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Founded in 2013, Portea Medical, India's Leading Home Health Care Company employes over 4000 people and covers 40+ cities in India doing 1,50,000+ home visits every month. Portea has also helped about 5,00,000 COVID-19 patients, working with seven different cities and state governments, including Delhi, Mumbai, Faridabad, Gurgaon, Chennai, Bengaluru and all of Karnataka.  Meena Ganesh, Chairperson and Co-Founder, Portea Medical is one of India’s most celebrated entrepreneurs and business leaders.  She sits on the boards of numerous firms like Axis Bank, and has a string of start-up successes to her credit. She co-founded her first company, Customer Asset, in 2000 and later on sold it to ICICI. Then came TutorVista, which she ran successfully till it was acquired by British publishing giant Pearson.  Before founding Portea, Meena also served Pearson India as the chief executive officer and managing director.  With her incredible career and achievements, she also became part of Fortune India’s ‘50 Most Powerful Women in Indian Business’ from 2015 to 2021. In today’s episode, we talk with Meena about her entrepreneurial journey so far, learnings from building a healthcare startup in India and why even getting two large exists previously, she still thinks that journey with her third venture Portea is the most satisfying in terms of learnings.  Notes -  01:36 - Intro 02:04 - Family background & what got Meena into entrepreneurship 08:02 - Brainstorming Ideas during the conception of Portea 12:46 - Milestones after Series A till date 17:53 - Her thoughts on the notion that - “It’s difficult to create money from healthcare & health-tech startups” 21:36 - Zoho Sponsored – Prashant Ganti on Where do founders struggle with Payroll and how can they fix it? 22:37 - How has the pricing model evolved at Portea? 24:06 - Learnings from building in healthcare in India 27:14 - How has she grown as a founder during her entrepreneurial journey? 30:04 - Her fundraising journey at Portea 30:33 - Balancing investor-founder relation over the course of a startup’s journey 32:07 - Managing her time between GrowthStory, Portea and home Also, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur! https://zoho.to/zoho-payroll

In startup ecosystem a lot of people talk about Category creating startups, but it is equally difficult and as it sounds glamorous and exciting.  That’s possibly the reason why we don’t see a lot such Category creating startups around us very frequently. And even if they do come up, they don’t sustain very long.  In today’s episode we are talking with Vijay Arisetty, Founder, MyGate, i.e. a category creating startup in its space.  As of now MyGate cators to almost 4 Million+ homes across India. It is very likely that you would have interacted with MyGate directly, as its installed in your society or indirectly probably when you would have visited to meet a friend or family in a gated community, and you would have experienced the seamless flow it brings to gates of these gated communities. During the episode, catch Vijay sharing what all challenges and opportunities did they come across being a category creating startup in terms of hiring, what to offer to its customers, how to monetize better and much more.  Notes -  01:51 - Intro 03:11 - Family Background and joining the Armed Forces 06:55 - His first startup - PurpleRoad in the Delivery space 08:19 - Aha moment which led to starting MyGate? 11:53 - Final Scale with his logistics startup and initial scale at MyGate before first funding 14:48 - Challenges during the first funding round being a category creator 21:25 - Zoho Sponsored – Prashant Ganti on Where do founders struggle with Payroll and how can they fix it? 23:13 - Current and operationally capable scale of MyGate 24:56 - Evolution of monetary channels 29:48 - Challenges during their 0 to 1 journey and then in 1 to 10 journey 37:36 - Existential crisis prior to first round of funding 42:13 - Journey from Series A to Series B and beyond 44:55 - How were the two years of Covid for MyGate? 49:02 - Similarities between being in the Armed Forces and being an Entrepreneur 54:08 - 30 Million homes untapped market by MyGate Also, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur! https://zoho.to/zoho-payroll

