This week’s episode is a case study which explains Bangalore's water crisis and raises the question whether Karnataka government is at fault for how Bangalore has struggled to deal with water issues as we welcome water activist Viswanath Srikantaiah to the Neon Show!Will WW3 Happen Because Of Water Scarcity?Has The Karnataka Government FAILED Bangalore?Why Metropolitan Cities In India Are Unliveable!“The TRAGIC Reality About India Is…”All these EXPLOSIVE topics and more in this BRUTALLY HONEST conversation about India’s long standing relationship with water. A deep dive into how water may lead to the waging of the next big war in the world as well as a special focus on Karnataka & Bangalore's struggles with water… Tune in NOW!___________________________________________________________________________________________________Siddhartha Ahluwalia, Founder, Neon Fund & Host, The Neon ShowTwitter: https://twitter.com/siddharthaa7LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siddharthaahluwalia/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/siddhartha_a/___________________________________________________________________________________________________*Sponsor Shout Out*Looking to build a differentiated tech startup with a 10X better solution? Prime is the high-conviction, high-support investor you need. With its fourth fund of $120M, Prime actively works with star teams to accelerate building great companies.To know more, visit https://primevp.in/!__________________________________________________________________________________________________CHAPTERS00:00 - Precap01:46 - Introducing Viswanath Srikantaiah, Bangalore-based water activist!02:19 - Will WW3 Happen Because Of Water Scarcity?05:04 - Indo-China Water War On Brahmaputra Explained!07:22 - Indus Water Treaty Conflict Between India & Pakistan08:53 - Cauvery Water Dispute Decoded!15:14 - Geographical Breakdown of Bangalore’s History22:40 - Has The Karnataka Government FAILED Bangalore?26:43 - Is Urban Architecture At Fault For Water Issues? 31:33 - Will Indian Water Quality Reach Levels Of U.S. & Australia?35:00 - Why Metropolitan Cities In India Are Unlivable!41:40 - Why Is Bangalore Poor At Dealing With Water Issues?45:58 - Can India’s Economy Thrive Like Japan & Singapore?48:26 - History Of Migration In Bangalore!53:48 - Impact of Green Revolution on India1:03:22 - Why India Will NOT Leapfrog China’s GDP!1:06:30 - Social Impact of Water Crisis on Farmers1:09:53 - Is Migration DESTROYING Kannadiga’s Livelihoods?1:13:44 - Impact of Population Explosion on India1:18:42 - “The TRAGIC Reality About India Is…”1:29:42 - Shining Light On The Well Digging Community In Karnataka1:36:31 - Concluding Remarks_________________________________

This week’s episode is about India’s Gold Obsession, Pitching to Anushka Sharma, and Silver Jewellery’s $4 billion Business as we welcome GIVA’s Co-founder Ishendra Agarwal to the Neon Show!History of Gold & Silver As A Stored Value!Why Does South India Love Jewellery So Much?!How Has Perception Of Jewellery Changed?How Did GIVA Pitch To Anushka Sharma?All these JUICY topics and more in this HONEST & DETAILED conversation about India’s jewellery industry. A deep dive into how jewellery became such a large part of Indians’ lives & whether silver can eventually take over the jewellery sector in India… Tune in NOW!___________________________________________________________________________________________________Siddhartha Ahluwalia, Founder, Neon Fund & Host, The Neon ShowTwitter: https://twitter.com/siddharthaa7LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siddharthaahluwalia/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/siddhartha_a/*Sponsor Shout Out*Looking to build a differentiated tech startup with a 10X better solution? Prime is the high-conviction, high-support investor you need. With its fourth fund of $120M, Prime actively works with star teams to accelerate building great companies.To know more, visit https://primevp.in/!__________________________________________________________________________________________________CHAPTERS[00:00] - Precap[01:09] - Introducing Ishendra Agarwal, founder of GIVA[01:42] - History of Gold & Silver As A Stored Value![05:19] - Evolution Of Gold & Silver In India![09:04] - % of India That Invests In Jewellery[12:09] - Early Days Growing Up In Agra[13:29] - The GIVA Journey[19:55] - How Did GIVA Become Such A Recognizable Brand?[22:44] - Pitching To Anushka Sharma! [26:13] - Breaking Down India’s Jewellery Sector[30:02]- Why Are Making Charges So High For Silver?[32:17] - How Do Silver Brands Solve For Low Average Order Values?[35:25] - Breaking Down GIVA’s Revenue Structure[36:55] - Why Does South India Love Jewellery So Much?![39:23] - How Has Perception Of Jewellery Changed?[44:34] - Will Made To Order Be The Future Of The Jewellery Sector?[46:47] - North India vs South India: Observations On Jewellery[52:01] - Can Tanishq Take Over Market Share For Jewellery In India?[56:26] - Concluding Remarks___________________________________________________________________________________________________*Sponsor Shout Out*Looking to build a differentiated tech startup with a 10X better solution? Prime is the high-conviction, high-support investor you need. With its fourth fund of $120M, Prime actively works with star teams to accelerate building great companies.To know more, visit https://primevp.in/!___________________________________________________________________________________________________

This week’s episode is in discussion with India’s ex-RBI Governor about Dr. Manmohan’s Legacy, India's 1991 Reforms & Future Economic Plans as we welcome C. Rangarajan to the Neon Show!What Was Life Like After Independence?What Was RBI’s Role Before & After Rangarajan Came In? Why Did The Partition Of Tamil Nadu Happen?Was Manmohan Singh A Good Prime Minister?All these SPICY topics and more in this PREMIUM conversation about India’s economics. A deep dive into how India became a powerhouse economy in the world since 1991 & the man behind reviving India in the 90s… Tune in NOW!_____________________________________________________________________________________________________🎇CHAPTERS[00:00] - Precap[01:14] - Introducing C. Rangarajan, ex-RBI Governor of India![02:36]- Balance of Payments CRISIS That Led To 1991 Reforms![06:23] - Why Did 1991 Economic Reforms Happen?[07:40] - Socialist India’s Downfall During The Late 80s![11:49] - Who Did India Owe Its Default To?[14:10] - How Did India Overcome Its Current Account Deficit?[18:27] - Influence of Narasimha Rao & Manmohan Singh[20:37] - What Was RBI’s Role Before & After Rangarajan Came In? [28:43] - RBI’s Biggest Policies During Rangarajan’s Tenure![33:57] - Rangarajan’s Childhood Before Partition![38:46] - What Was Life Like After Independence?[41:35] - Could India Have Changed From Socialist Principles Earlier?[42:50] - Why Did The Partition Of Tamil Nadu Happen?[45:27] - Reason Why Tamil Nadu Has Become Industrial Hub Of India![47:47] - How Terms Like NPA & FDI Get Created![50:32] - How Did The Advisory Team To Manmohan Singh Get Assembled?[53:30] - Was Manmohan Singh A Good Prime Minister?[59:47] - Why Did Rangarajan Step Down in 2014?[1:00:59] - His Message To The Youth of India & Where India Is Headed![1:09:18] - Concluding Remarks_____________________________________________________________________________________________________*Sponsor Shout Out*Looking to build a differentiated tech startup with a 10X better solution? Prime is the high conviction, high support investor you need. With its fourth fund of $120M, Prime actively works with star teams to accelerate building great companies.To know more, visit https://primevp.in/!

This week’s episode is an EYE-OPENER for those who want to understand how AI impacts our lives & to be aware of potential AI scams as we welcome Manoj Agarwal, co-founder at DevRev, to the Neon Show!Can Machines Think For Themselves?What Jobs Are Most At Risk Due To AI?Is AI Progression Outpacing Humans?All these JUICY topics and much more in this DEEPLY INSIGHTFUL conversation about the AI revolution that has taken over the world & how it will impact future generations… Tune in NOW!_____________________________________________________________________________________________________🎇CHAPTERS[00:00] - Precap[00:48] - Introducing Manoj Agarwal, co-founder of DevRev[01:25] - Journey At Nutanix & Building DevRev[10:18] - Why Is AI At The Heart Of Innovation Today?[12:34] - Can Machines Think For Themselves?[17:51] - Why Is ChatGPT So Monumental?[21:19] - AI & Geopolitics[22:38] - BIGGEST Problem With Enforcing Laws on AI[25:19] - Is AI Progression Outpacing Humans?[27:07] - What Jobs Are Most At Risk Due To AI?[29:59] - What Jobs Will Be Created Due To The AI Revolution?[33:14] - How Is Gen Z Using AI Today?[34:40] - How Do AI Models Ensure There Is No Confirmation Bias?[37:35] - Why Are Indian Engineers/Developers More In Demand Now?[40:45] - Is India’s Talent Pool The Best In The World?[42:51] - Difference Between AI Focused Companies In The Past vs Now[47:00] - How AI Is Making Day-To-Day Life Easier[49:53] - The Concept Of “Hallucination” In Technology[53:51] - Concluding Remarks____________________________________________________________________________________________________*Sponsor Shout Out*Looking to build a differentiated tech startup with a 10X better solution? Prime is the high conviction, high support investor you need. With its fourth fund of $120M, Prime actively works with star teams to accelerate building great companies.To know more, visit https://primevp.in/!_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

This week’s episode is a MUST WATCH for Indians abroad as we welcome Saravana Kumar, co-founder at Kovai.co, to the Neon Show!Why Are Expats Coming Back To India?Is a Masters' Degree Abroad Still the Best Option For Indians?Why Hasn’t India Produced A Company As Big As Microsoft or AWS?All these INFORMATIVE topics and more in this DEEPLY INSIGHTFUL conversation about the exponential changes taking place in India and why Indians abroad are eager to make their way back to their home country… Tune in NOW!_____________________________________________________________________________________________________*Sponsor Shout Out*Looking to build a differentiated tech startup with a 10X better solution? Prime is the high conviction, high support investor you need. With its fourth fund of $120M, Prime actively works with star teams to accelerate building great companies.To know more, visit https://primevp.in/!_____________________________________________________________________________________________________🎇CHAPTERS[00:00]- Precap[00:46] - Introducing Saravana Kumar, co-founder of Kovai.co[02:06]- Middle-Class Upbringing in Coimbatore![04:18] - Biggest Learnings From Childhood To Now[06:14] - “They Put a Team of 18 People To Replace Me![10:24] - Why Are Expats Coming Back To India?[12:19] - Reasons For “INDIA SHINING”[13:46] - Why InfoSys Is The McDonald’s of India![20:56] - Is a Masters' Degree Abroad Still the Best Option For Indians?[28:34] - Creating Silicon Valley In Coimbatore[30:48] - Secret Behind His Efficiency & Speed![33:44] - Will ChatGPT & AI Kill Many Indian Startups?[38:09] - Why Hasn’t India Produced A Company As Big As Microsoft or AWS?[42:29] - What Indian Founders Need To Unlearn![48:11] - What Kind Of Leader Is Saravana?[49:17] - Is Narayana Murthy’s 70 Hr Week Policy Correct?[53:58] - Will Bangalore Continue To Be Tier-2 India’s First Choice Of Escape?[58:49] - How Many SaaS Companies Are In Coimbatore?[59:11] - The Future of Kovai[1:03:30] - Concluding Remarks____________________________________________________________________________________________________

This week’s episode requires that you watch this podcast before you apply for a Venture Capital job, as we welcome Ashish Fafadia, Partner at Blume Ventures, to the Neon Show!The History of Venture Capital in India!Is Obsession Required To Be A Successful Founder?What Is The Right Skill Set Required To Be In The VC Ecosystem?All these INFORMATIVE topics and more in this MASTERCLASS conversation about the inception of venture capital in India, what the DNA of a successful fund is & how to succeed in the VC ecosystem… Tune in NOW!_____________________________________________________________________________________________________*Sponsor Shout Out*Looking to build a differentiated tech startup with a 10X better solution? Prime is the high conviction, high support investor you need. With its fourth fund of $120M, Prime actively works with star teams to accelerate building great companies.To know more, visit https://primevp.in/_____________________________________________________________________________________________________🎇CHAPTERS[00:00] - Precap[00:54] - Introducing Ashish Fafadia, Partner at Blume Ventures![02:03] - The History of Venture Capital in India![17:10] - Blume Ventures’ Inception[24:19] - Do Investors Have FOMO?[29:03] - Food Chain Model in Venture Capital[32:57] - Blume’s Fund 1 & 2 Journey[37:46] - Why A DNA Change Was Necessary For Blume![42:18] - How To Raise Funds From Large Institutions[52:54] - $102 Million Fund 3 Journey![55:55] - $290 Million Fund 4 Journey![1:02:25] - Top 5 Investments Made By Blume Ventures[1:10:04] - Biggest Learnings From Investing![1:14:58] - Is Obsession Required To Be A Successful Founder?[1:19:45] - Future of The India Opportunity[1:23:47] - Want A Job In VC? Watch This![1:28:25] - The Right Skill Set Needed To Be In A Fund![1:30:35] - How To Succeed In The VC Ecosystem![1:34:26]- “Fund Is A 5 Muscle Job!”[1:37:21] - Concluding Remarks____________________________________________________________________________________________________

This week’s episode is about why India as a country loves seeking status, as we welcome Ankush Sachdeva, co-founder of ShareChat, to the Neon Show!How Have Indian Consumers Evolved In The Last 10 Years?India vs Bharat ArgumentAre Majority Of Indian Products Aimed At Tier-1 Cities?All these CAPTIVATING topics and more in this FREE-FLOWING conversation about how social media has played a part in the consumer behaviour of Indians. A deep dive into why Indians are so status-driven rather than wealth-driven… Tune in NOW!_____________________________________________________________________________________________________🎇CHAPTERS[00:00] - Precap[01:02] - Introducing Ankush Sachdeva, co-founder of ShareChat![01:45] - Siddhartha & Ankush’s Friendship Journey![03:44] - Setbacks Ankush Faced Before ShareChat[04:39 ]- Previous Companies Ankush Tried Building![09:48] - Lessons Learnt From His 14 Previous Failures[13:30] - ShareChat’s Untold Story[17:45] - India vs Bharat Argument[20:26] - Why India LOVES Seeking STATUS![24:20] - Are Bharat’s Audience Poor Spenders? [28:57] - How Have Indian Consumers Evolved In The Last 10 Years?[34:50] - How Far Is ShareChat From Profitability?[39:23] - How TikTok’s Ban Affected ShareChat![45:14] - Does China Have Better AI Algorithms Than India?[53:04] - Why Is Generative AI Taking Over The World?[57:03] - Will AI Read Human Minds In The Future?[58:47] - Can AI Capture Human Desire?[1:02:19] - What Categories Does India As A Country Love To Consume?[1:09:33] - Are Majority Of Indian Products Aimed At Tier-1 Cities?[1:13:09] - Will Mainstream Professions Like Doctors & Engineers Change In India?[1:16:55] - Concluding Remarks_____________________________________________________________________________________________________*Sponsor Shout Out*Looking to build a differentiated tech startup with a 10X better solution? Prime is the high conviction, high support investor you need. With its fourth fund of $120M, Prime actively works with star teams to accelerate building great companies.To know more, visit https://primevp.in/!

This week’s episode is about the most important tips required to get a good night’s sleep as we welcome Ankit Garg, co-founder of Wakefit, to the Neon Show!Why Do Indians Sleep So Poorly?Misconceptions Indians Have About Sleep!Will Quality Of Sleep Get Better Or Worsen In 10 Years?All these JUICY topics and more in this EYE-OPENING conversation about sleep cycles in a country like India. A deep dive into why India’s ambitious goals come at a loggerhead with the amount of sleep it gets… Tune in NOW!🎇CHAPTERS[00:00] - Precap[01:09] - Happy New Year Neon Tribe![01:38] - Introducing Ankit Garg, co-founder of Wakefit![02:22] - Why Do Indians Sleep So Poorly?[04:56] - Gen Z’s Relationship With Sleep[06:40] - Why Is Quality Of Sleep Going Down But Focus On Health Going Up?[08:45] - How Has The Indian Consumer Changed Over The Years?[11:50] - Ankit’s Backstory & Its Influence On Creating Wakefit[15:53] - Sleep Patterns That The Highest Performers Across Business & Sports Have![18:39] - Which Cities In India Sleep The Best?[20:57] - Steps Required To Get Good Sleep![29:14] - Will Quality Of Sleep Get Better Or Worsen In 10 Years?[30:28] - What Is REM? Various Phases Of Sleep?[34:39] - Misconceptions Indians Have About Sleep![38:36] - Is The Neck Pillow Industry Operating On A Placebo Effect?[41:19] - Will People Go Back To Buying Cheaper Mattresses In The Future?[43:16] - Wakefit’s Agenda[46:19] - Concluding Remarks*Sponsor Shout Out*Looking to build a differentiated tech startup with a 10X better solution? Prime is the high conviction, high support investor you need. With its fourth fund of $120M, Prime actively works with star teams to accelerate building great companies.To know more, visit https://primevp.in/!

This week’s episode is about Building Snapdeal, IIT Delhi - 2006 Batch & India’s Positive Future as we welcome Rohit Bansal, co-founder of Snapdeal & Titan Capital, to the Neon Show!What Sells & Doesn’t Sell In India?Have Aspirations Of Young India Changed In The Last 20 years?The Most Common Misconceptions About Investors!All these JUICY topics and more in this MASTERCLASS conversation about India’s e-commerce industry. A deep dive into how India has grown incrementally in the e-commerce industry over the last 15 years & what it takes to create a great product-market fit in the e-commerce space… Tune in NOW!🎇CHAPTERS[00:00] - Precap[01:18] - Introducing Rohit Bansal, co-founder of Snapdeal![01:50] - Small-Town Upbringing in Rural Punjab![04:33] - Further Education in DPS, R.K. Puram & IIT Delhi[06:49] - Meeting Kunal Bahl & Sacrificing Their U.S.-Based Jobs[10:13] - Have Aspirations Of Young India Changed In The Last 20 years?[12:32] - Rohit & Kunal Bahl’s Top 3 Ever Investments![16:48] - Qualities Titan Capital Looks For In Indian Entrepreneurs![22:30] - The Iconic 2006 and 2007 Batches of IIT Delhi![27:24] - Changes In Indian E-Commerce Over Last 15 Years[33:20] - E-Commerce: India vs China![35:42] - What Sells & Doesn’t Sell In India?[46:23] - Why Are Copycat Companies So Common In India?[49:15] - How Would Rohit Describe India’s Growth In The Last Decade?[54:10] - What Has Changed About Startups In India Since The Early 2000s?[57:19] - Can People Go Into Angel Investing Full-Time?[1:01:19] - Why Titan Capital Is So Successful![1:04:08] - Common Misconceptions About Investors[1:06:33] - Concluding Remarks*Sponsor Shout Out*Looking to build a differentiated tech startup with a 10X better solution? Prime is the high conviction, high support investor you need. With its fourth fund of $120M, Prime actively works with star teams to accelerate building great companies.To know more, visit https://primevp.in/!Shot By: Aravindh YuvarajCheck his profile out here: https://www.instagram.com/createdby.aravindhyuvaraj

This week’s episode is in discussion with PM Narendra Modi’s Economic Advisor who talks about Kolkata’s Decline, Amrit Kaal & India’s $10 Trillion Economy as we welcome Sanjeev Sanyal to the Neon Show!What Changed in India After Liberalisation in 1991?Does Being World’s Largest Population Help or Hinder India’s Growth?Sanjeev Sanyal’s Role In Reforming The Banking SystemsAll these JUICY topics and more in this ROUSING conversation about India’s economics. A deep dive into how India became a powerhouse economy in the world since 1991 & where it aims to be as a country by 2050… Tune in NOW!🎇CHAPTERS[00:00] - Precap[01:01] - Introducing Sanjeev Sanyal, PM Modi’s Economic Advisor[01:31] - “Kolkata DIDN’T DIE. It Was MURDERED!” Sanjeev’s Childhood Days[05:08] - Life In India After Independence & Before 1991![08:37] - What Changed in India After Liberalisation in 1991?[10:42] - Why India’s Banking System Was Reformed Post Modi![15:32] - Sanjeev Sanyal’s Role In Reforming The Banking Systems[21:01] - How India Maintained Its Stability Even After Covid![23:08] - 5 Influential Economic Reforms Sanjeev Has Been Part Of![30:35] - Can India Become Top 5 Nation In The Ease Of Doing Business Index?[36:21] - Does Being World’s Largest Population Help or Hinder India’s Growth?[41:24] - India’s Amrit Kaal: The Global Factors That Could Play A Role[46:01] - India’s Growth Rate vs China’s Growth Rate[50:55] - Can India Become a $20 Trillion Economy In The Near Future?[52:22] - Will India’s Population Continue to Grow In the Next 50 Years?[53:22] - What Economic Reforms Can Indians Expect In The Next Few Years?[56:43] - What % Of The Indian Economic Advisory’s Time Goes Into Propelling Startups?[59:59] - Concluding RemarksSponsor Shout OutLooking to build a differentiated tech startup with a 10X better solution? Prime is the high conviction, high support investor you need. With its fourth fund of $120M, Prime actively works with star teams to accelerate building great companies.To know more, visit https://primevp.in/!Shot By: Aravindh YuvarajCheck his profile out here: https://www.instagram.com/createdby.a...

This week’s episode is about Chandrababu Naidu's influence, the inception of ISB Hyderabad & Rajat Gupta's Case Study as we welcome Pramath Raj Sinha, founding member of ISB & Ashoka University, to the Neon Show!Chandrababu Naidu’s Role In Building ISB Hyderabad! Why Is ISB Unable To Break IIT’s Monopoly In The Educational Sector?What Makes US Education STAND OUT From the Rest Of The World?Would ISB Have Happened WITHOUT Rajat Gupta’s Involvement?All these CAPTIVATING topics and more in this MASTERFULLY INFORMATIVE conversation. A deep dive into where India is headed as a country & how important education will be in propelling it to new heights… Tune in NOW!Sponsor Shout OutLooking to build a differentiated tech startup with a 10X better solution? Prime is the high conviction, high support investor you need. With its fourth fund of $120M, Prime actively works with star teams to accelerate building great companies.To know more, visit https://primevp.in/!Shot By: Aravindh YuvarajCheck his profile out here:   / createdby.aravi.  .

This week’s episode is about India's BRIGHT FUTURE by 2030… as we welcome Bhaskar Ghosh of American Venture Capital firm 8VC to the Neon Show!How Much Has Bangalore Changed In The Last 30 Years?Is SaaS The Future of India?What Role Is India Playing In AI?All these CAPTIVATING topics and more in this HONEST conversation. A deep dive into whether is equipped to grow to the next level & how Bhaskar thinks about where India's future will be by 2030… Tune in NOW!Check his profile out here:   / createdby.aravindhyuvaraj  Sponsor Shout OutLooking to build a differentiated tech startup with a 10X better solution? Prime is the high conviction, high support investor you need. With its fourth fund of $120M, Prime actively works with star teams to accelerate building great companies.To know more, visit https://primevp.in/!

This week’s episode is about the IKEA of INDIA… as we welcome Bhavana Suresh, founder of 10 Club, to the Neon Show!Shot By: Aravindh YuvarajCheck his profile out here: https://www.instagram.com/createdby.aravindhyuvaraj*Sponsor Shout Out*Looking to build a differentiated tech startup with a 10X better solution? Prime is the high-conviction, high-support investor you need. With its fourth fund of $120M, Prime actively works with star teams to accelerate building great companies.To know more, visit https://primevp.in/!

This week’s episode is about the brutal truths that working mothers in India have to experience… as we welcome Neha Bagaria, founder of HerKey formerly known as JobsForHer, to the Neon Show!Biological Clock vs Career Ambitions Why Working Women Are ESSENTIAL For India’s Economy!Which Fields Are Indian Women Excelling in?Where Will India Be As A Country For Women IN 10 YEARS?All these CAPTIVATING topics and more in this VIBRANT & HONEST conversation. A deep dive into what makes Indian women so vital to India’s economy & how Neha Bagaria is seeking to become a catalyst and a STRONG voice for them… Tune in NOW!Shot By: Aravindh YuvarajCheck his profile out here: https://www.instagram.com/createdby.aravindhyuvarajSponsor Shout OutLooking to build a differentiated tech startup with a 10X better solution? Prime is the high-conviction, high-support investor you need. With its fourth fund of $120M, Prime actively works with star teams to accelerate building great companies.To know more, visit https://primevp.in/!

This week’s episode is about meeting India’s breakfast king who created a Rs. 3,000 crore business from idli, dosa batter & much more as we welcome PC Musthafa, founder of iD Fresh Foods, to the Neon Show!Were iD Fresh PIONEERS In Selling Batter In Stores? Why Don’t Indians TRUST Packaged Foods?Why Did Idli/Dosa Become So Popular Around The World?All these EXCITING topics and more in this WONDERFULLY GENTLE conversation. A deep dive into what makes iD Fresh a powerhouse in the Indian batter market & how PC Musthafa became the man he is today… Tune in NOW!Sponsor Shout OutLooking to build a differentiated tech startup with a 10X better solution? Prime is the high conviction, high support investor you need. With its fourth fund of $120M, Prime actively works with star teams to accelerate building great companies.To know more, visit https://primevp.in/!

This week’s episode is about The REAL REASON Indian Farmers Struggle as we welcome Shashi Kumar, founder of Akshayakalpa, to the Neon Show!What Does An Indian Farmer Want?Why Did INDIA Become A Farming Nation?Why Are Indians Antibiotics Resistant To Milk?All these UNIQUE topics and more in this INCREDIBLE conversation. A deep dive into why farming is so prevalent in India & why it will continue to be a big part of India’s economic ecosystem… Tune in NOW!Sponsor Shout OutLooking to build a differentiated tech startup with a 10X better solution? Prime is the high conviction, high support investor you need. With its fourth fund of $120M, Prime actively works with star teams to accelerate building great companies.To know more, visit https://primevp.in/!

This week’s episode is about the UPI Struggle Story, India vs The World and brain drain challenge for India as we welcome Sharad Sharma, founder of iSPIRT, to the Neon Show!How Has India Grown As A Country In Last 30-40 Years?Will INDIA Be Next THAILAND vs Next KOREA?Why Are Startups So Successful In China?All these gripping questions and more in this MASTERFUL conversation. A deep dive into why India as a country is on the cusp of world dominance & iSPIRT's role to play in accelerating this process… Tune in NOW!Sponsor Shout OutLooking to build a differentiated tech startup with a 10X better solution? Prime is the high conviction, high support investor you need. With its fourth fund of $120M, Prime actively works with star teams to accelerate building great companies.To know more, visit https://primevp.in/!

This week’s episode is about the mastermind behind India’s hottest startups such as Sharechat, Sugar Cosmetics & Kuku FM as we welcome Anand Lunia, founder of India Quotient, to the Neon Show!Is The Youth Of India Bad At Saving?Can India Become The Largest Economy In The World?Why Has India Not Created a Successful Role Model In Startups?All these exhilarating topics and more in this GRIPPING conversation. A deep dive into why India Quotient understands the consumers of India so well and how India is at the cusp of glory… Tune in NOW!*Sponsor Shout Out*Looking to build a differentiated tech startup with a 10X better solution? Prime is the high conviction, high support investor you need. With its fourth fund of $120M, Prime actively works with star teams to accelerate building great companies.To know more, visit https://primevp.in/!

This week’s episode is all about discovering OUR SECRETS as we let you in on how we gained 25,000 subscribers in JUST 90 days as our founders welcome Vidit Agarwal, our branding manager and founder of Witchcraft, to the Neon Show!Where Did Neon’s Journey Begin?How Did We Build BRAND LOYALTY For The Neon Show?Why Did The Name Neon Have To Be “Sexy” To Attract Viewers?!All these juicy topics and more in this HONEST conversation. A real look into why branding is so important for building loyalty amongst consumers & how it can transform a company’s fate, like it did Neon’s… Tune in NOW!*Sponsor Shout Out*Looking to build a differentiated tech startup with a 10X better solution? Prime is the high conviction, high support investor you need. With its fourth fund of $120M, Prime actively works with star teams to accelerate building great companies.To know more, visit https://primevp.in/!

This week’s episode is a SURPRISE feature with an UNEXPECTED host! Our co-founder Nansi Mishra takes on hosting duties as she looks at why Indians worship Bhagwan using puja flowers in Hinduism as we welcome Rhea Karuturi, co-founder of Hoovu Fresh, to the Neon Show!What Was It Like Growing Up In Ethiopia & Learning From The World’s Best Rose Exporter?What Are Some Practices Indians Use While Praying?What Is Rhea’s Family’s Relationship With God?How Difficult Is It To Be A Woman Entrepreneur In India?All these fascinating topics and more in this CAPTIVATING & INFORMATIVE conversation. A real look into the inner workings of faith in India & how impactful flowers can be in Hinduism with a woman that’s only began the start of her highly successful journey… Tune in NOW!*Sponsor Shout Out*Looking to build a differentiated tech startup with a 10X better solution? Prime is the high conviction, high support investor you need. With its fourth fund of $120M, Prime actively works with star teams to accelerate building great companies.To know more, visit https://primevp.in/!

This week’s episode is an CAPTIVATING look at how Reliance changed India forever, the flaws that Bharat as a country has & how BigBasket has empowered farmers as we welcome V S Sudhakar, co-founder of BigBasket, to the Neon Show!How Did Mukesh Ambani Change India Forever?What Weaknesses Does India Have As A Country?Does BigBasket Have Any Benchmarks For Profitability?“We See Education Not As A Barrier, But As An Enabler At BigBasket.”All these riveting topics and more in this PLEASANT & INFORMATIVE conversation. A real look into the hidden brains behind BigBasket’s success & a man with a golden smile… Tune in NOW!*Sponsor Shout Out*Looking to build a differentiated tech startup with a 10X better solution? Prime is the high conviction, high support investor you need. With its fourth fund of $120M, Prime actively works with star teams to accelerate building great companies.To know more, visit https://primevp.in/!

This week’s episode is an HONEST look at why Indians love government jobs, how Kuku FM is aspirational for Indians & whether Indians are now changing their views on private jobs as we welcome Lal Chand Bisu, founder of Kuku FM, to the Neon Show!Are Indian Masses Willing To Pay For Subscriptions?Why Do Tier-3 City Indians Aspire For Government Jobs?GOVERNMENT Jobs vs PRIVATE jobsMost Popular Kuku FM Series?All these captivating topics and more in this DOWN TO EARTH conversation. A real look into the spirit of the man who runs a company that handles over 2 million active subscriptions… Tune in NOW!*Sponsor Shout Out*Looking to build a differentiated tech startup with a 10X better solution? Prime is the high conviction, high support investor you need. With its fourth fund of $120M, Prime actively works with star teams to accelerate building great companies.To know more, visit https://primevp.in/!

Put your thinking caps on because this week’s episode is an assortment of INSIGHTFUL INFORMATION about stock markets, trading & entrepreneurship as we welcome Deepak Shenoy, founder of CapitalMind, to the Neon Show!Which Company Transformed India’s Trading Market?Indian Stock Market vs Global Stock MarketsAre Financial Influencers Fooling Their Followers?Would Global Companies Ever List In India?All these juicy topics and more in this EXTENSIVE conversation. A dive into the psyche of the man who manages over Rs. 500 crore in the Indian markets… One of the rare times where the conversation never stops being informative & gripping. Tune in NOW!*Sponsor Shout Out*Looking to build a differentiated tech startup with a 10X better solution? Prime is the high conviction, high support investor you need. With its fourth fund of $120M, Prime actively works with star teams to accelerate building great companies.To know more, visit Prime Venture Partners!

Welcome back Neon Tribe!This week’s episode is a DETAILED DIVE into the stock market through the eyes and mind of one of India’s most successful stock traders as we welcome Ravi Kumar, co-founder of Upstox, to the Neon Show!How Many Brokerage Accounts Are There In India & What % Of Them Use Upstox?What will The Stock Market Look Like In America, China & India In 10 Years?Why Was India A Better Choice Than America To Start Upstox?What Does The Future Of Indian Startups Look Like?All these exclusive topics and more in this DENSE & EDUCATIVE conversation. An exploration of the man behind a 30,000 crore company … This is a MASTERCLASS about everything stocks. Tune in NOW!*Sponsor Shout Out*Looking to build a differentiated tech startup with a 10X better solution? Prime is the high conviction, high support investor you need. With its fourth fund of $120M, Prime actively works with star teams to accelerate building great companies.To know more, visit https://primevp.in/ !

Welcome Back Neon Tribe! This week’s episode is a MUST WATCH for India’s youth because we delve deeply into the insights and learnings gathered by one of India’s youngest crorepatis as we welcome Ishan Sharma, co-founder of MarkitUp, to the Neon Show!Ever wondered what the life of a content creator actually looks like? Well… This episode reveals everything! What Is The Biggest Difference Between India’s Youth & The Youth Abroad?How Much Has Timing Played A Role In Ishan’s Success?Will We See More Indians Dropout Of College In The Near Future?Who Are The Top 5 Indian Leaders Ishan Is Inspired By? All these captivating topics and more in this VIBRANT conversation. From being a BITS Pilani dropout to crossing 1 million subscribers on YouTube at the age of 22… Ishan Sharma’s story is an inspiration to all Indians that an unconventional path in life does not mean a wrong one. Tune in NOW!*Sponsor Shout Out*Looking to build a differentiated tech startup with a 10X better solution? Prime is the high conviction, high support investor you need. With its fourth fund of $120M, Prime actively works with star teams to accelerate building great companies.To know more, visit Primevp.in !

Welcome Back Neon Tribe! This week’s episode is a vast case study into the psyche of one of India’s brightest and most inspiring men as we welcome Vijay Rayapati, founder of Atomicwork, to the Neon Show!Clocking in at a whopping 2 hours, this detailed episode has everything… Experiences shared about the pitfalls of a difficult childhood journey, the aspirations of youthful adolescence and the wisdom that came with maturing age.  Do Indian founders command respect in the Valley ecosystem?What was it like growing up in a village and why was he bullied at school?How was it dealing with his mother’s battles with cancer?What is the story behind his successful exit from Minjar? All these spellbinding topics and more in this DEEPLY STIRRING conversation. From being just a farmer’s son to one of the most influential founders in India’s SaaS ecosystem… Vijay Rayapati’s story is not just one you listen to, but one you take notes from as well. Tune in NOW!Sponsor ShoutoutLooking to build a differentiated tech startup with a 10X better solution? Prime is the high conviction, high support investor you need. With its fourth fund of $120M, Prime actively works with star teams to accelerate building great companies.To know more, visit Primevp.in !

Welcome Back Neon Tribe! This week’s episode is the definition of captivating as we welcome Pallav Nadhani and Paras Chopra, founders of FusionCharts & Wingify respectively, to the Neon Show!In today’s episode, we learn about the journey of their 13-year old friendship and how young both of them were when they attained financial independence.Is it better to be your own boss or work for large corporations? What’s the major difference?What does happiness & death mean to them? What topics in life give them anxiety?How important is legacy for an entrepreneur?Did they startup companies for money or to change the world?All these engrossing topics and more in this RAW & SAVAGE conversation with two of India’s brightest millionaires. The most distinct conversation we’ve ever had on the Neon Show… Tune in NOW!*Sponsor Shoutout*Looking to build a differentiated tech startup with a 10X better solution? Prime is the high conviction, high support investor you need. With its fourth fund of $120M, Prime actively works with star teams to accelerate building great companies.To know more, visit Primevp.in !

Welcome Back Neon Tribe! This week’s insightful episode is about India’s favourite drink “Chai”! We welcome the founder of India’s original Chai startup, Raghav Verma of Chaayos, to the Neon Show! In this week’s episode, we learn about the ingenious man behind the Chai Revolution that’s taken place in India over the last 10 years!In a country where Chai is consumed at 30x the rate of coffee, can you imagine having 80,000 varieties available to you all at one store?!How has Indians’ opinion on the country’s culture changed over the course of the last 20 years?Truly unbelievable! This outrageous flavour is Raghav’s favourite at Chaayos 😱 You will have to hear it to believe it… Trust us on that!Wait… Chaayos had a huge impact on our host’s love story? Find out how!All these Kadak topics and more in this highly ENGROSSING conversation with one of India’s Brightest Founders. Pour yourself a Chai while watching, as this episode will give you Sereni-Tea 😉 … Tune in NOW!

Welcome Back Neon Tribe! This week’s episode is an extraordinarily explosive one as we welcome Mohandas Pai, ex-CFO of Infosys, to the Neon Show!In this week’s episode, we learn about the “rebellious” man behind India’s largest midday meal programme, Akshaya Patra, and his highly inspiring journey from childhood days to Infosys and way beyond! How did Jawaharlal Nehru set India back 30 years as a country and why is PM Modi, India’s best prime minister till date?India vs America! Who do you think is better at Marketing?Why are Indians incomparable to any other population in the world?!All these fiery topics and more in this UNFILTERED conversation with one of India’s most proud citizens! Unlike any conversation we’ve ever had on the Neon Show… Tune in NOW!*Sponsor Shoutout!*Looking to build a differentiated tech startup with a 10X better solution? Prime is the high conviction, high support investor you need. With its fourth fund of $120M, Prime actively works with star teams to accelerate building great companies. To know more, visit Primevp.in! 

Welcome back Neon Tribe!   This week’s episode features one of the most resilient founders we’ve ever met. We welcome Vinay Singhal, co-founder of STAGE, to the Neon Show!  In this week’s episode, we learn about the tough tenacity of small-town entrepreneurs and the extreme strength they have to pick themselves up after failures. Many may know our guest from his emotional segment on Shark Tank but how many of you know his heartbreaking story about WittyFeed, his first company, which got shutdown by Facebook overnight? Why is depression such a silent killer in the Indian startup ecosystem? How did Vinay tackle his own battle with it?  Want to know more about how Vinay and his co-founders created India’s very own NETFLIX?  Well to find out all this and much more, join us on this rollercoaster ride of a conversation! Trust us when we say this is the most emotional conversation we’ve had yet!

Welcome back Neon Tribe! This is an episode we have been waiting years to make happen and the dream has finally come true! We welcome Vineeta Singh and Kaushik Mukherjee, co-founders of SUGAR on the Neon Show as we delve into the depths of the beauty industry in India.In this week’s episode, we learn about the electric duo’s combined entrepreneurship journey which began in 2012 with Fab-Bag, a subscription platform that provided deliveries of beauty products.Ever wondered what it is like to be husband & wife as well as being co-founders of a company? The answer to that question will be found here as Vineeta and Kaushik discuss finding the right balance between their personal and professional lives!Curious to find out how big of an impact Shark Tank has had on SUGAR’s overall growth? Join us to find out about all this and more as we discuss in detail with perhaps the most dynamic duo in India’s entrepreneurship landscape currently!

Neon Tribe!Get ready for another gripping episode as we welcome Tarun Mehta, the founder of Ather Energy on the Neon Show! Tune in as we thoroughly delve into the inner workings of the two-wheeler and EV industry in India.In this week’s episode, we learn about a truly one-of-a-kind backstory which began from deep within IIT Madras’s engineering department! Get ready as you will find out exactly how Tesla inspired Ather and whether Ather would have still reached the same heights it has today, if Tesla never existed. Equipped with an abundance of knowledge on the EV industry, Tarun also shares his understanding of the market dynamics for EVs in India as well as the current state of the Indian scooter market.Curious as to why a career in software engineering is more rewarding than one in hardware engineering? Well, look no further as Tarun explains in detail why college students would prefer the former over the latter! Join us for all this and more as we candidly engage with the genius mind responsible for turning a 20 crore ARR business from five years ago into a colossal 1800 crores as of today!  

Today I have with me the entrepreneur who I’ve always looked up to. I consider him the Dronacharya of the Indian startup ecosystem.This man has never shied away from expressing himself freely. His company was the first tech company in India to go public and inspired a generation of companies to go public like MakeMyTrip, Zomato, and PolicyBazaar. All entrepreneurs dream of taking their companies public and the very few who reach that milestone remain busy managing that company or end up taking retirement.But this man never rested. He is responsible for many startups in India that have gone public.Today I have with me Padma Shri awardee Sanjeev Bikhchandani Sir. This episode is about the unconventional choices of Sanjeev Sir and his philosophy of making India great.I would also like to thank our sponsors Prime Venture Partners for sponsoring the Neon Show.Hope you enjoy it.

