Rohit Bansal is the Co-founder Snapdeal, one of the largest online marketplaces in India. The company has raised over $1.7B from eBay, Kalaari Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Intel Capital, BlackRock, Temasek Holdings and SoftBank. He is also the Co-Founder of Titan Capital , which has invested in companies such as Mamaearth, Dealshare, OLA, RazorPay and OfBusiness. He an alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. . . . Episode Notes: Introduction (2:00) What m...
Nov 27, 2023•56 min•Season 1Ep. 126
Shubham Goel is the Co-foudner and Co-CEO of Affinity, a relationship intelligence platform for dealmakers. The company has raised over $120M in funding from Menlo Ventures, MassMutual Ventures, Pear VC and Advance Venture Partners. Prior to Affinity, Shubham completed his BS in Computer Science at Stanford University. . . . Episode notes: What made Shubham pick entrepreneurship (2:00) Propensity of risk increasing as the company grows (6:08) The journey until the ah-ha moment (10:06) The aha-mo...
Nov 26, 2023•47 min•Season 1Ep. 125
Sumeet Mehta is the co-founder and CEO of LEAD , an edtech company helping digitize and transform affordable private schools to better serve students from middle and low-income groups of families. Before co-founding LEAD, Sumeet was Chief Executive Officer at Zee Learn (2007-2012). He transformed the institution from a pre-school franchise company to an education company with a presence in pre-schools and K-10 schools, and science activity and animation classes. Prior to that, Sumeet spent eight...
Oct 02, 2023•45 min•Season 1Ep. 124
Sankar Bora is the Co-founder & COO, Dealshare , a social ecommerce startup in India, that has raised close to $400M in venture money from marquee investors such as Alpha Wave Global, Tiger Global, Matrix India, Alteria Capital and WestBridge Capital. Prior to this, he co-founded Myntra in 2007, which was sold to Flipkart in 2010. . . . Episode Notes: Why entrepreneurship? (2:30) What gave Sankar the conviction to embark on the path of entrepreneurship (5:50) Early days of Mantra (10:32) A f...
Jul 20, 2023•54 min•Season 1Ep. 123
Aloke Bajpai is the Co-founder and CEO of ixigo.com a platform that aggregates and compares real-time travel information, prices and availability for flights, trains, buses, and hotels, and allows ticket booking through its associate websites and apps. Since ixigo's launch in 2007, the company has gone from a bootstrapped startup to India’s leading travel search and planning business, with over 20 million active users every month across mobile and web. Aloke graduated from IIT Kanpur in 2001 and...
Jul 14, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 122
Rajat Tandon is the President of IVCA , India's apex body representing the interests of PE/VC industry, Real estate, Infrastructure and Credit funds, Limited Partners, Family offices & Corporate VC's. Rajat leads the planning, development, and implementing IVCA’s regulatory advocacy activities, while also effectively influencing regulatory outcomes in support of the alternate asset class. Previously, Rajat was part of the leadership team at NASSCOM, where he headed NASSCOM’s 10,000 Startups ...
Jul 10, 2023•55 min•Season 1Ep. 121
Rohit Sood is the Partner at Bertelsmann India Investments (BII), an investment firm that invests in companies in the digital, education, media, and services sectors. The firm also focuses on early-stage, as well as growth-stage investments. Rohit was the founding team member and has been part of Bertelsmann from Day 0 having seen the growth of the fund over the last decade as well played an instrumental part in shaping India’s startup ecosystem. Prior to Bertelsmann, he spent some time at Deutc...
Jun 26, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Season 1Ep. 120
Saurabh Saxena is a serial edtech entrepreneur who has co-founded Lakshya , Vedantu and Power Club (previously known as Uable). He has been an educator and Edtech entrepreneur for 15 years now. After graduating from IIT Roorkee in 2005 he started Lakshya, a chain of offline learning centres. After a successful exit, Saurabh then co-founded Vedantu in 2012 which then went on to become one of the leading online test prep companies. Shortly after becoming a parent himself, Saurabh realised that our...
Jun 21, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 119
Nandini Mansinghka is the CEO of Mumbai Angels, an investment firm that now operates under the 360 One umbrella. She came on board as the third Co-Founder, operating partner, and CEO in 2017. She has vast years of experience across the Investment Banking, Media, and Education industries and worked for 5+ years with J.P. Morgan in India in leadership positions in the Investment Banking research group. Before J.P. Morgan, she has worked for over 5 years with the Times of India Group. She also hold...
Jun 16, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 118
Dr. Pankaj Jethwani is the Executive Vice President at W Health Ventures, a Boston-based venture capital firm focused on helping entrepreneurs build the future of healthcare delivery in the US and India. Over the last ten years, Dr. Jethwani has been involved in improving care delivery in several care settings in the US and India as a physician leader, operator, management consultant, and investor. Dr. Jethwani started his career as a Primary Care Physician in Mumbai, India. Through this experie...
