We have a deep conversation with Mukul Rustagi of Classplus, and IIT Roorkee grad who had the intent to solve problems right through college, just like his co-founder Bhaswat.

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We explore the world of coaching institutes, how a teacher at the institute influences a child’s ability to learn and get better. We delve into building the Classplus business model and understand how Classplus has been able to carve a niche for itself and raise 9 million dollars as part of their Series A from marquee investors including Sequoia and Blume Ventures.

Mukul has a book recommendation for anyone who loves sports and build a perseverance mentality— Marvan Attapattu

My favorite quotes from the show are:

“70%-80% of centers are in tier 2 cities and beyond”

“Technology cannot replicate the experience of learning from teachers”

“Technology will be a supplement teachers”

Classplus is hiring, you can find Mukul on LinkedIn and email via [email protected]

Classplus has investments from RTP Global - a prolific investor in early stage startups, Times Internet, Blume Ventures, Sequoia Capital India’s Surge, Spiral Ventures, and Strive.

Timeline:

2:45 — Early Days

4:42 — Finding each other and the passion for starting up

6:35 — Classplus

8:26 — Competitors; B2B vs B2C

11:29 — Tech adoption outside of Metros & large cities

13:15 — Expense on coaching spends

15:50 — Structuring classes

17:06 — Kota Factory*

20:58 — Mentoring a key part of tutoring

24:41 — Co-creating the product with teachers

33:15 — Sequoia Surge program

35:44 — Series A raise of $ 9 million

36:52 — Spending a large fund raise

39:01 — Hiring

44:03 — Kunal, Bhavish & Kunal

We speak with Vikas Chawla a friend of mine from my time at Loyola College - Chennai , who founded digital agency called Social Beat. He along with his brother Suniel Chawla have built a sought after agency that has won numerous awards as a Premier Google Partner & as a recommended Facebook agency.

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In the conversation we talk about the origin story, how an ecomm website became an agency and how an agency is looking at building products to scale beyond the services business.

A fun conversation into all things digital and chatting about the 4 businesses being built inside of the agency.

Vikas can be found on LinkedIn and Twitter

2:13 — Aiesec

3:16 — Getting work experience while at college

4:52 — Working at The Murugappa Group

5:57 —MV Subbiah, Padma Bhushan & ex-Chairman of the Murugappa Group

10:42 — Moving on from Murugappa group to entrepreneurship

13:10 — Exploring Social Commerce

17:10 — Influence and curation is influencing commerce

21:23 — Understanding Social Media filters

23:41 — Transitioning to Social Beat — India’s fastest growing Digital agency

26:43 — The client that put us on the map

30:13 — Multi lingual campaigns

32:21 — ROI driven agency

35:45 — UPI’s impact on transactions

37:52 — Launching brands products from the Agency

39:02 — influencer.in

41:30 — Ads Quotient

42:30 — 22languages

43:25 — DigiGrad

49:01 — Hiring & Managing COVID19

Sarvesh Sashi was a cricketer from Chennai who was picked in 2 IPL squads. Yep, he put IPL fame aside to pursue his love for Yoga.

Sarvesh talks about how he met his guru and how he took up Yoga. He also shares how the app has a star studded investor list including celebrities like Jennifer Lopes & her husband, baseball legend, Alex Rodriguez. We get chatting about yoga of course, and a lot lot more.

Sarva has Malaika Arora, tv celebrity and actress, as a co-founder and more recently the app also brought onboard cricketer Shikhar Dhawan as an investor.

If you want to join a rocket ship you should reach out to Sarvesh and team!

Timeline:

01:09 — Arrogance, Attitude & Anger | Circket was life, meeting a guru

06:12 — Injury free with Yoga & being picked up by IPL teams

07:33 — Yoga has genuinely become a part of competitive sports

09:35 — Bikram

11:45 — Yoga being adopted across the world

12:55 — Sarva

14:05 — Adoption of Yoga

15:41 — Improving life outcomes with Yogic practice

17:23 — Importance of Yogic practice

21:35 — Celebrities launching workout programs

24:10 — Getting J.Lo & A.Rod as investors

26:35 — Moving away from creating studios to just focusing on a digital strategy

30:40 — Trends on app usage

32:54 — Enabling jobs with yoga

On the EP13 we explore the world of alcohol and how an app from Chennai making it possible to buy alcohol from neighbourhood wine shops as well as enabling deliveries for these shop owners. Prasanna Natarajan & Prashant Adurty are the founders of Hipbar. Prasanna and I chat about the state of country spirits, and the business of delivering alcohol.