Today we have with us Jigar Shah, co-founder 82 Degree East, a skin care brand that he started along with Deepika Padukone. Jigar's journey, from an investment manager at a VC firm to managing investments for Deepika Padukone and finally co-founding a self-care brand with her, is nothing short of captivating.Jigar shares how the idea of starting 82°E came to life. Despite having Deepika Padukone as a co-founder, Jigar and Deepika veered away from banking solely on star power.They concentrated on creating a unique skincare brand committed to satisfying real consumer needs. From establishing an R&D center in Bangalore, catering to a global audience, Jigar also talks about how he and Deepika tackled the design and marketing aspects of their brand to differentiate it in a saturated marketplace.Subscribe to the 100x Entrepreneur podcast today for more inspiring and informative episodes on the entrepreneurial journey!🚀✨CHAPTERS: -00:00:00 - Intro0:02:21 - 0:04:59 - Jigar's Skincare Routine 0:05:00 - 0:07:58 - Life as a Founder 0:07:59 - 0:13:59 - Indian Entrepreneurs Jigar Admires 0:14:00 - 0:15:11 - How Jigar Met Deepika Padukone 0:15:12 - 0:16:33 - Jigar's First Investment Endeavors0:16:34 - 0:22:09 - The Birth of 82E 0:22:10 - 0:23:49 - Managing Consumer Expectations with a Celebrity Co-founder 0:23:50 - 0:27:37 - Jigar's Business Relationship with Deepika 0:27:38 - 0:30:43 - Mistakes to Avoid as a Founder 0:30:44 - 0:33:50 - Rapid Fire Questions 0:33:51 - 0:37:41 - Unique D2C Processes at 82E 0:37:42 - End - Unexpected Challenges in the Business Journey 

In today’s episode of the 100x Entrepreneur podcast, we're joined by our very own co-founders, Nansi Mishra, and Siddhartha Ahluwalia. Did you know that behind the scenes, these founders have been cooking up some incredible strategies? While many listeners might not be aware, Nansi will reveal how Siddhartha's passion for investing led him on an extraordinary journey. Siddhartha shares his quest of understanding the VC world from close quarters, his struggle to get into the world of VC, and his final landing at Prime Ventures Capital as the community head.  Nansi and Siddhartha also throw light on the dynamic landscape of second-time founders , Siddhartha’s preference for companies and why SaaS companies are securing funding with relative ease nowadays. Whether you're an entrepreneur, an aspiring founder, or just curious about the startup space, this episode is your one-stop resource for all things venture capital. Learn what it takes to attract VC attention and raise that crucial funding.Subscribe to the 100x Entrepreneur podcast today for more inspiring and informative episodes on the entrepreneurial journey!🚀✨

In this episode of the 100x Entrepreneur podcast, we have Mr. Shripati Acharya, Managing Partner of Prime Venture Partners, one of India’s top early-stage venture capital funds.Throughout his career, be it as a business lead at Cisco or as a co‐founder of Snapfish, the world's largest photo site acquired by HP, or at Transarc, which was acquired by IBM, Shripati has combined his passion to build great teams, an extraordinary desire to excel and a keen eye for spotting the tales. He is known for being astute with a razor-sharp intellect and a Zen‐like devotion to data-driven decision‐making.Shripati has also worked alongside Mr. Nandan Nilekani on the UIDAI project. Having spent substantial parts of working career in the United States and India addressing worldwide markets, Shripati brings a global management perspective.During the podcast, Shripat shares valuable insights on raising funds,early stage investing, avoiding mistakes as a founder, maintaining a healthy work-life balance and missed investment opportunities too.If you are an early-stage entrepreneur, we recommend that you tune in to the podcast for a wealth of insights from the startup ecosystem. Be sure to hear the podcast to the end and leave a comment with your favorite parts! 

Welcome to this exciting podcast ep, where we will delve into the world of Prafull Billore, the most famous Chaiwala. In our conversation, we highlight various aspects of his life that have contributed to his success. From understanding how he gets his passion and self-confidence to discussing short-term versus long-term goals, we cover it all!We also talk about Prafull's journey post-COVID and how he has been able to recover after facing several challenges that helped him mature with experience despite being only 26 years old. As you listen further, you'll discover why Prafull believes that bigger struggles lead to bigger successes and how he constantly strives towards improvement every day.So come join us on this thrilling ride where we learn more about what else Prafull is planning in store for the future!Notes - 00:00 - Highlights of the conversation01:12 - Prafull Billore, the most famous Chaiwala03:05 - What makes him so confident06:58 - Having short-term goals v/s long-term goals09:25 - Opening his 2nd outlet12:33 - Recovering post COVID15:21 - Current scale of opening new outlets17:58 - Challenges while scaling21:17 - How do his thoughts become inspiring?25:42 - Emulating successful people like Jeff Bezos28:33 - Maturing with experiences at the age of 2630:09 - “Bigger the struggle, bigger the success.”32:23 - How is Prafull of today better than the Prafull of yesterday? 34:13 - Best quality - “Learning How to ask for help!”40:14 - Bias for action - Content creator vs Entrepreneur42:12 - What more is he planning for?

Whatfix has a user base of over 10 million people and has been used to create over 1.5 million digital walkthroughs and tutorials. It has 500+ enterprise customers worldwide, including companies like HP, Schneider Electric, and Autodesk. Since its launch in 2014, Whatfix has become a go-to solution for businesses across multiple industries.The platform has also received the "Best SaaS Product for Web/App Development" at the 2021 SaaS Awards.In this episode, we have Whatfix founders Khadim Batti and Vara Kumar Namburu share the journey of Whatfix from their first offline Dreamforce event to reaching 10 Million people, their vision, clients, scale, culture and more. Notes - 00:00 - Highlights of the conversation02:06 - What’s Whatfix and how it’s unique04:07 - Strategy of CTO moving to the US and CEO being in India06:31 - Bringing Vispi Daver as an Angel Investor10:18 - Avoid falling into the trap of following someone else’s playbook as a first-time founder14:13 - Getting the first few Enterprise customers15:57 - Taking Counter-intuitive bets19:40 - Their first big event Dreamforce 25:02 - Going one step back, would they do a 10-15 member round table for their most interested CIOs post Dreamforce event?26:49 - Focusing on farming with Account Managers31:36 - Advice to SaaS founder: When to focus on Brand? 34:10 - Brand-building after their first Dreamforce36:45 - Their initial Ideal customer profile37:58 - Challenges & Hurdles in their 1 to 10 journey39:23 - Examples where the deal got stuck at IT Security or CFO-level43:55 - Enabling multiple stakeholders in a sales decision46:30 - Traditional profile of a sales person47:24 - Hiring profile of their initial senior sales team49:28 - How to deal with people’s Title expectation?54:23 - Building their culture early-on56:28 - Mistakes in their early journey58:06 - Guiding the early team in current journey1:00:05 - Time & efforts in recent rounds of fundings1:04:27 - Raising from Stellaris Venture Partners1:05:32 - Changing path amongst the founders1:06:59 - Account plan review with customers1:08:50 - Having set accounts with every leader to help the customers succeed

Imagine a social micro-blogging platform like Twitter that allows users to express themselves in their local languages on a large scale. Well, that's precisely what Koo offers. In today's episode, we are joined by Aprameya Radhakrishna, the Co-Founder, and CEO of Koo. Aprameya's first startup was TaxiForSure, which was acquired by Ola Cabs in 2015. Since then, he has invested in over 30 early-stage startups, including Unacademy, TapChief, and Daily Ninja. During our conversation, Aprameya discusses his thoughts on Indian startups and tech talent building for global markets, his experience with VCs as a second-time entrepreneur, and much more.Notes - 00:00 - Highlights 01:47 - Aprameya Radhakrishna and Koo's story03:23 - Koo's scale in India and Brazil08:30 - Current market headwinds10:59 - Koo's positioning in the audience's mind13:17 - VC and investor perspective being a second-time founder15:13 - Going deeper in India v/s Going Global16:30 - Exiting TaxiForSure17:56 - Focus on product and traction while building a product20:29 - Learnings from TaxiForSure 22:36 - Confidence to go global as a consumer internet company from India26:50 - Self-doubt while starting Koo31:14 - Change in Aprameya's ability to read the market33:22 - Gut feeling about the recession's duration37:04 - Balancing confidence and arrogance as a founder40:17 - Relationship with VCs over time45:00 - Future bets in the next 10 years46:32 - Riskiest bets that paid off48:02 - Financial independence's impact on Aprameya as a person49:57 - Aprameya's other aspirations besides building Koo51:53 - Is the core India shining?

A report by Deloitte and Wipro estimated that the value of B2B digital payments in India will reach $700 billion by 2025, growing at a CAGR of 30% from 2020.The B2B digital payment ecosystem in India has been growing rapidly, driven by factors such as: # Government initiatives to promote digital payments# Increasing adoption of mobile devices and internet connectivity# Growing awareness of the benefits of digital payments among businesses and moreIn this episode we have with us Akash Sinha, Co-founder & CEO, Cashfree payments, talking about B2B Digital payments ecosystem in India. Cashfree Payments has processed over 200 million transactions as of 2021, with a total transaction value of over $12 billion. It serves over 3,00,000 businesses, ranging from small startups to large enterprises, across various industries such as e-commerce, travel, hospitality, and fintech such as Dream11, Zomato, Dunzo, CRED, Acko, and Nykaa amongst others.Cashfree Payments offers various payment solutions, such as payment gateway, payouts, auto-collect, recurring payments, and marketplace settlements. They have also launched new products like Cashgram and Cashfree AI to improve the user experience and prevent fraud.Let’s deep dive into the episode where Akash has their initial journey with heavy competition in the market, complying with RBI regulations as a payment solution provider, and much more.Notes - 00:00 - Highlights of the conversation02:07 - Intro to Akash Sinha, Cashfree Payments and Payment ecosystem in India03:09 - Journey so far & Indian payment’s landscape06:37 - Mapping the payment landscape’s online segment10:05 - Cashfree’s share in B2B payments in India11:06 - Strengths of Razorpay & Cashfree Payments13:59 - Larger customers such as - Meesho, Swiggy, Zepto, and CRED among others14:50 - SME signups and payments insights across India16:59 - Scaling with a Platform approach18:14 - Being part of YC early-on20:22 - Strengths as a CEO & Founder24:57 - Y-o-Y growth at Cashfree Payments26:01 - Plans for IPO26:31 - Emotional Journey of a founder in the last 8 years27:53 - Steering clear in a competitive market back in 201532:05 - Building multiple products to solve multiple problems34:44 - India’s growing Digital infrastructure38:03 - Advice for entrepreneurs to choose tough markets with large tailwinds39:56 - Coming from a Non-fintech background42:32 - How fast is the Digital payments market growing? 43:35 - How tough is it to be compliant with RBI regulatory changes? 

By end-2019, just before the pandemic, the market for Coworking spaces was spread over some 30 million sq. ft, with 471,782 seats across the top seven markets in India, per JLL Research data.In December 2022, the numbers grew to 50 million sq. ft and 750,000+ seats. In the next three years, the co-working space market in India is set to cross the 1-million-seats mark spread over 75 million sq. ft.WeWork India is the leading provider of flexible workspace solutions with almost 70,000+ seats across 44+ locations in India.In this episode, we have Karan Virwani, CEO, WeWork India, talking about his experience of bringing and scaling WeWork in India, over the past 7 years.Karan brought WeWork to India in a partnership tie-up with his family's Embassy Group. Starting business operations in the country with 100k sq ft, WeWork India has progressed to 6.5mn sq ft as of today. Within 6 years, WeWork India has grown from 2,200 members in WeWork Galaxy, Bangalore, to 44 locations across 6 cities in India today - Bengaluru, Mumbai, Gurugram, Noida, Hyderabad, and Pune.During the episode, Karan shares the ups and downs in their journey, especially during Covid, and how they tackled the situation which helped them build goodwill and scale back faster post things normalized. This podcast is for anyone who wants to have an insider view of India’s growing Flex workspace market.Notes - 00:00 - Highlights of the conversation01:34 - Intro to Karan Virwani, WeWork and Global Co-working phenomenon02:27 - Bringing WeWork to India09:36 - Why not start under the Embassy brand name and why start with WeWork? 12:16 - Borrowing the DNA of WeWork Global to India 13:37 - Scaling to 40+ WeWorks and 70,000+ Desks in India15:57 - Back into Growth mode post Covid17:14 - Having multiple landlords for Pan-India growth18:39 - Initial investment & roadblocks in their journey24:43 - Plans for WeWork IPO in India25:33 - Coworking customer segment in India v/s Global33:16 - Coworking as a culture amongst Traditional & Legacy companies34:05 - Operating in a certain price segment36:44 - Partner-led approach during Covid40:01 - Sector-wise demand of commercial real-estate43:07 - Hitting $1 Bn revenue in 3 years43:38 - Coworking as a % of Commerical Real Estate in India

As per Tracxn, there are 1100+ SaaS startups in Chennai as of Feb 2023. Chennai has rightfully gained the title of the SAAS capital of India, thanks to the expansion of companies such as Zoho and Freshworks. Although these two firms have recently surpassed the $500 million revenue milestone, making them the most prominent success stories in the realm of Indian-based SAAS companies, there are other companies contributing to Chennai's reputation in the market. Chargebee, CloudCherry, HappyFox, and FourKites are among the businesses that are creating a unique space in the industry.In this episode, we have with us Srikrishnan Ganesan Founder, Rocketlane. Srikrishnan's SaaS journey began with Konotor, which got acquired by FreshWorks and later became Freshchat. He has experienced scaling from 0 to 100 and is now building Rocketlane, a customer onboarding platform that reduces time to value and eliminates hit-or-miss experiences.During the episode, he talks about his inspiration behind building Rocketlane, Planning and doing GTM early on being a SaaS founder, setting up a base in Chennai, and much more.Notes - 00:00 - Highlights of the conversation01:32 - Intro to Srikrishnan Ganesan, Rocketlane and Chennai’s SaaS ecosystem02:36 - Why do SaaS founders prefer Chennai?06:09 - Advantages of building prior-product building experience09:50 - Choosing the domain for Rocketlane13:12 - Rocketlane’s Pre-Launch setup18:53 - What works in customer conversation’s Pre-Launch?22:44 - Why do SaaS founders ignore GTM?24:35 - Raising their 1st round26:32 - Choosing to become a Category creator29:08 - Investing in Brand-building upfront30:39 - Funding announcement with a Rap video34:15 - Learnings from his journey37:54 - Their strategy for Demand-Gen40:29 - His thoughts on Generative-AI45:47 - Slowness demand for Rocketlane or similar companies serving SMBs

Imagine you’re part of an NBFC, how would you lend to a person running a Kirana business? Without any proper credit score, current account or other standard checks. Finding it difficult to evaluate the credit worthiness of the shop owner. Right? In the age of the internet, UPI, net banking, Jan Dhan Bank account and almost all transaction-related data available with transparency, it seems possible.  Now imagine dealing with the same issue, back in 1984. Seems impossible right? Well, that’s when Five Star Business Finance, ventured into small business financing.In this episode, we have with us, Rangarajan Krishnan, CEO, Five Star Business Finance.Dive into this episode as Rangarajan shares the journey of Five Star, their experience of going IPO recently, how RBI regulates NBFCs, what differentiates them from other NBFCs, Banks Fintech, and more. This episode is a must-listen for entrepreneurs, small business owners, and anyone looking to learn more about the working, valuation, and scaling of NBFCs in India.Notes - 00:00 - Highlights of the conversation01:28 - Intro to Rangarajan & Five Star Business Finance02:38 - Valuation for NBFCs while going IPO03:14 - Their IPO journey over three phases10:29 - Private round valuation Pre-IPO13:33 - History and background of Five Star22:03 - RBI’s regulations around deposit-taking NBFCs23:26 - How does the lending market in India looks like? 26:29 - The simplest way to define a customer of Five Star31:51 - Branch presence across major geographies in India37:10 - RBI scale-based regulations for 10,000+ NBFCs 39:45 - What differentiates them from other NBFCs? 42:41 - Do they aspire to be amongst the Top 10-15 NBFCs in the next 2-3 years?44:11 - Prerequisites from RBI for starting an NBFC46:16 - Do they want to become a Fintech eventually? 49:20 - Being a CEO and a Non-founder51:39 - His interaction while joining Five Star56:53 - Managing his & promotor's responsibilities 57:46 - Things he has changed & retained in the company in the last 7+ years

In this episode, we talk with Mithun Sacheti, the founder of CaratLane, who has disrupted the traditional jewellery industry in India by leveraging technology and innovation. He started CaratLane in 2008 with the vision to provide access to beautiful jewellery designs at an affordable price. Mithun Sacheti comes from a Marwari family and joined the family jewellery business, Jaipur Gems, after graduation. He started its stores in Chennai. Later, he founded CaratLane in 2008 after being inspired by the online jewellery retailer, Blue Nile. CaratLane aims to solve the problem of limited access to beautiful and affordable jewellery designs for the middle class in India.The conversation dives into his entrepreneurial journey, his insights on the Indian D2C startup ecosystem, and the challenges he faced along the way. Mithun recalls the struggles he had in convincing Bluedart to be their shipping partner and how it took them almost a year and a crore to build their website. Tune in now to know Mithun’s journey of building CaratLane from scratch, his belief that in life, the harder thing is not to find answers but to find the right questions and what are the next questions for him in life.  Notes - 00:00 - Highlights of the conversation01:45 - The idea & Need of CaratLane01:55 - Disrupting the underserved jewellery market in India03:19 - The first one to bring jewellery at low prices03:33 - The designs should be democratised 03:55 - Becoming the Market Maker 04:04 - The reality of the Jewellery Market in India06:08 - Why 25% of your wealth should be in form of gold?06:47 - The effect of the Ukraine War on the purchase of gold07:05 - Quitting family business to start Caratlane08:30 - Life of kids born in families running big businesses08:58 - Inspiration behind starting Caratlane10:36 - First few pivots in their product journey13:38 - Initial phase of building and growing Caratlane17:57 - Raising funding & building for Titan21:57 - Journey after Tiger Global’s funding24:12 - Getting advice from Raamdeo Agrawal at Rakesh Jhunjhunwala’s dinner31:48 - Why do people really buy jewellery?39:13 - Tata group being able to marry the Entrepreneur to the business post-acquisition43:03 - Learnings while working with Tata46:15 - What are the next questions in life for him?

Manish Mundra is an Investor, a film producer, and a man whose story is an inspiration for all the small-town people with big dreams.Manish was born in a Marwadi family based in Deoghar, Jharkhand. He along with his family experienced a difficult time when his father’s business suffered a setback. From selling sarees to cold drinks, he had done it all to support his family. Manish later on focused on his education and did his MBA from a college in Jodhpur. He, later on, moved to Nigeria to join a multinational Petrochemicals firm and rose up to become its CEO.In 2013, Manish responded to a tweet by actor-director Rajat Kapoor, offering to produce a movie based on his script—Ankhon Dekhi (2014).After that, Manish founded Drishyam Films to back socially relevant films like Masaan, Newton, Ankhon Dekhi and more becoming one of the most promising filmmakers of Indian cinema. Recently, he also released his first movie Siya as a director.In our conversation with Manish, he shares his journey from his early days in Deoghar to moving to Nigeria and then finding a way to produce and direct movies.  He also opens up about his passion for promoting diversity and inclusivity in cinema and why it's so important to give a voice to underrepresented communities.Manish's infectious energy and inspiring story that he has will definitely make you think that when it comes to dreams, the sky's the limit for him.Notes - 02:08 - Intro to Manish Mundra05:48 - Moving out of India10:33 - Initial life in Middle-class families 20:34 - Working hard early in career to scale faster23:50 - His experience with his first film - “Ankhon Dekhi” with Rajat Kapoor35:33 - Slow compounding throughout his journey39:18 - Being a filmmaker who has no background of movies42:47 - More screens for independent film-makers52:02 - Dealing with your inferiority complex? 56:35 - More evolved and More Spiritual 57:14 - What’s the purpose that’s driving Manish at the age of 49? 

In the recent episode of Shark Tank India which went viral, we saw Ganesh Balakrishnan, the Co-Founder of Flatheads Shoes, pitch his sustainable and ethically-made footwear brand to the Sharks. Although Ganesh faced some initial skepticism from the Sharks, he didn't give up and continued to present his vision with confidence and determination.And through his pitch, he made everyone realize that entrepreneurship is not only Unicorns, fundraisers, and large secondaries for the founders. It's mainly about the fight that goes on within an individual and with the outside world.Ganesh's tenacity and perseverance in the face of rejection are an inspiration to all entrepreneurs, and his story is a reminder that success doesn't come easy and entrepreneurship is a long journey. In this episode, we talk to Ganesh about his journey as an entrepreneur, the inspiration behind Flatheads Shoes, and the challenges he's faced along the way. Listen to the full episode to learn more about Ganesh’s new Mantra for Entrepreneurship "Down but not out" Notes - 01:22 - Intro to Ganesh02:42 - Getting into Shark Tank05:02 - What happened once the episode aired? 07:32 - The Joy of Creation14:12 - Emotional Journey with family as an Entrepreneur20:51 - Impact of Covid on Flatheads28:44 - What’s next for Flatheads?33:15 - Pandemic-driven thought process: Offline vs Online35:28 - What else was discussed in the Shark Tank pitch that wasn’t aired?38:12 - Why didn't he take the Shark Tank offer? 39:45 - What brings humility to an entrepreneur? 43:50 - Knowing what he got to know after Shark Tank, what would he have done differently in Flatheads' journey? 47:11 - His focus in 2023

The Indian Grocery market was at 396 Billion Indian Rupees in 2022. Over 95% of Indian grocery stores are made up of Kiranas or small grocery stores. While supermarkets account for about 4% of total grocery shares, online groceries are not even near one percent. Which stands as a huge potential market for companies like BigBasket, Blinkit, Swiggy Instamart, Zepto, JioMart, and Dunzo to scale.Zepto pioneered 10 min grocery delivery In India. It’s a phenomenon that took India by storm. And this is a unique Indian offering. Nowhere in the world has 10 min delivery been pioneered and scaled like in India.And there are very few businesses born once in a decade that change consumer behavior permanently. Flipkart pioneered e-commerce in India, BigBasket pioneered grocery in India delivered in 3-4 days and Zepto has pioneered grocery delivered in 10 mins. In this episode, we have Aadit Palicha, Founder & CEO, Zepto sharing his journey so far with us.During the conversation, Aadit also mentioned about his first startup, moving back to India during Covid, dropping out of Stanford, and starting Zepto.Notes - 00:00 - Intro01:36 - The life story of Aadit before starting Zepto02:36 - First startup at age 1608:18 - Dropping out of Stanford10:21 - First round of funding from Y-combinator and Nexus12:30 - Growth & Challenges in Zepto’s journey so far17:35 - Is grocery a big enough category to build a large enough business? 20:54 - Is it possible to become profitable in this space? 25:50 - Headwinds in their business28:46 - Going public in India at $10 Bn34:00 - Where does 99%+ of his learnings come from?37:45 - Avoid taking a hit on culture as you scale 

SaaS startups in India have seen significant growth in recent years. The country's SaaS market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 22.5% from 2020 to 2025, reaching a value of $6.3 billion. A few of the factors driving this growth are:Increasing adoption of cloud computingAvailability of advanced tech infrastructure in IndiaSupport from the Government of India for funding, mentorship, and other resources to entrepreneurs. In India, there are Investors and founders who have witnessed the evolution of SaaS in India. With his notable investments like Whatfix, LimeChat, GTM Buddy, Alok has built his own thesis for SaaS over the years.Tune in to hear Alok sharing about the top SaaS companies in India, what all has changed in his investing thesis, the categories he’s most bullish on, and why SaaS sector is only going to rise in the coming years.  Notes - 01:53 - How Alok got into investing02:44 - Evolution of SaaS in India08:16 - Definition of global category leaders in SaaS10:02 - Is there a known pattern in the US for his portfolio companies in India? 13:23 - SaaS investments in 202214:02 - Next 3-4 years for SaaS in India19:03 - Building a GTM engine in the US with a seed round in India23:00 - Focus on reducing burn24:51 - Growth in more & more $100Mn ARR companies in India29:14 - The Edge India has in creating successful SaaS startups 31:28 - Major shift in his thesis in the past years38:21 - His focus on AI automation startups43:55 - Thesis on Developer-Centric Softwares48:50 - Backing founders at Idea Stage58:34 - What he looks for in founders?

Why the DARLING Edtech in 2021 became a taboo in 2022 for VCs?What do students really expect? Why do Edtech entrepreneurs fail? And what's the most important factor in EdTech Success?Today we talk with Manan Khurma, Founder at Cuemath who answers all these questions for us. During our conversation he shares how building an Education venture is not like building on a rocket ship, but building with trust. He has been building Cuemath for almost the last decade and he highlights that unlike the common notion or FOMO behind going online being an Edtech venture, right before Covid, only 5% of their entire revenue came via Online classes.His first question to any new entrepreneur looking to enter the Edtech space is if they are ready to give atleast two decades to build their educational venture. Further during the episode Manan shares their views on performance marketing in edtech, building trust for students and parents, and much more. Notes - 02:21 - Manan’s journey to becoming a teacher and entrepreneur04:31 - What’s his view of Edtech landscape both in India and globally?08:08 - Which are the institutions that inspire him? 11:55 - Going down the attention span of kids in the last decade17:45 - Certain kids already being great at grasping new things21:19 - Zoho Shoutout23:30 - Getting answers has become really easy27:39 - Real learning happens when a student puts their brain in isolation to a problem29:07 - Increase in the number of screens in our home33:11 - Thesis on how not to build an Education venture39:31 - Mercenary category of Entrepreneur45:15 - Current scale of Cuemath47:55 - Their approach to starting coding courses49:30 - Essence of Analytical thinking50:54 - Goal to build a strong base and system51:52 - Best way to build a 1,00,000 paid students base in Educational venture54:22 - How have the customer acquisition channels evolved? 

Recently the trend in startups has been around growing fast, scaling faster, and becoming humongous with viral products, ideas & marketing. But in most cases, such ideas come crashing down in a short span of time, because of the lack of depth either in the product or the customer base.In this episode, almost after a year and half since we published NoBroker Founder Amit Agarwal’s episode, we have with us his Co-founder Akhil Gupta to talk more about their journey of building NoBroker with depth in every market and focus on customers over the last 10 years. During the episode, Akhil shares the ups and downs in their journey, along with the initial response they got while they were trying to raise their first round, what are his thoughts about the current & future of the housing market in India, and more.Notes - 01:26 - Early Product Market Fit moment for NoBroker07:19 - Clarity to make NoBroker the largest Real Estate solution in India 08:53 - The most challenging obstacles13:35 - Defining moments in their journey15:19 - Mistakes they made being founders16:46 - Key factors why they succeeded 20:35 - Zoho Sponsored – Prashant Ganti on What does Zoho Payroll do and what’s the story behind it? 21:36 - Future Plans23:41 - How they become the Amazon of Real Estate25:16 - Passion behind starting NoBroker30:40 - Why they got rejected by so many VCs32:29 - Realistic way of building a sustainable growing startup38:07 - Reason behind the sky-rocketing of rentals in Bangalore42:04 - Impact of global factors on the Indian Housing market Also, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur! https://zoho.to/zoho-payroll

Where was the Indian Startup Ecosystem back in 2010-12, where is it now in 2022 and where is it headed 5 years down the line, in terms of - # Digital Infrastructure# Tech Talent# Innovative mindset amongst founders# Investments from VCs and Angel Investors and more. In this episode, we will talk about all of it, with our guest, Santosh Panda, Co-founder, Foundership where he is Incubating & Accelerating Top Founders & Builders Launch Defining Web3 Startup of tomorrow.Tune in to hear Santosh share his insights on the importance of finding a Co-founder, the opportunities of the Indian Startup Ecosystem in the years to come, the past, present & future of Web3, and much more.Notes - 00:00 - Bhai tu Co-founder banega?01:55 - Meeting with Santosh for the first time06:40 - Being compassionate09:05 - Convincing someone to become your Co-founder16:22 - Being within the Startup Ecosystem since 200819:57 - Zoho Sponsored – Prashant Ganti on how is Zoho Payroll solving problems beyond payroll. 23:35 - Thoughts about the current Indian Startup Ecosystem31:00 - How would 2025-2030 be like for Indian Startups?34:47 - Tech Innovation in India for last mile connectivity37:09 - The essence of having a Digital Infrastructure in India41:18 - What is there for India in Web3?

As of today, only 15% of India’s population lives in the top 50 cities, and the remaining 85% which accounts to around 119 crores, live in towns or villages. According to an ASER survey, the availability of smartphones in rural India was 67.6 % in 2021, primarily bought for kids’ studies amid the pandemic.With this, we can make out that even in towns and villages, the penetration of smartphones and the internet is huge and people in villages are driven to spend higher to provide better learning resources to their children. This exact learning is what drove our guest, Lal Chand Bisu, Founder, Kuku FM, to build a product for Bharat.In today’s episode, we talk with Lal Chand Bisu to understand, how he was able to build a subscription model product for the mass Indians and what have been his learnings over the years while scaling Kuku FM.Notes - 01:50 - Intro 02:20 - Do the mass Indians pay for subscriptions?03:46 - How do Indians define value? 05:37 - How is Kukufm an aspirational product for the masses? 08:05 - Indians consuming aspirational content11:33 - Split of content on Kuku FM12:36 - Starting Non-series content in form of Mini-episodes16:25 - Popularity of Personal Finance on Kuku FM18:24 - Family Background and the entrepreneurial path he chose20:26 - Zoho Sponsored – Prashant Ganti on what makes Zolo Payroll different from its competitors? 28:46 - How was he motivated to do something out of his league?32:36 - Why do people in towns or villagers aspire for Government jobs?36:44 - Convincing Indian consumers to pay for Non-fictional content subscriptionsAlso, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur! https://zoho.to/zoho-payroll

The direct-to-consumer market, known as the D2C market had a size of about $33 billion in India in 2020. By 2025, the total addressable D2C market is forecast to grow almost threefold and reach $100 billion.In today’s episode, we have with us, Abhishek Goenka, Head of Investments, RPSG Capital Ventures.RPSG Capital Ventures is an early-stage consumer VC fund focused on investing in the D2C ecosystem including food & beverage, personal care, and lifestyle goods.Some of their portfolio companies are mCaffeine, Plixlife, and The Souled Store among others.In today’s episode, Abhishek shares the differentiating factor of what led them to invest in Plixlife, one of their portfolio’s profitable exits, and more. Notes - 01:07 - Intro to RPSG and its investments in D2C space02:42 - Largest portfolio companies and what helped them reach there03:45 - What’s D2C from his perspective?05:04 - What has helped D2C in India to have explosive growth?13:51 - How does a D2C brand differentiate itself in today’s time?20:39 - Zoho Sponsored – Prashant Ganti on what is their long-term vision with Zoho Payroll.22:23 - Thesis which didn’t work out29:41 - Why don’t we see many D2C unicorns in India?32:14 - What are the moats for a D2C brand? 34:54 - Doubling down on the Hero productAlso, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur! https://zoho.to/zoho-payroll

Karthik Jagannathan, after working for more than two decades across cross-functional experience in Telecom and Internet businesses, with a specific focus on SMBs, decided to build a solution to help SMBs scale faster with Gallabox.In today’s episode, Karthik shares the backstory of what led him to starting up at the age of 50, building something for SMBs, and more. Notes - 01:36 - Serving a business like it's your own04:10 - Where do the roots of ownership come from in his life? 06:27 - What other significant events in his life lead him to here today? 08:58 - Building and growing sustainably in crisis12:06 - India wasn’t a place of - “Grow fast, Break fast.”18:34 - Landscape out there in Small & Medium Businesses in India24:33 - Zoho Sponsored – Prashant Ganti on Where do founders struggle with Payroll and how can they fix it?26:44 - Zeroing down on an idea to solve for SMBs36:22 - Leveraging Whatsapp with Gallabox39:06 - Themes that he wanted to solve for40:49 - Scaling to over 500+ business49:39 - Learnings from their journey so far51:50 - What helped them grow faster?57:49 - Advice for entrepreneur building for SMBsAlso, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur! https://zoho.to/zoho-payroll

With so much happening in our work and personal lives on a daily basis, how do you keep track of things?  Which one of the following do you generally practice? 1. Just try to remember all of it with your brain2. Save reminders or alerts with a calendar or events management app3. Maintain a daily diary4. Some other way! As argued and mentioned by most founders and VCs on our podcast so far, like Gaurav Munjal, Founder Unacademy, its futile to put so much pressure on your brain to try and remember everything all the time.  Instead, its best to take notes of all the things that matter to you or you think would matter to you down the line, store it somewhere and refer it when needed, and just use your brain as a processor, rather than a hard drive. In today’s episode, we have with us, Tiago Forte, Founder, Forte Labs and we’re going to talk in-depth about his book - “Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organise Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential”. In simple words, taking and processing notes in an effective and efficient way. During the episode, Tiago talks about our mental blockers which hold us back from taking effective notes, how to get back at reviewing them later, how to get started with step 1, and more. Notes - 00:36 - Intro01:24 - Key takeaways from his book for a layman03:30 - What’s his why behind writing his book and creating this system?06:01 - Why or how do health issues triggers to write such an unconventional book? 07:04 - Initial system of note-taking and how it has evolved. 08:34 - What’s the App-stack that he relies on? 10:00 - How has this journey transformed him as a person?11:36 - First set of things anyone can do to get started? 16:13 - How to review or revisit your notes effectively?18:14 - His daily schedule: Between first brain & second brain20:20 - Why is it difficult for people to take this 1-extra step?22:26 - What can help our listeners help overcome procrastination and start note-taking?25:39 - Zoho Sponsored – Prashant Ganti on Where do founders struggle with Payroll and how can they fix it?26:55 - How to manage accountability in note-taking? 31:23 - How to make note-taking frictionless?34:18 - Three personas from his book where note-taking made a significant change to their lifeAlso, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur! https://zoho.to/zoho-payroll  

There’s been a high rise in global data breaches for several years, and 2022 has been littered with information thefts. As per Analytics India magazine, the data breach cost averaged Rs.176 million in 2022, reaching an all-time high.In July, Twitter suffered a data breach of 5.4 million accounts, and throughout the year so far, there have been several cases of data theft of various scales.Our today’s guest, Jaspreet Singh, Founder & CEO Druva, has built and scaled the company since 2008 to provide a solution in this space.Druva is trusted by over 4,000 global organizations. The company has such strong faith in these data-protection systems, that they even offer a Data Resiliency Guarantee up to $10 Mn against five key data risks.In today’s episode, Jaspreet shares with us the backstory of what led him to start Druva, move to the US, and more. Notes - 00:42 - Intro01:13 - Conceptualizing Druva04:06 - What kept him going in the first 5-years?05:37 - Reaching $1 Mn ARR07:08 - Druva’s revenue till 2013 before getting their first large customer07:49 - What were they building in the first 5 years and what did they transition into after 2013?10:46 - Letting go of $8 Mn revenue 11:45 - Milestones and evolving for revenue growth14:19 - Critical requirement to shift to the US for scale17:19 - Is a India Product-Market-Fit exactly replicable in the US?19:26 - Zoho Sponsored – Prashant Ganti on Where do founders struggle with Payroll and how can they fix it?20:26 - What worked well for Druva in the 10 to 100 journey? 24:52 - His advice to SaaS entrepreneurs to reach $20 Mn ARRAlso, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur!https://zoho.to/zoho-payroll

What are some of the valuable learnings and inspirations Siddhartha and Nansi got after recording 200+ episodes with the most successful entrepreneurs, VCs, and creators on the 100x Entrepreneur podcast?The new episode with our duo is out now! Tune in to learn how to start a podcast, what you can expect after a certain number of podcast episodes, how you grow with each conversation, and which guests inspired Nansi & Siddhartha the most!We hope you enjoy this short, crisp and insightful episode from 100x! Notes - 00:22 - Intro01:15 - Learning Consistency: Publishing episodes every Monday02:26 - Learning Networking: Bringing Top-notch guests06:24 - Learnings from Gaurav Munjal, Unacademy: 10000+ Notes on his iPad08:40 - “A Startup Team is Sports Team, not a family.”09:34 - Learnings from Vidit Attrey, Meesho: Listening to your customers12:35 - Realising that you know nothing and absorbing the best of your guests14:02 - Shoutout with Prashant Ganti, Head of Product, Zoho on where do founders struggle with Payroll and how can they fix it?16:12 - Learnings from creators who’ve cracked distribution17:42 - Being professional with people you work withAlso, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur!https://zoho.to/zoho-payroll

In 2021, 125 Indian companies raised over $18 Bn through initial public offerings (IPO) in public markets.Out of $18 Bn, over $7.3 Bn was raised by 11 Indian Tech Startups from Nazara to MapmyIndia.In today’s episode, we talk with Abhishek Goyal & Neha Singh, Co-founders, Tracxn, which recently went IPO.But unlike the other major tech startups which went IPO in recent years, at Tracxn, they decided to go IPO at a probably early stage, considering their ARR of $10 Mn.During the episode, they share there view point on why they chose to do it on an initial ARR rather than going IPO, once they’ve grown big enough and more.Notes - 00:37 - Intro to ​​Tracxn01:27 - Feeling of going IPO02:27 - Preparing for an IPO 05:06 - Splitting the roles within team to be prepared from Day 105:41 - Documents which they had to submit to SEBI or any other regulator for the DRHP06:46 - Trendsetter by going public at $10 Mn ARR08:44 - Convincing VCs for going IPO-early11:33 - Mentors from whom they took advice for going public12:59 - Is it possible to time the market for IPO? 14:58 - Raising an Anchor allocation Pre-IPO16:17 - Most stressful part of going IPO: Market Uncertainty18:34 - Rollercoaster set of emotions they went through22:24 - Moments of giving up during the whole process24:16 - How to prepare mentally before entering the IPO-process?24:33 - Zoho Sponsored – Prashant Ganti on Where do founders struggle with Payroll and how can they fix it?26:01 - IPO-Checklist and learnings31:26 - What does it requires for tech companies to go public?35:03 - Playbook where companies can go public and build in long-term35:54 - Founder aspiration beyond becoming UnicornAlso, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur!https://zoho.to/zoho-payroll

What are those 5 key decisions Siddhartha and Nansi took to building 100x Entrepreneur?The new episode with our duo is out now! Tune in to hear their journey, learnings, and the hard work they put into bringing the best startup podcast to you all! We hope you enjoy this podcast. Make sure to watch it till the very end and share it with your friends!Also, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur!https://zoho.to/zoho-payroll

The number of retail grocery retailers across India in 2022 amounted to about 13 million. Grocery retail account for about 65% of India's overall retailers.And the most common problems faced by these retailers on a financial front up until a few years back were - Accepting digital payments such as UPI or CardsEasy & Quick access to loans for expanding business or in the form of working capital for buying new stock.In 2018, BharatPe was started to cater to these problems faced by every day retailers in India. Since then the company has grown to enable 10 million merchants in 400+ cities, processing US$ 20 bn of annualized TPV in payments.During the peak of Covid, they also joined hands with ICICI Lombard to launch Coronavirus insurance cover for shopkeepers. To enable hands-free checking of transactions they also launched Speaker. To know how digital payments turned out as a big break for them, we’ve got BharatPe founder Shashvat Nakrani  & CEO Suhail Sameer on our guest seats this time.In this episode we discuss-How they’ve scaled BharatPe over the past 4 years?Does the age gap between them affect the decision-making at the top level?What do they keep in mind while building or scaling any new product?And much moreNotes - 01:35 - Expectations with BharatPe’s current scale03:17 - Joining a Rocket Ship as a CEO05:10 - Changes in culture and customer offerings in the last 2 years12:19 - Very less attachment to a particular role amongst founders & CEOs16:30 - Dealing and coming out the challenging times at BharatPe18:17 - Zoho Sponsored – Prashant Ganti on Where do founders struggle with Payroll and how can they fix it?19:33 - Helping the team innovate faster and plan Go-To-Market strategy25:37 - Strengths & Weakness of Shashvat29:33 - Strengths & Weakness of Suhail31:03 - Handling the firing decisions35:17 - What are the things they bond over? 36:38 - Processes v/s Hustle in 0 to 1 and 1 to 10 journey40:49 - Secret recipe behind success at 0 to 1 on a product-level44:02 - Idea behind building distribution network47:33 - Suhail’s top priorities while joining BharatPe49:29 - Biases and things Suhail had to unlearn55:21 - Listening to Younger v/s Older Team members while decision making 58:39 - Next Chapter of BharatPe01:01:00 - What is being IPO-ready? 01:07:39 - Things which they could have explored outside of Fintech?

