Hard Truths By Vertex

What happens when a founder looks at construction workers losing their weekends to spreadsheets and thinks, “AI should be doing this”?

In this episode, I sit down with Shiva Dhawan, founder of Attentive, to unpack how he turned a painfully manual construction estimating problem into an AI business serving over 1,200 contractors.

We get into why generic LLMs still struggle with construction plans, why Attentive combines AI with humans in the loop, and how its AI takeoff software is changing the role of construction estimators. How contractors are using automation to increase bidding capacity, what he believes makes a defensible AI company, and why he thinks the billable-hour model is dying.

IN THIS EPISODE: 

00:00 Teaser

00:46  Why Attentive Chose Outcomes Over Software

02:09  Why Takeoffs Slow Down Bids

02:42  Why AI Still Needs Humans

04:32  How AI Helps Contractors Bid 3X More

08:48  Why LLMs Struggle With Construction Plans

10:56  How Attentive Gets 99%+ Accuracy

12:33  The Human Layer Behind the AI

14:59  What Makes Attentive Hard to Copy

17:00  Why Construction Needs Specialized AI

19:57  How Founders Should Delegate

21:46  Selling AI to Traditional Industries

23:44  The Next Big AI Opportunity in Construction

25:54  Attentive’s $20B Market Ambition

27:00  Closing 

Shiva Dhawan

Shiva Dhawan is the Co-Founder and CEO of Attentive.ai, an AI-powered construction technology company transforming how contractors handle takeoffs, estimating and preconstruction. Its flagship platform, Beam AI, helps construction teams automate time-intensive estimating workflows, increase bidding capacity and focus more of their time on winning and delivering projects. Today, Attentive.ai works with over 1,200 contractors and suppliers across North America.

Shiva started Attentive as a services company before evolving it into a vertical AI and SaaS business focused on construction and field services. Before Attentive, he worked as a business analyst at Kearney and co-founded Consulting for Social Good. He has also previously led a deep-tech services business, scaling it to approximately $2 million in annualised revenue.

Nikhil Marwaha

Nikhil Marwaha is a Partner at Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India, where he invests across consumer, enterprise technology and healthcare. He brings extensive experience across venture capital and growth equity, having previously worked with Avendus Future Leaders Fund, MegaDelta and New Enterprise Associates (NEA) India.

His investment experience includes companies such as FirstCry, Xpressbees, Goqii and greytHR. Nikhil holds a PGDM from IIM Ahmedabad and a B.Tech in Civil Engineering from IIT Delhi.

Rahul Thayyalamkandy

Director of Comms & Community, Vertex Ventures SEA & India

Rahul Thayyalamkandy joined the SEA/India team as the Director of Communication & Community in 2024 and is based in Singapore.

Before joining Vertex, Rahul served as a Product Manager at BLOCK71, an incubator and joint venture of NUS Enterprise and Singtel Innov8, where he developed scalable services for portfolio startups and designed mentorship programs. He also gained experience as a Summer Associate at Cocoon Capital, working with the Managing Partner on investment deals.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulthayyalamkandy/

--

Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India is a pioneer in investing in tech start-ups in this region and has helped to build a number of unicorns. In this podcast, we seek to share and uncover the Hard Truth — raw, unfiltered insights and venture capital knowledge from across Southeast Asia and India. Tune in to learn from leading founders, innovators, venture capitalists, and industry experts in the region and gain industry insights from those in the know.

If you like what you hear, please follow or subscribe to the show so you don’t miss out on any of our upcoming discussions.

Follow us to get notified whenever new episodes are shared.

For more information, please visit: https://www.vertexventures.sg

India may be late to the AI gold rush… but Piyush Kharbanda thinks we might be looking in all the wrong places.

I sit down with venture investor Piyush Kharbanda to unpack how he’s thinking about AI startups, venture capital and India’s place in the global AI race. We get into why Indian AI companies are still behind the US, why the old SaaS playbook is breaking, and what he actually looks for when investing in Series A and Series B startups. 

Piyush also explains why boring industries like manufacturing and industrials could become India’s biggest AI opportunity, and why execution, not technology, may be the real moat. If you’re building an AI startup, investing in one, or trying to understand where India’s AI ecosystem is headed next, this conversation gets very practical, very quickly.

IN THIS EPISODE

00:30 | Why India Is Missing the AI Boom

01:52 | Why the US Pulled Ahead

03:45 | Can India Catch Up?

