Maharajas of Scale

The World of Start-ups is fraught with failure. It is estimated that only 1% of Start-ups succeed which means millions of start-ups fail. Yet, Ashish Kashyap's Story is an interesting one. From being Google India's First Country Head to Growing and Selling GoIbibo for a whopping $2 Billion, making it India's 2nd largest startup exit, Ashish's resume in the world of start-ups reads like a dream resume. He is a man with the Midas Touch! But here he is again teaming up with Amrita Sirohia to build IndWealth which has already notched up several early successes. Ashish knows a lot of secrets about building and scaling startups. Listen to this freewheeling episode on everything that he has done and how he succeeds again and again in a world of failure. Amrita talks about her experience and the lack of solid solutions in Wealth Management and how they are bridging it with IndWealth.

An IIT Rourkee Graduate, Ankit Garg found initial funding success with a product he created out of his laboratory. But having funding and a good product did not mean success. He realized that managing financial side of the startup had a role to play. He soon shut shop and was out of a job. This meant sleepless nights and sleep walking. Today, Ankit Garg has built a Rs.500 Crore Mattress Brand in Wakefit. Its ironical how he went from being sleepless to building a brand that would assure others a sound sleep at night. How did he go from being jobless and being sleepless to doing this? Its all here!

Ajay was a newly mined graduate at MuSigma, one of India's premier Unicorns in the data analytics space. On a fine day, while house hunting, he is bewildered by the commission the broker makes for the little value that he added. Unlike most renters, he feels that he is getting compensated disproportinately compared to the value he added. He takes a deep dive and 2 months later, quits his high paced and exciting job to found TheHouseMonk in 2014. TheHouseMonk currently has over 1000000 properties managed thru its product. They are pushing the levers of scale in the housing sector with their product. The journey thus far is interesting and full of ups and downs. A fascinating listen.

Ashish Singhal is a lifelong problem solver. Most people are consider working for a high powered Jeff Bezos team as their end "dream scenario". Not Ashish. Amazon was just his starting point. Having cut his teeth with Bezos Teams at Amazon, he went on to found Urban Tailor and eventually CoinSwitch with a vision to make Crypto Buying as simple as buying groceries. While discussing his story, he gives out a lot of secrets building user base of millions. If you know what secrets to look for, you will find them. DONT MISS THIS EPISODE.

Raghu was a network engineer working for a telecommunications networking firm. Network engineering can be exciting and yet boring at the same time depending upon which part of the industry you worked in. It was in this boring industry that Raghu had an epiphany to start a consumer oriented business and thus the business of home improvement was born. However, he soon left it for a lucrative career in freelancing making over US$200K in a single year and ended up traveling to more than 30 countries in that time while working as a freelancer. That is when he hit upon the idea of freeing blue blooded professionals to experience the same rewarding path he had taken thru CrewScale. But the path was anything but straight. How did he scale CrewScale to more than 60K freelancers around the world? It's all in here.

Some professions and roles evoke a feeling of exoticness in us. One such profession is that of a Marine Biologist. Aman was fascinated by it and became a Marine Engineer and even worked for the Merchant Navy but stagnated. He broke out and tried his hand at selling T-Shirts which kind of worked out but didn't scale. He tried his hand at propelling civil activism thru a platform called Write for India. Eventually, realizing that creating wealth is the best way to make impact in India, Aman Co-Founded HighApe. How did they survive the graveyard of event based startups and another startup graveyard called Covid? How did he make the transitions? It's all in here, in this episode!

Amit Mishra comes from the town of Amravathi in Maharashtra. Originally from a family of teachers, Amit grew up in the Slums of Amravati in whose schools generations of his ancestors as well as his parents taught. Forever taunted by his mother to do something vocational, Amit decides that he would do something that would outstrip everyone around him. From a life where he does all his schooling till 10th grade in Marathi and refuses to relocate overseas as he loves to live in India, Amit's down to earth attitude and dogged persistence in solving a problem has made iMocha a big success skill assessment. In a nation where skills are sold for a song, iMocha is a breath of fresh air. This is a heart warming story unlike any other.

While still in College, Vivek Khandelwal embarked on a journey of discovery with Jagriti a train journey unlike any other that takes young minds to see the best of entrepreneurship and innovation across India. This inspired him to become a creator and an entrepreneur. He shares how he and his co-founders have built a multi million $ SAAS business working with businesses across the Globe.

Rahul Prasad joined Brother Ankit and built Bobble, a keyboard company that helps Indian users express themselves in Indic languages using their key board. Bobble today has millions of users and thru their recent partnership with Xiaomi, will be loaded onto 30 Million Xiaomi devices but that is not how it all began. Rahul and Ankit want to make it The No.1 Keyboard in the World. Are we there yet? Listen on!

If you are an entrepreneur wanting to make a difference, the question is - what are the challenges in scaling a News Startup in India in the age of Sensationalism.  Anu and Dhimanth began The Better India as a blog, they have stayed true to their roots of bringing a balanced perspective and news about what is right about India. More than a decade later, their monthly audience has touched 70 million. This is their story of how they did it!

Abhishek Shah of Wellthy had an interesting upbringing. He was an engineer and had a scientific bent of mind. Having parents who were successful entrepreneurs, he had seen them run their ventures but existing care not catching up with their lifestyles. Working with Ronnie Screwvala and investing in startups gave him an outside in perspective on ventures. How did he combine the two to build and put Wellthy Therapeutics on the path to scale? That story is here!

Sanjeev Barnwal can come across our typical IIT Grad. Coming from the small town Jharkand where the dream is to crack IIT, he did not just that but went on to work for Sony in Japan. But a chance discussion with his old buddy led him to pursue entrepreneurship and found Meesho. And he has never looked back. Listen to this small town boy who is going places!

