The Startup Fridays Podcast
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Startup Fridays S4 Ep16: How Shivnath Babu wears two hats lightly, an entrepreneur and a scientist
In this episode, Shivnath Babu, co-founder and CTO of Unravel Data, talks about the growing importance of data observability and the contributions being made by his venture. Shivnath started his career as a computer science engineer from IIT Madras and then earned his PhD in the area of data platforms at Stanford University. He spent 12 years as an adjunct professor at Duke University before teaming up with Kunal Agarwal to start Unravel Data. The venture today is a Series D-funded company with investors including Third Point Ventures, Menlo Ventures and GGV Capital
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Startup Fridays S4 Ep15: Will Poole on investing in resilient founders in the global south
Will Poole, co-founder and managing partner of Capria Ventures, talks about the opportunities and challenges in investing in the global south. Will started his career with a computer science degree 40 years ago and worked at some of the biggest names in tech, including Sun Microsystems and Microsoft, before turning to VC investing. A significant part of that career involves working in India, where in his own words, an early lesson was about finding "resilient founders." He also talks about why he wants every company in Capria's portfolio to have a generative AI strategy
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Startup Fridays S4 Ep14: The lightness of being Dev Khare and other notes on India's startup scene
In this episode, Dev Khare, a partner at Lightspeed, one of the most prominent global early-stage VC firms operating in India, talks about how and why he became a venture capital investor, and what keeps him going today. Dev also talks about how India's startups are changing, how Lightspeed is different, in his view, and some lessons from his own career, having tasted entrepreneurship firsthand before turning VC investor—the importance of timing, the value of compounding not just investments but relationships, and a simple productivity hack that always works for him
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Startup Fridays S4 Ep13: Sayandeb Banerjee on life as a 'practitioner' CEO at TheMathCompany
In this episode, Sayandeb Banerjee, co-founder and CEO at TheMathCompany, talks about how his six-year-old venture has grown from strength to strength, building custom analytics solutions for some of the world's biggest companies. He also talks about how he's always had an entrepreneurial streak; the advantages of not taking VC money too early; lessons Banerjee, and his co-founders Aditya Kumbakonam and Anuj Krishna, had to learn or unlearn as "practitioners," new to hard-core sales; and finding personal space and time for his love of the sitar
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Startup Fridays S4 Ep12: Why Rishi Navani seeks founders he can't help, and what he means by that
In this episode, Rishi Navani, founder and managing partner at Epiq capital, a growth-stage VC firm, talks about never losing sight of the core idea of venture capital, which is to make substantial returns for his investors. Over the 25 years that he's been backing ventures, including previously co-founding Matrix Partners India, Navani's way of doing this is to not spend time on how he can add value to an entrepreneur or startup, he says. Instead, he seeks founders who are so good that they mostly don't need his help, beyond the capital
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Startup Fridays S4 Ep11: Arun Kumar at Celesta on tough times revealing resilient founders, great investments
In this episode, Arun Kumar, managing partner at Celesta Capital, talks about why some of the best VC investment opportunities can be found in tough times, as they reveal the most resilient entrepreneurs. Kumar's career includes leading KPMG India and serving in former US President Barack Obama's administration. He also talks about embracing change—from leading thousands of colleagues at KPMG to being part of a team of about 25 at Celesta—the importance of purpose, his love of poetry and learning to enjoy everything that life threw at him
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Startup Fridays S4 Ep10: SpotDraft's founders on spit-and-a-handshake in the age of machines and AI
In this episode, Shashank Bijapur, Madhav Bhagat and Rohith Salim talk about how they got to build SpotDraft, which offers a machine learning and AI-based contract lifecycle management platform to legal teams at companies around the world. Founded in 2017, SpotDraft has helped customers process more than a million contracts since the company released its first commercial product. The first-time entrepreneurs have raised nearly $45 million in funding from investors including Prosus, PremjiInvest, and Arkam Ventures. This year, soon, they expect to hit an ARR of $10 million
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Startup Fridays S4 Ep9: Ganesh Rengaswamy's fascinating trip from Travel Guru to Quona Capital
In this episode, Ganesh Rengaswamy, co-founder and managing partner at Quona Capital, looks back at how he once juggled being a co-founder at Travel Guru and an MBA student at Harvard Business School, and what he would have done differently. Ganesh also talks about Quona's deep interest in fintech in India and several other markets; and how India's public digital infrastructure and private startups will eventually unlock the massive potential of our SMBs. He also talks about his own experience with respect to seeking and learning from mentors
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Startup Fridays S4 Ep8: Nishchay Ag's plan to stay scrappy, be shameless and build a Zoho at Jar
In this episode, Nishchay Ag, co-founder and CEO of Jar, talks about how there is a massive addressable gap in India's middle class with financial products that go beyond the top 30 million that everyone is targeting. Nishchay talks about how he and his friend Misbah Ashraf went from a few WhatsApp group pilots to 10 million users at Jar, in just two years, helping people save money by investing in gold, every day. With close to $65 million in funding, Jar is changing how millions of small-town Indians save, one user at a time
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Startup Fridays S4 Ep7: Bala Srinivasa on the great middle Indian opportunity for startups and VCs
In this episode, Bala Srinivasa, managing director at Arkam Ventures, talks about experiences from the firm's first set of 14 investments so far from their $106 million inaugural fund. Over the last four years, Srinivasa, and his fellow founding partner Rahul Chandra, have backed entrepreneurs who have successfully applied technology to create business innovation in areas including financial services, agriculture, modern staffing and augmented reality. A second thesis at Arkam is software-as-a-service and Bala also talks about why Indian SaaS companies mostly prefer the US as a market
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Startup Fridays S4 Ep6: Nitin Chhabra's fascinating journey from Boomer bubblegum to SaaS to $50 mln retail operator
In this episode, Nitin Chhabra, co-founder and CEO of Ace Turtle, a tech-enabled retail business that's the force behind brands like Lee and Wrangler in India, talks about how the company started out as a SaaS business, selling software for the so-called omnichannel retail. Nitin and co-founder Berry Singh then decided to risk that entire business, convincing their board and investors, to transform Ace Turtle into a retail operator, even as the Covid pandemic was unfolding. They are now looking at more than doubling their sales to become a $100 million company over the next 12 months