The Neon Show

#1 Smartwatch Brand in India

#3 Smartwatch Brand in Asia

#9 Smartwatch Brand Globally

All the above feats are not from Apple, Samsung, or a legacy player in the market, but from our own homegrown Indian brand - Noise.

In this week’s podcast, we turn the spotlight on Noise : A brand that’s on a mission to offer quality smart wearables at affordable prices to its customers. 

In our conversation with Amit Khatri, Co-founder of Noise, he shared how the brand started bootstrapped in 2014, what have been the challenges and how have they scaled over the years.

We have tried to summarize some key themes & takeaways from our conversation. 

Notes - 

02:09 - Early Career & Family Background before starting Noise

05:45 - Product development & Revenue journey from 2014 to 2018

08:04 - Finalising the main categories - Smartwatch and Wireless Earbuds

09:55 - Why prioritize growing own Website instead of relying on marketplace?

12:18 - Testing your idea in the market being bootstrapped

13:36 - Vision & plan of the brand early-on

14:56 - Initial Learnings for early-stage D2C Entrepreneurs

16:16 - Focus on building the brand from Day 1

18:55 - Building and launching the first product

24:15 - Secrets of scaling from Rs.160 Cr+ to Rs.800 Cr+ Revenue

26:26 - Key elements of creating a playbook for a Rs.1000 Cr+ D2C brand

31:36 - Keeping prices reasonable while ensuring better quality

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Why is HUL considered a Leadership factory?

“Every great brand is built on a fundamental human insights.”

Do you agree that people come before revenue?

“Invest in Brand, even as little as possible, and not just Performance Marketing from Day 1.”

Listen to Shashank Mehta, Founder of The Whole Truth Foods and a passionate HUL Ex-employee in today’s episode to know his perspective about everything mentioned above. 

Notes - 

03:43 - Definition of D2C market in India context

07:11 - His early career prior to starting his entrepreneurial journey

09:40 - Post-MBA why he chose Marketing over Finance?

11:30 - Why HUL is considered a leadership factory?

14:30 - Learnings from his stint at HUL

18:48 - Why he joined Faasos (now REBEL Foods) a lesser known startup leaving HUL in 2012?

23:40 - Scale of Faaso’s when he joined and left the company

24:30 - Why he left Faasos and joined HUL again?

28:22 - Learnings from setting up an Ayurveda-brand within HUL

34:09 - Consumer insight which HUL was trying to  solve with its AYUSH proposition

34:54 - His blog about food and fitness - FIT SHIT

41:54 - Raising around 5 Cr+ initial funding during his Notice Period

45:10 - Zero to One Phase of The Whole Truth Foods

50:02 - Realizing the ‘Aha Moment’ of brand’s journey

52:32 - Sales & Revenue Milestones during their journey

54:05 - Being a Truth company rather than being a food company

57:00 - Key learnings while scaling a brand

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MobiKwik is one of the largest Mobile Wallet and Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) platforms in India. Its tech platform has 120  million Registered Users, 25.3 million pre-approved BNPL users and more than 3.4 million merchant partners. MobiKwik's top line grew by 80 percent from INR 300 crore in FY21 to INR 540 Crore in FY22.

Tune in to this conversation with Bipin Preet Singh, Co-founder, MobiKwik where we talk about his journey of building and scaling the company for the last 13+ years.

During the episode, Bipin also shares about how they started first with a basic problem of the masses with mobile recharge and then scaled over time, how they sailed through the difficult times of Covid and took Mobikwik to 100Mn+ users.

Notes - 

02:21 - What led him to founding MobiKwik?

09:00 - “You can’t build the platform on Day 1, the platform has to evolve.”

11:58 - Advice for early-stage entrepreneurs pitching to build a platform

14:27 - How did MobiKwik evolve as a platform? 

27:23 - What has transformed significantly in the last 1-2 years?

30:33 - Current revenue, profits, and scale 

36:25 - Is the economy currently going into recession?

38:11 - What kept him going for 13+ years?

40:33 - Tailwinds which are supporting Fintech in India

44:52 - Creating a mental model to build in markets with already existing large players

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Any idea what’s common between Flipkart, Ola, Swiggy, Zerodha and 6000+ other Businesses in India and South-East Asia? 

