The Neon Show

In this episode, we chat with Amit Kumar Agarwal, NoBroker. 

NoBroker, as the name suggests eliminates the middle-man/broker most of us have to go through when we look out for our buy/rent a property. 

NoBroker handles $2 billion worth of transactions on its platform every year and claims to have helped save brokerage worth Rs 1,100 crore last year.

During the podcast, Amit shares how he built NoBroker while facing troubles from local brokers and brought it into realization as a broker-free platform at a time when larger competitors like Housing.com and Commonfloor still had brokers on their platform.

Notes - 

01:39 - Family background & childhood, shifting cities too often

06:36 - Challenges while beginning with your Startup in your 30s

09:54 - Ideating the concept of NoBroker

13:25 - Approaching VCs for initial funding

14:37 - Investors seeking the existence of a US/China counterpart

22:18 - Choosing BTL advertising over ATL considering the ROI at a premature stage

26:02 - Not expanding too fast to multiple cities

37:43 - Listening to what your customers want

42:58 - Bringing premium Add-on services

47:01 - Changes in his personality as a founder in 0 to 1 & 1 to 100 journey

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In this episode, we chat with Sanjeev Kapoor, the famous Indian celebrity chef, Padma Shri-awardee, entrepreneur and television personality.

He rose to fame after hosting Khana Khazana (an Indian cookery show) in the early 90s. It was the longest-running show of its kind in Asia with over 649 episodes over 19 years.

He also holds a Guinness World Record for cooking 918 kg khichdi live at World Food India 2017. In 2017 he was the only chef in Forbes ‘top 100 Indian celebrities’.

Sanjeev’s business ventures range from premium cookware and appliances brand Wonderchef to TV channel FoodFood and 65 chain restaurants under different brands in nine countries.

During the podcast, Sanjeev talks about creating the content that he personally enjoys and running multiple ventures with partners he trusts and is comfortable with. 

This conversation is pure gold for someone who’s either currently in or planning to enter the food industry to get a top-level perspective of how things work and what all should you consider and various stages in your journey.

Notes - 

02:30 - Getting nostalgic with the Khana Khazana show

04:54 - Being a content person at heart via books, website, social media, & TV channel

07:48 - Working with Pharma companies to bring nutritional foods of medicinal value

08:21 - KitFresh via Amazon: Ready to cook fresh meal kit

09:19 - 4000+ employees under Sanjeev Kapoor’s Brand 

11:12 - Family background & early career

16:38 - Being comfortable with discomfort

18:57 - Drive to start working on something new

23:45 - “If you continue to do things that give you pleasure, satisfaction, & purpose then it's not work, it's something that you’re enjoying all the time.”

26:34 - Deciding ownership of actionable in a partnership

33:43 - Understanding numbers and building scalable businesses

36:55 - Building comfort & trust prior to entering into a partnership

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In this episode, we chat with Karan Bajaj, Founder, WhiteHat Jr. From being the CEO at Discovery, to being an author with Penguin Random House & HarperCollins Publishers, to curating his Edtech venture Karan has donned many hats.

Founded in November 2018, WhiteHat Jr is focused on helping children between 6 to 14 years in developing commercial-ready games, animations, and apps online using the fundamentals of coding. In August 2020, Whitehat Jr was sold to Byju’s in a $300 million all-cash deal. 

During the podcast, Karan talks about how he took 3 breaks in his professional career and how they impacted him as a person, he also talks about what roles should a founder play at various growth stages in a startup’s journey.

For anyone looking to make a planned approach & setting outcomes for sabbaticals, or for any founder confused with prioritizing the impactful things in their journey at various stages, this conversation can be of great value.

Notes - 

01:03 - Early childhood & career prior to WhiteHat Jr

03:49 - Taking breaks in a professional career

04:10 - Becoming consistent with writing - “Natural consequence of living what I thought was a very interesting adventure, an experience that I thought that many people should do.”