In Sales the stakes are high. And for company’s growth it is important to get it right. Thanks to multiple options of Sales engagement softwares which streamlines the sales process through integrations which enables companies to combine their sales and marketing efforts to create personalized and automated sales journeys. In today's episode of 100x Entrepreneur, we have with us Yamini Bhat, Co-founder & CEO, Vymo; i.e An intelligent sales engagement platform for financial institutions. Started in 2013, Vymo is used by 300,000+ Sales Reps across 65+ Enterprises such as HDFC Bank, SBI Life Insurance, and Sun Life Financial among others. While most SaaS startups go global from Day 1, Vymo is one of the few Indian SaaS companies which scaled to more than $10M ARR with India Enterprises as clients. During the episode, catch Yamini sharing why did they chose to focus on BFSI, how did they brought awareness for both their team and customers about their product and much more.  Notes -  01:33 - Intro 03:05 - Career background in Sales Transformation at Mckinsey which led her to Vymo 06:48 - Family background and getting into BITS Pilani & IIM Bangalore? 14:58 - Quitting Mckinsey and identifying the problem statement to startup 17:29 - Till Series-A being focused on a horizontal solution 20:53 - Zoho Sponsored – Prashant Ganti on Where do founders struggle with Payroll and how can they fix it? 23:04 - Milestones during Vymo’s journey 26:26 - Key challenges with team and customers early-on 28:56 - Convincing the first few BFSI customers for an average contract value of $350K 31:54 - Building a SaaS behemoth from India and then expanding globally 36:16 - Her 0 to $10 Million ARR playbook for SaaS-entrepreneurs in India Also, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur! https://zoho.to/zoho-payroll

As per a recent article,“About 60% of companies that reach pre-series A funding fail to make it to Series A, so the success rate is only 30%-40%.” Infact if you check on Crunchbase, in India you’ll find 4300+ startups at Pre-seed or Seed-stage, but only 600+ out of them have managed to reach Series-A, which bring the success rate to even lower at just 15%.    Apart from this, even in the entire Indian startup ecosystem, there are so many Product Managers, Ex-founders, and many more, who either have an idea around a Problem-statement, but don’t know how to proceed or there are students in college, who are amazed by the startup ecosystem, and want to take their early step, but afraid on how to take the next step.  In order to solve this we have with us our guest of this episode, Rajiv Srivatsa & Nitin Sharma, Antler India.  Antler unlike most VC firms bets on the startup ideas at Pre-seed stage with their Antler India Residency or in some cases even earlier with college students via Antler India Fellowship. During the episode, catch Rajiv & Nitin sharing their First Principles approach and what infrastructure they are building at Antler India to make the founders succeed considering the time constraints at Pre-seed stage and much more.  Notes -  03:50 - Intro 04:44 - Why did they choose to build Antler India?  09:35 - How did Antler happen?  12:02 - Why kind of institutional mindset do they bring in?  16:18 - How do they balance the equation of a Founder’s optimism & a VC’s pessimism between them? 18:22 - Background around Antler’s India Portfolio over the last 18+ months 22:08 - Zoho Sponsored – Prashant Ganti on Where do founders struggle with Payroll and how can they fix it? 23:47 - What’s their approach and what’s the general cheque size?  29:48 - Learnings from the Ups & Downs in Urban Ladder Journey 33:28 - Focusing on building around core foundational use-cases during times of crisis 38:18 - Keeping founders from falling in love with the product and not the actual problem-story 42:12 - Examples of building PeakPerformer & Bookee with Antler 46:47 - How & when do founders get distracted after funding? 50:08 - When do founders have the best chances of succeeding at Seed-stage? Also, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur! https://zoho.to/zoho-payroll

Varun Mayya was in college when he along with his friends started up a t-shirt manufacturing business called SIZR. Later on, he went into building a recruitment platform, Jobspire. And they were one of the youngest teams to raise venture capital of Rs 1.7 crore even before they graduated, and scaled the company to serve 4 million requests in 2016. In 2017, they sold Jobspire to a New York-based company. Varun also authored a book named Pyjama Profit which is a guide for millennials to get started with an online freelance practice, while developing the skills needed to succeed. Along with running a youtube channel, Varun also co-founded Scenes, a community platform for creators to manage, moderate, and monetize their communities in one place.  Scenes has raised funds from some notable investors including Kunal Shah, Gaurav Munjal, Kalyan Krishnamurthy, Tanmay Bhat as well Tanglin Ventures, Better Capital, Whiteboard Capital, iSeed Ventures, and Blume Founders Fund. Tune in to this insightful episode with Varun to learn about building a brand, processes around content creation, and leveraging your youtube channel to scale your business. Notes –  03:10 – Intro 04:05 – His journey before entrepreneurship 06:49 – Getting introduced to oDesk (now Upwork) via his mother and earning his first $100 09:10 – Starting a visual version of Naukri in fourth year of college 11:09 – Writing an Amazon Bestseller Book – “Pyjama Profit: The Millennial’s Guide to a Sustainable Freelance Career”  12:48 – Starting Avalon Scenes 18:07 – Two rounds of funding for building a community space 19:22 – Top clients and why do they use Scenes? 22:11 – Zoho Sponsored – Prashant Ganti on Where do founders struggle with Payroll and how can they fix it? 24:09 – What excites him the most about Scenes?  26:40 – Solving a problem really well v/s Building a large business 28:41 – What’s their longterm goal with Scenes?  33:02 – Can Scenes eventually replace Discord?  34:36 – Why he continues to a creator with Scenes growing?  41:25 – Learnings on YouTube and Twitter around content creation 46:15 – One of his best videos on YouTube 52:44 – “I think we live in a trust-deficient economy and content is the only way to beat it.”   Also, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur! https://zoho.to/zoho-payroll

