The Neon Show

The Neon Show

By Siddhartha AhluwaliaBusinessEntrepreneurship
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The Neon Show episodes

  • The $600B Grocery Market Is Obsessed With Speed — FirstClub Is Betting on Quality | Ayyappan

    Is the best grocery platform one that decides what it WON’T sell?

    That is the bet Ayyappan is making with FirstClub. Fewer products. Stricter rules. While most quick commerce apps are trying to deliver orders faster, he is asking a different question. What if consumers need not “faster or cheaper”, but a retail platform where they can trust every item listed on it?

    A place where you do not have to read every label, check multiple reviews, or wonder if the top result is there because a brand paid for it. FirstClub is trying to solve a harder problem. It is trying to define what “quality” means for everyday products we consume, starting with groceries.

    India has received the highest quick commerce funding of any country in the world, at $9.24B over the last 10 years. Yet only 1% of Indians use quick commerce services today. With a large market still open for expansion and the possibility of better unit economics over time, FirstClub is building a countertrend to the hype around Indian quick commerce.

    Ayyappan brings eleven years of experience at Flipkart, and has also served as SVP at Myntra and CEO of Cleartrip. This episode is the story till here and the plans ahead for Firstclub.

    00:00 – Trailer
    01:01 – The Costco of Indian quick commerce
    04:32 – Building a counter-trend company
    06:15 – What consumers say v/s what they actually want
    09:37 – The only retail platform to Ban 200 ingredients
    12:34 – Why can’t the big players solve this?
    13:21 – A simple rule of thumb for food
    16:03 – Brand stories from FirstClub
    19:20 – Is the problem access or income?
    21:29 – Who are the 20 million FirstClub consumers?
    24:14 – Only 1% of India uses quick commerce
    26:04 – What does “quality” mean in grocery?
    32:34 – How will FirstClub monetize without brand sponsorships?
    34:53 – Do consumers behave differently across categories?
    39:30 – Why is Myntra so powerful in fashion?
    42:24 – What Myntra taught Ayyapan that Flipkart didn’t?
    43:53 – Unlearning to build for Quick commerce
    48:25 – Why Indian consumers are very experimental today
    50:59 – Is India one country when it comes to quality?
    52:43 – If Ayyappan was a product, what would he be?
    54:47 – The hardest belief to defend while building FirstClub
    56:26 – Akshayakalpa & The Whole Truth
    57:48 – Not niche, but premium

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    India’s talent has built the world’s tech—now it’s time to lead it.

    This mission goes beyond startups. It’s about shifting the center of gravity in global tech to include the brilliance rising from India.

    What is Neon Fund?
    We invest in seed and early-stage founders from India and the diaspora building world-class Enterprise AI companies. We bring capital, conviction, and a community that’s done it before.

    Subscribe for real founder stories, investor perspectives, economist breakdowns, and a behind-the-scenes look at how we’re doing it all at Neon.

    -------------

    Check us out on:

    Website: https://neon.fund/
    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theneonshoww/
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/neon-fund/
    X: https://x.com/TheNeonShoww

    Connect with Nansi on:

    LinkedIn: https://in.linkedin.com/in/nansi-mishra
    X: https://x.com/nansi_mishra

    -------------

    This video is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the individuals quoted and do not constitute professional advice.

    Send us Fan Mail

    1 hr
  • The First AI Market With 8 Billion Potential Users | Sudarshan kamath, Smallest AI

    Will smaller AI models win over large language models?

    Sudarshan Kamath grew up in Mumbai, taught himself AI before most Indian companies were even hiring for it, and bought the domain "smallest.ai" for $100 in 2022, two years before the company existed. Today, he runs Smallest AI, a startup focused on real time voice AI.

    He started with self-driving cars, training large models and compressing them to run on vehicle hardware in real time. That's where he first saw what small models could do: a hundredth of the size, almost no loss in accuracy.

    Two years later he put in his own $150K, got some GPUs, and started training. Eighteen months later he had a seed round, a Series A, a seven-figure enterprise deal, and a $150M acquisition offer he turned down.

    Most of the data that goes into large models is noise. Strip it out, train small, and you get a model that matches a giant at a fraction of the size and runs in real time. That insight is what Smallest AI is built on.

