BlitzBusiness: Recent Episodes
Ashish Airon
The best business/startup stories from India and beyond. On each episode, host Ashish Airon talks to entrepreneurs/CXOs on new-age business models, challenges, opportunities how to scale.
New episode every week.
We also run special series like Behind The Deal solely focussed on the intricacies of the venture capital world.
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Olyv (formerly SmartCoin Financials Pvt. Ltd.) was established in 2017 as an app-based consumer lending platform. Olyv partners with RBI-registered NBFCs to offer digital personal loans to self-employed and salaried individuals who comprise the emerging and underbanked segment in India. We are among the most trusted quick personal loan apps in India. Over the last 7 years, the company has evolved from a consumer lending to a comprehensive, digital financial platform providing versatile offerings, beyond digital loans and including gold savings, among others.
Rohit Garg Co-Founder & CEO Rohit Garg is the Co-Founder & CEO of Olyv India (formerly SmartCoin Financials) where he has been driving the company’s vision of becoming a next-gen financial wellness platform for the millions of underbanked people in India. Rohit comes with nearly two decades of experience across trading, financial markets, financial modeling and business strategy with leading Indian and international players. His previous stints include acting as the Vice President for Nomura where he focused on European rates and inflation markets. He was also responsible for formulating income and investment strategies as well as trade ideas based on macro and RV themes. He also spearheaded regular research publications and played a key role in building the company’s analytical infrastructure. He began his career as an IT Associate in Morgan & Stanley and has also worked as a Senior Analyst at Deutsche Bank. Rohit completed his B.Tech in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and his post-graduate diploma in Finance, Strategy and Entrepreneurship from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.
© Podcast by Ashish Airon on BlitzBusiness Indian Podcast. India's top business podcast, startup podcast and entrepreneur podcast. Follow, like and subscribe to stay updated.
Huntr - which is a migrant blue-collar worker marketplace that connects various business enterprises with service providers such as government and training partners to source, manage, and onboard a job-ready workforce. Huntr operates as a SaaS-based platform that offers tailor-made solutions to cater to the diverse hiring needs of businesses. It streamlines the onboarding process, reducing it to 30 days compared to the 2-3 months of legacy hiring systems, saving millions of dollars in attrition costs. The company currently serves 40+ clients comprising some leading names like Amazon, Hilton, Marriott, Landmark Group, Dulsco, Accuro to name a few.Samuel Joy is the Founder & CEO of Huntr. He assumes the responsibilities of vision casting, spokesperson, strategic compass, hiring leader, and the driving force behind the fundraising. He brings years of technology, employment, and government coordination expertise to build trust and transparency in the hiring system. Alumni of Techstars NYC Accelerator, Samuel holds a Bachelor's in Marketing from the Vellore Institute of Technology and did his schooling at St. Thomas Central School in Trivandrum, Kerala. © Podcast by Ashish Airon on BlitzBusiness Indian Podcast. India's top business podcast, startup podcast and entrepreneur podcast. Follow, like and subscribe to stay updated.
The home is where the heart is"— Situated in the heart of India’s ultimate tourist destination, Sun Estates Developers from Goa are builders who’ve managed to infuse innovation into construction and inspire their architectural designs to be artistic. By balancing Goa’s natural visuals withmodern home designs, the company has been able to masterfully create the perfect juggle between design and purpose.Suraj MorajkarManaging Director, Sun EstatesSuraj Morajkar established one of the Hilton Group's first resorts in the nation with the goal of exhibiting Goa's interiors. The Hilton Goa Resort, perched above the picturesque, terraced slopes of Saipem Hills in Goa, is a showcase of Suraj Morajkar's design, aesthetics, and taste for exoticgrandeur. He has developed magnificent mansions for celebrities such as Neha Dhupia, Chunkey Pandey, Yuvraj Singh, designer Ritu Kumar, MD and CEO of Eicher Motors Vikram Lal, and former CEO of Café Coffee Day Naresh Malhotra, to mention a few.© Podcast by Ashish Airon on BlitzBusiness Indian Podcast. India's top business podcast, startup podcast and entrepreneur podcast. Follow, like and subscribe to stay updated.From a small-time entrepreneur to building the iconic Hilton Goa Resort w/ Suraj Morajkar
With a focus on practical skills and industry-relevant curriculum, TimesPro empowers learners to excel in their careers. Their collaborations extend to some of the country's premier institutes like IIMs (IIM Kozhikode, IIM Calcutta, and IIM Lucknow.) and IITs(IIT Delhi and IIT Roorkee), offering specialized courses across various domains. Courses offered through these collaborations cover a wide range of subjects, including but not limited to digital marketing, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, business analytics, data science, and cloud computing. This extensive curriculum ensures that learners acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to excel in their chosen fields.Through partnerships with top universities and industry leaders, TimesPro provides students with valuable insights and hands-on experience, preparing them for success in today's competitive job market.© Podcast by Ashish Airon on BlitzBusiness Indian Podcast. India's top business podcast, startup podcast and entrepreneur podcast. Follow, like and subscribe to stay updated.
Qoruz pioneers influencer marketing innovation with its streamlined, SaaS-based creator management platform in India. Tailored for brands and agencies, Qoruz simplifies the entire collaboration process from discovery to insights, management, and campaign reporting.#influencer #marketing #influencermarketing© Podcast by Ashish Airon on BlitzBusiness Indian Podcast. India's top business podcast, startup podcast and entrepreneur podcast. Follow, like and subscribe to stay updated.
Dhiway raised USD 1 million in a pre-seed funding round from Cornerstone Venture Partners Fund and SUNiCON Ventures and existing shareholders.Dhiway currently works with large public and private Institutions in the areas of Governance, Identity, Payments, Digital commerce, Skills, Education and workplace solutions in their journey to adopt emerging Web3.0 technologies. The company has MoU’s with several leading organisations for mutual collaborations as they build their domain-specific solutions using the CORD infrastructure.#blockchain #startup © Podcast by Ashish Airon on BlitzBusiness Indian Podcast. India's top business podcast, startup podcast and entrepreneur podcast. Follow, like and subscribe to stay updated.
Makoons is a #preschool #franchise that forms a part of KRS Educreations Pvt. Ltd. The company primarily caters to parents of children aged between 1-5 years, while also targeting investors who are looking for business avenues with an investment capacity of 15-20 lacsVijay Kumar Agarwal is the CEO and Co-Founder of KRS Educreations Pvt. Ltd., promoting pre-school franchises under the brand name “Makoons”. He holds a BSc and an MBA and has over 25 years of corporate experience in the fields of paper, automobiles, synthetic yarn, and education, specifically experience with various start-ups. He also has over 10 years of experience in the education industry and 15 years in corporate.
© Podcast by Ashish Airon on BlitzBusiness Indian Podcast. India's top business podcast, startup podcast and entrepreneur podcast. Follow, like and subscribe to stay updated.
Established by Manu Jain, Himanshu Semwal & Acharya Dev in late 2020, VAMA is a one-stop virtual platform that provides easy access to an array of services for one’s #religious/#spiritual journey. For #devotees & customers from all over the world, the platform offers virtual puja remedies in temples. Through purna #puja offerings, #astrology services, and #remedies. Additionally, it has over 300 experienced astrologers and other spiritual experts. Manu Jain is a serial entrepreneur and the co-founder of VAMA, a one-stop virtual platform that connects people from across the globe with a wide range of religious services. © Podcast by Ashish Airon on BlitzBusiness Indian Podcast. India's top business podcast, startup podcast and entrepreneur podcast. Follow, like and subscribe to stay updated.
Recode Studios started in 2018, with the aim of bringing a revolution to the makeup industry. Based in Ludhiana in India, it’s a Premium quality cosmetic brand that is available online at shop.recodestudios.com. Rather than viewing Indian brands as rivals, Recode positions itself against international giants like MAC Cosmetics and Smashbox. The essence of Recode's differentiation lies in its commitment to delivering international-quality products at accessible prices. For instance, while MAC Cosmetic offers a primer at Rs. 1800, Recode provides a comparable product of the same quality for just Rs. 800 in India. This strategic approach underscores Recode's primary focus: offering premium international standards at affordable rates.
sharktankindia #recodestudio #india #startupindia
© Podcast by Ashish Airon on BlitzBusiness Indian Podcast. India's top business podcast, startup podcast and entrepreneur podcast.
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Dheeraj Gupta, founder of Jumboking
Indian businessman Dheeraj Gupta has pioneered the establishment of homegrown QSRs as a ‘category’ in the restaurant industry. He’s the force behind India’s largest homegrown burger chain- JUMBOKING. Gupta is recognized as a prominent proponent of the discipline of 40% YOY growth and frills-free execution. Gupta’s business philosophy is based on building strong, symbiotic partnerships with individual entrepreneurs. His advocacy for franchising and its advantages to both franchisors and franchisees has been instrumental in building the groundswell for franchising as a model for shared growth.
Gupta is a clockwork crusader; a member of the 5 am club, he believes that Indian texts such as the Ashta Vakra Geeta, Narad Bhakti Sutras etc; possess copious business wisdom. Gupta is a marathoner, yoga practitioner and avid reader of business biographies.
employeeengagement #advantageclub #startup #startupindia #startupsuccess
Sourabh Deorah is the Co-founder & CEO of Advantage Club, a global platform for employee engagement with benefits like perks, rewards, and early wage access on a unified platform. In his current capacity, he is responsible for the strategic direction, product development, and overall business success.Advantage Club is a global employee engagement platform with benefits like rewards, recognitions, flexible benefits, wellness, onboarding, perks and communities on a single platform. It provides end-to-end solutions to facilitate employee engagement through exclusive privileges and rewards by brand partners, allowing them to reach out to targeted customer segments. Advantage Club has over 4 million users, presence in over 100+ countries, 1000+ clients, and 10,000+ brand options. Established in 2016, Advantage Club is a brainchild of UCLA postgraduates Sourabh Deorah and Smiti Bhatt Deorah, who identified employee benefits as a space to create disruption using data mining and analytics. Headquartered in San Francisco, Advantage Club has an impressive client portfolio featuring Concentrix, Teleperformance, #Hexaware, #EY, #Target, #Accenture, #BCG, #HCL, #Tech #Mahindra, Tata Steel, Rakbank, Lafarge, Resort World Sentosa and many more.© Podcast by Ashish Airon on BlitzBusiness Indian Podcast. India's top business podcast, startup podcast and entrepreneur podcast. Follow, like and subscribe to stay updated.
Kalpana Chawla Space Academy is a non profit organization founded in Lonavala by Narayan Bhargava Group, which offers high cost courses like Space Education for underprivileged students.
Kalpana Chawla Space Academy was founded under the leadership of former Director from ISRO (CBPO Director, Mr. Sudheer Kumar N) and is looking forward to educating young minds to reach great heights in the Indian Space Industry.
© Podcast by Ashish Airon on BlitzBusiness Indian Podcast. India's top business podcast, startup podcast and entrepreneur podcast.
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In conversation between Manisha Zaveri , Joint Managing Director, Career Mosaic and Ashish Airon.
Career Mosaic, India & South Asia's largest international student recruiter and a trusted partner to over 300 top-tier U.S. universities, also collaborating with a global network of 900+ institutions.
canadalife #canadaimmigration #canadavisa #canadastudyvisa #canadastudyvisa #canadanews #internationalstudents #canadastudyvisa #internationalstudents #studentlife #studentvisa #international #usa #uk #europe #india #university #universities
© Podcast by Ashish Airon on BlitzBusiness Indian Podcast. India's top business podcast, startup podcast and entrepreneur podcast.
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In conversation between Karmesh Gupta, CEO and Co-founder at WiJungle- Unified Cyber #security platform and Ashish Airon#WiJungle #KarmeshGupta #PraveenGupta #Entrepreneur #ItStartup #Startup #IndianStartup #hackers #hackerexposed #Forbes30Under30 #CyberSecurity #CyberSecurityStartup #MakeInIndia #IndianIT #cafirm #CyberThreat #lawyers #StartupIndia
In conversation between Samarth Sethia, CEO & Co- Founder, Mr. Milkman. and Ashish Airon.
entrepreneurship #entrepreneur #dubailife #weather #driving #dubai #milk #saas #startup #startupindia
© Podcast by Ashish Airon on BlitzBusiness Indian Podcast. India's top business podcast, startup podcast and entrepreneur podcast. Follow, like and subscribe to stay updated.
In conversation between Dr. Vikram Kamat, Founder & Chairman, of the VITS Kamats Group and Ashish Airon.The Vitskamats Group has been the pioneer of vegetarian, hot and healthy meals with their iconic brand - Kamats winning the trust of its patrons since decades. Popularly known as the Food People, with its food legacy of over 80 years, Kamats stands tall as the most long standing vegetarian Indian restaurant chain. Having started from humble beginnings by Venketesh Vithal Kamat and then his son, Dr. Vithal Venketesh Kamat , now the legacy and glory of the brand is being taken forward by Dr. Vikram Vithal Kamat and his team.The brand is independently listed as Vidli Restaurants Ltd. on Bombay Stock Exchange and has numerous awards to its credit, including best performing (SME) stock - 2015, HT Times Media Awards, Golden Spoon Awards and many more. Headed by its independent board of directors, its managing director is Mrs. Vidhi Vikram Kamat, who continues to guide and manage the day to day operations using her and the team’s vast knowledge and inputs.#DrVikramKamat#Kamats #KamatsIndia #VitsKamatsGroup #TheVitsKamatsGroup #KamatsLegacy #VitsHotelsAndResorts @vikramkamat #bse #entrepreneurship #entrepreneur#restaurateur #restaurant #restaurantchain #restaurantbusiness #hoteliers © Podcast by Ashish Airon on BlitzBusiness Indian Podcast. India's top business podcast, startup podcast and entrepreneur podcast. Follow, like and subscribe to stay updated.
In conversation between Vikram C Modi, owner of Modi Group (Dealerships for #jaguar, #landrover ,#hyundai , #honda and #tatamotors CV) and Ashish Airon.#startup #business #dealership © Podcast by Ashish Airon on BlitzBusiness Indian Podcast. India's top business podcast, startup podcast and entrepreneur podcast. Follow, like and subscribe to stay updated.
In conversation with Meghna Agarwal - Co Founder - IndiQube & Ashish Airon.
IndiQube has achieved remarkable success, boasting an impressive $100 million in ARR. The current 88% occupancy rate stands as a testament to the trust and satisfaction of their clientele.
© Podcast by Ashish Airon on BlitzBusiness Indian Podcast. India's top business/startup podcast.
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Advantage Club is a global employee engagement platform with benefits like rewards, recognitions, flexible benefits, wellness, onboarding, perks and communities on a single platform. It provides end-to-end solutions to facilitate employee engagement through exclusive privileges and rewards by brand partners, allowing them to reach out to targeted customer segments. Advantage Club has over 4 million users, presence in over 100+ countries, 1000+ clients, and 10,000+ brand options. Established in 2016, Advantage Club is a brainchild of UCLA postgraduates Sourabh Deorah and Smiti Bhatt Deorah, who identified employee benefits as a space to create disruption using data mining and analytics. Headquartered in San Francisco, Advantage Club has an impressive client portfolio featuring Concentrix, Teleperformance, Hexaware, EY, Target, Accenture, BCG, HCL, Tech Mahindra, Tata Steel, Rakbank, Lafarge, Resort World Sentosa and many more.
Sourabh Deorah is the Co-founder & CEO of Advantage Club, a global platform for employee engagement with benefits like perks, rewards, and early wage access on a unified platform. In his current capacity, he is responsible for the strategic direction, product development, and overall business success.
© Podcast by Ashish Airon on BlitzBusiness Indian Podcast. India's top business podcast, startup podcast and entrepreneur podcast. Follow, like and subscribe to stay updated.
© Podcast by Ashish Airon on BlitzBusiness Indian Podcast. India's top business podcast, startup podcast and entrepreneur podcast. Reach out to us on
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HexaHealth is a HealthTech platform founded by Ankur Gigras, Vikas Chauhan and Dr. Aman Priya Khanna in June 2021, which aims to bring transparency and accessibility into healthcare. With the largest network of hospitals across the country, HexaHealth offers a seamless surgery experience and serves as a one-stop solution for patients who require surgery.
Ankur Gigras is the Co-Founder & CEO of HexaHealth.
