#470 Solving Your Own Problem at Scale: Rahul Swaminathan’s Journey with Desertcart

Episode 470

[00:00:00] 

Mehmet: Hello and welcome back to a opposite of the CT O Show with Mehmet, today. I'm very pleased joining me and I'm very happy when I say this from the same place where I live, the same city from Dubai, I have founder of Desertcart, Raul with me. Rahul, thank you [00:01:00] very much for being here with me today on the show.

The way I love to do it, as I was clearing to you, I love to keep it to my guests to introduce themselves. Tell us little more about you. You know, your journey. And how you ended up being the founder of Desertcart. So the floor is yours. 

Rahul: Okay. Well first, uh, ma, thanks a lot for, uh, having me, uh, pleasure to be on.

Um, so the idea for Desertcart, basically I, you know, I, I finished college. I, I've actually. Been raised in, uh, Abu Dhabi, you know, a few hundred kilometers from here. So I've been here for like 20, 25 years now almost. Mm-hmm. So, uh, after finishing college I came back and, you know, e-commerce was really picking up in the rest of the world.

And one of the things I missed most, uh, in Dubai was, I dunno if you remember, but back in the day around. Talking early 2010s, 20 10, 11. It was very hard to get, uh, you know, the kind of products you [00:02:00] wanted. Uh, I know you could go online and buy things like mobile phones, tablets, but you know, if you're into the niche, hobbies, uh, me personally, I was into magic tricks and I couldn't get some of the stuff I wanted online.

And I knew this was possible, you know, you could buy a lot of stuff online in the US and the uk. So for me, it was a problem I kind of had in like, okay, why can't I find. Really the products that I want to have, uh, online. 'cause I know it's available in the rest of the world. And, um, sometimes they would ship to you, sometimes they wouldn't ship to you.

Um, sometimes you could get a ship, but it's like super expensive to get a ship. So after all that, I'm like, okay, you know what? If this is a problem I'm having, I'm sure other people are having to. And, uh, I came up with the idea of Dekar based on that. Uh, the idea is very simple, you know, there's. Hundreds of millions of sqs around the world, and let's make that accessible to people everywhere, rather than just in one country or one region.[00:03:00] 

So kind of trying to make the entire planet, you know, your store is the idea ahead. And I basically started to solve my own problem and thinking that if I have this problem, then I'm sure other people have too. So I've been doing this now for nine, nine and a half years, and it's been a pretty, uh, great journey.

Uh, 

Mehmet: but around you come from a technology background, uh, also, right? Like Yeah, yeah, yeah, 

Rahul: yeah. I, I mean, I always been interested in computers and I was one of the first people. Uh, I had to, when I was a kid, I remember I had to, uh, re nag my dad into getting DSL, which just came out back in the day. Uh, but yeah, I was, I was super into computers tech.

Uh, I think I was writing code when I was like 15, 16, back in the day. Uh, so yeah, it's always been a fascination for me and obviously the whole software, uh. Web as it came around in like they were 28. So I was super excited with the apps that came out with the website. So I did go to [00:04:00] college as well. I studied computer science there, so it's always been a passion of mine.

Uh, mostly writing code developing. So that's my background. But I think writing code to solve a problem is one of the nicest, like best feelings you can have in the world. You know, like absolutely. You write something, you can super fast deploy, you get it out there and 

Mehmet: yeah. Especially if you are solving your own problem and just for people to relate.

So, you know, I was telling you Raul, like we have, you know, audience globally, so Yeah. Mm-hmm. Here in, in the UE and the Middle East region in general, back in 20 10, 20 11. Um, so we didn't have the Amazon. And, you know, these big, uh, you know, e-commerce shops over here. And, um, it was, and still I think it's a kind, I, I'm sure like Raul, you can shed light and this is what exactly what you do at Desertcart.

So, uh, getting, getting what you want as fast as possible is one of the biggest challenge. And as you said, there's nothing. More, uh, rewarding, I would say, [00:05:00] is to solve a problem that you have and, you know, like a lot of other people they have. And of course, uh, when you write it as a code, this is like a completely also different, uh, uh, experience.

Now, Rahul, so this is, you know, the reason why you start it and, um, you know, from. You know, building the company, um, at that time. So, so almost like, uh, when would she restarted exactly the, the business? Oh, 

Rahul: it was around 2014. Yeah. Uh, yeah, I don't remember exactly. It was almost 11 years. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mehmet: Yeah. 

Rahul: I dunno. Yeah, 14. It was, it was kind of slow to start because I think people were still used to the buying stuff online phase at that point. But once people, you know, found it, and we basically got a. It spread very quickly through word of mouth in the very beginning, and once people found out about it, it just blew up.

