"I Raised ₹25 Lakhs Without a Company" – The Truth About Funding.

Описание: Is your business actually failing, or is just one component broken?
In this episode, we sit down with Arul Murugan (Founder, Snack Experts & Eden Nutrition) to dismantle the "Startup Dream." Arul reveals how he raised ₹25 Lakhs from investors before he even registered his company and why his initial B2C model failed miserably despite having funding.
He explains the brutal reality of the "Impulse Economy"—why customers won't wait 4 days for a snack—and how an "accidental" B2B pivot saved his career. We also cover his controversial decision to acquire a viral brand started by two college kids just to buy their "customer validation"

Timestamps & Chapters

01:33 - The "Startup Boom" Trap (2015) Arul discusses leaving a stable career during the 2015 startup craze. He argues that there are two ways to start: straight out of college (blind optimism) or as an industry expert who sees a specific gap after 8 years of working.

06:45 - How I Raised ₹25 Lakhs Without a Company A masterclass in pitching. Arul reveals how he convinced investors to fund him before he even registered the business entity. The secret? He pitched the problem, not the product, and investors backed the "validation of the pain" rather than the solution.

11:20 - The B2C Failure: "Why Should I Wait 4 Days for a Snack?" The brutal realization that the model was broken. Despite the funding, they weren't getting even 100 orders a month. Arul explains the psychology of "Impulse Products"—nobody wants to order snacks on Amazon and wait days to eat them.

15:10 - The "Accidental" Pivot to Corporate (B2B) Success came from an accident. A single customer asked to have snacks delivered to his office of 1,000 people. This shifted the entire business from struggling for ₹40,000 a month to securing massive recurring revenue by feeding corporate employees.

21:30 - Buying a Company for "Validation" (The Viral Video) Arul tells the story of how two college kids created a viral video (5 million views) that solved the customer validation problem he had struggled with for 10 years. Instead of competing, he bought them out to acquire their "proof of concept

27:45 - The "Component" Theory of Failure Don't accept "Failure" as a whole. Arul explains his core philosophy: diagnose which specific part (Distribution, Sales, or Product) is broken. If you can isolate the failure, you don't have to shut down the company—you just have to swap out that one component.

32:50 - Co-Founder Conflict & The 90% Failure Rate How to handle the dip when the market humbles you. Arul discusses the reality that you and your co-founder sign up for "90% success," but the market often gives you "90% failure." The key to survival is stripping away the ego and analyzing the data together

Host:

  / rk-radhakrishnan  

Guest:

  / arulmuruganpalanichamy