Audio
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Best of 2022 Ep9: Ankit Jain and Sidhant Pai at StepChange on their SaaS platform to target carbon emissions
In this episode, from October, Ankit Jain and Sidhant Pai, co-founders of StepChange, talk about their enterprise software products that help businesses track and reduce their carbon footprints. They help companies attempting to build sustainable products get useful insights into the impact of their products and operations. Ankit and Sidhant are developing StepChange into a SaaS software platform that businesses can use to also specifically target what are called Scope 3 emissions, which the entrepreneurs say are the most difficult to curtail
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Best of 2022 Ep8: Sanjay Swamy and Anshul Rai on what founders should know about exits
In this conversation, from September, Sanjay Swamy, managing partner and co-founder at Prime Venture Partners and Anshul Rai, co-founder and CEO of Happay, which was acquired by CRED, talk about the central role of exits in the venture capital-driven startup model. The VC investor and the entrepreneur break down everything from the timing of an exit to what not being able to provide a good exit to stakeholders can do to founders. Rai also reflects on what life is like, after Happay's success and $180 million sale to CRED
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Best of 2022 Ep7: Narayan Subramaniam, Niraj Rajmohan and Vishesh Rajaram on learnings from building the F77
In this episode, from September, Niraj Rajmohan and Narayan Subramaniam, co-founders of Ultraviolette Automotive, and Vishesh Rajaram, managing partner at Speciale Invest, talk about the importance of strong local R&D for the long-term growth of the EV sector in India. They also talk about how developing Ultraviolette's first electric motorcycle, the F77, which has since been launched in the market, helped the company build a connected vehicle platform that can support multiple future products and services
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Best of 2022 Ep6: Saravana Kumar on his dream of building Coimbatore's first SaaS unicorn
In this conversation, from August, Saravana Kumar, founder and CEO of Kovai.co, recalled how he bootstrapped his company from one customer—a casino in Hong Kong—to thousands, including Shell, Boeing and Ikea, in a niche software area, growing to a $10 million ARR SaaS venture out of London and Coimbatore. Saravana—who went from a distance-learning MCA degree to a successful software entrepreneur—spoke of tripling revenue by 2024 and creating the first SaaS unicorn from his hometown
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Neeraj Chopra and his journey to becoming an all-time great
Neeraj Chopra became the first track and field athlete from India to win an Olympic gold medal at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. In 2022, he became the first Indian to win the Diamond League final with a javelin throw of 88.44 metres. The Haryana lad has become the most written-about sportsperson this year. His achievements have landed him on the cover of our 2022 Year-Ender Special. In this podcast, Kathakali Chanda talks about her cover story which analyses how Chopra has given Indian athletics a seat at the table
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Best of 2022 Ep5: Ankita Thakur at GeoIQ on turning her fascination for data into a business
In this episode, we go back to a conversation from August with Ankita Thakur, co-founder and chief data officer at GeoIQ. Ankita spoke about how her fascination with data brought out the idea that became her first successful startup. She also explained the connection between the availability of rich location data and real-world business outcomes for customers—made easy through the APIs that GeoIQ offers, with all the heavy lifting happening in the backend. At the time of this conversation, Ankita was expecting to grow revenues fourfold in the coming quarters
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Best of 2022 Ep4: Karthik Rajaram at Freshworks on the India opportunity and top priorities
In this episode, we go back to a conversation from July, with Karthik Rajaram, VP and country head for India and ASEAN at Freshworks. At the time, Freshworks had been recently empanelled as a vendor on India's Government e-Marketplace and Karthik spoke about the public sector opportunity. He also spoke about his reasons for joining Freshworks, and his mandate to add many more customers in this market, including the larger established enterprises. On the SaaS ecosystem, Karthik highlighted the growing trend of global enterprise software being developed from India
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Best of 2022 Ep3: Neha Singh and Abhishek Goyal on dream of building the Bloomberg of private markets
In this episode, we go back to a conversation with Neha Singh and Abhishek Goyal, co-founders of Tracxn Technologies, from July 2022, when they were preparing to take their company public. The company was listed on the stock exchanges in Mumbai in October. In this conversation, Neha and Abhishek spoke about how they teamed up, why they decided to start Tracxn, back in 2013, and their plans ahead. The aspiration is to make Tracxn synonymous with private markets intelligence, just as Bloomberg is with public markets
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Best of 2022 Ep2: Manish Dabkara on how he built EKI, India's first listed carbon credits company
In this episode, we go back to a conversation from March 2022, with Manish Dabkara, CMD and CEO of EKI Energy Services, India's only listed carbon credits company. EKI Energy, a BSE SME listed company shot to a billion dollars in market value within nine months of going public in April 2021. The company's market value has not been spared by this year's downturn in the global economy. In this conversation, Dabkara spoke about what EKI did, how he came to start the company and the opportunities ahead
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Best of 2022 Ep1: Francisco D'Souza on the vision for IP-led tech services companies at RECOGNIZE
In this episode, we go back to a conversation with Francisco D'Souza, co-founder and former CEO of Cognizant Technology Solutions, from February this year. In 2020, after more than 25 years at Cognizant, Francisco stepped back from the IT services giant he helped found and build. Since then he's been working on his next innings, as co-founder and managing partner at RECOGNIZE, a $1.3 billion private equity firm in the US that focuses on intellectual-property-led tech services ventures delivering business outcomes
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Avinash Godkhindi at Zaggle on why expense management SaaS will soon be big in India
In this episode, Avinash Godkhindi, CEO and MD at Zaggle, a fintech SaaS company, talks about why expense management solutions will see strong demand in India soon. He also talks about how, over the last 10 years, keeping Zaggle focused on enterprise customers has paid off. The company has grown from offering employee benefits all the way to vendor management, with customers including some of the biggest Indian and foreign names in operating in India. Plans include some fund raising and acquisitions