South Asian Trailblazers

Simi speaks with Garima Shah, Co-founder & President of Biller Genie, on scaling a fintech to $10M+ in revenue. Biller Genie tackles a simple key problem: helping small businesses (SMBs) get paid faster. The company has doubled every year since 2022, and takes the average small business from 47 days to get paid down to 8.

In an era where the glorification of venture capital has convinced a generation of founders that revenue is optional, Garima Shah wants to set the record straight on building strong, sustainable businesses...sometimes solving unsexy problems. 

From starting her career in door-to-door sales at 19 to entering fintech, Garima shares how those early experiences shaped her approach to entrepreneurship, leadership, and business. Garima also opens up about being a founder, mother, and wife, the importance of communication and soft skills in the age of AI, and her non-profit Brown Girls on a Mission.

KEY TOPICS:

• Why door-to-door sales at 19 was the single most important early-career training
• Scaling Biller Genie to $10M+ without raising massive VC rounds
• Why the glorification of fundraising is hurting young founders 
• Taking small businesses from 47 days to get paid down to 8 
• Why human connection and soft skills matter in the age of AI 
• Balancing entrepreneurship, motherhood, and Brown Girls on a Mission

ABOUT GARIMA SHAH 

Co-Founder & President, Biller Genie Born in the UK, raised across the US (Detroit, Chicago, Missouri, Florida), Garima Shah graduated from Boston University at 19 and holds an MBA from Rollins. Before co-founding Biller Genie, she led sales at Bell South, built and sold her own outsourced sales firm, and ran sales for Payment Alliance. Garima is the founder of Brown Girls on a Mission — a giving circle for minority women that has donated over $80,000 and 1,600 volunteer hours in its first year. 

FOLLOW GARIMA: Instagram · LinkedIn

South Asian Trailblazers is an award-winning media platform, community, and agency dedicated to elevating leading South Asians. Join our community at SouthAsianTrailblazers.com. Subscribe to our newsletter to get new episodes and updates on our latest events in your inbox. Follow us @southasiantrailblazers on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify.

Growing up, Ankur Rathee only saw South Asians on screen playing age-old tropes. This week, he plays Ronak in Netflix's Best of the Best, a South Asian leading man written as a true hero, something Hollywood has rarely put on screen.

Simi sits down with Ankur to trace his unconventional journey to acting. It runs from a family of farmers in Haryana, to a California childhood spent reenacting Bollywood dance numbers, to Princeton, where he couldn't stay off the stage. 

From there, it's ten years building a career in Bollywood (Four More Shots Please!, Made in Heaven), and now a lead role in a Hollywood studio film with an entirely South Asian cast.

IN THIS EPISODE:

•  Why Ankur has to fight "tooth and nail" to protect his optimism in an industry built on rejection
•  Bollywood vs. Hollywood sets: hierarchy, crew size, jugaad, and red tape
• How we get more South Asian-centric films greenlit
•  His wife, actor Anuja Joshi, and how she's shaped his career
•  Why he calls fame a currency, and what "making it" means to him
•  His advice for college students torn between a corporate career and the arts
•  The two words he wants to define his legacy: spiritual warrior

ABOUT ANKUR RATHEE

Ankur Rathee is an Indian-American actor known for Prime Video's Four More Shots Please!, Zoya Akhtar's Made in Heaven, and Netflix's Best of the Best, where he plays the male lead, Ronak. He was born in India, raised in California and educated at Princeton, and spent a decade working in Bollywood before returning to Hollywood. He is married to actress Anuja Joshi, a fourth-generation artist whose aunt is National Award-winning actress Pallavi Joshi.

ABOUT BEST OF THE BEST
Netflix. Released September 18, 2026. Directed by Lena Khan. Written by Prashanth Venkataramanujam and Hasan Minhaj. Starring Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Priyanka Kedia, Ankur Rathee, Janina Gavankar, Chaneil Kular, Becky Alex, Shreya Navile, and Hasan Minhaj. 

WATCH OUR EPISODE THE CREATORS of BEST OF THE BEST: Hasan Minhaj, Prashanth Venkataramanujam, and Lena Khan.

South Asian Trailblazers is an award-winning media platform, community, and agency dedicated to elevating leading South Asians. Join our community at SouthAsianTrailblazers.com. Subscribe to our newsletter to get new episodes and updates on our latest events in your inbox. Follow us @southasiantrailblazers on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify.

Six years ago, Hasan Minhaj and Prashanth Venkataramanujam asked a question: How has a movie about the South Asian college dance team experience not been made?

