102: Box Box Club - Ranjith Ramanan & Kamal Kumar

Kamal Kumar:

I think the first interaction that we had from Formula 1 was a legal notice that they sent us. So on App Store, we named our app like Box Box Club: F1 Widgets. And then F1 is a trademark term and we couldn't use it and we had no knowledge that, "Okay. We shouldn't be using that."

Ranjith Ramanan:

Even if it was getting the legal notice, we were happy that they're using the product. They're aware of the product.

Charlie Chapman:

Yeah, exactly. It's like the Jack Sparrow, "But you have heard of me."

Welcome to Launched. I'm Charlie Chapman, and today I'm excited to bring you the duo behind the beautiful Box Box Club and GO Club, Ranjith and Kamal. Guys, welcome to the show.

Ranjith Ramanan:

Okay. Thank you. Yeah.

Kamal Kumar:

Hi, Charlie. Thank you for having us.

Charlie Chapman:

I'm trying to remember. I've met both of you in person I feel like multiple times in multiple different countries, but I don't have a perfect mapping of where all of those were. Were both of you in Bangalore whenever I was there last year?

Kamal Kumar:

Yeah, I don't think Ranjith was there, but I met you.

Charlie Chapman:

That's what I thought. I know you gave a talk.

Kamal Kumar:

Yeah.

Charlie Chapman:

Okay.

Kamal Kumar:

Yeah.

Ranjith Ramanan:

I met you in Apple Park for this year DubDub.

Charlie Chapman:

Yeah, Cupertino. Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. That makes sense. So we've run into each other occasionally and I've been following you all for a while now. I mean, Box Box Club is one of those apps that popped out of nowhere from my perspective and was just this beautiful thing that existed and you're constantly posting just beautiful new things that you're doing. So I followed you from afar for a very long time, but I actually don't know the origin story and everything behind it, so I'm pretty excited to get into it here. The way I usually kick off this show is I ask the same three questions, which is where are you from? Do you have a formal education? And then what's your story leading up to Box Box Club? I think we'll start with you, Kamal, and then that will naturally lead into Ranjith's story.

Kamal Kumar:

I'm from a town in India, southern part of India called Coimbatore. So it's very famous for sweets. Recently, I think in the last few years there's also a large monolith statue of Lord Shiva that has come up that has become quite a symbol of Coimbatore. It's also a place that's very famous for motor sports in India. So the first Formula 1 driver from India was from my hometown, so probably one of the reasons why I also got into Formula 1. Me and my dad, when we were kids, we used to watch World Rally Championship and Formula 1s on television, and I was really fascinated by the way the cars were going around the circuits and I just loved the feeling of how fast they were. So I started following the sport slowly and getting into it.

I do have a formal computer science engineering education. So after I graduated, I was just working in different companies. I was actually into many multiple different job roles. I was once a quality assurance engineer. I was into automation testing, and then I got into a little bit of business analysts. So I was interacting with clients, trying to understand how we can build apps and what users are actually looking for. And then I slowly gotten into iOS by chance actually. So I was training to be an Android engineer. And then an opening, there was a job opening for iOS, has been the same company and I was like, "Hey, can I move into iOS instead of Android?"

Charlie Chapman:

Was this because you wanted to do iOS over Android or was this a, "That was the opportunity and so I'll just take whatever I can get that's in mobile"?

Kamal Kumar:

That was an opportunity there, but I've seen all the iMacs and the MacBooks and all the iPhone devices and Apple Watches were brand new back then, and this mobile team, the Android team had two devices with them and the iOS team just looked cool there, the mobile development team. It was like, "Let me be part of the cool guys' team."

Charlie Chapman:

I feel like that sums up the Android versus iOS debate.

Kamal Kumar:

Yeah, probably.

Charlie Chapman:

It just looks cool.

Kamal Kumar:

Yeah. So yeah, I just landed up there. Yeah, that was a US-based company that was into healthcare. So I just started iOS. I think that was almost 13 years back. So that's when I started with Objective-C and then slowly into storyboards. And then right now it's all SwiftUI. Yeah, that's my journey of an iOS engineer. But I also mentioned about being a Formula 1 fan. So that part, I always wanted to build something. I was just exploring some ideas, but then I never got the right idea on what to build. So that was, I think, 2022, four years back, almost four and a half years back.

We have a mutual friend, Gokul. So he just pinged me and tagged me in one of Ranjith's tweet about some Formula 1 concepts. So I had known Ranjith at least a year before that indirectly because the three of us, like me, Ranjith and Gokul, we have an iPhone, like a shared album for wallpapers. So we just had cool, really cool wallpapers in that album. So probably he also knew me by name, but never knew who I was. So that tweet-

Charlie Chapman:

Your entire interaction at this point was that you shared a wallpaper shared folder?

Kamal Kumar:

Yeah, that was the only interaction that we have ever had.

Charlie Chapman:

Oh, that's pretty funny.

Kamal Kumar:

So just one tweet. And then yeah, I just looked at some concepts that he had put out and I really loved them. So that's when I connected and probably segue to Ranjith on how he felt when he saw my-

Charlie Chapman:

Yeah. So this is the tweet that started your connection, which ultimately led to Box Box Club.

Ranjith Ramanan:

Yep, yep.

Charlie Chapman:

Okay.

Kamal Kumar:

Yes.

Charlie Chapman:

We got to that part of the story and cinematically we're going to rewind the clock here and go back and I'll ask the same three questions to you, Ranjith.

Ranjith Ramanan:

Okay. I'm Ranjith. I am originally from Kerala, but I'm in Bangalore for the last 15, 20 years. So yes, I do have a formal education in design, but design was my first semester. I never trained to be a designer by the way. So I mastered in 3D animation and special effects, but unfortunately I landed in a designing. I think that's something which I love doing.

Charlie Chapman:

Anybody familiar with your work is not surprised to hear that though. There's a lot of 3D and motion graphic effects going on throughout-

Ranjith Ramanan:

Through the colors.

Charlie Chapman:

... your website and your app work.

Ranjith Ramanan:

Absolutely. Yeah. So I love colors. I worked in a couple of telefilms back in while I'm just studying and also my dream to be working in some of the Indian movies and all that. So always get inspired by that, the kind of colors, the sound effects-

Charlie Chapman:

Ah, there it is.

Ranjith Ramanan:

... how you're using all that stuff.

Charlie Chapman:

This has become a joke. People make fun of me for my reactions, but so many people that have been on this show have either history or early career goals of getting into the film industry or visual effects or something, and so we got that. We can check this one off the list.

Ranjith Ramanan:

Yeah. Yeah, perfect. Yeah. So while studying, my goal is or my assignment is every day I need to watch one movie and deconstruct and understand various part of it, like the special effects or something. Even till date, when me and my wife watch movies, I can't watch normal movies samely because I could see that this is a green screen in it or this is special effects, so the gravity, all the things I just connect-

Charlie Chapman:

So you're focusing on the effects and compositing then?

Ranjith Ramanan:

Yeah.

Charlie Chapman:

Okay. Okay. That makes sense.

Ranjith Ramanan:

Specifically to that. And then my first semester was designing. So unfortunately then I got into design and it's been almost like 15, 16 year I'm in that same industry. So my journey started with working with an advertising agency back in those days. My early career started within advertising agencies and always I aspire to work with some of the really good brands. So I got an opportunity to work with really good brands like Adidas, Nike, that time just working only on the posters, like posters and the flyers and everything. So that's when the website design started to entering. I got an opportunity to learn along with that. Then it's become website and then it's become mobile app. Then worked on various companies as service-based companies and product-based companies.

So I'm learning on the go everything that whatever is doing, and just kept on allow iterating or maybe if you're following Twitter and you probably know that I just kept on creating some random concepts. So for me, it's like if I get some concept, either I just put it on a sketchbook pad or put it on my art board, I'll just keep it, I'll save it there and then I'll come back and revisit some of them because always after a day or after three days, I'll get an entirely different idea when I look at the same thing, so I always-

Charlie Chapman:

What do you use for that?

Ranjith Ramanan:

App-

Charlie Chapman:

Is it a physical-

Ranjith Ramanan:

Figma.

Charlie Chapman:

... thing? So Figma is your...

Ranjith Ramanan:

Go-to tool.

Charlie Chapman:

What do you used to call those? Books of creative influence or whatever where you kind of have ideas and if you're looking for an idea, you'll flip through that, through your Figma, I guess digitally flip through.

Ranjith Ramanan:

Yeah. Yeah.

Charlie Chapman:

Okay. Interesting. Interesting.