    00:00 – Trailer 
    00:51 – Sudarshan's journey before Smallest AI 
    05:00 – Arjun Jain & Yann LeCun 
    08:20 – Why build in voice AI in 2024? 
    15:09 – Why move the company from India to the US? 
    17:25 – Hiring talent via LinkedIn and X 
    18:49 – What large US funds actually bring to startups 
    21:03 – Raising a seed round with zero revenue 
    26:06 – Strong intros from US VCs 
    28:23 – What the first enterprise customer teaches you 
    31:50 – Raising Series A with Seligman Ventures 
    32:19 – The $150M acquisition offer 
    34:32 – When should founders sell secondaries? 
    36:24 – Who are Smallest AI's customers? 
    38:28 – What are state space models? 
    40:16 – Are GEPA models closer to AGI? 
    41:23 – Growing 10× in three months 
    48:03 – This is not a winner-takes-all market 
    49:32 – Why this is a trillion-dollar market 
    50:08 – Why large AI labs are not building in voice 
    51:26 – What it takes to reach $100M ARR 
    54:21 – The biggest goal for 2026 
    57:11 – Voice costs 1000× more than text 
    01:02:04 – How Smallest AI cracked large enterprises

    -------------

    India’s talent has built the world’s tech—now it’s time to lead it.
    This mission goes beyond startups. It’s about shifting the center of gravity in global tech to include the brilliance rising from India.

    What is Neon Fund?
    We invest in seed and early-stage founders from India and the diaspora building world-class Enterprise AI companies. We bring capital, conviction, and a community that’s done it before.
    Subscribe for real founder stories, investor perspectives, economist breakdowns, and a behind-the-scenes look at how we’re doing it all at Neon.

    -------------

    Check us out on:
    Website: https://neon.fund/
    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theneonshoww/
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/beneon/
    Twitter: https://x.com/TheNeonShoww

    Connect with Siddhartha on:
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siddharthaahluwalia/
    Twitter: https://x.com/siddharthaa7

    -------------

    This video is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the individuals quoted and do not constitute professional advice.

    Send us Fan Mail

    1 hr 10 min
  • AI Needs to Know Why You Took THAT decision | Ashu Garg, Investor at Foundation Capital

    What if AI can learn the “why” behind decision making of humans?

    Ashu Garg and Jaya Gupta recently wrote one of the most discussed articles on AI this year. Their idea drew public responses from Dharmesh Shah, Aaron Levie, and Arvind Jain.

    Enterprise software has always captured what happened. It records the order, the ticket, and the approval. But it has never captured why it happened. It does not store the reasoning, the exception, or the past decisions that shaped the outcome. Ashu argues that this missing layer is the biggest opportunity in enterprise AI right now, and that the startups that capture it will be the biggest winners in AI.

    In this episode, we go deeper into what context graphs really are, how they get built, why startups have an edge over incumbents, and how close we are to seeing this work in practice.

    00:00 – Trailer 
    00:32 – What are context graphs? 
    02:48 – Why agents haven't lived up to the hype? 
    05:18 – The "why" of Decision Making 
    08:17 – How agents will store data for context graphs 
    10:38 – What will be possible for Digital twins? 
    14:02 – Can context graphs reveal a company's moat? 
    15:50 – Guardrails on Access for agents 
    19:50 – Managing agents vs being managed by agents 
    23:01 – Will winners be vertical or horizontal players? 
    25:56 – The future is agent swarms 
    28:43 – Finding PMF is what makes a great CEO 
    31:40 – What will set apart successful enterprises of 2030 
    33:44 – Where Foundation Capital is investing 
    35:16 – Why AI won't be winner-takes-all 
    37:38 – Where will the context graph reside? 
    40:45 – Will systems of record be replaced? 
    42:42 – Human in the loop → hands-off execution 
    44:46 – A reality check on where we are today 
    46:43 – Where startups will win in orchestration

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    India’s talent has built the world’s tech—now it’s time to lead it.
    This mission goes beyond startups. It’s about shifting the center of gravity in global tech to include the brilliance rising from India.

    What is Neon Fund?
    We invest in seed and early-stage founders from India and the diaspora building world-class Enterprise AI companies. We bring capital, conviction, and a community that’s done it before.

