That One Idea

Anjali Sosale of Waterbridge Ventures chats with Rahul Boggaram and Nikhil Boggaram of Yellow Metal. Yellow Metal is an asset-backed credit company that disburses gold loans in less than 30 minutes in the privacy of your home. Focused on rural India, Yellow Metal seeks to provide low-cost loans to small farmers and business owners who are otherwise not part of the formal credit eco-system.   

We dive deep into Rahul and Nikhils's journeys and the series of experiences and events that led to them to building Yellow Metal.

(1:09) Upbringing and early years
(3:14) Why gold loans for rural india?
(5:04) Rahul's journey after leaving home at 16
(7:10) 0 to 1 at Flipkart, Treebo, Groww and Myntra
(9:51) How has consumer app design changed in the last 10 years?
(11:36) UPI as the game-changer for rural India
(12:41) How did Rahul and Nikhil's paths converge during the pandemic in 2020?
(15:41) Early challenges in transitioning from a corporate job to a startup?
(17:15) The role of empathy in the goal loan business
(18:44) The story behind the name "Yellow Metal"
(20:22) Yellow Metal's customer service ethos since day zero
(22:43) Company culture at Yellow Metal
(24:37) How to hire people when solving for rural India?
(26:07) Parents' view on starting up
(27:43) A day in the life of an early-stage startup founder
(28:32) Transparency in gold loans pricing
(30:46) Building a tech platform for rural India
(33:12) 2022 and beyond

Anjali Sosale of Waterbridge Ventures chats with Jaydip Biniwale and Abhishek Doshi of Downtown Club. Downtown Club is an e-commerce platform for discovery of D2C brands. The Downtown app enables users to browse new brands and products every day through a personalized virtual shopping experience.

They dive deep into Abhishek and Jaydip's journeys and the series of experiences and events that led to them to building Downtown Club.

Sections:

(1:11) Born and raised   
(5:58) Rejecting IIT and dropping out of Purdue
(8:33) The first startup bug
(12:29) The CEPT experience and finding each other
(20:13) Flirting with entrepreneurship
(23:11) The decision to finally start up
(28:11) Pandemics, plans and pivots
(31:39) 3 steps to epiphany
(35:04) The story behind the name "Downtown"
(37:02) From idea to initialization - Downtown’s early days
(40:05) Building Downtown’s MVP
(48:29) Conscious culture building
(50:53) Abhishek’s & Jaydip’s sleepless nights
(52:44) A day at Downtown
(54:52) Downtown - then vs now

Nilesh Balakrishnan of Waterbridge Ventures chats with Amit Shekhar, Janishar Ali and Mridul Sahu - the founders of CuriousJr. CuriousJr is a mobile-first, vernacular-based coding platform that helps kids learn the fundamentals tenets of coding. Powered by strong product innovation, the CuriousJr app democratizes coding for students who might not have access to a desktop by focusing on the mobile phone user interface and using a combination of gamified and experiential learning to make coding fun. They dive deep into their founder journeys and the series of experiences and events that led to them building CuriousJr

Sections -

(1:27) - Early years
(5:01) - The IIT Connection(s)
(12:01) - How early struggles moulded the founding team
(16:33) - The journey from civil engineering to coding
(19:20) - MindOrks & building a 2M+ Android developer community
(22:45) - The birth of Curious Jr.
(28:27) - The intersection of mobile tech and vernacular education
(29:36) - Putting together the dream team
(35:37) - Skills vs counter-skills
(37:09) - Story behind the name “CuriousJr”
(38:48) - Entrepreneurship Ups and Downs
(41:15) - The Covid19 push to education
(42:37) - From MindOrks to CuriousJr - building products for children
(46:44) - Culture & learning at CuriousJr
(58:32) - Why is Curious r “That One Idea”?
(1:01:07) - Conviction around the market for learning code
(1:03:06) - Mridul’s experience with OYO
(1:04:58) - Experiential learning via Curious Jr
(1:06:57) - Entrepreneurship isn’t as romantic as it sounds
(1:08:03) - When did you want to be a founder?

Nilesh Balakrishnan of Waterbridge Ventures chats with Manish Shara and Yash Desai - the founders of OneCode. OneCode is a hyperlocal network of direct sellers for digital-first brands. Through their unique phygital approach, OneCode is building a demand funnel for brands by acting as a bridge for end-consumers that need physical touch points and in-person interactions before buying a product or service.  

They dive deep into Manish's and Yash's journeys; the series of experiences and events that led to them to building OneCode.

Sections - 

Backgrounds: (1:15)

Dineout : Journey (8:59)
OneCode : The Genesis (11:20)
Leaving DineOut (14:15)
Family Reactions (16:06)
Raging Pandemic (20:48)
Offline distribution in an online world (29:46)
Bharat Market Drivers (31:50)
Tech Levers at OneCode (34:38)
Culture at OneCode (38:33)
Running India's Largest sales team (42:38)
A day in the life at OneCode (46:21)
OneCode : The name (49:20)

Anjali Sosale of Waterbridge Ventures chats with Gunjan Kejriwal and Utsav Tiwary of BitClass. BitClass is India’s largest platform for live-learning for the passionate and curious. With over 1 million learners on the platform, they were recently crowned App of the Year by Google Play.