04:46 | Why India’s AI Apps Lag

05:35 | AI Is Still at Day Zero

08:29 | Why the SaaS Playbook Is Breaking

10:44 | The Real Moat in AI

15:32 | Why Proximity to the Edge Matters

17:34 | Where AI Moats Will Come From

19:17 | Why the Harness Could Be the Moat

20:45 | India’s Biggest AI Opportunity

23:23 | Why Legal & Health Are Overcrowded

25:12 | Why AI Startups Grow So Fast

28:29 | What VCs Want From AI Now

30:12 | Why “Boring” Industries Could Win

Piyush Kharbanda

Piyush Kharbanda joined Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India in 2016 and focuses on opportunities in India. Piyush is a technologist at heart and has invested across consumer and enterprise focused companies that use software technology to build strong business models. Piyush works closely with Kissht, Kuku FM, Signzy, Ayu Health, Beepkart, Tortoise, Threado and Certa. Piyush has also successfully helped exit Recko and Hansel.

Prior to Vertex, he spent five years doing growth investing in the Financial Services and Technology verticals with Multiples, a leading India based mid-market fund, where he was involved in investments through portfolio management and exit. Before that, Piyush worked with Alvarez and Marsal on performance improvement and strategy consulting assignments.

Piyush holds an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, and a Bachelors in Electronics and Communications from the Delhi College of Engineering, Delhi.

Rahul Thayyalamkandy

Director of Comms & Community, Vertex Ventures SEA & India

Rahul Thayyalamkandy joined the SEA/India team as the Director of Communication & Community in 2024 and is based in Singapore.

Before joining Vertex, Rahul served as a Product Manager at BLOCK71, an incubator and joint venture of NUS Enterprise and Singtel Innov8, where he developed scalable services for portfolio startups and designed mentorship programs. He also gained experience as a Summer Associate at Cocoon Capital, working with the Managing Partner on investment deals.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulthayyalamkandy/

—

Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India is a pioneer in investing in tech start-ups in this region and has helped to build a number of unicorns. In this podcast, we seek to share and uncover the Hard Truth — raw, unfiltered insights and venture capital knowledge from across Southeast Asia and India. Tune in to learn from leading founders, innovators, venture capitalists, and industry experts in the region and gain industry insights from those in the know.

If you like what you hear, please follow or subscribe to the show so you don’t miss out on any of our upcoming discussions.

—

Follow us to get notified whenever new episodes are shared.

—

For more information, please visit: https://www.vertexventures.sg

#ArtificialIntelligence #AIStartups #IndiaAI #GenerativeAI #VentureCapital #StartupIndia #IndianStartups #EnterpriseAI #SaaS #AIInvesting #FutureOfAI #TechStartups #StartupFunding #AIBusiness #VentureCapitalIndia

I sat down with an AI founder who believes companies are spending first… and asking what it cost later.

Lemuel Low is building Ren3 to help businesses understand, control and optimise the rapidly growing cost of AI. As enterprises deploy copilots, autonomous agents and increasingly complex workflows, many are discovering that traditional software budgets simply do not work when every outcome carries a different and potentially uncapped token cost.We spoke about why AI never became as cheap as promised, who should be accountable when an agent fails, whether companies can predict the cost of a workflow before running it, and why governance needs to be built into infrastructure rather than left as another policy document.

Lemuel also explains model routing, open-weight alternatives, outcome-based pricing, the conflict between model providers and their customers, and what cost-efficient companies are already doing differently.

This is one of the most practical conversations I’ve had about the economics behind enterprise AI. If you care about AI agents, enterprise software, token costs, governance, model routing, pricing, or building sustainable AI businesses, watch this one till the end!

IN THIS EPISODE

00:00 | Teaser

00:51 | Uber's AI Budget & Token Spend

03:32 | Why Token Maximisation Suddenly Stopped Working

05:33 | When Finance and Engineering Collide Over AI Costs

09:42 | The Two Things Every Company Must Control

10:59 | Who Takes Accountability When Agents Fail?

12:40 | Accountability Beyond Governance Frameworks

13:21 | Why the Best AI Model Is Often the Wrong Choice

16:46 | Can You Price an AI Task Before Running It?

20:40 | Inside Reentry’s AI Cost-Control Infrastructure

22:26 | Can AI Companies Really Charge for Outcomes?

26:09 | What Cost-Efficient Companies Look Like

34:24 | Will AI Competition Actually Make Models Cheaper?

