Building Oaken: Shashi Raghunandan’s Leap from Banking to AgTech Innovation

Allan Gray

Hello, I'm Allan Gray, Executive Director of DIAL Ventures. Back with you again on a DIALed IN podcast. Looking forward to the opportunity today to visit with you with Shashi Raghunandan, one of the DIAL fellows, termed co-founder of one of the companies that has come out of DIALed IN. Shashi, looking forward to the opportunity to visit with you today.

Shashi Raghunandan

Same here, Allan. It's great to meet with you as usual.

Allan Gray

Fantastic. In full disclosure, Shashi and I have been working together now for probably 18… Actually, I think almost 2 years now. Shashi, we've been working together on these concepts that we've come up with here. Your company, your brand, Oaken, you're showing off there for us today. We'll talk a bit about Oaken as we go through our opportunity to visit today, too. I just want to make sure our audience knows that we've known each other for quite some time and really enjoyed the opportunity to work together.

Shashi, let's start this conversation with letting everybody know a little bit about who Shashi Raghunandan is. Of course, I could tell a little bit of a story about interviewing you as you thought about becoming a fellow. I believe my opening question to you was, "Who is Shashi?" That's exactly the way I thought I might open this podcast up, too. Shashi Raghunandan is originally from India. I know that part about you. I know about a substantial amount of time spent in commercial banking for a long period of time in your history and background. Tell me a little bit about Shashi.

Shashi Raghunandan

Just to recount that experience, Allan, this was almost, I think, a year and a half ago, and for the audience that's listening, I got into this interview with Dr. Allan Gray. It's the first time I've ever been interviewed by him. Literally, the first question I get is, "Who is Shashi beyond your work?" Was the specific question I had asked. He didn't want to know anything about my background at work or anything else. It was, basically, what are my interests and what is in my history and everything else.

For most people who are being interviewed, you're used to starting off with your work background, and there's a little bit of a crutch to fall back on. He just took that away. Suddenly, I found myself stammering into the question with my background and how I love tennis and everything else, and after about 5 minutes of mumbling and grasping my way through that question. I think I answered it in some way, shape, or form, because I did land up the job at DIAL Ventures. All that to say, Allan, great to meet with you and great to be with you here in person.

Those 18 odd months since that first interview, we've been through a lot. I think you've guided me through the initial fellowship at Purdue, and then finally on to setting up the company, and then as a board observer, of course. We've enjoyed that interaction over those last couple of years here.

To answer your question more specifically, I will lean a little bit into my personal and work background. I might end it off with my hobbies, but I'd like to keep it for the audience. I grew up in a small town in India. Like Allan said, most of my background was… My parents were middle class and were professionally employed. My mother was a teacher and a strict disciplinarian, if you will. Always grew up working hard and trying to get those grades, which were really important to my parents.

Found myself in college and post that at work in a bank in India. Did a wide variety of things while at work. To Allan's point, I did work in financial services for well over 20 years before I joined the DIAL Ventures program. That journey took me through many ups and downs, both professionally as well as personally.

Worked in areas spanning retail banking to microfinance to agricultural lending into payments and then into more private banking stuff and then back into payments, where I spent, I think, about 10 years over at Mastercard before I was at DIAL Ventures.

I did a lot of work. Geographically, I've moved from India to Singapore to the US. That was a great journey. A lot of learnings there for me in terms of dealing with multiple cultures and learning from different sorts of people, expanded my horizons there a little bit. Also being a little bit fearless in terms of stepping into new situations, new geographies, new environments, new roles.

I think all of those learnings over the last 20 years converged and crystallized in my experience at DIAL, where it had me take a risk or a chance that I would have, normally 20 years ago, would have thought 100 times over. Given my experiences of stepping into new environments, trying to build something, all of that helped me and supported me in that journey in DIAL. Here we are with a company that set up.

Allan Gray

Shashi, tell me about… I often tell people when I'm talking about Shashi and how he came to us that a fair amount of our fellows that we recruit are entrepreneurs. They've created startup companies in the past, maybe had some failures along the way, some successes along the way. I always say, Shashi comes through us from a little bit different background, but one that we've considered an entrepreneur, not really an entrepreneur, but you had built businesses within the business quite a bit. Is that the right way to characterize that as an entrepreneur?