But yeah, for the first couple years it was, I think for the first year it was fairly slow and then it, 

Mehmet: [00:06:00] right, so, so 11 years, if I want to take you back 11 years ago, AUL and uh, yeah. So you had the idea, you know, and you know, it's a, you know, actual problem that not only you, but a lot of people, I want to go first from the technology side of, of the business.

So back then, you know, like, how did you. You know, decide, like, for example, on, um, like how from from both sides, like from back end perspective, front end perspective. Yeah. Like, uh, did it, did you do it by yourself? Do you need to hire a team with you? And like, did you plan also, for example, for scalability because, you know, like I'm curious to know about, you know, these details, uh Yeah, yeah.

From you. Yeah. Which will be also like, uh, helpful for fellow entrepreneurs also as well. 

Rahul: Yeah, so I, in college I'd kind of come across this thing called, uh, Ruby on Rails. And it was this really, uh, [00:07:00] it was this framework written on Ruby to write web applications. And, you know, I was, um, I, I'd written four or five apps with that before and I was kind of familiar with it.

And I was also super into, um, like web scraping technology. Like, you know, the stuff Google does to crawl all these websites. And if you think about it, that's a very, uh, you need a very scalable architecture to do that. 'cause you have, you know, millions and millions of websites, billions probably. You had to scale, you had to index them, you had to search them.

And to me, honestly, when I was starting this, I wasn't really thinking about the scale we would get to today. I was just thinking about my initial problem solving myself. So I wrote it in, uh, I, I wrote the whole code, myself and Ruby on rails. Um, including stuff like the, the spiders, the crawlers, everything.

Um, I, I knew that there's a lot of products available. Um, if you look at the markets like us, uk, India, you know, the stuff we, we ship to and ship from, uh, their markets with huge number of products. [00:08:00] And I knew that if it's gonna be super successful one day would have this huge, uh, infrastructure. But, you know, when you start, I think especially with tech, one of the great things you just, you can just solve the next immediate problem and go after that.

Um. So I didn't start thinking of this as, you know, we need to be storing terabytes of data and, uh, indexing and crawling. We have around 300 million products now in our, uh, database that we show our users. But yeah, I wasn't thinking about that day one, but it was, uh, it's, it's, it's more interesting to solve those challenges as they come about than to try to plan them out on the first day.

And I think that's in general with building any, uh, technology. So, yeah, we started with Ruby and Rails and it's not, it's, it's really great because it makes you ship really fast. You know, you can go and build something out and get it out there really quickly. And also it's good because I think there's a lot of good developers and engineers who work on that stack.

So we've been able to have a [00:09:00] pretty, uh, good tech team, engineering team in our company. Right, because I think we're one of the earliest people to be a Ruby on Rails stack in the UAE specifically. I think a lot of companies are using it now, but we're one of the earlier ones. I think back in the day it was a lot of PHP, a lot of, uh.

Java apps and stuff like that. 

Mehmet: And I think some people used to go for the on, on the shelf as we call them solutions. Yeah. And just like, um, but you don't have a lot of customizations, uh, over there. 

Rahul: Yeah. So, yeah, in a way I really think it would be nice if we use something like WooCommerce or Shopify.

Mm-hmm. But just based the model and how much of it we do in house. Uh, like, you know, shipping all these different skews, different millions of products internationally is not easy. So. In fact our whole, and like you said in the very beginning, you touched on, you know, people want their stuff fast. When people order something they want, you know, like as fast as possible.

And I realized a big advantage we would have is having our own internal software [00:10:00] use for our operations and logistics. So we actually built our own software we use in our warehouses and our picking, packing and our receiving and our shipping. So having that integrated into our main application makes it so much smoother, the process, the tracking and everything else that, um, I think it made sense to make a custom solution.

Because of the problem we're solving and the skill we're solving it at 

Mehmet: right now, if. I want to ask, like, as we were discussing before the recording, like mix of both technology and, you know, business questions also as well. So if you look back, you know, from 11 years ago and you know, to to to today, uh, how have you seen, you know, the e-commerce space, you know, evolved, especially in, in, in our region, in MENA region?

So, yeah. Um. To your point, and again, yeah, I've been here in, in the UE since 2005 and, you know, ordering something, uh, from abroad, uh, actually online was a dream. [00:11:00] And then like ordering something you, you know, you need. Uh, I remember back in the day, sometimes if you have a friend or maybe some family member, you know, visiting a conference or just going for a vacation.