They all rely on Exotel for their customer communications, no matter the size, scale, or industry within which the company exists; Exotel has the a product-solution for all of them. 

In this episode, we talk with Shivakumar Ganesan, Founder of Exotel to learn more about his journey and challenges building and scaling the company.

During the episode, Shivakumar talks about his experience with VCs & Angel investors, having Ola as a customer and much more.

Notes - 

03:48 - Early days, Family, background & career

06:40 - Entrepreneurial attempts before starting Exotel

09:51 - Initial Problem statement and solutions

13:50 - Raising money from Blume Ventures

18:30 - Scale and Customers at $1Mn ARR

30:21 - Cofounders leaving the company

37:30 - Dealing with thoughts about quitting

41:55 - How did A91 Partners chose to back Exotel?

49:38 - Current Capabilities & Scope for growth

52:15 - Proving naysayers wrong by building a $60Mn ARR SaaS from India for India

53:39 - Key lessons from his journey

55:56 - Advice for understanding market size  

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With the emergence of health issues in recent years, most people have started becoming proactive to improve their immune system and diet, rather than being reactive at a later stage when the damage has already been done. 

Even most doctors agree that if from an early age, we somehow get access to a preservative-free, natural source of nutrients, it might significantly boost our health in the long-run.

Our guest Aarti Gill’s OZiva is India's leading Clean, Plant Based Wellness brand. 

OZiva was started back in 2016 and since then the company has scaled significantly with a large base of repeat customers.

During the episode, Aarti talks about how she pivoted from her first venture to OZiva, what are the major challenges she has encountered during her journey and much more.

Notes - 

05:38 - Initial intro about OZiva

08:40 - High-level metrics around customers and revenue

09:44 - Building an Omni-channel brand v/s a D2C brand

11:26 - Early Education & Career prior to OZiva

14:14 - Meeting her co-founder and their first venture

18:35 - Deciding the first 4 products

21:14 - Market demand of OZiva’s Prime membership

22:26 - Challenges during the early years of OZiva

24:38 - Building a 20 Cr+ revenue from 2016 to 2020

26:53 - Building online & offline distribution channels

28:03 - Nuances while building distribution channels

30:10 - Rapid scale of 5x within a year

31:37 - Ensuring repeat purchase by customers

36:46 - Funding interest while growing from 0 to 20 Cr+

38:45 - Mental model of self-evaluating during each funding rounds

40:10 - Deepika Padukone as a brand ambassador

42:44 - Framework behind brand positioning campaigns

44:37 - Things which didn’t work out & learnings

46:19 - Why build new categories apart from nutrition

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# Can a passionate cricketer become a passionate entrepreneur? 

# Can you and your spouse be Cofounders without conflict? 

# How many successful & fulfilling stints can an entrepreneur have? 

All the above questions get answered during the episode with our guest Ashish Tandon, Founder & CEO, Indusface.

Indusface is his 3rd venture after 2 successful exits and a short but successful early-career in Cricket. 

During the episode, Ashish talks about how his wife has supported him throughout his journey, what led him to start over and over again post his multiple exits and much more.

Notes - 

03:08 - Early background in Cricket

06:30 - 1st venture right out of College

08:46 - Getting acquired by SIFY within 2 years

09:49 - What led to his 2nd venture? 

13:21 - Multi-million dollar Exit to TrendMicro

15:16 - Reason behind Bootstrapping his ventures

17:55 - What led him to starting Indusface?

19:42 - Problem statements solved by Indusface

24:32 - Journey from $1Mn ARR to current scale

28:10 - Key Levers to doubling their ARR within a year

31:32 - Challenges in building Indusface

36:58 - Having your spouse as your Cofounder

38:50 - Reflecting back how he feels about his journey? 

44:09 - Lessons from all his ventures

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# China Accused of cyber-attacks on Ukraine before Russian invasion

# Buget 2022: $9.9 billion towards cyber security aims to make Australia a key 'offensive' cyber player

These are some of the recent headlines around Cyber threats globally. Cyber attacks have been rated the fifth top rated risk in 2020 and continues to grow in 2022 as IoT cyber attacks alone are expected to double by 2025.

In this episode our guest Rahul Sasi, Founder CloudSEK, talks about the key challenges in Cyber Security in India today.