Gotama is a very unlikely entrepreneur. His father's career inspired him to tread a different path - one of Journalism, only to be later smitten by entrepreneurship early on. Gotama had a very different start. He tried his hand at a Quick Service Restaurants and a bakery. One failed to launch and the other succeeded but with a series of twists and turns that led him to launch and succeed with an IOT startup. Listen to him talk about How he launched and scaled an enterprise IOT with almost no sales or entrepreneur background? This story has it all!

PC Mustafa or PC as he prefers to be called had to walk miles to go to school. At a certain point, he considered dropping out as he was a below average student. He continued this streak of being a below average student into adulthood. Smitten by the IIM Campus in Bangalore and being unable to summon the courage to request the security guard to let him take a peek, he swore he would get in right royally. He eventually got into the hall of fame. Around the same time, he was throwing around ideas with his cousins in Bangalore to start something. One thing lead to another and they ended up starting a business manufacturing and distribution of Idly batter. But the road was not an easy one. How did PC overcome challenges and make ID the largest fresh food distributor in the world? This is the story

Akshay Chaturvedi's entrepreneurial journey is a story of humility and persistence.  An entrepreneur at heart, Akshay is excited about the impact a startup can have. He begins a venture putting students and mentors together. A few thousand downloads and a few months later, he realizes that he needs something much bigger. Something that will bring in revenues and is monetizable. He shuts down the venture and embarks on a journey of learning, working at Snapdeal and doing an MBA at ISB. In the process, he realizes that what he was personally doing - helping other potential students get into ISB could be the right angle to put on top of his erstwhile mentor network idea. He dives in and begins LeverageEdu and LeverageEdu picks off well garnering a lot of users in a matter of months. So much so that, when it comes to funding, he is in the position of choosing investment firms that match his value ethos to help him realize the larger goal of creating something big. What failures did he encounter on his first journ

Toilet - A Love story - but of a different kind. In the movie Toilet - Ek Prem Katha, Akshay Kumar builds a toilet for his wife who refuses to live with him because his home lacks a toilet. Deep Bajaj went a step further and helped millions of women. Deep realised on a road trip with pregnant wife the complications women face with personal hygiene and toilet cleanliness or the lack of toilets.  Deep's start-up Peebuddy and Sirona- hygiene products for women, was a result of several bad experiences all the women around him faced including his mother, wife & female friends. He did this by exiting his secure events career and helping his wife with stabilizing the business of making Handmade Carpets. Listen to Deep Bajaj explain his product development challenges and the thousand days scaling strategies for an innovative product designed to help women avoid dirty toilet seats.

An inventive young entrepreneur breaking the conventional myths of start-ups with his zealous attitude. On a journey to finding solutions and emerging trends, Nischal self-taught organic growth hack and founded start-ups that are today lashing definitions in the ecosystem. A passionate coder, realised his IT corporate job did not let him understand the impact he was making to the end-user.  This quickly lead to a career switch at BURRP - One of India's earliest restaurant discovery platforms. After learning the ropes of start-up Burrp, he launches CrowdFire which notches up millions of users. Using a simple formula called ETC, Nischal goes on to repeat his success of scaling at his next startup WazirX now owned by Binance, the world's most pre-eminent Crypto Organizations. What is ETC? What Growth Hacks did they apply? You definitely want to hear Nischal Shetty's insight and the start-up story that has an abundance of wisdom to offer.

Shrijay Seth came from a reputed business family that was into the business of offset printing for generations. He followed the trodden family path of acquiring a management degree from the US. However, working in the US for Legalzoom and his own inner entrepreneurial spirit prompted him to jump headlong into entrepreneurship. Most of us work at a job and imagine either changing jobs or growing in the same organization. Shrijay took the awesome things that Legalzoom stood for and set about to replicate the same for Indian entrepreneurs by founding and setting up LegalWiz on the path to scale. Four years hence and having served thousands of entrepreneurs, he still feels like he is just starting up. A tale full of humility and excitement. A great story!

Alex Lazarow comes from the small city of Winnipeg in Canada. Coming from this small town, having a first hand view of m-pesa's growth and working in Venture Capital with the likes of Omdiyar network gave him a perspective about startup playbooks. The strategies and tactics and playbooks that entrepreneurs outside Silicon Valley employed fascinated. They fascinated him so much that he decided to dive deep and chronicle their stories. 200 interviews and numerous discussions later, this fructified into the book - Out-Innovate: How Global Entrepreneurs from Delhi to Detroit Are Rewriting the Rules of Silicon Valley. We are always interested in new scale play books that are taking the context around them and putting a startup on the path to scale. We are even more interested if they are from around the world where the context is varied and dynamic. Our hope is that some of those tactics become relevant to our entrepreneurs who are trying hard to scale their ventures in India. Listen on and read the book!

Anindita is a pragmatic entrepreneur. She loves to trek and travel and it was during her jaunt in the US that she thought about delivering Tasty and Healthy Breakfast options to Indians. When she looked around, she realized that there were hardly any Tasty and Healthy eating choices and she decided to jump head long into entrepreneurship along with her Sister Suhasini to start Yoga Bars. When they started, no one was making breakfast bars in India. And India's varied temperature conditions meant that recipes and manufacturing processes that worked overseas would not work in India. It was similar to what Sam Pitroda faced while designing telecom solutions for India. Anindita and her sister brought a pragmatic approach to figuring out how to make the bars, what to put in them and were also smart in taking advantage of the digital commerce trend to scale their reach. Even though she is not from an entrepreneurial family, it feels like she knows the basics and like a good startup, their focus and clarity has help