Shashi Raghunandan

That's absolutely right, Allan. As we looked at… Before I joined Mastercard, I was at J.P. Morgan. J.P. Morgan was, at that time, way back in 2008, was looking to set up a retail bank in India. J.P. Morgan is not known for its retail bank outside of the US, where it's got the Chase brand, but outside of the US, there is no Chase brand. It's mostly private, commercial banking, and things like that. In India, for various reasons, they wanted to set up a retail bank for regulatory reasons and to get a little bit more presence.

I was essentially working with the India CEO to launch the India Retail Bank, which was almost like a new business, completely unknown to people who had J.P. Morgan in India or the lines that they were reporting into. Here we were trying to design retail cards and brands and bring the Chase brand into India and design the branch layout, and decisions that a commercial bank or a corporate bank in India was just not used to making. Despite that, we did launch a basic product, and we were able to garner over about $100 million in deposits into that product that we initially launched.

I wouldn't say it was an overall success, because eventually, the bank did shut down, but it gave me a lot of learnings on creating a business case from grounds up, getting the sponsorship through the management team, getting the funding that we needed, essentially setting up and recruiting a team of people who are experienced in areas that I don't have expertise in.

All of these learnings are things that I gathered at J.P. Morgan, which carried on to my work at Mastercard as well. The last 5 years at Mastercard, I was in this team called Strategic Growth, which is essentially incubating new businesses within Mastercard. As they were maturing, depending on the stage they were at were being brought back to the mothership, if you will.

Worked on different areas from public sector to agriculture, in some cases, to healthcare and digital commerce. Those business lines also gave me further exposure to a global context how to think about and rationalize and convince varied stakeholders beyond India to convince and invest in your business case and why it would make a compelling business to launch within the constraints of the corporate environment.

One of the things that didn't teach me, however, was in any corporate entrepreneurial role, you always have a corporate safety net. You do have your 9-5/8 rule. You have salary that comes in every fortnight. You're geared towards that dopamine hit that comes with your bank account and everything works well. At the end of the day, the decisions that you make are always in the larger context of a company that has its own engine that's working.

That is something that I've had to learn as I've set up my own organization and my own company and would have never been in that position to be so if it wasn't for Purdue DIAL. All of those, I'm sure we'll discuss to the course of this podcast.

Allan Gray

Great. We've had this professional journey through banking. Mostly, it's a banking background, financial backing. Personally, we decide we're going to move to the United States, too. Tell me a little bit about that decision-making process and those early days of experiencing coming to the US.

Shashi Raghunandan

Absolutely. I've made two changes in geography or countries in my career. The first move was far simpler, and though it should have been more difficult because it was my first outside of India. That was from India to Singapore. I had changed jobs as well. I was moving from J.P. Morgan to Mastercard. It was a new role, a new country, arguably should have been more difficult.

However, Singapore was a large city, which pretty much mimicked a lot of what India had to offer, weather-wise, people-wise, culture-wise. It's Southeast Asian, South Asian culture and food and everything. Plus, my home was a 3-hour flight away, which is, ironically, was shorter than where I used to work, back to my hometown in India.

For a lot of reasons, Singapore was a great first place to start work and gave me both the global expertise or experience I required, as well as without that cultural shock that goes with it. About 6 months into that role in Singapore, I got the opportunity to work at a global role within Mastercard, and they offered to move me to the US, where a global role would make more sense.

I discussed this with my wife, and we decided to take the plunge. I think the rationale at that time was life's an adventure. We'll see a new place, we'll experience a new culture, and we'll see where life takes us. We jumped in headlong into that adventure, landed ourselves from Singapore, a bustling megapolis, if you will, into JFK Airport. I quickly gathered our belongings and moved us to a suburb in Connecticut, where I thought we would be best suited to place ourselves for the rest of our lives.

I didn't quite think about the social context of the move. I didn't quite think about all of the challenges in terms of building a network, creating a friend circle, things like that never even crossed my mind. I think we were being naive at that point in time, but we did move into a suburb, a very quiet, leafy suburb of Connecticut, and which was close to my office. That's all this top of my mind, I need to get to office and back.