    Subscribe for real founder stories, investor perspectives, economist breakdowns, and a behind-the-scenes look at how we’re doing it all at Neon.

    -------------

    Check us out on:
    Website: https://neon.fund/
    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theneonshoww/
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/beneon/
    Twitter: https://x.com/TheNeonShoww

    Connect with Siddhartha on:
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siddharthaahluwalia/
    Twitter: https://x.com/siddharthaa7

    -------------

    This video is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the individuals quoted and do not constitute professional advice.

    Send us Fan Mail

    50 min
  • How AI Will Finally Deliver the Promise SaaS Made | Samay Kohli: From Robots to Digital Workers

    Samay Kohli spent 12 years at GreyOrange, scaling it to over $100 million in revenue and a $3 billion valuation at its peak, making it one of the world’s largest warehouse robotics companies. Two years ago, he started again with Budy, this time in the US senior care industry.

    In this industry, decisions are emotional, sales cycles can run for years, and multiple stakeholders are involved. While the market sits at the intersection of real estate, healthcare, and hospitality, most sales still depend on manual follow-ups and scattered tools.

    Budy builds digital workers for sales teams: AI teammates that handle follow-ups, scheduling, and lead management across CRMs, calendars, and inboxes. Instead of adding another layer of software, Budy went zero UI-UX and focused on enabling sales teams in an industry with 99% inbound leads to manage their cold leads better.

    Today, Samay joins Siddhartha (Partner at Neon Fund, and a proud investor in Budy) and shares his journey from building robots to building digital teammates for a very non-traditional industry.

    00:00 – Trailer
    01:00 – What Budy is building for senior care
    05:15 – Real Estate × Healthcare × Hospitality
    06:25 – Zero UI UX technology
    10:09 – AI teammates not assistants
    12:03 – How sales teams operated before Budy
    12:51 – A ninety nine percent inbound industry
    13:45 – The real cost of senior care homes
    15:35 – Can a CRM alone solve this
    17:55 – Direct benefits of a digital worker
    20:49 – Two founder archetypes
    22:06 – Can lights out operations become real
    24:49 – What Samay underestimated about the market
    25:58 – The largest players in the industry
    29:07 – Treat your customer’s company like your own
    30:52 – Entrepreneurship as a profession
    35:36 – Unlearnings as a second time founder
    37:30 – What digital workers actually are
    39:47 – The original promise of SaaS
    42:04 – The next decade of digital workers
    45:25 – Digital workers that read best selling books
    47:26 – Will Claude build CRMs
    49:38 – Business etiquette across the world
    55:18 – How a second time founder chooses investors
    01:01:00 – Why every team member should track the P and L
    01:02:14 – How Samay’s view on growth evolved

    -------------

    India’s talent has built the world’s tech—now it’s time to lead it.
    This mission goes beyond startups. It’s about shifting the center of gravity in global tech to include the brilliance rising from India.

    What is Neon Fund?
    We invest in seed and early-stage founders from India and the diaspora building world-class Enterprise AI companies. We bring capital, conviction, and a community that’s done it before.
    Subscribe for real founder stories, investor perspectives, economist breakdowns, and a behind-the-scenes look at how we’re doing it all at Neon.

    -------------

    Check us out on:
    Website: https://neon.fund/
    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theneonshoww/
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/beneon/
    Twitter: https://x.com/TheNeonShoww

    Connect with Siddhartha on:
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siddharthaahluwalia/
    Twitter: https://x.com/siddharthaa7

    -------------

    This video is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the individuals quoted and do not constitute professional advice.

    Send us Fan Mail

    1 hr 5 min
  • What Top 1% Investors Look For in AI Startups | Umesh Padval, Seligman Ventures, Ex- Bessemer

    Do startup valuations today make sense?

    Umesh Padval, an early investor in Cohere, now valued at about $7 billion shares why Cohere stood out at the time of his investment. He shares what he saw early that made him believe this was not just another AI model company.

    Umesh is the Founding Managing Partner, Seligman Ventures and previously at Thomvest and Bessemer Venture Partners. He brings experience from investing across multiple tech cycles, from chips to cloud to AI. Umesh talks about how deals are really done in venture capital and what he looks for when everything feels noisy and crowded in AI.

