Backstage with Millionaires

In this episode of Millionaire Mondays, featured in Startup Spotlights, an initiative by Google Play, we sit down with Anshul Kamath and Rohan Arora, founders of Evolve, a mental health platform, with a special focus on the LGBTQIA+ community. Since its inception in 2017, Evolve has helped over 1 million people across the world, in the uplifting and well-being of their mental health. 00:00 Intro 03:51 Story of Anshul 08:47 Rohan's Story 12:36 How Both of them Met 17:32 Evolve's Early Days 21:28 Early Financing 23:20 First Fundraise 27:29 Recognition by The Google Play Store 29:36 Building for the World 31:39 Evolve's Business Model 35:24 Decision to build for LGBTQ+ community 45:55 Is Evolve B2B or B2C? 50:18 Future Roadmap 53:09 Looking Back 58:31 Founder's Future Ambitions 1:04:24 Outro When Anshul and Rohan initially started Evolve in 2017, it was a mental health app for everyone. However, in 2021, the team pivoted towards an LGBTQ+ first app after seeing some early signs of traction. The reason according to the founders is that “the LGBTQ+ community is one of the fastest growing user segments globally and research shows that members of the community are almost 4 times as likely to experience serious mental illness compared to the general population”. Evolve's core team comprises people from diverse gender identities and sexual orientations and this helps them understand first-hand the struggles and challenges of the LGBTQ+ community when it comes to mental health and wellness. What makes Evolve different from the other mental health apps in the market is its focus on community building. So while other apps focus primarily on virtual content, Evolve has a thriving community where users can discuss and share their experiences to normalise stressors. (Social Links Google India's IG: https://www.instagram.com/googleindia/ Google India's X: https://x.com/GoogleIndia https://x.com/googledevsin?lang=en Google India's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GoogleDevelopersIndia https://www.youtube.com/GoogleIndia Google's Global Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@GoogleDevelopers Google India's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/googleplaybiz/posts/?feedView=all Evolve's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/evolveinc/ Evolve's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/evolveapp_/ Evolve's X: https://x.com/evolveapp_ Anshul Kamath's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anshulkamath/ Rohan Arora's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rohan-arora5/ Anshul Kamath's X: https://x.com/anshulkamath Anshul Kamath's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anshulkamath/ #mentalhealth #StartupSpotlights #GooglePlay [This podcast is sponsored by Google Play.]

In this episode of Millionaire Mondays, featured in Startup Spotlights, an initiative by Google Play, we sit down with Tito Aby Idicula and Nigel Crasto, founders of Programming Hub, one of the largest apps to learn programming. Since its inception in 2016, Programming Hub has taught coding to more than 40 Million people, reaching almost every single country in the world. 00:00 Introduction 03:41 Inception at L&T 04:34 Transitioning from Employment to Entrepreneurship 08:21 Financial Struggles and Creative Solutions 20:51 A Turning Point: Google Launchpad Accelerator 25:08 Understanding Userbase and Monetising them 34:32 Benefits of Bootstrapping 36:29 Project X 46:45 Insane Growth During Pandemic 54:05 AI: Boon or Bane? 1:04:29 Video Game Suggestions Tito Aby Idicula and Nigel Crasto started Programming Hub in 2016. The company was founded with the vision of addressing the growing demand for programming skills in an increasingly digital world. Recognising that traditional education systems often fall short in providing flexible, up-to-date, and comprehensive coding education, the founders set out to create a platform that would democratise access to high-quality programming instruction. At the heart of Programming Hub's appeal is its extensive library of courses, which covers a wide array of programming languages and technologies. From foundational languages like Python, Java, and C++ to specialized fields such as data science, machine learning, and mobile app development, Programming Hub caters to both beginners and advanced learners. Each course is meticulously designed to ensure a seamless learning experience, featuring interactive lessons, hands-on coding exercises, and real-world projects. The platform also offers courses in emerging technologies like blockchain, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity, ensuring that learners are well-prepared for the future of tech. Both Nigel and Tito see AI as the biggest advancement in tech till now and see it as a big opportunity for Programming Hub in the future. Among many things to take away from this podcast, their journey of building a bootstrapped profitable startup is something I am most impressed about. (Social Links) Google India's IG: https://www.instagram.com/googleindia/ Google India's X: https://x.com/GoogleIndia https://x.com/googledevsin?lang=en Google India's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GoogleDevelopersIndia https://www.youtube.com/GoogleIndia Google's Global Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@GoogleDevelopers Google India's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/googleplaybiz/posts/?feedView=all Programming Hub's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/programming-hub/ Programming Hub's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/programminghub.io/ Programming Hub's X: https://x.com/Prghub Nigel Crasto's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nigel-crasto-a2306547/ Tito Idicula's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/titoaby/ Nigel Crasto's X: https://x.com/Nigelcog Tito Idicula's X: https://x.com/KillerCrosser Nigel Crasto's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nigel_crasto Tito Idicula's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tito_aby #programminghub #StartupSpotlights #GooglePlay [This podcast is sponsored by Google Play]

Today's episode of Millionaire Mondays is extra special - because it's also the first episode being featured in #StartupSpotlights, a Google Play initiative, where inspiring startup founders share their untold growth stories. In today's episode, we're in conversation with Yannick Colaço, co-founder of FanCode, a one-stop destination for sports fans in India. FanCode has more than 100M lifetime users, making it one of the largest sports streaming platforms in the country. 00:00 - Introduction 04:08 - Career Beginnings and NBA Experience 11:23 - The Inspiration behind FanCode 17:15 - Starting FanCode 25:22 - Team and Culture at FanCode 38:11 - Navigating the Pandemic 42:28 - Growth and Expansion Post-Pandemic 45:52 - Monetization and Revenue Strategies 48:45 - Merchandise and New Ventures 56:28 - Future Plans and Innovations 58:33 - Outro Yannick Colaço and Prasana Krishnan started FanCode in 2019. The company has positioned itself as a comprehensive destination for sports fans, offering a variety of services including live streaming, non-live content, sports statistics, and merchandise. Yannick Colaço previously worked with NBA India as managing director, while Prasana Krishnan was a former executive at sports pay-television broadcasters Sony Pictures Networks and Neo Sports. FanCode raised $50 Million in May 2021. One of FanCode's significant strengths lies in its comprehensive sports coverage. The platform offers live streaming of matches, which includes not just major leagues and tournaments but also smaller, regional, and even grassroots events. This has democratised access to sports content, enabling fans to follow their favourite sports and teams regardless of their geographic location. FanCode also provides detailed sports statistics and real-time data, enhancing the viewing experience for sports enthusiasts who crave in-depth insights. Expanding beyond digital content, FanCode also offers sports merchandise, allowing fans to purchase official team gear. During the ICC World Cup 2023, FanCode was the official partner for Indian team jerseys. Social Links Google India's IG: https://www.instagram.com/googleindia/?hl=en Google India's X: https://x.com/GoogleIndia https://x.com/googledevsin?lang=en Google India's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GoogleDevelopersIndia https://www.youtube.com/GoogleIndia Google India's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/googleplaybiz/posts/?feedView=all FanCode's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fancode/mycompany/?viewAsMember=true FanCode's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fancode/?hl=en FanCode's X: https://x.com/FanCode Yannick's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yannick-colaco-237aab11/ Yannick's X: https://x.com/yansports [This podcast is sponsored by Google Play.] #FanCode #StartupSpotlights #GooglePlay

It all began in late 2008, amidst Abhinav Das' GATE exam. In a pivotal moment of realization, he abandoned the exam midway, recognizing that pursuing a master's degree wasn't his true calling. Instead, he crafted a business plan on the spot, birthing the concept of 'Evomo - Evolving Mobility'. The objective behind Evomo was straightforward: to replace the ubiquitous jugaad vehicles prevalent in rural India with Rural Utility Vehicles (RUVs). These RUVs were envisioned to be cost-effective, modular, and specially designed for rough terrains. However, Abhinav Das encountered a significant obstacle – funding. He required approximately 2.3 crore rupees, equivalent to about 383,000 dollars at the time, to kickstart his vision. Despite seven years of dedicated efforts and the creation of an impressive prototype, Evomo failed to generate any revenue. Abhinav Das attempted to secure venture capital to obtain certifications and commence manufacturing, but his endeavors only yielded a fraction of the required funds – a mere 12 lakh rupees, or 18,000 dollars at the time. Facing limited options, Abhinav Das took a daring leap and applied for Y Combinator in 2015. Despite being accepted for an online interview, he fell short of securing a spot after the in-person interview in California. The setback was a crushing blow, leading Abhinav Das to shutter Evomo, depart from Ahmedabad, and return to his parents' home in Delhi. He grappled with a profound sense of purposelessness, battling bouts of depression characterized by prolonged sleep and difficulty in getting out of bed. Yet, amidst the darkness, Abhinav Das resolved to reclaim his passion for entrepreneurship. He embarked on a journey to resurrect his dreams, eventually founding Orangewood Labs alongside his co-founders, determined to make a lasting impact in the world of robotics. Abhinav Das and his fellow co-founders at Orangewood Labs are on a mission to revolutionize the robotics industry. Their focus? Building robotic arms that are not only affordable but also incredibly easy to program, thanks to their innovative AI-powered software named RoboGPT.

00:00 Intro 02:52 Building Ather S340 and 450 09:15 Indian EVs vs Chinese EVs 19:29 Can India become the biggest electric vehicle exporter? 28:10 Indian EV industry (wave 1) 33:30 Struggles of building an EV company 40:40 How Ather almost shut down 52:09 The hardware wave 58:10 How to take feedback 1:04:48 Asteroid mining is the future 1:09:59 The future of the energy industry 1:15:45 Outro

00:00 Intro 01:50 From a Bedroom, to a Basement 05:53 Hiring in 2005: a Big Challenge 10:26 Building Culture, Organically 11:10 Running a Global Company in India 14:16 Being Profitable and Bootstrapped 16:16 Three Near-Death Experiences 22:40 Milestones and the Path Ahead Pallav Nadhani founded FusionCharts at the age of 17 in an effort to earn himself some extra pocket money. He succeeded in doing so, and now, 17 years later, he has more pocket money than he knows what to do with. The data visualization company has over 28,000 customers as of December of 2019, some of which include Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Adobe, Walmart, NASA, and many, many more. In this video, Pallav explains how he built FusionCharts from his bedroom and turned it into a multi-million dollar company over the course of the last 17 years. From a Bedroom, to a Basement: Pallav Nadhani was able to run FusionCharts for three years on his own before he realized that he needed help. He onboarded his first employee, a friend of his cousins, and together they worked out of Pallav's bedroom for about a year and a half. By the end of this period, they were working with over 1,000 customers, and couldn't handle to workload on their own anymore. They shifted into a basement office and started hiring more employees. Hiring in 2005: a Big Challenge: Hiring wasn't a very easy thing to do for a startup in Calcutta in 2005. India's startup ecosystem was still in its infancy, and the startup ecosystem in Calcutta was nonexistent. Employees were hesitant to join the startup despite the fact that they were already working with a number of Fortune 500 companies. However, with time and experience, Pallav was able to assemble of solid team of engineers. Building Culture, Organically: Even as FusionCharts was scaling up and the startup was onboarding more and more employees, Pallav really didn't know anything about building strong culture. Instead, he simply focused on instilling values like pride in the company, a strong work ethic, and the desire to learn and grow on the job. As a result of these values, FusionCharts was able to establish a strong culture organically. Running a Global Company in India: Less than 1% of FusionCharts' customers are Indian. This is something that Pallav takes pride in, because going global from India was a pretty big challenge when FusionCharts was first starting out. In spite of this, FusionCharts has been able to build quality products that are good enough not only for India, but also for the world. What is more, they have done so as a bootstrapped, profitable company from day 1. Being Profitable and Bootstrapped: Because FusionCharts has always been profitable and bootstrapped, they have very rarely struggled with money problems. In fact, the biggest money they have faced is a surplus of funds. The challenge for them has been to figure out what to do with these funds. Part of the reason that they are able to be profitable and bootstrapped is that FusionCharts is a very lean company: they have 68 employees serving 28,000 customers!

