The Startup Fridays Podcast
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Startup Fridays Ep 23: I'm a political junkie interested in how large corporations are built - Sharat Potharaju
Our guest today is Sharat Potharaju, co-founder and CEO of MobStac, a company he started over 12 years ago along with Ravi Pratap Madimsetty. Previously, he worked in investment banking at companies including Merril Lynch and Fieldstone Private Capital. Potharaju has a degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and a master's degree in technology management and entrepreneurship from Duke University
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Startup Fridays Ep 22: Entrepreneurship demands head in the clouds and two feet on the ground - Bala Parthasarathy
Our latest guest on Startup Fridays is an incredibly prolific entrepreneur and VC investor. Bala Parthasarathy is the co-founder and CEO of Mwyn Tech, better known for MoneyTap, the company's app-based lending platform with millions of users. The company is now well onto its next phase of growth as a digital bank under the name Freo. He'd previously co-founded Snapfish, photo management and ecommerce app acquired by Hewlett Packard. He is also co-founder of Prime Ventures, an early-stage tech-focused VC
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Startup Fridays Ep 21: A founder needs conviction and resilience when things are low - Suresh Shankar
Our guest this week is Suresh V Shankar, founder and CEO of Crayon Data, a nine-year old big data and AI company, out of Singapore and Chennai. Shankar is a second-time entrepreneur, and an evangelist of big data, analytics and digital personalisation. His first venture, RedPill Analytics was acquired by IBM. With more than 35 years in the industry, he likes to say he's been around long enough to see the transformation of marketing from right-brain to a left-brain pursuit
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Startup Fridays Ep 20: Our mission is to help everyone find the right career - Ashutosh Garg
Our guest this week is Ashutosh Garg, co-founder and CEO of eightfold.ai, a company with a sophisticated talent intelligence platform used by some of the world's biggest companies. Garg is also the co-author of a book titled, "What's Next for You - The Eightfold Path To Transforming The Way We Hire And Manage Talent". Eightfold is backed by investors including SoftBank Vision Fund 2, General Catalyst, Capital One Ventures, Foundation Capital, IVP and Lightspeed Venture Partners
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Startup Fridays Ep 19: 'Want to catalyse a global network of professionals working on climate change — Anshuman Bapna
Our Guest today is Anshuman Bapna, co-founder and CEO of Terra.do, an online school that offers an immersive deep dive into all the important aspects of climate change with the purpose of equipping professionals to take action and become part of the climate change solution. Before starting Terra.do last year, Bapna has had multiple startups to his credit. Bapna also has an MBA from Stanford University. Before Terra.do, he was chief product officer at MakeMyTrip
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.jpg "Startup Fridays Ep 18: Backing outliers and seeing them succeed motivates me - Vaibhav Agrawal, Lightspeed India")
Startup Fridays Ep 18: Backing outliers and seeing them succeed motivates me - Vaibhav Agrawal, Lightspeed India
Vaibhav Agrawal started out as a medical doctor, but found an entrepreneurial streak in himself, and founded Prima Clinics, a chain of outpatient clinics in New Delhi. His second startup, called Comfort, was in California, and also in the area of healthcare. He has an MBA from Stanford University, and for the last five years, he has been a partner at Lightspeed India Partners — one of the top VC firms operating in the country
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Startup Fridays Episode 17: It's time to act to ensure responsible AI - Ashwini Asokan, CEO, Mad Street Den
Ashwini Asokan is co-founder and CEO of Mad Street Den, a computer vision and artificial intelligence technologies company, based in Chennai in India, and Redwood City, California, in the US. In 2017, Mad Street Den was recognised among the 50 most promising startups in the world by Bloomberg. Ashwini has also written about her experience in making Mad Street Den a company where half the staff are women. She is an alumna of Carnegie Mellon University and a product design and user experience specialist. She is also a trained dancer
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Startup Fridays Episode 16: 'Aiming for a million scooters across 7-8 cities in 3-4 years' — Amit Gupta, Yulu Bikes
Our guest today is Amit Gupta, co-founder and CEO of Yulu Bikes, an innovative urban mobility company trying to solve the problems of access, availability and affordability for the masses. Gupta previously co-founded ad-tech company InMobi, and AnalyticsWorks, a business intelligence venture. He is also an active angel investor in multiple startups in India and the US. He has an executive MBA from Harvard Business School, and a degree in mechanical engineering from IIT Kanpur, where he is a distinguished alumnus
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Startup Fridays Episode 15: More Indian entrepreneurs will soon go global — Ray Newal
Canada-based Ray Newal was instrumental in setting up the Indian unit of Techstars, a respected global startup accelerator, headquartered in the US, in Bengaluru. Newal was actively involved in mentoring its first few cohorts, before returning to Canada. He remains an advisor to the company and also serves on the advisory boards of Canadian VC firms Brightspark Ventures and StandUp Ventures. Today, Newal is MD and head of capital and ecosystems at the MaRS Discovery District, in Toronto, Canada
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Startup Fridays Ep 14: Looking at total customer experience automation-Yellow.ai's Raghu Ravinutala
A chance discussion over a breakfast meeting with friends about poor customer experience thanks to bad internet connection became the germ for an idea that would become a successful conversational AI-driven platform. Raghu Ravinutala, co-founder and CEO of yellow.ai, the company that built that platform, now has over 700 large companies using its technologies, this includes some of the world's biggest enterprises across 50 countries
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Startup Fridays Episode 13: We offer quality support for emotional wellbeing, and also run a sustainable business — Richa Singh
Our guest today is Richa Singh, co-founder, chief conceptualiser and CEO of yourDOST. For over six years now, Richa has been working to simply make it easier for people to talk to someone who can not only listen with empathy, but also offer professional help wherever needed. And she has built his into a growing network that now touches millions of employees of corporate businesses that have partnered her organisation