35:41 | The Coming Battle Over Enterprise AI Spending

Lemuel Low

Lemuel Low is building Ren3, an AI platform focused on helping businesses manage, attribute and optimise the cost of running AI workloads. His work explores how companies can move beyond unrestricted token consumption by introducing model routing, workload planning, traceability and governance directly into their AI infrastructure.

Through Ren3, he is working to give organisations greater visibility into how tokens are being consumed, which teams and processes are responsible for that spending, and whether the outcomes being produced justify their cost. He believes that as AI adoption accelerates, companies will need to treat token economics as a core operational discipline rather than relying on model providers to control spending for them.

Rahul ThayyalamkandyDirector of Comms & Community, Vertex Ventures SEA & India

Rahul Thayyalamkandy joined the SEA/India team as the Director of Communication & Community in 2024 and is based in Singapore.

Before joining Vertex, Rahul served as a Product Manager at BLOCK71, an incubator and joint venture of NUS Enterprise and Singtel Innov8, where he developed scalable services for portfolio startups and designed mentorship programs. He also gained experience as a Summer Associate at Cocoon Capital, working with the Managing Partner on investment deals.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulthayyalamkandy/

—

Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India is a pioneer in investing in tech start-ups in this region and has helped to build a number of unicorns. In this podcast, we seek to share and uncover the Hard Truth — raw, unfiltered insights and venture capital knowledge from across Southeast Asia and India. Tune in to learn from leading founders, innovators, venture capitalists, and industry experts in the region and gain industry insights from those in the know.

If you like what you hear, please follow or subscribe to the show so you don’t miss out on any of our upcoming discussions.

For more information, please visit: https://www.vertexventures.sg

They went from three villas to 600 in just over two years — by betting that India’s next major travel brand would look less like a hotel and more like someone’s dream home.

Ritwik Khare and Karan Miglani, co-founders of ELIVAAS, had worked together in travel before building a company at the intersection of hospitality and real estate. They saw a growing market of second-home owners who needed help maintaining, monitoring and monetising their properties — and travellers who wanted the privacy of a villa without sacrificing hotel-level service. ELIVAAS has since grown from three villas to around 600 properties.

In this conversation with Rahul, Ritwik and Karan explain why India’s luxury villa market is larger than it appears, how group travel makes premium stays more affordable, and why customers increasingly choose the property before the destination. They also break down the technology and operational systems required to manage scattered homes consistently, the advantage of building dense micro-markets, and their ambition to make ELIVAAS the Marriott of villas and apartments.

IN THIS EPISODE

00:00 | Teaser

00:45 | Introduction: From Airbnb Host to ELIVAAS Founder

01:29 | Why Focus on Luxury Villas and Apartments?

02:50 | The Genesis: A Personal Problem to Solve

04:00 | Market Size and Growth Potential

05:40 | Changing Travel Behavior: More Frequent Luxury Getaways

07:33 | The 3M Promise: Maintain, Monitor, Monetize

08:35 | Customer Personas: Homeowners and Travelers

10:52 | ELIVAAS vs. Alaya Stays: Two Brand Segments

11:41 | Cross-Sell Services and Enhanced Experiences

13:25 | Evolving Consumer Behavior and Sustainability

15:18 | Surprising Consumer Insights

17:43 | Technology and Operations: The Execution Engine

19:34 | The Power of Micro-Markets

21:18 | Why Choose ELIVAAS Over Airbnb?

22:13 | Competitive Landscape and Early-Mover Advantage

22:47 | International Expansion Strategy

24:40 | Vision for 2035 and Key Risks 

About Ritwik Khare

Ritwik Khare is the Founder and CEO of ELIVAAS, a technology-led luxury villa and apartment management company. His experience as a second-home owner helped shape ELIVAAS’ core promise: to maintain, monitor and monetise properties while delivering a consistent luxury experience for travellers.

Ritwik on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ritwikk/

About Karan Miglani

Karan Miglani is the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of ELIVAAS. He leads the company’s technology and product systems across homeowners, travellers and on-ground hospitality teams, helping ELIVAAS manage distributed luxury properties at scale.

Karan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karanmiglani/

Rahul Thayyalamkandy

Director of Comms & Community, Vertex Ventures SEA & India

Rahul Thayyalamkandy joined the SEA/India team as the Director of Communication & Community in 2024 and is based in Singapore.

