SEED TO SCALE Podcast Series by Accel

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We’re in the early innings of AI, and the playbook for building companies is already changing.In this episode of SeedToScale, Shekhar Kirani, Partner at Accel, sits down with Jason Graefe, CVP of Microsoft’s AI Partner Catalyst Team, to unpack what’s actually changing in the AI era.From building products to winning enterprise customers, the playbook is being rewritten in real time.Jason brings a unique vantage point, working closely with some of the fastest-scaling AI companies globally, while also operating inside Microsoft at the forefront of AI transformation. The insights are practical, grounded, and directly relevant to founders building today.Here’s what we explore in this episode:• Why we’re still in the “early innings” of AI, and what that means for founders • The shift from horizontal AI tools to durable, workflow-driven products • Why the first enterprise sale is always a trust sale • How design partners can accelerate product-market fit • Speed as a moat: why faster iteration is defining winners • The role of “taste” in building products users actually stick with • Why go-to-market needs to be built from day one, not as an afterthought • The “golden age of margin”: reducing costs while creating entirely new products • India’s structural advantage in building and scaling AI startupsIf you’re a founder, builder, or operator trying to understand how to win in the AI cycle, this conversation is a clear, grounded playbook.Chapters: 0:00 - Introduction0:58 - India’s startup energy and why this market stands out2:07 - What’s changed since pre-COVID3:18 - Global AI ecosystems and where India fits4:42 - The rise of second-generation founders in India6:05 - Why startups are scaling faster than ever7:26 - From Flipkart to AI-native companies: the infra shift9:12 - Is the AI market already crowded?10:36 - Why we’re still in the early innings of AI11:48 - AI in traditional industries: where we actually are12:31 - The “golden age of margin” explained13:52 - Startups hitting profitability faster with AI15:04 - Moving atoms vs moving bits: what AI can’t disrupt easily17:18 - Where the real opportunities still exist18:42 - Horizontal vs vertical AI: speed vs durability20:11 - Building AI products that adapt to enterprises22:07 - Why personalization creates sticky products23:34 - Software that feels like it’s built for you25:02 - Enterprise AI adoption: two buyer behaviors26:41 - Why the first sale is always a trust sale28:06 - How to win your first design partners29:52 - Enterprises are more open than ever to co-building31:08 - Surviving rapid LLM evolution32:14 - Taste: the ultimate differentiator in AI products33:27 - Real-time feedback loops → faster product iteration34:52 - Speed as the new moat36:09 - Domain experts vs first-principles builders37:42 - First-mover advantage in AI39:03 - How product + GTM cycles are compressing40:18 - Why GTM must be built from day one42:06 - Experimentation in go-to-market43:38 - India as a proving ground for global products45:11 - Why early customers matter more than big logos47:02 - Product-led vs forward-deployed models48:36 - Selling outcomes, not software50:07 - India’s structural advantage in AI talent51:19 - The culture of learning driving adoption52:27 - OutroFollow SeedToScale on LinkedIn: / seedtoscale Follow Shekhar Kirani on LinkedIn: / kirani Follow Jason Graefe on LinkedIn: / jason-graefe #SeedToScale #Microsoft #Accel #AI #AIFounders #Startups #ArtificialIntelligence #Product #GoToMarket #IndiaTech #AIStartups

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In this episode of PitchCraft, Ixigo MD and Group CEO Aloke Bajpai joins early investor Shailesh Lakhani to revisit the company’s 2016 Series B deck, a moment that captured Ixigo at an inflection point in India’s evolving travel market.The conversation traces how Ixigo moved beyond being a travel meta-search engine by focusing relentlessly on solving customer pain points across flights, trains, and buses, while betting early on mobile growth and product-led innovation.Shailesh reflects on what built conviction after years of tracking the founders: disciplined execution, resilience through multiple crises, and the willingness to pivot from aggregation to owning transactions when customer experience demanded it.They unpack the strategic shifts, and long-term decisions that shaped Ixigo’s journey from startup to publicly listed travel technology leader.

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Founders today are building in an environment shaped by constant technological shifts and evolving team dynamics.In this episode, Gokul Rajaram, Partner at Marathon Management Partners and early backer of companies like CRED, Figma, Curefit, and Postman, shares how he thinks about building startups that endure. Drawing on his experience as a product leader, investor, and board member, Gokul reflects on the patterns he’s seen across hundreds of companies.The conversation explores how founders navigate inflection points, scale teams responsibly, make irreversible decisions, and earn trust over time—with customers, teams, and investors. Gokul also speaks candidly about what tends to break early companies, and what quietly compounds when founders get the fundamentals right.

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Behind every funding decision lies hours of evaluation founders never get to witness.This episode of SeedToScale offers a rare backstage pass into the room where ideas are dissected, and where a simple yes or no is anything but simple.Seasoned investors, Mukul Arora, Co-Managing Partner at Elevation Capital, and Rajan Anandan, Managing Director at Peak XV, sit for a discussion with Anand Daniel, Partner, Accel, to unpack what really happens, from the first cold email to the final investment committe vote.The conversation goes beyond the cliches and gets brutally honest about how thousands of startups get filtered.

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“Founders need to stop assuming VCs are Excel junkies.”In this episode of PitchCraft, Pratik Agarwal, Partner at Accel, breaks down how investors really evaluate startups today.We’re no longer in a copy-paste playbook era. Founders are building unfamiliar ideas across AI, consumer, SaaS, fintech, and deep tech and investors are comparing radically different businesses side by side. In that world, numbers alone don’t create conviction. Pratik introduces the CORE framework, a universal pitch memo designed to help founders communicate what truly matters:• Change: What has shifted in the world that makes this idea inevitable now• Opportunity: Why this is a real, urgent problem with undeniable pull• Resilience: How the business can compound, defend itself, and become a default• Edge: The founder’s unique perspective and right to winIn this episode. Pratik walks through how this framework is already being used, and why it works across geographies, stages, and sectors.If you’re a founder raising capital, refining your pitch deck, or struggling to get investors to really get your idea, this episode is your playbook.

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Doctor visits are short. Health journeys are long.In this episode, Anuruddh Mishra, Founder & CEO of August AI, talks about building an AI-led health companion designed to support patients beyond brief clinical interactions. He shares how August is built to retain personal health context over time, stay available when questions come up, and help people make sense of scattered medical information across their journey.Watch the full episode for the complete conversation.Chapters:0:09 - Intro0:33 - What is an AI health companion3:06 - As an engineer, why did you choose to get into this field related to health?8:04 - Did you worry about ChatGPT being a competition?10:15 - How do you look at benchmarks?14:31 - How is it performing versus human doctors?15:40 - Why are you a horizontal health AI platform?17:53 - Where does August AI stand in terms of memory?21:37 - Is August’s memory different from general purpose memory?21:53 - Are there any general purpose memory tools or do you have to build everything in-house?23:00 - How much did you spend on marketing?24:15 - What did you do in the early days to get this magical market pull?27:30 - How did you go about fundraising & was it challenging?33:30 - Aren’t you worried about Google & ChatGPT coming at August with full force once they take notice?36:00 - Can you help us walk through your version of the world filled with an abundance of clinical knowledge?38:54 - How do you ensure that AI never crosses regulatory guardrails?42:36 - In 10 years what will be inevitable with AI in healthcare?44:36 - OutroFollow Anuruddh on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anuruddhmishra/?originalSubdomain=inFollow Anagh Prasad on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anaghprasad/?originalSubdomain=in Follow SeedToScale on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/seedtoscale/ #DecodingAI #SeedToScale #Accel #Healthcare #Tech #Medical #Startup #Funding #Digital

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Everyone’s talking about generative AI. Few talk about industrial AI: where the data meets the factory floor.In this episode of Decoding Manufacturing, Vipin Raghavan, Co-founder & CEO, Haber, explains how Haber is using AI to close the loop between lab and line, turning process data into real-time chemistry control and measurable profit impact.From automating dosing systems to building trust through prediction accuracy, Vipin breaks down what it takes to bring AI into legacy plants, why Haber prices by production output instead of licenses, and how vertical depth and reliability built a zero-churn business.He also talks about India’s manufacturing readiness, cultural differences in adoption, and what the road to autonomous factories really looks like.Chapters00:00 – Intro: AI that augments, not replaces operators02:57 – The three universal manufacturing challenges07:25 – Why now: Connected factories and cheaper edge compute 09:59 – Trust before autonomy: Building accuracy first 13:52 – The pacemaker product and Haber’s zero churn 17:37 – Pricing by the tonne, not by the seat 21:46 – India vs West: Cultural adoption of industrial AI 24:36 – Building T-shaped talent 27:33 – The long road to near-autonomous factoriesFollow SeedToScale on LinkedIn for more insights: https://www.linkedin.com/company/seedtoscaleFollow Vipin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vipin-raghavan-6142986/?originalSubdomain=in #AI #Manufacturing #Automation #Innovation #Technology #Sustainability #Industry#Data #DecodingManufacturing

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Everyone’s talking about AI models. Few talk about the data that moves them forward.In this episode of Decoding AI, Jonathan Siddharth, Founder & CEO, Turing, explains how Turing evolved from a global developer platform into a research accelerator, fueling the world’s top labs and enterprises with bespoke, interdisciplinary training data.From RL gyms to post-training pipelines, Turing is engineering the human-in-the-loop systems that are quietly pushing us toward ASI.Chapters00:00 – Intro: The Future of Intelligence 01:11 – From Stanford to Rover: Jonathan’s Founder Journey 07:05 – The Idea Behind Turing 09:28 – Why Post-Training Is the Real Edge in AI 12:49 – How the World’s Smartest Humans Move Models Forward 19:10 – Inside Alan: Turing’s Data Engine & Talent Network 21:17 – How Enterprises Build Their AI Advantage 25:28 – The 100× Productivity Shift Ahead 29:59 – Closing Thoughts: The Future of Work & IntelligenceFollow Anand Daniel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ananddaniel/Follow Jonathan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonsid/Follow SeedToScale on LinkedIn for more updates: linkedin.com/company/seedtoscale#startup #ai #artificialintelligence #turing #data #ASI #artificialsuperintelligence #intelligence #aimodels

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The next big shift in AI isn’t about models getting smarter, it’s about how we work.In this episode of Decoding AI, Aparna Chennapragada, Chief Product Officer for AI Experiences at Microsoft, shares how AI is transforming the workplace from tools that assist us to teammates that collaborate with us.Aparna draws from over two decades of product building. From Akamai’s internet backbone to Google’s AI-first products, like Lens, and now leading Microsoft’s AI strategy. Her insights go beyond features and hype, focusing instead on what it takes to build AI products that last.Here’s what we explore in this episode: • Why “adding AI” isn’t enough and what “AI-first” really means • How Microsoft is reimagining productivity for the AI era • What happens when the model starts to “eat the product” • Why trust, timing, and design are key to durable AI • Where founders can find the next big opportunities in AI, from context engineering to workflow intelligenceIf you’re a founder, builder, or product leader trying to understand where AI is headed next, this conversation is a roadmap.Chapters: 00:00 – Introduction 01:32 – Aparna’s journey: From Akamai to Google to Microsoft 05:20 – Lessons from building early AI products at Google 08:15 – Why the timing of AI adoption matters more than novelty 11:40 – The speed of AI change 15:05 – The shift from tools to teammates at Microsoft 19:30 – How AI is transforming productivity inside organisations 23:10 – The danger of “adding AI” vs. building AI-first 28:20 – What happens when the model eats the product 33:05 – Building moats: data, context, and trust 37:25 – AI products that last beyond hype 41:00 – Where founders can build next in AI 45:12 – Closing reflectionsFollow SeedToScale on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/seedtoscale/Follow Anand Daniel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ananddaniel/Follow Aparna on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aparnacd/Follow SeedToScale on X: https://x.com/Seed2Scale#DecodingAI #SeedToScale #Microsoft #Accel #AI #ProductDesign #FutureOfWork #startup #aistartups #artificialintelligence #copilot #accel

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Every metal behaves predictably, but carbon fiber doesn’t.Its strength depends on how every fiber is laid, making it one of the hardest materials to automate.That’s where Dhinesh Kanagaraj, Founder & CEO, Fabheads, comes in. Their breakthrough “adaptive tow placement” technology lets machines think like craftsmen, achieving fiber-level control at industrial speed.With software-driven automation and smarter material handling, Fabheads is achieving 3-10X productivity, up to 40% fewer rejections, and reduced waste.Watch this episode of Decoding Manufacturing to see how Fabheads is transforming carbon fiber manufacturing.Chapters:0:24 - Intro0:28 - Revolutionizing the carbon fiber industry1:05 - Misconception about automating carbon fiber manufacturing1:32 - The single most important breakthrough in tech stack2:07 - Brief explanation of what Fabheds does2:50 - Misconception about automating carbon fiber manufacturing3:27 - The single most important breakthrough in tech stack4:00 - Solving the gap in India’s composite manufacturing ecosystem5:15 - Carbon fiber 3D printing for aerospace7:41 - Demand for robotic composite system in a manual manufacturing led industry8:21 - Elaborate on the tech stack9:33 - The hardest technical milestone10:17 - Comparison of robotic automation to traditional manual work11:05 - The best yet underappreciated tech stack12:13 - Reasons behind building end-to-end approach13:52 - What keeps high profile clients engaged to Fabheads10:39 - The economic structure of Fabheads15:21 - Biggest growth challenge16:43 - Operational challenges with expansion17:58 - Building talent in a niche ecosystem19:10 - Failures and early lessons20:36 - Vertical vs horizontal Industries 22:17 - One belief that needed unlearning23:22 - Success for Fabheads in 5 years down the line24:06 - Outro Follow SeedToScale on LinkedIn for more insights: https://in.linkedin.com/company/seedt...Follow Dhinesh on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dhineshrk/?originalSubdomain=in #DecodingManufacturing #CarbonFiber #Automation #Engineering #Innovation #DeepTech #Composites #SeedToScale

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For decades, India’s two-wheeler industry perfected manufacturing at scale, but not innovation. Then came Ather Energy.Tarun Mehta, Co-founder & CEO, shares how Ather built every layer of the EV stack, from battery architecture to charging infrastructure, entirely from scratch.From a lab at IIT Madras to India’s one of the largest electric two-wheeler brands, Ather’s story is one of conviction over conditions.Tarun and his team built what didn’t exist: suppliers, technology, and manufacturing processes, turning obstacles into opportunities.In this episode of Decoding Manufacturing, Tarun shares insights on building deep R&D culture, scaling hardware with precision, and the mindset required to design in India, not just make in India.Chapters:0:24 - What led to the birth of Ather Energy?2:23 - The biggest challenges in the early days7:03 - Why did Ather decide to go full stack?9:38 - When did it truly feel at ‘scale’?10:53 - Balance of IP vs speed during scaling12:15 - Defining decisions in Ather’s journey13:23 - Views on the current ecosystem14:57 - Flaws of early-stage hardware founders20:12 - Hardware vs software-led future22:11 - India’s manufacturing prowess25:35 - Manufacturing vs global imports26:28 - Advice to deep tech & advanced hardware founders26:52 - Lowest point while building Ather28:54 - The strongest belief from 5 years ago29:36 - Doing Ather differently in 2025Follow SeedToScale on LinkedIn for more insights: https://in.linkedin.com/company/seedt...Follow Tarun on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tarunsmehta/?originalSubdomain=in About Decoding Manufacturing:This series spotlights the audacious founders positioning India to lead the next industrial revolution by transforming deep tech into scalable manufacturing breakthroughs.#manufacturing #manufacturingprocess #AtherEnergy #DecodingManufacturing #AtherEnergy #Founder #EV #MadeInIndia #Innovation #manufacturing

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What if a rocket engine could be 3D-printed in a single shot?What if a launch pad could move wherever permission is granted?That’s exactly what AgniKul is building. In this episode of Decoding Manufacturing, Srinath Ravichandran, Co-founder & CEO of AgniKul, shares how the team is reimagining rocket design and manufacturing from the ground up.From single-piece 3D-printed rocket engines to mobile launch pads, AgniKul is showing how India’s manufacturing ecosystem can power deep tech innovation at global scale.He also breaks down:• Why rockets had to be redesigned for today’s smaller satellites• How India’s private space ecosystem is maturing with clear policy support• Why space tech is the seedbed for India’s next manufacturing waveChapters:0:00 – Intro: Rockets for today’s satellites1:26 – India’s ecosystem: from execution to design3:03 – The shift: Designing in India & manufacturing maturity4:41 – Policy clarity and long-time cycles in deeptech6:15 – Why rockets had to be redesigned for small satellites7:50 – Breakthrough: Single-piece 3D-printed rocket engines10:25 – Innovation through young teams & first principles11:11 – The real challenge: repeatability and process discipline13:18 – Autopilot, scalability & mobile launch pads15:27 – Building talent: balancing design and quality17:13 – People, components, infra: what really matters18:57 – Policy breakthrough: InSpace and private space in India19:42 – Testing facilities, ISRO collaboration & documentation culture25:12 – Patient capital and trust in Indian innovation28:10 – Founder’s journey: from Wall Street to rocketsFollow SeedToScale on LinkedIn for more insights: https://in.linkedin.com/company/seedtoscaleFollow Srinath on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/srinath-ravichandran-09679a7/?originalSubdomain=in #AgniKul #SpaceTech #3DPrinting #RocketEngineering #DecodingManufacturing #SeedToScale #Accel #Innovation #indiamanufacturing

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In this episode of PitchCraft Season 2, Gaurav Singh Kushwaha, Founder and CEO of BlueStone and Prashanth Prakash, Partner at Accel, revisit the 33-page idea-stage deck that launched one of India’s most enduring jewelry brands.Back in 2011, BlueStone didn’t even have a website or sales to show. It only had a conviction that India’s jewelry market was ripe for disruption. Gaurav reflects on the choices that shaped the pitch: why jewelry was one of the few categories resistant to horizontal marketplaces, how consumer behavior was shifting from family jewelers to brands, and why design had to be the company’s moat.Prashanth recalls why Accel took the leap at such an early stage: the scale of the opportunity, but more importantly, Gaurav’s clarity of thought and first-principles approach. From 3D renders that changed how jewelry was visualized online to home try-on that built trust, BlueStone redefined how Indians bought jewelry long before omnichannel became the norm.Together, they unpack the original deck, the debates it sparked, and how its early insights on design, differentiation, and consumer trust, still anchor the company as it stepped into the public markets in 2025.

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In this episode of PitchCraft Season 2, Chandra Srikanth sits down with Harshil Mathur, Co-founder and CEO of Razorpay, and Vikram Vaidyanathan of Z47 to unpack the pitch deck that launched one of India’s most iconic fintech companies.Harshil looks back on Razorpay’s early days in 2014, when he and Co-founder Shashank Kumar were just two engineers trying to accept payments for a side project, only to realise how broken and outdated India’s digital payment infrastructure really was. Their first deck didn’t have polish or even a founder slide. But it had something better: clarity of problem, product conviction, and deep insight into why existing gateways weren’t working.Vikram shares why he invested in Razorpay when many others passed on the opportunity, thinking the space was crowded. What stood out wasn’t just the market; it was the mindset. Harshil and Shashank approached payments as a product and tech problem, not a financial one. That product-first thinking, combined with early proof of execution, became Razorpay’s differentiator.Together, they deconstruct how the original pitch came together, what mattered more than the slides, and how Razorpay’s core values—customer obsession, product depth, and technical rigor—have remained constant from their seed to scale.

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In the debut episode of PitchCraft's Season 2, Chandra Srikanth speaks to Sriharsha Majety, Co-Founder and CEO of Swiggy, and Accel's Anand Daniel as they deconstruct the company's first pitch deck that laid the foundation for one of India's most iconic consumer tech companies.Harsha reflects on Swiggy’s early days in 2014, when the team put together a function-first deck built on a single insight: existing platforms didn’t solve the real consumer problem—getting food from your favourite restaurant delivered quickly. From day one, Swiggy differentiated itself by building its own delivery fleet and prioritizing reliability and speed over scale or polish.Anand shares why Accel backed Swiggy in 2015, even in a crowded market: the clarity of thought, deep consumer insight, and a relentless focus on experience. The founders didn’t pitch a marketplace—they pitched a logistics company with a sharp product lens. Swiggy launched with just a few handpicked restaurants, high-velocity dishes, and an app-first approach that showed early, real traction.Together, they break down how the pitch came together, what stood out in the deck, and how Swiggy’s founding principles—customer obsession, clarity, and operational discipline—have stayed intact from the seed round to the stock market.

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Contracts are the backbone of every business, every dollar in or out is tied to one. Yet, they remain one of the most antiquated, slow, and expensive parts of how companies operate. Legal workflows still rely on copy-paste, track changes, and armies of lawyers billing by the hour.SpotDraft is rewriting this story. By treating contracts as the hardest language problem for AI, one that demands accuracy, trust, and reliability, the company has built a Contract Lifecycle Management platform purpose-built for the AI era. From creating dummy datasets to designing proprietary editors, workflows, and repositories, SpotDraft has reimagined how businesses negotiate, execute, and manage contracts at scale.In this episode, Co-founder & CEO Shashank Bijapur, along with Goutam Kurumella, Head of Startup Solutions Architecture at AWS, takes us inside the journey: why contracts are a unique challenge for AI, how SpotDraft combines general-purpose LLMs with its own specialized layers to cut through hallucinations, and the tough trade-offs of prioritizing long-term product over short-term revenue.