His educational background includes a Dual Degree in Chemical Engineering from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and an MBA in Business Administration and Management, General, from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
© Podcast by Ashish Airon on BlitzBusiness Indian Podcast. India's top business podcast, startup podcast and entrepreneur podcast. Reach out to us on
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College Vidya
College Vidya is a trailblazing education platform that stands at the forefront of India's online educational landscape. With a rich heritage stemming from the esteemed Blackboard Education & Research Foundation established in 1996, College Vidya has positioned itself as the nation's foremost and One-stop solution for making informed online education choices Driven by a spirit of innovation, the company is dedicated to transforming the traditional education system and democratizing access to high-quality learning experiences. The company envisions assisting those who wish to pursue higher education through online and distance modes and enabling students to access quality education tailored to their needs, unlocking opportunities for personal and professional growth.
Established in 2019 and headquartered in Noida, College Vidya has achieved remarkable success due to its exceptional team of visionary founders- Mayank Gupta (Co-Founder and CEO), Rohit Gupta (Co-Founder and COO) and Sarthak Garg (Co-Founder and CMO). Mayank Gupta, deeply committed to students' career development, identified the need to challenge the existing sales-oriented approach prevalent in the industry.
Rohit Gupta
Co-Founder & COO, College Vidya
Rohit Gupta is the Co-Founder & COO of College Vidya, India’s most trusted and comprehensive platform for students seeking online courses. He is the first generation entreprenur with a down to earth approach and at the helm of the company Rohit is responsible for overseeing and managing all operational aspects while strategically planning and executing sales strategies.
After completing his schooling at Dehradun Boarding School and graduating from Deshbandhu College, Rohit ventured into the corporate world and worked tirelessly in multiple jobs and ventures, immersing himself in diverse industries and gaining invaluable experience along the way. Through determination, adaptability, and a relentless pursuit of excellence, Rohit finally realized his vision and gave birth to College Vidya (with two other founders), a market leader in B2B admissions generating 30+ Crore revenue.
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Kots is a pioneering residential leasing company operating in East Bangalore that is reimagining home as a service. Established in 2019 by entrepreneurs, Vijeth Reddy and Sangeetha Holiyachi, Kots aims to revolutionise the rental home industry in India. Its primary goal is to cater to the housing needs of the new generation of tenants, specifically targeting young Indians aged between 24 to 35 years. At the core of the brand’s mission is the commitment to deliver rental properties that perfectly align with the preferences and requirements of these young tenants. By ensuring an exceptional tenant-market fit, Kots aims to provide living spaces that are intelligently optimised and tailored to the modern lifestyle. This approach not only enhances the tenant's experience but also maximises yields for landlords.
Vijeth Reddy is the Co-Founder & CEO of Kots,a digital consumer brand reshaping the residential leasing space in East Bangalore. With a mission to solve urban housing for young India, Vijeth, along with his wife Sangeetha Holiyachi, established Kots in 2019 to revolutionise the rental home industry in India. Key responsibilities in the company include growth, brand building, partnerships, digital transformation, leadership coaching and defining the strategic course for the business. In a holistic sense, he builds the systems, drives the philosophy of Kots, develops the leadership and aligns all the initiatives to achieve the outcomes.
© Podcast by Ashish Airon on BlitzBusiness Indian Podcast. India's top business podcast, startup podcast and entrepreneur podcast. Reach out to us on
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About ARAPL (Affordable Robotic & Automation Ltd. )
Affordable Robotic and Automation Limited is a Turnkey Automation Solution provider for all kinds of Industrial Automation needs such as Line Automation, Assembly Line, Conveyor, Robotic Inspection Stations, Pick & Place Systems, Gantry, Auto Assembly stations etc
Based in Pune, ARAPL has been at the forefront of the automation industry for more than a decade, serving diverse sectors, including Automotive, Non-Automotive, General Industries, and the Government. ARAPL has demonstrated exceptional growth and success in recent years with an expanding customer base in India and across Asia.
ARAPL boasts a subsidiary called ARAPL RaaS, specializing in robotic solutions for warehouses. Over the past year, ARAPL RaaS has filed for a 6 patents, developed 5 proprietary software solutions, and crafted numerous algorithms, positioning itself as a future-ready leader in the warehouse automation landscape.
Their recent partnership with Toyota Lift Northwest as a Channel Partner is poised to transform the industry and positively impact ARAPL's retail investors, holding an 80% stake in ARAPL RaaS.
About Milind Padole
Milind's journey from graduating from VJTI Mumbai to gaining valuable experience at Mahindra and Comau has been remarkable. However, his transformative assignment in Germany ignited his passion for robotics. He discovered that robotics is not just about cost-efficiency and productivity; it's a force that's shaping the very fabric of lives.
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About Nitin Chhabra
Nitin has been in the retail industry since 2000 and has been accredited with launching and managing multiple domestic & international brands. He has been the CEO of Brooks Brothers, Thomas Pink & Iconix Brands and was responsible for forming joint ventures and alliances during his stint with Reliance Brands. He has held various leadership roles in Reid & Taylor, VF Corp and Arvind Brands.
About ace turtle
A new India's leading tech-native retail company is spearheading the retail industry’s next phase of transformation. The company is vertically integrated from design, local manufacturing and marketing to reach consumers directly. ace turtle is powered by its proprietary technology which uses data science from design to fulfilment to meet ever-evolving consumer expectations. Bengaluru and Singapore-based ace turtle is the exclusive licensee of iconic global brands Lee®, Wrangler®, Toys“R”Us® and Babies“R”Us® for India and other South Asian markets.
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About Nitin O Mahipal
Nitin has spent over two decades in the logistics and supply chain industry, leading Carry Logistic to become a true industry titan. His expertise ranges from supply chain optimization, innovative technology integration, and sustainable logistics practices to adapt to the ever-changing global market.
About Mega pack and carry
Mega Pack and Carry Logistics is a premier logistics company dedicated to providing top-tier transportation and supply chain solutions. With a commitment to excellence, Mega specialize in a wide range of services to meet the cargo needs.
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Satyen Kothari, Founder & CEO of Cube Wealth
Satyen Kothari is not only the visionary behind Cube Wealth but also an accomplished angel investor and serial entrepreneur. He has an impressive track record in the fintech industry, with notable achievements such as co-founding Citrus Payments, which soared to a valuation of $100 million in just four years under his leadership. Over the course of his career, he has successfully founded and contributed to various businesses in Silicon Valley and India, working with renowned companies like Intuit, First Data, Cisco, AOL, Yahoo, and Frog Design & App.
https://www.bankoncube.com/
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"Bottle Openers" (https://bottleopeners.co.in/index.html). A new age omnichannel communications commerce consultancy. Providing 360 degree services in creating brand campaigns that are original and provide business effect for its clients. BottleOpeners utilises a thorough understanding of company and consumer insights along with a specialised team of professionals in advertising, media, design, and technology to develop integrated communication strategies that provide measurable results.
For India's leading sports brand Alcis sports apparel brand, Bottle Openers has conceptualised and oversaw production of apparel films with Shikhar Dhawan. In the same year, Alcis was signed on by the Rajasthan Royals to redesign their entire merchandise. The Bottle Openers team has supported Alcis in the transformation of Rajasthan Royals's new pink identity with social and online engagement campaigns featuring coach Shane Warne. The campaign was also instrumental in increasing hits to their e-commerce platform to sell the exclusive merchandise.
Notable examples include campaigns for well-known brands such as Snickers, where BottleOpeners increased brand awareness for Snickers' packaging innovation, and Tupperware, where a simple contest was transformed into a successful initiative to empower womenpreneurs. Additionally, BottleOpeners was at the forefront of managing the social communication of Tech Mahindra's partnership with the NFL team, the Jacksonville Jaguars.
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Lee Keshav
Life is just as extraordinary as you believe it to be, and Lee Keshav, a Design Leader On Weekdays and Racing Driver On Weekends, has been writing his extraordinary life story since the age of 16. Subsequent years were a roller-coaster of success and failure for Lee, as he kick-started his journey in the racing arena soon after taking professional training in Thailand. Later that year, he was invited to a selection event by the prestigious Red Bull MotoGP Rookies Cup in Spain. Even though he couldn’t make it to the academy, he never backed out.
The lows fueled Keshav’s dreams and he switched from superbikes to cars, which worked wonders for him as he earned the title of India’s 'Fastest and Fittest Young Driver’ at the highly competitive JK Tyre Volkswagen Motorsport Polo R Cup championship.
Since then, he has competed in several top-tier championships, namely JK Formula BMW and MRF Formula Ford 1600 championship, and garnered multiple wins and podiums under his belt. Keshav also managed a last-minute entry in the highly acclaimed MRF Challenge winter championship, which marked his debut in international racing and made him one of the fastest-progressing drivers from India. He carried this momentum and started competing against the likes of Freddie Hunt, Mathias Lauda, and other top racing drivers from around the world.
When Keshav is not racing, he adorns the hat of a successful Product Design Leader in the startup space. He has been fascinated by tech and even founded his App Design firm when he was just 16. There is no stopping him, as he joined Hike Messenger as a Senior Product Designer at just 19. When you have the determination to do something big with your life, you find ways to make things happen, and so did Keshav, when he later went on to lead Product Design for Hike Messenger and Airtel Wynk Music under the mentorship of Kavin Bharti Mittal. Keshav has also successfully led product design teams for other startups in India like OYO Rooms, Foxy India, and most prominently NITI Aayog, where he advised as an industry leader to help build the Women Entrepreneurship Platform.
Lee Keshav is truly a self-made man in every sense. From finding his passion at a young age to investing energy and time in building it from scratch, Keshav has come a long way in his careers – motor racing and product design. Today, while he is getting ready to make a comeback in the racing arena, he is also taking care of the Creative Head role at Rush Gaming Universe.
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PolicyEnsure, India's first and fastest-growing PHYGITAL insurance distribution network, founded in 2017 by insurance domain experts Rahul M Mishra and Pankaj Vashishtha. With the rising demand for online insurance products, PolicyEnsure is disrupting the traditional insurance market by providing a seamless and user-friendly platform for consumers to purchase insurance policies.
Phygital insurance companies are transforming the traditional insurance industry by combining the convenience of digital technology with the personal touch of physical interaction. PolicyEnsure is leading the way in this new trend by leveraging technology to streamline the entire insurance process, from purchasing policies to filing claims. They use digital channels to provide customers with quick and easy access to information, such as policy details, coverage options, and claims processing. At the same time, they also offer physical channels, such as brick-and-mortar stores, agents, and call centers, to provide a human touch and address any concerns or questions.
PolicyEnsure's founders aim to make insurance easily accessible to non-metro cities, where there is a lack of awareness about the importance of insurance and a credible infrastructure. With its PHYGITAL model, PolicyEnsure combines physical presence on the ground with a robust technology platform for convenience, transparency, and efficiency.
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Spectrum Talent Management is a one-stop solution for all local & global human talent management needs. Established in 2008, Spectrum is the brainchild of MBA graduates Vidur Gupta and Sidharth Agarwal,who intended to tap and manage India’s most significant resource, its manpower. Since then, it has been striving to continuously evolve by effectively meeting various global organization's staffing and recruitment needs.The brand is committed to establishing and encouraging best-in-industry practices, the leading multinational talent management organization that offers exhaustive talent management services, from finding talent to managing it. The brand has grown exponentially from 2008 and closed FY 21-22 at 465 crores which is 55% higher than the previous year's revenue recorded at 298 crores
With 15,000+ & 9+ offices in India and International offices in USA, UK and UAE, it has delivered phenomenal growth in the last few years. So far, the organization has worked with 300+ clients globally and facilitated 8000+ hirings last financial year. Spectrum Talent Management has also launched their IPO in June 2023 on NSE emerge comprising a fresh issue of 51.85 lakh equity shares and an offer for sale of 8.92 lakh equity shares.
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About Saurabh Arora
Saurabh Arora, a fervent founder with expertise in digital strategy and entrepreneurship, is the visionary CEO & Founder behind University Living. Inspired by his own challenges as an international student, he's dedicated to simplifying accommodation searches for students worldwide. The vision was simple: to ensure that no student feels lost while searching for a home away from home.
Saurabh's diverse skills & interests encompass digital strategy, entrepreneurship, AI & tech advancements and financial acumen, making him a leader in the field.
About University living
Revolutionizing student housing with 360-degree digital transformation: connecting students, accommodation providers, and education consultants. University Living, through its AI driven tech platform has enabled the 360 degree digital transformation of the student housing ecosystem for all its stakeholders - students (demand), accommodation providers (supply) & education consultants (support ecosystem
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Founded in 2002,Cactus Communications (cactusglobal.com) is a science communications and technology company that aims to advance society by making science accessible globally through innovation and technology. CACTUS solves problems for researchers, universities, publishers, academic societies, and life science organizations through innovative products and services developed under the brands Editage, Cactus Life Sciences, Researcher.Life, Impact Science, Paperpal and Cactus Labs. CACTUS has offices in Princeton, London, Aarhus, Singapore, Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul, Tokyo, and Mumbai; a global workforce of over 3,000 experts; and customers from over 190 countries. CACTUS is considered a pioneer in its workplace best practices and has been consistently ranked a great place to work over the last several years.
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Founded in 2016, PayMe India is a leading FinTech company that offers a wide range of financial services for individuals and corporations. With an initial seed capital of USD 2 million, the company was recognized as one of the top 30 emerging FinTech startups by INC 42.
PayMe India has a rapidly expanding customer base that includes salaried professionals, employees, small businesses, and startups. The company currently serves over 5 million customers with its services, which include instant personal loans, corporate loans, and credit score improvement solutions. The company's services are especially designed for corporate employees who need quick lending options at the most competitive interest rates. The company currently offers loans for individuals up to Rs. 5,00,000 in just a few clicks.
Mahesh Shukla—Founder & CEO- PayMe India
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About Fountain
Fountain is the market leader in high volume hiring because its solutions enable customers to get ahead of their hiring goals. Fountain’s all-in-one platform enables companies to find qualified candidates and move them from application to onboarding quicker, reducing time to hire from weeks to days—or even hours. By simplifying the screening, interviewing and hiring experience, Fountain’s solutions keep applicants happy while ensuring organizations have pipelines full of hourly talent that is ready to work. Hundreds of customers use Fountain’s solutions to hire over 3.5 million workers annually in more than 78 countries.
About Ashish Kesharwani
With a career spanning over 30 years, He had an enriching journey from hotel, Resort, club, and restaurant operations, hospitality academics, and retail training to successfully setting up and launching Business ventures.
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DrinkPrime is a smart customised water purifier based on input water quality. Unlike traditional water purifiers that are not connected to the internet, DrinkPrime is Internet of Things (IoT) -enabled and is in sync with a subscriber’s DrinkPrime mobile app allowing them to monitor water purifier health at all times. It was founded in 2016 by Mr Vijender Reddy Muthyala, Co-founder & CEO and Mr Manas Ranjan Hota, Co-founder & COO.
A data-driven model, it blends a water purifier subscription service along with sensors to track a household’s water input and consumption in real-time. The customized four-stage filtration process gives access to clean drinking water based on input water quality while being charged based on the chosen subscription plan.
Manas Ranjan Hota is the Co-founder and COO at DrinkPrime, India’s leading drinking water solution provider.
50% of India does not have access to safe drinking water and DrinkPrime is focused on solving this problem. Under his leadership, DrinkPrime has been recognised as a part of Fast Company’s ‘The 10 most innovative Asia-Pacific companies of 2021’ and in Forbes Asia 100 To Watch list.
Manas is responsible for growing DrinkPrime’s subscriber base by
500% over the last 2 years with the current subscriber count exceeding
30,000. He leads high-performance teams - sales, marketing, operations
and customer experience - at DrinkPrime and oversees the company’s
day-to-day activities. He has played a pivotal role in building the
125+ strong DrinkPrime team from scratch.
Before starting DrinkPrime, Manas built and led the inside sales team at Sonata Software. He is a Master of Business Administration (MBA) graduate from Pondicherry University.
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Columbia Pacific Communities (CPC) is India’s largest and most experienced senior living community operator with close to 1750 residential units under management in 5 cities and 10 locations across south India (Bengaluru, Chennai, Puducherry, Coimbatore and Kanchipuram) . As the pioneers in this category it is committed to reimagining the concept of senior living in India and create world-class practices that exceed these expectations of all our stakeholders. It is part of the Columbia Pacific group, one of the foremost developers of senior living communities in the United States, Canada and South East Asia. Founded by Dan Baty, Columbia Pacific has more than 40 years of experience and expertise in designing, building and managing senior housing communities around the world. The team, with the expertise of their principals in the United States of America and our partners in India, brings together rich experience in senior housing design, development and management.
