BABOYOT with Kartik Das from Doosra: Building Repeatable Revenue Without Big Retail

 
 

(Listen on Apple or Spotify. Full transcript below.)

While most founders obsess over store count, Kartik Das, Founder of Doosra is building repeatable revenue systems. Rather than chasing new accounts Kartik focused on just 15 core retail partners and developed a multi-channel strategy that generates predictable cash flow.

Sarah and Kartik dive deep into Doosra’s financial playbook: the 90-day cash flow planning system that breaks large expenses into daily decision points, strategic use of 0% APR credit cards for working capital, and community crowdfunding. Discover why Kartik deliberately turned down major retail opportunities and how he validates market demand through methodical testing rather than expensive guesswork.

From creative funding solutions to building systems that scale without burning cash, this episode delivers financial insights food entrepreneurs can use to build financially sustainable businesses.

Learn more about Doosra

Website: www.eatdoosra.com

Instagram:@eatdoosra

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Episode Timeline

00:00 Introduction to Good Food CFO Podcast

11:33 The Launch of Doosra: A Unique Snack Company

12:11 Kartik Das: Founder Insights and Brand Philosophy

19:10 Growth Strategies: Methodical vs. Rapid Expansion

35:02 Financial Strategies: Cash Flow Management

50:14 Balancing Growth and Customer Relationships

Full Episode Transcript

You're listening to the Good Food CFO podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Delevan, and with us as always is our producer, Chelsea. Hey, Chelsea.

Hey, Sarah. We have a really good BABOYOT episode coming up today, but I want to start things off talking about the episode that we actually just came out with a couple of weeks ago. Okay. Two weeks ago, we released an episode where you announced the coming of the Good Food CFO software.

I have to say that since then it has been a whirlwind of excitement, of support, of talking with our peers and our community and a lot of events since then. I want to remind everyone listening or tell you if you're listening and you're not on our mailing list, maybe you don't know this, but we've been doing previews of the software for our members on Substack.

That has been really exciting because I know that the feedback that we've gotten so far has been basically everything that we wanted to hear. Yeah. Better than we could have even imagined. Yeah. To give a sense of what the preview is, is essentially you get to see what the software looks like. You get to see all of the components of the software.

So we're not walking through this is exactly how you use it, but more so this is what it does. And this is what you're going to be able to do and to see and to achieve with this financial strategy software. And yeah, I think I keep playing over and over in my head the one bit of feedback we got. And this is not an exact quote, but it was sort of like a wow, wow, wow, wow. You know, this doesn't exist.

anywhere else. I've been working with great financial people over the last few years, but they don't have anything like this. It's like, same, right? I consider myself to be a great financial person and I haven't had this either and I wanted this and we need this and that's exactly why we created it. Yeah, all of the feedback we've gotten so far has been amazing. We want

our members and anyone who's interested to come and see the preview, get a taste of what this tool can do, get on our wait list. And the other thing we're doing, in addition to these events, we're gearing up to start doing some free courses, or I'm going to call it like a workshop for our members. And this is to help you make the most of the software. So something we've talked about

a number of times here on the podcast. We've done newsletters about it. We've done sort of like virtual workshops, if you will, where like we would drip step-by-step content weekly in our newsletters. But we're going to do it in real life. That is customizing your profit and loss statement. The more customized you have your P &L to bring into the software, the more powerful outcomes you can create.

within the software. So we want everybody to be ready to go when this launches in a couple of weeks. So we're offering this, again, totally free course for our members. I think we're going to offer it two or three times to try to hit everybody's schedule and when it's best for them. That'll be inside the membership on Substack. You can see all of those dates. We'll definitely let you know in the newsletter as well. And I'm excited to do this

course live with folks for the first time after all of these years of talking about it, communicating about it, answering questions about it. We'll get to do it live. People can bring their PNLs to the course. We're going to look at it in real time. It's going to be really exciting. Okay, great. That was going to be my question is like, should members be bringing their PNL? Like is it going to be that kind of a workshop where you're just going to talk through it and answer questions and look at things and…

Yeah, well, basically we'll give you the, here's the idea, right? We want the revenue section of our P &L to be separated by sales channel, for example. And then we're going to walk through the why and the how, and then we'll look at examples. So if you're like, okay, Sarah, here's what mine looks like now. Here are the channels I sell in. Confirm for me, this is how it should be broken down.

I can confirm that for you. And then we'll also talk about the next steps to get those changes implemented. It's an easy process, but it's just one where you have to carve out a little bit of time to think through the changes and then communicate them to your bookkeeper or whomever is doing your books for you. So yeah, really interactive, really productive, which is why I think it's more of like a workshop than a course, because we're actually going to be digging in together. Yeah, doing the work. And then lastly, Sarah, we also have...

a members only episode coming up. If you've been listening along, we've had a whole series of member only episodes this summer talking about the work that we've been doing behind the scenes. this one, we're going to be actually diving into some real numbers, some investments on what it took to bring this software to life. Yeah, this was a suggestion by a client actually and community member. And he

He was like, I think you should do an episode on the investment and the time and what it looks like to build the software. Turns out that he worked in software in a past life before becoming co-founder of the food business. I thought, you know what, if you think this is interesting, I'm sure that other people will find it interesting as well. I've learned a lot in this process. It keeps kind of blowing my mind every time I think about the fact that I've gone from

consultant to tech founder. I have these now sort two titles and there's so much I've learned as a tech founder in terms of what you can do, how much it costs to do certain things, how you have to tiptoe into building that ultimate tool that you want to build and figuring out how do we make something that is going to be really impactful from day one while staying in budget.

and being smart about how we build. It's very aligned with how we talk about building food businesses, but just sort of in another industry, if you will. Right? Yeah. Or with another perspective. Yeah. And so I thought, you know what, as always, if one person is interested in it, there's probably a couple other people who were interested as well. So we're going to dive into that and just kind of share a little bit more of what it has looked like from the financial side and just like the work side of building software for those who are interested. Yeah.

