Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of What's Next With V, wherein we invite experts from various industries through them, understand more about that industry, and then kind of in the end, figure out what's next in that space. Today we have a very interesting guest, uh, Mr. Barada Sahu. Mr. Barada, welcome to What's Next with V.
Awesome to be here, Vishal, and, uh, great to talk with you. Look forward to chatting up a little bit.
Awesome. Barada is a product and technology entrepreneur with over 20 years of work across various high tech companies, including your consumer and enterprise space. Uh, he built and sold his past startup to the FlipKart group, uh, which is obviously now Walmart.
It'd be great to hear that from Barada. And presently, he's the founder at Mason, an AI shopping engine for brands. Super interesting stuff that these guys do. It'd be great to hear about all of this in this episode. Uh, I'm Vishal Ramaswamy. Your host as always in 'What's next with V'? Uh, Barada Jumping right in, right.
Interesting story. You graduated from one of the top engineering schools in the country. Worked across high-tech companies, building consumer enterprise apps, uh, leading technology teams. You've been technology lead architect, uh, followed by couple of startups and one of them getting acquired by the flip card group.
So it would be great. I'm sure listeners out there would be nvis about your story. Uh, would like to know more about, uh, what you have done. It would be great if you could connect the dot better for us.
Yeah, I mean, uh, the way that I like to, uh, talk about this, you know, uh, al is that, uh, oftentimes you don't look forward building a career forward, right?
I mean, the career looks more like coming together once you start looking at it backwards. Exactly. Yeah. And saying that things start to, uh, the dots connect, uh, by itself. But you start more by saying that what things interest you and, uh, I think that's like more like a north star. What I usually like to lean in on.
So for me it was initial, in the initial days it was more about technology was really close to heart about what we started off building with, uh, is excited by the whole, uh, you know, back in those days, that was the first time that computers were introduced to IOTs. In, uh, when I was starting over there and it was the first time that you got e exposed to, you know, the halls having internet and what do, uh, kids do when they have internet?
They start playing games. So we got, uh, got this first wave of internet almost being introduced to the technology schools and post that it was, uh, part of it, last part of it is working together and learning in the first phase of what my career was. And there I actually learned from, uh, what I would say the best.
In some parts of the enterprise space, uh, working at a, uh, places like, uh, B M W Daimler, building out some of the supply chain systems. Uh, subsequently I worked on this, uh, Citibank rollout. I worked with this company called Coney, which is essentially a platform, uh, for building applications across the whole enterprise stack.
Um, uh, and, uh, This was those early days where we didn't have any of these cross-platform toolkits from React to React native and all of that. This was pre that. And um, uh, we built that and we rolled out this whole consumer application for Citibank across 25 countries. It was a lesson onto itself, how to do a large implementation, which affects maybe like a hundred million plus consumer globally.
Right. Wow. Yeah. At civic landscape and, um, Something that I really learned, uh, a lot working together with the team over there. That's when I actually jumped out. And I also saw that, you know what, we kind of lacked more of these kind of tools for more kinds of enterprises. We are doing it in the FinTech space largely, but there was lots more, uh, of these tools which are needed across the board.
Uh, and that kind of got me started out on this whole thing about, uh, I came together with a bunch of friends who are new from back in those days. And we started this thing called, uh, native Five, which is a cross-platform, uh, building tool. Uh, I think of it as the OGs for no coders today. Uh, and subsequently what the AI we has done, but, uh, essentially helping teams build applications across the stack.
So that was a little bit about how I got started off on this whole journey of, uh, building products. Making things, uh, that are exciting along the way. I try out a lot of different things from consumer apps to building out personal tools that was always close to heart, but, uh, this was my first foray into, uh, entrepreneurship by myself.
Um, and during that phase, it was a, a learning curve. We did that for, uh, uh, four years and, uh, we scaled it to a certain, uh, uh, size. But what we also realized is that it would be much better to join hands and do it in a space where we could add a lot more value. Uh, that's where incidentally the flip cut acquisition happened.
We spent a bunch of time, me and my co-founders spent a bunch of time at, uh, FlipKart, building out some of the revenue infrastructure over there. Made some great partnerships over there, uh, along with my current co-founding co-founders and my founding team. A lot of them back from, uh, the days that I worked at Flipkart and working on some of these problems.
