Vedant Lamba is here not just to sell shoes, but to immerse you in the culture of sneakers

The 23-year-old founder of Mainstreet Marketplace–one of India’s biggest sneaker reselling platforms–shares his plans to build an immersive experience for sneakerheads and making it on the Forbes Asia ‘30 Under 30’ list

Contrary to popular assumption, my connection with sneakers at the age of 17 had nothing to do with sneakers. In 2017, I started off with a YouTube channel called Mainstreet TV because it seemed like a big business opportunity at the time. Growing up, I was obsessed with looking for a solid business idea and talking about sneakers seemed like something I could do. So I jumped into it. And here we are–it’s 2022 and we are looking at our next round of funding in the coming few days.

The 30-under-30 tag

At the age of 23, while being on Forbes Asia’s ‘30 Under 30’ list is, of course, an honour, I believe it’s made no real difference in my life. It’s made me ridiculously cool, I’ll give that. But I’ve done nothing different in my life the day before or the day after [winning the accolade]. Even if it wouldn’t have happened I would have been doing the same things right now. It's interesting in a way because I think the only way I would describe this experience is that it’s deeply fascinating to see the impact such a list has on our society. It's not a bad tag to have; I'm now seeing how impactful it is. But as a business, I don’t think we are there yet. And it’s not just about my business, it’s also about selling my story. While the market for limited-edition sneakers in India is just beginning, the market for a story of a kid selling sneakers is massive. Stories like these get easily picked up by mainstream media. But as a company and as a business, we are still struggling with a lot of things. I wish we could turn around and say that all those things have now been fixed after getting on this list, but that isn’t the case.

Age is just a number

Age is irrelevant. On the one hand I’m very agnostic about age, but on the other, I feel like I’m very late with things (in terms of business). Some of my closest friends right now are Aadit Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra, the co-founders of Zepto—a delivery service that goes beyond offering groceries—who raised capital of $200 million at a $900-million valuation. These boys are 19-year-olds. But when you meet them, they aren’t naive; they are two sensible adults. I learn a lot from them and I love that I get to hang out with them. I see it almost as a blessing in disguise in a way—that God sent these two children to knock off the possibility of me getting in my head about running this business at the age of 23. We closed one round of funding in December 2021 and I’m now working towards the next round. So when I’m sitting in meetings with wonderful people who are CEOs and COOs of big companies who want to invest in my company, I’m just in awe and grateful to be there in that room with them. It’s pretty much what I could have asked for, I am actually living the dream.

Reselling a dream

Our whole business runs on the idea of reselling sneakers. It's a massive uptick in India right now. Anybody who gets into it at any capacity can make money. Honestly, I would encourage every kid to get into reselling as a side gig right now, because you’d make bank. To an outsider, it may seem competitive, but the ecosystem of sneaker resellers has very different players and we are playing a very specific role here. A customer who buys shoes from a kid selling them on Instagram or WhatsApp is not going to buy a shoe from me. And he shouldn't, by all means. If that person has the time and wants to take the effort to look up better deals, then of course, they deserve to pay a cheaper price. But if they want to buy from us, there’s a premium they have to pay. We're very clear about the role that we play and I think that's a large part of why we are where we are in this industry. When people say that hype culture is dying, what it actually means is that it’s becoming more accessible, which means that more people are just wearing them regularly. You go to a club and you’ll see way more people wearing sneakers—earlier it used to be one out of ten, but now you’ll find six people out of ten wearing cool sneakers.

The next big thing

All our big things really happened after we closed the round of funding last year. When we announce the next round of funding soon, there will be bigger things in store for us, with bigger names and bigger games. As of now, we are hosting a sneaker convention on 3rd September. While most brands are building big things, what we are keen on building is an experience which is immersive, unlike having stalls and tables, where every corner is a calculated decision, taken and curated by us. It’s not about having 10,000 people at the convention. Even if there’s one person, I want that person to enter a new world of sneakers, where they can learn a lot. We are trying to build a visual, physical and an interactive experience, something that’s going to be unique, which we plan on doing annually. Apart from the investments and the convention, which is keeping us on our toes right now, we are planning to set foot internationally in the next two quarters.

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