Forbes India - The Startup Fridays Podcast
By Forbes India - The Startup Fridays Podcast
Forbes India - The Startup Fridays PodcastApr 05, 2024
Startup Fridays S5 Ep4: Axio's founders unpack lessons from BNPL success
In this episode, Sashank Rishyasringa, and Gaurav Hinduja, co-founders of Axio, a buy-now-pay-later specialist in Bengaluru, talk about how, while a strong regulatory environment is critical in fintech, it can also become an enabler of innovation. Lower cost of money for “new entrants and challengers” with innovative financial products can benefit millions of consumers, which in turn can help India’s economic growth, they say.
Startup Fridays S5 Ep3: Ashok Jhunjhunwala on why India must say ‘yes we can’ to deep tech
In this episode, Ashok Jhunjhunwala, institute professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras and president of IITM Research Park, Incubation Cell and RTBI, talks about why the next big push is needed now for India to become a nation of deep tech products over the next decade. He also asks that administrators and bureaucrats change their control mindset to allow our scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs to fail without fear so that they can eventually succeed in building this ecosystem for India.
Startup Fridays S5 Ep2: Vinod Shankar’s journey from software techie to lending books to deep tech investor
In this episode, Vinod Shankar, founding managing partner at Java Capital in Bangalore, talks about his passion for backing deep tech entrepreneurs. Vinod started out as a software engineer but found himself repeatedly drawn to new experiences. His insatiable thirst for knowledge has taken him from a software startup to leading marketing for a library chain to angel investing to eventually working at a VC firm before starting one of his own. Vinod talks about why he wants to invest in deep tech, and how he identifies entrepreneurs worth backing.
Startup Fridays S5 Ep1: Karan Mohla at B Capital on the convergence he sees coming in India’s startup ecosystem
Welcome to a new season of Startup Fridays. In this episode, Karan Mohla, partner at the VC firm B Capital talks about the convergence that he sees beginning to happen, which is bringing different aspects of India’s startup ecosystem to points of inflection. Karan, who’s based in Delhi, has been involved with investments in more than 20 companies including Bounce, FirstCry, HealthifyMe, Xpressbees and CropIn.
He has led investments in startups in sectors including ecommerce, healthcare, SaaS, logistics, mobility, ed-tech, agri-tech and gaming. He’s also now actively scouting for opportunities in climate tech and deep tech.
In this conversation, Karan also talks about how he figured out early that entrepreneurship was not for him, but backing founders was. He talks about learning from early mistakes as a VC investor and the importance of being self-aware and honest when deciding on investments.
Startup Fridays S4 Ep24: Kavita Shenoy, Anand Gopal part 2 – from nearly running out of money to a done deal
This is part two of a conversation with Kavita Shenoy and Anand Gopal, on their 10-year entrepreneurial roller coaster, building Voiro, an ad-tech SaaS company in Bengaluru. In today’s episode, they talk about how the $750 billion ad landscape is changing, their hopes for Voiro’s future, how building their own company has been life-changing, and why it has them coming back for more every day.
Startup Fridays S4 Ep23: Kavita Shenoy, Anand Gopal Part 1: 30k from Nandan Nilekani to multinational customers at Voiro
Part one of a conversation with Kavita Shenoy and Anand Gopal, on their 10-year entrepreneurial adventure, building Voiro, an ad-tech SaaS company in Bengaluru. Kavita and Anand are natural conversationalists and story tellers, and produce their own podcast as well.
In today’s episode, they talk about how they started Voiro, and then went from consulting and services and an "excel sheet from hell" to a software product and winning customers like Hotstar.
Startup Fridays S4 Ep22: Viral Shah on the mission at Julia Hub to help scientists and engineers innovate faster
Viral Shah, co-inventor of Julia programming language and co-founder of Julia Hub, an enterprise software startup, talks about this opensource language’s journey that will touch 15 years in the new year. Julia Hub, founded in 2015, today has customers including some of the world’s biggest companies in pharmaceuticals, aerospace, semiconductors, and industrial engineering. With some $43 million in funding, Viral and his co-founders are helping scientists and engineers innovate faster by tackling what he calls the “two language problem.”
