The Story Rules Podcast E24: Anurag P and Nachammai S – Indus Valley Annual Report (Transcript)

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Intro hook:

Intro Hook

“I think the biggest takeaway for me has to be about the storytelling bit of it and how important it is to tell a story. And I think I will not even take the credit for it. I will give most of the credit to Sajith because of driving the whole process, right? If you look at him, he has done it three times. So the driving of the story, how do you tell a story? What is the story? What are you trying to answer? All of those things are something that I learned along the way.”

Welcome to the Story Rules podcast with me, Ravishankar Iyer, where we learn from some of the best storytellers in the world, find their story and unearth the secrets of their craft.

Today we speak with Anurag Pagaria and Nachammai Savithri (or NS), co-authors of the Indus Valley Annual Report-2024. 

The Indus valley Annual report (now in its 3rd year of publication) by VC firm Blume Ventures offers the most definitive story of the vibrant Indian startup ecosystem. Several decades later when historians study the origin of this phenomenon during this crucial period in India’s economic history, I have no doubt that the Indus Valley reports would be among their most used sources.

Creating a comprehensive 132-slide deck is not easy – especially when you are combining data from multiple sectors, geographies and companies. 

More interestingly for storytelling coaches like me, getting such high-quality data stories in the public domain is not easy. And so when this was released, I pounced on it. Apart from understanding the fascinating aspects of the Indian startup ecosystem, I also tried to decode the storytelling techniques used by the team creating it.

I even wrote a post analysing the key storytelling principles that the report uses. But I wanted to dig deeper – and speak to the report’s authors about their thought process and approach in creating this tome.

Which is where Anurag and NS come in. While the report’s authorship is led by the inimitable Sajith Pai, I thought it would be useful to speak to the folks who would have done the bulk of the research and creation work for the deck. (Incidentally I have already interviewed Sajith on this podcast earlier – a must listen episode)

So in this conversation, Anurag and NS get into the weeds of how they picked key themes for covering in the report, how they went across the research process, how the draft storylines were crafted, the review and refinement process for the narrative and finally the visual element in creating the deck.

Several fascinating takeaways for students of data-storytelling emerge from the episode:

• Simple tools work for research and retrieval: The three of them just used basic G-Suite tools (like Google Drive, Sheets, Docs and Slides) for their entire research and first level storytelling needs
• Leading with the story: Once a reasonable amount of data for a theme/sector was collected, the first step was to create a skeleton storyline and run it past Sajith and other sector leaders at Blume till they got to the right iteration. To put it in different words, they did not end up waiting till they had “all the data” before they created the draft storyline
• Connecting the dots: The team would not look at sectors in silos. Instead connections were made between similar patterns across sectors and geographies – and you get a  rich sense of that when you read the report
• Following Data Storytelling basics: Clear messages on top of slides, connecting messages across slides, using transition slides between sections
• Keeping the visuals simple: No fancy graphics and charts – just simple column, bar and line charts to explain the message in the easiest way possible
• Using engagement elements: The team includes evocative images, tweets and quotes from credible people to make the content engaging for the general reader

It’s rare to get such high quality data storytelling outputs available for the general audience. It’s rarer still to be able to go deep into the process followed by the team which created it.

I am sure you can derive a lot of value from this in-depth conversation.

Let’s dive in.

Ravi 00:06

Hi Anurag, hi NS, welcome to the Story Rules podcast. 

Anurag:

Hi, glad to be here. 

NS:

Hi Ravi, really glad to be here. 

Ravi:

Superb. So this is a special one, it’s a different one. Normally, it’s about the journey and the work done by the storyteller. Here we have a very specific output that we’re discussing, which is the fabulous ‘Indus Valley Annual Report 2024’. And I’ve been reading this report for the last three years and it’s really given me a lot of context, a lot of knowledge about this vast, growing and diverse startup venture ecosystem that we have in India. So really appreciate the work being done by Blume on this. What I also as a learner, student and teacher of storytelling techniques, especially data storytelling techniques, I also find it as a great learning document for people who want to up their skills on telling a good story, a good narrative with data. And so, which is why you would have seen me share some of the data storytelling lessons.

01:05

I’ve been doing this, I think even last year I had done that and this year also, I think it was great. So now I just thought this year, let me go deeper and, you know, and, you know, pick the brain of the people who actually created this. So that’s the idea. 

So let me start with, you know, this is a report that is in this third edition. And apart from Sajith, who’s kind of the anchor, I’m guessing, it doesn’t necessarily have the same people working on it, right? So how did you both come into working on this, when did you start working on it, and what was the broad plan that you created when you initially started to work on it? 

NS:

Got it. I mean, I can maybe go first on this. I mean, I’ve been with Blume for a little over a year now. In fact, joined when Edition 2 was being worked on by Sajith and Amal, right? And Sajith and Amal worked on the first two editions for context.

02:02

I mean, at that point, already the report was really gaining in popularity and so on. So it was one of those high quality sort of projects that you always dream to work on. I joined Blume, in fact, in Sajith’s team. So this was always a little bit on the horizon, but I wasn’t entirely sure if I was going to be coming in or so on. But at that point, Amal was transitioning out of Blume and he was going to work for one of our portfolio companies. So…

02:31

I mean, Sajith did at that point, we’d worked on a couple of projects together and so on. And we’d, in fact, settled on a couple of themes. He had a couple of themes in mind for Indus Valley at that point. And he let me sort of run wild with one of them. 

Ravi:

What were the themes, if I may ask, NS? 

NS:

One of the earliest themes we settled on was personal credit. I think we were seeing a lot of that on the uptake and the previous report also hinted towards this area of personal credit being on the rise in India. So, Sajith was very sure that that was something that he wanted to explore in this edition of the report. So, did some of the reporting and, you know, chart discovery sort of workflow for that particular theme in mind and really did this with two or three reports. And once we were both comfortable with each other sort of workflows and so on. I think that was one of the earlier days of knowing that I was going to be working on this report. And this was around September of last year, right? Although that was very early days, it’s not when we were full throttle working on the report either, but it was just sort of to get a temperature check on, can we actually come into this team and can I like work on it? So that was my story of joining the team. And of course, then I was there for that transition period, where Amal was leaving Blume as well, and then got to sort of get some of his tips and tricks on how he approached Indus Valley in the first two editions. Of course, Sajith was a guiding light throughout it as well. So that’s my piece, yeah.

Anurag 04:13

So I think NSS has covered a lot of things. Essentially, if I would have to say that, how did I get involved? So I joined the firm, joined Blume in September and always been a very big fan, just like you said, right? It’s a report that tells you a lot of things. It tells you about India, tells you a different story about India all the time. So I was very interested, always intrigued and always, and I also have a habit of just reading about a lot of things about India, macro lens, all of that. So   

There was like a mutual sort of fit in terms of interest in what I wanted to do. And this time it felt like if there are more people involved, if there are two or three of us doing this and that that could get a better result out of it. So eventually the same similar timeline. So we, I also started working on the project around September. We all of all Four of us started working on the project around September along with  the intern also that was helping.

05:10

also there. So there were four of us that were doing it for a, for three, four months. So I will not get into the details. I would let you take the story as you wanted to, but essentially for a first, let’s say 70% of slow burn and then 30% was a more high burn sort of a thing that we did for this.

Ravi: 

I’m guessing a lot of night outs. So we’ll come to that. So no, this is great. And I think I love the fact that, you know, you give it enough time. I think you released it in January or is it February?

NS: 05:39

February end

Ravi:

From September to February, like five months. And so that’s, that’s a lot of time. And also you have an existing report. You’ve got some broad structure to rely on. How much do you rely on that? And in this edition, of course, one is you’re talking about themes. And as you mentioned, personal credit, you remember the other theme that you had thought of at that time?

NS:06:01

This one was the strongest one that we were thinking about. In fact, another one was food patterns, but we never actually went ahead. 

Ravi:

So that is fascinating. That tells me that you have a hypothesis that this could be important, but if the data is not probably telling you a strong enough story, you could actually drop it. 

NS:

Absolutely I think it’s also twofold one, as you mentioned, if the data isn’t supporting it, you can drop it. And the other sort of contrary to that is also something can be done several times. So maybe there isn’t a different angle that you can approach it with. So you also take that call to maybe not include it, maybe it doesn’t fit your narrative or the flow of information. So there’s multiple layers to this, I think. I mean, there were several parts of or several themes that we did explore in early days where we thought we had really great data, but there was a certain story that was coming out, which was much stronger, right? We do have to sort of stack rank the themes that we do look at. So that’s, it’s a process of elimination at the end of the day. You don’t want to overburden the reader as well.

Ravi:

That’s amazing. And I like those points that you made that, you know, A, you may not have the data to support your hypothesis and also that if you have nothing new to add, and that’s a crucial element in storytelling, that novelty should be there, something new.

Then why bother? But I think on a separate note, you have a 132 slide deck. I think you might be having 1,320 slides or not, which is not included as a part. You should do that as a separate one. But coming back to the main themes, right? So you broadly have some themes in mind. Do you also, as a team, get together and then say that here is a skeleton outline or here is a broad  hypothesis narrative that we have. (To) What level are you clear about the structure of the report in September?

Anurag08:02

So I think a better way of understanding it would be like, I think it is more of a divergence, convergence, divergence, convergence, a lot of times that we do. So I’ll be very honest. So it’s not like we have thought out everything. It’s not like the structure is in place. Everything can be rethought every time that you’re doing the report. So eventually, the way the process works this time, and maybe that’s not the way the process works the next time.