Together, they made Best of the Best — a coming-of-age comedy about two best friends — played by Maitreyi Ramakrishnan and Priyanka Kedia — who join their college’s competitive Bollywood-fusion dance team — out Friday, September 18 on Netflix. 

Simi speaks with Hasan Minhaj (comedian, producer, actor), Prashanth Venkataramanujam (producer, writer), and director Lena Khan about the journey to bringing Best of the Best — the first movie about the American collegiate Bollywood competitive dance scene — to the big screen.

Ultimately, they answer: Can South Asian stories be commercially viable in Hollywood? What does it take to make a story that feels authentic to the community, while still reaching mainstream audiences? 

KEY TOPICS:

• Building an all-Brown ensemble castHow they pushed this movie through the show business ecosystem
• Why Maitreyi Ramakrishnan said this film was a first for her
• Hasan Minhaj on collegiate Bollywood dance being "an American art form"
• The moment Lena Khan knew the community had arrived
• What Hasan learned from Dev Patel about chasing bold, audacious risks

ABOUT HASAN MINHAJ — Comedian, Writer, and Actor

Best known as the creator and host of Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj and his OG special Homecoming King, He’s a former Daily Show correspondent and toured with shows: The King’s Jester, Off With His Head, and Hasan Hates Ronny. Through his production company, 186K Films, he wrote Best of the Best with longtime collaborator Prashanth and stars in the film as Professor Hamza Latif.  He is an investor in Kolkata Chai Co — whose founders we had on the podcast last season!

FOLLOW: Instagram 

ABOUT LENA KHAN — Director

Known for films like Tiger Hunter, Flora & Ulysses, and directing episodes of Never Have I Ever, which featured Best of the Best star Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, she is the director of Best of the Best.

FOLLOW: Instagram

ABOUT PRASHANTH VENKATARAMANUJAM — Writer and Producer

Prashanth has been Hasan’s creative collaborator for over 15 years. He co-created Patriot Act, The King’s Jester, Off With His Head, and Hasan Hates Ronny. And he co-wrote and produced Best of the Best alongside Hasan under 186K Films. His credits include Billy Nye Saves the World and BAIT.

FOLLOW: Instagram

South Asian Trailblazers is an award-winning media platform, community, and agency dedicated to elevating leading South Asians. Join our community at SouthAsianTrailblazers.com. Subscribe to our newsletter to get new episodes and updates on our latest events in your inbox. Follow us @southasiantrailblazers on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify.

Simi speaks with Karan Bhagat, Founder and CEO of 360 ONE — one of India's largest wealth and asset management firms, advising nearly 9,000 of the country's top families with almost $80 billion in assets under management, including industrialists, tech founders, Bollywood stars, cricketers, and some of India's most prominent public figures. Recorded at the India Conference at Harvard, this conversation traces Karan Bhagat's extraordinary journey from cold-calling Delhi's wealthiest families at age 25 to building a firm that just partnered with UBS.

Karan Bhagat shares how he built 360 ONE with $3 million in seed capital during the 2008 financial crisis, why adversity became his greatest advantage, and his conviction that true wealth is created only by building your own business. He explains why global banks like Goldman Sachs and UBS have struggled to crack India's wealth management market, opens up about generational wealth in India, and walks through the P-multiple formula that reframed his understanding of success in entrepreneurship.

KEY TOPICS:

• How 360 ONE came to advise 9,000 of India's top families — including industrialists, Bollywood stars, and cricketers — with trust at scale
• Building India's largest wealth management firm from $3M in seed capital to $80B in assets
• The real difference between wealth creation and wealth optimization
• Why global banks like UBS and Goldman Sachs have struggled in India
• Generational wealth transfer and the "third generation" myth in Indian families
• Hard work, hustle, and the "special sauce" that separates the top 50 from 2,000
• What does Karan Bhagat believe about wealth creation — and why does he say you can only build wealth through your own business?
• What the P-multiple is and how it impacts Karan Bhagat's view on entrepreneurship

ABOUT KARAN BHAGAT:

Karan Bhagat is the Founder, Managing Director, and CEO of 360 ONE WAM, one of India's largest wealth and asset management firms. Under his leadership, 360 ONE has grown to manage approximately $80 billion in assets across nearly 9,000 families. Karan Bhagat began his career at Kotak Securities in 2001 and co-founded IIFL Wealth Management in 2008, which rebranded to 360 ONE in 2023. He forged a strategic collaboration with UBS in 2025. A Fortune India 40 Under 40 honoree and EY Entrepreneur of the Year (Services, 2025), Karan Bhagat holds an MBA from IIM Bangalore.