As per Statista, Market size of the cosmetics industry across India which was at $3 Bn in 2010 is expected to grow to atleast $20 Bn by 2025.In today’s episode, we talk with Manish Taneja, Co-founder and CEO, Purplle, which was started back in 2012.During the podcast Manish talks in detail about - How he along with his Cofounders have always thought for the long-term?Problems they faced back in 2012 in Vertical Ecommerce.How MOATs against competitors are mostly in the minds of the founders? rather than being actually relevant to Indian customers, who are most price and value sensitive.What’s unique about their culture that has helped them retain as well as hire new talent? And more…Lastly before we dive deeper into the podcast, something that Manish mentioned during the episode - “Our 2nd part of the journey has been about, believing in yourself, doing things that are contradictory to the world but at the same time, we think could create massive value in the future.”Notes - 03:19 - Intro to Manish & Purplle04:57 - Being from a Finance background what got him to start his 2nd venture in Online Beauty space? 10:32 - Challenges in Vertical Ecommerce back in 201212:29 - Challenges in delivery, cash flow and more in the first 5-6 years17:30 - Two defining characteristics in their fund raising journey2!:52 - Zoho Sponsored – Prashant Ganti on Where do founders struggle with Payroll and how can they fix it?22:55 - Learnings while his exit from Avendus Capital24:18 - Major changes in the 2nd part of their journey from 2016-17 onwards28:34 - Launching their own brands with 65%+ Gross Margin31:08 - How has he evolved as a founder during Purplle’s journey? 33:21 - Shaping Purplle’s culture over the years38:34 - “MOATs aren’t as relevant for consumers, as they are for founders against competition.”42:23 - Opportunity to build a $20-30 Bn FMCG company from India45:26 - Not succumbing to external pressures around GrowthAlso, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur!https://zoho.to/zoho-payroll

Thinking about Entrepreneurship or Startups which of the following do you think really matters -  # Having Degree from a Tier-1 college?# Having or finding the right Co-founder?# Sky-rocketing your scale up as soon as you secure funding? # Pouring in your resources to get as many customers as fast as possible via Ads?Well the short answer to all the above questions is, IT DOESN’T.In today’s episode we’ve with us Vaibhav Sisinty, Founder, GrowthSchool. And in this episode, while sharing his experiences of building and scaling GrowthSchool, he busts all the above myths one-by-one.For all of you, who’ve been active on Linkedin, in the past few years, especially around themes like marketing and growth hacking, you would have surely noticed a post or an Ad by Vaibhav, or his perfect case of personal branding and self-curated courses on Sisinty.com.During the episode, we talk with Vaibhav about how he learnt and grew his marketing skills during his job at Uber and Klook, how he used a brilliant growth hacking method even while raising his first round and much more.Lastly before we dive deeper into the podcast, something that Vaibhav mentioned during the episode - “True Product Market Fit is, If I shut down my product today, will 25 people line out of my office, requesting to please turn it ON.”Notes - 00:54 - Intro01:55 - Starting in Growth Journey: From his 1st Venture to Uber05:24 - Helping other startups: His playground to learn06:29 - Building Organic v/s Paid Channels of Growth12:02 - Founder-Market Fit towards starting GrowthSchool16:02 - 0 to $1 Mn ARR before first round of funding20:36 - Zoho Sponsored – Prashant Ganti on Where do founders struggle with Payroll and how can they fix it?22:33 - Running Lean & Shrewd to achieve profitability23:58 - Scale & format of courses before and after the funding29:00 - Growth Hacking his way to raise funding from Sequoia, Owl & 80+ Angels36:15 - “Blitzscaling right after funding will break things.”39:17 - Focus & Internal goals in near future41:46 - What’s his definition of PMF for GrowthSchool?49:15 - Managing his time as a Solo Founder52:55 - Various process which he has built in his lifeAlso, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur!https://zoho.to/zoho-payroll

As per Statista, globally there are more than 2.6 Mn Apps on Google Play Store, and when you’re building in today’s age of internet, you need as much as visibility possible around - # Accurately measuring the impact of your marketing initiatives# Actionable insights on your user behaviour# Potential Competitors & on what metrics do they compare with you and where do you & your team needs to focus more.To understand mobile marketing analytics better in this episode we’ve with us Oren Kaniel, CEO & Co-founder, AppsFlyer.Founded in 2011, AppsFlyer has grown leaps and bounds and is currently amongst the top choices of marketers to mobile marketing analytics.In today’s episode, we talk with Oren about how they built and grew AppsFlyer where there was almost a free option like Google Analytics available to the masses, also what’s their focus triangle about Privacy, Users Value and Safety.Lastly before we dive deeper into the podcast, something that Oren’s mentioned during the episode - “Do not fall in love with your product, fall in love with the ecosystem, with the problem-statement.”Notes - 03:09 - Intro to AppsFlyer03:55 - Starting with Entrepreneurship05:53 - Identifying the opportunity and starting AppsFlyer09:18 - How well positioned is Israel for capturing Asian and Global markets? 12:55 - $300 Mn ARR from the US & rest of the Global market13:46 - Journey from 0 to 1 and 1 to 1020:13 - Zoho Sponsored – Prashant Ganti on Where do founders struggle with Payroll and how can they fix it?22:25 - Ensuring faster growth by balancing pricing and revenue model27:53 - Evolving of Go-To-Market insights over time38:19 - Building the team and cultureAlso, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur!https://zoho.to/zoho-payroll

Today being an entrepreneur and starting with a new idea, you can take either of the two approaches - 1. You can build on top of an existing category in the market and bring your unique offerings2. You can take the riskier bet and create an entire category. In India, companies like Flipkart, Oyo, Ola etc. are the ‘Regional’ first movers. Although their concept was inspired from the global companies, however, being the first mover in the Indian subcontinent region gave them an advantage.In today’s episode we have Bala Srinivasa, Managing Director, Arkam Ventures, who has a great focus on identifying and investing in such Category Creators for Middle India.  Prior to Arkam, Bala, was part of the founding team at Vistaar, which in simple words helps companies like Cisco, Dell, GE, Ford, and Hitachi to make better, faster, and more profitable business decisions.Post that he became one of the founding members of Amba research, which was acquired for $100 Mn by Moody’s. After Amba, he was also with Kalaari Capital for over 3 years, post which he co-founded Arkam Ventures, a Venture Capital firm with a focus on “Category Creators for Middle India” and “Enablers for the Global”.In today’s episode, we talk with Bala about key ingredients of building a Category Creator, Solving for the pricing problem in SaaS startups, taking SaaS to the mass audience in Tier-3 cities and towns and much more.Notes - 02:01 - Intro04:05 - Essential ingredients to build a $10 Mn ARR company06:29 - Why focus on category creators for Middle India? 18:38 - Zoho Sponsored – Prashant Ganti on Where do founders struggle with Payroll and how can they fix it?20:08 - Evolving from a single problem statement to a platform with multiple offerings22:23 - Razorpay’s gameplan for trust building for Small town customers24:06 - His thesis around investing in enablers like Signzy and Spotdraft30:26 - His thoughts on India-focused SaaS with regards to pricing33:24 - Themes and Thesis which didn’t worked out38:42 - What gave him an edge into the middle India consumer?Also, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur!https://zoho.to/zoho-payroll

How can an experience being a VC come handy while starting up? To answer this today we’ve with us Divyaanshu Makkar, Co-Founder, Sourcewiz.Prior to starting Sourcewiz, Divyaanshu had already tasted entrepreneurship with his first venture in EdTech space, Connect2Teach in London. Post that after working with EY-Parthenon for a brief period of time, he joined Bessemer Venture Partners in California, United States.At Bessemer he focused on EdTech, Consumer Tech for India/SEA and Enterprise/SMB SaaS being built from India/SEA for the world. In today’s episode, we talk with Divyaanshu understanding his journey from being a Entrepreneur to becoming a VC and then going back for Entrepreneurship, his learnings and networks from his VC-period which came handy while starting Sourcewiz and more. Notes - 02:24 - Intro03:53 - Early Career and background in Venture Capital prior to Sourcewiz07:35 - After VC what made him come back as an entrepreneur?09:38 - Learnings from Mistakes from his previous venture13:02 - Mistakes he observed other founders make while being a VC15:04 - Key criterias for him while selecting a market from a VC’s lens20:03 - Zoho Sponsored – Prashant Ganti on Where do founders struggle with Payroll and how can they fix it?21:58 - Quitting at Bessemer Venture Partners to starting up Sourcewiz31:10 - Connecting with Sajith Pai from Blume Ventures35:02 - Identifying and Focusing on the problem statement within SaaS41:08 - Getting their first paying customer44:45 - Figuring out a scalable GTM for Tier-II customers47:34 - Acquiring 400+ Paid customers in within first year49:20 - Building a marketplace and its current traction53:59 - His path to a $1Mn ARR and then for $10Mn ARR56:16 - Building mechanism for scale 1:00:34 - Unknowns in the market they are still figuring out1:02:12 - Closing their second round of Seed funding with ​​Matrix Partners India1:05:02 - Selection criteria for Angel Investors1:06:44 - Key pointers of Do’s and Don’ts for new foundersAlso, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur!https://zoho.to/zoho-payroll

The Indian market is seeing several startups offering innovative products in the D2C & FMCG segment. One such innovative brand is Rage Coffee. Founder Bharat Sethi launched Rage Coffee in the year 2018. It offers a variety of vegan-friendly, vitamin-infused instant coffee flavours. The brand is currently present in 2,500+ retail outlets pan-India and plans to expand its offline presence 5X within a year by strengthening its distribution channels.In today’s episode, we talk with Bharat Sethi who has been a serial entrepreneur about his entire journey so far and how does Rage Coffee stands out as a brand, the mistakes he made being a founder and what are his future plans for Rage Coffee. Notes - 02:02 - Intro02:47 - Family background & what led him to entrepreneurship?06:35 - Conceptualising PosterGully in 201211:09 - Exit from PosterGully11:50 - Zoho Sponsored – Prashant Ganti on Where do founders struggle with Payroll and how can they fix it?12:59 - Mistakes and learnings from iDecorama18:45 - Ideating for Rage Coffee25:55 - Milestones & Growth over the yearsAlso, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur!https://zoho.to/zoho-payroll

Founded in 2013, Portea Medical, India's Leading Home Health Care Company employes over 4000 people and covers 40+ cities in India doing 1,50,000+ home visits every month.Portea has also helped about 5,00,000 COVID-19 patients, working with seven different cities and state governments, including Delhi, Mumbai, Faridabad, Gurgaon, Chennai, Bengaluru and all of Karnataka. Meena Ganesh, Chairperson and Co-Founder, Portea Medical is one of India’s most celebrated entrepreneurs and business leaders.  She sits on the boards of numerous firms like Axis Bank, and has a string of start-up successes to her credit. She co-founded her first company, Customer Asset, in 2000 and later on sold it to ICICI. Then came TutorVista, which she ran successfully till it was acquired by British publishing giant Pearson. Before founding Portea, Meena also served Pearson India as the chief executive officer and managing director. With her incredible career and achievements, she also became part of Fortune India’s ‘50 Most Powerful Women in Indian Business’ from 2015 to 2021.In today’s episode, we talk with Meena about her entrepreneurial journey so far, learnings from building a healthcare startup in India and why even getting two large exists previously, she still thinks that journey with her third venture Portea is the most satisfying in terms of learnings. Notes - 01:36 - Intro02:04 - Family background & what got Meena into entrepreneurship08:02 - Brainstorming Ideas during the conception of Portea12:46 - Milestones after Series A till date17:53 - Her thoughts on the notion that - “It’s difficult to create money from healthcare & health-tech startups”21:36 - Zoho Sponsored – Prashant Ganti on Where do founders struggle with Payroll and how can they fix it?22:37 - How has the pricing model evolved at Portea?24:06 - Learnings from building in healthcare in India27:14 - How has she grown as a founder during her entrepreneurial journey?30:04 - Her fundraising journey at Portea30:33 - Balancing investor-founder relation over the course of a startup’s journey32:07 - Managing her time between GrowthStory, Portea and homeAlso, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur!https://zoho.to/zoho-payroll

In startup ecosystem a lot of people talk about Category creating startups, but it is equally difficult and as it sounds glamorous and exciting. That’s possibly the reason why we don’t see a lot such Category creating startups around us very frequently. And even if they do come up, they don’t sustain very long. In today’s episode we are talking with Vijay Arisetty, Founder, MyGate, i.e. a category creating startup in its space. As of now MyGate cators to almost 4 Million+ homes across India. It is very likely that you would have interacted with MyGate directly, as its installed in your society or indirectly probably when you would have visited to meet a friend or family in a gated community, and you would have experienced the seamless flow it brings to gates of these gated communities.During the episode, catch Vijay sharing what all challenges and opportunities did they come across being a category creating startup in terms of hiring, what to offer to its customers, how to monetize better and much more. Notes - 01:51 - Intro03:11 - Family Background and joining the Armed Forces06:55 - His first startup - PurpleRoad in the Delivery space08:19 - Aha moment which led to starting MyGate?11:53 - Final Scale with his logistics startup and initial scale at MyGate before first funding14:48 - Challenges during the first funding round being a category creator21:25 - Zoho Sponsored – Prashant Ganti on Where do founders struggle with Payroll and how can they fix it?23:13 - Current and operationally capable scale of MyGate24:56 - Evolution of monetary channels29:48 - Challenges during their 0 to 1 journey and then in 1 to 10 journey37:36 - Existential crisis prior to first round of funding42:13 - Journey from Series A to Series B and beyond44:55 - How were the two years of Covid for MyGate?49:02 - Similarities between being in the Armed Forces and being an Entrepreneur54:08 - 30 Million homes untapped market by MyGateAlso, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur!https://zoho.to/zoho-payroll

In Sales the stakes are high. And for company’s growth it is important to get it right.Thanks to multiple options of Sales engagement softwares which streamlines the sales process through integrations which enables companies to combine their sales and marketing efforts to create personalized and automated sales journeys.In today's episode of 100x Entrepreneur, we have with us Yamini Bhat, Co-founder & CEO, Vymo; i.e An intelligent sales engagement platform for financial institutions.Started in 2013, Vymo is used by 300,000+ Sales Reps across 65+ Enterprises such as HDFC Bank, SBI Life Insurance, and Sun Life Financial among others.While most SaaS startups go global from Day 1, Vymo is one of the few Indian SaaS companies which scaled to more than $10M ARR with India Enterprises as clients.During the episode, catch Yamini sharing why did they chose to focus on BFSI, how did they brought awareness for both their team and customers about their product and much more. Notes - 01:33 - Intro03:05 - Career background in Sales Transformation at Mckinsey which led her to Vymo06:48 - Family background and getting into BITS Pilani & IIM Bangalore?14:58 - Quitting Mckinsey and identifying the problem statement to startup17:29 - Till Series-A being focused on a horizontal solution20:53 - Zoho Sponsored – Prashant Ganti on Where do founders struggle with Payroll and how can they fix it?23:04 - Milestones during Vymo’s journey26:26 - Key challenges with team and customers early-on28:56 - Convincing the first few BFSI customers for an average contract value of $350K31:54 - Building a SaaS behemoth from India and then expanding globally36:16 - Her 0 to $10 Million ARR playbook for SaaS-entrepreneurs in IndiaAlso, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur!https://zoho.to/zoho-payroll

As per a recent article,“About 60% of companies that reach pre-series A funding fail to make it to Series A, so the success rate is only 30%-40%.”Infact if you check on Crunchbase, in India you’ll find 4300+ startups at Pre-seed or Seed-stage, but only 600+ out of them have managed to reach Series-A, which bring the success rate to even lower at just 15%.  Apart from this, even in the entire Indian startup ecosystem, there are so many Product Managers, Ex-founders, and many more, who either have an idea around a Problem-statement, but don’t know how to proceed or there are students in college, who are amazed by the startup ecosystem, and want to take their early step, but afraid on how to take the next step. In order to solve this we have with us our guest of this episode, Rajiv Srivatsa & Nitin Sharma, Antler India. Antler unlike most VC firms bets on the startup ideas at Pre-seed stage with their Antler India Residency or in some cases even earlier with college students via Antler India Fellowship.During the episode, catch Rajiv & Nitin sharing their First Principles approach and what infrastructure they are building at Antler India to make the founders succeed considering the time constraints at Pre-seed stage and much more. Notes - 03:50 - Intro04:44 - Why did they choose to build Antler India? 09:35 - How did Antler happen? 12:02 - Why kind of institutional mindset do they bring in? 16:18 - How do they balance the equation of a Founder’s optimism & a VC’s pessimism between them?18:22 - Background around Antler’s India Portfolio over the last 18+ months22:08 - Zoho Sponsored – Prashant Ganti on Where do founders struggle with Payroll and how can they fix it?23:47 - What’s their approach and what’s the general cheque size? 29:48 - Learnings from the Ups & Downs in Urban Ladder Journey33:28 - Focusing on building around core foundational use-cases during times of crisis38:18 - Keeping founders from falling in love with the product and not the actual problem-story42:12 - Examples of building PeakPerformer & Bookee with Antler46:47 - How & when do founders get distracted after funding?50:08 - When do founders have the best chances of succeeding at Seed-stage?Also, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur!https://zoho.to/zoho-payroll

Varun Mayya was in college when he along with his friends started up a t-shirt manufacturing business called SIZR. Later on, he went into building a recruitment platform, Jobspire. And they were one of the youngest teams to raise venture capital of Rs 1.7 crore even before they graduated, and scaled the company to serve 4 million requests in 2016. In 2017, they sold Jobspire to a New York-based company.Varun also authored a book named Pyjama Profit which is a guide for millennials to get started with an online freelance practice, while developing the skills needed to succeed.Along with running a youtube channel, Varun also co-founded Scenes, a community platform for creators to manage, moderate, and monetize their communities in one place. Scenes has raised funds from some notable investors including Kunal Shah, Gaurav Munjal, Kalyan Krishnamurthy, Tanmay Bhat as well Tanglin Ventures, Better Capital, Whiteboard Capital, iSeed Ventures, and Blume Founders Fund.Tune in to this insightful episode with Varun to learn about building a brand, processes around content creation, and leveraging your youtube channel to scale your business. Notes – 03:10 – Intro04:05 – His journey before entrepreneurship06:49 – Getting introduced to oDesk (now Upwork) via his mother and earning his first $10009:10 – Starting a visual version of Naukri in fourth year of college11:09 – Writing an Amazon Bestseller Book – “Pyjama Profit: The Millennial’s Guide to a Sustainable Freelance Career” 12:48 – Starting Avalon Scenes18:07 – Two rounds of funding for building a community space19:22 – Top clients and why do they use Scenes?22:11 – Zoho Sponsored – Prashant Ganti on Where do founders struggle with Payroll and how can they fix it?24:09 – What excites him the most about Scenes? 26:40 – Solving a problem really well v/s Building a large business28:41 – What’s their longterm goal with Scenes? 33:02 – Can Scenes eventually replace Discord? 34:36 – Why he continues to a creator with Scenes growing? 41:25 – Learnings on YouTube and Twitter around content creation46:15 – One of his best videos on YouTube52:44 – “I think we live in a trust-deficient economy and content is the only way to beat it.” Also, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur! https://zoho.to/zoho-payroll

According to a recent article in Forbes, as per data of ProductLedGrowth.org,“Buyers want to self-educate.” Personalization is expected by customers—not only are 80% of people more likely to do business with a company that offers personalization but Salesforce’s 2017 State of Marketing Report found that 52% of B2C customers would actually switch brands if they weren’t getting a personalized experience. In today’s episode we’ve some Dheeraj Pandey, CEO at DevRev; Board Member at Adobe; Investor & Co-founder at Nutanix. During the episode, catch Dheeraj sharing his experience around Product-Led Growth over the past two decades, taking Nutanix Inc. public within 6 years of inceptio and much more. Notes - 01:44 - Intro02:26 - Achieving Product Market Fit - “What is the journey is not a destination.”05:15 - Identifying the problem statement for first 10 customer at Nutanix07:54 - Main value prop by Nutanix for early customers10:11 - How to identify large problems?13:22 - Whether to find a niche problem and then expand or find a problem statement of the larger market?15:07 - What’s the first Aha moment for customers on DevRev?20:04 - Zoho Sponsored - Prashant Ganti on Where do founders struggle with Payroll and how can they fix it?21:18 - Why have Startups as the target audience v/s Large Entreprises?27:10 - History of Product-led growth32:50 - First principle thought behind Product-led growth with velocity37:49 - Customer Relationship Management v/s Sales First Automation39:07 - How a B2B developer can think like a B2C developer?40:23 - What are risks of failure they need to think about?41:40 - Building an entrepreneurial culture43:47 - Dealing with the most difficult part of an acquisition (i.e. Integration)45:38 - An early childhood in Patna, graduating from IIT Kanpur & Ph.D. dropout from University of Texas50:33 - Why did he chose to startup in a downturn of 2009?54:07 - Milestones in Nutanix’s journey58:31 - Becoming a Public company59:58 - Aspirations for DevRev1:02:29 - What kind of person he is in his personal life?Also, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur! https://zoho.to/zoho-payroll

In today’s podcast, we have Ishan Sharma with us! Ishan is a Youtuber, Entrepreneur, and Founder of MarkitUp. He droped out of his college(BITS Pilani, Goa) at the age of 20 and decided to continue his entrepreneurial and content creation journey!Ishan Sharma has around 500k Subscribers on Youtube and about 100K on LinkedIn. He also wrote a  book called "Crush It on LinkedIn" back in Mid 2020 which summarises his experience of using LinkedIn and it is a guide for college students to find opportunities.Ishan will share his YT journey so far,  why he decided to drop out, what motivated him to do so, how MarkitUp was formed, and a lot more!Let’s listen to his inspirational journey so far and what he plans to do next! 0:00 - Intro2:05 - What drives you in your life?2:49 - How did you overcome the pain of Failing in JEE Advanced Exam?6:22 - Do you remember the date you started your YouTube Channel?7:18 - What's the main reason behind starting your YouTube Channel?9:13 - What other skills have you learned after Coding & Content Creation?11:40 - When did you make your First Money?12:16 - How was your YouTube Journey & How did you reach 10,000 Subscribers?13:35 - What are your learnings from YouTube?15:24 - How did you master YouTube Thumbnails?17:47 - What are your other Income Streams beside YouTube?19:56 - What was your income in May?21:44 - When did you get your First Brand Deal & What does it takes to reach here?24:56 - What is the Sales Engine looks like for 'MarkitUp'?26:20 - Where do you want to see yourself in 1 Year in terms of numbers?27:15 - How many Brand Collaborations do you do in a month?28:52 - How much do you pay a Freelancer per month?30:05 - How does a day in your Life look like?33:14 - What made you choose not to spend any more time in college?39:00 - How do you differentiate your income?39:55 - What do you do with the money you are making right now?41:08 - Do you draw any salary from 'MarkitUp'?43:05 - What is enough for Ishan?45:02 - Why does $1 Million in Investment important for you?46:03 - What is one thing that is missing in your life?47:48 - What do you do to make your growth engine proactive?49:32 - Have you explored during 10 Day Meditation or Vipassana?50:43 - What is Your Biggest Fear right now?53:14 - Do you watch Netflix or any other OTT platform?54:16 - Do you believe in Manifestation?55:18 - What's your process for recording a YouTube Video?57:08 - What would you do if your Investment Portfolio reaches $1 Million?59:49 - OutroAlso, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur! https://zoho.to/zoho-payroll

If you’re a startup enthusiasts, its highly likely that you would have read or atleast heard about the book - Saying No to Jugaad: The Making of Bigbasket by by T. N. Hari & M. S. Subramanian.In today’s episode we have Hari Menon, BigBasket’s founder sharing the his experience in the Indian Ecommerce Ecosystem over the last two decades. In May 2021, Tata Digital invested $375 Mn in BigBasket. They have also recently launched their quick commerce vertical called BBNow and will now compete alongside the existing players such as Swiggy, Blinkit, Zepto and Dunzo.During the episode, catch Hari talking about his learning from his first venture, his thoughts on the current market and the investment slowdown, and much more. Notes - 02:20 - Building India’s online grocery market in the last two decades14:37 - Starting BigBasket at the age of 5021:16 - Dividing equity between the founders21:42 - Mistakes & Biases which got carried from his first venture24:15 - Becoming a part of Tata Group and growing bigger27:16 - Top learnings and observations from Tata Group29:30 - His thoughts on “10-minute delivery”33:14 - Any similar patterns between June 2022 and 1999 boom and bust?35:14 - Business which are not building a profitable model will suffer the most38:22 - Indian Startup Ecosystem in the next 5-10 years40:20 - Framework to identify large opportunities: Scale & Profitability42:36 - Culture at BigBasket which keeps people from moving out46:45 - Growing with the business as CEO

We’ve heard inspiring stories of founders of Facebook and Microsoft who’ve dropped out of Harvard and even some of the well known Indian Entrepreneurs who’ve dropped out of IITs to build on their dream venture. But in today’s episode we’ll talk with Anish Achuthan, who ran away from his hometown during his Class 11th with dreams to build something big in the Dotcom space and currently is the Cofounder of Open, which recently became Kerala’s first unicorn start-up.Listen to Anish talk about his journey through his various ventures over the last two decades and how he’s building for Open to democratize the Neobanking space in India. Notes - 02:42 - Being born in Govt service-oriented family in Kerala to getting inspired by Dotcom06:11 - Meeting his cofounder & life partner07:49 - Cumulative learnings from his previous companies11:27 - Product Offerings by Open for SMEs, Banks and Fintech Entreprises13:57 - Key milestones in Open’s journey15:49 - Current metrics on the platform16:56 - What are his plans with Open for the long term19:17 - Their moat against other Neobanks and traditional banks23:04 - Product & distribution strategy for the first 100 to 1000 users31:46 - Licenses and certifications needed for Neo Banking33:47 - Challenges while cracking the first banking partner35:27 - Monetizing their services on Freemium model36:55 - Advice to early-stage entrepreneurs

On the podcast today, we have with us Sandeep Jain, Founder, GeeksforGeeks. GeeksForGeeks is one of the largest online learning platforms for coding enthusiasts, budding engineers, and anyone involved in the tech domain. Sandeep is from Firozabad which is 40 kms away from Agra in UP. He studied in a government school before doing his graduation from UP Technical University, Mathura, and masters from IIT Roorkee. In the year 2009, he created a blog with the intent to help engineering students prepare for placements. What started as a blog is today a 1000 Crore+ annual revenue Edtech company with 250+ team members. Let’s dive deep into his journey from leaving his engineering job to becoming a teacher to 10 Million+ registered 'Geeks' from across the world.Notes - 03:07 - Growing up in Firozabad to growing the love for coding07:20 - Joining D. E. Shaw & Co after graduation09:24 - 30% Salary cut in his first Teaching job v/s being a Software Engineer10:00 - Starting GeeksforGeeks in 200916:03 - Hiring the initial team18:26 - Annual revenue growth to 1000 Crore+24:12 - Learning the skills and growing in the role of a CEO30:35 - Growing against well-funded competitors

March 2019 was when we published our first episode of 100xEntrepreneur. So far we’ve covered 150+ VCs, Angel Investors and Entrepreneurs from the Indian startup ecosystem. Alongside 100xEntrepreneur podcast we’ve so far invested in 30+ portfolio companies via like Airmeet, PlumHQ, Zencastr and Neeman’s. In today’s episode we share our journey so far. We are Siddhartha & Nansi, a husband-wife entrepreneur-cum-content creator duo who started their podcast journey with a purpose to make behind the screen conversations, thought process, and mindset of VCs, Investors and Successful entrepreneurs accessible to thousands of early-stage entrepreneurs and startup enthusiasts like you. We really hope that we have been able to serve you with great content so far and would really appreciate your feedback. How can you share your feedback with us? Reply to this emailComment on our Youtube, iTunes, Castbox or Spotify ChannelNotes - 01:09 - How 100xEntrepreneur was born?09:44 - To Unlock Growth: Start reaching out to people who are better and bigger than you14:19 - What went in the background while recording a podcast?21:01 - Joining AWS to setting up 100x Fund23:33 - Building the team at 100xEntrepreneur27:46 - Our favourite episode so far

India’s largest Content Marketplace with 1L+ creators, 2500+ customers, out of which 70+ are Unicorns. Does that ring any bells? We’re talking about Pepper Content, founded by Anirudh Singla, in his 2nd year of undergrad college.Pepper’s journey started when Anirudh during his college decided to take up freelancing and content creation to fund his graduation all by himself. He then realised the potential of content creators in India and decided to organize it by creating an Indian marketplace for the same. In our conversation with Anirudh, we dive into the journey of building and scaling Pepper to $8 Million ARR Content-marketplace in under 5 years and their plans ahead.Notes - 03:06 - Baniya-family background, freelance exposure while at college07:06 - First few steps to building a marketplace11:06 - Splitting equity early-on12:46 - Reaching out to 80+ VCs and Angel Investors while raising their 1st round17:20 - What made them raise their 1st round? 18:43 - Scaling from $500k ARR to $8 Million ARR in 14 months21:20 - Client base: 550+ Active customers and 70+ Unicorns24:20 - Need to focus on a SaaS based approach for Content26:15 - “Hustle doesn’t scale. By the same time what scale’s is the mindset of thinking big enough!”28:25 - “Not building a family, but instead building a high quality sports team.”

#1 Smartwatch Brand in India#3 Smartwatch Brand in Asia#9 Smartwatch Brand GloballyAll the above feats are not from Apple, Samsung, or a legacy player in the market, but from our own homegrown Indian brand - Noise.In this week’s podcast, we turn the spotlight on Noise : A brand that’s on a mission to offer quality smart wearables at affordable prices to its customers. In our conversation with Amit Khatri, Co-founder of Noise, he shared how the brand started bootstrapped in 2014, what have been the challenges and how have they scaled over the years.We have tried to summarize some key themes & takeaways from our conversation. Notes - 02:09 - Early Career & Family Background before starting Noise05:45 - Product development & Revenue journey from 2014 to 201808:04 - Finalising the main categories - Smartwatch and Wireless Earbuds09:55 - Why prioritize growing own Website instead of relying on marketplace?12:18 - Testing your idea in the market being bootstrapped13:36 - Vision & plan of the brand early-on14:56 - Initial Learnings for early-stage D2C Entrepreneurs16:16 - Focus on building the brand from Day 118:55 - Building and launching the first product24:15 - Secrets of scaling from Rs.160 Cr+ to Rs.800 Cr+ Revenue26:26 - Key elements of creating a playbook for a Rs.1000 Cr+ D2C brand31:36 - Keeping prices reasonable while ensuring better quality

Why is HUL considered a Leadership factory?“Every great brand is built on a fundamental human insights.”Do you agree that people come before revenue?“Invest in Brand, even as little as possible, and not just Performance Marketing from Day 1.”Listen to Shashank Mehta, Founder of The Whole Truth Foods and a passionate HUL Ex-employee in today’s episode to know his perspective about everything mentioned above. Notes - 03:43 - Definition of D2C market in India context07:11 - His early career prior to starting his entrepreneurial journey09:40 - Post-MBA why he chose Marketing over Finance?11:30 - Why HUL is considered a leadership factory?14:30 - Learnings from his stint at HUL18:48 - Why he joined Faasos (now REBEL Foods) a lesser known startup leaving HUL in 2012?23:40 - Scale of Faaso’s when he joined and left the company24:30 - Why he left Faasos and joined HUL again?28:22 - Learnings from setting up an Ayurveda-brand within HUL34:09 - Consumer insight which HUL was trying to  solve with its AYUSH proposition34:54 - His blog about food and fitness - FIT SHIT41:54 - Raising around 5 Cr+ initial funding during his Notice Period45:10 - Zero to One Phase of The Whole Truth Foods50:02 - Realizing the ‘Aha Moment’ of brand’s journey52:32 - Sales & Revenue Milestones during their journey54:05 - Being a Truth company rather than being a food company57:00 - Key learnings while scaling a brand

MobiKwik is one of the largest Mobile Wallet and Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) platforms in India. Its tech platform has 120  million Registered Users, 25.3 million pre-approved BNPL users and more than 3.4 million merchant partners. MobiKwik's top line grew by 80 percent from INR 300 crore in FY21 to INR 540 Crore in FY22.Tune in to this conversation with Bipin Preet Singh, Co-founder, MobiKwik where we talk about his journey of building and scaling the company for the last 13+ years.During the episode, Bipin also shares about how they started first with a basic problem of the masses with mobile recharge and then scaled over time, how they sailed through the difficult times of Covid and took Mobikwik to 100Mn+ users.Notes - 02:21 - What led him to founding MobiKwik?09:00 - “You can’t build the platform on Day 1, the platform has to evolve.”11:58 - Advice for early-stage entrepreneurs pitching to build a platform14:27 - How did MobiKwik evolve as a platform? 27:23 - What has transformed significantly in the last 1-2 years?30:33 - Current revenue, profits, and scale 36:25 - Is the economy currently going into recession?38:11 - What kept him going for 13+ years?40:33 - Tailwinds which are supporting Fintech in India44:52 - Creating a mental model to build in markets with already existing large players

Any idea what’s common between Flipkart, Ola, Swiggy, Zerodha and 6000+ other Businesses in India and South-East Asia? They all rely on Exotel for their customer communications, no matter the size, scale, or industry within which the company exists; Exotel has the a product-solution for all of them. In this episode, we talk with Shivakumar Ganesan, Founder of Exotel to learn more about his journey and challenges building and scaling the company.During the episode, Shivakumar talks about his experience with VCs & Angel investors, having Ola as a customer and much more.Notes - 03:48 - Early days, Family, background & career06:40 - Entrepreneurial attempts before starting Exotel09:51 - Initial Problem statement and solutions13:50 - Raising money from Blume Ventures18:30 - Scale and Customers at $1Mn ARR30:21 - Cofounders leaving the company37:30 - Dealing with thoughts about quitting41:55 - How did A91 Partners chose to back Exotel?49:38 - Current Capabilities & Scope for growth52:15 - Proving naysayers wrong by building a $60Mn ARR SaaS from India for India53:39 - Key lessons from his journey55:56 - Advice for understanding market size  

With the emergence of health issues in recent years, most people have started becoming proactive to improve their immune system and diet, rather than being reactive at a later stage when the damage has already been done. Even most doctors agree that if from an early age, we somehow get access to a preservative-free, natural source of nutrients, it might significantly boost our health in the long-run.Our guest Aarti Gill’s OZiva is India's leading Clean, Plant Based Wellness brand. OZiva was started back in 2016 and since then the company has scaled significantly with a large base of repeat customers.During the episode, Aarti talks about how she pivoted from her first venture to OZiva, what are the major challenges she has encountered during her journey and much more.Notes - 05:38 - Initial intro about OZiva08:40 - High-level metrics around customers and revenue09:44 - Building an Omni-channel brand v/s a D2C brand11:26 - Early Education & Career prior to OZiva14:14 - Meeting her co-founder and their first venture18:35 - Deciding the first 4 products21:14 - Market demand of OZiva’s Prime membership22:26 - Challenges during the early years of OZiva24:38 - Building a 20 Cr+ revenue from 2016 to 202026:53 - Building online & offline distribution channels28:03 - Nuances while building distribution channels30:10 - Rapid scale of 5x within a year31:37 - Ensuring repeat purchase by customers36:46 - Funding interest while growing from 0 to 20 Cr+38:45 - Mental model of self-evaluating during each funding rounds40:10 - Deepika Padukone as a brand ambassador42:44 - Framework behind brand positioning campaigns44:37 - Things which didn’t work out & learnings46:19 - Why build new categories apart from nutrition

# Can a passionate cricketer become a passionate entrepreneur? # Can you and your spouse be Cofounders without conflict? # How many successful & fulfilling stints can an entrepreneur have? All the above questions get answered during the episode with our guest Ashish Tandon, Founder & CEO, Indusface.Indusface is his 3rd venture after 2 successful exits and a short but successful early-career in Cricket. During the episode, Ashish talks about how his wife has supported him throughout his journey, what led him to start over and over again post his multiple exits and much more.Notes - 03:08 - Early background in Cricket06:30 - 1st venture right out of College08:46 - Getting acquired by SIFY within 2 years09:49 - What led to his 2nd venture? 13:21 - Multi-million dollar Exit to TrendMicro15:16 - Reason behind Bootstrapping his ventures17:55 - What led him to starting Indusface?19:42 - Problem statements solved by Indusface24:32 - Journey from $1Mn ARR to current scale28:10 - Key Levers to doubling their ARR within a year31:32 - Challenges in building Indusface36:58 - Having your spouse as your Cofounder38:50 - Reflecting back how he feels about his journey? 44:09 - Lessons from all his ventures

# China Accused of cyber-attacks on Ukraine before Russian invasion# Buget 2022: $9.9 billion towards cyber security aims to make Australia a key 'offensive' cyber playerThese are some of the recent headlines around Cyber threats globally. Cyber attacks have been rated the fifth top rated risk in 2020 and continues to grow in 2022 as IoT cyber attacks alone are expected to double by 2025.In this episode our guest Rahul Sasi, Founder CloudSEK, talks about the key challenges in Cyber Security in India today.CloudSEK’s customer list includes Axis Bank, NPCI, Netcore, OLA, Sun Pharma, ICICI Lombard, IndusInd Bank, MakeMyTrip and many more who don’t wish to take a chance with the growing threat of global cyber crimes.  11 of the Fortune Global companies, and 7 of the world’s biggest banks, trust XVigil (one of CloudSEK’s flagship products) to safeguard their security posture.During the episode, Rahul talks about how they started CloudSEK, customer acquisition strategy, and much more.Notes - 04:04 - Background before starting CloudSEK08:55 - Current ARR and scale in terms of customers09:45 - Milestone since launch12:04 - Products and Problem Statements solved by CloudSEK14:44 - How has been the industry response? 20:19 - Challenges with hiring the right people24:40 - Targets for the next 2 years26:17 - Learnings from their fundraising journey28:26 - How to leverage your investors?

The Internet of Things category is not slowing down for anyone to catch up. It is projected to be a $1.1 trillion category by 2027, with the number of active IoT-connected devices ​​expected to reach 30.9 billion units by 2025.Targeting this, we have our guest Yadhu Gopalan, CEO & Founder at Esper, with a vision to power the next billion smart devices. Currently, Seattle-based Esper has more than 200 paying customers and over 2,000 developers using its platform for product development.During the episode, Yadhu talks about his journey building Esper, how he met his cofounder, what learnings he has brought from his stint at Amazon and Microsoft, and much more.Notes - 01:12 - Journey before starting Esper02:20 - Early Childhood and moving to the US03:48 - Problem statement behind starting Esper05:25 - Product offering and clients10:25 - The founding team at Esper15:43 - Attracting the best talent16:50 - Building a team across geographies19:07 - Execute distribution and partnerships at scale20:39 - Work Culture & learnings from Microsoft & Amazon27:51 - Key learnings from his startup journey

As per a recent Entrackr report, Indian startups saw over 250 acquisitions in 2021. Edtech startups like Byju’s, Unacademy, and upGrad have been in the headlines for their acquisition spree, and also startups in the e-commerce roll up space such as Mensa Brands, GlobalBees, 10club, Upscalio, and fitness tech platform Cultfit (Curefit) also took over smaller brands, recording the highest number of acquisitions last year. With so much going on around acquisitions, our guest Rohit Anand, Founder, 1digitalstack.ai shares his experience of getting his first venture acquired. During the episode, Rohit talks about bringing in a third-party consultant to assist with the acquisition, his second stint at entrepreneurship, and much more.Notes - 02:12 - Starting his first entrepreneurial venture in 199906:34 - “Importance of going after a problem where you have a natural advantage.”11:39 - What did Value Edge work upon? 12:57 - Value Edge’s ARR at the time of Exit13:39 - Thought process behind the Exit18:46 - Process of identifying the right M&A Advisor and the help an entrepreneur can expect24:00 - Maintaining balance during the stress while acquisition28:57 - Deciding to start 1digitalstack.ai32:31 - Current scale in terms of ARR & top clients35:17 - Taking investor money during his 2nd entrepreneurial stint38:10 - Future plans for 1digitalstack.ai (in terms of ARR & Growth drivers)42:15 - Vision and Ambition of building a large company46:19 - Current practices: Same & Distinct from Value Edge50:32 - His approach towards investing

Many founders try to build for large markets. But Saahil Goel, Founder, Shiprocket thinks differently. In his opinion, it’s okay to build small or lesser things and target a core segment of users, instead of jumping into a competition with large players, where you might not stand a chance. In other words - Picking your battles wisely. During this episode, Saahil talks about finding the right investors, current focus of the company, and much more.Notes - 01:56 - Finding his Co-founder & brainstorming around data-driven logistics09:04 - Problem with starting in a large competitive market12:02 - Focus metrics during the initial journey14:12 - Current scale of Shiprocket22:04 - Warehouse as a Service26:24 - Y-o-Y growth of platform27:49 - Approach to fixing broken things & building new32:14 - Raising initial rounds of funding45:01 - “Unless and until you have clarity about something, it won’t work.”48:19 - Ensuring focus within the team

Suppose you're a marketer or have a marketer friend/colleague. During an event like IPL or Diwali, you need to get 100+ variations of creatives with 20-30 sizes for each, within a few days and not weeks, so that you can test campaigns on multiple platforms at the earliest. However, traditional software is time-consuming, especially if you have a small design team with limited bandwidth. Our guest, Satej Sirur, Founder & CEO, Rocketium, solves this for 1200+ brands like Bigbasket, cult.fit, Groww, Meesho, Supr Daily, Urban Company, and many more across 95+ countries.During the episode, Satej talks about how customers differentiate between them and Adobe, the fundamental principles he focuses on to include in Rocketium's culture, and much more.Notes - 00:52 - Initial Intro05:13 - Pivoting in early years of Rocketium09:50 - Metrics around ARR & Customer base11:31 - Customers comparing Rocketium to Adobe18:07 - Company building: Attracting the best talent22:36 - Principles in Rocektium's work culture25:51 - What's 8-4-5? 28:02 - Framework while setting internal metrics30:07 - Playbook behind International expansion33:45 - Importance of deeply knowing who your users are39:08 - Fundraising journey: Finding the right investor

"You never know when and where you can be "bitten by the entrepreneurship bug." Something similar happened with our guest Shashank Bijapur. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he was working with a New York-based top-tier law firm; when he came across the news of Elon Musk launching Self-driving cars. He realized his manual work on Legal contracts was easily replaceable by AI automation soon.This led him to start SpotDraft, an end-to-end contract automation platform for companies of all sizes.In this episode, Shashank talks about his initial hiring struggles, getting new clients, some of his mistakes as an entrepreneur, the future plans for SpotDraft, and much more.Notes - 01:19 - Starting SpotDraft and meeting his wife for the 1st time04:51 - First few years of struggle07:28 - Timeline of Shashank & SpotDraft's Journey10:34 - Switch of TG: From Enterprise to Startups12:58 - Early customers: Unacademy & Chargebee amongst others14:36 - Hiring A+ talent: Referrals from existing employees17:01 - Mistakes in 0 to 1 Journey22:18 - Competitive edge over large competitors25:23 - "Let's get SpotDrafted."