“Without knowing the extent of govt oversight, the naivety helped me become successful”

Prasanna is a first generation alcohol beverage industry entrepreneur. Trust me, there are a very few of these in India. Hailing from a family of teetotallers, at 27, he launched Sipping Spirits, a craft spirits business in Goa that he started from scratch in 2007.

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We get talking about indigenous spirits and the obstacle to their success in India. How so far no online portal could successfully work on the liquor business as Indian laws do not permit the sale and purchase of liquor via digital channels. How HipBar could overcome this legal obstacle by identifying itself as a pure-play fintech company. It currently counts TASMAC shops in Tamil Nadu as clients, has been in operation on and off in Bangalore and more recently started servicing Odisha & West Bengal for deliveries.

HipBar is backed by alcohol major Diageo.

Hope you enjoy the episode of Stars & Startups with Varun Vummidi as much as I did. You can connect with Prashanth on Linkedin

Video: https://youtu.be/XcYUPItDqq4

Timeline:

04:46 — What was the product?

05:35 —  Partnership with Netherlands based Melchers group

10:01 — Classification of IMFL & country spirits

11:03 — Promoting country spirit

12:05 — Why tequila is popular around the world

15:12 — Problem of tagging country liquor as country liquor

16:04 — A case for local speciality alcohols

18:12 — Free movement of alcohol between states?

20:01 — Venturing into the business.

23:00 — Transitioning to HIPBAR from Sipping spirits

24:19 — getting the HIPBAR name

25:17 — creating the Uber experience as the first

25:21 — One City One Price launch via HIPBAR

28:06 — the opportunity to start with deliveries

28:31 — confusion on what resulting in launching deliveries

30: 29 — Mobile payments in multiple states

31:35 — Efficiency is a casualty for wineshops and bars

33:32 — Challenges posed by Zomato & Swiggy to restaurants & bars

37:47 — Govts coming forward to implement digital solutions

40:44 —Regulatory rules, actions taken without oversight

41:41 — Hipbar participating in deliveries as well? Launch in Odisha

42:35 — Hyperlocal bar?

EP12 : {Jitendra of Citrus Pay & Jupiter Money} Exiting to PayU for a cool US$ 130 million cash deal, Angel Investing and on raising US$ 26 million to launch Jupiter with only an idea 

On this special episode of Stars & Startups I chat with my ex-boss and mentor Jiten Gupta, Founder of Jupiter Money.

Jiten was the co-founder of Citrus Payments an online payment company that sold to its rival PayU payments in 2016 for a mammoth $130M cash deal, post which Jiten went on to run PayU’s consumer play LazyPay.

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A lot of you already know that Jiten has become a prominent angel investor, some call him a Super Angel, with some blockbuster investments in Ridlr (exit old to Ola), JoeHukum(exit to Freshworks), Khatabook (60M $$ in capital raised) & Bank Open (37M $$ in capital from Tiger Global ) and the big one, the craft beer maker Bira 91 the maker of India’s favourite white beer. Jiten has a lot more interesting investments, so do search for them if you’re interested. He’s invested in wide range of companies — consumer products, crypto, transport, entertainment, beauty & wellness and SaaS.

We cover a lot of ground in the limited time with Jiten, where we get into the origin of Citrus, sale to PayU, Angel investing & we scratch the surface on what’s cooking at Jiten’s latest startup Jupiter Money for which he has raised capital of US$ 26M on an idea to create a better banking experience.

Jupiter Money is hiring, so do reach out their careers page of you want to be part of Jiten’s team. Technology candidates are always welcome and currently looking for folks in digital marketing (as of Jun 2020).

Jiten is easily accessible on LinkedIn and Twitter

Youtube: https://youtu.be/GMEfRkqpKIE

Timeline:

4:05 — Intro to Jiten

6:35 — Genesis of Citrus — working at ICICI & meeting Amrish Rau

8:40 — First course of action for a, initial 2 years of launching Citrus

10:45 — Focussing on going after certain sectors while competing with well funded players

13:25 — Importance of strategic partnerships

14:45 — B2B vs B2C economics and brand

18:45 — Building LazyPay

22:20 — Exiting to PayU

24:30 — Transitioning into an Angel investor

28:35 — Support to investee companies

29:55 — Who should become an angel investor?