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India today stands at the cusp of a new wave in advanced manufacturing. With global supply chains shifting, demand for cost-effective innovation rising, and deep scientific talent at home, the country has a chance to create the building blocks of tomorrow’s industries. Specialty chemicals, critical to pharmaceuticals, agro, electronics, and more, are one such frontier.Scimplify is leading this shift. The company acts as a full-stack platform for specialty chemical development and manufacturing, bringing enterprise-grade R&D into India’s underutilized factories. In this episode, Co-founder Sachin Santhosh takes us inside their model: how technology and data are being used to map facilities, why India’s scientist pool is its true edge, and how Scimplify is bridging the gap between lab-scale innovation and commercial-scale delivery.Sachin also shares the hard realities of building in this space, from hiring world-class scientists to balancing reliability with cost, and his bold vision to make Scimplify a mark of trust across global industries. This conversation is a window into how advanced manufacturing in chemicals could be India’s next big leap, powering not just growth, but global leadership.

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India today stands at a once-in-a-generation moment to establish itself as a global leader in advanced manufacturing. With deep-tech innovation, shifting global supply chains, and a rising domestic market that demands scale and affordability, the country has the chance to build world-class products, not just for India but for the world. Aerospace, EVs, semiconductors, and clean energy are just a few sectors where this ambition is becoming real.Sarla Aviation is one such story. The company is building India’s first mass-market flying taxis, electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft designed to tackle the unique challenges of Indian cities. In this episode, Co-founder and CEO Adrian Schmidt takes us inside their journey: why India’s density makes it the perfect market for aerial mobility, how simplicity in design unlocks affordability, and why creating an indigenous aerospace supply chain is critical for success.Adrian also talks about the hard trade-offs, range versus payload, cost versus complexity, and the bold vision to make flying taxis not a luxury for the elite but a true mass-mobility solution. This conversation is a glimpse into the audacious bets shaping India’s future of transportation, and how advanced manufacturing can propel the nation into the skies.

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Every economic superpower has been built on the backbone of manufacturing.Today, with global supply chains being rewritten and the world moving from cost to precision, resilience, and IP, India stands at a rare window of opportunity.Advanced manufacturing is no longer our quiet revolution.Decoding Manufacturing brings you the voices of India’s boldest builders, decoding what it takes to reimagine manufacturing on the global stage and shape the country’s future.#founders #startup #startupindia #indianstartup #manufacturing #advancedmanufacturing #precisionengineering #precisionmanufacturing #sarlaaviation #airtaxis #flyingtaxi #haber #fabheads #scimplify #entrepreneurship #atherenergy #agnikul #sattelite

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AI is rewriting the rules of education, turning personalized tutoring from a privilege of the few into a possibility for every student, regardless of where they live or what they can afford. For millions of students in India’s tier-2 and tier-3 towns, the barrier to quality learning has long been financial and geographic. Arivihan is breaking that barrier.In this episode of Decoding AI, Accel’s Anagh Prasad sits down with Ritesh Singh, Co-founder and CEO of Arivihan, to unpack how his journey from Indore to IIT, and his own struggles with access to coaching, which inspired the mission to democratize education.The conversation dives into how Arivihan is solving deep challenges in edtech: building trust in AI tutors, ensuring accuracy and engagement, and keeping costs low while serving students in Bharat. Ritesh also shares why he believes AI tutors will soon transform the coaching industry and make quality learning universally accessible.

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It’s almost a consensus view that India can’t build its AI future on borrowed code. It needs infrastructure rooted in Indian languages, accents, and real-world use cases. At the heart of this mission is AI4Bharat, an open-source initiative building cutting-edge AI models for all 22 official Indian languages.In this episode of Decoding AI, Prayank Swaroop, Partner at Accel, sits down with Professor Mitesh Khapra, one of the key architects of India’s Indic and open-source AI movement and co-lead of the AI4Bharat initiative at IIT Madras. A former researcher at IBM and now a faculty member at the Wadhwani School of Data Science and AI, IIT Madras, Mitesh has been instrumental in laying the groundwork for India’s AI stack.The conversation traces the journey of AI4Bharat, from early experiments mapping real-world problems to a focused effort on building foundational language technologies that power applications across sectors. Mitesh shares how the team is bridging data gaps, enabling synthetic data generation, and competing with global benchmarks, all while staying open-source.This episode unpacks why India needs its own AI infrastructure, what makes AI for Bharat technically and culturally distinct, and how startups and developers can plug into this growing ecosystem to build truly inclusive AI solutions.

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AI is stepping into uncharted territory, assisting decision-makers with high-stakes, low-frequency calls that shape the future of enterprises. These decisions require more than historical data; they demand fresh insights, domain expertise, and a deep understanding of context. That’s where Bridgetown Research comes in.Bridgetown’s AI agents autonomously conduct deep research—interviewing experts, gathering proprietary insights, and identifying patterns to deliver real, actionable intelligence.In this episode of Decoding AI, Anagh Prasad, Investor at Accel, sits down with Harsh Sahai, Co-founder and CEO of Bridgetown Research, to discuss how AI is transforming decision-making at the board level. With a background spanning Amazon and McKinsey, Harsh shares his journey of bridging a career in AI and consulting to build an AI platform.The discussion explores how Bridgetown is tackling the complexities of high-stakes decision-making—leveraging AI to gather insights, enhance research depth, and improve judgment at scale. Harsh shares how AI agents can proactively collect and synthesize information, enabling decision-makers to act more confidently and clearly in an ever-changing business landscape.

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Meesho is redefining the role of AI in e-commerce, driving innovations that scale to meet the demands of millions. From handling over 60,000 voice bot calls daily to managing 'trillions' of features, AI is embedded in every facet of Meesho’s operations.In this episode of Decoding AI, Anagh Prasad, Investor at Accel, sits down with Debdoot Mukherjee, Chief Data Scientist and Head of AI at Meesho, to explore the transformative impact of AI on one of India’s largest online marketplaces. Debdoot shares learnings from his early days of machine learning at Myntra to shaping Meesho’s AI-first marketplace. The discussion dives into Meesho’s use of AI for solving complex challenges, such as optimizing matchmaking between users and products, and developing scalable machine learning platforms. Debdoot also shares how open-source frameworks drive innovation at the company.This episode offers a compelling look at how AI is transforming industries and presents invaluable lessons for anyone looking to build and scale AI-driven solutions at large.

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Google DeepMind stands at the cutting edge of AI innovation, solving some of the most intricate scientific and engineering challenges. From protein structure prediction through AlphaFold to enhancing energy efficiency in data centers and advancing robotics for real-world applications, DeepMind is shaping the future of technology. But how can AI startups in India leverage DeepMind's insights? In this episode of Decoding AI, Prayank Swaroop, Partner at Accel, speaks to Dr. Manish Gupta, Senior Director at Google DeepMind, APAC to find out.Dr. Manish shares insights into the current landscape of language models, spotlighting groundbreaking work like the IndicGenBench project. The conversation dives into how Google DeepMind focuses on foundational technologies while empowering startups to create transformative solutions in sectors like healthcare and education. Dr. Manish also offers valuable guidance for startups, elaborating on Google's Trusted Tester Program and its collaborative approach to IP sharing. Dr. Manish also reflects on India’s distinct position within the global AI ecosystem, emphasizing the country's unique opportunities and challenges, and the potential of AI in scientific breakthroughs, including its role in advancing fusion energy.

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India is making strides in artificial intelligence, blending academic rigor with real-world applications. In Episode 4 of Decoding AI, Prayank Swaroop, Partner at Accel, is joined by Professor Balaraman Ravindran of IIT Madras, a pioneering figure in Indian AI research and application. As the founding head of several prestigious AI-focused centers, including Wadhwani School of Data Science and AI, the Robert Bosch Centre for Data Science & AI, and the Centre for Responsible AI at IIT Madras, Professor Balaraman discusses how IIT Madras is driving innovation in AI research, language models, healthcare, and more.Key highlights include IIT Madras's work on Indian-language AI systems, such as translating NPTEL (National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning) videos into multiple languages and collaborating with the Supreme Court to make legal documents accessible in regional languages. On the healthcare front, groundbreaking initiatives like Garbhini tackle maternal and fetal health challenges unique to India.Professor Balaraman also provides insights into how startups can engage with IIT Madras's vibrant research ecosystem. Looking ahead, he emphasizes the importance of solving uniquely Indian problems, urging startups and investors to focus on creating value within the country instead of catering to first-world markets.

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Simplismart is an AI infrastructure company building the critical platform-agnostic middleware to deploy, train/customize, and serve open-source AI models in production. With a very small team and under $1M in funding, these two Bengaluru-based founders built the world's fastest inference engine.In Episode 3 of our Decoding AI series, Amritanshu Jain, Co-founder and CEO of Simplismart, joins Anagh Prasad to discuss the startup's remarkable pivot. Initially built as an AutoML platform, Simplismart's breakthrough came when they happened to discover the speed of their inference engine after a conversation with a potential customer. In this episode, Amritanshu also elaborates on the open-source versus closed-source debate, noting that the comparison is complex and requires significant education. He emphasises that it is not simply about declaring one model superior to the other but understanding the broader context and specific advantages each model offers. While open-source solutions can offer high customization and cost efficiency, the choice between open-source and closed-source models ultimately depends on the unique needs and constraints of the enterprise.

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GenAI is growing rapidly, evolving from a mere tool into an intelligent partner that empowers businesses to scale with greater speed and efficiency.In Episode 2 of our Decoding AI series, Vishwesh Pai, Senior Director of Product Management for AI Platform at ServiceNow, and Anagh Prasad, Investor at Accel dive into how large companies are navigating the opportunities in enterprise software, especially with the rise of generative AI. Vishwesh reflects on his journey from leading AI initiatives at Amazon Alexa to spearheading AI development at ServiceNow, where he leads the company’s efforts from India.Vishwesh discusses how ServiceNow leverages generative AI to enhance customer productivity and agility while addressing legal, ethical, and security concerns. He emphasizes the company’s focus on AI safety and trust, which are critical in the enterprise space. According to him, generative AI presents a “golden opportunity” for ServiceNow to deliver more value to its customers and accelerate product development.Listen to this conversation for deeper insights into how large companies like ServiceNow are navigating the AI revolution and the challenges and opportunities for startups in the AI space.

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With GenAI on the rise, software is evolving from a tool that needs constant supervision to an intelligent partner that handles tasks autonomously, similar to human assistants. This shift promises a future where enterprises are more efficient, with AI seamlessly integrating into daily operations.In Episode 1 of SeedToScale's Decoding AI series, Accel's Anagh Prasad explores the future of enterprise software with Surojit Chatterjee, Founder and CEO of Ema, a company which elevates Agentic AI to the enterprise level.Surojit explains how the next generation of enterprise software, driven by Gen AI, will be radically different from the current systems. These new applications will break down data silos and access information across the enterprise to create adaptive, real-time user interfaces that respond dynamically to user needs and roles.Watch the full episode as Surojit shares how Ema is designed to bridge the gap between AI capabilities and business needs, and how Gen AI, much like past technological revolutions, is poised to create more jobs and opportunities than we can currently imagine.

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2023 is particularly momentous to Accel as we complete 40 years as a global fund and 15 years in India.As we celebrate this milestone, we hope to share insights from the firm’s shared history with you, in this riveting two-part podcast series. We begin with a look at the past, and how startups and investors evolved over the years; moving on to investing today, and why many call 2023 the year of reset in VC. Finally, we look to the future, with timeless lessons the next generation of investors must carry forward.

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Know what is harder than pivoting when the going gets tough? Pivoting when the going is good.

On the surface, most metrics were scaling efficiently for Urban Company (previously UrbanClap) at the end of 2015. The tech company mainly generated leads for at-home service providers. But founders Abhiraj Bhal, Varun Khaitan, Raghav Chandra recognized that improving the experience of suppliers and customers would require deeper involvement. They needed to build a full stack marketplace with trained professionals.

Eight years later, the company is valued at $2.8 billion. After proving their chops by taking the beauty industry online, Urban Company went on to digitally connect customers with a range of professional services including cleaning, repairs, electrical works, plumbing, and carpentry.

When they first looked into the space, at-home services in India had been full of holes. The founders, all three from IIT Kanpur, knew that the problem had the potential to keep them busy for a lifetime. So they joined hands in 2014 to bring in organization and digitization.

Over the past decade and a half, new-age marketplaces in India have transformed how people buy and sell products and services.

From Flipkart to Swiggy, Urban Company, and Zetwerk, each has reimagined "the bazaars," shaping the future of commerce and livelihood in India. Starting November 3rd, we will share stories from the trenches about building and scaling these marketplaces, along with foundational lessons from their journeys.

Learn more: https://bit.ly/3UnptTO

0:00 - Introduction 1:20 - Origin story 4:10 - Early days 9:33 - Product-market fit 14:25 - Picking the right service 16:30 - Testbed 17:40 - Zero-to-one phase 21:15 - Scaling the company 24:30 - Key strategic decisions 27:40 - Value to service partners 32:40 - Disintermediation 34:10 - Creating value on both sides 36:30 - Navigating COVID 39:50 - Leadership and culture 43:20 - The future

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At their core, marketplaces are in the business of efficiency. Deeply optimized supply was the need of the hour in the world of construction, where access to materials was fragmented and unreliable. Souvik Sengupta of Infra.Market and Prashanth Prakash of Accel talk about transforming the manner in which real estate companies buy for their projects.

Over the past decade and a half, new-age marketplaces in India have transformed how people buy and sell products and services.

Learn more: https://bit.ly/3UnptTO

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What does it take to build a timeless marketplace? Time.

Long-lasting marketplaces have little to do with restless hustling, and a lot to do with clear research and balancing gut calls with data calls. You can trust that bit of wisdom because it comes from Mukesh Bansal who knows the ups and downs of entrepreneurship in India more intimately than most.

As founder of Myntra, head of commerce and advertising at Flipkart, and now as founder-CEO at Cult.fit, the relentless entrepreneur has sold fashion, fitness, and almost everything in between.

Mukesh was one of the first startup folk to have brought the Bay Area ethos to the Bengaluru ecosystem. Over the last 15 years, he has steered companies through teething problems, pivoting and scaling missions, as well as acquisitions.

In this part of a series of conversations sponsored by Accel, Mukesh shares his favourite entrepreneurial hits and misses. Joining him is Subrata Mitra of Accel who has been among Mukesh’s earliest backers. He shares wisdom not just for the benefit of founders but also for venture capitalists as they go from backing two to four to 20 companies.

Over the course of chatting with Pankaj Mishra, the duo sum up their journey so far in many quotable quotes.

Over the past decade and a half, new-age marketplaces in India have transformed how people buy and sell products and services. From Flipkart to Swiggy, Urban Company, and Zetwerk, each has reimagined "the bazaars," shaping the future of commerce and livelihood in India.

Starting November 3rd, we will share stories from the trenches about building and scaling these marketplaces, along with foundational lessons from their journeys.

Learn more: https://bit.ly/3DqT87o

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When Niraj Singh started up Spinny, the used-car market in India was already crowded with cash-rich competitors. More and more Indian buyers were leaning towards buying pre-owned cars because of the better value they offered but the landscape was still full of potholes and barriers. There were few trusted intermediaries, and no convenient way for buyers to go through the sea of options or for sellers to find the right price. That is where Spinny came in.

Niraj Singh founded the full-stack platform for buying and selling used cars in 2015, together with friends Ramanshu Mahaur, a fellow alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Delhi, and Mohit Gupta, an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management Technology (IMT), Ghaziabad, who moved from Flipkart to join as operations head. A car lover himself, Singh wanted to address the pain points in the sale and purchase of a used car.

“When you're buying your first car, it's a very important, very aspirational, very emotional purchase for you, and your entire family. It was very clear that we are not going just after the used-car market opportunity, but we are going to solve (an issue) of trust, experience and aspirations of people,” he said in an interview with Pankaj Mishra, co-founder of the digital media publication FactorDaily, a journalist tracking start-ups, with over two-and-a-half decades of professional experience.

Sellers put in a request to sell their cars on the website. If it passes a 200-point test by an inspection team, Spinny sets a price, features the car on the site, and takes over the responsibility of selling the car. Buyers have the assurance of buying a Spinny-certified vehicle and the added benefit of a 1-year warranty. The company takes care of all the paperwork, from registration to title transfers.

Among others, Spinny competes with OLX, Quikr and CarDekho in a market that was valued at $23 billion in the financial year 2021-2022 and is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 19.5 per cent until FY 2026-27, according to a report by IndianBlueBook, an auto technology platform, and Das WeltAuto, the pre-owned car business of Volkswagen India.

After starting operations in the National Capital Region (NCR), centered on Delhi, Spinny has expanded into Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Indore, Coimbatore, Lucknow and Kochi. It became a unicorn with a valuation of about $1.8 billion, when it raised $283 million last year from a consortium led by Abu Dhabi-based ADQ, Tiger Global and Avenir Growth.

This interview is part of a special series brought to you by the Indian unit of Accel Partners, which has backed some of the most significant marketplaces that have come up in India including food delivery platform Swiggy, e-commerce company Flipkart, TaxiForSure, which offers ride-hailing services, and Urban Company, a provider of home cleaning, appliance repair, beauty treatment and handymen services to customers at their doorstep.

Joining Pankaj Mishra in the chat is Niraj Singh, who at the time of founding Spinny, already had two start-ups behind him – TechMonkey, an Internet media company, and Locus Education, an IIT-JEE prep venture with offline and online presence. They dive into the details of going from a marketplace model to a direct full-stack model, the business of trust, and the basic rules of team building.

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Conversation Highlights

In addition to asking if the sector is unorganized, ask whether it is inefficient. Know exactly what kind of a profit pool is available there.
There are businesses where a tight testbed is not possible. So find your fulcrum. It takes trial and error but look for the side where your tech intervention as a marketplace will drive the most value.
Fairness is an easy sell. Both sides of the marketplace appreciate fair policies and practices.
Once built, marketplaces are not static. They are in dynamic equilibrium. Pay attention to both demand and supply and balance them.
Unknown mistakes are okay. Don’t make known mistakes.

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Cutting out the intermediary helps many industries. Not so in manufacturing. It needed a middle layer. Suppliers routinely failed to deliver on time, and customers failed to pay on time. To improve trust and speed, Amrit Acharya and Srinath Ramakkrushnan introduced Zetwerk as a B2B marketplace for manufacturing in 2018.

Zetwerk began as a hub for steel fabrication. Within six months, its business went from a topline of ₹1 crore a month to ₹10 crore a month. Since then, the company has expanded into more than 10 categories and is valued at $2.7 billion today.

The company has transformed the space with high-quality products, increased transparency, and fewer and shorter delays. The backbone of its operation is technology. It uses dashboards to track each order at various stages in real time so that suppliers can stay on schedule and customers can get regular updates.

Manufacturing appealed to Amrit because he had dabbled in it fresh out of college. In several ways, it prepared him for starting up – because ‘building’ things from scratch is common to both worlds.

In this part of a series of conversations sponsored by Accel, Zetwerk CEO Amrit Acharya participated along with Prayank Swaroop of Accel Partners, who has backed the company right from the early days. They discuss the brass tacks of setting up a B2B marketplace with Pankaj Mishra.

Starting November 3rd, we will share stories from the trenches about building and scaling these marketplaces, along with foundational lessons from their journeys.

Learn more: https://bit.ly/3DqT87o

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Give someone a fish, you feed them for a day. Give someone reliable access to seafood in a supply-deprived industry, you go on to create a successful B2B marketplace for fish. Take it from Utham Gowda, the founder of Captain Fresh, an investment banker-turned-fisherman, so to speak.

Three years after its birth in 2019, the company has raised $126.5 million in funding at a $500 million valuation. In an industry where the average level of spoilage is 20-30%, Captain Fresh manages to minimize waste in seafood shipments to 2-5%.

It was in 2015, while scouting for viable sectors as an investment banker, that Gowda embarked on an aquatic adventure. He was helping a seafood player become IPO-ready. Some years of diving deep into fisheries revealed a fragmented, underserved industry begging for scientific solutions. There was a clear entrepreneurial opportunity, but few had even touched the space.

Quite frankly, the waters were muddy. There was a combination of problems: High perishability, seasonality, varying tastes by region and so on. Gowda rose to that challenge with a combination of his own: Research, resources, and people.

As an investment banker, he knows the importance of due diligence. As a single founder, he knows the importance of finding the right talent. And as someone who started up a little before COVID-19 hit, he knows the importance of planning and stress-testing.

In this part of a series produced by Accel Partners, Gowda was joined by Barath Shankar Subramanian of Accel, a vegetarian who strongly backs the fish-fuelled business. In July 2021, after many Zoom calls between Subramanian's and Gowda’s teams, Captain Fresh raised $12 million in Series A funding led by Accel. They talk to Pankaj Mishra, co-founder of digital media publication FactorDaily, about their journey.

Starting November 3rd, we will share stories from the trenches about building and scaling these marketplaces, along with foundational lessons from their journeys.

Learn more: https://bit.ly/3DqT87o

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It’s essential to keep things as simple as possible initially, with a total focus on understanding the consumer problem statement. Because when it comes to subscriptions, users drop off a lot — they are commitment-phobic.

In the next stage, startups must know how to decentralise well. A founder cannot go on micromanaging a hundred things. Many startups fail because while they thought they solved a problem, they had no idea about its sustainability in terms of how it would scale economically.