# Marketer of the Year 2018 and 2019 by IAA Leadership Award held by International Advertising Association (IAA)# Most Influential Youth Marketing Professional by Global Youth Marketing Forum 2019# Top 30 CMO's in India 2020 by IAMAI#" Marketer of the year" by The Economic Times ET Brand Equity #SharkAwards2021All of the above recognitions have honored our guest Karan Shroff, Partner & CMO at Unacademy, for his marketing strategies and the stellar brand campaigns time and again.Before joining Unacademy, Karan was Heading Marketing at Xiaomi, and in this episode, he shares his decade-long experience in the marketing domain.During the episode, Karan also talks about his first meeting with Unacademy Co- Founder & CEO, Gaurav Munjal, keeping his learners' emotions at the heart of all his campaigns, and much more.Notes - 03:19 - Early career journey04:39 - Story behind joining Unacademy07:32 - Marketing campaigns close to his heart10:30 - Learnings from Gaurav and Unacademy's culture14:45 - Finding creativity, ideas and tapping into it18:17 - Audacity of ambitions & goals20:38 - Secret Sauce: Keeping the sentiments of the users at the core of the campaign23:24 - How to build an iconic brand?27:24 - What has Karan Unlearnt?31:24 - Changes in marketing strategy as per the dynamic needs of the customers35:36 - His timeless marketing advice for startups

Do you know about the most interesting headline of all Indian business newspapers on 30 November 1999?It was India's most prominent Internet deal at the time - a $115Mn acquisition of IndiaWorld, founded by our guest Rajesh Jain. After this successful acquisition; Rajesh started Netcore. Yes, the same company is responsible for 75% of India's email traffic and 50% of Asia's email traffic through its Cloud network.During the episode, Rajesh explains how they've been one of the Proficorns at Netcore, all his learnings and experiences over the last two decades, and much more.Notes - 03:17 - Early career and failures09:42 - Learning entrepreneurship from his father11:32 - Starting and scaling IndiaWorld22:04 - "More important than knowing when to enter a business, is to know when to exit a business."24:26 - His perspective about businesses in India31:46 - "StarTech: Great Golden Era of Indian Entrepreneurship."34:33 - Building Netcore after the previous acquisition38:45 - Pivots and growth of Netcore43:45 - What is Proficorn, and why has Rajesh strongly advocated for it?51:48 - 25% ownership by employees

# Does the word 'Compounding' excite you? # Have you always wondered what 'Value Investing' is and how can you follow this approach?# Are you biased in your investment decisions? Then, this is an episode you shouldn't miss. Our guest, Gautam Baid, CFA & Founder at Stellar Wealth Partners, and Founding Creator at Chapter talks about his journey in the stock market from his early days, learning through great books on investing to eventually becoming a writer and fund manager himself. During the episode, Gautam talks about his personal experience of gaining and compounding knowledge, his recommendations (in terms of books, checklists, biases) for first-time investors entering the stock market, and much more.Notes - 03:46 - His family background and childhood09:21 - Compounding of Knowledge: Spent on hours of learnings14:28 - "Nothing teaches you the biggest lessons of life, more than an empty pocket and empty stomach."21:19 - His thoughts about 'Value Investing.'31:35 - Checklists in his investing decisions33:15 - 3 biases every investor should know49:28 - "Time is the new status symbol."50:35 - His book recommendationsAdditional links:Link to Gautam Baid's smallcase: www.stellarwealthpartners.comLink to Gautam Baid's Chapter: https://getchapter.app/@gautamLink to Gautam Baid's book: www.TheJoysOfCompounding.com

As per the recent data by Tracxn, there are 1338 AgriTech startups in India. However, with 118.7 million farmers, who contribute to a mere 17-18% of Indian GDP, many problem statements are left to be solved at a larger scale.In March 2020, we interviewed Vaibhav Domkundwar from Better Capital, where he mentioned their then-recent investment in Bijak - their first interaction with the founders and their thesis behind the investment. In today's episode, we're interviewing Nukul Upadhye, Co-Founder at Bijak, where he talks about how and why he started Bijak. Bijak is a one-stop agriculture marketplace where sellers and buyers can find trustworthy, reliable, and transparent counterparties. Bijak processes transactions worth more than Rs 1.5 billion on a monthly basis. During the episode, Nukul also talks about their initial challenges, leveraging the pre-existing offline supply chain, and much more.Notes - 01:48 - Creating a B2B marketplace - Bijak05:55 - Alternate ideas while starting Bijak09:24 - How does Bijak differentiate itself from traditional offline marketplaces? 17:33 - Challenges during the initial journey31:42 - How has he personally evolved over the past two years?

Since early 2020, we've noticed numerous startups becoming Unicorn one after another. But something a bit unnoticed by the wider audience is the valuations of startups at Seed-stage, which has grown multiples in the last two years. Bipin Shah, Partner at Titan Capital and this week's guest, says, "Till 2019, a great startup idea with an awesome team would be valued around $2Mn to $3Mn, which has now gone up to $10Mn+."So far, Titan Capital has made more than 250+ investments in early-stage startups. Bipin shares his experience and the thesis around identifying, mentoring and investing in seed-stage founders.Notes - 01:18 - Joining Titan Capital06:10 - Finding Soonicorns and Unicorns08:27 - How did they manage to make 90+ investments in a year?12:02 - What support does Titan Capital offer to portfolio companies?15:58 - Thesis: Focus on bottom 50% of companies28:10 - Change in valuation at the Seed stage31:20 - Learnings in the last six years as an investor

When you hear the word Startups & Angel Investing, which cities do you most commonly think they are based out of? Bengaluru, Delhi / Gurugram, Mumbai, or Chennai. The guest of our today’s episode, Abhishek Rungta clearly breaks this stereotype. Back in 1997, when he was still in his graduation, he had two options post college - - Join his father’s family business in Jute Trading- Start something totally unexpectedAnd that’s exactly what he did, he founded Indus Net Technologies from Kolkata, completely bootstrapped, which today has 200+ active clients across Banking, Financial Services, Insurance, Retail, Publishing, Media, Government, Healthcare and Entertainment sectors in five continents.Today his company has an ARR of $11Mn, and offers services in verticals such as:- Integrated Digital Marketing Services- Cloud Application Development (CMS, CRM, E-Commerce, ODC, OPD)- Enterprise MobilityIn parallel to this, he also started as an Angel Investor and later as an LP. During the episode, Abhishek talks about the crux of his journey as an investor, his learnings along the way, what mindset he currently carries as an investor and much more.Notes - 01:07 - Family Business Background - Jute Trading03:48 - Acquiring a global client base from Kolkata06:50 - His journey in Angel Investing12:13 - valley of despair in investing15:14 - Thesis: Investing in 2nd time founders22:05 - Diversifying your investments33:01 - Learnings to intake as an LP35:11 - Investors’ whose thesis he looks up to

Habits! Our habits make us who we are as a person. Since an early age we’ve been told by our parents and mentors, the distinction between a good and a bad habit. But how often do we skip to the good one’s? Specially as grown-ups, can you confidently say that you have the best habits in terms of - 1. Managing your finance & expenses2. Managing your work life balance3. Having a fruitful & fulfilling daySomething similar intrigued Rajan Singh, the guest of our today’s episode, to start HabitStrong in early 2020.Prior to HabitStrong, Rajan served as a IPS officer, as a McKinsey consultant, and as an investment professional with a private equity fund.​HabitStrong started with him inviting people to join him on YouTube sharp at 5 am, for a 30-day challenge. And the next morning, he was surprised to see several people already waiting. Over the next few months, through several bootcamps, thousands of applicants and several hundreds of volunteers, HabitStrong was on its journey to positively create an impact in everyone’s life.During the episode, Rajan talks about how people run after work, money and luxury lifestyle and how it can lead to a deterioration of mental peace over time, and much more.Notes - 01:18 - Journey to starting HabitStrong05:02 - “Things that sound the simplest are often the most powerful and most overlooked.”11:15 - Why did he make the choices he made? 19:48 - Current scale of HabitStrong29:15 - What does Financial Independence mean for him?33:33 - His definition of happiness - “Ability to step back from what is not making your life meaningful.”

# 5M+ Shopping Moments Personalized#400M+ Monthly Active Users Engaged#30B+ Messages Sent Monthly#$10B+ Additional Revenue DeliveredThese are some of the metrics driven by WebEngage, which caters to 400+ global brands as a robust customer data platform, personalization engine, omnichannel campaign manager, and an analytics engine. In today’s episode we have Avlesh Singh, WebEngage’s, CEO & Co-founder, sharing insights on how they’ve built a seamless full-stack Retention OS.During the episode, Avlesh talks about how companies can reach out to their own users, reducing churn and increasing retention, instead of reaching out to third-party ad platforms, and much more.Notes - 01:45 - Intro to Webengage05:06 - “Marketing will only put a certain amount of value to the software, only if we are able to bring more users back to the platform.”13:20 - Current scale in terms of revenue & customers36:51 - Learnings from his experience as a founder

"The world is going through one of the worst recessions, and you plan on starting a Travel venture. You must be out of your mind!"This was precisely the reaction of everyone around Prashant Pitti, the guest of today's episode, and his co-founders when they decided to launch EaseMyTrip during the 2008 Recession.In fact, when they approached a few VCs during their early days to pitch for an investment, they received multiple preset filters and nuances -# A B2B travel venture won't grow big enough# You're late; there are so many travel startups alreadyHowever, proving everyone wrong, they've grown leaps and bounds since inception, so much so that they were one of the first internet companies to go public during Covid.During the episode, Prashant talks about how they are thankful for not being VC-funded, some of the tough calls they took during their journey, which propelled their growth, and much more.Notes - 01:02 - Starting a travel venture during recession02:52 - Problem statement solved by EaseMyTrip for Travel Agents05:49 - Impact on growth because of not charging “Convenience Fees”07:44 - Being extremely efficient and disciplined as a company13:41 - Decision behind going public16:59 - How did EaseMyTrip remain profitable even during Covid?25:31 - Why does EaseMyTrip prefer hiring Non-IITians?

4.03 billion people!That’s the most recent reported number of email users worldwide. No platform even comes close to the potential reach of email. The latest Facebook statistics give them over 2.8 billion monthly active users.As of today there are almost 1 billion and 700 thousand active users of Gmail, being of the most popular email service providers. But it was launched on 1 April 2004. Prior to Gmail, the tech trend of that era was Hotmail, and if you had a Hotmail account, that was something worth showing-off. Founded in 1996, by the guest of our today’s episode Sabeer Bhatia and his co-founder Jack Smith, Hotmail was the world's first web-based email when it launched.Back then, they sold it two years later to Microsoft for an estimated $400m. Since then Sabeer, became the face of tech entrepreneurship, and has been inspiring generations.Recently last year, in 2020, he’s back with an idea, which might lead to another tech revolution, named ShowReel. Consider this as a short-video version of Linkedin, where your profile, all your posts, and feed will have just videos. During the episode, Sabeer talks about his vision with Hotmail, what are his current plans with Showreel, what all founders can learn from his entrepreneurship journey and much more.Notes - 01:02 - Right timing as an entrepreneur03:06 - What led to Hotmail’s acquisition?09:55 - His journey as an entrepreneur & investor post acquisition11:27 - Problem statements being solved by ShowReel17:21 - His opinion about Web 3.023:47 - “Only crazy entrepreneurs change the world.”

A founder’s role is challenging, requiring expertise in multiple enterprises. From funding to hiring, it is entirely the onus of the founder to convert visions into reality. In today’s episode, we’ve brought Sameer Guglani, Founder of Supermorpheus, a Community-driven seed investing platform, to simplify the founder’s role and expand it beyond finance to foster the entire Startup team’s well being. Supermorpheus (the evolution of Morpheus) is a curated global community of founders and folks in the startup space focussing on consciousness-driven creation of Startups and wealth with 350+ founders and 40+ investments.  During this episode, Sameer talks about how startups need to focus on integral growth, optimizing startups for the long run, and prioritizing excellence over the competition. Notes:3:12 Birth of Supermorpheus29:12 Fundamental Changes in the Indian Startup Ecosystem33:00 Role of Financial freedom in Sameer's Journey38:49 Time spent on self-development43:17 Similar Patterns observed among founders

A notion amongst most Indian SaaS entrepreneurs is to move to the US to expand or start from the US from Day 1 itself.However, in today's episode, we've brought Anand Jain, Co-founder of CleverTap, to debunk this myth and shed more light on what an early-stage SaaS founder's roadmap should be in terms of either staying in India or moving to any global market.CleverTap is a leading customer engagement and retention platform, trusted by over 10,000 apps, including Gojek, AirAsia, Sony, Vodafone, Carousell, and Cleartrip.During the episode, Anand talks about how a company needs to adopt new market plans to continue growing one milestone after another, his learnings early-stage SaaS entrepreneurs can consider in their journey, and much more.Notes - 00:55 - Founding CleverTap06:57 - $45 Mn ARR and customer growth Y-o-Y10:43 - “What got you to 45 will not get you 100.”16:55 - Is moving to the US to expand as a SaaS company necessary?24:03 - 3 Key points in his $1 Mn to $10 Mn ARR Playbook27:10 - Mistakes in his journey building CleverTap40:10 - Game Plan to market your product in newer markets and different ARR levels

With so many Indian startups achieving unicorn status in 2021, the situation begs an answer to the question:  # Is this growth sustainable or are we in a bubble?# What does this mean for foreign and Indian investors? #What does this mean for the next decade of VC and Startups? To understand this better, in today’s episode, we’ve brought Anjali Bansal, founder of Avaana Capital, that invests in innovation-led start-ups creating sustainability and impact at scale while delivering outsized returns. Previously, Anjali has been Global Partner and MD with TPG Growth PE and a strategy consultant with McKinsey and Co. in New York. She’s also the former non-executive Chairperson of Dena Bank, where she successfully led the resolution of the stressed bank.She has invested in and regularly mentors various successful start-ups including Delhivery, Nykaa, Alpha Vector, Lenskart, Urban Company, Darwinbox, Coverfox and FarMart.She is closely associated with NITI Aayog’s Women Entrepreneurship Platform and Digital Solutions and is on the Expert Advisory Committee for the Start Up India Seed Fund Scheme. She has been appointed as President, Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and serves as an independent director on several leading boards including Tata Power, Kotak AMC, and Piramal Enterprises.During the episode, Anjali talks about the volatility in the Indian startup ecosystem, the opportunities for entrepreneurs and investors; she also shares learnings from her portfolio and much more.Notes - 00:40 - Intro and background02:55 - Working at ISRO and early career04:59 - Ideology behind Avaana Capital08:22 - Is the Indian startup ecosystem in a bubble?17:21 - Common patterns and learnings from the winners20:50 - Mistake: Investing in the idea and not the team22:44 - Ability to move quickly as a fund34:49 - Learnings from early-career at Mckinsey36:29 - Potential in Indian startups41:01 - What all she prefers to read on a daily basis

# What is Financial Independence? # Does everybody need precisely 10 crore to be happy? # Is the process of “Wealth Creation = Cutting out on all your wants & desires completely”?For the past 2 years, it seems like everyone around us is investing either in stocks or crypto and also making generous profits. And you too are probably thinking to jump in right? After all - # Markets are at an all-time high # Crypto is “The New Thing” and you don’t want to miss outWell, just wait for a moment, before you begin, in today’s episode we’ve brought Deepak Shenoy, Founder and CEO at Capitalmind (SEBI registered - Portfolio Manager). During the episode, Deepak will help you have the right mindset to begin your investment journey, what to and what not to expect off your investments, and how to evaluate an investment opportunity much more.Notes - 01:40 - Beginning of his investing journey04:33 - Where would your 1st crore of wealth come from? 07:17 - Behavioural changes in growing from 1 to 10 crore wealth10:29 - True definition of financial independence14:20 - Are emotional buying decisions hindrances in wealth creation?24:13 - Has investing become mainstream in 2021?33:30 - How to find under-valued investment opportunities?41:43 - His upcoming book “MONEY WISE: Timeless Lessons on Building Wealth”

Diwali just got over, and following the fatal trend of smog in the nation's capital for the past five years, it is here again.It is alarming to recognize that India is home to 7 of the top 10 cities globally, notorious for its air pollution levels.With increasing incomes, more and more people can afford cars, increasing the severity of the already worse air pollution scenario due to fossil fuels.All this emphasizes the need for greener transportation alternatives. Despite the bad news, we have several large companies and startups leading the way to clean modes of travel, be it the prominent players like Tata Motors, MG, and Hyundai or the startups like Ola Electric, Ather Energy, Yulu, and Blu Smart, among others.In today's episode, we've brought Arpit Agarwal, Director at Blume Ventures, to talk about the current scenario of EV startups in India. During the episode, Arpit talks about the various challenges and opportunities for EVs in India, some of Blume's portfolio companies, how they contribute to India's EVs revolution, and much more.Notes - 02:40 - Future of EVs in general06:01 - Adoption by TCO positive segments07:25 - 5-year use case of an electric scooter10:13 - Key challenge in EV market17:22 - Challenge with charging stations24:30 - Opportunities for EV in India under various sub-segments32:53 - Large players engaging with the EV ecosystem34:12 - Funding & duration of developing an EV from scratch37:28 - Future of mobility C.A.S.E.

"Don't be afraid of failure. Always optimize for success, but be prepared for failure." - Ashish Singhal.In today's episode, we've brought Ashish Singhal, Founder & CEO of CoinSwitch, to talk about their journey globally and how they're shaping the narrative around crypto in India. Recently, CoinSwitch, caught people's attention when they used the entire front page of The Times of India to simply wish Happy Diwali, bringing back the pure festive joy, instead of bombarding users with bumper-sized Ads and unrealistic offers like 100% cashback and more.CoinSwitch currently has more than 13 million+ users, with more than 55% of their users coming from Tier 2 and 3 cities.Last month, they raised over $260 million in its Series C funding round from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Coinbase Ventures, and existing investors. With this, American venture capital firm a16z made its first investment in an Indian unicorn.During the episode, Ashish talks about the problem-statement CoinSwitch is after, how they are giving an initial flavor of crypto to first-time investors with referrals, and much more.Notes - 01:40 - Background prior to CoinSwitch05:33 - Hackathons and starting CoinSwitch08:39 - Growing globally and launching in India12:17 - Choosing the right investors for their journey15:49 - Success of the pre-launch campaign in India17:19 - Simplifying the crypto-investing experience29:57 - Current scale on platform33:14 - “Users always come first, business comes second.”

As per a recent article by Economic Times - “Early stage investing is at an all-time high in post-pandemic India with the country averaging one seed round a day this year.”As of Sept, so far over 240+ companies have secured their first funding in 2021 v/s 302 companies in 2020, and 257 in 2019, and with a few more months remaining, this number is expected to cross last year’s benchmark. In today’s episode we’ve brought Kushal Bagia, CEO of FirstCheque, to talk about the current scenario of early-stage funding in India. So far with their first fund, they’ve done over 100+ deals, and some of the well know portfolio companies are Giva, Kaagaz, Able Jobs, and Mailmodo among others.During the episode, Kushal talks about the influx in pre-seed investing post the pandemic, how they’ve created a moat for themselves and much more.Notes - 01:19 - Background prior to FirstCheque03:00 - Various domains where they’ve invested05:35 - Performance of the companies from Fund-I07:48 - Change in valuations in early-stage funding13:18 - Top performing portfolio companies16:50 - FirstCheque’s edge in early-stage investing25:49 - Value addition by FirstCheque to founders

During and post the pandemic, several sectors have seen a dramatic rise in customers & sales, specially the ones which were ready to embrace the new change and leverage the new opportunity of everything going online and remote. With 2021 being the most prominent year for Indian startups achieving unicorn status, Edtech isn’t left behind. In today’s episode we’ve brought Vamsi Krishna, CEO and Co-founder of Vedantu, India’s 5th and most recent Edtech startup to become a unicorn.Prior to starting Vedantu, Vamsi, and his team had prior experience in offline education with their venture - Lakshya Institute. This definitely helped them with a lot of learnings and the initial groundwork for building Vedantu.During the episode, Vamsi talks about the Vedantu’s role being an early entrant and being a category creator, how they’ve built and leveraged organic growth over the years and much more.Notes - 02:29 - Co-founding and running Lakshya Institute for over 8 years05:28 - Pivoting from offline to online and starting Vedantu08:50 - Prior to scaling, first validate if the solution works14:47 - Revenue milestones18:49 - Conscious considerations while building new features22:41 - 3 Verticals at Vedantu24:10 - Focusing on Organic vs Paid Acquisition26:22 - Importance of referrals in Edtech30:19 - Advice to first time entrepreneurs

According to WHO, obesity has doubled since the turn of the century, and almost 40% of all adults globally, i.e. 2 billion people - are overweight or obese, resulting in 4 million deaths per year.HealthifyMe an AI driven health and fitness app startup, took up this problem statement 10 years back and has been building and solving for individuals to curate and track a healthier diet.The company crossed 25 million downloads recently and is on track to hit $50 million annual recurring revenue (ARR) in the next six months.In today’s episode we’ve brought Tushar Vashisht, CEO and Co-founder of HealthifyMe, to talk about the journey of creating a monetizable healthcare & fitness platform in India. They’ve recently raised $75M in Series C round led by LeapFrog and Khosla Ventures, with which it plans to further expand into India and South East Asia markets besides making inroads into North America. Currently, it generates around 25 percent of its revenues from overseas markets.During the episode, Tushar talks about the casual and unexpected moments when he got several breakthrough ideas, why they consider minor consistent pivots essential for thriving in the long-term and much more.Notes - 02:29 - Roller coaster moments in HealthifyMe’s journey06:02 - Strengths as a founder08:21 - Essence of assembling a team for experienced mentors as board members13:11 - Experiencing living like an average Indian15:17 - Early concerns with HealthifyMe’s model during initial funding20:52 - Advice for entrepreneurs: When to pivot vs when to be persistent?26:19 - Myth: Indians don’t pay for digital healthcare services28:05 - Growth hacks like VaccinateMe29:25 - Getting the first 1000 customers

Personal branding is something that’s drawing a lot of attention from people across all domains. And the only proven way, to create a personal brand for yourself, is by becoming a consistent and quality content creator. With over 200+ speeches in 26+ countries on wealth & personal growth, the guest of our today’s episode, Raj Shamani describes his journey from 0 to a million+ followers and building a strong personal brand.Other than that, being - # One of the youngest Indians to represent India at the United Nations# Featured amongst Top 10 Young Entrepreneurs in India - Asian Age# Featured amongst Top 5 Young Influencers in India - YourStory# Featured amongst Top 10 Business Podcasts in India - ItunesAre just some of the feathers in his cap, during his personal brand building journey.During the episode, Raj talks about starting small with consistency, importance of building a team and much more.Notes - 02:29 - Becoming a speaker at small scale04:43 - Strengths from 0 to 100k followers05:21 - Getting 900k+ followers organically in just over a year10:23 - Expanding team over time13:38 - Monetizing multiple channels over multiple platforms18:50 - Recommendation to first time content creators21:19 - Journey as an investor*Sponsors*-This episode is brought to you by Prime Venture Partners, an early-stage VC fund led by Amit Somani, Shripati Acharya, and Sanjay Swamy. Prime is often the first institutional investor in category-creating tech startups in fintech, SaaS, Healthcare, and Education such as MoneyTap, Happay & Mfine. To know more about Prime visit primevp.in-This episode is also brought to you by Red Bull Basement. Red Bull Basement is back to empower the next generation of young innovators like you! Present your unique idea in a simple video of up to 60 seconds and the most impactful and creative ideas will stand a chance to represent your country at the Global Finals in Turkey! Last date of Registrations: October 25th, 2021 Register here: https://basement.redbull.com/en

India is becoming the world's fastest-growing startup ecosystem with over 60+ Unicorn Startups, out of which 25+ have gained their Unicorn status in 2021 itself. One of the youngest amongst them is headed by the guest of our today’s episode, Amrit Acharya, Co-founder & CEO, Zetwerk. Zetwerk started in 2018, with the idea to help manufacturing managers with managing several suppliers with ease using a dashboard, as previously the role had been very “manual and prone to errors”. The product was great, but when they reached out to potential customers, they didn’t get a very optimistic response. Instead these customers wanted a marketplace solution where they could discover and connect with new suppliers. And that’s what led to Zetwerk's pivot within 6 months of starting up.Currently Zetwerk helps its customers reduce costs, optimize suppliers and execute production faster. Some stats relating to its current scale - # 15+ Countries - North American, Indo-Pacific & Middle Eastern regions# 25+ Industries - Oil & Gas, Aerospace, Automotive, Construction, Mining & more# 100+ Retained happy customers# 1000+ projectsDuring the episode, Amrit talks in-depth about the nitty-gritty of the manufacturing sector, what are some of the key focus points for customers and much more.Notes - 01:29 - Revenue and scale at Zetwerk04:26 - Solving for market access & capital expenditures for small manufactures05:31 - Zetwerk’s revenue model10:15 - Time v/s Quality in manufacturing18:30 - Nature of retained customers20:47 - Order size from $1000 to $30 Mn24:32 - Creating a catalogue for the uncatalogued market36:15 - Approach as an entrepreneur during fundraising

Normally for the most of us our buying focus is around products like - # Which smartphone to buy? # Which laptop to buy? # Which car to buy? And so on. But have you ever thought for a bit about which mattress should I buy? Probably No, right. This is the reason why, in almost the last 10-15 years, prior to 2015-16, we’ve barely seen any innovation in mattresses or competitive pricing amongst brands? But a lot of that has changed in the last 3-4 years, with companies like Sleepyhead, The Sleep Company, Wakefit and a few other D2C mattress brands coming up.In today’s episode we’ve brought Ankit Garg, Director and Co-founder of Wakefit, to talk about the journey of the brand and how he and his Co-founder, Chaitanya Ramalingegowda, won the hearts of several customers in this segment. Founded in 2016, in current financial year, Wakefit recorded 2X growth, clocking Rs 410 crore revenue. The year earlier, it registered a turnover of Rs 197 crore. They manufacture all their products in-house across nine factories in Bengaluru, Jodhpur, and Delhi. While they only sell online and drive most of their sales from Amazon (i.e. mostly by new customers) and their own website (i.e. mostly by returning customers), they also have over 22 experience centres — six in metros and nine in smaller towns. During the episode, Ankit talks about focusing on making their customers happy, understanding simple yet viral strategies to continue driving up their revenue and much more.Notes - 02:58 - Getting a taste of failure early-on09:05 - Working on your idea part-time during the early phase12:25 - Building a D2C vs B2B company15:17 - Initial pricing experiment of selling mattresses on Amazon18:16 - Core habit of talking to customers22:10 - Focus on NPS & customer happiness25:23 - Removing inefficiencies in the product to offer better prices26:17 - Revenue growth over the years32:09 - Approach while reaching out to investors36:13 - Wakefit’s 100 Nights Trial campaign48:01 - Wakefit’s sleep campaign50:30 - Advice for D2C founders

Have you heard about “Programmatic Advertising”?Well for those of you who haven’t, Programmatic Advertising, also known as programmatic display advertising, is an automatic process of planning, buying and selling ad inventory.Before advertising was programmatic, it was done manually, which included being in touch with a sales team, and included requesting for proposals, bidding, quotation, and human negotiation. And as you can imagine, this was a very time intensive task.With Programmatic Advertising the system automates all of this for this, and as a cherry on the cake, it provides actionable data in planning and determining what Ad content is relevant to a particular user.For instance, a user is scanning some blog related to “baby food”. The Ad tech system evaluates the user and displays an Ad related to “offers on baby food items” or “baby food pouches”.The guest of our today’s episode Kshitij Jain, with his company Joveo, enables recruiters with one of the most advanced Programmatic Job Advertising Platform. Their clients include - Wells Fargo, Barclays, Rolls-Royce, Sony, HCL and several other Fortune 500 companies.Their system claims to be driving up to 2X more relevant applicants, 40% higher click to apply conversions, at 20-50% lower Cost per Hire.Kshitij who has spent over 20+ years in the online recruitment and hiring industry, is a second time founder with Joveo. His first company, MoBolt was acquired by Indeed in 2014, just under 2 years of being operational.During the episode, he talks about his experience in the industry over the year, how did he and his team made MoBolt a big success within such a short-time, his learnings from his traditional-family background in India and much more.Notes - 00:50 - What does Joveo stands for?02:17 - Insights related to online Jobs & Hiring industry09:47 - Motivation behind spending 20+ years in this industry 13:03 - Difference between Sales & Selling17:16 - Magic recipe behind Mobolt19:35 - How to focus on what the customer needs and not what the customer wants?25:27 - “Everybody who wants to be an entrepreneur needs to know how to cold call.”27:58 - Key milestones in Joveo’s journey30:22 - Learnings coming from Marwari family background39:41 - “I’m the business of the unfinished business.”

How often and sincerely do you help someone for free? Moreover when it's related to building/growing their business?Only some of us can confidently say yes to the above questions. However today we have Manish Pandey, who heads Culture and Brand at Josh Talks. Coming from Silvassa (i.e. headquarters of the union territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu), Manish had very humble beginnings. He’s been featured on Josh Talks series - #RagsToRiches and Ranveer Allahbadia’s #TheRanveerShow, Ranveer also referred to Manish as his mentor for career and spirituality and also credits him for helping to build and grow Beerbiceps and Monk entertainment.Similarly, Manish has selflessly helped several solopreneurs and founders in building and scaling their brands for free.During the episode, Manish shares with us what drives him to help other entrepreneurs grow, his recommendations for building a personal brand and more. Notes - 02:50 - Helping Entrepreneurs and Content Creators07:49 - Introspecting life backwards to 5th standard16:04 - Meeting Ranveer Allahbadia21:12 - Advice to 100xEntrepreneur to build its Social Media Brand23:44 - Putting out one’s vulnerability 26:08 - Manish on Spirituality

In whichever industry or ecosystem you are, there are some people you just can’t not know about, because they are the ones who have either - # had a major role in shaping the industry as it is today # or achieved something at such a massive scale that no one can miss to notice itThe guest of our today’s episode Vani Kola, founder and managing director of Kalaari Capital, is one such person. She was listed as one of the most powerful women in Indian business by Fortune India in 2014.She started her career in the silicon valley, as a serial entrepreneur and spent close to 22 years. While in silicon valley, she founded an e-procurement company RightWorks, which was later sold for $657 million.After returning to India in 2006, she founded Indo-US Venture Partners (IUVP) in 2006, which was later rebranded as Kalaari Capital.Some stats around Kalaari Capital -# 188+ Investments; popular portfolio companies are Dream11, Myntra, Cure.fit, and Snapdeal# 23+ Exits; most notable exits include Workday, Milkbasket, and SimplilearnDuring the podcast, Vani shares with us how she approaches any new investment, how she suggests the founder to treat any failure, how yoga and meditation have positively impacted her life and more. Notes - 02:50 - “What you can’t dream, you can’t achieve.”10:32 - “What didn’t work can give you an actionable insight.”18:09 - Assessing a founder’s potential vs pedigree23:12 - Having a depth of clarity rather than just being a good storyteller38:54 - Balance to life: Meditation & Yoga41:05 - CXXO Initiative: $10 million fund for women founders

Did you used to get pocket money before the age of 18 to manage your expenses? I personally used to get a fixed & tiny pocket money after 10th, thanks to my parents.When I was in college, I stayed away from my hometown, in a PG with a roommate, unlike me, he didn’t had a fixed or tiny pocket money, he used to get an X amount from his father whenever the previous X amount got over. I was always a bit envious, as to why he has a free flowing pocket money, whereas I have to manage everything (Travel, Accommodation & Misc expenses) in a fixed amount. Fast forward 7 years, I’m a lot thankful to my parents for both -# giving me pocket money, and # keeping it fixed (mostly) on a monthly basis.This helped me in learning how to manage my finances better, which definitely helped, once I got into a job. Btw this is exactly what Sambhav Jain, guest of our today’s episode is trying to do with his company Fampay. Fampay, being a virtual card prepaid card for teenagers, enables them to do online transactions and manage their finances, eventually educating them to be more financially aware down the line as grown-ups. Recently after adding 2 million+ registered users on platform Fampay raised USD 38 million in funding from Elevation Capital and others.During the podcast, Sambhav shares with us how he came across the idea behind Fampay, what were the initial challenges when they approached several banks with this concept and more. Notes - 02:02 - Graduating from IIT Roorkee and working in Product roles06:28 - Concept of pocket money in western countries09:14 - Problem statement of financial literacy among kids in India16:25 - Initial discussion with Elevation Capital & achieving PMF 20:05 - Driving hyper-growth with campus ambassadors 28:14 - Building the product like a community rather than a transactional app30:02 - Initial response from traditional banks32:53 - Working of a Fampay wallet34:48 - Adoption of technology among teenagers

Data access for App development for startups and enterprise is very complex and has a lot of security concerns. It gets even worse when you plan to scale the product.This has vastly changed since Hasura came into existence. Founded by the guest of our today’s episode, Tanmai Gopal, Hasura provides an open-source engine for developers to streamline data access in a secure and scalable way to make app developments easier.Started in 2018, it has seen adoption from thousands of developers across fast-growing startups and Fortune 500 companies.During the podcast, Tanmai shares with us how they ideated Hasura as an open-source engine, and when did they realize the right opportunity to monetize it by launching a commercial model. Notes - 01:22 - Hasura in layman’s term03:56 - Early childhood and graduating from IIT Madras10:21 - “Until you build a product and take it to market, you actually don’t know anything.”13:11 - Launching Hasura as an open-source engine; 2 Mn+ downloads in first year & 100 Mn+ downloads in the second year14:34 - Changing perspective from being bootstrapped to raising VC funding21:23 - Shifting from free open-source to a commercial model25:38 - Milestone around Mission Critical Adoption34:02 - GTM strategy - Free adoption followed by commercial conversion38:50 - Hiring for the Non-dev team41:33 - His advice to entrepreneurs building open-source products

Venture Capital or Angel investments aren’t a must have, to make your startup successful. This has been demonstrated again and again by several bootstrapped startups which have been very successful, namely - GrabOn, Zoho, Zerodha, Wingify & others.The guest of our today’s episode Rajdip Gupta, CEO & Founder, Route Mobile, similarly has an exquisite journey of taking his company from being completely bootstrapped to getting listed in the share market and growing to a market share of Rs.11,000 crore+. Just to understand the faith amongst retail investors in Route Mobile's strong growth potential, you must know that in September 2020 its Rs 600-crore IPO was oversubscribed 74 times. It made a stellar debut with a 105% rise on day one of listing.As a niche player operating in an extremely dynamic, high-growth segment of the cloud-communications space and catering to the digital user engagement needs of enterprises, Route Mobile has a limited number of competitors and no publicly listed rivals. During the podcast, Rajdip shares with us, what are the various offerings Route Mobile has for its enterprise customers, where it stands against its Indian competitors and how he personally tackles things to bring a work-life balance in his daily life. Notes - 01:53 - Creating a story & value from India04:17 - Solutions for enterprise customers10:02 - Scale & revenue breakup across geographies12:25 - Benchmarking against Indian competitors16:07 - Challenges during the early phase of building Route Mobile22:19 - Work-life balance and unavoidable circumstances in a startup journey36:11 - Future plans for Route Mobile

Today most companies around us follow two approaches to presenting their user data via Ads - # Company A - We have 60% of our users coming from Tier-I cities with greater than Rs.50,000 monthly income. # Companies like Uber - Rahul & Rashmi, a couple from Gurgaon take an Uber to their office everyday and get a background verified driver, with a well-sanitized car, at an affordable price. # Companies like Meesho - Sarah, a housewife from Lucknow wanted to support her family, she started her online store with Meesho and now earns Rs.25000 from home. Now which of these companies will you feel more attracted towards? Very like towards Uber & Meesho right, because they showcase real people instead of just numbers.  Well, this is exactly what the guest of our today’s episode, Roshan Abbas also tries to emphasize upon.Throughout his career he has focused on being best at storytelling for various brands. As per him, in order to be a good storyteller, you need to wrap your data with a real person’s journey & life experiences, rather than making it less life-like and treating people like Cohort A, B & C.Roshan has been a radio jockey, theatre actor, TV anchor, writer, director, angel investor & entrepreneur over his career.He credits this to his attitude to - “Listen, Assimilate & Action”.During the podcast, he shares with us how he kept successfully surfing across multiple roles throughout his career, how he picks the companies he wants to invest in, and how he enjoys life along with constantly achieving his goals. Notes - 03:23 - Mastering multiple skills; Creators are curious people05:37 - Scale & opportunities from Radio to Television06:10 - Identifying the next step11:21 - “You can’t have every skill, then you hire for the right skill.”13:17 - Importance of accountability in creativity17:53 - Being a seller of dreams22:34 - Be interesting or be interested26:46 - Building Kommune for young creators28:56 - Being militant with removing distractions42:15 - Future & the change in media consumption48:12 - Importance of having a great hook in storytelling

During the pandemic & lockdown since last year:# Initially people weren’t able to visit a doctor personally;# And, currently both the patient & the doctor try to avoid meeting physically unless it's absolutely necessaryDuring this period, Telemedicine has grown silently and rapidly, revolutionizing Indian healthcare.Recent report by EY, has predicted robust growth in the country’s telemedicine (e-consults & e-pharmacy) sector between now and 2025 – at a 31% compound annual growth rate, securing up to $5.5 billion.And today we have Prasad Kompalli, CEO & Co-founder Mfine, which is acing this tailwind with an over 8x growth in users, and adding 250 hospitals to its platform, taking the total partner hospitals to over 550, in just the initial months of lockdown.Mfine, which was started in 2017, is enabling doctors to diagnose more number of patients, with higher accuracy, thanks to its AI & ML integrations.During the podcast, Prasad talks about their learnings of a customer’s journey on product, his view on the future of telemedicine in India and his advice to first-time entrepreneurs entering this sector.Notes - 02:23 - Growing up in Vijayawada; Engineering background at family10:06 - Key learnings from working at Myntra13:59 - mfine thesis: Power of mobile & healthcare being a data-driven business16:54 - Current Scale: Monthly transactions & Customer journey18:36 - Early investments from Stellaris & Prime Venture Partners29:42 - What worked: Primary care & Digitizing specialist care32:39 - What didn’t work: You can’t inflate the demand37:55 - Advice to first-time health care entrepreneur46:34 - Being a Calm vs Aggressive startup CEO

How often do you see an entrepreneur’s last employer putting equity in their idea? Well, this is exactly what happened with the guest of our today’s episode, Shantanu Deshpande, Founder - Bombay Shaving Company.In 2015, when Shantanu decided to dominate the men's grooming space and he was quitting his job at McKinsey, then his peer’s and seniors didn’t just allow him to leave but decided to back him up with an initial Seed funding.Last year when the country went into lockdown, the company’s revenues increased by 3x. One of the interesting driving factors behind this was the women employees at the company. Their perspective was very straightforward: # Problem Statement: During the lockdown, there was a shortage of women's hair removal products and razors. # Opportunity: They were working for a company, which made razors for a living. # Solution: These women employees then decided to coordinate with the product designers, test the product on themselves, put in their inputs, and get their own women’s razor out in the market.With this the Bombay Shaving Company, which earlier had 27% women customers buying their products for the men in their life (i.e. partners, father, brother) as a gifting option, now had 50% orders coming in from women with a major share of them buying women’s hair removal products. During the podcast, Shantanu shares with us what other tailwinds he leveraged during last year’s lockdown, how he believes in enabling his investors to partially exit from the brand from time to time, and how he derives the best value from his large institutional investors. Notes - 01:38 - Growing up in Florida (US) and moving back to India06:50 - Leaving McKinsey & starting Bombay Shaving Company09:18 - “The richest source of information is a conversation with people who are in it all the time.”17:13 - Tailwinds which enabled 3x revenue post-lockdown in Mar’2019:50 - Channel-wise revenue break-up21:47 - Raising initial seed-round from McKinsey23:30 - “My belief was always, that we should never raise money to buy revenues, we should always raise money to build a brand.”26:24 - Core-target metrics since launch30:02 - 3 Crucial things to winning customers early-on33:07 - Enabling exits for early Angel investors39:57 - “Having good organic traffic is a proxy for brand strength.”44:32 - Deriving best value from financial investors

