From Whisky and Kebabs To An AI Fitness Startup

Varun Bhanot: [00:00:00] Way too much whiskey and eating way too many kebabs like I need to make a big change now. Otherwise, this is gonna cause health problems later on, right? I'm in the end. We have the odds stacked against us. I went down from 27% body fat down to seven. You go into a gym, the personal trainer stands over clipboard and pen.

There must be a way to scale this exact same hyper-personalized experience. But using technology and AI was the driver to do that. We closed our first round of funding in April of this year, which we haven't announced yet, but we got.

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Amardeep Parmar: Welcome to the BAE HQ Podcast, where we aim to inspire, connect, and guide the next generation of British Asian entrepreneurs. Today I have with me Varun Bhanot, who's the founder of Magic and AI Startup and unhoused.org, which say nonprofit. He started with his wife. How you doing today, Baron?

Varun Bhanot: Yeah, good to see you, man. And, uh, great to be on. Great to be on today. 

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Amardeep Parmar: So, starting off, you're now like an entrepreneur. You've got multiple businesses. But when you were [00:01:00] growing up, did you ever think that would be what you did? 

Varun Bhanot: To be honest, yes. I think going to, you know, going to university, I think it was very important to get a degree.

Um, I studied law, like I guess a lot of Indians. It was brilliant getting that foundation with academics and just getting a, getting a base with the skills that you, you learn by going to, going to university. But the truth is, is that I always knew that to ultimately be financially free. It's not going to come from a standard profession, right?

Because when you look at the people who have genuinely achieved, um, financial freedom, and I'm not just saying, I'm not just talking about being rich. I'm talking about being like genuinely financially free. Often it's not because they're working in a, in a nine to nine standard job in an office all day, right?

Sure. You can earn a great living doing that. And if that's what you enjoy. By all means, you know, follow your passion. But I, I knew straight away if I'm, if I'm gonna, you know, spend the rest of my life doing something, then it has to be something that I genuinely enjoy and feel that I can make a great living from [00:02:00] as well.

And I think that's what sort of made me think, well, well, entrepreneurship is, is definitely the way forward. 

Amardeep Parmar: You mentioned there about the difference between  being rich and being financially free. What do you think the difference is for you? 

Varun Bhanot: So being financially free. Is because a lot of people say, Oh, I want to be rich.

I want to, I want to be X hundred million. I want, I want this. I want that. But the thing is, is that for most people, actually, they don't realize that the figure that they actually need to live a life that they genuinely love and enjoy and can do all the things that they want to do is probably much less.

I don't know what that is. You'd have to work it out and sit down and think, you know, how much is this car and this holiday and this house and this lifestyle to buy all these things. But for most people, it's actually not sort of a crazy, crazy figure. What they really want is to be financially free, right?

Financially independent, where they don't have to wake up in the morning and schlep into an office and, and, and they have to rent out their time to a company five days a week or seven days a week or whatever it is. They want the freedom to be able to do whatever they want, whenever they want, [00:03:00] and don't have to worry about the cost.

So that, to me, is what financial freedom is. And I think that when you, when you talk to people and you break it down, like, I think that's what they realize they actually want. Running your own business goes hand in hand with that, right? Because already you're doing everything on your own time. You know, suddenly you have that freedom and the hope is the money follows. right?

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Amardeep Parmar: Yeah.  And that's, that's the hope, right? Is that you build something you care about. And then it's also, if you're doing something you care about, usually the money will follow because you're going to achieve that. You're going to offer value to other people because you actually care about what you're doing.

And you started off working for other startups as well, right? So you worked at Hubble for a while and obviously that helps you learn quite a lot because they grew pretty quickly as well. Can you talk about that experience? So what did you learn from being at Hubble and what was that experience like?

Varun Bhanot:  Yeah, so I, when I left uni, studied law, I went to work for an investment bank over in New York for a year, which was an amazing experience being in, being in, in, in New York. But. Being in this box office all day, you know, [00:04:00] pushing paper and just, just putting in keys on the keyboard and stuff, I was like, I can't, I was, you know, 22 years old.

I was like, I can't spend the rest of my life doing this. I suddenly realized that, you know, I don't want to die with my song still inside me. Right? I don't want to die with my song still inside me. I want to express myself and go out there and achieve things and be things. And I just felt that that wasn't going to happen sitting in a box office, you know, chained to a desk.