And as far as possible, until you hit product market fit, keep things as lean as possible. If you start hiring too many people for specific roles, it gets difficult to roll things back when they go wrong.

Eventually, it all boils down to two questions: Who are you building for? Do they consumers like your product? In this conversation, Nandan Reddy and Phani Kishan from Swiggy and Accel's Anand Daniel share lessons learned while building and scaling their startup in a crowded market.

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Starting November 3rd, we will share stories from the trenches about building and scaling these marketplaces, along with foundational lessons from their journeys.

Learn more: https://bit.ly/3DqT87o

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About TaxiForSure

TaxiForSure, founded in 2011, was the outcome of a drunken conversation in a Bangalore pub between friends Raghunandan G and Aprameya Radhakrishna, who had both been to National Institute of Technology Karnataka and the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad. Raghunandan was 33 and Radhakrishna a year older.

Three-and-a-half years after it started up in a 100-square-feet office in a Bangalore suburb. TaxiForSure was acquired in March 2015 by bigger rival Ola Cabs, which paid $200 million in a cash and equity deal as it attempted to fend off competition from Uber. By August 2016, TaxiForSure was gone after Ola integrated its service with its own and fired hundreds of its employees.

Today, Raghunandan and Radhakrishna, who both worked briefly at Ola as advisors before walking away, are successful people and have funded a string of startups. The former has founded fintech firm Zolve and the latter is co-founder of Koo, the Indian version of Twitter. WasTaxiForSure a failure?. Not so if the experience and insights they gained into running a startup in a space like mobility shaped their future roles.

Highlights

Research, research, research. When things get difficult, and they will, this user research will be your north star.
There is a tendency in founders to assume the role of the customers. Stop. You were the customer when you conceptualized the marketplace, now you’re no longer a customer. Build for what the customer wants, not what you want.
Happiness. The happiness of the team guarantees happiness of all stakeholders, which in turn ensures happiness of the customer. A happy customer will always reflect on the bottom line.
Build a team with diverse backgrounds. If you plan to disrupt a market, try to hire from outside the market. Those within the market come with their mental blocks, and fresh perspectives guarantee innovation.
Evolve to where the market will be, not where the market is currently. This will ensure that you’re ahead of the pack.

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Like in most markets, India is a large but under-penetrated insurance market. While the COVID-19 pandemic led to a sharp uptick in life insurance premiums, bringing it at par with the global average of 3.2% of GDP, non-life premiums - health and motor insurance - continue to lag at sub 1% of GDP, compared to 2% for developing Asian countries and 5% for developed economies. In a low-income economy, paying up premiums to protect against potential long-term downside is not a top priority for people.

However, this will grow. As India’s GDP and per capita income grow, more people will begin insuring themselves and their assets. This has happened globally and India is no different.

Second and more important, the state of insurance in India leaves much to be desired, both for the insurer and the insured. Improving this can be vital to changing the Indian consumer’s relationship with insurance, and building enduring private companies in the space.

We spoke to Varun about his journey building an insurance company, how he approaches building a brand in an industry with established players, and what he sees in the future. He is joined by Abhinav Chaturvedi and Subrata Mitra, investors at Accel who have had a ringside view of Acko and Coverfox.

Key Segments

3:19 - 7:20 - Varun’s journey from Coverfox to Acko
14:13 - 17:43 - Technology’s role in insurance: Underwriting Distributor vs Underwriting Customer
17:44 - 20:11 - Future of Insurance: Ancillary Services
21:36 - 25:30 - Learnings from the US Insurance Sector
36:32 - 40:12 - Managing regulations in Insurance
44:31 - 46:31 - What’s next for Acko

The Accel team wishes Varun and Acko all the best in their mission.

Blog authored by Sankalpana Agarwal from Accel

Check out other episodes from the Insights Podcast series at https://www.seedtoscale.com

Share your feedback and suggestions at https://www.twitter.com/Accel_India

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India, frequently referred to as the two-wheeler factory of the world, serves a tremendous market both in India and abroad. About 15M two-wheelers were sold in India in 2021 and 3.7M two-wheelers manufactured in India by the top 4 Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) were exported. By 2030, the number of two-wheelers sold in India annually is expected to reach 35M representing an about $30B market, growing at the back of limited penetration of affordable public transport (public transport only serves 7% of the total trips at present) and the ever-increasing cost of not-so affordable four-wheelers.

However, with rising fuel prices and the increasing cost of Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) scooters, ownership of personal two-wheelers has become financially challenging.

Owing to this, customers are now looking for reliable and affordable personal mobility solutions for their daily commute. This new customer demand, along with increasing environmental concerns and favourable government regulations, has created an urgency for electric mobility and set the stage for the rapid adoption of electric vehicles (EVs).

As Accel, we have always looked for new-age solutions that add immense value to consumers and Bounce with its dockless mobility solution presented a great investment opportunity in 2018. What started out as Wicked Ride - a luxury bike rental platform and pivoted to a dockless mobility solution has today become a full-stack EV mobility solution for the Indian masses with 3 core business verticals - electric scooter manufacturing, Battery-as-a-Service and dockless mobility. With a capacity of 220K+ scooters per annum, Bounce launched its Infinity e1 electric scooter in early 2022 and has already received 60K+ pre-orders. It completed 5M+ EV rides covering 27M+ EV mobility kilometres with 1M+ swaps by building India’s largest battery-swapping network present in 40k+ locations across India.

To understand this new era of mobility which is rapidly unfolding, we spoke to Vivekananda Hallekere, Co-founder and CEO of Bounce, who has been at the helm of EV mobility adoption in India.

In this conversation, Vivek talks about his journey, the various phases of Bounce, EV trends in India and abroad, the inevitability of EV adoption and the need for regulatory support.

Key Segments

Bounce’s journey from luxury bike rentals to full-stack EV mobility - 1:15
Battery charging, battery swapping and Battery-as-a-Service - 17:00
Future of Electric Vehicles - Global and Indian - 26:06
State of regulatory environment in India - 44:46
Future of Bounce and Energy-as-a-Service - 50:46

We thank Vivek for coming on and sharing these insights with us and we wish him and Bounce team all the best for this amazing journey of revolutionizing personal mobility for India.

Blog authored by Lakshay Bansal from Accel

Check out other episodes from the Insights Podcast series at https://www.seedtoscale.com

Share your feedback and suggestions at https://www.twitter.com/Accel_India

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Banking opportunity in India is tremendous, with overall banking assets expected to reach $3T by 2025, with deeply under-penetrated private credit markets which account for ~50% of GDP (vs. 150%+ for developed economies).

Despite this large opportunity, customer experience and engagement in traditional consumer banking in India is broken and has been so for over a decade.

With the increasing digital penetration in the country, customers armed with their smartphones are looking for an easy, seamless, quick and personalised experience and their expectations are ever-evolving.

Neo-banks attempt to fix the broken customer journeys and provide a superior banking experience, serving as a layer over traditional banks. This means that customers no longer need to spend hours at their physical bank branch queues, mired in paperwork for everyday banking needs. While doing so, a neo-bank improves access to a whole suite of financial products across wealth management, lending, and insurance through a single platform.

As Accel, we’ve always believed that technology can revolutionise banking and attempted to enable that ecosystem, first through our investment in Monzo in 2018, then through our investment in Zolve in 2021, and recently through a growth investment in Niyo - Niyo is a leader in the consumer neo-banking segment in India with a base of 5 million users.

To understand this new era of banking which is fast unfolding, we spoke to Vinay Bagri, Co-founder and CEO of Niyo, who is a long-standing veteran in the banking industry in India.

In this conversation, Vinay talks about how Niyo came into being, shares some of his reflections on the ongoing changes in the banking ecosystem, draws parallels from other fintech segments and discusses the need for regulatory support.

Key segments

The large market opportunity for a neo-bank in India - 18:05 - 19:48
How neo-banks provide a completely new banking experience - 20:22 - 22:41
The success of neo-banks globally - 24:00 - 25:20
Customer segmentation in neobanking - 30:25 - 32:12
State of neo-banking regulations in India - 36:28 - 39:10

We thank Vinay for coming on and sharing these insights with us and we wish him and Niyo team all the best for this amazing journey of revolutionizing consumer banking for India.

Check out other episodes from the Insights Podcast series at https://www.seedtoscale.com

Share your feedback and suggestions at https://www.twitter.com/Accel_India

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B2B marketplaces are different. There are tremendous opportunities, but also different challenges. This arises from the business model itself. Having to cater to both the supply and demand side is one thing, the other is adjusting to the nuances of the products and commodities being bought and sold. This is different for every domain and therefore there is nothing that can be replicated. Everything had to be thought through first principles.

One example of a company that did exactly this is Bizongo, the largest business-to-business online marketplace for packaging needs in India. Bizongo has been a phenomenal success story in the last few years, witnessing exponential growth during the pandemic. Founded by Aniket Deb, Sachin Agrawal and Ankit Tomar, the company is now at a significant point, poised to scale. The team raised funding of $110 million in December 2021 and now stands at a valuation of over $600 million.

As Bizongo scales, we thought this was the best time to get CEO Sachin Agrawal to talk about their First 500 days.

I also have on the podcast Prayank Swaroop, my colleague, and partner at Accel, who led the seed round in Bizongo. Prayank has been a part of Bizongo’s journey from the beginning, and he will help us shed light on some of the decisions that helped Bizongo get here.

We’ll be diving into the initial days, the evolution of the business model, pivots, and finally the challenges due to the pandemic and how Bizongo overcame them. With Prayank here, we will also take the opportunity to dive into how investors think about such businesses and what they look for in founders and the team when they invest.

I thank Sachin and Prayank for coming on and sharing all of these stories and insights about Bizongo’s first 500 days. We wish Sachin and the Bizongo team all the best, they have an amazing few years ahead of them!

Summary of the conversation:

GMV versus profitable business - 17:14 - 18:31
Creating a culture of trust at Bizongo - 26:14 - 27:06
Building a bond as co-founders - 29:23 - 30:24
What is working capital? - 32:06 - 34:18
Business expansion during Covid times - 35:59 - 38:11

Check out other episodes from the Insights Podcast series at https://www.seedtoscale.com

Share your feedback and suggestions at https://www.twitter.com/Accel_India

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The D2C ecosystem has truly found its feet in India. There are now a lot of great brands making niche, high-quality products for targeted audiences. The e-commerce wave has given them a channel of distribution that they own. But as the market matures, there are other needs for young D2C startups. They need marketing, sales, and brand talent, things which they can’t easily get access to in order to grow as fast as they want to.

Ananth Narayanan’s Mensa aims to solve this problem for the new D2C economy. Mensa is a house of brands that invests in digital-first, D2C brands, and scales them globally. Previously, Ananth was CEO of Myntra, which was acquired by Flipkart, and co-founder and CEO of Medlife, which was acquired by Pharmeasy.

Remember, Mensa is not even 500 days old!

Subrata’s presence is also notable here, as he has had a long relationship with Ananth. Fun fact: Mensa was co-created as a concept by Ananth and Accel working together from the start. We’ll go into more details in the podcast, but Subrata has been in the trenches with Ananth: from ideation to team expansion, and from strategy to building out their tech platform.

I thank Ananth and Subrata for coming on and sharing all of these stories and insights about Mensa’s first 500 days. We wish Ananth and the Mensa team all the best, we are definitely rooting for them!

Summary of the conversation:

6:55 - 8:16 - The India opportunity for a digital house of brands.
8:34 - 9:58 - How did Mensa achieve Unicorn status in 6 months?
16:35 - 18:55 - How did Mensa use technology top scale?
19:37 - 21:37 - How did Mensa convince founders to sell their brands to Mensa?
27:05 - 29:25 - Advice for founders from Ananth & Subrata.

Check out other episodes from the Insights Podcast series at https://www.seedtoscale.com

Share your feedback and suggestions at https://www.twitter.com/Accel_India

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How is the world of Open Source faring in a landscape that is being overturned by Web3 and its ascendant new technologies? It’s an important question and not just in the realm of entrepreneurship and products. Open Source was the first promise of some kind of a technological revolution, where everyone could build and use things they want to with help and support from a real, tangible community.

Where is that promise now, what is being built out of it, and where does it stand with the advent of new technological paradigms?

That’s the topic of the conversation I have the pleasure of bringing you today.

My colleague, Prayank Swaroop, Partner at Accel, is talking to Abhishek Nayak, founder and CEO of Appsmith. Appsmith is a startup that provides an open-source low code tool that helps businesses build any custom internal application within hours. And the company has just raised its Series A of $8 million.

There's one more Accel connection here: Abhishek was also part of the Accel team for a while.

In the podcast, we try to understand from Abhishek about where the open-source world is, how far it has come, and what we can look for from it, and all of it from the lens of Appsmith.

This podcast has a lot of takeaways for founders thinking about building open-source projects and companies.

Thanks to Prayank for the interview and thanks of course to Abhishek for taking time away from the grind of entrepreneurship to come talk to us!

Summary of the conversation

16:00 - 17:57 - Why did Appsmith take the open-source route?
11:44 - 13:24 - Why internal apps & not consumer facing apps?
24:50 - 25:53 - How to build an engaged community on Discord?
30:03 - 31:40 - Why aren't business users adopting open source tools?
35:10 - 37:08 - How did Appsmith acquire users?
38:52 - 40:50 - Do developers care about design?
44:18 - 46:27 - Challenges raising money for an open source project
48:24 - 49:32 - Advice for founders thinking of open source projects

Check out other episodes from the Insights Podcast series at https://www.seedtoscale.com

Share your feedback and suggestions at https://www.twitter.com/Accel_India

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If you know about Crypto, you can’t have missed FalconX, I’ll still give you a brief: FalconX is a blockchain, cryptocurrency, and fintech-focused cryptocurrency brokerage and digital asset trading platform. Accel has been proud partners since the startup’s inception, and we’ve been cheering on their success loudly!

Crypto is definitely here. With the slew of recent advertising and coverage around it, plus the FOMO that investments in it are generating, we are definitely overdue for a discussion on the space.

And we have just the thing for you.

Pratik Agarwal, my colleague at Accel has been interested in this space for a long time, and he is interviewing Raghu Yarlagadda, CEO of FalconX, one of the world’s fastest-growing companies of the last half-decade.

But that’s not just why we are talking to Raghu for this episode. As reported by Bloomberg in August 2021, FalconX saw its revenue grow by a multiple of 30 times in the 12 months (up to June 2021).

Evidently, Raghu and the team know something we don’t.

And that’s not all.

The crypto world is moving at a pace that is beguiling to even seasoned market watchers. There is just so much happening every day. Raghu and Pratik will also attempt to give us a lens into this world and how to make sense of a rapidly changing scene.

This podcast has all this and more. It has been one of my favourite episodes recently and we hope to bring Raghu back for more next year.

6:57-7:59: Insights that helped in starting FalconX; building a tokenization gateway for institutions
8:15-10:26: Why was it critical to focus on institutions and not retail customers?
16:00-18:20: Convenience in the institutional adoption of crypto assets
20:39-22:21: De-Fi(decentralised finance) explained
23:15-25:35: Nuances of De-Fi; Comparing it with conventional banking system
27:22-29:50: Global overview on the regulatory landscape in crypto
31:06-33:01: Future white spaces that could be chased starting today in crypto
33:03-33:55: Newer opportunities on the infrastructure side in the crypto market

Check out other episodes from the Insights Podcast series at https://www.seedtoscale.com

Share your feedback and suggestions at https://www.twitter.com/Accel_India

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Edtech is a category whose time has come. The pandemic and its attendant ramifications have meant that Edtech is now one of the hottest spaces for innovation and growth globally. This also means that a lot of new Edtech startups are coming up, with newer visions and interpretations of what the future of learning and education can look like.

And they have a lot to navigate around and wade through in a rapidly evolving landscape.

Which is why we bring to you this conversation with Bob Meese, the Chief Business Officer of Duolingo, one of the most innovative Edtech companies in the world. You know the company, of course, and we are delighted to be bringing you a glimpse into its history and workings.

Bob is interviewed by my colleague Manasi Shah, Vice-President at Accel. She is deeply interested in the space and has been looking at Edtech startups for a while now.

What resulted from this meeting of minds is a far reaching conversation, about the nature of online education itself, how the world is embracing it, what the challenges are, and what the future will look like.

13:10-15:30: Monetization at Duolingo and it's framework; Audience growth more critical than monetization
17:52-19:41: Frameworks of monetization and the key areas of focus with each approach
23:15-24:52: Perception of experimentation and subsequent failure with monetization
28:07-30:00: Empowering teams to come up with newer and better ideas; also taking help from the ecosystem
31:10-33:24: Retention metrics and how Duolingo approaches them
39:32-41:46: Approaching GTM at Duolingo; how growth of mobile devices helped them scale
44:10-46:34: Challenges during Bob's early days at Duolingo; not having the right set of people; setting up ambitious goals and missing out on them consistently
48:54-50:56: Future of edtech; how Duolingo saw edtech transform from being a "bad word" to a promising vertical
51:55-53:50: Shaping up the product as a key source of customer delight

Check out other episodes from the Insights Podcast series at https://www.seedtoscale.com

Share your feedback and suggestions at https://www.twitter.com/Accel_India

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Credit cards are one of the most ubiquitous financial products in the world. We all use them everyday, they are part of our lives.

But as the world changes and our spending and consumer behaviour changes along with it, so have our needs with regard to financial products. We now have different financial behaviors and the exciting field of fintech is ready to serve us according to our own preferences.

Credit cards are the first logical step in this revolution.

Over the last couple of years, several startups in India are trying to disrupt and change the credit card ecosystem in India, and literally all of them are tremendously exciting.

One of the foremost among them is Uni, and Nitin Gupta, the CEO is one of the domain’s most knowledgeable.

Which is why I’m delighted to present to you this conversation between Rachit Parekh, Vice President at Accel, and Nitin. It’s a far reaching dialogue on the evolution of Indian fintech, what the future holds, global trends, and challenges the field is facing.

The conversation is also insightful in that it makes clear the opportunities that exist in a nascent fintech space like India’s, in which credit cards may be the first step in a boom of new and innovative products the country has never seen. But, and here’s what I think is the more important part of the conversation, Rachit and Nitin also spend time on the regulatory challenges faced by Indian fintech. This is important not just for the fintech and credit card ecosystem, but for anyone who needs to navigate the Indian system.

I learnt a lot from the conversation, and I know you will too. And yes, watch this particular space in fintech. There’s going to be a lot of action here in the decade ahead

0:00 - 8:00: Intro
8:08 - 9:37: Why go after credit card business?
11:35 - 13:36: Global trends in the financial services business
26:39 - 29:11: Challenges in the Indian financial services industry
31:29 - 32:10: Making customer data available
34:39 - 36:44: How to manage regulators?

Check out other episodes from the Insights Podcast series at https://www.seedtoscale.com

Share your feedback and suggestions at https://www.twitter.com/Accel_India

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From lipsticks to hair care to bath and body -- there’s little to nothing that the average shopper cannot find that covers all beauty and personal care needs. And what’s more, the shopper can browse through multiple brands within the same unified platform.

It is to talk about this vision that I am joined today by Prashanth Prakash, senior partner at Accel and the man behind the glam himself -- Darpan Sanghvi, CEO and co-founder of MyGlamm, India’s fastest growing direct-to-consumer beauty brand.

MyGlamm is one of our more recent investments in the beauty and personal care (BPC) segments that has seen tremendous success with its house of brands model and direct-to-consumer (D2C) business approach.

It was enervating to hear Darpan’s unique take on the growing BPC market from an entrepreneurial perspective, along with Prashanth's keen and experienced insights into the burgeoning business.

In this episode we discussed everything from MyGlamm’s journey, building a scalable beauty company using technology, the challenges and opportunities of the Indian market, tackling the COVID-19 crisis, leveraging social media, creating a data engine, and more -- all while keeping an eye on the offline sales game as well.

0:00 to - 6:25: Introductions and beginnings! Darpan isn’t your average CEO, and MyGlamm wasn’t born without some serious on-ground work that began with a keen interest in brands, and a never-say-never attitude.
6:30 to 10:51: Prashanth’s thoughts on the brand space with specific insight into BPC, and what is unique about the sector.
10:53 to 20:45: How Darpan navigated this space from an entrepreneur point of view. How did Darpan decide what product to launch with?
20:50 to 24:00: Prashanth gives us the investor perspective.
24:03 to 27:51: What are the challenges and advantages that startups face in this segment, when they come up against the goliath brands that have been around for longer.
27:52 to 30:40: Darpan tells us how he learnt from the foundations of the business, and in the BPC space the challenges that exist, are actually opportunities in disguise.
30:35 to 31:45: Prashanth on how brands and businesses have to look to survive. How they must leverage the offline muscle that they built, to stay relevant in digital times.
31:5o to 34:47: Does Darpan believe in the offline sales concept as well? How does it apply to his D2C brand and platform?
34:50 to 39:20: The impact that COVID-19 has had on this industry and the surprises that came along with it!
39:22 to 46:55 : Internet penetration in India has been far more successful and higher than the BPC penetration. What does this mean for aspiring companies in this space?
47:00 to 55:34 - What does the future hold for BPC brands as well as the broader D2C segment. Our experts have predictions, aspirations, and hope for the future.

Check out other episodes from the Insights Podcast series at https://www.seedtoscale.com

Share your feedback and suggestions at https://www.twitter.com/Accel_India

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In the latest episode of Grit Stories, I spoke with Baskar Subramanian, founder and CEO of Amagi. Baskar has been an internet entrepreneur and startup founder since before either of those terms were really a thing. Having started and sold his first startup in his mid 20s, Baskar, along with a group of friends, started looking for new problems to solve.