# Saffola - Cooking Oil# Parachute Advansed - Hair Oil# Nihar Naturals - Hair Oil# Set Wet - Hair Gel# Livon Hair Serum and many more... You must have seen or used at least one of these names in your house, on TV, or in Newspaper Ad right? Do you know what connects all these names? Its Marico Ltd, one of India’s leading consumer products companies operating in the global beauty and wellness space. Marico touches the lives of 1 out of every 3 Indians, through its portfolio of brands. In today’s episode, we have with us Harsh Mariwala, the man behind building Marico over 30+ years, with a Market Cap. of 68,000cr+ and making it a common name in every Indian home.During the podcast, he shares with us how he experienced the Ins & Outs of business from childhood at family’s dinner-table discussions and how he joined the family business - Bombay Oil Industries at an early age, and built Marico, a Fortune India 500 company. Notes - 02:02 - “When business topics get discussed in your presence, then even if you may not be able to add value, you’ll get a good understanding of the business.”04:15 - Early exposure to the brand & business at the age of 2006:02 - Forming Marico as a separate entity in the 1990s11:27 - Building the team at Marico13:50 - “Involvement brings in commitment, and you have to involve people in some organizational issues if you want their commitment.”17:46 - Thought process behind Brand-Building19:54 - First taste of success with Parachute & Saffola oil22:15 - Personal Social Responsibility initiatives by Marico26:19 - Reduction in entry barriers for consumer brands27:47 - Levers of growth as an individual30:11 - Treating your employees as Brand Ambassadors34:33 - Advice to entrepreneurs to pioneer in their segment36:11 - Source of learnings: Books & Thought leaders

In a recent report as per KPMG, “Online gaming industry in India is going to be worth Rs.29,000 crore by FY25.”Have you heard about Nazara Technologies?Probably Yes, when its IPO came in March 2021, as it was very well highlighted in the News, being one of the portfolio companies of Rakesh Jhunjhunwala.Nazara’s founder and the guest of our today’s episode, Nitish Mittersain probably saw this coming much early, almost 20 years back.With its IPO, Nazara gave 80%+ as listing gains to its IPO applicants, this reflects how well the Indian stock market has reacted to a gaming company, and also highlights the potential of India’s gaming industry in years to come.During the podcast, Nitish talks about his journey of building a gaming company in India, when no one believed that gaming as a domain was properly monetizable. He also shares how Nazara got listed in NSE & BSE and how it impacts the company's future growth plans.Notes - 01:14 - Textile business family background; coding games in BASIC02:33 - Started Nazara in 1999 while he was 1st year in college04:27 - 2000 Dot-Com Bubble - “I often say, I did an expensive but enriching MBA, sitting here in Bombay.”06:54 - Focus on Cash Flows; not chasing vanity metrics07:13 - Raising funds & Friends of Nazara07:59 - Acquisition since 2015 - NODWIN Gaming & Nextwave Multimedia among others08:44 - Synergy between the acquirer & the acquiree company10:14 - “Over a 20+ years journey gaming always looked like a mirage in the desert.”13:10 - “Just trying to run a profitable business today may not be good enough.”14:56 - Advantage of being the only listed gaming company20:09 - Source of Revenue: In-app purchases vs Advertising20:51 - What convinced Rakesh Jhunjhunwala to invest?24:53 - Getting listed in Indian markets being a startup

Would you dare to create a TEDx version from scratch for the Indian audience-Right out of college? -Without any good-paying job?-And living on a shoestring budget?Well, that's the story of Supriya Paul, Co-founder, Josh Talks, and the guest of this week’s episode of 100x Entrepreneur. She along with her Co-Founder, Shobhit Banga started Josh Talks in 2015, with a vision to bring access to the right role models for the audience in Tier-II & Tier-III cities. She wanted to create an Indian version of TEDx, that could be accessible in multiple regional languages and bring such stories on the platform which could be easily relatable by their Indian youth.Today Josh Talks has grown leaps and bounds and some of its milestones include -# 2000+ stories# 10 vernacular languages# No-cost career-guidance under Josh Kosh to 500000+ people/month# 1 Mn+ app installs & 100k+ paid users of their e-learning platform, Josh SkillsDuring the podcast, Supriya talks about her journey of building and growing Josh Talks over the years and also shares her insights on what keeps her team aligned and focused on delivering their best.Notes - 02:18 - Starting Josh Talks straight out of college05:27 - Revenue growth over time10:13 - “I think vulnerability & purity in storytelling is what has gotten us this far.”11:52 - What works on YouTube: Consistency, Authenticity, & Packing as per its algorithm14:55 - Moments of self-doubt20:11 - Core metrics for Josh: Talks, Skills & Kosh24:12 - Business targets over the next 2-3 years25:23 - Hiring & retaining quality talent26:01 - All You Need is Josh: Inspiring Stories of Courage and Conviction in 21st Century India27:58 - Defining work-culture & core values at Josh Talks29:25 - Strengths & weakness of both the co-founders31:26 - Connecting with Ankur Warikoo as Mentor & Investor

Have you ever heard about Infotel Broadband Services Limited (IBSL)? Even if you haven’t, I’m very much sure that you can’t deny that you don’t know its current rebranded form. I’ll give you a hint; this company currently has the largest market share in terms of wireless subscribers (i.e. telecom) in India, even greater than Airtel. Yes, you’ve got it right, it's Jio. Before getting rebranded as Jio, the original company IBSL, was the only company that won broadband spectrum in all 22 circles in India in the 4G auction in 2010.And later that year Reliance Industries acquired the company. After Jio’s official launch in September 2016, it gained the first 50 million customers in just 83 days of launch and currently has an overall subscriber base of 414.9 million customers. “That’s the Reliance way of doing things”, quoted by Farooq Adam, during the podcast. What he means is that at Reliance, just the sheer scale at which they launch and operate their product and make their marketing strategy, ensures the success of the product.And when Reliance approached him in 2019 after he had raised the Series-C led by Google, this is exactly what convinced him to combine Fynd with Reliance and support the rollout of JioMart.During the podcast, Farooq talks about the early days at Shopsense (rebranded as Fynd), getting rejected by investors during the first round, and his experience being an Angel Investor. Notes - 01:18 - Early childhood in Kuwait; getting into IIT Bombay 05:01 - Initial stint with Adsale; adding another sale by recommendations & coupons10:12 - Visiting Diesel (clothing store) on Juhu Tara Road (Mumbai)14:58 - Problem statements solved by Shopsense17:24 - Getting benchmarked against Capillary Technologies by investors22:40 - Rebranding Shopsense as Fynd to cater to hyperlocal marketplace31:26 - “How & when you collect your NPS is very interesting.”32:08 - Acquired by Reliance after getting Google-led Series-C funding51:39 - Experience as an Angel investor52:10 - Co-investing with First Cheque VC57:47 - Advice to his portfolio companies59:44 - Book recommendations for founders

Venture debt was introduced in India 15 years ago. However, it has gained traction in the last decade.In the last 6 years itself, approximately $4 bn of debt has been deployed across 150+ deals in India. But, not very often you come across an investor talking proactively about both debt & equity investments in the startup ecosystem! That’s why in this episode we’ve brought Ashvin Chadha from Anicut Capital. During the podcast, Ashvin talks about the various debt funding deals he came across at Anicut, and while he considers debt funding to be lucrative over equity investments over a short period, but for people who are willing to stay invested for over 10-15 years, he points out how we are in the golden age of early-stage investing.He also talks about how a lot of VCs in the Indian Startup ecosystem are already getting 100x returns on their equity investments, we shouldn’t be surprised to see 1000x returns becoming normal in years to come.Notes - 01:56 - Setting up Anicut Capital03:24 - Initial equity & debt investments04:51 - Structuring debt investments by setting up an AIF in 201506:04 - Investing in Sharechat during an internal bridge round09:19 - Exits & thesis with debt investments10:52 - “In my view it takes 10-15 years to build brands in India and if you don’t stay the course, your compounding doesn’t happen.”13:55 - Parameters & mental models while making equity investments15:56 - Learnings from portfolio companies hitting a roadblock24:12 - “We are in the golden age of early stage investing.”26:56 - “A good company will last even in a bad market.”27:07 - Backstory & thesis of investing in Bira 9130:51 - Backstory & thesis of investing in Wingreen Farms42:02 - Backstory & thesis of investing in Neemans

“We don’t think of ourselves as fund managers. The fund manager is someone managing 100s of millions of dollars, your job is largely doing money management. Our job is not to do money management, our job is to look at the new trends, try to meet the smartest of the smartest guys, and somehow try to convince them to take out money, and be a good part of the ecosystem and make other good people within the ecosystem come and talk to us.”Can you ever imagine someone who has been an NGO worker for a long time, suddenly switch careers and;# Setting up a VC firm# Raising $120.9M+# Investing in 102+ companies# Getting 11 exitsWell, that's the story of Madhukar Sinha, Co-founder, India Quotient, and the guest of this week’s episode.Most of us get comfortable in our jobs post the age of 30, let alone the thought of setting up a VC firm. But that’s exactly what Madhukar, along with his Co-founder Anand Lunia did, back in 2012.During the podcast, Madhukar talks about his first experience with 3G, how he didn’t let his NGO background limit his career choices, and much more. Notes - 01:12 - Early life: Growing up in Jamshedpur to working in NGO06:14 - Understanding what India really is, not only in metros, but in terms of Tier-II & Tier-III cities06:47 - NGO background stereotyping & limiting his career choices07:12 - Completing his MBA and joining Aavishkaar10:55 - Experiencing the potential of smartphones after getting his first 3G phone in 201112:32 - Co-founding India Quotient in 2012; at the age of 3515:51 - Being more of Entrepreneur, less of Fund manager26:18 - Not continuing what you aren’t comfortable with32:35 - Making investment decision for early stage companies43:05 - Talking about portfolio companies - Sharechat, Lokal & BharatAgri50:28 - Fund return expectation in 5+ year period57:54 - First Cheque: Investing in unique ideas that don’t directly match India Quotient’s thesis1:02:34 - Getting personalised deal flow via founders of portfolio companies

“Financial independence is nothing but freedom of thought, freedom of action, and I think that’s invaluable. If you have to constantly work in your life to live, then you’ll have all sorts of restrictions.” - quoted by Paras during the podcast.The term “Financial independence” has gained more popularity in Google searches (i.e. Google Trends) post-2020, and we all know why that is.When Covid-19 got widespread last year & brought chaos and anxiety in our lives, then a lot of people experienced job losses, business-shutdowns, which as a ripple effect lead to non-payment of loans, and monetary crisis. This represents making the wrong decisions with choosing where to spend your money.During this period, there was another set of people who were able to save more as a result of working from home (i.e their native place) and not having to pay regular expenses like - house rent (of living in a metro city), groceries, commuting costs, etc. And if you’re wondering, what did most of these people choose to do with their savings?As per CNBC’s recent article -”15% of current retail stock investors began investing in 2020.”Probably because as per Paras, “For most people, the way to becoming financially independent, is to hit a jackpot or lottery.”During the podcast, Paras talks about the money-related choices he made early on in his life. And he doesn’t hesitate to openly talking about the bad choices he made while making his investments and warns our listeners to be cautious of the same. At the same time, he also recommends how one can educate himself/herself in the right way to build a mindset for achieving financial independence.Notes - 02:09 - Meaning of “True Wealth” for him05:15 - “Money creation is obviously not a trivial thing. It requires a non-trivial amount of commitment, intellect, passion, and so on and so forth.” 05:40 - Wingify: 4th attempt of trying to build a startup06:59 - “If money was a primary motivator, I imagine, I would have gone ahead and we would have raised some funding, but we didn’t.”10:15 - His definition of financial wealth 13:29 - #1 mistake in investing: Real estate15:31 - “Chasing safe assets like FD early on is a big mistake.”18:34 - Having 70-80% asset in equity markets22:56 - “Diversification is the only free lunch, in finance.”24:02 - Advice to a 25-year-old on “spending wisely”26:31 - “If you have to constantly work in your life to live, then you’ll have all sorts of restrictions.”27:55 - ULIPs: “The more complex something sounds, the riskier it is.”31:23 - Investing in Index funds34:37 - His ideal investment: being passive, no speculation, & growing faster than inflation35:50 - Treasure to read: Warren Buffett's Annual Letters37:17 - Focusing on what new to do at Wingify39:59 - Following Deep work principle

In this episode, we chat with Amit Kumar Agarwal, NoBroker. NoBroker, as the name suggests eliminates the middle-man/broker most of us have to go through when we look out for our buy/rent a property. NoBroker handles $2 billion worth of transactions on its platform every year and claims to have helped save brokerage worth Rs 1,100 crore last year.During the podcast, Amit shares how he built NoBroker while facing troubles from local brokers and brought it into realization as a broker-free platform at a time when larger competitors like Housing.com and Commonfloor still had brokers on their platform.Notes - 01:39 - Family background & childhood, shifting cities too often06:36 - Challenges while beginning with your Startup in your 30s09:54 - Ideating the concept of NoBroker13:25 - Approaching VCs for initial funding14:37 - Investors seeking the existence of a US/China counterpart22:18 - Choosing BTL advertising over ATL considering the ROI at a premature stage26:02 - Not expanding too fast to multiple cities37:43 - Listening to what your customers want42:58 - Bringing premium Add-on services47:01 - Changes in his personality as a founder in 0 to 1 & 1 to 100 journey

In this episode, we chat with Sanjeev Kapoor, the famous Indian celebrity chef, Padma Shri-awardee, entrepreneur and television personality.He rose to fame after hosting Khana Khazana (an Indian cookery show) in the early 90s. It was the longest-running show of its kind in Asia with over 649 episodes over 19 years.He also holds a Guinness World Record for cooking 918 kg khichdi live at World Food India 2017. In 2017 he was the only chef in Forbes ‘top 100 Indian celebrities’.Sanjeev’s business ventures range from premium cookware and appliances brand Wonderchef to TV channel FoodFood and 65 chain restaurants under different brands in nine countries.During the podcast, Sanjeev talks about creating the content that he personally enjoys and running multiple ventures with partners he trusts and is comfortable with. This conversation is pure gold for someone who’s either currently in or planning to enter the food industry to get a top-level perspective of how things work and what all should you consider and various stages in your journey.Notes - 02:30 - Getting nostalgic with the Khana Khazana show04:54 - Being a content person at heart via books, website, social media, & TV channel07:48 - Working with Pharma companies to bring nutritional foods of medicinal value08:21 - KitFresh via Amazon: Ready to cook fresh meal kit09:19 - 4000+ employees under Sanjeev Kapoor’s Brand 11:12 - Family background & early career16:38 - Being comfortable with discomfort18:57 - Drive to start working on something new23:45 - “If you continue to do things that give you pleasure, satisfaction, & purpose then it's not work, it's something that you’re enjoying all the time.”26:34 - Deciding ownership of actionable in a partnership33:43 - Understanding numbers and building scalable businesses36:55 - Building comfort & trust prior to entering into a partnership

In this episode, we chat with Karan Bajaj, Founder, WhiteHat Jr. From being the CEO at Discovery, to being an author with Penguin Random House & HarperCollins Publishers, to curating his Edtech venture Karan has donned many hats.Founded in November 2018, WhiteHat Jr is focused on helping children between 6 to 14 years in developing commercial-ready games, animations, and apps online using the fundamentals of coding. In August 2020, Whitehat Jr was sold to Byju’s in a $300 million all-cash deal. During the podcast, Karan talks about how he took 3 breaks in his professional career and how they impacted him as a person, he also talks about what roles should a founder play at various growth stages in a startup’s journey.For anyone looking to make a planned approach & setting outcomes for sabbaticals, or for any founder confused with prioritizing the impactful things in their journey at various stages, this conversation can be of great value.Notes - 01:03 - Early childhood & career prior to WhiteHat Jr03:49 - Taking breaks in a professional career04:10 - Becoming consistent with writing - “Natural consequence of living what I thought was a very interesting adventure, an experience that I thought that many people should do.”07:04 - Major career sabbaticals throughout his journey14:24 - Impact of 1st Sabbatical: Understanding that the world is very boundary-less15:06 - Impact of 2nd Sabbatical: Productivity as an individual 15:41 - Impact of 3rd Sabbatical: “If I pick up something, I just have to keep at it every day.”17:00 - Growing leaps and bounds in corporate career after 2nd sabbatical 18:30 - Self-doubts while writing and publishing his books22:04 - Accepting and realising that growth isn’t linear28:43 - Ideating and pursuing WhiteHat Jr34:46 - Initial scale, revenue, and metrics tracked at WhiteHat Jr38:17 - Top mistakes at WhiteHat Jr while blitzscaling41:45 - Being mindful as a founder while facing criticism 43:15 - “The founder in a blitzscaling phase has to let some fires burn.”45:41 - Byju’s & WhiteHat Jr deal: Startup economics for Acquirer, Acquired & Investors51:19 - Enabling 11000+ women teachers on the platform52:07 - Karan’s perspective on the Wolf Gupta’s Ad1:00:14 - WhiteHat Jr’s journey in a book & chapter names for each phase1:04:32 - One major personality change while building WhiteHat Jr

Ranjeet Pratap Singh is the Co-founder & CEO of Pratilipi. Prior to Pratilipi, he worked at Vodafone with stints in Marketing, Retail, and Channel Sales. Pratilipi, is the largest vernacular Indian story-telling platform with over 320,000 writers in 12 languages and over 25+ million Monthly Active Readers. There are several sub-categories and sub-products within the brand such as - Pratilipi Literature, Pratilipi Comics, Pratilipi FM & their latest acquisition IVM Podcasts.During the podcast, Ranjeet talks about simplifying the creation of online consumer internet companies, creating their own definition of growth, giving ownership to employees to define their plan of action, and set their individual North star metrics amongst other work culture practices followed at Pratilipi.Notes - 01:03 - Pratilipi - Vernacular self-published content platform02:53 - Problem statement behind starting Pratilipi05:04 - Onboarding first set of users & building traction on the platform06:11 - Current scale in terms of authors, stories, & readers07:19 - Revenue model: Brand advertising for IVM Podcasts08:34 - Revenue model: Subscription & Virtual gifting for Pratilipi Literature10:22 - Revenue model: Early access model for Pratilipi Comics11:45 - Optimising your odds based on a long-term future as a founder12:49 - Challenges while raising initial funding16:12 - Transparency & Ownership amongst employees19:10 - The thought process behind hiring: “We don’t look at people as dots, but we look at people as journeys.”21:22 - Adopting things from work culture at Freecharge, CRED & Flipkart amongst others25:31 - Setting product-wise North-star & check metrics28:44 - Not following the general Growth Playbook31:22 - Future goals as a platform: Democratizing Storytelling32:33 - Thesis behind Audio Content: IVM Podcast & Pratilipi FM39:24 - Things that didn’t work out at Pratilipi

In this episode, we chat with Malika Datt Sadani & Mohit Sadaani, The Moms Co. which deals with toxic-free products for newborns and mothers.The Mom’s Co’s journey started from a personal experience. Both the couple’s daughters had skin conditions which made them scourge for natural products that were free of toxins and artificial fragrances.During the podcast, they talk about how to build trust amongst customers in D2C products, what are the things a first-time entrepreneur in D2C should consider, and how they’ve built a closely knit community to stay connected with their customers, amongst other things.Notes - 01:12 - Background of The Moms Co.02:32 - Family & career background prior to The Moms Co.03:27 - Meeting each other as life partners & co-founders05:22 - Mindset prior to the launch of the first product07:47 - Raising initial funding for a D2C brand in 201710:22 - Life-changing conversation & insight for Malika in the early days of The Moms Co.16:12 - “How do we change the definition of what mom’s skin, face & hair care look like and allowing us to play into a lot of other very large categories with a very different proposition.”17:32 - Consumer journey over the past 5 years19:04 - Close touch with customers over Whatsapp & Facebook community22:27 - Brand advocates, including Genelia D'Souza to build brand trust24:55 - Challenges while setting up distribution channels29:35 - Advice to D2C entrepreneurs31:36 - Malika’s experience shifting from a home-maker to an entrepreneur38:43 - Founders & Mentors they reach out to for brainstorming

In this episode, we chat with Pravin Agarwala, founder BetterPlace. Blue-collar workforce management is one of the biggest industries in the Indian economy.Urbanization and deeper penetration of the internet have helped players like QuikrJobs, LinkedIn, Just Jobs, Aasaan Jobs, and Google to make inroads into this segment.BetterPlace is India's largest technology platform delivering digital solutions for blue-collar workforce management, throughout the entire value chain. Pravin started Betterplace in January 2015 as a background verification company. However, they eventually realized the need for an enabler to bridge existing demand and supply gaps in the ecosystem, thus moving to a B2B2C business model and creating a digital platform to enable the ecosystem.During the podcast, Pravin talks about defining and solving the challenges for the blue-collar workforce in India and also shares the company's vision to go global soon.Notes - 01:26 - Coming from Dibrugarh (North-east India), working with SAP India03:15 - Backstory behind starting BetterPlace05:20 - Defining Workforce Management Solution for blue-collar employees07:04 - Solving for improving productivity, attrition, time & attendance among other challengesFt3 - First step in the product - Onboarding solution with background verification14:39 - Current key customers, metrics & milestones16:09 - Challenges while raising funding for a SaaS startup impacting blue-collar workers19:58 - Global expansion plans for BetterPlace23:28 - Approach behind the valuation of early-stage SaaS startups26:35 - Focus on: Customer value, Step-by-step approach, Team building among other elements30:18 - Bringing an Angel Investor within the company full-time to build on core principles30:31 - Value addition from investors34:01 - Things he’ll do differently if he got another shot at building BetterPlace37:25 - Starting early in your startup journey as a founder39:40 - Why a founder shouldn’t have a Plan B while starting up?

From investing all his savings in Sahil Barua's Delhivery in 2011 to becoming an angel investor in 130 Indian startups, the story of Abhishek Goyal, Co-founder, Tracxn is worth listening for everyone in the ecosystem.  Being an Ex-Yahoo & Amazon employee, Abhishek stepped into the startup investing ecosystem with Accel Partners in 2008.Traxcn aims to become the largest platform tracking Innovative Startups, Private Companies & Emerging Sectors globally. They track millions of companies, to enable Investors & global corporates to track sectors of their interest effortlessly.During the podcast, Abhishek talks about how to identify founders who’ll make category-creating startups, important signals to predict a brand’s success, starting as an Angel investor in the ecosystem.Notes - 03:06 - Background with Yahoo & Amazon, joining Accel Partners09:58 - The story behind Accel's investment in Flipkart16:33 - Identifying patterns and traits in successful founders18:09 - Unlearning your existing beliefs as an investor22:01 - Explaining Unicorn startups and the general notion of ownership amongst investors29:47 - Importance of customer signals at an early stage31:28 - “Capital doesn’t follow fundamentals, fundamentals follow the capital.”36:10 - “10 years later we as Indians won’t be celebrating Unicorns.”37:44 - Sectors he’s bullish for this decade: SaaS, EdTech, and Banking among others46:42 - Preventing forced exits being an Angel investor49:36 - Advice to first-time investors in Startups55:01 - Reading and keeping himself updated with Startup news

In this episode, we chat with Ashish Jhina & Karthik Venkateswaran, co-founders of Jumbotail, a 5-year-old online wholesale marketplace for grocery and food items. Jumbotail serves more than 30,000 neighborhood stores (popularly known as kiranas in India) in the country with its full-stack B2B e-commerce model, which includes warehouses, a last-mile delivery supply chain network, and a fintech platform for payment and credit solutions to store owners.During the podcast, they talk about breaking down a problem to its finest version and then solving for it, they also talk about how capital has wrongly been seen as a golden solution by most entrepreneurs for solving all challenges at a startup. Notes - 02:44 - Karthik & Ashish’s backgrounds as a Major in the Indian Army and Apple farmer respectively08:55 - First-principle thinking applied at Jumbotail13:57 - Core-Engineering Principle: Build for utility, not for the use case19:24 - Problem statements solved by Jumbotail, for Kirana (Grocery Retailers)23:18 - Capital cannot be an only moat, where “unit economics” are extremely difficult to figure out24:32 - Rapid scale-up pushing towards $250 Mn27:25 - Raising first-funding from Nexus Venture Partners38:16 - Identifying your co-founders at a mature-career stage 

Harpreet Singh Grover founded CoCubes.com, an online platform for assessments and hiring along with his batchmate Vibhore Goyal in 2007 after completing his graduation at IIT, Delhi.  CoCubes was acquired by Aon Hewitt in an all-cash deal in 2016. Harpreet has also authored a book titled Let’s Build a Company along with Vibhore Goyal. This book is a tale of persistence & grit and about a company built in India by two Indian founders. It is written in the hope that entrepreneurs can avoid the mistakes Harpreet and Vibhore made and learn from what they did right.Harpreet is also an active angel investor, with his deals including Chaayos, ShopKirana, and Avail Finance. When it comes to entrepreneurship most people only talk about immersing themselves in the company they’ve been building while ignoring everything else. To contrast with this, during the podcast, Harpreet shares the emotional and personal aspects while making the tough decisions and the importance of spending time with family in an entrepreneur’s life.Join this heart to heart conversation with Harpreet to know how entrepreneurs, while building their dream startup, compromise on their emotional and personal aspects, and how Harpreet’s journey can add value to anyone who is doing a startup and experiencing the ups and downs while building a company in IndiaNotes - 02:47 - Harpreet’s journey: Lowest point as an entrepreneur08:42 - “My best investments were done when I had less money.”15:12 - “At any point in your journey, if you’ve been in a tough spot, talk to someone who has been in that tough spot.”21:30 - “Companies are not sold, they are bought.”22:16 - Life after the acquisition 29:12 - Importance of having family time in an entrepreneur’s life35:19 - What choices he would have changed in life, 10-12 years back?39:42 - Being an Entrepreneur: Solving for simple problems

In this episode, we chat with Mitesh Shah, who has headed finance at startups like Ola, BookMyShow & Being Human Clothing, and currently is co-founder at Inflection Point Ventures. IPV comprises about 4,000 investors, who are CXOs at various top of line brands across the globe. Till date it has been part of 55 deals and these include names like Milkbasket, Blusmart, Truly Madly, and Multibhashi among others.During the podcast, Mitesh emphasizes how the average early startup mortality rate is generally 70-80% across industry and has been brought down to 30-40% in the case of IPV portfolio companies. And he credits this to the robust support system between startup founders and IPVs extensive network of CXOs who guide and enable them to solve problems across hiring, growth, and monetization amongst others, with their rich experience.For any early-stage founder looking to raise funding, or CXOs who wish to contribute to the Indian startup ecosystem, this conversation can be of great value, and help them take their first step with a structured approach.Notes - 02:20 - From being a traditional CFO to becoming a VC 05:47 - What role does Inflection Point Ventures play?07:01 - Helping the founders with CXOs on platforms09:35 - Back Story: Investing & exiting from BharatPe10:56 - IPV Thesis: “Businesses will keep pivoting, invest in great founders.”19:05 - Portfolio investments in E-vehicles, Healthcare, SaaS among other sectors28:02 - Message to founders: “Be very selective & critical while choosing the investor you want to have.”

In this episode, we chat with Ghazal and Varun Alagh, Co-founders, Mamaearth. Ghazal & Varun’s entrepreneurial journey began when they were expecting their first baby and were on the lookout to ensure that they could use the best childcare products to keep their baby safe. But what came up as a shock for them was that every product out there had some or the other form of harmful chemical component.This experience drove the duo to create then a babycare brand: Mamaearth.Mamaearth is Asia’s first brand with MadeSafe certified products and has recently crossed Rs.500 crore revenue run rate.During the podcast, they talk about how they initially started interacting and understanding their future customers and their concerns. They also share how they built a closely-knit community of parents with a newborn where prior to every product launch, they would take feedback from them, and then they’d launch the product after working on their suggestions.For anyone looking to start up a D2C brand, this conversation can be of great value. From building a close connection with your prospective customers to earning their trust to building your brand, to differentiating your brand vs other players, this podcast has it all.Notes - 03:13 - Their personal experience which led to founding Mamaearth04:30 - Career prior to Mamaearth07:42 - Things to prioritise early on to build a base for a D2C brand11:28 - Top-seller product categories at Mamaearth13:36 - Journey & Challenges from 0 to $1 Mn ARR and beyond15:34 - Major milestones and fundraises17:43 - Difference in Mamaearth’s growth strategy vs other D2C brands21:47 - Future plans with Mamaearth 23:38 - Connecting & Understanding with the first few customers (mothers)26:51 - Identifying vendors for packing, shipping, and production29:02 - Bringing Shilpa Shetty on board as a Brand Ambassador & Investor33:11 - Leveraging Influencer marketing to propel growth35:01 - What they admire in each other as Co-founders & life partners

In this episode, we chat with Dilipkumar Khandelwal, Limited Partner with Stellaris Venture Partners & Fireside Ventures, and an active Angel Investor in 25+ companies.He’s Ex-President at SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud business and came closer to the startup community in late 2016.He has keen interest in D2C, Consumer-Tech and B2B SaaS. Some of his portfolio companies include Whatfix, Signzy, Moglix, Yellow Messenger, Credgenics, and Pepper Content among others. During the podcast, he shares how he initially got introduced to investing in startups and began building his portfolio.For anyone looking to begin investing in startups either by their own-self as an Angel Investor or as an LP with a VC firm, this conversation can be of great value. From building your own thesis to curating an exit strategy, this podcast will really help you through it.Notes - 00:59 - From a Traditional Rajasthani business family to Investor in Early stage04:28 - First interaction to Startups via Alok Goyal - Stellaris Venture Partners07:12 - Change in perspective; investing in startups08:51 - Thesis: Solving small but focused & specific problem statements11:15 - Scaling can only work with the overall fundamental mechanism of the Org15:09 - Making a product scalable is different vs adding more features18:11 - Exit strategy as an Angel Investor27:30 - Importance of deeper understanding with a sectoral perspective28:14 - Upcoming trends over the next decade

In this episode, we chat with Arun Venkatachalam, who comes from the Murugappa Group - family, and is also an active Angel Investor. Arun has invested in 25+ companies including Posist, ZoomCar, ZestMoney, AdPushup among others. And he has also got successful exits from companies like Innov8 CoWorking (acquired by OYO Rooms), Yourbus (acquired by Naspers/Ibibo Group), Endless Robotics (acquired by Mojay) etc. During the podcast, he also shares how he initially invested in equity markets to build his own capital, which he later invested in his studies and his portfolio companies.For anyone looking to start up as an Angel investor, this conversation can be of great value. From gaining a deep understanding of a particular space, to sourcing potential deals, to making your first investment, this podcast will really help you start and build.Notes - 00:55 - Belonging to Murugappa Group (Family Enterprise); starting in Investment Banking04:56 - Initial investments as an Angel investor07:42 - “In order to be an expert down the line, someone has to start somewhere.” 12:50 - Creating an impact on Cap-table25:21 - Investing in Recykal; creating impact because of ESG28:01 - Advice for a first time Angel investor32:12 - Having a conservative approach as an Angel investor34:32 - “Opportunity isn’t in running with the herd, it's always in running against the herd.”36:51 - Finding investment deals as a first-time investor39:17 - Having a nuanced view while investing in Fintech

In this episode, we chat with Nishith Rastogi, Founder of Locus.sh; a startup that uses technology and proprietary algorithms to provide smart logistics solutions to businesses such as route optimisation, real-time tracking, insights, and analytics, vehicle allocation, and utilisation.In 2015, Nishith along with his former AWS-colleague Geet Garg, built RideSafe, a real-time route deviation detection, for passenger safety in cabs. However, they eventually realised the potential of this concept in logistics & supply chain, which led to pivoting to Locus.Apart from India, Locus.sh is present in Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh, San Francisco, and the East Coast.For anyone looking to explore horizontal pivot or growth strategy, this conversation can add great value. From identifying the problem statement to creating customer-focused solutions, by leveraging a committed team & inward focus for efficiency, this podcast will guide you through it all.Notes - 01:55 - Graduating from BITS Pilani, joining Amazon03:11 - Creating RideSafe, a geo-tracking app for women’s safety04:26 - Identifying the problem statement in supply chain & logistics05:53 - Early adopters of Locus.sh09:30 - Having more PhD’s in the team than engineers early-on11:58 - Onboarding experience with Unilever; as first enterprise customer17:56 - Scale up journey from India to 20+ countries22:15 - Clarity of purpose both as a startup & founder30:40 - Inward focus on efficiency in terms of capital31:20 - Cultural shift with the growth of Locus.sh31:35 - Focus while hiring: Ambition, Commitment & Integrity36:48 - Concept of “Yes process, but no policy”.39:21 - Implementation & Ideation OKRs42:01 - Helpful books & resources

In this episode, we chat with Bhaskar Majumdar, Founder of Unicorn India Ventures; an early-stage fund with portfolio companies such as - Inc42, OPEN Bank, and VLCC’s VanityCube among others. Bhaskar spent his early career in various Media companies like - Zee Network & Times Group. He also had an entrepreneurial stint with Recreate Solutions in 2001, which he later sold to US systems integrator. He has since been an investor in several early-stage technology startups over the years, in India and the UK.For anyone looking to start up in unconventional sectors, this conversation can add a great value. From identifying the problem statement to creating digital solutions, by leveraging trends & technology, this podcast will guide you through it all.Notes - 02:04 - Early career in Media domain and founding Unicorn India Ventures04:25 - Traditional mistake - “Finding a Co-founder whose skillset is exactly complementary to your own”.06:26 - Identifying portfolio companies in uncommon sectors08:04 - Thesis behind investments: Digitization of old, rugged & broken systems11:07 - Investing in Neo Banks based upon the trend shift in large banks abroad16:59 - Enabling Indian portfolio companies to go global

In this episode, we chat with Geetha Manjunath, Founder of NIRAMAI; one of India’s most awarded health tech startups using AI to solve the detection of early-stage breast cancer. Prior to NIRAMAI, Geetha has made her mark at CDAC, HP & Xerox, with her 25+ years of research and innovation background.Set up in 2016, NIRAMAI is India’s only startup among CB Insights’ 100 most promising AI startups. For anyone exploring health tech, this conversation would be of great value. From identifying the problem statement to creating affordable solutions for the end-user, by leveraging AI & technology, this podcast will guide you through it all.Notes - 01:33 - Her belief in “Karma Yoga”05:11 - Family background and upbringing06:20 - Getting into IISc, learned - “Enjoying the newness of something”07:36 - Joining CDAC -  Member of the team that developed the First Indian Supercomputer10:23 - NIRAMAI’s cause - Enabling early-stage detection of Breast Cancer15:16 - Identifying problem statements and creating solutions20:11 - Partnering with hospitals and health startups21:54 - Mammography vs NIRAMAI screening (in terms of OpEx & CapEx)29:06 - Challenges while fundraising as a Healthcare startup34:33 - Opportunities for Healthcare startups in India36:10 - Challenges Healthcare startups should brace up for42:53 - Future plans at NIRAMAI

In this episode, we chat with Viraj Sheth, Co-founder, Monk Entertainment and the man behind one of the fastest-growing Influencer marketing agencies in India. At the age of 24, Viraj started his entrepreneurial journey with his college senior Ranveer Allahbadia who is better known as BeerBiceps on social media. In this episode, catch Viraj talking about starting Monk Entertainment, getting their first few clients, achieving their current scale, working with companies like Nykaa Men, MamaEarth and much more. For anyone looking to explore influencer marketing, this conversation would be of great value. From building an audience by sharing about your niche, to having a long term vision when working with a brand, this podcast will guide you through it all.Notes - 01:14 - Starting Monk Entertainment with Ranveer Allahbadia06:33 - Working part-time on acquiring clients and Quitting a stable job08:07 - Growing the startup at the age of 2510:11 - Current scale at Monk-E15:35 - Building monetization & business model with creators19:39 - What differentiates them from other Influencer Marketing Agencies?22:16 - Setting the right practices for influencers while interacting with brands23:40 - How is India’s influencer market space evolving?26:27 - Segmenting creators 30:51 - Two rules to grow the audience on Twitter35:22 - Structuring and organizing the workflow at Monk-E39:50 - Learnings from Ranveer Allahbadia

On our 102nd episode, we chat with Jon Sakoda, Founder, Decibel Partners, a Cisco-backed venture fund. Jon founded Decibel to push through the conventional boundaries of early-stage investing in SaaS startups. After being an entrepreneur for a few years and working as a General Partner at New Enterprise Associates, Jon decided to set up Decibel Partners. With Decibel, Jon’s vision was probably an industry-first approach to provide a way for entrepreneurs to get access to unparalleled resources at a time and stage when they need it most.In this episode, catch Jon talking about pivoting as an entrepreneur, finding the right coach to guide you through your startup journey, and much more. Notes - 01:39 - “I’m a recovering entrepreneur.”06:29 - Pivoting and finding product-market fit09:11 - Partnership with Cisco13:20 - Leveraging strongholds of industry dominant LPs in the VC firm17:20 - “What makes you great in getting you from 0 to 1, may not be great in getting you from 1 to 10 or 10 to 100.”23:10 - Coaching for early-stage founders; for Performance and Efficiency29:27 - Having an Advisor v/s having a Coach as an early-stage founder32:30 - “You should be more conscious about who you want to work with, rather than, where you want to work.”

The guest for our 101st episode of 100xEntrepreneur is Abhishek Asthana, Founder, Ginger Monkey, and the man behind one of the most followed accounts on Twitter, @GabbbarSingh with 1.3 Million followers. He is amongst the few who have transitioned from an engineer to a successful marketer. He has been the brains behind some of the marketing campaigns at AirAsia, Bounce, Durex, and Urban Company among others.It was in 2019 when he decided to help companies with their branding and marketing strategies by founding Ginger Monkey. In this episode, catch Abhishek talking about starting GingerMonkey, working with AirAsia, Durex India, Urban Company, and much more. For anyone looking to explore digital marketing, this conversation would be of great value. From building an audience by tapping your creative side, to building a brand for a D2C company to reach your customers, this podcast will guide you through it all.Notes - 01:39 - Abhishek’s journey as an engineer03:28 - Corrupted by Twitter04:21 - Getting featured in Outlook while doing his MBA06:37 - Founding GingerMonkey as a first-gen Entrepreneur08:02 - Taking calculated risk while setting up the business09:17 - Key milestones of GingerMonkey’s journey11:12 - “We don’t have a BD team, our clients are our BD team. It’s a complete word of mouth.”16:39 - Viral campaigns for Schindler - Getting Ankur Warikoo & Ranveer Allahbadia19:17 - Creating and going viral with @GabbbarSingh on Twitter21:43 - “If you’re not able to monetize your hobby, it will die.”32:02 - Indian D2C brands leveraging digital marketing38:18 - Branding without burning money on advertising44:12 - Reaching out to early adopters being a new D2C brand

Our guest for the 100th episode of 100x Entrepreneur Kunal Bahl is best known as the co-founder of Snapdeal & Titan Capital.He co-founded Snapdeal back in 2007 along with his high school friend Rohit Bansal. It initially started as a daily deals platform but soon expanded to become one of the largest online marketplaces in India. Over the years, Kunal has mentored and invested in several early-stage entrepreneurs. In 2011, he decided to formalize it by setting up Titan Capital. Titan Capital has invested in the likes of Ola, Urban Company, Mamaearth, and Bira among others.In this episode, catch Kunal talking about starting Snapdeal, guiding and investing in early-stage founders, having the drive to keep going as an entrepreneur, and much more. For anyone looking to explore entrepreneurship, this conversation is worth its weight in gold. From learning from your own mistakes & failures to keep going even when you want to give up your entrepreneurial dream, this podcast will guide you through it all.Notes - 01:43 - Launching Snapdeal after getting H1-B Visa rejected03:59 - Pivoting from coupons marketplace to a marketplace for physical products05:17 - “Identifying the type of businesses Rohit and I like to build”12:01 - Why not fearing being wrong/failing is important13:29 - “Our greatest powers will come from our greatest wounds”15:04 - What drives Kunal even after 13 years as an entrepreneur18:29 - Tectonic shifts in the Startup ecosystem over the last decade26:42 - Investing in D2C companies; Beardo, Mamaearth, & OZiva, etc39:02 - Investing in Urban Company based on their customer-first approach43:32 - Investing in companies prior to Product-Market Fit 51:48 - Starting up as an Angel Investor and eventually setting up Titan Capital56:59 - What has changed for Kunal after becoming a parent

Kunal Kapoor is someone who dons many hats - an actor, director, and entrepreneur. Some of the well-known movies he has been a part of - Rang De Basanti, Don 2, and Dear Zindagi among others.In 2012, he joined hands with Varun Sheth & Zaheer Adenwala with a mission to create a change in society and connect people to access healthcare and share happiness and co-founded Ketto. Over the years, Ketto has emerged as Asia's most trusted crowdfunding platform with a network of over 55 lakh donors who have funded around 2 lakh, online fundraisers. So Ketto as a platform has successfully raised over ₹1100 crore in online donations since its debut in 2012.In this episode, catch Kunal talking about becoming an entrepreneur, what’s it like running an online crowd-funding platform, gaining the trust of investors in the vision, and much more. To anyone looking to get into the crowdfunding space, this conversation is a great place to start. From making the right use of technology to building a sustainable business model for investors, this podcast will guide you through all.Notes - 01:30 - Intro of Kunal Kapoor & Ketto02:16 - Becoming an Entrepreneur & Co-founding Ketto03:27 - Democratization of Capital04:12 - Initial challenges with Ketto05:17 - Building an online presence for NGOs09:41 - Future plans at Ketto around medical & health services12:15 - Ketto’s impact during the pandemic14:20 - Business model at Ketto (As a Profit venture)16:46 - “Building a tech company is like bodybuilding, but building a tech company with a celebrity is like bodybuilding on steroids.”18:47 - Growth & Scaling-up plans at Ketto23:24 - Essential mental models for Kunal as an entrepreneur25:31 - “Whether it’s acting or entrepreneurship, it’s not as glamorous as it looks.”