Pravesh Pandey is one of the most renowned faces in India's Hotel and Restaurant Industry. He started his career with ITC Hotels back in 2002, where he was a Guest Service Coordinator. He spent the next decade of his professional career in senior positions at key companies like P&O Cruises, Lizard Lounge, Henry Tham Lifestyle Restaurant, and Hard Rock Cafe. In 2020, Pravesh started Bissi Bissi Oota, which is India's first QSR brand serving home-style meals that are 'Shuddha', 'Aarogya', and 'Taaza'. They ensure the provision of fresh, nutritious, and hygienic food at the most affordable prices. In fact, a meal is provided at a price of INR 30. Pravesh is also one of the shareholders and directors at Byg Brewski Brewing Company , which at the time of its opening was India's largest Microbrewery. Pravesh early in his career also helped in the rapid expansion of 'Social'.

Candice Lock's journey from her upbringing in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia, oto her tech career in New York is a tale of cultural fusion and culinary passion. Growing up in a Cantonese family, she later found herself at the Copacabana salsa club in New York, where the Latinos affectionately referred to her as "Chinita," meaning "little Chinese girl" in Spanish. Her love for Latin American cuisine, especially Mexican food, blossomed during her time in the city that never sleeps.When Candice moved to Bengaluru for work in 2008, fate intervened, and she crossed paths with Amit Mirchandani, who had a deep appreciation for Mexican cuisine from his time in the United States. In 2010, and Candice had not only married Amit but had also fully embraced her passion for Mexican food.Together with Amit and his brother Sameer, who shared her love for Mexican cuisine, they embarked on a journey to bring the flavors of Mexico to Bengaluru. Tacos became their specialty, and they started selling them at Bengaluru's Soul Sante.

When Anubhav was a kid in school, he used to flip phones. That's the start of his business venture even though he didn't know that's how business worked. During his teenage, his parents wanted him to do his UPSC exam and become an IAS Officer but he chose entrepreneurship without his parent knowing about it.He moved from Delhi to Indore to start his entrepreneurial journey and decided to start selling chai. They came up with a business plan to start selling chai and decided to open their very first store in near a girls hostel. As they opened it, they had no name for the place. When customers came for chai, they started calling them "gumnaam chaiwallah" and that's they came up with the name Chai Sutta Bar.Chai Sutta Bar doesn't allow people to smoke in or around their outlets even though it has "sutta" in it's name. After they started their first store in Indore, they saw a massive demand and decided to open more locations. They had expanded to 3 stores by 2016 with a franchise model. Then in 2019 they expanded to 65 locations.Today, Chai Sutta Bar has expanded to 500 location across 300 cities, including 3 stores in Dubai. They are planning to open more stores in other countries like USA, Canada and the UK.

Explorex's website: https://explorex.co/ When Nicolas moved to India from France for an internship, he was struck by nostalgia for the sandwiches from his homeland. And so, he embarked on a culinary journey. In 2015, he took a bold step and launched a food truck called Paris Panini in Bengaluru, with the aim of introducing gourmet French street food to the city.Paris Panini was among the pioneering food trucks in Bangalore, housed within a converted old-school van. Its weekly route quickly gained a following, with customers tracking its whereabouts through social media and forming long queues upon its arrival.Introducing a novel product to the Indian market posed its challenges, but Nicolas was determined to refine the menu to cater to local tastes while preserving the authenticity of French cuisine.One of Nicolas's key objectives was to change the prevailing perception of Indian street food as being predominantly unhealthy and unhygienic. To achieve this, the food truck was designed with an open counter, allowing customers to witness the panini preparation process, and fostering trust through a professional and hygienic live kitchen experience on wheels.Initially, the menu was quite limited, featuring approximately ten items. The primary focus was on delivering high-quality products crafted from fresh ingredients. Every item was painstakingly made from scratch, including the hand-cut and double-fried French fries that have since become iconic, reflecting the preparation methods in Nicolas's hometown of Arras, in northern France.Nicolas's unwavering passion and dedication catapulted Paris Panini into the limelight. The food truck gained immense popularity, leading to invitations to cater for major festivals, birthday parties, and weddings throughout the city.However, the food truck scene in Bangalore was marked by unpredictability, primarily due to the absence of regulation. At one point, the city's notorious traffic congestion even led to a temporary ban on food trucks. As Paris Panini's popularity continued to soar, Nicolas faced the challenge of scaling up his operations.This pivotal moment arrived when Nicolas crossed paths with AB and Nikhil from The Pizza Bakery, who shared his vision of transitioning Paris Panini from a food truck concept to a brick-and-mortar casual dining restaurant. They remained committed to maintaining the brand's core values while developing an extensive menu that would provide customers with an authentic Parisian cafe experience.In November 2019, Paris Panini opened its doors on the bustling 12th Main Road in Indiranagar, Bangalore. The restaurant's walls were adorned with hand-drawn Parisian street scenes, effectively transporting patrons to a Parisian cafe ambiance. The menu showcased gourmet panini, signature French fries, freshly brewed coffee, and delectable crepes, offering an authentic culinary journey.Today, Paris Panini boasts a rapidly expanding fan base, with the brand establishing itself in ten locations across Bangalore. It has quickly risen to become the city's leading purveyor of gourmet sandwiches, serving as a testament to Nicolas's dedication and commitment to bringing a taste of authentic French cuisine to the heart of India.

Explorex's website: https://explorex.co/ Ankit got his start building an online community called YouthPad, with the tagline “Have your say” - ​​the website's goal was to bring together the youth of Delhi NCR onto common platform, and he ran this platform from 2007 to 2010 when he got a job working at Flipkart.By 2015 Ankit had proven himself to be a formidable intrapreneur, and was promoted to the position of Chief Business Officer - everything was going well for Ankit, but in 2016, after more than 6 years at the company, he left and teamed up with Mukesh Bansal, Flipkart's Head of Commerce & Advertising to built Curefit, and over the next four years, Curefit evolved into India's leading health and fitness startup. They acquired numerous gyms across the country, worked with celebrities like Hrithik Roshan, and launched a health food brand called EatFit.Ankit Nagori had a vision to build marketplace of health restaurants for people who go to the gym and workout. So Ankit Nagori and Mukest Bansal started Curefoods and Acquihired EatFit as their first brand to build one of the biggest healthy-food facing house of brands startup in India. Now, Curefoods currently operates brands like EatFit, CakeZone, Sharief Bhai, Nomad Pizza, Frozen Bottle, Olio, Rolls on Wheels, Great Indian Khichdi, Home Plate, Juno's Pizza, Ovenfresh.

00:00 Intro 04:04 How Matt started a coffee business 07:13 Challenges while roasting coffee in India 08:58 Blue Tokai's marketing strategy 09:49 Blur Tokai's ₹40 lakh roaster 11:19 The raise of Blue Tokai 15:25 Opening their first location 21:25 Challenges faced while expanding 24:28 How Shivam Shahi joined Blue Tokai 27:01 Becoming a cafe 28:39 Delhi Police seals Blue Tokai locations 32:03 Evolving coffee culture in India 32:43 Blue Tokai during the pandemic 34:56 Blue Tokai post pandemic 36:30 Blue Tokai vs other cafes 38:56 Will coffee price increase in India? 43:27 Blue Tokai products 45:52 Blue Tokai going global? 47:14 Challenges for becoming profitable 51:08 Bootstrapped vs external capital 52:35 Blue Tokai IPO 56:11 Outro In the United States, third wave coffee culture in the United States was in full swing. During this third wave, concepts like farm to cup and single origin beans were popularised, and Matt Chitharanjan had been living in the Bay Area from 2003 to 2007, so he'd jumped into this movement headfirst during his time there. He even bought a small roaster and started preparing small batches of coffee as a hobby. When Matt came to India in 2011 for a 1-year job opportunity in Chennai, he spotted an opportunity. He saw the Cafe Coffee Days and the Baristas of India and realised that coffee's third wave hadn't reached India yet. It was in Chennai that Matt met his wife and co-founder Namrata Asthana, and after moving to Delhi in 2012, they got to work setting up India's first homegrown specialty coffee brand, Blue Tokai. Now, Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters is India's largest specialty coffee brand, with its headquarters in Gurgaon, India.

Explorex's website: https://explorex.co/ When Bert Mueller first visited India in 2010 he never could have anticipated that he'd spend the next decade of his life building a business there. Today he runs a profitable 50+ location QSR chain called California Burrito - they did ₹110 crore in FY22. Bert Mueller started California Burrito with two American co-founders, Dharam Khalsa and Gaelan Draper. They each put in $15,000, and were able to raise an additional $250,000 from family and friends using a Tumblr blog which documented their startup's journey. Initially they thought they'd launch their inaugural restaurant in Gurugram, but chose Bengaluru instead because real estate was more affordable there. Their first choice was Orion Mall, but after that deal fell through, they settled on Embassy GolfLinks Tech Park. This first location was a huge success. Located opposite of Goldman Sachs, the restaurant was doing 150 bills per hour in their first three months with no marketing. Bert and Gaelan Draper spent the first six months behind the counter serving burritos himself. Bert Mueller and an employee did ingredient procurement themselves. They bought a Maruti Omni and would fill it up with veggies from a local market twice a month. Seeing how much each vegetable cost was a key factor in the company's strong unit economics. Apart from their dine-in business California Burrito also dabbled in catering; they made burritos for Zynga and a few other companies. Then, after opening two more restaurants in Bengaluru, they raised $750,000 in a round led by entrepreneur and angel Adhvith Dhuddu in 2013. Using these funds, California Burrito was able to expand their footprint to 15 locations using a COCO (Company Owned Company Operated) model. Bert Mueller believes that the franchising approach only works in countries where legal recourse is easily achieved, e.g. the United States. Despite the business's success, Gaelan Draper stepped away from California Burrito to get married and return to the United States in 2014, leaving Bert and Dharam Khalsa to build the business on their own. By 2020 California Burrito's business was thriving: they had their best month in February, bringing in ₹4 crore in revenue across 37 stores. However, because they were largely reliant upon tech parks and malls for customers, their business was devastated by the pandemic. Overnight, ₹4 crore dropped to ₹25 lakh monthly revenue, and while they did have ₹1.5 crore in the bank, Bert decided to raise a small round in May 2020 to keep the business afloat. With these funds, California Burrito finally began investing in marketing to increase sales. Also in May of 2020, Bert's remaining co-founder, Dharam Khalsa, returned to the United States and built a startup called Mirador in California, leaving Bert to build California Burrito in India on his own as a solopreneur. By October of 2021, California Burrito achieved pre-pandemic sales with fewer stores. They did this by only opening stores that were located 8 kilometres apart, thereby optimising delivery efficiency. Today delivery makes up 60% of their business, up from 30% pre-pandemic. They also improved their outlet economics, setting an internal benchmark of ₹30 lakh revenue per store, up from their previous standard of ₹12 lakh. Other changes include product innovations like tacos, and new ingredients such as Mexican tomatillos and hass avocados. California Burrito celebrated their most successful location launch ever in May of 2023 when they expanded to Chennai. They now have a presence in Bengaluru, NCR, Hyderabad, and Chennai. Bert is aiming for California Burrito to have 100 stores by March 2025.