Jun 12, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 117
Saurabh Pandey , co-founder and CEO of EloElo . EloElo is an app that enables live-social experiences through games and entertainment. It is currently among the top 10 Apps on the Google Play Store in India with over 10M downloads. It accommodates 34,000 creators and offers a staggering 400 million minutes of live content. The company has raised $15M from Kalaari Capital, KB Investment, Lumikai, WaterBridge Ventures and Better Capital. Before Eloelo, he accumulated a decade of experience in vari...
May 26, 2023•1 hr 24 min•Season 1Ep. 116
Karan Desai is the Founder and Managing Partner at Interface Ventures , an early-stage venture fund based out of Mumbai, India. He’s an operator turned investor who brings a diverse skill set that encompasses extensive experience in operations, investment banking, and financial consulting. Prior to Interface, he was the Joint Managing Director at Trucap Finance Ltd., a rapidly expanding NBFC listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange which specializes in providing finance to MSME businesses in India. I...
May 23, 2023•54 min•Season 1Ep. 115
Yohei Nakajima is the General Partner at Untapped Capital , a pre-seed and seed-stage focused fund investing in under-represented founders in the US. At Untapped Capital, the sweet spot is investing $100k-$250k checks into startups based raising at $3-7m in valuation. Yohei has been supporting early-stage startups for 15 years, originally starting on the community side organizing events and educational courses for founders out of coworking spaces. He has spent the last 7 on the investing side, i...
May 14, 2023•54 min•Season 1Ep. 114
Prateek Agarwal is the Investment lead at First Cheque , a micro VC fund based out of Bangalore that invests $100K in pre-seed startups in India. Prior to this role, Prateek worked with the India Business Head at Dr. Reddy's where he was responsible for tracking business metrics, identifying areas of improvement, and leading strategic projects. His background as both a consultant and operator at firms like Dr. Reddy's and EY has allowed him to develop skills in strategic planning, project manage...
Apr 30, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 113
Nitin Jain is a well-known name in the Indian startup ecosystem as the co-founder and Chief Business Officer of OfBusiness , a tech-enabled platform that provides raw material procurement and credit solutions to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in India. With a strong background in structured solutions trading, Nitin has played a key role in OfBusiness' success, helping the company raise over $875M from top investors like Tiger Global, SoftBank Vision Fund, and Matrix Partners, among others. ...
Apr 28, 2023•50 min•Season 1Ep. 112
Beerud Sheth is the co-founder and CEO of Gupshup , the world's leading platform for cloud messaging and conversational experiences. It is used by over 30K+ developers and handles over 4.5 billion messages per month. The company has raised more than $480M from marquee investors such as Helion Venture Partners, Tiger Global, CRV, White Oak among many others. He was previously the co-founder of Elance (now Upwork), the world's largest online services marketplace, which went public in 2018. Prior t...
Apr 16, 2023•57 min•Season 1Ep. 111
Abhishek Goyal is the Co-founder, Vice Chairman, and Executive Director of Tracxn , a leading research firm that provides market intelligence data on private companies. Since its founding in 2012, Tracxn has secured funding from top investors like 3one4 Capital, Elevation Capital, Prime Venture Partners, and angel investors including Sachin and Binny Bansal, and has grown to become a highly profitable business. After much success, Tracxn debuted on the NSE in October 2022, becoming one of the fe...
Apr 06, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 110
Sanam Rawal is the Founder and Partner at Metamorph (previously known as Passion Connect) , a Blume Ventures-incubated human resource advisory platform that helps startups grow with talent acquisition, talent branding, acquisitions, research, learning and development and more. With offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, and Pune, Metamorph has assisted in the hiring of more than 800 candidates, including CEOs and senior vice presidents for well-known startups such as Unacademy, Slice, HealthifyMe,...
Apr 03, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 109
Jen Abel is the accomplished Co-Founder of JJELLYFISH , a Boston-based firm renowned for its pioneering approach in assisting B2B startups to achieve early-stage sales proficiency and success in the United States, as well as the UK and Australia markets. With over six years of experience in the industry, JJELLYFISH has empowered over 200 B2B/enterprise startups to validate their sales process and go-to-market strategy, demonstrating a commitment to delivering exceptional results. The firm's high...
Mar 31, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 108
Rahul Chowdhury is the Managing Partner at N+1 Capital , India’s first revenue based debt fund. He brings 18+ years of intensive entrepreneurial and operating experience. He is a two-time founder, having founded and sold DenuoSource, a Chicago-based data analytics firm, in 2011. He later founded Reboot, India's first refurbished IT asset lifecycle management firm. How does revenue-based-financing (RBF) work? N+1 will provide startups access to capital, at a premium, without taking any equity sha...