So, so that was an exciting phase. Uh, yeah, so that was a little about how we got started off on this whole journey. Uh, happy to tell more.
Great. So whether I think presently you are, uh, building the next product with Mason, um, maybe it would be good to hear more about, uh, Mason. I think you pivoted also, you started off with something, you pivoted midway and what you're doing now was a bit different from what you started out with.
So it would be good to hear, I'm sure a lot of entrepreneurs out there, um, especially during this phase, right? This people call it the funding winter. There's cost cutting. There's people are talking about profitability and all of that. So it would be good to hear how you started out, why the pivot and how is it going now?
So with Mason, yeah.
Uh, when we started out, uh, you know, incidentally, the story to going up to Mason and maybe there's a couple of jumps over there might be interesting for folks also, uh, who are kind of starting out. It's not a linear path ever to kind of get into that product market, elusive product market fit.
And because markets keep shifting, products also keep changing. Exactly. So, so it's got to, you've got to keep yourself nimble at the startup. That's really your core. Uh, what is a superpower in some sense, your ability to kind of figure out in terms of how the market is moving, what's going to be the right fit and not get stuck up Also too long doing something which might not lead to something.
When we started out initially, our, uh, and we were, uh, some of the folks at, uh, Accel, uh, these days call us as the OG in the geni space because we were like doing this back five, six years back when we were doing, um, A product like My Journey, uh, what it is doing today for MS. Synthesis, um, uh, or what runway ML is doing on video synthesis.
Essentially, we're building a creative engine, uh, generated creative engine, which helps you, uh, more focus on catalogs and e-commerce catalogs, helping you create catalog imagery, helping you create catalog videos and all of the kind, right? And bringing in all of these ability of segmenting images, being able to figure out which are the objects within them.
Being able to extract those and then create them into new backgrounds or create completely virtual, uh, content over there. Right. Uh, the challenge of course over there was this typically, uh, one was that the technology was not yet there and sometimes you've got to let it catch up. That was one of those things that had to happen, uh, because on one side there was a technology problem and there's a business problem.
And oftentimes when you're a startup, you only have. A limited amount of time and you've got to focus on one problem. You cannot take both of them simultaneously. Exactly right. True. Yeah. So, so what we, uh, realized that, and as we built out, was the initial technology problem needed for itself to evolve where some of these networks needed to evolve.
Some of those computing, uh, accessibility to, uh, chips itself needed to evolve. The GPUs needed to evolve, and they needed to become more cost effective to really access. And subsequently you could build out more products, which you could take to market. Um, and, and the adoption itself also needed to be more mainstream, to really have a market if you're too early into a market.
You can be spending a lot of time not only building the technology problem, but also solving out who are going to be those early adopters. Are they going to be around you? And um, so when we did Cubic, we realized that those early adopters were kind of really the design partners. They were not really at a stage where we could make a successful business out of it.
Whereas the technology was super promising, right? The lead design partners found a lot of value. But the, uh, large market was not ready for it. So what we did do is that we said that, you know what, we'll come back and see if there's something that can evolve further down the road. But right now, from a product standpoint, we need to see what is the real problem that most of these brands today are facing today.
And that got back to actually a lot of what we had seen back at the, in the flip card days and in the Mira days where we are building out. No, uh, one of those, uh, stories that I like to tell is that, um, It's become super easy for folks who come online, but harder for them to grow online business. Very true.
Because building has become more and more easier. Right, exactly. And, uh, this is becoming more and more real for brands. And what we had seen back then in those days was that, um, a large part of what actually made that scale difference for a lot of these brands on marketplaces was the understanding of consumers.
And being able to subsequently create the entire sales funnel, if you'd call it the whole browse to buy funnel for consumers on their stores. And that was kind of lacking for a lot of brands today. It is not just the ability for them to create content and put it into the store, but last part of it was understanding consumers and then being subsequently creating these uh, journeys for consumers on their own storefronts, helping them sell to them.
So that took us a little bit back closer again to, uh, understanding consumers back again looking at the real problem, which they were willing to pay for at that point of time. And that's really what became, in some sense, the genesis for Mason. Uh, um, this, uh, understanding of, you know, what, we had built out a fairly complex technology infrastructure for people to create content, but that's not the solution in itself for the market today.
