In this episode of The Spotlight, we have the amazing journey of a company that started with the idea to give India its first video streaming platform, but ended up helping its clients to unlock the real potential of their video content.

In a candid conversation with Akshay Datt, Vinayak Shrivastav, CEO and Co-founder, Toch.ai, takes us through his journey. He is a graduate of London Business School and has worked for a prominent Venture Capitalist firm before taking the entrepreneurial plunge.

In 2016, he started Toch with an aspiration to become the next YouTube of the Indian market. However, after a minor setback, Vinayak launched the reboot version of Toch with a vision to build a solution that unlocks the potential of videos by making them more engaging and monetizable, making it a pioneer in its niche.

Tune in to this episode to hear Vinayak speak about Toch is redefining video content by implementing tech in the real world.

Key takeaways!

• Definition of a good founder
• Plans of global expansion
• Effects of COVID on business

In this episode of The Spotlight, we have a founder who is on a mission to improve the quality of air we breathe.

In a candid conversation with Akshay Datt, Dr. Srikanth Sola, CEO, Devic Earth, takes us through his amazing journey. He is a graduate of Stanford University and a former cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic.

It was the love for his country and the will to serve people that brought him back to India. He joined the Department of Cardiology at the Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Medical Sciences, Bangalore, where he was astonished to see the rising cardiac cases due to air pollution. He took this as his personal mission and started evaluating and developing technologies that can help in improving air quality.

He founded Devic Earth in 2018 and since then has served many companies with its affordable product offering.

Tune in to this episode to hear Dr. Sola talk about how this green tech company is tirelessly working towards providing clean and breathable air.

Key takeaways:

• Experience of working in the US vs India.
• Subscription model.
• Fundraising journey.

In today’s episode of The Spotlight, we have a founder who is on a mission to bring healthcare to your doorstep.

In a candid conversation with Akshay Datt, Shyatto Raha, Founder and CEO, MyHealthcare, recalls his 23-year journey at a prominent media house, which groomed the entrepreneur he is today. From starting as a research intern to heading the e-commerce business unit, Shyatto has been there and done it all.

It was when he took a business trip to Indonesia, he realized that the healthcare system was completely broken in hospitals. He started working on this gap and brought MyHealthcare to existence in 2017; a digital platform with a mission to bridge the gap between healthcare providers and patients.

Tune in to this episode to listen to Shyatto speak about how MyHealthcare is working towards streamlining the healthcare delivery system in India.

Key takeaways:

• Working in a corporate vs start-up.
• His thoughts on B2B2C model.
• Importance of making patients’ experience better.

For years, Sathvik Vishwanath lost 7-8% of his earnings from a virtual world business to high transaction fees. His search for a cheaper alternative led him to discover Bitcoin and ultimately build Unocoin, India's very first cryptocurrency exchange, turning a personal frustration into a pioneering venture.

Dr. Sathvik Vishwanath is the Co-founder and CEO of Unocoin. A technologist-entrepreneur with a PhD focused on disruptive technologies, he has been at the forefront of India's crypto landscape for over 11 years. He has successfully raised over $6.75 million, grown the platform to over 2.5 million users, and demonstrated incredible resilience by surviving a two-year banking ban from the RBI, which he successfully challenged in the Supreme Court.

• Problem-Driven Entrepreneurship: Unocoin was founded not on speculation, but to solve a tangible problem of high cross-border transaction fees that Sathvik personally experienced.
• Pioneering in an Unregulated Market: As India's first mover, Unocoin had the immense challenge of educating a nascent market and self-imposing strict KYC/AML standards in the absence of any regulatory framework.
• Resilience Against Regulatory Hurdles: The company survived the RBI's 2018 banking ban by downsizing, using its funding reserves, and leading the legal battle that eventually overturned the restriction in the Supreme Court.
• User-Centric Innovation: Product development was guided by user needs, leading to features like the Systematic Buying Plan (SBP) to mitigate volatility and an "auto-sell" function to help freelancers seamlessly convert crypto earnings to rupees.

(00:01:28) - Early Life & First Brush with Technology

(00:08:14) - Lessons from a Corporate Job & Funding an MBA

(00:12:51) - The "Second Life" Venture & The 7% Problem

(00:17:49) - Discovering Bitcoin: A Solution Becomes an Opportunity

(00:18:46) - A Simple Explanation of How Bitcoin & Blockchain Work

(00:33:30) - The Genesis of Unocoin: Building India's First Exchange

(00:42:21) - Solving Real User Problems: The Product Roadmap

(00:43:55) - The RBI Ban: Fighting for Survival for Two Years

(00:47:23) - The Future of Crypto in a Shifting Regulatory Landscape

#FounderThesis #SathvikVishwanath #Unocoin #CryptoIndia #BitcoinIndia #IndianStartups #Entrepreneurship #StartupStory #Fintech #Blockchain #Web3 #MakeInIndia #StartupIndia #FounderInterview #RBI #CryptoRegulation #DisruptiveTech

“When you teach, you learn.”