Startup Fridays S4 Ep21: Amit Gupta on sticking to his by-the-pincode approach to scaling Yulu
In this episode, Amit Gupta, co-founder and CEO of Yulu Bikes, gives us an update on how the electric moped venture will continue its pincode-by-pincode approach to growth. Earlier this year, Yulu added a battery-as-a-service business, called Yuma. Yulu has also entered the OEM business, with Bajaj Auto making the Yulu Wynn, a more stylish version of the Yulu Miracle, that consumers can buy for about ₹55,000 upfront, and then subscribe to a battery and mobility plan.
Amit expects to go from about 25,000 of Yulu’s low-speed scooters on Indian roads at the time we spoke, in September, to about a 100,000 by June or so next year. He also expects Yulu to hit breakeven this year.
Startup Fridays S4 Ep20: Kiran Mysore on his journey from Bhadravati to UTEC’s deep tech evangelist
In this episode, we chat with Kiran Mysore, a principal at the University of Tokyo Edge Capital, one of Asia’s biggest deep tech VC funds, on the ninth anniversary of his move to Japan, where he found his calling as a deep tech VC investor, leading global investments including India and southeast Asian ventures. We spoke mostly about his experience with the deep tech ecosystem in India thus far and plans. But Kiran also opened up a bit about his love of learning and how he stays on track.
Startup Fridays S4 Ep19: Kunal Khattar on how the best is yet to come in India’s EV sector
Kunal Khattar, founding partner at AdvantEdge, an early-stage VC firm in Delhi, focused on India’s mobility sector, talks about the future of this industry in India and the role that companies ranging from Ather to Tesla could play in it. He also talks about business innovations that could soon make electric vehicles more affordable to the Indian buyer and perhaps even cheaper than the fossil-fuel guzzling ones. Kunal also spoke a little bit about his own entrepreneurial journey, leading up to the setting up of his VC firm.
Startup Fridays S4 Ep18: Arun Raghavan on journey from accidental investor to $40 mln fund at Arali
Arun Raghavan, founding partner at Arali Ventures in Bengaluru, talks about how he and his friend Rajiv Raghunandan became VC investors with an operator’s flavour, and the experience that’s helped them invest very early in entrepreneurs across sectors, from fintech and SaaS to deep tech startups. Arun also talks about how India is ready for the next level of sophistication in sectors such as SaaS, where we need to go from application-level plays to infrastructure layers. Such companies would then be truly relevant to global customers
Startup Fridays S4 Ep 17: TN Hari’s counterintuitive ideas on purpose and other notes on Indian startups
In this episode, TN Hari, co-founder of Artha School of Entrepreneurship, who’s also a prolific author on building for India, and an angel investor, talks about his learnings from across his career – from being a corporate executive at Tata Steel to diving into startups like TaxiForSure and BigBasket. He talks about problems in India that aren’t necessarily amenable to the hyper-growth model of VC funded startups. And he talks about the value of some highly effective leaders, who’re almost invisible to the public eye, he says.
Startup Fridays S4 Ep16: How Shivnath Babu wears two hats lightly, an entrepreneur and a scientist
In this episode, Shivnath Babu, co-founder and CTO of Unravel Data, talks about the growing importance of data observability and the contributions being made by his venture. Shivnath started his career as a computer science engineer from IIT Madras and then earned his PhD in the area of data platforms at Stanford University. He spent 12 years as an adjunct professor at Duke University before teaming up with Kunal Agarwal to start Unravel Data. The venture today is a Series D-funded company with investors including Third Point Ventures, Menlo Ventures and GGV Capital.
