BlitzBusiness Indian Podcast

GoKwik - an e-commerce enablement company, on a mission to democratize the shopping experience and increase GMV realization for e-commerce businesses. Founded in the post-pandemic era, GoKwik is easy to integrate (plug and play) and leverages AI/ML to solve merchant-first problems, including the return to origin (RTO) and cash on delivery (CoD) conversion rates for e-commerce players as well as direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands.

Vijay Sandilya leads the Checkout Product at GoKwik eCommerce solutions. He is also the head of the marketing function at GoKwik. Based in Bengaluru, Vijay has extensive experience in product growth and marketing with an in-depth knowledge of the payments space and the overall D2C eCommerce industry.

Vijay is now smearing his deep understanding of the D2C eCommerce industry to Gokwik. With GoKwik, Vijay is leading the vision of creating a unified commerce identity by democratizing the overall shopping experience and helping merchants achieve maximum GMV realization. To support this vision, Vijay facilitates conversions for the merchants by leading the checkout product suite. Moreover, Vijay also leads the online payments suite at GoKwik, enabling merchants to ease their customers' payment process.

With quality product management, leadership, guidance, and communication both inside and outside the scale, Vijay has successfully enabled many big D2C players to join hands with him at GoKwik. He believes in the ideology of "Let's get this done" and strives to provide the best to the merchants and solve their problems with immense grit and hustle.

Before joining GoKwik, Vijay worked with Axis Bank, Jio and Razorpay in a managerial capacity. At Axis Bank, he led the Digital Payments vertical as a Product Manager and was part of the UPI team, which powered payments for Google Pay, Amazon Pay etc. He was also instrumental in setting up Axis Pay, the most considerable UPI Banking App. At Jio, he led innovative projects in the Payments space and implemented UPI-based payments on the Jio Feature Phone in a product manager's capacity. He also led the development of an industry-first video/voice calling app working seamlessly across TV, desktop and mobile devices.

At Razorpay, He led the business and marketing across verticals. He worked in the D2C landscape empowering e-commerce businesses to deal with payments and problems like RTO. In addition, he led the Go-To-Market efforts for industry-first solutions in the e-commerce and D2C space, which resulted in massive adoption for various products of Razorpay.

Vijay holds an MBA from IIFT, Delhi.

Swagat Sarangi, Co-Founder, Smytten

About Smytten

Link https://smytten.com/

Company Profile:

Reynolds India, a brand owned by Newell brands, has been a household name in India for the last 40 years. It is one of the most well-known and respected stationery brands, trusted by generations. This is the result of a history of consistent quality products that deliver on key performance metrics and a good user experience. Reynolds has a strong portfolio of well-known brands including 045, Trimax, Brite, Racer, and Jetter proving solutions for all writing occasions.

Spokesperson Profile:

Rajat Vohra, Country Head – India & South Asia, Reynolds Pens is a seasoned business leader with more than 2 decades of experience in business growth, strategic sales, planning and distribution. As the Country Head, Rajat leads the India and South Asia business for Reynolds Pens, a globally-recognised writing instruments’ brand. He has played a key role in the company’s growth over the years with a key focus on innovation and technology. Rajat has contributed to successfully scaling the India business for Reynolds and venturing into newer product categories.

He is a highly focused and result-driven leader who considers himself a ‘Creative Systemic Innovator’. Rajat has demonstrated the ability to develop business strategy and successfully create and lead highly-driven teams across consumer and enterprise segments of leading Fortune 500 Technology, Telecom and Oil industries. He is a graduate from Delhi Institute of Technology and holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Delhi University.