Yeah. We used to tell them like, Hey, on your way back, can you grab this? You give them the money and then, right. Mm-hmm. So, and, and now to where we are today. Right. So, so tell me a little more, you know, and how this has affected dessert card. Like, did you have also to change a little bit, you know, the business model also as well, like how it evolved?

I'm, I'm curious to know all about that. Yeah. 

Rahul: Yeah, I think that's a very good point. If you remember back in the day, there was, uh, uh, what, like, maybe like a entire 10,000 SKUs you could find online in, uh, UAE. And that has gone up to now what, like millions, right? You have all the cross border guys from the.

From China, you have people from the US that's getting better capability to expand international. We have Amazon now in the market. You [00:12:00] have, uh, noon, uh, everyone's doing a great job and everyone's really trying to win the customer's, uh, wallet, right? So you have deep discounts. You have really good deals, and I think, yeah, it's.

It's much harder to say that UA now is a developing e-commerce market compared to where we were 10 years ago. Yeah, I think it's, it's, it's pretty, pretty developed and in a way it's really good, I think for the consumers. And I think it was just a little maybe, uh, under invested in 10 years ago. Uh, I think for what we do, you know, we've seen ourselves growing every year, uh, including, and I think part of it is that a.

People really, um, prefer the big selection of stuff, you know? So I think there's always gonna be like a few layers of e-commerce. You have the stuff, um, like, you know, you have the dark stores, now you have the local deliveries and you can get stuff and I think [00:13:00] almost 15 minutes now. It's shocking. I ordered something a few days ago and I got it to my house in like seven minutes.

I was like, pretty impressed. So you have like a, the, the local selection, which is really close to you. You can get that in 10, 15, 30 minutes. I think you're gonna have a, a larger hub, maybe in a city level or a district level that might maybe have like somewhere like a million to 2 million SKUs and you can get that in a day or two.

And then I think you'll have the third one, which, you know, we, we fit into, which is, uh, 300 million SKUs all around the world. But you're not gonna get that in a day or 15 minutes. You're gonna wait four or five days for that. And I think that's kind of the three. Parts. I see. Um, like those are the three buckets I see.

Like how you can, you know, mustaf us 'cause you can't store a million SKUs near your house and you can't store 300 million SKUs in your, you know, city. Um, and yeah, I think in a way the rise of e-commerce has been really good kind of, uh, [00:14:00] uh, tailwind for us. 'cause people are now used to buying stuff online.

They kind of have a certain service level they expect. If you remember back in the day, there's a lot of, uh, cash and delivery people were not really trusting, like, oh, what am I buying online? But that's kind of mostly gone away. Now, people understand that, hey, if I get something online, I go, I pay for it.

I'm gonna get it in my door. I can get the tracking and get the whole visibility end to end. So. Yeah, I think it, it's been, it's been very helpful and I'm, I'm really enjoying seeing the ecosystem grow and people just getting more comfortable shopping online. I think UA is still not, if you look at percent of retail that's online, I think the region UA is probably far ahead of the rest of them.

But I think as a region we're, we're getting closer and closer to the developed economies of like us, uk, Europe, et cetera. 

Mehmet: Right. And 

Rahul: we cut up pretty fast. 

Mehmet: And I think Raul, like you ex, I mean from coverage perspective, you went outside of the UE also as well, right? 

Rahul: Yeah, [00:15:00] yeah. That was one of the, look, I think we consider ourselves a very UA company.

I started here, my first customers were here, and our whole like team is here. Uh, so we do consider ourselves like a homegrown company. Mm-hmm. And on ua, there's a. Not many tech companies that are homegrown, but it's a smallish ecosystem. But I think, uh, around five years into the journey, I realized, okay, we're solving a problem here, but what we can do here.

It's a proof of concept and it works really well, and we can take it to other parts, both in the region and outside the region. So the first place we went to was Saudi Arabia. Then we went to Oman, then we went to Kuwait, then we went to Bahrain. We slowly covered the entire, uh, middle East. Um, after that we decided let's move into Asia.

We moved into India, which is now like a big market for us. Mm-hmm. And it's really well 'cause you know, people are the same everywhere. You know, they have hobbies, they have interests, they have things that they [00:16:00] want that they can't find locally. You know, especially very specific items that, you know, just their local merchants don't cater to them.

Um, we also now ship to, you know, really far places like Australia, we ship to UK parts of Europe. So we're kind of building up our customer base. In different parts of the world that have the same problem that people in the UE have faced, which is the lack of availability to the exact product they're looking for.

Mehmet: From business perspective, Rahul also like, I mean the business model. So do you also, you know, try to, to see kind of partnership where, in a sense, as an e-commerce, as an tech company, uh, seeing like. Maybe in like small businesses or maybe even individuals. 'cause now the laws allows, you know, for doing the e-commerce activities.