FOLLOW:

KARAN BHAGAT
Instagram |  X | LinkedIn

360 ONE
Website | Instagram | X | YouTube | LinkedIn

South Asian Trailblazers is an award-winning media platform, community, and agency dedicated to elevating leading South Asians. Join our community at SouthAsianTrailblazers.com. Subscribe to our newsletter to get new episodes and updates on our latest events in your inbox. Follow us @southasiantrailblazers on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify.

Sakshi Sindwani is one of India's most prominent curve models, content creators, and body-positivity advocates who has built a community of 700,000 women. In 2021, she became the first curve model to appear in a Manish Malhotra bridal couture campaign, and in 2026, the first Indian creator to walk the Grammys red carpet. 

Recorded at the India Conference at Harvard, Simi's conversation traces Sakshi's path from growing up hearing "You're fat, you're never going to be worthy of love" to embodying self-love and normalizing representation among India's biggest fashion houses.

Sakshi shares the behind-the-scenes hustle most people never see: cold-calling designers to put herself on the runway at Dubai Fashion Week and why she believes inclusivity still needs to transcend surface-level representation. She opens up about the mother-daughter encounter that changed how she measures success, why she dropped her famous handle to reclaim her real name in 2026, and the message she has for every young woman: the quirks people criticize will become the strengths that carry you far and forward.

KEY TOPICS:

• Making history as the first Indian creator at the Grammys in custom Manish Malhotra couture
• Fighting tokenism and normalizing inclusivity in Indian and global fashion
• Building a 700K female community through authenticity vs. virality
• The hustle behind Dubai Fashion Week, Forbes, and global platforms
• Self-love, identity, and the message young South Asian women need to hear

ABOUT SAKSHI SINDWANI:

Sakshi is a curve model & creator redefining beauty standards in Indian couture. She has walked for fashion houses including Manish Malhotra, Gaurav Gupta, and Papa Don't Preach, and partnered with brands like L'Oréal, Johnnie Walker, H&M, and Swarovski. She has walked red carpets at the Grammys, the Cannes Film Festival, and Paris Fashion Week. She is a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, has walked Lakme Fashion Week and three shows at Dubai Fashion Week, and commands a powerful community of women as a creator. Originally from Delhi, Sakshi launched her channel in 2015 and broke out during COVID under the handle @StyleMeUpWithSakshi before rebranding to her given name in 2026.

Follow Sakshi:

• Instagram | YouTube

South Asian Trailblazers is an award-winning media platform, community, and agency dedicated to elevating leading South Asians. Join our community at SouthAsianTrailblazers.com. Subscribe to our newsletter to get new episodes and updates on our latest events in your inbox. Follow us @southasiantrailblazers on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify.

Simi Shah sits down with Sid Sriram — one of the most distinct voices in global music — for a live-recorded conversation at Harvard. Born in Chennai, raised in Fremont, trained at Berklee, mentored by A.R. Rahman, Sid Sriram has spent 15+ years alchemizing Carnatic and R&B music and putting Eastern and Western music "in conversation with each other."

He was the first South Indian artist to perform at Coachella and took NPR's Tiny Desk by storm. With over 3.8 billion+ Spotify streams alone, Sid Sriram opens up about his journey through three worlds of music — Carnatic, playback singing, and original — as well as the highs and profound lows that shaped his trajectory: from his first collaboration with the legendary A.R. Rahman to the profound ego death he faced in Covid.

Inside Sid reveals speaks to AI in music; the levitating sensation he first felt singing for the first time; how he's surmounted the classic traps around celebrity; and the path for South Asian artists to break through globally. He also teases a very special, unreleased song.

KEY TOPICS:

• How cold emailing A.R. Rahman from his college dorm set him on a journey to 3.8 billion streams
• His career across three worlds of music: Carnatic, playback singing, and his original sound
• Why AI is the first thing that's made Sid Sriram feel like an "old head"
• The buzzing, levitating sensation that's been Sid Sriram's north star since age six
• The Bad Bunny Super Bowl moment — and what it's actually going to take for South Asian artists to get there

ABOUT SID SRIRAM:

Sid Sriram is a singer, songwriter, and producer whose work bridges Carnatic music, R&B, and soul. Born in Chennai and raised in Fremont, California, he trained at Berklee College of Music and got his start as a playback singer in 2012 when A.R. Rahman called him to record "Adiye" for the Tamil film Kadal. He has since become one of India's most-streamed artists with 3.8 billion+ Spotify plays.

Sid Sriram's original work — including the recent single "Soul" and a forthcoming album — represents what he calls the "kaleidoscope" of all his influences finally existing within each other. He is widely credited with helping shape the modern wave of Indian creators putting their roots in conversation with global sound.

Follow: @sidsriram

Recorded live at the India Conference at Harvard.

