Podcasts about khatabook

My guest today is Ravish Naresh, founder and CEO of Khatabook. The Indian economy is set up structurally differently to the West. While the US has big box retail and all the benefits that come with it - efficient supply chains, readily established infrastructure, and access to credit - India largely operates in the backs of the MSME segment; micro, small, and medium enterprise. Understanding the MSME segment is critical if you want to understand India. It's the heartbeat of the Indian economy and it represents over 60 million businesses, largely in tier two and tier three cities. The limiting factor for growth for most of these businesses historically has been access to credit. They're underbanked and operate on a cash basis, and it's why this week I was excited to have Ravish on Return on India to help us better understand the segment and how to build for it. Khatabook is helping merchants in India digitize their bookkeeping and is bringing them from the offline world into the online economy. Today, Khatabook has over 10 million monthly active users, and the platform records a staggering 250,000 transactions per hour. In this discussion, we chatted through how to understand the nuances of the MSME segment, the challenges of building for this segment, and the second and third-order effects of including MSMEs in the formalized Indian economy. Please enjoy my conversation with Ravish Naresh.   For the full show notes, transcript, and links to the best content to learn more, check out the episode page here.   ----- Return On India is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Return On India, visit joincolossus.com/episodes.   Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter: @RomeenSheth | @joincolossus Show Notes [00:03:17] - [First question] - Overview of the MSME segment in India with examples  [00:10:16] - How the retail market structure in India differs from the West [00:15:58] - The role of Kirana stores and Khatabook in local Indian economies [00:21:13] - Potential challenges and upsides of selling software to MSME businesses [00:25:50] - Khatabook's use of a free software wedge to leverage credit business [00:31:08] - How Khatabook uses bookkeeping data to make lending decisions [00:35:53] - The network effect enabled by Khatabook's platform [00:42:36] - Projected second-and third-order effects from Khatabook's foundations Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jeremy and Adriel reflect on 250 episodes of the Brave SEA Tech Podcast Adriel Yong joined the BRAVE Podcast team in the COVID summer of 2020 and has worked across multiple roles including co-authoring the BRAVE10 anthology, running community events, editing audio & transcripts and creating cover art.  Adriel is a senior at Yale-NUS College, majoring in Global Affairs. He is an analyst at Orvel Ventures, a sector-agnostic early stage fund investing across Southeast Asia. Prior to joining Orvel Ventures, Adriel was a Venture Fellow at UK-based Hummingbird Ventures which was an early investor in Deliveroo, Kraken, Khatabook and Pristyn Care. He was one of the founding members of social mobility non-profit organization Access Singapore, which has ran career exploration programmes for underserved secondary school students across Singapore. He writes restaurant and bar reviews, scuba dives and volunteers with non-profit organizations in his free time. Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/podcast-reflections

The $600M fintech grew rapidly by digitizing an existing behavior. CEO Ravish Naresh shares his lessons and why profitability is his new focus. Brought to you by Vauban from Carta To succeed as an angel or VC, you need the right platform Thankfully, Vauban from Carta has you covered – whether you're writing your first check or running a $1 billion fund. Though there's a lot of power under the hood, here are two key features investors should know about: Easy SPVs. There are different ways VCs get the capital for their investments. One of the easiest and most efficient is with an SPV platform like Vauban from Carta. Spin up an SPV from your couch, share with your network and start collecting small ticket checks to make your investment in the future. VC dashboard. Keeping track of your investments can become a full-time job in and of itself. Vauban offers an elegant dashboard that helps take care of all the boring bits including legal, compliance, and tax. Better yet, you'll get the support of more than +200 VC specialists ready to help you win. ‍Start your VC today. To find the original piece, published Nov 13, 2022, follow this link. Subscribe to this podcast, and to our newsletter at readthegeneralist.com. You can also follow @mariogabriele and @thegeneralistco on Twitter for updates.