The market needs the solution, which should help them grow their business. So we took some, some pieces of it. We pivoted the company a couple of years after we had kind of started off the initial product. We rolled it up into saying that, uh, we would bring in some of those core technology infrastructure, but really focus on the problems that merchants and brands are facing today about how to help them grow.
That's really been the journey to kind of get started with Mason, uh, and Mason is today in its third year. Uh, as we can speak about it, uh, growing fabulously, we are growing, uh, 15% month and month. Last year we grew by four x. Uh, and, uh, yeah, and, and this year we are also looking to the same, excited about some of these product offerings that you're bringing to life.
Cuz not only are we seeing the, uh, the realization of the product itself, but the acceptance from the market has been fabulous. Cause we see that real value coming from brands, coming from consumers, that that's always super exciting, uh, a product. Uh, oftentimes when it gets love. Uh, that's really the best way that you can see that product flourish.
So that's really been, uh, the story to
getting here. Awesome, awesome. But I think what you mentioned one point was quite interesting, uh, launching your company, you're launching your e-commerce is easy growing is is the challenge, right? You have so much competition, there's so much noise already. So I think tools like yours help brands to kind of grow big.
But I would like to maybe get a little bit more deeper here. I believe you have gone global. You have a lot of global brands, um, yeah. Who are using your tool. This would be good to, for listeners to understand how a, like how a brand benefits from this, like a particular brand, for example, based sort of us they use your tool.
Uh, what has been certain, uh, success stories. Some testimonials from customers. Yeah. What's the journey like for brands? Yeah. So, uh,
uh, you bring about some interesting points. One in terms of like, uh, how, how do brands realize that value, but before you realize the value first. I think it's like this understanding of the problem that brands face today.
You spoke about it rightly. It's easy to come online, harder for them to grow their business online, and a large part of that growing of that business comes from that initial insight. What you. Started to realize more and more this understanding of consumer is at the heart of selling any product or building any product.
Also, today's brands are actually waking up more and more to that reality of what they see. That Right? Uh, uh, in fact, uh, as, uh, at this, uh, Recent event where we're speaking with a bunch of brands from the Indian ecosystem. Um, and, uh, they were speaking about, you know, what our next generation of products that we are launching are actually, because consumers told us that they needed that product.
They were launching this product, but the, the product ne uh, was initially launched in the form of an oil and they realized that consumers didn't want an oil product, but they wanted to see them. And that only happened because they were very close to the customers. And they were very close to the consumers in terms of understanding the needs.
And so they completely converted the product in terms of the initial line that they launched and they converted to the new generation of the products. And that's really how product development is happening. The selling part of it is, of course, once you build products with consumers want, that's an automatic adoption of the the thing that's really what works.
And so for us, when we see about how those brands are finding value, it's really starting off by helping them understand these consumers. Uh, in depth by helping them with engagement tools that help them share their information As the consumers, you and I, you know, uh, we are also pampered by the likes of an Amazon.
And all of these marketplaces today, the convenience of buying, right? They really understand as well. They show us the right products of, at times they'll start off the journeys from exactly where we have stopped earlier from the browser, not bot to showing us deals that are ible around the products that we like and all these Addison products that they help us discover.
So we kind of also adjusted to these experiences. When we go to a brand site, it's almost like I'm anticipating that I'll have a similar sales experience, a one-on-one experience that I'm getting at the marketplace. That's really where the infrastructure bit comes to the table for most of these brands.
Is there the ability to understand consumers and subsequently create these experiences? These consumers on the fly. What we bring is a platform that, uh, connects the DOT and all of these today, helping them first understand consumers in depth, what they want, what they're engaging with, and subsequently create.
The whole sales experience for you, which is very tailored for you. Like what is buying maybe sh likes blue and uh, uh, I like gray and like showing us different sets of products which are tailored for us, showing us at different price points. We might be sensitive to different types of offers. So, uh, to showing us the kind of products that go well together.
For example, if I'm just buying a gray thing, they might suggest me a complimentary product, which might go really well. Maybe it's a black. Uh, genes that might go really well with this, or a blue pad that might go well with this. And so giving, almost like being that helpful assistant sales assistant that you'd expect in a one-on-one experience, bringing it to your store to life, that's really what we are kind of bringing to the table with.