Explorex's website: https://explorex.co/ 00:00 Intro04:26 How Samosa Party started10:27 How Samosa Party got it's name11:25 From B2B to B2C18:58 Expanding the brand30:12 Diksha joining as a co-founder33:03 Samosa Party during the pandemic44:54 Expanding to different cities50:47 Outro Amit Nanwani and Diksha Pande started Samosa Party in 2017, with an aim to provide a hygienic yet authentic alternative to India's favourite snack.Before starting Samosa Party, Amit was a developer at INTEL, and while working here, he started Samosa Party as a side hustle. His initial plan was to start a catering business for corporate events, and while Samosa was one of the items they were selling at this time, they weren't the sole focus.Diksha on the other hand had spent her corporate career in the F&B industry from the Oberoi Group to Pizza Hut to Chai Point, and this is where she learnt skills that would help her in future as a second co-founder of Samosa Party.She joined Amit full-time in January 2020.With Samosa Party, the co-founders want to create a differentiated experience for the urban millennial customers who value convenience, hygiene, and quality even if they have to pay extra.And today, Samosa Party is selling 35,000 Samosas every single day across 50 locations in 5 cities. Connect with us: Twitter: https://twitter.com/bwmillionaires/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/backstagewithmillionaires Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/backstagewithmillionaires/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5rGPalovc6AKsfbOyjh32p

Book a free demo with Explorex here: https://share.hsforms.com/1wdxFNOxpQZ29F9MpD48e7Acyk5y Explorex's website: https://explorex.co/ 00:00 Intro 1:52 Vijayawada - Barkaas' First Location 7:57 Hustle - The Struggles of Running a Restaurant 10:16 Mangalagiri - Barkaas' Second Location 12:05 Money - The Financials of Barkaas 17:09 Bengaluru - Experiences in Marketing 20:39 Expansion - The Challenges of Franchising 25:05 Scale - Managing 10 Locations 27:29 COVID-19 - Barkaas During the Pandemic 33:13 New Normal - Bouncing Back After the Pandemic 38:25 Round 2 - Expanding to 20+ Locations 40:00 Strategy - The Barkaas Business Model 45:34 Global - Barkaas' International Expansion 49:13 Gyaan - Advice for Young Entrepreneurs 51:38 New Frontiers - Old Mill Brewery 56:03 Outro Gowtham Kudapa launched his first Arabic cuisine restaurant, Barkaas, in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, in 2016. The idea for Barkaas as an Arabic mandi-centric restaurant first came to him on a trip to Sharjah where he was fascinated by the culinary culture of sitting while eating. He decided to bring the tradition of mandi back with him to Vijayawada. Gowtham Kudapa is a hotel management graduate, and understood flavours and recipes well, and from this education he also understood hospitality. Using his skills and experience, he was able to craft an Arabic mandi restaurant menu which preserved the dishes and styles of food from the UAE, while enhancing flavours and adding masalas which would be recognised and appreciated by the palate, and more specifically, the palate of people in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh. Barkaas also brought in new ways of experiencing food via large plates upon which food for multiple people was placed and eaten, as well as cushioned seating areas instead of elevated tables and chairs like most restaurants. Gowtham Kudapa and his business partners spent between ₹30-₹35 lakh to get their first location up and running, and this initial ROI paid off immediately. Barkaas saw a tremendous response from the people of Vijayawada, and it quickly became the most popular Arabic restaurants in Andhra Pradesh. This meant that Gowtham Kudapa and his business partners and staff often worked 16-18 hour days just to keep up with demand. In spite of these challenges, Barkaas expanded to a second location about 6 months after the success of the first location. This second location was located in Mangalagiri, Andhra Pradesh, about 15 kilometers from the first location. This second location was very successful. From the financial side though, Barkaas was doing well. They were taking a margin of 35-40% which was amazing. These margins enabled the Barkaas team to think about expanding beyond Andhra Pradesh, to Karnataka, and more specifically Bengaluru. Expanding to Bengaluru was a real challenge for Barkaas. This was when Barkaas began allocating some of their expenses to marketing. It took 6 months for Barkaas to begin seeing acceptable footfall in Bengaluru. In Bengaluru, Barkaas took a very conscientious call to only onboard franchisees who were ready to be restaurant operators and managers. They didn't want any absentee franchisees. By taking control of the kitchen and inserting their own people into franchisee's locations, Barkaas was able to bring restaurant quality back to the level that they had envisioned in 2016. However, then the pandemic hit, forcing Barkaas to halt their expansion plans. As the pandemic came to an end, Barkaas began experimenting with technology to offer a contactless dining experience, including QR code menus from their restaurant operating system platform, Explorex. Today, Barkaas is still doing well financially - they take a margin of about 20-25%, and have expanded to more than 20 locations across India. They have plans to go global too, and Gowtham Kudapa is also setting up his first brewery, called Old Mill Brewery. This new business, Old Mill Brewery, will be established in 2023.

Book a free demo with Explorex here: https://share.hsforms.com/1wdxFNOxpQZ29F9MpD48e7Acyk5y Explorex's website: https://explorex.co/ There's an Indian burger startup that is stealing market share from Burger King and McDonald's. Its founder hadn't tasted a burger before 2010. Now he's running a ₹100 crore ARR burger chain with 100+ locations. This is the story of Biggies Burger: Biraja Rout is from Bhubaneswar, Odisha. He comes from a regular working-class family. In 2010 he got a job at Infosys, and briefly shifted to Mysuru for training: it was here that he tried his first burger. The experience had an unusually profound impact on him. After shifting to Bengaluru to work at Infosys' campus in Electronic City, Biraja borrowed ₹1.5 lakh from a friend and purchased a fabricated 5 sq. ft. booth. This was the first Biggies Burger location. He would man the booth after office hours and on weekends. Biraja was passionate about burgers but he had no business experience. From 2011 until 2015 he rarely had more than ₹1,000 in his bank account, and his motorcycle would often run out of petrol while he drove to Namdhari's to buy expensive, fresh lettuce for his burgers. Biggies Burger's second kiosk was set up in Bhubaneswar in 2012. Biraja would transport ingredients from Bengaluru via the Prasanthi Express train's AC chambers, as an affordable alternative to expensive cold chain logistics. He lost money on every Bhubaneswar burger sold. Biggies Burger became extremely popular in Bhubaneswar - it was essentially the only burger joint in a 200 kilometre radius. This caught the attention of Sandeep Satpathy, who approached Biraja about setting up a franchised location in Raipur in 2013. Raipur is a largely vegetarian city, and at this time the brand name was Biggies Burger ‘n' More. One of their secondary product lines were hot dogs, which were made of chicken meat. These meat products were underperforming in Raipur, and so Biraja decided to create a veg option. However, due to a lack of quality veg hot dog products in the Indian market, Biraja wasn't impressed and decided to import hot dogs instead, sourcing them from Malaysia. These hot dogs equated to a loss of ₹860 per kilo. Biraja sustained this loss for several years. By 2016, the business was still in a financially precarious position, owing between ₹18-20 lakh to various vendors. During this time, on any given day, Biggies Burger was ₹10,000 away from collapse, and when Biraja got married in 2016, he couldn't afford to buy a blazer. Biraja's fortunes finally turned when a master territory franchise was established and four franchisees paid their fees in rapid succession. Suddenly, Biraja and Biggies were out of debt. By the end of 2016, Biggies had 18 locations. In 2016, Sandeep Satpathy joined Biggies burger as a co-founder, along with Abilash Bellur, who had purchased the Electronic City location in 2013 as a franchisee. Abilash Bellur took on operations, Sandeep spearheaded business development, and Biraja focused on R&D. From 2016 onwards, the business was able to achieve financial stability. Biggies' parent company, Beamer Food and Beverages, also launched a new subsidiary brand, Bigguy's Wingery, to compete with KFC in the chicken QSR space. Today, Biggies has 124 locations, and is doing annualised revenue of ₹100 crore.

Book a free demo with Explorex here: https://share.hsforms.com/1wdxFNOxpQZ29F9MpD48e7Acyk5y Explorex's website: https://explorex.co/ Sohrab Sitaram began his career as a manager at Taj Hotels. In 2000, he started his first business, No Escape, a nightclub in Connaught Place, New Delhi. Over the next 14 years, he would go on to start numerous restaurants in multiple cities across India, including Tabularasa, Chi Kitchen & Bar, Shalom, and Italic. Then, in 2013, Sohrab Sitaram was approached by Agastya Dalmia and Aman Arora. This co-founder duo had been trying to revitalise the Keventers brand, which had been in the Dalmia family since 1940 when it was purchased by Ramkrishna Dalmia from the nephew of Edward Keventer, the original founder of Keventers. Edward Keventer had come from Sweden to India as a dairy technologist, and had started a successful dairy business soon after arriving in India. The brand soared to new heights after being acquired by Ramkrishna Dalmia, but when their main Chanakyapuri factory was shut down, the business languished. Ramkrishna Dalmia walked away from Keventers, and over the years, the brand dissolved into a handful of unofficial, unrecognised locations run by Keventers original distributors. In 2013, Agastya Dalmia and Aman Arora attempted to revitalise the brand, but without a solid strategy, their attempt failed. It wasn't until Sohrab Sitaram stepped in as a consultant, then partner and co-founder, that Keventers began to reclaim its forgotten success. Agastya Dalmia and Aman Arora had attempted to set up their first location in Pitampura, in Delhi, but Sohrab Sitaram recommended Select CITYWALK instead. At this premium location, Keventers saw a lot of footfall, and soon enough the brand was opening franchises in cities across India. Keventers expanded via a franchised business model. However, when the pandemic hit, many of Keventers' franchise owners couldn't sustain themselves. Many, about 70-75%, sold their franchises back to Keventers. Others turned to less honest methods, diluting ingredients in order to cut costs. This resulted in a lawsuit wherein one of their franchisees allegedly sold sub-standard milk products at a Keventers outlet. The judge didn't have good things to say about Keventers though, saying, “Keventers was no longer as good as it used to be,” and that their “products are not at all fit for consumption.” In subsequent years, Keventers has taken a company-owned business strategy to keep quality under control, and has also been expanding their menu to keep up with changing tastes. Apart from normal dairy milkshakes, Keventers now offers sundaes, hot chocolate, vegan dairy-free milkshakes, and they're also working on a line of offerings which have less sugar than their traditional milkshakes. Under the leadership of Sohrab Sitaram as CEO, Keventers has also expanded to Kenya, Dubai, Oman, and Abu Dhabi. Connect with us: Twitter: https://twitter.com/bwmillionaires/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/backstagewithmillionaires Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/backstagewithmillionaires/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@backstagewithmillionaires