    He also shares why many strong companies are choosing to stay private and what has changed in the IPO market. Public markets now demand cash flow and durability, not just fast growth.

    Umesh talks about why open source has become a powerful sales funnel for modern AI companies. Developers become the first users, and community adoption turns into long-term enterprise revenue.

    After four decades in Silicon Valley and 20 years as a VC, Umesh shares what keeps him in building and investing.

    0:00 – How big is the scope for investing in AI startups?
    04:04 – Do unit economics justify large AI valuations?
    06:00 – Thomvest’s LLM investment thesis (Cohere case study)
    09:18 – Are CTO roles changing in AI
    11:21 – Traits of the best AI founding teams
    13:40 – Timeline to find the best founders
    16:52 – Partnership with Jyoti Bansal
    19:07 – Where is the IPO market headed?
    23:40 – Salesforce–Clari acquisition
    25:18 – Is profitability a prerequisite to go public?
    26:00 – Can the India–US corridor beat US–Israel?
    28:53 – Umesh’s investment philosophy
    31:08 – Open source as a sales funnel
    33:38 – IIT → Stanford → Startups
    41:45 – The only CEO with 60 direct reports
    43:43 – Why Jensen never does 1-on-1s?
    48:23 – What ultimately drives Umesh Padval?

    -------------
    India’s talent has built the world’s tech—now it’s time to lead it.
    This mission goes beyond startups. It’s about shifting the center of gravity in global tech to include the brilliance rising from India.

    What is Neon Fund?
    We invest in seed and early-stage founders from India and the diaspora building world-class Enterprise AI companies. We bring capital, conviction, and a community that’s done it before.
    Subscribe for real founder stories, investor perspectives, economist breakdowns, and a behind-the-scenes look at how we’re doing it all at Neon.

    -------------
    Check us out on:
    Website: https://neon.fund/
    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theneonshoww/
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/beneon/
    Twitter: https://x.com/TheNeonShoww

    Connect with Siddhartha on:
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siddharthaahluwalia/
    Twitter: https://x.com/siddharthaa7

    -------------

    This video is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the individuals quoted and do not constitute professional advice.

    Send us Fan Mail

    52 min
  • When Founders Should Quit Their Startups with Matt MacInnis | COO Rippling

    Matt MacInnis spent 6 years as COO at Rippling and now leads as CPO. He joined Rippling in 2019, when there were only 70 people, and has led the company across multiple stages.

    Before that, Matt was a founder for 9 years, building Inkling after 7 years at Apple. These three chapters of his career shape this conversation. We focus on how to build and operate teams as a company scales. Matt explains how he thinks about speed versus real progress, and which parts of building a company should move fast and which should move slowly. He shares how he decided when to introduce processes at Rippling, when to keep things informal, and how to recognize when a process that once helped the company had started to slow it down.

    We discuss how his role changed as Rippling grew from around 70 people to 100, then to 500, and now to thousands. He explains what he paid attention to at each stage and which metrics he deliberately did not obsess over.

    These are practical lessons for founders, from the earliest days of a startup to the challenges of scaling a large organization.

    0:00 - Trailer
    01:11 – One thing people get wrong about building a business?
    04:01 – Great founders find markets that already exist
    06:36 – What does a “death march” mean at Apple?
    10:11 – How to build a good team in early-stage startup?
    12:33 – Learnings from Apple to Inkling
    18:11 – Processes to set up in startups
    25:20 – Humans always optimize for comfort (and why that’s bad instinct)
    33:09 – Why success teaches you more than failure
    36:01 – How should processes change as company scales?
    42:11 – How is AI changing the software industry?
    54:03 – If Matt were starting up today, how would he do it?
    57:07 – How would Next-gen PM roles look like?
    01:01:51 – Matt shares about Rippling CEO Parker
    01:04:32 – Founder instinct vs Data
    01:06:06 – Over-optimizing for employee comfort
    01:07:27 – If building a startup feels comfortable, it’s probably dead
    01:08:36 – One thing only CEO’s should do forever
    01:11:15 – One piece of startup advice Matt doesn’t trust

    -------------

    India’s talent has built the world’s tech—now it’s time to lead it.
    This mission goes beyond startups. It’s about shifting the center of gravity in global tech to include the brilliance rising from India.