07:04 - Major career sabbaticals throughout his journey

14:24 - Impact of 1st Sabbatical: Understanding that the world is very boundary-less

15:06 - Impact of 2nd Sabbatical: Productivity as an individual 

15:41 - Impact of 3rd Sabbatical: “If I pick up something, I just have to keep at it every day.”

17:00 - Growing leaps and bounds in corporate career after 2nd sabbatical 

18:30 - Self-doubts while writing and publishing his books

22:04 - Accepting and realising that growth isn’t linear

28:43 - Ideating and pursuing WhiteHat Jr

34:46 - Initial scale, revenue, and metrics tracked at WhiteHat Jr

38:17 - Top mistakes at WhiteHat Jr while blitzscaling

41:45 - Being mindful as a founder while facing criticism 

43:15 - “The founder in a blitzscaling phase has to let some fires burn.”

45:41 - Byju’s & WhiteHat Jr deal: Startup economics for Acquirer, Acquired & Investors

51:19 - Enabling 11000+ women teachers on the platform

52:07 - Karan’s perspective on the Wolf Gupta’s Ad

1:00:14 - WhiteHat Jr’s journey in a book & chapter names for each phase

1:04:32 - One major personality change while building WhiteHat Jr

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Ranjeet Pratap Singh is the Co-founder & CEO of Pratilipi. Prior to Pratilipi, he worked at Vodafone with stints in Marketing, Retail, and Channel Sales. 

Pratilipi, is the largest vernacular Indian story-telling platform with over 320,000 writers in 12 languages and over 25+ million Monthly Active Readers. 

There are several sub-categories and sub-products within the brand such as - Pratilipi Literature, Pratilipi Comics, Pratilipi FM & their latest acquisition IVM Podcasts.

During the podcast, Ranjeet talks about simplifying the creation of online consumer internet companies, creating their own definition of growth, giving ownership to employees to define their plan of action, and set their individual North star metrics amongst other work culture practices followed at Pratilipi.

Notes - 

01:03 - Pratilipi - Vernacular self-published content platform

02:53 - Problem statement behind starting Pratilipi

05:04 - Onboarding first set of users & building traction on the platform

06:11 - Current scale in terms of authors, stories, & readers

07:19 - Revenue model: Brand advertising for IVM Podcasts

08:34 - Revenue model: Subscription & Virtual gifting for Pratilipi Literature

10:22 - Revenue model: Early access model for Pratilipi Comics

11:45 - Optimising your odds based on a long-term future as a founder

12:49 - Challenges while raising initial funding

16:12 - Transparency & Ownership amongst employees

19:10 - The thought process behind hiring: “We don’t look at people as dots, but we look at people as journeys.”

21:22 - Adopting things from work culture at Freecharge, CRED & Flipkart amongst others

25:31 - Setting product-wise North-star & check metrics

28:44 - Not following the general Growth Playbook

31:22 - Future goals as a platform: Democratizing Storytelling

32:33 - Thesis behind Audio Content: IVM Podcast & Pratilipi FM

39:24 - Things that didn’t work out at Pratilipi

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In this episode, we chat with Malika Datt Sadani & Mohit Sadaani, The Moms Co. which deals with toxic-free products for newborns and mothers.

The Mom’s Co’s journey started from a personal experience. Both the couple’s daughters had skin conditions which made them scourge for natural products that were free of toxins and artificial fragrances.

During the podcast, they talk about how to build trust amongst customers in D2C products, what are the things a first-time entrepreneur in D2C should consider, and how they’ve built a closely knit community to stay connected with their customers, amongst other things.

Notes - 

01:12 - Background of The Moms Co.

02:32 - Family & career background prior to The Moms Co.

03:27 - Meeting each other as life partners & co-founders

05:22 - Mindset prior to the launch of the first product

07:47 - Raising initial funding for a D2C brand in 2017

10:22 - Life-changing conversation & insight for Malika in the early days of The Moms Co.

16:12 - “How do we change the definition of what mom’s skin, face & hair care look like and allowing us to play into a lot of other very large categories with a very different proposition.”

