Founder Thesis

Mukesh Kalra speaks about how to scale up using a product-led growth approach and how his venture is challenging the status quo of the entire financial service industry.

Know about:-

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Tech giant Google uses an approach called OKR to manage its employees which has taken the startup world by storm. Abhinav’s venture is a platform that helps fast-growing companies adopt the OKR methodology. This episode is a masterclass in both OKRs and building a vertical SaaS business.

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In a gold rush, the ones who sell the shovels are the ones who make the most money.  In the fintech gold rush that we are seeing today, it’s a company like M2P Fintech that is selling the shovels; connecting banks, fintechs, and businesses with custom APIs for financial services. 

This episode is a must-listen for anyone who wants to understand the fintech ecosystem in India!

Know about:-

• Conceptualizing use cases
• Coining the term “payments infrastructure”
• Building a neo banking platform
• The BNPL scheme

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An IIT Delhi alumnus who, inspired by the Chinese startup scene, built India’s largest hyperlocal tech-backed gig marketplace- Abhishek’s story is truly like that of Frodo Baggins. 

In an insight-packed conversation, Abhishek tells Akshay about the journey of building Shadowfax.

Know about:-

• Aggregating supply and demand
• Pivoting towards enterprises
• Creating static hotspots
• Data-feedback loop of the enterprise product

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Unlike most founders who first have an idea, then build a prototype and then raise funds, Shachindra started big - by directly acquiring a publicly listed financial institution that he transformed into U GRO Capital.

In this episode, you’ll hear about some unique innovations of this fintech platform that is at the forefront of the digitization of SMEs.

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Bhakti and Bharat are inseparable. Finding its root in Sanskrit, Bhakti means spirituality and encompasses community, mental well-being, and philanthropy. Being a uniquely Indian concept, the market for this space remains hugely untapped.

Prashant is an Internet entrepreneur who created a spiritual-tech app to serve the emerging devotional needs of Indians. He tells Akshay Datt about his journey of building this engagement lead consumer platform.

Know about:-

1. Finding cofounders for the first venture
2. Genesis and evolution of Trell
3. Model of AppsForBharat and the flywheel of growth
4. Community features and virtual darshan

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"If the bet had not worked out, we would have died".

This was Clear's reality when it pivoted from a beloved consumer brand into enterprise software for the new GST regime. This single, high-stakes gamble reveals the conviction required to build a category-defining company, moving from a product people liked to a platform businesses couldn't live without.

Srivatsan Chari is the Co-founder of Clear (formerly ClearTax), the company that transformed financial software in India. A computer science engineer from BITS Pilani, he has been instrumental in building Clear into a fintech powerhouse that has served over 6 million income tax filers , supports more than 600,000 SMEs , and processes over $300 billion in B2B invoice value annually. Under his leadership, Clear was the first India-focused startup to be accepted into Y Combinator and has raised over $140 million from elite investors like Stripe, Sequoia Capital, and Founders Fund.

• The "Unglamorous Problem" Advantage: Clear deliberately chose to solve the complex and "unglamorous" problem of Indian tax filing, a niche that larger competitors had ignored, turning it into a competitive advantage.
• The Great B2B Pivot: The company made a high-stakes, "bet the company" decision to pivot from a high-traction B2C tax product to a B2B enterprise SaaS platform with the launch of GST in 2017. This move now accounts for 85-90% of Clear's revenue.
• Bootstrapped Resilience: The founding team bootstrapped for three years, a period that forged extreme resilience and creativity. All early growth was organic, driven by content, SEO, and word-of-mouth, a DNA that remains core to the company.
• Founder's Philosophy: Build & Sell: A key lesson from Srivatsan's earlier, failed startups was that a founder must be involved in both building the product and selling it, embracing all facets of the business from customer support to marketing.
• The Financial OS Vision: Clear's ambition extends beyond taxes to building a connected "Financial Operating System" for businesses, using acquisitions and technology to unify invoicing, payments, compliance, and credit on a single platform.
• Forward-Thinking Regulation: The Indian government's decision to provide APIs for tax filing and implement a forward-looking, digital-first GST system was a critical enabler for Clear's success and scale.

(00:00) The Origin Story: Solving India's Tax Problem

(11:10) Early Days: Bootstrapping with a "Pay What You Want" Model

(17:14) The YC Catalyst: How Y Combinator Transformed The Company

(32:51) The "Bet the Company" Pivot to GST

(38:25) Why GST & E-invoicing are a Global Game-Changer

(45:51) The Challenge of Pricing & Selling Enterprise SaaS

(55:16) More Than Tax: The Story Behind Rebranding to "Clear"

(57:53) The Future: Building a Financial OS for Businesses

(1:01:52) Taking the Indian Playbook Global

(1:05:31) Clear's Monetization and Business Model Today

#FounderThesis #SrivatsanChari #Clear #ClearTax #StartupIndia #Fintech #SaaS #B2BPivot #YCombinator #Entrepreneurship #VentureCapital #MakeInIndia #StartupStory #Bootstrapping #IndianStartups

There are 2 ways to build a startup - one is through cash burn and the other is by bootstrapping it- the harder but sustainable way. This episode is a masterclass in building a startup the harder way.

Akshay Datt speaks with Neel Kothari who built iZooto, a push notification platform that touches the lives of billions consuming news on the Internet!

Know about:-

• Concept of “owned audience marketing”
• Customer retention & future engagement- personalizing messaging at scale
• Making it contextual to the content
• RSS feed integration & developing own content recommendation engine

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This edition is a delectable one where Akshay Datt chats with a couple elevating India’s experience of bread consumption. Aditi Handa and Sneh Jain are the founders of The Baker’s Dozen, India’s first artisan bakery brand serving an exquisite variety of authentic European breads and bakery products. 

Aditi is a trained baker from the renowned International Culinary Institute in New York and Sneh is an IIM-A alumnus and an ex-McKinsey consultant. Together they started up the venture, with Aditi passionately steering the product, and Sneh building the business with an eye on the numbers.

Know about:-

• Aditi’s learnings at International Culinary Institute, New York
• Sneh Jain’s epiphany at McKinsey- using lego blocks to create a world
• Scaling up the supply chain
• Evolution of sales channel: the omnichannel approach

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This episode is a crash course in molecular biology, a $62 billion industry, and its several real-world applications.

Akshay Datt speaks with Dr. Manoj Gopalkrishnan, Founder and CEO of Algorithmic Biologics, a deep-tech startup providing the highest quality molecular testing at a fraction of the market cost. Their first product, Tapestry, is an award-winning software delivering affordable large-scale Covid-19 testing.

Dr. Manoj is an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur who, after completing his doctorate in the US, came back to India and became an associate professor at IIT Bombay, before starting Algorithmic Biologics.

Know about:-

• Contributions during Ph.D. and RSA algorithm
• RT-PCR test and Tapestry
• Challenges of the medical diagnostics market
• How molecular computing leads to better molecular testing

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If you want to be a podcaster, then check out Zencastr.com which is also the generous sponsor for this episode. Zencastr is like a Shopify for podcasters taking care of all your needs from recording to editing to hosting. 

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