Staying true to his love for academics and teaching for nearly 2 decades of his career, our guest on The Spotlight is a retired professor, angel investor, startup mentor and co-author of the book ‘Funding Your Start-Up and Other Nightmares’.

In this episode, we are in conversation with Dhruv Nath who wears many hats. After serving as a professor at MDI, Gurgaon, he became the director of Lead Angels Network in November 2020, an angel investment platform that is providing time and money to early-stage startups, supporting them with funds and the much-needed guidance they require to grow amidst COVID-19 crises. 

As the pandemic altered a lot of things in our lives, redefining ‘Normal’, Lead Angels saw a unique opportunity to invest in early-stage, up and coming startups, providing them exposure and innovative solutions in the new world. 

He shares insights from his initial working days as a Senior Vice President at NIIT which is among world’s leading training companies. A keen-learner, and someone who believes in incorporating personal experiences into his teachings, he talks about his rewarding days as a professor. 

Well, he is the most excited talking about his role as an angel investor and the workings of angel investing. 

Tune in to the episode to listen to the powerhouse of a man talking about teaching, startups, investment, mentoring and everything in between. 

From the episode: 

1. Days at MDI and the phenomenal learning experiences. 
2. Lessons on creating digital Start-Ups and Fintech. 
3. Angel Investing, chances of being successful at it, and the risks involved.  
4. Scaling-Up hacks for aspiring founders. 

For more founder stories, check out our website: The Founder Thesis Podcast

Our guests today, yes you heard it right. In today’s episode of The Spotlight, we have not one but two co-founders who are on a mission to solve the problem of lack of accessibility and awareness for healthcare in Bharat, on the other hand, making it affordable for the Bharat user. 

Rajat Garg and Dr Manuj Garg are the co-founders of India’s largest Healthcare Content company, myUpchar.com, providing healthcare-related information in a plethora of Indian languages with an aim to reach tier 2 and tier 3 India.

In this chat, they recollect their individual journeys to Stanford University. Dr Garg has a PhD in Economics from Stanford University and went on to be a Management Consultant at Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in San Francisco during which he largely worked on healthcare delivery in India for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Rajat, on the other hand, went on to pursue an MS in Electrical Engineering. They share their interestingly accidental story of coming together to launch myUpchar and rethinking technology to take healthcare in every part of India. Dr Garg calls it a ‘happy accident.’ 

Bitten by the bug of starting up, these two passionate entrepreneurs followed their heart to revolutionise the healthcare scenario in Bharat. 

Tune in to the episode for conversations on a range of topics spanning from startups, technology, healthcare, discovering yoga, connecting with patients from the remotest areas, to scaling out, building supply, pitching to investors, hearing rejections, to finally raising funds, monetizing the platform and fulfilling medicinal requirements.

Key highlights of the episode:

1. The potential of content and technology to deliver healthcare awareness. 
2. Intellectual fulfilment at a prestigious graduate school. 
3. Building a healthcare consultation platform. 
4. Getting angles onboard. 
5. Creating a positive impact by solving health issues in Bharat. 

Join us on IG: @thepodium.in

For more founder stories, check out our website: The Podium - A Network of Podcasts

We are in conversation with Prithvijit Roy - CEO and Co-founder at BRIDGEi2i Analytics Solutions. BRIDGEi2i is a rapidly growing analytics solution firm based out of India and USA. 

In this episode host Akshay Datt talks to Prithvijit about his early childhood days growing up in Calcutta and then later studying at ISI Delhi as a student of quantitative economics. Prithivijit also shares about his corporate work life - working in big large corporations such as GE & HP where he incubated and built two of the largest business analytics services organizations. 

Having grown up in an entrepreneurial environment Prithvijit, always had an inclination towards entrepreneurship & starting something of his own. Thus after almost 12 years of solid corporate experience, Prithvijit took the courageous leap of faith and dived straight into the genesis of BRIDGEi2i. 

We talk to him about his journey thus far and learn some great insights about maintaining successful co-founder relationships. Especially about dealing with the tough questions - How to decide roles & how to navigate the equity split. 