South Asian Trailblazers is an award-winning media platform, community, and agency dedicated to elevating leading South Asians. Join our community at SouthAsianTrailblazers.com. Subscribe to our newsletter to get new episodes and updates on our latest events in your inbox. Follow us @southasiantrailblazers on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify.

Simi speaks with Masoom Minawala — one of India's pioneering influencers. Masoom bet her career on the internet at 17, starting her fashion blog Miss Style Fiesta in 2010, a decade before the world knew what an influencer was. She became the first Indian content creator to walk at Milan Fashion Week, a fixture on the Cannes red carpet, and has collaborated with over 500 brands, including Louis Vuitton, Dior, and Hermès. She also launched the #SupportIndianDesigners movement that generated 300,000+ posts during COVID-19.

But 16 years in, Masoom Minawala isn't resting on her highlight reel. In this episode, she reveals the identity crisis that hit after becoming a mother — "I looked in the mirror and didn't recognize myself" — and how it forced her to tear down her personal brand and rebuild as the founder of MSF Media, one of India's fastest-growing media platforms dedicated to the global woman. Masoom Minawala also shares her bold thesis that India is being dangerously undervalued as the "next superpower," why AI will make authenticity the only strategy left for creators, and the two words her husband said that changed everything.

KEY TOPICS:

• How motherhood rewired Masoom Minawala's brain and forced her to reinvent her career
• Why Masoom Minawala says India is not the "next superpower" — it's already here
• Surviving 16 years in the creator economy — from blogger era to AI age
• Indian fashion on the global stage: Milan, Cannes, and why IP still isn't protected
• The $770 billion GDP gap and why women's economics matter

ABOUT MASOOM MINAWALA: Masoom Minawala is one of India's most influential digital creators and the founder of MSF Media. She launched Miss Style Fiesta in 2010, has collaborated with over 500 brands including Louis Vuitton, Dior, Hermès, and Samsung, and became the first Indian content creator to walk the runway at Milan Fashion Week. She hosts The Masoom Minawala Show, the most-watched podcast by women in India. She is the author of "She'll Never Make It" and was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia. Masoom Minawala splits her time between Dubai and Mumbai and is a mom of two.

Follow:

 Masoom Minawala | The Masoom Minawala Show

South Asian Trailblazers is an award-winning media platform, community, and agency dedicated to elevating leading South Asians. Join our community at SouthAsianTrailblazers.com. Subscribe to our newsletter to get new episodes and updates on our latest events in your inbox. Follow us @southasiantrailblazers on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify.

In a first-ever live multi-founder panel from South Asian Trailblazers, Simi Shah sits with 4 South Asian beauty founders at the vanguard of South Asian-inspired beauty: Diipa Büller Khosla (indē wild), Rooshy Roy (Aavrani), Nisha Phatak (Lion Pose), and Lisa Mattam (Sahajan).

The conversation was born from a single line. When Rooshy returned to Trailblazers to announce Aavrani's acquisition, Simi asked about whether the dynamics with other founders were collaborative or competitive. Her response?That there's actually a "Desis at Sephora WhatsApp group." Simi made it her mission to bring that group chat to life — every South Asian beauty founder in Sephora who could be in the room.

Inside: how Diipa built indē wild's hair oil from her mother's recipe into Sephora's #1 seller; why Rooshy says she launched Aavrani at Sephora "too early" — and that it'll take 100 brands for South Asian beauty to become a true category; how Nisha cold-emailed Mindy Kaling and took a Zoom 48 hours after giving birth; how Lisa pioneered clean + clinical Ayurveda before Sephora had a "Clean" shelf.

KEY TOPICS:

• Why South Asian beauty isn't yet mainstream — and what makes a true category
• Sephora's road map: when to launch, when to wait
• The influencer-to-founder pivot, fundraising, and being underestimated
• Building for the US, UK, and India consumer at the same time
• Founder life and motherhood: the "balance is a lie" doctrine

Follow:

• Diipa Büller Khosla: @diipakhosla · @indewild
• Rooshy Roy: @rooshyroy · @aavrani
• Nisha Phatak: @nishaphatak · @lionpose
• Lisa Mattam: @lisamattam · @sahajan

South Asian Trailblazers is an award-winning media platform, community, and agency dedicated to elevating leading South Asians. Join our community at SouthAsianTrailblazers.com. Subscribe to our newsletter to get new episodes and updates on our latest events in your inbox. Follow us @southasiantrailblazers on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify.