Before joining Vertex, Rahul served as a Product Manager at BLOCK71, an incubator and joint venture of NUS Enterprise and Singtel Innov8, where he developed scalable services for portfolio startups and designed mentorship programs. He also gained experience as a Summer Associate at Cocoon Capital, working with the Managing Partner on investment deals.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulthayyalamkandy/

—-

Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India is a pioneer in investing in tech start-ups in this region and has helped to build a number of unicorns. In this podcast, we seek to share and uncover the Hard Truth - raw, unfiltered insights and venture capital knowledge from across Southeast Asia and India. Tune in to learn from leading founders, innovators, venture capitalists, and industry experts in the region and gain industry insights from those in the know.

If you like what you hear, please follow or subscribe to the show so you don’t miss out on any of our upcoming discussions.

—

Follow us to get notified whenever new episodes are shared.

—

For more information, please visit: https://www.vertexventures.sg 

He wants to build the “herbal Pfizer”... and he’s betting Kapiva’s future on proof, not blind faith.

I sat down with Ameve Sharma, founder of Kapiva, to understand how his personal connection to Ayurveda became a mission to bring 5,000 years of Indian medicine into modern healthcare. We unpacked his journey of scaling Kapiva, investing heavily in clinical trials, challenging traditional thinking, and convincing manufacturers to meet standards nobody else was asking for.

Ameve explains why Ayurveda must work alongside modern medicine, how Kapiva uses R&D, doctors, technology and AI-powered healthcare journeys, and why building trust matters more than selling another wellness product.

We also spoke about taking Indian herbal medicine global, competing with pharmaceutical companies, and his ambition to make Kapiva a respected global healthcare brand built on measurable results.

Timestamps

00:00 | Why Kapiva Is Rebuilding Ayurveda

02:17 | What Makes Ayurvedic Products Safe?

02:41 | Why Ayurveda Treats More Than Symptoms

03:36 | How Ayurvedic Medicines Actually Work

05:27 | Can Clinical Trials Prove Ayurveda Works?

07:51 | How Kapiva Personalises Your Treatment

09:51 | Why Big Ayurveda Brands Missed Healthcare

10:47 | How Kapiva Tests Products Like Pharma

13:15 | Why Kapiva Bet Big on Research

15:22 | What Doctors Need to Trust Ayurveda

16:26 | How Kapiva Tests Every Product Batch

17:15 | Are Heavy Metals in Ayurveda Dangerous?

18:04 | How Kapiva Builds Customer Trust

21:49 | What Ayurvedic Customers Really Want

23:43 | Can Ayurveda Work With Modern Medicine?

25:22 | The Hardest Parts of Scaling Kapiva

28:03 | Can Indian Ayurveda Become Global?

30:48 | What India Can Learn From China

33:49 | What Could Unlock Ayurveda’s Growth?

35:04 | Why Prevention Isn’t the Biggest Market Yet

37:18 | Kapiva’s Goal: Become the Herbal Pfizer

About Ameve Sharma

Ameve Sharma is the founder of Kapiva, an evidence-based Ayurveda brand based in India. He started his entrepreneurial career with a cold-pressed juice company before pivoting to Ayurveda, where he saw an opportunity to apply scientific rigor to one of the world's oldest wellness traditions. Under his leadership, Kapiva has conducted 28 clinical studies, raised over $60M, and grown from a D2C-first startup into an omnichannel brand with 250 field sales staff across Tier 2 and Tier 3 India. Kapiva is an official health partner of the IPL.

Ameve on LinkedIn: https://in.linkedin.com/in/amevesharma 

Kapiva website: https://kapiva.in/ 

Rahul Thayyalamkandy

Director of Comms & Community, Vertex Ventures SEA & India

Rahul Thayyalamkandy joined the SEA/India team as the Director of Communication & Community in 2024 and is based in Singapore.

Before joining Vertex, Rahul served as a Product Manager at BLOCK71, an incubator and joint venture of NUS Enterprise and Singtel Innov8, where he developed scalable services for portfolio startups and designed mentorship programs. He also gained experience as a Summer Associate at Cocoon Capital, working with the Managing Partner on investment deals.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulthayyalamkandy/

—

Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India is a pioneer in investing in tech start-ups in this region and has helped to build a number of unicorns. In this podcast, we seek to share and uncover the Hard Truth - raw, unfiltered insights and venture capital knowledge from across Southeast Asia and India. Tune in to learn from leading founders, innovators, venture capitalists, and industry experts in the region and gain industry insights from those in the know.