    What is Neon Fund?
    We invest in seed and early-stage founders from India and the diaspora building world-class Enterprise AI companies. We bring capital, conviction, and a community that’s done it before.
    Subscribe for real founder stories, investor perspectives, economist breakdowns, and a behind-the-scenes look at how we’re doing it all at Neon.

    -------------

    Check us out on:
    Website: https://neon.fund/
    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theneonshoww/
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/beneon/
    Twitter: https://x.com/TheNeonShoww

    Connect with Siddhartha on:
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siddharthaahluwalia/
    Twitter: https://x.com/siddharthaa7

    -------------

    This video is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the individuals quoted and do not constitute professional advice.

    Send us Fan Mail

    1 hr 21 min
  • How Buyers Discover Startups, From a 10-Year Founder Journey to an EXIT | Ankur Rawal & Vishwa Krishnakumar

    This is a special episode from the Neon Fund.

    In 2025, the US saw $1.8 trillion worth of M&A deals, around 25× more than India. But India’s startup ecosystem is much younger, which makes every acquisition a playbook for founders on process, pricing leverage, and stakeholder management.

    Neon backed Zenduty in 2020, when the founders had been bootstrapping profitably for two years and were already growing at a pace many VC-backed startups aspire to.

    Today, founders Ankur Rawal and Vishwa Krishnakumar join Siddhartha, Partner at Neon, to discuss one of the most untalked acquisitions of 2025.

    Over a 10-year journey, Zenduty pivoted to SRE in 2020. Vishwa and Ankur also share insights on the future of the DevTools space, which they believe will always be a strong choice to build great products, because engineers are among the hardest end users to please.

    This episode is a founders’ view on how acquisitions work in Indian SaaS.

    00:00 – Trailer
    01:00 – Initial years of a decade-long journey
    07:12 – How Zenduty chose its investors
    11:04 – How much should founders dilute?
    12:24 – Building with profitability before & after fundraise
    14:45 – Six years of survival before the pivot
    17:01 – Why the pivot to the SRE space?
    18:39 – How Zenduty differentiated from PagerDuty
    19:12 – End users are the toughest to please in engineering
    20:39 – Is market attractive if biggest player is valued only $1.5B?
    25:22 – Why acquisition and not a Series A?
    27:18 – The process before acquisition
    29:23 – How pricing negotiations work
    31:51 – Should devtool companies build from India or US?
    34:58 – Three types of connects at physical events
    37:06 – What physical presence at events signals
    39:06 – Founders’ feedback on Neon Fund
    41:41 – “Don’t build in silence”
    43:50 – How to build a core AI-native company today
    47:54 – Do first-time founders have an edge in the AI era?
    52:08 – Cost to PMF has drastically gone down
    54:48 – What hard problems are startups solving today?
    55:37 – Why are acquisitions rare in India?
    1:00:20 – How US investors are facilitating M&As
    1:01:14 – How to make your brand visible to potential acquirers

    -------------

    India’s talent has built the world’s tech—now it’s time to lead it.

    This mission goes beyond startups. It’s about shifting the center of gravity in global tech to include the brilliance rising from India.

    What is Neon Fund?

    We invest in seed and early-stage founders from India and the diaspora building world-class Enterprise AI companies. We bring capital, conviction, and a community that’s done it before.

    Subscribe for real founder stories, investor perspectives, economist breakdowns, and a behind-the-scenes look at how we’re doing it all at Neon.

    -------------

    Check us out on:
    Website: https://neon.fund/
    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theneonshoww/
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/beneon/
    Twitter: https://x.com/TheNeonShoww

    Connect with Siddhartha on:
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siddharthaahluwalia/
    Twitter: https://x.com/siddharthaa7

    -------------

    This video is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the individuals quoted and do not constitute professional advice.

    Send us Fan Mail

    1 hr 4 min
  • From Startup to US IPO in 5 Years: Kanwal Rekhi’s Historic IPO of Excelan

    Kanwal Rekhi first came to the US in the 1960s. He took his company public on Nasdaq in 1987. 

    As a young Indian in the US, he was laid off from his first three jobs. That experience pushed him towards entrepreneurship. At the time, Indians were known and hired for technical and mathematical skills, not as founders building companies on US soil.