For more such inspiring & intriguing leadership stories visit our website at www.thepodium.in 

We are also on Instagram at @thepodium.in and have a Whats app community of fellow entrepreneurs & startup enthusiasts at www.podm.in/growwithpodium 

Join us there to stay updated on the latest from The Podium.in 

“A global event changes the way people live, behave and consume.”

Our guest today on The Spotlight, Ratnesh Verma, founder of Pidge, is someone who reinvented himself after reaching the peaks of the corporate world. Pidge is an on-demand, safe & secure, delivery ecosystem. 

Ratnesh grew up in an academically oriented atmosphere, with a lot of emphasis on education. He graduated from University of Delhi, while simultaneously pursuing a professional degree in corporate and economic laws.  He then went on to complete The Stanford LEAD, an extensive one-year long program on corporate innovation from Stanford University Graduate School of Business. 

He believed that gaining work experience could help him accumulate larger perspectives as well as knowledge of the real world and didn’t want to get degrees for the sake of getting degrees. 

He knew it would add more to his learning.

His first most professional role was at Hyatt Regency, Delhi as a financial controller, and he continued working there for 21 years. This opportunity opened ways to exceptional learning experiences and continued motivating him to always try his best and push boundaries. 

He was the first Indian to have been given an opportunity to work at Hyatt internationally. Working for internal and external audits, he lived out of a suitcase.

Ratnesh talks about his remarkable life experiences, how marriage played an influential role in his life, his defining moments, turning points, his professional journey across the spectrum of hotels, lessons on starting up, and how COVID-19 has impacted the hotel business. 

Listen to the entire conversation full of inspirational anecdotes and bright entrepreneurial insights. 

Key takeaways:

• Experiential offerings for consumers. 
• Value chain hotels and focusing on building consistent products. 
• Impact of COVID on the hotel industry. 
• Man is a social animal, and travel will not go anywhere.
• Adapters will be the survivors and those who don’t adapt will perish. 
• Running a hotel in a post-COVID world.

"A viral video changed everything for us."

This single event took Bhanu Harish Gurram and his co-founders from the brink of running out of money to securing their first funding check from Zerodha. It's a powerful reminder for every founder that a breakthrough can come from the most unexpected places when you are consistently creating value.

Bhanu Harish Gurram is the co-founder of Finshots, Finception, and Ditto Insurance. An alumnus of IIT Roorkee and IIM Ahmedabad, Bhanu turned down a pre-placement offer from Amazon to build his vision. Today, his daily financial newsletter, Finshots, reaches over 500,000 subscribers, and his insurance advisory platform, Ditto, has advised over 300,000 users and sold more than 30,000 policies.

• Problem-First Approach: The ventures evolved sequentially, each tackling a more refined version of the initial problem: making finance simple and accessible for the average Indian.
• The Content-to-Commerce Flywheel: Finshots builds a massive, trusting audience with free, high-quality content, which then serves as a low-cost acquisition funnel for Ditto Insurance, their primary monetization engine.
• Monetize Trust, Not Content: The team made a deliberate choice not to put their content behind a paywall, instead choosing to monetize the trust they built by offering ethical, advisory-led services.
• The Power of a Strategic Partner: The early and consistent backing from Zerodha provided not just capital but immense credibility and philosophical alignment, proving crucial to their success.
• Building an "Anti-Pattern" Brand: The ventures were consciously designed to counteract the negative practices of their respective industries—jargon, mis-selling, and spam—thereby creating a powerful brand differentiator built on transparency.

(00:00) - From Local College Dreams to IIT

(02:26) - Life at Nestlé & The Decision for an MBA

(07:39) - Rejecting an Amazon Offer to Start Up

(12:18) - The First Venture: The Rise and Pivot of Finception

(24:17) - "We Were Running Out of Money"

(31:31) - How a Viral Video Led to Zerodha Funding

(38:11) - Launching & Scaling Finshots to 500k+ Readers

(42:49) - The Long-Term Vision: Creating Ditto Insurance

(50:52) - The "Why": Personal Stories That Built the Mission

(58:07) - The Challenges of Hiring and Scaling a Team

#Finshots #DittoInsurance #BhanuHarishGurram #FounderThesis #StartupIndia #Fintech #Insurtech #IIMAhmedabad #Zerodha #Entrepreneurship #ContentStrategy #ContentMarketing #Bootstrapping #VentureCapital #IndianStartups #FinancialLiteracy #StartupJourney #AkshayDatt