So use your, your platform for people also to, you know, to put their products or, [00:17:00] yeah. Did you prefer, like, just. For the sake of quality, for the sake of, you know, uh, keeping not control in a sense. Do you want to keep the control, but you want also to fulfill, you know, the orders and you want to make sure that everything is, is controlled.

So, so which shroud, you know, have, have you chosen and why? 

Rahul: Yeah, I think. A lot of platforms are very tempted to go the platform route and build a marketplace. And we kind of avoided that because, you know, the points you mentioned, uh, we physically receive every item and we check it. So when you buy international, right, the last thing you want is, you know, you waited, you know, five, six days for your order to come, and then you're like, you know, this is not exactly what I want.

Or, you know, it's, uh, maybe, uh. Closer to expiry than I like, or there's a slight damage and we like to make it so that everything we sell goes through our process. So someone in a warehouse can check it, someone in operations can, you know, [00:18:00] handle it. And opening up to a platform where other sellers can come on and sell their products and ship it to the customer, we think would kind of not have the same.

It feels very hard to control third party sellers on your platform. And one of the things is, you know, we realize as well because, you know, we buy from all over the world, different sources, and not all of them come the same. So we are actually pretty careful from where we, uh, source from. And we also try very hard to ensure that every single item we send is, uh, checked, received properly, packaged properly, and you know.

Make sure that it gets to the end customer in a pretty good shape. 'cause you know, when it goes through all these layers of international shipping, you know, it gets on trucks, on planes, on people's bikes, and then back on a truck. And then there's a lot of chances that things don't end up coming to you the same way they're shipped out.

So [00:19:00] we like to be there to make sure that happens. Um, we do have another platform now we do, like there are a lot of sellers, I think in the world that have very interesting products to sell. And one of the problems for them is that they don't know how to reach an international audience. Like they have their local markets, they have some interests, but I think a lot of them find it a struggle to kind of ship internationally.

'cause once you ship internationally, you, you know, you get into a. Trying to figure out what the duties are, what the taxes are, um, what the import regulations may or may not be in other countries. Right. And thus having, you know, shipped around millions of products. So far we have that kind of baked in and we have this product called, uh, self ship.

I. So if you're a seller and you wanna ship to your customers worldwide, you can come to us and we do have a separate product for that specifically. Um, again, it's not part of the Desa card platform. It's not selling goods to our customers yet, but it is allowing you to basically be able to get our expertise in [00:20:00] international shipping, get our rates, get our prices, and be able to, uh, deliver to your customers wherever they're in the world.

Mehmet: Great. I want to go back to a little bit touch on the technology here. A whole, so we discussed about Yeah. Like how also, you know, platforms, I mean, and, uh, programming languages from, from, you know, you choose Ruby on Rails, which is, by the way, there a lot of well-known websites they, they're relying on.

Mm-hmm. But, but what I'm, I'm interested to, to, to talk about now, so I remember. Yeah. And people know by now I'm like old enough. So especially in e-commerce. So big data was, you know, the, the world at some stage. So the big data and then, you know, machine learning, and now we have ai, so I. From, from your perspective, Raul, and someone who's, you know, coming from technology and you're running the business also as well.

Yeah. Uh, integrating, you know, these technologies, uh, [00:21:00] and making sure that you make the best out of that. Um. What was your approach, what's your approach now with Gen AI and, you know, all the, you know, great things that we are seeing, you know, um, happening around us? Yeah. Would like to, to to see like your, your point of view on that also as well.

Rahul: Yeah. And you had a, a lot of guests, I think, talking about AI on your, on your show. Yes. Um, I think it's, it's, it's pretty, uh, cool what we're seeing and I, I don't think anyone could have predicted it. What's happening right now with, uh. With, uh, AI in general, generative ai. So obviously we were one of the first people to adopt it.

Uh, we're using, I think, the Open AI APIs back in 20 22, 20 20, uh, 2023, I think. And like, I think it's very different. I think AI is very different to big data or any of the other trends before. And this is literally, um. [00:22:00] In a way, you know, your computer is talking to you and can generate text. That sounds pretty, uh, pretty much like a QMB.

I don't know if you were, if you were there back in the day when, um, AlphaGo was, uh, Google had, uh, AlphaGo that beat. Yeah. Yeah. That was, I think it's one of those moments where you're like, okay, something new has been unlocked, you know, um, and. I don't really know the end end where it's gonna go at the very end.

I, I think, but, um, I think we've been on top of it. It's, it's pretty exciting. It's, it's from an e-commerce perspective and what we do, which is, uh, technology to ship stuff around the world, uh, it's helping quite a bit. If you look at just our engineering teams, I think they've gotten way more productive with use of engine ai.