Ranjith Ramanan:

So the Figma is one and then Procreate. Maybe because my time when I started, the internet was not that powerful or we don't have an access to internet, so it's always taught us to just think original, then go into the internet and then searching. So that helped me always stay away from the net first, going immediately into some of the design platform and trying to identify and all that. So creating concept has always been one of my thing. I just kept on creating various thing. The last stint with me was I was with the VMware. I was leading the team. I was actually setting up the Indian team and various teams.

So I got more into strategy part of it and I'm not really getting to work on anything, but I got an opportunity to work on one of the legacy product, which that's helped me identify it. So if you asked me few years back, will I become a founder or do you want to start something? My answer would be no. But that is something that over the period that when I got into that, I just really enjoy the part being handling everything from in and out. Also, with my wife's support, I was just able to just go ahead and then doing that.

So coming to Box Box, I don't follow Formula 1 like how Kamal used to follow from decades or something. I know here and the drivers, I know of course the drivers know Alonzo, Sebastian or Schumacher and Lewis and everything, but I never watched it or never got in front of that. Thanks to Netflix for their Drive to Survive series. So that is some things where during the pandemic where things are just getting settled down, everything is slow. Everything has become slow from the fast-paced world. Then started watching Drive to Survive, I just got addicted into it. And since being a designer, I love to know more about the sport, how the sport is functioning.

So at that point, I'm also trying to get another hobby because India always considers cricket as being a religion. Anyone, if you ask, they would follow any cricket. I think that's something instinct. I'm also like that. I'm also the same guy who watched cricket or if some matches, if India has lose, I won't be able to sleep. I will be just disturbed a lot and probably sometime I just cry that why we did not win. So I'm that much of emotionally attached to it. So I want to detach from that. Then all of a sudden the sport like Formula 1 is when I just got it. So when I started, I wasn't able to know where to watch, like how the sport is being... It's so difficult. I have to go through various website and understanding everything. So in the back of the mind, there was-

Charlie Chapman:

And the time zones are weird too, right?

Ranjith Ramanan:

Yeah, absolutely.

Charlie Chapman:

I went through the same exact thing. Drive to survive, got hooked in. Me and my kids kind of started, we picked the driver that we like and a team and all that. But it's hard to get into the habit whenever the time zones are always so weird, especially in North America. I imagine it's a little easier for you.

Ranjith Ramanan:

The same thing for me as well. And then later I just got into the sport and also spatially creating something, understanding that how the sport... So I just kept on creating various concepts and everything and allowed Lewis Hamilton, I think probably you could see that, the T-shirt or this one, everything that which I'm wearing from the Lewis Hamilton thing. So 2021, all of a sudden the entire chaos was happening between all the rift and Max and Lewis was all that fight was happening. 2022, I was planned, I just all of a sudden thought, I just decided, okay, I want to just go and watch the sport in person. I just want to go and witness it. It doesn't matter. I need to go. So me and my wife travel and that was my first Formula 1 race that I'm going to watch in person.

Luckily, I was able to meet Lewis Hamilton and I could just see him. He came for one of the fan zone and then he started talking about a lot of things like losing and failing. So that motivated me a lot. So before that I had a really nice little portrait of... I just sketched in a portrait of his face in Procreate. So probably I'll send it to you later. That's where everything's beginning. So I just started that portrait. Then I thought, "Okay. How do I just put this into some of the concept?" Then I just came into-

Charlie Chapman:

So this was after you listened to his-

Ranjith Ramanan:

After watching-

Charlie Chapman:

.. speech-

Ranjith Ramanan:

Speech.

Charlie Chapman:

... you were like he's kind of like-

Ranjith Ramanan:

After listening to his speech-

Charlie Chapman:

... a hero for you to some degree. You sketched out a portrait of him. Where was this at? Which race was it?

Ranjith Ramanan:

This was Bahrain GP, 2022.

Charlie Chapman:

Ah, okay. Nice, nice.

Ranjith Ramanan:

I got to see him on a podium, I think, third place. I think if I'm right, he was on the podium. I was able to see that he's on the podium and celebration coming back.

Charlie Chapman:

So he gave an inspirational speech and you were just like, "I want to do something now," but at this point you didn't know what?

Ranjith Ramanan:

Yeah. So I really want to contribute something to the sport, contribute something for the fans.

Charlie Chapman:

Specifically for the sport.

Ranjith Ramanan:

Yeah, perfectly for the sport. Only that my superpower is designed, so I could design something and then put it out there. So all my goal was like, "Okay. Let me design something for the sport." The first point was like, "Okay. Create some of the widget because widget was easiest form of that you can just translate the sports into." I could just put the schedule or the driver points or team points right on your iPhone-

Charlie Chapman:

You were thinking mobile app right away and specifically iOS right away?

Ranjith Ramanan:

Yes, yes. Because when I'm looking at it various point, how do we just get it? So I was thinking maybe iOS widget could be one of the key thing. I was searching that, are there any F1 widget is available at that point of time? There were none. Just kept on. I'm just looking at Twitter, Reddit, going to various places and there were no product at all, but I don't know how to build. So I just created the design. Throughout my career, I worked with so many developer, so many developer. So I just started to reaching out to everyone asking that, "Hey, I have one. Now I have a concept. Can we create this?" Everyone is like, "No, I'm not interested." Or they're just wiping away because they would've been probably thinking, "Oh, this guy every now and then create some concept and come back and then this is going to work out or not."

So I thought I'll just let people put it on a Twitter. I'm asking if any developer can just come in and build this, it'll be really great. So that's the only goal. Nothing was... I just posted and that's when Kamal had commented on it saying that, "Bro, I'm interested." So at that point, Kamal is an absolutely stranger for me. I didn't even know that we are sharing one wallpaper group with another friend of us, wherein this guy used to send a lot of car wallpapers in there. So I just post a lot of design related and he would be posting a lot of car related... All the Formula 1 car will be there in that wallpaper. So I have no idea about that kind of time.

First thing when I see the message, I was like, "Okay. This guy's totally stranger. I didn't even know." Then I just dropped him a message asking that, "Okay. Fine. Let's do it." Then he said, "Okay. Give me three days. Let me check and then get back to you on it." I said, "Yeah. Okay. Fine." So I have no expectation, nothing. He just came, told, and then went, and I just completely forgot about it because I just posted. After three days, he again pinged me back and said that, "Bro, I got it. We can just do it this way." Then he started to explain about, "I did spike and we can work on X, Y, Z." That was actually, I was like, "Okay. Things are just getting serious." Then after that call, I think it's not even a call, I guess that's the chat. After that chat, I thought, "Let me stalk this guy. Who is he? What is he into?" Because if I want to invest something, I really want to know that who that other person is.

Charlie Chapman:

Yeah. I mean, you're kind of going into a partnership to some degree.

Ranjith Ramanan:

At that point, it was nothing sort of we were thinking we want to create a product or nothing. I was like, "Okay. I got this guy who can just build this product. I think give life to my design. That's it." Then I thought, let me look at who is he. Then I started searching him on Instagram and looking at his feeds, and while scrolling, I could see one photo where he had a Formula 1 car tattoos over here, and I ask him-

Charlie Chapman:

Now you're like, "Oh, somebody else who's... It's not just an engineer, he's also passionate about the same thing."

Ranjith Ramanan:

Exactly. Yes. As soon as when I see that, I think everyone would've been watching Avatar movie wherein the Jake came out and then he'll took that dragon's, the tail or tail of the part and then he'll connect and identify, "This is my dragon," when he's go. And at that point I was like, "He is the person." Then immediately we just got connected and we started talking and we are IDT. So one of the best part about Kamal is Kamal and me is like-minded. Kamal is very calm and composed. I would be more aggressive or something. The complement both of our characteristic as well when we are working and the same thing. He does a fantastic work on the engineering side of site. And then I get to see everything, whatever I'm designing that getting live because of he put that much of effort.

Every time whenever we are having conversation back then, we were like, first thing that we are talking about, "Bro, we need to build something really good." Everyone should feel like, "Okay. Where this app is coming from?" That's only one goal. We don't want to just interrupt any experience. We want to build something really, really good, like thoughtful product that people genuinely love to use.

Charlie Chapman:

So it wasn't a like, "Hey, there's nothing else out there that does this. Let's get the first version out there that just has the bare bones." You were like, "This needs to be a statement right off the bat that this is different."

Ranjith Ramanan:

Yeah. So we are like, "We want to release the product." You wouldn't believe that at that point, we were not even thinking to start a company. The product doesn't have a paywall screen at all. It's completely free to use. I think we have a various widget. It's just like if somebody's using the product, they should know what exactly they can work and they watch the race and then what are the schedules and driver points.

Charlie Chapman:

Yeah. It sounds like this just came out of your joint passion for wanting this to exist.