And so all of that exciting stuff is going to be happening in our membership, which you can learn more about if you want by going to our website, the goodfoodscfo.com and clicking on membership. Now, Sarah, I teased that this was a Bobby Yacht episode and today we are going to get to hear your conversation with Kartik Das, the founder of and snack maker at Doosra. I love following up.

Kartik's Instagrams. They just recently made over 400 pounds of Doosra for food service. It's really fun. You get to see a nice behind the scenes with him and his team. Yeah, we have sort of a funny meat cute, if you will. I was at Expo West, as many of you may know, earlier this year. Ali Ball and I sort of ran into each other moments after I arrived on the Expo floor. She said, hey, Kartik from Doosra,

wants to meet you, he's at this table, like make sure you go by and meet him." I was like, okay, great. So it wasn't his table, but he was helping out another brand. And so eventually over the course of the day, I landed over at the table that he was at and he was not there.

So I talked to the other founders over there. said, please tell Kartik that I am here and I'd love to connect with him. So then we ended up connecting over Instagram and we had a lovely conversation, just like a getting to know you. And in that conversation, he shared so many insights into how he's building Doosra and very much like how he's doing it.

on his own terms and the ways that he's building it. Of course, I'm sitting there and I'm taking it all in and I said to him, you have to be on the podcast. They think you're an inspiration to building a business on your own terms and continually, right? We need founders to hear these different stories. I think the other really important thing here too is that Kartik is a, as he calls it, a third culture kid. He's got backgrounds in

India, Singapore, London, and New York. He's worked in banking, logistics, and food. He's got many backgrounds, many experiences, and he's created Doosra as a way of showcasing a lesser-known part of Indian food culture. I think in our conversation, he mentions everyone knows tikka masala, but nobody knows these sweet and savory and dare I say a little funky, and I love funky

snack that people in India love. And so that's what he's creating. so it's almost like extra special because he's bringing something from his heritage. He's bringing something that he loves to eat. He's introducing much of the United States to this food that they're unfamiliar with, and he's doing it on his own terms. And so I just found him to be a really inspiring and interesting

founder and I'm so glad that he agreed to sit down and chat with us and get recorded. Well done. Yeah. I think on the topic of like introducing these flavors, if you will, right, to the American palette, because I think that is, you're right, that is what he's doing. One of the things that you guys talked about that I found so interesting was the diversification in his channel strategy, right?

one of the things he specifically talks about is being in corporate pantry sales. Yeah. And I thought that was so interesting. I mean, among the like food service and markets and all the other channels that he's in, but that one really spoke to me because he talked about wanting to find the ways or the channels in which he could get in front of customers, find his customer in a way that is like the lowest risk for the customer.

Yeah. I think you're going to risk as a common thread and him sort of analyzing the risk, understanding the risk, and then making decisions with that in mind throughout the conversation. And without going into too much detail and giving too much away here, I think you're going to find it in the channels that he has chosen. I think you're going to find it in the way he prioritizes cash flow.

and margin. think you're going to find it in the way that he utilizes his credit cards. I think you're going to find it in the way that he grows his business, right? It really is a common thread where I think and I'm just kind of reflecting on this now as you bring this up, where he's saying, how do I do this for Doosra and for our customer in the least expensive, least risky way? Yeah.

And not to say like in the cheapest, but like in the least financially risky way. And how do I test, iterate, prove, and repeat, which I love. Yeah, it was one of the things I really loved about the conversation. And it does mirror back to the conversation that you had with Ilay from Bezi, which was, and I think he even says it in the episode, the idea of testing and failing when it won't cost you as much.

Yeah. I think there's so much for founders to take away from my combo with Kartik. I think we are ready to jump right in. What do you think, Chelsea? Yeah, let's do it.

Want to take advantage of all the things we talked about at the beginning of this episode? Then become a BABOYOT member. When you become a member, you'll unlock access to our software previews, our free webinars in September. And as a BABOYOT member, you'll also get access to your own members only podcast link, beta testing the software before it launches. And if you become an annual member, you will receive a 10 % discount on all tools and resources.

that includes the software and CFO office hours. Become a member now by visiting the goodfoodcfo.com/baboyot. That's B-A-B-O-Y-O-T. And now back to the show.

Kardik, welcome to the podcast.

Hi Sarah, thanks. So glad to be here.

I'm really excited to learn more about Doosra and your approach to starting and running and growing your business. But before we get into all of the meaty stuff, will you tell our listeners a little bit about your brand?

Yeah, so I run a snack company called Doosra. Now, Doosra in Hindi or Urdu means different or other. And that sort of guides the way we approach Indian food, right? We make snacks that are a little crispy, a little crunchy, a little savory, a little salty. And it's a very big part of South Asian cuisine in general. If you come into somebody's house, they're offering usually something to drink and a little salty snack. those drinks are usually chai, and chai is made into every shelf.

and every pantry across the country, but the snacks haven't made it. I think of Chai as Batman and the snack was Robin. You want to bring Robin to the game. So that's what we do. I'm a third culture kid. And so my lived experience is through a range of different food cultures, a range of different flavors. So Doosra is in its essence, an Indian snack company, but you will find elements in our snacks that are quite, quite different, hence the name Doosra.

Yeah, I love that. I love to hear the background of the name and the why of a brand. So thank you for sharing that. Give us a little bit of insight into where you are as a brand right now in terms of how many stores you're in, how you're selling your product, what channels you're in, and a little bit of that kind of info. Sure.

So when I started this business, I had an idea that food margins weren't great, but I don't think I really understood the intricacies of the way the system is built here. But I knew that in order to build, there's two real ways we'd approach it. One is dive all into one channel, or the second is to build three or four different avenues for us to make money and to make sales. And because we've got a product that's quite different traded that requires a lot of explanation,

It could fit into your life quite easily, but if you don't know what the flavors are, you're going to be hesitant. So we decided to do a few things. We've got an independent store channel. So we're in just under 50 stores, I believe. They change up and down here and there. We've got a little bit of dark to consumer. We do a decent amount of conventions and markets. We started on farmers markets, but now we like to do larger buying conventions. And then we're standing up small food service arm where we're selling our snacks in.

four pound bulk bags to some bars who have it their bar menus and restaurants who are having on their dessert menu. And now we're working on the corporate pantry side of things to get some larger tech organizations to make the snacks of choice in those countries.