Um, we use a lot of it for powering our logistics and our supply chain. Um. Again, when it comes to shipping, a lot of it is [00:23:00] documentation. Doing work around paperwork, you know, making sure you have the right data for the right product and the right, uh, regulations. And yeah, we use it quite a bit for that.

Um, we've, we have some exciting new stuff coming out product wise, um, which I can't share share right now, but we'll announce it too. But I think we have some pretty cool AI related. Uh, 

Mehmet: sneak peek maybe. 

Rahul: Sneak peek maybe. Yeah. Look, I just, I just think, look, the way we're gonna be buying stuff and searching stuff, I think will change.

Mm-hmm. You know, like you look back in the day, um, you're probably, what, using your encyclopedia before, I'm saying pre-internet, if you wanna find information, you know, that's where you went to, right? You went to encyclopedia, maybe, you know, newspaper or whatever. And post internet, those are different way you would find information.

Uh. Pre-internet, there's a way you shop and post internet, there's a different way you shop. You shop online, you search on, you know, your Googles or your Amazons or your Desertcarts and pre-internet, you'd probably go to your local mall or your [00:24:00] local retail store. So I definitely think post ai, the way you shop, is not gonna be the same as the way you shopped pre ai.

Uh, it's not gonna be the same. Let me go search for reviews, find, you know, what the ratings between, it's gonna be different. Again, I don't think we can predict exactly how that's gonna look right now. But I can tell you it's not gonna be the way you, uh, shot pre ai and that's gonna be pretty exciting, right?

I'm sure there'll be a lot of new companies, new tools, new. Uh, entrepreneurs, new startups coming out there. But, uh, yeah, we're, we're trying to build something that will kind of be more in the future on how you shop rather than how we, you know, have shopped in the last 20 years on the internet. Uh, I think the ideas will still be the same.

You know, people want smooth experience. People want fast deliveries. People want cost efficient products. But I think the way to get in front of your customers and the way to promote your product, that's what's gonna change. I'm excited about that. I think AI a technology is very powerful. I think it's more than just like [00:25:00] what we can do for increasing our DESA card, e-commerce platform.

Obviously we're doing all that, but I think it's potentially gonna change the way we work and change the way that we, uh, I don't know, uh, just I think the internet change a lot, right? Like, I think it's gonna change even more than internet potentially. 'cause it's literal, you know, intelligent. Things that are on your computer.

Like, it's, it's a pretty, uh, I I don't think people have really grasped the magnitude of, you know, kind of what, 

Mehmet: right. Yeah. I, I, I get the point and, um, you know, if I want to quote, you know, someone I can, uh, quote, uh, John Chamber who was, you know, uh. Back in the days, in the early nineties, he was talking about how the internet will change the way we live, work, and play.

Right? Yeah. Yeah. And, and I like, you know, actually, you, you touch it like Raul, so we always [00:26:00] say pre-computer, post computer, pre-internet. Post-internet. Yeah. Pre smartphone, post smartphone. And you know, this phase of AI and gen ai, it's again, yet another. Um, you know, yeah. Moment, which is like, yeah. Pre and post.

Um, so, so a hundred percent on, on, on this point and Yeah, for sure. And I like when you said no, we cannot predict. Absolutely. I remember you, you one, you know, like before we started actually recording, you started to ask me like, like when I started to do the podcast, the time I started to record my first few episodes, like Chad g.

PT was still like, I think couple of weeks. So, okay. 

Rahul: Yeah. 

Mehmet: Uh, okay. It was the cool thing, but you know, we didn't know. Yeah. So I still used to ask at the end, for example, as a traditional question to any of my guests, Hey, like, what do you think will happen in this domain After, mm-hmm. In the next five to 10 years, I stopped ask this question because.

Now. And also you gave [00:27:00] a very nice example, Rahul, when you said about the, the, the goal and you know, the, this unlocking. So it's like we are, it's look like maybe little philosophical, we're like into a game, right? Yeah. And now, you know, we are, we are inkling the next levels. Very fast. So, so, so you don't have much time into that level.

You need to upskill yourself very fast. So you go and jump to the next one and, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think it's gonna be very hard 

Rahul: to make plans like two years, three years, five years. I think the best you can do and stuff is moving this fast, is keep your, keep yourself very close to the ground, you know, like almost like a sprinter, you know, get ready to see what's coming in.