The group set their sights on disrupting television advertising with technology, the startup that became Amagi.

The startup ecosystem, Indian or international, sometimes focuses too much on the loud and the noisy. But there’s another kind of startup, quiet, tough and resilient, focused on their business and their goals. It’s clear which kind Amagi is, and this was a great insight into the people behind it.

Amagi has been in the future since 2008, and we wish them the best with their rocketship.

2:44-3:45: Baskars Story; Coming from a small time; being dyslexic but still finding a connect with the computers
3:45:20-5:14:09: First business stint in grade 11! Building financial products from small businesses!
07:45:23-09:19: Making the decision of leaving Texas Instruments although being a top coder there and thoughts on starting up
16:34-19:06: Amagi Story: Empowering the smaller players to advertise on TV!
20:30-22:36: Challenges faced operationally; Extensive traveling in tier-2 cities; facing the cable mafia and getting them onboard!
25:23-28:34: Facing the problem of scale and changing the targeting through research on larger brands
32:48-39:03: Friction with the TV channels; Broadcasters v/s Amagi
35:51-38:59: Changing the model and almost starting afresh; tough times as a founder!
41:16-44:22: Grit of continuing even during tough times; Unconditional support from the employees

Check out other episodes from the Insights Podcast series at https://www.seedtoscale.com

Share your feedback and suggestions at https://www.twitter.com/Accel_India

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Aprameya is no stranger to the entrepreneurial journey. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Koo, a microblogging platform catering to the Indian vernacular. Koo was born as an offshoot of Vokal, a vernacular question and answer platform. Within one year, it amassed over a million users and became a force of its own.

Before this, he was at the helm of TaxiForSure, leading it to a successful acquisition by Ola Cabs back in 2015. I was part of this journey, and Aprameya’s clarity and grit has been something I’ve been aware of throughout.

This was among my favourite conversations, and not just because of having known Aprameya for so long. It helped me better understand the fast-shifting world of content, and the directions in which it is headed.

Koo is about to make some noise, and we are excited for it.
Listen and find out more.

00:00 - 3:10 - Introduction
6:35-8:38- Parents not agreeing for his startup stint; Shift in his own inclination towards startups and getting conviction
9:04-10:24- Grit to start TFS; anyhow getting people from point A to point B
10:57-12:32- Angel Investors being very scarce and lack of information
12:34-14:25- Market explosion and TFS being not really ready for it
18:09-20:05- Grit to build for local language and not English: Vokal story- empowering non-English speaking crowd
20:27-22:41- Challenges as a founder of shifting from a transactional business into a non-transactional business
27:28-29:05- Pursuing the right person to rope him in as a co-founder
32:08-34:04- Atmanirbhar Bharat victory, being just a 3 month old product!
34:59-35:57- Moving fast to capture the Nigerian market
44:11-45:03- Advice to new founders: Start early & Always trust in your first thought!

Check out other episodes from the Insights Podcast series at https://www.seedtoscale.com

Share your feedback and suggestions at https://www.twitter.com/Accel_India

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Check out other episodes from the Insights Podcast series at https://www.seedtoscale.com Share your feedback and suggestions at https://www.twitter.com/Accel_India

00:00 - 03:16 Introduction 03:17 - 5:26 Tough beginnings and what shaped Niraj 05:33 - 7:25 Grit to get to IIT-D 12:34 - 13:42 Support of the ecosystem being very low back in the day 14:53 - 17:23 Lost his father but bounced back in 3-4 months and started his second company 31:42 - 33:51 Going with the full stack model even though the new investors pulled the term sheet 35:22 - 37:37 Restarting with the new business model: What happened after the investors pulled back? 39:43 - 41:28 How the team stepped up during tough times? 52:46 - 53:57 Being open to feedback and it's importance

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The story of Vedantu is a heady mix of grit, determination and conviction. The Bangalore based startup, which raised almost 200 million in 9 rounds, has had a journey and a story that will definitely inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs. The startup witnessed 4.5x to 5x growth in the last financial year on each of its core metrics. And the growth trajectory has been rocketing upwards with 12x to 15x growth in the past 2 years.

But how did it get here?

In this candid conversation with Anand Daniel, Vamsi Krishna, co-founder and CEO, talks about the unseen struggles of an entrepreneur and what it took to make Vedantu what it is today.

Check out other episodes from the Insights Podcast series at https://www.seedtoscale.com Share your feedback and suggestions at https://www.twitter.com/Accel_India

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If there is one thing that the pandemic is bound to teach humanity, it is the will to go with the flow and not plan too ahead in life. That said, counterintuitively, it seems important to be prepared and planned when similar outbreaks arise in the future.

A healthcare startup from Canada, BlueDot, in its report, shared that the outbreak was fast spreading in China even before the World Health Organisation (WHO) had reported it. The startup’s outbreak risk software helps mitigate the exposure to infectious diseases using Artificial Intelligence. It goes to show that healthcare organisations, governments and public health officials would have to rely on these AI-based systems in the future to prevent similar outbreaks from reoccurring.

On this podcast, Murali Aravumdan, Founder and CEO of nference and Radhika Ananth, Vice President at Accel cover some of the important applications of AI in healthcare, and the sub-segments that are still untouched by AI but have huge potential for disruption. We also cover the apprehension of the medical communities to adopt to new technologies and the steps to overcome them. The focus areas within healthcare for Accel are AI in diagnostics, drug discovery, precision medicine and digital therapeutics, with some recent investments made in these categories.

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Taking cues from a top-down structural approach, the Agritech industry has many layers to it.

On top of them however, like every other major industry, Financial services is also a critical part of Agritech. However, it is largely unorganised and has plenty of room for disruption. Most farmers in the country do not have access to credit-based lending facilities and startups like Samunnati are attempting to fill that gap.

Mark Kahn, the Founding Partner of Agritech-focused impact venture fund Omnivore, chats with Prashanth Prakash and Anand Daniel of Accel, discussing the trends in Agritech in India. They talk about the major market segments Agritech is segregated into, the factors that are fueling the growth of the industry, and how COVID has contributed to the sector’s growth.

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The future of digital health pertains to a myriad of technologies put together. Whether it is Artificial Intelligence (AI), advanced health sensors genomics, digital therapeutics, or all of them put together, digital healthcare is very much technology-based only on paper as of now. With the COVID-19 pandemic, we have learned in a hard way that we need to be better prepared when similar outbreaks happen in the future, and the only way to predict, prevent and manage care would be through massive digitization of the healthcare industry.

On this podcast, Dr. Bertalan Meskó, Director of The Medical Futurist Institute and Radhika Ananth, Vice President at Accel cover some of the high impact trends in digital health, some north star metrics for healthcare startups, and finally how prevention and care will be delivered to the patient of the future.

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Podcasts have been one of the ways we try to bring out untold stories of startup founders. Continuing with this tradition, we at Accel are excited to introduce our new podcast mini-series: Untold Seed Stories. This new show aims to unravel the first 500 days of our founders’ startup journey — ranging from how they first conceived the idea and met their co-founders, to details of how they secured their first funding and challenges along the way.

For the fourth podcast of our Untold Seed Stories, we chat with Girish Matrhubootham, Co-founder and CEO of Freshworks. Founded in October 2010 in Chennai, Girish and his CTO Shan Krishnaswamy grew the company to a Series-H stage, after its latest fundraise of $150 million.

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This new show aims to unravel the first 500 days of our founders’ startup journey — ranging from how they first conceived the idea and met their co-founders, to details of how they secured their first funding and challenges along the way.

For the third podcast of our Untold Seed Stories, we chat with Sri Harsha Majety, Co-founder and CEO of Swiggy. (Bengaluru-based hyperlocal food delivery platform. Founded in 2014 by Harsha, Nandan Reddy and Rahul Jaimini, the startup now operates in more than 600 cities in India.

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Most of our other podcasts are targeted towards early-stage founders looking to build and scale their companies. But now we are also launching a new podcast mini-series keeping in mind the founders of fast-growth companies. The Scale Playbook, as the name suggests, will help unravel the playbook of large startups for founders to understand how to solve scale challenges across different business functions like engineering, product, sales and strategy through candid conversations with specialists from some of the most successful startups in the ecosystem.

A lot has always been said about secret sauces, key factors and the different drivers of value creation and growth to build any business. It’s a subject that has received a lot of attention over the last 30 years, that does not just confine to venture-backed or self-funded private companies but also public companies.

For digital companies, in the recent past, Venture Capital firms around the world have started to observe this aspect closely. Including some analysis from within the Accel Community through the lens of digital companies, there are four key drivers that primarily contribute to value creation in a company.

In our second episode, Ajay Sethi, Venture Partner at Accel takes us through these four key drivers. Over the years, Ajay has worked with most of our portfolio companies to help them achieve deliberate and sustainable growth.

Listen now to learn how Scale, Habit, Brand and Network Effects can contribute to value creation in your company

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For the second podcast of our Untold Seed Stories, we chat with Abhiraj Singh Bhal, Co-founder and CEO of Urban Company. (Gurugram-based home services marketplace that offers services in cleaning, painting, spa & beauty, plumbing, carpentry and so on.) Now having its centers in 22 cities across India, Singapore, UAE and Australia and Singapore, Urban Company boasts of 30,000+ service partners and more than 10,000 beauticians.

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Most of our other podcasts are targeted towards early-stage founders looking to build and scale their companies. But now we are also launching a new podcast mini series keeping in mind the founders of fast-growth companies. The Scale Playbook, as the name suggests, will help unravel the playbook of large startups for founders to understand how to solve scale challenges across different business functions like engineering, product, sales and strategy through candid conversations with specialists from some of the most successful startups in the ecosystem. For our first episode we have two industry stalwarts from Flipkart — one of India’s largest ecommerce platforms.

Jeyandran Venugopal is the Chief Product and Technology Officer at Flipkart. He has previously led several engineering and product teams at Myntra, Yahoo and Amazon.

Naren Ravula is the Vice President and Head of Strategy at Flipkart. He was leading product strategy and operations at Salesforce and NetApp previously.

Today’s episode is focused on building a strong engineering team and strategy. We will also touch upon Flipkart’s Leap Accelerator program which is targeted towards early-stage founders.

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Thiru is a serial entrepreneur in its truest sense. He founded six startups including a coaching academy and a Biryani cloud kitchen before he landed on Ninjacart - which, interestingly, isn’t the same business as it was initially perceived. Though the first six companies failed to take off, he did not give up and kept charging ahead with one idea after another.

His attempt at building these companies came with its set of learnings but his biggest learning of building a large, fast-growing company was from his stint at TaxiForSure. “This is where I learnt how to build a culturally strong startup,” says Thiru about TaxiForSure. After the Ola acquisition, Thiru decided to revisit his last startup, Shout, which was initially a location-based social network app. He decided to convert it into a location-based e-commerce app which eventually became Ninjacart.

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The 56th episode of the INSIGHTS podcast features Sairee Chahal, Founder and CEO of SHEROES- a social networking platform with over 20M women. Sairee is also an Aspen Fellow and serves on the board of Paytm Payments Bank. She has been an entrepreneur for 15+ years. In this episode, Sairee shares insights on building successful products around communities

To learn more about Sairee’s inspiring journey, tune in to the latest episode of the Insights Podcast by Accel.

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In this episode, we hear from Vetri on what OKRs are, how they are different from other goal-setting frameworks, how businesses can go about adopting them, and some common challenges and pitfalls to be careful about.

To learn more about how you can adopt OKRs as a powerful tool in your organization to increase alignment and engagement around achieving goals, tune in to the latest episode of the Insights Podcast by Accel.

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In today’s special episode of the INSIGHTS podcast on ‘student entrepreneurship’, we cover the journeys of two well-known founders in the startup community whose entrepreneurial journeys started right from their college days: Shashank Murali from Tapchief and Farid Ahsan from Sharechat.

We hear from Shashank and Farid on their early life and college days, how they decided to take up entrepreneurship, how they arrived on the idea they went after, how they worked progressively to build their companies, and finally how they would do it differently if they were to do it all over again.

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In this episode of the INSIGHTS podcast, we have with us Neeraj Arora, who played a pivotal role at WhatsApp as an early employee and then as the Chief Business Officer.

We hear from Neeraj on his early career days, non-obvious career moves, learnings from the WhatsApp journey, the multi-billion dollar Facebook- Whatsapp deal, his experiences from investing in India, and finally some advice for startup founders.

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Anand and Sudheer give a glimpse into their respective startup journeys - skillsets they brought from their previous experiences, new challenges that they were not prepared for, and milestones that marked their journey.

The podcast covers all the different phases of their journeys: from identifying the problem to go after and building the MVP to scaling the product, figuring out monetization, and solving for Sales GTM and funding.

To learn more about what it takes to build scalable global SaaS companies out of India, tune in to the latest episode of the Insights Podcast by Accel

Notes:

04:24 – Early days of startup journey

11:22 – Picking the right mountain and validating it (Vertical vs Horizontal SaaS)

20:40 – Finding the first set of customers

29:55 – Business model and monetizing

34:55 – Funding the early phase: bootstrapping vs fundraising

39:20 – Scaling up phase, expanding geographies

48:30 – Advise for early-stage SaaS founders

50:30 – Rapid Fire Round

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Alex throws light on how the entrepreneurs from frontier markets are reinventing startup best practices and offering a brand new playbook for innovation that looks different from that of startups in the valley.

The podcast centres around the shift of innovation from the silicon valley to the global playground. Alex talks about the incredible stories of entrepreneurs in emerging markets who maneuver challenging environments to build resilient sustainable businesses that create large social impact.

To hear more from Alex on global innovation trends, tune in to the latest episode of the Insights Podcast by Accel

Notes:

02:31 – Genesis of ‘Out-Innovate’, the book

04:44 – Future is at the frontier: Innovation increasingly coming from emerging markets

08:49 – Social impact of creators

16:59 – The camel approach: Building sustainability from Day 1

20:50 – Going global from the Get-go

23:55 – Frontier innovators = Ecosystem builders

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Mukesh shares how his journey as a leader has evolved over the last decade and in times of COVID, what got him to write a book, and how he manages to carve out time to give back to the community.

The podcast deals with some of the most relevant topics in today’s times: focusing on holistic health, improving performance, and giving back.

Notes:

02:10 – Productivity in COVID times

03:39 – Settling into the new rhythm of running the company

05:36 – Executing fast through decentralized decision making

09:36 – Hacks for managing personal physical & mental fitness

13:04 – Cracking the performance code: No Limits

18:09 – Importance of introspecting about purpose

20:39 – Long term strategic thinking and daily healthy habits

24:00 – Supporting the Olympic Gold Quest initiative

26:14 – ACT Grants and Bharat Health Stack

27:50 – Rapid Fire Round

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Subrata and Prashanth share an on the ground view of the state of the VC ecosystem in India amidst the COVID situation and what to expect for the road ahead. They share advice for founders as they plan for the tough times ahead along with learnings and observations from previous economic downturns including some of the positive outcomes.

The podcast clears the air around what founders can expect the fundraising situation to look like in the next near future.

01:27 – Comparing COVID-19 times with dot-com bubble burst and 2008 recession

06:23 – Efforts going on in the startup- VC ecosystem around helping fight COVID

09:50 – Current state of Indian VC ecosystem amidst COVID

13:00 – Assessing risk at a portfolio level

16:08 – Actionable advice to startup founders

20:20 – Planning for cash runway- time frame and approach

21:55 – Advice for founders looking to startup or in pre-PMF stage

24:30 – Fast forward: view of 24 months ahead

28:43 – Reinventing yourself in crisis times (INSIGHTS #13: 1999 to 2018 — Ashish Hemranjani recaps the BookMyShow journey)

30:25 – Fundamental transformation of some sectors

31:13 – Dealing with anxiety

33:25 – Rapid Fire Round

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This is a continuation to podcast #46 on SaaS. In this podcast, Shekhar and Krish dive deeper into the best practices for building a SaaS company out of India.

Shekhar and Krish share learnings on the important tips to keep in mind for founders looking to build a large SaaS company: spending time on market research to identify the right opportunity in your area of interest, validating the problem through multiple customer interviews, building strong context on the problem before building the MVP and having the willingness to pay conversation early on.

The podcast is filled with analogies and examples from Shekhar and Krish’s more than decade-long experience in SaaS.

To learn more about things you need to get right to be successful in building a large SaaS company, tune in to the latest episode of the Insights Podcast by Accel

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Notes:

01:47 – Climbing the mountain analogy

05:18 – The advantage of having a strong industrial experience

09:08 – First mover advantage

13:32 – India advantage for SaaS startups

19:00 – Picking a good founding team

21:57 – Co-creating product with initial customers

23:30 – Understanding go to market

29:28 – Building MVP

32:15 – Testing for willingness to pay from early on

35:00 – Rapid Fire Round

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How are Indian Startups dealing with the COVID-19 situation?

This is a special podcast episode that deals with the tough situation that the world is facing today amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and features how the startup ecosystem in India is responding to it.

We have 4 guests on the podcast this time around:

Vivekananda Hallekere, CEO & Co-founder of Bounce (two-wheeler scooter sharing solution operating in Bangalore & Hyderabad)
Abhiraj Bhal, Founder and CEO of Urban Company (managed market place for all kinds of home services)
Suman Gopalan, Chief HR Officer of Freshworks (Software-as-a-Service company focused on customer engagement)
Girish Menon, Head of HR, Swiggy (online food ordering and delivery platform)

Podcast Summary

Our guests today represent startups employing over ten thousand employees and take out time from their schedule to share some of the best practices for dealing with the disruption to business operations.

Vivek, Abhiraj, Suman, and Girish cover some of the most critical themes for business owners which include communicating within the organization and with the customers, prioritizing the health and safety of all stakeholders, planning for business continuity and dealing with challenges that come along the way.

To learn more about how these leading startups are dealing with the COVID-19 situation, tune in to the latest episode of the Insights Podcast by Accel

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Notes -

02:04 – Vivek on dealing with business continuity challenges at Bounce

05:48 – Abhiraj on steps taken to continue Urban Company’s business line

10:24 – Suman on the steps they’re taking at Freshworks globally

15:12 – Limiting exposure vs. extreme measure at the cost of losing business

20:45 – Best practices on communicating to customers

21:58 – Girish on educating customers and 2 lakh + delivery executives at scale

27:30 – Dealing with challenges in rolling out Business Continuity Plans for work from home

35:24 – Keeping employee productivity in check

38:40 – Impact of COVID-19 on business plan and runway

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Spotify Link: https://open.spotify.com/show/1YQdnQ50mmenzWVA2MBsQy

Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/insights-podcast-series/id1364412685

The several success stories of Zoho, Freshworks, Browserstack, Icertis who have all reached several hundred million dollars in ARR with most of their product built in India give proof points for the possibility to build large scale SaaS companies coming out of India.

Unlike the 90s when software was a one-time sale, the subscription nature of SaaS pricing ensures that the interests of the customer and the software vendor are well aligned. Today, there are over a hundred thousand software companies serving over two thousand categories with over five hundred billion dollars spent on software purchases. The SaaS industry is just one hundred fifty to two hundred billion dollars, so there’s another three hundred billion dollars of traditional on-prem software that needs to be replaced. Another opportunity exists in creating a product for the customers currently being served by custom software solutions built by the large IT services companies. At the same time, new industries are seeing digitization, creating more opportunities for building software.

In terms of liquidity as well, SaaS as a sector offers significant options- from an active M&A market and active interest from venture capital and private equity to fund growth to several examples of companies going public.

Krish ends by quoting Jason Lemkin, “In a SaaS business, once you cross $10M with good momentum, you basically become unkillable because of the recurring nature of the business”

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In the first episode of 2020's #InsightsPodcast series, we take a look back to round up the learnings that 2019’s series left us with.We kick-start 2020’s #InsightsPodcast series with a special episode that offers a quick roundup of our 2019 podcasts and presents the top 12 highly recommended insights for entrepreneurs.

Finding the right opportunity

The bare essential task of identifying the right opportunity is something that every founding team must go through.

1.Farid Ahsan of Sharechat shares how he and his co-founders went about discovering the idea. “We started observing why people were making WhatsApp groups and sharing content on them.”

2.Ritesh Arora of Browserstack shares the importance of thinking global from early on, helping expand the opportunity set for the startup.

3.Kunal Shah of Cred shares his framework on how startups can validate whether their idea is creating a delta change in consumer behaviour and emphasises the importance of picking a market opportunity with good tailwinds. “Great product-market fits even with mediocre founders create a lot of value while terrible product-market fits with great founders can never create value. Fighting headwinds only burns fuel.” Building a team and culture to go after that idea The team forms the building block of any organisation and is an integral contributor to the success of a startup. A good culture keeps the team motivated to keep going after the problem.

4.Naveen Tewari of Inmobi talks about the importance of having a co-founder in the roller-coaster of a journey that entrepreneurship comprises. “Most of the moments in the journey are low moments. The co-founder’s role is to bring you out of these low moments that you’re in and vice versa.”

5.Binny Bansal of Flipkart shares about the importance of being willing to ‘let go’ and empowering your team. “We realised that only way to scale the company was to hire people like us, to do the things that we do - there were going to be hundreds of things to do and we would need hundreds of people would need to work like we work, every day.”