I think that that move was extremely challenging for us and for a couple of reasons for the first few years, at least. Because, number one, even though I was not changing jobs, I think the entire culture, weather, things that you need to get used to were very different. The interactions I was having were very, very different than in Singapore. The cultural context is miles, miles away.

We had to accommodate to that. We had to change ourselves, our patterns, our behaviors, and our assumptions to acclimatize to this new way of thinking and the new way of making friends. It took us a couple of years, but we are very happy now in having made a lot of friends, a lot of people that we worked through, and it took a lot of things to get us to that point, which I can touch upon.

The second thing that was a challenge was the weather. I'd always grown up in the Equatorial side and from India into Singapore. I landed into the US and we were hit by… In the very first winter that we moved into our home, we were hit by four Nor'easters. My wife and I had never seen snow before this. We came in, and people been inundated with snowfall, and no one is outside, and it's quiet, and no one's roaming around. India was bustling with people and people knocking at your doors at all times, and there was no one here.

It took a lot of adjustment. If we remain open and open to new experiences, open to changing ourselves, open to learning different things, and open to the experience of life, I think you eventually do end up in a good place. I think we find ourselves there now as we try to make the next shift now from the East Coast to the Midwest.

Allan Gray

Shashi, you're going through these changes. Big Corporation moves you to North America, to US. You decide to be as crowded as you can be, and then you move to the suburbs to try to avoid the crowds, I guess. Believe me, the suburbs of Connecticut are a far cry from the Midwest of where we are here at Purdue. Somehow, somebody convinces you, you should think about something called DIAL Ventures and this space called AgTech. What is going through your mind? You got bored in Connecticut and decided, "I need something else exciting to happen." What's going on there?

Shashi Raghunandan

No, it is a couple of things, Allan. I spent about 5 years at Mastercard in that role, and I was loving the role. I think what I enjoyed most about it was waking up every day, trying to solve a challenge that would push me in different directions, whether it was financing, or whether it was getting new customers, or building out a product and things like that. I love the challenge of trying to build something from grounds up.

Not many people within a large corporate context are geared that way. I think a lot of people enjoy the stability and that rigor of disciplinary approach or a disciplined approach, rather. I've always found myself drawn towards these new initiatives and new programs.

At the beginning of 2022, as I was considering career options because I was in a role transition, and I was looking at opportunities that lay ahead of me, I said, "If I ever get the opportunity to set up my own company, I think I'd want to do that." That was always at the back of my mind, given my experiences in J.P. Morgan and Mastercard. I said, "I think I want to back myself and see whether I can do this."

As luck would have it, I did land a couple of offers in other companies. There was a LinkedIn ad that came by, and it was for a venture studio, and I was scrolling through it. It was from Purdue DIAL and Purdue University. Of course, a lot of my friends had been there, and a couple of my friends actually are professors there. Like, "It looks interesting, and maybe I should look at it further."

The best thing about it was, it was a one-click application. I said, "What's the harm? Let's see where life takes us." I just happened to click on that button. Within 5 minutes, Tim Dixon, who's part of the team now at DIAL Ventures, reached out, and he said, "Shashi, we really like your profile. If you're looking for a career, we'd encourage you to apply."

At that time, I didn't think too much about it. I said, "I don't know. I've got these jobs, and maybe I should just go that way." I didn't respond for a couple of weeks. As the deadline approach, Tim reached out once more, and he said, "We really think you should apply."

That got me thinking, "If I don't take a shot now, I never will." I had a reasonably okay career, and I said, "Let's take this shot and see where it takes me." I just asked my wife, and she said, "Go for it."

I applied for the job, prepared a video. I've responded to, I think, two psychometric tests. Potentially six interviews later, one of which was with you, Dr. Allan, if you remember well, and I got offered the opportunity. It was really, I think for me, and I don't know if you know this, Allan, but at that point in time, I had joined a job. I had called up Tim and" said, Listen, I have an offer in hand. I'm going to have to take it because I don't have an offer from you. But if you make the offer, I will take it." Unfortunately, you were in the midst of that decision-making process, so I had to I set up another job.