Mr. Mohit Nirula, CEO, Columbia Pacific Communities (profile attached)
The second innings:
Columbia Pacific Communities, Nirula’s second organisation in a 30-year old career allows him to bring to the fore all the skills that he has gained over the past three decades.
A vision that he has created, a culture that he is nurturing, a mission that is "worthy". Its an opportunity to expand his knowledge and skills working with domain experts in areas as diverse as land acquisition; design and development of the communities; construction - on quality, on time, on budget; sales & marketing of real estate but with heart and empathy, ultimately continuing the association with the buyers and residents by servicing the community and the needs of the residents. His sole objective is to provide our elders with a safe, secure and engaging lifestyle in an environment of genuine warmth and care.
The first innings:
He started in hospitality with The Oberoi Group in 1986. Since 1996, he has been in leadership roles, heading hotels - across brands (Novotel / Trident / Oberoi), geographies (India / Mauritius / Egypt), with a diverse range of responsibilities (Operations / Openings / Renovations / Restorations).
Specialties: Process analysis for enhanced efficiency and effectiveness, a passion for detail and maximizing the achievement of potential of colleagues through a mentoring approach. The ability to balance the creative tension that must exist between the means and the end. The means being the way and manner in which he conduct business and the values embodied in our brand, while the end being the hunger and passion necessary to win and out perform competition.
"The best time to plant a tree was 30 years ago. The second best time is now." Chinese proverb
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Hop Electric Mobility Pvt Ltd. got formally established in January 2020 and Operation started in January 2021. Mr. Vivek Tomar (Business Head), Mr. Rajneesh Singh (Head Marketing) and Mr. Avinash Choudhary (Regional Manager North) later joined the company as core team members.
Aspiring to become one of the top global new energy automotive companies, the brand aims to cater for the growing demands of the customers looking to opt for environment-friendly electric mobility solutions. Working on B2C and B2B market. With three e’s in its name - electric, energy, environment HOP now provides lineup of electric two wheelers and energy network platform and well environment is part of our conscious in every step and action.
Nikhil Bhatia
Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer – HOP Electric Mobility
A Qualified Mechanical Engineer from Punjab Technical University and with experience of more than a decade, Nikhil Bhatia started his career with Oil and Gas industry, the mecca of mechanical engineers. Even though learnings were amazing as an energy professional, within the first 3 years of professional exposure, he made a conscious change towards the field of new energy and clean technologies
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Atmantan Wellness Centre is India’s most luxurious integrated wellness destination spa and transformation centre located nestled on a crystal hill, spanning 42 acres of lush green valley, Atmantan, has it abode in the Majestic Sahyadris, and overlooks the pristine Mulshi Lake. True to its name, Atma (soul) Mana (mind) and Tan (body), the resort is dedicated to providing you with a rejuvenating experience that will return you as a renewed individual, heart whole and fancy free. Here we help you understand the relationship between sound nutrition and the functioning of the body.
The resort offers an expanse of 6525 sq. ft. of fitness facilities in addition to world class spa and wellness therapies like traditional Ayurveda, oriental acupressure, aromatherapy massages, Chi Nei Tsang, purifying body polishes, cocooning wraps, physiotherapy, and Pranic chakra cleansing.
Living up to true Indian hospitality, Atmantan exceeds expectations in terms of luxury, service and quality. It is a wholesome amalgamation of pampering your mind, body and soul. Our certified experts create customised packages just for you by using a happy mix of spa and fitness therapies along with the right dietary inputs and lifestyle improvements to provide you with holistic well-being.
Our special ‘farm to table’ cuisine is curated to satiate your taste buds as well as nutritional needs, with fresh ingredients sourced from local farms, free of preservatives and other unnatural additives. Atmantan living offers a range of evidence based wellness packages such as a master cleanse, weight balance, journey through yoga, and number of others which help you align your mind and body while gaining utmost peace.
The Founders are health & fitness oriented visionaries who have imagined Atmantan as the ultimate wellness haven for people looking to scale new personal heights of wellness - SharmileeAgarwal Kapur as a Pranic healer brings energy, medicine and conviction to Atmantan while Nikhil Kapur as a fitness enthusiast and an ironman triathlete, brings methodical planning andthe wellness focus to the resort.
Atmantan has received the India's Best Wellness Retreat Award at the World Spa Awards and also awarded as Conde Nast Readers Travel Favourite Destination Spa award in 2017! We have also had the privilege to host guests like Parineeti Chopra, Bhumi Pednekar,Malaika Arora, Lisa Ray, Masaba Gupta and Neena Gupta, Karisma Kapoor, Sri Devi, Nimrat Kaur, Randeep Hoodaand Sanjeev Kapoor to name a few.
Sharmilee Agrawal Kapur
Co-Founder & Director of Atmantan Wellness Centre
A pranic healer and spiritual yogini, Ms. Sharmilee Agrawal Kapur is the Co-Founder and Director of Atmantan Wellness Centre - one of a kind, luxury wellness clinic committed to transforming the Body Mind and Soul through holistic practices.
An MBA graduate (Bond University, Australia), Sharmileeinherits her talented entrepreneurial mindset from her father wholeads a prominent Hospitality and Real Estate company - Bramhacorp, Pune.
Mr. Nikhil Kapur
Co-Founder & Director, Atmantan Wellness Centre
With over 15 years of experience as a pioneering entrepreneur Mr. Nikhil Kapur is the Co-Founder and Director of Atmantan Wellness Centre - one of a kind, luxury wellness clinic committed to transforming the Body Mind and Soul through holistic practices.
An alumnus of Symbiosis Institute of Business Management (MBA - Marketing, 2000) and Fergusson College (BA - Eco, 1998), Nikhil is a seasoned professional with > six years dedicated to working with leading multinationals such as Wipro and Reuters, before he decided to pursue his dream of setting up a wellness centre.
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DriveUis India’s largest car driver service and a super-app for car owners. DriveU has revolutionised the way consumers hire drivers for their private cars, and how businesses maintain a strong, reliable supply chain of professional drivers to transport vehicles. Operating in all the major cities of India and trusted by over 650,000+ customers, 150+ businesses, that are served by 65,000+ background-verified, uniformed professional drivers, and have completed 5+ million trips. In 2021, DriveU launched India’s first Car Ownership Super App that allows users to book any service around car ownership such as general maintenance, roadside assistance, car cleaning, and much much more! DriveU rewards car ownership. Car owners can gain reward coins that can be immediately redeemed for exclusive partner offers, discounts, or products. DriveU is committed to helping driver partners become micro-entrepreneurs and increase their income. DriveU also strives to improve the quality of life for its driver partners through training in etiquette, hygiene, service quality etc.
Ashok Shastry Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer - DriveU Ashok Shastry is the Co-Founder and CEO of DriveU, India’s largest on-demand private driver service trusted by over 650,000+ customers, and 150+ businesses, that are served by 50,000+ background verified, uniformed, trained professional drivers, who have completed 5+ Million trips. DriveU is present in all of the major cities like Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi & NCR, Hyderabad Mumbai, Kolkata, and Coimbatore for B2C & B2B services. Ashok is a young entrepreneur, who started DriveU, in May 2015, with the dual objective of making life simple for millions of car owners across India through technology, while creating reliable incomes for those who need it the most. He had an entrepreneurial inclination since childhood and graduated from California State University in Hayward with a focus on marketing, finance and psychology. Ashok has a hands-on approach to solving real-world problems and he focuses towards building strategy, marketing, and operations. Prior to DriveU, he worked in marketing and operational roles at TaxiForSure which was acquired by Ola - one of the largest cab services in India. Ashok is based out of Bengaluru, India and likes to enjoy his weekends with close friends, trekking nearby trails, and experimenting in the kitchen. He is also an avid animal lover and fitness enthusiast, who's adopted three Indie dogs from the streets who live at home, and another 3 who call DriveU’s HQ theirs.
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Sheru, an energy storage company based out of New Delhi (India). The company provides cloud storage solutions by aggregating idle battery capacity to create a virtual energy storage platform.
FuelBuddy is India's first and largest Doorstep Fuel Delivery startup
It's 180+ cities 50000+ customers, 12 cr lts and 24 million dollars fund raised so far.
ET Medialabs is helping businesses integrate technology into their marketing strategies. With their expertise in areas such as data analytics, automation, and AI, ET Medialabs is enabling companies to optimize their marketing efforts and achieve better results.
Founded in 2019 by Amit Lakhotia, Park+ is a super app for car owners that solves the daily challenges faced by car owners - ranging from parking, FASTag management, car insurance, automated vehicle access control systems, and EV charging stations.Backed by Epiq Capital II. Matrix Partners India & Sequoia Capital India, and recently raised INR 145 Cr in series C to utilize and expand its presence to over 100+ cities, to hire 200+ employees, and expand its services verticals, to supercharge Park+’s next growth phase.Park+ today hosts India's largest community of car owners on its platform with 70 lakh+ users. Park+ is present in 2,500+ residential societies, 250+ offices, and 35+ malls across 50+ Indian cities, including Delhi NCR, Bangalore, and Mumbai.
Explorex has more than 350 restaurant partners across 15+ cities in India and was able to secure USD 6.5 million in funding over pre-seed and seed rounds. Since its inception, Explorex has processed over 28 lakh orders
Zynga is a global leader in interactive entertainment with a mission to connect the world through games and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive.
ActionAid Association’s work with these communities is strongly focused on women and children. It was established with a vision to create a world without poverty, patriarchy and injustice in which every person enjoys the right to life with dignity. In 2006, ActionAid Association was registered as an Indian organisation, governed by an independent General Assembly and a Governing Board. Together with supporters, communities, institutions and governments, they strive for equality, fraternity and liberty for all. It works in 24 states and two union territories, with several partners and allied organisations. ActionAid Association is part of a global federation and a full affiliate of ActionAid International, that has presence in over 40 countries worldwide. Ms. Shabana Azmi is the current chairperson of the governing board.
Super Plastronics Pvt. Ltd (SPPL) is a manufacturing concern established in 1990 with its Head Office in Noida. It has 3 manufacturing plants in India located in Noida, Una and Jammu. It has employee strength of over 1000 across India.
Wakao Foods is a sustainable Goa based company that brings plant based ethically sourced ‘Ready to Cook’ and ‘Ready to Eat’ products to the market. Thefirst offering from Wakao, is the native jackfruit meat. Inspired by rising trends of veganism across the world and in India, as well, Wakao brings a new and disruptive approach with a sustainable focus. Launched in 2020, just before the pandemic hit Indian shores, Wakao has still shown a 25% month on month growth since its inception.
CuriousJr, a Gurugram-based Edtech and online coding platform for kids to enable code learning for children between 8 and 17 with 250,000 active monthly users
77 - Varna Bhat, Blisswater Industries, maker of Indian vodka brand Rahasya and the whisky Yaksha
Planify Capital Private Limited is a fintech company that aims to build India's biggest private equity marketplace
New episode with Arnav Kishore, Founder and CEO at Fire-Boltt
Complete Episode Releasing on 31st August 4 PM IST
Bureau is on a mission to protect the growing banking and fintech sector along with ecommerce and mobile-first businesses in India, from the risks of credit and fraud. Bureau's no-code identity orchestration platform powers automation of decisions, prevents fraud, and powers seamless customer onboarding and fraud-free customer interactions for any business.
New episode with
Arnav Kishore, Founder and CEO at Fire-Boltt
Complete Episode Releasing on 31st August 4 PM IST
Trucknetic is made of two words 'Truck' and 'Kinetic', thereby privileging a truck's kinetic energy and to be in constant motion.Founded by Arham P Jain in 2019 who has been a driving force behind the firm from inception, Trucknetic aims to be the Uber for the trucking sector.
rham is the Founder and Chief Trucking Officer of Trucknetic. He has been a serial entrepreneur, integrating technology in the conventional worlds of logistics, commerce and energy. He strongly believes that India is an amazing story which hasn’t been written yet. Arham is a mechanical engineer turned social entrepreneur turned investment banker. He was the Managing Director of Apeejay Overseas Limited. He has been selected for prestigious fellowships such as Indo-German YLF, Indo-Swiss FLF, IDEX Global, World Merit, ALS (University of Chicago). He has done Entrepreneurship – Leading change through innovation courses from Stanford University. He has been awarded Entrepreneur of the Year Award by IAF in 2020.
About MiQ
MiQ is the leading programmatic media partner within the adtech domain. MiQ does programmatic differently as
- Partner agnostic - Access to diverse inventory from across the open and closed web
- Tech enabled - Our tech allows us to easily connect data at speed; putting always-on brand, consumer and campaign insights in our clients hands and allowing our traders to activate top performing campaigns across platforms
- People powered - Programmatic marketing still requires humans, and we have hundreds of analysts, data scientists and software engineers, who are at the top of their game
MiQ clients range from Global Holding companies to Client Direct to in-housing clients.
MiQ is around 1000 people strong, spread across 9 countries and 22 offices delivering media at scale in 83 media markets across the globe.
About Krish
Krish heads Technology and Data Science practices at MiQ, a leading programmatic partner within AdTech Domain. He has over 19 years of international experience and is an expert in building global technology teams that deliver highly scalable and reliable applications, from the ground up.
At MiQ, his focus is on scaling Technology and Data Science in terms of architecture, infra, practices, processes and people.
Prior to MiQ, he was at Expedia Group where he led multiple technology teams and was the Site Lead for Expedia Group office in Bangalore. Krish holds a Master's degree in Computer Engineering and a Master's degree in Industrial Engineering, both from Arizona State University, USA.
Rashmi Daga laid the foundation of one of the most exciting food tech companies - FreshMenu in September 2014. Armed with a rich experience in spearheading and managing several start-ups and diverse businesses, she wants to bring the best of food to customers table tables. Aimed at rescuing food- seekers from mundane meals, FreshMenu is on a constant quest to whip-up interesting food options in the kitchens spread out across the city that deliver freshly cooked food to the doorsteps of its customers.
Armed with an MBA from IIM, Ahmedabad, Rashmi started her career as a Business Manager at IBM in 2003 where she handled an extensive portfolio of corporate and government clients. She then went on to enjoy successful tenures at LifeScan (One growing fastest-growing franchises of Johnson & Johnson) and TutorVista.
Rashmi started her entrepreneurial journey with Afday.com, an online business which focused on selling curated art and craft products. During this period, she developed a network of artists across India.
Subsequently, Rashmi has also worked with segment leaders such as Bluestone.com and Olacabs. At Bluestone, she launched successful offline sales strategies like small format guide stores and home-trial that saw significantly higher customer conversions than online sales. At OlaCabs, Rashmi was responsible for strategic alliances with several online travel companies as well as large corporates to accelerate sales.
This width of experiences across industries and leading names have equipped Rashmi to scale and build a formidable brand with FreshMenu in the Indian food-tech market.
Rashmi enjoys listening to Bollywood classics and cooking. She lives in Bangalore with her husband and daughter.
Within a short span of 2 years since launch, The June Shop today boasts of an eclectic yet affordable 60+ sub-categories being retailed on their website and is on track to achieve a whopping 200% growth, witnessed with the boom of online spending. Currently, the brand has 100+ craftsmen working on products with more than 1.5L+ customers.
Rishav Nahata
Co-founder, The June Shop
Rishav Nahata is the Co-founder of The June Shop, a design-inspired lifestyle e-commerce brand. Rishav Nahata along with Pranav Jain who is the Co-founder of the company came together with an idea to disrupt the impulse buying category online after realizing the immense demand in the Indian market for design-oriented, lifestyle products. Born to address this need gap, The June Shop serves this niche with their curated array of everyday collectibles which are fun, premium and aesthetic. Before this Rishav was working within his ancestral textile business where he was looking after the procurement and manufacturing division.
Hailing from Kolkata, Rishav has a degree in Business Management from Centre for Management Studies, Bangalore. He is an e-commerce professional with a decade worth of experience in procurement and manufacturing.
Rishav is driven by a passion to bring products with great designs and functionality to the discerning Indian consumers. He is responsible for strategic expansion and procurement of products and also overlooks designing, product curation, and product research. Under his able leadership, the brand is on track to achieve a whopping 200% growth.
He enjoys listening to podcasts, boxing, working out, and loves coffee.