In this episode of 100xEntrepreneur Podcast, we chat with Krishna Kumar, Founder & CEO, CropIn Technology- a leading "Full-Stack AgTech"​ organization that provides SaaS-based solutions to agribusinesses globally. CropIn serves 220+ agribusinesses and numerous governments and non-government organizations present in over 52 countries. CropIn has digitized over 5 million acres of farmland, enriched the lives of nearly 2.1 million farmers, and gathered data on 265 crops and 3,500 crop varieties. In this episode, Krishna shares his journey of being the change-maker and being one of the first entrepreneurs to step into Agritech in India.Listen to this podcast to learn about:01:57 - Intro of Krishna & his journey04:08 - Interacting with farmers and key-stakeholders within the Agri-Ecosystem05:10 - Identifying the problem statement06:43 - Building the team at CropIn10:30 - First project with Safal- a subsidiary of the National Dairy Development Board15:12 - Pooling initial $10k from his friends19:50 - Scaling up from first few clients to going global in 52 countries28:56 - Enabling banking ecosystem for lending & insurance for farmers34:55 - Tech Products & offerings from CropIn for farmers42:49 - Leveraging AI to transforming agriculture at scale45:15 - Potential for upcoming Agritech startups in India47:18 - Adoption of Agritech offerings by Enterprises

In this episode of 100xEntrepreneur Podcast, we chat with Shailesh Ghorpade, Managing Partner and CIO, Exfinity Venture PartnersThroughout the podcast, Shailesh shares his deep understanding of the SaaS startups building for Enterprises from his close to two decades of experience working at Infosys, Suzlon & Azure Capital, and others.02:31 - Intro of Shailesh03:25 - Background in the VC ecosystem06:07 - Major milestones at Exfinity Venture Partners08:36 - Fund growth over-time & thesis change09:50 - Investing early-on in AI startups like Mad Street Den13:29 - Identifying Mega-trends while looking out for potential portfolio companies17:33 - Differentiating factor between top portfolio companies vs other portfolio companies funded around the same time19:59 - Essential fundamentals to get from 0 to $1Mn ARR early-on22:52 - Standing out amongst thousands of SaaS businesses in India25:47 - Approaching Enterprises to validate problem statements as a SaaS founder35:23 - Challenges restricting founders in between $1Mn to $10Mn ARR39:50 - India market not completely ready for SaaS offerings48:39 - Hiring the right people for Enterprise SaaS startups59:55 - Book Recommendation - Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach

In this episode of 100xEntrepreneur Podcast, we take you through the journey of Pranav Pai. He early on in his career implemented learnings from his father’s (Mohandas Pai) in his work and curated new approaches to finding horizontal & uncommon investment ideas. Listen to this podcast to learn about:Notes - 00:11 - Intro of Pranav & 3one4 Capital01:50 - Influence of upbringing and early career choices05:25 - Background and setting up of Aarin Capital by Mohandas Pai08:17 - Learnings & practices at 3one4 Capital, inspired from Aarin Capital17:25 - Balancing the Venture fund performance & relationship with LPs18:33 - Investing early-on in uncommon ideas like - Licious & Yulu22:17 - Investing in horizontal businesses like Darwinbox27:48 - Fund-III - Lookout for New format for Indian digital citizens29:12 - Changes in Fund-III - More variance & verticals35:42 - “Not enough Indian capital is available for Indian funds to raise.” 38:21 - Top 3 advice from his father - T.V. Mohandas Pai

In this special episode of 100xEntrepreneur Podcast, we have Sanjay Swamy & T.N. Hari with us who were once best friends in School. After many years, they reunited again to write a book - “Sailing Through a Storm: Making a Crisis Work for You”.Sanjay Swamy is the Founding Managing Partner of Prime Venture Partners. Sanjay who also co-founded ZipDial and EzeTap is known for his sense of humour and his impeccable expertise over fintech.T. N. Hari is the Chief People Officer at BigBasket. Hari is an advisor and mentor to numerous young entrepreneurs and startups. He is also a Strategic Advisor at Fundamentum, a growth Fund, co-founded by Nandan Nilekani and Sanjeev Aggarwal.Listen to this podcast to learn about:Notes - 00:31 - Intro of Sanjay and Hari01:52 - Background story of their friendship03:28 - Idea of writing a book together06:43 - “Socially nobody likes to talks about things which are not going well” - Sanjay Swamy07:31 - Biggest crisis faced in personal lives24:07 - Experiences/Lessons from the crises37:49 - Leadership traits a person must possess to make a crisis work

In this episode of 100xEntrepreneur Podcast, we take you through the journey of Ashwini Asokan, Founder & CEO, Mad Street Den. During the conversation, Ashwini shares how she built the processes for scale while building the team, delivering the best value prop to customers, and more.Listen to this podcast to learn about:00:59 - Serendipity, luck, or intent? What initiated her journey in the creative field of AI?03:11 - Influence of Carnegie Mellon University on her career05:16 - Initial days of Mad Street Den07:51 - Challenges while building an AI startup in India08:08 - Building Vue.ai after 3 years of deep-research11:42 - Essence of storytelling in positioning their offerings14:28 - Building the team to scale to $1 Mn ARR24:32 - Getting Sequoia India, Exfinity, GrowX, and FalconEdge on board27:41 - Building processes to reach from $1 Mn to $10 Mn ARR35:31 - Learnings/Advice to early-stage SaaS founders38:18 - Early-stage founders comparing their journey vs some other founders’46:19 - Has her “Why” behind starting Mad Street Den changed during her journey?

“Always make more mistakes but make sure to recover quickly & learn from them.”In this episode of 100xEntrepreneur Podcast, we take you through the journey of Beerud Sheth, Founder and CEO of Gupshup, the leading smart messaging platform. He previously founded Elance (now Upwork), which pioneered the gig economy and went IPO in 2018.Throughout the podcast, Beerud shares his experience of over 22 years as an Entrepreneur building Elance and Gupshup.Listen to this podcast to learn about:Notes - 00:30 - His journey from IIT Bombay & MIT to founding Elance & Gupshup05:21 - Transitioning from a Wall-Street trader to an entrepreneur07:55 - How did the idea of Elance come up?10:02 - Key pivotal moments during his early days of entrepreneurship13:57 - Scale at which Upwork was operating when he left & why did he leave?22:56 - How did the idea of Gupshup come up?26:50 - Growing Gupshup to $100 Million ARR and plans of taking it to IPO30:41 - Highlights of the recent partnership with WhatsApp Business45:09 - Grit, perseverance & mental fortitude necessary for an entrepreneur47:23 - Learnings from his mistakes from over 22 years as an entrepreneur49:33 - Looking at resume value vs other soft-attributes while hiring

In this episode of 100xEntrepreneur Podcast, we take you through the journey of Shripriya Mahesh from growing up in Madras (India) to working with eBay & Omidyar Network, making Films, battling cancer while founding Spero Ventures.Prior to Spero Ventures, she led Emerging Tech investing at Omidyar Network. Shripriya has been an active angel investor in, and board member or advisor to, private technology companies throughout her career. Shripriya formerly held several leadership roles at eBay including as Vice President of Product Marketing (US, revenue), and as Vice President of Global Product Management. Shripriya has an MBA from Harvard Business School, an MFA in Film from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and a B.A. in Economics from Stella Maris College, Madras University.Listen to this podcast to learn about:Notes - 00:58 - From growing up in India in the early 90s to moving to the US02:50 - Doing MBA from HBS & moving to Bay Area09:26 - After eBay what prompted her to move to NYC to do a film-making Course?15:47 - Joining Omidyar Network and later starting Spero Ventures21:39 - Investing in mission-driven founders23:44 - Battling cancer and building Spero Ventures29:09 - “How technology is designed/biased towards the mainstream audience”.30:51 - Building empathy in technology36:53 - “The mission & business model of a company needs to be perfectly aligned”.37:58 - Her perspective of Gen-Z’s mission-driven attitude to make the world a better place

In this episode of 100xEntrepreneur Podcast, we take you through Jay Vijayan’s journey from working with Tesla, VMware, Oracle to building a Billion Dollar Company, Tekion. Tekion has raised $150 million as part of its Series C financing led by private equity firm Advent International, at over $1 billion valuation.Jay’s insights which we discuss during the podcast are on -Notes - 00:58 - From working at Oracle, VMware, & Tesla to Founding Tekion 05:21 - From bootstrapping to getting VC funding10:25 - Thoughts on Founder & VC alignment13:40 - Challenges for startups in the Automotive retail industry16:13 - Building a single platform for OEMs, dealers & customers22:25 - Getting General Motors, Nissan–Mitsubishi, FM Capital, Exor (Fiat Chrysler, Ferrari) on Tekion’s cap table24:02 - Developing end-to-end solution for Mid-Small Dealers - Automotive Retail Cloud31:08 - ARR growth42:19 - Creating transparency for customers while buying a new car49:52 - “Life is a never-ending journey of learnings”.54:58 - What has always stopped him from settling down?58:19 - “When an egg-shell break from within - Life begins, but when it breaks from outside - Life ends.”- Jay’s philosophy on continuously pushing himself 1:03:25 - What made Elon Musk approach Jay twice in a span of 12 months for the CIO role at Tesla1:14:17 - What core things he learned from working with Elon at Tesla?

In this episode of 100xEntrepreneur Podcast, we take you through the journey of Priya Mohan, Startup Sensei, Venture Highway. She became a VC after exiting her Edtech Startup - Vidyartha to Byju’s.During the podcast, Priya shares her story of breaking the glass ceiling, being one of the few women leaders in the Indian Venture Capital industry. Listen to this podcast to learn about:Notes - 06:23 - Problem Statement solved by her first venture Vidyartha11:30 - Having clarity to become a VC post-exiting as a founder14:56 - Investing experience in Swiflearn being a parent & ex-Edtech founder16:58 - Portfolio companies where she has led investments 19:36 - How does Venture Highway differentiate itself from other VC firms?23:03 - “Having the opportunity to learn from Failures”.23:48 - “The biggest bias is Confirmation Bias”.25:52 - Pros & Cons of being a VC with a background as an Entrepreneur34:01 - “There’s no good or bad news, there’s just news”41:38 - Recommended read for listeners - “Principles” by Ray Dalio

In this episode of 100xEntrepreneur Podcast, we take you through the journey of Aloke Bajpai building ixigo over the last 13 years.Aloke is one of the few founders who experienced & survived the 2008 crisis. During the podcast, he shares how ixigo applied similar strategies and learnings to tackle the current pandemic. Aloke’s insights which we discuss during the podcast are on -00:28 - USP of ixigo - Built its major user base organically01:36 - Building quirky sharable content around travel03:56 - Where does ixigo stands in terms of net profits & GMV for FY20?07:26 - Launching ixigo assured & TARA assistant (i.e. Travel agent of the future)10:42 - How travel is going to open up in the next 6-12 months?13:50 - His lessons from surviving the 2008-crisis22:35 - 20% of ex-ixigo employees becoming entrepreneurs24:50 - Key-value props which have pushed ixigo into a higher orbit against its competitors28:49 - “ixigo Train App” having higher numbers of users vs all of its travel competitors apps combined31:19 - Pursuing Ph.D. in Survival Sciences32:39 - Identifying organic growth hacks to tackle Zero-budget marketing42:50 - Raising capital after the 2008-crisis50:45 - Destination for ixigo ahead: Becoming the most loved OTA in India56:33 - Mentoring first-time entrepreneurs & supporting them as an Angel Investor

In this episode of 100xEntrepreneur Podcast, we take you through the investment thesis opted by Jishnu Bhattacharjee, Managing Director, Nexus Venture Partners, behind investments in SaaS platforms like - Postman, Druva, & Observe.AI among others.Jishnu began his stint in the VC world with Nexus VP in 2008, and since then he has been part of many cross-border investments in SaaS startups.Jishnu’s insights which we discuss during the podcast are on -Notes - 00:28 - Joining Georgia Tech for MS & Ph.D.03:02 - Finding his first job offer based on his Ph.D. research paper05:32 - Joining Business school to move-out of his regular desk-job06:10 - Connecting with Naren during the early days of Nexus10:52 - Why did he choose to focus only on SaaS?15:27 - Journey of his first SaaS investment, Gluster which later got acquired by Red Hat17:33 - Discovery of Postman23:49 - Nexus being one of the few VC firms to have a common cross-border investment team & fund25:41 - “Product-first thinking” the common trait of all the SaaS investments by Nexus VP33:30 - How did organic growth come early for companies like Druva & Postman?43:37 - Key aspects influencing Postman’s valuation going forward51:37 - Broadening the horizon being an Entrepreneur- “Think broadly but act narrowly”58:22 - Thesis for future investments in SaaS

In this episode, we bring Shanti Mohan, Founder, LetsVenture on the 100x Entrepreneur podcast who has been enabling Investors & Entrepreneurs to meet each other and make the best investments happen.Shanti with her experience at LetsVenture of seeing over 260+ funding rounds, helps us understand what distinguishes the good vs bad in terms of founders, investors, and deals in great detail.Listen to this podcast to learn about:Notes - 00:28 - Building LetsVenture being a 2nd-time entrepreneur 05:35 - Solving the problem of ACCESS15:05 - Serving as a marketplace for founders to fundraise16:12 - Enabling first-time investors to co-invest with Lead investors 17:42 - Building LetsVenture Plus for family offices and HNIs18:58 - Building MyStartupEquity for founders to manage their Cap. table & ESOP 23:31 - Helping founders and investors with legal compliance and due diligence 31:12 - What leads to failed transactions38:22 - Insights for angel investors40:39 - On competition from platforms like AngelList46:07 - Angel Investing as an asset-class then and now

In this episode of 100x Entrepreneur Podcast, we take you through the investment thesis of Rahul Chowdhri, behind investments in D2C, E-commerce & Edtech platforms like - Mamaearth, Shop101, & Swiflearn respectively.We also discuss the common question a new founder thinks about while entering the Edtech sector, “Is the Indian Edtech sector saturated with the large players like Byju’s, Unacademy, and other presents in the market?”.Rahul’s insights which we discuss during the podcast are on -Notes - 00:56 - His journey from working at BCG to joining Helion Ventures & then founding Stellaris Venture Partners03:25 - Sectors at which he looks after - Consumer Retail, Edtech, Agritech, Horizontal Content & Social Network platforms04:07 - Thesis behind investing in Mamaearth - Founder’s understanding of brand-perspective & online-thinking11:14 - Can digital-first D2C brands achieve $100M+ ARR & achieve $500M+ Valuation?12:10 - Moats which digital-first D2C brands can build to stay ahead of competitors14:10 - Indian D2C brands which he admires and why - OZiva, FableStreet, Yoga Bar16:35 - Are there still opportunities left for new players in Edtech, with large businesses like Byju’s & Unacademy already present?20:10 - Thesis behind investing in Swiflearn and the problem they are solving? 25:56 - Thesis behind investing in Shop101 & the company’s growth so far30:21 - Investments where their thesis didn’t work out and what were their learnings from it?36:53 - Biases among VCs & founders about “What models & monetizations would work out?”

In this episode of 100xEntrepreneur Podcast, we have interacted with Mohan Lakhamraju where he shared his journey of building Great Learning and Great Lakes Institute of Management.Mohan initially worked with Tiger Global Management for 3 years, setting up their India office. During this period one of his focus areas was the education sector in India and South-east Asian markets.This was how he developed an inclination towards the education sector and decided to set-up a B-school specifically catering to management professionals in the Energy sector.Notes - 01:20 - Journey from IIT Bombay, UC Berkeley & Stanford University to joining Tiger Global06:19 - Realising himself to be more of an Entrepreneur than an Investor07:13 - Taking insights for online learning from the early journey of Coursera08:56 - How has high-quality education impacted his journey?10:15 - “Most people never experience excellence”17:05 - Learnings while building Great lakes & Great learning?23:33 - At what scale Great learning is currently operating in terms of enrollments & programs31:09 - What is the opportunity cost of not learning or not doing something new?38:50 - How is Great learning helping colleges & universities conduct effective online classes with their platform?43:36 - His viewpoint on the future for Edtech in India49:22 - His advice for entrepreneurs looking to build Edtech startups

In this episode, we are in discussion with Amit Somani, Managing Partner, Prime Ventures. Also bringing to you an entirely new format, in this episode, we discuss what goes behind building a successful podcast.Some of the key points which Amit & Siddhartha discussed and their experiences during the podcast were -01:07 - Idea to start a podcast and how has the journey been so far?05:19 - What have been their learnings being the host at a podcast?06:25 - How to go about and solve core problem statements like content creation & distribution while running a podcast?13:25 - What were the memorable moments while recording the podcast?15:43 - How did they improvise themselves and became a better podcast host overtime?18:04 - How to differentiate between open-ended & close-ended questions during a podcast and make the conversation more open & free-flowing?19:35 - How has being a podcast host helped them in their personal & professional life?23:21 - How to be an interesting guest?29:29 - What are some of their recommendations to someone who wants to start podcasting?

After having an elaborate educational and career background in finance, right from becoming a CA & CFA to working at Morgan & Stanley and Citi, Ankur decided to join BlackSoil Capital.BlackSoil, growing fast into the Venture Debt fund space, has so far disbursed over Rs.450crore+ to VC backed start-ups & growth companies.Some of the notable startups under its portfolio are EarlySalary, Vogo, & Nearbuy among others. In this podcast, Ankur seeks to help our listeners understand the entire Venture Debt fund ecosystem and its working in a better way.Notes - 00:38 - Founding BlackSoil and initial focus areas02:39 - How is BlackSoil and its working structure different from other VC firms?03:30 - Value propositions which BlackSoil brings to the table while funding its portfolio companies06:54 - What are the interest rates, loan tenure, repayment modes which they currently offer as a working capital to Startups?09:06 - Which family-offices is BlackSoil currently backed by? How did they build that credibility?15:57 - How is Venture Debts different from traditional Bank loans for businesses?17:30 - How do warrants work in case of Venture Debt funding?18:59 - How’s the future of Venture Debt in India?

Shruti is one of the few Indian-origin VCs in US who invest in Enterprise focused Startups globally.After spending 9 years of her career at IBM as an Engineer, she joined Samsung Next as a Principal, where she spent the next 2 years investing in early-stage startups. This was probably what worked out as a perfect mix of (a) Her understanding of Enterprise focussed SaaS businesses & (b) Venture funding ecosystem, which helped her start Array Ventures.Some of her notable investments are CasaOne, Blumira & Modal among others. In this podcast, Shruti shares her experience of supporting founders building early-stage SaaS businesses focussed on solving problems for Large Enterprises.Notes - 00:57 - Her journey from Mumbai to the US and transitioning from an Engineer-cum-Founder to a VC02:35 - How and why did she choose to start a fund to cater to startups selling to Enterprises?05:20 - Changing growth & opportunities for SaaS startups focussed on Enterprises in India & the US08:19 - Her thesis of investing in Blumira based on how their automated threat detection can benefit companies09:53 - Is the recent IPO of 6 Enterprise companies including Palantir, Snowflake, Sumo Logic, Bentley Systems, creating real value or is it a bubble?11:20 - Her learnings from Array VC exits: Passage AI, Hivy, & Simility13:10 - What would be an ideal exit for her - Large Acquisition (in 5-6 years) or IPO (in 10 years)?14:13 - What value does Array VC bring to its portfolio companies?16:10 - How’s the growth trajectory for her portfolio SaaS companies from 0 to $10M and then from $10M to $100M ARR?19:02 - What are things which worked for her portfolio companies for exponential ARR growth?

Baskar’s journey is very similar to what classic Product-driven Tech entrepreneurs have, i.e. a college drop-out built several tech solutions from an early age, founded a fast-paced startup growing multi-folds over years.He co-founded Amagi Media Labs, in 2008 with the intent to revolutionize global content delivery & monetization of the Media Industry. Amagi is one of the few startups which experienced constant growth even in the Covid-19 circumstances and has no plans of slowing down its growth engines anytime soon.In this podcast, Baskar shares his experience of building tech solutions and his learnings from being a Tech entrepreneur for over two decades.Notes - 01:09 - Enabling end-to-end global virtualization of content delivery and monetization in Media Industry03:22 - Major emerging trends in Media & OTT platforms for broadcasters08:50 - Evolution of OTTs in the US and how Amagi helps them as a one-stop-shop!11:59 - His journey from dropping out of IIT Bombay (during MTech) to starting Amagi?21:12 - Transiting from an Advertising sales model to a Technology platform25:44 - Growth in Revenue from 2012 to till date28:35 - How was the fund-raising experience being in the Media industry?32:32 - What’s his end goal with Amagi? Going Public, achieving a $200 Million ARR or something else?36:34 - What are the processes which helped him as an entrepreneur & the company to grow exponentially?38:25 - How “letting go” is a very crucial part of the growth process?40:36 - How being open, vulnerable, and accepting your mistakes openly within the team can help a company grow?

Naren is probably one of the earliest VCs in India’s startup ecosystem. He co-founded Nexus Venture Partners in 2006. He has also been mentoring early-stage entrepreneurs and supporting them since 1990.With investments in over 200+ companies in India and the US, Nexus Venture Partners have some of the most notable startups in their portfolio - Postman, Rapido, and Unacademy among others.In this podcast, Naren shares his experience of investing in early-stage product startups for over three decades.Notes - 01:16 - His journey from moving to the US being an IIT Gold Medalist 02:10 - Lessons from his first venture - Integrated Systems Inc.05:45 - Starting Nexus Venture Partners and deciding upon sectors it won’t invest14:25 - Building a cross border teams18:50 - Uniqueness among entrepreneurs and growth journey of portfolio companies24:52 - Being an early-stage investor and also being consistent through the follow-up rounds29:25 - What are the metrics of success upon which early-stage founders and VCs should focus?35:13 - At what stage do things like - go-to-market, building stronger organization & sales, become a part of board-meeting discussions?

From working at PwC, while pursuing his CA to starting a Venture Fund which invests in Early-stage disruptive Tech startups, Vishesh has experienced it all.He started his investing career at VenturEast in 2007. This was where he understood the Ins & Outs of Venture investing. From its Fund-I, Speciale Invest has invested in a total of 10 portfolio companies, some of which are Scapic, Agnikul, and Kawa Space among others.In this podcast, Vishesh shares his experience of investing in seed-stage Hardware & SaaS startups.Notes - 01:10 - His journey from a CA to becoming an Early-Stage Investor07:41 - Starting Speciale Invest aiming to invest in disruptive tech startups09:30 - Developer Tools companies in his portfolio - Scapic, Kawa Space, TotalCloud, and iauro10:44 - Conversation AI startups in his portfolio - True Lark & Wingman 12:35 - Investing in Cynlr with a vision to evolve Visual AI and Industrial Robotic Arms14:47 - Investing in Agnikul - India’s version of SpaceX16:27 - His experience Investing & Exit from Vogo19:48 - Is the Indian startup ecosystem mature enough for early-Exits within 5-6 years of investment?24:31 - What are some of the recent tailwinds for Hardware & SaaS startups in India?28:19 - How are B2B founders different from B2C founders in terms of Go-to-market strategy, customer acquisition, and other parameters?31:18 - His learnings from being a VC-cum-Fund Manager and managing LPs

Ashmeet started his career at HP in 1989. He founded Sidana Systems in 1995 (later sold to Doclinx in 1999).He started his stint as a VC at Foundation Capital in 2004. Eventually, he founded Engineering Capital in 2015, which focuses on investing in Tech startups, based on Technical insights. He is one of the few VCs to have been to the base of Mount Everest. In this podcast, he also shares his experience of climbing mountains, one step at a time.Engineering Capital is based in the US and majorly in the San Fransico Bay area, some of its notable portfolio companies are Robust Intelligence, Concentrix, and vFunction among others.In this podcast, Ashmeet shares his thesis of investing in Tech Startups and the approach he follows while evaluating them.Notes - 01:24 - His journey from growing up in Rural India to becoming a VC dedicated to Engineers02:43 - Purpose of starting a fund focussed on engineers04:04 - Difference between Market insight, Technical insight & Consumer insight06:43 - Investing in SignalFx based on its use case - “Enabling cloud-based monitoring and analytics.”08:18 - Investing in Robust Intelligence based on its use case - “Solving the issue of User Data contamination.”10:51 - Investing in vFunction based on its use case - “Allows users to take any legacy applications and break them into micro-services & benefit from the cloud.”12:35 - Is Technical insight alone a sufficient reason for a VC to back a Tech Startup?15:49 - Making an early seed-investment in Azure Power (India) as an Angel Investor20:50 - His perspective and view-point on Postman & potential of Tech Startups in India24:55 - Learnings about Market size with future entrepreneurs in B-schools29:36 - “Even though Venture Capital attracts the brightest and smartest minds all over the world, but still most VCs are not successful.”36:12 - “The magic of making a startup successful is to focus on an incredibly narrow problem, that has a wide application.”

Nikhil is one of the most Tech & Product-centric VCs in Asia. This probably comes from his early career with Microsoft, and later with Pie (acquired by Google).He also founded a company called TommyJams, a tech-enabled Artist management platform.He has been with STRIVE Ventures for over 5 years. STRIVE’s portfolio includes HASURA, Classplus, and Saleswhale among others.In this podcast, Nikhil shares his experience of investing in SaaS startups in Asia and helping them achieve Product-Market Fit.Notes - 01:03 - Two major SaaS buckets for STRIVE - (1) Global SaaS (US, European, & Asian markets) and (2) Local SaaS (India SaaS / Indonesian SaaS and similar others.)04:48 - How does STRIVE focus on such segregated SaaS markets?09:28 - Not only monetizing Local SaaS startups through the typical Subscription-Business model (Example - Classplus) but also through transactions17:34 - What was the thought process at STRIVE while coming up with a Non-subscription model for monetizing their portfolio companies in the Indian market?20:27 - Indonesia SaaS market in terms of product adoption, willingness-to-pay & market penetration26:21 - Portfolio of Global SaaS - Healint, HASURA, Saleswhale29:18 - Investing in HASURA with a vision to simplify backend development 33:10 - Investment Thesis - “Founders & Teams who Do More with Less”36:10 -Common early-stage mistakes in SaaS startups40:05 -Crucial changes in GTM strategies for SaaS startups in Pre-COVID vs Post-COVID market48:22 - Emphasizing on portfolio companies to build user engagement and reach an initial $1 million+ ARR

Sheel is a Fintech-Entrepreneur turned Fintech-VC investing in Pre-seed & Seed rounds.His first startup was FeeFighters in 2010, which was acquired in 2012 by Groupon.In this podcast, Sheel shares his experience of being an entrepreneur twice and becoming an Angel Investor and later starting his own VC firm. Notes - 01:03 - His journey from a Fintech Entrepreneur to a Fintech VC04:50 - Starting “The Pitch Podcast” (acquired by Gimlet, Gimlet was later acquired by Spotify)07:55 - What does he look for in founders while investing in startups at Seed/Pre-Seed stage?09:57 - Brief about his game-changing fintech portfolio companies13:29 - From hating working at a company that made software for hospitals to investing in a startup which makes software for hospitals14:50 - “Majority of companies in the future will be Fintech companies”22:15 - How did he spot his first Angel Investment?

Amit being one of the co-founders of India’s first Unicorn Startup - InMobi, needs no introduction. After driving InMobi’s growth journey for over 10 years, he decided to start Yulu (E-bikes & Mobility solutions) in 2017. In his 2nd entrepreneurial stint, he also convinced Rajiv Bajaj (MD, Bajaj Auto) for investing in Yulu & assembling Yulu bikes in India by Bajaj Auto.As an Angel Investor, Amit has backed over 30+ Early-stage startups, as a gesture of giving back to the community. Some of the popular ones being - HealthifyMe, Applicate & Vahak.In this podcast, Amit shares his experience of building two great companies, along with his core beliefs & principles as a long-time entrepreneur.01:28 - Starting his Entrepreneurial Journey 04:04 - Co-founding InMobi in 2006, based on his intent to disrupt Mobile Advertising in India11:50 - How did he identify the potential in mobile advertising in India, back in 2006, when mobile internet wasn’t mainstream?16:02 - What made him start a new venture after 11 years in InMobi?27:30 - Convincing Rajiv Bajaj for investing in Yulu & assembling Yulu bikes in India by Bajaj Auto30:40 - Future plans & product positioning of Yulu with the current COVID situation in perspective39:23 - How did Yulu negotiate free parking spaces for YuluZones?42:37 - Was raising funds for Yulu easy, being a 2nd-time entrepreneur?59:40 - Startups he’s backing as an Angel Investor

Sajith has been constantly sharing his thoughts & thesis around the Startup ecosystem on social media since 2012.This probably reflects from his background, of being at the Times Group for over two decades and his love for reading and taking copious notes.He joined Blume Ventures in 2018, in his 40s. As he didn’t have a background in VC & Angel investing, he humbly considers himself, “An Accidental VC”.Some of Blume Ventures portfolio companies include - Unacademy, Dunzo, and Cashify among others.In this podcast, Sajith shares his experience of becoming a VC, from a Non-investing background and identifying startups that outshine during Covid-19. Notes - 00:55 - A Day in the life of a VC during Covid-1902:02 - Why does Sajith refer to himself as “An Accidental VC”?07:09 - Building a personal brand & experience to enter the VC Ecosystem09:44 - Emphasis on Note-taking for collating thoughts & ideas12:56 - Secret to being an open-minded VC - “Having Strong Views, weakly held”22:30 - Strongly backing Unacademy’s incredible growth journey25:55 - Markets where vacuums have been created in situations like Covid-1942:10 - What’s his perspective on “Moats” in Early-stage startups vs Bigger players in the market?45:27 - What things did he have to unlearn to succeed as VC?53:45 - What does he consider, as his edge as a VC, coming from a Non-investing background, at the age of 40?

Pratik Poddar having his roots back in a Tier-II city, Patna, is probably one of the youngest Principals at a VC firm in India. After having multiple entrepreneurial stints, Pratik joined Nexus Venture Partners, in 2015 as an Investment Associate and has grown tremendously since.Some of Nexus Venture Partners’ portfolio companies include - Zolo, Postman, and Unacademy among others.In this podcast, Pratik shares his experience of identifying potential Edtech Startups in India and adding them to his Portfolio. Notes - 01:29 - Focus on Product-first companies in the Portfolio05:35 - How Edtech startups made themselves resistant from Covid-19?07:46 - Edtech Companies in Portfolio - Unacademy, WhiteHat Jr., and Quizizz among others09:58 - Monetization & Growth Journey of Unacademy with 1200+ Cr. Annual Revenue11:08 - TestPrep Market Scenario & Opportunities in India21:30 - Investing in WhiteHat Jr. a very new concept in Edtech41:25 - Untapped Opportunities in early school for Edtech 49:02 - How big is the potential market for “Pay After Placement model” startups like Newton School?52:45 - 3 Key Qualities VCs look for in Edtech Entrepreneurs

After completing his MBA from Delhi School of Economics, Ishpreet worked with many banks like - Kotak Mahindra, IFDC, and Citibank among others.For a major part of his career, he worked on Debt funding companies via Banks as Financial Institutions. Eventually, this made him start a Venture Debt Fund of his own, Stride Ventures in December 2018.Some of its portfolio companies include - Stellapps, CredR, and LetsTransport among others.In this podcast, Ishpreet shares his experience of being a part of Debt funding in companies across all domains and building a Venture Debt Fund ecosystem in India. Notes - 01:05 - His early career in Investment & Corporate Banking04:30 - Experience the VC Ecosystem and founding Stride Ventures06:58 - How does Stride Ventures differ from other Venture Debt Funds in the market?09:22 - At which stage does Stride Ventures enter in a Company? 13:55 - With what financials does it makes sense for a company to raise a Debt round?19:50 - How much returns do a Venture Debt fund typically expect?22:27 - Investing in companies like Stellapps & CredR27:53 - Potential sectors in 2020-21 from a Debt Fund’s perspective - SaaS, Logistics, and Gaming among others29:45 - Building an ecosystem of Venture Debt Fund in India

While having his family roots back in Odisha (India), Somesh had his upbringing in the US.After completing his graduation from UC Berkeley in 2001, as the US job-market was hit after 9/11 he came to India and joined Sony Entertainment.Later in 2005, he joined Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) back in the US. IVP was founded over 40 years ago and has so far invested in over 400+ companies out of which 111 have gone public.Some of its portfolio companies include - Twitter, Slack, and Soundcloud among others.In this podcast, Somesh shares his experience of investing in growth-stage companies across various sectors. Notes - 02:20 - Building a portfolio with numerous public companies05:52 - Two lessons the Startup Ecosystem can consider during Covid-19 crisis as learnings from similar past events12:51 - Starting his career in India after 9/1123:22 - Investing in companies in their growth-stage - Twitter, Thrive Global, Netflix among others27:30 - Diversity in portfolio companies spread across Cyber Security, Consumer, Analytics & Enterprise Softwares31:27 - Missing out on Salesforce & Zoom39:08 - Second wave of Tailwinds which most people might missout in the startup ecosystem43:50 - “A Startup’s aspirations shouldn’t be to raise the next Unicorn-venture round, it should be to build the next Microsoft or Google.”53:27 - Importance of Mental Health from a VC perspective

Dhruv worked with ABN AMRO and McKinsey & Company in Investment Management & Strategy roles in the early days of his career. He stepped into the VC ecosystem in India by eventually joining Helion Ventures in 2008.At Helion Ventures he was part of investing in companies like Ezetap, Azure Power, and MoEngage among others.Later when in 2015, Sistema (Russian conglomerate) decided to set up a Venture Fund in India, Dhruv joined Sistema Asia Capital in order to bring the best practices and 8 years of experience on board with him.Some of Sistema Asia Capital’s current Portfolio includes - Licious, Lendingkart, Netmeds & Faasos among others.In this podcast, Dhruv shares his experience of investing in mid-stage growth startups across various sectors in India’s Startup Ecosystem. Notes - 00:57 - His Journey from working at ABN & McKinsey to joining Venture Capital04:30 - Experience of working with Helion Ventures07:56 - Joining Sistema Asia Capital - Building the foundations of a VC firm10:15 - Sistema’s background & establishment in India14:34 - Executing Exit from Qwikcilver (Acquired by Pine Labs)19:44 - Investing in Faasos - reaching $1 billion valuation25:30 - Impact on fintech portfolio companies during Covid-19 lockdown - Lendingkart & Kissht31:26 - HealthifyMe’s transition from human-centric model to AI-based model33:30 - Netmeds offering a full-stack model & growing scalable margins37:04 - Sectors at which Sistema is bullish in 2020-21 - Edtech, Healthcare, & Agritech

Ganesh began his career working in Strategy & Acquisition at Infosys in the San Francisco Bay area. He founded his first startup - Travelguru (later acquired by Travelocity) while he was pursuing his MBA from Harvard Business School.In 2006, he began his journey as a VC with Greylock Partners. In 2014, he Co-Founded Quona Capital, which is a Fintech-focused VC firm, making investments across Asia, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa.A few of its successful exits include - IndiaMart (went IPO) & Coins.ph (acquired by Gojek).Some of its current Portfolio includes - ZestMoney, Fisdom, & Neogrowth among others.In this podcast, Ganesh shares his experience of investing in emerging markets and fintech-businesses with robust teams. Notes - 00:54 - His Journey from working at Infosys to Co-founding Quona Capital04:39 - Quona Capital: Countries of operations, Cheque-size & Ideology07:58 - Starting Travelguru while pursuing MBA at Harvard Business School14:07 - Investing in teams who respect & fear lending18:17 - Exit from IndiaMart - Most Successful Digital IPO22:30 - Exit from Coins.ph - Acquired by Gojek28:08 - Managing investments across multiple countries and diverse markets34:02 - Fundamentals driving rapid growth in Indian startups in Quona’s portfolio36:23 - Rise of Neobanks in India

With over 14+ years of experience in investing, Sushma has been acknowledged for “40 under 40 - Alternate Investment Professionals” in India.Currently, at Aavishkaar, she majorly looks after Fintech & Microfinance.Aavishkaar is also well-known for being one of the few VC firms in India, well known for its Impact Investing Thesis. Some of its portfolio companies are - Chqbook, Agrostar, and Soulfull among others.In this podcast, Sushma shares her experience of investing in high-growth socially responsible startups. Notes - 01:10 - Her Journey from real estate equity background to joining Aavishkaar03:08 - How does Aavishkaar differentiate itself from other funds in terms of thesis - Impact Investing06:36 - Is impact-investing successful in giving justified returns to LPs?08:55 - Investing in socially responsible businesses - Micro-finance & Agritech13:42 - Investing in Chqbook - Making credit cards & short-term loans accessible19:23 - Diversification in investments between early-stage & growth-stage companies22:25 - Significant evaluation around Exit-thesis at the time of new investments28:33 - What does the Indian startup ecosystem requires to mature similarly to Silicon-valley?30:48 - Gender Diversity in the VC & Startup Ecosystem in India

Anand has worked with some top companies in SaaS & Product roles - Yahoo, Airtel, Snapdeal, Freecharge, Facebook & currently at Five9.Since 2014 he has been an Angel Investor in over 50+ companies, some of the popular one’s being - Yulu, Khatabook, and MoEngage among others.In this podcast, Anand shares his experience of building consumer-friendly products & becoming a successful Angel Investor. Notes - 01:10 - Journey of one of the best product thinkers in the country - Entrepreneur in SaaS (2001-2008), Multiple Product Leadership Roles across few of the best companies in the world 2008 - Present (Airtel, Snapdeal, Facebook, Five9) and now an investor in startups 2016-Present (Rupeek, Khatabook and 48 other companies) 03:16 - Joining Five9 after Facebook04:09 - Leading acquisition of Whendu and Virtual Observer06:55 - Five9’s future plans with over $400 million ARR and becoming a Decacorn soon09:42 - Working in India with Airtel, Snapdeal & Freecharge (from 2013-16)13:12 - 50+ portfolio companies as an Angel Investor - Khatabook, MoEngage, Innov8 etc.16:56 - Investing in Rupeek - Building a customer-friendly product in a market with very low NPS19:32 - Investing in Nobroker - Solving rental issues on consumers21:16 - Investing in MoEngage - Solving the user engagement marketing needs with SaaS23:00 - Exits from Fynd & Innov8 - More of a founder & team bet, than a market bet!28:37 - Failures Startups face - Cash burn without Product-market fit & Lack of team chemistry36:50 - Covid-19 crisis - Not just conserving cash but creating solutions to tackle it38:16 - Working & learning with Marissa Mayer (Yahoo), Mark Zuckerberg & Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook), Gopal Vittal (Bharti Airtel)44:15 - “The tools that people continue to pay for during a crisis are the ones which grow in the long run.”51:02 - His first principle of being an Investor -“You are not the Hero of the story, the founder is!” - Just be founder friendly53:01 - His second principle of being an Investor - ”You make your money with the success, but you make your reputation with the failures.” - Being with founders during their bad times54:30 - His third principle of being an Investor - Not to exit from a company, as soon as it breaks-out56:10 - In India would it make sense for Angel investors to Exit-early at a good valuation?