Ranjith Ramanan:

Yeah. I think we spent a lot of nights. I would say we both are nocturners. We allowed to work at night, maybe after office hours. Even I was working with a US organization, so I'll mostly have a call till 10:00 PM. After 11:00 PM is when the Batman, like how the Batman, we will start around 11 o'clock, we start messaging and this go till 3:00 AM or 4:00 AM. I'll share something and you'll share something and we just constantly discussing. All of a sudden the stranger has become someone who I spoke a lot over the period that every day that we are just talking and getting an idea, just chiming in each other.

Charlie Chapman:

You said the initial version was free, but did you... You built this as it was basically a widget was the primary thing. How long did it take you to build and get that released?

Kamal Kumar:

I think it was just around one month or something. So we started the conversation in March, and then the first version went live on the first week of May for... I think it was the US Grand Prix.

Charlie Chapman:

Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. So you were timing it with-

Kamal Kumar:

Yeah, we timed it. Yeah. So I think even for me, when I didn't know the widgets have to be built with SwiftUI because that was the first ever widget I was building for iOS. Till then I didn't know SwiftUI also, so I was just working on Swift and storyboards, and it was so exciting for me, the designs that I was working for. I've never seen designs as good as what Ranjith had created. So whatever I was working for, it's a healthcare app or a FinTech app, sort of boring, but then these designs got me hooked in. I was like, "Wow, this is good. Now how do I build this? How do I solve it?" I think that part got me hooked on. I wanted to keep building it.

Yeah, I think that designs were one of the most key thing that made sure that I stay awake every night and I wanted to deliver. For us both, I think we had the synergy, so we knew that, "Okay. Let's put the app out there." We had all these ideas of how it should be for the community, and that's why we named it Club. So Box Box, any Formula 1 fan will understand that it's the radio call for pit stops. So it's like, "Okay. Let's add Box Box and Club."

Charlie Chapman:

Which is such a good name, by the way. Even before I kept up with Formula 1, that is almost the audio logo of Formula 1 in my head is like Box Box.

Ranjith Ramanan:

Yeah, absolutely.

Charlie Chapman:

I don't know why. It just sits in my head. So that name is so perfect because it's fun, it's a little sort of esoteric, but then immediately if you care about F1, you know exactly what it's about.

Ranjith Ramanan:

That's exactly the thought behind naming it when the product is coming out and then we were deciding, okay, what name that we need to add. Charlie, always the paid when we are building the interest to start a company and start a product is becoming more and more because from the other side, I'm started to seeing the things that on my screens are started to getting live and I could see the TestFlight and I started seeing that I'm interacting and I was like, "Okay. This is coming out really well."

Charlie Chapman:

Yeah. You're like, "Oh, my gosh, this stuff that I've been designing is coming to life and I have this mechanism, I can throw it into this bucket, which is Kamal. And then out comes the thing alive now." I imagine that's almost intoxicating like, "Oh, my gosh, I think we could do this and we could do that and we could do this."

Ranjith Ramanan:

Yeah. I love seeing the TestFlight one build this up, waking up and then looking at it and then giving, "Okay. Can we do this? Can we do that?" We have this way this testing, and since it's based on a character-

Charlie Chapman:

I've said this a lot on the show, but I love designer engineer teams because I think it perfectly encapsulates a thing that's hard to do for yourself, but I encourage lots of people to do, which is to design separately than you engineer your stuff. So if you're a complete indie and you're building your own thing, I really recommend starting with sketches on paper or Figma, or even if you're doing the AI thing, start your AI stuff with image generation, not with code, because you start thinking about the problem, not about what's the easiest thing to solve. Many of us have worked in an environment where you get designs handed to you by a designer and you're like, "Oh, my God, they're making this so hard on me." That's an annoying experience, but it's only annoying because you're building enterprise software and you're like, "It would just be easier if you let me do this."

But what Kamal was explaining, it is addicting when you have what is a good design and an exciting design, and then you have the engineering problem of, "How can I make that work?" You never in a million years would've designed it that way if you were doing it in code. So that interplay is so fun, and you can force yourself to do that to some degree if you split your tooling, no matter what your tooling is. But obviously if you can find one of these partnerships, like it sounds like you all have, that is the gold standard and it's beautiful to see.

Ranjith Ramanan:

Yeah, 100% is.

Kamal Kumar:

Yeah, I think when we were discussing with other indie founders and developers who are doing all the stuff solo, so that's when I think I also realized this, having a design co-founder with me who's able to... Whenever we discuss ideas and then it's like we both have our own versions of understanding of what that new feature could be, what that new idea could be, and then he immediately sketches a version one and then whatever we had discussed, I can just immediately visualize it. And then we have a call on what those designs mean, and straight away we are able to find out all the missed use cases and connect cases, and then he refines the design again. So that way we actually solve a lot of things. When we look at, let's say, one initial design, the version one, we get even more ideas. So I think as you rightly said, the design has to be a completely different process that comes even before you start coding.

Ranjith Ramanan:

Kamal is being absolute stranger at that point of time, even now. Sometime I understand why others don't want to work with me, especially for the developers, because whatever I see in the Figma, that is going to be one version, and when I see it on a TestFlight, I would be completely changing it. We'll be all of making iteration. So I had to just first say, "Bro, there is some changes we need to make," and then I'll give him a list of things we need to change. So he never come and fight with me or saying. So there was nothing about, "Oh, I spent so much of time. Why are we making changes?" The product betterment is number one priority. So to reach that, we both push each other into do the best thing. So I would be constantly making changes.

The one thing, Kamal is so interested in sport, and whenever if I'm working on a new features, I have to move away from creating a different concept, like some other page. Sometimes what happen if it's come and see, he'll start building that and send it to me a build. So I need always to hide from him. Any new feature, I'll hide him. Until I finalize myself, "Ah, this is fine to show him, then I'll put it there." Otherwise, sometime he'll give me a surprise. I would've been just concept creating and next day morning like, "Bro, it's ready." I was like, "No, that's just an outlier. You're not supposed to build..." Because I feel guilty about he's starting, he's spending a lot of time, and I had to ask him to make that changes. I'm telling that this is not right.

So I believe that being a designer, which I don't want to look in the code, for me, it's metrics. When I see code, I feel like I'm new and then all the codes are coming in. So I design, I stay away and giving to him and he will engineering. I give the life to it and then come back to us though.

Charlie Chapman:

It sounds like you clicked really well. You got this first version done, which more or less was about the widget, and then you launched it for free. One, were you expecting this to be a big hit or was this just it's exciting to make a thing and get it out there and that was a real goal? And then two, what was the reaction from the community?

Kamal Kumar:

Yeah. We launched it and we never really... I mean, both of us are from different backgrounds, but none of us, neither of us were from marketing background, so we don't know how to market our app and we didn't know what exactly to do. So we just were just talking about it. Initially, we were thinking India could be the big market.

Charlie Chapman:

Why did you think India would be the big market? Because that's not the central market for F1.

Kamal Kumar:

We didn't have an understanding of where the market was exactly and how we could grow. We didn't have a proper understanding of marketing or app growth at all. So we thought we'd just launch app and see the reaction. And then after one week and two week, we didn't know exactly how the indie path is going to be. We were still doing our full-time job back then. And then we launched it and then we started seeing download spikes happening in Brazil and US. We were wondering, "Why is this happening? How could this happen?"

Charlie Chapman:

Did you market at all? Did you post it anywhere or was it literally just pushing into the store?

Ranjith Ramanan:

No, even till today.

Kamal Kumar:

Yeah, we just pushed it. Yeah, it's been mostly organic growth that we have been getting. But yeah, we just pushed the app and we were just looking at the reactions, looking at the downloads. I think after first week it says we had closer to 5,000 downloads, so we didn't know what was happening. And then slowly we discovered that someone who discovered it from, I think, Mexico, they love the app. They love how the app was built and all the widgets. Widgets was a very new concept in iPhones back then. So I think it was iOS 15 and iOS 14 was when the widgets were launched. People started understanding, "Okay. You can have these small widgets on your home screen that can show you information." So it was exciting for all the Formula 1 fans to have something brand new that no one had ever built at that point.

Probably there was one other app, but we were doing it much better because your home screen, it's very personal. You want to have an icon in a certain place. You want it to be some sort of theme is there. So it's very personal to everyone. So having a good designed widget on your home screen, I think that meant a lot to the Formula 1 fans. So one such Mexican fan who downloaded our app, he just posted something about our app on TikTok. I mean, in India, we don't have access to TikTok, so with India we know what was happening or where the downloads were coming from. TikTok, I think it blew. It had over, I think, a few thousand views and then later to a million views. That one TikTok, I think that blew up and that started getting us all the downloads. Looking at that fan, multiple other people from Mexico and then slowly to Brazil and then slowly to US, it started spreading. So yeah, that's how our growth began.