And run, rather than trying to say, I'm gonna make a skill. 'cause even 10 years ago at the rise of internet, you can't train yourself to be like, Mo, I'm gonna train you to be a, you know, a podcast host. They'd be like, okay. I don't, I don't know, like, is that gonna be a good thing to train for? Like, so I don't think we'll know the kind of jobs we'll have or the work [00:28:00] we'll be doing in a few years, because it's probably not gonna be the same as what we're doing today.

Mehmet: Right, 

Rahul: right. 

Mehmet: As a tech, as a tech leader, Raul, and it's good because you mentioned, you know, you said about like how, um, AI helped your engineers and with the, again, it's a trend now where people talks about using AI in, in coding and, you know Yeah. The, the vibe coding also as well. Yeah. Which on the rise as, as a technologist.

Now I want you to put, you know, your technologist hat, your, the engineering hat and, you know. Like, tell me your opinion. I will not tell you what will happen in the future as we spoke. No one will know of course, course, but, but is AI going to replace completely, you know, developers or is just like mm-hmm.

Make the developers more senior? Um, you know, like senior employees. I mean, with, with, with a lot of capabilities, with a lot of, uh, you know, uh, augmented 

Rahul: parts, augmented, uh, yeah. I think it's really funny how things have turned out. Like I think [00:29:00] you're talking about predicting the future and it's really funny 'cause I remember when I was a kid, right?

People are talking about how the robots are gonna come and automate all the labor first. Like the people in the, uh, who are like making your phones or the people you're making your clothes, you know, the, the, the more unskilled the, that's gonna be automated. Blue Cross will be the first to be automated, and then it's gonna be the, you know, slowly it's gonna be maybe the people doing manual work on computers and then the coders and the CEOs and the, these guys will be the last to be automated.

'cause the job, you know. But if you look at how things have turned out, it's exactly the reverse, right? Opposite, opposite the, it seems like the first thing that AI are getting really good at doing is coding, or at least they've been more, you know, tuned in that way because it's a valuable industry. Sure.

But. Um, and yet the self-driving cars are still like barely here, you know what I mean? Whereas coding mm-hmm. Has been seen as like, oh, this is, you know, very advanced skill. Um, I think, like from what I can tell, uh, the AI can [00:30:00] do most of the jobs. I mean, if you look at the best models right now, I'm talking about the O fours or the, the cloud three point sevens.

They're as good as the best junior developers. Mm-hmm. Um. Now the thing is the models aren't humans in that they can't learn, right? They're very input, output driven. They have a specific, uh, I mean the model is the model that it doesn't live update in real time. So it's like talking to the new developer every time and giving him a task.

And I'm not sure what the next ones will be, but maybe the next one will actually learn as you talk to it and get better at understanding the intricacies of your code base or intricacies of how you wanna develop stuff. Um. Again, I think right now humans are still a bottleneck because there's some things AI can't really do.

Like they can't use your computer well, for example, they can't click on different icons, they can't click on create pull requests. So you still need humans to do certain work. But if you look at how well decode given a certain task and how fast they do it, the same work [00:31:00] that would've taken me like a few days to do, I can get it done.

Now if I give the right prompt and the right context to an AI in maybe, you know, a few minutes. So do I think there's a long lifespan for people whose job is writing code? I don't think so, but I don't think a lot of soft, I think maybe people have thought of their job wrong and as a software engineer, maybe your job isn't to write code.

It is to understand the complex problem that you're solving. Mm-hmm. And tell that to an ai, you know? Um. Yeah, I, I don't know. Look, if these guys, these things are getting more and more powerful, like, more like cognitively powerful in what they can do, uh, they can plan tasks for longer. They can probably write better code too.

I, I don't know. I, it seems to me it's hard to say that the job of writing code will be, uh. Human domain for too long. And it's funny 'cause I, I think someone told me the word computer actually comes from a human job. There used to [00:32:00] be people back in World War I or ii and I think it was mostly women, but they used to be given these math tables and their job was to compute, like, okay, given this number, they just some, you know, uh, do all the calculation and give you the final output.

So if you need to do like, you know, ship missiles or something, uh, you'd be given the, the angles and the velocity. Then you'd have to calculate where the full, so that job was called a computer. And they're these human computers. So maybe coder is now, not anymore a human thing. Just say computers went from human to just being a machine.

I think maybe developers would also be the same thing. A developer would not be a human. 

Mehmet: Right, right. A hundred percent. Just like quickly on what you mentioned, so a couple of things, um, with the last thing you ended with, I think there's a lot of terms we need to change. So computer, you know, I work in the, in the sector for a long time.

Which we call all of us it, right? Mm-hmm. And I don't feel it. It's [00:33:00] information. What's, what's, what's information technology guys. I start, I said like, yeah, it was relevant word back in the nineties, maybe beginning of two thousands. It's just technology. It's not like information. What are we? Because all the information is digitized.