Simi speaks with Raj Shamani — India's #1 podcaster, ranked #25 in the world — in a special live-recorded episode in New York City. Across 540+ episodes, 15 million subscribers, 400 million annual views, the Host of Figuring Out, Raj Shamani, has interviewed Bill Gates, President of France Emmanuel Macron, Aamir Khan, MS Dhoni, MrBeast, Vijay Mallya, and several other notable figures. Raj speaks primarily in English with moments of Hindi throughout — subtitles on YouTube.

But here's what makes today different — Raj Shamani rarely gets on this side of the mic. So when India's #1 podcaster sits down with the leading South Asian diaspora podcast, in front of a live audience in New York, you get the crossover episode of the year. In a rare conversation, Raj Shamani resets the myth of his own origin story, walks Simi through how he turned 15,000 rupees into a global media platform, what the Indian Diaspora gets wrong, and his path to becoming the #1 podcast in the world.

KEY TOPICS:

• Resetting the origin myth — what really happened when Raj's father got sick
• Why "values over views" makes Raj turn down guests offering insane money
• The hidden habits of the world's top 1% — billionaires, presidents, world champions
• What the South Asian diaspora gets wrong (and right) about India today
• Why building trust beats going viral as the modern creator strategy
• The 10-Year Framework Raj uses to know whether to enter any new field

ABOUT RAJ SHAMANI

Raj Shamani is an Indian entrepreneur, author, and host of Figuring Out with Raj Shamani — India's #1 podcast, ranked #25 globally. Born in 1997 in Indore, he stepped into his family's soap manufacturing business at 16 after a family health scare. He represented India at the United Nations Youth Assembly, built a global personal brand on Instagram, and launched Figuring Out in 2021. In 2023, he co-founded House of X, raising seed funding from Lightspeed, Razorpay, and Mamaearth's founders. He is a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and an angel investor in Classplus, GrowthSchool, Wint Wealth, and Neko Health.

Follow Raj: 

• Instagram | LinkedIn | X

Follow Figuring Out:

• YouTube | Instagram

South Asian Trailblazers is an award-winning media platform, community, and agency dedicated to elevating leading South Asians. Join our community at SouthAsianTrailblazers.com. Subscribe to our newsletter to get new episodes and updates on our latest events in your inbox. Follow us @southasiantrailblazers on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify.

Simi speaks with Revathi Advaithi, CEO of Flex — a $24 billion global manufacturing company that builds the critical infrastructure behind AI, cloud, healthcare, and automotive. Flex operates in 30 countries with over 140,000 employees, and under Revathi's leadership, the stock has soared from ~$7 to over $60.

Revathi started her career on a factory floor in small town Shawnee, Oklahoma. She is the youngest of five sisters and lost her father at the tender age of 15 in India. After nearly failing out of engineering school, she built her career in the industrials sector in small-town America at companies like Honeywell and Eaton. She ascended to the C-suite at Eaton and was eventually tapped to lead Flex. In 2024, she was diagnosed with breast cancer while traveling — and chose to stay on as CEO, working through treatment without missing a single day. Today, she is one of Fortune's Most Powerful Women in the World, Fast Company's Modern CEO of the Year, and serves on the board of Uber and MIT.

Recorded live in San Francisco in partnership with Pratham USA, this unfiltered conversation covers breaking into the boardroom, immigrant grit, a battle with breast cancer, and what it actually takes to lead at the highest level.

KEY TOPICS:

• Breaking into the boardroom as an immigrant woman in industrial America
• Leading through a cancer diagnosis without stepping down
• Transforming a legacy manufacturer into an AI infrastructure powerhouse
• On work, family, and navigating motherhood across continents
• The moments that nearly broke her — and the ones that made her

Revathi's TIME Op-Ed on her Cancer Battle

ABOUT REVATHI ADVAITHI:

Revathi Advaithi is CEO of Flex, the global manufacturing partner helping a diverse customer base design and build products improving the world. Since 2019, she has led Flex's transformation across 30 countries, driving technology innovation and supply chain resilience. Previously, she served as President and COO of Eaton's electrical sector with corporate responsibility for EMEA, and spent six years at Honeywell in manufacturing and supply chain leadership. She has been appointed by the U.S. President to advisory committees on trade policy and supply chain competitiveness, and serves as co-chair of the World Economic Forum's Advanced Manufacturing CEO Community. She holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from BITS Pilani and an MBA from Thunderbird.

REVATHI ADVAITHI
Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/revathiadvaithi/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/revathiadvaithi/

South Asian Trailblazers is an award-winning media platform, community, and agency dedicated to elevating leading South Asians. Join our community at SouthAsianTrailblazers.com. Subscribe to our newsletter to get new episodes and updates on our latest events in your inbox. Follow us @southasiantrailblazers on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify.