The Startup Fridays Podcast
_sm.jpg "Startup Fridays S3 Ep11: 'Strategic investors can make or break a deep tech venture, choose wisely, time it right' — Sriram Viswanathan")
-
Startup Fridays S3 Ep7: 'If you are among the top growth drivers in any company, why not build your own' — Ajeet Singh
Our guest today is Ajeet Singh, cofounder and executive chairman of ThoughtSpot. In 2009, he co-founded Nutanix with Dheeraj Pandey and Mohit Aron. Today, it is a listed company in the US with $1.2 billion in ARR. In 2012, he co-founded ThoughtSpot with Amit Prakash. The company is seen as a leader in enterprise data analytics. At its last funding round, announced in November 2021, ThoughtSpot was valued at $4.2 billion dollars, with total funding of $674 million. ThoughtSpot plans to invest $150 million over the next five years in India
-
Startup Fridays S3 Ep6: 'Choose your stakeholders, investors wisely, and you won't get pulled in different directions' — Smita Deorah
Our guest today is Smita Deorah, co-founder and Co-CEO of Leadership Boulevard, better known for its edtech business LEAD. Smita and her husband Sumeet Mehta started LEAD in 2012. Today the company reaches a million students in 3500 schools in more than 400 cities in India. It is now a unicorn, privately valued at more than a billion dollars, by investors including WestBridge, Elevar Equity and GSV Ventures
-
Startup Fridays S3 Ep5: 'Think big; one launch a day is aspirational but possible' — Pawan K Chandana
Our guest today is Pawan Kumar Chandana, co-founder and CEO of Skyroot Aerospace. Pawan and Naga Bharath Daka, both former ISRO engineers, started Skyroot in 2018 and over the last four years they—and their team of 200—have reached a point where their next big step will be the space flight of their first rocket, Vikram I. Earlier this week, they also made headlines for the biggest funding round at any Indian space tech startup so far, raising $51 million from Singapore's GIC. Perhaps this will also prove to be a pivotal moment for India's private space ecosystem
-
_sm.jpg "Startup Fridays S3 Ep4: 'To win in startup investing, bring differentiated value to founders' — Ashutosh Sharma")
Startup Fridays S3 Ep4: 'To win in startup investing, bring differentiated value to founders' — Ashutosh Sharma
Our guest today is Ashutosh Sharma, head of investments in India for Prosus Ventures, one of the world's biggest technology investors. In this episode, Sharma, who has led Prosus Ventures' investments in India for some six years, talks about how an emerging trend in the country's startup ecosystem is led by entrepreneurs "building in India for India." That is reassuring, even amid a slowdown, because it augurs well for the long-term growth of entrepreneurship in the country, he says
-
Startup Fridays S3 Ep3: 'If your conviction is strong, follow through, as there's rarely a right time' — Bobby Balachandran
Our guest today is Bobby Balachandran, founder, president, and CEO of Exterro Inc., which provides a sophisticated tech platform for global corporations to better manage their governance, risk, and compliance needs. Bobby started out with a BSc in computer science from Government College of Technology in Coimbatore in South India, and an MS in from Portland State University in Portland, Oregon in the US. He started Exterro in his garage in 2008. Today, the company is privately valued at more than a billion dollars
-
Startup Fridays S3 Ep2: 'Deep tech founders need tech-biz grasp, patient money, and stamina for the long game' — Krishna Rangasayee
In this episode, Krishna Rangasayee, founder and CEO of SiMa.ai, a 30-year veteran of the semiconductor industry, with more than 25 patents to his name, talks about why the edge is the new battleground. He also delves into the reasons that compelled him to take his first entrepreneurial plunge after a long corporate career, building a cross-border deep tech company and what such ventures need to succeed
-
Startup Fridays S3 Ep 1: 'That teaching hasn't kept pace with the world became my idea' — Aditya Prakash
Our guest today is Aditya Prakash, co-founder and CEO of Skidos Labs, an award-winning maker of a children's educational apps company headquartered in Denmark. Aditya co-founded Skidos in 2013, which today offers a software development kit that can infuse math education for children into any game. Before Skidos, after an MBA from the Indian School of Business Hyderabad and The Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth, Aditya had a successful corporate career, including work at Bharti Airtel and HT Media
-
Startup Fridays S2 Ep.15: 'Entrepreneurship is about selling a future only you see' — Rajesh Jain
Our guest today is Rajesh Jain, founder and group MD of Netcore Cloud. In the world of entrepreneurship, he is best known for selling one of his earliest ventures, IndiaWorld Communications, to Sify—then Satyam Infoway—for $115 million, in 1999, one of the biggest internet deals of the time in Asia. Jain founded Netcore in 1997, and has bootstrapped it to a profitable $100 million ARR SaaS company that is preparing for an IPO
-
Startup Fridays S2 Ep.14: 'We knew we were onto something when we analysed our rejections' — Vinay Nair
Our guest today is Vinay B Nair, Founder and CEO, TIFIN, a fintech venture that provides technology and expertise to business clients to apply AI to personalise their financial products and services to their end customers or consumers. Vinay has a chemical engineering degree and a doctorate in finance and economics. He founded TIFIN in 2018. Previously he has been a hedge fund manager and sold a startup, 55 Institutional Partners, an investment advisory, to JP Morgan. He is a visiting faculty member at The Wharton School and co-author of 'Investing for Change'
-
Startup Fridays S2 Ep. 13: 'In any pursuit, strive to be in a place where you can add value' — Sunil Thomas
Our guest today is Sunil Thomas, co-founder and executive chairman of CleverTap, which provides a software platform that a large number of brands around the world use to better engage with their customers. Sunil started with a computer science degree, and in a career that spans more than 30 years now, he has held several top jobs in tech and business. He and two of his friends—Anand Jain and Suresh Kondamudi—started CleverTap in 2013, in Mumbai, and since then, they've expanded their operations to the biggest markets around the world
-
Startup Fridays S2 Ep.12: For lasting societal impact, ventures have to grow into enduring businesses — Sandeep Farias
Our guest today is Sandeep Farias, founder and managing partner at Elevar Equity, an early-stage VC firm that backs entrepreneurs who are solving large problems for the low and middle-income communities in India and Latin America. In this episode, Sandeep talks about the 'Elevar Method' for identifying ideas that could become enduring businesses with significant societal impact