Book a free demo with Explorex here: https://share.hsforms.com/1wdxFNOxpQZ29F9MpD48e7Acyk5y Explorex's website: https://explorex.co/ Mainak Sarkar and Pritam Khan started Eatables in 2016 while they were studying at IIT Kharagpur. This startup was their answer to a problem they had discovered while visiting restaurants in Kolkata, wherein many of the restaurant menus that they'd discover online while on campus at IIT Kharagpur were inaccurate and contained incorrect prices or items that were no longer available when they actually travelled to Kolkata. When Mainak Sarkar and Pritam Khan asked restaurants why this was happening, they were told that it would often take a week or two for restaurants to actually update their menus on Zomato. Mainak and Pritam saw this as an opportunity to build a platform which would enable restaurants to quickly and easily update their menus online. Sadly, their platform didn't see widespread adoption, with only 250 restaurants signing up and 10,000 lifetime downloads overall. They had hoped that if they relocated Eatables to Bengaluru, it would see more adoption, so Mainak dropped out of IIT Kharagpur in 2017 and shifted to Bengaluru. However, only 100 restaurants signed up. Mainak Sarkar and Pritam Khan were devastated. Their startup was failing. Towards the end of 2018, Mainak Sarkar and Pritam Khan decided that offering an app for restaurants to keep their online menus up-to-date wasn't working, and so they pivoted to providing restaurants with digital menus that their customers could scan with QR codes. However, in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and stopped Eatable in its tracks. Mainak Sarkar and Pritam Khan had basically been bootstrapping Eatable up until this point, having only raised a small FFF round. However, when the pandemic hit, Mainak asked his mentor for ₹15 lakh and was able to keep the startup alive even though all of Bengaluru's restaurants were shut. In 2020, Mainak and Pritam applied for Y Combinator for the third time. Their initial attempts had failed because they struggled to get through the interview round due to nerves. However, by their third attempt, they were able to crack the Y Combinator interview and got to be a part of YC's first remote cohort. Their pitch involved Mainak explaining how Eatable would build an ecosystem for restaurants, solving all of their problems with a single platform. This impressed the team at Y Combinator, and eventually Eatable was able to raise $150,000 from YC. Then, in August of 2020 Explorex raised an $850,000 seed round, bringing their total fundraise to $1M at the end of 2020. In 2021 when restaurants began opening back up again, Mainak and Pritam onboard three breweries in Bengaluru for their MVP, which consisted of an ordering and order management system. Their new customers loved Explorex, and the company realised that they had finally found product/market fit. In 2022, Explorex raised $5 million from angels like Kevin Lin, co-founder of Twitch, James Park, co-founder of Fitbit, and Taher Savliwala, co-founder of Relief Technologies. Today, Explorex powers more than 1,000 restaurants across 15 cities in India, including Easy Tiger, Forty Six Ounces, La Casa, Jook, ShakesBierre, Stories, Vapour, Fire Station, Fox In The Field, Cafe Azzure, Oia, and Tiger Tiger Brewhouse.

Learn more about Plivo here: https://www.plivo.com/ In this podcast, we sat down with Venky Balasubramanian to talk about the story of Plivo, a cloud communications platform that simplifies and personalises businesses' customer communications. Every kind of business, from startups to public companies, can benefit from Plivo's enterprise-grade communications platform, which includes a premium carrier network with connectivity in more than 190 countries, an API platform for messaging and voice calls, and solutions for sales and support teams. Venky Balasubramanian started Plivo in 2011 along with his co-founder Michael Ricordeau. Initially, Plivo was an open-source GitHub project, but after attending a developer conference in Chicago, the co-founder duo decided to commercialise their voice-based app communication framework. Initially, they applied for Y Combinator's Winter 2011 Batch, but were rejected. Venky emailed Paul Graham to ask why they had been rejected, and he said: 1. Venky B and Michael Ricordeau didn't have a lot of in-person co-founder experience; they had only met offline in Chicago at that conference, and 2. Plivo was a pre-revenue company. Venky Balasubramanian got to work proving to Paul Graham that he and Michael had what it took to succeed as a business, scoring Plivo's first customer and beginning to generate revenue. He also raised a pre-seed round from Morpheus, Seeders and One97 Mobility Fund, along with Vijay Shekhar Sharma. Following this, Plivo was accepted into Y Combinator's Summer 2012 batch, and counted companies like 9GAG, Boosted Boards, Coinbase, Soylent, and Zapier as its batchmates. Venky B clearly remembers seeing Coinbase's Brian Armstrong offering other Y Combinator founders bitcoins in exchange for signing up for Coinbase. By the time Plivo's time at Y Combinator was over, they were generating more revenue than most of their fellow startups, and were able to raise a $1.5M seed round from investors like YC, Battery Ventures, A16Z, and Qualcomm Ventures. This fundraise grabbed media attention and also solidified Plivo's reputation as a business with trustworthy, legitimate backers. In 2017, Plivo raised $8M in venture debt, rather than pursuing a Series A. While these funds did temporarily alter the startup's culture, Venky B and Michael Ricordeau were able to course-correct, saving the company from the high-burn trap many other SaaS businesses fall into. By raising debt instead of a Series A, Venky and Michael were also able to retain their equity in Plivo. Plivo has no plans to go public or sell, and are looking forward to growing Plivo's new offerings including Contacto and Sellular. Contacto is an omnichannel contact center that seamlessly combines your customer conversations and your existing systems, and Sellular is a modern sales platform built for Salesforce users. Both Contacto and Sellular have been internally funded by and set up within Plivo, but with siloed teams and goals which enable them to grow independently. Today Plivo has a team of 300, the company is fully remote across USA and India, they're profitable, and are bringing in somewhere between $50 to $100 million in annual revenue from customers across 190+ countries. They've also been profitable for 6.5 years! Stay updated on what's new at Plivo: Twitter — https://twitter.com/plivo Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/Plivo/ LinkedIn — https://in.linkedin.com/company/plivo-inc GitHub — https://github.com/plivo Connect with us: Twitter: https://twitter.com/bwmillionaires/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/backstagewithmillionaires Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/backstagewithmillionaires/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5rGPalovc6AKsfbOyjh32p

In this episode of the Backstage With Millionaires podcast, we sit down with Awis Ahmed, founder of Pixxel, to discuss his entrepreneurial journey. 00:00:00 Intro 00:02:41 Building the pod 00:06:25 Working at SpaceX 00:07:31 Why Awais chose asteroid mining 00:14:11 Why no one got into hyperspectral commercial space 00:22:23 Raising funds to build a satellite 00:32:58 Building the first satellite 00:43:54 Raising funds during the pandemic 00:49:41 How Pixxel generates revenue 00:50:21 Launching the satellite 1:09:58 Outro Pixxel is a space data company building a constellation of the world's highest-resolution hyperspectral earth imaging satellites and the analytical tools to mine insights from the data. The images gathered by Pixxel's satellites will provide global coverage every 24 hours and help detect, monitor, and predict global phenomena across agriculture, mining, environment, and energy use cases. About Awais Ahmed: Awais Ahmed started his professional journey at HAL (Hindustan Aeronautics Limited), as a research intern. Around the same time in 2016, he was also the founder member and engineering lead at Hyperloop India. He started Pixxel in 2019.

Download the OctaFX Trading App at https://bit.ly/OctaFX_Backstage100 and get 5,000 USD on your demo account! Enter promo code - BACKSTAGE100 and double your deposit!

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In this episode of the Backstage With Millionaires podcast, Caleb Friesen sits with Akshay Singhal, founder, and CEO of Log9 Materials, to discuss his entrepreneurial journey. 00:00 - Intro 03:10 - Inefficiencies in Fuel-Cells 05:01 - Disruption during the Pandemic 06:52 - Idea for Corona Oven 14:58 - Getting Back Stronger 28:30 - Tech Behind Log9 Efficiency 33:06 - Log9's Market Share 34:25 - Transition to two-wheeler Batteries 38:51 - Concept of Day Zero 42:42 - Outro Akshay Singhal started his entrepreneurial journey in 2015 when he started Log9 Materials, to develop India's first commercial application of Graphene. Currently, Log 9 Materials is using its core competence in Graphene nanotechnology to develop advanced energy storage technologies from the synthesis of electrode materials, and cell fabrication to pack assembly. Their rapid charging battery packs solve the challenges in adoption for the two-wheeler and three-wheeler electric vehicle platforms while their Aluminum Fuel Cell technology is targeted towards the electrification of long haul, heavier vehicles. Log9 currently has a 20% market share in the three-wheeler battery segment and going ahead they are planning to enter into bus and truck segment as well. Till now, Log9 Materials has raised over $50 Million in funding. Connect with us: Twitter: https://twitter.com/bwmillionaires/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/backstagewithmillionaires/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/backstagewithmillionaires/ Discord: https://discord.gg/XySGGhXKep Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5rGPalovc6AKsfbOyjh32p#startup #entrepreneur #ev

In this episode of Backstage With Millionaires podcast, Caleb Friesen sits with Abhishek Nayak, founder and CEO of Appsmith, to discuss his entrepreneurial journey. Abhishek started his entrepreneurial journey in 2011, when he built 'GharPay', a platform to let e-commerce companies collect cash payments. He then started 'Clink', a product in the transaction marketing space with the Gharpay team and investors. After Ezetap acquired Clink, Abhishek worked as director of products at Ezetap before moving on to his next venture. He started 'Wise' in 2015, a hardware startup, where their team built two products, but couldn't find a product-market fit, and hence pivoted to an AI started called Bicycle AI. Bicycle AI applied deep learning and machine learning to automate customer service for companies. The team saw success there but had issues with the working on AI and hence shut it down. Abhishek started Appsmith in 2019, an open source project that makes it easy to build and maintain custom internal business tools. It has since raised over $51 Million, and is currently valued at over $250 Million. Appsmith currently has a team of 140, and their clients are present in every country on the globe. Connect with us: Twitter: https://twitter.com/bwmillionaires/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/backstagewithmillionaires/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/backstagewithmillionaires/ Discord: https://discord.gg/XySGGhXKepSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5rGPalovc6AKsfbOyjh32p #startup #entrepreneur #saas