According to a recent article in Forbes, as per data of ProductLedGrowth.org,“Buyers want to self-educate.”  Personalization is expected by customers—not only are 80% of people more likely to do business with a company that offers personalization but Salesforce’s 2017 State of Marketing Report found that 52% of B2C customers would actually switch brands if they weren’t getting a personalized experience.  In today’s episode we’ve some Dheeraj Pandey, CEO at DevRev; Board Member at Adobe; Investor & Co-founder at Nutanix.  During the episode, catch Dheeraj sharing his experience around Product-Led Growth over the past two decades, taking Nutanix Inc. public within 6 years of inceptio and much more.  Notes -  01:44 - Intro 02:26 - Achieving Product Market Fit - “What is the journey is not a destination.” 05:15 - Identifying the problem statement for first 10 customer at Nutanix 07:54 - Main value prop by Nutanix for early customers 10:11 - How to identify large problems? 13:22 - Whether to find a niche problem and then expand or find a problem statement of the larger market? 15:07 - What’s the first Aha moment for customers on DevRev? 20:04 - Zoho Sponsored - Prashant Ganti on Where do founders struggle with Payroll and how can they fix it? 21:18 - Why have Startups as the target audience v/s Large Entreprises? 27:10 - History of Product-led growth 32:50 - First principle thought behind Product-led growth with velocity 37:49 - Customer Relationship Management v/s Sales First Automation 39:07 - How a B2B developer can think like a B2C developer? 40:23 - What are risks of failure they need to think about? 41:40 - Building an entrepreneurial culture 43:47 - Dealing with the most difficult part of an acquisition (i.e. Integration) 45:38 - An early childhood in Patna, graduating from IIT Kanpur & Ph.D. dropout from University of Texas 50:33 - Why did he chose to startup in a downturn of 2009? 54:07 - Milestones in Nutanix’s journey 58:31 - Becoming a Public company 59:58 - Aspirations for DevRev 1:02:29 - What kind of person he is in his personal life? Also, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur! https://zoho.to/zoho-payroll

In today’s podcast, we have Ishan Sharma with us! Ishan is a Youtuber, Entrepreneur, and Founder of MarkitUp. He droped out of his college(BITS Pilani, Goa) at the age of 20 and decided to continue his entrepreneurial and content creation journey! Ishan Sharma has around 500k Subscribers on Youtube and about 100K on LinkedIn. He also wrote a  book called "Crush It on LinkedIn" back in Mid 2020 which summarises his experience of using LinkedIn and it is a guide for college students to find opportunities. Ishan will share his YT journey so far,  why he decided to drop out, what motivated him to do so, how MarkitUp was formed, and a lot more! Let’s listen to his inspirational journey so far and what he plans to do next!  0:00 - Intro2:05 - What drives you in your life?2:49 - How did you overcome the pain of Failing in JEE Advanced Exam?6:22 - Do you remember the date you started your YouTube Channel?7:18 - What's the main reason behind starting your YouTube Channel?9:13 - What other skills have you learned after Coding & Content Creation?11:40 - When did you make your First Money?12:16 - How was your YouTube Journey & How did you reach 10,000 Subscribers?13:35 - What are your learnings from YouTube?15:24 - How did you master YouTube Thumbnails?17:47 - What are your other Income Streams beside YouTube?19:56 - What was your income in May?21:44 - When did you get your First Brand Deal & What does it takes to reach here?24:56 - What is the Sales Engine looks like for 'MarkitUp'?26:20 - Where do you want to see yourself in 1 Year in terms of numbers?27:15 - How many Brand Collaborations do you do in a month?28:52 - How much do you pay a Freelancer per month?30:05 - How does a day in your Life look like?33:14 - What made you choose not to spend any more time in college?39:00 - How do you differentiate your income?39:55 - What do you do with the money you are making right now?41:08 - Do you draw any salary from 'MarkitUp'?43:05 - What is enough for Ishan?45:02 - Why does $1 Million in Investment important for you?46:03 - What is one thing that is missing in your life?47:48 - What do you do to make your growth engine proactive?49:32 - Have you explored during 10 Day Meditation or Vipassana?50:43 - What is Your Biggest Fear right now?53:14 - Do you watch Netflix or any other OTT platform?54:16 - Do you believe in Manifestation?55:18 - What's your process for recording a YouTube Video?57:08 - What would you do if your Investment Portfolio reaches $1 Million?59:49 - OutroAlso, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur! https://zoho.to/zoho-payroll