Essentially, you get a lot of ideas, you throw all the ideas into a spreadsheet sort of a way, you ask a lot of people, you ask your peers, you ask other people like what’s something about India that has been surprising you? What’s something about. what’s a story that you would like to tell the world? So essentially that creates a list for us. And then let’s say that themes that come a lot frequently. Let’s say

personal credit as she said, right? Has come four or five times. People have told them for multiple angle. And when subject matter experts also talk about that, that means that there’s something over there. And also everybody’s own nuances. So Sajith also has, Sajith also reads quite a bit. So he has certain ideas that, okay, this is a theme that is striking out. Everybody brings all of this together and then it comes into a spreadsheet. And then basically from there, you kind of build a structure. So if you look at the last year report, it was divided into three parts. One was essentially interpreting India, sort of way. Then there was some bit of narratives and then there was some bit of Indus Valley. But this time there’s only two parts. One is India and then there are narratives in that. And then there is Indus Valley. So those things come out naturally as keep on digging the story, keep on finding different nuances. Maybe the starting, at the start, we started with three things, but three themes as the last report, but it ended up being only two themes. So more like I would say first principle thinking,the divergence in terms of collecting different ideas, getting different viewpoints. Because let’s say I work closely with B2B companies, right? I would get, I would start ignoring a lot of things because I’m seeing it a lot more often. But when you get a lot of ideas, when you get a lot of inputs, you start getting, okay, this is interesting. Okay, this guy finds this particular thing interesting. And that you would see again and again.

10:18

So I would slightly disagree on the fact that you cannot tell the same story again and again, because I think some stories are very much possible to be told again and again, because there’s a newer audience that gets into it. So that’s also some misbalance between new readers and old readers that you keep in mind. So I think broadly, I would like to put it this way. I don’t think that’s the best way or I don’t think that’s the only way.Sort of. 

NS:

So, yeah.I just wanted to add a couple of things there. I think the divergence convergence is a big part of the report, right? It happens throughout the report. In fact, as you’re selecting themes, you’re shortlisting themes, then you’re doing a second round of shortlist. The skeleton in fact, where we actually spend time building the skeleton out was on the first two editions of the report. Because when you have 225 page reports, right?

For Sajith, it’s a little bit second nature because he’s been through the nitty gritties of both these reports and building it out. Whereas for us, we had to build context on those reports as well. So there, the skeleton guides you on, okay, so these are the stories you’ve told and these are the ways in which you’ve told these stories. These are the stories where additive layers have come in in two years. Maybe we can keep these as, you know, like your regular recurring themes and then just add to that or update the information there. I mean, GDP is a good example of that, GFCF consumption. These are good ways in which we’ve been building out that recurring theme. And the previous edition and building out skeletons of the previous edition gives you a sense of that. Consumer tech is something we’ve covered in all three reports, but we’ve told the story differently. So the skeleton tells you how you approached it the first two times. And what room is left the third time you’re doing that story. So that’s how we approached that, so to speak. 

Ravi:

Yeah. Very cool stuff. And by the way, while I share some thoughts, I’d love for it if you can dig out that original spreadsheet and maybe show it, right? And we’ll see. 

NS:

I can actually show you that. 

Ravi

Superb. So while you’re digging it out, just a quick few observations, right?

Ravi 12:35

One question that I love you use there, Anurag, is when you’re asking people, what is surprising you about the venture ecosystem, right? That word, their surprise, is something that people don’t realize has so much power in storytelling. And often, if I know where to translate that to somebody in a normal corporate job, looking back at his or her team’s work over the last, whatever, quarter/ year, I think that’s a question they should ask. Hey, over the last one year, what surprised us?

Ravi 13:03

And when they look back, I’m sure they’ll find something that was unique, that was different, that they probably took for a, you know, took it as for granted, and then they realized that it’s powerful. 

(I) just like a lovely mind tree (mindmap) that you have used here. And would love to go into maybe one of these. So these are different. Oh, this is the IVAR 2022, 23, and 24. Oh, wow, this is a great level of organization. 

…

NS 13:32

So this sort of gives you at a glimpse, what can you do? What are the narratives you can play with? What are the stories you’ve attacked before? What are the areas left to explore?

Ravi:

So let’s go into the 2024 one. 

NS

Yeah much smaller than the previous two editions.Yeah.

Anurag

I think one thing that I would add is that, so essentially,

if you look at it from a first principle lens, right? So the way Indus Valley has evolved is also about understanding what does the user like. Everybody as a user or a reader like stories. They like to have some sense of, okay, what is the story over here? So what we realized over the editions is that can we bring about stories? Like what is the story behind GDP? How does it tie into GFCF? How does it tie into consumption? Which is what you start to see the way Indus Valley has evolved over the last three years.

14:31

So last year maybe we were covering more themes, but each theme was not that connected to each other. This time if you are covering themes, each theme talks to each other in some ways. So that is also a nuance that you would see or that I saw while I was working through this process.

Ravi

A great point, and I think that connection would probably come during the convergence process that probably comes towards the end. And this is like a great way to see the structure of the report. But I’m sure that the original Excel that you would have had, the spreadsheet or whatever document that you had, would have been a little more messy, right? Because then you would have had so many themes and which eventually ended up not coming through. One quick tactical question that when you said that, you know, we spoke to people to ask them, what is surprising you? What story would you like to say? What would you like to talk about? And how frequently are you seeing? How many people would you have spoken to?

Anurag15:25

See, again, no correct answer, no deadline also. So you’re continuously asking people. So let’s say the initial set of users, initial set of people would be 15 to 20. That’s probably everybody in the investment (team). So basically how Blume is structured is everybody looks at a certain division. So just speaking to them, understanding what is their viewpoint, what has changed in their particular division, and then continuously…

15:48

Let’s say today, I feel space has done a very good job space tech. There has been a lot of improvement. Then you’re, then you’re speaking to people in space tech. That what do you think has been the case now? It’s not necessary till let’s say January, and it’s not necessary that everything that you had a conversation would go into the report, but conversations keep on happening, but I can say that safely say that 20, 25 people is a bare minimum that we just get ideas from and then it keeps on increasing. As you go. And plus obviously the fact that you’re doing something as a scale of talking India story, you have a lot more people to talk to. I can talk to anybody to understand what is their viewpoint.

Ravi 16:27

Excellent. 

NS

Yeah, I guess. Sorry. Yeah. So here, another way to think about it is I think the direct and the indirect conversations you’re having about what’s exciting, right? The indirect conversations can be publications, what are people talking about in our circles within the ecosystem, as well as what were the breakout slides or the breakout narratives in previous editions, right? So that’s also a pool that we did dip into to be inspired for this one.

Ravi 16:57

Take all these things across various sources, secondary, primary, etc, and then now you’ve got a bunch of areas to go deeper into, a bunch of hypothesis to test out. Can you talk a little bit about the planning thing that how did you kind of decide to say, okay, this will take so much time and it can get quite messy and over the time the number of people that you need, how would you have approached that?

Anurag17:22

So they want me to take a stab at it? Okay, cool. I’ll give, I’ll take a stab at it. So essentially, so let’s say there are 20, 25 themes that you feel like there is a travel category, there’s a, there’s a space category, there’s healthcare, all of those categories. Now what you start to do is basically start collecting a lot of reports, start collecting a lot of industry papers, start collecting, start reading a lot of newspaper articles on that.

17:52

I’ll give you a very normal example. Let’s say equity markets, equity markets as a theme you feed. Now you find reports on equity markets. There could be a UBS report. There could be a Barclays report. All of those reports. So those 40, 50 reports come into one place. You start collecting them into different sectors, the different sectors. So equity market would have 40 reports. Then let’s say climate would have 10 reports. Some by the nature of it would have less reports, right? You would have some

Ravi

Space tech may not have too much work on it. Yeah.

Anurag 18:21

So if let’s say space type does not have a lot of reports, then you rely on a lot of articles and then you rely on a lot of interviews. So interviews is because the easiest thing to do is read. The next easiest thing is to read somebody’s opinion and the hardest point is to get interviews that get the results. So that’s how we also approach it, how much of knowledge is already there for us to synthesize in that way. So we collect a lot of it.

18:49

And this collection actually happens a lot more passively during the year. Let’s say tomorrow you share a very good report talks talking about India. I would put it into a certain folder and that I would review in the month of October when I’m starting out and this kind of collection keeps on happening. When you collect and then you basically start reading them and then you start creating, let’s say this is something that I like, you take that as a, you take let’s say screenshot and tag it.This particular chart, what does it talk about? This chart talks about how much investment is flowing in.

Ravi 

Can you get a little tactical Anurag, what, what software or what app do you use to do the tagging, the screenshots? 

Anurag

You would love the answer.  Uh, the answer is just a simple screenshot. You just take a screenshot. Uh, then you put a tag to it. So let’s say, rename that particular picture. You rename that picture to let’s say, uh, equity market flows in between FY 23 and FY 24 and then the report name, right? And then you put that into a Google Drive, into a particular folder of equity market. The whole point is that this has to become a searchable database. So let’s say I read 100 reports, NS reads 100, Sajith reads 100, Ayan reads 100. Those 400 reports become the foundation layer of the essential report that is going to come about. There would be a lot of these, these are just (data points)… These are not narratives, right? So between this to actual narratives, there is a lot of then secondary research, then a lot of primary research interviews that go about it. But this sort of builds a foundation of what you want. NS, if you would like to cover anything else.

NS 20:35

Yeah, no, I think the most surprising thing of the whole process is how reliant your like snipping tools and your Google Docs, Google Slides, Google Sheets is. I mean, that’s the suite we used, right? Nothing fancy, nothing crazy.

Ravi

You think Notion or one of those, you don’t even need that. Just a simple Google Drive is good enough. It’s perfect. 

Anurag 21:02

I mean, it’s process. oriented, it’s not entirely revolving around what tool you use.

Ravi

Very cool. So you’re doing this and as you’re doing this, if you come across some new findings or some new themes, do you then keep going back and revising your original list of themes, that I guess must have constantly kept happening? 

NS

Yeah. I mean, sometimes you take out one chart for a more impactful chart that has come in three months later. I mean, for context, we changed out some charts, some themes like three days before the first time anyone had seen the report, because a new report had come in at that point. Another, yeah, so that keeps happening all the time. So Sajith always says this thing, which is don’t be emotional about like the section, right?

