Forbes India - Tech Conversations

Our guests today are Mohamad Faraz, Shivam Prasad, and Vinay Jain, founding partners at Upsparks, a micro VC firm that the entrepreneurs-turned-investors started in 2020. In this conversation, they talk about bootstrapping a communications platform-as-a-service business at a time when there were no playbooks in India and seeing it go through an acquisition and eventually the IPO of the parent business—an experience that they want to offer startup founders, along with their cheques.

Notes:

(00:40) Intro to The Daily Tech Conversation

(00:52) Our guests today—Mohamad Faraz, Shivam Prasad and Vinay Jain, founding partners at Upsparks micro VC firm

(02:22) Three friends from college, coming from a lower-middle-class family, everything starting in Bangalore

(04:59) More about Solutions Infini, the CPaaS venture the trio built

(10:35) Starting Upsparks, switching from startup founders and operators to VC investors

(14:05) A sense of the kind of startups that they are seeing today. What kind of entrepreneurs are coming on the scene? What kind of ideas are they bringing to investors?

(17:05) The initial fund at Upsparks

(18:09) Changes in the Indian startup ecosystem — are aspiring founders bringing really original ideas to investors

(21:43) The time it takes for an entrepreneur, from first pitch to the first cheque at Upsparks

(24:12) Any subsets within SaaS and fintech that Upsparks would be interested in?

(26:25) What are some of the advantages of having a small fund? What are the ways in which it helps Upsparks to focus on its investments; what are the advantages that they bring to their portfolio founders as a micro VC firm?

(31:37) What is still missing today in the Indian startup ecosystem?

Theme music courtesy Free Music & Sounds:

Our guest today is Ritu Verma, cofounder and managing partner at Ankur Capital. Ritu started as a physicist but wanted to be in a world where science is applied to make useful things. In today’s conversation, Ritu talks about realising that ambition as a venture capital investor backing science-led startups and the challenges it presents. By the way, it’s the international day of women and girls in science today

Our guest today is Amitava Saha, co-founder and CEO of Xpressbees. He has just taken his company to a billion dollars in valuation and has an IPO on the horizon. In this conversation, Amitava talks about how the logistics industry is becoming much more tech-enabled and a convergence he sees in the operations of his largest customers.

Our guest today is Aayush Ghosh Choudhury, co-founder and CEO at Scrut Automation, a venture focused on automating processes related to governance, risk and compliance. In this conversation, Aayush talks about the innovations that are built into Scrut, and plans ahead, after a recent funding round that saw the young venture get the backing of Endiya Partners and Lightspeed

Our guests today are Pawan Kumar Chandana and Naga Bharath Daka, co-founders of Skyroot Aerospace, who are preparing to flight test their first space rocket by the end of this year. In this conversation, Pawan and Bharath talk about their aspiration to be a launch vehicle provider of choice, with the ability to launch a rocket a day, on demand.

(00:39) Intro to The Daily Tech Conversation

(00:56) Our guests today — Pawan Kumar Chandana and Naga Bharath Daka, co-founders of Skyroot Aerospace

(01:45) A snapshot of Skyroot, and this year is the first launch

(03:20) The rocket tech being developed Skyroot, ground tested multiple propulsion technologies

(05:16) Focussing on small satellite launch vehicles, which is the opportunity ahead

(07:25) Innovations that make Skyroot’s rockets efficient to build and launch

(09:35) Modular rockets for mass product and rapid assembly; the path to commercialisation

(11:14) The opportunity in the years to come — tens of thousands of satellites

(13:28) Current Technology Readiness Level for Vikram 1

(14:55) The ambition for the long term is to have Skyroot’s own independent launch infrastructure

(16:45) The aim is to achieve a ‘high cadence’ launch capability of one launch every few days and eventually even one every day

(20:30) Plug-and-play capabilities of the Vikram series of rockets

(21:44) Important lessons from building Skyroot so far

(23:25) Carbon fibre module for a solid fuel stage — a first for an Indian private space tech company

(26:00) Achieving the product-market fit in a mission-critical hardware startup — the first launch will be a finger-crossing experience

(28:36) Funding snapshot and plans over the next 12 months

(30:45) Some positive changes in the funding ecosystem for space tech in India

About Skyroot Aerospace

Theme music courtesy Free Music & Sounds:

https://soundcloud.com/freemusicandsounds

Our guest today is Dinesh Varadharajan, vice president and chief product officer at Kissflow, a no-code software pioneer. In this conversation, Varadharajan talks about lessons in perfecting a product, like how less can be more and pitfalls to avoid. He also talks about Kissflow’s next product—a low-code software package with advanced customisation features aimed at the IT team

(00:37) Intro to The Daily Tech Conversation

(00:57) Our guest today — Dinesh Varadharajan, VP and chief product officer at Kissflow

(01:45) The beginnings of Kissflow, in 2004, when low-code and no-code weren’t buzzwords yet. It was about do-it-yourself computing.