Startup Fridays S4 Ep15: Will Poole on investing in resilient founders in the global south
In this episode, Will Poole, co-founder and managing partner of Capria Ventures, talks about the opportunities and challenges in investing in the global south. Will started his career with a computer science degree 40 years ago and worked at some of the biggest names in tech, including Sun Microsystems and Microsoft, before turning to VC investing. A significant part of that career involves working in India, where in his own words, an early lesson was about finding “resilient founders.” He also talks about why he wants every company in Capria’s portfolio to have a generative AI strategy.
Startup Fridays S4 Ep14: The lightness of being Dev Khare and other notes on India’s startup scene
In this episode, Dev Khare, a partner at Lightspeed, one of the most prominent global early-stage VC firms operating in India, talks about how and why he became a venture capital investor, and what keeps him going today. Dev also talks about how India’s startups are changing, how Lightspeed is different, in his view, and some lessons from his own career, having tasted entrepreneurship firsthand before turning VC investor—the importance of timing, the value of compounding not just investments but relationships, and a simple productivity hack that always works for him.
Startup Fridays S4 Ep13: Sayandeb Banerjee on life as a ‘practitioner’ CEO at TheMathCompany
In this episode, Sayandeb Banerjee, co-founder and CEO at TheMathCompany, talks about how his six-year-old venture has grown from strength to strength, building custom analytics solutions for some of the world’s biggest companies. He also talks about how he’s always had an entrepreneurial streak; the advantages of not taking VC money too early; lessons Banerjee, and his co-founders Aditya Kumbakonam and Anuj Krishna, had to learn or unlearn as “practitioners,” new to hard-core sales; and finding personal space and time for his love of the sitar.
Startup Fridays S4 Ep12: Why Rishi Navani seeks founders he can’t help, and what he means by that
In this episode, Rishi Navani, founder and managing partner at Epiq capital, a growth-stage VC firm, talks about never losing sight of the core idea of venture capital, which is to make substantial returns for his investors. Over the 25 years that he’s been backing ventures, including previously co-founding Matrix Partners India, Navani’s way of doing this is to not spend time on how he can add value to an entrepreneur or startup, he says. Instead, he seeks founders who are so good that they mostly don’t need his help, beyond the capital
Startup Fridays S4 Ep11: Arun Kumar at Celesta on tough times revealing resilient founders, great investments
In this episode, Arun Kumar, managing partner at Celesta Capital, talks about why some of the best VC investment opportunities can be found in tough times, as they reveal the most resilient entrepreneurs. Kumar’s career includes leading KPMG India and serving in former US President Barack Obama’s administration. He also talks about embracing change—from leading thousands of colleagues at KPMG to being part of a team of about 25 at Celesta—the importance of purpose, his love of poetry and learning to enjoy everything that life threw at him.
Startup Fridays S4 Ep10: SpotDraft’s founders on spit-and-a-handshake in the age of machines and AI
In this episode, Shashank Bijapur, Madhav Bhagat and Rohith Salim talk about how they got to build SpotDraft, which offers a machine learning and AI-based contract lifecycle management platform to legal teams at companies around the world. Founded in 2017, SpotDraft has helped customers process more than a million contracts since the company released its first commercial product. The first-time entrepreneurs have raised nearly $45 million in funding from investors including Prosus, PremjiInvest, and Arkam Ventures. This year, soon, they expect to hit an ARR of $10 million
Startup Fridays S4 Ep9: Ganesh Rengaswamy’s fascinating trip from Travel Guru to Quona Capital
In this episode, Ganesh Rengaswamy, co-founder and managing partner at Quona Capital, looks back at how he once juggled being a co-founder at Travel Guru and an MBA student at Harvard Business School, and what he would have done differently. Ganesh also talks about Quona’s deep interest in fintech in India and several other markets; and how India’s public digital infrastructure and private startups will eventually unlock the massive potential of our SMBs. He also talks about his own experience with respect to seeking and learning from mentors