21:57

Remove yourself from that and just look at it as a much larger narrative. Yeah. 

Ravi

Stephen King, I think, used to say, kill your darlings. It’s tough. It’s tough to do that. So I like this point that you made, Anurag, that think of your research as layers, right? At the foundation, you have basic reports like this, which is primarily data. Of course, there’ll be some opinion of the analysts, but it’s primarily data. And then you have maybe experts’ opinions expressed through maybe interviews, podcasts, and I love the way Sajith and you guys also consume podcasts. But so that’s there. And then you really your highest quality insight might come from a good one-on-one interaction, right? And that’s that’s a ‘primary’. And I remember from my consulting days also that we had to really prepare for that because you’re going to get just one chance, one shot with that senior guy. You don’t go there without getting prepared. You can’t ask him something that you could have easily found anywhere else. So I like that.

22:53

Do you remember in this process, any interesting anecdotes, examples of these personal interviews that you did with folks from industry or with other investors? How did you prepare for that? Anything that you learned as not to do or ought to do and something that you can share? 

Anurag 

Also, I’ll go first. Essentially, I think you’re very right in terms of the structure part. I think the only nuance that I would add is that the themes that we decide in the first day, those don’t end up being the themes at the last day. There’s a lot of mix and match that happens and a lot of your personal observation and understanding of the safe space also has to go into it. So certain sectors we would not pick it up because we don’t think a very good story is coming up. And then we go to the next level of interviews. First we have to get a concrete sense of this is the picture.

23:48

These are the holes in the picture. We want to fill those holes that we’ll use a expert interview for. So I’ll give you a very simple example. And there would be a lot more that I’m not getting, not able to remember. But essentially, let’s say when we are researching on equity markets, there was a very, very interesting theme in terms of how many SME IPOs are happening in the last two, three years. And there’s a very big SME boom and a lot more people and the  returns are also fabulous. The main board versus SME board performance is like 6x or 7x. I don’t remember exactly, but that’s the broader difference. So the question was why? Now, if you read, if you go read articles, if you go read all the opinions, you would get to understand something. But that’s also very much, very much people have filters when they write about things. People don’t have very much, people don’t put everything all together. So then when you start talking to bankers…

24:40

And one such conversation I had with Banker, why is this happening? So his main idea was at that time, yeah, this one, this one. So the main idea that he gave me was basically SME IPOs is something that is good, but it’s also risky because a lot of SEBI pressure is coming in. A lot of SEBI does not want a lot of these things to happen. And the capital also that is being raised will capital that is also being raised will not be you will not be able to raise again and again. So there are a lot of caveats which is why it is somewhat hidden and there’s because of the retail participation you’re seeing so much upward movement that is something that you don’t generally get and in this also right let’s say specific if you look at equity markets right so equity markets you would observe that companies like Paytm or Zomato raise a very huge amount of money not all of it is required at that time why is that the case?

25:38

So the reasoning is that in India, you can raise capital once, but you cannot raise again and again. Whereas in Tesla, you could raise every year in the US. So this is why companies want to raise a lot. This is changing and this is again his, the banker’s opinion on that. But essentially these kind of nuances, when you understand that’s when you try to get, okay, this is why X happened, this is why Y happened. So that’s where I think the primary research or the interviews help a lot, when you have a very, very clear understanding of what questions to ask and what questions to ask and also what do you exactly need help in more than anything else. 

Ravi

Excellent, Anurag. NS? 

NS

Yeah. No, so at Blume, we have one of our sort of high advisors in one of our sectors here who looks at deep tech. So, Mudit Narain, right?

26:34

And he’s been a huge influence, especially when we were going deeper into deep tech, trying to understand better about the companies, especially in all energy, in battery tech, space tech as well. And he has been on the policy side of it and gives you that governance perspective as well in terms of reform, in terms of how space sector has opened up in India right.

It’s one of those sectors which have always been open to FDI unlike any other sector in India itself.

27:02

And a big reason for this is because the spend on R&D and on space tech is less compared to most pure economies. Therefore, making ease of building and ease of entry into the market and ease of funding for the market has been the primary mission. So we tried to tell that story in several parts and Mudit really brought in some of that clarity to run with that narrative as well.

Ravi

27:32

Very useful to have those experts that you can rely on, whether internally or externally. And one point that I like that you’re saying is that don’t go to an expert for any research… that you’re going to, expecting them to make your narrative for you. You already need to have some sense of the narrative. And even if it is, you know it’s limited, but have something, let there be big holes, but you should have some patchwork and then you can help them to fill the holes. Don’t go to them, expecting them to kind of, you know, do your work for you. That was very useful also as an input. Right, so you’re doing this, you’re getting the research done, and slowly the pieces are coming in, you’re kind of, you know, putting it out there into this Google Drive. As you’re putting it, right, so one is you’re dumping, or you know, you’re putting all these multiple 300, 400 data points into a common resource. As you’re putting it, are you also putting down key findings or messages in a Google doc, Word doc, some spreadsheet somewhere, because at the end of the day, I shouldn’t just start from a big Google drive, right? I must have some set of findings or messages as I like to call them. So do you do something like that? What is your approach to saying, okay, this is kind of our starting document to build the narrative?

NS

Yeah, actually we didn’t use this. I mean, we did have a spreadsheet, the initial one where we were going through all the themes and trying to say these will be the sections that we break these themes into. And then once you do the reporting and you see some of these slides itself for some of these data (points), reinforce a particular story, right? Then you block that down as a specific narrative under that theme. But when all of this comes together and when the initial storytelling begins is actually on Google Slides.

29:23

So what happens at this point is first you go back to all your data sources. So you’ve already looked at the reports, you’ve already pulled out the chart snippets and the data snippets that you like. Have a look at those. What are the stories coming out there? Do you have questions now? Can these questions be answered by other data points? Can they be answered by an expert? Can they be answered by someone inside at Blume? Right.

29:50

Answer those questions and then the Google Slides has just headlines which present the story that you want to tell and it gives you a good starting point to see if storyline is strong, are there impact narratives that are coming out in the section, is this section that you should dig deeper into and at this point you just drop the charts where you have charts.

30:14

And then when you have data points, you drop those. But at no point of this, I’ll be making that final slide itself. This is just the storyboard. And a lot of it starts with the headline. And then Sajith, Anurag, and I come together, pitch the sector or the section that we’ve been working on to each other. And that, again, brings in a second level of questions that would be very interesting to answer.

30:40

And then you go back to the drawing board, repeat your data process. But again, it’s divergence, convergence right? The theme itself has been broken down into three or four narratives. And again, you diverge a little bit to get more data. And then you converge again to arrive at that final narrative.

Ravi 31:02

Anurag?

Anurag

I think she covers a lot of it. I think the only thing that I would add, maybe more collaboratively, collaborative experience that she did was my initial read before starting the process was that you write everything down. Okay, this is what I’m thinking. This is how it will flow.

31:21

What worked for me and I think everybody, all three of us, what I realized as a different process of getting to a story. What worked for me was essentially there’s one thing somebody told me at random, I find it interesting. I keep that. I then start finding what data points do I have to validate that particular thing? And what data points do I have to invalidate that particular thing. Get that all together into a story. Story is essentially just putting the charts, but let’s say if there are two charts onto a slide.

31:49

There are five slides, there’s basically 10 charts, 10 charts, 5 slides, and effectively seeing whether the story is coming out. Let’s say if it is a story about India exposes people. So India has the highest diaspora, that is causing that that is also one of our natural resource. And one of our, so Ravi is there in our office, so he, Ravi is a colleague of ours, so he told me that India exports as much IT services as Saudi exports oil. So that’s a very interesting example, though it’s not relevant, but something that wow, so there’s something new. In this case, what can you find other ways to show this particular thing? So initially, I found the Saudi oil to this comparison, then I was looking at the IT services contribution to the overall GDP. All of those things became three, four slides. And then the question in the common meeting that we had every two weeks sort of thing is that is this good enough to dig deep? Because now you’re not expected to have a final story, right? If you look at the entirety of the section, right? 50% of the section would have happened in the last month. 50% of the section we had earlier than that, right? So the question is, is that interesting enough to dig deep? If the question is yes sort of, then you basically park that for the January month or January mid month.

33:15

And you do keep start working on something else for them, the other themes that you want to talk about. So essentially this is broadly how I looked at storytelling in this case. So if you look at this section, right, there’s this amazing chart about remittance, how much remittance comes from different countries. This one, right. So how much remittance, the next one, if you look at the next one, the next slide. So this basically shows that, okay, how much remittance is coming versus the number of people that are there in terms of diaspora.

33:45

This came from a fintech report that we read a month later. But because we had the theme in mind that we want to cover this, then it became started connecting to that. So what I realized, and this is one thing that is that I’ve taken away is essentially if you have a rough idea of what do you want and you keep, keep yourself looking at different data points, you’ll slowly start to build a picture in your mind.

34:10

Instead of thinking if I have to create a Google Doc, I have to write all of those things and I have to build in a way of in a process manner, what worked for me was more of a chaos manner. That’s essentially that worked for me until the process has to be there for data collection so that you can get what you want. So let’s say if I take a snippet of this from the FT reports, I should be able to browse it a month later. So that’s something which helps in terms of screenshotting, snippeting, all of that.

34:40

But, after that, the storytelling bit is like a bridge that does not exist. You have to keep on thinking and something comes about. So that’s a very long answer to your question, but that’s my take on it. 

