The Builders Club Startup Founders Podcast

For all those who are building tools using no-code, this one is for you guy.

​How many of you dream of building a SaaS business? How many of you are willing to spend 17 years building it? and how many of you want to do it without raising any money?

​We have one who is profitable, clocking upwards of $2.5mn ARR, but has picked just $1mn funding!

​Our numbers might be a bit outdated, but it remains true that DronaHQ is up to something exciting and we had to get the cofounders on our podcast to understand more about what they are doing.

​For those who do not know, DronaHQ is a low code platform helps engineering teams and product managers to build internal tools, custom user journeys, digital experiences, automations, custom admin panels, operational apps 10X faster.

​They operate in a segment where Retool has raised $45mn at a valuation of #3bn+.

​Jinen Dedhia and his team have been building this tool for almost 17 years now, and his story is of perseverance, grit, determination, pivots and lastly, sustenance.

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About The Builders Club :

The Builders Club is a community driven platform which acts as an enabler in your startup journey

We have multiple initiatives and events which we do regularly to help you accelerate your growth and move to the next stage of your startup life cycle.

Niyati Merchant, cofounder, Arre Voice has spent close to a decade in the content ecosystem, and talks to us about the changing content paradigm.

​Arré Voice is a short-form, women-first audio social app. The app has a rapidly growing community across relationships, storytelling, K-pop, K-Drama, music, mental wellness,  spirituality in multiple languages. These will soon be available in more Indian languages & dialects and content genres followed by a global rollout.

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About The Builders Club :

The Builders Club is a community driven platform which acts as an enabler in your startup journey

We have multiple initiatives and events which we do regularly to help you accelerate your growth and move to the next stage of your startup life cycle.

Chqbook is India’s leading neobank which offers solutions for India’s 64 million small business owners. Aligning with the vision of Digital India Initiative, Chqbook aims to empower small business owners with digital access to financial services across banking lending and insurance. 

​ Vipul Sharma, Co-founder and CEO at Chqbook, has done BA Honors in Economics from Loyola College where he worked as Editor for the magazine of Economics Department, “Oikonomikos”. He has also done MBA in finance and marketing from International Management Institute, New Delhi. Vipul has nearly 20 years of experience in marketing and management.

​Rajat Kumar, Co-founder and COO at Chqbook, has done MBA in International Business from Panjab University. Rajat has also been to Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore where he acquired the skills of Executive General Management and Organisational Leadership. Rajat has almost 27 years of experience and has been the founder and CEO of The Money Estate. 

​Mohit Goel, Co-Founder and CMO at Chqbook, has completed his schooling from Kendriya Vidyalaya and is graduated from the Hindu College, University of Delhi in Physics. Mohit has over two decades of experience in Marketing, Sales and Customer Experience across Telecom and Financial Services.

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About The Builders Club :

The Builders Club is a community driven platform which acts as an enabler in your startup journey

We have multiple initiatives and events which we do regularly to help you accelerate your growth and move to the next stage of your startup life cycle.

 Namit Chugh, Venture Capitalist at W Health Ventures, joined us for the LIVE recording of the Watercooler Conversations and will talk about “Building the Future of Health care Delivery”. 

​W Health Ventures, founded in 2019 by Sunil Wadhwani and his family, is a Boston based venture capital firm focused on helping entrepreneurs build the future of healthcare delivery.

​Namit is an investment professional and an ex-management consultant focussed on the healthcare sector India. Prior to joining W Health Ventures across sectors and worked closely with entrepreneurs in the journey to scale up ventures He has previously worked with consulting firms such as Alvarez & Marsal and PwC and focused on strategy and commercial due diligence assignments for private equity clients. Namit holds an MBA from the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad and has completed Level I and II of the CFA program.

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About The Builders Club :

The Builders Club is a community driven platform which acts as an enabler in your startup journey

We have multiple initiatives and events which we do regularly to help you accelerate your growth and move to the next stage of your startup life cycle.

Rahul Raj, Founder and CEO of FloBiz. 

Flobiz has emerged as a growing global economic startup network to drive technology inclusion in Small and Medium Businesses. Based in Bengaluru, the venture established a neobank for SMBs backed by renowned investors like Sequoia Capital, Elevation Capital,Greenoaks Capital, Beenext and Think Investments. Its primary objective is to introduce a completely new way of doing business for small & medium enterprises with creative use of technology. Its marquee offering, called myBillBook helps SMBs digitise their invoicing,streamline businesses accounting and automate workflows of their enterprises.

Rahul Raj, an IITian is the founder and CEO of Flobiz and has competence for entrepreneurship, international trade and business, event organization, startups, etc. He has also been a delegate at Harvard Project for Asian and International Relations (HPAIR) Conference 2014 at Tokyo, Japan. He was also an Associate Manager at the Corporate & Media Relations, Entrepreneurship Cell, IIT Kharagpur. He has about 14 years of experience in the business development and entrepreneurship domain.

