The Startup Operator

Deepti Agrawal has been the Director of Engineering at Flipkart for over 9 years and has held multiple roles in the company. She is not only witness to the workings underneath the hood of India's largest e-commerce company but also adding to it's growth and scale.  Prior to Flipkart she held the position of Software development lead at Clickable. In this episode Roshan and Augustus talk to Deepti about innovation, building for scale and more!  

Some points discussed in this conversation: 

How Engineering varies in different company sizes 

How to scale an Engineering team? 

Engineering teams Structure at Flikpart 

Build, Integrate or Acquire? 

Fostering Innovation 

New initiatives at Flipkart 

What makes a great engineer? 

Behind the Scenes of the Big Billion Day 

Transition from Engineer to Engineering Manager 

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Pooja Goyal joined Avishkaar as the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer in September 2020. She brings with her over 20 years of global leadership experience in EdTech and product development with the likes of Adobe, KLAY, and PalmSource Inc.

Avishkaar robotics kits are already used by more than 100,000 students in over 1100 schools across India. As the co-founder at Avishkaar, Pooja is looking to scale the company to the next level of growth and build a worldwide robotics and coding education brand out of India – a 38-billion-dollar market worldwide.

Tune in to get a better understanding of how EdTech companies are changing educational norms with the help of technology.

00:00 - Episode overview 

01:04 - Pooja's journey so far 

05:18 - Being a serial entrepreneur 

08:37 - Learnings from previous startups 

12:11 - Avishkaar's founding story 

19:27 - Managing stakeholders 

30:22 - EdTech and educational institutions 

37:19 - Being a VC-investible business

Connect with Pooja -  

Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/poojasgoyal 

Twitter - https://twitter.com/poojasgoyal

Nexus Venture Partners (www.nexusvp.com) is India’s leading venture capital fund, with offices in India and Silicon Valley. It has over $1.5B under management across 5 funds and an active portfolio of over 70 companies across technology, internet, media, consumer and business services sectors.  

In this episode, Roshan Cariappa hosts Pratik Poddar, who is Principal at Nexus Venture Partners. As an entrepreneur turned VC, Pratik is most passionate about consumer, community/content, education, e-commerce, financial services, and healthcare startups. 

(01:37) Transitioning from an associate to principal 

(05:17) Competing to work with the best startups 

(07:12) Decision-making principles 

(15:38) Overcoming covid-19 challenges 

(21:20) Healthy market cues 

(24:08) Evolution of EdTech 

(27:45) Impact of edtech on teachers 

(32:53) What makes content business investable? 

(38:37) The next 10 years for India VCs  

Connect with Pratik: 

Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/pratikpoddar 

Twitter - https://twitter.com/pratikpoddar  

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Found this episode informative? 

Let us know by hitting the like button & subscribing to our podcast. You can also Tweet or DM us on 

- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/startup-operator 

Twitter - https://twitter.com/OperatorStartup  

Solving big data engineering problems, scaling an engineering team, and building core technology products - that's Pankaj's forte.  

With 19+ years of experience, Pankaj co-founded Zendrive with Jonathan Matus and established the R&D centre in Bangalore in 2014. He leads the data science, engineering, and product teams at the centre which has 85 employees at present.   With a knack for solving hard problems in computer science and generating valuable IP for the company in the process (16+ patents filed), Pankaj spoke at length about some of the most fundamental engineering questions of a scaling startup.  

Tune in!  

- Pankaj's journey thus far (01:12) 

- The common engineering problem (03:12) 

- Application of AI / ML (04:54) 

- What makes an ideal engineer? (09:46) 

- Building an engineering culture (14:50) 

- Problem-solving in Zendrive (25:57) 

- Structuring an engineering team (30:01) 

- Setting the right expectations (35:26) 

- Growing in an engineering role (42:36) 

- Working with other stakeholders (45:56) 

- Hiring the right person for the role (56:55) 

- Advice for founders on working with engineers (01:02:45)  

Connect with Pankaj -  

LinkedIn: https://in.linkedin.com/in/risbood 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/risbood 

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Found this episode informative? Let us know by hitting the like button & subscribing to our podcast.   

You can also Tweet or DM us on - 

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/startup-operator 

Twitter - https://twitter.com/OperatorStartup

Welcome to another episode of The Startup Operator Roundup, where Roshan Cariappa and Gunjan Saha discuss -   

Sujay Koduri heads engineering at Vymo which is one of the fastest growing enterprise tech startups in the world. Prior to working at Vymo he was the senior engineering manager at [24]7.AI. In this episode Augustus and Roshan talk to Sujay to find out how he manages engineering in a fast growing startup and more.

Some Key points discussed in this Episode are

 What Makes a great engineer?

 Importance of facing customers, importance of being a team player

 Alignment between engineering and other teams

 Solving high level challenges

 How WFH has changed the way engineers work

 What goes into a large scale deployment to enterprise

 Balancing freshers' autonomy

 Key skills to transition from engineer to engineering manager

 What's special about Vymo?

 How do you work with existing systems and scale them later?

If you liked this episode, don't forget to like, share and subscribe.

An update from The Startup Operator

Welcome to another episode of The Startup Operator Roundup, where Roshan Cariappa and Gunjan Saha discuss - 

To learn more about the nuances of early-stage startup investing, we have with us today Prayank Swaroop, a Partner at Accel, who invests in B2B, Consumer Brands, and Fintech. He has invested in multiple startups solving problems specifically for Indian Businesses across sectors.  He focuses on cybersecurity, developer tools, marketplaces, and SaaS investments. Some of the investments led by him are - Aavenir, Bizongo, Maverix, OnsiteGo, Securden, Sintel, Skeps, and Zetwerk.  

Prior to Accel, he worked at Adobe and Standard Chartered Bank in India and Singapore. He held positions across engineering, product marketing, pre-sales, and product management.  

In this episode, we talk about - 

- How has early-stage investing changed? (02:35) 

- Entrepreneurship as a career choice (05:45) 

- Attracting top entrepreneurs (09:10) 

- Mentoring entrepreneurs (12:12) 

- Institutionalising knowledge (15:56) 

- Identifying the right partners (19:23) - Overcoming challenges (27:53) 

- Tackling small market sizes (32:43) 

- Prayank's investment thesis (43:15) 

- SaaS wave in India (48:44) 

- SaaS Valuations (52:12) 

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Found this episode informative? Let us know by hitting the like button & subscribing to our podcast. You can also Tweet or DM us on - 

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/startup-operator

Twitter - https://twitter.com/OperatorStartup 

Welcome to another episode of The Startup Operator Roundup, where Roshan Cariappa and Gunjan Saha discuss -