So when I came back to London, I'd heard about startups and tech, but this was beginning of 2014 when in London, there was no Monzo. There was no delivery. There's no Babylon. There was no Uber, no Airbnb. So this is like a world which no one really knew, right? Like, like for most people who graduated with me, it was like you go into a corporate.

And that's basically it, actually. What I did was I connected with an old, uh, contact from university who was starting this company called Hubble, which was part of this [00:05:00] accelerator, which had just started in London called EF or Entrepreneur First. So I said, look, I want to learn. I want to be part of this world.

And so I offered to work for free. I ended up getting an internship, but an internship basically with just two founders sitting in a dungeon in London, a dungeon office in London bridge, you know, tech was so early on that really, that was the only way to get in and really. Um, get a foothold in that, in that world.

And, um, you know, I learned so much by being in, in that startup. I mean, I stayed with them from literally founding all the way up to, I think we were doing our sort of pre series B when I left and we were 60 people at that point. And I'd learned the entire life cycle of building a company. I think if you want to start a company, I think there's two ways to do it.

You either work for one where the learning curve is obviously not, not, not, not too steep or you start one where the learning curve is very steep, but obviously you're, you're, you're, you're learning as you go along. So I'd highly, highly recommend to anyone is to, is to go and work for one [00:06:00] first. Um, even if you always want to be your own boss, it's, I think it's, it's worth just putting that aside for just a few years and go and learn from, um, how people have done it before, right?

Because it will just cut the years. It will cut the learning by, by so much. 

Amardeep Parmar: Where you came in as well, as an early employee, and there were 16 employees, but you weren't one of the founders, you're part of that early team. And that obviously meant that when other people joined, you're part of the reason you're helping build that culture that went into the other employees.

And how do you think your role adapted as you went on time there? Like, did you feel like as it got on that it was getting success and you felt part of that team and how did you manage those people? Because obviously that would be your first experience managing so many people as well. 

Varun Bhanot: Yeah, it's one of those things you just learn as you go along.

I think there's that meme of Wallace and Gromit where they're on this train and they're moving really fast and they keep laying the tracks as they're moving. You've probably seen it. And I think that's pretty much the life of any one in a startup. We're all winging it. No one, no one has a clue what we're doing half the time.

Problem with when you're starting your own business. And when you're, when you're the manager or you're the, [00:07:00] you're the, you're the CEO of a misstep can be extremely costly, right? It can. And in some cases, as you hear on the news, it can, it can kill the entire business. So it's, it's, it's an incredible rollercoaster and you have to be really mentally prepared for it.

And, and as I said, working for one does mentally prepare for it. ‘Cause it's not a shock, right? You know, you know what to expect, right? I'm about to go into my office after this, which is down the road here in Shoreditch and it's quite possible that something's gone tits up, but you know, I'm already mentally prepared for, for that shit show.

So, so I think it's very important to sort of acclimatize yourself to that, that level of uncertainty. And if you're working in a corporate, you're not going to be, you're the complete opposite, right? You're not going to be ready for uncertainty. All you want is certainty, right? All you want is structure and hierarchy and, and, and, um, schedule and timetable, right?

This is the complete opposite, right? It's a rollercoaster. Um, where, as I said, you're, you're building the tracks as you, as you go down and up.

Amardeep Parmar:  [00:08:00] In the cabin, the way he talked about how there's so many times where it could have collapsed and they've, you've been able to bounce back again. And I guess from the pandemic after you left and all these kinds of things, how do you think you were able to do that?

How do you think you and the early team were able to keep bouncing back from these things that somebody from that side, but I think, okay, that's it, the business is done. But you kept bouncing back again. 

Varun Bhanot: Yeah. I mean, I think it's the first thing is just having a very strong mission and vision that has to be very clear from the early days.

Like what is the, you know, your overall mission. Right. And as long as you can articulate that to investors, to customers, um, to the wider network, then you will always be able to raise money and you'll always be able to keep the lights on. So that's the first thing. Second, I would say is have a very clear vision of what your milestones are.

Like for us at Magic at the moment, we have very clear milestone. It's one figure that we're chasing. That's it. We're not, we're not trying to do 10 things. We're just trying to do one. If we can do that one thing, then we know we can convince people to help us out for the next milestone and next milestone.