Ravi

No I loved both the answers. I think there’s a lot that people can learn. So if I combine a bit of both, what I hear you say is that research time, deep-research time is expensive. And you have to pick your themes and pick your battles, so to speak, that, you know, I can’t be doing a hundred hours or whatever, a lot of hours of research on every theme. What you’re doing initially is doing some quick and dirty storytelling. And I don’t think too many people do that, right? They keep doing analysis, analysis, analysis only in the end thing, (they say), ‘Now let me try and make slides’. But what you guys are doing is, okay, let me make a quick version of the story and the storyboard as you’re saying and show it to an audience, which is my internal audience. And then see, is it going through?

35:36

And one great point that NS mentions there, which is useful, is that don’t expect that they will do your work for you. So when you’re telling a quick version of a story to Sajith, you make sure that you answered all possible questions, right? So it’s not like, you know, you have finding X and then you just give that answer, oh, I found this. No, if finding X is giving rise to a further follow on, a further set of follow-on questions, quickly see if you can find that out from your data itself, from the people internally,

36:06

And you do your best saying, okay, now with everything available to us, this is the draft story that is coming through. And don’t worry about, oh, what chart should I use? What slide design? Just, you know, cut and paste those screenshots of the data and the charts that you have. But put that draft story out there. And once you do it, then once more people see it, they’ll pick holes. They’ll say that, OK, these are the additional things. And so two things happen. One, you figure out what are the holes in the story. And two, as you’re saying Anurag, that you realize does this have legs to really be included in the report? Do you need to do further research there? And I think, yeah, that’s a very good approach to telling a story. In fact, I’m going to, as a follow on to this, I’ll put a link to a brilliant interview by Steve Jobs,  I’m sorry, not as the Apple CEO, but when he was mentoring and he was also an investor in Pixar, right? And there’s an interviewer who asked about.Pixar storytelling approach. And it’s basically the approach that you guys were using, which is that they don’t kind of, you know, animate multiple hours and then edit from that. Animation is incredibly expensive because you know, a lot of effort goes into that. And so to make sure that they’re not animating unnecessary scenes, they write the story and create a rough cut storyboard with, you know, scratch voices, you know, even there’s somebody in the office itself might record a voice and they’ll use some very basic scratch visuals. And then they almost like run a slideshow movie in a small auditorium for their employees, right? And in a way, that’s what you’re doing. And in that they will find that, you know, the story is not working, story is not working. Why is this character doing this? You know, why is this event happening? And they iterate on it. They say, you know, hundreds and thousands of times. And which is why the Pixar movies come out so beautiful, right?

37:55

And which is why I’m in this report. So I think that those are some interesting ways that you have, does that resonate and you want to add anything to it or

NS

No, I think well-captured. That’s been the key, yeah. 

Anurag

I think I’ll just add one thing. So I think what I would say is that let’s, there’s this, the X factor that Sajith also brings into this by being a very good editor, for say. So it’s one thing to tell stories, but it’s also one thing to make stories in your head and one thing to tell stories, right? So that’s, I think, something I cannot really explain in the process, but basically a great editor, what he does is basically makes your work combine or makes your work fall together in place, combines different work, combines seven parts of the work into one big picture. 

38:51

So which isa very brilliant thing I feel Sajith brings into this by essentially saying that, okay, you have bought this, I still feel you are missing X, Y, Z. And I think you are over indexing on this thing. Or let’s say saying that, okay, this, what you have done over here will not fit into the larger picture over there. So that particular “X” factor creates a lot of this report, creates a lot of this thing interesting. And maybe in the end.

39:18

I can tell you my thoughts like why do I think people love this report so much. And I feel a lot to do with how Sajith approaches storytelling. 

Ravi

Do you remember any instance of where you took a draft storyline to him and he could make a big difference to it or could look at some other angle that you had missed completely and it would be difficult to remember immediately but if something strikes then…

Anurag 39:44

That would be a lot of, I think every part that I’ve worked in, there has been some input. So let’s say if I take an example, two examples, but let’s just tell you one of them. So let’s say we are telling the story of why is Indian equity market doing so good? The one theme is that there is a lot of SIP flowing into the market. That SIP is creating a lot of systematic movement and that’s bringing basically monthly, a lot of systematic money into (the markets) which is causing overall markets to do well. So if you look at each slide, right, each chart talks to the other chart. So let’s say the first chart, you look at FII versus DII. So that’s foreign institutional investor versus domestic institutional investor, right? What do you need over here? You need to tell me two things. You need to tell me that FII ownership has been stagnant and domestic investor ownership has increased. That proves my point that domestic investor ownership has increased.

40:44

Right. Or else if I just tell you that domestic investor ownership has increased, you would say that what happened to FIIs. That’s a question that you would have. So if I would go with two data points that I find interesting that, okay, Sajith look at this, this feels very interesting. He would be like, okay, what do I need for me to be convinced that this is interesting? Those are the two things you can actually, if you. If we start doing it, I can actually tell you each slide by slide, what starts to happen. So the, the slide.

41:13

Each slide talks to each other, but each chart also talks to each other. So if you go to the next slide, there you would see that, uh, there’s. How the, to the last point where we made domestic institutional investor ownership is increasing. You’re, you would see that, okay. What is domestic investor ownership? That’s mix of retail mutual fund. That’s mix of EPF. Now domestic mutual fund is a combination of SIP and also how household value is increasing. So that combines that together.

41:42

Now, here I would have taken a detour of talking about EPF also, that EPF was increased. But do you keep that? Does that add to your story? That doesn’t. So you remove that. So that is where I feel there’s a very big, very big “X” factor that I cannot actually tell you. Maybe if I were doing it alone, I would not be able to recreate. So that is something that I feel is a very, what do you call a subjective, subjective understanding of what story you need to tell.

42:11

Does that answer your question?

NS

Just to add to that. 

Ravi

Go ahead, NS. 

NS

Yeah, sorry. So just to add to that, I think, one, the narrative perspective. Two is also something which I’ve realized is a big part of Indus Valley report, is that it is  130 slides. It’s powerful. It’s a lot of charts. It’s a lot of numbers..

42:38

But to bring all of that together in one line. If you notice all of our headlines are like one line, right? And there are context slides and there are impact slides. So nailing that headline on your impact slide is it’s key, right? So there’s been a lot of places here where again, is editorial approach to it, where just changing a couple of words in the headline or breaking that down into a much smaller, more easy to ingest version of the existing headline has made all the difference as well. I think that’s also something that Sajith brings in that finer touch. 

Ravi

That’s useful. I think what I hear you say is that often when there are a set of people who are working on the data, who have gone completely neck deep into the data, there is one, there’s a very old storytelling concept known as the curse of knowledge, right? That you know something so well that it is difficult for you not to know it.

43:37

And there it becomes a little difficult to then say, okay, should I keep this or not? I think it is important because I’ve found this and it is interesting. And so which is where the, and an outside insider, and you know, Sajith a kind of plays both those roles, right? He’s an insider, like one of the core insiders in the venture ecosystem, but in a way he’s not actually probably gone through the data and you know, done all of that. So he’s able to kind of also maintain that the eyes of the reader and that’s a great, you know, set of eyes to have in any data story that you know, so run it by somebody who’s senior, who knows the space, who knows what kind of questions to answer, but is not so neck deep into the data that, you know, can’t view it from the audience’s point of view. I think that’s a very useful input. So, okay, so before I move to the visual element of it, right, I just want to, you know, go back to the narrative element, right? So, you’re kind of having all these themes in each theme, you’re building a narrative. How do you or when do you arrive at your structure site? So let me kind of go there and you’ve got like. Yeah, so this is the structure slide that you broadly have. Was this broadly in place or this came towards the end when you realized, okay, these are the broad themes that we have and this is going to be our final outcome? So how did this slide come about? 

NS

This was, in fact, one of the last slides we worked on right before we made the title card slides. This was right at the end. We were moving things in and out until right at the end. As I mentioned, new reports would come in new angles would come in. We would sort of review it with one or two folks in the team. Only section we actually reviewed was the sectors with the sector experts within our team. So some of that here and there. So this came right at the end.

Anurag

But I think if, let’s say, if I have to rephrase your question and ask you that, how, when did we have the structure in place? I think it was much sooner. So let’s say the way.

45:42 

This slide was at the end, we decided to have the content slide at the end of it, but the narratives Right ok, there’s GFCF, there’s consumption, there’s equity markets, there’s personal loans, all of that would have happened, let’s say, January end or early February. That’s where we started to get narratives. 

And then the sectors also we started to have in let’s say next week or the second week of February. So this is the first time that we have added a content section in itself. So last year reports all of that didn’t have so everyone had just the narratives part of it.

Ravi

And when you said the narrative was ready, Anurag, so are you meaning that the slides of the narrative were ready or were you showing the narrative in a condensed form, maybe in a Google Doc or something?

Anurag

46:37

There are three parts to a slide, right? So I’ll just take a detour. So let’s say a slide, one part of the slide is just have images. So let’s say, take any of this example, like India GDP consumption that is coming from RBI and IMF. So RBI would have this chart. Maybe it would have in a table form. So we would just take the table and put it in a slide. And then we would find the China GDP, put it in a slide, right? And then we put a title to it. You have that six, seven pages that become a narrative.

This is something that Sajith worked very deeply into. So let’s say there is 500 snippets that you have, all 500 snippets come to a slideshow. You think, okay, these are the six themes in your mind that, okay, these are the six themes that I want to talk about GDP being one. Then you are like, okay, what are the snippets that I have of GDP? So he’s sitting in the morning, let’s say at 6 to 10, he’s looking at all the charts.

47:36

He has an idea. Then he takes those charts and moves it into a slideshow, into a different slides, put it across as, OK, these are the 10 things. Then let’s say he then tries to tell the story by the title. So India’s GDP is led by consumption, unlike China. So that becomes a narrative. And similarly, we also did for certain sections. Let’s say I’m working on a personal loan. 

48:02

So I would the same thing. You have all those snippets that become slides that becomes the final slide, so to speak. And then the narrative where you just are using other people’s pictures. You get that you then again the next day, let’s say if I did it on a Friday, then on Monday, I just relook at it, whether it makes sense. Then comes the penultimate sort of a slide where you are actually making them on an Excel and making the chart out of it.