Startup Fridays S4 Ep8: Nishchay Ag’s plan to stay scrappy, be shameless and build a Zoho at Jar
In this episode, Nishchay Ag, co-founder and CEO of Jar, talks about how there is a massive addressable gap in India's middle class with financial products that go beyond the top 30 million that everyone is targeting. Nishchay talks about how he and his friend Misbah Ashraf went from a few WhatsApp group pilots to 10 million users at Jar, in just two years, helping people save money by investing in gold, every day. With close to $65 million in funding, Jar is changing how millions of small-town Indians save, one user at a time
Startup Fridays S4 Ep7: Bala Srinivasa on the great middle Indian opportunity for startups and VCs
In this episode, Bala Srinivasa, managing director at Arkam Ventures, talks about experiences from the firm’s first set of 14 investments so far from their $106 million inaugural fund. Over the last four years, Srinivasa, and his fellow founding partner Rahul Chandra, have backed entrepreneurs who have successfully applied technology to create business innovation in areas including financial services, agriculture, modern staffing and augmented reality. A second thesis at Arkam is software-as-a-service and Bala also talks about why Indian SaaS companies mostly prefer the US as a market
Startup Fridays S4 Ep6: Nitin Chhabra’s fascinating journey from Boomer bubblegum to SaaS to $50 mln retail operator
In this episode, Nitin Chhabra, co-founder and CEO of Ace Turtle, a tech-enabled retail business that’s the force behind brands like Lee and Wrangler in India, talks about how the company started out as a SaaS business, selling software for the so-called omnichannel retail. Nitin and co-founder Berry Singh then decided to risk that entire business, convincing their board and investors, to transform Ace Turtle into a retail operator, even as the Covid pandemic was unfolding. They are now looking at more than doubling their sales to become a $100 million company over the next 12 months.
Startup Fridays S4 Ep5: Suresh Sambandam’s irrepressible optimism for India’s SaaS sector
In this episode, Suresh Sambandam, founder and CEO of OrangeScape, better known for its product Kissflow, talks about persevering for over 15 years, before he found himself at the right place at the right time offering the right product. Suresh now dreams of making his company at least one of the top three in the world in its category. He also talks about his optimism for India’s cloud software sector and why he believes it can really deliver a trillion dollars in value—an idea that he says was dismissed by many when he aired it at a conference in Bengaluru some four years ago
Startup Fridays S4 Ep4: ‘To succeed as an entrepreneur, never lose sight of your end goal’ – Ben Mathias
In this episode, Ben Mathias, managing partner at Vertex Ventures for Southeast Asia and India, talks about how he decided to leave behind a nice life in the software industry in Silicon Valley, to come to India as a VC investor. With over three decades in the tech and VC industry combined, Ben talks about what investors did to startups over the last two years, distracting them with too much money from the real purpose of building lasting businesses. He also talks about why Vertex is very bullish on India, how the firm invests, and what his investment plans are in 2023
Startup Fridays S4 Ep3: ‘Small-town India remains a largely untapped opportunity for startups’ – Anjani Bansal
In this episode, Anjani Bansal, partner and India country head at Global Brain, a Japanese VC firm, talks about why certain opportunities in small-town India are ready for startups to grab and create disruptive innovations. The time is also right for Global Brain to step up its own operations in India, Bansal says, who is looking to grow his team and go beyond the “outbound” investments that the firm has largely relied on so far. Bansal talks about his own “meandering” journey starting from a chance encounter with a book on Rwanda and the path that it set him on
Startup Fridays S4 Ep2: ‘Find difficult and large problems and prepare for the long haul’ – Rahul Garg
In today’s episode, Rahul Garg, founder and CEO of Moglix, talks about what’s next for the company, which he says is knocking on $600-700 million in revenue. He also talks about his love of solving not just difficult problems, but difficult and large ones, which feeds his entrepreneurial decisions. Aspiring founders must understand this, and prepare for the long haul—from the existential challenges of the early years to facing the question ‘can you scale profitably,’ later on, he says.