In this episode of Backstage With Millionaires podcast, Caleb Friesen sits with Tushar Vashisht, founder and CEO of Healthifyme, to discuss his entrepreneurial journey. 00:00 - Intro 02:21 - Time at Aadhaar 04:26 - 100 Rs a day experiment 08:00 - Seed for Healthifyme 10:40 - Early days of company 11:58 - Sponsored Segment 13:06 - Initial Money to start 13:49 - Moving To Bangalore 14:55 - Raising Angel Round 17:20 - Meeting co-founder 20:58 - Running out of money 26:18 - $1 Mn Seed Round 30:18 - Goa Saga 33:02 - Pivot to AI 37:32 - Growth during COVID 41:02 - 1 Billion dreams 44:28 - Outro Tushar started his professional career as an analyst at Deutsche Bank. He returned to India to work on an ambitious government project of Aadhar in 2010. He started Healthifyme in 2011 as a project to help people to keep track of their calories. Since then, HealthifyMe has served over 30 Million users and is now present in over 5 countries worldwide. Tushar and his team have an ambitious goal of helping to 1 Billion people on their journey to being fit. Connect with us: Twitter: https://twitter.com/bwmillionaires/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/backstagewithmillionaires/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/backstagewithmillionaires/ Discord: https://discord.gg/XySGGhXKepSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5rGPalovc6AKsfbOyjh32p #startup #entrepreneur #health

In this episode of Backstage With Millionaires podcast, Caleb Friesen sits with Rajiv Srivatsa, Partner and Investor at Antler India, to discuss his professional journey. 00:00 - Intro 02:13 - Leaving Urbanladder 03:27 - Moving on to Antler 09:42 - How Antler India started? 15:04 - Meeting co-founder(s) 16:46 - How to start a VC firm? 21:39 - Antler's Business Model 26:38 - Founder Hat to Investor Hat 28:33 - Antler India's sectoral focus 30:27 - India: Building for the world 34:01 - Being flexible as an investor 37:10 - Future plans Rajiv Srivatsa started his professional career with corporate roles in companies like Infosys, Congizant and Yahoo. He started Urbanladder in 2012 with his IIMB batchmate Ashish Goel and ran it for almost 7 years. At it's peak company was valued at over 1 Billion dollars. In 2019, Urbanladder was acquired by Reliance and Rajiv moved on to his next adventure. During this time he was approached by Antler Global team to start Antler in India and Rajiv along with his co-founder Nitin, started Antler India in June of 2020. Antler India partners with early-stage founders to build scalable startups, by guiding them through the entire process from inception to raising a Series A. They offer a stipend of Rs 1 lakh and a pre-seed fund after 10 weeks for selected startups. Rajiv's plan for the near future is to strengthen entrepreneurship in India through Antler, and he feels startups are the way for our country to progress. Connect with us: Twitter: https://twitter.com/bwmillionaires/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/backstagewithmillionaires/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/backstagewithmillionaires/ Discord: https://discord.gg/XySGGhXKepPodcast: https://anchor.fm/bwmillionaires #startup #entrepreneur #antlerindia

Download the OctaFX Trading App at https://bit.ly/OctaFX_Backstage100 and get 5,000 USD on your demo account! Enter promo code - BACKSTAGE100 and double your deposit!

In this episode of the Backstage With Millionaire Podcast, Caleb and Pankaj sit with Riten Debnath of Fueler.io to discuss his journey of building his startup, Fueler. Fueler is an online platform to help you showcase your work on the internet. It's like Github but for Generalist individuals.

Permissionless, a deep-tech startup founded by Roshan Vadassery, is building open-source public infrastructure on the internet. Backed by ex-General Partner a16z Balaji Srinivasan, their viral Gen Z startup culture is attracting some of the brightest minds in India. Check out Permissionless here: https://prmsnls.xyz/ Roshan Vadassery's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roshan-vadassery-951708138/ Roshan Vadassery's Twitter: https://twitter.com/roshanvadassery Merch: https://merchter.com/stores/backstage-with-millionaires Twitter: https://twitter.com/bwmillionaires/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/backstagewithmillionaires/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/backstagewithmillionaires/ Audio Podcast: https://anchor.fm/bwmillionaires

Will Poole started Capria Fund as a fund-of-funds, with a network of more than 15 managers and a collective AUM of more than $1 billion and presence in the leading tech hotspots in Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and India. Capria's second fund is structured as a conventional venture fund, investing in individual early-growth startups selected from the 350-company portfolio of their partners across the global south. Will Poole first came to India in 2003, leading Microsoft's Windows global expansion. This experience opened his eyes to the potential of the Indian market as a startup ecosystem and tech hotspot. In 2009 he became an investor and co-chair of innovative education startup Vidyanext Learning, and helped them to establish dozens of Vidyanext learning centers in Bengaluru and Gurugram. Following this he established Unitus Ventures in Bengaluru in 2012 to support early-stage tech startups with India scale and global potential. Then in 2015 he founded Capria Ventures as a financial services innovator. Capria invests in and alongside leading emerging managers in emerging markets, and also manages Unitus Ventures. Unitus Ventures: https://unitus.vc/ Unitus Ventures Resources/Articles: https://unitus.vc/resources/ Capria Ventures: https://capria.vc/ Capria Ventures Resources/Updates: https://capria.vc/updates/ Media Handles: BwM: https://www.youtube.com/@BackstageWithMillionaires BwM Uncut: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpVR5rkBD9baBcrgaI5zJjA Twitter: https://twitter.com/bwmillionaires/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/backstagewithmillionaires/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/backstagewithmillionaires/ Discord: https://discord.gg/XySGGhXKep Follow Backstage with Millionaires to remain updated with our latest developments.

In this episode of Backstage With Millionaires, Caleb discusses ONDC with founders of Gogappi, Arvind Sekhar and Samhitha Kotaamasu, one of India's first ONDC buyer apps. Gogappi is one of the first startups on ONDC. ONDC is short for Open Network for Digital Commerce, it is an initiative by the government of India to promote an open network for exchange of goods and services over the Internet. This basically means that the government is trying to create a level playing field for all the small business owners in India. ONDC is promising same power and features to these small owners that big e-commerce companies like Flipkart and Amazon have. ONDC can be a game changer for these small businesses as now you won't have to pay anything to reach all these customers. All you have to do is list yourself with ONDC and customers across the country can find you from any application of their choice. The government has compared this with ‘hypertext transfer protocol for information exchange over the internet' where you could reach millions of customers without spending anything. Next big issue right now for D2C brands is efficient inventory management. ONDC promises to solve this by standardizing operations like cataloging, inventory management, order management and order fulfillment. This would mean that as a small seller, you could use any ONDC compatible application and you don't have to worry about managing everything on your own. It will be interesting to see how ONDC unfolds in India. An open network for doing business will certainly give confidence to millions of retailers and small brand owners to come online and do business and we could see thousands of unicorns in the future just from taking this direct-to-customer approach. However, we as buyers have become very comfortable and spoiled with the services provided by these e-commerce giants, from order tracking to return and refund, we tend to get aggrieved with every small issue we face. And this would be a challenge for ONDC to solve.

We tried ONDC. Here's how it went. Twitter: https://twitter.com/bwmillionaires/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/backstagewithmillionaires/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/backstagewithmillionaires/ Discord: https://discord.gg/XySGGhXKep Podcast: https://anchor.fm/bwmillionaires

Rahm Shastry is a serial entrepreneur from Bengaluru and the Silicon Valley. He is also an active angel investor who helps companies with his vision and business strategies. He talks about his journey, DriveU's growth, his exit form TaxiForSure, and unit economics. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On today's episode: 00:00 Intro 00:52 DriveU's background 02:23 Who is Rahm Shastry? 03:23 A life changing advice 05:07 Entrepreneurial journey 08:50 The network effect 09:07 How did TaxiForSure happen? 10:23 What kind of investor is Rahm? 11:09 Cab situation back then 12:44 TaxiForSure VS Ola 13:23 DriveU's beginning 15:56 DriveU's journey 18:10 VC's toxic culture 20:07 DriveU's first investment 22:23 Unit economics 24:08 Smooth sailing? 25:57 A near-death experience 27:33 Genius move 28:16 Pivot point 29:46 DriveU's efforts for it's drivers 32:05 Covid consequences & tackle points 37:00 Unicorn culture 42:39 Outro ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Links- Merch: https://merchter.com/stores/backstage-with-millionairesPodcast on Ola Electric and Bhavish Aggarwal: https://youtu.be/GyAdwp0OhR8Twitter: https://twitter.com/bwmillionaires/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/backstagewithmillionaires/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/backstagewithmillionaires/ Audio Podcast: https://anchor.fm/bwmillionaires Enjoy the content! ;) #bwm #startup #startuppodcast

Check out BWM's Merch: https://merchter.com/stores/backstage-with-millionaires Our Podcast on Ola Electric and Bhavish Aggarwal: https://youtu.be/GyAdwp0OhR8 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This week in Indian Startup News: BYJU'S shut down their Kerala office, 900+ restaurants opted out from Swiggy Dineout, Ola Electric has launched its third e-scooter Ola S1 Air and Uber Pilots EV Rides In Delhi-NCR. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ BYJU'S shut down their Kerala office: 1. Aggrieved BYJU'S employees also met Kerala Labour Minister V Sivankutty, who said that a probe would be ordered into the matter. 2. BYJU's blames the ‘ongoing organisational restructuring for profitable growth' and redundancy behind the closure of Trivandrum office. 3. This comes nearly a week after BYJU's announced plans to layoff 2,500 employees across verticals including product, content, media, and technology. 900+ restaurants opted out from Swiggy Dineout: 1. Recently, The National Restaurants Association of India (NRAI) asked restaurants to pull out of Swiggy Dineout as it believes that Swiggy is exploiting the restaurants. 2. The NRAI said that Swiggy's discounts are affecting the dine-in restaurants heavily and ‘popularising a dangerous culture of discounting that will be irreversible'. 3. As a result, more than 900 restaurants have opted out from Dineout. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Funding this week: This week at least 13 Indian Startups raised more than $1 Million, in total raising $450 Mn. These are the top three- 1. SiMa.ai raised $37 Million 2. Devtron raised $12 Mn 3. BluSapphire raised $9 Million ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quick Updates: Ola Electric launches a new EV: 1. Ola Electric will start delivering S1 Air scooter in April 2023. 2. The scooter will include a 4.5 kW hub motor that will enable it to reach a peak speed of 85 kmph. 3. Besides a new scooter, Ola Electric has announced the launch of its new software upgrade dubbed Move OS3. Uber Pilots EV Rides In Delhi-NCR: 1. Currently, EV cabs are only available for pre-scheduled trips, and users have to ‘reserve' a ride on the Uber app. 2. Uber is offering the service to support the Indian government's target to reduce 45% emission by 2030. 3. The cab aggregator is reportedly launching two-wheeler and three-wheeler electric vehicles in other parts of the country in the next few months. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Media Handles: Twitter: https://twitter.com/bwmillionaires/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/backstagewithmillionaires/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/backstagewithmillionaires/ Follow Backstage with Millionaires to remain updated with our latest developments. #startup #news #byjus

In this third episode of Backstage With Millionaires podcast, Caleb and Pankaj talk about recent controversy on Ola's toxic work culture. Bloomberg in a recent article, talked about several instances where Bhavish Aggarwal, founder and CEO of Ola, behaved in a manner which could be termed as 'toxic'. During one of the instances, "When Bhavish Aggarwal arrived for a recent visit at the Ola Futurefactory, marketed as the world's largest electric two-wheeler plant, the company's founder was quick to spot a shuttered entryway that should have been left open. He immediately summoned a custodial manager, people who were present said, and meted out a punishment: run three laps around the several-acre-large plant." Other than this, we also talk about whether Bhavish can turn things around for Ola and become India's answer to Elon Musk.