So it sounds like these decisions for which channels to launch in and to grow into is sort of a mix of like, how can we best communicate and help the potential customer know what this product is and how it can fit into their life, their restaurant, their company, but also margins and choosing wisely.

You're trying to have something that's a little blended, But think of it from your perspective. If you were offered something that's a little different, something that's a little new, naturally there's a bit of risk aversiveness to try a product for the first time and spend cash for the first time, right? So trying to find spots where you can try it with the lowest amount of risk and understand what you're about to get. And then we believe strongly enough in our product that if we're for you, that conversion is quite high.

But we'd rather do that in places where, you if I'm offering you a sample with a glass of wine at a happy hour, you're like, well, what's the worst that can happen? I'm going try a couple of bits. And then if I like it, great. So we're trying to find different ways to do that. that corporate pantry element, where most of those folks get those snacks for free, right? That's no aversion to trial. You can always look at something else if you don't like it. And so that's what we're trying to do. But like you said, from a margin perspective,

In order to get into traditional retail here, as you've mentioned the podcast quite a bit, there's a decent amount of capital required to play in those spaces. And we know at some point we'd like to pursue that, but we'd like to build our own cash bubble before we go there. having cash upfront at markets and events with larger margins and with the corporate food service side of things, again, you're moving a decent amount of product as inventory turnover in a good way.

and that's Cache coming in. So it's a bit of both.

Yeah. I love when founders share the very strategic elements of how they're choosing their customers and their channels is I think sometimes, especially early days and sort of from the outside of the industry, there's a mindset or an understanding that like there's one way to grow in, in food, right? And that's get into big retail. And this is the way it

I'm making air quotes for those who aren't watching on YouTube. Like this is the way it's done. And you know what I mean? And so I think, you know, it's so awesome to hear. And there's several, you know, founders who've come on the show at this point and said, we're really thinking about this strategically. And, you know, I'm really pinpointing on something you just said, which is like cash is important. And we want to have a cash cushion. We want to have a bit of a cash runway. We don't want to, and I'm paraphrasing, you know, jump into

a channel where it's going to be very cash intensive and we don't have the cash or it's not generating cash for us in a certain time frame.

Yeah. And I think something that resonated when I first started listening to you, so I'm going to shout out to Ash, Dr. Raju from Ajaswara, you actually brought me to the Good Food CFO podcast a while back. I think the focus in the industry here is, I for at least the focus for me is rather, at the end of the day, I'm building a business, right? And so there are elements that go into that. And, you know, you go back to your old school, like,

MBA, intro classes, like there are four different types of product lines, right? Like one is your cash cow and you've got things like that. so things that someone like me has to consider is that, are there avenues or different types of sale channels that might not be sexy, that might not be what CBG media or folks who are talking about on trend value, but

It allows me to then build my business in a way that I think will make sense. And I used to work in finance a long time ago and one of these companies, I don't know what I don't know is like a very important way of approaching anything. And so I can only operate in the way that I know and I'm learning things, but some of those pathways have a lot of prerequisites for you to follow down that path that we're just not equipped with yet.

Yeah, I there's two topics that I want to talk about. I don't know which avenue to go down first. I'm going to go first with like your growth philosophy, because I know that you took some time to validate market demand for your product. And I want to I want to talk about that approach and what you call repeatable methodical growth versus rapid expansion. So can you share a little bit about

sort of that testing period and then what you mean by repeatable methodical growth.

Sure. mean, to be completely honest, I think we're still testing and we're going to be continually testing. But when I started the business, right, I literally bought craft bags off Amazon, stuck some stickers on it and went to a farmer's market to sell. Because I knew the product tasted good. I needed to know if other folks thought the same and whether they would buy. Right. That was the first step. And so we did that for three, four months. People liked the product. They were like, the branding is complete nonsense. I'm like, it's a brown paper bag with some stickers on it. I understand.

And so that's when we made the first shift. first, the name was different, right? So then we coined the name Doosra because it meant a lot, not just in describing the product, but reflecting me as a founder. And then we said, okay, now we've got a bag that could stand on a shelf. Let's go to the three different types of markets we think this brand will resonate with. And so my hypothesis was we've got first folks who like Indian food, right?

and are open to trying a different form factor of Indian food. Because you see all the chives and the spices and the simmer sauces, but you don't see snacks in outside Indian stores. The second was anybody whose first generation South Asian American, right? So their parents had snack brands that they related to, but they're sort of in a different space. So that was that second group. And the third was, you know, your very classic millennial female from

XH to XH, right? So those are the three stores we said, okay, we're going to go pursue. So let's double down. Let's see if that hypothesis is true, because I don't have the ability to acquire data. I tried to consume your presence was a little challenging. And also we've got a chocolate product. So in the summer, it's quite difficult to really push that and still make money. And we did that. And we very quickly realized that my best, highest converting audience was the folks who liked Indian food, but didn't live in cities, who live in suburbs, who couldn't get access to these things on a regular basis.

I wouldn't have expected that the people who buying the most were above 50. Right. It was Caucasian women, 50 and above who were hosting, who were finding better for you products to use throughout their day. Something for breakfast, something for lunch, something for a happy hour. And so we, okay, that's, that's, it's validating some things there. So we learned a few things and we said, let's look for more of those types of stores because we know that if we sample and we talk to that audience,

They will continue to buy. And those are the best word of mouth customers because they're often sharing things. So we did that. And then we said, okay, we're also going to double down on this larger Asian American audience because when we sampled with them, it was also resonating. Right. So we're in stores like Spice Walla, which resonates to folks who enjoy API products in New York. We're at Pearl River Mart for folks who are looking for API products. So that doubled down there. So we did this for two years. Right.