Welcome to #92th episode of The Startup Operator Roundup. Today we have Roshan Cariappa and Gunjan Saha discussing -  ------------------------------------- This episode is brought to you by Park Avenue, shop for their wrinkle free shirts here: https://www.myraymond.com/ ------------------------------------- Building an Electric Sports Bike out of India | Narayan & Niraj | Ultraviolette Automotive : https://youtu.be/RK5y_J0rOJw ------------------------------------- How did Khatabook get 1 Cr. MSME clients? |  Ved Prakash (VP, Growth & Marketing) : https://youtu.be/jH8wfuw700w ------------------------------------- Connect with Us: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/startup-operator​Twitter: https://twitter.com/OperatorStartup ------------------------------------- Topics:00:00 Opening comments03:35 Amagi Acquires US-Based Streamwise05:23 India will be a $40Trn economy by 2047: Mukesh Ambani07:52 Story of Rasna founder Areez Khambatta 10:22 PhonePe to raise funds at a valuation of $12 billion12:37 PhonePe may acquire Zestmoney14:00 Park Avenue Wrinkle free shirts14:30 Ultraviolette Automotive & Pravaig dynamics release Premium EVs16:51 Karnataka govt decides 5% app fee for auto rides booked on apps17:06 Amazon shuts down food delivery and edtech business in India19:03 Khatabook ends FY22 with 4X growth in revenue21:24 Other Fundraises24:06 Park Avenue Power Points If you liked this episode, let us know by hitting the like button and share with your friends and family. Please also remember to subscribe to our channel and switch on the notifications to never miss an episode!

Our guest today is Madhu Shalini Iyer, a partner at Rocketship.vc—a Silicon Valley-based fund investing globally. Iyer started out with an engineering degree from the University of Sydney. In her 20-plus years as an engineer, operator and investor, her previous roles include chief data officer at Gojek, which she helped to grow into a business valued at $10 billion at the time, and a founding member of Intuit's Quickbooks Lending Platform. Rocketship's portfolio in India includes Apna, Moglix, Khatabook, Uravu Labs, Mad Street Den and Agnikul, and several other companies

In this episode, Madhu Shalini Iyer (Partner, Rocketship VC), joins our host Digjay, to talk about her path leading up to Rocketship VC, genesis of Rocketship VC and its unique data-led approach to investing in startups, incorporating qualitative inputs from past deals to refine data algorithms, combining data with the human element to make the final investment decision, outlier founders from Rocketship's portfolio, cross-geography learnings for founders given Rocketship's global portfolio, how Madhu's global experience has shaped her personality and more. Rocketship VC is a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm that uses machine learning and data science to identify & invest in startups around the world. The firm recently closed their 3rd fund at $125mm & has invested in 14 different countries in marquee startups like Khatabook, BukuWarung, Splitwise, Moglix, Apna, Sary, Yulu and more. Prior to Rocketship, Madhu was the Chief Data Officer at Gojek. She started the Singapore office and helped grow the business into a $1 billion unicorn. Prior to Gojek, Madhu was an operating partner at a $150 million private equity fund building startups across South East Asia. She was part of the founding team of Intuit's Quickbooks Lending Platform where she helped grow the platform to $300 million and holds 3 patents in the areas of user data augmented algorithms for financial inclusion. You can connect with Madhu here on Linkedin ---- Show notes – (01:54) Madhu's background & path leading up to Rocketship (06:54) Genesis of Rocketship VC (10:54) Unique data-led approach to investing in startups (14:59) Incorporating qualitative inputs from past deals to refine the data algorithms (18:11) Combining data with the human element to make the final investment decision (24:19) Key deal breakers despite data checking all the boxes (30:00) Reverse pitch to founders to win outbound deals (32:41) Identifying investment trends before they become mainstream (35:29) Outlier founders from Rocketship's portfolio (38:24) Cross-geography learnings for founders given Rocketship's global portfolio (43:14) How has Madhu's global experience shaped her personality? (49:29) Rapid fire and closing remarks ---- If you liked our episode, you can subscribe to our podcast on any podcast platforms of your choice (like Spotify & Apple iTunes). We would appreciate if you could leave us a review on Apple iTunes. This helps others discover the podcast organically. You can visit thevcpreneur.com and follow us on Twitter @thevcpreneur_ & Instagram @thevcpreneur for more episodes and interesting insights on the startup ecosystem. You can also follow our host Digjay here on Linkedin & Twitter

