Lokesh Garg

Building deepshorts | Ex. PM at Streamoid, Healthify, AJIO | BITSian

[Lokesh Garg @loki9608]

With Stricks we generated a revenue of Rs. 7.5 Lakhs.

But why did we stopped working on it then?

We started Stricks with a mindset that habit tracking can build habits but habit tracking is in itself a habit which people fail at.

The idea was that if we make the process of habit tracking fun and easy, people will be able to form long lasting habits.

We built an easy prototype, a NFC based reading habit tracker in the form of a bookmark.

Launched in Cubbon park at Cubbon read, shared free samples with everyone.

People just loved it. (obviously as it was free)

Some people offered us money, stating they would like to pay.

To evaluate further to understand playability of the product, we put stalls in Church Street.

Sold 20 bookmarks for Rs 100 each.

Time was to test the product on scale, launched it in a book fair.

Crowd was less in the fair, but we had a good conversion rate of 35%.

35% of the crowd who came to the fair purchased our product.

Market pull felt right, we launched the product as D2C product. With avg. price at 150Rs per bookmark.

Launched multiple UGC ad campaigns on meta, at one point were doing sales of Rs 1.5 Lakhs per month.

Our avg order value was Rs 550 and acquisition cost was around Rs 400, while being always on the edge of breakeven.

Aim was to bring this acquisition cost down.

Tried social media marketing, influencer marketing, marketing agency, rebranding the product, launching alternative product as water tracking bottle, enhancing the tracking system, launching on market place, forming whatsapp community, running open tracking challenges, revamping website, launched whatsapp based motivation coach.

But nothing helped, to get that acquisition cost below.

We even tried pricing experiments as well, but things went worse.

We still had few bets in mind:
1. Doing international launch, as NFC is more prevalent there.
2. Parallel product for renewals for D2C brands.
3. Pure NFC based trackers, at cheaper rates.
4. An app which works even without NFCs for tracking, and can be used to upsell the physical products.
5. New categories like gym bag, cheaper bottle etc.
6. Influencer based ad campaigns.
7. App enhancements with forest app like features.

But time was ticking and the aim with https://t.co/4ad5d78Mch was to just create side income.

We had already lost over 4-5 Lakhs, and we only had few months left for our strict deadline (got extended now though)

Both of us @skgupta996 and me have tech background and the stricks required very basic tech.

Hence, we planned to shift to our strengths and started exploring ideas.

During the process of building reading habits for people, we realised that reading non-fiction books are not stimulating enough for today's Instagram generation.

Which made us realise that why can't books be as addictive as reels.

This became the basis of https://t.co/PWTkBRsvYL.

The idea of deepshorts evolved from their, and now we think of it as an better alternative to Instagram, where you can scroll through learning content of your own choice. Or even can create custom through AI.

We are launching soon. (Estimated 1st June)

What's going on with Stricks?
The product is stable and is live on https://t.co/4ad5d78Mch, people still buy then and their.
We don't put any effort in tech or marketing.
Just when the order comes we pack it and schedule the delivery.

Wrote this today as got a random order of a bottle and a set of bookmarks from one of our recurring customers.

Last question, do we consider Stricks as fail?
-Definitely not, we earned few users who are tracking their reading for over 400 days
-we still have few people who showered love to our product
-we learnt a lot in the process
-the product still have potential to be acquired from brands like crossword, or any other reading related startup
-it is the idea which let to the idea of deepshorts, which we believe can transform the whole education system one day.

That's about it. :)

(Below is the pick of my 2 friends, Kuldeep and Himanshu, who were their with me at the launch in Cubbon)

[Lokesh Garg @loki9608]

@YesKhush_5 Your math is completely wrong brother. He is posting 10-15 videos per day on an average.

For 20% premium I would say the conversion rate should be at least 50%.

Considering that, the number of daily requests should be not more than 30.

[Lokesh Garg @loki9608]

@ParasMadan9 @navneet @ParasMadan9 would love to try out, few videos for you and see how it goes.

[Lokesh Garg @loki9608]

This guy @Navneet was paying a video editor ₹3k per video to edit his talking head videos.