48:32

And then again, looking at it, okay, does it make sense? Is the story flowing or not? Here also a lot of magic happens. Here also 30% of the things changes. So let’s say if you’re looking at this left chart and the right chart, what you will observe is that left one is showing that the personal loans have increased from 3.1% to 6.7%. And the volume in terms of, in volume wise it has increased 12x.

48:56

But we also have to show that the value has only increased 3.5x that we were not doing earlier. So that happens in the second last kind of an iteration that where you are just putting all of those things together with your own charts, because you have to understand. So some slides, some charts would have FY 18, FY 17, FY 16, FY 23. It is not a readable chart. Those are made from their view part. So we have to condense it in that way that, okay, what do we want to show? These two data points we want to show.

49:25

So then it starts happening in the second last one and the last one towards the end becomes, okay, this is how it looks like, then you work on it visually and all of those things happen. So a bit longer answer, but I would say that broadly we knew what are the themes we are going to cover, 80% of the way, early Jan or Jan. Things changed in the later part of the, no sorry, early Feb. Things kept on changing till the last date.

Ravi

49:52

That is normal, but what I, you know, multiple things that are coming in, and NS you can also add to this, that you talk about the fact that, you know, that the narrative is the one that you’re constantly focused on and trying to see if it is simple, it is clear, it is flowing. And for each narrative finding that, like for example, here the ISM and secured credit has been one of the key themes.

50:18

When you’re supporting that, only show that much information which is relevant, right? So you might have, and this is very tempting that you might have had information on personal loan volumes for FY 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, all those seven, eight years. You don’t want to load the audience with all that information because it’s over killing, overdoing the amount of information that they have. Just show these five years, 18 to 23, see the increase and boom, and the chart becomes simpler and the consumption of information also becomes so much simpler. So I really like that.

50:48

NS if you want to add something on that? 

NS

No, I think well said. Nothing much to add at this point. So because the charts do come in at the second point of the work that we do, or at the second look. The headlines and that one liner that you see there, that comes right at the end because you’re constantly moving around the slides or you’re moving around chart from slide one to slide five and five to three. So that comes right at the end and that’s sort of the bow that ties it all together right at the end.

Ravi

So let’s talk about headlines, right? And that’s something that I teach in my courses that often what people do is that on the top of slides, what they have is just this India equity market. So let’s take this section as a whole, right? So into equity market section, right? So now, normally, people would have India equity market on this slide, or maybe they would have had flows across DII and FII. And then here, mutual fund flows. So these are what I call as bland titles, and they don’t do anything for the audience, right? Because the audience is saying, okay, mutual fund flows, what about mutual fund flows? And then I have to now read through the slide and figure out what is happening. 

52:07

So this is something that I really find useful. And it’s one of the things that I pointed out in my LinkedIn post also, that all the slides, almost all the slides have a very clear finding message, takeaway, summary at the very top that leaves the audience in no uncertainty as to what is the point of the information on the slide. So is that something that happens naturally? Do you do this even for your quick and dirty reviewed slides that you send?

NS

52:37

Yeah.I mean, as I mentioned, when we sort of first pitch the narrative, we start with the headlines, right, or at least condensing the four stories we tell under a section into a headline. It probably isn’t this, because this is a very context setting headline. But broadly, what is the most interesting thing that we can narrate within this section of the report? So it starts with that.

53:06

And on the headlines front, something else that we constantly like keep trying to make sure that we’re doing is to ensure that. So the report is very intimidating, right? Every slide is stacked with intimidating charts, intimidating stats. So the headline has to make sure the reader fully understands what we’re trying to deliver, right?

53:34

Your trading off between intimidating the reader and also comforting them a little bit. You’re playing that game of balance with every slide. I think, which is why it comes right at the end as well.

Ravi

Very interesting. Anurag? 

Anurag

I think I’ll just add one thing to it. And I think that’s a personal observation. I feel if you try to ask yourself, why do people read it? It’s about, it’s not about the facts. It’s not about the charts. It’s about the story you tell.

54:03

Right? And so I think the difference between Indus Valley report is that it tells you an opinion and it’s being intellectually honest publicly. We might be wrong. So you’re somebody would not want to say that in the Indian markets remain, they could be like in the personal loan. That’s more controversial. Like that RBI is worried or let’s say there are a lot of NPAs. 

54:31

People would be hesitant to talk about that simply because that’s giving a value judgment to it and you don’t want to do it, you want to play safe. And here you are trying to be as honest in telling your opinion and being like, okay, I could be wrong. It’s as simple as that. And that becomes and it’s surprising that a lot, very few people do that. It’s surprising very few people do that. And I also, this again ties into the fact that let’s say in internally also, right, when I am creating a story, I would put a particular headline and I being me, I put a very harsh kind of a headline. So how do you order it that in terms of how do you communicate only the specific things that you want to? That again comes into the editorial fit of it. But yeah, I think that’s we have hit the nail in terms of there has to be a narrative that has to be a story that you’re telling. It’s not simply charts because there are thousands of reports. We read thousands of reports to make this thing work to make this thing. But why do people love this thing? Because you’re telling because you’re holding a position in that particular thing. 

Ravi

And I want to now go into some specific examples, right? So this one, what I liked about this slide is that you’re telling your narrative at two levels, right? Level one is a more detailed level. For example, if I look at this chart, it says FII percentage ownership has kind of remained stagnant between last 10 years from 18.4% to 18.1% versus in the same last 10 year period. And this, by the way, this chart looks so simple. I’m sure it must have been not easy to get the data to back it up. The domestic investor ownership has tripled from 3.3% to 9.1%. So, which is what this sub-message is doing, right? FIIs are not the dominant actors. Presently, domestic investors now match even surpass FIFOs in recent years. But this is the kind of, you know, kind of almost a literal reading of what is happening. What I liked is that you’ve not left it at that. And then you’re asking yourself a question. Okay, so what does it mean? So what does it tell us about the Indian equity market? And that so what is a useful question, right? And I that I don’t know how that came about that, you know, somebody came up with the thing that, oh, the Indian market is more resilient, despite this fluctuation. And you can see the fluctuation in FII flows in this, right? 

56:49

So Was that how it came about or how did you reach from that, what the data is telling to that resilience theme? 

Anurag

Very interesting question. I think I can, if let’s say we start doing this with every particular section, every section would have a different story. So here this section, let’s say if you take this for an example and you will see why primary, secondary, all of that research matters. So we are a VC fund, right? Everybody, all of us are working in private markets. So we also read about public markets.

57:18

Because that is something that is relevant to us in a much deeper way. So we keep reading, you see that in the last three years Indian markets have done really well compared to every other market. So if you ask yourself three WHYs, like why is that the case, why is that the case, why is that the case, you get a sense that okay it’s because SIPs, but if you could have left it over there then there’s no story. That’s just a one or two page thing that okay SIP is there because of which this has happened.

57:46

But you have to ask yourself like, okay, has SIP not been there? Has FII has not been there? So you, if, when you start asking yourself questions and then just leave it at that, don’t try to answer that. Then you read a lot of reports on equity markets. You would come about this, this particular chart we came about in a, I guess a CLSA report, I think this comes from a CLSA report, where we saw this chart and this is like, okay, this shows you exactly what has happened. The DII flows have increased. So you’re like, okay, This chart becomes one chart that we would use. Now the other two also came about that way. Okay, this proves one point, this proves the other point. 

Now, if you go to the next to next one, if you could go to the next page, the next page, the next page, okay, one more page after this. So let’s say, now when you have created, let’s say a rough storyline, right? Now you have to, when you’re asking yourself questions, you have written down a bunch of questions, right? Okay. Why has that happened? Now, one question came about like, why do you say Indian markets are performed well? So you have to tell them, okay, what has been the return? So you’ll see India’s BSE return has been the best over a period of time. 

59:01

So that becomes a central theme, right? So it’s basically asking questions, roaming around, trying to see diverging in terms of finding charts, having specific questions that you look for, these three make a story and then criticizing the story. So let’s say if I present this, people criticize, the NS and Sajith will criticize, okay, this is something that is missing. Going back and doing that.

59:28

So all of those keeps evolving the process. I’ll just take one more example. If you go to digital public infrastructure right, this is a very interesting one. So this came about and this is like we wanted, like everybody talks about, you have to go to the start of it. So if you could just go last slide, two, three slides back. Sorry, you have to go seven, eight slides after this. The next one, government section. Government section, okay. Yeah, in the government section, right? So we were like, no, the last link. If you could, so this, okay, so this chart, this chart is essentially our observation was everybody talks about this. Jandhan Bank has been a very big driver, UPI trading, UPI transaction have crossed a particular mark. How do you show it? Right? How do you show it in a meaningful way? What’s the population? What’s the UPI number of transaction?

01:00:28

What’s the number of Jandhan accounts? So that becomes the hero chart over there. And then you are like, okay, why has Jandhan bank account improved? Then you go to the next one and you see that, okay, there is a lot of money going into direct benefit account and that is causing a lot of things. Now, I don’t know this, right? I didn’t know this. All of us didn’t know that, okay, this is the amount of transfer that has happened. But when you ask yourself questions, just find different reports, try to understand the thing, and then try to make the whole thing bulletproof, you create a sort of narrative. So I would say it’s three, four teams. The starting point is unknown. Each time the starting point might be a conversation, the starting point might be an observation, but then the process becomes sort of like this.

Ravi

01:01:15

Thanks for that, Anurag. I want to also go into one other case study, which is the story of this Indian consumption class. And what you’re doing here is this, what I call building a narrative over several slides. So I think this set of slides from, I think, page number 31 to 35, we’re talking about how the Indian consumption class is growing, but there’s, I think, a divergence in that. So with primarily affluent Indians taking on a lot of that consumption.