Vansikha Nahata
CEO, The June Shop
Vansikha Nahata, a young 25 years old entrepreneur from Kolkata is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at The June Shop – an E-commerce start-up. Vansikha leads the brand and is steering the expansion, content, branding and marketing aspects of business. She is responsible for driving business’ critical mandates and her multi-dimensional qualities ranging from ideation, content curation to designing as a leader have ensured a fundamentally strong, customer centric business with enormous potential.
Her vision for The June Shop not only includes expansion of the manufacturing base predominantly to India, but global expansion is also on the roadmap with a focus on building innovative products across diversified product categories for Smart and Elegant Homes. She strives to focus on organic growth.
Vansikha is a graduate of St. Xavier’s College in Kolkata and a master’s degree in Financial Mathematics from King’s College, London. She is also passionate about Indie music and loves number crunching and reading.
About RUBANS:
Established in 2014, Rubans Accessories is the fastest growing jewelry brand in the country, housing an enthralling combination of brilliant artistry and modernity.
RUBANS is the brainchild of Chinu Kala, a first-generation entrepreneur. The brand was started with a vision to honour Indian artisans and to make jewelry affordable and accessible to all. It has over 2000+ designs meticulously curated by artisans from across the country. With more than a million happy customers RUBANS is today INDIA’S MOST LOVED JEWELLERY BRAND offering a strikingly exquisite range of handcrafted collections for every occasion with a vision of making a woman believe that she is her favorite, every single day. Starting from a Kiosk in 2014 to transitioning and setting a new benchmark for the virtual market space in 2021, Chinu has taken the brand to new heights earning her accolades all around.
About Chinu Kala:
Chinu Kala is an entrepreneur, socialite, model and one of the prominent women in the fashion jewelry business in India today. Her start-up Rubans Accessories, founded in 2014, is the fastest-growing fashion jewelry brand in India.
She has come a long way in life by genuine hard-work, persistence, eagerness to learn, and understanding of the gigantic power of the human spirit
Rubans is like her personality. Its quirky, fashionable jewelry that supports her values of being persistence, hardworking and budget-conscious.
Her journey started at the age of 15, when she left home with a pair of slippers, a salwar suit and just Rs 300 in her pocket. In order to survive and to have her daily food she started working as a door-to-door sales person selling knives and coaster sets. During her struggle days she did all possible odd jobs right from working as a waitress to being a telemarketing executive. She started her 1st venture Fonte corporate solutions in 2008 which was into corporate merchandising. In 2007 she participated in Gladrags Mrs. India beauty pageant and it is here that she realized the power of Jewelry. How a piece of jewelry could transform the overall look of a person. For years this thought lingered on in her mind and in 2014 she started her Fashion jewelry brand Rubans
A brainchild of Ritika Gupta, Konpal Batra & Rakshit Singh, the brand originated with the purpose of offering impeccable craftsmanship to its patrons. With varied skillsets and a common passion, the three designers are united by their live for creating the perfect blend between the classic and the modern. This brand is known for its Mask Chains which gained popularity by being spotted on just about everyone. With the doors of its studio open in Noida, Tann-ed produces designs that are loved locally as well as internationally.”
Founded in 2022, The Fair Trust is an ecosystem building a borderless and democratic community of
investors funding the next generations of revolutionary blockchain projects. The platform is founded by
Anthony D. & Micky P. who bring with them decades of experience from working with consulting and
tech giants like Deloitte, IBM to founding multiple ecommerce and multi-chain service brands.
Micky P. is the Co-founder and CTO of The Fair Trust. As the CTO, Micky is responsible for the
technology development of The Fair Trust financial ecosystem and spearheads the team of
developers. He has been instrumental in streamlining the business for increased efficiency and
profitability by focusing on building state-of-the-art technology, engineering and strengthening the
engagement. With his relentless passion for technology, Micky is focussing on building long-term
strategies with the evolving digital infrastructure for The Fair Trust.
Prior to The Fair Trust, he worked with the tech giant, IBM. Micky was the National Head at Sheer
Event Management where he led the charge to effectively grow the organisation and form strategies
to expand the business portfolio. He is also the founder of the popular chain, Tea Villa Cafe since 2014.
Micky is extremely passionate about entrepreneurship and is a firm believer of an optimistic approach
for growth, teamwork, and positivity.
About MDPH:
Mysore Deep Perfumery House (MDPH) was started in year 1992 by Mr. Prakash Agrawal. Zed Black the flagship brand was launched and over time has become popular across the globe. Headquartered in Indore with 36 company owned depots across India, MDPH today has 5 Factories, 35 Regional Sales offices, Work Strength of over 3000 people with more than 70% women, kitty of 1200+ products, exported to over 30+ countries across 6 continents, MDPH processes over 15 Lacs Incense pack every day at their 6,40,000 sq feets (53,000 sq mt) of manufacturing space in Indore. In FY21, the company turned a clock over of Rs 650 crores.
Anshul Agrawal, Director, MDPH believes in upgrading his knowledge continuously & puts his enormous efforts & time to do so.
He is a 2nd Generation Entrepreneur heading his family business. Born in 1987 Anshul completed his schooling from Indore. At the age of 13, he became the youngest Web Developer in MP by developing Indore city website.
In 2008, he attained a B Tech in Civil Engineering from IIT Delhi. During his college, he completed a 3 months internship in New Zealand and also received an award for Cumulative Outstanding Contribution to Photography Club of IIT Delhi.
After graduation his first work experience was in the field of Retail Consultancy with Dunnhumby for a year and then co-founded a startup in the Education sector with his fellow IITians. He has also completed a management development program in family business from IIM Ahmedabad. Later on he joined his family business in 2011 and since then he has been an integral part of the company.
With his super-eminent managing skills, Anshul is heading the Operations, Administration and HR at MDPH. He is managing more than 3,000 people at its 4 manufacturing units with cumulative production space of 6,50,000 sq fts. and 35 offices across India. Group MDPH is now India's 2nd largest Agarbatti manufacturer with its flagship brand, Zed Black, being endorsed by M S Dhoni, while Bollywood actor Hrithik Roshan endorses their brand Manthan Dhoop
Mira Jhala has built her career on the basis of some stellar food startups that have grown into notable brands under her guidance and vision. Over the last decade, she has founded and funded multiple companies that have not only grown, but flourished under her experienced leadership.
She is currently building FroGo - India’s first and largest online frozen food delivery company. FroGo is set to take the country by storm with its freshness of perspective and of course, freshness of frozen food.
Mira is a Founding Partner of VeritasX, an angel investing platform started by Harvard Business School alumni. She also serves as an Operating Partner at ScaleX Partners where she uses her experience by providing strategic and operational expertise to start-ups’ in the food and FMCG domain.
Prior to this, she founded Purist, a new age contract food manufacturing company, which was acquired by Cure.Fit - India's largest health and fitness tech company. While at Cure.Fit, Mira was heading the food business for the North and East regions. Previously she co-founded and spearheaded two successful food businesses: The Urban Kitchen (2009), and Curry-in-a-Hurry (2013).
About VaccineOnWheels:
In collaboration with IIT Hyderabad and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Jivika Healthcare Private Limited (VaccineOnWheels.com) has introduced India’s 1st Doctor-based Mobile Vaccination Clinic in 2019.
VOW is a Future Ready concept! We are India’s only mobile vaccination service capable of handling Adverse Event Following Immunization. VaccineOnWheels aims to immunize India’s underserved population by “Ensuring access to quality vaccination for all”. We are one-stop mobile vaccination clinic with the vision to reduce inequality and increase immunization penetration. To ensure access for all economic strata, we create hospital-like sterile setups near their communities providing vaccination services. This agile setup reduces the overall costs and thereby makes quality vaccination service available and affordable for all age groups.
The vaccination services are available for all age groups – new born, infants, children, adults and the elderly. Our service innovation enables us to cover the entire array of economic strata with an increased focus on bottom-of-the-base.
Jignesh Patel has 14+ years of leadership experience in Business Development, Channel Sales, Sales & Marketing Strategy. For a major part of it, he was associated with India’s largest automobile manufacturer; Maruti Suzuki India Limited, driving sales & operation for the western zone of one of the Maruti Suzuki’s division.
Even when his corporate career was going from strength to strength, his passion lay in becoming a social entrepreneur. He wanted to be a change maker in the field of healthcare, a dream that lay hold of his heart for nearly 8 years. In 2018, he could take the brave step of leaving his cushy job at Maruti Suzuki that earned him a remuneration of more than INR 2 mn to join The Foundation for Center for Healthcare Entrepreneurship (CfHE) at IIT Hyderabad. The 1 Year Research based Residential program (based at IIT Hyderabad campus) helped him to understand healthcare sector from close quarters and identify various issues faced by diverse stakeholders primarily from patient/society perspective.
The research of 1 year at IIT Hyderabad helped him in understanding the on-ground bottlenecks of the Vaccination Delivery model in India (and also in various developing nations around the world). He envisages an organized and customized Vaccination Service for India as an answer to the issue by introducing India’s 1st Doctor based Mobile Vaccination Clinic in 2019 – VaccineOnWheels as part of 1st division of Jivika Healthcare. The model involves a customized vaccination service to take Mobile Vaccination Clinic facility on the wheel’s community level focusing on reaching the unreached within urban and rural parts of India. The ultimate aim of VaccineOnWheels is to ensure access of vaccination for India’s rural and urban poor. Under B2G segment, to ensure access for bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP) - in partnership with Government, VaccineOnWheels creates hospital-like sterile setups near the community providing free vaccination services with the CSR support.
About R.V Ramanathan
Founder of Hyperface, Ram started his career with Amazon after completing his BTech from NIT Tiruchirapalli. He turned entrepreneur when he went on to start a mobile payments gateway company, Juspay in 2012. Juspay recently closed their $60 million funding from Softbank. In February 2021 he set up Hyperface along with banker-turned-entrepreneur Aishwarya Jaishankar. Hyperface simplifies launching a credit card product for fintech companies, e-commerce firms and neobanks that want to embed financial products into their mobile apps. Hyperface has recently closed its funding from Kunal Shah, Binny Bansal (021 Capital) and other notable founders.
About Hyperface
Hyperface is founded in February 2021 by domain experts, R.V. Ramanathan, ex-CTO Juspay and banker-turned-entrepreneur Aishwarya Jaishankar. Hyperface simplifies launching credit card and BNPL products for fintech companies, e-commerce firms and neobanks that want to embed financial products into their mobile apps.
Victorinox is a global company with five product categories: Swiss Army Knives, Household and Professional Knives, Watches, Travel Gear and Fragrances. The Swiss Army Knife is the core product and has a pioneering role in the development of all product categories.
Debraj Sengupta is the Chief Marketing Officer for the brand and has a P&L responsibility for the watch product line at Victorinox India Pvt. Ltd. He has been associated with Victorinox India since 2010. He is also responsible for the pan India marketing strategy for the brand. Own and manage AOP and drive brand campaigns, product planning and media channel management for improving conversions sales and influencing P&L.
He brings in the most practical and rare knowledge in the luxury and niche watch business, with over 21 years of rich hands-on experience. Before joining Victorinox India, Mr. Sengupta has served several watch brands like Titan, Citizen, Rado, Tag Heuer and Dior.
After successfully launching Victorinox Swiss Army (watch) and spreading it across 170 doors in India, Mr. Sengupta says his current challenge is to be more digital-friendly and adopt a strategic, integrated approach that concentrates on consumers and makes Victorinox relevant yet different in consumers' eyes. He would be focusing on e-commerce and own retail for the next growth phase for Victorinox India. Victorinox is expanding its global retail footprints by including India from 2022, and this shall be the next exciting assignment, he says.
On weekends he passionately mentors and shares his knowledge online with aspiring students willing to make a career in the Business of Luxury.
Sleepyhead is a D2C lifestyle home décor brand made for the digital native Indian millennial & Gen Z headquartered in Bengaluru. Launched in 2017 with the unique Bed-In-A-Box concept, Sleepyhead broke all category norms and became India’s fastest-growing D2C mattress brand. Today, Sleepyhead is a home lifestyle brand focusing on making everyday living fun and fabulous with its thoughtfully designed products. The brand caters to the underserved needs of the new age Indian customer by making great designs accessible without compromising on quality and service.
Shop Online: www.mysleepyhead.com
Follow Us @sleepyheadhq
Mathew Joseph: Co-Founder, Sleepyhead Home Decor Private Limited
As a multifaceted business leader with a demonstrated history of working in the consumer goods industry, Mathew is an expert in Marketing Management, Product Design, Advertising, Sales, and Trade Marketing. At Sleepyhead, as the Co-Founder & Mathew is responsible for Product Alignment, Brand Strategy, Operations, Sales and Marketing. He dedicates most of his time on strategy and planning and has been instrumental in establishing Sleepyhead as one of the fastest growing mattress brands in the e-commerce space.
Before starting Sleepyhead in 2016, Mathew was the primary shareholder and the Marketing Director of Duroflex, an industry leader in the mattress category. With over a decade of proven experience in the business, Mathew has been instrumental in the success of Duroflex and continues to be a Board Member.
Their main focus is to bridge the healthcare delivery gap using data-driven care. MyHealthcare platform helps connect doctors, nurses, patients, health records, pharmacy, home care under one roof. It also manages the healthcare needs of over 21.5million patients today and has some leading healthcare institutions such as Max Hospital, Fortis Hospital, BLK Super Specialty, Breach Candy, PSRI, Aakash Healthcare, and many others on their platform. MyHealthcare has developed solutions to help fight against the COVID19 second wave by introducing MyHealthcare@home which allows COVID patients with mild symptoms to receive the required care at home digitally.
For patients, MyHealthcare helps in building a patient's longitudinal history, whereby medical records, clinical history of a patient is created and managed centrally. For doctors and care providers, the platform enhances their efficiency with their EMR which has been designed and developed by clinicians. MyHealthcare is the first to launch a HIPAA compliant -end to end SOI for virtual consultations and it also helps to deliver 360-degree care to the patients. To expand this continuum care to Tier2 and Tier 3 cities of India and for regional expansion in SE Asia and the Middle East, MyHealthcare is close to finalizing its Series B round of funding. MyHealthcare has received a total of $5M in funding by Sixth Sense Ventures, Hunch Ventures and Ajay Nanavati. They are also looking at closing their Series B round soon.
Some of the key milestones that they have achieved are:
Associated with 80 hospitals
Doctors linked with the portal = 6800
Manage approx 4 Lakhs of OPD per month
Patients managed = 21.5 mn
**Divya Laroyia
Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer**
A media professional with 23+ years of experience in broadcast and digital content production and design, Divya was with the NDTV Group in various leadership roles. From heading the News Operations team of 150 people across NDTV’s three flagship channels – NDTV 24x7, NDTV India & NDTV Profit, to heading the design team as Chief Brand Officer at NDTV Worldwide. Over the past 12 years she has been focussed on building digital platforms and products across sectors such as content platforms, retail, education and healthcare sectors. She has worked with clients across SE Asia and the regional markets of India to help build digital product strategies for web and mobile platforms. In 2017, she set up a healthcare technology start- up – MyHealthcare, as its Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer. MyHealthcare is a digital healthcare ecosystem that works with hospitals, clinics, its doctors and caregivers, in creating an effective patient care continuum process. The core focus of MyHealthcare is to bridge the healthcare delivery gap using a data driven care process. MyHealthcare manages the healthcare needs of over 20 million patients today, across 55+ hospitals.
She has also won NASSCOM Emerge 50 and also been a part of the India Revival Mission Council
Ramandeep Singh, the founder and managing director, comes from a family that has been involved in the cosmetic industry for over 50 years. With consistent support and guidance from his long-time mentor and father, Mr Charanjit Singh, Ramandeep learned every trade and worked relentlessly to make sure his family business thrived and prospered.
After working in the beauty business for almost 10 years, it didn’t take him long to see the bigger picture. He felt a gaping hole in the way taking care of one’s skin is perceived today. When the focus is solely on the ‘problem’ aspect of the skin and the ‘ingredient’ aspect of products, skincare gets viewed as a miraculous transformation of bad skin into good skin instead of a progressive journey that includes the good, the bad and the in-between.
Always wanting to stay one step ahead, Ramandeep also believes that cosmeceuticals are the future of skincare. With Lisén, he has developed a brand that delivers science-backed, high-efficacy products while inspiring people to believe in themselves and in their ability to flourish through every phase of their skin journey.