If you’re a startup enthusiasts, its highly likely that you would have read or atleast heard about the book - Saying No to Jugaad: The Making of Bigbasket by by T. N. Hari & M. S. Subramanian. In today’s episode we have Hari Menon, BigBasket’s founder sharing the his experience in the Indian Ecommerce Ecosystem over the last two decades.  In May 2021, Tata Digital invested $375 Mn in BigBasket. They have also recently launched their quick commerce vertical called BBNow and will now compete alongside the existing players such as Swiggy, Blinkit, Zepto and Dunzo. During the episode, catch Hari talking about his learning from his first venture, his thoughts on the current market and the investment slowdown, and much more.  Notes -  02:20 - Building India’s online grocery market in the last two decades 14:37 - Starting BigBasket at the age of 50 21:16 - Dividing equity between the founders 21:42 - Mistakes & Biases which got carried from his first venture 24:15 - Becoming a part of Tata Group and growing bigger 27:16 - Top learnings and observations from Tata Group 29:30 - His thoughts on “10-minute delivery” 33:14 - Any similar patterns between June 2022 and 1999 boom and bust? 35:14 - Business which are not building a profitable model will suffer the most 38:22 - Indian Startup Ecosystem in the next 5-10 years 40:20 - Framework to identify large opportunities: Scale & Profitability 42:36 - Culture at BigBasket which keeps people from moving out 46:45 - Growing with the business as CEO

We’ve heard inspiring stories of founders of Facebook and Microsoft who’ve dropped out of Harvard and even some of the well known Indian Entrepreneurs who’ve dropped out of IITs to build on their dream venture.  But in today’s episode we’ll talk with Anish Achuthan, who ran away from his hometown during his Class 11th with dreams to build something big in the Dotcom space and currently is the Cofounder of Open, which recently became Kerala’s first unicorn start-up. Listen to Anish talk about his journey through his various ventures over the last two decades and how he’s building for Open to democratize the Neobanking space in India.  Notes -  02:42 - Being born in Govt service-oriented family in Kerala to getting inspired by Dotcom 06:11 - Meeting his cofounder & life partner 07:49 - Cumulative learnings from his previous companies 11:27 - Product Offerings by Open for SMEs, Banks and Fintech Entreprises 13:57 - Key milestones in Open’s journey 15:49 - Current metrics on the platform 16:56 - What are his plans with Open for the long term 19:17 - Their moat against other Neobanks and traditional banks 23:04 - Product & distribution strategy for the first 100 to 1000 users 31:46 - Licenses and certifications needed for Neo Banking 33:47 - Challenges while cracking the first banking partner 35:27 - Monetizing their services on Freemium model 36:55 - Advice to early-stage entrepreneurs

On the podcast today, we have with us Sandeep Jain, Founder, GeeksforGeeks. GeeksForGeeks is one of the largest online learning platforms for coding enthusiasts, budding engineers, and anyone involved in the tech domain. Sandeep is from Firozabad which is 40 kms away from Agra in UP. He studied in a government school before doing his graduation from UP Technical University, Mathura, and masters from IIT Roorkee. In the year 2009, he created a blog with the intent to help engineering students prepare for placements. What started as a blog is today a 1000 Crore+ annual revenue Edtech company with 250+ team members. Let’s dive deep into his journey from leaving his engineering job to becoming a teacher to 10 Million+ registered 'Geeks' from across the world. Notes -  03:07 - Growing up in Firozabad to growing the love for coding 07:20 - Joining D. E. Shaw & Co after graduation 09:24 - 30% Salary cut in his first Teaching job v/s being a Software Engineer 10:00 - Starting GeeksforGeeks in 2009 16:03 - Hiring the initial team 18:26 - Annual revenue growth to 1000 Crore+ 24:12 - Learning the skills and growing in the role of a CEO 30:35 - Growing against well-funded competitors