Startup Fridays S4 Ep1: ‘I wish for India, many unreasonable entrepreneurs’ – Cody Friesen
In today’s episode, Cody Friesen, founder and CEO of SOURCE Global, talks about his dream of putting to bed one of humanity’s biggest and most urgent problems—the lack of access to clean drinking water for billions around the planet. Friesen is a scientist, engineer, teacher and entrepreneur. In this conversation, he also reflects on his approach to knowledge transfer, the “vibrancy” of India’s startup ecosystem, and his hope that we’ll see many entrepreneurs willing to challenge and break the status quo to solve some of our biggest problems
Startup Fridays S3 Ep13: Anand Lunia at IndiaQuotient on why we need ‘Hindustan Big Tech’ to level the playing field
Our guest today is Anand Lunia, general partner at IndiaQuotient, a well-known domestic VC firm that backs entrepreneurs attempting to solve large problems for the Indian market at even “concept stage.” In this episode, Anand talks about how 2021 was an exception, and for the startup ecosystem to come back to its mean, two-thirds of the startups may not be able to raise money, going forward. He also talks about how, as a nation, we ought to prioritise software independence, backing local entrepreneurs developing intellectual property, and not just software jobs
Startup Fridays S3 Ep12: ‘Established entrepreneurs from the best startups in India must step up as mentors’ – Madhu Shalini Iyer
Our guest today is Madhu Shalini Iyer, a partner at Rocketship.vc—a Silicon Valley-based fund investing globally. Iyer started out with an engineering degree from the University of Sydney. In her 20-plus years as an engineer, operator and investor, her previous roles include chief data officer at Gojek, which she helped to grow into a business valued at $10 billion at the time, and a founding member of Intuit’s Quickbooks Lending Platform. Rocketship’s portfolio in India includes Apna, Moglix, Khatabook, Uravu Labs, Mad Street Den and Agnikul, and several other companies
Startup Fridays S3 Ep11: ‘Strategic investors can make or break a deep tech venture, choose wisely, time it right’ – Sriram Viswanathan
Our guest today is Sriram Viswanathan, the founding managing partner at Celesta Capital. In this episode, Sriram talks about his long association with technology and investing in deep tech companies, and Celesta’s strategic focus on the US-India corridor. He also has some experience to share with deep tech entrepreneurs, in areas including product-market fit, growth and scale, the value of strategic investors, and exits
Startup Fridays S3 Ep10: ‘From doer to enabler, I’m optimistic about innovation and inclusion in India’ – Sanjay Jain
Our guest today is Sanjay Jain, partner at Bharat Fund and chief innovation officer at CIIE.co. Sanjay, who played a leading role in building Google’s Map Maker, and later was the founding chief product manager at UIDAI, talks about his journey going “from doer to enabler.” With a master’s in computer science from UCLA, and experience as a serial entrepreneur himself, Sanjay also talks about how the fund, a Rs. 600 crore corpus, attempts to straddle intellectual-property-led innovation and an inclusion mandate for the Bharat segment of India.
Startup Fridays S3 Ep9: ‘For your company to last 100 years, empower everyone to singularly focus on the client’ – Srikanth Velamakanni
Our guest today is Srikanth Velamakanni, cofounder, group CEO, and vice chairman of Fractal Analytics, which as the name suggests, provides deep analytical insights to customers in a range of verticals, including retail, financial services, and healthcare. Srikanth co-founded Fractal in 2000, and it turned unicorn earlier this year. The real aspiration, Srikanth says, is to have the company outlast its founders.
Startup Fridays S3 Ep8: ‘Climate tech is cause for optimism but we’re just not doing enough’ – Grace Sai
Our guest today is Grace Sai, cofounder and CEO of Unravel Carbon, a company that is making it easier for businesses to track and reduce their carbon emissions, with a focus on Scope 3 emissions and Asia. Grace is a serial entrepreneur and also a VC investor as a Kauffman Fellow. She has an MBA from the University of Oxford (where she was a Skoll Scholar) and a Masters in Change from INSEAD. She speaks 6 languages and lives in Singapore. She co-founded Unravel Carbon with Marc Allen, about a year ago, and the venture is backed by investors including Y Combinator and Sequoia.