As a week or two later, you guys made the offer, and I looked at it, and I called up my company and I said, "Listen, I've got this thing." They said, "What is it? Is it the salary, or can we match it? Is it the role?" I said, "No, I'm actually taking a huge salary cut. I'm not going to try to set up my own company."

They were nice about it. They said, "We can't compete with that. You should go do what you think is right and whatever makes you happy." Within 2 weeks of joining that organization, I had to turn in my papers and join this, and they were gracious about it. Here we are at DIAL and taking a leap of faith and backing myself to set up a company and everything else.

To answer some of the other aspects of what you asked, I think a lot of the motivation for me was to set up something that I could create, something that I could call my own, a blank canvas given to me, where I could draw my own portrait or picture, if you will. That opportunity excited me. The opportunity to be guided through that journey excited me because I knew I could not take those first steps on my own. For anyone who's listening, who's looking to set up their own company, I think the venture studio program offers you a guided way to set up your company.

I came from a corporate context. I had a lot of systems and processes in place, which I did not know how to set up if I were to do this on my own. To go through that journey, to understand the systems processes, understand how to build a business case from grounds up, and then have the assistance and the funding to be able to do it the right way from the get-go, those are important building blocks of what I've learned over the last couple of years at DIAL. I don't think I would have traded those experiences for anything else.

Allan Gray

I always think this story is fascinating, Shashi, just because you had done well in your career. We were always intrigued by your background because of this. You had this entrepreneurial spirit inside a corporate setting. But, buddy, you took a dive off deep end when you decided, "I'm going to leave a job so that I can come to this DIAL Ventures experience." Tell me, walk us through, Shashi, for somebody who doesn't understand what a fellow is in DIAL Ventures. What's that journey? Tell me about that journey you went through. What does it mean to be a fellow in DIAL Ventures?

I'm actually quite serious about asking this question. I'm not sure I've ever had one of you tell me what the experience is from your perspective. I know what it's like for mine, but tell the audience what it's like to be a fellow at DIAL. What does that mean?

Shashi Raghunandan

Absolutely. First off, I think I would say there are a lot of things that go into being a fellow at DIAL. The fact that you're in the program means that there is some merit in your case of being there. It's your background, your experiences, your deep industry experience, maybe your technical skills, whatever has brought you to a certain point within DIAL.

But that said, the very start of the DIAL program, I think one of the most impactful moments for us was, six of us walking into the five other fellows with me, and we all walked into the discovery. I think that was the building. Dr. Allan was sitting there on a call. The first thing I think you indicated was, "Listen, you may think you guys know whatever you bring and your background and your knowledge, everything else. We got to just drop those assumptions, and we're going to start building from grounds up by listening to the customer and understanding what the case is, and we're going to have a process to it."

The first to your point, "What does it mean to be a DIAL fellow?", I think the first thing is a complete sense of, "Drop the ego." I wouldn't say, "Drop your knowledge." I think it's just dropping the sense that you know it all and embrace the process. It's about trying to understand from grounds up what is it that this industry needs at this point in time, and where can you add value, and what business can this be, and how do you build a business case around it? There's a lot of learning, a lot of soul-searching, a lot of ego-dropping that happens. You need to be part of that to really understand how it is to create a business from grounds up.

I think that's the number one thing I would say. It brings a lot of humility. It brings a lot of groundedness. At the end of the day, you feel that you've done enough to at least have a case to begin work on something, and that is meaningful in itself. The process is important, and that initial humility is really important.

The second thing was in the journey itself, I would say, the six fellows, we went through six months of pretty rigorous, I would say, learnings, talking to customers, learning how to build business cases, anything that it takes to build out a company. These are building blocks towards what you will eventually want to do. Those will stay with you right through, whether you end up setting up a company of your own through the DIAL program or outside of it. These building blocks are critical.

How do you convince a venture capital company to partner their hard-earned money or hard-raised money to give it to you? How do you build a leadership team that is complementary of your skill sets? How do you identify true leadership? A true understanding of yourself. Forget about the other things that are external to it. I think a lot of the programs we did at DIAL, it was how do you understand yourself, what are your skills, what are your leadership traits, how do you communicate and things like that, which are really important to your own self-growth.