So it's just being super clear on what your ambitions are and what your metrics are [00:09:00] for, for, for success or what does success look like, right? What is that? Uh, what, what, what is it? What does it really look like? And, and again, I think people don't work in startups. I've never really sat down to, to, to articulate what in literally in numbers, what does success look like normally?

Because they're like a cog in a wheel. I, they don't really have accountability for that end result. Startups, there's no way to hide, right? You're, you're on the front line and you have to produce that result. Otherwise, you know, it's, it, it, the company could collapse or something, but, you know, massive respect to the co founders of Hubbell, Tom and Tushar, you know, very good friends of mine who have just time and time again pulled out of the bag and they're doing incredibly well and I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm glad to still be a shareholder.

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Amardeep Parmar: So after working at Hubbell, what. made you start magic? Where did the idea come from? Because obviously I know that you're very into fitness and that's obviously something to do with it. But then how did you marry that with AI and all the other stuff you do?

Varun Bhanot: Yeah, so, so the short answer is I was very fat.

I left [00:10:00] university after having drank way too much whiskey and eaten way too many kebabs. And frankly, I had very bad nutritional discipline. I didn't really know the difference between Protein and fats and carbs and things like that. And plus, I'd never set foot in a gym either, right? I'd never lifted dumbbells.

I didn't have a clue what half of this stuff was. I found it very intimidating, I think, like a lot of people probably do. So what I realized is, I was about 25, 26, and I was like, I need to make a big change now. Otherwise, this is going to cause Health problems later on. Right. I'm Indian. I've got hereditary issues already.

We already have the odds stacked against us, generally speaking. So I was like, I've got to make a big change now. Otherwise it's gonna, it's gonna, um, affect me later on. I couldn't get a girlfriend either. Right. And so, and so I think that played into it, um, a little bit. I was like, look, if this is, if there's a time to shape up and look good, this is it.

But, but health was the main, was the main thing I underwent a personal training program. Um, in [00:11:00] London, um, a fantastic gym down the road over, of course, a couple of summers, I lost, I think, I think it was about 20, 25 kilos. I went down from 27 percent body fat down to seven and had this sort of very ripped kind of cover model looking body, which I never thought I would have.

Frankly. Right. It was one of those things you always see other people and you're like, no way. Put it up on my vision board. I was like, I need to make that reality. Yeah. I achieved that achieve that goal. Then I realized. That, you know, working in a tech company in the daytime where we do all this innovative tech forward stuff, I was like, well, we're not doing any of these things in the personal training world.

Like you're going to a gym, the personal trainer stands over clipboard and pen. He's like manually counting your reps and giving you verbal feedback on your form. There's no innovation in the equipment. It's not scalable. You have to go to a certain time on a certain place, um, and, and meet a certain person.

So it got me thinking. There must be a way to scale this exact same hyper personalized experience, but using technology and AI [00:12:00] was the driver to do that. And that was like the seed of the idea. That was a nugget, which made me think that there's got to be something that could work. And this was about 2015, 2016.

I'd seen the success of Peloton in the United States who, you know, had literally growing at one of the fastest paces of any, any startup. I know their churn was less than 1%, which is lower than Amazon prime and Netflix. And it still is, by the way, despite what you read in the news, then their churn is like ridiculously low because it's such a fantastic business model and, and such a brilliant community.

So I was like, well, there's got to be something like this, but for, for personal training, for strength, and perhaps we could go into other modalities and, and, and, um, exercise forms from there. That was, that was the seed of the idea. And then myself and my, my co founder, uh, Sunil, who I worked with, he was the head of product over at Hubble, super smart guy who's an Imperial College physicist, we sort of banged our heads together and thought, well, let's, let's try and create an AI based system, which people can have in their homes.

It's scalable. It can coach people one on [00:13:00] one with hyper personalized feedback in real time, and, and then we can scale it to homes all over the world, uh, starting, starting in the UK. Um, and we can work with. Potentially world class trainers and athletes and that's, that's the direction we're going in as well.

So yeah, it's just been an exciting ride so far, but that's, that's basically where it came from. It was my own personal story, my own personal experience of, uh, just being very, very fat and realizing we've got to, we've got to do something about this. I think it's always when you're fixing your 

Amardeep Parmar: own problem, the passion comes through as well all the time.