If you like what you hear, please follow or subscribe to the show so you don’t miss out on any of our upcoming discussions.

_

Follow us to get notified whenever new episodes are shared.

_

For more information, please visit: https://www.vertexventures.sg 

#Kapiva, #Ayurveda, #D2C #IPLsponsor, #FiresideVentures, #FMCG, #foundermistakes, #quickcommerce, #Blinkit, #Zepto, #startupculture

I sat down with a founder who almost lost his company twice… and still built one of Indonesia’s biggest e-commerce enablers.

Brian Marshal took SIRCLO from a Shopify-style startup to powering major brands across TikTok Shop, marketplaces, live commerce and fulfillment… all while surviving the startup crash, failed fundraising rounds and the tech winter.

We spoke about profitability, AI agents, startup governance, IPO readiness, scaling outside Jakarta, and why most Southeast Asian startups got growth completely wrong.

IN THIS EPISODE

00:00 | Why SIRCLO Almost Died Twice

01:38 | The Shopify Idea That Failed in Indonesia

02:25 | Why Brands Need More Than Just a Storefront

04:06 | The Brutal Reality of Startup Fundraising

06:30 | How SIRCLO Finally Became Profitable

07:53 | Preparing SIRCLO for a Possible IPO

11:37 | The Governance Mistakes Startups Keep Making

15:24 | Why Good Tech Infrastructure Pays Off

17:10 | How SIRCLO Is Using AI Agents Internally

19:38 | Scaling E-Commerce Without Owning Warehouses

22:05 | How TikTok Changed E-Commerce in Indonesia

23:31 | Why Catalog Commerce Is Dying

24:00 | Building for TikTok, Live Selling & Creators

25:07 | Why Sales and Marketing Are Merging

26:05 | The Future of Live Commerce in Southeast Asia

26:19 | Will Indonesia Become Like China’s E-Commerce Market?

27:23 | Balancing Profitability and Innovation

28:22 | Why Innovation Failed at SIRCLO Earlier

32:30 | Why Southeast Asian Tech IPOs Struggle

35:10 | Is Indonesia Still a Great Startup Market?

36:36 | Brian’s Vision for SIRCLO’s Next Chapter

Brian Marshal

Brian Marshal is the Founder and CEO of SIRCLO, a leading Southeast Asian e-commerce enabler that helps brands sell online across their own web stores and platforms like TikTok and Shopee. What began as a simple website-builder idea in 2013 has grown under his leadership into an integrated solution powering millions of monthly orders. Over the past decade, Brian has guided the company through organic and inorganic growth, shifting market conditions, and a steady push toward profitability, rooted in a commitment to resilience and integrity.

His personal journey bridges Indonesia and Singapore, built on a background in computer science and data analytics alongside a firm belief in technology's power to unlock new opportunities. Beyond SIRCLO, Brian is deeply committed to nurturing Indonesia’s future leaders through his active involvement in the Informatics and AI Olympiad communities, as well as the McKinsey Young Leaders for Indonesia program.

Rahul Thayyalamkandy

Director of Comms & Community, Vertex Ventures SEA & India

Rahul Thayyalamkandy joined the SEA/India team as the Director of Communication & Community in 2024 and is based in Singapore.

Before joining Vertex, Rahul served as a Product Manager at BLOCK71, an incubator and joint venture of NUS Enterprise and Singtel Innov8, where he developed scalable services for portfolio startups and designed mentorship programs. He also gained experience as a Summer Associate at Cocoon Capital, working with the Managing Partner on investment deals.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulthayyalamkandy/

—-

Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India is a pioneer in investing in tech start-ups in this region and has helped to build a number of unicorns. In this podcast, we seek to share and uncover the Hard Truth - raw, unfiltered insights and venture capital knowledge from across Southeast Asia and India. Tune in to learn from leading founders, innovators, venture capitalists, and industry experts in the region and gain industry insights from those in the know.

If you like what you hear, please follow or subscribe to the show so you don’t miss out on any of our upcoming discussions.

—

Follow us to get notified whenever new episodes are shared.

—

For more information, please visit: https://www.vertexventures.sg 

#hardtruthsbyvertexventures  #vertexventures #entrepreneurship #startups #venturecapital #vc #podcast #businessleaders

He had one formula for building trust in fintech: promises kept divided by promises made.

Anup Agrawal spent years at LazyPay watching how India actually pays — and what he saw was striking. 85% of consumer transactions ran on UPI. Credit cards existed, but they weren't built for the way India's new generation spends. So he built Kiwi: a credit card designed as a delightful UPI experience, with credit rails underneath and instant cashback on top.

