July 2016, Mumbai. The first meeting lasted for just two minutes. “No. He was not having Maggi,” giggles Asish Mohapatra as he recounts his maiden pitch with Niren Shah. “He was too engrossed in having lunch,” says the venture capitalist (VC)-turned-entrepreneur who co-founded OfBusiness with Bhuvan Gupta, Nitin Jain, Ruchi Kalra and Vasant Sridhar in 2015. It was well past noon on a wet Friday. The city was under a thick cloud blanket and a gloomy encounter was the last thing on the mind of the first-time founder who had raised $5 million in February. Mohapatra expected quick funding dollars.
(This story appears in the 18 November, 2022 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)