Varun Bhanot: For sure. 

Amardeep Parmar: Whereas sometimes you see some entrepreneurs are trying to find other people's problems, which maybe they don't really have a personal connection to. And then when they're trying to fix it, they might be able to do the basics of, okay, this means this, or this means that, but it's not the same passion and driving behind it of like, okay, you know, that.

How that experience of becoming more healthy has made a big difference in your life. So then you can help other people to do that in their own lives. And obviously you did this aside, it's going to be a side hustle on top of your day job at Hubble. When did you decide to take it full time? What was the trigger behind that?

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Varun Bhanot: [00:14:00] So the pandemic was definitely a driver. Uh, it's not what we are counting on or it's not, it's, it's quite frankly, it has nothing really to do with our business, even though obviously home fitness and home workouts was a big boom during, during the during the pandemic, but, um, bringing fitness into the home was already a big, big trend in the same way how Netflix has brought the cinema into the home and PlayStation's brought the arcade into the home.

So it's just another one of those trends. I realized that it was something that we should probably spend our whole life, whole, whole time doing for now is, is that, well, first of all, it's very difficult to build something this complex. If you're not spending your whole time on it, it's, this isn't a, um, you know, we're not, we're not selling, um, 50 online or something, right?

This is, this is a, this is crazy stuff. There's AI, there's hardware, there's content. That we need to shoot. So that was the first thing. And, um, second is, is, and I think you captured it. It's that we generally, we generally love what we're working on. Everyone in the [00:15:00] team has an interest in fitness and wellness, um, or, and previously worked in companies, um, in this, in this space, and we all come into work and we generally believe and love the mission, the mission and the passion, we love what we're building.

And I think that's so, so important as well, because as you said, you will spend your, your evenings on it, spend your weekends on it. If you, if you, if you love what you do. So, yeah. And I think the old adage is probably true that, you know, you love what you do. You never work a day in your life. And I think that's certainly true for what we're building a magic.

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Amardeep Parmar: One interesting  in  that magic as well. And I think especially in the deeper tech space is that you can't just get a product out there straight away, right? You can't just instantly become profitable. There needs to be a lot of investment in R and D and. Sometimes it might take a little while for that product to come out.

And obviously as part of that, you have to then raise money or you need to invest your own money into that. How's that process for you? Because obviously, and it's very stressful to raise this capital. And I know you've been working like a priest behind the scenes. 

Varun Bhanot: Yes. So before we raised the rat, we closed our first round of funding in

April of this [00:16:00] year, which we haven't announced yet, but we got super, super incredible venture capital funds, along with a roster of angels who I can't wait to reveal, but they're, they're founders of very successful tech startups in London. So brilliant network. But before that, to get to that point, we did need to show something, right?

So to get to the prototype, I actually decided to bootstrap the business, which is the only way you can really get something like this out is you have to put your own money in right? Of which I had very little. So I started bootstrapping by what I did was I set up a Shopify store and started selling treadmills.

Um, so I literally just found a supplier that would, that would sell treadmills for like a hundred quid. We sold them for 400 and we sold about 200 of them 2021. And using that money, we put it all into the R and D for, for this product. And at the same time, we sort of built out our supply chain because of

the fact that we were selling something in a, in a similar space already. So I already got to understand like manufacturers, freight, shipping, warehousing, 3PL [00:17:00] delivery. That was the first thing to get to the prototype. We, we, we basically we strapped it. We put in, put in money from there. And that got us to a ready enough state that we could go to invest and say, look, we've, we've got this AI thing.

It's got a mirror and it's got these dumbbells and there's a little bit of content. We can't go to market with this, but it's enough to raise, raise some money. And that's what we did. Unfortunately, um, people bought the vision. It was very, very tough when you're raising something, especially when it's hardware as well, because there's a lot more uncertainties and investors have this, uh, irrational, in my opinion, irrational bias against hardware businesses.

They think it's harder, um, which is not, not quite true all the time. So we, we went into the fundraise process, which was the most exhilarating mentally constraining experience of my life. I mean, I don't know if I'd recommend it, but, um, you know, we came out the other end and, and, um, we're building an incredible team and culture as a result.