March 2019 was when we published our first episode of 100xEntrepreneur.  So far we’ve covered 150+ VCs, Angel Investors and Entrepreneurs from the Indian startup ecosystem.  Alongside 100xEntrepreneur podcast we’ve so far invested in 30+ portfolio companies via like Airmeet, PlumHQ, Zencastr and Neeman’s.  In today’s episode we share our journey so far. We are Siddhartha & Nansi, a husband-wife entrepreneur-cum-content creator duo who started their podcast journey with a purpose to make behind the screen conversations, thought process, and mindset of VCs, Investors and Successful entrepreneurs accessible to thousands of early-stage entrepreneurs and startup enthusiasts like you.  We really hope that we have been able to serve you with great content so far and would really appreciate your feedback. How can you share your feedback with us?  Reply to this email Comment on our Youtube, iTunes, Castbox or Spotify Channel Notes -  01:09 - How 100xEntrepreneur was born? 09:44 - To Unlock Growth: Start reaching out to people who are better and bigger than you 14:19 - What went in the background while recording a podcast? 21:01 - Joining AWS to setting up 100x Fund 23:33 - Building the team at 100xEntrepreneur 27:46 - Our favourite episode so far

India’s largest Content Marketplace with 1L+ creators, 2500+ customers, out of which 70+ are Unicorns.  Does that ring any bells?  We’re talking about Pepper Content, founded by Anirudh Singla, in his 2nd year of undergrad college. Pepper’s journey started when Anirudh during his college decided to take up freelancing and content creation to fund his graduation all by himself. He then realised the potential of content creators in India and decided to organize it by creating an Indian marketplace for the same.  In our conversation with Anirudh, we dive into the journey of building and scaling Pepper to $8 Million ARR Content-marketplace in under 5 years and their plans ahead. Notes -  03:06 - Baniya-family background, freelance exposure while at college 07:06 - First few steps to building a marketplace 11:06 - Splitting equity early-on 12:46 - Reaching out to 80+ VCs and Angel Investors while raising their 1st round 17:20 - What made them raise their 1st round?  18:43 - Scaling from $500k ARR to $8 Million ARR in 14 months 21:20 - Client base: 550+ Active customers and 70+ Unicorns 24:20 - Need to focus on a SaaS based approach for Content 26:15 - “Hustle doesn’t scale. By the same time what scale’s is the mindset of thinking big enough!” 28:25 - “Not building a family, but instead building a high quality sports team.”

#1 Smartwatch Brand in India #3 Smartwatch Brand in Asia #9 Smartwatch Brand Globally All the above feats are not from Apple, Samsung, or a legacy player in the market, but from our own homegrown Indian brand - Noise. In this week’s podcast, we turn the spotlight on Noise : A brand that’s on a mission to offer quality smart wearables at affordable prices to its customers.  In our conversation with Amit Khatri, Co-founder of Noise, he shared how the brand started bootstrapped in 2014, what have been the challenges and how have they scaled over the years. We have tried to summarize some key themes & takeaways from our conversation.  Notes -  02:09 - Early Career & Family Background before starting Noise 05:45 - Product development & Revenue journey from 2014 to 2018 08:04 - Finalising the main categories - Smartwatch and Wireless Earbuds 09:55 - Why prioritize growing own Website instead of relying on marketplace? 12:18 - Testing your idea in the market being bootstrapped 13:36 - Vision & plan of the brand early-on 14:56 - Initial Learnings for early-stage D2C Entrepreneurs 16:16 - Focus on building the brand from Day 1 18:55 - Building and launching the first product 24:15 - Secrets of scaling from Rs.160 Cr+ to Rs.800 Cr+ Revenue 26:26 - Key elements of creating a playbook for a Rs.1000 Cr+ D2C brand 31:36 - Keeping prices reasonable while ensuring better quality

