Obsessed: Recent Episodes
Neha Verma
Obsession is beautiful. It’s what makes art. Let's hear from the obsessed, across different fields, about their journey.
In this podcast, Shrinath Balakrishnan, CTO of Source One, with experience of working on tech side of big companies like Amazon to finally heading the tech team of a fast growing start up, gives us a sneak peak of what it's like in today's time to build with tech, the challenges tech leaders face, how is the tech scenario in India shaping up in comparison with the world and how can tech professionals chart their careeer path most effectively. Along with Neha Verma, host of The Obsessed Podcast, we also hear an honest opinion on how AI is going to impact businesses, is it just another buzz word or the time of machines and algos has finally arrived! Lastly, Shrinath shares what has truly driven him all these years to grow continuously in his field and how spirituality has an impact on his personal and professional journey. The podcast is a sneak peak into the fast growing life of a techie - a journey of inspiration already!
Stay focused, stay obsessed. And follow us on social media to stay inspired.
Instagram
Twitter
Linkedin
Startup funding is still seen as a space that is evolving and dynamic and a bit of a black box for many, including for new founders in this space. This episode sees Nikhil Madan, a veteran in the space of startup investments have a candid discussion with Neha Verma, host of the show, on how this space really operates, how investors think and what founders can do to make their funding efforts more successful.
Stay focused, stay obsessed. And follow us on social media to stay inspired.
Instagram
Twitter
Linkedin
Arun Singhal is the Cofounder of Source One which is a B2B Commerce Platform. In a span of 4 years they have transformed how SMEs are procuring materials and selling in India, with a turn over grossing over 2000 crores. What has been the journey like, how did they come this far, their learnings and their plan ahead - all packed in this one hour conversation between Arun and Neha Verma (Founder - The Obsessed Podcast).
Below is an excerpt of the conversation. For full interview, play the podcast on Spotify!
Neha Verma: Today we have Arun Singhal with us, who's the founder and CEO of Source.One, a startup disrupting B2B commerce as we know it. They have closed the Financial Year '22 with a revenue of over 1600 crores and all of it in five years. And there's a lot more that the company is doing. But Arun, I will let you talk more about it. Thank you so much for joining me today. I have a lot of questions on how the hell did you do so much in just five years. But I'll let you start with your company and then we'll come onto my curiosity.
Arun Singhal: Thanks Neha for having me. You just made us look older. We're actually four years. We just completed four years, 20 days back.
Neha Verma: How did you do it? First, tell us a little bit more about your startup. There are a lot of details I could find, but I'll let you do the introduction of exactly what Source One does.
Arun Singhal: We are a simple distribution company using some simple, common sense, conventional business principles to disrupt a very, very traditional, old school, gigantic industry of raw material distribution. And we've started with chemicals and within Petrochemicals, which is the raw material for everything that we use in our daily lives, simply called US. Plastics. The overall space of chemicals is close to 230 billion dollars in India, growing at a growth rate of 1015 percent on a yearly basis. And Petrochemical within that segment, our first baby, and we are going to produce many more babies as we grow older and older, is close to $25 billion odd. So that's what we are. This everything is detailed. The way we have done it is through using very intuitive and intelligent use of technology to disrupt gigantic old school industry. We've used conventional business techniques because most of our users are 50 year plus MSME manufacturers were generally overlooked by the majority of the bankers, the tech enthusiasts and everyone. And you would know that in India, B2B has still not seen technological revolution that B2C space has seen yet. So we are playing a small part in bridging that gap and that's essentially what we are up to.
Neha Verma: Interesting. That sounds like a huge challenge and hence opportunity. You mentioned some really good and big numbers about the space that you're in. Polymers and plastics, B2B space, the opportunities and billions. I want to know how did you come up with this concept? How did you find that? Okay, here's the opportunity that you want to dedicate yourself to. How did it all start?
Arun Singhal: All right. So, Neha, most of us start with an MBA driven career. The first job that you get on campus, I was lucky to land up a job which was not sounding lucky. At the start, but eventually it proved to be so. Where I was mostly talking to MSN business owners day in, day out and selling them for its derivatives looks very glorified, but essentially the best part of the job was we were talking to business owners all the time...
Play the full podcast on Spotify.
Stay focused, stay obsessed. And follow us on social media to stay inspired.
Instagram
Twitter
Linkedin
Transforming education is no small feat, and we have two people who have shown the courage to take up this challenge - Anand and Rohit - They share their insights on their journey of working at the grass root level, with a vision of transformation with an impact across geographies, languages and cultures, how they see this space developing, the struggles of an edtech startup and most importantly what keeps their obsession fueled through the good and tough times!