And, and we wouldn't be able to get to where we are today without, without doing that. 

Amardeep Parmar: And obviously along that [00:18:00] process, you're going to get feedback from different venture capitalists and investors. Was there any feedback that they gave you that really helped you to like transform the company or pivot in some ways, which maybe you hadn't thought of before?

Varun Bhanot: Yeah, I mean, the first round of investors that we pitched to, so normally you don't go to like your top choice first, you start at like the lower list. So we went to like our like fourth choice investors, but that's right. And they shit all over our business plan. They said, what you're doing is garbage.

You're not qualified to do it. You have no real tech expertise to pull off something of this scale. Right. Um, I mean, some of the, some of the feedback I got was so personal to me. Some, some guys went on my LinkedIn that were tearing, tearing it apart. Has this guy actually. What did he do at uni? What's he done for the last eight years?

Other than work for hubble. I mean, some of the stuff I was wild. Some of it was helpful though. Right. And you know, yeah, I think you have to sort of separate the personal because you're so personally vested in the business, right? It's difficult to not take this stuff personally, but, um, I had to learn to sort of separate the personal from the [00:19:00] actual practical, uh, business advice I was getting and after our first round of rejections that we got, but there were people who I really wanted

to invest even though like fourth and fourth on the list, like you want everyone to invest, right? And so I took it really personally, but we took their advice. We worked the deck in some areas where we felt like maybe they were right in, in criticizing, uh, made the products look, look more impressive in certain places.

Um, because we hadn't emphasized certain features, but I would recommend to anyone best bit of advice is don't go to your first choice investors or your second or your third. Go to the worst one. Get rejected by them. Let them shit all over your deck and tear it apart and take that advice and rework it and then make it better.

And if they, if we hadn't have in hindsight, if we hadn't have had that. Um, feedback, we wouldn't have raised money in the end from the people who were ultimately impressed. And, and now, you know, we're in a much stronger position because of  it.

Amardeep Parmar: And now you're growing up a team, right? So it started off with you and Sunil, and now you've got a team [00:20:00] behind you.

And you mentioned how you've got a big event later today as well. How are you finding the people to join a startup? Because obviously it's your baby. Right. And trusting people, your baby is obviously quite a big thing. So like how are you 

Varun Bhanot: selecting these people? It's funny because the first challenge I thought was, um, and this is the thing every, every entrepreneur has, right?

And startups is the big things you've got to raise money, right? It's really hard and you have to do it and you have to get out there and pitch to all these investors and then you get the money and do all the legals and the money's in the bank. Right? So we did all these things thinking it's the hardest thing in the world.

And it was right. It was really, really hard. And then the money comes into the bank. And then you think, uh, Oh, that's cool. I can build the business now, right? I'm free to, to do all these amazing things, which is true, but then you realize actually you have to now hire people. Now hiring people is like pitching all over again.

Obviously it depends on the climate and the, and the environment that you're hiring in, but you have to convince people to [00:21:00] take a chance on their career, on your unproven, unfounded Startup, which has very limited traction. You've got a round of funding. That's not even been announced. No one even knows essentially you're a bunch of cowboys operating still from your parents basement, right?

To these two, to these new high potential hires that you're, so we often found that hiring was like a two way interview. It wasn't like, you know, the classic. We're the, we're the people offering the job and you're the, you're the, you're the one who, who's like competing to get it, um, competitions on both sides.

And, and, you know, we, we had employees who we really want to turn us down because we're such early stage and, and people asking questions like, what's your runway? How much equity do I get in the business? How much, you know, really, um, Um, articulate, deep questions, which where we felt like we had, we were all sort of on the back foot.

Fortunately, we, we managed to convince people who are unbelievable. They're actually, they were our first choice across marketing and [00:22:00] operations. We wouldn't be where we're going without those people. Um, it's impossible to build something like this with just one or two people. You have to have a small village to, to really pull off, um, something of this scale.

And we're moving towards it now. Thanks to this, this awesome team we have. 

Amardeep Parmar: Looking at the team you have on your other startup as well. So that was unhoused. org. So it's more of a nonprofit than a startup, I'd say, right. With your wife. How did that come about? Because I know it's very important to you as well.