Charlie Chapman:

Oh, that's crazy. That's one of those things where, yes, it's like luck, but having it be well-designed, in particular in this case, is so important for it to work on a visual medium like TikTok. So not only did it have to be good in the person to like it, but if it looks pretty, it catches people's eyes, which causes the video to gain more traction, and then that has cascading effects.

Ranjith Ramanan:

It's always whenever you look at our product, be it Box Box or be it GO Club, so one of the philosophy that what we follow strictly is build something that is fall under Shaper and a multiplayer. I think that's a design philosophy that I had. What is Shaper? Shaper is nothing. Just you have thousands of app and all of a sudden when you come and discover some app and you feel, "Oh, wow, this app looks really good, entirely different than what it is supposed to be." So as soon as user get that kick... And then second thing work as a multiplayer, you see the app and you become the UGC, you started to showing to other people, "Hey, look at it. I found one app. You must use this product."

This is something we just constantly, consciously or unconsciously that put thought into while working on the product and we'll make sure that the users are going to allow it wherein they're going to bring another person even without even we are telling because they want someone else to use it or they wanted to put the video out there and saying that, "Hey, I discovered this product. Why don't you go and check it out?" So that's one of the growth aspect where we started to seeing a lot of users.

Back in those days, first time I'm getting access to App Store Connect from the designer perspective, so I allowed to see the numbers saying, "Oh, we are getting these many downloads." When I'm looking at it, I was like, "Wow, the numbers are increasing," or "Where are these numbers are coming from? Is there any review?" Until date, it's been a four years and every single day my day start with log into App Store Connect, read all the reviews and then respond if possible, or if there's anything technical, just reach out to Kamal, then look at or reread every review, be it positive, be it negative, just kept on reading. That's something motivate me to just before even starting the work.

Charlie Chapman:

So at this point in the story, you have an app that's catching on. It's making some waves in TikTok and on social circles being spread around, but it's totally free. So I'm presuming you didn't quit your day job at this point because you had no other income. So what's the transition from there to like, "This is a business now"?

Kamal Kumar:

Yeah, it was mostly user-driven or fan-driven. So the users of our app, they understood this is brand new. You also mentioned about the time zone issue, right? So users at that point, the Formula 1 fans didn't know when exactly the next race was happening. They had to open up the search engines and try to understand from Google, "Okay. When is the next time zone?" They have to open up the Formula 1 official app or something. And then we were giving them the localized time zones. We were letting them add their favorite drivers and favorite teams right on their home screen. They were able to follow the sport much better, much closer.

So users, they started giving all good reviews and we thought, "We're building a club. We are building a community of users and we should be more connected to them." We thought instead of just giving them an email support, let's add WhatsApp support as well so that whenever users, they have some feedback, they want some feature, let them reach out to us and we'll be able to immediately reply to them. So we went out, got a SIM card, got a dedicated WhatsApp channel, and then we started replying to every user. At one point, the users were like, "You guys are doing such a good job. I would like to pay you." We were slightly taken aback. Why people want to pay us? We just want to do it for free. But that's when I think that one point made us realize that, "Okay. That could be a potential that we could also be earning from our app."

Charlie Chapman:

It's always a good sign whenever your users are asking to give you money.

Kamal Kumar:

Yeah, it was. I think the first little milestone was we paid $100 for the App Store developer account. Let's see if we can make that money back. I think that was the only goal for us back then. We were like, "Okay. Let's start a subscription." But again, the problem was we had given so many widgets and features for free at that point and we didn't know, okay, now if we have to bring a paid version, the community who had supported us from the beginning, we cannot take the features back from them telling them that, "Okay. From this version on this, you're going to pay." And then it was more work for Ranjith. So it was like, "Okay. Now let's design more stuffs. Why don't we add themes to the widgets? Why don't we add an Apple Watch app and complications?" I think we had to actually discover more features to be adding. Yeah. Probably Ranjith can talk about all the designing. He had a lot of designing to do because once we bring in subscription, it has to be valuable for the users.

Charlie Chapman:

It sounds like you were basically like, "All right. We have to come up with features valuable enough that people are willing to pay." So what was the approach to coming up with that?

Ranjith Ramanan:

I think initially when we just got message from a couple of users that they wanted to pay, we were not sure about how to just go about that. So what we did, even what we do usually towards the end of the season, the Formula 1 season, we start doing a bit of survey from the users. We'll send them Google survey link and I would be adding... I think this is where the designer in me is helping because I wanted to know only one or two answers specifically, but I'll just make a list of 10 question, nine or eight questions that I really don't want. But you as a user probably would've been filling in with all the journey, but I would be getting only from two, three points that which I wanted.

So there we were asking that whether you want to build an app for iOS and Android or if you're willing to pay, how much would you willing to pay between the range of five, 10, $20, something like that which you put in the circle and then ask various questions like, "What would you pay? Why would you pay?" I'm asking a lot of the why and why do you want to do all this stuff? When we got, I think at that time, around 5,000 or 6,000 response which we got from the users, that was massive. I was just going through and looking at everything and we were almost clear and we were like, "Okay. Fine. There are people ready to pay and we don't want to take back any of those features that whatever that we give, that's number one. Number two, what we can do, we can build on top of that, top of that what we can build, what is that which we can build?" So I can ask you the question, how often that you change your wallpaper, the own wallpaper?

Charlie Chapman:

Me?

Ranjith Ramanan:

Yeah.

Charlie Chapman:

Pretty inoften. I'm one of those people that-

Ranjith Ramanan:

Keeps on changing?

Charlie Chapman:

... sits tight for a very long time, but then when a new phone comes out, I'll usually try the new one that it comes with and then I'll usually will fall back to one of my original ones.

Ranjith Ramanan:

Yes, yes. So the wallpaper, so this is the entire idea behind it. Because wallpaper is so personal to every individual, they would be using one wallpaper for a longer time and they have the habit of putting the icons, what icon they need to be in the first home screen, second home screen, and they'll add what widget needs to be there. If the widget is good, that has to match with their wallpaper. So there are a lot of combination, but consciously or subconsciously they were arranging something in designer way, aesthetically looking good. That's when we realized it, "Okay. Maybe why not creating themes for the existing widget? Let us add more themes and give the option for the user to customize a lot." So the customization part coming to the picture at that time where the user can customize it, they could see a various theme for a schedule, the same schedule, the same informations completely laid out in a different form of it where they could adopt into any of their widget and we started to rolling out that on top of that, these are the widget that we can add.

So I think at that point is when we formed the company formally thinking that yes, we can do it and we were deciding maybe end of '24 we should be able to quit. That's something that was there back in my mind, we were asking, "What do you want to do?" I still remember Kamal saying that we wanted to go and watch one Formula 1 race. I said, "Yeah, we'll do that." They were like, "Yeah. But we will start doing something in 2024 around that and that will work." But we were constantly working. That 10:00 PM to 3:00 AM kind of hustle, that was every day. Every single day I was just after office hours-

Charlie Chapman:

That was all building up towards this update that would then introduce some sort of paid plan?

Kamal Kumar:

Yep.

Ranjith Ramanan:

Yeah.

Charlie Chapman:

Was that subscription right off the bat or were you doing a one-time purchase?

Kamal Kumar:

It was a subscription. Yeah, it was aligned with how Formula 1 was happening. So it's just like a season that happens, the season of races that happens throughout the year. So we thought, "Let's add in a yearly subscription so any user who comes inside, they'll pay us for the season and stick with us for the next year if they choose to continue." I think that was the approach. That was the thinking behind adding only the yearly subscription back then. Yeah, I think another big point where a user started subscribing more is we added more widgets and widget themes, Apple Watch app. One of the main or the major event for us ever happened with the launch of lock screen widgets. The next version of iOS was launched with lock screen widgets. We thought, "Let's try to be there on day one with some of our own concepts of our home screen widget converted into lock screen widgets."

So it was simple. We already had the widgets for home screen, specifically not a lot of extra coding that we were doing. So it was small design and small coding. On day one of that iOS, I think it was iOS 16, we were there already on the App Store with all the lock screen widgets. People saw that and there was this new trend going on everywhere of, "Oh, show your lock screen. Show your lock screen. Share your lock screen on Twitter and Instagram, everywhere." I think fortunately one of the Mercedes admin on Twitter, he also noticed this trend and then the Mercedes tweet, the official Twitter page, they posted, "Share your lock screens with your Mercedes wallpaper."

Charlie Chapman:

Oh wow. So the Mercedes team picked up on the trend, share your lock screen. Naturally the overlap between Mercedes audience and your audience was probably quite high, so I imagine a lot of those had Box Box, probably without the name though on it.

