Inspire With Daivik

Ankit Ranka is the co-founder of GoPaani , an app for water jar suppliers to scale and automate their business. They found a problem which is faced by a very niche market and are solving it by the power of technology. Ankit has a varied width and depth of experience across startups. He has been a serial entrepreneur since his early days.

We spoke closely about how he grew up in Indore, along with the challenges of risks he faced when he went to study abroad as any middle class Indian student from a tier 2 city. He fought against all odds and started his  first startup right after college. Moved to silicon valley, was working out of the twitter office and had uber as their customer. Sounds like a dream right?!  And yet, in spite of all that some ideas worked, some failed, and eventually after nearly a decade of running multiple startups, he got back to India. He also shared his thought process of coming back from the US and still choosing to stay in Indore as opposed to moving to any other city in India.

This is an extremely candid conversation where 2 founders talk about the challenges of startups, failure and how to find your path through it all. Give this episode a listen and let us know what you think. You can drop your feedback on [email protected]

Nikhil is the founder of Freadom. Their goal is to transform the lives of millions of kids out there who cant speak , read or understand English. In India with 270 million school-going children, 98% children up to grade 5 aren't able to speak in English. It took me a while to wrap my head around the size of the problem they are trying to solve and the positive impact it will create. They are focusing on the 3 to 12 year old age group and are scaling their vision through their app. The app not only gives personalized attention, but also adapts to the different dialects of English across the country. 

In our conversation, we spoke about what drives Nikhil as an entrepreneur and how he started this company. It indeed is an interesting journey of how they started and where they are headed. The clarity of vision and purpose to solve this problem can be seen in the conviction with which he speaks about solving this problem. He also shared a story of how he cold emailed his way to getting people from Stanford to join him on this mission of Freadom. A Stellar founder, and an even more stellar conversation.

Listen to this and let us know what you learnt about entrepreneurship from this episode. Drop in your feedback at [email protected]. Always open to feedback and guest suggestions.

#Freadom #InspirewithDaivik

In this episode we dived into a conversation with Vasanth who is the cofounder of Ariro Toys. He and his wife Nisha, started Ariro Toys during the pandemic. They were blessed with a daughter a few years back who was allergic to plastic toys. As every parent would go to any length to keep their kid happy, they did the same. They found wooden toys a very good alternative to plastic ones. They hired a carpenter to make wooden toys for their daughter. Not only did they solve for their daughter, but for all the other kids out there. One thing led to another, and they are now India's leading D2C wooden toys brand.

Ariro Toys was one of the most famous Shark Tank pitches from Season 1. They got 2 of the favourite sharks onboard, Aman and Peyush. Being our first shark tank guest, he has patiently shared his entire Shark tank experience. Right from how it happens, how they prepared for it and how startups should decide whether they should go to shark tank. So all of you out there, wanting to know how to Ace the shark tank experience should give this episode a listen.

Let us know what you learnt from this episode. You can share your feedback with us or share guest suggestions by writing in to [email protected] . It would mean the world to us if you can rate our show on Spotify and share it with people who you think will find value in it! Until next time, keep hustling!

#AriroToys #InspirewithDaivik

Shailendra Dhakad is the cofounder of Codeyoung, which is making coding accessible for kids across the globe. He is our first edtech entrepreneur on the show, and it was a super fun chat, jumping into his story. A kid from Gwalior who got into IIT Delhi, and pursued a B.Tech in Engineering Phsyics. He later identified his passion for coding and charted a new path for himself.  Through his years of volunteering for social services from 2nd year of college, he had a lot of interactions with underprivileged kids, which helped him realize the talent of kids out there. Over time, he began to question the accountability of formal education systems in place today. There is a large chunk of youth out there who dont have the skills, which are necessary and relevant to get meaningful jobs out there today which add value. 

His vision while starting out was that why cant coding be introduced to kids as added skill like music, dance ,etc rather than an academic subject. They believe coding shouldn't be a niche, it should be a norm. This is a very fresh perspective on making coding mainstream for kids. They started in December 2019, right before covid hit, and they rode the wave of challenges that came their way to launch their pilot, which was wildly successful. Then there was no looking back. A team of 300 strong now, codeyoung is at the forefront of its sector, pushing the boundaries to help make coding accessible to everyone.

Please share this episode with as many people who would find some value or inspiration from this story! We are always open to feedback and guest suggestions, send your emails on [email protected]

In this new age of internet, we are all wondering what exactly are NFTs and Web3.0. Well I had exactly the same questions. And it led me to Ujwal Gupta, Cofounder of Deefy. They are building a portal where you can use your NFTs in very unique ways. As we know, NFTs can be expensive, but with Deefy you can redefine the utility of your NFT and the way you buy it. You can rent your NFT, Buy Now Pay Later , loan your NFT to someone and even get access to Peer to Peer loans within the community.