Why is HUL considered a Leadership factory? “Every great brand is built on a fundamental human insights.” Do you agree that people come before revenue? “Invest in Brand, even as little as possible, and not just Performance Marketing from Day 1.” Listen to Shashank Mehta, Founder of The Whole Truth Foods and a passionate HUL Ex-employee in today’s episode to know his perspective about everything mentioned above.  Notes -  03:43 - Definition of D2C market in India context 07:11 - His early career prior to starting his entrepreneurial journey 09:40 - Post-MBA why he chose Marketing over Finance? 11:30 - Why HUL is considered a leadership factory? 14:30 - Learnings from his stint at HUL 18:48 - Why he joined Faasos (now REBEL Foods) a lesser known startup leaving HUL in 2012? 23:40 - Scale of Faaso’s when he joined and left the company 24:30 - Why he left Faasos and joined HUL again? 28:22 - Learnings from setting up an Ayurveda-brand within HUL 34:09 - Consumer insight which HUL was trying to  solve with its AYUSH proposition 34:54 - His blog about food and fitness - FIT SHIT 41:54 - Raising around 5 Cr+ initial funding during his Notice Period 45:10 - Zero to One Phase of The Whole Truth Foods 50:02 - Realizing the ‘Aha Moment’ of brand’s journey 52:32 - Sales & Revenue Milestones during their journey 54:05 - Being a Truth company rather than being a food company 57:00 - Key learnings while scaling a brand

MobiKwik is one of the largest Mobile Wallet and Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) platforms in India. Its tech platform has 120  million Registered Users, 25.3 million pre-approved BNPL users and more than 3.4 million merchant partners. MobiKwik's top line grew by 80 percent from INR 300 crore in FY21 to INR 540 Crore in FY22. Tune in to this conversation with Bipin Preet Singh, Co-founder, MobiKwik where we talk about his journey of building and scaling the company for the last 13+ years. During the episode, Bipin also shares about how they started first with a basic problem of the masses with mobile recharge and then scaled over time, how they sailed through the difficult times of Covid and took Mobikwik to 100Mn+ users. Notes -  02:21 - What led him to founding MobiKwik? 09:00 - “You can’t build the platform on Day 1, the platform has to evolve.” 11:58 - Advice for early-stage entrepreneurs pitching to build a platform 14:27 - How did MobiKwik evolve as a platform?  27:23 - What has transformed significantly in the last 1-2 years? 30:33 - Current revenue, profits, and scale  36:25 - Is the economy currently going into recession? 38:11 - What kept him going for 13+ years? 40:33 - Tailwinds which are supporting Fintech in India 44:52 - Creating a mental model to build in markets with already existing large players

Any idea what’s common between Flipkart, Ola, Swiggy, Zerodha and 6000+ other Businesses in India and South-East Asia?  They all rely on Exotel for their customer communications, no matter the size, scale, or industry within which the company exists; Exotel has the a product-solution for all of them.  In this episode, we talk with Shivakumar Ganesan, Founder of Exotel to learn more about his journey and challenges building and scaling the company. During the episode, Shivakumar talks about his experience with VCs & Angel investors, having Ola as a customer and much more. Notes -  03:48 - Early days, Family, background & career 06:40 - Entrepreneurial attempts before starting Exotel 09:51 - Initial Problem statement and solutions 13:50 - Raising money from Blume Ventures 18:30 - Scale and Customers at $1Mn ARR 30:21 - Cofounders leaving the company 37:30 - Dealing with thoughts about quitting 41:55 - How did A91 Partners chose to back Exotel? 49:38 - Current Capabilities & Scope for growth 52:15 - Proving naysayers wrong by building a $60Mn ARR SaaS from India for India 53:39 - Key lessons from his journey 55:56 - Advice for understanding market size  