This week in Indian Startup News: Ola Employees reveal hostile work culture, BYJU'S raises $250 Mn, Karnataka HC Allows Ola, Uber, Rapido To Continue Auto Services and Flipkart launched Flipverse. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 00:00 Introduction 00:06 Ola Employees reveal hostile work culture 01:27 BYJU'S raises $250 Mn 02:50 Bird's Eye Segment 03:48 Karnataka HC Allows Ola, Uber, Rapido To Continue Auto Services 04:07 Flipkart launched Flipverse ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ola Employees reveal hostile work culture: 1. The current and former employees of Ola electric have referred to the company's work culture as “Hostile”. They have also revealed that Bhavish Agarwal's attitude towards his employees is worrying. 2. Some instances of this mistreatment include ripping a report that an employee wrote in half, because he forgot to include page numbers, shouting at people in the office because he wasn't satisfied with the quality of the paper, and sometimes referring to teams within the company as “useless”. 3. Addressing this issue, Bhavish said that not everyone is fit for the company's work culture. He doesn't want an easy journey for either himself or for Ola. BYJU'S raises $250 Mn: 1. BYJU's was looking to raise somewhere around 500 million dollars to 700 million dollars. So, the 250 million dollars round seems a bit low when compared to what they were targeting. 2. BYJU'S CEO Byju Raveendran also made a statement that the company's unit economics works and they are targeting profitability by the end of the ongoing financial year 2022-23. 3. To make this happen they will be taking a three-pronged approach and the focus on international markets will also be increased. They have consolidated their K-10 companies into a single business unit. Whereas Akash and Great learning will be operating separately. Funding this week: This week at least 13 Indian Startups raised more than $1 Million, in total raising $450 Mn. These are the top three- 1. BYJU'S raised $250 Million 2. Ather Energy raised $50 Mn 3. Progcap raised $50 Million Karnataka HC Allows Ola, Uber, Rapido To Continue Auto Services: 1. The Karnataka high court allowed Ola, Uber and Rapido to continue their auto services until the state government fixes their fares. 2. Apart from 5% GST, they can also charge users 10% of the base fare as convenience fee. 3. This is just a temporary direction until the government comes up with some fair set of rules and regulations and new base fares. Flipkart launched Flipverse: 1. Flipverse is an online shop where Flipkart's users will be able to buy products inside the metaverse. And this feature can be accessed literally by any of you guys right from the Flipkart app. 2. All you need to do is open Flipkart, navigate to Categories and tap on Firedrops. And you will enter the Flipverse.

00:00 - Intro 00:30 - What's going wrong? 03:33 - Blinkit Deal 06:33 - Why are restaurants unhappy? 08:33 - What does Zomato have to say? When Zomato went public last year, it was considered as the biggest startup IPO in the Indian market. Its valuation was just around $5 Billion before going public, and they were targeting a valuation of over $8 Billion post IPO. And that did happen, honestly. Zomato's IPO was super-successful. Their investors made 65% gains on listing day itself. Overall, the IPO was oversubscribed by 38 times. But a year since, Zomato's stock price is down more than 50% from their listing price and there is question that can Zomato become profitable ever? Zomato's acquisition of Blinkit came with a lot of confusion and panic for investors, and following the acquisition, Zomato lost 25 percent of its value in just 4 days. Zomato acquired Blinkit as this acquisition was considered a natural extension of Zomato's core business, food delivery and that it will also bring synergies, increase the addressable market and the potential profit pool and also make the business more defensible. But Zomato paid a massive 3000 crores on top of Blinkit's actual value. More than 1100 crores was the loan given by Zomato to Blinkit and 1800 crore Rs is what Zomato will be spending on Blinkit to cover it's losses in next few years. This changed the sentiment among public for Zomato and the company has struggled on stock market ever since. Another issue for Zomato is that their core business of food delivery doesn't seem sustainable. If we take a look at Zomato's competitors on global scale, none of the companies have made profits from delivering food alone and that is one of the reasons why Zomato is now eyeing grocery delivery and other sectors to expand into. And lastly, restaurants aren't really happy with Zomato as well. Here's a quote directly from Jubilant, the parent company of Domino's: “In case of an increase in commission rates, Jubilant will consider shifting more of its businesses from online restaurant platforms to the in-house ordering system." Zomato now is focusing heavily on profitability. The company's CEO Deepinder Goyal has said categorically that they're gonna be focusing on profitability moving forward. This is a huge pivot for them, because up until very recently they were pretty comfortable burning through tons of money, but now Deepinder has actually speculated that their core business might be profitable in about a year. These potential profits are also intended to be stable, and long-term - this isn't a one-year strategy, this is Zomato attempting to permanently be in the black. Their strategy here involves 3 key business lines: food delivery, quick commerce through Blinkit, and Hyperpure, and in case you're not familiar with Hyperpure, this is actually a potentially game-changing business for Zomato. It's a platform whereby Zomato provides fresh, hygienic, high quality ingredients to restaurants, and it's growing pretty fast. It will be very interesting to track Zomato's story from hereon and see wheather it can turn around things for itself?

In this second episode of BWM Podcast, Caleb and Pankaj discuss current situation at BYJU's and their future plan of going global. BYJU's recently revealed their numbers for FY-21 and it's revenue from operations barely grew 4% to Rs 2280 crore in FY21 from Rs 2,189 crore in the previous fiscal year (FY20). However, the company's losses ballooned 14.9X to Rs 4,564 crore during the same period. After this announcement, BYJU's fired 2500 of it's employees and announced a plan to become profitable by March 2023. According to Divya Gokulnath, co-founder of Byju, the company will start concentrating on establishing brand awareness abroad through new collaborations and hire 10,000 teachers for both its Indian and international operations. "We have designed a path to profitability which we plan to achieve by March 2023. We have built significant brand awareness throughout India and there is scope to optimise marketing budget and prioritise the spends in a way that it creates a global footprint. Second is operational cost and the third is integration of multiple business units," Gokulnath said. Along with this, company is now looking at global markets like US, South America and Europe. In this direction, BYJU's has acquired rights to become principal sponsor of FIFA World Cup 2023.

Check out BWM's Merch - https://merchter.com/stores/backstage-with-millionaires This week in Indian Startup News: Karnataka government bans Ola, Uber and Rapido Auto, Byju's are going to layoff 2,500 employees, RBI to soon pilot Digital Rupee ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Karnataka government bans Ola, Uber and Rapido Auto: 1. The transport department of Karnataka issued a notice to Ola, Uber and Rapido following complaints about them over charging customers 2. The companies have been accused of charging higher than prescribed fares for auto rides, and the department has sought a compliance report from them 3. The notice stated: "The cab-aggregator apps are in violation of the Karnataka On-Demand Transportation Technology Aggregators Rules, 2016 by running auto services" Byju's are going to layoff 2,500 employees: 1. Byju's said that it has laid off 2,500 employees to its piling up control losses. 2. Byju's will also be consolidating its K-10 acquired businesses such as Toppr, HashLearn, Scholar, among others, into one business unit. Funding this week: This week at least 6 Indian Startups raised more than $1 Million, in total raising $328 Mn. These are the top three- 1. Adda247 raised $35 Million 2. Pillow raised $18 Mn 3. Good Health Company raised 10 Million RBI to soon pilot Digital Ruppee 1. On 7th of Ocotber, the RBI released a concept note for Digital note. 2. On the concept note, the RBI said that it aims to create awareness about digital currencies in general and the planned features of the digital rupee 3. The RBI said that the main motivation for exploring the issuance of CBDC in India is the reduction in operational costs involved in physical cash management Quick Update: Dhoni invests in a plat-based meat startup! 1. MS Dhoni has invested an undisclosed amount of equity funding in plant-based meat startup Shaka Harry. 2. Shaka Harry will form a partnership with Dhoni to expand customer reach and introduce new product offerings. 3. The startup said it is currently serving 30,000+ customers across 10 cities on a monthly basis ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Media Handles: Twitter: https://twitter.com/bwmillionaires/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/backstagewithmillionaires/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/backstagewithmillionaires/ Discord: https://discord.gg/XySGGhXKep Podcast: https://anchor.fm/bwmillionaires Follow Backstage with Millionaires to remain updated with our latest developments.

In this first episode of our new 'Unnamed' podcast, Caleb and Pankaj discuss the impact of UPI going Global. UPI (Unified Payments Interface) is an instant real-time payment system developed by National Payments Corporation of India. The interface facilitates inter-bank peer-to-peer and person-to-merchant transactions. Currently, more than 15 countries have either adopted or are in process of adopting UPI. These include Singapore, Malaysia, France, Japan and Oman. Recently because of ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, many of Russian banks were removed from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a financial system that enables seamless and speedy transmission of money across borders. This has resulted in Russian banks losing access to quick and easy transactions offered by SWIFT, causing payments for its agricultural and energy exports to be disrupted. Now that banks had to communicate directly with one another, there were delays and additional expenses, which ultimately impacted the Russian government's finances. According to estimates, the Russian economy is thought to have lost 10-15% of its GDP due to the SWIFT ban. The embargo also targeted $630 billion in Russian foreign exchange reserves. This has started discussion that could their be alternative to SWIFT and if UPI can be that option. Other important reason that India sees for the use of UPI is, Remittances. India receives more remittances than any other country in the world. In 2021 alone, the country received more than $87 billion in remittances. So, if in future, India is excluded from the SWIFT network, it would heavily impact Indians sending money back home.

This week in Indian Startup News: UPI is off to International markets, ONDC launches its Beta tests!, Meesho crosses Amazon in festive sale orders. UPI is off to International markets: 1. On 3rd of April, 2020, the NPCI registered a subsidiary company called NPCI International Payments Limited (NIPL) with a motive to make UPI an internationally accepted and used payments service. The NIPL's primary focus is to make UPI and RuPay as widely accepted as possible and it seems like they are on the right track in doing so. 2. A lot of countries across the globe have already adopted UPI as an accepted form of payment in their country. These include Singapore, France, UAE, The UK, Russia, Nepal, and all of the other countries that you are seeing on your screen. And on top of this, NPCI International is also in talks with 30 more countries for the adoption of UPI in which 3 have already signed MoU regarding the same. ONDC launches beta tests!: 1. ONDC's is not yet available in every city or pan-India as it is still in its pilot stage but the beta tests which launched on 30th September, 2022 are currently live in 86 cities which include cities like Bengaluru, Delhi, Bhopal and Lucknow. 2. The first app that went live on ONDC was Paytm Mall. This also means that almost all Bengaluru-based users can now order products online from various sellers that are listed on the ONDC via the Paytm app. Funding this week: This week at least 6 Indian Startups raised more than $1 Million, in total raising $328 Mn. These are the top three- 1. Meesho raised $192 Million 2. Euler motors raised $60 Mn 3. Byju's raised $49 Million Quick Update: Meesho beats Amazon in festive order volumes! 1. Flipkart continues to lead the festive season sale with an order sale share of whopping 49%. But, for a change the second spot is now held by Meesho instead of Amazon with a sale share of 21%. 2. Now, this data is only for the first week so there's a chance that Amazon can catch up in the coming weeks but it's interesting to see that what has always been an Amazon vs Flipkart fight is now witnessing a third player, Meesho.