Varun Bhanot: So Anisha and I used to go into work every day. She was working in Moorgate and I was in Shoreditch. So we'd go into the office and every time on the tube, we'd, we'd go past, um, homeless people who were just sitting there by the station. And we realized that people don't like giving money to, to people just lying there on the street anymore, because they've become very accustomed to the idea that they only,

Might  spend it on drugs or gambling or something. And on top of that, on that end, and then on the other end, we realized that giving to charity, especially if like for us, like millennial [00:23:00] generation has sort of become a bit, um, uh, not as attractive because people feel that the money's just getting swallowed up in a big black hole.

They don't really know where it's going. There's not much transparency and we're in a very like transparent generation where people want to see the full results of of where money is going. They want to understand, um, instantly, almost like instant gratification where things are going. So we started to think, well, there must be a better solution.

For helping homeless and people when we call them unhoused, rather than homeless, because the onus then switches to the idea that they should have a home. So rather than calling them homeless, we call them unhoused, meaning they need to be housed. And that's why we called the organization unhoused. org. a social enterprise set up to allow transparency for, um, the donation process.

And what I mean by that is we're an online shop where people can order, uh, their winter clothes, [00:24:00] jumpers, t shirts, um, underwear, socks, gloves, hats. For themselves and for everyone that we sell, we donate 1 to the homeless. So the price of 1 covers 2 essentially. And then when we go and donate that that item to the homeless, we take a picture and send it back to the person who made the original order.

So we're basically covering all the things that you don't get in the other. In the other processes where you get to see where your money's going, we send you a picture as well. So, you know, it's helping right on the front line. It's not getting swallowed up in some big bureaucratic hole. And on top of that, you're getting something for yourself, right?

We're not a charity where we're trying to get something for nothing all the time. We're trying to appeal to people's good, good nature and spending money. Yeah. You know, millions of marketing just to get donations. And we don't do that. We supply value to people by giving people an item that they've bought in the same way.

You might buy something from ASOS or Amazon or whatever, but, um, we're donating one at the same time. And, and that's what's made unhoused at all. Really get off the [00:25:00] ground is, is, um, we don't spend any money on marketing. All the money we, we, we, we've made has come from actual customers that want to spend on our store because they want to help and get something for themselves.

And it's just, it's just really taken off from there. Actually, we've not, we've not invested a penny into the business and um, it's been completely self funded through, through the purchases, which is, um, you know, the most sustainable way to build anything. Um, and, and we're very proud of what, very proud of that.

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Amardeep Parmar: What's the end  mission with that? So do you want to keep growing on house. org or what are you looking to do there? 

Varun Bhanot: So our mission is ultimately, so right now the, if you go on the platform, you can order, uh, you know, socks, gloves, hats for yourself. And then we donate for each, each order that you, that you buy.

However, we don't ultimately, that keeps people warm, and it keeps them, um, sheltered, um, but it doesn't help people off the street, right? Um, I know there's a lot of charities that sort of like, oh, we collect food for the [00:26:00] homeless, or we, you know, we, we, we do haircuts for them or whatever. Well, the truth is, though, like, like, we're not going to kid ourselves.

It doesn't help people off the street. So as our name suggests, Unhoused, the direction that we're ultimately going to go in is we're going to move more into trying to help people into housing. Now, we're a tech first organization, so this isn't going to be the same way how charities do it. We have a few ideas for what this might look like.

And one of them is potentially crowdfunding micro mortgages for, for people. Potentially like ways of instead of giving, giving mortgages and then they can pay it back. One is potentially helping, um, starting in like third world places where the cost of housing is very cheap and potentially crowdfunding, like building supplies and 3d printing processes.

So we could essentially produce housing for much cheaper, you know, I'm talking thousands of pounds as opposed to hundreds of thousands of pounds. Right. So we're looking, I mean, I'm keeping it quite high level because at the moment we're still looking at different solutions, but we're very, [00:27:00] like everything we do has to be tech first, because we know that charities are like the bottom of the pecking order when it comes to technological innovation, right?

First, it's companies that exploit new technologies, right? Like AI and computer vision. And then it might be like individuals and charities like bottom, right? They don't, they don't tend to touch new technology in any way, right? They're still running the same way they were around like 30 years ago. So, um, we're trying to bring the world's most incredible innovations in tech and trying to bring them to third world and first world problems as well.