Maybe digital technology. I don't know. The second thing, which is, um. About, you know, the human role. Um, so one, one of my guests, and he's a friend, actually we're in the same university, uh, Rab Abla. He, he said like, in the future, what he thinks is the, the best position to know or to have is the business analyst, the one who understand, you know, the business requirements and this complexity.

And he can convert this into what's called quote unquote, prompt engineering. To give it inter natural language, you know, uh, form into the machine, right. And the machine would go and do the job for you. And the last thing, and just, just again, I'm, I'm going a little bit philosophical Yeah. About the [00:34:00] cycle.

And when you mentioned like, people, you know, thought that the blue colors would go first and then the white colors are like, like the senior. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so the other, you know, couple of weeks ago I was talking to my, to my father, like. He's like 85 years old and you know, saying, what do you think will happen?

I said, you know, I'm looking at it as a cycle. Right? So, so we started from, you know, the age where everyone was a farmer, and then we had industrial age, and then we had the information age and looks like we're gonna go to big farmers again because yeah, everyone will have like a small. Right. Yeah. Or I don't know.

Or maybe, you know, maybe you become a fisherman, I don't know. Like whatever you like to do. And then there are machines who are doing the jobs for us. Of course. Like, right. I mean, yeah. 

Rahul: It seems to me that that world is very, uh, exactly. We don't know what is, what's left for the. For us to be doing. And maybe, yeah, maybe in a way it's a nice world if we just go back to be like, okay, look, we made all this technology and now we [00:35:00] can go back to doing what we were, you know?

Absolutely. To do Go farm and hunt or whatever. Maybe 

Mehmet: that's, it's, it's just a little bit philosophical and of course, like we discussed that times. No, no, no one knows. And again, back to your point, Rahul, no one knows, like we cannot predict a hundred percent. You cannot forecast it a hundred percent because there is a lot of things, uh, and always I tell people we don't know currently what some builders in the tech I'm I'm speaking, they are working on.

And they might surprise us because when, when Chad GPT came to us, I, I remember very well November, 2020, uh, two. Yeah. And uh, the first I knew about the G Open AI and you know, what they were trying to do, I said, okay, like, just another chatbot, you know, and just like when I interacted with it, I said, wow, like this, this gonna like take the world by storm.

And yeah, I'm, I'm grateful enough any technology that I've seen, like, [00:36:00] and I said that gonna. Changed something. It did. So my, my, um, I would say, uh, it came to my expectations now. Back to your, yeah. Even. 

Rahul: Yeah, please. G PT two was pretty exciting. Gt I think just like the Chad g pt, just like kind of the world got into it, right.

But even it too, you could like tell there's something different about this, uh, what they were, what this was. And I think the worrying thing, like you said, even the people who are building it don't know what they're building next. And maybe even more weird is the people who built it don't actually know how this works.

Like it's, this is the first technology we have where, you know, usually when you build something, the person who built it knows exactly how it worked. Like if you look at the Tech for Desertcart, I could tell you exactly what each line did and how it worked. Right? And if you looked at someone who built a plane, they would tell you exactly, you know, how it works.

But it's really surprising that in this situation. The people that are building it don't really know what's these, it's just matrix multiplication. They don't know what it's actually, the algorithms are inside it. So in a way, if they don't know even how it [00:37:00] works, how are they gonna, even the people building it, they can't really say what's coming next.

So, you know, I don't think we can really, 

Mehmet: right. Just to add one, one small thing, I remember also I read it couple of weeks ago, so there are now some scientists who are trying to understand how Claude, specifically the, from tropic. Act when you ask a question, especially when it comes to coding. So they're trying to understand the reasoning of the machine, which is mm-hmm.

For me, something fascinating. So it was, it, it was, you know, built by humans and now humans are trying to decode how it was done because I. Again, we can go in details as like, uh, yeah, talking about very interesting neur networks and, you know, like, uh, physi logic. Yeah, I can, I can go till morning. But again, now, Rahul, you know, as, as we are almost coming to an end, I want from you a couple of things.

So first, if there's anything you learned and you want to share with the audience, like a couple of things to avoid maybe, and also like final advice for people who might be [00:38:00] now. Listening to us on their way to work, or maybe students in their final years and, you know, they are getting excited to go. So maybe a word to also like, motivate them and finally where people can get in touch and find more about you.

Rahul: Yeah, sure. Um, um, in terms of motivation, I, I think if you're, if you're like a. Young person like me just coming outta college. I think one of the biggest things I found personally drove me was my curiosity. You know, I was very curious and I think curiosity is a big driver in me, and also I try to instill that as a company culture.