6.Girish Mathrubootham of Freshworks talks about focusing about culture and building a work environment that motivates and inspires the team. “Anybody can create a happy work environment, but the real happiness is when people really feel that they’re playing to their strengths, the job is tapping their potential and giving them an opportunity to learn, and that they have managers who they see as role models.” Raising money and building a sustainable company With a boundless vision comes the need to find the right support, and finding the right investor can really help a startup.

7.Harsh Jain of Dream11 talks about the advantage of meeting investors ahead of fundraising. “Meet VCs six months or a year before raising money and get honest, open feedback. When the journey and progress is shared with VCs, they’re much more vested.” 8. Deep Kalra of Makemytrip talks about the importance of unit economics and scaling sustainably. “Irrespective of the kind of business, you should not be losing money on a variable cost basis.” Key lessons for founders’ growth In the greater scheme of the startup journey, the founder’s individual self often gets ignored. Here are some key insights on keeping a founder’s growth on track. 9. Shradha Sharma of YourStory talks about the founder’s growth journey being more internal and how entrepreneurship is a journey of patience and perseverance. “You have to internally reflect very deeply on what you want.” 10. Nandan Nilekani of Infosys and the man behind the Aadhaar programme talks about the importance of being execution-focused. 11. Ritesh Agarwal of Oyo talks about the importance of perseverance. 12. Dheeraj Pandey of Nutanix shares his valuable insights on balancing family life along with running a startup.

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In this edition of the #INSIGHTSPodcast series, we have with us Aditya Agarwal and Ruchi Sanghvi, both of whom were early members of Facebook's engineering team.

Aditya was the first Director of Product Engineering at Facebook. He also co-founded Cove, a modern collaboration software company that was acquired by Dropbox, where he went on to join as the VP of Engineering and Chief Technology Officer. He was also on the board of Flipkart.

Ruchi was the first female engineer at Facebook, and went on to co-found Cove along with Aditya and Akhil Wable. Cove was a collaboration, coordination and communication product for organisations and communities. On acquisition by Dropbox, she joined in as the VP of Operations. She also established South Park Commons, a residential and professional tech space that functions similarly to a hackerspace.

Ruchi graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a degree in electrical computer engineering in 2004, a time when it was tough for international students to find a job in the US. While extending her stay at the university so she could interview with more companies, Ruchi became a power user of Facebook, was fascinated about what they were building and went on to join them as their first female engineer.

Growing up in Southeast Asia, Aditya graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a degree in computer science and joined Facebook as one of its first five engineers.

Facebook's hacker culture

Aditya and Ruchi share their Facebook experience, including being part of some of the earliest architecture - the Facebook search engine and the News Feed. Giving a glimpse into Facebook's hacker culture from the early days, Ruchi and Aditya share how the engineers were always into building something- a minimum usable version- much before the concept of MVP was talked about.

Aditya talks about the importance of focusing on tooling and infrastructure to be able to deploy faster even at scale with a conscious effort to improve iteration speed and tracking it just as closely as the business metrics.

Ruchi speaks about the importance of adding light-weight processes that are built for the work environment of your company, and updating these processes every four months to make the product management practice in the organisation stronger.

After Facebook, Ruchi and Aditya decided to start up on their own to change the way organisations communicate and collaborate with Cove. The startup went on to become Dropbox's first acquisition.

Culture of original thinking

Discussing the pros and cons of starting a company with your partner, Ruchi highlights the importance of being cognizant of each other's strengths and weaknesses, making sure that one partner isn't dragging the other along and that both want to participate, and finally having a clear understanding from the start on who's taking the lead.

On the hiring front, Ruchi says, "When companies find product-market fit, everything feels like it is falling apart. You need to hire enough people to keep things going. At that point, most people are often looking for the unicorn hire - someone who is perfect when the company is just 50 people but can also scale with the company when it gets to 100 people, is an individual contributor, and an excellent manager. It becomes impossible to find this unicorn hire at that stage. People need to reset expectations on how this person can help your company today and in the next one to two years, and be comfortable that their roles might evolve over the next few years."

Aditya and Ruchi end by sharing tips on how they manage their personal lives and their excitement for the way the Indian startup ecosystem is shaping up.

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In this episode of the #INSIGHTSPodcast series, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Chairperson and MD of Biocon, talks about starting up and her strategic shift to the biopharma industry, and gives young entrepreneurs advice on innovation, problem-solving, and mentorship.

We continue with the #INSIGHTSPodcast series and on this episode, we have with us Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Chairperson and Managing Director of Biocon.

A pioneer of the biotech industry in India and the head of the country’s leading biotechnology enterprise, Kiran is a highly respected business leader and has been named among Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. She’s a recognised global thought leader in biotechnology and has been awarded the Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan, two of India’s highest civilian honours.

Today, Biocon is one of Asia’s largest biopharmaceutical companies — 12,000-people strong with 30 percent women, most of whom are scientists. It focuses on diabetes and cancer as thrust areas and has a vision of making global impact on healthcare by providing affordable access to life-saving drugs.

On this podcast, Kiran talks about her journey, building Biocon, how she started out, built a great team, and went on to take the company to IPO. She also shares insights on how founders can find a good work-life balance by prioritising what matters most to them.

An accidental entrepreneur

Kiran calls herself an “accidental entrepreneur”, starting Biocon when she was discriminated against as a woman while applying for the job of a brewmaster. She set up Biocon in 1978, initially focusing on the enzyme industry, and made a strategic shift to the biopharmaceutical industry as it was a much bigger opportunity — riding the shift in cancer care from chemotherapy to immunotherapy.

Starting up at the age of 25, in a field that was not understood by many, raising capital was not an easy task. Especially at a time when a woman entrepreneur without collateral was considered a high financial and business risk. Hiring talent was another challenge. As Kiran started building her company, she aggressively pursued building the team, hiring people with complementary skills to form the core team, and incentivised them with rich stock options.

A bottomline-driven business

In 2004, Kiran did a lot of roadshows and went IPO, to raise capital for the business. She wasn’t concerned about raising the value of the company, but made sure it was profitable in the last four quarters before going public and had clear visibility on profits in the foreseeable future. She says today’s companies are topline-driven in contrast to her business that is “bottomline-driven”.

Opportunities to learn

On her personal growth, Kiran says she used her team as a think-tank and used her mentors to draw inspiration and for brainstorming.

“Mentors in an entrepreneur’s journey should only help stay focused. I don’t think any entrepreneur should keep going back to a mentor asking ‘what should I do next’? That is not entrepreneurship,” she says.

“Entrepreneurs need to script their own journey, figure out their own things, and solve problems. If you keep running back to your mentor at the drop of your hat, you’re not an entrepreneur. A true entrepreneur is a risk-taker, problem-solver, a person who’s willing to face challenges and failure.”

Kiran says she encourages young entrepreneurs to not worry about making mistakes and see them as opportunities to learn. Adding to her advice, she urges them not to wait to develop the perfect product and to instead go to market first.

Continuing to reiterate how AI can help transform healthcare, she also gives her take on work-life balance. Kiran believes the answer to this question is only one: “Prioritisation”.

Tune in to the podcast to hear more interesting insights from Kiran’s journey of launching and growing Biocon.

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INSIGHTS #42 Madhavan Ramanujam of Simon-Kucher gives his take on monetising innovation by Accel

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In this episode of #InsightsPodcast series, we have Dheeraj Pandey, Chairman and CEO of Nutanix, taking us through his journey of building a generational company, its IPO story, and how he built a culture of reading and learning at his organisation.

As we continue with the #InsightsPodcast series, we head to Silicon Valley to meet Dheeraj Pandey, Chairman and CEO, Nutanix. The company helps customers modernise their data centres and run applications of any scale on the cloud. Dheeraj co-founded Nutanix a decade ago and took the company public on NASDAQ in 2017. Today, the company trades at a $5 billion+ market cap. Dheeraj’s entrepreneurial spirit has been recognised with several prestigious awards including Dell’s Founders 50 and E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year, Silicon Valley.

On this podcast, Dheeraj takes us through his journey of building a generational company, his vision of making computing invisible, and the Nutanix IPO journey. Dheeraj grew up in Patna, finished his undergrad as a Computer Science major at IIT Kanpur, and then decided to pursue a PhD at UT Austin. He completed his master’s and dropped out of the PhD programme to pursue a career in the computer science industry. Before starting Nutanix, Dheeraj spent a decade working in the industry with stints at a couple of startups and one large company (Oracle) building software for data servers.

Read to grow

Talking about his transition from engineering roles to that of a CEO to build a business, Dheeraj gives an analogy of how the product and the go-to-market strategy are like the heart and brain of the business and over time he learnt to straddle both ends of the spectrum driven by his passion for building the bridge between technology and business. Dheeraj has always believed in learning from the experiences shared by his advisors and is an avid reader. Learning from other entrepreneurial journeys, he believes, gives one precedence and courage to deal with the highs and lows of the roller coaster ride that building a business can be. He explains that as a company, Nutanix has built an organisation culture that cares about reading. “It gives you courage, parallels, frameworks, and principles to think about. It’s a great de-stressor,” he says.

Disrupt to stay relevant

Switching gears and sharing lessons for entrepreneurs, Dheeraj starts by talking about the importance of disrupting yourself with a long-term view versus becoming irrelevant. He says, “You should act as a competitor to yourself because if you don’t, someone else will, and it will be a lot more uncomfortable to deal with the unknowns of a competitor.” This was realised at Nutanix when they decided to give away their software to their hardware partners allowing them to compete with Nutanix (shaving of 26 percent of top line) and again when Nutanix made the shift from software to subscription. Both the times involved a complete change in business model at the scale of a publicly traded company. These bold moves allowed Nutanix to disrupt themselves and extend their reach, stay more relevant as the customer’s tastes changed.

Dheeraj talks about how businesses/entrepreneurs who postpone gratification and think about long-term gains mostly constitute large outcomes. The largest companies have taken long-term bets, something that the mob doesn’t have the courage or fortitude to do. That said, long-term goals must be check-pointed with short-term ones, without losing sight of the larger picture.

This for Nutanix came out in the form of the 5Hs- Hungry, Humble, Honest, Heart, and Humour.

On a closing note, Dheeraj shares how at the end of the day, family is as much a partner in the entrepreneurial journey as you are. “You are at war out there and when you go home you don’t want to be at war. Hence it is so important to reduce that friction. You have to believe that your professional goal is something that you share with your spouse.”

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As we continue with the #INSIGHTSPodcast series, on this edition we have with us Hans Tung, Managing Partner at GGV Capital. Hans, who is a seven-time Forbes Midas Lister and has invested in 15 unicorns over the last decade-and-a-half, leads the US operations of GGV Capital. Some of his investments include shopping app Wish, second-hand marketplace OfferUp, Chinese social commerce company Xiaohongshu, workplace tool Slack, electronics maker Xiaomi, Chinese super app Meituan-Dianping, scooter sharing company Lime, among others.

On this podcast, Hans shares his journey of witnessing first-hand the three phases of the Chinese startup ecosystem: from PC to mobile phones to high speed internet powered smartphones.

Born in Taiwan and having immigrated to the US at 13, Hans went to college at Stanford and took up a career in finance. After stints in banking and growth investing, and spending a few years as an entrepreneur, Hans saw the value in moving to China where he could make use of his understanding of both the East and the West. He joined Bessemer Venture Partners marking the start of his career in venture capital. He went on to spend a few years with QiMing Venture Partners before moving back to the Bay Area with GGV Capital.

Recalling his China days, Hans talks about how the time he went to China (mid-2000s) was seen as being either five years too late - as the PC internet era started in 1999 - or five years too early - as the iPhone was yet to be announced. He did learn though that the Chinese startup ecosystem was fiercer in terms of competition than the Silicon Valley, contrary to the popular belief that the discrimination against US companies made China a protective turf for starting up.

The Chinese ecosystem grew hand in hand with the consumption pattern of the emerging middle class, urbanisation, and government initiatives focused on improving the infrastructure. By working with internet companies across both the PC era (the likes of Baidu and Tencent) and the smartphone era (the likes of Xiaomi), Hans learnt the importance of providing solutions that are cheap in terms of cost but high quality in terms of customer satisfaction and serving the mass market. While those forming the mass market have lower disposable incomes, they bring in the advantage of having more time on their hands, hence spend more time on a company's services.

This was true in the case of Alibaba as well. Jack Ma's belief was that offline marketplaces existed because everyone didn't have everything. He focused hard on getting more suppliers than anyone on his platform so that over time consumers came to his shop not for cheaper prices but for higher choice of selection.

Having worked with several successful founders, a common thread that Hans has seen across them is that they are all extremely driven, passionate about things they do, and have a vision that is transformational and inspiring for others to be willing to join the journey.

"They tend to be extremely thoughtful and analytical, are level-headed, and open-minded to try a lot of different things and iterate quickly," he says.

On his thoughts on India, Hans shares his excitement for the Indian ecosystem, expecting to see many more companies from India that go global following the lead of OYO.

On a closing note, Hans has a movie recommendation for Indian founders in People's Republic of Desire, and quotes Kobe Bryant:

"A lot of people think like 'if I have to choose between vegetables and ice cream'. I love eating vegetables. I don't mind getting up four o'clock in the morning to train for 20 years in a row. That's the fun part and always being in the heat of the NBA championship year after year. That's what makes me happy."

The best founder has that characteristic in them.

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We continue with the #INSIGHTSPodcast series, and on this edition we have Hari Menon, Co-founder and CEO of BigBasket, India’s largest online food and grocery store, which serves 10 million customers in 30 cities today.

In this podcast, Hari takes us through the journey of starting and scaling BigBasket and gives a behind-the-curtain glimpse of the years of grocery business experience that led to building an expertise in grocery supply chain and culminated in building India's leading online grocer.

Starting up in the 90s: too early to market

Born and brought up in Mumbai, Hari graduated from BITS Pilani and chose to start working right away. A few jobs old, and exposed to the internet boom during his stint at Wipro, Hari decided to start Fabmart in 1999, an ecommerce company that started by selling cassettes online, and quickly diversified to books, jewellery, toys, and groceries. This was at a time when the Indian consumer was still wary of transacting online, there were no payment gateways, and deliveries were difficult. The business model was too early for the market and the dot com bust made it difficult to raise more capital from investors. The team decided to leverage the platform developed and the existing warehouse set up to pivot into a physical grocery chain built on a franchisee model that they scaled from 15 stores in Bangalore to 200+ stores in South India before getting acquired by Aditya Birla Group.

Bigbasket: timing it right the second time

The founding team went on to do different things before coming together again half a decade later, when the market had caught up with their initial vision- broadband had picked up, payment gateways were there and Flipkart was demonstrating serious traction in terms of online transactions- the time was right for ‘BigBasket’. Calling upon the supply chain expertise in the complex grocery business from Fabmart days and with a focus on setting up a robust backend technology, the team’s second bid at making Indians shop for groceries online picked steam very quickly.

“We expanded fast because one thing we told ourselves was that if we did get into a city, we would do the entire city. Secondly, we would start with fruits and vegetables because that was the toughest one to solve for in terms of supply chain (due to the highly perishable nature).”

Today Bigbasket is the fifth largest grocer in the country after offline giants D-Mart, Reliance, Big Bazaar, and More. Hari’s near term vision is to take it to top three.

Talking about personal growth as CEO, Hari talks about how valuing trust and attitude over skills and knowledge while getting people to join, obsessing about process (BigBasket’s head of HR has authored a book called ‘Say No to Jugaad’) and being passionate about the grocery business has helped take Bigbasket to where it is today. He says that knowing when to pivot and when not to pivot is something every entrepreneur must learn- instead of being emotional about the original idea which at times goes against the company's interests. Last but not the least, he emphasizes the importance of having an unshakable conviction on the business, something that helped BigBasket survive the test of time and emerge as a successful business today.

“It's all about getting that emotion out and saying, you know let's pivot but you won't get it because you're so emotionally attached to the idea that you're not even thinking right. Then it's important to believe in your model in spite of giants and large investors coming in and pumping money. The whole world was talking about SoftBank, Tiger backing asset-light models but we stuck our ground on the need for inventory control. Since then, there really has been no looking back.”

On a closing note, Hari shares his fondness for cricket and music, something that is well known in the startup ecosystem. Tune in to the podcast to learn more about Hari’s roller coaster journey.

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We continue with the #InsightsPodcast series, and on this edition we have with us Manu Kumar Jain, Managing Director of Xiaomi India- a leader in smartphones, televisions, and many other products. Manu walks us through the journey of setting up Xiaomi in India and scaling it to become one of the best mobile phone brands in India in a very capital efficient way.

Starting by talking about his childhood days, Manu remembers growing up in Meerut in a large family with a business background, where the ultimate aspiration was to set up shop- the larger the shop the more successful one was. Unlike most of his cousins, Manu decided to pursue engineering from IIT Delhi and then did his MBA from IIM Calcutta, post which he worked with Mckinsey for five years before co-founding Jabong. He ran Jabong for 2 years before moving out and then joined Xiaomi to start their India business.

Talking about Early days at Jabong, Manu gets candid about how his first thoughts on selling fashion online was that “it was a stupid idea”, but after some persuasion from his co-founders he was able to take the leap of faith, only to get pleasantly surprised that a lot of people were willing to buy shoes and clothes online. Riding on the wave of mobile first online consumers, Jabong grew from thousand orders a day to ten thousand orders a day, to become a top two player in the online fashion space.

Hugely fascinated about mobile as a category and having heard about a Chinese company trying to do things differently by online as the primary channel for sales, Manu connected with the founders through his network out of pure interest to learn more about the company’s journey. After multiple exchanges between Manu and the founders, sharing learnings with each other on the China and India landscape, Lin Bin, Co-Founder & President of Xiaomi, offered Manu to join them to start their India business.

At a time when India had more than 300 smartphone brands, Xiaomi went ahead with an online only sales strategy when everyone else was spending huge marketing dollars on advertising and sponsorships. From very early on, the expectation from the board was to be profitable and not burn at a day-to-day operations level. This led Xiaomi to take a product focused approach and leverage social media to take its consumer delight story to the masses. What others spent on marketing, Xiaomi spent on quality of the phone giving the customer a better hardware and a better camera.

“We can’t make more than five percent margin from any of our hardware products by board resolution. We believe in a concept called as honest price. We cut down all possible costs like marketing, distribution, working capital, inventory cost and pass on that benefit to the user without keeping a profit margin for ourselves.”

The social media angle that bolstered Xiaomi’s rise to the top continues to be a core part of today’s focus. Mi community today has more than 70 million MAUs and physical fan clubs in more than 25 cities.

Finally, sharing learnings for young entrepreneurs, Manu talks about the importance of having mentors who do not have a vested interest in your company or you, so that the conversations are brutal and honest. Last but not the least, Manu stresses about the importance of investing in the team and ensuring that good performers grow within the company, from both and equity and cash perspective. Spending time with the team has always been in the top three priorities for Manu. “One-on-one or group sessions are not only meant for year-end appraisals but should be a part of your weekly and monthly schedule time. And these are not performance reviews but to ask how they're feeling, how they're growing and for discussing about stuff informally too, within work and outside work.”

Tune in to the podcast to hear more interesting bits and insights from Manu’s journey of scaling Xiaomi to its today’s scale.

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We continue with the #InsightsPodcast series, and on this edition we have Deep Kalra, Founder and Group CEO of MakeMyTrip, India’s leading online travel company. Today, the company has become the go-to-site for majority of Indians looking to book flight tickets, hotel reservations, rail and bus tickets.

In this podcast, Deep takes us through his journey of building MakeMyTrip at a time when internet adoption was still early. He talks about how he helped sail through challenging times to eventually list MMT on NASDAQ in 2010 and finally grow it to today’s scale of $2.4 billion market cap.

Bitten by the entrepreneurial bug

Born in Hyderabad and grown up in Delhi, Deep graduated from St. Stephen’s College and completed his MBA from IIM Ahmedabad. Later, he took up a career in banking where he spent three years before taking the bite on his first entrepreneurial pursuit- setting up bowling alleys in India to tap into the expected boom in family entertainment. Not tasting much success, Deep decided to go back to the corporate life, joining GE Capital as VP of Business Development, when he was introduced formally to the internet and the enormous potential it had to significantly impact our everyday lives.

Deep decided to take the plunge into entrepreneurship again, and in April 2000,- MakeMyTrip (MMT) was born. Convinced that his internet venture was bound for success, Deep looked for business verticals that were ripe for internet disruption. He arrived at travel as the industry that was poised for an upstart to take over using the power of internet and because- “travel is fun”.

Lessons from the dotcom bust

Early into the journey, the dotcom bust happened, making it extremely challenging to raise external funding for a business model that was purely built around the internet. At MMT, the team was constantly working with two to three months of runway in terms of expenses, salaries, rent etc.

However, this tough phase turned out to be a blessing in disguise in retrospect, as it forced the team to focus on unit economics from very early on. Another learning from that phase was the importance of patience. “No great company has been built very quickly. It takes time to set up a decent company in India, and probably 10 years to become something. So be patient. Don’t look back for the first 4-5 years. Once you are onto something tweak, pivot, keep your ears to the ground, pick up messages, do the right thing but at the first sign of winter do not back up. It takes a lot of courage to do it all over again. You probably won’t do it all over again”, Deep says.

Through the tough phase, MMT focussed on the NRI segment who were early adopters due to previous experience of transacting online, but in 2005, thanks to IRCTC, the Indian consumer became more comfortable with the idea of purchasing online, which combined with the advent of Low Cost Carriers in India offered MMT a unique opportunity to revolutionize the travel booking industry.