This week in Indian Startup News: Swiggy will soon start the pilots for middle-mile drone deliveries, Flipkart will reportedly enter Metaverse with the launch of "Flipverse", Mahindra Logistics acquired Rivigo for an undisclosed amount. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 00:00 Introduction 00:13 Swiggy pilots middle mile drone deliveries 02:07 Flipkart will reportedly enter the Metaverse 03:12 Bird's Eye Segment 05:18 Sponsored Segment 06:56 Mahindra Logistics acquires Rivigo ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Swiggy will soon start pilots for middle-mile drone deliveries: 1. The flight corridors have been approved by the government: Swiggy CTO Dale Vaz 2. Customer-directed drone deliveries could involve fraud, and safety constraints while the middle-mile opportunity is insulated from such challenges. Flipkart will reportedly enter Metaverse with the launch of "Flipverse": 1.Flipkart has reportedly partnered with social media giant Meta and Ethereum Layer-2 scaling startup Polygon for the project. 2. Flipkart will likely announce the Metaverse offering during the ongoing ‘Big Billion Day Sales' and launch the project around Diwali. 3. Flipverse is expected to deploy Web3.0 technologies to elevate current 2D user experience to include virtual reality and other interactive features. Funding this week: This week at least 10 Indian Startups raised more than $1 Million, in total raising $99 Mn. These are the top three- 1. Unravel Data raised $50 Million 2. Elucidata raised $16 Mn 3. Saveo raised $21 Million Quick Update: Mahindra Logistics has acquired Rivigo for an undisclosed amount.

This week in Indian Startup News, OYO has filed for an IPO, UPI can now be used in credit cards too, ONDC beta testing to begin soon, Co-founder of Zepto, recently emerged as the youngest Indian to have a net worth of over Rs 1,000 crore in a survey. 00:12 Introduction 02:37 OYO filed for an IPO 03:50 UPI can now be linked to Credit Card 03:53 Sponsored Segment 04:57 Bird's Eye Segment 07:12 Quick Updates OYO has become EBITDA positive for the first time since its registration in 2012. The company saw its EBITDA margins rise to +0.5% in quarter 1 of FY23 from -9% in FY22. This is because they have managed to cut off a lot of expenses. The narrowing of losses has also prompted OYO to file fresh documents for its IPO with SEBI. It's a speculation that they are looking to go public at the end of October, somewhere around Diwali. RuPay credit cards can now be linked to UPI! Yes, you heard right, now you can use your RuPay credit card to do UPI transactions. Well, this is just a pilot as of now, and hence, has only been launched for customers of Punjab National Bank, Union Bank of India, and Indian Bank. The pilot phase will be centered on extracting ‘actionable learnings' from the operations. The project will be scaled up with time to include other banks and to increase usage. Funding this week: This week at least 10 Indian Startups raised more than $1 Million, in total raising $161 Mn. Zopper raised $75 Million Bhanzu raised $15 Mn Join Venture raised $23.5 Million Urban Company FY22 Loss Widens 2X To INR 514 Cr but the Operating Revenue increases upto 77%. 19 yr old Kaivalya Vohra, the co-founder of Zepto, recently emerged as the youngest Indian to have a net worth of over Rs 1,000 crore in a survey.

In the first and second part of ‘How Bengaluru became India's Silicon Valley', we discussed the journey from Bengaluru's early history, to setting up of Indian Institute of Science, and then finally the post dot-com bubble burst scene. In this video, we take a look at how Amazon's arrival into India changed Bengaluru's entrepreneurship scene forever. Amazon hired best talent in India and focussed obsessively on customer satisfaction, and this was adopted by two of it's employees, Sachin and Binny Bansal with their own E-commerce startup, Flipkart. A month before Flipkart was started, Infibeam launched their own Amazon-inspired e-commerce platform. The company's founder, Vishal Mehta, had been working for Amazon in Seattle for 5 years before moving back to India in 2007 after realising that Amazon had put their plans to launch in India on hold. Meanwhile, Binny and Sachin were struggling financially. They'd approached Sequoia, Matrix Partners, IDG Ventures, Nexus Venture Partners, but without any luck. In 2010 when Flipkart raised their headline-grabbing Series B, but they weren't the only game in town. Fabmart.com had been around since 1999, and by 2010, they had rebranded to indiaplaza.com and then there was also Myntra as well. Then, in Mumbai, Flipkart had an indirect competitor in eBay India, and there was also Naaptol, which is still around to this day. In 2010, Flipkart's real competition wasn't in Ahmedabad or Bengaluru - it was in NCR, where a number of companies were vying for a piece of the e-commerce pie. One of the earliest was Snapdeal, which got its start in 2008 as a coupon service in Delhi called MoneySaver, which was pivoted into Snapdeal in 2010, and at that time they weren't selling products, they were selling discounts, so they weren't a huge threat yet. Besides Snapdeal, you also had Homeshop18LIST starting out in 2008 in Noida, Letsbuy came onto the scene in 2009 as eTree Marketing in Gurugram and was selling items like mobile phones, cameras, laptops and home appliances, and then in 2011, Gurugram-based startups like Jabong and Shopclues appeared too. Jeff Bezos was excited by the burst of e-commerce activity in India, and finally decided to put their limited presence in Bengaluru to good use. But instead of trying to re-enter India under their own name, Amazon instead approached Flipkart in 2011 to talk about a potential acquisition13, and in response, Sachin Bansal told Amazon that he would only sell at a 1 billion dollar valuation. This deal didn't happen and Flipkart ended up raising 20 million dollars from Tiger Global, this was their Series C round, later on in 2011, at a 200 million dollar valuation. This was the single-biggest round of funding secured by an e-commerce startup in India. Flipkart would go on to raise 150 million dollars in their Series D round, then 200 million, then 160 million, then 210 million, and then a billion dollar Series G round in 2014. And they weren't the only ones raking in the capital here - in 2014, Snapdeal raised a massive round too: 600 million dollars from Softbank, and this is just e-commerce we're talking about here. There were multiple other industries being fought over by startups at around this time, like Ola and TaxiForSure, both of which were based in Bengaluru, and then Uber showed up, with Bengaluru being its first city as well. And then towards the end of 2014 and into 2015, India saw its first startup food fight, where companies like FoodPanda, TinyOwl, Swiggy, and Zomato raised hundreds of millions of dollars to capture India's food delivery space.

In this video, we take a look at top 10 startups based out of the city of Pune. CHAPTERS: 0:00 Intro 1:30 Noccarc Robotics 2:37 EventBeep 3:33 Pariksha 4:29 Bamboo India 5:27 Repos Energy 6:48 Haber 7:56 RoadBounce 8:56 Fittr 9:55 Moonshine 10:48 Biddano 1. Noccarc Robotics: Noccarc invented a solar panel cleaning machine that doesn't use water and is fully automated. They were off to a really great start as a company - they raised a $1.6 million seed round from the Indian Angel Network. 2. EventBeep: The goal here is for this app, Beep, to be a student's all-in-one app: students can also see nearby events, they can get notifications from the college they're attending, participate in live quizzes, get a student credit card and exclusive cashbacks, find out about workshops and sporting events, and just generally feel more connected with their college and friends. 3. Pariksha: India's largest vernacular edtech platform, and the name of the company is actually the Hindi word for exam, and what sets Pariksha apart from other edtech startups is their focus on vernacular exams. They actually focuses on another customer segment, the kids who don't have a lot of money, who come from smaller towns, have a harder time sourcing these prep materials, AND aren't fluent in languages like English or Hindi. 4. Bamboo India: Bamboo India is disrupting this 500 crore rupee market in a big way - they've already sold upwards of 4 million toothbrushes to customers in 18 countries, and are currently manufacturing upwards of 50,000 new bamboo toothbrushes every single day in their Pune manufacturing plant. 5. Repos Energy: I can describe their startup is that, just like Zomato and Swiggy deliver food, and Zepto and Blinkit deliver groceries, Repos Energy delivers fuel, and they got off to a great start: in 2019 Ratan Tata agreed to invest an undisclosed amount into the startup as an angel investor, and also became a strategic partner - Repos has now tie up with Tata Motors to make and market fuel trucks with built-in pumps. 6. Haber: Haber built a robot, eLIXA, which is able to collect data using a variety of different sensors, and then it's able to react to that data in real-time using AI and machine learning - another way of putting it is that eLIXA is to the manufacturing industry what autonomous vehicles are to the automotive industry, but unlike modern autonomous cars which typically still need to have a driver present in case the AI makes a mistake, eLIXA is completely automated, there's no human intervention required whatsoever. 7. RoadBounce: The RoadBounce app records the quality of the road in real time. Now this is nice and all, but how does RoadBounce actually generate revenue? Well, as I mentioned earlier, it's primarily a B2G company, business to government. By purchasing the data that RoadBounce collects, contractors and government agencies can make data-driven decisions as they build or repair roads. 8. Fittr: Fittr makes you fitter - they do this with their app's free diet and training tips, and some premium paid features like personalised guidance, customised fitness and nutrition plans, and weekly check-ups from the company's in-house coaches. 9. Moonshine: Moonshine Meadery, there actually aren't any mead brands in Asia, let alone India, so it is a very new type of drink for this market, but in spite of that, they were able to raise a seed round in September of 2018. They tried to raise more capital on Shark Tank India, and while they did get offers from the investors on that show, nobody could agree on a valuation so these deals all fell through. 10. Biddano: Biddano acts as a middle-man between medical supply distributors and the pharmacies and hospitals that wanna buy these medical supplies.