Kamal Kumar:

Yeah. Yeah. They didn't have the name, so they just posted with our widgets and the other users, the other Mercedes fans, they were intrigued like, "What is this? Why am I seeing an F1 information there? How can I add the Hamilton's logo or coins there? How did you do it?" And then the fans were already replied. They said, "Oh, this is from an app called Box Box." And then we got such a spike in downloads. I think in that one week after that tweet, we had 250,000 downloads. There's almost a quarter million downloads.

Charlie Chapman:

I thought you were going to say you were there on day one and so Apple featured the app and that drove a lot of downloads, but this is significantly more impactful because a large company that perfectly aligns with your customer base is what drove all that traffic. I imagine the conversions on all of those were way higher than you get from an App Store feature.

Kamal Kumar:

Yeah.

Charlie Chapman:

Wow. Okay.

Ranjith Ramanan:

Yeah. We were able to see closer to quarter million downloads in a week and then followed by Mercedes tweeted and then followed by Haas. There's another Formula 1 team called Haas. And then Aston Martin, they both created a reel in TikTok and posted. And then everyone started picking up. All the users started to discovering the product and they started creating reels and that a trend is happening. Everyone started downloading and then the download number is going up. So that is quite a nice viral moment that which we created. Also, inside us earlier that when we designed... So Charlie, even if you look at it throughout the story, there will be some small checkbox that we are adding. The first one would be like, "Okay. We want to build the product we allow." As soon as the product came to me as a TestFlight, that box is checked in. The second is when the users are started allowing it and the box again got checked in, and then when we see the official teams are using it, then we are like, "Okay.

Charlie Chapman:

Yeah, that's crazy.

Ranjith Ramanan:

That also got checked in because we were more happy about these small little things like how users are reacting it or how the official teams are reacting it or how even the drivers are coming and using it. So these are something what make us go back and work on it from the pure craft perspective.

Charlie Chapman:

Now, was this the beginning of your official relationship with F1? Because at this point, cutting to today, you have some sort of formal relationship with them, right? Did it start with them starting to tweet about your app or were those completely disconnected?

Kamal Kumar:

We don't have any formal relationship yet. I think the first interaction that we had from Formula 1 was a legal notice that they sent us. So on App Store, we named our app like Box Box Club: F1 Widgets. And then F1 is a trademark term and we couldn't use that and we had no knowledge that, "Okay. We shouldn't be using that." We were also using the official font of Formula 1 because it gave the real feel of-

Charlie Chapman:

Which is their logo mark.

Kamal Kumar:

... Formula 1. Yeah.

Charlie Chapman:

Yeah.

Kamal Kumar:

We didn't know that we weren't supposed to use it. And then after the legal notice, then we tried to understand the legal side of things or like, "Okay. Okay. There are certain things that we shouldn't be doing and we are not allowed to do." And then we went through all the rules that Formula 1 had. We were using driver photos and car images back then. So we removed the fonts. We updated the App Store name, subtitle and subtitle, everything. We updated the App Store description. We removed all the driver photos and we created our own versions of... I think back then it was some 2D images, some 3D images that we tried to work with some 3D artists and tried to create different images, just representations of the drivers and cars.

So I think that was that legal notice that they sent us was the first ever interaction. But again, we were quite happy about it that it was not a huge deal that they wanted us to just alter certain things on what we were doing and we knew that, "Okay. Formula 1 is actually noticing us. So people in Formula 1, they are using our app, they know us." That was a great deal for us that we were going in the right direction.

Ranjith Ramanan:

Even if it was getting the legal notice, we were happy that they're using the product. They're aware of the product.

Charlie Chapman:

Yeah, exactly. It's like the Jack Sparrow like, "But you have heard of me." Yes.

Kamal Kumar:

So that's-

Charlie Chapman:

Okay. Well, what am I thinking of then? I thought you did something official with either F1 or some of the teams. Am I imagining that or is there something there?

Kamal Kumar:

No, it happened. It actually happened. So after this, and I think localization was also an important feature that we added because we're growing in Mexico and Brazil and we added all the languages. People from different regions, they would just ping us, "Okay. We saw your app here. We downloaded your app because we discovered it from this TikTok or this tweet." And then there was one moment, then suddenly again, another spike of downloads were coming and then we were trying to understand why is this spike happening after the Mercedes tweet? Then we understood that one use code discover that the Ferrari driver, Charles Leclerc, he was using our app. So I think in one of his own blogs, he was just showing his phone and then it had our lock screen widget added right there.

Charlie Chapman:

Oh, that was Leclerc?

Kamal Kumar:

Yeah. Leclerc was using the widget.

Charlie Chapman:

For whatever reason, me and my kids latched on to him, and so he's our guy. Oh, that's pretty cool.

Kamal Kumar:

Yeah, I think that was, again, a second big viral moment for us. And then people were like, "Oh, Leclerc, what widget is he having?" Again, people said, "Oh, this is Box Box. This is from Box Box." Again, there was a huge spike. So that's when we realized, "Okay. We wanted to build something for the community and it looks like we are also building for the official team and driver." So I think that was one of the best ever moments for us as indie developers. So we were so happy that something was happening and an unofficial interaction with Formula 1 or association with Formula 1. And then I think our app was getting famous back then and we were getting calls from some investors and they wanted to invest in us. We didn't know how exactly, because again, we are not from the marketing or we are not actually business people. We didn't know if we should be actually taking in investments.

So there was one particular investor who was very much interested in actually teaching us what... He knew that we didn't know anything about the business, but he was very... I think he understood that we didn't know anything about the business or how exactly we should be doing it. So he used to set up three or four different calls and he was teaching us all these things, how you should be portraying yourself and how you should be creating pitch decks, what are the numbers that should be concentrating. And then he also brought an important point of, "Okay. You're not pricing your products properly." I think that's another feedback that we got from few other users as well that, "You are doing so much, but then you are asking so little, your price is so cheap and we'd be happy to pay more, so why don't you add a place in your app where I can give you more money?"

So that was, again, few users said that. Initially, we priced it for... I think it was 5.99 an year, but then we thought, "Okay. Maybe users want to pay us more. Why don't we give us different options?" That's when we integrated RevenueCat, and then we started a different kind of subscription with a monthly option, a lifetime option, and also an yearly option that's price that was priced much higher than what we already had. Again, it was very important for us that all the users who are paying the lower subscription, they still got access to some of the newer features, but then this higher subscription level had even more features.

So we expanded the app. What was earlier just based focused on widgets, and our app only had three screens. One was showcasing all the widgets that we had. The other screen, the other tab, the second tab was how to add widgets to your home screen and lock screen. The third tab was settings, which actually had reach out to us, contact us and privacy policy and terms and all the general stuff. So there was nothing else in our app. So we built a full-fledged app so that the new high price subscription people were understanding that, "Okay. These guys are actually building stuff. They're listening to us. They're expanding the app, they're catering to everything that a Formula 1 fan will ever need."

Going back to your question of the official Formula 1 association, right? So it was happening with Formula 2 actually. So what happened was there's a former Formula 2 driver, Juan Manuel Correa, he's a Ecuadorian, US, a dual citizen, was driving for Formula 2, and he just messaged me on LinkedIn saying, "I found your app quite interesting and I'd like to get on a call to try to understand what you guys are doing and what you guys are building." For us, again, after the Leclerc moment, it was like, "Oh, my God, another official Formula 2 driver is reaching out to us. It's huge."

Juan, the Formula 2 driver, so he messaging us, it was quite a surprise for us, and then he wanted to onboard with us as an investor. But then we tried to have two, three calls with him trying to understand why he wanted to join us. And then we understood that he shared the same vision, so he wanted our app to grow, and then he actually did not want the other investors, the previous investors whom we had called earlier. He was not looking at as a commercial or the monetary aspect. He was looking at the passion behind building the product. So we understood that he might be the right investor. Again, he was not asking for money or he was not investing. Rather, it was more of a strategic partnership that he wanted to onboard with us.

And then he told that he's going to be sort of a brand ambassador for our app, and then he's going to talk to Formula 1, the officials that he knew of, and he just wanted to make sure our app was set for the right path on growth. So yeah, I think one of our legal things were involved in onboarding him as one of the board of directors for our registered company then. Yeah, we completed all that. Even before all the legal proceedings were going on, he was happy to invite us to Abu Dhabi Race where we spent all three days of the weekend in his garage talking to all of his engineers. And then he had a huge surprise for us. When we visited his garage, he showed us his helmet and race suit. It had the Box Box logos everywhere. We are like, "Oh, my God, our logos are there."

Charlie Chapman:

Wow.

Kamal Kumar:

And then he also showed us this-

Charlie Chapman:

You didn't pay for a sponsorship, but you were basically a Formula 2 sponsor.

Kamal Kumar:

No, we did not.

Charlie Chapman:

That is amazing.