There's an Ag industry and business-building thing. That's the first part, but this part of it is how do you build a community, and how do you think about building a company from ground up? A lot of learnings in that space as well.

The third thing is I would say that it's the community of High Alpha, Purdue, and the Fellow Program. I will never forget those six months right through till the time I die, probably. I've made the most amazing friends, most amazing colleagues that I've met, people I still reach out to. We have a casual conversation. Sometimes I'm in town, I meet with them, have a coffee with them. Relationships that you build, which are… Some relationships have blossomed now into them investing into the company and things like that, where they're able to guide you, or they become customers of yours. It is just a phenomenal network that you're able to build up from ground zero.

Take my example. Two years ago, I had no idea of the Ag industry to the extent that it was in the US or whatever. I had no relationships here. I could not speak Ag. I probably still can't to a large degree. But the thing is, I go through that journey. Two years out, I'm leading a company that's building software services for the Ag industry. I'm able to at least hold my own and not come off as a complete unknown entity.

I've got relationships in the industry, which people will pick up the phone or at least have a word with me. I'm able to lean on people. I'm tapping into investors. That community-building in a couple of years time, I think those are the benefits of the DIAL program in itself. That's what I think it feels. That's what it means. That's what the journey gives you. I would actually strongly encourage people to tap into the benefits of that.

But the most important is the first step. You've got to drop that ego, bring some humility, learn the process, embrace the process, and the benefits will accrue. If you come in there and I think try to outsmart the system or things like that, you may succeed, but you won't get the full benefits of which I think this program can deliver.

Allan Gray

Shashi, I think it's an important differentiator that you did not come to the Fellows Program with an idea of an AgTech company you wanted to start, and then our job was to help you. You came in without an idea because in fact, in the DIAL program, it's what's unique about our Fellows Program. People don't come into program with their own company, and we're trying to help them. A lot of people get confused by that. We're not an accelerator. We're a startup studio that builds what the industry needs, and we go out and find out what that is.

That part of, "Hey, leave your ego at the door." really is this, "We're coming into this with a full attempt to try to build empathy for our industry to find out what is their challenge that they need help with that we might be able to build a company around." That's the requirement that we ask the fellows, "Don't come in here with your idea of how you're going to solve Ag's problem because you're not going to be able to do that in this program. We don't even really believe most people know what Ag's problem is to be solved because they haven't done a very good job, generally, of listening to that has been our experience." That's great to share that. Your experience, Shashi, through this DIAL Fellows Program ends up with something called Oaken. What the heck is Oaken?

Shashi Raghunandan

Yeah. You can be asking me that question after a couple of years. You haven't given me the money to say it. I understand that you want to… I'll be explaining it to the listeners here.

I guess the best way to explain what Oaken does is we are a software platform for all things that are farmland asset-related. When you think of a farmland, there are various aspects of land. Land is 80% of the balance sheet of any given farm. They are $4 trillion worth of assets in the US alone, and it has a lot of dynamics associated with it from farm management, where growers are trying to lease the farmland, and they're trying to manage a lot of relationships and expand their business, or trying to manage their business on the land side.

Right from there into financing against farmland or trying to transition the farmland, landowners are trying to pass that land on to the next generation or trying to figure out how to get liquidity against that farmland, things like that which are all associated with the farmland.

Now, most of the listeners here will have a stock portfolio. When you have a stock portfolio today, you're able to log into a digital platform, you're able to figure out how much the stocks are worth, you're able to access your the documents related to the stock, see the dividend history, see the stock movement over a period of time. But believe it or not, when it comes to farmland, all of those $4 trillion are being managed on manual processes today, and there's no such digital interface.

At Oaken, what we're trying to do is essentially build a farmland asset management system which will make it as easy to manage farmland as it is to manage stocks. Whether it be managing that farmland, whether it be financing against that farmland, whether it be understanding the value of that land, whether it be transitioning that land, our vision is to build one platform that can help with all of these aspects of land.

