Neuroscience confirms that to be truly happy, human beings will always need something more. To seek this “more”, we must ensure that our bodies and brains exhibit their peak performance, and what we eat clearly defines this performance. In India, while we like our Samosas and Chola Bhaturas, we have now acquired a taste for health and wellness. And COVID has only accelerated the trend.

Jo Pattabiraman, CEO and Founder of Grow Fit recognized the potential of healthy foods in India early on, as she founded Grow Fit in 2015. Grow Fit is one of India’s leading result-oriented health food companies that provides everything ranging from expert consultations to medically-proven food on its website and our daily go-tos such as Zomato, Swiggy, and Amazon.

Jo is an internet and mobile maven, having spent her career on the frontlines of internet businesses. Starting her career at payments pioneer Cybercash (later acquired by Paypal), she has played leadership roles at marquee companies like Oracle, eBay and Yahoo in Silicon Valley during their growth phases. She went on to play key roles at venture-funded companies backed by the likes of Kleiner Perkins and Menlo Ventures before moving to India in 2008. Back home in Bangalore, Jyotsna has helped build businesses at scale, such as OnMobile and Knowlarity (Sequoia-funded). She is active in the startup world as a panelist, writer and speaker. Her work has been covered at the Wall Street Journal, Femina, CNBC, Outlook and other prominent publications.

What intrigued me about Jo is how she exhibits this constant state of awareness, which makes her flexible and allows her to follows her curiosity. I hope you all are able to capture this from our conversation.

In this episode, we will learn -

• Jo’s journey of starting Grow Fit - follow your curiosity
• Identifying the right market timing
• Wizard of Oz model for product development
• Habits of a premium and aware Indian consumer
• The role of distribution in food tech and when should you partner with third-party distributors such as Zomato and Swiggy
• Cloud kitchens - building teams and tracking metrics of success
• Impact of COVID and common leadership/customer themes observed across startups
• Being a single founder
• Importance of meditation in one’s life

Most of us look forward to the wedding of a relative or a friend where we can dance and eat! For some of us, our weddings got planned by our parents and relatives right after we entered college. Because apparently, it takes a LOT of time and effort to organize one.

In this episode of Women who Build, I talk to Sanna Vohra who is making it easier to plan weddings through her company, The Wedding Brigade. The Wedding Brigade is an online portal where users can discover the best wedding content and buy curated wedding fashion. The highlight for me was her belief in the power of NOW.

Sanna was elected to Forbes Asia’s 30 Under 30 List of 2018, and The Wedding Brigade was recognized as one of the Top 50 Ventures in India by the Smart CEO-Startup50 2017 Awards, in the consumer brand category. Prior to The Wedding Brigade, Sanna worked in investment banking at Morgan Stanley in New York, and at the advertising agency Saatchi and Saatchi X. She discovered her passion for building businesses at Brown University when she co-founded the largest student-run business at the time.

Together, we will learn about -

• Sanna’s love for weddings and the beginning of the Wedding Brigade
• Online vs offline wedding markets, and creating adoption for online wedding shopping
• How the Wedding Brigade got >1 million social media followers
• Building a team for social media - freelancers vs full-time, hire per what the content demands
• Identifying transient vs lasting social media trend
• Curating supply-side on marketplaces - volume vs quality
• Different preferences of regional brides
• Why the “number of days to delivery” is important
• COVID challenges and learnings
• The Power of Now

We have seen 2, 3, 4, 5 women investment partners at venture capital firms. Have we seen firms where all three investment partners are women? Not too many!

I am so excited about today’s podcast with Enzia Ventures. The team at Enzia has been an early supporter of Women who Build. Enzia is an early-stage investment firm in India that invests in education, health, and the environment. 

So let us get to know them -

1. Namita is one of the most empathetic people I know in startups :) Namita pursued her undergraduate and master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering from IIT Bombay and an MBA from the Stanford GSB. Post business school, wanting to work at the grassroots, she joined Central Square Foundation where she helped establish and grow the Edtech team. Later, she went on to lead education investments at Omidyar Network India and has invested in the likes of WhiteHat Jr, amongst many others. Her love for entrepreneurship and working at early stages led her to join Enzia.
2. Karuna Jain - Karuna has extensive experience and expertise in early-stage and growth investing in healthcare, skilling, and renewables. Prior to Enzia, she worked in the leadership teams at Acumen and Aditya Birla Group. At Acumen, she led healthcare investments globally, managed a portfolio of 25+ companies, and kickstarted investments in tech startups in healthcare, agriculture, and the environment. At Aditya Birla, Karuna handled multiple roles in finance, investing, and strategy.
3. Jayshree Kanther Patodi - Jayshree has been both an operator and investor in healthcare space. Prior to Enzia, she has worked in leadership roles at IHH Healthcare Berhad, Asia’s largest hospital chain, and Khazanah Nasional, Malaysia, where she led their India division for Investment in Healthcare and Sustainable Development and played a key role in establishing their India office. Jayshree's portfolio companies include Apollo Hospitals, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, amongst others.

In this episode, we will learn - 

1. Why and how did team Enzia come together?
2. Why their focus is on investing in the most fundamental things in life - education, health, environment. 
3. How they work together for best outcomes. 
4. Learnings launching a new fund.
5. What will define education and climate in the next decade?
6. Many other inspiring stories!