Ranjith Ramanan:

Because he's being one of the director and one of the member of the team, and he just went ahead and then put it out there in the car and everything.

Charlie Chapman:

So cool.

Ranjith Ramanan:

So it is sort of a surreal moment when you design something. Initially, when I designed the logo, you tried to add it in various assets, like put it on a mug or put it on a desktop and put it on a car. Those are just a mock-up wise. And then all of a sudden, it's on a car and it's on a F2 car.

Charlie Chapman:

In front of your eyes.

Ranjith Ramanan:

Yeah, in front of your eyes. I was like, "Wow, this is something crazy is happening."

Kamal Kumar:

So you imagine your logo on the products, but then again, we saw it on a Formula 2 car and then we tried to watch the live streams and our logo was there on the screen on live Formula 2 broadcast and such a surreal moment for us. So we were just on cloud nine looking at, "Oh, my God, look at this. Our logo is there. There's a logo on the car." We couldn't just believe what was happening. So he was very happy to be with us. And then he started talking more about that to his friends, to other Formula 2 drivers. I think spending the weekend with... We also got to understood or see the sport in a very different perspective. So for us as fans to then-

Charlie Chapman:

Not as a fan, but as a participant.

Kamal Kumar:

Exactly. So we were just looking at... I mean, we had been to the Bahrain Grand Prix again. Yeah, that was another thing. So when we started getting all the subscriptions, so I told Ranjith that the next milestone in our subscription or in our earnings should be that we should be earning enough from the subscriptions that our app should be sponsoring our trip to Formula 1. Yeah, that actually happened. So earlier that year we took our family, my wife and my daughter and then Ranjith and his wife, we all traveled again to the next Bahrain Grand Prix.

Charlie Chapman:

You mean you had a company offsite that happened to align with Bahrain Grand Prix?

Kamal Kumar:

Yeah, I think it was a cycle from his Bahrain Grand Prix was it where he met Lewis and he had the inspiration. And then the following Bahrain Grand Prix, we all traveled there with our own money that we earned from our app.

Ranjith Ramanan:

Towards the July, as soon as once we start discussing with Juan Manuel Correa, we understood, "Okay. This is the direction that which we wanted to go." I was just asking Kamal that, "Okay. We'll do one thing." It was a surreal moment because we know that the product is accepted by users and fans, and we know that there are a lot of things which is going to come in. I was very comfortable job. I think where I was used to work, I was in the leadership role, getting really good money. I don't need to look at anything, but I still have that itch to acute and then do something. So convincing my wife was something important. So I was just asking her that, "Do you mind that if I quit and then follow my passion?" She also being a designer and she was completely supporting. She was like, "Yeah, go ahead. Just go ahead and then do something. I know that you would be able to do it." And that she was being the backbone and supporting.

This is another additional thing which I felt so happy about it. So I was planning to quit. So we were initially thinking that one of us will quit and one can't stay because we were not sure, sort of an uncertainty. Then I just went and told Kamal, "So you know what? We will quit. I'm planning to quit. This is what we want to do it." He also decided all of a sudden, and he was like, "Okay. I'm also going to quit." For me, I just got mad at-

Charlie Chapman:

So both of you quit your day jobs at the same time.

Ranjith Ramanan:

Yeah. Yeah. Same time. I think in fact, he quit before me, then I quit because I need to just go through a bit process and everything, then I had to quit. So for me, we were married, so it's fine. He has one kid as well, so quitting is like... It's not that easier to do something when you are having everything comfort and then all of a sudden stopping all that and we want to start something new. When he said that, and that felt like a lot more responsibility from our end like, "Okay. Fine. We have to..." Then there are no other options.

Charlie Chapman:

Now it's not a fun side project that just happens to generate fun cash. It's like, "This is how I'm paying-

Ranjith Ramanan:

Then it was like, "We have to-

Charlie Chapman:

... for my house and my family."

Kamal Kumar:

We have go at it.

Ranjith Ramanan:

True, 100%. So that's where we started. Then the grinding was really interesting. We have earlier that when we used to work like a Batman, the part-time job on the night, now early morning we can look at the product, wake up and look at the product. And then when you look at it, the day that when we could and then when start looking at the product, we could see a lot of things that which we could fix, which if we have enough time that we would be able to make it. That was one of the major iteration that which we are going ahead. And then we just completely redesigned the entire app. That was something like a surreal moment. And then we started to building a lot more feature there.

I think back then the Live Activity came and I think till date we could better and say that we just a better Live Activity as compared to anywhere else. It's that accurate. And then fans are loving the fact that how we just control how we design that fact. So we were just adding all the small little parts and that's something that adding on top of everything. And then we started knowing that some of the official drivers have started using the app. So it's every site from the monetary aspect of it, from the designer in me or the child in me is getting happy because of various things are just happening over the period.

Charlie Chapman:

One other thing you guys did, if I remember correctly, at some point in this journey is you joined up with... Apple has this app accelerator program. I think they have them in different places around the world, but there's one in Bangalore and that's the one you guys went to, right?

Kamal Kumar:

Yeah. Yeah, we did. Yeah.

Charlie Chapman:

How was that experience? Was that something that you think changed the trajectory or was it a useful thing to be part of?

Ranjith Ramanan:

That was actually a 2022 towards the end. So for us-

Charlie Chapman:

So that was right at the beginning?

Ranjith Ramanan:

Yeah, in the beginning. So 2022, I got a mail from some Apple ID and it looks so suspicious, like two-letter.apple.com.

Charlie Chapman:

Anybody listening, I bet there's lots of people, indie developers, it is very funny how Apple, the most polished company in the world, every once in a while you get emails from them that just read like, "Why did my spam filter miss this?" You're like, "It says it's apple.com, but surely not." It is very funny. This is a common thing and I don't know what it is because it's not like I expect emails to be polished. Maybe it's because it's Apple, but I have gotten this as well, and I know other people who said the same thing where we've texted each other like, "Did you get this too? Is this real? Is this not?" It's very funny.

Ranjith Ramanan:

Let's say the email ID is ka.apple.com. So it was so strange that I was not sure that this is actually coming from Apple, but still we wanted to respect that world. Maybe, we'll just let's get on a call and see.

Charlie Chapman:

Yeah, you don't want to be the one who ignored it.

Ranjith Ramanan:

We don't want to just miss it and regret, right? They asked us to just, "Why don't you come to the developer center in Bangalore? Why don't you come and meet us in the scene?" So I was a bit nervous because I was driving from here to... I think Charlie would've been travel Bangalore traffic and you know that where the airport I think is closer. So the first developer center is somewhere closer to airport. So Kamal was not there in Bangalore, so I'm going alone. So I'm driving all the way, but I'm just having this doubt. What if this is scam that they're coming and snatching me or something? I have no idea. I was so skeptical until I just go there because we are not aware that there is a developer center exist in Bangalore. We have no idea.

Charlie Chapman:

This is before the new fancy one that I went to last year.

Ranjith Ramanan:

Yeah, this is the 2022, the first version. The first version, once we have the design was ready, I think we were going to... So every year that we'll make some changes... Because the nature of the sport also like that, right? So 2023 concept was ready. I think if I'm right, this is towards the end of December, I think end of December or somewhere like that. Then I saw the Apple logo. I was like, "Yeah, this is urgent." Then I entered and I had to give them a presentation. And then when we presented, they was absolutely love the fact, "How you guys are doing that?" We showed that the new version that this is what which we are going to build the next. And then that was an interesting partnership with them. They were just literally just helping us in terms of reviewing various things, how to just go about it and any side of the technology part of it and the design aspect of it.

I could just bounce an idea with them and then start making those small little changes. So that partnership, which was going really, really well. I think because of that, I was able to meet so many other like-minded developer as well during any of the event when I just go and go and meet them and discuss with them. Every individual was helping us in terms of something or other stuff because we both are being the curious kid and then going and asking, "Hey, how to done this one? How are you just getting cracked down on the subscription level?" Or somebody will be just giving some advice on, "Okay. The paywall screen can be this way, so that's going to get into... This is the funnel." So we are just getting all the small tips and tricks from all other co-founders or the builders. They will just tell us if it's resonate with us and that suits the product, the first thing will come back and then we implement and test it out and see that whether that's working or not.

Kamal Kumar:

I think for Apple also, we were checking all the right boxes, all the latest technologies. We did not want to impress Apple in adopting all this latest SDKs, but for us it made sense to add all the Live Activity or lock screen widgets or just migrate to SwiftUI and all those things because we were interested in adopting all this. But for Apple, it was a very nice checklist when they looked at our app. SwiftUI checked, Live Activities check, WidgetKit check, ActivityKit check. So it was like, "Okay. These guys are adopting all the latest technologies, so we should be helping these guys and probably getting featured or see how we can help them." So that was approach that Apple had for us. Yeah, it worked quite well in our favor. So they tried to help us out in terms of making our app better and where we should be concentrating and building and all the process.