They dive deep into Gunjan’s and Utsav's journeys; the series of experiences and events that led to them to building BitClass.

Sections: 

Where Gunjan and Utsav grew up - (1:10)
How Gunjan & Utsav met - (6:05)
Third time lucky - (7:34)
While everyone was partying, we were starting up - (11:38)
Biggest challenges in the early days - (17:22)
Unique customer insights - (21:07)
Building to create impact - (23:59)
A Hogwarts culture - (27:24)
BitClass, today - (31:30)
Early influences - (33:52)
Breaking out of the mould - (35:45)
War and Marriage: co-founder relationships - (40:31)
Sneak peak into 2022 - (42:16)

Anjali Sosale of Waterbridge Ventures chats with Saurabh Pandey, co-founder and CEO of EloElo. EloElo is an app that enables live-social experiences through games and entertainment. it is currently among the top 10 Apps on the Google Play Store in India, with over 2 million downloads in 2021.  Anjali deep dives into Saurabh's journey and explores the series of experiences and events that led to him building EloElo. 

(4:32) Discovering himself and his love for studying human behaviour while being a college student at St Xaviers, Mumbai

(5:36) Wearing skull ties and shiny shirts at his first sales job

(12:14) Why his co-founder Akshay and him are like yin and yang

(13:00) "Pandey Ji, Bungee Jumping Banta Hai" - the advice he got from Kunal Shah

(14:02) Managing his Mom's Yoga YouTube Channel

(16:30) How and why they quit Flipkart together on the same day

(18:08) Why you need a solid support support around you to start-up and work 16hours a day

(24:00) Pivoting away from beauty recommendation videos to live-gaming and solving for creator fan engagement and monetization

(27:00) Creating the Bharath Metaverse

(28:00) The name EloElo being inspired by the famous "Ole Ole" song from 

(34:00) The Creator Economy Landscape in India

(35:11) Why fast-eating Chicken Wings live is actually a popular game on EloElo?

(42:00) What gives him shivers and sleepless nights

(47.40) Keeping up with the Kukrejas! How a family of three live stream their daily life on EloElo

(51:00) Creating a happiness company

Anjali Sosale of Waterbridge Ventures chats with Karan Kalia of Legitquest. Legitquest is a data-as-a-service platform, unlocking the huge potential of litigation data in India. With a repository of 80m pages that continues to grow by 1m pages a day, LegitQuest uses deep-tech to bring on-demand insights that allow businesses to proactively take real-time, data driven decisions while engaging with any stakeholder.

We dive deep into Karans's journey getting to this point in his life, from Ram Jethmalani’s law chambers to the University of Pennsylvania and the series of experiences and events that led to him building Legitquest.

Nilesh Balakrishnan of Waterbridge Ventures chats with Rohin Malhotra of Nymble. Nymble builds smart kitchen appliances using Robotics, artificial intelligence and IoT that automates the mundane task of daily cooking. Nymble’s innovative home cooking robot Julia has perfected an impressive repertoire of dishes catering to global audiences.

They dive deep into Rohin's journey and explore the series of experiences and events that led to him building Nymble. 

(0:50) Early childhood in Delhi

(3:36) College influences

(6:30) Entrepreneurship origin story

(9:28) Nymble - the official story

(11:40) Nymble - the unofficial story

(12:48) That One Idea: Idea to Business

(14:59) Unique challenges in the hardware businesses

(18:53) Life @ Nymble

(21:15) Rohin's favorite dish(es)

(22:23) Covid supply chain issues and rethinking Nymble

(25:26) Super alpha trials in SF

(26:58) How to demo Nymble today

(28:18) Culture and distributed teams @ Nymble

(30:38) Julia the cooking robot

(36:57) The highs and lows of entrepreneurship

(38:36) Family cooking review

Anjali Sosale of Waterbridge Ventures chats with Anand Ramachandran of BigFatPhoenix. 

BigFatPhoenix builds first party video games for kids to help them build their social, emotional and life skills. Through their Fairside Stories app, they've built video games that give kids an online social safe space to play games and interact with their friends and peers.  You can find them at https://www.bigfatphoenix.com/. 

We dive deep into Anand's journey and explore the series of experiences and events that led to him building BigFatPhoenix:  

(3:49) Dropping out of college

(6:56) Always wear your passion on your sleeve

(13:05) Why every child is a game designer

(15:07) Breaking into Zynga without formal training

(17:22) College dropout in a pre-internet world

(27:40) BYJU's first game designer for kids

(30:25) Meeting the founding team and conceptualizing BigFatPhoenix

(33:18) Not shying away from love

(36:03) Video games as a positive influence on kids

(37:08) The slow epiphany of BigFatPhoenix

(44:48) Feedback should take you by surprise

(54:46) Creative energy in a remote work environment

(01:00:28) Why we should trust kids more