This week in Indian Startup News, Instant Grocery Delivery startups extend their delivery time, Byju's losses pile up, ONDC beta testing to begin soon, Lido learning files for bankruptcy. 00:00 Introduction 00:30 Instant Grocery Delivery startups extend their delivery time 03:33 Byju's losses pile up 04:30 Bird's Eye Segment 06:13 ONDC beta testing to begin soon 06:38 Lido learning files for bankruptcy 06:50 Sponsored Segment 08:15 BWM Update Instant Grocery Delivery startups extend their delivery time: Zepto, Dunzo, Blinkit and Swiggy Instamart are now testing pilots for late night deliveries. These pilots are only available for selected markets in cities like Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Delhi, Pune, Mumbai and Chennai. They are doing this mainly because Indian customers tend to stay up late, and when they stay up late, they tend to order snacks and other eatables in the night. This would give extra business to these companies. Byju's losses pile up: Byju's, world's biggest ed-tech company, has posted their financials a couple of days ago after delaying it for almost an year; and it's not looking good. They reported a loss of 576 million dollars in FY21 from 29 million dollars in FY20, that's a massive increase of 1,880% or 19.8X. Company's total revenue declined by 3.3% from 315 million dollars to 305 million dollars. The main reason for this loss is acquisitions and marketing. 1/4th of the losses are because of WhiteHat Jr, a code learning platform which Byju's acquired back in 2021, which reported a loss of 212 million dollars alone. Funding this week: This week at least 10 Indian Startups raised more than $1 Million, in total raising $143.8 Mn. Yulu raised $82 Million Agritech startup Akshayakalpa raised $15 Mn Deeptech startups raised $21 Million ONDC beta testing to begin soon: ONDC beta testing will begin at the end of September. The beta testing is likely to take place in Bengaluru, said ONDC CEO. Lido learning files for bankruptcy: Lido Learning has filed for bankruptcy! Lido failed to pay off debts payable to its ex-employees, customers, vendors, lenders and sundry creditors.

upGrad was started by Mayank Kumar and his two friends Ravijot Chugh & Phalgun Kompalli. They were later joined by serial entrepreneur Ronnie Screwala as the fourth co-founder. Mayank got the idea for upGrad when he saw a major gap in India's education sector. Mayank discovered that brick & mortar higher education was reaching less than a quarter of TAM - that's 150 million people that make up the total addressable market, who should be in college, but aren't, and Mayank saw this as a massive opportunity. Around the same time Ronnie Screwala, well known for building UTV and many other category-defining businesses, sold his controlling stake in UTV to Disney for a reported 2,000 crore rupees. By January of 2015, Ronnie had officially joined Mayank, Phalgun, and Ravijot as a co-founder, and he also made a seed-stage investment of $16 million dollars into the company, which was at that time something that he had re-branded to UEducation. The lack of offline market penetration was one gap that online education could fill, but another opportunity was the disconnect between traditional college curriculums and industry requirements and this what upGrad decided to solve. Their first course was a 12-week rigorous online entrepreneurship program that taught students through live lectures, case studies, group assignments, and guidance. This first StartUp program was just a test, really. An MVP of sorts. It was taught mainly by UpGrad, along with a couple of people they'd brought in from successful startup companies, but this wasn't going to be the long-term structure that these programs would take - UpGrad planned step back, out of the teaching role and into the administrative role, so that rather than becoming an OEM, an original education manufacturer like for example BYJU'S or Unacademy, they would instead tie up with IITs and global universities to create online-only courses specifically for UpGrad students. By the end of 2018, using this innovative approach had taken UpGrad's student base from 100 to upwards of 15,000. They'd tied up with multiple higher education institutions including the University of Cambridge, IMT Ghaziabad, BITS Pilani, IIIT-B, and MICA. They'd also started teaming up with recruiting partners to ensure that UpGrad graduates could get placements right out of their programs. By the end of 2020, UpGrad had crossed a million learners across 50+ countries, and delivered 10 million hours of learning experience to their students. They also raised their first external capital, which was $6.7 million dollars in debt funding from IIFL. They followed this round up with a $9.3 million dollar venture round from Ronnie's Unilazer Ventures in April of 2021, and then $185 million dollars from Temasek, the World Bank's IFC and IIFL in a round that closed in August of 2021. This last round of 2021 brought their valuation - which was unknown at the beginning of 2021 - to $1.2 billion dollars. In 2021, UpGrad tripled their course offerings, scaled university partnerships, closed 3 acquisitions. After raising $225 million in June of 2022, UpGrad opened up a number of offline experience centers across cities in India. In the first three months of 2022, they were profitable - their revenue had seen a 150% growth, reaching an ARR of $300 million, and this resulted in a 70% gross margin across all of their income streams, which allowed them to start thinking globally. Today, UpGrad has a goal of $2 billion gross revenue by 2026, and while it's unclear whether the profitability they saw in Q4 of the financial year of 2022 will continue into the financial year of 2023, sustainability is definitely one of UpGrad's core company values, and that's what it's gonna take for Mayank, Phalgun, and Ronnie to achieve their goal of becoming one of top 3-5 companies globally in edtech.

This week in Indian Startup News: 1. “Unacademy One” launched by Unacademy 2. Flipkart launched a new hotel booking service- Flipkart Hotels 3. Bengaluru is flooded 4. Tata 1mg becomes a unicorn 5. Ola Electric's EV registrations have fallen. 00:00 Introduction 00:10 Flipkart launches Flipkart Hotels 02:14 Unacademy launches Unacademy One 04:21 Bird's eye Segment 05:50 Quick Updates 07:05 BWM Update Unacademy launched Unacademy One - a collection of 50 youtube channels: Indian Ed-tech giant Unacademy launched “Unacademy One” which is a collection of 50 youtube channels. Unacademy has always used YouTube to drive traffic for its paid learning products, but this is the first time that Unacademy has expanded the content universe under its own branding. Funding this week: This week at least 16 Indian Startups raised more than $1 Million, in total raising over $195 Mn. Rupeek - $16 Mn Gromo - $11 Mn Tata 1Mg - $40 Mn SenseHawk - $32 Mn iBus Networks - $15.65 Mn Flipkart has announced the launch of a hotel-booking feature on its main app - Flipkart Hotels. Flipkart Hotels is an extension to Flipkart's travel supply chain which already includes companies like Flipkart flights which is a flight booking service launched in 2018. The company has also set up a dedicated customer care centre to support customers with user-related queries arising from the hotel booking service. 1mg: now called Tata 1mg is an online Pharmacy Company that provides health care products, lab test bookings, delivery of medicines, tele-consultation and more. The Startup has raised a total of 40 million dollars from Tata Digital at a valuation of 1.09 billion dollars. After all the burning incidents and controversies, the demand for Ola Electric's EV's have gotten down- The overall Ev two-wheeler market is seeing a steady growth of 13% month on month and yet Ola Electric's struggle continues. India's Silicon Valley, Bengaluru, is drowning. The rains and water logging affected the lives of normal people and operations of many startups as employees struggled to reach office timely.

This week in Indian Startup News, Zomato just launched an Intercity Food Delivery Pilot, Indian Govt to promote over 10,000 startups, NPCI looking to pick 9-10% stake in ONDC. 00:00 Introduction 00:13 Zomato just launched an Intercity Food Delivery Pilot 02:21 Bird's Eye Segment 03:12 Sponsored Segment 06:14 Indian Govt to promote over 10,000 startups 07:09 NPCI looking to pick 9-10% stake in ONDC 08:30 BWM Team Update Zomato just launched an Intercity Food Delivery Pilot: Food delivery company Zomato has launched a service called 'Intercity Legends' that will let users order dishes and delicacies from famous outlets and restaurants in other cities. For now, service is limited to South Delhi and Gurugram. People living in these areas will be able to enjoy rosogollas from Kolkata, biryani from Hyderabad, and kebabs prepared in Lucknow. In a latest statement, Zomato's CEO Deepinder Goyal said that Zomato is going to show profits soon and that he is very enthusiastic about it. Funding this week: This week at least 9 Indian startups raised more than $145 Million. Bike Bazaar raised $52.8 Million Genome research startup MedGenome raised $50 Mn Fintech startups - Early Salary raised $13 Million Indian Govt to promote over 10,000 startups: Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) Secretary Alkesh Kumar Sharma said that the government is looking to promote more than 10,000 startups in the coming five to six years under its GENESIS - that's an acronym for Gen-Next Support for Innovative Startups - initiative. So, Digital India GENESIS is a deeptech startup platform that will help tech startups largely from Tier-II, III cities. MeitY has already partnered with 22 accelerators under Centre's SAMRIDH. NPCI looking to pick stake in ONDC: The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is looking to pick a 9-10% stake in the government's digital commerce initiative, the Open Network for Digital Commerce or ONDC which is a government owned open source platform. NPCI manages the digital payments network of UPI and its CEO, Dilip Asbe, is also a part of the advisory council of ONDC.

This week in Indian Startup News, Ex-unicorn Rivigo looking for Buyers at discounted price, Dezerv raises funding, Unacademy's Relevel shuffles 100 employees internally, ONDC to open for public from September. 00:00 Introduction 00:12 Ex-unicorn Rivigo looking for Buyers at discounted price 02:17 On the side 03:00 Bird's Eye Segment 04:33 Startup Spotlight 08:45 ShopX shuts down 09:40 Unacademy's Relevel shuffles 100 employees internally 11:03 ONDC to open for public from September Ex-unicorn Rivigo looking for Buyers at discounted price: Logistics Unicorn Rivigo is facing some tough times right now as the company is not being able to raise any funds and they are considering the only solution left to them - being acquired at a much less valuation. Rivigo's board has given green signal for this acquisition and according to an ET report, company is in early-stage talks with Flipkart's logistics arm eKart and FirstCry for acquisition. (https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/startups/troubled-logistics-tech-unicorn-rivigo-held-talks-with-flipkart-firstcry-for-a-sale/articleshow/93715606.cms) Funding this week: This week at least 12 Indian startups raised more than $281 Million. Fintech Sector - EarlySalary raised $97 Million Device Management Startup Servify raised $65 Mn F&B startups - Hector Beverages raised $50 Million Startup Spotlight: dezerv was founded in 2021 by co founders who have 50+ years of collective experience in managing over INR 50,000 Cr. It is the next big step in dezerv.'s mission of making expert-led investing available to professionals using its unique Integrated Portfolio Approach (IPA) which is built on decades of iinvesting expertise and modern portfolio science ShopX shuts down: ShopX, founded by Amit Sharma and Apoorva Jois in 2014, provided logistics and procurement support to kirana stores and other SME retailers. It offered assisted ecommerce solutions, including sourcing, supply chain and credit lines. It also provided digital services such as mobile and DTH recharge, bus and flight bookings, and utility bill payments. Unacademy's Relevel shuffles 100 employees internally: At least 100 of employees who were working on Relevel, have been asked to interview for other roles in Unacademy. Among these, 15-20 employees have declined this offer as they claim that the company was overburdening those retained at Relevel. ONDC to open for public from September: Currently ONDC is running on pilot in few Indian cities and right now ONDC officials are focusing on improving customer experience, building ONDC-compatible tools for small sellers and weeding out challenges within the network.

In this interview, I sit with Pratham Mittal of Masters' Union School of Business. 00:00 Introduction 02:23 Early Entrepreneurial life 09:04 College Hackathon 15:00 How to deal with Failure? 18:01 First company 25:28 Moving back to India 27:07 Why education? 29:01 Why India? 31:17 How Masters' Union started? 36:15 Problems with current Education System 37:37 Starting Masters' Union 49:15 Profitability in Edtech We talk about Pratham's journey, from Jalandhar to Doon School and then to University of Pennsylvania. Pratham started his entrepreneurial journey during his college days and after coming back to India, he saw a gap in how business education is provided to students and that's when he decided to start Masters' Union School of Business. At Masters' Union School of Business, Pratham and his team have rediscovered how business education is provided in India. Their focus is more on on-ground and practical learning and their teachers consists of industry experts from the field of business. In last couple of years, students graduated from Masters' Union's course have received higher salaries than top business institutes in India and this has become their USP now. In the video, Pratham also talks about what's inherently wrong with Indian EdTech players right now and how outcome based learning is going to be the future of EdTech in India.