Alongside that, we did events, chocolate shows, places where you're doing like beverage sales, like wine and whiskey shows and where to snack there, right? So things like that. And people found themselves gravitating to us in ways where we didn't even mention Indian. The idea was just flavor and people enjoyed the flavor. And so now we got through two years. People love the product. We exhibited Fancy Food last year and everybody was like the distributors, the retailers, the buyers were like, product is great. Packaging won't survive on shop.

And I think we kind of knew that we needed to do a version two, but we didn't want to rush into it. And so we said, two years, we've learned, let's now change that, right? So three weeks ago, we exhibited Fancy Food again and we made the bag smaller. So we said, okay, people want to try this for the first time, but the six ounce bag is too much of a price barrier to try for the first time. So let's make it smaller. People walking past the bag have no idea what it is. So we updated our branding, which we invested in.

So far, the response has been really, good. So now we know we can actually try and go sell. So the next stage of growth now is over the next, call it 18 months, right, so the six months and then all 2026 is to test if more people are going to pick it up without us being there, without us being able to tell that story because not the packaging should tell the story. We've been fortunate enough to get some learned media along the way that should back this up.

Right.

to look for us to validate that purchase when they see us on the shelf. And it's going to be the same. We're going to try and avoid any major retail. We're going to double down independence. We're going to build that niche and build these ancillary business, ancillary channels of food service. kind of, I don't like to make the comparison because we're nowhere near capitalized or we're nowhere near as cool as someone like Raza, but suddenly you saw them everywhere and you had no idea what it was as a start. And so for me, it's, want people to see us in places.

and start getting inquisitive. And that's what these different channels do for us.

Yeah.

To your point, marketing matters. Branding matters, right? And I think that when I think about your brand, I think about longevity. I think about growth like this over time. And maybe there'll be a bigger curve up at some point, right? I hope you see that. But I think there's a difference between something that becomes a big trend.

Right. The risk that that has is like, when is the next big olive oil trend going to come or the next big something that can kind of, you know, wipe that out versus something like yours, which is again, going back to repeatable, repeatable methodical growth. And I think that's, you know, I love this idea of we're testing these things out. I've really become a fan of this idea of like failure is an option and saying, okay, we're going to test these three.

markets, these three audiences, these three consumers. I have a hypothesis, right? Having a hypothesis inherently means I'm testing this out to see if I'm wrong or right about my thoughts, right? And there's so much value in that. think especially in today's world where we as founders are believing that we have to get everything right, right? Like the first time we do something, it's got to be right. And that's just not realistic.

You know, and you're also, think, working to eliminate the randomness, right? Like there is randomness in someone coming to buy your product every once in a while, right? There is going to be someone who's outside of your quote unquote target audience or your avatar who buys your product, right? But maybe that's not the repeatable bit. So really understanding who is my consumer. How do I speak to them?

Where do they shop? Where can I find them? And then also understanding, because this is the other thing I'm hearing, understanding the learning curve about your product and asking yourself the question and then testing out and hypothesizing the channels in which you can create a low barrier to trial, I just think is really smart. So these are all really, I think, intelligent ways of approaching and hypothesizing about your business to test it.

Because you can fail a lot quicker doing this, and a lot less expensively.

When you first asked where we were, I think a lot of times the question is how many stores you're in. We've never gone past 50 stores. We've been doing this for two years. Admittedly, we're a very, very small business. think people think we're lot bigger than we are. I'll pat myself on the back, we'll move on. I know we're small. I am very upfront with folks when they say, we'd love to see you here or you should do this or do that. It's like, we can't. If we were to go raise a...

a chunk of capital, maybe that's possible, but is that A, the best use of any of cash in general, regardless of whose it is, is that the best use of building a relationship with someone who's going to give you capital, and then you're not able to use it in an effective way. so that risks gaining more capital down the road. We still don't know, right, whether this works, but I would rather, I would rather grow like this, as long as there's a little bit of an incline.

Yeah. Knowing that my cost of failure is low. I am building this business so that I don't have to work another job in my life. I can do this, you know, for as long as I need to. I'm not looking for a crazy exit. I'm not looking to build a hundred million dollar company. If you know in five or seven years, we have a $10 million company that

We hire 10 people, we can feed them, we can take care of them and I can live a comfortable enough life. That's great. And so I also understand that I am privileged to be able to do that because I have a, I say I have one investor and that's my wife, right? And I have a 401k. And we're able to do this because, we don't have a very fancy lifestyle, but we're able to keep the lights on. We've got food on the table and I can do this in a slow, steady way where

If we get those repeatable systems where if I get 100 stores that are ordering from me every two weeks on a regular enough cadence, I don't need a thousand stores. And there are folks who've started way after me who are way ahead of me. And it's kudos to them because they're doing incredible stuff. But this is the way that I'm going to do it. And at some point, if we have all those things checked off, then we can take capital and then we can grow in a meaningful way.

Yeah, I am so like keyed into this idea of repeatable and I want to just stay on the topic briefly because I'm thinking about, you know, it's it's the time of year for me and my work where we're looking at, you know, discounts, bundles, promotions for the holidays. We're being strategic, you know, financially about who we can hire and what we can spend not for not for the good food CFO, but for our clients. Right. And that's what we're looking at. We're going to be gearing up for office hours again in September to help

you know, other folks in the industry do this. And as part of the process, right, we're forecasting what do our Q4 sales look like and what do the sales look like, you know, in each channel and the number of founders that struggle to either make a forecast for the, for, you know, October, November, December, or they make a forecast and then they struggle to hit the numbers. It's the majority, right? Those two categories.

are the majority of folks that we work with. And I think the reason both of those things exist is because they lack that repeatable sales. They may have had a holiday where someone came in last year and bought a bunch of products, but they don't have another one of those for this year lined up.