17:32 - Consumer journey over the past 5 years

19:04 - Close touch with customers over Whatsapp & Facebook community

22:27 - Brand advocates, including Genelia D'Souza to build brand trust

24:55 - Challenges while setting up distribution channels

29:35 - Advice to D2C entrepreneurs

31:36 - Malika’s experience shifting from a home-maker to an entrepreneur

38:43 - Founders & Mentors they reach out to for brainstorming

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In this episode, we chat with Pravin Agarwala, founder BetterPlace. 

Blue-collar workforce management is one of the biggest industries in the Indian economy.

Urbanization and deeper penetration of the internet have helped players like QuikrJobs, LinkedIn, Just Jobs, Aasaan Jobs, and Google to make inroads into this segment.

BetterPlace is India's largest technology platform delivering digital solutions for blue-collar workforce management, throughout the entire value chain. 

Pravin started Betterplace in January 2015 as a background verification company. However, they eventually realized the need for an enabler to bridge existing demand and supply gaps in the ecosystem, thus moving to a B2B2C business model and creating a digital platform to enable the ecosystem.

During the podcast, Pravin talks about defining and solving the challenges for the blue-collar workforce in India and also shares the company's vision to go global soon.

Notes - 

01:26 - Coming from Dibrugarh (North-east India), working with SAP India

03:15 - Backstory behind starting BetterPlace

05:20 - Defining Workforce Management Solution for blue-collar employees

07:04 - Solving for improving productivity, attrition, time & attendance among other challenges

Ft3 - First step in the product - Onboarding solution with background verification

14:39 - Current key customers, metrics & milestones

16:09 - Challenges while raising funding for a SaaS startup impacting blue-collar workers

19:58 - Global expansion plans for BetterPlace

23:28 - Approach behind the valuation of early-stage SaaS startups

26:35 - Focus on: Customer value, Step-by-step approach, Team building among other elements

30:18 - Bringing an Angel Investor within the company full-time to build on core principles

30:31 - Value addition from investors

34:01 - Things he’ll do differently if he got another shot at building BetterPlace

37:25 - Starting early in your startup journey as a founder

39:40 - Why a founder shouldn’t have a Plan B while starting up?

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From investing all his savings in Sahil Barua's Delhivery in 2011 to becoming an angel investor in 130 Indian startups, the story of Abhishek Goyal, Co-founder, Tracxn is worth listening for everyone in the ecosystem.  Being an Ex-Yahoo & Amazon employee, Abhishek stepped into the startup investing ecosystem with Accel Partners in 2008.

Traxcn aims to become the largest platform tracking Innovative Startups, Private Companies & Emerging Sectors globally. They track millions of companies, to enable Investors & global corporates to track sectors of their interest effortlessly.

During the podcast, Abhishek talks about how to identify founders who’ll make category-creating startups, important signals to predict a brand’s success, starting as an Angel investor in the ecosystem.

Notes - 
03:06 - Background with Yahoo & Amazon, joining Accel Partners
09:58 - The story behind Accel's investment in Flipkart
16:33 - Identifying patterns and traits in successful founders
18:09 - Unlearning your existing beliefs as an investor
22:01 - Explaining Unicorn startups and the general notion of ownership amongst investors
29:47 - Importance of customer signals at an early stage
31:28 - “Capital doesn’t follow fundamentals, fundamentals follow the capital.”
36:10 - “10 years later we as Indians won’t be celebrating Unicorns.”
37:44 - Sectors he’s bullish for this decade: SaaS, EdTech, and Banking among others
46:42 - Preventing forced exits being an Angel investor
49:36 - Advice to first-time investors in Startups
55:01 - Reading and keeping himself updated with Startup news

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In this episode, we chat with Ashish Jhina & Karthik Venkateswaran, co-founders of Jumbotail, a 5-year-old online wholesale marketplace for grocery and food items. 

