The Startup Fridays Podcast
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Startup Fridays S2 Ep. 11: 'Swabhimaan,' not simply money, drives our rural youth to entrepreneurship — Madan Padaki
Our guest today is Madan Padaki, founder and CEO of 1Bridge, which provides a host of services in small towns and villages, linking brands and businesses with India's rural economy, and creating micro-entrepreneurs from among the rural youth. In this episode, Madan, who is an entrepreneur and angel investor, talks about how rural youth have the same aspirations for a better life as anyone else, and how that represents a massive entrepreneurial opportunity
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Startup Fridays S2 Ep.10: Satya Bansal on the journey from his grandfather's 'bahi' to an international banker and climate VC investor
Our guest today is Satya Bansal, founder and CEO at Blue Ashva Capital, a Singapore and India VC firm that is focused on backing entrepreneurs building sustainable businesses in 'core sectors' in this region. In this episode, Satya talks about the clear gap in climate tech funding and efforts at Blue Ashva to incubate deep tech efforts in climate change; He also talks about lessons from his own career, including his earliest learnings — from his grandfather
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_sm.jpg?impolicy=website&width=360&height=270 "Startup Fridays S2 Ep. 9: 'We need to accelerate corporate adoption of climate tech from startups' — Pratap Raju")
Startup Fridays S2 Ep. 9: 'We need to accelerate corporate adoption of climate tech from startups' — Pratap Raju
Our guest today is Pratap Raju, founding partner of Climate Collective, an organisation that is building a platform to accelerate climate tech startups in India, by catalysing stronger linkages between the startups and large corporate buyers and users of their solutions. He is also the founding partner of a VC fund, Climate Seeds Fund, providing seed-stage funding to climate startups. Climate Collective also has a dedicated programme to encourage women entrepreneurs in climate tech
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Startup Fridays Season 2, Episode 8: We like to engage founders right from their -1 to 0 stage — Rajiv Srivatsa
Our guest today is Rajiv Srivatsa, partner and investor at Antler India. Rajiv's career spans going from software engineer at Infosys to product developer at Yahoo! to entrepreneur as co-founder of Urban Ladder to VC investor. In this episode, he talks about how each stage was the realisation of his overarching desire to always mentor people and take a deep passionate interest in helping them develop their careers
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Startup Fridays Season 2 Ep. 7: My hope is, entrepreneurs even crazier than us will rise and build for India — Rohan Verma
Our guest today is Rohan Verma, CEO and executive director at MapmyIndia, a Mumbai-listed company in the areas of digital mapping, geospatial technologies and automotive mobility technologies. In this episode, Rohan talks about why he is optimistic that a serious tech product ecosystem will emerge in India over the next five years. He also hopes that entrepreneurs with foresight will rise and make India self reliant for the crucial underlying infrastructure as well
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Startup Fridays Season 2 Ep. 6: 'Entrepreneurship isn't a lifestyle, it's a life time of perseverance' — Naga Prakasam
Our guest today is Nagaraja Prakasam, an angel investor and startup mentor. Before he turned investor full time, Naga, as everyone knows him, had a successful career in the software industry. Over the years, he's turned his focus to impact investment and it remains his passion. He is also a bit of a globetrotter and has visited 26 countries. He is an advisor and mentor at various startup incubators, including the NSRCEL in IIM Bangalore
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Startup Fridays Season 2 Ep. 5: VC or entrepreneur, seek to be relevant, enjoy the journey, deliver results: Sateesh Andra of Endiya Partners
Our guest today is Sateesh Andra, managing director at Endiya Partners, a VC firm that backs early-stage IP-led startups. Before Endiya, he was a partner at Ventureast and DFJ. Before turning to VC, Sateesh was a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, as founder and CEO of Euclid, in the IT management software space. Sateesh was also a top-ranked table tennis player representing Andhra Pradesh
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Startup Fridays Season 2 Ep. 4: Don't build for your investors, build for your customers — Anish Achuthan
Our guest today is Anish Achuthan, co-founder and CEO of Open Financial Technologies, a neobank with more than two million SMEs as customers, making it one of the biggest fintech companies in this sector worldwide. Open has marquee investors backing it, including Google, Tiger Global and Temasek and the company is building a very strong portfolio of technologies for banking and financial services
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.jpg?impolicy=website&width=360&height=270 "Startup Fridays Season 2 Ep. 3: In entrepreneurship, as in life, breathe and know that this too shall pass — Anirudh Damani")
Startup Fridays Season 2 Ep. 3: In entrepreneurship, as in life, breathe and know that this too shall pass — Anirudh Damani
Our guest today is Anirudh Damani, founder and managing partner of Artha Venture Fund. After a degree in Economics and Business Administration, he spent several years in the energy industry in the US. He returned to India in 2013 and started Artha Energy Resources, an advisory firm in Mumbai, and Artha India Ventures, his family office, through which he backed several noteworthy startups, before starting his own micro VC firm, Artha Venture Fund. Anirudh is also a certified scuba diver
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Startup Fridays Season 2 Ep. 2: Entrepreneurship is an experience in expanding circles of influence and impact — Ajit Isaac
Our guest today is Ajit Isaac, Founder and Executive Chairman of Quess Corp. Ajit's career started just as India's economic liberalisation was beginning. Earlier in his career, Ajit was a British Chevening scholar. He had a successful corporate career before he turned entrepreneur, and built two large HR companies, including Quess. In today's conversation, Ajit talks about the next phase of Quess's evolution and his own growth as an entrepreneur
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Startup Fridays Season 2 Ep. 1: Bootstrapping can mean leaving a lot of value on the table - Vaibhav Domkundwar
Our guest today is entrepreneur-turned VC investor, Vaibhav Domkundwar, founder and CEO of Better Capital, an early-stage VC firm. At Better Capital, Vaibhav has had phenomenal success in identifying a large number of promising startups very early and backing them. Today, collectively, his portfolio companies are worth over $5 billion