The Startup Fridays Podcast
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(800×600px)-162.jpg?impolicy=website&width=360&height=270 "Startup Fridays S5 Ep8: Parithi Govindaraju on Okulo's long-endurance drones for India")
Startup Fridays S5 Ep8: Parithi Govindaraju on Okulo's long-endurance drones for India
In this episode, Parithi Govindaraju, founder and CEO of Okulo Aerospace, gives us a quick update on the solar-electric hybrid long-endurance drones he and his team are developing, for what he describes as "persistent monitoring". In this conversation, Parithi talks about the importance of such long-endurance UAVs for protecting India's strategic assets — both civilian and military. He also touches upon his experience so far, in building a deep-tech company out of India
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Startup Fridays S5 Ep7: Abhishek Poddar and Saurabh Arora's experiment with tech and radical transparency
In this episode, Abhishek Poddar and Saurabh Arora, founders of Plum Benefits Insurance Brokers, talk about how they are using tech to reimagine employee health benefits and insurance. In this conversation, Abhishek and Saurabh, who started Plum five years ago, also talk about how the journey so far has been one of discovering "a culture of radical transparency" with all stakeholders, which is at the heart of their success
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Startup Fridays S5 Ep6: AI for India - Jan ki baat, Sthaan and other use cases from People+ai
This episode is part 2 of a conversation with Tanuj Bhojwani, head of People+ai, a non-profit effort that's working to find population-scale applications of artificial intelligence that are relevant to large problems in India. In this conversation, Tanuj about how both the development and applications of AI in India will be different from what we see happening in the rich countries. People+ai is funded by Nandan Nilekani, chairman of Infosys and former chairman of UIDAI, through his EkStep Foundation
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Startup Fridays S5 Ep5: AI for India - How people+ai was born
In this episode, Tanuj Bhojwani, head of people+ai, a non-profit effort that's working to find population-scale applications of artificial intelligence that are relevant to large problems in India, does a quick recounting of how the initiative was seeded. In this conversation, which I hope will be the first of many on AI for India, Bhojwani also gives us a quick overview of the four main objectives at people+ai, funded by Nandan Nilekani, chairman of Infosys and former chairman of UIDAI, via his EkStep Foundation
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Startup Fridays S5 Ep4: Axio's founders unpack lessons from BNPL success
In this episode, Sashank Rishyasringa, and Gaurav Hinduja, co-founders of Axio, a buy-now-pay-later specialist in Bengaluru, talk about how, while a strong regulatory environment is critical in fintech, it can also become an enabler of innovation. Lower cost of money for "new entrants and challengers" with innovative financial products can benefit millions of consumers, which in turn can help India's economic growth, they say
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Axio's founders unpack lessons from BNPL success
In this episode, Sashank Rishyasringa, and Gaurav Hinduja, co-founders of Axio, a buy-now-pay-later specialist in Bengaluru, talk about how, while a strong regulatory environment is critical in fintech, it can also become an enabler of innovation. Lower cost of money for "new entrants and challengers" with innovative financial products can benefit millions of consumers, which in turn can help India's economic growth, they say
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Startup Fridays S5 Ep3: Ashok Jhunjhunwala on why India must say 'yes we can' to deep tech
In this episode, Ashok Jhunjhunwala, institute professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras and president of IITM Research Park, Incubation Cell and RTBI, talks about why the next big push is needed now for India to become a nation of deep tech products over the next decade. He also asks that administrators and bureaucrats change their control mindset to allow our scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs to fail without fear so that they can eventually succeed in building this ecosystem for India
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Startup Fridays: Vinod Shankar's journey from software techie to lending books to deep tech investor
Vinod Shankar, founding managing partner at Java Capital in Bengaluru, talks about his passion for backing deep tech entrepreneurs. Shankar started out as a software engineer but his insatiable thirst for knowledge has taken him from a software startup to leading marketing for a new-age library chain to angel investing to eventually working at a VC firm before starting one of his own. Vinod talks about why he wants to invest in deep tech ventures, and how he identifies entrepreneurs worth backing
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Startup Fridays S5 Ep2: Vinod Shankar's journey from software techie to lending books to deep tech investor
In this episode, Vinod Shankar, founding managing partner at Java Capital in Bengaluru, talks about his passion for backing deep tech entrepreneurs. Shankar started out as a software engineer but his insatiable thirst for knowledge has taken him from a software startup to leading marketing for a library chain to angel investing to eventually working at a VC firm before starting one of his own. Vinod talks about why he wants to invest in deep tech ventures, and how he identifies entrepreneurs worth backing
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Startup Fridays S5 Ep1: Karan Mohla at B Capital on the convergence he sees coming in India's startup ecosystem
And in this episode, Karan Mohla, partner at the VC firm B Capital talks about the convergence that he sees beginning to happen, which is bringing different aspects of India's startup ecosystem to points of inflection. Karan, who's backed companies including FirstCry, HealthifyMe, XpressBees and CropIn, also talks about how he figured out early that entrepreneurship was not for him, but backing founders was. He talks about learning from early mistakes as a VC investor and the importance of being self-aware and honest when deciding on investments
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Startup Fridays S4 Ep24: Kavita Shenoy, Anand Gopal part 2 — from nearly running out of money to a done deal
This is part two of a conversation with Kavita Shenoy and Anand Gopal, on their 10-year entrepreneurial roller coaster, building Voiro, an ad-tech SaaS company in Bengaluru. In today's episode, they talk about how the $750 billion ad landscape is changing, their hopes for Voiro's future, how building their own company has been life-changing, and why it has them coming back for more every day