Yeah, I think that's why I say I never talk about store count because I've got 20 stores that I know are going to keep ordering from me. And those are the relationships I'm building. And so with them, we are constantly figuring out, OK, we're bringing product in. What is the cadence in which we need to send someone out there to demo? What is the cadence in which we just send them a box of samples and they sample on their own? What is the cadence in which we can do an event or a collaboration with them?

So we keep that going. So at that point, I'm not worried. So last year, what I did is I looked at all the stores we were in and I looked at the top 15. The top 15 stores, because that's kind of where the natural break ended up being in volume, and said, OK, these are the only 15 stores that matter to me. The rest, if they order a grain, that's gravy. But if these 15 stores, I need to keep and I need to grow. Because if I double the revenue we get from these 15 stores, the other 35 don't matter.

Right?

Right. And it sounds a little callous to say, but, uh, and I will still extend the service to those 35 stores. And as long as they're interested in growing the business, we will do that. But I know these 15 will stick and will grow. And then that is, and if we get into a rhythm over the course of six months where I can say, this is a plugin play, I can go to another store, the same size and the same demographic and said, we've done it here. So let's try and do the same thing here. And it's going, and then I can tell them with confidence as a start, we might be selling two units.

a week, but if we keep doing this over the course of six months, in month eight and month nine, we can get to a point where we're selling 10 units a week, and then it makes sense for you and it makes sense for me.

Yeah, this is so powerful. it's like, you said it's the unsexy work, right? But it's reviewing, it's note taking, it's understanding that, OK, I believe, again, I'm hypothesizing if I do a demo right now, this is what the result is going to be. Like you said, if I send a package of samples there and they do the sampling, this is what the result is going to be. That's repeatable. It's predictable.

And then the confidence that you bring to every new store that you open with when you say, here's what we're probably going to start. This is what we're going to do. These are the results you could see. Here's the data to back that up. They're like, okay, amazing. What an awesome partner you are, number one. And number two, when it comes to forecasting and looking ahead and saying, okay, I want to grow maybe 5 % this year. Maybe I want to grow 10 % in my revenue this year. What does that equal? That might equal

I'm obviously making up numbers here that might equal five more stores that look just like this 15. Okay. That's doable. Right. You can break that down into actionable steps to find those right stores, to get onboarded with those stores and then to execute on those sales. And I think that that's, that is the work of a founder is to figure out who is your customer, where are they, and then how do you make this a science?

as much as you possibly can.

Yes. And I think the challenge with doing that is keeping your blinders on. Because everything else in the industry, if you're plugged into the industry, it's how many stores are growing, how you're doing all that. I mean, I'll be honest, I'm human, right? At some point that gets me where it's like, okay, am I doing this wrong? Do I question myself? I think if

Have you read Unreasonable Hospitality? It's a by Will Gadara. It's a phenomenal book. He talks about how every business is a hospitality business. So I come from a hospitality background and how you treat everybody you work with is important, right? And so I don't want to take on anyone that I can't treat well. And that's from labor. That's the reason that we are still a one person business. I still pack every bag we've ever sold because

I want to be able to support folks if I do hire them. The same way that if I bring on a retail partner, retail is a really tough business. It's probably a lot harder than what I do. And there are probably 50 to 100 people every day for independent stores reaching out to them. So it's how do I make your life as easy as possible to support me to support you? that's not.

It's not always going to be smith sailing. so part of it is building that repeatable business, but part of it is building this unscalable piece that allows me to build that repeatable business. Right. And so that's what those markets come in. That's where these random things that don't might be one offs, but unfortunately that's a reality to keep this business going if I'm not taking capital. Right. And so as where we are right now is where resource constraint is that I am the resource. And so we're trying to figure out how to manage these things in a way where we can sort of

Yeah.

The goal for the rest of year is just to build a bit of a cash buffer so that in 2026, we can then double down and say, okay, now we have capital to allocate to whether that's hiring one person on a fractional basis or something, or to commit to these 10 stores and sink in capital upfront knowing that in six months we're gonna get a return. So repeatable is important, but I think building repeatable

is resource training if there's nothing else.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's a great point to make. That's that's a really great point. I want to dive into your financial strategy. You're talking about creating that cash buffer. I know that you also use a 90 day cash flow like plan as a core metric for your business. You know, I want to talk about that, like how you how you look at that. But let's go back sort of to the beginning of the business again, because you did get some initial funding.

Can you talk about like how you went about that? What platforms you used and what that looked like for Doosra?

So when I started, I knew that I had a little bit of saved capital that I could put into the business, but I didn't want that to be the only capital we went into the business with. And part of the ethos of what we do as a business is we care about the people we work with. So if I was going to raise any sort of capital, I wanted to be able to give back more to the folks who were helping me. So there's a platform called New Market, that's N-U-M-A-R-K-E-T, and they predominantly support hospitality businesses, but it's a community crowdfunding platform.

So for example, if I had a campaign and you contributed $100 to it, you would get $120 to Doosra in credit spread over six months. So it would sort of vest, right? So for me, I was like, okay, I'm giving more to folks who are giving than they're giving to me. I keep them interested in the business for a course of six months so they're brought in. And it gives me the upfront capital to be able to deploy. And that cost of 20 % is something that I can deal with because if we sell the product we want to, that margin will cover.

that delta. So that's how we started. And then after that, I then realized how capital intensive the business was and said, okay, we need a little more liquidity. I could either put a bit more of my savings or I could find a way to float credit in a way that makes sense. So then I said, okay, let's look at 0 % APR credit cards, right? In my personal life as well, we don't spend money we don't have, but that gave me cashflow buffers. so

we ended up getting a first 0 % APR credit card about a month after we launched. And that helped us cover the cash, the initial expense of packaging, initial inventory, things along those lines. And my thought process was, can I find three of those? And can I then stagger them basically every eight months? So I knew what they were. I applied for the first one when we started. When we got to the end of the first holidays, these and I applied for the second one. So the next year we recovered for the first eight months. And then we came to that.

you know, call it September, October a bit, I applied for the third one. So at each point we had cost free debt that I knew over a 12 month period, which is what deserves an APR period was we could cover that. So that gave me a little, of confidence and helped me sleep a little easier at night knowing that we could, we had working capital to keep the business going. And so that's how we did it.

you know, again, I'm always in the lookout for cost-efficient debt capital because I'd much rather raise debt capital at this point. I had a bit of advice from someone a couple of years ago and they said, if you're raising, think about equity and debt capital this way. If you're looking for capital expenditure and if you're looking to hire talent, go raise equity capital. But if you're doing anything from like a variable cost perspective that you can recover through

selling product, go raise debt capital as long as that margin covers your cost of capital. And so that's the way that I'm operating the business. At this point, I've got no need for capital expenditure. I've got no need for labor. So equity's off the table. And so we'll really focus on debt capital for the long term.