Ramandeep has 10 years plus experience in the beauty industry. Worked across all domains of the brand Blue Heaven and executed new strategies which were trend-driven and quality-driven to make it one of India's most accepted beauty brands growing.
He is BSc (Hons) in chemistry and has vast experience across new product developments, market research and strategies in the beauty industry. Extensive experience in production, product quality & packaging.
Timestamp
Knowing the founders - 0 - 3 mins
Evolution of Therapize - 3 mins - 7:40 mins
Destigmatising therapy - 8.20 mins - 14.20 mins
Target user, Affordability & Business model - 14.20 mins - 22.25 mins
Identifying the right Therapist - 22.30 mins - 30.20mins
Competitors / Current Market - 30.22mins - 34.42mins
Challenges in building Therapize - 34.45 mins - 39 mins
Doing things differently - 39 mins - 45 mins
Therapize
Finding trust worthy mental healthcare support should not be another source of anxiety in your life. Unfortunately misinformation and a lack of due diligence, along with loose guidelines regarding qualifications required for therapists means that finding a high quality therapist in India can be incredibly challenging. This is where therapize comes in. Therapize is committed to simplifying the process of seeking out mental healthcare in India to bring you the most highly qualified therapists across geography, price ranges, and availability.
Aviva Bhansali
Aviva has been passionate about product innovation, mental health, and content creation ever since she can remember. After spending 2 years at Aon, the largest human capital consulting firm globally, she joined Dasra, India's largest strategic philanthropy foundation and worked on projects for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Cipla, and several others across the social sector. With a keen interest in all things product, she is always looking for new ways to design products that truly are user-centric.
Anushka Kelkar
With a love for all things mental wellbeing, tech, and community-based healing related, Anushka began her career at Human Factors International as a user experience designer and researcher after which she then moved on to Dasra, India's largest strategic philanthropy foundation where she worked across social impact sectors with global foundations and high impact nonprofits. At Therapize, she looks at all things customer acquisition and community building. Some of the places where her work has been featured are The Huffington Post, CNN, Quartz, Times Of India, Hindustan Times, BuzzFeed India, Scroll, and Mid-day.
Website - https://www.therapizeindia.com/
About 5ire
5ire is a blockchain ecosystem that brings forward Sustainability, Technology & Innovation to build the 5th industrial revolution (5IR). Founded by Pratik Gauri, Prateek Dwivedi and Vilma Mattila, proponents of blockchain technology in August 2021, the mission of the 5ire ecosystem is to embed the for-benefit paradigm at the heart of blockchain, highly incentivize practices that align with the United Nation’s Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs), facilitate the transition from the 4IR to 5IR and accelerate the implementation of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. 5ire empowers decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and working groups to help accelerate the implementation of the UN’s 17 SDG goals. It assures openness, unity of purpose, and inclusivity. Thus, shaping the ethics of business and collaborations toward sustainability while providing a cross-chain environment as well as advanced governance and rewarding mechanisms for participants.
The company’s primary offering is 5ireChain, a first layer, sustainability-driven 5th generation blockchain that ensures adherence to the philosophy of 5IR creating a net positive impact on the planet and service humanity. It embeds sustainability and social impact deep inside the 5irechain runtime logic, and ensures that the activities which are aligned with the UN’s SDGs, either on-chain or in the real world, are highly incentivized with the cutting-edge multilayered Proof-Of-Fire consensus mechanism and reward distribution engine. All of this while assuring democracy between all the participants, governance for the purpose of bringing union and to ensure the longevity of the 5irechain sustainable vision.
Pratik has founded 8 companies prior to founding 5ire, which is a blockchain ecosystem that brings forward Sustainability, Technology & Innovation to build the 5th industrial revolution.
Pratik is also a Partner at 5th Element Group - a global impact management consultancy to implement and scale omniwin solutions to positively impact millions of humans by mobilising millions of dollars.
Pratik was named Creative Entrepreneur of the year - Startup by Entrepreneur India magazine and Entrepreneur of the year 2020 by Indian Achievers’ Forum. He has been recognised as Entrepreneur 35 Under 35, ET Now Leaders of Tomorrow, Greenbiz Global 30 Under 30, AsiaOne 40 Under 40 Most Influential Leaders, British Petroleum Scholar, World Economic Forum Global Shaper, Ambassador at One Young World, Al Gore’s Climate Leader, Fellow at Startup Leadership Program, Winner of UNLEASH 2019, Asia’s top 50 Voices by Earth Day Network, and Changemaker at Global Action on Poverty. He is at www.pratikgauri.in
Kison’s description:
Kison Patel is the Founder and CEO of M&A Science, with a passion to drive the M&A industry forward. He was an M&A advisor for ten years in which he sold larger companies such as commercial banks and hotel chains. In 2012, he noticed teams lacked efficient technology to manage deals and created DealRoom, an M&A lifecycle management platform. In 2016, he started the M&A Science podcast devoting his time to creating a platform where all the best practitioners could share their best practices and lessons learned from real-life deals. Kison then created The M&A Science Academy in 2020 to offer step by step training to those looking to master M&A featuring courses created by top level practitioners. Through developing technology, educational content, and industry training, Kison aims to bring better practices to an industry with growing market pressures, transaction values, and competition.
M&A’s description:
M&A Science is an educational podcast exploring the intricate world of M&A with industry leaders and practitioners. What started in 2013 as research phone calls, transformed into an industry-leading podcast featuring practitioners sharing lessons learned with over 15k listeners. Our listeners include corporate development professionals, private equity, investment bankers, consultants, and tech leaders.
M&A Science comes in three mediums: a traditional podcast, a weekly live roundtable, and most recently, a virtual summit.
DealRoom’s description:
The idea for DealRoom began in a small office in downtown Chicago in 2012. Founder, Kison Patel, was running a boutique M&A practice that focused on hospitality. He realized the standard technology available for M&A created inefficiencies such as work silos, duplicate work, and version control issues. He knew there had to be a better way and that the M&A industry desperately needed project management.
Podcast Timstamp
Beginning - Intro and Smarak Swain journey (from IIT to IRS to being an author)
7 mins - Journey as as an author
15 mins - Loan against shares (LAS) scams / fraud examples Haridas Mundhra, Ketan Parikh (k10), Geetanjali Gems(2014), Pump & Dump Schemes cycle.
26 mins - Startups Valuations, digital regulations and
32 mins - Startup loopholes / Tax avoidance
45 mins- Thought Experiment on Cyber hacking
51 mins - Dichotomy of Gold/ Bitcoin / Silk Road
55 mins - Anecdotal stories - loosing the entire capital
60 mins - Tech Future / Decentralised Twitter (DAO), Cryptocurrency
Smarak Swain graduated from IIT Kharagpur in 2006 and went on to join the Indian Revenue Service (IRS) in 2008. He is a post-graduate in taxation & business laws from NALSAR University, Hyderabad, and recently received a Masters in Public Administration from Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore.
He has wide experience in tax audit and financial investigation of multinational corporations, charitable trusts, and businesses in the informal sector. He is a master trainer in National Academy of Direct Taxes of India.
He has written 10 books, including bestselling books Loophole Games: A Treatise on Tax Avoidance Strategies and The Great Indian Fraud. Presently, he works for the Finance Ministry as Director of India’s Advance Pricing Agreement (APA) Program. In his workplace, he is considered a resource person for tax, tech, and trade policies.
AISECT - India’s leading Social Enterprise that is working in the areas of Skill Development, Higher Education, Financial Inclusion, e-Governance, and other ICT-based services to bring about an inclusive change in the semi-urban and rural areas of the country.
The Bhopal-headquartered organization has been untiringly reaching out to the country's remotest corners to empower people, generate employment for the youth, and unfold entrepreneurial initiatives since I985.
· AISECT has created 15000 Rural and Semi-urban Entrepreneurs with 20,00,000 Students trained by AISECT until date
· 10 Lakh Students recruited, 5 Higher Education campuses established and 22 States covered under Skill Development Projects
· Under the second gen leadership Siddharth Chaturvedi’s focus has been giving skill-based education / vocational skill focussed through short-term training or courses not part of the formal education sector and which provides employment in informal sectors for rural and semi urban India
· Schemes such as Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) is the primary focus of AISECT group of Universities students can receive both security and benefit, as it aids in an equivalent acknowledgement of both informal and formal learning
Siddharth Chaturvedi is the Executive Vice President of the AISECT Group. Along with this, he is the Chairman of the CII Bhopal chapter. Siddharth is also a part of the Governing Body and Board of Management of the Dr. C. V. Raman University in Chhattisgarh as well as the Rabindranath Tagore University in Madhya Pradesh. Furthermore, he is a Member of the CII Western Region Committee on Startups, Skills and Employability; a Charter Member of the TIE Madhya Pradesh; Founding and Governing Board Member of the Association of Skills Training Providers; the Convener of CII Madhya Pradesh Panel on Education and Skill Development and an Invitee Member for the Government of Madhya Pradesh Committee on TEQIP Programme Implementation.
Wonderla Holidays Ltd., India’s largest Amusement park chain operates three amusement parks in Kochi, Bangalore, Hyderabad and a resort at Bangalore named ‘Wonderla Resort’
Mr. Arun K. Chittilappilly, Managing Director of the Company, is armed with Masters in Industrial Engineering from Industrial Research Institute of Swinburne University (IRIS), Melbourne, Australia. He has been a key architect of Wonderla Holidays and has been actively involved in strategizing and conceptualizing the Wonderla Parks and Resort.
Soon after his Masters, Mr. Arun got involved in the operations of Wonderla Cochin. Being well versed in industrial engineering and driven by his keen interest in the functioning of the amusement park, Mr. Arun set out to start his own venture. Believing that an amusement park in the same lines as the popular Veega Land [Cochin] would see great acceptance in Bangalore, he initiated the project in 2003 which was completed by 2005.
The Bangalore Wonderla Park was designed as a grander version of the Kochi Park, using the latest technology to complement its umpteen attractions and facilities. Having been a part of the project right from its conceptual phase, Mr. Arun has witnessed and experienced the phenomenal growth of the amusement park. After the success of Bangalore Park, built a Resort just behind the Bangalore Park in 2012. With a vision of rapid expansion across South India the third Amusement Park launched at Hyderabad in 2016.
Apart from being passionate about theme parks, his other interests include music, cars, reading, traveling, adventure sports and swimming.
Mahabelly is a specialty restaurant serving authentic Kerala cuisine located at DLF Avenue Saket, New Delhi & Gurgaon.
Thomas Fenn is an Economics graduate from St Stephen's College and has worked as an Analyst with an infrastructure consultancy for two years before handling Operations, Marketing & Business Development for the Stellar Children's Museum, Ambience Mall Gurgaon since its inception in 2012. He co-founded Mahabelly with Zachariah Jacob and Prem Kiran in March 2015.
Thomas is also Member, Managing Committee of the NRAI overseeing their interests in E-Comm Policy, Online Ordering & Logistics.
Zachariah Jacob is a lawyer by profession and a restaurateur by passion, with a demonstrated track record of establishing successful businesses in the legal and hospitality industries.
After graduating in BSc (Hons.) Physics from St Stephen's College, Delhi University, Zachariah studied law at Campus Law Centre, Delhi University. Thereafter, he worked as a Manager (Law) with IFCI Ltd from 2012 to 2015 till he co-founded an authentic Kerala cuisine restaurant brand called "Mahabelly" based in Delhi NCR, with his school and college friend, Thomas Fenn.
Zachariah is also an experienced lawyer with specialization in Banking and Finance and is the Co-founder and Partner of Actus Legal, a multi-disciplinary law firm based in Delhi.
He is a Certified Associate of Indian Institute of Bankers (CAIIB), Limited Insolvency Professional and currently the Co-Chairman for ASSOCHAM North Region Tourism & Hospitality Council.
https://linktr.ee/mahabelly
Decimal Technologies, award-winning applications such as Kotak 811, AU Abhi and Aditya Birla Payments application, and banks such as IndusInd Bank, Deutsche Bank use solutions developed by the company. They recently launched Saarathi, a pioneering, one-of-a-kind lending marketplace, specializing in digital transformation of loan files. The AI-based product enables hassle-free, paperless digitalization of multiple financial products such as loans, credit cards and insurance on one platform. Saarathi offers a transparent, low-cost process to the lender ecosystem ensuring loan files are trustworthy and fraud proof, while at the same time making the approval process 5X faster for customers.
Lalit Mehta, is the Co-founder & CEO, Decimal Technologies. Lalit has been in the industry for over a decade. He founded Decimal Technologies in 2009 when digitisation in the BFSI sector was still in its nascent stages and people weren’t aware of the significant growth it will witness. Lalit and his team at Decimal were one of the early adopters of technology in the sector and were integral in helping institutions through their own journeys of becoming early digital adopters too.
Lalit has built a path for Decimal where it can keep reinventing every few years and stay ahead of the curve. Decimal continues to innovate to make banking operations smoother and, in turn, customer experiences better. This is evident in their mantra of #DigitisingBFSI which became even more pertinent during the pandemic as Decimal was at the forefront of meeting the rapid demands of digitisation in the BFSI sector. They closed deals with financial institutions they’d been negotiating with for years, within months once the first lockdown hit.
Lalit has over two decades of experience leading innovation in the fields of finance and technology. He is a serial entrepreneur who has founded another company in identity and access management viz., Mobico Comodo, in addition to one in the education space called The Olive Schools. Interestingly, Lalit has also worked in the automotive space and was a part of his family car dealership business before he found his calling in finance.
GoKwik - an e-commerce enablement company, on a mission to democratize the shopping experience and increase GMV realization for e-commerce businesses. Founded in the post-pandemic era, GoKwik is easy to integrate (plug and play) and leverages AI/ML to solve merchant-first problems, including the return to origin (RTO) and cash on delivery (CoD) conversion rates for e-commerce players as well as direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands.
Vijay Sandilya leads the Checkout Product at GoKwik eCommerce solutions. He is also the head of the marketing function at GoKwik. Based in Bengaluru, Vijay has extensive experience in product growth and marketing with an in-depth knowledge of the payments space and the overall D2C eCommerce industry.
Vijay is now smearing his deep understanding of the D2C eCommerce industry to Gokwik. With GoKwik, Vijay is leading the vision of creating a unified commerce identity by democratizing the overall shopping experience and helping merchants achieve maximum GMV realization. To support this vision, Vijay facilitates conversions for the merchants by leading the checkout product suite. Moreover, Vijay also leads the online payments suite at GoKwik, enabling merchants to ease their customers' payment process.
With quality product management, leadership, guidance, and communication both inside and outside the scale, Vijay has successfully enabled many big D2C players to join hands with him at GoKwik. He believes in the ideology of "Let's get this done" and strives to provide the best to the merchants and solve their problems with immense grit and hustle.
Before joining GoKwik, Vijay worked with Axis Bank, Jio and Razorpay in a managerial capacity. At Axis Bank, he led the Digital Payments vertical as a Product Manager and was part of the UPI team, which powered payments for Google Pay, Amazon Pay etc. He was also instrumental in setting up Axis Pay, the most considerable UPI Banking App. At Jio, he led innovative projects in the Payments space and implemented UPI-based payments on the Jio Feature Phone in a product manager's capacity. He also led the development of an industry-first video/voice calling app working seamlessly across TV, desktop and mobile devices.
At Razorpay, He led the business and marketing across verticals. He worked in the D2C landscape empowering e-commerce businesses to deal with payments and problems like RTO. In addition, he led the Go-To-Market efforts for industry-first solutions in the e-commerce and D2C space, which resulted in massive adoption for various products of Razorpay.
Vijay holds an MBA from IIFT, Delhi.
Swagat Sarangi, Co-Founder, Smytten
Swagat has over 17 years of experience across various industries - Internet & Technology, FMCG, Management consulting, Oil & Gas, and IT. Before Co-founding Smytten, he headed the Business Marketing vertical at Google. In the formative years of his career, he has worked as a Consultant at McKinsey and Customer Services Manager at Unilever. He has wealth of experience in varied fields such as Product Marketing, Brand & Communication, Digital Marketing, Strategy consulting, Project Management, Account management, and Modern trade retailing. Swagat is an alumni of Indian School of Business (ISB) where he completed his MBA in Marketing and Finance, and was also a recipient of ISB’s torch bearers award. He completed his B.E. (Hons.) in Mechanical from Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani.