(03:20) The idea — take computing to the business users who were close to any problem, without relying on an IT team

(05:55) 2012 onwards, beginning to add customers with increasing number of users

(06:48) Three main needs of business users and focussing on them as a no-code workflow automation product

(08:10) Kissflow today — a three-product company, including Kissflow Digital Workplace

(09:55) Coming soon, a low-code product aimed at IT teams for more sophisticated applications

(11:08) Two big implementations of Kissflow at big enterprise customers

(13:49) A specific example of an application built at Reckitt Benckiser — automating the ‘write-off’ process, specific to RB

(16:15) Kissflow low code, with advanced features

(16:57) The biggest lesson — ‘power of simple’

(19:16) Think ‘we are always wrong,’ iterate, simplify

(20:24) Co-creation and product development as a collaborative effort across functions

(21:40) Product life cycle has become much more data driven

(22:42) Design for future, develop for now

(24:52) The biggest pitfall in product development

(26:32) What ‘failing fast’ means in product development

(29:00) Founders and product managers

(30:22) Attributes of a great product manager in SaaS

(32:21) Three important trends in SaaS product development

About Dinesh Varadharajan

https://shrtm.nu/ihVZ

Theme music courtesy Free Music & Sounds:

https://soundcloud.com/freemusicandsounds

Our guest today is Achuthanand Tanjore Ravi, co-founder and CEO of Kula, a startup that is aiming to make life easier for recruiters around the world. In this conversation, Achuthanand talks about his own experience dealing with the frustration of finding the right talent quickly in multiple companies that he worked with, and the lessons and customer feedback that has gone into some of the innovations in the product Kula.ai.

Our guest today is Arun Vinayak, co-founder and CEO of Exponent Energy, a battery and charging technologies provider for the electric vehicle market in India. Vinayak, who was part of the founding team and chief product officer at e-scooter maker Ather Energy, started Exponent in 2020 to tackle the problem of quickly getting power into EV batteries from the grid. He has raised about $6 million in funding so far and expects to see his products in the market this year.

Our guest today is Arvind Parthiban, co-founder and CEO of SuperOps, a Silicon Valley and Chennai SaaS startup that is automating a bunch of processes for small managed services providers. In this conversation, Arvind talks about co-creating SuperOps with several MSPs, why SaaS startups are increasingly looking at more features from the get-go, and a new round of funding as well—led by Lee Fixel’s Addition.

Notes:

(00:40) Intro to The Daily Tech Conversation

(00:56) Our guest today — Arvind Parthiban, co-founder and CEO, SuperOps

(01:30) The problem that SuperOps is trying to solve — PSA and RMM

(02:35) Some basics about PSA and RMM

(02:55) The target customers for SuperOps — MSPs with five technicians and on

(03:25) More on why SuperOps has started with focussing on this particular customer segment of micro and small MSPs

(05:10) More on the MSP market — a very mature market, so SuperOps needed a sharp strategy and it still took two years to get to general availability

(06:25) A bit about what the scene is like today and why SuperOps will make a difference

(07:30) Most MSPs are still using on-premises software, but the need for cloud-based solutions has become urgent

(08:50) General Atlantic has invested $100 million in an Israeli vendor in the same space, which is hot

(09:30) Beginning to develop AI features, starting with automated intelligent alert

(12:00) Building a feature-rich product and not a bare bones MVP

(13:15) Vision — building the Baskin Robbins of IT tools for MSPs

(13:58) More on the need for a feature-rich product from the start

(15:08) Co-building the product with 150 MSPs

(16:45) On going from a beta version to a commercial product — urgently building much needed integrations

(19:02) Learnings over the years, building SaaS software products — knowing what to build in a limited amount of time that will also make money

(20:35) Importance of customer feedback before writing a single line of code

(22:50) The 18-month roadmap with the money from the latest funding

(24:00) The role of ‘consultative sales’ in SaaS

(25:26) The slightly longer term view — going upmarket to tap a much larger market

(27:00) Getting the total addressable market right

(29:30) Challenges of the Indian MSP market for SaaS startups

(30:20) The mindset difference between MSPs in India versus in the US

Theme music courtesy Free Music & Sounds:

https://soundcloud.com/freemusicandsounds

Our guest today is Srikrishnan Ganesan, who is on his second successful venture, building cloud software products for the enterprise market. In today’s conversation, Srikrishnan talks about some of the lessons he learned from the market that helped him and his co-founders focus on what customers wanted versus what was dear to the entrepreneurs