Startup Fridays S3 Ep7: ‘If you are among the top growth drivers in any company, why not build your own’ – Ajeet Singh
Our guest today is Ajeet Singh, cofounder and executive chairman of ThoughtSpot. In 2009, he co-founded Nutanix with Dheeraj Pandey and Mohit Aron. Today, it is a listed company in the US with $1.2 billion in ARR. In 2012, he co-founded ThoughtSpot with Amit Prakash. The company is seen as a leader in enterprise data analytics. At its last funding round, announced in November 2021, ThoughtSpot was valued at $4.2 billion dollars, with total funding of $674 million. ThoughtSpot plans to invest $150 million over the next five years in India
Startup Fridays S3 Ep6: ‘Choose your stakeholders, investors wisely, and you won’t get pulled in different directions’ – Smita Deorah
Our guest today is Smita Deorah, co-founder and Co-CEO of Boulevard Leadership, better known for its edtech business LEAD. Smita and her husband Sumeet Mehta started LEAD in 2012. Today the company reaches a million students in 3500 schools in more than 400 cities in India. It is now a unicorn, privately valued at more than a billion dollars, by investors including WestBridge, Elevar Equity and GSV Ventures
Startup Fridays S3 Ep5: ‘Think big; one launch a day is aspirational but possible’ – Pawan K Chandana
Our guest today is Pawan Kumar Chandana, co-founder and CEO of Skyroot Aerospace. Pawan and Naga Bharath Daka, both former ISRO engineers, started Skyroot in 2018 and over the last four years they—and their team of 200—have reached a point where their next big step will be the space flight of their first rocket, Vikram I. Earlier this week, they also made headlines for the biggest funding round at any Indian space tech startup so far, raising $51 million from Singapore’s GIC. Perhaps this will also prove to be a pivotal moment for India’s private space ecosystem
Startup Fridays S3 Ep4: ‘To win in startup investing, bring differentiated value to founders’ – Ashutosh Sharma
Our guest today is Ashutosh Sharma, head of investments in India for Prosus, one of the world’s biggest technology investors. In this episode, Ashutosh, who has led Prosus’s investments in India for some six years, talks about how an emerging trend in the country’s startup ecosystem is led by entrepreneurs “building in India for India.” That is reassuring, even amid a slowdown, because it augurs well for the long-term growth of entrepreneurship in the country, he says.
Startup Fridays S3 Ep3: ‘If your conviction is strong, follow through, as there’s rarely a right time’ – Bobby Balachandran
Our guest today is Bobby Balachandran, founder, president, and CEO of Exterro Inc., which provides a sophisticated tech platform for global corporations to better manage their governance, risk, and compliance needs. Bobby started out with a BSc in computer science from Government College of Technology in Coimbatore in South India, and an MS in from Portland State University in Portland, Oregon in the US. He started Exterro in his garage in 2008. Today, the company is privately valued at more than a billion dollars
Startup Fridays S3 Ep2: ‘Deep tech founders need tech-biz grasp, patient money, and stamina for the long game’ – Krishna Rangasayee
In this episode, Krishna Rangasayee, founder and CEO of SiMa.ai, a 30-year veteran of the semiconductor industry, with more than 25 patents to his name, talks about why the edge is the new battleground. He also delves into the reasons that compelled him to take his first entrepreneurial plunge after a long corporate career, building a cross-border deep tech company and what such ventures need to succeed
Startup Fridays S3 Ep 1: ‘That teaching hasn’t kept pace with the world became my idea’ – Aditya Prakash
Our guest today is Aditya Prakash, co-founder and CEO of Skidos Labs, an award-winning maker of a children’s educational apps company headquartered in Denmark. Aditya co-founded Skidos in 2013, which today offers a software development kit that can infuse math education for children into any game. Before Skidos, after an MBA from the Indian School of Business Hyderabad and The Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth, Aditya had a successful corporate career, including work at Bharti Airtel and HT Media
Startup Fridays S2 Ep.15: ‘Entrepreneurship is about selling a future only you see’ — Rajesh Jain