So I would say rather than trying to do something that people are telling you to do or people are telling you the direction to go in, I think just if you're generally smart, I think curiosity is a good. Thing to lean on. Like what are, what is, what are you intrinsically curious about? Like, you know, just go work on that.

And [00:39:00] what are you intrinsically excited about? What makes you curious to want to learn more, do more? And I think that's, I don't know, like the thing with advice to young people is that there's always two sides of the same advice. There's other advice. Someone's gonna give you exact opposite advice. Like, uh, I don't think it's general advice.

You can give people that work for everyone, so. Yeah, I would say, uh, 'cause you know, some, sometimes you need advice, but another person needs exact opposite advice. So there, I don't think there's a specific advice I can point of view. I, I don't know if that's very motivational, but, um, 

Mehmet: no, no, completely reasonable.

Completely, for me at 

Rahul: least worked, was following my curiosity. And that 

Mehmet: this is an advice by the way, it sent from Exactly right. 

Rahul: Yeah. Again, it's what worked for me, but maybe it's, uh, it's not gonna work for someone else. I. It's hard to tell. Um, in terms of, um, what I learned, I think, yeah, bu building a company [00:40:00] I think is much harder than you expect.

And I think, uh, it's better doing it young because you're more naive about the problems and the, you know, things you're facing. And I think that's the reason why there's so many young people in. Doing tech because they don't understand, like, it's like, okay, we'll solve it when you come across it. And I think if you knew all the stuff you would have to do, you'd probably never start in the first place.

So I think in a way, I, the younger you are, I would say if you at least have any inclusion at all to do your own company one day or to do a startup where you have entrepreneurial mindset, you know, just take the leap and do it early because it's more fun that way. And I think you have a, a better chance anyway.

Um. I think UE has been a great place to start a company, as I would recommend that, if you're thinking about it at all or if you have a place to be. I would say, uh, it's very friendly business ecosystem wise and, uh, people wise, I would say, um, [00:41:00] um, try that and if you wanna reach out, you can always, uh, reach me at my name at.

Desertcart.com. This is my email. Um, I'm not super in social media. I do have a Twitter that I never use. You can probably find me there, same Rahul, so me nothing. But probably email is probably the easiest way to reach out to me. 

Mehmet: No problem at all. Of course. And we respect that role and you know. Just final thing from me before we do the actual closing.

I, I liked, you know, what you said about, you know, it might work for me, it doesn't work for someone else. This is the philosophy that I go, I say to people, get inspired. Like it's not an advice or more and inspiration, um, thing because what worked for MeMed. Might not work for Rahul and what worked for Rahul might not work for someone else.

Right? Yeah. Yes. But maybe, maybe what I can look at. I said, okay, like Rahul did this, he followed that. Mm-hmm. [00:42:00] He followed his passion. So it's an inspiration for me. Yes. And I have to go now as an entrepreneur or like as a, uh, someone in tech to go and find, okay. Mm-hmm. And my thing, I always tell people, you need to go and find out by yourself by trying, because Yes.

It's good. It's, and I do it. It's good to read books. It's good to listen to podcasts like this one. It's good. It's actually super, and that's what also my, my knowledge, you know, exploded because I immersed myself into this. But at the end of the day, you know, I. I take the decision based on the situation I am in.

So a hundred percent on that point, Rahul. And, uh, yeah, I'm gonna put the, the website for dessert card, um, you know, for, uh, for the audience. They can, you know, find out more. And again, thank you very much Rahul. I enjoyed this conversation today. I appreciate also the time. I know how it can be for a founder like yourself.

Busy. Yeah. So thank you. So thank you for finding the time. And this is how I end my episode. This is for the audience. [00:43:00] If you just discovered this podcast by luck, thank you for passing by. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, so please give me a favor, subscribe, share with your friends and colleagues. We're trying to make an impact.

This podcast is all about inspiration, education, and insights for the new generation. And if you are one of the people who keeps coming again and again and send me their messages. Thank yous and you know, recommendations. Thank you very much for doing so and also even for your feedback is very important for me, so I read every single message.

So thank you for doing this and thank you for making us this year really special, putting the podcast. In a single week now in multiple top 200 charts in Apple podcasts across multiple countries. So thank you very much for this, and thank you. Of course, because of you, we are being selected as one of the top 45 must Listen business podcasts here in Dubai.

So thank you for that Also as well. And, uh, all the [00:44:00] accolades, it's not for me. It's actually for, for the audience. So thank you very much for the encouragement and hope, you know, we keep always the same momentum. And as I say, always, thank you for tuning in. We'll meet again very soon. Thank you. Bye-bye.