Awesome,
awesome. I think this kind of technology, as you said, right? People are so used to Amazon and the other marketplaces out there. Uh, customers expect that on the brand site as well. Absolutely. Whereas when people on the brand site, there is a disconnect, people don't get that exact experience. So I think your, whether you're kind of in a way democratizing that entire marketplace experience for brands.
Yeah. They can just come plug and play, use your, uh, dashboard and kind of start building those experiences. But I want to just kind of take you back maybe in your previous startup, the past mm-hmm. Startup that you had mentioned. See for many founders out there getting acquired is like holy grail, right?
It's one of the, uh, kind of unanticipated, or they kind of prepare themselves to get advocate acquired or kind of raised. Go through an I p O, all of that. Right? So I just wanted to maybe dig deep a little bit more. Obviously you mentioned that, uh, it was into, uh, it was like a platform for building mobile and web apps.
Uh, just wanted to understand the acquisition story. How did Flipkart reach out? Did you reach out first? How did all start and. Maybe just some finer points would be, would be, be
for me. This was, yeah. This was back in those days when Flipkart also was making a lot of acquisitions, uh, I would say in the whole space.
And it was a fast growing company that made recently the mentor acquisition just, uh, a year or so before that. Okay. Case had moved to a new role at Flipkart and everything, and we had a good relationship where we had spoken earlier with Ish, also as part of the startup where we are trying to help. And so a lot of these dots kind of connected together.
Mm. At that stage in time. And oftentimes, timing is really what matters, especially if you're going through that whole acquisition process is about you need to time yourself, right? You need to develop your relationship. Acquisition is not an overnight game. You've got to also think about that when you are getting acquired.
You've also got to ensure that you're getting acquired to bring certain skills and bring certain things to the table over there for the other team, and you've got to be committed to that. So that's usually. The way that founders today, at least when they're thinking about going through that acquisition, should be looking at it.
Can I develop those relationships early on, which will help me subsequently? I might not be looking for an acquisition at this point of time. Absolutely right? True. But building those relationships early on is super important as you go through this whole process, right? Because you don't know where you kind of fit in in that whole story.
Secondly, I would say like this was one of those moments that I couldn't have planned for. Right? I mean, we weren't planning on an acquisition. We, I wasn't planning on Mason or Cubic later on, but it's been a fabulous story ever after, right? I built up my whole team. Subsequently, after I get into the group, I got got a whole new network of folks that I kind of connected with.
And none of these are things that you anticipate and say you go through it deliberately. So one is that Skype your relationships set up your relationships early. And then kind of commit to making things a success as you get in over there. So those are the things that I would like to kind of tell folks who are kind of looking to get acquired.
Uh, once you do that, I think, uh, you know, uh, uh, while most people tend to think that, uh, there is a, uh, bit of a tall poppy syndrome, Typically in emerging markets where if growing through too big, then people want to cut you down to size. But I also tend to find that we are in very exciting phase in our growth today as an economy, as a country itself.
And there's a lot more younger talent who is out there, who are hungry, who are ambitious in terms of making a big impact on the world around me. And uh, what I like to say is that if you can get that ambition in, but you can also collaborate with all these people who are also, you are well vicious, then you kind of really have big outcomes for yourself, right?
Because all of us are true, we do want to make the best. What do you want to do in our lives? Right. No,
absolutely. But I think a very interesting point that you mentioned, what I've heard from many entrepreneurs out there that none of them who have got acquired never planned for it. Yeah. They just did Right things at the right time.
Build those relation relationships ly and things just line up, right? Yeah. Like whenever you don't plan for it and it happens naturally, that's the ideal best win, right? For everybody. So I think that's also true, by the way, that's also very true about, uh, fundraising, uh, as it goes. You typically raise funds when you don't need them, rather than when you need need it.
Exactly. And so you've got to be planning for it and going through that whole cycle. Uh, true. Likewise. Yeah. So, but I call it the insurance mindset. You buy insurance when you don't need it. So that you, you're prepared always, right? Yeah. Great. Uh, brother, jumping into my next, next segment of this podcast is obviously innovations are happening on a daily basis.
Twitter, LinkedIn is filled with chat GPT gen, ai, uh, non-tech guys speaking these, this language, you see the entire, I don't know everybody. Like everybody's joining this bandwagon. I don't know whether all people know what exactly it is, but, but since you have been in this space and you have been OGs in a way, creating no code platforms in your first T avatar and then Gen ai, which when you didn't know Gen ai, that you were building gen ai.