About Gilded:

Gilded offers an easy, cost-effective platform for buying, holding, selling, and sending digital gold for long-term savings via a mobile app. The company also provides a modern and innovative way to gift gold and send funds in the form of digital gold across borders. Gilded provides the highest level of safety, security, and trust in the gold business. Gold purchased through Gilded meets the highest standards, being Swiss refined, of 0.9999 fineness and compliant with all London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) gold bar specifications. Gilded is registered in Jersey, Channel Islands, with the Jersey Financial Services Commission, the principal financial services regulator in Jersey. Gilded also utilizes Jersey Trust Company as an independent administrator. The app is currently available for free in India and in the UAE on Google Play Store and Apple App Store. Learn more: www.gilded.app

About Ashraf Rizvi:

As the CEO and Founder of Gilded, formerly Digital Swiss Gold, Ashraf Rizvi is responsible for the day to day running of the firm. Ashraf sets the vision and strategy for Gilded and brings over 20 years of executive experience as Founder, Managing Partner and Global Business Head. Ashraf started Gilded as he wanted to provide investors freedom from the fiat based financial system. His goal is to provide investors everywhere, access to gold with the benefits of ease of use, safety, security and savings. With Gilded, gold is more than just a commodity to hold on to: it’s a symbol of economic independence.

Prior to founding Digital Swiss Gold-Gilded, Ashraf was the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of SummerHaven Investment Management, a commodities management firm overseeing nearly $2 billion in assets for retail and institutional clients including endowments, foundations, and family offices. While at SummerHaven, he was instrumental in developing, creating, and launching many ETF’s that collectively managed assets of over $1 billion with many of the ETFs achieving Morningstar 5-star rankings.

For over 13 years, Ashraf was a senior leader at UBS holding a variety of roles in New York and London including Global Head of Commodities Trading, Global Head of Metals and Banknotes, Global Head of Emerging Markets FX and Global Head of Credit Repo. Under his leadership UBS was regularly ranked Top Metals Bank in Risk magazine and earned many honours for Most Innovative Deals of the Year. He was Head of FX Options Trading in New York for Credit Suisse. Ashraf started as a FX options trader on the trading floors in Philadelphia, Chicago and New York and was a senior member of the FX team at Susquehanna Investment Group one of the largest independent trading firms in the world.

Adam is a seasoned executive with a history of launching and growing successful businesses. At the age of 19, he founded and ran a successful Chinese textile export business called China2. Over the next 6 years, Adam worked with over 30 factories, establishing and growing markets in the Middle East, North America and EU. During this time, Adam also founded SeekSource Solutions, an online company that aggregates Chinese real-estate listings from over 200 websites. Beyond start-ups, Adam’s held senior positions in Sales, Marketing and Finance.

Sasha Mirchandani is Managing Director and Founder of Kae Capital and Co-founder Mumbai Angels. Previously, he was at Blue Run Ventures as Managing Director for the India operations. Before joining Blue Run Ventures he was CEO and Founder of Imercius Technologies. Earlier he was at Mirc Electronics (Onida) where he was Head of Corporate Affairs and new business. His investments include Inmobi, Healthkart,1Mg, Myntra, Porter and Fractal Analytics. Sasha sits on the Boards of Hathway Cable and Datacom Limited, Nazara Technologies Limited, Healthkart, Young Presidents’ Organization (Mumbai Chapter) and Mumbai Angels Venture Mentors among others. Previously he was on the Boards of Fractal Analytics, Myntra and Ador Welding.

https://kae-capital.com/

BIC Cello, the manufacturer of Cello pens, is India’s market leader for writing instruments in India. The company focuses on developing innovative new products and ink flow systems, delivering significant value to the writing experience of the customers. BIC Cello’s expanded portfolio now includes a range of world-class products including permanent markers, whiteboard markers, colour markers, mechanical pencils, roller pens, fountain pens and office and school stationery products. The company sells over five million pens a day and has a strong presence in more than 70 countries around the world.  BIC Cello’s robust and growing distribution network ensures that its products are accessible across demographics and geographies.

Tanveer Khan is the Director, Marketing at BIC Cello India.

Slurrp Farm,  a brand that is driven by a strong vision of providing healthy snacks and mealtime options for young children and adults via reviving the use of super grains. Slurrp Farm, through its innovative portfolio of millet, ragi and oats based packaged food products (devoid of preservatives, artificial flavors and colors) has been successfully contributing towards inculcating healthy eating habits among children and adults alike.