Imagine this, it is essentially a fintech startup in the crypto space. Its a combination of two very powerful and upcoming sectors in the Indian startup space. It was quite a Sunday afternoon conversation we had, which left me amazed by the value Deefy is creating in their space. I have openly asked Ujwal all my basic doubts on NFTs and Web3.0. Right from what those basic terms stand for and how we can correlate NFTs and Cryptos to everyday things around us.

Huge shoutout to Ujwal and his team at Deefy who are bringing in a new era of valuable Web 3.0 Indian Startups. More power to him and his team.

Thank you for listening in to yet another episode of our podcast. We have now gone down to 2 episodes a month, but our focus is still to maintain the quality of conversations and add value and learning to all our listeners. We are always open to feedback and suggestion on guests, topics and improvements for the show. Write in to us on [email protected] . It would mean the world to us if you rate our show on Spotify and help us spread the word. 

I can assure you that this conversation will have your mind absolutely blown. At the end of this episode shoot, I just took a moment to pause and understand where we as a generation are headed with new age entrepreneurs like Shourya, accelerating our progress towards what's in store ahead.

Every few years, people move from one social network to other. We moved from Yahoo Messenger to Orkut to Facebook to Instagram. Where do you think we are headed next? That's what Flam is building, for tomorrow. Its the future of social media, a platform that stays forever with the help of Augmented Reality. 

All you Harry Potter fans might remember the talking and moving paintings? Well, Flam's first product is a normal picture which can transform into a video when you aim your phone camera towards it. Trust me, it works, I have a flam card on my desk. They are unfreezing moments and bringing life into photos in a way you thought could only happen in Harry Potter movies. And if that's not enough, they recently also conducted a round of interviews as part of expansion on an AR platform in the metaverse. Candidates had to create an Avatar to be a part of that interview. 

Flam cards is what they are starting with, but what blew me away completely is a concept of Time Travel. Imagine you visit a restaurant in a new city for dinner on vacation with your family. A few years later, you walk past that restaurant, and you get a notification on your phone, if you want to travel back in time and experience that memory? Through your phone , you will be able to see the memory play out in 3D. Its like pokemon go, for memories. We spoke at length about this feature halfway into the episode. Check it out!

Abhishek is the cofounder of RecycleX, a company which is manufacturing construction materials like bricks and paver blocks from waste plastic. Their company turns heaps of everyday single use plastic around us. Cement is actually second biggest contributor to carbon emissions after transportation. We discussed the different challenges associated with building a business around sustainability. They are not only creating valuable products out of waste but also generating employment. They have wide range of products which they have developed to replace traditional products. And to top it all, they are also commercially if not less, as viable as existing products.

We would love to hear your feedback about our show, that's the fastest way for us to improve our work and bring out the best stories to inspire you to build and lead a company or team. You can also rate us on spotify and click the bell icon to get notified when we launch our next episode. Please share your feedback on : [email protected] 

They are building a better tomorrow for us, one brick at a time.

Khet is cofounder of Claim buddy, which acts as a one-stop solution for Health Insurance Claim assistance for Hospitals & Patients. They are building an ecosystem to ensure Hassle-free insurance claims by leveraging technology and a set of simple yet powerful processes and operations. To break it down further, its a company which will help you claim your insurance and get a maximum claim. Its a product which helps both helps patients and the hospitals.

You must have heard about the Kitchen Tech company Zomato invested 5mn $? Yes, that’s right! We jumped into a conversation with Co-founder & COO, Ramchander, Co-Founder, Nucleus Kitchens by Mukunda foods. They are currently building the future of cloud kitchens in the country to help F&B businesses scale faster across the country and maintain quality and taste of their food while doing so. 

They are doing this with the help of automated robotic equipment with softwares, which can instantly prepare your favourite dosas or pastas while keeping the taste the same. This is a life saver for food brands who need to replicate the same taste across various outlets in such a competitive space. We all know about SAAS, but in this episode, we discussed KAAS, kitchen as a service.

Through their KAAS model, they are helping companies focus on brand building and recipe development, while they handle the backend at the kitchen. Interested to know more? Give this episode a listen to know what KAAS is all about.

Share your feedback on [email protected] ! The fastest way for us to increase our reach is when you guys share this episode with your friends and rate our show. Always open to conversations on email or instagram dms @inspirewithdaivik.

Key Concepts :

1. What is the importance of having the right founding team

2. Finding the right market for your startup

3. Gathering surveys and finding Beta users

4. Building a feedback loop with customers to improve the product