So just wanted to understand what was happening in this geni space and at the same time, the infrastructure layer, like what's happening in India with the O N D C layer. I just would like to get your thoughts on this, these technologies, and is this, is it all kind kind of coming together for you?
Yeah, so one technology runs in all kinds of cycles right now.
Today we are of course in a hype cycle, of course, with the AI mindset. I mean, if you rewind the clock back like three, four years, it was all crypto. And web three, we went through that whole phase right. Until it kinda, uh, went on. But I think one thing that has been different, unlike the crypto wave, was that that was not building up for a while.
The crypto wave was like, kind of just, uh, went ballistics. But the AI wave has been building up and it has gone through some fundamental shifts on the infrastructure side that has really happened. Right. And which has enabled it at one point in time, intern who's really, uh, Gave birth to neural networks in some sense, because neural networks are pretty much dead.
Because before Hinton really showed that, you know, images could be better recognized handwriting, could be better recognized with neural networks than any of the other algorithms. Google and all had been doing that for years, and he did that out of a research lab in Toronto. And there were some fundamental innovations that happened over there.
During that phase of time, we had the ability to have larger cloud compute, which allowed us to create more sophisticated, uh, uh, networks, neural networks. And those really kind of enable these kind of algorithms to emerge, which should help us understand in some sense, first images. And subsequently now we text, uh, uh, understanding as well as text generation.
That has happened over the years. Now the big jump up that has happened is that as these layers. And fundamentally what we are doing is that in some sense we are trying to almost replicate the way that we understand our brains. We have come to realize is that it's like a very dense neural network of sorts.
And we are kind of trying to emulate a similar structure in the hope that we'll get to artificial intelligence, which can really understand things, uh, uh, around us. But while we are still a, uh, bit of a, we are away from fully a g i, as we call it. But what has happened along the way is that as networks have become bigger, they have come to, we have come to realize that they have got a fairly good grasping language today.
And that's really what we see, the whole explosion on the charge PT space itself today. Right. We have this ability to kind of ask it a question and all of a sudden it feels like it's answering back just like a human on the other side would do. Right. And for a lot of us, it's like, it's amazing. We suddenly feel the ca.
Does content writing go out of the way? Would, is there no value in writing anymore? Like if machines can just produce this content, does uh, art and design completely, uh, get described? Because machines can create, I think there is going to be some shift, but you know what? Uh, we've gone through all of these kind of waves much earlier.
If you look back at history, the industrial wave, in some sense, they said that, did it lead to the death of everybody who was creating clothes? No, it didn't. It just allowed those people to leverage that. We, of course, went through a disruption cycle, right? Some people will be out of jobs because they'll not be able to adapt and we'll go through that cycle.
But I think fundamentally it has kind of evolved where we've become better as a society because we are not doing the kind of job. Now, imagine if all of us had to handcraft our own clothes. We just be left doing that. There will be nothing else for us to do, uh, in our lives if we are just doing, uh, using looms, the older hand, uh, crafted looms of sorts, right?
So I also see a very similar emergence happening. Today's AI systems are getting better. I see that there's a lot of potential for us to adopt it in all kinds of workloads from the way that we write, from the way that we research. And the way that the best way to look at it is that, uh, think of it as an extension of yourself.
This helps you do better. Just like machines earlier helped you do things better. Computers help you do better. Yeah. It is now gonna help you do things better. So you are gonna apply your own intelligence a little harder. You're gonna use that to kind of create different kind of things. Possibly. We'll create different kind of movies.
Possibly we'll create different kind of art. Possibly we'll create different kind of, uh, uh, content. And that's really going to be what is going to be the future looking like. Well, today it's primarily in the content space, but we definitely see this having more applicability across the board for sure.
Uh, not just in commerce, but every industry I would say, uh, will, uh, have a fundamentally disruptive impact. Much like. The industrial age. So we are moving from what we call the industrial age to the digital age to now in some sense the A I and uh, I think we'll see more and more of that happening across the board for sure.
Great. Thanks Barada. Interesting thoughts there on innovation happening across, right? As you said, this technology can be used across domains and as you mentioned, right, machines can replace certain bit of your work. And as humans, we kind of upgrade to the next level of work. Absolutely. All the, uh, but they're going into my last, I think I introduced that concept there about O N D C.