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About The Builders Club :

The Builders Club is a community driven platform which acts as an enabler in your startup journey

We have multiple initiatives and events which we do regularly to help you accelerate your growth and move to the next stage of your startup life cycle.

Atul is the cofounder of Staqu technologies.

Staqu strives to utilise technology in solving real-world problems. Founded in 2015, the company provides state-of-the-art image recognition,language independent proprietary speaker identification, and text processing, including sentiment analysis, text classification and summarization.Staqu was handpicked by the British High Commission as the Best AI Start-up in the country.Furthermore, triumphing at IBM’s Global Entrepreneur Program, Staqu has successfully raised investment from Indian Angel Network.

Atul has done Master of Science (M.S.) in Artificial Intelligence from University of Manchester and has about 7 and a half years of experience in the business development and entrepreneurship domain and has hands-on experience in Computers and Machine learning. He has also been a research associate at University of Szeged and research consultant at University of Hertfordshire.

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About The Builders Club :

The Builders Club is a community driven platform which acts as an enabler in your startup journey

We have multiple initiatives and events which we do regularly to help you accelerate your growth and move to the next stage of your startup life cycle.

Rahul Rana is a venture builder and investor with specialties in finance and astronomy. 

Sharmin is one of the Fortune 40 under 40 Entrepreneurs and Forbes’ story target for Women in SaaS.

Entrepreneur, author and public speaker- Sharmin Ali founded Artirightis Theatre Group and Instoried. Instoried is an AI driven tool that analyses the emotional parameters of your content to get social marketing right.

Instoried is an augmented writing platform that improves customer interest and engagement to help writers in the e-Commerce biz, news, etc. to optimize their content. Sharmin is also a published author having written “Y. O. U”- a bestseller according to the New Indian Express and Oxford Bookstores and “How I was forced to become a staunch RACIST”.

Sharmin Ali has years of experience in analytics and talks about entrepreneurship in the analytics sector congruent with Sharmin’s efforts with Instoried. The startup has been awarded with several titles like “Best Startup 2018”, “Economic Times Innotribe Awards”, “Best Women Driven Startup in India”.

Join in to ask questions LIVE to Sharmin Ali while we talk about building an artificial intelligence based content managing startup and her journey of propagating her novel idea through her startup!

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About The Builders Club :

The Builders Club is a community driven platform which acts as an enabler in your startup journey

We have multiple initiatives and events which we do regularly to help you accelerate your growth and move to the next stage of your startup life cycle.

​Vatsal is Principal & CTO at 100X.VC and Web3 investor @ 2AM Ventures and Mehta Ventures. 100X.VC is the first VC to invest in early stage startups using India SAFE Notes. While being an angel investor, he looks after diligencing and sourcing Web3 deals for 2AM VC as well!

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About The Builders Club :

The Builders Club is a community driven platform which acts as an enabler in your startup journey

We have multiple initiatives and events which we do regularly to help you accelerate your growth and move to the next stage of your startup life cycle.

The Builders Club got in touch with Vijetha Shastry- Associate Director, Dexter Capital, a VC firm focussing on growth stage companies, new age entrepreneurs in their funding process.

Vijetha Shastry has about 28 years of experience working with different startup communities like NASSCOM, TiE, BHIVE and how he is helping start apps grow via Dexter Capital.

He is a certified mentor from NEN and mentor/ speaker at the SAARC Chambers! He specializes in open innovation, marketing and implementing tie- ups, mentoring and advising startups.

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About The Builders Club :

The Builders Club is a community driven platform which is an enabler in your startup journey.

We have multiple initiatives and events which we do regularly to help you accelerate your growth and move to the next stage of your startup life cycle.

Udit is an entrepreneur who has bootstrapped his way to making his business a $20M valuation. He is also an angel investor in 20+ startups and a member of the Forbes Business Council.

Udit has tons of experience and learnings  in the industry that he was keen on sharing with us! 

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About The Builders Club :

The Builders Club is a community driven platform which is an enabler in your startup journey.

We have multiple initiatives and events which we do regularly to help you accelerate your growth and move to the next stage of your startup life cycle.

Jatin Chaudhary is the Co-founder of e-Chai ventures and has a knack for entrepreneurship, international trade and business, event organization, startups, etc. He also spoke at the D2C meetup in Ahmedabad at the Center For Innovation Incubation & Entrepreneurship, IIM Ahmedabad.  He was a Global Shaper at the World Economic Forum as well! He has about 17 years of experience in the business development and sales domain.

Based in Ahmedabad, the venture has built a network that enables you to engage in meetings and induce growth. Its primary goal is to facilitate local meetups and cross-border interactions and collaborations.