Yeah, I'm a huge fan of the 0 % APR credit card. A lot of people think that I'm like against debt. So I try to say as often as possible, like debt is a privilege. Like those of us who have access to debt, you know, I love a line of credit from your bank. I love a 0 % APR credit card. This is not an industry, a type of business that you can...

Be in without being in debt either to yourself or to someone else. I like to say it starts on day one because the business bank account doesn't open up with money magically in it. Someone has to put it in there. And the goal is to make enough money to be able to pay your debtors back, you included, and then some.

there are ways to get creative there. think Debt Capital is one of them, and I do understand there's an asymmetry in information, but there are so many grants or small business programs that just for participating, it's a couple of thousand dollars here, a couple of thousand dollars there. in the grand scheme of things, there are small numbers, but those help in that 90-day cycle, right? You're just trying to get to that next bit where the next PO comes through and the next thing comes through. And yes.

in small businesses where there are not many people doing these things, that's time out of the founder's day. But I think keeping a pulse on those things here and there is important. And I believe a lot in serendipity. This is just the, I might say I'm very much a dreamer, but the more you put yourself out there without the intention of getting something back, I think these opportunities and if I'm not getting, I mean, I've applied for so many things that I've just never gotten, but I've applied for so many things that I would have never

if not for folks in this space. So I think that's, it takes time and effort, but I mean that has good karma and I believe in it.

Yeah, I used to work with a guy who just, we used to repeatedly say, we're at work. And he would just say, we're at work because like, people would get frustrated about having to do their work. And he's like, we're at work, like, this is what we're here to do. And that's sort of how I think about things like that. were recently awarded an Amber grant. I had not...

Thank you. I had not actively been a grant applicant, but our VP of Ops was like, Sarah, I think we should do this. Will you take some time to write it? And it's a couple of hours, but a couple of hours turns into 10K. That's pretty worth it. You know what I mean? Absolutely. And to echo what you said, people have asked, how did you get that grant? It's, guess, a notoriously difficult grant to get because a lot of people apply for it.

And I was like, I just was honest about what we're doing, why it's important, and what we're going to do with the money. And so my recommendation is, yeah, put yourself out there. Tell people what you're doing. Don't worry too much about what the grant readers are, quote unquote, looking for. Obviously, take that into consideration. But then write it purely from you and your point of view.

it's extremely helpful and trying in advancing your business to be able to do what you what you want to do, right? It's really incredible. When you talk about your cash flow these days, you said you use a 90 day cash flow planning or planner as like a core metric, can you describe or like, really kind of lay that out for some folks? Because there are people who listen to this podcast who are not projecting cash flow yet. We want to get on there.

I start basically with things that I know I have to pay regardless of whether we sell any product or not, right? So cost of storage, know, your services, your things like that. So those are your base costs that you you have to be able to cover. And then what I tend to look at is we have a very limited actuals database because we've been around for just under two years. the question always is, okay, based on last year, if I had to make the same, just had to sell the same amount of product, how much does that cost and production costs and inventory costs?

Um, and if there's any ancillary costs along those lines, right? So let's just use a number, for example, last year in August, we sold, you know, a thousand units, right? We saw, we need to a thousand units. Do I have that cash for August? What is the same number for September? What is the same number for October? Let's just use a number. If that number is $10,000, do I have the ability to access $10,000 today? Right. And if I.

If I do, great, not a problem. We're good to go. So between cost of capital, cash in the bank, receivables are coming in over the next 30 to 60 days. And all our, all our terms are net 30. So, you know, we have a good understanding there when that cash is coming in. And then the second bit is if I do not have that cash on hand and there is no AR, what do I need to go do so that in the next 60 to 90 days, we will have cash. Whether it is, okay, then the next three weeks is just selling when I'm taking an event.

I'm I'm setting new meetings with stores and I have an understanding of, can I get to that cash? Thankfully, where we are right now, we've always had cash in the bank or cash from sales or receivables. I also will acknowledge that our numbers are quite small. And so it's easy for us to have that flexibility in cash, but that's why that, the balance of credit and cash in bank, right? So even if I have cash on hand to clear all that debt, and if I have the ability to hold onto that cash, will hold onto that cash first.

because I know I have the ability to pay that debt over a course of time. I know that's not as in-depth and in-detailed as putting it on an Excel sheet, but for me, it's always because of my former job. If I get into an Excel sheet, I'm getting into the weeds and then getting to the weeds is time and effort and going down a rabbit hole that I can't afford to do. So for me, it's always, it's a very large back of the envelope, right? So this is the number I need to have based on what we did last year. This is the number I have in the bank. This is the number that I have.

in access to liquidity, this is the AR. So it's a quick back on math. If that number ties up, I'm not looking to tie up to the cents, but if it ties up to the hundreds of dot, to the hundred, we're okay. That allows me and gives me the freedom to then be able to go do what I need to do in order to get that. That's how we look at it. So we compare actuals, we compare if there are events coming up. I know that is cash in hand upfront with no terms.

Yeah.