That's a long journey. Where we started that journey is essentially on the management side, which is, you're a farmer, a large farmer, a farmland manager who's managing a lot of landowner relationships today. You have, let's say, over 20, 30 land leasers, your landholders that you're leasing There's a lot of work associated with that, to be able to renew leasers, to be able to manage the communication, to be able to manage those payments, to do reporting against that asset. You're essentially the asset manager on behalf of the landowner.

How do you report effectively out on the value and what you're doing on that asset? Our platform has started on that front to help make that process easier. We continue to build on that use case as we go down the road here shortly.

That's a long answer.

Allan Gray

Tell me a little bit about how you started on this, some early conversations. I'm really thinking about… I know you had an early conversation with, let's say, Kassi Rowland, for example. Walk us through, walk the audience through, "Hey, we have some conversation with some people that ends up leading us down a path that looks like this." Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Shashi Raghunandan

Yeah. Yeah. I think as with any fellow who's stepping into the program or with anybody who's trying to come up with an idea, you start with a blank slate, and it leads you in a direction, and then you keep borrowing through and trying to figure out what the opportunity and if there's an opportunity there.

With the DIAL program, I think we did explore, I think each fellow explored at least 10, 20 different ideas at a certain level, and then three were selected to go down and do a little bit more research and try to figure out whether any of those three could lead to even bigger opportunities and things like that. Through that process, you get down to what could be a couple of investible ideas.

I went through a similar journey, Allan. To your point, our initial set of ideas, we went through conversations with Kassi, and we had conversations with farmers who were dealing land sizes or landholding similar to Tom Farms in Indiana. Also had conversations with farmland managers, with banks, with food processors, and a wide variety of stakeholders across the Ag supply chain, trying to understand what the problem was. You're not trying to solve for a problem. You're just trying to figure out what are they most challenged by.

Then you're just trying to document that. Kassi was one of, I would say… Kassi Rowland, for the listeners, is part of Tom Farms. They manage about 20,000 acres of land in Indiana, a very large farming operation, if you will. For most of us who are listening and don't know farm sizes and can't appreciate the size of that, 20,000 acres is pretty much the size of the city of Paris. If you look at the core metropolitan areas of Paris, that's how large the farming size there is.

Kassi manages a pretty large farming size, and she leases land from about 100 odd landowners. That was a specific-

Allan Gray

What? How many?

Shashi Raghunandan

-problem, and she got onto the call. I still remember the early calls talking about… About 100 or more.

Allan Gray

A hundred landowners. Wow.

Shashi Raghunandan

Sorry, you're breaking up there, Allan, I can't quite hear you.

Allan Gray

I said, "A hundred landowners. Wow, that's a lot of landowners."

Shashi Raghunandan

Yeah. Again, I think for me, that was a very good learning because first off, when you think about farming, you think about people farming on their own land. You never quite associate that people are leasing land. Then, when you think about leasing land, you think, "Oh, maybe it's four or five landowners, and maybe they're 200, 300-acre farming operation." Then you meet Kassi, and she's like, "Oh, we farm 20,000 acres, and I'm leasing land from 100-plus landowners, and it's a real problem."

I have leasers that renew every year. I have payments to be made. I have timings to be adhered to, I have birthdays and things to remember, and I have all improvements that need to be done in the land which I need to track. There's no way I do that. She walked us through this gigantic 10-sheet Excel page that she took us through. I was certainly taken aback a little bit. I didn't quite realize the scale of the land leasing operations. I kept that at the back of my mind, and there were a couple of other problems I was going through. But as I began to look at this one in more detail, there were a lot of aspects of it which were compelling.

One was, of course, in the US alone, as we did our market research, which is the next stage following the customer conversations in the DIAL program, you try to assess how big of a problem is this. When we did that, it was pretty evident that in the US, about 50% of our land is leased. There's about $30 billion in lease payments that are made. It accounts for one of the top eight expense lines at a farm level and so on and so forth.

There are a lot of growers out there who have this large land lease things. Not just that, they have farmland managers who are managing those leases sometimes on behalf of landowners. Especially with the generational transfer of land that's happening, more and more consolidation tends to happen at the farm level. This is a problem that I thought could solve for something meaningful, but also large enough that it could be solved for a lot of people's problems. You could build some a sustainable business from there on out.