Anup worked with some top of the line consumer brands like - Bata, Yum! Restaurants International (Pizza Hut), Whirpool, and P&G among others for over 20 years of his career.In 2015 he started his own family office through which he mentored and Angel Invested in several startups over the next 2 years.In 2017 he joined Orios Venture Partners, where he currently focuses on retail, fintech, healthTech, edTech and D2C brands.Some popular startups in its portfolio - PharmEasy, Zostel, MoneyOnClick, CountryDelight, Gully Network, BeatO among others.In this podcast, Anup shares his experience of identifying top-quality founders and how their portfolio companies are combating with the lockdown due to Covid-19. Notes - 00:42 - Working at Consumer Brands to joining Orios Venture Partners05:11 - Thesis behind investing in Portfolio companies - Multiple pain points, Founders & Team with quality execution experience08:06 - Investing in BeatO - Personal assistant for managing Diabetes09:10 - Investing in MoneyOnClick - Personal loan for salaried professionals09:52 - Investing in Gully Network Retail11:58 - What are their portfolio companies doing to survive through Covid-19?16:08 - Exploring new investments vs re-investment in existing portfolio companies18:15 - Helping out Portfolio companies with - Extending runway & Optimising operations19:25 - Is it a suitable situation to consider an M&A?21:45 - PharmEasy being the crown-jewel of Orios Venture Partners26:12 - Sectoral outlook for potential tailwinds during Covid-19

During her early career, Ritu worked in Product Development at Unilever and later in Marketing Strategy at Philips. In 2013 she Co-founded Ankur Capital with Rema SubramanianAnkur Capital has so far majorly invested in Agritech & Healthcare sector, some of its portfolio companies - Health Sutra, Cropin & Niramai among others.In this podcast, Ritu shares her experience of investing in Agritech & Healthcare space in India, and her vision going forward. Notes - 00:42 - Her Journey from a Physicist to the VC ecosystem06:50 - Thesis behind investing in Cropin & Niramai10:21 - Concentration of Portfolio towards Agritech & Health-tech11:20 - Future of Agritech in India by emerging startups21:36 - Training farmers for adopting Agritech solutions23:20 - Deployment of Fund II in 2020 & 2021 (at Pre-Series A & Series A rounds)25:07 - Recent successful exit from Carmel Organics and others in the pipeline (next 6-8 months)27:40 - Is it difficult for women to mark a place as VC?35:07 - Thesis behind investing in Jiny

Deepak’s investment journey started with him joining Intel Capital in early 2000, where he spent 14 years managing global investments, mergers & acquisitions. In 2015, he started Equitycrest, which identified and worked with early-stage startups and assisted them in engaging with investors to realize their funding needs.After gaining over 17 years of investing experience and managing acquisitions, in 2017 he founded WEH Ventures.Some popular startups in its portfolio - Trell, Pratilipi, and smallcase among others.In this podcast, Deepak shares his experience of investing during the 2000 & 2008 crash and what he expects now. Notes - 00:43 - Joining Intel Capital & starting WEH Ventures03:05 - Successful exits from Telecom, Consumer Internet startups05:07 - Working at Intel Capital & understanding fundamentals of Venture capital06:57 - Investing during previous downturns of 2000 & 200809:27 - Investing in Pratilipi - Crucial to India’s vast vernacular landscape13:08 - Investing in smallcase - Simplifying investing in Stocks by creating thematic bundles16:31 - Overall approach to finding & adding portfolio companies18:45 - Advice for Startups in tailwind sector - Being semi-aggressive20:15 - Advice for Startups in badly hit sectors - Cut down cost & preserve your runway22:22 - Distinct qualities of entrepreneurs who survive & thrive during such crisis 28:06 - Impact of Covid-19 on upcoming investments (Series A & Series B) in 2020 & early-2021

Pankaj joined Bertelsmann New York in 2009 and later started Bertelsmann Corporate Services India Pvt. Ltd and Bertelsmann India Investments. Bertelsmann India Investments has several popular startups in its portfolio - Licious, Pepperfry, and Quikr among others.In this podcast, Pankaj shares his opinions on how startups can optimize spendings and become more cash efficient in the long run. Notes - 00:40 - Joining Bertelsmann in New York & starting Bertelsmann Corporate Services India02:33 - Thesis behind the diverse portfolio of Bertelsmann India Investments07:02 - Exit from Saavn which is now JioSaavn11:02 - What change can startups expect in consumer behaviour post Covid-19?14:45 - Biggest value addition which Bertelsmann brings to its portfolio companies20:20 - Average ticket size & ideal phase for making an investment at BII21:12 - Personal habits and hobbies which he attributes to his success23:35 - Ability to see far & deep and implementing future prospects within the business26:30 - Investing companies which raise minimum capital and are able to build great businesses28:58 - Identifying companies with high profit margins(Treebo as an example)29:59 - Advice to entrepreneurs to sail through Covid-19 crisis

Coming from a Tech-background Mekin spent his early career at Yahoo, Ugenie, Lulu.com, and Flipkart.Since 2016, he has also been an Angel Investor investor and exited a few startups such as - UrbanClap, Vaahan, Tapchief, Quizziz & mGaadi.In 2017 he started Udhyam, it focuses on nurturing and guiding students to become future entrepreneurs at the school level. In 2018, he parallelly started Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship, referred to as GAME. As the name suggests, it aims to create 10M entrepreneurs (50% of women), who will create 50M jobs by 2030.In this podcast, Mekin shares his opinions regarding the current situation of MSMEs and how Udhyam & GAME are moving towards their goals amid Covid-19 crisis. Notes - 00:48 - Joining Flipkart and founding Udhyam02:52 - How does Udhyam stimulates and encourages young entrepreneurs?04:34 - How was GAME founded and what problem does it solve?06:14 - Enabling entrepreneurs who run a small business and employ 5-20 people12:53 - How are MSMEs affected by Covid-19?18:21 - Behavioural changes after the crisis20:45 - Opportunities which might emerge from the current scenario27:30 - How is Udhyam leveraging the current lockdown?36:02 - Advice to entrepreneurs to navigate through this crisis

#100xEntrepreneur #Podcast with Sanjay Nath, Managing Partner at Blume VenturesIt seems as if Silicon Valley has been a consistent choice during the early career phase for several Indian VCs! Sanjay isn’t an exception as well. After spending his early years in Silicon Valley, in 2006 he came back to India and became an active member of Mumbai Angels.Finally, after 4 years of being an Angel Investor, he cofounded Blume Ventures in 2010. So far Blume Ventures have announced funds of a combined value of $150M with over 192 Portfolio Companies.Some of its Portfolio Companies are - Dunzo, LBB, Cashify, and Unacademy.In this podcast, Sanjay shares his opinions on Indian startup ecosystem navigating through Covid-19 crisis. Notes - 00:44 - From Joining Mumbai Angels to Co-founding Blume Ventures03:40 - Backing Naveen Tiwari, InMobi during 2008 Crash07:35 - How do you test the founders in good vs bad times?12:02 - How has Covid-19 affected Mobility & SaaS Startups?15:30 - Advice to founders to navigate through these tough times16:30 - Startups contributing to building the Future of Work21:53 - Change in Investment Thesis from 2011 (Super-Angel Fund) to 2020 (Fund-III)24:31 - Post Covid-19 Scenario for Non-Consumer Startups (SaaS, Deep Tech, Enterprise)29:55 - Survival of best companies being self-sufficient32:05 - How to evaluate & implement cost-saving strategies?40:10 - Considering and dealing with possibilities of mergers & acquisitions

Mark started Omnivore, an impact Venture Fund focused around Agritech back in 2010. Omnivore has so far invested in over 57 startups which are based on multiple verticals such as - B2B, B2C, Fresh-to-home & Rural Fintech.Some of his Portfolio Companies are - Bijak, Stellapps, and DeHaat.In this podcast, Mark shares his experiences & learnings of investing in Agritech Startups in India over the last decade. Notes - 00:40 - Omnivore’s Background03:06 - Why was Agritech chosen at the focus at Omnivore?05:50 - Investing in Stellapps full-stack dairy digitization08:18 - Portfolio Company - Intello Labs building fresh produce quality system using AI & ML09:47 - Impacting Indian farmers - Lowering cost, increasing profitability, insurance, better techniques13:55 - Co-investing with other Indian Venture Capital firms17:13 - Various verticals in Agritech - B2B, B2C, Rural Fintech, Fresh-to-home21:12 - Challenges while investing in Agritech - Incubation period of the investment, Connecting with farmers, Finding the right opportunities24:40 - How is Omnivore creating a difference in Agritech in India?31:28 - Impact of Covid-19 on Agritech

After working at BCG for 2 years, Ishaan joined Sequoia India's Analyst Program in 2011. He spent around three and a half years at Sequoia India. He then went to business school and joined Sequoia India back in 2016. In this podcast, Ishaan shares his experiences & learnings of investing in Consumer brands and Fintech Startups. Notes - 00:42 - Joining Sequoia India's Analyst Program01:57 - Investing experiences over 9 years at Sequoia03:34 - Culture at Sequoia - “Singular focus on doing the right thing for all the stakeholders”.04:45 - “We help the daring entrepreneurs build from Idea to IPO & beyond”.06:23 - “While investing you never have the right or wrong answer”.09:29 - Macro-trends driving Consumer Brands in India11:05 - Financial Services in India are still unpenetrated12:21 - Mamaearth - Being a digital-first personal care brand for their consumers12:57 - Eruditus - Making Ivy league colleges more accessible15:18 - Fintech Startups in India leveraging large digital footprint of their customers to serve them better18:30 - Razorpay - Solving merchant payment issues with innovative solutions20:34 - Scope & Future of Neobanks in India across various customer segments28:37 - Challenges while investing from a large pool of amazing founders

“It’s fine to grow slower, but importantly to grow sustainably.” Mohit has been a successful Angel Investor since 2012 growing over 20x in his portfolio. He even considers his learnings from one of his early investments - Local Banya equivalent to an MBA degree.Since 2017 he has been a part of the Investment Trust of India Group and manages investments in early-stage innovative ideas.Some of his Portfolio Companies are - REVOS, Evolve Snacks, and ten3T Healthcare.In this podcast, Mohit shares his experiences & learnings of investing in Startups which have sustainable growth models. Notes - 00:42 - His learnings from being an Angel Investor05:40 - Investing his own money in early ideas in Ecommerce Startups09:32 - Co-investing in REVOS - Smart Mobility Platform11:15 - Investment & Growth Thesis in Evolve Snacks12:40 - Investing in Preventive Healthcare - ten3T Healthcare18:04 - Avoiding over-ownerships in Portfolio Companies to have a downside protection26:20 - Is securing a Hyper-investment a sure success parameter for a Startup?28:59 - Important to have Sustainability in Investing v/s Spray & Pray

#100xEntrepreneur Podcast with Vaibhav Domkundwar, CEO at Better Capital“Do Zero Paid Marketing - To Understand What’s Working And What’s Not” Vaibhav has founded successful companies like Roamware (acquired by Audax Group) and Better Inc. As a VC & a founder, he’s a core believer in implementing & experimenting with organic growth hacks to grow a company, this reflects in most of his portfolio companies as well. Some of his Portfolio Companies are - Khatabook, OPEN Bank, Gramophone, and ShopKirana.In this podcast, Vaibhav shares his experiences & learnings of investing in Startups which provide a simple but complete solution to a consumer problem. Notes - 00:35 - His Journey from Founding Two Companies to Becoming a VC05:20 - Investing in 45 Companies in Last 2 Years07:02 - While making an Investment Decision it’s important not to Templatize a Founder’s Idea09:30 - Investing in Asia’s first Neobank - OPEN14:29 - Creating a product which completely solves a problem rather than offering a better way of dealing with it - Khatabook16:05 - Agritech Portfolio Companies - Gramophone, Jai Kisan, BharatAgri18:49 - Investing in a Truly AI-first company30:57 - How does Better helps its Portfolio Companies?

#100xEntrepreneur #Podcast with Rutvik Doshi, Managing Director, Inventus Capital PartnersRutvik refers to himself as an “Accidental Venture Capitalist”, coming from a Product management & Software Engineering background.He’s an IIT Kharagpur alumni and later did his MBA from INSEAD. During his early career, he worked at Broadcom Inc. & Google.In this podcast, Rutvik shares his experiences & learnings of building relationships with founders, scanning through potential investments & more. Notes - 00:35 - Accidental Venture Capitalist03:50 - Being a part of Inventus Capital Partners05:50 - Investing in PolicyBazaar & RedBus.in09:14 - Scaling & Diversity in HealthifyMe12:35 - Filters & Criteria to scanning potential investments15:43 - Being a mentor to the founding team22:30 - Giving 1st Priority to Founder / Business & then later check on the Market32:10 - Common traits among founders who’ve scaled 100x36:45 - Fine line between Conviction & Stubbornness in founders37:55 - Challenges while fund-raising as a VC

#100xEntrepreneur #Podcast with Vidit Aatrey, Founder & CEO, MeeshoAfter completing his B.Tech. from IIT Delhi, Vidit worked with ITC & InMobi during his early career. It was around 2015 when he decided to try out something and while exploring other options he came across this idea to create a platform (Meesho) where people could start & manage their business from the comfort of their home.In this podcast, Vidit shares his experiences of building Meesho & understanding the core needs of their customers. Notes - 00:40 - His career background and bringing an un-organized business online04:30 - Building 1st version of Meesho11:10 - Aggregating distributors on the platform12:50 - Making investors understand the new business model15:55 - What helped him keep growing while building a new business model?17:40 - Tackling the growth slowdown 6 months after raising capital from SAIF Partners26:25 - Listen or Die (Talking to users every 30 days)27:43 - Meesho’s revenue model29:30 - Current User Persona32:38 - Culture & DNA of Employees at Meesho35:55 - Change in Go to market strategy41:45 - Hiring strategy for Key Leadership roles48:50 - Irrespective of your growth don’t compromise with Culture Fit

After completing his MMS from BITS Pilani in 1993, Rahul entered into the Investment Banking domain. From 1997 to 2006, he was part of Walden International as an Investment Manager. It was the first Silicon-Valley based VC Firm to come & establish a presence in India. This was when Rahul experienced Venture Capital & Angel Investing from a close perspective.Later in 2006, he cofounded Helion Ventures with a $140M fund size, which has since then made over 135 investments across Finance, Healthcare, Logistics & Agri.Some of the Portfolio companies are MakeMyTrip, Bigbasket, RailYatri, and Ezetap among others.In this podcast, Rahul shares his experiences of finding & nurturing Indian entrepreneurs for the past 15 years. Notes - 00:38 - Sharing his Journey via his book - The Moonshot Game: Adventures of an Indian Venture Capitalist03:10 - Working as an Investment Banker in 199509:05 - Cofounding Helion Ventures in 200622:10 - Starting multiple VC firms/funds from Helion25:15 - Traits of founders who build great companies28:22 - Three core reasons behind Investing in Bigbasket32:30 - Taking tough calls as a VC based on your experience38:50 - Giving synthesised advices as a VC vs a Canned-one44:44 - Starting Unitary Helion Fund45:17 - Building products for middle class by design & not by accident

After completing his graduation from IIT Bombay, Hemant worked at AMD during his early career. In 2012, after completing his MBA from Cambridge University, he joined Google, where he worked in New Partnerships & Development for 5 years, post which he joined Andreessen Horowitz in 2017.Lastly, after seeing a huge potential in the growing Indian Startup Ecosystem, he ended up moving to India in 2018 and joining Lightspeed India.Some of Lightspeed India portfolio companies are Udaan, Darwinbox, OKCredit, and Shuttl among others.In this podcast, Hemant shares his learnings of building a Tech company in India, he also shares his Venture Investing experiences in India & the US. Notes - 00:46 - Growing up in Middle of Himalayas to joining Lightspeed India05:38 - Joining Corporate Development at Google after MBA06:26 - Choosing Lightspeed India vs any other VC firm in the US12:10 - Is it necessary to raise a Venture Capital to build a big company?15:38 - Is it the right time to build a Tech company in India?18:16 - Looking after Enterprise, Fintech & Logistics focused deals19:59 - Big wins for Lightspeed in India - Byju’s, OKCredit, Udaan, OYO25:25 - Difference b/w Venture Investing in US & India (Andreessen Horowitz vs Lightspeed)30:42 - What Indian Entrepreneurs can learn from their US counterparts?33:22 - “Most problems are solvable if you immerse yourself deep within”38:33 - Best Founders know much better about a Market than a VC

After completing his MBA from IIM Lucknow in 1998, Anand started his first EduTech company around the Dotcom boom - Brainvisa which became one of the largest eLearning companies in India and later on got acquired by Indecomm Global Services. From 2007 to 2012, he backed several startups as an Angel Investor - Fasoos & MyDentist.Later in his career in 2012, he became a Founding Partner at IndiaQuotient, Venture Capital Firm which has invested in over 50 startups in the last 8 years.Some of his portfolio companies are LoanTap, Clip, and Sharechat among others.In this podcast, Anand shares his understanding of the Indian Middle-class consumer & also shares his learnings on how can startups build products for them. Notes - 00:35 - His Journey from Starting the first company in Dotcom boom to becoming a VC in 201201:50 - Experience with Early Portfolio Companies - Financial Services & Content09:00 - Understanding Indian consumers & building products for them16:55 - Investing in Indian Cosmetics Brand - Sugar20:50 - Serving the average Indian consumer with disposable income27:30 - Thesis behind building Indian Consumer Brands32:50 - Core Themes for future Portfolio companies at IndiaQuotient 38:50 - Portfolio Companies in Small Business Software - Vyapar, Fleetx, BharatAgri39:48 - Being bold & Taking Contrarian bets as a VC

After graduating from IIT Kanpur in 1992, Manish worked with several top firms - Tata Elxsi, Motorola, Ittiam Systems & Sling Media.In 2013 he started LetsVenture which enables Angel Investors, Family Offices and Funds to discover and invest in early-stage and growth startups.Post that, in 2016, he started pi Ventures, which primarily invests in AI, IoT & Blockchain companies.Some of his portfolio companies are FrontdeskAI, Wysa, and SigTuple among others.In this podcast, Manish shares his experiences of investing and helping entrepreneurs build AI Startups. Notes - 00:40 - From Graduating IIT Kanpur in 1992 to starting pi Ventures in 201606:50 - Keys learnings while building Venture firms10:58 - Learning from path-breaking Entrepreneurs14:08 - Unsolved problems & prospects for upcoming startups in AI16:54 - Criteria for evaluating AI companies27:52 - Helping in building AI Startups28:22 - Convincing VCs to invest in AI Startups30:15 - Challenges while fund-raising as a VC37:26 - Advice for Founder’s who get lost in their Journey

Sameer’s journey in India’s venture capital ecosystem began back in 2007 when he joined Reliance Ventures, where he focused on early-stage investments in the Technology, Media / Entertainment & Telecommunications domain.After being with Reliance for 4 years he joined Nexus Venture Partners in 2011 & currently leads their Bangalore office. At Nexus in the last 9 years, he has been part of the investment team that has lead investments in over 35 of their Portfolio companies.Some of Nexus portfolio companies are Druva, OLX, NetMagic, PaySense, Gluster, Rancher, H20, MapMyIndia, Pratilipi, Delhivery, Myupchar, Rapido, Snapdeal, Unacademy, Zomato, and Zolo among others.In this podcast, Sameer shares his experiences of identifying top-notch founders & his signature style of signing the Term sheet in the first meeting with the founders in whom he sees potential. Notes - 00:36 - From CFA Level-I to spending over 11 years in Venture Ecosystem07:48 - I’m very fond of what I do as VC10:50 - Investing in over 35 Portfolio Companies across - Business Services, Consumer Brands, Data & AI, Enterprise & Healthcare16:30 - Top 2 Portfolio Companies in every fund18:00 - Growth & Success of Postman and UnAcademy20:19 - Story behind signing term-sheet at UnAcademy27:11 - Size of Test Prep market in India28:48 - Investing in Postman right around its buyout stage33:37 - Signature style of getting Term-sheet signed & Investing then & there38:30 - Learnings from Mistakes as a VC41:05 - Identifying secular trends/shift in markets44:48 - Guiding founders in situations where they are able to raise $50M+ but haven’t had experience building big startups47:17 - Quality of founders is getting better & better51:55 - Low-value creation in several crappy companies in India01:01:20 - Low-key & Successful Portfolio Companies at Nexus Venture Partners01:04:50 - Being called a P/E VC Investor01:07:10 - Culture of hierarchy-free & openness at a VC firm

Sanjay started his career in Silicon Valley in 1992 & spent over 7 years at his first company, working in different roles across - Sales, Customer Support, Engineering & Marketing. He then worked with Xerox & Portal Software in US before coming back to India in 2003.From 2003 to 2011, he had several experiences most of which revolutionized entire ecosystems they were part of, right from mCheck, ZipDial, Ezetap & Aadhar Team (at UIDAI).Finally in 2011, he started Angel Prime (now Prime Ventures) which invests in early-stage entrepreneurs to build great companies.Some of his portfolio companies are Moneytap, Ezetap, Happay, and Kredx among others.In this podcast, Sanjay shares his experiences & learnings from being on both sides of the Startup ecosystem - An Entrepreneur & A VC. Notes - 00:38 - His journey from a small town in Karnataka to Silicon Valley & finally becoming a VC04:04 - Part 1- Experience & Learnings in Silicon Valley (from working in Sales, Customer Support to Engineering)05:55 - Working with Xerox 08:40 - Coming back to India and working with mPortal & mChek11:20 - Realizing of being Ahead of Time at mChek 14:08 - Successful Startups which Controlled their Ecosystem like Paytm & those which rode the Ecosystem changes like PhonePe & GooglePay16:49 - Part 2 - Working with Aadhar (UIDAI Team) & Experiencing the formulation of Aadhar19:56 - Part 3 - Bringing together previous learnings & starting AngelPrime (currently Prime Ventures)22:51 - Conceptualizing ZipDial while being on a flight25:10 - Validating Market Fit in less than $100 at ZipDial28:45 - Building Ezetap - Being on the Merchant Side30:45 - Being the First Sculptor of the Company34:16 - Formulating Market Specific Preferences as a VC40:00 - Importance of being Honest & Open with your VC Partners44:57 - There’s No Completely 100% Right or Wrong situation being a VC47:59 - Being a Founder in Late 30s or 40s50:37 - Having 360 days of Frustration & 5 days of Glory as an Entrepreneur

#100xEntrepreneur #Podcast with Sid Talwar, Managing Partner, Lightbox VenturesIn 2001, Sid founded Evolv, a vocational training company funded by Singapore Technologies. Over the next 6 years, he built it into a business that trained 20,000+ people annually across 200 cities in South Asia and the Middle East. He later sold it to NIIT in 2007 but continued to lead the internal teams in adopting new technology as a transformative force in education and vocational training.Post that, after being associated with GSF India for about a year, he Cofounded Lightbox Ventures in 2014. Some of his portfolio companies are Furlenco, Embibe, Dunzo, Cleartrip, and Bombay Shirt Company.In this podcast, Sid shares his experience of helping Entrepreneurs solve & avoid mistakes in their Entrepreneurial Journey. Notes - 00:36 - His Journey of helping Entrepreneurs Solve & Avoid Mistakes 01:58 - Invest in Few Companies at a time to understand them better04:03 - Top Exits from Fund-II07:34 - Building relationships with Portfolio Companies10:40 - What kind of businesses is Lightbox trying to promote?18:39 - Investing in Embibe based on the Aditi’s conviction as a Founder22:54 - Investing in Furlenco after getting to know Ajith Karimpana In & Out26:34 - Challenges in building a subscription model in India for Furniture35:42 - Thesis behind recent Investment in Nua 39:18 - Advice to Entrepreneurs while Pitching to VCs

#100xEntrepreneur #Podcast with Adith Podhar, Founding Partner, Gemba CapitalAdith belongs to a typical Marwari family from Mumbai, after completing his MBA from the University of Mumbai, he worked with ICICI Bank handling fundraising for individual investors in Private Equity. During 2013 to 2017 he also headed Motilal Oswal Private Equity as their Vice President. In June 2017, he finally decided to start his own journey as an Early Stage Investors and started Gemba Capital. Some of his portfolio companies are myHQ, ClearDekho and HoiFoods.In this podcast, Adith shares his experience of operating as an Early Stage Investors and his learnings. Notes - 00:42 - Journey from Typical Marwari family to experiencing different stages in Entrepreneurial Journey and finally becoming a VC 05:11 - Why he started Gemba Capital? 06:48 - How did he develop his Priority Sectors and created his Investment Thesis? 11:40 - Investments, Vision & Thesis in Fintech 13:19 - Difference between companies which have scaled faster compared to others15:10 - Macro Factors behind Scaling faster and larger for a Company16:44 - Why is Cashout / CreditLine model becoming a popular product in Fintech?17:55 - How to crack your Distribution Channels suitable to your Products?22:04 - Ideal Co-investors24:20 - Overcoming Challenges and Hardships as a VC29:57 - Is the Sequoia Surge Programme a Threat to Small/Early Stage VC Firms?30:52 - Overcoming biases as a VC while Investing33:22 - Mistakes & Learnings as an Angel Investor

#100xEntrepreneur #Podcast with Tej Kapoor, Co-Executive President of Fosun RZ Capital (India & Africa)From 2007-13, Tej held several key positions at AOL in the United States and then at Naspers Group.In 2016 he joined Fosun RZ Capital, where some of his portfolio companies are Gland Pharma, Delhivery, MakeMyTrip, Ixigo and Kissht.In this podcast, Tej shares his experience of working with both Large scale markets as well as Seed-stage startups in India & China. Notes - 00:47 - Journey from AOL in the US to Naspers and finally heading Fosun RZ (India & Africa)04:17 - What is Fosun RZ Capital about? 05:42 - Typical Ticket Sizes08:45 - Focus Markets in 2020 - Fintech, Travel, E-commerce, Consumer Brands10:54 - Parameters to evaluate Seed/Early stage companies12:41 - Shift from dealing with Large Ticket Sizes at Naspers to Seed Stage Investing at Fosun RZ 15:25 - Role of Storytelling in Fundraising by Early-stage founders17:46 - Crucial aspects to building and selling your product20:20 - Growth Scale of Ixigo & Delhivery 22:31 - Key investments & Thesis at Naspers25:12 - Experience & Learnings in working with Founders of Ixigo, Delhivery & Ibibo28:57 - How’s the Startup and Angel Investing culture in China?34:50 - New Verticals of E-commerce Startups coming up in 202036:58 - Evaluation of a Fintech Startup & New opportunities in Fintech Space

#100xEntrepreneur #Podcast with Gaurav Munjal, Co-founder, Unacademy“Every single mistake that entrepreneurs do 99% of that is already documented somewhere.” - Gaurav MunjalSince his childhood Gaurav was an innovative person, at the age of 12 years, he created a similar to KBC-like quiz which was demonstrated amongst his classmates and the school. In 2013 he started Flat.to (real estate platform for college students and bachelors across India) which later become FlatChat and got acquired by CommonFloor in 2014.In 2015 he Co-founded Unacademy, which was originally a YouTube channel started back in his college days. Today Unacademy gets 140Million views / month on its youtube channels + app/web.In this podcast, Gaurav shares his experience of scaling & creating a dent in the Edtech space, as well as lays down the path to how can one grow personally & professionally as an Entrepreneur. Notes - 0:53 - Journey from a 12-year curious kid to Founder of Unacademy03:32 - First Entrepreneurial Journey Flat.to (Real estate platform for college students and bachelors across India) (Later FlatChat)09:12 - How he got started with Unacademy in 201509:54 - Learnings for building a product for Large markets11:02 - Mistakes as a first-time Founder & Learnings14:37 - “Learning should be part of a CEO’s schedule.”17:05 - What do his notes or learning structure look like?18:03 - How does his recall process work to revisit his ideas or tasks?19:09 - Key milestones of Unacademy over the years 24:11 - Is storytelling a major pillar for an entrepreneur?25:38 - Building a successful company that will create a dent in the Industry28:25 - What is Unacademy replacing in the physical world?32:42 - Getting the best educators on Unacademy35:50 - How being an Obsessive founder helps him compared to other founders who are more relaxed?37:53 - How does he transfer his passion for learning among his team members?39:27 - “The values of an organisation are not what they put up on the wall, it’s what you do every single day!”40:00 - Distribution & Branding at Unacademy41:22 - What have been the Growth levers for Unacademy from 2015 - 2019?45:16 - Cracking Monetisation54:57 - Book recommendations by him for the listeners

#100xEntrepreneur #Podcast with Kitty Agarwal, Head of Corporate Development, Info EdgeBelonging from a Calcutta based Marwari business family, Kitty completed her MBA from IIM Ahemdabad in 2012, post which due to her interest in Entrepreneurship, she came in touch with Sanjeev Bikhchandani and joined Info Edge.She has spent the last 6 years investing in early-stage consumer internet companies. Working closely with portfolio companies for strategy-building, monitoring progress and follow-on fundraising. She also looks after deal sourcing, due diligence, and legal documentation.Some of Info Edge’s Portfolio Companies include - Zomato, Ustraa, and MeritNation among others.In this podcast, Kitty shares her experience of Early Stage Investing at Info Edge and How she closely works with Founders to enable Growth.Notes - 00:41 - Her Journey from a Marwari Business Family in Calcutta to Info Edge03:15 - How did investing in other Startups began at Info Edge?05:50 - Recent 5 Investments06:35 - First Cheque Size & the Stage at which they enter a business08:00 - What value does Info Edge brings to the table apart from money in Portfolio companies? 08:56 - Misconception about Info Edge owing a greater than 50% stake in Portfolio companies13:26 - Evaluation Process for Potential Portfolio companies 19:00 - What’s her take on Content-based startups in India?20:55 - Potential Markets & Opportunities in 2019-2026:30 - How does Info Edge help its Portfolio companies in setting up Corporate Governance34:30 - Lessons for Founders, based on her experiences with their Portfolio companies

#100xEntrepreneur #Podcast with Shripati Acharya, Managing Partner, Prime Venture Partners“I’ve more patience than the average person, because life is a marathon, not a sprint” - Shripati AcharyaComing from a very humble background, Shripati did his schooling in Kendriya Vidyalaya, Bhopal. Later took admission in IIT Madras, then went to Stanford to pursue his Masters and finally did his MBA from Harvard.In 1999, he Co-founded Snapfish (now part of HP) - One of the largest online photo services in the world with over 70M members. In his later career he worked at Senior Management roles at Cisco & UIDAI Aadhaar.In 2011, he Co-founded Prime Venture Partners, one of India's Premier Early Stage Funds, focused on creating disruptive, category creating technology companies out India for local and global markets.His Portfolio Companies include - Ezetap, Happay, and MyGate among others.In this podcast, Shripati shares his deep insights of the SaaS opportunities in India & the core fundamentals of Early Stage Investing.Notes - 00:36 - His Journey from Kendriya Vidyalaya in Bhopal to Stanford01:47 - How did he start Snapfish?03:10 - From being the Founder of Snapfish in the US, what brought him into the Indian Startup Ecosystem?04:17 - How was Prime Venture Partners started?06:06 - “Being a VC you should meet every entrepreneur with an open mind and not have preconceived notions” 08:24 - Operating Thesis at Prime Ventures15:45 - Meeting existing Portfolio companies regularly for discussing Strategic Actions 17:27 - His thoughts on Wealth Creation & Public Marketing Investing19:14 - What are the parallels between Early Stage Investing & Public Market Investing?22:17 - Potential in Indian SaaS companies to go for an IPO25:28 - Unfortuante failures or hurdles occur when Entrepreneurs are caught up in hindsight32:54 - Is it possible to build breakout companies like Whatsapp in India?

#100xEntrepreneur #Podcast with Ashu Garg, Partner, Foundation CapitalAfter graduating from IIT Delhi, and later completing his masters from IIM Bangalore, Ashu worked at various companies such as - Unilever India, McKinsey & Company, Microsoft and a few others.In 2008 he joined Foundation Capital and since then he’s been primarily investing in B2B & SaaS Companies for the past 11 years.Foundation Capital invested early in Netflix.His Portfolio Companies include - Localytics, QuanticMind, Opas.ai, ZeroStack and FundsIndia among others.In this podcast, Ashu shares his deep insights of the B2B & SaaS space in US & the opportunities coming ahead.Notes - 00:56 - His Professional Journey - A series of Serendipitous Events.05:03 - What caught his interest in the B2B & SaaS market space?07:23 - What are the key skills, he looks for in B2B founder?10:05 - How to sell B2B or SaaS products?12:01 - Why is having clarity on ICP (Initial Customer Profile) crucial for a business?14:40 - How long does it take for him from - “First email from a founder to Cutting a Cheque”?16:40 - Success & Struggles in Foundation Capital’s Portfolio Companies25:10 - What’s his advice for founders who struggle to scale up in the SaaS market?27:55 - When does he plans to invest more in Indian Companies?31:23 - Themes he’s been on a look out for - Task Automation, Tools to make Development easy, Cybersecurity27:15 - Will Startups in Credit Lending Space be able to make money?38:00 - How can B2B entrepreneurs crack the next big thing?

#100xEntrepreneur #Podcast with Amrish Rau, Co-founder at Citrus Pay, Head of Investments & Partnerships at PayU“Life is Game, Treat it as a Sport, Enjoy your time in the Field, & It will be Fantastic!” - Amrish RauAfter starting his career as a Sales Manager at Siemens Nixdorf in 1996, he later worked extensively with Teradata & First Data. He later started Citrus Payments in 2014, which was acquired by PayU for $130Mn in 2016, one of the biggest FinTech deals in India.As an Angel Investor, his Portfolio Companies are - CRED, Khatabook, Signzy, and OPEN Bank among others.In this podcast, Amrish shares his deep insights of the FinTech space in India & opportunities coming ahead.Notes - 00:56 - How did he grow from a Sales Manager at Siemens to one of the renowned names in Indian Fintech Space?05:20 - How does he treat his work life?06:36 - His experience of Investing in CRED, Mobile Premiere League, Khatabook, Dunzo & Bira 13:28 - Formation of Citrus Pay14:42 - Seeds of Entrepreneurship17:55 - First few years of Citrus Pay - Testing the Market19:26 - His thoughts on Business Capital requirement & Funding21:45 - “You should not tie your dreams to - How much funding I can raise?; Instead, think of - What problem statement can I solve?”23:11 - Pivots v/s Experimentation & Improvisation24:32 - Core Unsolved problems in FinTech for B2C & B2B27:15 - Will Startups in Credit Lending Space be able to make money?28:24 - Credit Lending opportunities in SMEs30:23 - Cost of money is extremely high through NBFCs31:37 - Other Markets he’s interested in - Transactions & eKYC32:52 - “The number of Quality founders, I meet every day, I’m soon going to end up broke being an Angel Investor.”35:26 - Preparation for the Big War in FinTech 37:33 - Advice to listeners - “Spend time in understanding the complexity of FinTech”44:45 - No.1 Golden Rule for a Cofounder is to put the Company First

#100xEntrepreneur #Podcast with Sasha Mirchandani, Founder, Kae CapitalIn early 2000 Sasha was approached by two guys from IIM Ahmedabad with a Startup idea, to invest in. Later he went on to understand the entire Angel Investing & Seed Captial from his fellow Venture Capitalists. After being a solo Angel Investor for over 5-6 years he started Kae Capital in 2012.Some of the Portfolio companies include - Healthkart, LoanTap, Nua and 1mg among others.In this podcast, Sasha shares his deep insights of the Indian Startup Ecosystem from his 18 years of Investing Career.Notes - 00:36 - Mission of Kae Capital01:56 - His 18 Year Journey as an Investor06:53 - Looking at “How well the Founders deal with when the tough times come.” 08:52 - “There’s a Time & a Place for a Market to Take-off”10:55 - Failures while trying to Time the Market11:44 - Recent Investment & Thesis - Nua, Loan Tap, Zetwerk14:37 - Quality of Founders in 2019 vs Quality of Founders 10 Years back16:20 - Markets he prefers - Healthcare, AI, B2B Commerce & SaaS17:10 - Experience investing in Analytics & Home Services ?22:27 - The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz25:24 - Common Patterns in 100x Growth Startups27:29 - Advice to Entrepreneurs “Start, Pivot, Stop, Repeat”

#100xEntrepreneur #Podcast with Alok Goyal, Partner, Stellaris Venture Partners“It’s essential that you find the perfect balance between passion and money” - Alok Goyal.After heading SAP India as COO for 3 years, he decided to become a Venture Capitalist and joined Helion Ventures in 2013 to understand and experience the Indian Startup Ecosystem. In 2016 he Co-Founded Stellaris Venture Partners, where he looks after the following markets - SaaS, Logistics, Recruiting.Some of the Portfolio companies of the firm include - Mamaearth, Whatfix, mfine and Shop101 among others.In this podcast, Alok shares, about Electric-vehicle & SaaS space in India and more.Notes - 00:35 - Journey - COO at SAP India to a Venture Capitalist05:38 - How he got introduced and joined Helion07:02 - Led investments in Software & Services markets at Helion 09:15 - How are Investment decisions taken at Stellaris?11:20 - Deals led by him - Whatfix, Signzy, noticeboard, LOADSHARE 15:05 - Reasons behind rapid growth in Whatfix and LOADSHARE18:05 - Does he needs validation on his investment decisions from a senior investor?19:05 - “If you are a reasonably sized fund, it’s not possible to build Theme sized funds?” 21:39 - Why is he so bullish in the Electric-vehicle space in India?24:53 - Two-wheeler & Three-wheeler vehicles would be first adopters of EVs in India26:36 - “EVs Market would be bigger than Ola & Uber combined due to Economies of Scale”27:42 - SaaS Startups Growth in India vs US32:20 - Evaluation of Founders - “Great Founders don’t fit into any pattern, they define new patterns”35:05 - Key Strategies in SaaS - “Ability to sell your solutions, Scale what works & Kill what doesn’t”44:22 - Role of Markets in Growth - “Great Entrepreneur + Average Market = Average Outcome” & “Average Entrepreneur + Great Markets = Decent Outcomes”

#100xEntrepreneur #Podcast with Sandeep Sinha, Co-founder & Managing Partner, Lumis Partners“The belief of the Entrepreneur & the team that you are building & serving for a larger potential market is one of the differential factors in startups which grow 100x.” - Sandeep Sinha.After completing his Post-Grads from London School of Economics, he worked at GE and 3Com Corporation during his early career. In Sept 2006 he started Lumis Partners an Operating Private Equity Fund, with some focus areas which include: Education & Skilling, Recruitment, Assessment, Human Resources and Career Community Solutions.Some of the Portfolio companies include - SHEROES, Wheebox, Altizon Systems among others.In this podcast, Sandeep shares, about role play as an Investor, building relationship with founders and more.Notes - 00:32 - From working at GE in his early career to starting Lumis Partners in 200601:30 - Working closely with Entrepreneurs gives you the opportunity to learn & experience a lot02:25 - Prioritizing select markets can be done by regular experimentation & persuasion 04:44 - Identifying Recession-Proof markets with opportunities of big wins07:32 - Can startups with great teams persuade an Investor to make an Investment?10:24 - The Kind of Entrepreneurs he as a VC would love to work with again & again12:45 - Some of his exists from Healthcare, Human Resource & Fintech14:55 - Being a Hands-on Investor & Methodology of Engaging with Portfolio Companies 16:43 - Pros of being an Open-Ended Equity Firm in case of having to deal with LPs17:56 - Identifying Founders with Deep domain Industry Experience & Understanding20:19 - Engaging with Companies from the start by testing Pre-revenue Models20:56 - Anti-Portfolio Companies - MakeMyTrip, OYO, ShareChat26:30 - Enabling Founders to discuss Challenges & Problems with Investors by building a strong relationship27:57 - Ideal Co-Investors - Clarity in terms of Role Play as a Co-Investor 32:27 - “At the end of the day deliver Great Financial Results, Make an Impact & Enjoy the ride of being a VC”

#100xEntrepreneur #Podcast with Karan Mohla, Executive Director at Chiratae Ventures (formerly IDG Ventures India)“As a VC to add value, keep asking yourself, What are the one or two things which if the company does, based on your experience, they’ll thrive. And then Discuss & Communicate that with the Founders.” - Karan Mohla.After graduating from the University of Michigan, Karan joined Jefferies & Company in Silicon Valley, where he first experienced Capital raising, Strategic Company Analysis & Investment Banking.He was also the Youngest person admitted in the INSEAD Executive MBA program history. In 2010, after his Masters, he joined Chiratae Ventures (formerly IDG Ventures India) as a Senior Associate. Since then during his 9 years journey over there, he moved up the ladder to become Executive Director and Head of Consumer Tech & Media SectorCurrently, Karan is a Board of Member in Bounce, HealthifyMe, LittleBlackBook, POPxo, Tripoto and several other big names in the Indian Startup Ecosystem.In this podcast, Karan shares, about the Opportunities in Consumer Tech & Digital Media, Challenges faced by a Venture Capitalist and more.Notes - 00:50 - From being an Intern at E&Y to becoming Executive Director at Chiratae Ventures07:16 - “There are ways in life through which you can create an Impact, Entrepreneurship is one of them”09:40 - Challenges while Fund-raising as a Venture Capitalist & Being a Venturepreneur14:30 - His first Thesis based investment in FirstCry17:30 - What are the scenarios where Top-down or Bottom-up Strategy are suitable for?19:50 - Which markets & business models have been a big win in the past decade?21:37 - Why most Advertising & Ed-Tech Startups don’t work out in India?23:46 - Three Signs of a Bad Investment Opportunity 26:08 - Potential business models to look out in Consumer-Tech30:43 - Thesis for Digital Media Companies32:50 - Creating a Full Stack Business Model = Content Community + Commerce (not being a force fit)37:10 - Recipe to Scale Fast - Surround yourself with good people early on as an Entrepreneur39:55 - Proper Execution is more valuable than just having a Vision50:45 - Not having personal biases to your role as an Investor51:04 - “While making an Investment Decision, something or the other would always go wrong, it’s better to plan much in advance.”52:33 - Dealing with Uncertainties in the form of delayed results being a VC

Shalini started as a Venture Partner in the Venture Capital Ecosystem with 500 Startups in 2015.Post which later she started her own Rewards & Loyalty based product Epic.one in early 2019.In this podcast, Shalini shares, the investment philosophy & thought process practised by her at 500 Startups.Notes - 00:20 - Unusual for a VC to become an Entrepreneur01:30 - How did your life shape up your background?02:30 - How did 500 Startups happen?03:20 - Purpose in life as a VC & Now as an Entrepreneur04:17 - Epic.one (Solving the fragmented rewards space)05:15 - Profiling a Customer07:16 - Building an Ecosystem of Players09:38 - Teaming up with Cofounder - Amit10:25 - Key learnings at GSF as an Investor12:20 - Wave of Financial Startups13:40 - Investment Strategy at 500 Startups17:24 - “In early stages folding of Companies is very common, 40-50% close in first 2-3 years”19:50 - “Sometimes your hypothesis is wrong & sometimes it’s not well executed”23:01 - Four things I learnt from the mistakes of Startups we invested in!P.S.I would like to give shoutout to my friend Swayam Prabha, who is the founder of Divine Rejuvenation.I signed up for Divine Rejuvenation wellness class online. It was 30 min session where the instructor uses state of the art bio-energetic tool for your physical, emotional and mindful well being.I had one of the most deep sleep that day and next day my meditation session was wonderful.For 100x Entrepreneur listeners they have launched a special one time 30 min session at 100% discount. Use the code “100X” while signing up on https://divinerejuvenations.com/appointments/

Podcast with Vishal Gupta, Managing Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners.“When you create a Network effect, your moats become stronger and your growth is also disproportionate.” - Vishal GuptaVishal did his MBA from IIM Calcutta, in 2002. Post which he initially worked with HCL and later joined Reliance Capital Private Equity in 2003.Finally, he joined Bessemer Venture Partners in 2006.Some of the portfolio companies at Bessemer Venture Partners India include - Bigbasket, Swiggy, Pharmeasy, Urbanclap and DocsApp among others.In this podcast, Vishal shares, about startups with Strong Distributions Channels, opportunities in Healthcare and more.Some Questions answered by Vishal in this Podcast -1. What’s his take on Operational heavy businesses like Bigbasket & Swiggy ?2. What does he think Distributions & Supply Channels in Startups?3. Why does he believe in Data-driven board meetings?4. What is his thesis for opportunities in Healthcare in India?5. What markets didn’t worked out for him?P.S. I would like to give a big shoutout to Qtrove.comQtrove.com is a content and community driven curated marketplace that exhibits and sells natural, organic and non-mass produced products made by small and local sellers driven by passion and purpose. Qtrove.com wants its consumers to 'MakeTheSwitch' to a sustainable lifestyle for a better tomorrow. Qtrove.com wants to change how you consume products IN your body (that is food), ON your body (that is personal care) and AROUND your body (Household Care). They are the G-Commerce (G stands for Good) guys. Use the code 100x to get exclusive 20% discount till 31st oct 2019. I have myself made lifestyle switch into more organic and sustainable products. For eg. the honey and sugar which I consume, the soaps which I use at my home are all made by these local sellers made by hand. Not only you are using something which is good for your body, you are also providing livelihood to so many people.