31:41 — How Jiten invests

33:35 — Raising a large round of capital on an idea

34:50 — Ambitions for Jupiter

36:35 — What to invest in while having a large pool of capital

38:45 — Mistakes from Citrus that is being avoided

41:50 — Tech talent in Mumbai

44:12 — The KILLER feature for Jupiter Money

45:35 — Hiring for Tech & Marketing

46:01 — Suggestions for entrepreneurs during COVID

On the episode I catch up with award winning photographer Aneesh Bhasin of Svami drinks. Svami is a beverages brand that’s part of the latest wave of Indian consumer brands that is catering to a premium audience and offers variety in a segment that has long lacked innovation.  

Aneesh and I chat about coffee, his experience building his earlier startup HipCask and  how he’s taken that experience to build SVAMI - a brand that’s built up quite the fan following.

Aneesh has graciously offered a 15% discount on orders placed on SvamiDrinks.com and should be active for about a month (June2020). Do listen to the podcast to get your discount code! Do follow my channel wherever you listen to the podcast and do sign up to the newsletter so that you can receive the podcast delivered to your inbox!

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Timeline

12:05 —  Building a taste for the good stuff

17:13 —  learning from launching an iOS app for wine users in Mumbai

24:43 —  Hipcask Passport

30:15 —  team and coming together of SVAMI

33:25 — Creating an FMCG brand for a non-drinker

34:05 — Overcoming the incumbents

36:02 —  Reason to start with “tonics” for an FMCG brand

38:45 —  Why build a brand via bar sales?

42:30 —  Packaging and it’s importance

44:25 —  Creating an strong IP around  SVAMI Superlative Cocktail League

48:10 —  Building goodwill during the lockdown across the board

50:35 —  Product Development process

58:07 —  Driving purchases and sales channels

1:01:01 —  Fund raising

1:03:33 — Competition from other startups

1:05:45 —  Expansion global vs local

Svami Tonics, with their exquisite packaging and wonderful flavours, are finally putting the Indian in Indian Tonic. Svami manufactures and sells premium non-alcoholic drinks and mixers across retail stores, restaurant-pubs and e-commerce channels

Aneesh has worked on projects for food, lifestyle and travel for brand including  Johnnie Walker, Dom Pérignon, Hennessy, Starbucks, BBC Good Food, Vanity Fair, Lonely Planet, GQ, CN Traveller and a lot more!

Svami was founded by three partners Sahil Jatana, Rahul Mehra and Aneesh Bhasin in 2018. All three are connoisseurs  of good drinks — be it wine, beer or even coffee. Sahil started one of the first online stores for coffee in India, Rahul started one of the first craft breweries in Mumbai and Aneesh started India’s first app for wines and spirits.

EP10: Writing code at the age of 12 to now creating applications that enables easy use of satellite data {Bala Menon, Co-founder of Kawa Space}

Bala Menon is a tech entrepreneur who started writing code at the age of 12 and has built products across various industries and now, space. As the co-founder & Chief Product Officer he speaks about how Kawa Space aims to make space technology accessible to everyone; enabling the intelligence from space consumed at scale by businesses.

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The opportunity provided by Space, especially in Low Earth Orbit is a large and an exciting one, with India alone having over 300 companies focused on this market. Kawa is one of the latest in that lot and believe that eventually satellite data will be commoditised and there would be a point where the cost would tend towards zero.

Timeline

02:24 — Entering the Orbit: Kawa

05:44 — Launching Satellites vs getting satellite data

11:19 — Space and making sense of managing satellite data

15:52 — Commoditising the Data and Monetizing the Business

21:03 — Competitors and Kawa’s USP

28:48 — Becoming a Data Point for public as the Use Case

33:50 —Monetizing for Use Cases

36:24 — Space tech landscape in India

40:01 — Creating a moat

44:27 — Monitoring and rules of usage

47:23 — Onboarding the right team

Kawa is said to be working on a service that would make it extremely easy to work with satellite data and offer a platform that would require very little technical help or time for clients to get started. We get a little technical in this episode with Bala Menon of Kawa.Space where he shares the opportunity in the space of Space & what Kawa is building.

Kawa Space had recently raised funds from Speciale Invest and a sum from Paytm founder Vijay Shekar Sharma.