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Amardeep Parmar: And how do you balance that? Like unhoused with Magic? 

Varun Bhanot: It's been incredibly tough since, you know, Magic's taken off, I think, um, so the way we've, we've distributed is my wife, uh, Anisha, she takes a big role in Unhouse. org now, um, pretty much, pretty much manning that whole show with some volunteers, and I dip in here and there, but, um, but she's doing an incredible job, um, and, and I'm focused, um, you know, on Magic for sort of 90, 99 percent of my time, quite frankly, hopefully in the next few years, we'll be able to sort of Uh, balance things a little bit better, but, um, that you [00:28:00] got to be realistic about it and, and, um, you know, one is, one is very much a commercial venture and the other is nonprofit.

So we sort of have to divide our time accordingly and it's not our full time thing, but yeah, one day it could be, who knows. 

Amardeep Parmar: And then the last question  I want to ask you before we go to a quick fire, you said mentioned before about how magic has got one number that focuses on, I want to come back to that.

What is that one number? What is that one goal for magic? 

Varun Bhanot: So we have a figure in mind, which is the number of orders we want to hit per month. And we know that if we can hit that number month on month and it's growing. 12, 20%. Then we know that we've got a good amount of leverage to go to, you know, investors with for our next round.

And it's, it's really helpful to the team to just give them one figure. That's what we're going after. That's it. I don't care about traffic. I don't care about signups. Don't care about social media, likes and Instagram hits and comments and blah, blah, blah. Forget all of that. We have one figure. That's what we're going to hit.

And it's, it's, it's number of orders per month. [00:29:00] And we know that will put us on a certain annualized run rate and we can go to investors with that figure. 

Amardeep Parmar: Okay, so it's time for the quick fire questions. The first one is, who are three British Asians you'd like to shout out that people listening right now should be following?

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So I would say my very dear friend, Nikhil Sehgal, who is a founder of Vast Mindz, um, an awesome, another awesome AI and also technically in the health, health space as well. Check, check him out. He's incredible individual. Uh, my wife, Anisha, Anisha Seth, or Anisha Bhanot, I should say now she's me, founder of, um, unhoused.

org and Evening Partners. And the final person is my co-founder Sunil Jindal, who is an incredible individual. He was an Imperial College physicist, head of product at Hubble. And he actually runs an awesome company called the ping pong league or the league, I should call it, which brings lots of startups together to compete in sports, particularly ping pong.

Um, and, uh, he's just an incredibly smart individual. Um, [00:30:00] but yeah, he's my co-founder at Magic and just an all around incredible product guy. So it's well worth following him on social media and, and seeing what he's up to. 

Amardeep Parmar: I might check out that Ping Pong league myself actually. 

Varun Bhanot: Yeah. 

Amardeep Parmar: So the next question  is, what can the people listening right now, how can they reach out to you if they're looking for advice or help in what they're doing?

Varun Bhanot: So, uh, to get in touch with me, just hit me up on, uh, Twitter, Instagram. My name's Varun, Varun. On Instagram, Varun Bhangra. LinkedIn, um, I'm very active on, I'm probably more active on LinkedIn and Twitter than any other, any other platform and check us out Magic, the website's magic. fit, literally that's, that's just it.

And that's also our, our, our, our tag on, on social media as well. So, so check out what we're doing. Um, we're shipping product from end of the month, uh, end of November. So yeah, be sure to, to check us out. And, and if you like what we do, then, then please do support us. 

Amardeep Parmar: And then on the flip side, what's something which people listening right now might be able to help you with.

Is there anything you're looking for? 

Varun Bhanot: So  just literally looking for people who have built culture in other [00:31:00] companies and want to learn how they've built culture in a hybrid world. Um, it's something we're grappling with. We're trying to learn as much from other businesses. So if anyone has any advice, uh, just please hit me up.

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Amardeep Parmar: So thank you so  much for coming on today, Varun. It's a pleasure to have you. 

Varun Bhanot: Thanks so much, Ammar. Great to be here.

Amardeep Parmar: Thank you for listening to the BAE HQ podcast today. In our mission to inspire, connect, and guide the next generation of British Asian entrepreneurs. It would mean so much to us if you could subscribe to our channel, leave a review and share this with your friends.

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