In this conversation with Rahul, Anup unpacks the product decisions behind Kiwi — including a data point that surprises most fintech insiders (80% of Kiwi spends are offline, the exact opposite of the industry norm), a product failure that reshaped their rewards design (users who made their first transaction at a fuel station churned when they got no rewards), and two mental models he uses to make every product decision: the Trust Formula and the Ginger Product rule. He also makes a sharp case for why retention has to come before growth — every time.

Timestamps

00:00 | From LazyPay Data to the UPI Credit Idea

03:43 | What Kiwi Actually Is — "A Delightful UPI Experience"

05:52 | Why Gen-Z UPI Users Need Credit (The Utility Ladder)

06:43 | Virtual vs Physical Cards — and the Offline Stat That Flips the Industry

09:34 | Who Kiwi Is For — Credit-Invisible Affluents, Not Thin-File Poor

10:59 | Retention First: Why Kiwi Doesn't Push Growth Until It's Ready

12:25 | The Fintech-Bank Division of Labour

14:35 | The Trust Formula: Promises Kept ÷ Promises Made

17:35 | When Product Fails: The Fuel Attrition Story

19:31 | Cashback vs Points — Why Kiwi Bets Against Breakage

20:59 | Competing With Cred and PhonePe: Focus Over Distribution

23:07 | The Ginger Product Rule + Kiwi's Three Dimensions

25:53 | The 2035 Vision — Imagine the Taj Mahal Before It's Built

About Anup Agrawal

Anup Agrawal is the founder of Kiwi, a fintech company building credit card products designed for India's UPI-native generation. Before Kiwi, he led product and growth at LazyPay, where consumer behaviour data — specifically the 85% UPI dominance in Indian transactions — sparked the founding insight. Kiwi targets "credit-invisible affluents": users with income but limited formal credit history, who are well-served by UPI but underserved by traditional credit products.

Anup on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anup-agrawal-a2915b11 

Kiwi website: https://gokiwi.in/

Rahul Thayyalamkandy

Director of Comms & Community, Vertex Ventures SEA & India

Rahul Thayyalamkandy joined the SEA/India team as the Director of Communication & Community in 2024 and is based in Singapore.

Before joining Vertex, Rahul served as a Product Manager at BLOCK71, an incubator and joint venture of NUS Enterprise and Singtel Innov8, where he developed scalable services for portfolio startups and designed mentorship programs. He also gained experience as a Summer Associate at Cocoon Capital, working with the Managing Partner on investment deals.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulthayyalamkandy/

—-

Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India is a pioneer in investing in tech start-ups in this region and has helped to build a number of unicorns. In this podcast, we seek to share and uncover the Hard Truth - raw, unfiltered insights and venture capital knowledge from across Southeast Asia and India. Tune in to learn from leading founders, innovators, venture capitalists, and industry experts in the region and gain industry insights from those in the know.

If you like what you hear, please follow or subscribe to the show so you don’t miss out on any of our upcoming discussions.

—

Follow us to get notified whenever new episodes are shared.

—

For more information, please visit: ⁠https://www.vertexventures.sg⁠

#Kiwifintech, #UPI, UPIcreditcard, #fintech, #LazyPay, #creditcardIndia, #RBI, #cashback, #Cred, #PhonePe, #founder

How do VCs pick that one billion-dollar startup… before the world sees it?

I sat down with Kee Lock, a veteran venture capitalist who’s spent decades backing founders, navigating failures, and building companies from zero to exit. We unpack his real playbook—from sourcing deals and spotting great founders to surviving the brutal 0→1 and 10→100M growth journey in venture capital.

He shares how pattern recognition is built, why most investors get market size wrong, and the subtle red flags that instantly kill a startup pitch.

If you’re curious about startup investing, venture capital strategy, fundraising, and what actually makes a founder worth betting on—this one’s packed with insights you won’t hear elsewhere.

IN THIS EPISODE

00:30 | How VCs find winning startups (and how you get noticed)

01:30 | The exact checklist before investing in any startup

02:05 | 4 ways top VCs discover breakout founders

06:50 | Early mistakes that cost investors millions

07:58 | How VCs build “gut instinct” for great startups

08:45 | The 3 filters every VC uses before investing

09:52 | Why judging founders is harder than you think

15:20 | Red flags that instantly kill a startup pitch

16:54 | How to judge if your market is actually big

22:47 | How VCs actually help startups grow (beyond money)

33:32 | When and how VCs decide to exit

42:47 | Why VC training is like flying a fighter jet

Kee Lock CHUA

Mr Chua Kee Lock is the Group President / CEO of Vertex Holdings (“VH”), a Singapore-headquartered venture capital investment holding company. VH is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Temasek.