    But Kanwal and his co-founders decided to bet on themselves. They faced rejection from nearly 50 investors before one VC agreed to invest $2 million for 50% of the company. In just five years, the company went public.

    From being appointed CEO overnight to being removed by the board two months before the IPO for a more “wall street-acceptable” CEO, this is a story of many firsts.

    After Excelan, Kanwal co-founded TiE in 1992 and has mentored tens of thousands of entrepreneurs. Beyond a personal story, Kanwal Rekhi is a turning point in how Indian founders came to be seen in Silicon Valley.

    0:00 – Trailer
    01:11 – How TiE was formed
    07:11 – DoT Hatao, Desh Bachao
    11:31 – Career opportunities in the 70s
    13:41 – When Indians weren’t trusted to build companies
    15:44 – Pioneers in computer networking
    16:51 – Finding an Investor after 50 rejections
    20:31 – Becoming CEO overnight
    23:29 – Spare the story, show the numbers
    24:17 – The “Wall Street acceptable” CEO for IPO
    27:30 – Founders have to be financial thinkers
    28:14 – How Excelan could go public in just 5 years
    29:27 – Cost is unrelated to pricing in software
    31:12 – Do Indian companies need Americans to lead?
    34:05 – Benefits of registering in the US
    36:53 – $1 trillion to solve India’s problems
    40:49 – Policies for India’s startup ecosystem
    42:01 – Enabling entrepreneurs in villages
    44:41 – India in the 80s v/s today
    50:36 – US vs India vs China
    01:04:52 – How did IITs start allowing donations?
    01:07:25 – AI investments of Silicon Valley Quad
    01:18:29 – What Kanwal Rekhi looks for in founders?

    -------------
    India’s talent has built the world’s tech—now it’s time to lead it.
    This mission goes beyond startups. It’s about shifting the center of gravity in global tech to include the brilliance rising from India.

    What is Neon Fund?
    We invest in seed and early-stage founders from India and the diaspora building world-class Enterprise AI companies. We bring capital, conviction, and a community that’s done it before.
    Subscribe for real founder stories, investor perspectives, economist breakdowns, and a behind-the-scenes look at how we’re doing it all at Neon.

    -------------
    Check us out on:
    Website: https://neon.fund/
    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theneonshoww/
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/beneon/
    Twitter: https://x.com/TheNeonShoww

    Connect with Siddhartha on:
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siddharthaahluwalia/
    Twitter: https://x.com/siddharthaa7
    -------------
    This video is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the individuals quoted and do not constitute professional advice.

    Send us Fan Mail

    1 hr 19 min
  • What Went Wrong Before iD Fresh Worked | For the First Time Co-Founders Tell Their Story

    Where did the journey of iD Fresh start?

    It began when a 19-year-old Abdul Nazer decided to run away from home to Bangalore with ₹100 in his pocket. He did any job that came his way: cook, cleaner, conductor and sold anything he could, from clothes and vegetables to spices and peanuts. Along the way, he brought his three brothers to Bangalore.

    Even with huge losses in business, they never stopped looking for new opportunities. Their first real glimpse of success came from a tea stall run out of a rented room that cost ₹80 a month. Despite strong demand, the tea business was still running at a loss. The turning point came when they started opening the stall at 2 in the morning: a disruptive business model, says PC. Those ₹2 cups of tea taught them lessons they would carry forward.

    Abdul Nazer and PC Mustafa together share these stories for the first time. Their journey reminds us that no success is overnight, especially not for these brothers. It was at their kirana store in Indiranagar that the idea of iD Fresh was born. Five brothers with no background in food technology spent six months experimenting with recipes before finding their hero product. 

    This is the story of five founders who pushed past their circumstances. Today, iD Fresh is at a scale the founders never dreamed of growing up in Wayanad. 