Those are the building blocks of how you approach, I think, at the DIAL program, some of these problems. You begin with a customer conversation, try to understand the problem. You still don't go down the solution. Then you get to the sizing of the market and figure out whether it's large enough for a company to build an operation around.

Then, once you get a conviction on both of those, and then you've spoken to enough people to figure out that this is a repeatable problem, or it's a problem that many people experience, that is when you get down to business case. Then after the business case, potentially you get down to what a solution could look like. The solution is literally the last stage of it. I think that was quite a nice process that we had.

I think through the process, the other two ideas were dropped because of the market size and the difficulty in trying to obtain those customers or potentially the repeatability of that problem. But this one stood out because it checked a few boxes in terms of repeatability, in terms of number of customers, and then in terms of our ability to build a robust solution.

This is the one that we eventually went down. Of course, my own personal take on that was there's a lot of background in terms of payment flows that were happening. There's a lot of land itself is such an area to go down. I mean, this is one of the many challenges that people will have in land management. It was an exciting space to address at large.

Allan Gray

That's fantastic, Shashi. Tell me, I'm going to assume that since you launched, Oaken, that's been, gosh, I don't know, 14, 15 months ago, maybe, something like that. It's been great. All roses, everything's been perfect. No waves, no storms, or anything. This has been the ideal way that we should ever create a startup, right? Tell me a little bit about the experience so far in building out Oaken.

Shashi Raghunandan

I'm sure most of us would appreciate that Dr. Allan is joking here because he sits on our board as an observer, so he knows exactly what we're doing and the ups and downs and the trials and tribulations of founder, as I'm sure many who are listening to would connect with as well.

But, yeah, any startup journey, I think there is ups and downs. Every day is an up and down. Even within the day, there's an up and down. There's been emotional highs, there's been emotional lows, and really hard, gut-wrenching lows as well. I think the emotional… When you start off, it's all roses. Dr. Allan puts it absolutely correct. You start off, it's great. You've just got your first round of funding. Money is in the bank. You've got your founder. He's off building, you're off selling, and the company couldn't look better. You're off speaking to investors who initially say that they love the idea, and everything is all hunky-dory.

You start getting your first customer. I think that was for us in November, December, when we started showing Kassi the first prototypes of our solution, and she was excited by it, and there was an encouraging partnership with a group of firms as well. Things are rolling along just fine, and you're like, I think I'm onto something here. And all of those sacrifices can be written off, and I'm going to be riding off into the sunset with a pot of money here.

As it so happens, startup journey often leads you down different parts, and that was the case with us. I think one of the first indications, we had a lot of positives, I think, leading up in terms of signing up partnerships and getting the first set of customers in and building on the first set of features and everything else. But then there are always challenges.

There are always things that you need to watch for and figure out and then work yourself out of. And that's part of the joy of being the leader at a startup is how do you navigate those challenging situations. I think one of those things that I would point to is the last couple of for months as we've tried to do our fundraise, we've had many investors who have gone into due diligence and advanced due diligence and the like.

A couple of cases have come back. In some cases, they've been nice enough to invest into the company. But in some other cases, they've always come back with some feedback on the product and why they wouldn't want to invest. And that feedback is always hard to take as a founder because you have personally invested time and effort and your passion and your family's time and everything, you're emotionally invested. And I think that message is always a tough message to take.

I'm the first one to say that it affected me personally to the point where I really felt that I was doing something wrong. I would say that it took me two to three weeks to get out of that funk and to get back onto the horse and try to find a solution out of it. Those are the times that I've found I needed to be centered and try to find ways out of difficult situations, which has been interesting. Glad to say we're in that particular circumstance, we were able to make a few moves within the company and continue our fundraise journey.

Now we're raising some more money. So we overcame that initial hurdle. But these are the jolts that the external environment can deliver. A customer may churn. A customer that you're sure that you're delivering well against might just come up and say, "No, I don't like the product anymore." Or an investor may come by and say, "Hey, I don't think I can invest in the company because of so-and-so reason." Those are emotionally hurting judgments that you feel are being passed against you. But I think for anyone who's listening, I would say my own personal learning has been that I just need to keep plowing through.