Jumbotail serves more than 30,000 neighborhood stores (popularly known as kiranas in India) in the country with its full-stack B2B e-commerce model, which includes warehouses, a last-mile delivery supply chain network, and a fintech platform for payment and credit solutions to store owners.

During the podcast, they talk about breaking down a problem to its finest version and then solving for it, they also talk about how capital has wrongly been seen as a golden solution by most entrepreneurs for solving all challenges at a startup. 

Notes - 

02:44 - Karthik & Ashish’s backgrounds as a Major in the Indian Army and Apple farmer respectively

08:55 - First-principle thinking applied at Jumbotail

13:57 - Core-Engineering Principle: Build for utility, not for the use case

19:24 - Problem statements solved by Jumbotail, for Kirana (Grocery Retailers)

23:18 - Capital cannot be an only moat, where “unit economics” are extremely difficult to figure out

24:32 - Rapid scale-up pushing towards $250 Mn

27:25 - Raising first-funding from Nexus Venture Partners

38:16 - Identifying your co-founders at a mature-career stage 

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Harpreet Singh Grover founded CoCubes.com, an online platform for assessments and hiring along with his batchmate Vibhore Goyal in 2007 after completing his graduation at IIT, Delhi.  CoCubes was acquired by Aon Hewitt in an all-cash deal in 2016. 

Harpreet has also authored a book titled Let’s Build a Company along with Vibhore Goyal. This book is a tale of persistence & grit and about a company built in India by two Indian founders. It is written in the hope that entrepreneurs can avoid the mistakes Harpreet and Vibhore made and learn from what they did right.

Harpreet is also an active angel investor, with his deals including Chaayos, ShopKirana, and Avail Finance. 

When it comes to entrepreneurship most people only talk about immersing themselves in the company they’ve been building while ignoring everything else. To contrast with this, during the podcast, Harpreet shares the emotional and personal aspects while making the tough decisions and the importance of spending time with family in an entrepreneur’s life.

Join this heart to heart conversation with Harpreet to know how entrepreneurs, while building their dream startup, compromise on their emotional and personal aspects, and how Harpreet’s journey can add value to anyone who is doing a startup and experiencing the ups and downs while building a company in India

Notes - 

02:47 - Harpreet’s journey: Lowest point as an entrepreneur

08:42 - “My best investments were done when I had less money.”

15:12 - “At any point in your journey, if you’ve been in a tough spot, talk to someone who has been in that tough spot.”

21:30 - “Companies are not sold, they are bought.”

22:16 - Life after the acquisition 

29:12 - Importance of having family time in an entrepreneur’s life

35:19 - What choices he would have changed in life, 10-12 years back?

39:42 - Being an Entrepreneur: Solving for simple problems

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In this episode, we chat with Mitesh Shah, who has headed finance at startups like Ola, BookMyShow & Being Human Clothing, and currently is co-founder at Inflection Point Ventures. 

IPV comprises about 4,000 investors, who are CXOs at various top of line brands across the globe. Till date it has been part of 55 deals and these include names like Milkbasket, Blusmart, Truly Madly, and Multibhashi among others.

During the podcast, Mitesh emphasizes how the average early startup mortality rate is generally 70-80% across industry and has been brought down to 30-40% in the case of IPV portfolio companies. And he credits this to the robust support system between startup founders and IPVs extensive network of CXOs who guide and enable them to solve problems across hiring, growth, and monetization amongst others, with their rich experience.

For any early-stage founder looking to raise funding, or CXOs who wish to contribute to the Indian startup ecosystem, this conversation can be of great value, and help them take their first step with a structured approach.

Notes - 

02:20 - From being a traditional CFO to becoming a VC 

05:47 - What role does Inflection Point Ventures play?

07:01 - Helping the founders with CXOs on platforms

09:35 - Back Story: Investing & exiting from BharatPe

10:56 - IPV Thesis: “Businesses will keep pivoting, invest in great founders.”

19:05 - Portfolio investments in E-vehicles, Healthcare, SaaS among other sectors

28:02 - Message to founders: “Be very selective & critical while choosing the investor you want to have.”

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