About Smytten
Smytten is India's leading online platform for consumer product discovery and trials. Launched in 2015 by ex Unilever and Google executives, Siddhartha Nangia and Swagata Sarangi respectively; Smytten is enhancing the way India's online consumers discover, interact with, and try consumer products and services. It hosts 700+ brand partners on its platform across lifestyle categories, ranging from fragrances, beauty & makeup, male grooming, food & beverages, baby & mother care, health & wellness and offers product samples to consumers across these categories to help them make the right purchase decisions. It also offers its brand partners a suite of services, data & insights needed for quick scaleup during the early phase of growth.
Link https://smytten.com/
Company Profile:
Reynolds India, a brand owned by Newell brands, has been a household name in India for the last 40 years. It is one of the most well-known and respected stationery brands, trusted by generations. This is the result of a history of consistent quality products that deliver on key performance metrics and a good user experience. Reynolds has a strong portfolio of well-known brands including 045, Trimax, Brite, Racer, and Jetter proving solutions for all writing occasions.
Spokesperson Profile:
Rajat Vohra, Country Head – India & South Asia, Reynolds Pens is a seasoned business leader with more than 2 decades of experience in business growth, strategic sales, planning and distribution. As the Country Head, Rajat leads the India and South Asia business for Reynolds Pens, a globally-recognised writing instruments’ brand. He has played a key role in the company’s growth over the years with a key focus on innovation and technology. Rajat has contributed to successfully scaling the India business for Reynolds and venturing into newer product categories.
He is a highly focused and result-driven leader who considers himself a ‘Creative Systemic Innovator’. Rajat has demonstrated the ability to develop business strategy and successfully create and lead highly-driven teams across consumer and enterprise segments of leading Fortune 500 Technology, Telecom and Oil industries. He is a graduate from Delhi Institute of Technology and holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Delhi University.
About Gilded:
Gilded offers an easy, cost-effective platform for buying, holding, selling, and sending digital gold for long-term savings via a mobile app. The company also provides a modern and innovative way to gift gold and send funds in the form of digital gold across borders. Gilded provides the highest level of safety, security, and trust in the gold business. Gold purchased through Gilded meets the highest standards, being Swiss refined, of 0.9999 fineness and compliant with all London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) gold bar specifications. Gilded is registered in Jersey, Channel Islands, with the Jersey Financial Services Commission, the principal financial services regulator in Jersey. Gilded also utilizes Jersey Trust Company as an independent administrator. The app is currently available for free in India and in the UAE on Google Play Store and Apple App Store. Learn more: www.gilded.app
About Ashraf Rizvi:
As the CEO and Founder of Gilded, formerly Digital Swiss Gold, Ashraf Rizvi is responsible for the day to day running of the firm. Ashraf sets the vision and strategy for Gilded and brings over 20 years of executive experience as Founder, Managing Partner and Global Business Head. Ashraf started Gilded as he wanted to provide investors freedom from the fiat based financial system. His goal is to provide investors everywhere, access to gold with the benefits of ease of use, safety, security and savings. With Gilded, gold is more than just a commodity to hold on to: it’s a symbol of economic independence.
Prior to founding Digital Swiss Gold-Gilded, Ashraf was the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of SummerHaven Investment Management, a commodities management firm overseeing nearly $2 billion in assets for retail and institutional clients including endowments, foundations, and family offices. While at SummerHaven, he was instrumental in developing, creating, and launching many ETF’s that collectively managed assets of over $1 billion with many of the ETFs achieving Morningstar 5-star rankings.
For over 13 years, Ashraf was a senior leader at UBS holding a variety of roles in New York and London including Global Head of Commodities Trading, Global Head of Metals and Banknotes, Global Head of Emerging Markets FX and Global Head of Credit Repo. Under his leadership UBS was regularly ranked Top Metals Bank in Risk magazine and earned many honours for Most Innovative Deals of the Year. He was Head of FX Options Trading in New York for Credit Suisse. Ashraf started as a FX options trader on the trading floors in Philadelphia, Chicago and New York and was a senior member of the FX team at Susquehanna Investment Group one of the largest independent trading firms in the world.
Adam is a seasoned executive with a history of launching and growing successful businesses. At the age of 19, he founded and ran a successful Chinese textile export business called China2. Over the next 6 years, Adam worked with over 30 factories, establishing and growing markets in the Middle East, North America and EU. During this time, Adam also founded SeekSource Solutions, an online company that aggregates Chinese real-estate listings from over 200 websites. Beyond start-ups, Adam’s held senior positions in Sales, Marketing and Finance.
Asset Direct is creating the world’s first global personal loan marketplace; aspiring to connect up to six billion people, unable to access traditional credit, with niche alternative lenders that are willing to lend to them. Asset Direct provides services to these people through partnering with global companies that interface with them where they bank, budget, work, or shop.
Sasha Mirchandani is Managing Director and Founder of Kae Capital and Co-founder Mumbai Angels. Previously, he was at Blue Run Ventures as Managing Director for the India operations. Before joining Blue Run Ventures he was CEO and Founder of Imercius Technologies. Earlier he was at Mirc Electronics (Onida) where he was Head of Corporate Affairs and new business. His investments include Inmobi, Healthkart,1Mg, Myntra, Porter and Fractal Analytics. Sasha sits on the Boards of Hathway Cable and Datacom Limited, Nazara Technologies Limited, Healthkart, Young Presidents’ Organization (Mumbai Chapter) and Mumbai Angels Venture Mentors among others. Previously he was on the Boards of Fractal Analytics, Myntra and Ador Welding.
Sasha completed his Business Administration from Strayer University and MMDP program at IIM, Ahmedabad. He is a Charter Member at TiE Mumbai and was inducted in their 2019 Hall of Fame as an Outstanding Angel Investor. He is also Past President of Entrepreneurs Organisation (EO) Mumbai. He is also on the Board of Governors of the Universal Business School.
https://kae-capital.com/
BIC Cello, the manufacturer of Cello pens, is India’s market leader for writing instruments in India. The company focuses on developing innovative new products and ink flow systems, delivering significant value to the writing experience of the customers. BIC Cello’s expanded portfolio now includes a range of world-class products including permanent markers, whiteboard markers, colour markers, mechanical pencils, roller pens, fountain pens and office and school stationery products. The company sells over five million pens a day and has a strong presence in more than 70 countries around the world. BIC Cello’s robust and growing distribution network ensures that its products are accessible across demographics and geographies.
Tanveer Khan is the Director, Marketing at BIC Cello India.
Slurrp Farm, a brand that is driven by a strong vision of providing healthy snacks and mealtime options for young children and adults via reviving the use of super grains. Slurrp Farm, through its innovative portfolio of millet, ragi and oats based packaged food products (devoid of preservatives, artificial flavors and colors) has been successfully contributing towards inculcating healthy eating habits among children and adults alike.
- The idea of Slurrp Farm (https://slurrpfarm.com/) was conceived when the two friends identified the gap of healthy eating options in the children’s food market in India. When they failed to find high-quality packaged food for their own children, Shauravi Malik and Meghana Narayan, decided to follow a business idea close to their heart. What started as an experiment at their home kitchens in October 2016, has since turned into a loved food brand in the healthy packaged food category in a short span of three years ·
- The company has a wide product portfolio, including offerings such as Puffed Snacks, Millet Pancake Mix, Millet Dosa Mix, Cereals, Cookies, Chia Seeds, Sprouted Ragi Cereal, Brown Rice, Millets and Oats Porridge, Organic Jaggery etc., and is constantly innovating to strengthen its portfolio and footprint to cater to the growing needs of consumers across age groups
- Slurrp Farm is currently available in 800 stores in India and UAE and on all major eCommerce platforms in both countries: Amazon, Noon, Mumzworld, Big Basket, FirstCry etc.
- Slurrp Farm is now also available on all online marketplaces in India, and through Amazon in several countries with a 40% repeat rate on leading ecommerce sites.
Meghana Narayan: Before starting Slurrp Farm, Meghana led the Public Health practice at McKinsey & Company. She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, a BA in Computation as a Rhodes Scholar from Oxford University and a BE with Distinction in Computer Engineering from Bangalore University. Linkedin
Shauravi Malik: She has worked in the Consumer, Healthcare, and Retail Advisory team at J.P.Morgan. She was an Investment Manager at Sir Richard Branson's Group Holding entity at the Virgin Group in London. She holds a Master's degree in Economics from Cambridge University and a BA in Economics from St. Stephen's College, Delhi University. LinkedIn
Since its inception in 2012, High Street Essentials Pvt. Ltd., has emerged as one of India’s leading Omni channel fashion houses. Aimed at the modern Indian woman, the company has two brands under its wing. While FabAlley is a rapid fashion brand for western apparel and accessories, Indya presents a distinctive line of modern Indian wear. The company’s latest offerings are Earthen by Indya and Indya Skin Care. All have an inimitable style signature and are attuned to the women of today.
Ankit Prasad- Co-Founder and CEO, Bobble AI
Ankit Prasad founded Bobble AI; backed by 18 reputed angel investors, SAIF Partners - one of the largest VC in India, and Xiaomi - India's No. 1 Smartphone brand. He works along with Bobble AI team on cutting edge technology to make internet experience smarter on devices. Most recently and notably, Ankit was honoured on Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia 2018 List among a few other popular millennials. Besides this, he is also recognized in "BW 40 Under 40" list, "50 Fabulous Innovative Leaders" and as a TEDx Youth Speaker.
Ankit’s leadership has enabled the team to partner with top companies in the relevant industries. He believes that the input layer (Keyboard, Voice, Camera) which connects the end-users with smart devices would better understand and influence users' behaviour. The work being done by Ankit’s team to scale Artificial Intelligence features like, speech-to-text, next-word predictions, transliteration, swipe typing, etc. across language barriers is surely boosting users' smartphone and internet productivity.
Ankit has a longstanding interest in technology & startup. He wrote his first program at the age of 6 and was formally appreciated by the District Collector. By the age of 16, he had made his first technology startup profitable. He dropped out from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi to pursue his entrepreneurial ambitions. At IIT Delhi, he won several major awards including Best Fresher, and Best Chief Editor. Ankit has a ferocious appetite for risk-taking and pursues objectives with relentless resourcefulness.
LinkedIn: https://in.linkedin.com/in/prasadankit
About Bobble AI
Bobble AI is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) innovation start-up that empowers billions of everyday conversations of over 50 Million users from India and around the world via its highly expressive and personalized content including stickers, GIFs, and emojis, AI-powered contextual recommendations, speech-to-text and many other innovative technologies via its diverse portfolio of smartphone keyboard applications. Bobble Indic Keyboard (supporting 36+ Indic languages), the flagship product of the company and Bharat Keyboards in Bangla, Marathi & Malayalam – have the potential to revolutionize the usage of the vernacular languages, communication pattern in regional societies affect the consumer behaviour of around 536 million internet users from India who primarily rely on Indic languages. Bobble’s Indic Keyboard is regarded as the highest-rated, most engaging, and retaining keyboard in the world, surpassing Google's Gboard and Microsoft's Swiftkey. The company has created the powerful Mint Keyboard which is the default keyboard of Xiaomi phones.
The platform’s data intelligence vertical is GDPR compliant, anonymised, and aggregated insights with no compromise on user’s privacy. Backed by India's top seasoned investors including SAIF Partners, Sachin Bansal, Binny Bansal, Deep Kalra & Affle, rapidly growing start-up from India, Bobble AI is transforming the over 441 billion dollar Digital Advertising industry through its innovative marketing tool Conversation Media Marketing (CMM), which has helped reputed brands like Cadbury, ITC Sunfeast Yippee!, Kingfisher, Adidas, Reebok, ABP Weddings, Happydent, Ludo Supreme and Oreo in reaching out to their relevant audience of millennials and GenZies in a non-intrusive way through precise targeting using AI technology. Besides CMM, Bobble AI is also disrupting the Digital Advertising landscape through its Programmatic Advertising arm.
Arata - a community-led lifestyle brand with an entire ecosystem built around the core philosophy of clean formulations, responsible practices, and sustainability. The company sells all-natural, plant-based, vegan, and chemical-free unisex skin and hair care products for the “Generation-Clean”. The brand believes in the customers’ right to honesty and transparency in personal care and fully discloses all ingredients and formulations. Arata has been selling its products online across various marketplaces, including Amazon, Nykaa, etc., as well as on its website. The company is backed by DSG Consumer Partners, Nikhil Vora (Founder and CEO of Sixth Sense Ventures), and other angels.
Sid Talwar
Partner, Lightbox
Sid is a co-founder and partner at Lightbox.
He moved to India in 2001 to found Evolv, a vocational training company funded by Singapore Technologies. Over 6 years, Sid grew Evolv to 300 employees training and assessing over 20,000 people a year across 200 cities in South Asia, East Asia and the Middle East. In 2007, he eventually sold it to NIIT – Asia’s largest training company. He worked with NIIT for 3 years heading Evolv as well as Litmus and Uniqua (NIIT's foray into assessments and JV with Genpact). In 10 years of leading Evolv, Sid became a master in education technology (and continues to explore advancements in this market at Lightbox.)
An entrepreneur at heart, Sid left NIIT to get back in to the startup game. Over the next few years leading up to Lightbox, he has advised several startups, angel funds, and a very special NGO called Magic Bus.
As enterprising at play as he is at work, he launched a restaurant called The Hungry Monkey, which has won multiple national awards and international recognition.
Lightbox
Lightbox is an early stage venture fund based in Mumbai. We’re known for our unrivaled
originality and investments in technology enabled businesses that create a
transformational effect in consumer categories.
We manage approximately $400MM and work with entrepreneurs that have created a
unique solution in a large market. As traditional industries are being redefined by
technology, new industries are created around new consumption models. There are
huge opportunities for product-led, tech-enabled differentiation in the Indian consumer
market and we’re looking to create companies that redefine their categories.
A mix of entrepreneurs, technologists and investors, the firm’s most recent investments include WayCool Foods, Furlenco, Rebel Foods, Melorra and Dunzo
Sid: @sidtalwar
Lightbox: @lbvc
Sid:@sidtalwar
Lightbox: @lightboxventures
Sid:@sidtalwar
Lightbox: @lightboxventures
Sid: @sidtalwar
Lightbox: @thecafeupstairs
Floating Canvas Company is an art and design based startup that offers solutions in the space of interior decor, public art and street furniture.
Interior Decor:
Floating Canvas Company (www.floatingcanvas.co) offers curated digital art, photographs, limited edition prints, paintings and mixed media art by exciting contemporary artists that can be availed in 3 easy ways.
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SUBSCRIBE: Bring home an artwork for as little as Rs. 90/month. Earn a Free Switch every 6 months.
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BUY NOW: Love something you see? Buy it right away!
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BUY LATER: Start off with a subscription. Convert it into a purchase anytime.
They are India's first art-on-subscription service at scale and have been winners of Maharashtra Startup Week's inaugural edition.
Public Art:
Floating Canvas Company has executed numerous public art projects like murals, sculptures, art installations and art exhibitions, etc. for a host of government and private organisations. Their prestigious clients include Govt. of Maharashtra, Lakme Fashion Week, Johnnie Walker and Stanza Living amongst others.
Street Furniture:
They have recently forayed into this space to address the lack of user-friendly street furniture in their public places. One of their first products has been Power Seats: Pedal to Charge where we have combined the ideas of Fitness and Green Energy by creating phone charging points that are powered by people who sit and pedal.
Aagam Mehta
In charge of Business and Operations at Floating Canvas Company, Aagam Mehta graduated from HR College of Commerce and Economics, Mumbai and followed it up with a Masters in International Business Management from Aston University, UK. Prior to turning entrepreneur, Aagam had a productive stint as an Account Manager in advertising handling the digital mandate of prestigious brands like Kotak Mahindra Bank and Bajaj Electricals.
Shakti Swarup Sahu
In charge of Strategy and Brand initiatives at Floating Canvas Company, Shakti Swarup Sahu is a graduate of National Institute of Technology, Rourkela. Prior to turning entrepreneur, he worked in advertising as a Copywriter and Creative Supervisor with stints at reputed agencies including McCann Worldgroup and DDB Mudra Group. This phase saw him handling creative duties on a diverse set of brands across verticals like Gillette, MakeMyTrip, HDFC Bank, Spice Mobiles and Verizon Business.
Bharat Singhal, a retail designer by profession made a switch to entrepreneurship early in his career by creating a coffee brand called Bili hu coffees. At Bili hu coffees they work with plantations across Chikmagalur, Karnataka and curate coffees for some of the leading hotels, restaurants and cafes across the country and are now also retailing direct to consumer via their website www.Bilihu.in
Having pulled together the team over the last five years, Sandeep is the one responsible for keeping the machine moving as one.