The company's interests are the best that I can do to manage, and you need to find your out of it. And that's why you are in the position that you are and find options, whatever that may be, and keep the company's priorities at the… Keeping the company alive, keeping the company running, keeping your employees paid and happy. I think that those are your top priorities and keeping our customers happy along with that. So find a way to do that, whatever it takes.

Allan Gray

Well, thanks for sharing that in a vulnerable way, Shashi. I think it's important that… I think people probably know this. Startup companies are hard. Building a company from scratch is hard work. It's a lot of hard work, and there's a lot of ups and downs and things that can challenge you. It's your baby, and they tell you sometimes your baby's ugly, and you don't want to be told that your baby's ugly for sure. But listen, we don't want to stop this with, well, it's all hard work. Oaken is successful. It's early, of course. We want to be careful about that, but it's successful. You've had a lot of wins here. This company is on a path. Tell me a little bit about what's exciting you about where we're going?

Shashi Raghunandan

No, there's a lot of things that I'm super excited about. I mean, I painted a rather challenging picture prior to this question. But to be honest, I mean, those are challenges that any founder will face, if not more. And I don't want that to be taken as an indictment on the work that the team has been doing. I think that's been exceptional. I think for us, the team that we are building is the number one thing that I'm most proud of. I think the recruitments that we have made are the ones that we will make that I'm excited about in a couple of weeks from now. I think those are really good people who are coming in with interest in the industry and who see the value that we are trying to deliver and are willing to work hard at delivering that value.

The second for us to be able to onboard customers and to strike up critical partnerships, I think that has been critical as I mean, some of the largest groups of farms have come together, Tom Farms, for example, continues to provide good feedback about our product. I think those are critical product market fit things for our early stage company to know that you set out against a problem, and you've met it at some point and customers are liking what you're built and are willing to give you money to be able to pay for your product and service.

I think those are important validations that we've received as well. We've had investors who've come in, great set of investors, a mix of strategics as well as angel investors who've come in and guided the company in terms of, here's where you're at and here's what your story needs to look like. And these are the areas you can step into. And this is how you talk about your company. And getting us into those things have been super critical as we shape what this company can be down the road and where it can go to, what's the vision like. We've gotten into some very prestigious accelerators, I would say, like SVD Thrive and Plug & Play, which has been absolutely great for our visibility and for our brand and for fundraising.

Finally, we also won an award for the overall Ag supply chain solution of the at one year into the company to win that award alongside, I think, what could only be classified as some of the best companies in the industry. I think that's been a good validation of the quality that our teams delivered out in the marketplace. These are great proof points for us.

At the end of the day, nothing talks larger than a customer's cheque and their ability and willingness to pay for your service. But you look as a founder for these goal posts that can guide you to make sure that you're going in the right direction towards that cheque. These are some that I'm extremely proud of.

Allan Gray

Well, I think Shashi, it's important for the audience to know early stage company, sometimes the most important things we can find with respect to wins or do we have customers who love us? You do have customers who love you, that's for sure. I would also say in this particular environment, do we have folks who are willing to invest in our idea and where our company is headed, particularly in this market, which has been one of the most difficult investor markets for AgTech in more than a decade? You have.

You have customers who love you, and you have investors who've said, We're willing to put our money behind your company because we believe in what you're doing. This is a very difficult thing to do in this market environment, and you're winning. I believe that Oaken is winning. Of course, I'm biased. You're one of our babies that we birthed out of DIAL Ventures, so of course, I'm a bit biased. But Shashi, I couldn't be more proud of you and what you've been able to accomplish so far with Oaken, the absolute dedication to can we help farmers solve real problems around land.

Their most important asset is really just such a great thing that you're doing and the work your team is doing, your ability to build a team. Couldn't be prouder of you. Thanks for taking the time today to share with us a little bit your journey from India to the United States, to a crazy dream of trying to be a fellow in DIAL Ventures, to now building your own company in Oaken instead of making a real difference in the Ag industry. Thank you, Shashi, for taking the time today.

Shashi Raghunandan

No. Thanks, Allan. Thank you for this podcast and also for the opportunity to be part of the DIAL Journey here. I do appreciate it.

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