Vertex Group is a global venture capital network comprising 5 early-stage technology-focused funds (Vertex Ventures China, Vertex Ventures Israel, Vertex Ventures US, Vertex Ventures SEA & India, Vertex Ventures Japan), an early-stage healthcare-focused fund (Vertex Ventures HC) and a growth-stage fund (Vertex Growth). Each of these funds is managed by independent and separate General Partnerships and investment teams, with VH providing anchor funding alongside significant 3rd party capital commitments. Vertex Group manages USD 6.8B in assets. Mr Chua is currently Managing Partner of Vertex Ventures SEA & India, as well as Chairman of Vertex Growth Fund.

Rahul Thayyalamkandy

Director of Comms & Community, Vertex Ventures SEA & India

Rahul Thayyalamkandy joined the SEA/India team as the Director of Communication & Community in 2024 and is based in Singapore.

Before joining Vertex, Rahul served as a Product Manager at BLOCK71, an incubator and joint venture of NUS Enterprise and Singtel Innov8, where he developed scalable services for portfolio startups and designed mentorship programs. He also gained experience as a Summer Associate at Cocoon Capital, working with the Managing Partner on investment deals.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulthayyalamkandy/

—-

Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India is a pioneer in investing in tech start-ups in this region and has helped to build a number of unicorns. In this podcast, we seek to share and uncover the Hard Truth - raw, unfiltered insights and venture capital knowledge from across Southeast Asia and India. Tune in to learn from leading founders, innovators, venture capitalists, and industry experts in the region and gain industry insights from those in the know.

If you like what you hear, please follow or subscribe to the show so you don’t miss out on any of our upcoming discussions.

—

Follow us to get notified whenever new episodes are shared.

—

For more information, please visit: https://www.vertexventures.sg 

#hardtruthsbyvertexventures  #vertexventures #entrepreneurship #startups #venturecapital #vc #podcast #businessleaders

Why would someone quit chasing “big startup ideas” to redesign something as ordinary as a ceiling fan? 

In this episode, I sit down with Gazal, co-founder of Nuuk, to trace her journey from a personal problem at home to building a design-led consumer electronics startup in India.

We talk about how COVID changed the way Indians live indoors, why Indian consumers are shifting from cheap to meaningful products, and how Nuuk builds home appliances designed specifically for Indian homes.

Gazal shares the thinking behind product-first brands, women-led design, and what it really takes to scale a modern Indian consumer brand without cutting corners.

If you care about startup journeys, consumer brands in India, or product design that actually solves real problems, this episode will pull you in.

If you want it more playful, more founder-centric, or even punchier for YouTube, say the word and I’ll tune it!

IN THIS EPISODE
(00:00) Why Nuuk Isn’t “Just Another Appliance Brand”
(01:28) The Personal Problem That Started Nuuk
(04:40) How Indian Consumers Are Changing (And Why It Matters to You)
(06:21) Who’s Actually Buying Nuuk — The Answer Will Surprise You
(12:11) How Nuuk Turns Daily Frustrations into Product Ideas
(16:09) Designing Appliances That Actually Work in Indian Homes
(23:28) The Hidden Health Risk Lurking in Indian Mattresses
(29:28) Why Building in India Is Harder Than It Looks
(30:46) What “Safe Kitchens” Really Mean (And Why You Should Care)
(34:49) How Nuuk Builds Trust After the Sale
(41:54) Nuuk’s 10-Year Vision — And What’s Coming Next

Gazal Kalra | Co-Founder | Nuuk
Gazal Kalra is the Co-Founder of Nuuk, a new-age D2C brand for home appliances, shaping the Indian home with purposeful innovation and design-first thinking. At Nuuk, she brings a product-led approach rooted in human-centered design and operational excellence with a vision to create high-performance appliances that reflect modern lifestyles. Gazal is deeply committed to building consumer brands that solve real-world problems alongside raising the bar for thoughtful design, long-term utility, and a future-ready approach to sustainability.