I'm, I'm sure a lot of people are talking, A lot of people have taken snapshots of their orders versus their O N D C orders and showing, uh, There is a, a difference in pricing and, uh, this much better seamlessness in purchase experience and multiple stakeholders coming into one platform and kind of, uh, facilitating that, uh, buyer seller experience.
Just wanted to understand your thoughts on these infrastructure layers being created by by governments. Do you think it'll have an impact on, uh, e-commerce?
I, so one of those things is that, uh, if you look at fundamentally markets, right? Some of those areas where, uh, people have known to come to markets for, has been India, has been the Middle East.
Maybe these are where markets have really flourished. True. But you know, uh, we borrowed this concept of marketplaces from the west. Amazon incidentally happened to create this marketplace concept, right? And they always went into this concept of that needs to be one place held by a capitalist organization, which will basically ensure and control who gets to sell over here.
And that's really been what marketplace marketplaces are. Course flourished across the world ever since. But you know, as more and more marketplaces have come, it's also become harder for these sellers to really make a buck out of it. And for these brands really to make a livelihood, right? Because today the Amazon tax continues rising.
It's gone from where it was, uh, starting off with 15 to 20, uh, percentage points to right now people are paying between 30 to 50 percentage of their revenue to Amazon today. Right? And there's not much left on the table for you to do product innovation. So you get sold poorer products. Simple. Overall ecosystem does not grow.
What, uh, and I see that there is this, uh, here, there's a little bit of government intervention in some sense. But the good part about it that it's not just intervention, it's innovation that is happening that is ha uh, by the government. The government is providing an open platform today, right? And open markets are really what makes business thrive.
Really what makes everybody grow together, right? We just don't need large corporations. We need small businesses also to thrive, small and medium businesses to thrive. And India has been one of those hubs. We have had millions of small, uh, small businesses, right? And they cannot be kept hostage to large marketplaces deciding who gets to sell where, right?
Uh, and these kind of ecosystems I see more being the center of where these kind of innovations were necessary. They will also spread across the world what we call as fundamental open infrastructure. In some sense, we saw the open source movement, what it did for software. We see open market movement doing the same for commerce, open market, open payments movement, doing the same for commerce globally.
And uh, today, U p I, if you know it's already going to uk. It's already being supported in Singapore where you could use U P I to pay via, uh, pay now. And so there's a lot of these innovation which is spreading beyond our shows. We see India being as that next emergence hub in terms of where commerce innovation really happens today, because we are the ones who are closest to how small brands get created.
We already know this playbook. For a while, so this is good. Do I have a massively disruptive, uh, influence across the globe, not just in India For sure. And yeah, I'm pretty excited about, uh, what we're building around that, how we are helping, uh, merchants and o n DC go live, bring their shops, uh, to uh, to live and yeah.
Excited about what you doing.
Awesome. Awesome. I was just reading recently that, um, it's called DPI is what the government has given, uh, tack to a digital public infrastructure. And it seems that many countries have shown interest in kind of using the India stack, as they say, right? Yeah. Across commerce, payments, healthcare, all of that.
So I think I, I, I like to joke about it as the I P C stack. Um, the identity, payments and commerce. So like the IPC code, so this is like the IPC stack and Yeah. IPC can become i p c Edge. It can keep going on, right? Yeah. There's an agriculture stack as well that the, the government is looking at. So I think the list is endless.
I think every sector, um, can be, can. Government could provide that infrastructure wherein startups like yours, I mean companies SSEs, can kind of innovate over that platform. Right. So, uh, brother, coming to my last question and basically the theme of my podcast, um, is what's next? So, would like to get your thoughts, you have been in the ecosystem for some time now in the e-commerce space.
Would be great to hear your thoughts on how the next 3, 5, 10 years would look like in the e-commerce space.
Speak about three major maybe themes, what we see as emerging and maybe like that's at least the perspective that I, I see coming from us operating in the space for a while. Working together with brands, with merchants, with larger, uh, teams as well, and seeing how that's kind of shaping our globally.
We've spent a fair bit of time also across the world from selling to, in the us to selling in Europe and UK to selling in Southeast Asia. In India. And so a lot of these diverse markets that we operate in today, uh, and it'll speak about some of these larger trends, at least that we are seeing from on the commerce side, right?