As an early investor in InMobi and InfoEdge, two of India's billion dollar technology companies, Sandeep Murthy is one of the builders of India's Internet economy. And he hasn't just seen the highs and lows play out as an investor, but actually roughed it out in operational roles including one as the CEO of Cleartrip in 2006 for three years.
A dreamer from the start, who doesn’t believe in choosing between “this or that” he did his undergrad in both business and engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. Like all good Penn grads he dove into investment banking. However, since it was the height of the dot.com boom, he did it a little differently by moving out to Palo Alto, California to join CSFB Technology Group.
He teamed up with a friend to build a digital music company that was incubated by Sony Music and ended up selling the company to Sony after the Internet bubble burst. Sandeep lived the Bay Area dream for a few years before moving to New York to join InterActive Corp (IAC) the owners of Expedia, TicketMaster and Home Shopping Network where he helped launch Gifts.com. He started to explore the India technology opportunity and ultimately moved to Mumbai to manage investments for Sherpalo Ventures, a fund based out of Menlo Park in California.
Having raised over $400M from leading institutional investors, his most recent investments include Droom, Rebel Foods, Furlenco and AI-platform Embibe, which received a $185MM investment commitment from Reliance, India's internet super power. This is the largest AI investment in edtech any where in the world. Sandeep also supports platforms like Magic Bus, a non-profit organization that uses activity based curriculum to teach underprivileged kids life skills.
Most of his time is spent figuring how to make something unprecedented happen. With an all-in, nothing-held-back style, he loves diving in, getting to the heart of the matter, trying new things and getting as many people as possible involved. In a somewhat unpredictable market, Sandeep’s investment success stems from a combination of deep product instinct and unconventional thinking. If you want to hear some stories of what it takes to build a consumer technology company in India, just pull up a chair and buckle up... it’s been a rocket of a ride.
About Emoha Elder Care
Founded in January 2019, Emoha Elder Care is a technology powered community-based comprehensive platform enabling elders to age with grace and relevance. The platform acts as a gateway for elders to stay safe, secure and engaged while in their homes. Emoha Elder Care is spearheaded by a team of professionals with extensive experience in the elder care industry across geographies. It is anchored by Lumis Partners - an Operating Investment firm that partners with organizations that are passionate about solving large complex problems of global relevance.
These services can be availed on what is India’s most comprehensive elder app, exclusively designed keeping in mind elder’s needs.
The tech solution aids elders benefit from its services divided under the categories of healthcare, convenience, engagement, safety and emergency.
The 15 year old senior care industry is largely fragmented and unregulated with disparate players representing varied segments such as move in - senior living concepts, eldercare at home as and when required, caregivers staying at home focused on health related requirements alone and assisted living elder care solutions. Of late, a host of start-ups are entering the fray and coming out with unique technology enabled elder care solutions in the ‘New Normal’.
Saumyajit Roy, Co-founder and CEO, EMOHA Elder Care
Saumyajit has been playing industry leading roles specifically in the eldercare space for over a decade now. His passion for elder care and the product design construct of Emoha emerges from his personal experiences of taking care of his parents, in-laws, and years of working with elders across the country. He holds a B.Tech. (Urban Planning) degree from School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi (1st Rank) and an MBA (Marketing and Finance) from ISB, Hyderabad (Young Leader Awardee).
Saumyajit was involved in industry advocacy in the past. He was the co-chair of the CII Task Force on Senior Care and the founding board member of the Association of Senior Living India. Moreover, he has been a founding member of the award winning Antara Senior Living, a part of the Max India group before turning into an entrepreneur.
About Bakstage
Bakstage is a fun casual space for people to interact with real people via audio conversations. You can talk or join conversations about various topics like movies, shows, sports, tech, news, finance, social causes, politics, etc. Bakstage brings fans, celebrities, personalities, brands, influencers into one space and connects them via live audio conversations.
About FLYX
FLYX is the first streaming social network that helps users find what to watch and where to watch, through the use of a unique algorithm that focuses on aggregating reviews from friends, family, and contacts that you trust the most on content across all major streaming platforms.
Orfium
Orfium is the only rights management technology business that brings a deep data engineering approach to solving the industry's royalty collection issues. Every rightsholder has different needs. Whether you are a publisher, production music catalog, record label, distributor, collection society, aggregator, or all-of-the-above, our evergrowing team of engineers will find the solution that works best for you.
Michael Petychakis
He studied at the National Technical University in Athens, completing a MS in electrical and computer engineering and pursuing a Ph.D. in researching application programming interfaces (APIs). He has participated in various research projects in AI, Robotics and the future versions of the WWW and the Internet. He has been consulting companies in technology for over a decade and has created several startups over the last decade. Sharing the same vision along with Orfium founders Drew Dellis and Chris Mohoney, they developed an end-to-end suite of applications to power the next generation digital supply chain and monetization system of the entertainment industry. Michael, as Chief Technical Officer is leading the Greek Orfium Office that consists of more than 120 people mostly high caliber Engineers, Data Scientists and Software Developers.
TRUSTDOCK
Launched in Tokyo in 2018, TRUSTDOCK is already the most trusted name in KYC in Japan, having verified over 3 million identities to date for clients such as Transferwise, Twilio, and Yahoo!. With backing from Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, Mizuho Capital, and SMBC Venture Capital, Sony Innovation Fund, and 500 Startups, TRUSTDOCK is now beginning its global expansion alongside scaling its Japan business. Through TRUSTDOCK'S comprehensive digital ID verification API platform, companies seamlessly and reliably verify their customers' identities, and through a single integration they get access to deeply localized and compliant solutions in any country TRUSTDOCK operates.
Azusa
Azusa joined Gaiax Co., Ltd. as a web application developer in 2007, working as a project manager for CS monitoring and user support tools. She then joined Konami Digital Entertainment Co., Ltd. and developed online games for global markets, before returning to Gaiax to launch new businesses for the group. In 2016, she led the development of identity verification and digital ID for sharing economies applying blockchain technology, which became TRUSTDOCK. Azusa oversees operations as COO and defines product specifications. She is also Policy Team Leader of the KYC Working Group, OpenID Foundation Japan.
Jeff
Jeff has 15 years of experience leading startups across multiple sectors within three continents. He has simultaneously managed teams of 8-25 and portfolios of 10-12 client projects, owned revenue streams of $2mm+ and more than 10,000 customer relationships, and supported Seed through Series B rounds ranging from $500k to $12mm. Jeff has earned a MSc in Innovation and Entrepreneurship from HEC Paris and an MPA from the University of Washington.
Rishabh has always been passionate about taking the ideas of India to the world. During and immediately after college, he travelled over 26 countries as the Country Head of India and then as a member of the Global Leadership Team of AIESEC, a global youth leadership development organisation with thousands of members in over 120 countries. During these travels, the appreciation for yoga, Indian cuisine, and other prominent aspects of Indian culture were abundantly apparent to him, as to anybody else travelling globally. In 2009, he worked for a brief period with Mindvalley, a start-up based in Malaysia which published and sold personal development courses to the North American and Australian Markets. After working there, he got convinced that it was possible to build a global business selling to global consumers sitting out of India. So just a few months before he went to ISB in 2010, he started selling courses around subjects of Indian philosophy made with a professor from Delhi University as well as other authors, to the US. He made his first few sales even before going to ISB but kept working on the venture while at ISB.
He was also simultaneously experimenting with another early education venture which fizzled out due to the many mistakes a first-time entrepreneur makes. ISB incubated Transformative, the current holding company and till 2014 the company focussed on trying to make and market courses on its own website around several aspects of Indian and Eastern Philosophy. When that business was facing scaling challenges amongst others, a customer research call to one of the customers who had bought several of our courses changed our journey. The customer had studied Ayurveda in the USA, and was interested in doing a course on Ayurveda. Transformative launched the course as ‘The Ayurveda Experience’, and it did extremely well, and has had several thousand students over the years.
So the business pivoted to being an Ayurveda Education business for both consumers and practitioners in western countries, from there it experimented with being an Ayurveda Marketplace for a while, but upon realising the number of well-known Ayurveda brands in North America, Europe and Australia were extremely few, theayurvedaexperience.com decided to become a platform for ayurvedic brands across skincare, personal care, food, beverages and supplements all of which it builds/or acquires, but ultimately owns.
Spaceman Spirits Lab is creating a unique range of progressive craft beverage brands and is also building India's first ever community of mixologists, distillers and brand experts. Through the Spaceman Spirits Lab platform, anyone interested in the AlcoBev space can find a tailored solution to acquire experiential learning, experiment at a product level as well as scale their products to a commercial business. Spaceman Spirits Lab's maiden product, Samsara, a contemporary style Gin has received a lot of critical acclaim and will soon be available across the country.
Aditya is a graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Aditya left his job as a management consultant with PwC to return to India and start a creative think tank called Spaceman & Company. Over the last three years, Spaceman & Company has carved a niche for itself by breaking the status quo and by bringing to life surprisingly contrasting creative collaborations. Most recently, Aditya's passion for travel and culinary arts led him to the booming craft beverage space and resulted in the creation of Spaceman Spirits Lab.
Vithika Yadav is a Member of the Condom Alliance, a group of India’s most prominent condom manufacturers and marketers. The Alliance was established in 2019 and since then has been focusing on addressing the issues that hinder the use of condoms as a contraceptive and the underlying need to improve reproductive health in the country.
Vithika is also the Head of Love Matters India and currently leads the award winning Project Love Matters, which is the first ever website in India to give complete, honest and unbiased information on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in India in both Hindi and English language. She currently also serves as the Chair of the Global Advisory Board on Sexual Health and Well-being. Vithika is also an anti slavery, sexual rights and gender rights activist; and a social entrepreneur with over 18 years of experience. In 2016 she has received the honor of being one of the Top 120 under 40 New Generation of Family Planning leaders in the world by Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health. In 2007 she was awarded the Atlas Corps Fellowship and in 2012 she was awarded as one of the Top 99 under 33 young foreign policy leaders in the world by Diplomatic Courier and Young Professionals in Foreign Policy in USA. Over the years, she has worked for premier organizations such as UN Office on Drugs and Crime, BBC World Service Trust, Free the Slaves and MTV EXIT.
In year 2013, Love Matters won the Award for Excellence & Innovation in Sexuality Education from the World Association for Sexual Health (WAS). She is also the Founder of TeenBook - India's first comprehensive life skills resource hub for adolescents, teenagers, parents and educators. Her work on TV series 'TRAFFIC', which was broadcast on MTV India won the Best Public Service Program Award under Indian Television Academy Awards in year 2014.She was also featured in the worldwide Award winning documentary #FemalePleasure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vbj4lOYN2k
In 2012 her work ‘Standard Operating Procedures for rehabilitation work with victims of human trafficking, sexual violence and abuse’ was selected as a best practice model. Both nationally and internationally, Vithika is seen as an expert on survivor care and protection services and in this context she is focused on advising organisations on creating rights based programs of recovery through which women and girls can emerge from being victims to being human rights advocates in their own right.
Vithika is an Alumni of Lady Shri Ram College for Women and THNK - Amsterdam School of Creative Leadership.
Courage of conviction: Kanwal’s journey in three words!
Moving on from an exponentially successful fund he helped build, to starting his own, and making some golden investments in between Kanwal’s journey has been unlike any other. Kanwal gives us a generous deep dive into the values, thought processes, and consistent actions that help him navigate the consumer brand space.
We talk about trends, tech, the illusion of unicorns, the importance of knowing your market and its vernacular needs, and being a partner for the founders he supports. A conversation that will help you view the Venture capital landscape through a refreshing lens, from a leader who has set trends and not just followed them.
Alice Helme, director at CAARA, grew up on a farm in Wiltshire UK and attended Ballymaloe cookery school in Ireland. Both provided me with a passion for farm to fork, quality ingredients at the heart of all cooking. CAARA.COM is a multifaceted food company with restaurants, cafes, catering and a home delivery service. During COVID we’ve started online cookery classes which is an exciting new direction.
Siddhant Bhalinge is the Founder and CEO of Ugaoo – India’s premier plant company and gardening store. Armed with his Landscape Architecture degree from Cal Poly, Siddhant made a foray into the Indian entrepreneur scene in 2016 with the aim to introduce the Indian consumer to the plant world. With Ugaoo, he has created a niche brand, specialising in indoor and low-maintenance plants, that has made plants more accessible to the millennials.
Ugaoo was born on the premise that plants add value to life through wellness and décor. It aims to infuse plants in every Indian home. Today Ugaoo is the chosen plant brand for nearly 3 lakh customers and has seamlessly reconnected them to nature.
Ugaoo is well-loved for the quality of its plants and its unique and innovative mode of delivery, all backed by a scientific approach of growing.
Vino Jeyapalan is the Founder and CEO of Kabo Fresh Dog Food, a fresh dog food brand that uses data about your dog to deliver healthy and customized diets directly to your doorstep. Twin brothers, Vino and Vijay Jeyapalan, wanted to provide healthier dog food options after seeing the increase in dog food recalls driven by top brands in the market.
Since launching in 2019, Kabo has scaled to over $3M ARR and is the largest fresh dog food brand in Canada. Prior to entering the world of dog food, Vino spent over 8+ years working in scaling consumer product startups at Facebook and Instagram that led to him being awarded Top 30 Under 30 Marketing Magazine award.
Shruti Jain is the co-founder of Kaze Living – a curated marketplace for sustainably grown fresh produce and artisan gourmet foods based in Delhi NCR.
Kaze Living was started with a vision to make clean eating easy, accessible, and affordable for urban India. They began their journey in January 2020 and grew during the Covid-19 lockdown, serving over 5000 customers to date.
Check them out on kazeliving.com!
Sunil K Goyal is the Managing Director of YourNest Venture Capital, an early-stage venture fund he co-founded in 2011, that manages YourNest Angel Fund-I and YourNest India VC Fund-II. One of the early angel investors and a former member of The Indian Angel Network and Mumbai Angels, Sunil has led seed-stage investments and guided companies to successful exits. Prior to turning a full-time, early-stage investor and fund manager, he was a senior executive in the Telecom and FMCG industries. From his stints with Bharti Group (Airtel) and Dabur, he has gained comprehensive experience of leading complex projects during his career in the areas of M&A, business turnarounds, and strategic partnerships. Sunil continues to be an independent director on the Board of Bharti Telecom Ltd. (holding company of Bharti Airtel Ltd.) and Bharti Hexacom Ltd. (a joint venture with TCIL, a Government of India undertaking).
Sunil believes in ‘conscious capitalism’ and relishes driving business that involve a high sense of purpose and vision. Startups gain from his experience in building businesses from the ground-up stage to leading transformation. He is a qualified CFA from ICFAI, a Cost Accountant from ICWAI and a Masters in Business Economics (MBE) from University of Delhi – South Campus.
A special episode from our current theme focusing on a different aspect on how to build a career in research and science, getting different scholar
Dr. Sounak Sahu completed his undergraduate and postgraduate studies from the Presidency College, Kolkata, India, and then he moved to England to do his doctoral research at the University of Oxford, UK. He was awarded the Clarendon Scholarship from Oxford and the Sloan-Robinson fellowship from the Keble College, Oxford to do his research. He completed his D.Phil in 2019 and joined the National Cancer Institute, NIH, USA, where he is currently working as a Postdoctoral fellow.
Bombay Hemp Company (BOHECO) is India's premier Industrial Hemp & Medical Cannabis organisation providing hemp based products through sustainable agriculture & artisan empowerment. In 2016, BOHECO received an investment of $1.7 million from a few angel investors that included Ratan Tata, IIM Ahmedabad CIIE, and Rajan Anandan
Yash oversees all internal and external communication with the aim to optimise offline and online media engagements. He has worked with leading media companies, which have refined his design and planning skills to portray a strong visual identity for BOHECO. Driven by a holistic perspective, he strategizes BOHECO’s positioning in the hemp industry with an incisive business sense to create impact at the grassroots. He is at the helm of BOHECO Life, our health and nutrition brand.
Siddharth is an Investment professional with experience in private equity, venture capital and startup accelerator in India and US. Currently leading India hub for Shell Ventures and evaluating startup investments in mobility, logistics, power and oil & gas sectors. Part of the founding team of Shell India startup accelerator E4 with deep experience on legal and financial structuring of accelerator, program execution and deal structuring.