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About The Builders Club :

The Builders Club is a community driven platform which acts as an enabler in your startup journey

We have multiple initiatives and events which we do regularly to help you accelerate your growth and move to the next stage of your startup life cycle.

Taran Chhabra is the Founder of Neeman’s Shoes. He completed his graduation from Northern Illinois University and is a business strategist and data analysis expert with about 17 years of experience working with a2c IT Consulting, RCG Global Services, High Point Solutions, etc. He was also in the BW 40 under 40 list and Fortune 40 under 40!

Neeman’s Shoes is India’s first Startup to use the World’s most revolutionary natural and renewable fibers in the footwear industry. The aim is to change the way we wear shoes that look good, feel good and also do good to the environment!

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About The Builders Club :

The Builders Club is a community driven platform which acts as an enabler in your startup journey

We have multiple initiatives and events which we do regularly to help you accelerate your growth and move to the next stage of your startup life cycle.

Shruti Agarwal is the Founding Member of D2C Insider, Director at Shopmatic. Shruti has experience in the E-commerce and consumer technology industry while she was associated with eBay, Unicommerce and KartRocket.🛒 

D2C Insider is a unique community of more than 1000 direct-to-consumer native brands in India. The Community is the largest gathering of founders and core team members of direct-to-consumer firms where they can all learn and grow together!🤝 

The D2C summit that was held last year was a great success. They were also a part of the conference Engage'22. The D2C insider platform has featured some of our past Watercooler Conversation guests like Bharat Sethi and Arjun Vaidya as well.🚀 

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About The Builders Club :

The Builders Club is a community driven platform which acts as an enabler in your startup journey

We have multiple initiatives and events which we do regularly to help you accelerate your growth and move to the next stage of your startup life cycle.

Ruchin Kulkarni is the cofounder of Toplyne, a SaaS platform that helps businesses monetize their product-led growth. They are a part of the Sequoia Surge Program and recently raised $15mn from Sequoia, Tiger Global, Together Fund, and other angel investors.

In this podcast, we talk about how product led growth in SaaS startups can help increase topline while reducing operational costs and how TopLyne is leading the change in Product Led Startups.

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About The Builders Club :

The Builders Club is a community driven platform which acts as an enabler in your startup journey

We have multiple initiatives and events which we do regularly to help you accelerate your growth and move to the next stage of your startup life cycle.

Prof. Dhruv Nath has decades of experience in nurturing early stage startups. He is the director of lead angels, India's leading Angel network, and also a professor in MDI Gurgaon where he teaches entrepreneurship.

In this podcast, we talk about the persistent framework, a framework designed by Prof. Nath himself for evaluating the strength and sustainability of startup ideas.

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About The Builders Club :

The Builders Club is a community driven platform which acts as an enabler in your startup journey

We have multiple initiatives and events which we do regularly to help you accelerate your growth and move to the next stage of your startup life cycle.

Akash is the COO and co-founder of Instamojo, India's largest on-demand payments platform that allows anyone with a mobile number and bank account to start an online business. 

In his free time, Akash likes reading and traveling. He’s also a football aficionado. 

Instamojo was one of the first startups from India to join the prestigious 500 Startups Silicon Valley Accelerator Program. It has also been featured as one of the hottest startups by Economic Times in 2015. With more than 400,000 registered merchants, Instamojo's vision is to democratize e-commerce and be the 360º digital-enabling partner for SMEs of all shapes & sizes.

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About The Builders Club :

​The Builders Club is a community driven platform which acts as an enabler in your startup journey

​We have multiple initiatives and events which we do regularly to help you accelerate your growth and move to the next stage of your startup life cycle.

Vineet Saxena is the cofounder of Myntra, one of the most celebrated startups on India.

He talks about his beginnings, the beginning of Myntra and the rise of e-commerce in India.

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About The Builders Club :

The Builders Club is a community driven platform which enabler in your startup journey

We have multiple initiatives and events which we do regularly to help you accelerate your growth and move to the next stage of your startup life cycle.

Bhavik Vasa is Founder and CEO of GetVantange - Asia’s leading Revenue Based Financing fintech platform. He is a 2X Founder who has more than a decade of experience in FinTech, Alternative Financing, Digital Payments, Mobile technologies & Startups. Previously he served as a founding team member and Chief Growth Officer at ItzCash and was a Founding Member of Radical Payments and ISTS Worldwide.

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Know more about us:

Hey Guys, For This Saturday's Watercooler conversation, we have Shrehith Karkera as our guest.

Shrehith Karkera is one of the Co-founders of Finception, a startup trying to simplify all things finance. Their flagship product Finshots- a 3-min daily newsletter already has close to 3,50,000 subscribers and is one of the most widely read newsletters in India.

Ditto, another flagship product of Finception, where you don't just compare insurance. You understand it. Narrow down the choices. Avoid pitfalls and make better decisions.