That also gives me the buffer to do that. And we're breaking everything down to the unit cost perspective. I'll give you an example, right? We just got accepted to sell the Columbus Circle holiday market in December. The cost of doing that is $7,000. Big scary number. But if I break that down over the 30 days that we get through, that's $233 per day for rent. Right. Right. And now I know, okay, on a day-to-day basis in that store, how much product I need to be able to move to make sure that we've got net cash flow. And that's including

then I've got to add in labor. I've got to add in all the auxiliary costs that it's easy to ignore and forget, but at the end of the day, someone's got to pay that cash. So it's getting granular when it comes to those things, when it comes to large numbers, breaking them down to a smaller number has been very, very helpful for me so that it doesn't seem.

Yeah, I love that tip. think too, you know, something I'm keying in on here is with that 90 day cash planning, there's an element of forecasting, right? You got to know what's coming up, even if you're not 100 % accurate, right? You're as you said, you're looking back to last year, you're saying, okay, we sold 1000 units in August last year, you're building actively a repeatable, predictable business, right? So it's not unreasonable for you to say we're going to get 1000 or 1000 plus, you know, something.

And then what does it take to produce that? I just want people listening to hear like, this is really critical work from the financial perspective and from the staying in business perspective. And I know that a lot of people get overwhelmed by it, but my hope is that there's like hearing you today say, this is how I look at it. These are the things that I consider. And they go and do a back of the napkin, you know, to make those projections.

I think when you look ahead, and I love the 90 days, and I think you don't have to look much further than 90 days, Like doing an annual forecast is crazy overwhelming. And that is like trying to predict the future so far out, right? 90 days, do it in 90 day chunks, right? We look at our companies, a lot of companies quarterly, right?

And sometimes we break it up seasonally, like where the quarter will be like November, December, January for some people. Right. It's like just what makes sense. You know, I've got some summer businesses where it's like, my goodness, May is like the beginning of the year because May is it like the beginning of the summer. And so we start really spending money in May. And so that's where work that's like Q1, like month one Q1. Right. So so think about your business in three months. I think it's increments. I think it's a great idea. Choose the three month increments that make sense.

for how your business performs and operates. And don't worry about beyond that. I love that advice.

The other reason that 90 days made sense is I remember the first event I went to after we launched usra and we were speaking to a couple of financial advisors for CBG companies. What they told me was at a small CBG scale, if you go to a distributor, typically if you're lucky, you'll get a 30 day term. If not, you get a 60 day term. You could end up with a 90 day term.

So if you end up with a 90 day term, can you survive till that paycheck, that PO comes in? And so that's what the 90 days came from is 13 weeks of cashflow essentially. Naturally, I'd like to be able to be liquid for more, but that sort of helped me say, okay, let's just start with that. If we can make that 90 day work and then that's great. If not, we'd like to build a little more flexibility.

Yeah. The other piece of that that I really like is that it's not just about seeing the numbers, but then there's an action that can happen as a result of that quick calculation, right? You said, if we don't have enough to make it the 90 days, what's my shortfall? Yeah. And then my focus becomes selling, you know, to get the money that I need. I love looking at financial tools that way as just that tools for what is my next action? What is the thing that is of primary importance?

for us right now, right?

I think you mentioned this in a podcast, I think a few weeks ago, when you're talking to the different statements that make sense, right? P &Ls are historicals, like, okay, it's done, move on. But the most important thing is that you need to be able to make decisions based on what is real. And I think that's what financial...

modeling really is, right? All you're trying to do is you're trying to make decisions. numbers, the historical numbers are accurate. Anything in the future could happen, might never happen. But it gives you this window to play with. you can then understand what you have, you have what could happen. You've got, you understand what your levers are that you can pull for different things. And they can be financial, they can be non-financial and then just doubling down, right?

If you've got a whole bunch of extra stock that you need to then recall from someone else and you can clear with a bulk purchasing company, great. That's cash in hand that you can, sure, the margins are not great, but cash is more important to keep in the sky.

Yeah. Something, something you said, when we talked prior to starting the recording was that when you're growing a business, like you are growing doostra, which is sort of slow and steady, there is a tension between the cautiousness and sort of the aggressive growth, right? And, and can you talk a little bit about that and, and maybe how you handle that mentally or, otherwise so that other founders who are

doing the same thing can maybe relate or learn something.

I think the biggest tension is that typically in my everyday life, I throw caution to the wind. But when it comes to this, I realize there's bit of a greater responsibility, right? Not just to the people around me, but to the business that I've created and the customers who rely on it. And so for me, the tension comes when, you know, we were at this fancy food recently and I had three larger retailers say this would be interesting. And in my heart, even though that's a nice thing to hear, I know we are not going to be able

do that for another 12 months at the very least. And that's, that's still very hopeful. I think my focus always is when I try to have this in between is I keep thinking for my customers, customers I already have versus the customers I could get. And my greater obligation is to customers I already have. Cause I know they're already with me and they're already, they've already made us part of their lives in some way, or form. so the decision calculus always is, is the

Okay.

is the upside that comes from a new customer, a new opportunity of being aggressive in this growth, going to come at a downside to people who already trust us. Right. And if there's a way for me to balance that risk, so let's give an example, right? If I have a 50 door chain come to me and say, we want to do this, and this is what's required from a cash, from a time, from a resource, from an inventory perspective. I then go to the math to say, based on what we know we can do to scale production,

based on what we know we can do to secure a little more capital, will the 20 stores have helped me get here? Will that service be diluted in way? If yes, I need to consider that new one. If no, then we can go ahead and do it. And I think...

Right.

At of day, think you know this better than most folks, like, at the end of the day, anything is, there's some sort of resource constraint and understanding what that resource constraint is, right? So I don't have a good answer for you in terms of how I manage that tension because that's literally an everyday thing. But what grounds me is really, how do I take care of the folks who've already supported us? And you can do that.