I did a much better editing, with motion graphics, sfx etc. using AI for just ₹300

Its a petition to make him pay me ₹3k as well.

If you don't believe me you can check his reel.

[Lokesh Garg @loki9608]

What do they mean by Opus class?

[Lokesh Garg @loki9608]

Here is the link to it:
https://t.co/jRQ0RvGhBY

[Lokesh Garg @loki9608]

@iimcomic I literally thought it is of Zomato 😅

[Lokesh Garg @loki9608]

I hope this poster is an intentional move. :P

[Sourav Ganguly @SGanguly99]

The Best Gift Ever! Can’t wait to see you play my cover drive! #RajkummarRao

#Dada #DadaTheSouravGangulyStory #DadaFirstLook

[Lokesh Garg @loki9608]

Can we reach 100k followers this month?

Challenge accepted!

[Lokesh Garg @loki9608]

With fable 5 making accurate end to end products, we can finally say, Software is commoditised.

[Lokesh Garg @loki9608]

@mehulmpt Try generating groceries instead of buying.

[Lokesh Garg @loki9608]

Zor zor se bolke sabko bata do

[Claude @claudeai]

Fable 5 is back.

[Lokesh Garg @loki9608]

as a 29 year old adult I just want a good game of badminton

[Lokesh Garg @loki9608]

Anyone in HSR up for a game of pickleball?

Tonight 9-10pm? Already booked a court.

[Lokesh Garg @loki9608]

@shobhitic or maybe lenscraft?

[Lokesh Garg @loki9608]

@vatsal_sanghvi human generated text

[Lokesh Garg @loki9608]

@PandaGallery_ Kisliye banana h?

[Lokesh Garg @loki9608]

@shreyabhandari_ Vietnam, with family. Next is Japan hopefully next year.

[Lokesh Garg @loki9608]

@ayushunleashed Imagine, just after your message he might have got into a big fight with his wife or any other negative situation.

Ab agle din sam insaan ka experimental bet lene ka himmat zero ho gaya.

Maybe you should reach out to him again in some days.

[Lokesh Garg @loki9608]

@abhinavguptaIAQ Noiceeee 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀

[Lokesh Garg @loki9608]

Reminder to all the founders in their 20s and worried about not have made it big yet.

Kunal Shah was 31 when he founded FreeCharge.

[Kunal Shah @kunalb11]

It’s been a minute.

2015–2018
- Exited FreeCharge. Spent time learning and investing.
- Pondered about: Why can't trust be rewarded? Started with $1M of personal capital.
- Launched CRED to reward people for paying credit card bills on time.

2019–2025
- Built a system run by a team that values ownership, judgment, and craft.
- Grew from 0 to 17M members by aligning incentives with behaviour.
- Built several products during COVID lockdowns.
- Raised $900M+ from global investors. Did 4 ESOP buybacks.
- Made Indiranagar and IPL ads slightly more interesting.
- Received a full stack of regulatory licences.
- Lost 35 kilos.
- Scaled from 0 to ~$325M ( ~₹3,200 crore) in annual revenue across payments, lending, insurance, commerce, wealth, and credit cards.
2026
- First profitable quarter (yet occasionally asked what our business model is)
- Raised another $900M from Meta in primary and secondary capital.
- Announcing our 5th ESOP buyback.

Today

CRED is ready for its next phase. I am stepping back and @miten steps in as interim CEO, partnered with an incredibly talented team. He has been heading strategy and finance and suffering me since 2020. I’m stepping away from the operating role and will continue as a shareholder. My commitment doesn’t change. Just the role.

Extremely grateful to our members, partners, regulators, and investors who made this possible. And to our board, Shailendra, Micky, Saurabh for their extraordinary conviction.

Team CRED, I’ll still expect you to be a 10x version of yourselves.

As for me, I’ll be joining Meta to lead WhatsApp globally.

Meta comes in as a minority investor in CRED. No access to member data.

While it’s come very far, the delta between WhatsApp today and its full potential is massive. I look forward to working with Mark, Chris, and the leadership across Meta for the next step in WhatsApp’s journey. Will, thank you for scaling something the world relies on quietly, and for making this transition smooth.

Onwards.