    00:00 – Trailer
    00:55 – Dropping out of studies
    02:32 – 19 Year Old that Runaway to Bangalore
    04:35 – First job as a cook
    11:25 – When Nazer decided to become an entrepreneur
    14:01 – Huge loss in Vegetable business
    16:15 – Starting the kirana store that led to iD
    18:00 – On the verge of shutting down
    20:10 – How Lambu Tea Stall became profitable
    24:16 – When PC decided to do business with Nazer
    25:14 – All the (failed) businesses that led to iD
    27:04 – Why PC decided to come back to India
    28:23 – The origin story of the idli batter idea
    31:40 – The first $50k investment
    32:57 – Cracking the batter without any food tech expertise
    34:38 – The first recipe that became iD’s hero product
    35:35 – Why iD failed to sell 100 packets in 6 Months
    41:15 – The first customer approval
    43:06 – Building awareness was the biggest challenge
    44:35 – Lack of cold storage in supermarkets
    45:22 – The inventory model of iD
    46:25 – How the initial team was built
    48:35 – Story of team spirit
    50:15 – When iD Fresh Chennai & Mumbai Failed
    52:27 – How the chemistry worked between the five brothers
    56:52 – The buyout offer of ₹20+ crores
    57:35 – How founders build the mindset to hire experts
    1:00:50 – Did the runaway child achieve his dream?
    1:03:09 – How Nazer’s choices directly led to iD
    1:04:45 – Building within value systems
    1:07:26 – Summary: what really worked for iD Fresh

    -------------
    India’s talent has built the world’s tech—now it’s time to lead it.
    This mission goes beyond startups. It’s about shifting the center of gravity in global tech to include the brilliance rising from India.

    What is Neon Fund?
    We invest in seed and early-stage founders from India and the diaspora building world-class Enterprise AI companies. We bring capital, conviction, and a community that’s done it before.
    Subscribe for real founder stories, investor perspectives, economist breakdowns, and a behind-the-scenes look at how we’re doing it all at Neon.

    -------------
    Check us out on:
    Website: https://neon.fund/
    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theneonshoww/
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/beneon/
    Twitter: https://x.com/TheNeonShoww

    Connect with Siddhartha on:
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siddharthaahluwalia/
    Twitter: https://x.com/siddharthaa7
    -------------
    This video is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the individuals quoted and do not constitute professional advice.

    Send us Fan Mail

    55 min
  • What Best Founders & Investors Said in 2025?

    Best of 3500 Minutes in 45 Minutes

    2025 was a great year for The Neon Show. 60 episodes, 72 guests, and thousands of minutes of insightful conversations on everything around building a business.

    You’ll hear perspectives from Founders scaling companies across the world, sharing the real challenges behind building high-growth startups; Investors on how they spot opportunities and make bold bets; and Ecosystem leaders who have navigated multiple cycles and understand what truly lasts.

    This episode is a carefully curated highlight reel. The sharpest ideas, boldest bets, and timeless lessons that defined this year. Watch it for clear takeaways to carry into 2026 on building companies that last for decades.

    0:00 – Trailer
    01:26 – Paras Chopra
    03:37 – Avanish Bajaj
    06:53 – Vijay Rayapati
    08:33 – Ashu Garg
    11:39 – Kiran Darisi
    16:40 – Asha Jadeja
    20:33 – Sanjeev Bikhchandani
    23:22 – Alok Goyal
    26:41 – Shiv Shivumar
    29:34 – Saurya Prakash
    31:59 – Raviteja
    37:21 – Ashish Toshniwal
    43:54 – Bhaskar Gosh
    47:32 – Somesh Dash
    -------------
    India’s talent has built the world’s tech—now it’s time to lead it.
    This mission goes beyond startups. It’s about shifting the center of gravity in global tech to include the brilliance rising from India.
    What is Neon Fund?
    We invest in seed and early-stage founders from India and the diaspora building world-class Enterprise AI companies. We bring capital, conviction, and a community that’s done it before.
    Subscribe for real founder stories, investor perspectives, economist breakdowns, and a behind-the-scenes look at how we’re doing it all at Neon.
    -------------
    Check us out on:
    Website: https://neon.fund/
    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theneonshoww/
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/beneon/
    Twitter: https://x.com/TheNeonShoww

    Connect with Siddhartha on:
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siddharthaahluwalia/
    Twitter: https://x.com/siddharthaa7
    -------------
    This video is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the individuals quoted and do not constitute professional advice.

    Send us Fan Mail

    50 min

About The Neon Show

From the publisher's feed

Hi, I am your host Siddhartha! I have been an entrepreneur from 2012-2017 building two products AddoDoc and Babygogo. After selling my company to SHEROES, I and my partner Nansi decided to start…

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