01:01:45

So we talk about the fact that the consumption class is growing on this slide, on slide number 32. By the way, a minor thing that I really like is on a lot of your slides, you’ve got these ellipses, the three dots, which indicate to the audience that these are really connected slides. I’m not just throwing randomly three, four, or four, eight to 10 slides at you. I’m actually telling you a story. So I loved the use of that. So you’re saying on slide one that the consumption class is growing steadily.

01:02:14

Ramping up consumption and you’ve got four very different charts which show the ramp up of consumption across multiple sectors. And you’re continuing the story on the third slide that this consuming class, because it’s from the affluent segment, is consuming more premium products for which a whole different set of data points is there. And finally you know, closing this loop of that story by saying that this is leading to a K-shaped recovery with unfortunately a fall in some entry level products, but an increase in premium stuff. So this is a great effort you know in combining some really very diverse sets of data. On one hand, you’re looking at Apple India sales to Zara to postpaid mobile collections to Goldman Sachs (affluent Indians estimate). So talk me through how did you arrive at this section? You know what was the original story and how did you refine it? 

NS

Absolutely. I think something that certainly helped was that this was a very prominent theme in India across different sort of aggregators of information, right? The story has been talked about by many reports this year, and this is a rising story in the Indian ecosystem. It also certainly is one of those sections that we spent a lot of time on because the consumption section is that hallmark section of the Indus Valley report as well.

01:03:37

It’s sort of the best way to understand India from an investor lens as well. If you actually go to the slide before this, I think the, yeah, so the questions we started asking for this section have all been tethered around this slide, right? Which leads into that 30 million household number. So we just kept breaking this large question into different parts. And here you can see the data that we’ve taken into consideration to arrive at that consuming class number. And it’s just going one level deeper and deeper into each of these data points. And if you just move into the next set of slides, I think you’ll see that story play out, right? And this is again, where we talk about that distinction between context slides and impact slides and stacking those together to tell that story. 

Ravi

Sorry, before you go ahead, and this I want to understand the difference between what is the context and what is an impact slide. How do you define that?

NS

01:04:35

So the context slide is laying out that picture for you, right? It’s a slow burn process of, hey, these are the various elements that we have looked at. So finally, what do you derive from these elements, right? And that’s your impact slide. And you have to land that delivery there. And because there’s so many layers to consumption itself in India.

01:04:59

We had so many more data points, in fact, as well. And we did drop some to say that these are where the key story is coming out. I think we had one on hotel room numbers and so on. But finally, it’s saying, what are the numbers of the data points that our readers will care about? Are they different enough that they’re each painting a different story that leads into that final delivery of this is what is underlined?

01:05:28

And this is what you need to take away from these slides. 

Ravi

Very cool. And would you remember, NS, how many alterations did this section go through until it got finalized? 

NS

Yeah, no. This was one of those sections that we spent many, many, many days on. Sajith spent a lot of time in breaking down that consumption class itself. That is his baby, so to speak. Right?

01:05:55

And a lot of this comes out of that as well. These are, and then you take some of those very interesting numbers and you just run free with it. You see that this story itself has so much impact. Because when Sajith was explaining to us how he broke down the consumption class, we were like, wow, this is the number of household ownership of like AC and air coolers, right?

01:06:19

So then we were like, okay, we are also the target audience. Sometimes we do derive inspiration from our aha moments as well. And then place that in whichever parts of the report. But yeah, this went through many alterations. Many charts were moved around. And yeah, this is one of those sections we worked on right up until the end. 

Ravi

So on that note of charts, I want to move to the visual element that you’ve been using in this one. And one thing that struck me was that almost throughout you’re using the simplest charts possible. So you’re not using fancy charts for the sake of it. You’re using column charts. And some people, sometimes I hear people saying, shouldn’t you have some variety in charts? And I say, what variety? This is like, I would say eight out of, or nine out of charts are column, but that is fine because you’re not trying to impress other people. You just want to make sure that the message gets across in the simplest way possible. So when you’re thinking of choosing a chart, do you have any thought when you’re using a pie or a bar or a column or a line, or is it intuitively you kind of go with what the data you think needs?

NS

Yeah. Again, I think much of this has been very collaborative as well, right? You first take a stab at some of these charts. And then when you’re presenting it to your team or even to like someone was just in your vicinity, maybe a team member who’s there and you’re like, hey, is this story coming across? What are you reading from this chart? Or a parent at home and you’re like, what are you reading from this chart, right? Is the message really coming through? And then you try and simplify it. And that’s sort of been the process of this. We also had two earlier additions to borrow from as well.

01:08:14

And I mean, since a lot of the time went into narration, into storytelling, almost like a forcing function, we were left with a short window to actually make these charts, right? So you just have to strip it down to what is actually required. There isn’t room to run free with your imagination on that front, yeah.

Anurag

01:08:43

I think the only nuance that I’ll add over here is the chart… the chart is a tool that you want to use to tell a story. It’s not, anything in itself is not important. Right? So when you look at it that way, the way, I think it’s a very conscious choice of only spending 15, 20% on making the entire report. It’s about 80%, 70-80% just on getting the story right. Right. So if you look, we don’t use a lot of colors.

01:09:11

We don’t try to use a lot of different fancy ways of doing it. Maybe waterfall chart or something of that, something of those sort of ways. Because the point is that if, if let’s say I’m just putting one thing across, I should use something fancy. I should spend some time over there. But let’s say if you’re putting a report across it all has to fall into the people will not read it because how beautiful it looks, people will read it just because what, what are you trying to tell?

01:09:39

So optimizing on the wrong metrics is also not the way to look at it, which is something that comes about. So maybe we will not even have charts someday if you are finding a better tool to tell a story. So that ties into that particular element of it. 

Ravi

I couldn’t agree more folks. Sorry,NS.

NS

Oh, no, sorry. I just wanted to say here, something else we did was use those call-outs, right? To say, pay attention to this particular part of the chart or pay attention to this chart. That was also another tool that we used to tell the story. And honestly, keeping the chart simple again ties back into what I said about the data is really intimidating here, right? So you want to balance that with simpler storytelling, with simpler charts, but you also want to make sure there’s consistency. It’s clean, it’s not jarring. I think that’s been some of the principles that we tried to keep in mind instead of spending too much time and being incredibly out there with the visualizations. 

Ravi

No, I really like that. And so just to, you know, the point that I was making is that I teach this also the exact same thing that 70-80% of your time should be in nailing down the narrative. And then it should be almost like, you know, the chart should almost write themselves right there. You know, for this data point, for this message, this is the simplest chart that you can.

01:11:07

And you know the point that we’re making NS, it reminded me of this rule known as a five second rule. Have you guys heard of that? Yeah, so the Vinod Khosla five second rule, right? That an audience member who’s looking at a chart should be able to understand it within five seconds. And so I really like the fact that you show it to anybody around, even a parent, that’s fine, or a colleague, or a spouse at home. Because if they’re not able to understand, that means you have not picked it right. So that’s the core thing.

01:11:35

That is what is important. And I also like the fact that, you know, if you have a key message that you’ve highlighted, that’s fine, that is coming through in the chart? If you want to make a few additional points, use the annotations, use the notations to say that, you know. 

Oh, by the way, I want to tell you that, you know, while I’m showing you that there’s an increase in Demat accounts, here is an interesting stat from Nitin Kamath where he says that there are 16 million unique accounts and half of those are holdings less than 10,000. So that doesn’t have to come as a main message. That’s an interesting additional snippet that you can include and that kind of adds some additional colour to the story. And so these are, of course, numbers become charts, but charts are not the only kind of visuals that you have used. You’ve also used a bunch of other types of visuals and there’s one which… I’ll have to find this out, but it’s I think that the Mumbai picture and I don’t know where which slide it was in. It’s at the end of consumption. 

Anurag

Yeah. I think it’s at the start of or maybe you’re right. So I think go to 15 slide, 15 slide. I would say around that.

Ravi

You guys really know this report. So there is a part. Yeah, this one. So it’s a stunning image of, I guess, this is Powai. And so you’ve got in one picture, probably taken from a flight, you’ve got the whole slums. And so you’re seeing India 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, all of that in one picture. And so tell me about choosing such, do you, again, through your research, if you come across such striking visuals, you kind of pick and store them, saying, oh, we might use it somewhere. Yeah, that’s what happens. 

NS and Anurag Yeah.

Anurag01:13:22

I think the process is the simplest. The process is I guess, the simplest that you can imagine. So all of us are very avid Twitter users. Wherever we find some good tweet, we just try to save it. Again, the drive helps because then it becomes a logging mechanism. Okay. Why do I think this is good? So you keep that as a log. And then the whole report is done. When you have done the entire report, you just look at all the

different tweets that you’ve stored and you see that, okay, this fits into this, this fits into this. I feel you have done a lot of, we have done a lot of slides, done a lot of charts. We need something over here. Is there something that we can find similar to that? And that’s how you, that’s how you find a tweet, sort of, sort to speak. But I guess if there are 10 tweets, then eight of them would always be there in the repository. Two of them, then we have to go look for them.

01:14:19

And then we just ask ourselves, is that telling the story? Is that not telling the story? And then that becomes the entirety of it.

Ravi 01:14:32

I like the point that you made there that it’s not something that might be part of a core narrative, but once you have done it all, you kind of see what are some of these elements that it can add. And it’s almost like, you know, I try and use a cooking analogy here that, you know, adds to use a Hindi word, Tadka to the main dish, right? The main dish is kind of made and you kind of say, Oh, can I add some glitter to this? Can I add some toppings to this pizza, which is already being made? And, but it’s, it’s at so much value, right?

01:15:00

Because of nothing else, I might remember that one picture, that striking picture of the slums in Powai, or I might remember this quote by Deerbhagya Das. So I think that also adds a lot of value. It shouldn’t just all be about numbers and data, and to the point that NS was making, that sometimes pure charts (and) numbers can become intimidating. So some of these also break the monotony of seeing just piles of charts and tables.