Before Nuuk, Gazal co-founded Rivigo, the logistics-tech unicorn that disrupted India’s long-haul trucking sector by introducing relay trucking and tech-enabled efficiency at scale - cementing her reputation as a bold problem-solver with an eye for scalable impact. Her career also spans influential roles at McKinsey & Company and the World Bank in Washington DC, giving her a unique cross-sectoral perspective on systems, policy, and innovation.

Rahul Thayyalamkandy
Director of Comms & Community, Vertex Ventures SEA & India

Rahul Thayyalamkandy joined the SEA/India team as the Director of Communication & Community in 2024 and is based in Singapore.

Before joining Vertex, Rahul served as a Product Manager at BLOCK71, an incubator and joint venture of NUS Enterprise and Singtel Innov8, where he developed scalable services for portfolio startups and designed mentorship programs. He also gained experience as a Summer Associate at Cocoon Capital, working with the Managing Partner on investment deals.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulthayyalamkandy/

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Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India is a pioneer in investing in tech start-ups in this region and has helped to build a number of unicorns. In this podcast, we seek to share and uncover the Hard Truth - raw, unfiltered insights and venture capital knowledge from across Southeast Asia and India. Tune in to learn from leading founders, innovators, venture capitalists, and industry experts in the region and gain industry insights from those in the know.

If you like what you hear, please follow or subscribe to the show so you don’t miss out on any of our upcoming discussions.

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Follow us to get notified whenever new episodes are shared.

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For more information, please visit: https://www.vertexventures.sg

What if the biggest energy revolution in India isn’t happening in cities… but inside tiny flour mills in forgotten villages?

In this conversation, I sit down with Sandeep Chopra, co-founder & CEO of Metafin, to unpack how solar financing for rural MSMEs is reshaping livelihoods, powering micro-enterprises, and quietly shifting India’s clean-energy future. We dive into why solar energy in India is exploding across the Global South, how decentralised power beats unreliable grids, and what it takes to underwrite credit for first-time borrowers in remote villages.

From surviving COVID to unlocking financial inclusion, this episode will change the way you think about rural India, clean energy, and solar financing for MSMEs. Don’t miss the story behind one of India’s fastest-scaling impact-driven energy models!

IN THIS EPISODE
(00:00) Why the next big energy boom won’t start in cities
(04:41) The moment a finance guy quit London to chase purpose
(09:31) How one unexpected detour unlocked a billion-dollar rural opportunity
(15:04) The strange secret behind predicting who will actually repay
(18:59) The grid problem no one talks about… and the hack rural India figured out
(20:17) How one village becomes a “network effect” goldmine
(21:00) What the government quietly gets right (and wrong) about solar adoption
(23:25) The hidden barriers that stop rural India from scaling - and how to break them
(28:03) The one product rural MSMEs desperately need but don’t get
(29:34) A myth about rural India that shocked me completely
(32:11) The future of selling power like UPI payments - hype or real?
(34:15) The uncomfortable truth about grid stability nobody wants to admit
(38:08) The impact numbers that even shocked us
(40:22) A single upgrade that transformed one family’s entire future

Sandeep Chopra | CEO | Metafin
A senior executive with extensive experience in renewable industry (solar), growing start-up organizations, making them sustainable and delivering change.

Specialties: Strategy, Renewables, Finance, Delivering Change to make organizations sustainable, managing large operations, Negotiation Skills, Strategy

Rahul Thayyalamkandy
Director of Comms & Community, Vertex Ventures SEA & India

Rahul Thayyalamkandy joined the SEA/India team as the Director of Communication & Community in 2024 and is based in Singapore.

Before joining Vertex, Rahul served as a Product Manager at BLOCK71, an incubator and joint venture of NUS Enterprise and Singtel Innov8, where he developed scalable services for portfolio startups and designed mentorship programs. He also gained experience as a Summer Associate at Cocoon Capital, working with the Managing Partner on investment deals.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulthayyalamkandy/

—-

Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India is a pioneer in investing in tech start-ups in this region and has helped to build a number of unicorns. In this podcast, we seek to share and uncover the Hard Truth - raw, unfiltered insights and venture capital knowledge from across Southeast Asia and India. Tune in to learn from leading founders, innovators, venture capitalists, and industry experts in the region and gain industry insights from those in the know.

If you like what you hear, please follow or subscribe to the show so you don’t miss out on any of our upcoming discussions.

—

Follow us to get notified whenever new episodes are shared.

—

For more information, please visit: https://www.vertexventures.sg