How Nischal Shetty used a simple formula called ETC to scale two startups to millions of users

An inventive young entrepreneur breaking the conventional myths of start-ups with his zealous attitude. On a journey to finding solutions and emerging trends. Nischal self-taught organic growth hack and founded start-ups that are today lashing definitions in the ecosystem. Listen to Nischal of WazirX on scaling two startups to millions of users.

A passionate coder, realised his IT corporate job did not let him understand the impact he was making to the end-user.  This quickly lead to a career switch at BURRP – One of India’s earliest restaurant discovery platforms.

After learning the ropes of start-up Burrp, he launches CrowdFire which notches up millions of users. Using a simple formula called ETC, Nischal goes on to repeat his success of scaling at his next startup WazirX now owned by Binance, the world’s most pre-eminent Crypto Organizations.

What is ETC? What Growth Hacks did they apply? You definitely want to hear Nischal Shetty’s insight and the start-up story that has an abundance of wisdom to offer. Listen to Nischal of WazirX On Scaling Two Startups.

Here are excerpts from the episode:

 Initial Growth

And within two days, I saw about five to 7000 signups coming in. And that’s when I realized that what I wanted at least 10,000 more people wanted. That realization happened but like I said, I since I was not, this was not built as a startup startup. I thought to myself, maybe you know, this is just that initial surge of people that come to a product.

And eventually you forget the product and move on, because that’s what I’ve done to a lot of products and read about it, go sign up, use it and then forget.

But surprisingly, with this product that I’ve built, people kept coming back and kept referring their friends too. So within a few months, the number went to I think 100 or 150,000, signups organic, all organic

7:31 – Nischal

Growth Hack by Nischal

I would say the growth hack that I put in into the product. So that helped me really rapidly grow. And that’s when I learned that if you the one of the best ways for you to grow your product if you can make your users get you more users.

10:57 – Nischal

Word To Indian Entrepreneurs by Nischal

I think it’s a it’s a matter of time, before entrepreneurs learn all of these things and started acting. Right now I think it’s, there’s the other part of growth is when capital is cheap, you, obviously you exploit that. And the last 10 years, I think capital has been cheap, but there will come a time where capital will not be cheap, and maybe this time that we are going through might result in that, and that is where I think these organic growth hacks become all the more important.

But I think the other aspect is in India, if we were to spread this, I would say, especially for first time entrepreneurs who don’t usually have access to capital, these kinds of strategies become very, very crucial to take them off the ground. Because as now I’ve learned as a second time, founder third time, it’s so easier to get access to capital.

But first time founders always have it difficult. So if they start implementing these growth hacks with a good product, I think it will help them grow faster.

21:24 – Nischal

Decision Making Is Key!

We got all support we wanted. But I and that’s where I think when you raise money, it’s very, very important to look at who you raise from, and, you know, how can they help you and have they, I’m biased more towards, you know, just having to work with people who’ve seen companies growing or also not growing.

I think if they have seen both of those, then they understand there are decisions to be made at times, and those can be hard decisions. So for us it worked out well I guess

28:49 – Nischal

RBI and Crypto

RBI said none of the banks under the RBI can work with any of the crypto related businesses or crypto activities. So what that meant was we could not have a bank account to accept deposits or process withdrawals for people. So what we did is we said, that’s fine. We can act like an escrow for the crypto, we will hold the crypto in our escrow

35:34 – Nischal

So that’s the other aspect that unknowingly I think I built something that helped our company, but the intention was to spread the right information about crypto and help the situation that was there, which is something this is again, it comes on you know, if you are mission driven, not everything can you look at it from a lens of how do I grow my product, my company my stuff.

You can also look at how do I help them industry, the country, the sector. And if you take initiatives there, it helps you in branding yourself in the right way.

This was I think, probably my one of my biggest learnings in the whole world of branding. And see if you think about it, your growth, everything, it’s never a zero or a one, like, you know, you just do this and you will.

38:22 – Nischal

Crypto is Safe!

Crypto is a new technology that’s all. And you know anything any technology can be misused and also use for the right thing. There is no such technology which cannot be misused. But that does not mean that we do not adopt that technology. Because the thing is, even if one country does not adopt it, the rest of the world is going to adopt it.

Like if you wanted to, even if you had banned the internet, the only, you know, bad thing that would have come out is we would have as a country lost out on learnings and a lot of information that we get today.

And the communication that happens on the internet, we would not have had this we would not have had amazing companies coming out of India, the end eventually because you will have to join in. And that is what always happens, right?

55:55 – Nischal

Show Notes
Follow Nischal (WazirX) ⚡️ (@NischalShetty) | Twitter

Connect Nischal Shetty – Founder – WazirX | LinkedIn

Follow Maharajas of Scale On Twitter (@maharajaofscale)

Here is the word cloud for the episode