Meghana Narayan: Before starting Slurrp Farm, Meghana led the Public Health practice at McKinsey & Company. She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, a BA in Computation as a Rhodes Scholar from Oxford University and a BE with Distinction in Computer Engineering from Bangalore University. Linkedin

Shauravi Malik: She has worked in the Consumer, Healthcare, and Retail Advisory team at J.P.Morgan. She was an Investment Manager at Sir Richard Branson's Group Holding entity at the Virgin Group in London. She holds a Master's degree in Economics from Cambridge University and a BA in Economics from St. Stephen's College, Delhi University. LinkedIn

Since its inception in 2012, High Street Essentials Pvt. Ltd., has emerged as one of India’s leading Omni channel fashion houses. Aimed at the modern Indian woman, the company has two brands under its wing. While FabAlley is a rapid fashion brand for western apparel and accessories, Indya presents a distinctive line of modern Indian wear. The company’s latest offerings are Earthen by Indya and Indya Skin Care. All have an inimitable style signature and are attuned to the women of today.

Ankit Prasad- Co-Founder and CEO, Bobble AI

Ankit Prasad founded Bobble AI; backed by 18 reputed angel investors, SAIF Partners - one of the largest VC in India, and Xiaomi - India's No. 1 Smartphone brand. He works along with Bobble AI team on cutting edge technology to make internet experience smarter on devices. Most recently and notably, Ankit was honoured on Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia 2018 List among a few other popular millennials. Besides this, he is also recognized in "BW 40 Under 40" list, "50 Fabulous Innovative Leaders" and as a TEDx Youth Speaker.

Ankit’s leadership has enabled the team to partner with top companies in the relevant industries. He believes that the input layer (Keyboard, Voice, Camera) which connects the end-users with smart devices would better understand and influence users' behaviour. The work being done by Ankit’s team to scale Artificial Intelligence features like, speech-to-text, next-word predictions, transliteration, swipe typing, etc. across language barriers is surely boosting users' smartphone and internet productivity.

Ankit has a longstanding interest in technology & startup. He wrote his first program at the age of 6 and was formally appreciated by the District Collector. By the age of 16, he had made his first technology startup profitable. He dropped out from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi to pursue his entrepreneurial ambitions. At IIT Delhi, he won several major awards including Best Fresher, and Best Chief Editor. Ankit has a ferocious appetite for risk-taking and pursues objectives with relentless resourcefulness.

LinkedIn: https://in.linkedin.com/in/prasadankit

About Bobble AI

Bobble AI is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) innovation start-up that empowers billions of everyday conversations of over 50 Million users from India and around the world via its highly expressive and personalized content including stickers, GIFs, and emojis, AI-powered contextual recommendations, speech-to-text and many other innovative technologies via its diverse portfolio of smartphone keyboard applications. Bobble Indic Keyboard (supporting 36+ Indic languages), the flagship product of the company and Bharat Keyboards in Bangla, Marathi & Malayalam – have the potential to revolutionize the usage of the vernacular languages, communication pattern in regional societies affect the consumer behaviour of around 536 million internet users from India who primarily rely on Indic languages. Bobble’s Indic Keyboard is regarded as the highest-rated, most engaging, and retaining keyboard in the world, surpassing Google's Gboard and Microsoft's Swiftkey. The company has created the powerful Mint Keyboard which is the default keyboard of Xiaomi phones.

The platform’s data intelligence vertical is GDPR compliant, anonymised, and aggregated insights with no compromise on user’s privacy. Backed by India's top seasoned investors including SAIF Partners, Sachin Bansal, Binny Bansal, Deep Kalra & Affle, rapidly growing start-up from India, Bobble AI is transforming the over 441 billion dollar Digital Advertising industry through its innovative marketing tool Conversation Media Marketing (CMM), which has helped reputed brands like Cadbury, ITC Sunfeast Yippee!, Kingfisher, Adidas, Reebok, ABP Weddings, Happydent, Ludo Supreme and Oreo in reaching out to their relevant audience of millennials and GenZies in a non-intrusive way through precise targeting using AI technology. Besides CMM, Bobble AI is also disrupting the Digital Advertising landscape through its Programmatic Advertising arm.