Prior to venture role, He was leading project finance team at Shell, evaluating $100M-$2B investment decisions across multiple geographies in Asia, Australia and Middle East. Extensive experience in financial modelling, risk analysis and economics with in-depth technical understanding of energy projects.
About FableStreet: Founded in 2016, FableStreet offers solution-driven styles that address the lifestyle needs of working women. As an organisation, they strive for agility, authenticity & taking care of women’s work/life needs. Crafted thoughtfully using luxury fabrics, their premium pieces are timeless, effortless & tailored to body measurements. Like the women they design for, they are also constantly learning & unlearning but never stopping. And the same is reflected in their products & philosophy.
About Ayushi Gudwani, Founder, FableStreet
A Post Graduate Diploma in Management from IIM Calcutta, having worked with McKinsey & Co. for over six years as a Senior Engagement Manager Ayushi had the vision of manufacturing and delivering international quality work-wear especially designed to fit body types and cater to the like and preference of Indian women.
After working on several public health and welfare projects in Bihar and U.P, she wanted to establish her own venture, one that would create a positive impact and alleviate the challenges associated with fit and sizing for women’s western work-wear. She observed that there was an untapped potential in the professional work-wear space for women in the Indian market.
Ayushi then undertook an extensive, hands-on R&D program wherein she spoke to and measured over a 1000 Indian women in order to understand the problems associated with the western work-wear options available in the Indian market. She was able to identify the commonalities and distinctness of shapes and sizes amongst Indian women. After accumulating an invaluable data pool on the various types of body shapes, she devised a ‘Tailor Fit’ algorithm that requires just 3 body measurements (chest, waist and hip) along with the height to extrapolate the remaining measurements with great accuracy. With the algorithm in place and having interned over a course of six months in an apparel house to understand the construction and sizing of garments, Ayushi founded FableStreet in 2016.
Sensing the opportunity she was able to take advantage of the E-commerce boom, lack of good work-wear in the Indian market, increase in the number of women who prefer to wear western attires in the workforce and her vast knowledge to carve out a niche for herself in the Fashion and Lifestyle E-commerce sector.
77% of men suffer from some sort of stress, anxiety or depression, 40% of men in crisis admit that they won’t talk to anyone, often because they feel like they have no one to turn to. Tethr is a peer enabled mental health and well-being platform. Tethr provides a dedicated 24/7 support community, where members can safely express themselves and get access to services such as forums and private messaging.
Matt Zerker is the Founder & CEO of Tethr. Prior to tethr, Matt worked as a Portfolio Manager at a quantitative hedge fund and even achieved the coveted CFA designation. Despite the early career success, Matt was deeply unhappy. After the sudden death of one of his closest friends in 2018 sent him spiralling into a suicidal depression Matt began the journey towards a more fulfilling life. After trying everything from therapy to medication, and even some experimental treatments, Matt discovered a men's peer support group in his hometown of Toronto and that's when his inner world began to shift. After attending a fateful men's retreat in April 2019, Matt returned home on a Monday and quit his job suddenly on the Wednesday - he has been building tethr ever since.
Website : https://www.tethr.men/
Fanis is a serial tech entrepreneur out of Greece. He is the founder of GreenPanda.io (The fastest way to sell your smartphone) and Intale (Enterprise SaaS for Retail). Fanis has raised successfully more than $10M for his ventures so far.
Apeksha Jain, ex-French-teacher and Food Blogger-turned-entrepreneur, is the Founder of The Gourmet Jar, a brand of premium and innovative condiments that are completely natural and preservative-free. Apeksha is an Economics graduate from Lady Shriram College, Delhi and has no formal training in cooking or making preserves. She is a self-taught confiturier who’s passion for cooking is guided by her instinct and a husband that loves food! The inspiration for her business came when Apeksha discovered the world of artisanal preserves & condiments during her one year stay in Paris. The banana jam was something she first tasted at a small orchard in Burgundy, and it was love at first bite. Apeksha was conferred an award for being an “Exceptional Woman of Excellence” by the Women Economic Forum, Delhi in 2017. Apart from experimenting in the kitchen, Apeksha loves traveling and exploring new countries and cultures, learning new languages and kickboxing.
The Gourmet Jar was started by Apeksha from her home kitchen in 2012, moved into a 1000 sq ft production unit in 2015, and now runs from a 12000 sq ft facility in Noida with a team of 50 people, of which 80% are women. The Gourmet Jar offers a range of premium condiments (preserves, honey, mustard, sauces, and savoury spreads) in unique flavour combinations, that are handmade in small batches, from scratch, using all-natural ingredients and no preservatives or additives. Made with 100% pure ingredients, and much love and care, TGJ products are fresh & full of flavour. The Gourmet Jar is currently available in most Modern Retail stores and select specialty stores in India, and supplies to more than 30 five-star hotels across the country. TGJ’s Orange Marmalade won a bronze medal in the artisanal category at the World Marmalade Awards in UK in 2015.
Behind The Deal is a new podcast series from BlitzBusiness focusing on the intricacies of venture capital.
Sanjeev has spent three decades in the Indian technology sector. He has been an entrepreneur and is a venture capitalist.
He was the founder and CEO of Daksh, a pioneer in the BPO sector and led the company till June 2006, scaling it over 20,000 employees. Daksh was acquired by IBM in 2004. He was chosen “Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year” in 2002.
Sanjeev co-founded two venture capital firms:Helion Ventures and Fundamentum and has participated in both waves of investing - Start up and Scale up.
He co-founded Helion Ventures in 2006, participating in the ‘startup’ investing phase. It has $600M under management with over 70 investments in early-stage technology companies. Sanjeev is on the board of market-leading companies - Livspace, Axtria, UnitedLex, Amba (Moody’s). He is an active participant in building of 3 Unicorns - MakeMyTrip, BigBasket and Azure.
He co-founded Fundamentum in 2017 with Nandan Nilekani. Fundamentum is a ‘scale-up’ platform committed to help build enduring technology companies out of India. It leads investment rounds from $10-25M in companies, and has made its initial investments in PharmEasy, Spinny and FarEye.
He was awarded “Venture Capital Professional of the Year” for Asia region by AVCJ in 2012.
Sanjeev co-authored a book: “From Pony to Unicorn: Scaling a Start-Up Sustainably” in 2020. It describes the X-to-10X journey and narrates the fundamental principles behind scaling and various levers of organization-building. The book is derived from the authors' personal experiences in both building and guiding several startups that went on to attain the 'unicorn' status and became public-listed companies. The book also has some real-life examples, insights and experiences of Indian entrepreneurs.
Behind The Deal Hosts
Ashish Airon is the co-founder of CogniTensor, an enterprise AI Technology provider and was recently awarded Forbes30U30 2020 Asia for his contribution in enterprise technology. He is also a mentor at 500 startup, a silicon valley based VC firm with over 3000+ investments.
Vishnupriya Rajgarhia is a learn-it-all. Presently Visiting Faculty at Ashoka University, and a Strategy Consultant at 9dot9 group. She was selected as the only South Asian Research Fellow to represent the British Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale 2020.
Jimmy Mistry is a Designer, Hotelier, Serial Entrepreneur, Adventurer, & Developer. He founded Della Group in 1991 with a core belief that anything he designs or creates should be unique, inspirational, path-breaking and should improve the lives of as many people as possible.
Under the Della Group umbrella, he has launched 6 business verticals:
Della Adventure, Della Resorts, DATA, Della Villas , Della by Jimmy Mistry and Della Talks.
For more than 2 decades he has been at the forefront of the Indian Design industry and has a reputation for unique designs.
Jimmy has got himself instant recognition in the Indian Hospitality industry by conceptualizing, designing and operating India’s largest Adventure Park and Experiential Hospitality Resorts. He is acclaimed as a pioneer in Adventure parks in India, which has been selected as a case study for the prestigious New York Stern School of Business.
Through the past 2 decades Jimmy has been awarded multiple prestigious awards from the design and business fraternity, such as the VMRD Retail design award and Young Achiever award by the Indo-American Society and was nominated for the Ernst & Young entrepreneur of the year award.
Sridhar is a Chartered Accountant and Company Secretary with 35 years experience as Global
CFO across multiple industries primarily in services sector both in India and Abroad with significant
experience in operations of all education verticals and software industry
He is a Finance Expert involved in investment banking and merger and acquisitions in the education
sector having evaluated more than 200 opportunities globally and has raised more than 100 million $
in equity in the education sector across and has also executed two IPOs besides multiple M and A
deals in the education sector
He is also an experienced finance and management professional n multiple sectors, and has also
been an entrepreneur in the education sector i.e. in skills space
strategiesParas Fatnani is the Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder at Nectwork Foods Private Limited. The company aims to help consumers adopt healthier lifestyles by making small changes in every day habits. It offers easy to use, healthier alternatives in convenient and innovative packing solutions. The brand of Honey Twigs is a part of the Nectwork Foods family. Honey Twigs has both a B2B & B2C business and currently serves clients like Starbucks, Café Coffee Day, Chaipoint, Lavazza, Licious, Sodexo, Compass, Marriott Hotels amongst many others. It also retail for consumers through its website www.honeytwigs.in
In this role, Paras oversees business vision and growth, while driving the company’s global marketing and new business strategy.
Snigdha Manchanda is India's First Certified Tea Sommelier, trained under Japanese tea master Nao Kumekawa. She's the Founder & CEO at www.teatrunk.com an artisanal tea company shipping worldwide. She's an INK Fellow 2013. Her vision is to build a global wellness tea brand from India and enjoys sharing her learnings on ecommerce and entrepreneurship.
Rushil is the co-founder and head of product at Pidge. He is committed towards building brand-led businesses with strategic and data driven solutions. Through his time at Northwestern University (BA Economics and MSc Integrated Marketing) and working in the United States & India, Rushil rigorously and extensively developed a customer-first approach to problem solving. He has led the development of Pidge’s multiple products, creating industry-leading engagement and efficiencies. He was BusinessWorld’s Young Entrepreneur of 2020, recognized for his contribution at Pidge.
Pidge is the City Logistics Expert - combining the speed of on-demand services, reliability and efficiencies of traditional logistics, and an unparalleled consumer experience. Pidge’s unique proposition - being able to cater to multiple customer segments through on-roll employees - has led to rapid growth since inception and the trust of some of India’s most loved brands.
Bani Nanda’s love affair with pâtisserie goes back to when she first experienced a taste of her mother’s delectable home made cakes. Armed with a degree in Physics, this rush eventually led her to Le Cordon Bleu, Paris. A tryst at Dalloyau, one of Paris’ oldest pâtisserie dating back over 400 years, brought out her passion in French pastry and desserts.
Bani started Miam in 2015 after she identified a noticeable gap in a heavily saturated market. Bani saw that French pastry was not popular and wanted to change that. Her aim was to popularise a neoclassical style of presentation but at the same time she wanted to keep the spirit of classic, year old recipes alive. She wanted to experiment on people’s palates and found herself feeling incredibly lucky when she saw that all of Delhi embraced her and her brainchild, Miam.
https://www.miampatisserie.com/
Alex is the co-founder and CBO of Drover, a continuation of his journey in the micromobility space having previously co-founded CLEVR Mobility and been part of the leadership team at Immotor. A true global nomad, Alex’s diverse lived experience informs his approach to entrepreneurship and desire to adapt to constant change.
Drover is using AI and machine learning to remove the primary pain points experienced by shared micromobility users, cities and operators. Beyond micromobility, Drover has the capability to harvest and manage various sets of valuable data with our proprietary sensor fusion technology.
Hello everyone, Welcome to another episode of BlitzBusiness. Today with me I have Surabhi Talwar, co-founder of Happy Jars. Happy Jars is a health food brand, with a range of natural peanut, almond and cashew nut butters. In this episode, we discuss Surabhi’s Journey in setting up a health food brand, establishing a supply chain for procuring quality ingredients, and building a sticky customer base. I hope you will enjoy this episode.
Surabhi is the co-founder at Happy Jars. A marketer and branding specialist, she's worked with multinational companies in India and in the UK. She heads the Marketing & Sales function at Happy Jars.
Hello everyone, Welcome to another episode of BlitzBusiness. Today with me I have Jairam Balakrishnan, CEO of Edunation Services Pvt Ltd. Edunation is the leading operator of K-12 institutions across India, providing a managed school platform which enables over 18,000 students across India to get access to quality education.
Edunation was formerly owned by Pearson India Education Services Private Limited. Edunation was acquired recently by Ryan Group, one of India's leaders in private K12 education with over 137 schools in 40 cities teaching 270,000 students and Foundation Holdings, a global investment firm.
In this episode we understand from Jairam the indian education market in depth, the challenges and opportunities in managing schools, Edunation’s launch of new asset light business model- ‘Manchise’, the future of learning through a blended approach and the opportunities in EdTech space. I hope you will enjoy the podcast.
Jairam has completed a decade in the Education Industry. During this period, he has successfully acquired, built and managed a large network of K12 schools including 35,000+ children and 2000+ teachers. He was an integral part of the team which oversaw the sale of the Pearson Schools business to a consortium of Foundation Holdings and Ryan Group. He has spent the first 12 yrs in the BFSI space with GE, Citi and SCB. In all these organizations, he was a part of the senior leadership team heading one of their business verticals with P&L responsibility. and was responsible for the P&L. He have successfully managed close to 3000 employees and 4000+ channel partners across 200+ locations. .
Envolve is a revenue optimization tool for brick and mortar retailers and their suppliers. They help stores grow the top and bottom line, without hiring expensive consultants or wasting time with endless reports.
Envolve has processed over 200 million shopper journeys so far, track more than 100,000 offline purchase occasions every day, and have delivered double digit increases in store level profitability for our customers.
Brett (CEO & CoFounder) has 15+ years of experience in Retail Management, Shopper Marketing and Business Development in consumer goods companies across Europe, Australia and Asia. He has an MBA from Kellogg School of Management and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Master of Data Science, Strategy and Leadership from RMIT.
Today with me I have Rashi Narang, founder of Heads up for tails. A prominent go-to brand for all your pets needs having products ranging from a wide variety of food brands to likes of orthopedic beds and organic supplements.
In this episode we talked about RashI's journey of setting up Heads Up For tails after not finding any good products for her pet, scaling across India with a new business model and a key moment in her journey, when she won the highly competitive Lufthansa's Runway to Success program season 4 from amongst 60,000 entrepreneurs.
Rashi grew up with family pets and at a young age, developed a strong sense of compassion for other beings. It was no surprise then that she left her corporate job to follow her heart. Rashi’s pet, Sara, showed her the way.
While searching markets for products that would fulfill Sara’s needs, Rashi realized that pet parents in India did not have access to products that could improve their pet’s lives.
In 2008, she decided to take on the big task of turning things around for pets and kick-started a home-based business called Heads Up For Tails. Today, 13 years later, Heads Up For Tails with 32 stores pan India and a prominent online presence is the go-to brand for all pet needs.
Heads Up For Tails was also named "Brand of the Year" at the prestigious World Branding Awards - Animalis Edition for two consecutive years.
Today at Blitzbusiness we have Swati Sahni, Founder of IvyPlus network. a professional network of more than 20,000 alumni from top global universities including Harvard, Stanford and MIT amongst others. A network where personally I have built great friendships and some amazing memories.
In this episode we discussed her initial journey of setting up Ivy plus network, scaling to 20,000+ members, the challenges and new business models as she adapts to bring the networking experience to online channels too.
Swati has worked in the education policy space for the last decade with organisations including the World Bank, UNICEF and the Ministry of Education. Swati has a Masters in International Education Policy from Harvard University, where she was a Fulbright-Nehru Scholar.
Greece owns 20% of global fleets, owning more vessels than whole of China. A fascinating story of a Greek startup to disrupt marine industry with their AI powered products from the heartland of shipping industry.
In this episode we talked about Roberto's fascinating story of perseverance in building DeepSea, raising 3 million dollars , and the role of luck.
Roberto Coustas was born in Athens. At the age of 17, he relocated in London and studied Mechanical Engineering at UCL. Following his interest in computing, he continued his studies at the University of Oxford, where he received his MSc in Computer Science with Distinction, specialising in Machine Learning. Working briefly as a performance engineer and technical coordinator at Danaos, he realised the potential of applying Artificial Intelligence to the shipping domain. He then co-founded DeepSea Technologies with Konstantinos Kyriakopoulos, a Cambridge University PhD candidate, which has revolutionised the marine industry with their AI powered products.