Ash started his career in Banking and joined Silicon Valley Bank and has been since associated with them.He is credited with bringing the major VC & Investment houses of Silicon Valley & San Francisco Bay Area to India in 2003 (also known as the birth of Venture Capitalism in India).He later started Saama Capital in India with the vision of being an Active Co-Investor.Saama Capital is also well known for being an early investor in Paytm. Some of the other investments of Saama Capital include – Raw Pressery, Sula Vineyards, Shaadi.com, and Games2Win among others.In this podcast, Ash shares his journey and experience of bringing the VC culture in India, setting it up and investing in several well-known Consumers Brands & Fintech companies.Some Questions answered by Ash in this Podcast –1. How did the birth of Venture Capital happen in India back in 2003?2. How was his experience during his first meeting with Vijay Shekhar Sharma (Paytm) during his investment pitch?3. How does he see a Startup doing pivots and what was some of the successful Pivots in his investments?4. What has been his philosophy during all of his investments?5. Where did his market thesis didn’t work out?6. What are some of his big companies & exits in Consumer brands?7. What habits does he attribute to his successes?8. How is 2019-20 for founders?9. What are some of his advice for new VCs?A big shoutout for my friends at Sleepy Owl Coffee. Sleepy Owl makes super smooth Cold Brew Coffee and Hot Brew Coffee that requires no equipment to brew. Their Brew Packs are made from the best Indian Coffee beans, carefully roasted and packed immediately to seal in the flavour. Ready to brew, anywhere. Just add water & let it brew overnight. Apart from cold brews, Sleepy Owl recently announced their entry into the hot coffee segment with the launch of an entirely new category- 100% biodegradable, Equipment-free 5 min Dip-N-Sip Brew Bags. . Real coffee that’s made at home. Available at www.sleepyowl.co – use the code 100x at checkout to get 15% off your first order.

“What kind of products can I build for consumers who are already on the Internet, rather than bringing offline consumers online.” - Miten SampatMiten started his career in US after completing his Masters in Computer Science, in 2007. It was in 2012 that he began as an Angel Investor and Advisor for Startups.Around the same time, he took the call to move back into India and explore & leverage the Startup ecosystem here.In 2013, he joined the TimesCity and later shifted to managing investments decisions at Times Internet. Some of the portfolio companies at Times Internet include - MX Player, ET-Money, Dineout, Haptik, Shuttl and Cricbuzz among others.In this podcast, Miten shares, the investment philosophy & thought process practised by him at Times Internet.Some Questions answered by Miten in this Podcast -1. What made him come back to India & join Times Internet?2. What does he think about Times Internet investing as a Minority Share Holder?3. What markets or investment thesis didn’t work out for them ?4. Why did Times Internet Shutdown TLABS (Accelerator for Startups like - Inshorts & Pratilipi)? 5. What habits does he attribute to his success as an investor ?6. How does Times Internet chooses build Vs buy ?

Anurag Ramdasan, Head Of Investments at 3one4 Capital (Early Stage VC Fund).Out of the 60 Portfolio Companies, some well-known names are OPEN, Licious, Pocket Aces, YourStory & Darwinbox.In this podcast, Anurag shares his experience of coming from a hardcore Coding background into the VC world and also talks about some specific markets in the Startup Ecosystem like Content, Consumer Brands & Fintech.Some Questions answered by Anurag in this Podcast -1. How was his journey from being an Engineer to an Investor?2. How has their journey been with OPEN & Licious?3. Being one of the Youngest Principal’s, how did he mature so fast?4. How did 3one4 Capital establish themselves into this Ecosystem?5. Which were the markets where they had a Thesis and got a win?6. What were the markets which didn’t work out for them?7. What excites them being an Investor rather than being an Operator in the Startup Ecosystem?8. What are the upcoming markets in India where they are interested?9. How do you solve monetisation consents of Founders?

Utsav Somani, Partner, AngelList India shares his experience at AngelList India & Syndicates (Private Single-deal VC funds led by Top Angels).Some of the Startups where Utsav has invested as angel investor are BharatPe, AdPushup, Innov8, CoinDCX, Elemential Labs, Sugar Cosmetics, LogiNext, ARATA, Stranger & Sons, Mall91, Pernia's Pop-up Shop.Some Questions answered by Utsav in this Podcast -1. What is a Syndicate & How does it work?2. What are the minimum requirements to become a General Partner in a Syndicate?3. How can first-time founders approach AngelList for raising funds?4. How many Startups have been funded by Syndicates in India until now?5. How does AngelList ensure Startups which are funded by Syndicates to get updates & communicate with the Investors?6. What does an average Syndicate ticket size look like?7. What is “The Collective by AngelList India”?8. What is the Investment Thesis followed at AngelList - “Top-down” or “Bottom-up”?9. How does AngelList India work in sync with AngelList US?A guide for founders how to use AngelList in India:https://medium.com/@AngelListIndia/how-angellist-helps-indian-startups-raise-capital-277076828f5b

Dheeraj Jain, Founder at Redcliffe Capital shares his experience and thoughts around investing in Biotech / Health Care & Consumer Brands in India.By now he has invested in 32 companies, whereas some of his notable exits include Innov8, Burger Singh & Supr Daily. Some of the successful companies where Dheeraj initially invested, and since then they have raised significant amount of subsequent fundings are PeeSafe, LifCare, The Man Company, Drivezy, Coho, Coutloot and Qdesq, among others.Some Questions answered by Dheeraj in this Podcast -1. What caught his attention towards Health Care companies in India?2. Why is it the right time for Biotech Startups to scale up in India?3. Can Consumer Brand Startups become massive?4. What were his thoughts while investing in PeeSafe & The Man Company?5. What’s was the secret behind the 100x growth of Drivezy?6. What role do markets play when a company has to scale?7. What kind of characteristics does he look for in a Founder, during the early stage funding?8. Over the last 4-5 years, How has he seen himself grow as an Investor?

Brij Bhasin (General Partner at Rebright Partners, Ex-Operating Partner at GSF India).In 2012 he joined GSF (India's first multi-city accelerator program for early-stage tech product startups). Then in 2015, he joined Rebright Partners (an early stage Japanese Venture Capital Fund investing across Deep Tech, Healthcare, Mobility, Enterprise SaaS, B2B products and Internet/Mobile). Some successful portfolio companies in DocsApp & LetsTransport.Some Questions answered by Brij in this Podcast 1. What were his key learnings at GSF India?2. What were some of the key startups he advised or mentored?3. How did he joined Rebright Partners?4. Which few startups has he invested at Rebright Partners recently? How has their growth been?5. While evaluating deals for Rebright Partners, how does deal flow works for him?6. As an early stage investor what markets have been a win for him in the last 5 years?7. What would be his advice to founders in order to reach out and pitch to him?

Sukhbir Singh is a well-known Bollywood singer. He is also called the prince of Bhangra. He has recently become an active startup investor. His first investment is in the beverage market in India.In this podcast, Sukhbir shares his journey of how living hand to mouth in Kenya, in a Gurudwara taught him humbleness and never letting your success or work change your human principles. His parents migrated when he was just two years old from Jalandhar, India. His father was into singing, classically trained, but he was spiritually inclined. So he worked as a Gyaniji in Gurudwara in Kenya.He learned different instruments by being in a band in Kenya, started off as a keyboard player, then progressed to a drummer, guitarist, and then eventually a singer, started from backing vocals and then lead vocal. More on his journey in the podcast.When being asked on:1. How do you feel when you meet young founders today?I see myself in them. I see when I was their age and I had that desire and passion to create a song, would take an idea from just a melody to a song. And, for Startups I see them in a very similar fashion it starts with an idea and then the passion behind the ideas of people actually take that idea and make it into a reality. 2. How music production and startups are related?It's the same thing with startups you don't know if that is going to work. It's unless and until you put it into practices. Similarly, with music production, you take an idea to make it into song and then let you know the masses decide whether it's a hit song or not.Sukhbir also shares:1. What he is looking in startups and founders that he wants to fund2. His advice to founders to deliver excellence in business3. His learnings from 25 years in the music industry that can be applied to startups4. His advice from his own experience on dealing with failure in startupsFrom Siddhartha: A shoutout to India’s first start-up to create shoes with Natural and Sustainable Fibres. Neeman’s shoes are extremely lightweight and flexible. I wear them without socks, and I don’t have to worry about odour anymore. Plus, if they ever catch a stain, I dump them in a washing machine. Overall, after wearing Neeman’s – I don’t think I can wear any other shoes. So, go ahead and try them. Just for the audience of 100X, my buddies at Neeman’s are offering an exclusive 15% OFF using the code 100X on https://neemans.com

Semil Shah, Founder at Haystack & Venture Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, talks about his journey to becoming a successful Venture Capitalist.Semil founded Haystack in 2013 (An Early Stage Investment Fund). Some successful portfolio companies in Haystack include DoorDash, Instacart, Carta, Giphy, and Wag.Some Questions answered by Semil in this Podcast -1. What are his learnings for people who want to become a VC?2. How to choose the kind of Investor you want to become? Do you want to sit on the Board or do you want to be Growth & Network Driven?3. Is there any other path to become a VC other than an Ivy League college followed by some experience as a Consultant? 4. What should a 23-24 year old be doing fresh after college, to enter this Ecosystem?5. What was his First Fund size? How did he convince his first 5 LPs to put in the money?6. How did he happen to join Lightspeed Ventures?7. What are the Key Elements he looks for while investing?8. How much of his time does he dedicate to raise funds vs time spent on deploying it?9. What habits does he attribute for his success as a VC in such a short time (which generally takes others 10-15 years to achieve)?

Sanjeev Aggarwal is the Founder of The Fundamentum Partnership, Growth stage fund.Sanjeev has also been the Founder of Helion Ventures, one of the earliest Venture Capital Funds in India established in 2006.Sanjeev started his entrepreneurial journey as the Co-Founder of Daksh, one of the largest BPO in India which sold to IBM for $150 Million in 2004.Sanjeev shares his investing thesis in the podcast where startups need to solve a big problem for a large market. And if the participants in the market is very diffused which is the case with most consumer businesses, then organising that market can deliver you a very big impact.Eg Daksh was participating in $100 Billion outsourcing industry.MakeMyTrip $20 Billion travel industry.BigBasket $300 Billion grocery industry.Common theme is that very large market, highly under penetrated in terms of how it is organised and how digitally influenced it is.In founding team Sanjeev looks for First Principals thinkers. Reason that element is you are solving problem that has never been solved before so you can’t use a template to replicate. You have to create you template on the run.He is looking for Co-founders who are like Hindu gods Brahma and Vishnu, who are very complementary to each other, one if the visionary and other executes and builds on that vision.Why story tellers win ?Storytelling is as much about your thinking process as it is about communication process.Capital goes to those founders who are thinking big and who are thinking scale. Investors make their own mistakes but that is what is very attractive to investors. Are you solving a big problem. Do you have vision of the future. While you will solve actual problems bottoms up but do you have bigger picture very clearly in front of your mindThere is value in how you communicate but to me communication skills is an outcome of your thinking skills. And therefore they are the rightful recipient of large capital because in India GDP is growing and digital GDP is growing even faster. So there are lot of big problems which are waiting to be solved which is what these entrepreneurs are doing.Journey of scale up think in horizontal. It’s really about 4 things:1. Strategy: How are you thinking of shaping a market2. Structure: What is the organisation design. 3. Putting the right people 4. Having a very strong governance mechanism.

Prashant Pansare is the Co-Founder of Eagle10 Ventures, Seed Stage Fund investing $150,000 to $450,000 as the first external check in the startup.Eagle10 has invested in 6 startups which include TravelSpice, Zestl, Pi Beam Labs, Mate Labs, Net Analytics.Prashant has been founder of Playerify, Online Prasad, Medissist.Excerpt from the podcastPrashant's 5 favourite mistakes from his entrepreneurial journey:1. When we were building Playerify, Just Play sports, we kept on building considerable amount of time. We should have shipped lot faster, we should have iterated lot often. Key thing that I have learned the hard way that iterate faster, make mistakes.2. Being overworked as an Entrepreneur. Most of the entrepreneurs think that they need to keep clocking the hours. But I learned the hard way that it is important to take a pause. Moment of reflection really helps to see, to reassess. “Even Ferrari takes a pitstop”. 3. I have made tons of mistakes in hiring and not hired the best way in my earlier journeys. You need to always hire the people who are committed to you in your vision. People who come with a short term vision of may be making quick money or not understanding your vision they usually fall apart first. They don’t contribute to you as meaningfully as you would expect. 4. I didn’t do really well which I picked up in 4th year is peer to peer learning. You need to talk to more founders, share yours and listen to their challenges and not build in silos.5. Not just go for your passion. Most of the entrepreneurs tend to start their journeys with something they are extremely passionate but it may not be a business worthy idea. Passion is something you really love but is the market large enough. Because what you are doing if doesn’t have a wider acceptance, it’s really hard to build a large company even to be self sustainable forget about raising venture capital.

In this podcast with we explore Mayank Khanduja’s journey as an investor at SAIF Partners India. SAIF is among the Tier-1 early stage investors in India, investing across all sectors.Mayank comes from a family of engineers so getting highest education was the top priority in his family. After completing his engineering from Delhi, Mayank went on to MBA from IIM-Calcutta.After working 5 years in Technology consulting in McKinsey, Mayank itch to work closely with technology companies brought him to world of early stage investing with SAIF Partners. Some of the companies at SAIF, Mayank has been involved and invested in, are Sharechat, PropTiger, NoBroker, Playsimple, Treebo, TravelTriangle, Airblack.Mayank has spent most of the time at seed stage of the companies. SAIF had invested in 2015 in Sharechat. Back then there was no wave of content startups. It was a thesis from SAIF looking at growth of content consumption in China and asked themselves will India get to that stage in 3-4 years. Yes of course it will. And once data and handsets are available to Next Billion Users, which is a big term now. Back then they thought next 200-300 Million users what will they do first. They will like to access some content, some entertainment on their phones. And that was SAIF thesis when they invested in Sharechat there was a new wave of users coming in India and they would like to access some form of entertainment content on their handsets.In the podcasts Mayank continues to share his insights on:1. Importance of storytelling in building a large company. Can it be learned or great founders are born with it ?2. What happen when your competitor in a large market raise tons of money from VC like Softbank ?3. How to spot the Founders who create 10x - 20x value for their stakeholders ?4. Key skills for Founders to learn and keep building on ?5. The current exit scenario in India and some of the SAIF portfolio exits ?6. Book recommendations by Mayank for founders on scaling and thinking ?7. What habits Mayank attributes in his success as a Venture Investor ?8. What is the one most important factor which will have disproportionate impact on the size of outcome you generate ?

Raja Ganapathy is the Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Spring Marketing Capital, a skin in the game marketing capital firm that partners with founders to offer capital & marketing expertise.Raja has been ex-Chief Marketing Officer of Sequoia Capital India and has delivered some of the biggest marketing campaigns like BYJU'S.Why should you listen to the podcast ?- If you would like to know success story behind the marketing campaigns of Byju, Cars24, Epigamia ?- What power can celebrities bring to your brand ?- How did Byju team and Raja came up with the idea bringing the king of bollywood Shahrukh Khan in Byju marketing campaigns ? - The process that goes behind creating Wow and Viral marketing campaigns- Raja’s journey as a investor in Startups and his 10 year stint in Sequoia India as Chief Marketing Officer - What’s the new term on the block coined by Spring marketing capital. How Raja, Arun, Vineet and their team are creating magic by marrying marketing and capital for young startups.

Ajay Hattangdi is Managing Partner and Co-founder of Alteria Capital, India’s largest venture debt fund. Ajay started the country’s first venture debt program while at Citibank in 2005. He subsequently went on to create the first dedicated venture debt business in the country as the founding CEO for InnoVen Capital’s flagship India NBFC which he ran from 2007 to 2017. Alteria Capital was started by Ajay Hattangdi and Vinod Murali in 2018. It has invested in almost 20 companies including Stanza Living, Dunzo, Universal SportsBiz, ZestMoney. Vogo, Country Delight and Toppr among others. Here are some of the key takeaways from the podcast:1. Venture debt is very helpful for companies to add to their cash runway between equity rounds. It can help the startup improve valuations while minimizing dilution when taken as part of an equity round. Companies should not take venture debt where there is a binary element to their business or if the business model is still in the proof of concept stage.2. Entrepreneurs should not underestimate the importance of serendipity in achieving success. Serendipity is the combination of preparedness and timing. Once you have the opportunity and the timing is right, execute the heck out of it.3. It is very important for entrepreneurs to balance passion with cold logic to chart the path forward in their business. Passion provides the fuel that entrepreneurs need to obsess about their companies and drive forward relentlessly. But entrepreneurs that work with only pure passion may miss the signs that the business is off course. Knowing how to balance these two forces is critical for success.4. The best teams always include people with complementary skills which compensate for each other’s weaknesses. Build your teams accordingly.5. The best advice is to find something you enjoy doing, stay curious, not be afraid to revise your thinking if the facts change, take ownership for your mistakes, and don’t take life so seriously.

Hari TN is Chief People Officer BigBasket and Strategic Advisor, The Fundamentum Partnership, Growth Stage VC Fund.Hari is also an angel investor in Rocketium, BestDoc, UnFound.ai, Jiny.ioWe discuss in the podcast about:1. Hari's learnings and lessons from 17 years journey in Startups2. The early story on team building in TaxiForSure. Also we discuss about the TaxiForsure $200 Million exit and what led it. Key lessons on building a marketplace and raising capital.3. The culture of BigBasket and key processes incorporated which makes Big Basket the largest grocery service in India4. Hari's experience in working with Daksh, Virtusa, Amba Research, TaxiForSure, BigBasket. Key lessons on why only few companies scale 100x5. If you are looking to work in startups how to choose which startups to work for. Hari has identified his key criteria on it.

Ameera Shah is Founder and Managing Partner of Metropolis Healthcare, one of the largest and most trusted Healthcare Diagnostic company of India.Ameera joined Metropolis when it was 1 lab in South Mumbai started by her father. Over the years she expanded Metropolis to 120 Labs and 2400 collection centres. Metropolis Healthcare went IPO in April 2019. The company in recent fiscal year posted Rs 760 Crores revenue and Rs 205 Crores EBITDA.The podcast shares her journey to make Metropolis one of the most trusted names in Healthcare in India.Some notable quotes from the podcast:1. I started building Metropolis at the age of 21 in 2001. When I started building this firm the biggest issue people had with me was with my age, the lack of medical qualifications and with my gender. People couldn’t see me as somebody who could be relevant as I had none of these three attributes which people assumed to be very necessary to build something.2. To me the principles and the values that built Metropolis are probably the most important pieces of the journey. And we are very happy and proud to say that we accomplished that. Whether we accomplished the size we wanted is secondary. What we wanted is reputation. Whenever we meet anyone in the fraternity, Metropolis and I are recognised for being a clean promoter, for always being fair to people, for giving credible results and for making sure we take care of patients.3. In healthcare industry commercialisation, corporatisation and profit are all bad words. Because in India we are conditioned to believe if you make money you are not good.4. I discovered along the way that expressing your emotions in your work life actually can be a huge strength because it allows you to relate to people, it allows people to feel like they are understood, that we are not all robots coming to work and just doing our jobs but actually we are human beings. That allows ourselves to engage with each other on non professional fronts and that actually helps huge amount in building connections. Along the way I started showing my emotions. Some of my employees have seen me cry.5. I have 3 investors in Metropolis and I have made sure to deliver excellent financial returns on their investment: ICICI Ventures in 2005, Warburg Pincus in 2010 and Carlyle group in 20156. A lot of people used to ask me how are you so confident ? And what I realised where does confidence come from. Confidence doesn’t come from trying to be confident, confidence doesn’t come from suddenly you being born with confidence. Especially for women confidence comes from actually confronting the biggest, deepest fears that you have. And when you come through the biggest fear on the other side, that’s the thing that builds confidence. 7. Governance is a mindset. It’s not for everybody. But for me I was very clear I would build a company like HDFC or Kotak which is about good governance, transparency, good communication and not being overly aggressive but being consistent and delivering what we say.

Kunal Khattar is the Founder and Managing Partner of AdvantEdge Founders, an early stage Venture Capital Fund focussed on transportation and mobility sectors in India.The big investments of the fund include Shuttl, Rapido and Chalo.We discuss in the podcast about:1. Why AdvantEdge chooses to focus on only mobility startups ?2. In India 300 Million commutes happen every day India. How AdvantEdge plans to solve for it via investing in technology mobility startups3. Why the fund chooses to focus only asset light models ?4. Impact of Uber and Lyft IPO5. Kunal past experience as founder of Carnation, one of the earliest marketplaces in India for used automobiles.6. Why home startups have an advantage as compared to overseas startups in India7. The early story of Shuttl, the largest intracity bus service in India.

Sarbvir Singh is Managing Partner at Waterbridge Ventures, an early stage Venture Capital Fund based out of India. Sarbvir started his journey as a Venture Capitalist in 2007 with Capital 18, the VC arm of media conglomerate Network 18.Back then he was one of the first institutional checks in Bookmyshow, which is today a Unicorn and Yatra, which went public on NASADAQ.Waterbridge was started by Manish and Sarbvir in 2016. It has invested in 16 companies some on which well known ones are Unacademy, Chalo, Ziploan, MagicPin and DoubtNut.Here is what we are going to discuss on in this podcast:1. Why did Manish and Sarbvir start Waterbridge Ventures ?2. What is Waterbridge looking in early stage ventures while evaluating them ?3. What qualities is Waterbridge looking in Founders ?4. The most common mistakes founders make while pitching ?5. What should be the number 1 or 2 slide that should be in your pitch-deck and which thing you should be spending your most time on in investor pitches ?6. What value does Waterbridge ventures add in their portfolio companies ?7. What makes some companies 50 to 100x ?

Rajan Anandan is an Angel Investor and Ex-VP, Google India & SEA.Here is what we discuss in this podcast:1) We seem to have entered a new phase of the Indian startup ecosystem..what has changed ?2) Is monetising getting better for consumer startups ?3) Views on SaaS ?4) Big spaces like e-commerce and mobility seeing a lot of renewed interest..what is happening?5) 3 of Rajan's recent investments we are very excited about and why?6) What segments is Rajan focused on as an angel investor?7) What has been different about Rajan's investee companies who have been mega hits?

Kanwaljit Singh is the Managing Partner and Founder of Fireside Ventures. Fireside Ventures is early stage Venture Capital Fund investing only in Consumer Brands.Kanwaljit Singh is also known as the gardener of new Consumer Brands in India. Before Fireside, he invested personally in Paperboat, IDFresh. Both of them showed interesting sparks of what was happening in the Indian consumer market. He continued to personally invest in Epigamia, Licious, Yogabar, Vahdam Teas.FireSide has invested in 18 companies in the last 2 years which include MamaEarth, boAT lifestyle, Bombay Shaving Company.Kanwaljit Singh talks in the 100x Entrepreneur podcast about:1. Why he started FireSide Ventures ?2. How Indian consumer has changed in the last 5 years ?3. What’s are two large factors coming together in India which will give rise to hundreds of new consumer brands ?4. How new brands can be built in 5-7 years ?5. The new channels of engagement and sales which have completely shifted how new age brands are built ?6. Why disruption is must have thesis for the companies Fireside invests in ?7. What Founder DNA he is looking to invest in ?8. The evaluation process Fireside Ventures follows in investing ?9. His advise for Founders to deliver excellence in their business ?

Amit Somani is Managing Partner, Prime Venture Partners, an early stage fund investing in Technology startups in India.Amit previously was Chief Product Officer at MakeMyTrip, which went IPO in 2010. Before MakeMyTrip Amit was Head of Product at Google India.Few notable quotes from Amit Somani at 100x Entrepreneur podcast:1. "Came back to India in 2007 from Silicon Valley when I though India was a really really tall building and I am getting in the ground floor. Now 11 years later now I still feel India is going to be a really really tall building but hopefully we have now come onto the second floor."2. "Every 10 years people should take a year off on a self-imposed sabbatical or jobbatical. Take that time for self discovery, take that time to find yourself, take that time to learn about what else is happening. 3. There is Alvin Tofler who is this futurist has this beautiful quote, that people who are going to succeed in 21st century are not going to be the gyanis or the wise people. It’s the people who have the ability to unlearn, re-learn, learn all the time because you are seeing new situations all the time.4. Number 1 reason for startup success is not market, not team, not the product, nor some bell and whistle feature but TIMING. And you can’t predict it as an entrepreneur.5. If you have tailwinds behind your back, or timing is right or market is ready for your solution that is often the big difference between the companies that really break out and those that don’t.6. So really timing and getting some wind or current behind your back so you can get velocity that is often the predictor between the 100x startups and the 3-5x startups7. I have mantra called MEDS - Meditation, Exercise, Diet or Nutrition and Sleep. I try to follow daily all of those and recommend the same to all entrepreneurs because entrepreneurship is a marathon and not a sprint.

Karthik Reddy is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Blume Ventures, one of best early stage Venture Capital Funds in India.Blume Ventures started in 2010 as $20 million fund. Today the 3rd fund of Blume is $100 million. Blume has invested in 120 startups in the last 8 years. Some of the well known startups in Blume portfolio are TaxiForSure, GreyOrange Robotics, Unacademy, Locus, Exotel, Mettl.Karthik shares very candidly in the podcast:1. "Why to build for an IPO" is the only thing Founders should aim for and nothing less2. How Focus on new behaviour creation leads to creation of incredibly large long term value in the world. 3. Why to build a very large business without the capacity to storytelling is fooling yourself. 4. How founders who build 50-100x ventures punish themselves5. Why the early exits are never phenomenal.6. Why good storytelling is must in founding teams which make it large7. The Life Time Value (LTV) of a founder8. The Purpose of Blume is to nurture really passionate entrepreneurs who are trying to solve really hard problems.

Rajul Garg is the Founder and Managing Partner of Leo Capital, a Pre-Series-A Venture Capital Fund. Rajul has been the founder of two Billion Dollar companies Global Logic and Pine Labs. Rajul is counted among the top 10 early stage investors from India. Some of notable quotes by Rajul from the podcast:1. On purpose in life ?"My view of life is to be more in the present. I like to think here in this moment how I can be most productive. So my main focus now is how we make this conversation most productive for the listeners. So in my ideal state I would like to blank myself from everything else and be fully here in this moment. I feel if I can achieve that in every moment, in every hour that would come closest to my purpose."2. I do think when you look at any success including the companies I founded there definitely an element of topicality in the time they happened. Lot of different things come together to make a big company. There were so many points in the journey where the two companies could have totally shut down. Lot of ducks have to line up to make a company successful.3. "The quality of people you assemble in the company is really really important."4. Every big success is death by thousand cuts, it not one big thing but a combination of small things.5. Out of the three things - Market, team and traction, Market is something you can’t just fight with at all. Team you can still work with, you can hire more people, chip and chop, thought it's still difficult. Market is very very hard to fight. If you find yourself in a market which is small, hard to penetrate or super competitive or timing wise wrong, that is the number one reason why things don't work out. Number 1 predictor of success for investment has been timing.Getting the timing right of why this make sense to do it today is a very difficult part from an investment perspective and you often get it wrong as an investor.6. The magical thing which leads to scale of 50-100x? "I think it’s Product Market Fit. Product Market fit is one of those non-deterministic problems. It’s like asking - How do I fall in love or How can I be happy. It is not a problem that you can solve with money. It goes back to the timing thing, Is the market ready for the product today ?"7. "For me what I seen over the years I tend to let the process take over instead of thinking too much about the outcomes. I get into action mode and do things which need to be done instead of thinking what will happen tomorrow."8. On strengths and weaknesses “Because I am so aspired to be in the moment I am a good tactical thinker. Given 3 options I quickly able to latch on to what to do now and move forward, sort of bury the past, keep going. I am able to quickly correct mistakes and navigate my way through complex problems step by step. At the same time I don’t think of myself as a big strategic thinker like how will the market evolve in 5 years or 10 years.”9. The only way you can really judge an investor is look at their portfolio. Everything else is just talk. I can talk endlessly but you have to look where I have put my money in. That defines me more than anything else.10.Philosophy I life by:"You can’t make your happiness conditional to everything else. You can’t generally say if I do this then I will be happy. Specially for entrepreneurs if you say if I raise the next funding then I will feel happy. I feel there is an intrinsic fallacy in this. Chances are if you are not happy today you will not be happy tomorrow either. So I think happiness is something which comes from within and has to run like a fabric parallel to every thing else. Find a way to be calm, joyous and happy today because its not contingent on your business success or any other success, find that place today work on everything else alongside."

Pawan Raj Kumar is the Founder of Supa Foods and Hoi Foods. Supa foods is known for products like Supa corn and misht which are available in more than 3,000 retail outlets in India.Pawan is also an active angel investor in 15+ startups. Some of well known startups, where is an angel investor are Qikwell(Acquired by Practo), LifCare and Leverage Edu.Pawan has an entrepreneurial experience of 24 years. He started out in his family venture of Industrial Food Equipment, supplying and servicing to Large Food Chains like McDonalds, Pizzahut and Dominos. Some key quotes by Pawan during our conversation are:“After Graduating from IIT-Delhi and IIM-Lucknow I joined my family business as a welder. Spent first 3 months as a welder.”“If I am salesman of discounts then it’s not a business I want to be in because I am not adding any more value.““Businesses have to be built without emotions. Emotions about passion in business are important, but emotions about making business like a child of yours is wrong emotion to have for a business. I stopped having those kind of emotions long time back and I think that has served me well. One of the biggest mistake I have seen a lot of entrepreneurs make is that they can’t just let it go. There is a time when an entrepreneur’s passion cannot grow the business anymore. You need either professionals to come and run your business. You need to take a backstep, you should be ready to do that. The old mentality of building a legacy out of business is over. One should look at business as generating value for the society and hence you make money out of that. And the minute you are not adding any more value to the business, you have to step out.”“Whatever has happened in the world so far and whatever will happen in future is because of entrepreneurs. Because somebody is taking a risk in innovating something, coming up with something new, trying to change something small or big. And that what keeps on improving the world. So I want to be part of that journey in my small way and that’s what drives me towards investing in startups.”

Alok Mittal is the Founder and CEO of Indifi, SME lending platform leveraging technology and data in full loan lifecycle. Before Indifi Alok was Managing Partner of Canaan Partners India, one of well known Venture Capital firms. Alok's first startup JobsAhead was acquired by Monster.Alok shares during the podcast:1. Why he invests in startups ?2. How he evaluates the startups which reach out to him for investment?3. His schedule and work ethic at Indifi.4. What role Focus plays in his life and investments ?5. 3 advises to deliver excellence in business.6. How should startups reach out to him for the first time ?

Anjalli Ravikumar is the Social Mission Director at Unilever, the largest FMCG company in India and one of the largest in the world. Anjalli heads Fair and Lovely Career Foundation which is making huge impact in education and career guidance for young girls.Anjalli wanted to solve big problems for which there are no easy answers. She quit corporate sector very early after doing MBA and joined development.Spent 2.5 years at Naandi foundation and went onto Harvard to do masters in development. And then came back to India to work across consulting, and in Unilever bring projects to life which are going to make a difference to people.In this podcast Anjalli shares 1. How startups can work with corporates like Unilever and understanding their pain points2. Startups can learn relentless customer focus from Unilever.3. Startups have to stand for something. Even Unilever has discovered that brands that have purpose do better in the market place. Today’s millennial and GenZ really do care. You need to stand for a cause that young people will resonate with.

Hetal Sonpal is a well known Angel Investor in more than 20 startups in India. He has 20 year corporate technology business stint with Wipro, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Intel. In this podcast Hetal shares:1. Why he became an angel investor ?a. He has successful exits with BabyChakra, MassBlurb and AllisHealthb. His portfolio companies Vahdam Teas, Advantage Club, Impact Guru, Leverage Edu are the biggest winners in his portfolio and are doing fantastically well.2. What motivates him to help startups to scale3. He has completed half iron-man. How running has helped him set higher benchmarks for himself in personal and business life as well ?4. How taking up the challenge of reading 100 books in 2018 has transformed his life.5. Why he returned to India from Japan in 2010 ?6. His favourite books "Thank you for being late.- Thomas Freidman""21 Lessons of 21st Century""The art of Good life" Rolf Dobelli7. He considers Azim Premji and Remaesh Emani from Wipro his mentors and shares lessons which he has learnt from him

If you want to know how Private Equity investors can help in your entrepreneurial journey you must listen to the podcast with Sandeep Aneja, Founder and Managing Partner, Kaizen Private Equity. Kaizen is the only home grown fund which has scaled across geographies.Kaizen is investor in companies like KLAY, Toppr, Varthana Finance, Insofe. Sandeep shares his thoughts on1. Why he choose to start a fund focussed only on education2. He was a very successful Investor with Outlook Ventures in USA which was early investor in Yahoo3. How he missed investing in LinkedIn in 2004-20054. How he is riding on the back finance as a vehicle to drive quality education for everyone in India irrespective of their economic strata.5. What differentiates the companies which are able to scale 50-100x and which are not able to scale ?6. Do PE Investors take control of the company once they partner with the company ?7. Working with Founders on exit strategy from Day 1 and Introducing the companies to potential buyers so companies can see the exit route 10 years down the line.8. How he sees Exit as a natural path of companies growth, and it should be viewed as process to change investor set. 9. Why Having an open conversation about financial disengagement from each other is very critical though the event happens 7 years down the line from when they partner with companies.10. How he felt lost when he started Kaizen and didn’t budge his values for the sake of money.11. 4 advises to all entrepreneurs from Sandeep:a. To identify the problem you are solving very clearly. The problem should be clearly identified at a deeper level. eg. Problem of online education is a symptom or solution. The problem is personalised education.b. Continuing to identify the problem as the world changes as you changec. Communicating the identified problem with a differentiated perspective to the investors. d. Being ready to hire and being capable of hiring people who could scare you."OMG this person could take my job". Hire the person to help you grow. Once you get such people in they stick with you through thick and thin.

Rehan Yar Khan is the Founder and Managing Partner at Orios Venture Partners. Orios is considered among the best Venture Capital firms in India focussed on early stage startups.Rehan was the first investor in Ola & Dhruva, among the few startups in India with Billion Dollar valuation. Ola is the largest Mass Transportation company in India.In this podcast Rehan shares:1. His entrepreneurial journey of 20 years from 1992 to 2011.2. Early journey of Ola Cabs and Bhavish Aggarwal. Rehan was the first investor in Ola and when he took Ola to his fellow investors they said "we can call cabs in Mumbai by waving our hands" and passed on Ola.3. Why he became a Venture Capitalist.4. Market VCs are looking for in 2019-20205. What market thesis of Rehan have worked. 6. The Anti-portfolio companies for Rehan.7. The biggest reason why few entrepreneurs are able to scale their companies 100x.8. What Orios VC looks for in companies while investing ?9.What habits & mindset have made Rehan a successful founder and then a successful investor.10. 3 traits what makes a successful entrepreneur and a successful business

Girish Shivani is a Co-founder and Partner at Yournest Venture Fund. Girish started Yournest Venture Fund in 2011 and has witnessed Indian Startup evolve from infancy in last 8 years.In this podcast Girish shares:1. Why all Venture Capalists are not evi😈2. How he became a VC by accident 3. What is required from an entrepreneur to make him sign a check💰4. Why he replies to all emails by entrepreneurs, even cold ones. 💎5. What is required from an entrepreneur which can scale his startup 100x 💯🚀6. What differentiates between startups that scale 100x and those that do not scale7. His life and schedule as an investor8. The habits which make him successful as an investor9. His Anti-portfolio, the companies who went big and in which he could not invest in

Pankaj Bansal is the Founder and CEO of PeopleStrong, India's largest HR Tech company.In this podcast Pankaj shares:1. How he built a $100 million yearly revenue business 2. His plans of taking PeoplesStrong to IPO in next 3 years3. His daily habits, mindset and schedule4. How he built a large and efficient sales engine5. How with only 150 clients PeopleStrong is doing business of $100 million6. Why he started People Strong in 2005 ?7. His favourite books and how they have shaped him.8. The secret recipe behind Pankaj's and PeopleStrong's success

Originally from Australia, Glen has been a student and practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism since 1995 and graduated from the seven-year Masters Program in Advanced Buddhist Studies of Sutra and Tantra at the Lama Tzong Khapa Institute (Pomaia, Italy) in 2004.Since 2005 he has taught and led meditation retreats in India, Europe, North America and Australia with a teaching style emphasising clarity and stressing the integration ​of philosophical ​view, meditation and daily life conduct.I, Siddhartha Ahluwalia, have been part of many meditation retreats led by Glen and found them helpful in establishing practice of mindfulness and meditation.

Priya Krishnan is the Founder of KLAY Preschools, India's largest chain of Pre-schools.Priya has built a large profitable organisation with yearly revenues upwards of $20 Million. In this podcast Priya share about1. Why every team member in KLAY team is an entrepreneur2. The culture at KLAY Preschools3. How by helping parents raise better kids, KLAY is helping build new India4. Habits and Mindset which make her successful5. How she balance her many roles in life: Entrepreneur, Mother, Wife6. What gives her peace and balance on the entrepreneurial journey

Daljit Singh has 35 years of experience as a business leader. He is a IIT Delhi graduate. Currently he serves as the President of Fortis Healthcare. He is also an active Angel Investor in Indian startups focussed on Healthcare and Wellness.In the podcast he shares about:1. His professional journey of 35 years2. Daily Habits & Rituals which make him successful3. Why relationships is the top priority for him ?4. How at 62 years of age, he is super healthy and fit ?5. Which startups he is invested in and why he supports young entrepreneurs ?

Dr Aniruddha Malpani is a well known Angel Investor from India investing in Healthcare, Education and Social Impact startups.He is also among the top 10 IVF specialists in India.In this podcast he talks about:1. Why entrepreneurs need to be atrocious readers2. Why he never misses to post on LinkedIn everyday3. How he manages to read for more than couple of hours everyday inspite of his busy schedule4. Why he became an Angel Investor5. How interacting with entrepreneurs keep him young