Going public in the US

Having raised four rounds of institutional funding from 2005 to 2009, Deep decided to take MMT to IPO in the US market, where it was a huge hit, appreciating 90 percent on the first day taking MMT to almost a $1B valuation. The listing enabled MMT to enter the hallowed league of Booking.com, Expedia, and the others. More details on the IPO journey in the podcast.

On a closing note, Deep shares his views on how the Indian markets are opening up making it easier for companies to go public, but that companies need to fundamentally focus on building for scale and not look at IPO as an end goal. “So, I would encourage all entrepreneurs, when they are deliberating an IPO to ask themselves a very odd sounding question- Why do you want to IPO?”, Deep ends with a question for scaled founders to ponder on.

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We continue with the #InsightsPodcast series with a path-setter: Naveen Tewari, Co-Founder and CEO of Inmobi, India’s first unicorn. Naveen started a product company at a time when most people weren’t thinking about it, went global and cracked the China market, and is now starting a group of companies under Mobi.

In this podcast, he shares a number of great lessons for first-time founders, from how to go through pivots successfully and the role that co-founders play in maintaining morale in an organisation, to scaling internationally and building a culture that is deeply enriching for the employees who’re part of your startup journey.

Naveen kicks things off by talking about the three businesses under InMobi Group: InMobi Marketing Cloud, Glance, and TruFactor. InMobi Marketing Cloud, the group’s business that everyone associates the brand with and that has been built over the last decade, has a strong presence across the US, China, and the rest of the world. The second business, Glance, is an AI-led content discovery platform at screen zero (ie the lock screen) that hopes to change the way content is consumed on mobile platforms. The third business, TruFactor, is a platform for data scientists, a bet on a future where data will drive business strategy, oftentimes requiring data scientists to solve complex decision-making problems for the company.

The outlier

Rewinding back to the early days, Naveen talks about being born in an intense academic environment with many family members taking up teaching roles at IIT, and how he took a whole different path of joining management consulting instead of the expected PHD or exploring further studies. Post three years at McKinsey, Naveen did his MBA at Harvard Business School, which he calls “the most pivotal two years” of his life, enabling him to go beyond the restrictive thinking of a middle-class boy by establishing belief in his own abilities and that anyone can do big things in life.

After business school, Naveen dabbled in the startup world for a couple of years before starting a venture in the SMS-based search business only to realise that the world was headed towards internet usage with mobiles becoming more prevalent.

The beginning

He speaks about how this phase, before hitting upon the final idea that led to success, was a very tough one — beset with societal pressure and self-doubt. The failures brought in lots of personal learning, but the phase was nevertheless a painful one, especially in the first two years when Naveen didn’t have co-founders.

He adds, “Always have a co-founder because you know in these journeys there are a lot of low moments. Actually, most of them are low moments and the co-founder’s job is not to really go ahead and hit you on strategy. It’s far more important for a co-founder to bring you out of these moments that you are constantly in, and vice-versa.”

On the early days of InMobi, Naveen talks about how he saw the need for businesses to invest in advertising systems once internet became prevalent, and this is the use case that they went after. They quickly realised that India was a small market at the time and expanded to Asia, before going global. The first markets that they entered were ones where they garnered contacts in, expanding from one new market to another, solving for the immediate next step that was planned out for the next 6–12 months.

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In this episode of the #InsightsPodcast series, we have Nandan Nilekani, Co-founder of Infosys and the man who put in place India’s Aadhaar identification system. He tells us about how his time at IIT-Bombay honed his skills, growing Infosys, working on the UIDAI project, and why the ‘thinker-doer’ approach works.

We continue with our #InsightsPodcast, and on this edition have with us one of India’s biggest business legends, Nandan Nilekani, Co-founder of Infosys, its current Non-Executive Chairman and the brain behind Aadhaar while serving as the Chairman of Unique Identification Authority of India. He is a Padma Bhushan awardee and was listed by TIME magazine among the 100 most influential people in the world in 2006 and 2009. In this episode, Nandan shares experiences from both, his business days and from his more recent journey of public service.

Nandan starts by giving a glimpse into his formative years - of growing up in Bengaluru and then Dharwad, and making it to IIT-Bombay without access to any coaching classes. He credits his IIT days with the social skills and confidence that helped him take risk and build a large company like Infosys. While at the college, he dabbled in the many social activities and played a key role in organising IIT-Bombay’s cultural fest, ‘Mood Indigo’.

Talking about his early days, from meeting Narayan Murthy while interviewing for Patni Computer Systems to co-founding Infosys in 1981, building India’s first software campus in Bangalore in 1992 and going public in 1993, Nandan says the vision to build a globally competitive technology company out of India and the planning for scale by focusing on building an aspirational brand for employees and setting audacious goals for growth helped scale the way Infosys did.

“When we were a $3-5 million company, we talked about becoming a $100 million company. When we were approaching $100 million in revenue, we asked what it takes to reach a billion dollars in revenue.”

Nandan talks about how having a five-year blue sky plan, three-year strategic plan and one-year operating plan helped ensure the right mix of nimbleness of a startup and the professionalism of a large corporate. More on the entrepreneurial journey at Infosys, and reimagining it as a cloud service, in the podcast.

Thinking and doing

Talking about his next entrepreneurial stint as employee #1 at UIDAI, Nandan elaborates on the unique experience of building a team that was an amalgamation of stalwart bureaucrats from the public sector and top tech talent from the private sector, working together to successfully roll out Aadhaar. Citing the famous “thinker-doer” approach, Nandan mentions how his experience in thinking and executing roles in both public and private work settings made him uniquely positioned to achieve UIDAI’s mandate.

Opening up on the personal front, Nandan says that his curiosity to learn new things, being open to learning from others in an attempt to constantly stay relevant, desire to do something new, and willingness to live with uncertainty are all part of the core beliefs that define his value system.

Be frugal with time

Nandan talks about how the dual approach of being execution- obsessed while being able to step back and think big picture is something that’s helpful for founders to think clearly.

On scaling as a founder, Nandan has a simple tip: “Being frugal with your time is important. I am generous with my money, but frugal with my time. Money, you can give it away and make it again. Time is a perishable resource.”

Talking about the present-day startup ecosystem, Nandan is excited and hopes to see the next generation of Kotak, HDFC, TCS, and Infosys emerge to create jobs for millions, and leverage India’s growing $2 trillion economy. He hopes to see leaders spread their power, by delegating, empowering, and sharing the glory.

Tune in to listen to Nandan Nilekani as he speaks about the startup ecosystem, leadership, and the future for India.

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In this edition of the #InsightsPodcast series, we have the man of the hour, Ritesh Agarwal, founder of OYO, largest hotel chain of India that is now operational in more than 60 countries. Ritesh talks about the early days of OYO, how he always had grand plans for OYO and was able to execute them with his able colleagues to scale his company to today’s levels.

Ritesh remembers his childhood self as being the kid who always wanted to do different things. At the age of 13, he was selling sim cards just for the heck of it; at 18, he dropped out of college to start his first company Oravel, and got selected for the Thiel Fellowship, receiving a $100,000 grant from Peter Thiel, Founder of PayPal and an early investor in Facebook.

Spending time staying at friends’ places for a few months opened Ritesh to an exciting opportunity in the hotel industry. On the supply side, most hotels were passive investments for owners and had a fundamental problem of yield generation, with the asset owner wanting to get away from the daily headache of managing the asset. On the consumer side, there was a clear gap in availability of clean, well-organised, and well-designed hotel rooms at an affordable price. Ritesh saw absolutely no reason to not invest himself into solving this problem, and there has been no looking back since then.

“Whenever I have two opportunities, risking it versus regretting it, I would always invariably choose risking it, because I never want to regret that I did not pursue something that I really wanted to do. So that’s sort of what inspired me to start the first OYO hotel”, he says.

Building the right team

OYO today has expanded to beyond just budget hotels, with its offerings featuring upmarket luxury resorts, a chic mid-market accommodation brand (Townhouse), and others. The core principle though has remained the same: “bringing beautiful living spaces to middle income persons world-wide”.

Leveraging technology to scale

Ritesh has always had a focus on leveraging technology in his business. His 700 engineers in China and 700 engineers in rest of the world are constantly building new products and features that help OYO break the boundaries of language and culture through a superior experience. This, along with access to large capital and resources that come along with it, helped Ritesh understand the challenges and opportunities while entering new markets. Local talent has been a game changer, he says.

One of the most distinctive thing about the OYO story is the fact that Ritesh is all of just 25 years old today, which makes his feat seem even more incredible. He credits much of his personal growth to the management team he spends most of his time with who bring in years of experience across venture capital, consulting and operations.

Always curious to learn

Continuing to be field-oriented by learning from people who’re on-ground has helped Ritesh stay true to his entrepreneurial self and bring value to the table. Having a common mission that everyone was working towards, a transparent work environment that held each one accountable, and empowering his team members helped Ritesh keep age out of the picture when it came to team management and decision making.

On a closing note, the OYO founder talks about how he considers perseverance as the most valuable learning from his journey so far. “I feel that perseverance has no replacement. Remembering that there is always light at the end of the tunnel and continuously investing in the same direction for a long period of time is the most important.”

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In this edition of the #InsightsPodcast series, we have Harsh Jain, founder of Dream11, India’s largest fantasy sports platform with 70 million registered users and 10 million paid users. Harsh talks about how he achieved product market fit after multiple pivots while persistently following his passion.

After answering a quick round of rapid-fire questions that reveal his loyalty for Manchester United and Mumbai Indians, Harsh gives a preview of the scale Dream11 has grown to today and the journey that led up to this. He reminisces his high school days in London when he first picked up fantasy football and how it helped him keep in touch with his group of friends in Mumbai over the course of 2 years in London and 4 years of college in Philadelphia. Unwilling to join family business in real estate, Harsh’s itch to do something different and the hype around IPL at the time led to starting Dream11 in 2008, not the version we see today but more of a cricinfo++ with too many features and too little traffic. They moved to an ad driven business model only to realise that CPM rates in India were too poor to build a large business out of it and reached a stage where they ran out of money and had to run a services company on the side to keep the engine running at Dream11. Finally in 2012, they moved to the version of today, removing everything except the core business- fantasy cricket!

It was the time when Airbnb, Paypal and Facebook where in their growth phase and ‘growth hacking’ was a buzzword doing the rounds. Harsh left no stone unturned as he read up everything he could put his hands on around growth hacking, learning about A/B testing, cohort analysis, retention etc. along the way to finally understand what product-market fit was for his business, Dream11 would be an entertainment, fun product rather than an ROI driven product, a platform to multiply the fun of watching sports manifold at a nominal spend.

Harsh adds about the importance of founders knowing their numbers in and out and being crazy about a problem. “If you jump into a market when it’s hot, there is going to be a time when it’s not and you will be the first one to leave as well, because you never came in with passion, you never woke up every morning saying that this is what I want to do with my life, Founders need to enter this journey only when they wake up every morning thinking about this problem and they have a tough time to sleep at night because they’ve not had a crack at it. You have to have that passion because the journey is full of potholes and barriers and if you don’t have that passion, you won’t be able to survive.”

As a last thought, Harsh says, “Just fail, just go for it. Stop sitting, stop thinking, just start. Fail early, fail fast and be open to continuously pivoting and finding your way. Don’t wait for that big idea and more importantly do NOT not share your idea, speak to others and get feedback.”

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In this episode of the #INSIGHTSPodcast series, Divyank Turakhia, Founder of online advertising business Media.net, speaks about why entrepreneurs should focus on the right things, keep risks in mind, and must always be nimble.

We continue with the #InsightsPodcast series, and on this edition we have with us Divyank Turakhia, Founder of Media.net, one of the largest online advertising businesses worldwide, which he bootstrapped till he eventually sold it in 2016 for $900 million.

Divyank starts off by talking about his early days growing up in a small apartment in Mumbai, and how he started reading his dad’s collection of books at the age of five. This love for reading is something he attributes his success to.“I spend somewhere between 800 to 1,000 hours a year reading, and I’ve done that for the last 20–30 years of my life”, he says. The learning goals became more specific as he progressed along his entrepreneurial journey, but even today, you’ll find him trying to get every bit of information possible on a topic that is relevant to a business problem he’s solving.

On being asked how he went about picking ideas for his startups, Divyank stresses on how it was never about coming up with a truly original ideafor him, but about coming up with a large space to focus on.

Being a techie, Divyank was looking for a large industry that had something to do with the internet: ecommerce and online advertisingwere the most obvious businesses that came to mind. He went ahead with online advertising as it was closer to his domain experience (the fact that he didn’t know much about logistics, which was at the heart of ecommerce also influenced the decision). He started with the niche space of domain advertising, leveraging his knowledge on domain names from his previous startup, as well as the relationships he had built. As he expanded from domain advertising to mainstream online advertisingat Media.net, he made sure he used the same strategy: owning a nichebefore moving to the mainstream part of the online advertising industry.

“If I directly started competing with the giants on day one, I would obviously fail because I don’t have the same resources in any form. The idea was to pick a nichethat some of the giants were not paying as much attention to, so that once you grow in it, you know enough,” Divyank says.

Sharing tips for young entrepreneurs, Divyank talks about the importance of keeping an eye out for the risks that the business faces. “As you build a business, you need to keep thinking about what are the top 10–20 risks that exist in your businessthat could wipe you out entirely and have a very rough plan to tackle them.”

He adds that having success metrics and measuring them on an ongoing basishelps prioritise efforts and resources on the most important problems.

Talking about dealing with failures, Divyank mentions how he keeps working on the problemuntil he’s solved it. That said, he urges entrepreneurs to reprioritise when needed. “Whenever you come across something that is more meaningful and that deserves your time and the time of your team a lot more because it’s a larger opportunity, you need to have that nimblenessand you need to be okay to let go off certain things that you’ve been working on. The industry changes all the time, events happen all the time, the marketplace changes all the time, needs change all the time, newer tech comes in. You need to benimble to change and constantly change.”

Towards the end of the podcast, Divyank urges entrepreneurs not to fuss about market timing. “There’s no such thing as perfect timing. All timing is perfect. The more important thing is to get started.”

Tune in to listen to Divyank share his views about startups, growing them, and the need to be willing to change.

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In this episode of the #INSIGHTSPodcast series, Ashwin Damera, Co-founder of EdTech company Eruditus, speaks about the effect the 'founder-startup fit' has on scaling a company and the importance of a mentor.

The #INSIGHTSPodcast series continues with Ashwin Damera, Co-founder of Eruditus, an EdTech company that makes Ivy League education affordable and accessible to the world.

Eruditus offers a wide portfolio of customized and open programs delivered in India, Singapore, Dubai, and other global locations. It also runs Emeritus Institute of Management, which provides short-duration online courses. The company currently has 30,000 students across 85+ countries pursuing certificate courses, diplomas, or online degrees.

In the podcast, Ashwin, who belongs to a South Indian family and was 'expected' to work for an MNC, talks about his journey into the world of startups. He recaps his college journey at Harvard Business School and how studying in Boston in an Ivy League institute changed his perspective about education and life.

He also talks about the origin of Travelguru, his first startup, and the risks he endured to start the company and run it for five years before it was acquired by Travelocity.

While every founder talks about product-market fit, Ashwin speaks about the 'founder-startup fit' and the radical importance it holds when it comes to scaling a company. "Somebody maybe very good at starting a company and taking it to $10 million in revenue, but from $10 million to $100 million, is that founder still a good fit for that company, at that stage?"

Ashwin envisioned Eruditus as he firmly believes education is transformational. He credits it for teaching him to take the plunge and become an entrepreneur. With Eruditus and Emeritus, they decided to solve the problem of lack of high-quality education.

"How many people from India, Southeast Asia, China, or Mexico can pack up their bags for two years, spend more than a crore, and get that education. In most cases, even though people want to, the schools only accept five-10 percent. Accessibility is a huge challenge. So, one of the things we set to do was solve this challenge," he says.

As Eruditus scaled, Ashwin speaks about the launch of online programs through Emeritus and providing education that is completely opposite to the massive open online course (MOOC) model. He emphasizes on learning from their mistakes and understanding that classroom audience and online audience may not always demand the same product - in their case, courses.

The path Eruditus took, in 2016, by accepting capital was completely different from the one they had previously travelled for five years as a bootstrapped startup. Ashwin tells us why capital was essential to grow and scale.

As a founder, he also speaks about doing something you are passionate about, while also trying to find a big business space which allows you to launch a new S-curve every two years.

Comparing travel to education, he explains why it is crucial to building a sustainable enterprise over the years. The team that builds a startup and the team that is helping it scale is extremely important, Ashwin says.

He also emphasizes the importance of a mentor and the guiding angel they can be through this journey. On finding work-life balance, he says: "If you are running your startup as a marathon you will cover 24 km, but if you sprint you will cover 100 meters. To run it as a marathon, you need to have work-life balance."

Tune in to listen to Ashwin share his knowledge about the startup culture and the exceptional growth of Emeritus in eight years.

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We continue with the #InsightsPodcast series, and on this edition, we have Ritesh Arora, Co-Founder and CEO of Browser Stack, a mobile and web testing platform. In this podcast you will hear about Ritesh’s journey as a young engineer how he pivoted through a few startup ideas before landing on the BrowserStack idea. And how he bootstrapped the startup to more than $20M in revenue - a humongous achievement for any founder.

Ritesh comes from a family background in business, and always had an eye for venturing

on the entrepreneurial journey. Teaming up with his roommate from IIT Bombay, Ritesh started his first startup in final year of college: building a product for sentiment analysis in 2005, which involved him picking up machine learning and natural language processing way before AI/ML became fashionable. “I read probably about every research paper published on the topic at that time, about 76 of them. Went through them multiple times and came up with our own algorithm.”

Unable to come up with a go-to-market for the product, Ritesh and Nakul decided to take up jobs, but the desire to build something consumer-facing got them started soon on their second venture, in the space of information aggregation on the internet. This time around they were even able to gain traction, but monetization and identifying the right business model proved to be a challenge.

Ritesh and Nakul spent a year brainstorming before stumbling on the problem that BrowserStack solves today, while consulting with companies that were seeking their help in building machine learning solutions. ‘Testing website on internet browsers’ was a challenge for thousands of developers globally and something that Ritesh and Nakul experienced first hand as developers .

Ritesh and Nakul, set out to simplify the journey of developers by helping them test and debug their website on different browsers (mainly Internet Explorer at that time). The traction they got this time around was explosive, starting with 10K beta users in three weeks (thanks to John Resig’s tweet), moving to a paid offering soon that grew to $20K monthly revenues in about 4-5 months and $1M annual recurring revenue at the end of year one- all this when they were just a team of two, working out of a coffee shop in Mumbai!

The focus on global market from day one helped them scale to $20M annual recurring revenue in a span of four years with just a 50 member team. They realised the need to scale up the organization to be able to sustain the growth and decided to get advisors on board who can help mentor the team in the right direction. The fund-raise for BrowserStack was more about finding the right partner than about raising money. Ritesh speaks about the value that a good investor brings on board especially in the scaling phase, because the founder is always doing it for the first time while the VCs have helped many such companies scale.

Apart from talking about the journey of choosing the right investor, Ritesh shares learnings for younger entrepreneurs, from the early days and emphasizes on focussing towards solving large problems, getting feedback from customers, not solving for monetizing in early days and building a great product that makes the customer’s journey frictionless. “When your customers use your product, they should feel that it has changed their life” he says.

Tune in to the podcast to hear Ritesh’s phenomenal journey which has become an epitome of bootstrapping your way to success.

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On this edition of the #INSIGHTSPodcast series, we have Rahul Pangam, Founder of Simility, a fraud prevention and risk management platform that was acquired by Paypal late last year.

In this podcast, Rahul talks about his early days working at Google, how he met his co-founders, started off with a focus on building solutions for e-commerce companies, which became interesting enough to pique the interest of larger banks as well as Paypal. And of course, the entire phase of the exit.

Building fraud detection and risk management systems at Google led him to the thesis that there would be a greater need for new ways of managing the risk of fraud as more and more businesses went digital and the conventional methods lost relevance. He found great complementary skill sets in his future Co-founders Kedar Samant and Uttam Phalnikar, with Rahul taking charge of the business and operations, Kedar leading data science and Uttam heading infrastructure and engineering.

Rahul talks about the team's thought process at the time, saying, "We knew right off the bat that we were a self-contained unit that could build a POC (proof of concept) and sell the product. The three of us could build a company without needing a fourth person, for at least first 1.5–2 years"

So, Simility started off with the vision of using the power of machine learning to detect and adapt to the constantly changing fraudster behaviour. They decided to first chase ecommerce companies, as they were the easiest with whom the team could build early traction. Moreover, e-commerce was a space that Simility understood better than banking or any other industry in terms of customer pain points.

As Simility scaled, they hired sales, marketing, and user experience teams out of the US while the engineering and data analytics teams were based out of Hyderabad. This was possible thanks to Rahul's network from his days at Google and the incredible young tech talent present in the city who were excited about working for an enterprise startup.

Simility's success with ecommerce players led to inbound interest from fintech players and banks who collaborated to customise the product for the banking industry. As Simility gained traction in the banking industry, investors began showing an interest. Accel, one of their early investors, helped connect Simility to Paypal, who saw great promise in Simility's technology.

