak Ravindran: 36:05

Yeah, so today, just to give you some numbers, we've delivered about 8 million boxes to people across the UK. We are a B Corp, you know the lowest score is 80 and we've got 97, so we've done really well in the sustainability aspect. And then in terms of investment rates is another thing that people get asked all the time.

Deepak Ravindran: 36:28

We've raised about 25 million pounds to date so far from investors.

Amardeep Parmar: 36:32

And then, obviously, you're still going, and there's a bigger dream to come. So what do you hope to say in, say, five years time, 10 years time? We're sitting here opposite each other, and you. I asked you a question again of what's been the biggest wins. What do you think you can say?

Deepak Ravindran: 36:46

look, I think, if we can um, the ultimate aim is to um change behaviors of a million people, um, especially about food and where food comes from and food waste. If you're able to do that over the next five years, I'd be really pleased. Um, and yeah, you know, and I hope oddbox in five years' time is certainly across the UK but also in at least one mainland EU country by then.

Amardeep Parmar: 37:12

So we have to get to a quick five questions now because of time. So first question who are three British Asians you think are doing incredible work and you love to shout them out today?

Deepak Ravindran: 37:20

So the first person I'd like to shout out is Radha Vyas from Flashback. Radha and Lee are close friends, but also Flashback is a great travel business and they've gone through massive ups and downs in the last few years, especially since COVID. It's a travel business, but Radha is a British Asian, she kind of grew up in this country, but, yeah, she's a very inspirational female founder. And then the second one is Sai Lakshmi. He's the current CEO and founder of a car insurance company called Caura. He used to be the CEO and founder of Lloyd's Direct, which is called Soul. Yeah, again, I met Sai through an entrepreneur's network called ICE. And yeah, again, Sai, very smart, inspirational founder. So, yeah, surely I'm sure people benefit having him here. And then the third person is a lady called Sathya, again, whom I met through the ice network, originally Canadian but now Canadian, indian and then now in the UK now, and so she runs a company called Piper. So, again, super inspirational female founder and, yeah, very kind of down to earth human as well.

Deepak Ravindran: 38:38

Good to have on the podcast, yeah.

Amardeep Parmar: 38:39

So we've had Radha and Sathya before and like, basically they're both amazing and hopefully meet Sai someday as well. And if people want to learn more about you and what you're up to, and. Oddbox, where do they need to go to?

Deepak Ravindran: 38:50

Yeah, look, oddbox. co. uk is the website and @oddbox, LDN is the social handle, so that's the best place to reach out to or look into.

Amardeep Parmar: 39:01

And is there anything that you need help with right now or Oddbox needs help with?

Deepak Ravindran: 39:05

Join the mission, if you uh, if you can uh, to fight food waste. Um, um, the one thing to say is we are looking to launch or we're moving from d to c. We're doing d to c, but we're also kind of looking to launch into retail with our own branded um cpgs. So that's something to look out for. Um, so it'd be hopefully fingers crossed launching in Ocado in September. So if you are shopping in Ocado, go and get your hands on some awesome, so thanks so much for coming on today.

Amardeep Parmar: 39:31

Have you got any final words for the audience?

Deepak Ravindran: 39:32

No, I think, look, I mean no final words. Thank you for the opportunity and it's like I've always thought that it's great what you terms of changing behaviours and mindsets about entrepreneurship, but also that there are alternate careers to being an engineer or a doctor or an investment banker. So I think it's great what you're doing in terms of moving those you know, unshackling people and kind of changing behaviours. So thank you for that.

‍