Charlie Chapman:

So at this point, fast-forwarding back to where we left off, you've had a decent amount of success, you've both made this your full-time job and you're building Box Box and every season you're pushing further and further and people seem to be loving it. Well, first question, did it stay just you two or did you start bringing on people to help?

Ranjith Ramanan:

As soon as when we quit, the first requirement was we need to build one for Android as well. So that is the first thing so that we were looking for another Android engineer to just come along with us and then working. So what we did, we did a crucial hiring, what are the roles are demanding, what are the roles are required. So we are finding the right person to the job, someone who literally follow the sport. The number one thing that I look at, one is cultural aspect of it, what they bring to the table as a person. The second, whether they're interested in the team as in they're interested in the sport or not. So these are the two things. Skill can be taught. Anybody can just come and just learn, but these two-

Charlie Chapman:

Passion is one of those things.

Ranjith Ramanan:

Yes. Yeah, that is something-

Charlie Chapman:

Working at RevenueCat has been an example of that where it's like I've learned that you can have really talented engineers, but if you're not passionate about the space, you don't really gain that over time. Whereas if you're already passionate about the space and you've shown creativity and aptitude or whatever, you can build a lot more new skills. But if somebody's really passionate, that grind that you talked about at the beginning where you get in that circle, the only reason that works is because it's exciting to you whenever you get something working and you can feel how good it's going to be.

Ranjith Ramanan:

Yeah. So slowly that we started hiring and towards end of '23, we expanded the company and then become nine of us as full-time and there were a few contractor as well. One of the greatest thing that what we did is we hired one guy from US who takes care of the business development and who takes care of all the partnership deal that what we do with the Box Box.

Charlie Chapman:

It's almost cliché at this point, but it's like the Indian indie scene right now is just so good. Those are often people's favorite episodes because it's reminding people about the craft and passion skills that a lot of times people I feel like aren't as focused on right now as they maybe were.

Ranjith Ramanan:

I think the passion is always... Like I said, the first sketch that what I was mentioning that I did, it took me to building the Box Box. So the second time when I went to the Bahrain, I carried that same painting. I was able to stand in front of Lewis Hamilton's garage, which is closer, and I could touch his car and standing there and clicking of photos. So it was surreal moment in every minute. Maybe some people would say if you start enjoying your job and if it's a fun, then no more job. For us, it literally meant is like that because I was a spectator watching race in a TV or in a television, live streaming, then going to the race and then watching in person. The next step was we are inside the garage wherein we were able to just-

Charlie Chapman:

It's crazy..

Ranjith Ramanan:

... Listening to the audio and then listening and talking to the engineers, understanding that how well their days are going to be, how much they have to work, what they need to do, what is their daily routine look like, and having the lunch with the drivers or dinner with the driver, what they eat. That small details was inspiring us because we would never know that behind the screen what exactly happening, what these people just go through it. So talking to every engineer or every people who work behind the wheel, we are going and asking them and we just getting them and then checking with them, asking them. When we start building the product, we were able to apply that small little learnings that whatever that we just got from it. We are just trying to add that. That's something which just push us like, "Okay. Fine. We can just do the best."

Charlie Chapman:

Gosh, that's so cool. And then it becomes the de facto app. I mentioned it other times, but it's like Flighty is the de facto business person traveler app. It just is. Whether it's through them doing it themselves or them having all the conversations with everybody, it's like nobody understands that persona better than they do. And you've been able to build that up first at the spectator side, but then now from all these different angles, because you've been there and you've talked to all those people, it ends up creating a very unique moat that's like, it's so hard for anybody to get over because even if they copy your designs, you're always finding and building the next thing.

Ranjith Ramanan:

When we started, like we mentioned, there were one or two apps was there back in those times, but now there are more than 20 or 30. I could say there are 40 apps at the... The other people are there trying to replicate what we did, but the passion that bring what we are just bringing, that cannot be replicated. I think that is something that which we always believe in. Also, what happened, every time when the new competitors come, that's when we can also position ourself much better because there are no more monopoly. I think you could see you have 20 of them and you pick the best out of that.

Charlie Chapman:

In your case, it must also help the cyclical nature because if it's a productivity app or whatever, you come up with a unique feature, especially with all these AI tools now, it's so easy to be like, "All right. Replicate that feature." So you can get into this habit where it's like, "Oh, yeah, this new feature will come out, but it'll come to my app really quick anyway, so I'm fine here." Whereas because of the cyclical nature, it's like at the beginning of the race season, that is when everybody's reestablishing their habits. If that's right before that is when you release all of your stuff, you're the one that has it. Even if everybody else gets it in a couple of weeks, people establish their habits and they're like, "Yeah, that's the one that has this thing." I don't know if that's actually how it plays out, but it feels like that could be an advantage that you have too.

Ranjith Ramanan:

Yeah, that's 100%. So every season end, so we know that. I think the season start from February and go all the way to November. Then we have a three month is completely shut down. And most of the people, most of the user, what they do, they also disconnect with the sport and then they'll come back on the next year. So there are three months of gap and towards the end of the season, everyone know that who's going to win the championship.

Charlie Chapman:

Yeah, that's the weird thing about F1.

Ranjith Ramanan:

So then they also started to losing the interest as well over the period. So what we used to do from the beginning, we always launch one of the feature towards the end of the season where they get to experience it on the last two season so that we consider as releasing a feature, also doing an experiment and also just getting researched.

Charlie Chapman:

Yeah, it's almost like your little beta test.

Ranjith Ramanan:

Yeah. So it's a real-time test what we are doing. So Live Activity is one such feature.

Charlie Chapman:

And it aligns with Apple's release cadence too, I guess.

Ranjith Ramanan:

Yeah. So when we release, users started to seeing that, okay, something was happening. The next season, when the beginning, we spent more time and refining the Live Activity with more logical reasoning and how it want to see it. So they know that when they see, it's sort of like a movie cliffhangers. We'll give them something now and then the next year they'll get the full-blown picture like, "This is how that's going to look like." So they have an excitor to just come back and they're looking at it.

Charlie Chapman:

How do you feel now that it's a company and you have other people bringing different things to the table, other than obviously the Android person helped you bring an Android app? Do these other positions, do you think that's made a difference in terms of what you're able to provide for the app or is it mostly it's supporting stuff so that you can focus on the app?

Kamal Kumar:

I think one of the important aspects or the job roles that we hired was the business development person as Ranjith said, right? So he was sort of scouting different opportunities, business and partnership opportunities. One of the opportunities was from the Alpine Formula 1 team. So he just approached the Alpine team and he just showcased our app and they just loved it so much and like, "How can we integrate our team assets and our team into your app?"

So I think that was one of the biggest ever Formula 1 association that we had for us. So Alpine F1 team was like, "This app is cool, so why don't you add specialized widgets for us in your app?" And then we thought, "Okay. This is a nice thing to do." And then I think it was Pierre Gasly widgets and then Colapinto's. So we added those widgets right into our app. I think during one of the races, Alpine also tweeted about us and saying, "Oh, this is the official partnership with Box Box Club. You can find our driver and our team widgets in their app, go download it now." So I think that was, again, a big moment for us.

Charlie Chapman:

Yeah, that's a huge boost. So you hired somebody specifically for business development. Would you in a million years have ever just cold emailed one of the teams and pitched your app to them? Is that something you would've done on your own even if you had time?

Kamal Kumar:

No, I think we both would've never done that. So yeah, again, these are the different things. When we are adding a team member who's very passionate about the sport and passionate about what they're doing, this is what they were all bringing to the table.

Charlie Chapman:

And they bring a totally new unique skillset.

Kamal Kumar:

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Charlie Chapman:

Okay. So you have a team. You have an app that's successful, your full-time job. You're able to have your company meetings at Grand Prix. Very, very cool. But you built another app that, from my perspective at least, seems like it's getting a decent amount of your attention and you're spending a lot of time on it. What's the story there for what time we have?

Kamal Kumar:

Yeah, I think that also is, again, from our team, right? So there's this F1 off-season time at the end of the season, two, three months of cooling off work. Everybody, every F-1 driver team, they take a vacation and then they get recharged for the next upcoming season. For us, that's the time when we start adding more features. I think last season when F1 was done with them and we thought, "Why can't we just create a new app rather than just adding more features into Box Box?" We just looked at what we were doing within our team and we just noticed we were all very passionately working and building stuff and we also wanted to take care of our health, which we were not properly doing. I also noticed that we were not walking enough, we were not keeping ourselves hydrated enough. So that became the theme of GO Club.