Our guest today is Rajesh Jain, founder and group MD of Netcore Cloud. In the world of entrepreneurship, he is best known for selling one of his earliest ventures, IndiaWorld Communications, to Sify—then Satyam Infoway—for $115 million, in 1999, one of the biggest internet deals of the time in Asia. Jain founded Netcore in 1997, and has bootstrapped it to a profitable $100 million ARR SaaS company that is preparing for an IPO
Startup Fridays S2 Ep.14: ‘We knew we were onto something when we analysed our rejections’ – Vinay Nair
Our guest today is Vinay B Nair, Founder and CEO of TIFIN, which is a fintech venture in the US that provides technology and expertise to business clients to apply AI to personalise their financial products and services to their end customers or consumers. Vinay has a chemical engineering degree, and a doctorate in finance and economics. He founded TIFIN in 2018. Previously he has been a hedge fund manager and sold a startup, 55 Institutional Partners, an investment advisory, to JP Morgan. He is a visiting faculty member at The Wharton School and co-author of 'Investing for Change' – a book that argues for responsible investing.
Startup Fridays S2 Ep. 13: ‘In any pursuit, strive to be in a place where you can add value’ — Sunil Thomas
Our guest today is Sunil Thomas, co-founder and executive chairman of CleverTap, which provides a software platform that a large number of brands around the world use to better engage with their customers. Sunil started with a computer science degree, and in a career that spans more than 30 years now, he has held several top jobs in tech and business. He and two of his friends—Anand Jain and Suresh Kondamudi—started CleverTap in 2013, in Mumbai, and since then, they’ve expanded their operations to the biggest markets around the world.
Startup Fridays S2 Ep.12: For lasting societal impact, ventures have to grow into enduring businesses — Sandeep Farias
Our guest today is Sandeep Farias, founder and managing partner at Elevar Equity, an early-stage VC firm that backs entrepreneurs who are solving large problems for the low and middle-income communities in India and Latin America. In this episode, Sandeep talks about the ‘Elevar Method’ for identifying ideas that could become enduring businesses with significant societal impact
Startup Fridays S2 Ep. 11: ‘Swabhimaan,’ not simply money, drives our rural youth to entrepreneurship — Madan Padaki
Our guest today is Madan Padaki, founder and CEO of 1Bridge, which provides a host of services in small towns and villages, linking brands and businesses with India’s rural economy, and creating micro-entrepreneurs from among the rural youth. In this episode, Madan, who is an entrepreneur and angel investor, talks about how rural youth have the same aspirations for a better life as anyone else, and how that represents a massive entrepreneurial opportunity
Startup Fridays S2 Ep.10: Satya Bansal on the journey from his grandfather’s ‘bahi’ to an international banker and climate VC investor
Satya started life in a village, some 80km north of Jaipur city, in Rajasthan.
He earned a chartered accountant’s qualification and attended an advanced management programme at Harvard Business School. In a career that spans more than 30 years, he rose to become a top executive in private banking, first at ICICI Bank, in Singapore, and then at Barclays, where he was chief executive of private banking in India for more than 10 years.
He started Blue Ashva in 2019 and the firm is investing about $150 million in startups that are attempting to solve big problems in energy, food security, climate change, and economic immobility of those at the bottom of the pyramid.
More about Satya Bansal and Blue Ashva Capital:
https://www.blueashvacapital.com/story
Theme music courtesy Free Music & Sounds:
https://soundcloud.com/freemusicandsounds
Startup Fridays S2 Ep. 9: ‘We need to accelerate corporate adoption of climate tech from startups’ — Pratap Raju
Our guest today is Pratap Raju, founding partner of Climate Collective, an organisation that is building a platform to accelerate climate tech startups in India, by catalysing stronger linkages between the startups and large corporate buyers and users of their solutions. He is also the founding partner of a VC fund, Climate Seeds Fund, providing seed-stage funding to climate startups. Climate Collective also has a dedicated programme to encourage women entrepreneurs in climate tech.