Whenever I complained about “bad luck”, my mom always said that success is about what you make out of a situation, good or bad. Shruti, Founder and CEO of ApnaKlub is a true personification of this. I am so happy to do this episode of Women who Build with her, as I have personally followed her journey and am so proud of how she is impacting the lives of thousands of small businessmen/women through her company. She is also one of the very few founders who practices spirituality in her day-to-day, a trait that I feel builds up resilience like nothing else!

Shruti built an entrepreneurial streak early on during her time at IIT Delhi, where she organized initiatives for her hostel, Himadri. Post her under-graduation, she worked at Bain and Omidyar Network India. It was during this time, giving founders advice to do x,y,z things, that she built conviction about starting up herself. She went to Harvard Business School to study business and is now back in India, building for the small businesses here.

Apnaklub is a B2B social commerce platform. It digitizes and organizes the FMCG procurement market by connecting buyers and brands through a single platform. Despite a full transition from Sair to Sair Mall to Apnaklub, all during COVID, it has served over 5,000 partners across 6,000 pin codes in India and raised funds from the likes of Sequoia’s Surge, Blume Ventures, and Whiteboard Capital.

In this episode, we will learn -

1. Shruti’s journey of pivoting during COVID
2. FMCG distribution and white spaces within
3. WhatsApp as a tool for businesses and building teams to support WhatsApp
4. Importance of generalists in a 0-1 journey
5. Spirituality and entrepreneurship
6. Impact that the words of great leaders can have on you

Finally, I want to thank Azeez Gupta, Shruti’s partner, who was generous enough to share Shruti’s journey and growth as an individual and professional. You absolutely helped frame this.

Most of you who know me, know that my niece inspired me to start Women who Build. She is a 14-year-old baker who wants to launch her bakery business and wants to learn how. And now, my listeners encourage me to keep it going (see image).

In the first edition of Women who Build, we launched >10 episodes, talked to women worldwide, and were fortunate to have been called the “Best Podcast” by a few.

Then, the second wave of COVID hit India and I took what I thought was the scariest decision of my life at the time. I quit my job and took some time off to pause and reflect. I spoke to more and more listeners and understood them better. Interestingly, during our cool-off period, we witnessed a 60% MoM growth in the number of listeners!

On a macro level, the face of women's entrepreneurship was changing. In India for example, women entrepreneurs built back better. Only 6% of women did not make shifts to their business models. It is this grit and acumen that we think is important for today’s new-age entrepreneurs.

Thus, in this second edition of Women who Build, we will enhance our conversations with 3 things, which will help our listeners improve their decision-making. ONLY 3 things -

So if you have any interesting women founders, investors, operators, or even customers who would enjoy being a part of the podcast, hit me up and let us together help more and more women enter the startup ecosystem!

I was in middle school when Paula Mariwala gauged the potential of the Indian startup ecosystem and started investing through Seedfund. Paula is the Managing Director of Seedfund Advisors, a venture capital firm, which invests in early-stage companies in India, and the Co-Founder and President of Stanford Angels & Entrepreneurs India. Some of her key investments include Unacademy, redBus, and CarWale. She has decades of entrepreneurial and operating experience in the technology sectors of both the US and India.

Paula holds an MS in Applied Physics from Stanford University, USA and BSc (Hons) in Physics from St. Xavier’s college, Mumbai, and sits on the alumni boards of both institutions.

I could not have been prouder to launch this episode!

In this episode, we will learn:

- Paula's journey to the world of entrepreneurship and venture.

- Evaluating early-stage companies - Founding teams are the most important data points.

- How do companies become verbs?

- Missed investment in Flipkart.

- Opportunities in Climate tech.

- Paula's love for mentoring - Two of her mentees are Netflix stars :)

Follow on Twitter - Paula @pmariwala and The Women who Build @TheWomenWhoBui1.

I still remember how my sister and I used to play Mario Bros and the Jungle Book as kids. The thing that fascinated us the most about these games was discovering the unknown with every new level we entered. Storytelling was important to us. 20 years later, my nieces seek the same stories. I went a step ahead to figure out how many games in the market actually cater to their needs.

I spoke to Salone Sehgal, General Partner, Lumikai Fund. Salone has over a decade of cross-sector experience in advising, operating, and evaluating tech businesses. Salone started her career in the investment banking and private equity spaces at Morgan Stanley and Barclays and later went on to found a gaming company for the female audience called TrulySocial. To fund such games, she joined the world of venture at London Venture Partners, later launching the first fund with a focus on gaming in India. She has been recognized as one of the “Top 30 Women in Mobile” and “Top 100 Asian Stars in UK Tech”. She is a graduate of IESE Business School.

In this episode, we will learn:

- Salone’s journey to the world of venture 

- Growth drivers for the Indian gaming space 

- Finding space in the consumers’ minds - game mechanics is key

- Building and enhancing brand equity 

- Qualities displayed by gaming companies that have seen exits - having a view on the market and creativity are key

- Building games for girls / women - INSPIRATION is important; ‘tend and befriend’ vs ‘fight or flight’ responses

- Importance of niche funds - it helps for investors to have deep sector expertise 

- Building diverse VC teams

Follow on Twitter - Lumikai @Lumikai, Salone @salonesehgal, and The Women who Build @TheWomenWhoBui1.

In case of any questions/suggestions, write to me at [email protected].