CloudSEK’s customer list includes Axis Bank, NPCI, Netcore, OLA, Sun Pharma, ICICI Lombard, IndusInd Bank, MakeMyTrip and many more who don’t wish to take a chance with the growing threat of global cyber crimes.  

11 of the Fortune Global companies, and 7 of the world’s biggest banks, trust XVigil (one of CloudSEK’s flagship products) to safeguard their security posture.

During the episode, Rahul talks about how they started CloudSEK, customer acquisition strategy, and much more.

Notes - 

04:04 - Background before starting CloudSEK

08:55 - Current ARR and scale in terms of customers

09:45 - Milestone since launch

12:04 - Products and Problem Statements solved by CloudSEK

14:44 - How has been the industry response? 

20:19 - Challenges with hiring the right people

24:40 - Targets for the next 2 years

26:17 - Learnings from their fundraising journey

28:26 - How to leverage your investors?

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The Internet of Things category is not slowing down for anyone to catch up. It is projected to be a $1.1 trillion category by 2027, with the number of active IoT-connected devices ​​expected to reach 30.9 billion units by 2025.

Targeting this, we have our guest Yadhu Gopalan, CEO & Founder at Esper, with a vision to power the next billion smart devices. 

Currently, Seattle-based Esper has more than 200 paying customers and over 2,000 developers using its platform for product development.

During the episode, Yadhu talks about his journey building Esper, how he met his cofounder, what learnings he has brought from his stint at Amazon and Microsoft, and much more.

Notes - 

01:12 - Journey before starting Esper

02:20 - Early Childhood and moving to the US

03:48 - Problem statement behind starting Esper

05:25 - Product offering and clients

10:25 - The founding team at Esper

15:43 - Attracting the best talent

16:50 - Building a team across geographies

19:07 - Execute distribution and partnerships at scale

20:39 - Work Culture & learnings from Microsoft & Amazon

27:51 - Key learnings from his startup journey

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As per a recent Entrackr report, Indian startups saw over 250 acquisitions in 2021.

Edtech startups like Byju’s, Unacademy, and upGrad have been in the headlines for their acquisition spree, and also startups in the e-commerce roll up space such as Mensa Brands, GlobalBees, 10club, Upscalio, and fitness tech platform Cultfit (Curefit) also took over smaller brands, recording the highest number of acquisitions last year.

With so much going on around acquisitions, our guest Rohit Anand, Founder, 1digitalstack.ai shares his experience of getting his first venture acquired. 

During the episode, Rohit talks about bringing in a third-party consultant to assist with the acquisition, his second stint at entrepreneurship, and much more.

Notes - 

02:12 - Starting his first entrepreneurial venture in 1999

06:34 - “Importance of going after a problem where you have a natural advantage.”

11:39 - What did Value Edge work upon? 

12:57 - Value Edge’s ARR at the time of Exit

13:39 - Thought process behind the Exit

18:46 - Process of identifying the right M&A Advisor and the help an entrepreneur can expect

24:00 - Maintaining balance during the stress while acquisition

28:57 - Deciding to start 1digitalstack.ai

32:31 - Current scale in terms of ARR & top clients

35:17 - Taking investor money during his 2nd entrepreneurial stint

38:10 - Future plans for 1digitalstack.ai (in terms of ARR & Growth drivers)

42:15 - Vision and Ambition of building a large company

46:19 - Current practices: Same & Distinct from Value Edge

50:32 - His approach towards investing

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Many founders try to build for large markets. But Saahil Goel, Founder, Shiprocket thinks differently. 

In his opinion, it’s okay to build small or lesser things and target a core segment of users, instead of jumping into a competition with large players, where you might not stand a chance. 

In other words - Picking your battles wisely. 

During this episode, Saahil talks about finding the right investors, current focus of the company, and much more.

Notes - 

01:56 - Finding his Co-founder & brainstorming around data-driven logistics

09:04 - Problem with starting in a large competitive market

12:02 - Focus metrics during the initial journey

14:12 - Current scale of Shiprocket

22:04 - Warehouse as a Service

26:24 - Y-o-Y growth of platform

27:49 - Approach to fixing broken things & building new

32:14 - Raising initial rounds of funding

45:01 - “Unless and until you have clarity about something, it won’t work.”

48:19 - Ensuring focus within the team

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