The road from Paypal's participation in Simility's Series B funding in December 2017 to the final offer of acquisition at $120 million less than a year later was full of twists and turns, but resulted in a happy ending for everyone involved - investors got a quick return at decent multiples and the folks at Simility found a new and equally loving home at Paypal.

Tune in to the podcast to hear their story.

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On this edition of the #InsightsPodcast series, we have our youngest guest so far, Farid Ahsan, Co-founder of ShareChat, the most popular company in the Indian languages, i.e. vernacular, space. It has over 100 million monthly active users, a feat that they have managed to achieve in less than four years.

On this podcast, Farid talks about his early days at IIT, what motivated him to start up, how he and his co-founders came up with the idea for ShareChat, what has helped them scale, and his learnings from the journey so far.

Growing up in six different cities because his father's job involved regular transfers, Farid became adept at adjusting to new environments and making new friends. At a very early age, he became cognizant of the differences and the commonalities between people of different cultures. He also began to understood the nuances that come with diversity, which lies at the core of ShareChat today.

Farid jokes about the job prospects for his stream, Material Science, not being the best, which meant he had to look at investment banking, consulting, analytics, or joining an early-stage startup as possible career options. Farid did an internship in investment banking, which helped him understand the foundations that made a company successful, but he also realised that he wanted to become an entrepreneur. More on how that came about in the podcast.

Farid sums up his learnings right in the early days in three simple points:

It's not the idea that makes you win. Is your product a 'good to have' or a 'must have'?
It's important to understand how big the opportunity is
Executing your vision is key

"A company is much more than a set of features or products, it is a way of building and solving problems," he says. He talks about how his team was able to implement some of these learnings. For instance, they shut down their initial venture, 'Opinio', a debate platform which they quickly realised was a 'good to have' product for a niche customer segment.

Talking about how they stumbled on the idea for ShareChat, Farid shares the story of how his co-founder Ankush Sachdeva figured out an anomaly on Sachin Tendulkar's Facebook fan page, where a staggering 80,000 people shared their phone numbers so that they could get added to a WhatsApp group.

Farid, Ankush and Bhanu Singh quickly wrote code to create 600 WhatsApp groups and decided to observe user behavior: why were they on WhatsApp, what their problems were, why did they share content on WhatsApp, what was the bragworthy proposition behind sharing content on WhatsApp…and more.

This led them to the core idea that people wanted to find content, were not great at searching for what they wanted, their vocabulary was limited, and this audience was excited about the prospect of interacting with new people. "Group kisi ka bhi ho, dhamaka humara hi hoga, (IT doesn't matter whose group it is, we'll be the ones making waves)", he says, citing the common user mindset.

For the new-age audience who communicate in their own language, the mobile phone with an internet connection has become the gateway to a new world outside their immediate social circle in the past few years. What the trio realised was that, all that this set of people wanted was a platform that helped them with discovery online - and this was what ShareChat was going to be.

Given their success, the strategy has obviously paid off. But between then and now, the road has hardly been an easy one. Farid talks about these and other challenges further in the podcast: Hiring - who are the kind of people they bring on board and why 4. The financial freedom that the ShareChat team has 5. ShareChat's culture of innovation and experimentation (while keeping things efficient) 6. Optimising the founders' bandwidth and helping each other grow

He closes with his take on success and how it is achieved. Listen to the podcast for these and other insights.

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In this edition of the #InsightsPodcast series, we have serial entrepreneur Meena Ganesh, Co-Founder and CEO of Portea Medical, the leading provider of in-home healthcare services in India. Meena has had an illustrious career spanning corporate and the startup world. We talk to her on what has helped her scale across these various environments.

Growing up across the country owing to her father’s job in the Indian Railways, Meena believes her initial days of studying in Kendriya Vidyalaya served as a very good indoctrination, and helped shape how she treats people today. “Studying in a KV really makes you very egalitarian, and you learn to respect people from every background,” she says.

Meena had always been a good student in school, and decided to pursue her undergraduate in physics with the intention of becoming a nuclear physicist, before realising that she was more of a generalist and didn’t have the mentality for research. She pursued a masters from IIM Calcutta and soon after graduation, married her classmate Ganesh. Growing up in an environment where the idea of women having careers was uncommon, the question of whether to continue a career after having children always lingered, But Meena was clear that there were no second thoughts about continuing her career: it was as important as family for her.

Tutorvista reached a scale of managing 35 schools that housed a total of 35,000 students and was eventually acquired by Pearson.

In 2013, Meena set out to look at different focus areas that offered the next big opportunity and felt there was a lot of disruption that could be done in the healthcare space. She observed that there had been a lot of investment in the healthcare provider space in the form of new categories: multispecialty, single specialty and quaternary care hospitals, but not a single well-known brand existed in the outside hospitals space that served as a partner for patients in their long-term healthcare journey.

New to the healthcare sector, other than her experience of being a user while helping her father through his cancer treatment, Meena spent the first six months identifying market problems and realised the importance and need for an ecosystem in the continuum care space.

Convincing hospitals to hand over their patients, convincing patients to adopt a traditionally unknown concept of healthcare delivery at home, and convincing medical professionals to see this as a legitimate career option were all challenges that Portea had to overcome to reach today’s scale of 4,000 medical staff on their platform across the country in over 16 locations.

This need gap quantification, and aligning the opportunity with Portea’s capabilities proved crucial in its success. The visionary in Meena is evident as she shares the one question she’s constantly asking herself, “Does your solution make a big enough impact on people’s lives?”

Summarising her learnings from a plethora of experiences, she says the willingness to shed your ego and learn from everybody, along with the ability to look at the 30,000 ft view as well as work with colleagues in doing ground-level work have been important in helping her scale. Meena’s advice to fellow women professionals is simple, “It is important to prioritise. Work towards making things work at home as well as career, but never second guess yourself. Be open to reach out to people in your circle and ask for help”.

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We continue the #InsightsPodcast series, and on this edition, we have the ever-inspiring and charming Shradha Sharma, Founder & CEO of YourStory. In this podcast, we uncover Shradha’s journey from being a young girl from Patna to building the media powerhouse that YourStory has become today, with a team of 93 people, 80,000 stories published, 1 million subscribers and 20 million readers reached.

Being on the other side of the hot seat for a change, Shradha reflects on her successes and how she scaled as a founder over the past decade. From starting off as an idea to tell positive stories (something that she saw was lacking, in her experience at established media houses) to reaching a stage where the Prime Minister called out to the nation’s youth to read YourStory for inspiration, it has been a long journey for Shradha, where staying true to the vision proved crucial.

We get a peek into Shradha’s childhood: growing up in a family with four daughters and a son, raised alone by her mother while her father was away on work in the Merchant Navy. Shradha was a go-getter from the start and left no stone unturned to give her mother ample opportunities to be proud. She went on to major in History from St Stephen’s in Delhi, where she discovered her love for communication and writing, and also met the love of her life.

Shradha did stints with The Times of India and CNBC in Mumbai and climbed the corporate ladder before finding her calling in sharing relatable stories of common people, which she felt needed to be celebrated. Shradha recalls the struggles in the early days – not just to convince investors that she was not building an NGO but also in getting friends to join her. She was ridiculed, everyone said it wasn’t going to work, but she always had the conviction. In fact, the constant undermining helped stoke a fire in her belly, she shares.

“I chose to be the heroine of my story and not the victim. I used every stone thrown at me. I knew my business was not going to be an overnight success, and that it will take time to build. I wasn’t chasing big money or building a unicorn but drew joy from the work, it was what I loved doing.”

Talking about lessons learnt on both professional and personal front, Shradha has creative acronyms MNM (Mind, Network, Market) and 3Ms (Meditation, Medication, Mentorship). She says it’s important for founders to control their “mind”, invest in building a network with a focus on ‘giving’, and for the market to align with you. She illustrates on how increasing digital penetration and the coolness quotient associated with starting up provided tailwinds to YourStory’s growth.

At a personal level, Shradha has benefitted from both meditation and medication to overcome the agony of personal tragedies. She emphasises the importance of mentors and being open to asking for help from young and old alike. She laughingly points out that entrepreneurs become comfortable with being shameless in asking for help, thanks to the innumerable times they get no as an answer. Things change for the better, though, as one treads along the path to success, “Aaj kal toh mere acche din aaye hue hain (My good days are here!),” she jokes.

Shradha adds that the ability to communicate well (storytelling) is extremely crucial while building for success and that the narrative should evolve as stakeholders change. She talks about how investors have been a positive force in her journey, helping her shape into a better CEO by ensuring for discipline, rigour and accountability.

Just like any other founder, the journey has not been an easy one for Shradha and has involved making some hard decisions and surviving through tough times including those in personal life such as the unfortunate tragedy of losing her mother, who was a major source of inspiration.

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In this edition of the #InsightsPodcast series, we are joined by Kunal Shah, Founder and CEO of Cred, and Founder and former CEO of Freecharge.

Freecharge was part of the first wave of ecommerce startups in the country, along with the likes of Flipkart and Paytm. It was acquired for $450 million by Snapdeal in 2015, making it the biggest startup M&A in the Indian startup ecosystem at the time.

In the podcast, Kunal starts off with talking about his early days, and how he started working at the early age of 15 to help his family tide over a financial crisis. He juggled a full-time job while pursuing a bachelor’s degree in philosophy (which he chose based on class timings given his work commitments) and some freelance work in the evening, making him financially independent at a very young age.

He talks about his journey from a being a freelance designer and programmer to building a small SaaS company that pivoted many times to eventually become Freecharge. After the acquisition of Freecharge, Kunal had a couple of stints in investing, before deciding to start up again in 2018 with Cred.

In true entrepreneurial spirit, Kunal jokes about how he has done almost everything under the sun - from selling music CDs and mehendi, to running a SaaS business and even a BPO company. He also had a laptop import business for a while before finding his calling with ecommerce.

On how he achieved the product market fit for FreeCharge, Kunal says it started with the simple idea of offering a mobile top-up (which was the largest selling product at the time) free of charge to draw enough customers on the platform to potentially build a business. This was very much on the lines of the ‘loss leader strategy’ adopted by grocery stores to attract footfall. Kunal says he saw big opportunity in the mobile recharge space, which had a use case for 99 percent of the population who were on the verge of getting comfortable with online transactions, thanks to IRCTC.

That, along with reduced interest among merchants who were selling mobile recharges offline due to diminishing margins, made it a no brainer for these transactions to move online. As Kunal puts it rather nicely, “I saw recharge as the gateway to a transacting India.”

He calls himself a mediocre founder who found a great product market fit, and adds, “Terrible product market fits, even with the greatest founders, can never create value. Fighting headwinds never creates value, you only burn fuel.”

In the podcast, Kunal also talks about how it is challenging to get investors and team members on board when dealing with original ideas that do not have any global models to serve as comparables. Interestingly, it is these original ideas that have disproportionate wealth creation opportunities.

Kunal also gives the listeners a glimpse of the philosopher in him as he explains how platforms with a high frequency of transactions almost always win because the trust and habit built over many transactions enables such categories to expand faster in a mistrust democracy like India.

He also speaks of his famous Delta 4 theory, which encapsulates the need for new products to create significant delta in value creation for the customer through superior product/ service experience, making the switch from old behaviour to new behaviour irreversible, instead of giving massive discounts to infuse the delta in value creation for customers which is not sustainable without systematic change in consumer behaviour .

Answering a few questions from the audience, Kunal shares some words of wisdom for fellow entrepreneurs to succeed in a rapidly changing world. “Founders that try to fit in don’t raise the bar. So, if you want to be an outlier, don’t try to fit in.”

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We continue with the #InsightsPodcast series, and on this edition we have Girish Mathrubootham, Co-founder & CEO of Freshworks. Freshworks scaled from $1 million Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) to $100 million ARR in five years and two months, making it one of the fastest growing companies in the ecosystem, and one of the first VC backed software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies in India to achieve this milestone.

In this podcast, Anand and Girish discuss Girish's early life, and the series of events that led to starting Freshworks. They speak about how Girish's ability to translate even the most mundane stories, his product training, and focus on culture has helped build a successful organisation poised to grow even further.

Girish talks about his upbringing, and about how he was an average student in school and college. But he really loved to learn; just not in a classroom environment. He attributes most of his learnings to after college as he could learn through practice, not confined to tests and a specific set of topics. Teaching is something close to his heart, and he is always looking for innovative ways to teach or communicate. This has honed his storytelling ability.

His learnings from Zoho, and his ability to tell stories has helped him immensely as he scaled Freshworks. This is especially so when it comes to hiring (Helpdesk is very boring, he says), and selling his vision for the company to a new hire.

His motto for fundraising is very simple and is something he's been meaning to tweet for a while: "Data is your enemy, story is your friend".

Girish further delves into how he got into products at Zoho, and later how business models influence products and not vice versa. Company culture is very close to his heart - Happy "work" organisation is his motto, and he's always had an eye on how to build the organisation's culture. The importance of culture fits within your organisation, and gearing the organisation to stay true to its values is further highlighted.

We end the podcast in true Girish fashion, discussing the next leg of growth for Freshworks - the jump to a $1billion business, and how he believes that Freshworks is not an aberration in the Indian product space but is just the beginning of India producing great global product startups, with a simple, yet intriguing story.

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We continue with the #InsightsPodcast Series with a conversation on the evolving role of a Founder-CEO with Elad Gil, serial entrepreneur, investor and most recently, author of High Growth Handbook: Scaling Startups from 10 to 10,000 People.

Elad Gil has had a lot of experience with super-high-growth startups, having grown Google from 1,500 people to 15,000 people in just over three years. Following the stint at Google, Elad started a company called Mixer Labs, where he expanded the team from 90 to 1,500 in just a couple of years. The firm was acquired by Twitter in just a few years.

It was around this time that he started contemplating high growth and how to build a machine that can recruit 10 people a week instead of one person a month. What was supposed to be a blog post became a massively successful book. Elad is also involved as an operating executive, investor or advisor to private companies such as AirBnB, Coinbase, Gusto, Instacart, Optimizely, Pinterest, Square, Stripe, Wish, and Zenefits.

In this podcast, we talk about the role of the startup CEO. Until very recently, the Founder was CEO only until they could get the company off the ground. After that, professional management took over. Mark Zuckerberg changed that, establishing a tradition where the Founder and CEO became the mainstay with a very strong executive team backing them.

Elad tells us about the importance of the Founder-CEO, and the vision and entrepreneurial spirit they bring to the table. He also goes into greater detail about the evolving role of the CEO.

While hard work is important for success, avoiding burn-out is even more critical. It is important for founders to take a break and make some time for themselves. Founders should focus on building relationships outside of work, because this will be their support system when they go through really hard times at work. The typical image of a Silicon Valley founder is that of an individual who works very hard. What we don't hear about is the vacations and breaks they take that allows them to push that hard.

As startups scale, it is important for the CEO to play multiple roles, but it is even more critical for them to realise their weaknesses and hire for those positions. They also need to be willing and open to learn from the next level. The "growth mindset" is extremely important for founders to lead the company and make it a truly generational one. Learning from your peers, and being able to trust them with their work and letting go is key to taking the company to the next level each and every time.

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In the first episode of the #INSIGHTSPodcast series for 2019, I had the pleasure of speaking to Binny Bansal – his first ever interview after his departure from Flipkart.

The pace at which Flipkart scaled remains unparalleled in India – it inspires both envy and awe. The pitfalls of scaling too fast are well known but scale is what every startup aspires for. It’s what Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal wanted, and it’s what they achieved, that too in just a few short years.

With scale comes having to let go – something that most entrepreneurs struggle with. It requires a level of trust that is not easy to give. But Flipkart wouldn’t have been what it is today if the founders hadn’t made that leap of faith.

In this podcast, Binny takes us through his childhood growing up in Chandigarh and how that moulded him, his early interest in computers and how he was "lucky" to join the Computer Science Department at IIT Delhi.

We get a glimpse of his life in IIT Delhi, his love for the "not so popular" courses and how a very unique set of circumstances had him meet Sachin, a year senior to him, as well as the woman he would marry.

He talks about the businesses that he and Sachin considered going into before zeroing in on ecommerce. Coding was easy, convincing distributors to sign up with them was not.

Binny also talks about why Flipkart bought Myntra (and the one reason they wouldn’t have done so). He’s candid about the acquisitions that didn’t work out. When it was time to plan the next leg of growth, what it took to decide to bring in the likes of Kalyan Krishnamurthy (now Flipkart CEO) and Ananth Narayanan (until recently CEO of Myntra).

Binny also discusses his next venture and the role he plans to play in India’s startup ecosystem – one that was synonymous with Flipkart for the longest time.

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In this episode of #INSIGHTSPodcast Series, we focus on Cross-Border startups - particularly software startups that are cross-border in nature from early days. Dinesh Katiyar, our Accel India partner who is based in Silicon Valley shares some of his key learnings from working initially as a cross-border entrepreneur and now as a VC who focuses on this sector.

There is a range of important topics we cover in this podcast:

Sub-sectors in cross-border startups: What are the various sub-sectors within Enterprise Software that Dinesh is excited about? What are some of the nuances of each sub-sector and developing and scaling cross-border startups in these sub-sectors?

India advantage: Is there an India advantage while building Enterprise Software products out of India for the globe?

Product Market fit for cross-border startups: Does building a product for India first and then scaling to international markets make sense? What else startups need to think about in the early days while talking to potential customers of cross-border companies.

Enterprise customers: How can you service Enterprise customers sitting out of India. What can you do differently for these large enterprise customers vs. small-to-medium customers?

Getting the team right: Right hires in the US for an early stage startup with a majority of the team is based in India? Does it make sense to find a co-founder in the US?

Multi-cultural team: How do you build a multi-cultural team and why is that super important for a cross-border company?

World class products out of India: Israel is seen as a hub for tech startups that go global- is there a scope for India to build such a hub and if so how? Some examples of world-class software products built from India.

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We continue with the #INSIGHTSPodcast Series and in this episode, we focus on the healthcare sector and discuss opportunities and the market landscape using examples from the Accel portfolio. To talk about this exciting topic, We have Barath & Radhika, Principal & Sr Associate at Accel whose core focus investment areas are in Life sciences, Medtech and digital health.

On this podcast, we discuss the healthcare landscape in India using examples from the Accel portfolio and what to look for while building out a healthcare company from India :

Examples from Accel portfolio on problems being solved in healthcare for global markets

Lifesciences

What is life sciences - the model of an IP led lifesciences company solving global problems

Mitra Biotech -

Why did they choose to start in India?

The solution to an age old problem - How do you understand the effects of drugs on tumors without bombarding a patient with the drugs

Zumutor

Building a platform to develop molecules for improving drug delivery to cancer cells

Healthcare Delivery

The problems with the healthcare delivery in India

Moving care back to the home - counter intuitive insight and how Portea plugs the gaps in the delivery space

Digital health

Onco.com - using digital distribution to disrupt the current value chain and deliver better care for patients

Using AI to deliver healthcare in the diagnostics space - How sigtuple uses digital distribution and AI to deliver healthcare and diagnose correctly.

The Indian Advantage - Why healthcare is attractive in India

Capital efficiency from being in India

3x-5x advantage in capital required from building from India

Talent, Infrastructure arbitrage from India - The Indian pharma story for next wave of lifesciences

Speeding things up - How India helps speed up development

The regulatory advantage - lesser regulations for initial development of drugs

Using the initial momentum and taking the drugs to more regulated markets for trials - the difficulty of trials in the Indian market

Examples where the thesis on cost and time plays out

The estimates from Axio - getting to market with 1/10th the capital and 60% of the time to get to market with a great product

Setting the standards in India so the product goes global - no compromise on quality

The healthcare business - things to consider while getting into the healthcare sector

The trust process - building trust, and the time and effort it takes to build trust

Importance of IP - having a good IP and using peer-reviewed publications for validation and marketing

Patent portfolio and defensiblity of patents - defending incremental IP and not infringing existing patents, and filing patents to get it out in the world

The team - building a team as the company grows, and the expertise required; the differences between life sciences, and non-life science businesses

The Indian story - shift from communicable to chronic disease, infrastructure gap, mobile first country and the advantage technology provides in such an environment.

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We continue with our discussion on building for India in the #INSIGHTSpodcast Series and in this episode, we focus on selling to manufacturing SMEs. To talk about this important topic, we have Narayan, Co-founder of Power2SME, a "buying club" for SMEs. Narayan is a serial entrepreneur and before starting Power2SME, he was the founder & CEO of Denave, India's largest technology powered sales enabling services company. Previously he held various leadership positions in companies like Oracle and Microsoft.

On this podcast, we discuss the need for a “buying club” for the Indian SMEs, the role of credit in the economy, the life of a few and inescapable market effects:

Identifying a value proposition that can scale

Solving the right problems - choosing a problem which is a real pain point for customers

Importance of aligning with the interests of all players in the ecosystem

Building out the marketplace

Building out a marketplace for large sellers and small buyers

How is the market structured, and the quality of supply in India

Onboarding small unorganized players onto an organized marketplace

Turning Skeptics to believers - getting your first large seller to take you seriously

Working capital for SMEs

Challenges with getting credit for SMEs and the challenges for banks to underwrite and service SMEs

Why is working capital a big issue for SMEs? Potential for innovation

Taking on risk with NBFCs to enable credit for SMEs

The ILFS, liquidity crunch and how the credit system operates

Lessons learnt from running a startup

The ups and downs of running a startup - dealing with market effects

Effects of policy and regulation on business and SME

Diversification of portfolio of customers and lenders

Advice for startup founders - the importance of building a strong leadership and mentorship network

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We continue with our discussion on building for India in the #INSIGHTPodcast series and in this episode, focus on building an eCommerce company for Industrial India. To talk about this important topic, We have Rahul, Co-founder of Moglix, a B2B marketplace for MRO (Maintenance, Repair, and Operating Supplies). Before starting Moglix, He has held various leadership positions at Google in Asia Pacific and is a graduate of ISB and IIT Kanpur.