If you’re looking to partner or work with Kawa you can reach out to [email protected] or [email protected]

Bala is also easily accessible on LinkedIn and Twitter

Jaspreet talks candidly about how he started hacking together quadcopters for the fun of it in the college lab & sold those crude copters to make some pocket money. When quadcopters started becoming accessible and extremely powerful there were very few who knew how to monetize and even fewer who went ahead and tried their hand at it.

Now Visual AI manages over 35% of Indian solar assets, with a set of impressive client - comprising of 27 of the 35 companies in the solar space. The data science solutions help monitor geographical areas using its proprietary software. Clients include Adani Enterprises, Tata Power, Azure Power and ACC Cement.

Also a little bit about what he's been upto during the lockdown.

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Timeline:

23:10 — Insight on cracking large enterprise sales

27:35 — Hardware vs Software business

30:04 — Operating a drone business

31:50 — Autonomous drones without control — what about the future?

35:12 — Drone use cases

37:23 — Opportunities globally for drones

39:42 — Team, growth & prediction for future of the business

44:30 — Drone racing & rules on flying a drone

47:20 — Challenges being solved by drones

In 2017 they had raised an undisclosed amount of capital from the Mumbai Angels Network.

Jaspreet is extremely accessible on social channels, so do reach out to him via LinkedIn or Twitter if you’d like to have a chat. Or you can follow WeDoSky

EP08: Building a content business, Zoom weddings and the future of the ~ 12 million annual weddings in India; and the commerce around the occasion  

We speak with Sanna, CEO of The Wedding Brigade, a platform that has carved a niche for itself by gathering a highly engaged audience and produces high quality content to stay connected and relevant to its customers. Sanna discusses how she looks at content, how it drives commerce, why very few have been able to have the same success as they have. 

We also talk about the future of Zoom weddings and what's in store for the massive Indian wedding's market.  

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Show Notes:

You can find Sanna on Linkedin and on Instagram

The Wedding Brigade had raised over $1 million (₹6.9 crore) in a Pre-Series A round of funding led by Japan-based AET fund and Blume Ventures. Do share the episode with friends and family who too could benefit from hearing from Indian startups, founders and their journey. 

Are there any founder doing amazing things, do send me a message. Would love to have them on the show. You can find me on the Twitter. Don't forget to leave a 5 star rating on your favourite podcast player and do subscribe if you haven't done so already.

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This week we speak about something that’s become the topic of discussion during the pandemic, given job losses, economic slowdown and the many reasons for anxiety. Some estimates that at very least 150 million Indians are in need of intervention for mental health but only 30 million Indians have access to mental health facilities currently.

InnerHour was part of the Facebook India innovation Accelerator - AI for Social Good that Amit talks about briefly. He also shares  how InnerHour garnered 650,000 users on the play store, who uses InnerHour today and also the Indian wellness landscape.

Amit is an experienced Psychiatrist with extensive clinical leadership and healthcare operations experience in Mental Health services in Europe and India. InnerHour is a healthcare technology company looking to disrupt the psychological wellness/mental health provision.

To provide an extended support system for people in these challenging socio-economic times, InnerHour is extending its digital programmes and self-help tools pro bono WFH employees of companies. Sign up for the service via www.theinnerhour.com

You can find Amit and InnerHour on Twitter

Do share the episode with friends and family who too could benefit from hearing from Indian startups, founders and their journey.

Are there any founder doing amazing things, do send me a message would love to have them on the show you can send me tweet at me @varunvummidi on the twitter. Don’t forget to leave a 5 star rating on your favourite podcast player and do subscribe if you haven’t done so already.

Show Notes :

1:35 — The Journey behind InnerHour

5:40 — Advantages of psychiatrists having an MBA

9:55 — The difference between UK’s & Indian healthcare system

14:10 — Preventive Health in India

16:33 — Monetization & Payment models in the healthcare Industry

18:32 — InnerHour : Journey & Vision

22:47 — How people are reacting during lockdown-mental health

27:30 — Self diagnosis, how current generation looks at mental health

37:38 — Geographically availability of InnerHour

39:27 — Experience at Facebook Acceleration Programme

41:40 — Being a non-tech founder in tech company

42:53 — InnerHour services

45:22 — InnerHour offer during lockdown

46:00 — Hiring at InnerHour

48:08 — Revenues & monetizing the app