Yeah. Yeah. And something I'm learning from you today in this example that you're giving, you know, if a 50 chain store came to you, the other question that's popping up in my head is, do you have the resources to create the repeatability in those stores, right? To do the things you know, based on history will produce the outcomes that you want. And likewise, can you continue

investing those resources, demos, samples, et cetera, in the stores you already have. So it's like, if you've proven what's repeatable, is it still repeatable across the stores you have and the stores you want to bring on? Because I think that's a big part of it. When I see brands grow very quickly, something that tends to fall off is showing up in the stores.

And then you've got to onboard your demo folks and things, and that's like a big expense. Or it doesn't really happen in the timeframes that it needs to. And so then you see the velocities suffer. it's just, something I had never specifically thought of before in that way of like, once you've got repeatability, asking the question, can I maintain that in the old and the new stores?

And I'll be very honest, right? Even in the 50 stores we're in, I we've probably been in 80 to 90 stores with the course for I think quite a few stores have dropped us, right? And that's okay because A, we're realizing that this is not the right fit. B, we can't service them in a way that allows them to continue moving the product in a way that's beneficial for them, which is also a learning. And then I have to make decisions on, do I want to then spend the effort with that store to keep pushing it because we're valuable for their customers?

And then we can be valuable to them or it's just not a right fit. And that's okay. You take the ego hit and then you keep moving. And at some point you, when that 50 chain, we're going to use the 50 chain for 50, 50, for a reason. But if that comes, I need to be able to test in that first one. so the, another part that informed that decision is, is the buyer on the other end, understanding of what we can do and is willing to give us a timeframe in order to demonstrate that we can build that repeatability.

Yeah.

Yeah. Right. Because that's also important. And then we can dedicate resources. But I think that buy-in is sort of required both ways as much as I'm the person trying to impress the buyer, I need that buy-in from them as well.

Yeah, transparency. Yeah.

Right, exactly. We're all trying to win here. And if we're not very, very honest with each other upfront, it's just a poor relationship that's going to develop,

Yeah. Gosh, so many, I think, really good takeaways from this conversation today. Kartik, thank you so much for all of your insights and just sharing how you're approaching business. It's so, I always say it's refreshing, you know, to hear someone's unique take on how they're doing things. But I think the other interesting thing is like, the way you're doing it is becoming more and more common. And hopefully, you know, folks are coming to the podcast and able to, you know, to hear these.

these episodes more and more often so they can say, how do I want to grow my business? What is the right approach for me, for my family, right? For the community that we want to support.

Two things that I think are very important to small businesses, especially as folks who are doing it the way a lot of us are doing, which are under-capitalized, support each other. think something that's become a very big part of how I've gone through, you spoke to Keisha from Live Loud Foods, a good friend. there are so many of us who check in with each other because we're building businesses very similarly. We're in different categories, different approaches, different stories.

But the everyday is quite similar in that most of us are solo founders and solo business runners. Most of us are small and don't have the same capitalization that the big business have. Last year I got into an event not because I applied for it, but because Keisha sent it my way, right? And then I ended up getting it. And so it's how do I help everybody else do this? Because at some point we're building, most of the folks that we resonate with are building

small niches that are either products that have a story to them, products that have a cultural relevance, products that are filling a small gap that could be quite niche, but sort of

Sharing that, think, again, it takes time and effort, but I think it's incredibly valuable. So just hope more folks do that. you know, talk about each other's businesses to everybody else. think that really helps.

Yeah, I agree. That's amazing.

I think the other thing is it's okay to question why you do this every day. And I think you need to. Because even though it could be a very scary loop, it'll help you affirm whether or not it's something you actually want to do. So in a weird way, embrace the scary thoughts in your head. It'll help clarify the vision.

Yeah, get a journal if you need it. Because when my scary thoughts come, it's best to get them out on paper. I know not everybody is that way. But yeah, you hit those moments of you're like, I'm pretty sure nothing is going to work out. You know, and I got to get that down on a notebook. And then I can usually, you know, get myself back around, you know, to no, no, no, no, I see the path forward. It's scary, but we're gonna we're gonna keep going. So I love that.

None of those are business related, but if you're not functioning, the business is not.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's amazing advice. and, you know, what went through my head as you were talking about, you know, brands supporting each other is our food industry is dominated by a very few conglomerates that own the majority of the food industry. And I know not everyone's goal is to have their business forever. And a lot of people do want to reach an exit, but I think that when brands

have goals like you stated that you have for DUSRA to be maybe a $10 million company who's supporting, you know, maybe 10 employees and putting food on the table and taking care of them. Well, I think that that's a beautiful thing. And I also think it's, it's a necessary thing. So we need brands who, whose objectives are not to get big and, and sell, um, as a, as American consumers, and I'm no longer speaking as a financial advisor, like we want that. so.

We also need to support you and shout you out and buy your product and vote with our dollars and our voices that like, you know, we want you to maybe stay independent for lack of a better word, right? Not to not take investment, not to not have, you know, share ownership because those things are necessary in today's day and age. And I think it's naive to sit here and say, you could do it without any investment. Like, that's wild, right? It can't be.

but to say, do investment differently or do it on your terms and find the people who aren't explicitly saying, I am investing in people who are gonna sell the Pepsi or I'm investing in founder. You know what I mean? Like they're out there and it can be done and I'm speaking on behalf of people I think across the country is that we want brands like yours to be around.

I know this is slightly off topic, you saying that brought me to think of it. I know it's a bit of a pipe dream to have transparency in how everyone talks about everything. But I think there are so many small businesses who think that there is only one or two ways of doing things, right? But we hear about so many people talking about, I bootstrapped this company to X things. And I think there's a very real...

danger of using the word bootstrapped, almost like a throwaway, because it's a difference being bootstrapped and being self-funded. It's a difference being having personal capital and saying, I haven't needed to raise money and I can do all these things. So I think it's very important to ask what is real and not get blindsided by what you think is a

that's an underdog story until you look a little deeper.

Yeah, I think that's a great point. And on that note, Kartik, thank you so much for your time today, for sharing your story and for being a supporter of the Good Food CFO podcast. Thank you so much.

Thanks for having us here, I appreciate it. Keep doing the good work. Thank you.

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