Anurag 01:15:27

Yeah I think the importance is about light reading versus heavy reading. So this helps you in reading it lightly also at times. So let’s say if you have read six, seven pages of consumption or 10 pages of consumption, this gives you a refresher. Okay. Maybe you take a break at that time and you come back later to it, or maybe it gives you, okay, this perspective and it refreshes you in some sort of way. So the overall point is not to make it intimidating and to make it more friendlier, a friend talking to you in some ways, not to be like, okay, I’m the smartest kid in the block sort of ways that a lot of reports reach you. Like they’re, they’re trying to be like, ‘okay, we are the best. We, we will not set any context. We’ll just get into the bits and pieces of it’. Here you’re trying to just set the context a lot of times.

Ravi

I think it also kind of makes it tone very friendly, right? An expert, but who’s, who’s like, you know, treating this as, you know, okay, yeah, sure. This is like a very, very serious, you know, in-depth report on the Indian venture ecosystem. But, you know, let’s take a look at, you know, some interesting ways to view it. And the last year’s report had this beautiful starting tweet about a guy selling pens on the road in a signal in Bangalore. And he had a QR code scanner to sell them and that, you know, in counts, they encapsulated so much about India in just one picture. So I love how you’re able to, you know, your tagging system, although it’s quite basic, but it works. It really works.

01:16:57

So that’s very cool. Before I move to the next section on delivery, but just a quick last thought on slide design, on creating, do you guys do everything on the computer? Or do you sometimes, in some sections, are using pen and paper? Are you kind of quickly sketching stuff out, personally, both of you?

Anurag

01:17:23

So I think I would have a different process. I work better on pen and paper. I had a lot of time. So I would let’s say do a very basic sketch, but this is way back in the process. I would do a basic sketch and then I would take it to, but taking a step back. So essentially let’s say a narrative is finalized. I would then say that, okay, how do I tell the story in the right way? So that I would sketch in pen and paper.

01:17:47

There will be a few iterations that I go through and then I take it to Excel to make that chart and then that chart comes into the Google Slide. 

Ravi

So just coming in there. Anurag, so once you’ve done something on pen and paper, do you run it by somebody or do you say, okay, now I’m happy I’m going to make it? 

Anurag

No, no, pen and paper is all my process. And then I just take it to Google Sheets. Google Sheets, I put all of it across all of the data and then take it to slides and that slides become something that you talk about because the review part.

01:18:16

The basic structure of what has already happened when you have taken snippets and shown the story. So this becomes more of a presentation where like, are you presenting yourself presenting that particular thing or not? And pen and paper helps me because it helps me connect the story. So I would find holes in my story over there and then find, okay, I am seeing this is happening, but do I have a supporting point to that? That keeps that re-triggers because then you have to put it in terms of slides, you have to put in the work. So let’s say a story, let’s say taking a chart from somebody else’s work and to create your own chart would take you an hour, hour and a half, essentially, over all the slides. So that hour and a half when you’re working and looking at data, okay, 85.5, the next one is 90.5. Okay, dude, this seems like something I’m missing. So that becomes a forcing function for me to do it. But very simple, I would say. Very simple to the extent that not overthinking anything in this particular process.

Ravi

01:19:14

NS? 

NS

Yeah, I mean, I used to be very pen and paper heavy. But I think once you come into VC and a lot of your note taking, again, forcing function, right, you don’t have the time to reproduce your notes. So now I’ve been very digital first, whether it’s notion, whether it’s Whimsical for like quick mind maps or mental models and charts again, right? Something that I do is I like to look at a bunch of charts, especially when I know I’m working on like a high impact chart. I like to look at a bunch of charts, whether it’s the previous editions of Indus Valley and how they interpreted some of the most powerful slides, right? Or the slides that really were circulated heavily. Or even if it’s publications I’m looking at, other reports I’m looking at in the ecosystem Financial Times is one I really liked where I used to go back and look at some of their data visualizations, especially when I’m doing, and they also follow a very simple charts or line graphs, right, or pie charts. So I mean, just take inspiration for that for some of the high impact slides and then go from there. But very Google Sheets first in terms of my approach to the chart making.

Ravi

01:20:41

Yeah, I think the net thing is go with what works for you, but simpler tool, the better. We don’t need fancy tools, right? So that’s great. Now I want to shift gears and move into a delivery part of it. And of course, this is a report that you’ve just uploaded as a PDF and it’s to be read, but I’m sure, imagine a scenario where the both of you or one of you individually said that, you know, hey, there’s this interesting person who’s come, foreign investor, LP person and you need to take them through the report. So now you have the report and maybe you might make some changes. Would you make some changes for a report to be presented number one? And how would you prepare to deliver a report like this?

NS

Yeah, I’ll go first here. So in fact, we did present a version of this at Blume Day, right? To LPs, to ecosystem partners, to portfolio companies.

Ravi

May I ask how many people were there in the audience, NS?

NS

01:21:39

I would say 300, 400 odd people. 

Ravi

And Virtual I’m guessing. 

NS

No this was in person.  

Anurag

Yeah. So we do one, one day where our LPs are a portfolio companies, all of them assembled. It’s like a get together more like a get together in Bombay. And then we also release, yeah. When we also released a report to the report to us and then we release it to the public a few days later.

Ravi 

01:22:08

Very curious, NS, how much time did you have to present the report? 

NS

We had 12-15 minutes. Yeah, the three of us were presenting. 

Ravi

15 minutes for 132 slides.

NS

Yeah. Interestingly, we did it in a record 13 minutes.

Ravi

So tell me how. Yeah. 

NS

So we didn’t want to break the flow of the report because each section flows very well into each other. So we just took either two or three slides that we really liked, or five to 10 charts that we really liked. And then we changed the narrative around a little bit. So we would skip certain slides, or in certain slides you would see some charts filling in place of other charts. We would jump to the end of that story and have that in slide number two or slide number three right? Here, the reason we were able to do that is because verbal narration filled in the gap.

01:23:09

You can just say, look at this chart, look at this chart, look at this chart, and this is the story we’re saying. So that helped us really jump ahead and jump through the report and bring out the broad story of what we’re telling in a way that it’s still connected with the 132 page narrative.

Ravi

And did you have some sort of a script that you had prepared or were you like, oh, I know this stuff so I can talk through it? 

NS

01:23:37

Yeah. Anurag and I did with each other sort of run through how we’re going to approach it. And then we were able to tell each other, this is significant, maybe this isn’t significant. So that was something we did around 10 minutes before we went on stage. We did not see Sajith at all that day until we went up to present. So I think he’s so well-in-grained in the story of the report that he was just able to tell.

Ravi

01:24:05

Anurag ? 

Anurag

I think in the last part, I don’t have any comments. But essentially, the way we looked at it is basically it’s a product that you’re presenting to different set of audiences. One set of audience is going to read it, the other set of audience is going to listen to it. That makes a fundamental difference. So let’s say if I start showing you 130 slides , you will zone out after five, six minutes. So what is the point that we want to tell you? That’s the fundamental question that you would ask yourself.

01:24:35

And what’s the minimum amount of effort that you would make to tell that point. So we don’t want to create new charts. That is something that’s no good that we’ll not do that. What do you take from the existing architecture and put it across? So there are, so let’s say there are LPs there. The audience, who is the audience that also defines the message. So that becomes that you have to talk about in this value macro, like how much funding is going in, how much funding is not being going on, what is happening to the funding, so that becomes a key part of your report.

01:25:02

Then the next question is that, okay, what do people love most about the report? That also becomes the key thing. So that 130 slides, chances into 35, 40 slides that you effectively tell in those 15 minutes and effectively giving 15 to 20 seconds to each slide and move. And for the most part, just let’s say reading the headline and then putting a commentary on top of it, that becomes the way you tell the story to that audience.

Ravi

01:25:31

And really like this point that you’re making, that you can’t just use the existing deck as it is. So you have to almost rethink. Of course, take inputs from there. But it’s almost like a different presentation because different format and audience is not going to be patiently reading through it all. So that’s a useful input. A few final questions as we wrap up, begin to coming to the wrap up part. So how, if at all, did you use ChatGPT in this entire process?

01:26:00

I think we used, in my personal view, I used more of a, more of it like a search engine. Let’s say Perplexity was used much more. Essentially, let’s say, okay, I’m looking for this data point. How do I find that? Except that it was not that  it was not that useful because you’re making, you’re writing very little text, you’re writing or you’re creating a lot more charts. So in that way, that is not much helpful in, in, at least for me, it was not that helpful.

01:26:27

And also the story wise, right? Okay. So it is good to write a, it is, it is good in terms of writing something, but it’s not good in terms of telling a story. Right. So that becomes a lot more that so in a mechanical brute force research process, it helped a lot, but after that, it was not that useful.

NS

Yeah. If I were to add, again, didn’t use or rely heavily on ChatGPT

01:26:54

Per se, perplexity, yes, again, but here the only nuance I’ll add is it was great for publications, not as great for reports. So I think publication discovery on a regular search engine is hard because everything is basis either popularity or basis, a particular time in which it was published, right? Here it was much easier because you can ask for a particular data point and to get six publications that are talking about it and get different perspectives.

Ravi

Can one of you explain Perplexity so that people who don’t know? 

NS

Yeah, perplexity AI is very similar to Chat GPT. My favourite thing about it is that it lists the sources where it derives the answers for the questions you ask. 

Anurag

It’s like a search engine, like it’s Google but much more

01:27:48

It’s Google but much more a combination of Google plus ChatGPT would be the best way to understand it.

Ravi

Very interesting. Actually, I’m aware of one more tool coming called Notebook LM, which is right now available in the US. I think it does something similar. Those things will also probably change the way we run some of these projects, but that’s useful. Okay, last three questions. Let’s do it in a rapid-fire way, where I’m going to ask the question to both of you and you can respond one by one.