Mar 20, 2023•1 hr 28 min•Season 1Ep. 107
Tarun Sharma is Managing Partner at MegaDelta Capital Advisors , a sub-advisor to Millenna Capital, a Mauritius based investment fund as well as an investment manager of MegaDelta Capital Fund I, a SEBI registered Category II Alternate Investment Fund. The fund has invested in companies such as GOQii, Nova, IDfy, Naaptol, Firstcry, MoneyTap etc. and others. MegaDelta typically invest $15-25M across sectors of such as Healthcare, Enterprise technology and Engineering Services. Tarun has more than...
Mar 07, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 106
Kanika Mayar is a Partner at Vertex Ventures SEA & India (VVSEAI) , a fund part of the global Vertex Ventures network of funds, with portfolio companies such as Licious, FirstCry, Nium, Binance, Grab, Yatra, and Happy Fresh. In addition to Southeast Asia and India, the Vertex Global Network is comprised of affiliates in Silicon Valley, China and Israel. Kanika joined Vertex Ventures in 2020 and focuses on opportunities in India in agritech, B2B, consumer, and health tech. Kanika has worked i...
Feb 24, 2023•56 min
Aprameya Radhakrishna is a serial entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of Koo , an Indian microblogging and social networking app also known as the Indian Twitter. The company has raised a little over $50M from marquee investors such as Accel, Kalaari Capital , Blume Ventures , 3one4 Capital , Tiger Global among many others. He founded his first venture, TaxiForSure with Raghunandan, which was acquired by OLA in 2015 for $200 million. In 2017, Aprameya launched his second venture, ‘Vokal,’ a ...
Feb 19, 2023•55 min
Shyam Menon is the founding partner of Bharat Innovation Fund (BII) , an India-based early-stage venture capital fund that invests in IP-driven deep tech, healthcare, agritech, fintech, mobility, logistics, enterprise and renewables startups. The fund has invested in Fire Compass, CreditVidya, Shifu, Detect Technologies, among many others. He has worked in the technology industry for over 25 years. Prior to launching BII, Shyam co-founder Infuse Ventures , India’s first clean tech focussed early...
Feb 14, 2023•1 hr 18 min
Tushar Vashisht is the Co-founder and CEO of HealthifyMe , a digital health and wellness company that provides smart meal plans personalized by expert nutritionists and customized workout plans with certified fitness coaches. The company has raised just over $100M from Khosla Ventures, Chiratae Ventures , Athera Venture Partners , Blume Ventures among several others. Vashisht began his career on Wall Street at BlackRock. He later joined Deutsche Bank as a corporate finance analyst in San Francis...
Feb 05, 2023•52 min
Upasana Taku is the Co-founder, COO and Chairperson of MobiKwik , a financial services company that provides a fintech platform designed for online payments (incl. BNPL), life insurance, and loans. The company has raised $178M from marquee investors such as Sequoia, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Blacksoil, AmEx Ventures, Orios Venture Partners, Cisco Investments among many others. Upasana built the company from scratch and now has 32 million users and 100,000 merchants, doing close to 500,000-...
Jan 30, 2023•58 min
Bipin Shah is the Partner at Titan Capital , an early-stage sector agnostic micro VC fund based in India. The fund has an incredible portfolio of over 250 startups in India and the US across consumer internet, D2C, SaaS, AI, Web3, and other sectors, including investments in Ola, UrbanCompany, Mamaearth, Oziva, Dealshare, Razorpay, Ofbusiness, Yellow Messenger, Beardo, and Giva, among many others. He was a founding team member of Lead Angels Network , a seed-stage investment platform, before join...
Jan 23, 2023•1 hr 8 min
Yash Jain is the Founder and General Partner at Sparrow Capital , an early-stage micro VC fund that invests upto $500K in SaaS, B2B, Fintech, and Consumer Internet sectors in India with investments in companies such as Mailmodo, Qoohoo, Bimaplan, GoKwik, Superfone among others. Prior to Sparrow, Yash had two stints with large VC funds in India – Kalaari Capital and Arkam Ventures, and also worked at Flipkart as an analyst. Episode notes: 1. Why venture as a career path? (2:20) 2. The difficultie...
Jan 16, 2023•1 hr 17 min
Milap Jadeja is the Managing Partner of Openbook VC . He is a senior management and strategy professional with over 20 years of experience in building multiple businesses in sectors such as Pharmaceuticals, Agriculture and Non-ferrous castings. Milap brings with him a proven track record in investment leadership being An established angel investor with over 50+ angel investments in startups including unicorns and soonicorns. He has also led multiple fundraising efforts for startups as a syndicat...
Jan 09, 2023•1 hr 10 min
Shalini Chhabra is the Managing Partner at 3i (Impact India Investments) Partners , a Silicon Valley-based Impact Fund with the objective of supporting enterprises looking to solve some of the most pressing challenges faced by India's lower-income millions. She is a seasoned Banker with over two decades of experience in Credit Risk Management. She has managed diverse portfolios including Large Corporate, Inter-bank, SME, Financial Institutions including Mutual Funds and Insurance, Government / P...
Jan 04, 2023•1 hr 27 min