Pratap grew up in the US, and his early career was as a trader, economist and banker, including a brief stint at JP Morgan where he was a Power and Gas M&A Analyst. He came back to India to become an entrepreneur and tried his hand at various things, including starting a film and TV commercials company, where he co-wrote the story and dialogues for a Bollywood comedy, ‘Bas Yun Hi,’ starring actress Nandita Das.
The birth of his children got him thinking about the world that the next generations would inherit and that led him to zero in on climate change, and he started Climate Collective in 2016.
More about Pratap Raju and Climate Collective:
https://climatecollective.net/our-team/
Theme music courtesy Twisterium
Startup Fridays Season 2, Episode 8: We like to engage founders right from their -1 to 0 stage — Rajiv Srivatsa
Our guest today is Rajiv Srivatsa, partner and investor at Antler India. Rajiv’s career spans going from software engineer at Infosys to product developer at Yahoo! to entrepreneur as co-founder of Urban Ladder to VC investor. In this episode, he talks about how each stage was the realisation of his overarching desire to always mentor people and take a deep passionate interest in helping them develop their careers.
(00:40) Introduction to Startup Fridays
(01:00) Our guest today — Rajiv Srivatsa, partner and investor at Antler India
(02:22) A snapshot of Rajiv’s journey from software engineer at Infosys to VC investor at Antler
(08:31) More about Antler, and the philosophy at the VC firm
(13:09) Examples of startups that Antler India has invested in
(16:25) The most noteworthy changes in India’s startups and founders today
(19:38) Some info on the Antler Residency
(27:35) Some thoughts on the early stage scene in India and the challenges therein
(31:45) On incorporating startups in India
(34:15) Climate tech — an area of active interest
(34:38) Sources of optimism and concerns in the Indian startup scene
(37:41) How Rajiv looks at himself — a mix of three roles
(39:54) Low points and highs
(41:58) Earliest influences on Rajiv’s career — growing up in Chennai
(45:58) What keeps Rajiv getting up each day to attack the day ahead
(52:05) Rapid fire questions
More about Rajiv and Antler
Theme music courtesy Twisterium
Startup Fridays Season 2 Ep. 7: My hope is, entrepreneurs even crazier than us will rise and build for India — Rohan Verma
Our guest today is Rohan Verma, CEO and executive director at MapmyIndia, a Mumbai-listed company in the areas of digital mapping, geospatial technologies and automotive mobility technologies. In this episode, Rohan talks about why he is optimistic that a serious tech product ecosystem will emerge in India over the next five years. He also hopes that entrepreneurs with foresight will rise and make India self-reliant for the crucial underlying infrastructure as well.
Notes:
(00:47) Introduction to The Startup Fridays conversation
(01:12) Our guest today — Rohan Verma, CEO and ED, MapmyIndia
(02:32) On how MapmyIndia was started
(04:31) Early applications and use cases
(07:10) A couple of important milestones
(09:02) Challenges in the early years of the company
(11:36) Flagship products and platform of MapmyIndia today
(14:01) The direction in which the company is growing
(15:54) More on the tech — what’s at the heart of MapmyIndia
(18:17) Emerging use cases for location technologies
(20:48) MapmyIndia for consumers
(23:09) The toughest obstacles in building a tech product company in India
(25:47) No centre in Silicon Valley — passionate about India
(27:38) Biggest lessons
(29:39) How being a public company’s CEO is different
(31:36) What did Rohan have to unlearn
(33:41) What should India do to build up its tech products ecosystem
(37:25) Liberalisation of geospatial data policies in India — significance
(41:38) What worries Rohan about India’s tech scene
(44:39) Examples of crucial underlying building blocks in the tech industry that India must build its own
(46:58) Rapid fire questions
More about Rohan and MapmyIndia
Theme music courtesy Twisterium