So we thought, "Let's build an app," which is a very crowded space in health and fitness. There are so many step counting apps. There are so many water reminder and water tracking apps. And then we were like, "Okay. From our learnings in Box Box, it's always understood that we were good with designs and we were good with executing those designs. So let's concentrate on that. Why not let's go in a direction that's very, very different from what we had done, not using traditional layouts, not using the traditional colors?" I think Ranjith had a lot of thinking behind the app.

Ranjith Ramanan:

GO Club journey was really interesting. I think all of us are sitting in front of the laptop and no one's walking, no one is taking care of drinking water. We have a very short period. We want to build something at that point of time. Also that we don't want to spend more time behind that app because Box Box is always being the primary product. We know that once we got-

Charlie Chapman:

You want to make sure the main quest still gets its attention. This is just-

Ranjith Ramanan:

Yes, that's still going and they're not spending here. So very short and simple that we want to work on it. Also, I have a lot of these art boards. I think I was just keep creating lot of concept. We do have things that if it's not fit to the product, I don't go to add, even if that's a very small little interaction. If that doesn't need to the product, then that shouldn't be there. So as a designer, more than anything, you should know when to design, when not to design. So there were a lot of the not to design part was there for the Box Box, and there were a lot of things that which we wanted to experiment that in the GO Club from the starting onwards.

So we know that that's a crowded space, how we want to go ahead with it. So every single thing that what we are adding, that needs to just add a lot of little bit value to it, and the same philosophy, the shaper and multiplier coming to the picture. Also that we know that the other form fact, whenever you look at the step counting app, you don't quite often open, look at your phone, open your app and look at the numbers. You probably could glance at your lock screen widget or home screen widget or even the Apple Watch complications. By the time that we worked on various widget concept over the period, like multiple widget design, so we know that this is something our core, we can build some really good-looking widgets. We know that the users are not going to open the app, so we just working on the reverse engineering.

Everything that other form factor has to look good. The complication has to be good or the lock screen has to be good or the home screen has to be good. The minute when they come to the app, they should feel a bit surprised by the kind of an approach that what we are just giving. Even if the chart not pull out with a lot of other information, it has to be very minimal, clean, and then small little interaction. Also, we are adding a lot of Easter eggs, which we don't want it to reveal to the user. Let them figure out all those small interaction which we hide it behind few parts. Even now there are various concepts there which we added there. So that is one part.

Even if you look at the blue, probably people would be thinking, "Why blue? Is it coming from the Avatar universe or not?" So that also add value to the accessibility point of it. Various, how do you say, the various colorblind people, so for them, the disability, most of the color is going to be fade out, but the blues always retain the same, no matter what. It's going to be pretty much similar tone, but the red and yellow drastically change.

So that's one of the reasons that we wanted to go primarily with the blue, which we did not shout at or we don't want to mention anywhere. So that's going to be pleasing on your eyes. That's sort of like an art board, blue background and then go ahead with the white contrast and little bit of my earlier experience, how the magazine used to design, I think the physical magazines. So getting that kind of visual arts into it. So that part is what when you see, they cut to a regular other fitness or health and fitness or regular app. And then when you come here, you get an entirely different vibe or an entirely different experience altogether in terms of the color, in terms of everything. That was one thing that which we added, and that's how we went ahead with the GO Club.

Charlie Chapman:

Anybody listening should absolutely just go check it out even if you don't plan on using it just because it really is beautiful. The icon itself is a shoe that's rendered very just cool. I don't know. The whole thing is really, really pretty. It was a finalist for the App Store Awards, right, for the watch app? Is that right?

Kamal Kumar:

Yeah, that's right. Yes.

Charlie Chapman:

So it's been well recognized, it's been well received, I imagine as well in the market. I don't know what your company name is now. Is it still Box Box Club?

Kamal Kumar:

No, the company's name's Arcade Club Private Limited.

Charlie Chapman:

Arcade Club. Okay. Do you see it as you're now a multi-app studio or is it still Box Box is the main thing and GO Club is in the off season when you have extra time, it's kind of your fun side project?

Kamal Kumar:

No, right now I think we are concentrating equally on Box Box and GO, though Box Box is the money box for us where it's making... Most of our revenue is from Box Box. But we are trying to experiment, spend a lot of time with GO and understand how can we improve the app, how can we improve the paywalls so that we can improve the subscriptions there and keep adding more value to the users. But we do have plans to create other apps and become a quality app studio. So it's not going to go with the number of apps that we are going to add. It's just limited set of apps that are very creative, very fun to use. So I think that's what we want to create with Arcade Club.

Charlie Chapman:

Oh, that's so cool. Well, I think we can start wrapping up from there. But first I have to ask you too the question I ask everybody to end this show, which is what's a person or people out there that have inspired you and your work that you'd recommend others check out? Ranjith, we'll start with you.

Ranjith Ramanan:

I have so many people. I think one at my home, my wife was a designer, you could see all these paintings, so that is one. Another one which I could say the founder of Procreate, Cody, if I'm correcting right. I think he's such an interesting person to speak to. Like I said, before become a designer, I know him as that's the product that I use a lot for concept creating sketches. When I got an opportunity to meet him in '24 and then '26 this time at the DubDub, when I speak to him, I could just literally connect with the way how he works and how he just put that care into the product. Why he doesn't want to add any AI thing into the product? That's the same philosophy that which we also follow, and that inspired me a lot because you are being the number one in the game and still you are taking a certain decision that, "This is what makes me happy." These kind of thing that which I really love and look up to them to just how to just become someone like that at some point.

Charlie Chapman:

And then Kamal, what about you?

Kamal Kumar:

Yeah, I think I have lot of inspirations. I think for me, even Ranjith, I'm very inspired by him, inspired by his designs. So I think that's, again, very important for me to keep that inspiration up from him so that our continued relationship that's very important for me, that's what I feel. On the iOS front, I think Steve Jobs, I think one of my ever inspiring personality for me. But I've also been learning and getting inspired from other indie devs and iOS content creators like Sean Allen and there's Tundsdev or Tundsdev. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing it correctly. So I've learned a lot from him, Tunds as well. So very recently he started following me back on Twitter and I felt very happy that Sean Allen and Tunds are two people that I've been following a lot and they following me back on Twitter. It's a small, I think, little happiness that I get. Also KavSoft, I'm not sure if you've heard of the channel, KavSoft in YouTube?

Charlie Chapman:

Yes. K-A-V-S-O-F-T.

Kamal Kumar:

K-A-V Soft. Yeah, that's right.

Charlie Chapman:

I believe I've sponsored them before. They make incredible I don't know if you call them tutorials, but yeah, showing how they build things.

Kamal Kumar:

Yeah, different components and styles. One of them is-

Charlie Chapman:

Very good.

Kamal Kumar:

Yeah. Yeah. So amazing. So I learn a lot from him as well. So yeah, I think three people from this community itself, so very inspiring for me.

Charlie Chapman:

Ah, that's great. All right. Well, thank you both again for coming on. You've been on my list for a very long time, but especially after we met, Kamal, in Bangalore, I was like, "All right. I got to get you guys on at some point." So I'm glad we finally made it work even with our crazy time zone differences. Where can people find both of you and your work?

Kamal Kumar:

Mostly be in Bangalore, so I also travel often to Bangalore and people who want to meet us, have a coffee, talk about apps and design, we are always in Bangalore. Our apps, both Box Box go on any of the apps that we design, develop, it'll all be in App Store and a little bit on the Play Store.

Charlie Chapman:

Perfect. And then Twitter is the place to chat you up-

Kamal Kumar:

Yeah, Twitter, you can find Ranjith very active there.

Charlie Chapman:

... and see where your latest design experiments are popping up.

Ranjith Ramanan:

Yeah. I meet a lot of quite interesting people just having a call with them, just open my calendar and then listening to a lot of people or just meeting them in person. So I just open monthly or once in a two month, just very limited slot where I just go and meet them because I always feel that refreshing your mind, just talking to the different people, understanding their problem, statement or product, it helped me come back and then work on something, just inspiring rather than just we are sitting with five, six people and then talking same thing again and again. So yeah, of course, drop me a message. I would be happy to help anyone just having the call.

Charlie Chapman:

Awesome. All right. Well, thank you two again, and thank you all for listening.

Launched is a part of the RevenueCat podcast family. If you want to learn more about the growth side of the mobile app business, you should check out Sub Club by my good friend and colleague and former guest now I can say, David Barnard. You can check out revenuecat.com to learn about the easiest way to grow and monetize your mobile app business, and you can learn or find more Launched at launchedfm.com or you'll find all of our episodes and links to our YouTube channel because this is also a YouTube show so you can see our faces as we're talking. Yeah, that's it for this week. I will see you all again in two weeks. Bye.