01:28:15

Number one, what did you personally find most surprising among all the findings in this report?

Anurag

01:28:22

I think for me, it was the fact that it is a story that you’re telling, right? It is not (data) and it is a story that you are telling. It’s a story Anurag is telling, then the story Sajith is telling, the story NS is telling. And that’s a very key part of it. Like a lot of times people just take that story part out of it and just try to present data. That’s not useful. It’s a story and be honest that you’re telling a story. So you would find something, you’ll keep certain things that fit your narrative. You’ll not keep certain things that are very, that are coming out as, coming out not in that much favor of the narratives, simply because that’s the story that I’m choosing to tell. That’s the angle that I have in that case. It’s not being dishonest person. Obviously I’m not saying that we will tell you a wrong part of things, but I’m like, obviously everything is complex. I cannot say that, okay, mutual funds are growing only because of SIP. There’s five more different things, but I’ll try to focus only on that one thing because I feel that adds much more value to the story. So TLDR is that it’s a story, be honest that you’re telling a story and do it rather than just put a data point and let people think about it, whatever they want to.

Ravi

Sorry, just before I come to NS, to dig deeper on that, Anurag, when you say it was surprising for you to learn this, what was your thought about this a year back before you started working on this?

Anurag

My understanding was that you are just presenting data. There’s no opinion.

01:29:51

It’s just you’re just presenting data and just that data makes you understand and makes you and that the grant work is in the data. What I understand is the grant work is in the storytelling bit of it. 

Ravi

Very interesting. Okay. So actually, in a way to me, Anurag, you have answered a second question, which is what did you learn as a storyteller? And I would say that that would be a learning. And I would also like you to separately answer from the findings in the report itself what was most surprising that and that we’ll come back to that.

01:30:20

Maybe I’ll go to NS with this question, that, you know, NS, what did you learn the most as a storyteller, as a researcher, as a narrative builder, as any particular skill that you thought was learned the most?

NS

Got it. So a quick question, which one am I answering?

Ravi

You can answer both. 

NS

OK, I think the most surprising thing which I learned from the report:

is sort of the prominence of financial inclusion and the uptick of that within the country. And that story repeats itself in so many parts of the report, right? Whether it’s equity markets, whether it’s personal credit, whether it’s our section on FinTech, whether it’s the section on digital public infra or how the government and Indus Valley interact with each other. And the way they were narratives that just tied into each other at different points at the report. I think that was some of my most surprising because you can look at it from so many different angles, from so many different target audiences and that perspective I think I found very interesting. On top of that, also consumption. I think it’s everyone’s favourite section. This year, digging deeper into that 30 to 35 million households.

01:31:49

And understanding that a little bit deeper, I think that was shocking to me because every number led right back to that. And it’s, I mean, I see that number a lot more in life as well in other data points when I’m reading other reports, I’m always looking out for that number to be highlighted. So I think that nuance that the report has added to sort of my early career in BC, I think that’s been incredibly useful.

Ravi

01:32:19

And as a storyteller, NS, would you like to share that before we move on?

NS

I mean, this may be, but honestly, I would have never thought that we could have made a report this comprehensive using the Google Suite, to be honest. I mean, I’ve realized how much I’ve over-complicated my note taking, my information consumption, my, you know, my daily workflows. So now I’m going back to some of these things and rethinking how I consume information in different areas. Yeah. 

Ravi

Fascinating. Thanks. Anurag. So on the report, any, any particular finding that strikes you as?

Anurag

Uh, I think, uh, because I’m thinking of this right now,  essentially, right, I’ll answer in a two-part way, right? One as a storyteller, I think I’ve changed a lot by simply working on this report because the lot of things, a lot of small, small things, like, let’s say, not overcomplicating on the visuals, trying to keep it as simple as possible. Not because you cannot. I can overcomplicate things, I can make the best chart possible. But the point is that what are you trying to tell? You’re trying to tell a story, reinforcement of that thing. 

Second is that the simplicity, how simple can your process be? Can you use simply four or five tools and create this whole thing rather than trying to make it very complex?

01:33:48

Third again ties to the fact that you don’t need to note everything down. You can just try and give yourself some space, you can give yourself some information and the story comes together in your mind a lot of times. So that essentially will change the way I approach a story. And that I think is something that I take a lot away from this. In terms of what I learned, I think Indus Valley in general is a is a very educated person. Let’s say if I just read the 130 pages, I learn a lot. But because you’re working on this, you read a lot of different reports, you read a lot of different things, a lot of passive learning that you came into it. So if you ask me one thing that I learned, I’ll not be able to tell you something very surprising because that is something I’ve internalized so much that it is no longer surprising for me. But as an investor, do you become a smarter thinker? Do you become a much more learned thinker? I think yes, that, okay, you understand that, okay, there are 100 million people who are going to use your product. That’s the entirety of your sample size. It’s not 1.4 billion, right? That’s if I just tell you that information, you will keep it for 10 seconds and then leave it. But because I have seen it for hundreds of slides, when I’m looking at different information, it becomes an ingrained principle in the way I approach everything. So that’s a secondary thing. I think as a primary, I think the biggest takeaway for me has to be about the storytelling bit of it and how important it is to tell a story. And I think I will not even take the credit for it. I will give most of the credit to Sajith because of driving the whole process, right? If you look at him, he has done it three times. So the driving of the story, how do you tell a story? What is the story? What are you trying to answer? All of those things are something that I learned along the way. 

Ravi

Superb. Next year’s edition, there’s a last question for this conversation, what are the one, two, three, as many things that you do differently?

Anurag

01:35:47

I think next year edition, right? So I think the way we will approach it also again on a very first principle basis. So there are two challenges. One challenge is essentially that how many times would you, can you tell a new thing every year? Right? Because GDP does not change year over year. Gross fixed capital formation, how government spends does not change year over year. So what is a different angle that you get into? So let’s say next year also we are able to do it. So next year what you’re able to do is. So how does that report evolve in itself becomes a question that you keep asking yourself. I don’t think I have an answer to that, but essentially it would be bringing, if I would have to do one thing, it would bring a lot more anecdotes, a lot more comparison as, let’s say comparison with different countries, a lot more anecdote in terms of case studies, let’s say X company doing, why I think, why is that the case? Because I’ve realized what I realized is that it is not necessary to cover the entire thing. You don’t have to get one answer for the entire thing, but maybe you have to tell again through a story, a story under a story sort of a thing. So that’s something that I would bring into the next part of it.

Ravi NS?

NS

Yeah, I think, the three of us have discussed this at length as well. You know, whether India is really changing that drastically year on year that you can tell and retell this story, right?

01:37:12

So, and secondly, I think something else that we would love to do in the next edition is more interviews, bring in more perspectives outside ourselves and the team, right? Bring in more ecosystem perspectives into the report because I think that’s a nuance that folks are also looking for.

Ravi

Superb and I can’t as a reader, I can’t wait for… I know it’s about a year away, but please keep doing this good work. Please keep collecting these snippets and screenshots throughout the year, and we’ll get to see that gold somewhere next in February 2025. And maybe as a user, one request from my side is that if you could add an executive summary that puts it all in one or two slides, that would be useful for just to kind of see the whole thing in one place. So no, thank you so much, folks. Thanks for taking out the time for having this conversation and going through it so much depth and detail about your process for writing this great story. Is there anything else that you have not covered so far that any of you would like to talk about?

Anurag

01:38:19

I don’t have anything to add. Thank you so much. 

NS

Yeah, just wanted to highlight once more. I think you have had Sajith on the podcast previously, but I mean he is at the center of this report. It’s been his brainchild for the last three editions. So just wanted to drop that in there as well. And the master storyteller, so to speak, right? Which is why you had him on one of the other episodes as well.

01:38:49

So it’s been a great sort of picking up and learning from his processes as well on this report. I think we didn’t get to touch upon that too much in the conversation today, but did want to shout that out at this point, yeah.

Ravi

No, that is true. I think there’s a lot of impact that somebody like him brings. If people want to know more about Blume, what are some of the sources, channels that they can use? 

NS

01:39:15

You can go on Blume.vc, that’s our handles. And if a founder is listening to this right now, three of us are incredibly reachable. So Sajith is at sp @ Blume.vc, Anurag is at anurag @ Blume.vc, and I’m at ns@ Blume.vc. And we’re just looking to reach out to more founders, more folks in the ecosystem who are looking to sort of add to the story of Indus Valley. Yeah.

Ravi

And as they keep adding to the story, they can rest assured that Anurag, NS, and Sajith will keep collecting all of that and telling us that story every year. So thank you, folks. And thanks for coming here. Look forward to reconnecting and continuing this conversation as we go ahead. 

Anurag

Thank you so much. Thank you.

NS

Thanks so much. 

And that was Anurag Pagaria and Nachammai Savithri, co-creators of the excellent Indus Valley Annual Report, 2024.

A few things which stood out for me in the conversation:

• The use of simple tools to get your work done
• The importance of crafting a narrative as early as possible in the process
• How to sharpen your narrative with inputs from colleagues and experts
• Bringing your narrative to life through simple, visual slides
• Adding engagement elements to make dry statistics more interesting

If you find this content valuable, please rate and review this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen to them. It’ll help others like you discover these insights!

This podcast was hosted by me, Ravishankar Iyer. Audio editing by Kartik Rajan and all-round support by Sanket Aalegaonkar.

Until next time, may the force of good stories be with you.

Show Notes

My post analysing the storytelling techniques used in the report: https://www.storyrules.com/5-data-story-lessons-and-1-missing-element-from-the-indus-valley-annual-report/ 

Steve Jobs Interview – on the importance of story at Pixar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZM5ZlouOII

Sajith Pai on Story Rules Podcast: https://storyrules.buzzsprout.com/1742201/10809029-e17-sajith-pai-foremost-thought-leader-of-india-s-startup-ecosystem