With the emergence of health issues in recent years, most people have started becoming proactive to improve their immune system and diet, rather than being reactive at a later stage when the damage has already been done.  Even most doctors agree that if from an early age, we somehow get access to a preservative-free, natural source of nutrients, it might significantly boost our health in the long-run. Our guest Aarti Gill’s OZiva is India's leading Clean, Plant Based Wellness brand.  OZiva was started back in 2016 and since then the company has scaled significantly with a large base of repeat customers. During the episode, Aarti talks about how she pivoted from her first venture to OZiva, what are the major challenges she has encountered during her journey and much more. Notes -  05:38 - Initial intro about OZiva 08:40 - High-level metrics around customers and revenue 09:44 - Building an Omni-channel brand v/s a D2C brand 11:26 - Early Education & Career prior to OZiva 14:14 - Meeting her co-founder and their first venture 18:35 - Deciding the first 4 products 21:14 - Market demand of OZiva’s Prime membership 22:26 - Challenges during the early years of OZiva 24:38 - Building a 20 Cr+ revenue from 2016 to 2020 26:53 - Building online & offline distribution channels 28:03 - Nuances while building distribution channels 30:10 - Rapid scale of 5x within a year 31:37 - Ensuring repeat purchase by customers 36:46 - Funding interest while growing from 0 to 20 Cr+ 38:45 - Mental model of self-evaluating during each funding rounds 40:10 - Deepika Padukone as a brand ambassador 42:44 - Framework behind brand positioning campaigns 44:37 - Things which didn’t work out & learnings 46:19 - Why build new categories apart from nutrition

# Can a passionate cricketer become a passionate entrepreneur?  # Can you and your spouse be Cofounders without conflict?  # How many successful & fulfilling stints can an entrepreneur have?  All the above questions get answered during the episode with our guest Ashish Tandon, Founder & CEO, Indusface. Indusface is his 3rd venture after 2 successful exits and a short but successful early-career in Cricket.  During the episode, Ashish talks about how his wife has supported him throughout his journey, what led him to start over and over again post his multiple exits and much more. Notes -  03:08 - Early background in Cricket 06:30 - 1st venture right out of College 08:46 - Getting acquired by SIFY within 2 years 09:49 - What led to his 2nd venture?  13:21 - Multi-million dollar Exit to TrendMicro 15:16 - Reason behind Bootstrapping his ventures 17:55 - What led him to starting Indusface? 19:42 - Problem statements solved by Indusface 24:32 - Journey from $1Mn ARR to current scale 28:10 - Key Levers to doubling their ARR within a year 31:32 - Challenges in building Indusface 36:58 - Having your spouse as your Cofounder 38:50 - Reflecting back how he feels about his journey?  44:09 - Lessons from all his ventures

# China Accused of cyber-attacks on Ukraine before Russian invasion # Buget 2022: $9.9 billion towards cyber security aims to make Australia a key 'offensive' cyber player These are some of the recent headlines around Cyber threats globally. Cyber attacks have been rated the fifth top rated risk in 2020 and continues to grow in 2022 as IoT cyber attacks alone are expected to double by 2025. In this episode our guest Rahul Sasi, Founder CloudSEK, talks about the key challenges in Cyber Security in India today. CloudSEK’s customer list includes Axis Bank, NPCI, Netcore, OLA, Sun Pharma, ICICI Lombard, IndusInd Bank, MakeMyTrip and many more who don’t wish to take a chance with the growing threat of global cyber crimes.   11 of the Fortune Global companies, and 7 of the world’s biggest banks, trust XVigil (one of CloudSEK’s flagship products) to safeguard their security posture. During the episode, Rahul talks about how they started CloudSEK, customer acquisition strategy, and much more. Notes -  04:04 - Background before starting CloudSEK 08:55 - Current ARR and scale in terms of customers 09:45 - Milestone since launch 12:04 - Products and Problem Statements solved by CloudSEK 14:44 - How has been the industry response?  20:19 - Challenges with hiring the right people 24:40 - Targets for the next 2 years 26:17 - Learnings from their fundraising journey 28:26 - How to leverage your investors?

The Internet of Things category is not slowing down for anyone to catch up. It is projected to be a $1.1 trillion category by 2027, with the number of active IoT-connected devices ​​expected to reach 30.9 billion units by 2025. Targeting this, we have our guest Yadhu Gopalan, CEO & Founder at Esper, with a vision to power the next billion smart devices.  Currently, Seattle-based Esper has more than 200 paying customers and over 2,000 developers using its platform for product development. During the episode, Yadhu talks about his journey building Esper, how he met his cofounder, what learnings he has brought from his stint at Amazon and Microsoft, and much more. Notes -  01:12 - Journey before starting Esper 02:20 - Early Childhood and moving to the US 03:48 - Problem statement behind starting Esper 05:25 - Product offering and clients 10:25 - The founding team at Esper 15:43 - Attracting the best talent 16:50 - Building a team across geographies 19:07 - Execute distribution and partnerships at scale 20:39 - Work Culture & learnings from Microsoft & Amazon 27:51 - Key learnings from his startup journey