One of those is that, uh, you know, uh, today for us as consumers, the behavior is shifting today, right? And that behavior, I will say is that as generational shift happens, that behavior is a, in some sense, we are all digital natives today. You would roll back a generation back. They were not because the internet kind of evolved with them, but we are all digital natives today, and every generation subsequently is today.
Right. And they require that, almost that instant fulfillment part for them. The internet is the whole commerce landscape. It's not just I'm going to a place and shopping. There I am. I want to shop wherever I discover products, whether it's on a TikTok, whether it's on Instagram, whether it's on Pinterest, whether it's on Facebook.
Whether it's on Twitter, right? I want to shop wherever I am. So discovery and shopping are essentially going to be more and more connected. It's going to be at the point of discovery shopping is going to happen. And so open markets really help in those, uh, spaces, right? Because now you can shop anywhere, right?
So that's, that's one major shift that I definitely see happening. Um, and around that theme itself is what I call us instead of closed marketplaces. We'll see the emergence of open markets. And you see O N D C playing like a big role in creating some of these fundamental infrastructure. But that's like one of those, uh, things that I, I see happening.
The second part that I see is that we spoke a little bit about this digital age to the a I h, uh, a little while back. Uh, and we also see the consumer interfaces changing today, um, because the internet's also become this very noisy space. We will have a way for us to curate the internet for us. And we see AI playing a big role in terms of how the relationship with the internet itself happens, how the relationship with shopping itself happens, right?
So we'll see more and more of these AI first. What you say, almost like, uh, what we call it is we had travel agents who would go and find the best deals for us. We'll have shopping agents, we'll go and find the best products, which are most likely for us. So we see that trend also kind of coming, ai playing a fairly disruptive role in terms of the relationship with how we buy, how we shop, how, how we start the internet.
Uh, and, uh, these are some of those motions that we kind of, uh, see in play. The last part of it is that, as. Things become more, you see the internet is becomes like this one place for us. There are these AI emergence. It becomes difficult also for brands to keep up with this, uh, pace of, uh, development. So that's also another part that we see on the commerce part, which is the infrastructure and enablement part.
People who have to think beyond setting up student products. Because today commerce is not about, I set up a store and all of a sudden, magically my business happens. It's not that today you've got to sell everywhere the consumer is, whether it's on a marketplace, whether it's on email, sms, social, wherever, whichever channel the consumer is, and you've got to connect the consumer by understanding the consumer.
So you've got to think beyond Sofa and builders. Some of these platforms of the older generation will not suffice. We'll see a new stack. And that's really where Mason really comes to the table Today we are building this new stack for you to help you sell everywhere. Wherever the consumer today is, making it a little simpler for you to run your business and grow your business.
But those are some of those, uh, what I say, emotions in the commerce space that we see more and more happening. Uh, happy to, of course, uh, things keep evolving. We keep learning, but these are definitely some of those things that we keep, uh, seeing in the days to come. Awesome. But I think quite interesting in sales as a customer, as a consumer, I feel excited.
Because it makes my life easy wherever I am, like example, I'm browsing on a website or an app, I can just click and I can buy. Everything gets, yeah, everything gets on the backend. Everything gets fulfilled for me. So, uh, another point that you had mentioned ai, right? AI coming as a shopping agent. And kind of figuring out, uh, like scraping over the internet and figuring out the best deal for you.
Um, likewise it can do that for the brand as well, right? Absolutely. So it's, it can work for both the stakeholders there and as you said, good to hear that Mason is part of that journey and, uh, helping build these innovative tools so that brands are always couple of steps ahead of the curve. Uh, Berda.
Thanks once again for taking our time. I think some super, uh, great insights across your acquisition days, your, what you're doing at Mason and your experience at various companies. Uh, Berda. I'm sure listeners out there would reach out to you, uh, I think for specific, uh, questions. So I think LinkedIn would be a good place to reach out to you.
That is correct. I'm on LinkedIn and, uh, please do, uh, uh, share out my handle. I I'll drop it to you. And, uh, yeah, I mean, uh, listeners can hit me up for any questions that they have around this. I sometimes am on Twitter, not always so much now, but, uh, I, I do respond back, so please feel free to reach out for any questions.
