"If you are starting as a solo founder, be quick to find a good team and always hire someone better than you" with Goutham Gandhi Nadendla

Goutham Gandhi Nadendla is the founder of Hyderabad-based start-up Futuristic Labs. He, along with his team, has curated the world’s first automatic rice and curry-maker, Riku. The machine provides the user with almost 500 recipes from around the world and lets them cook it in three easy steps. Riku is definitely a path-breaking innovation in food technology. (https://www.getriku.com/) 

Can you tell our readers about your background?

I am an instrumentation engineering graduate from Andhra University, India. Later, I pursued a Master’s degree in electrical engineering from Drexel University in the US. My specialization during my masters was in control systems, robotics, and intelligent systems,  which laid the foundation of design thinking and automation solutions. After completing my education, I worked at a research lab at the University of Pennsylvania, first as an analyst and then as an application developer. I was involved in analyzing data from research trials and projects to find anomalies and patterns in the trials. The area of research that I worked for focused on diabetes, obesity, and metabolism.

What inspired you to start your business?

Starting Riku was a gradual moment. The idea was slowly cooking in my mind for a long time before I could do something about it. I was first inspired by automatic cooking when I was a kid, watching the automatic cooking machine in the Jetsons and looking at my mom spending all day in the kitchen. The work pressure combined with cooking would often lead to her being tired and exhausted. All this made me think of how different our life would have been if cooking was automated.

While spending my time in the US, I encountered the same problem. Working all day long and then cooking for myself frustrated me. My education in robotics made me recognize that there could be a solution to cooking and in 2015, I started thinking about how I could automate the cooking process. I was sure that automating the process of cooking is something that I wanted to do. I decided to do it as a personal project, if not as a company.

Where is your business based?

My start-up is based in Hyderabad.

How did you start your business? What were the first steps you took?

As the first step of validation, I wanted to check if everyone was facing the same problem as me. So I started with market research where I decided to call every single friend/family member living in the US and ask if they would buy an automatic curry maker. Since asking is generally not enough to validate the idea, I enquired if they would pay for a machine like this. When nearly every one of them said yes, I knew that I was solving a problem that many were facing.

Since my family was able to connect with the idea, they pushed me to move back to India and work on making it a reality. My founding team had only 2 employees. Both of them reached out to me through AngelList and played a pivotal role in building Riku. The company was initially bootstrapped.

Riku is a summation of all my experiences. However, I have to point out that I had absolutely no experience in running a business or in manufacturing appliances. I am still learning in those aspects and probably am a long way from being an expert.

What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business?

Email campaigns have worked well for us as it provides a personal connection with potential customers. Facebook too, has managed to drive attention to our product. We are also developing a presence on other social media platforms like Instagram so as to be more visible to the public eye.

What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?

The biggest roadblock has been prototyping, manufacturing, and testing the product. Due to the fact that most of our parts are custom and materials have to be food grade, we quickly hit the limits of rapid prototyping methods like 3D printing resulting in long prototyping & testing cycles. The absence of industrial partnerships initially and a low influx of people resources have been the other pacifiers. However, we have now achieved great feedback for our final prototype and have built the capacity to manufacture it at scale. Riku is now set for mass production and will be available at scale, globally.

Secondly, the challenge was to gain the confidence of potential customers. I still remember, at one of the maker faires in India where we were showcasing Riku, one lady came up to me and asked me if she could “see what is cooking while Riku was cooking”. She told me that she would be very anxious to let a machine cook for her without actually being able to see what was happening inside the machine. I eventually understood the basis of her fears and decided to use a camera in the machine to stream a live feed of the food being made. I think it's been one of the most useful feedback for us.

How do you stay focused?

My end goal is to solve cooking and I have built confidence in my skills to solve this problem. As long as I am using these skills and working towards solving cooking, I look at all problems as iterations. If something is not working, I see it as an iteration and try to do it with a new approach. I think it also helps that we have so much information available, so many innovations to learn from that you can always find motivation from other innovations and come back and fix things.

How do you differentiate your business from the competition?

The beauty of automating cooking is that the market is huge! Being the first company to move into this space we have a first-mover advantage and the scale that we can achieve almost immediately is astonishing. We are planning to grow in a way that we can take over the entire pipeline of cooking. We want to take the guesswork out of cooking and let our customers depend on us completely so that they find us synonymous with cooking. Additionally, the fact that we have complete control over our manufacturing line gives us a lot of flexibility and strength in making Riku. I think figuring out end-to-end manufacturing with complete control could be a difficult target to achieve for our competitors. We are not afraid if they try though.

What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?

I think Facebook and email have worked the most for us. The product is quite novel so it's been relatively easier for us to market it using Facebook. We have generated most of our interest through this channel. Additionally, I feel building up customer engagement and driving sales has been possible through our email campaigns. Since Riku is not an impulse buy, it needs repeat impressions to drive a sale and hence Facebook retargeting and emails have really helped us. 

However, we are targeting the most sales for Riku to take place through our crowdfunding campaign that will be launched in August 2020. You can find it here.

What's your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?

If you are starting as a solo founder, be quick to find a good team and always hire someone better than you. Also, don’t give up. A solution to your problem is always available. Seek advice, look at real-life case studies and I am sure you can figure a way out.

Make fast choices. Choice of what to do and also what not to do. The combination of capabilities and your budget will lead you to the decision of what to do, what to outsource, and what not to do. Make that decision consciously and let your team execute it to their best potential. Your ability to make choices fast will decide your sustainability 

Also, audit your customer assumptions. Most of our marketing strategies are based on customer personas that we researched and statistically validated with data. Audit those personas. Audit every assumption that you had earlier established for your persona. For example, when we were launching the automatic rice and curry maker, we were thinking of customers as before the coronavirus hit the world. Now we have changed those beliefs to reflect reduced purchasing power, need to make work from home more comfortable, etc. Our marketing strategies are now tailored to address these pain points along with the pain points we had established earlier.

What's your favorite app, blog, and book? Why?

I swear by Zero to One by Peter Thiel. If you are starting up, read this. Period.

What's your favorite business tool or resource? Why?

Zoho projects: We use this for our project management, blueprints are our recent obsession :)

GSuite + Slack : Content Management + Communication.

Fusion360: Our mechanical team is heavily dependent on this.

Adobe Suite: Used by our design team.

Visual Studio Code: Our developers are big fans.

Who is your business role model? Why?

I don’t have one particular role model. I find inspiration in people around me. Everyone has a quality that is very unique and inspirational. Whether they notice it themselves or not, I sure do. I pick up the qualities I like, add my own flavor, and apply on myself.

How do you balance work and life?

I allot 2-3 hours each day for things I do for myself like reading, thinking, and workout. I plan my day around them so that no matter what happens, I make sure I have time for myself.

What’s your favorite way to decompress?

I take a  vacation every couple of months and try to work out every day. 

What do you have planned for the next six months?

We are very excited about our crowdfunding campaign that will be launched in September. We are also launching the Riku app before our launch on Indiegogo. You can expect it to come out in the first week of August.

We are currently in the pre-revenue stage since we are mostly earning on pre-orders. However, we are vying for $200,000 in revenue through our crowdfunding campaign this September. 

How can our readers connect with you?

The best way to reach out to me is via email gouthamgandhi@gmail.com.