On this podcast, we discuss building a B2B marketplace for the Indian Industry:

Choosing the problem — How do you think about the problem to go after? How do you evaluate B2B market opportunities?

Importance of market size and, conversely in especially large markets figuring out what is the value proposition and the market-segment you can address with this value proposition

The chicken and egg problem — what comes first in a marketplace — solving for what comes first on your platform — identifying the size of buyers and sellers and determining the build-out of your marketplace

Contrasting between B2B and B2C — buying behavior and differences in customers

The difference in the decision-making process of B2B and B2C customers and ticket size changes and the way the product must be built out

Cash flow — B2B runs on credit while a B2C is on cash being paid upfront; rethink cash cycles for your business

Winning in the space — How Moglix is building a well-loved and resilient business

Building a tech-first marketplace to handle scale in the future

Surviving the initial few years and emerging as a leader in the space

Hiring the right talent for the team, and hiring for B2B

B2B businesses are not glamorous — finding the right talent means finding people with a passion for the business and the problem you are trying to solve

Hire a diverse group of people who bring complementary skill sets to your team — juggle responsibilities till you find the right hire for the role

In the next few podcasts, we will dive deeper into startups in the Indian Business Sector. If there is any feedback on this podcast or questions for the next set of episodes, please do share as a comment below or tweet us at @Accel_India

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We continue with the #INSIGHTSpodcast Series and in this episode, we focus on tackling the Indian market, why selling to Indian businesses is an exciting untapped opportunity and how one can build for India. To talk about this important topic, we have Prayank, a Principal at Accel who invests in B2B, Consumer Brands and Fintech. He has invested in multiple startups solving problems specifically for Indian Businesses across sectors.

On this podcast, we discuss building for the Indian Business and how to go about building it out:

Indian Business Sector — Why it is an exciting space to build technology enabled startups

Picking a sector — What to look for and things to be wary about while picking a sector

Handling capital in a B2B business — payment cycles, working capital and managing your finances

Dynamics of a marketplace — Building supply, demand and building robust marketplaces

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We continue with the #INSIGHTSPodcast Series on importance of execution and in this episode, we focus on the myriad problems and decisions founders face while scaling. To talk about this important topic, we have Dhruv Agarwala, a successful serial entrepreneur who has built companies across multiple Industries.

On this podcast, we discuss what to expect when we scale, and potential conflicts that arise and how to resolve them:

Early days - the thesis for Proptiger and figuring out the core value proposition for the business, and the focus areas

Achieving product market fit quickly - The importance of MVPs and integrating feedback into a scrappy, yet functional product

Scaling the business - What is the right time to scale your technology and refine processes, how did the org structure evolve with the business

Acquisitions - How do you look at acquisitions and achieve synergies. Importance of being prepared and timing your acquisitions

Strategic investments vs financial investments - How and when do you choose a strategic investor vs financial investor.

Dealing with problems as a founder - How do you deal with exits of leaders and co-founders, tips to manage emotional volatility

If there is any feedback on this podcast or questions for the next episode, please do share as a comment below or tweet us at @Accel_India

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We continue diving deeper into the importance of execution in an early stage startup and how to get it right. We discussed this topic with Srikanth Iyer, co-founder and CEO of HomeLane in Episode #14. In this episode, we dive into the Education industry and look at execution from the lens of an experienced EdTech entrepreneur Vamsi Krishna, Co-founder and CEO of Vedantu.

In the first part of the podcast we dive into the following questions regarding execution in an EdTech startup:

Challenges of execution in early days

Importance of Minimum Viable Product and speed in execution

Focusing on one product and nailing it and the importance of that

Customer delight - to get to Product-market fit - what metrics did Vedantu use to achieve this

What changes after product-market fit?

When do you bring in specialists for specific roles?

Role of founders as specialists are brought it to take their roles

In the second part of the podcast, we dive into the Objectives and Key Results (OKR) approach that startups can use to stay focused on what matters for the company in the near to medium term. This methodology is very clearly articulated in the book "Measure What Matters" which is a great read for startups founders.

Measure what matters

What are OKRs and why does it matter?

How many OKRs at a company level and how do you roll it out?

Stretch OKRs vs Committed OKRs

What are the benefits of rolling out OKR process?

What are the challenges to watch out for?

Next episode will be the last on the series "Importance of execution" and how to get that right as a startup founder. If there is any feedback on this podcast or questions for the next episode, please do share as a comment below or tweet us at @Accel_India

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We continue the #InsightsPodcastSeries and in this episode, we focus on the importance of Execution and how to get it right in the early stage of a startup. To talk about this important topic, we have Srikanth Iyer a successful serial entrepreneur who has built large companies across multiple industries. Initially in Education with Edurite (sold to Tutorvista/Pearson) and currently founder and CEO of fixed furniture eCommerce startup HomeLane.

On the first part of the podcast, we discuss the importance of execution and specifically the following topics:

What is execution and why is it important?

Early days — how to get things started, how to figure out must-haves vs nice-to-haves and focusing on must-haves

Speed vs. getting things right — what is more important?

Customer delight — to get to Product-market fit — how to go about it?

Role of product/tech — how important in early stage vs once you are focusing on scale

Launching with a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) and then continue refining the product/tech

Why scaling prematurely can hurt your startup?

We also discuss a book that has really inspired Srikanth to deliver outstanding service to his customers. The book is “Uncommon Service” and highly recommended for founders — particularly startups that involve services. Here are some of the key takeaways from the book and we discuss a couple of them in the podcast in the context of Srikanth’s experience.

Uncommon Service — key tenets:

Tenet #1: You CANNOT be good at everything — to be great at something its ok to be bad at something else — how do you decide on what to be good at as CEO?

Tenet #2: Someone has to pay for it — what does that mean?

Tenet #3: It’s not your Employee’s fault — but they are the ones executing?

Tenet #4: You must Manage your customers — how do you do that?

Tenet #5: Now multiply it all by Culture — talk to us about the importance of this one?

In the next few podcasts, we will dive deeper into the importance of execution and how to get that right as a startup founder.

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In this final episode on fundraising, we hear from a master story-teller — Ashish Hemranjani, co-founder and CEO of BookMyShow, India’s leader in entertainment ticketing.

Ashish recaps his journey from founding the company in 1999 all the way to 2018 and the various phases of the business ups and downs he has seen over this time period.

In particular, we discuss the following topics in great details:

Early days of BookMyShow including launching India’s first cash on delivery (COD) service
The tough years post the 2001 dotcom bust and how they survived those tough years
How to pick your investment partner — and the importance of that in the battle called entrepreneurship
How to think through valuation while fundraising
Hiring bankers or not while fundraising
How to become a good story teller as a founder

Difference between building a good company vs a great company

Having an empty chair that represents your consumer in every meeting

Why Ashish appreciates being known as a mongrel more than being a Unicorn

And most importantly how to run this marathon called a startup while still enjoying your life and coming back every Monday energised to build your startup!

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Today, we are looking at the same topic from an entrepreneurs’ perspective. We are chatting with Abhiraj Bhal, co-founder and CEO of UrbanClap, a path-breaking company in the Home Services space which has grown from zero to over 300K transactions per month in just over 3.5 years and still growing at a phenomenal pace (3–4x per year).

We are again going to divide the topic into two sub-topics — 1) picking who to raise funds from and 2) the process of fundraising. Key topics covered in this short 30 minute podcast are outlined below.

Picking who to raise funds from

What are the factors to consider before picking who to raise funds from?

How did Abhiraj connect with his Angel Investors and VCs?

Importance of having an experienced Angel as an investor

Avoidable mistakes while picking your initial source of capital

Tips on the fundraising process

How long should someone budget for fundraising?

Tips on preparing your investor pitch — the What, How and Why methodology

Importance of story-telling as a founder and how to practice that and get feedback

Being completely open with the investor and why that is important

Best way to connect with the investor

Initial pitch to term-sheet — the process from an entrepreneurs’ perspective

In the next episode, we are going to hear from an entrepreneur who is a master at Story-telling — a very essential skill for fundraising as well as for recruiting and retaining employees. If there are any specific questions that are top of mind for you, please do share as a comment below or tweet us at @Accel_India

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As a first time startup founder, fundraising can seem overwhelming. Many have gone through the process without too much knowledge about who to raise funds from and how to go about the process - particularly as it relates to the Indian ecosystem.

In this podcast, Abhinav Chaturvedi from Accel demystifies fundraising and addresses most of the questions that are probably going through your mind as a first time founder. Here are the topics covered in this podcast:

Picking who to raise funds from

When should you start the fundraising process for your startup?

When is it good time to go to an Angel investor vs an institutional investor?

What's the best way to reach your top investor choices?

What are the common avoidable mistakes that first time founders do while figuring out who to raise funds from?

Different types of companies - B2B vs B2C and any advice on how they should think about funding differently?

Tips on the fundraising process

What are the top reasons investors are compelled to invest in a particular startup?

What are some of the best pitches Abhinav has heard and funded - what stood out in those pitches?

From the first pitch to getting to a term-sheet -what to expect, what happens behind the scenes in a VC fund?

What are the common avoidable mistakes that first time founders do in the fundraising process?

In the next two episodes, we are going to hear from a couple of entrepreneurs who have gone through this fundraising process a few times and tips from them for a first time founder. If there are any specific questions that are top of mind for you, please do share as a comment below or tweet us at @Accel_India

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In a startup ecosystem that runs on a culture of “move fast and break things,” Varun Dua took the path less traveled to establish Coverfox in 2011, an online insurance aggregator platform . Seven years down the line, we look back at his startup journey and the lessons he learned from plunging into the Indian insurance market as an entrepreneur. We also learn more about his newest venture: Acko, a general insurance company developing an innovative, more efficient age of insurance.

Though Varun only fell into insurance coincidentally, he was quickly sucked into its world and discovered everything about the market’s complex inner workings. Then it wasn’t long before the itch to startup got to him. In his own words, “I started off not really clear about what I wanted to do, but I definitely didn’t want to do what I was doing.”

Varun therefore talks to us about how he identified his vision, and in true startup fashion, the critical ways he pivoted his initial idea to solve more imperative problem statements. What originally started as a B2B software service company for insurance providers grew into Coverfox. Through tedious market research, many hours of fine tuning, and a hasty wake-up call about his technical understanding of product management and process development, Varun changed the way insurance works in India’s ecosystem.

His Coverfox journey was all about asking the important questions that providers and aggregators simply weren’t addressing. For example, do we really want our customer to go down to their car park, unlock their car, open their glove box, find their soon-to-expire car insurance policy, and log back onto the website, just to enter their policy’s expiration date into a field on our online questionnaire? We are sure you are tired just reading that sentence, which is why Varun streamlined this process to make closing a deal faster and simpler. It is no wonder then that Coverfox has become one of the leading online aggregators in India. More importantly, Varun gained a better appreciation for business processes and product management - two aspects he advises all startup founders to pay attention to, especially if they are eventually interviewing product managers only to have no idea what questions to ask. (True story! Hear it directly from Varun.)

This is what makes his journey into the nitty gritty world of insurance as a provider with Acko so important to him. He first sought to turn the insurance market on its head - but you can’t add a new coat of paint and expect the building to suddenly become brand new; You’ve got to change the rails and the plumbing too. “And if you really want to change the plumbing, you’ll have to start manufacturing it,” he states. Thus, he established Acko, an effortless way to find insurance, because it goes where the consumer goes, whether that’s Amazon.in or the Ola app. Join us on the latest INSIGHTS podcast as Varun discusses how he responded to those crucial questions, his product-market fit research process, and the key takeaways from his journey at Coverfox that all those looking to startup should know.

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In 2007, Myntra founder Mukesh Bansal left California for India after spending ten years building his career in Silicon Valley. Accompanied only by the ambition to make his startup vision a reality and the unwavering conviction that India Shining was a truth about to be realised, he took the plunge. This week, we take a look at how Myntra took India’s e-commerce fashion market by storm and learn more about Bansal’s newest venture, CureFit.

Once Bansal arrived in India, his team referred him to Subrata Mitra, one of our founding partners at Accel. He easily piqued Mitra’s interest; “What was very interesting was the big commitment to come back [to India], and the second thing was [that] he was willing to put in his own money,” said Mitra. A startup founder unwilling to wait for investors was just as rare then as it is today. Therefore, the deal was closed and the cheque deposited. It was time to get to work.

Since then, Myntra has been numerous things. A personalised product company. A sports apparel firm. A travelling mall kiosk (yes, really). So what was the entrepreneurial journey that led to the Myntra that we have all come to know, browse endlessly, and love today? It took many a market pivot, a whole lot of patience, good ol’ commitment - and a lonely walk in a shopping mall. Trust us, this is a story you’ll want to hear because it truly goes to show that inspiration can strike at any moment.

Following Myntra’s success, Bansal planned to take a six-month vacation… Only to return less than a month later with an idea for a brand new venture: CureFit. After surveying the health and fitness market, he recognised its key issues and is now transforming the industry by bringing it to the 21st century.

Like many of us, you’re probably wondering how Bansal generates such innovative yet essential products. As Mitra puts it, “If you don’t live the experience, it’s not authentic.” Since 2007, Bansal has dedicated his career towards building brands with authenticity. In this podcast, live the experience with Bansal and delve into his entrepreneurial journey; from combining Myntra’s fashion and tech DNA, to why culture is such a vital aspect of any company, unearth his perspective about the critical influence of timing, market positioning, branding, and mergers. All before learning about Bansal’s newest venture, CureFit, and how it is revolutionising the health and fitness market in India today.

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Subrata Mitra, one of the founding partners of Accel, has been a part of (and has even helped design and engineer) the startup ecosystem in India as it stands today. This week, we take a look at his exciting, ten-year-long journey as a hands-on investor. From the gaming industry to the fashion e-commerce market, Mitra has a world of knowledge to share.

Discussing how to find the perfect product-market fit, Mitra says, “If there is one customer who has a need that you can satisfy, that’s where you begin the product-market fit. Identify that one customer or company.” The problems, then, only arise when an entrepreneur attempts to scale. And trust us, Mitra has a lot to say about scaling; Behind every successful, groundbreaking project that seems like common sense now, exists a fair share of research, trial-and-error, and even failed attempts.

Whether it was Myntra’s initial stages: personalised mugs with your photo on them, or the very beginnings of Common Floor as a community-creation platform, finding the perfect product-market fit and its appropriate scalability model has always been a fruit of research and development. Like Myntra and Common Floor, you’ll be surprised to find out where and how some of India’s most prosperous startups, such as MuSigma and Virident, actually began. All this, right from someone who was on the ground, learning about the market, and influencing each company’s decisions.

Subrata also shares some valuable insight into the qualities of an entrepreneur who can turn a synergetic product-market fit into a scalable and monetizable venture. “There are outward facing and inward facing entrepreneurs,” Mitra says.

“There are a certain set of people who solve hard problems better and are also good entrepreneurs.” Could you be one of those “certain people” in the industry today? Well, if you’ve got the characteristics that Mitra identifies, that may be a possibility.

We also hear from one of Subrata's early portfolio founders Mukesh Bansal, who spent ten years in Silicon Valley working for startups there. After quitting his job and moving from Chicago to the Bay Area in California, Bansal “bounced around, sleeping on friends’ couches” just so that he could learn more about startups. Well, today, as the founder of two successful startups Myntra and now Curefit, we think his plan definitely played out well. Not that you should be bumming off your friends as a startup founder, but listening to Bansal’s advice will certainly help. All this and more on this weeks #InsightsPodcast.

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“You can’t get bigger than Messi,” Anjana Reddy says. Less than two weeks ahead of the 2018 FIFA World Cup, Reddy, founder of Indian fashion company Universal Sportsbiz Private Limited (USPL), reflects on her entrepreneurial journey from a sports e-commerce brand to a national fashion industrialist.

A sports fanatic and forward-looking business mogul, Anjana left her town in Hyderabad to attend university in the US, where she discovered something she had never seen before in the Indian market: Dogs wearing team jerseys at sporting events. Well, everyone wearing team jerseys - and drinking from team-branded beer mugs. At pep rallies, football games, and after-parties, every single attendee had a way to let you know exactly which team they were supporting. That’s when she struck gold and decided to combine her two favourite things.

With India’s craze for the game - whether that’s cricket, football, or entertainment - Anjana decided to bring the business model to India in early 2012 through Collectabillia.com, a celebrity-based e-commerce merchandise and memorabilia brand. For this brand, she signed legends like Sachin Tendulkar, Virat Kohli, and Rajnikanth. In 2014, she even managed to sign Lionel Messi right before he played the World Cup (despite a run-in with the Spanish Embassy; you’ll have to hear her story to believe it).

After her initial success, she developed her business even further, scaling it to include women’s fashion and youth-oriented clothing in both online and offline markets with WROGN and Imara. Though she was unfamiliar with the clothing industry, one of the oldest trades in the country, she spent nights studying the entire process from yarn to final product at factories, and analysed the market for years in order to position her brand effectively.

USPL is a lesson in market disruption, customer valuation, and how a little entrepreneurial drive can make a world of difference. Join us as Reddy, now on the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list, discusses the importance of market analysis, distribution, and funding. And don’t forget your Accel-themed beer mug. (We’re kidding, but, Anjana, let’s work on that?)

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Every entrepreneur has gone through the dilemma of quitting a well paying, full-time job and starting up. It is not as easy as it sounds and requires much thought before taking the plunge. In this episode we chat with Raghu, co-founder of TaxiForSure on his journey with TaxiForSure and particularly the early days and how they went about evaluating the market opportunity.

Some Advice For Entrepreneurs

As a successful entrepreneur, who exited his business successfully and now an active Angel investor, Raghu has a few tips for first time founders:

Be Close to the Market: Talk to as many people as possible in the market (actual supply, demand, etc.) to really understand the market

Don’t hire from the industry: Especially if you are trying to disrupt an industry using technology, avoid hiring from the industry (since they might be stuck to the ideas of the incumbent)

Focus is key: Focus on one core problem at the seed stage. During Series A stage, focus on scaling to multiple markets. Only post Series B, when you have established yourself as a brand in the core space, do you look for adjacencies.

Let it Go: As entrepreneurs, one of the most important things is the hard and tough call of letting go of certain people. However, these are the calls they have to take, primarily if it is affecting the business. Another aspect of letting go, is letting go of certain responsibilities to more capable people who you can hire in — the specialists. He added, “You have to become the jockey, not the horse.”

Ability to say no: Learning to say no as an entrepreneur is very key — to employees, to investors, to the Board — are all critical and figuring out what things to say “No” to is essential for the success of a startup

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Every entrepreneur understands the importance of market evaluation, but not every market is the same and the ever changing dynamics adds to the entrepreneur’s dilemma. Prashanth Prakash, Founding Partner at Accel tell you how to ace the market evaluation, in this podcast with Anand Daniel.

Ideas don’t build a company but converting them to something tangible does. The first step towards this is understanding the market potential of your idea. Every startup knows the importance of market research towards making the product/service successful. But the way you evaluate the market is crucial. If an entrepreneur doesn’t know his market in terms of size, demographics, and the customer’s needs, then it will be difficult for his/her venture to sustain long-term. Also, market evaluation is one of the key factors for any venture capitalist to consider the potential of a startup. Not all markets are created equal, and what works in one geography doesn’t necessarily mean it would work in another. Especially when it comes to Indian markets, the dynamics are different in comparison to global markets.

Prashanth Prakash is one of the founding partners in Accel, who has been investing in ventures like BookMyShow, QuickSilver, RentoMojo, and CleverTab since 2004. In this podcast series, he talks about evaluating markets from an investor as well an entrepreneur’s perspective, especially for the tech sector.

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In this second part of the podcast, Sriharsha Majety, founder and CEO of Swiggy speaks to Anand Daniel about the challenges of finding the right co-founders and the essential characteristics of a CEO.

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In this podcast, Sriharsha Majety, founder and CEO of Swiggy speaks to Anand Daniel, Partner at Accel on not finding the beginner's luck and yet becoming successful with his second venture, Swiggy

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BlackBuck, a startup focussing on the Full Truck Load (FTL) segment and the B2B space, has been charting new territories for online freight aggregators. Now, a lot goes into getting a startup from its genesis to becoming a successful company. For founders, the journey of their hard work and initial struggle is more than a sense of accomplishment. BlackBuck’s story is no different. So, what led to the initial idea of driving into the fragmented logistics market in India? What were the challenges? How the team grew from 3 founders to over 1200 employees? Joining us is first-time entrepreneur and co-founder Rajesh Yabaji, who will trace his journey to the initial days of conceiving BlackBuck.

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It takes much more than ideas and passion to build a successful startup. Shekhar Kirani, an entrepreneur turned venture capitalist and Partner at Accel, shares his insights on how to build a successful startup by mixing the right ingredients like having great founders, critical skill sets, right team size, amongst others.

The Podcast is hosted by Anand Daniel, Partner at Accel

SEED TO SCALE Podcast Series by Accel: Recent Episodes

Anand Daniel, SEED TO SCALE Podcast Series