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Know more about us:

Narayanan is the Co-Founder & CBO of Unschool that ranks 3rd on Linkedin's 2020 Startup List in India and is funded by Y Combinator. 

Unschool is an e-mentorship platform that allows students, graduates, young professionals, entrepreneurs and "anyone with the curiosity to learn" to create an online learning ecosystem that fits their needs and industry demands.

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Nishita and Nikita who have made it to Forbes 30 under 30 list, are dynamic leaders and have Co-Founded Nexus Power that manufactures rechargeable, bio - organic and biodegradable batteries for electric vehicles. At this early age, they are dominating a niche market which is expected to grow many folds in the upcoming future.

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Pratap is a passionate entrepreneur and performance technologist.He has successfully run large-scale Learning & Development and Vocational Education Operations and also created, coached and mentored several high performance teams. Pratap has been an entrepreneur since he was 15 and continues to create simple and scalable solutions for complex training challenges.

Currently, He is leading the Capability Development function at HCL Technology

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Bharat is a serial entrepreneur who has already built two successful businesses, PosterGully and iDecorama in the past. Both of these were digitally native brands. With this experience, He started Swmabhan Commerce Private Limited to focus on creating digitally native vertical brands in large untapped markets in the FMCG sector in India. 

In their latest round of funding Swmabhan was led by Reflex Capital, a VC firm, 9 Unicorns Venture Capital Fund with participation from Keiretsu Forum, and a clutch of other prominent strategic investors.

Currently, He is building Rage Coffee, a  digitally native FMCG company that manufactures, markets & distributes innovative coffee products.

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Jaineel is Co-Founder and CEO at Planet Superheroes, India's only omni-channel consumer brand dedicated to licensed character merchandise like Superheroes, Cartoons & Comics. In addition to its own website, Planet Superheroes has 25+ stores across 12 states in India and sells via both online and offline channels.

The Story of Planet Superheroes was also mentioned in the well-celebrated book “Funding Your Start-Up and Other Nightmares" by Authors Dhruv Nath and Sushanto Mitra.

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Piyush Kumar is the CEO & Co-Founder at Rooter.

Rooter is the biggest Indian Game Streaming Platform.

Rooter is the only Indian Company ever to be selected for prestigious IeAD Sports Accelerator Program run by Adidas Family in Berlin, Germany. IeAD Fund is also a key investor in the company aside from other funds like Paytm, Anthill Ventures, Founder Bank Capital, Venture Catalysts and famous personalities like Actor Boman Irani, Suresh Babu etc.

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Sairee Chahal is the Founder, CEO of SHEROES – a community platform for women, offering support, resources, opportunities, and interactions via Sheroes.com and the SHEROES App. Sairee is credited with building up women at work and future-of-work conversations in India, besides building a strong technology play to solve the problems of gender disparity in India.

Recognized for her achievements globally, Sairee is a Devi Award winner, apart from the Femina Achievers Award, Cartier Award, Editor’s choice for L’Oreal Femina Women’s Award, Business Today, and Most Powerful Women in Indian Business. In 2018, she was ranked 53 on Onalytica’s “Future of Work Top 100 Influencers” list.

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James Mayes is the Co-Founder and CEO for Mind The Product - the world's largest and brightest community of Product Managers with over 300,000 members in 200 cities across the world.

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Varun is the co-founder and CEO of Avalon Meta, It is an alternative online education platform that teaches you skills relevant to the present-day world, to help you develop the tools & mindset you need for building great careers. Experts across various disciplines help you learn, mentor you, and transform your career prospects.

He is also the author of the book “Pyjama Profit”(#1 Amazon Business bestseller), on his journey building a sustainable remote business and freelance career, published by Bloomsbury.

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Tanveer is the Co-Founder and CEO of SOVA.Health, India's first Precision Nutrition platform to prevent and manage lifestyle diseases.

He has been an entrepreneur for over 8 years and has an academic background in Business Studies and Design Thinking (Advanced Track @HPI). His primary area of focus is to enhance the quality of human lives through proactive nutrition.

He co-founded an Indo-German Design Innovation firm that specializes in developing sustainable business models that are user-centric and future-ready. He has worked with Indian, German, and Swiss companies, helping them build new products and services. In the past, he collaborated with a Fortune 100 company on designing the future of food recipes.

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Part 1 here: https://bit.ly/3udJQ8T

Sanjay is one of the founding team members of PayPal and is credited by Elon Musk and Reid Hoffman with significant contributions that helped make the Paypal business model work. he is now an evangelist and helps people from around the world get together to make billions from millions.

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Part 2 here: https://bit.ly/2Pn6IUn

Sanjay is one of the founding team members of PayPal and is credited by Elon Musk and Reid Hoffman with significant contributions that helped make the Paypal business model work.
he is now an evangelist and helps people from around the world get together to make billions from millions.

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