In this episode, we take a look at top 10 startups based out of the city of Hyderabad. Pure EV: Founded by two IITians, Nishanth Dongari and Rohit Vadera in 2016, Pure EV began its journey as an IIT Hyderabad incubated startup, and today, they are one of the leading electric two wheeler startups in India. Their most recent product, an electric motorcycle called the Etryst 350, is completely designed, developed and manufactured in India. Skyroot Aerospace: Started by two former ISRO scientists, Naga Bharath Daka and Pawan Kumar Chandana in 2018, the startup's goal is to open Space for all by making Spaceflight affordable, reliable and regular. Their current project, Vikram-1, will be India's first ever privately designed and developed launched vehicle, which they're hoping to launch before 2022 is over. Swipe: The company was founded by two serial entrepreneurs and friends, Aditya Vemuganti and Sri Teja Allaparthi, in 2021, and their goal was to make life easier for small and medium-sized businesses. Their main competitors are OKCredit and Khatabook. Recykal: The company was started by serial entrepreneur Abhay Deshpande, who after selling his second startup, Martjack, in 2015, decided to build his next business out of trash. In the early days, their startup followed a B2C model, where they would work with ragpickers who collected waste from residential homes and deposited this waste at Recykal's recycling centres, but later moved to B2B model as it was more profitable. Ekincare: Founded by Dinesh Koka, Kiran Kalakuntla, Dr. Noel Coutinho, and Srikant Samudrala, Ekincare works with corporates to offer health benefits programs to their employees. They started with B2C model but quickly realised that B2C preventive healthcare was a hard sell because people don't usually try to improve their health until serious symptoms start to show up, so the company ended up pivoting to a more profitable B2B2C model. AdOnMo: The company was founded by Krishna Chaitanya Bommakanti, Sandeep Bommireddi, and Sravanth Gajula back in 2016 with the goal of revolutionising outdoor advertising. AdOnMe built a prototype for this service in 2017, they were testing mounted digital screens on just 5 cabs in Hyderabad, but today the startup has partnered with over 700 brands, they have 18,500 screens across 12 cities in India. StanPlus: Three INSEAD graduates, Antoine Poirson, Jose Leon, and Prabhadeep Singh started this company back in 2016 with the goal of basically building the Uber of ambulances. The way that they've done this is by building a tech platform that aggregates and standarises hospital ambulances, private operators, and government-run services, along with other options like air ambulances at comparatively affordable prices through a business vertical called StanAir. Bhanzu: The company was founded by Neelakantha Bhanu Prakash, who at the age of 15 held the title of World's Fastest Human Calculator. He started his entrepreneurial journey in June of 2020, soon after the COVID-19 pandemic started, and he along with his team started teaching math to students through recorded lecture videos on YouTube. Neemans: This D2C footwear startups was started by Taran Chhabara, when he came up with the idea for an all-in-one shoe. In 2018, Taran launched Neemans along with Amar Preet Singh - a natural, sustainable, D2C merino wool shoe brand. Eventually, as the company's popularity grew, they expanded out of the D2C model to put their shoes on the shelves of offline stores like Shoppers Stop, Lifestyle, and online marketplaces like Amazon and Flipkart. Darwinbox: This SaaS unicorn was started by Chaitanya Peddi, Jayant Paleti, and Rohit Chennamaneni back in 2015, when they realised that none of the available products were focusing on the entire HR lifecycle.

Gokul Rajaram serves on the executive team at DoorDash, where he leads the Caviar product line. Previously he worked at Square, where he was also on the executive team and led a number of key product lines, and as a product director at Facebook, where he helped the company transition its advertising business to become mobile-first. Earlier in his career, Gokul was a product director for Google AdSense, where he helped launch the product and grow it into a substantial portion of Google’s business. Gokul also serves on the boards of Coinbase, Pinterest, and The Trade Desk and is a prolific angel investor, having invested in companies like Airtable, Khatabook, and 100+ more.In this episode, you will learn:1. How to navigate your next career - What should you focus on in order to improve your optionality?- What should you consider as you look for your next career adventure?- Why join winners in a space?- Why should people entering the workforce join mid-stage companies?- Why there are many paths to success.2. How to build a product development process at early-stage companies- What does the best product development process typically look like at different company stages? - What are some common pitfalls when building these processes?3. Hiring PMs- When should you hire your first PM? What should you look for?- When should you wait longer to hire a PM?- What’s the number one secret for hiring a product leader, regardless of industry? - How much time should you allocate for hiring as a founder?- How might job titles impact your company’s work culture?4. How to start angel investing - How did Gokul start investing in startups? What would he have done differently?- What does he look for in a startup pitch? - How much time should you spend as a part-time investor? - How do you find deals as a new investor?Where to find Gokul:- Twitter: https://twitter.com/gokulr References:- Gokul’s current favorite app, Coinbase Wallet: https://www.coinbase.com/wallet - Favorite book, Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works: https://rogerlmartin.com/lets-read/playing-to-win - TED talk: TEDxConcordia - Lenny Rachitsky - Losing Serendipity Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

Angel investor is a high-net-worth individual who provides financial backing for small startups or entrepreneurs, in exchange for equity. In this episode, we take a look at Top 20 Angel Investors in India. #20 Sandeep Tandon: Sandeep co-founded one of India's first mobile payment platforms, Freecharge. He began his journey as an angel in 2015, and his portfolio includes Spinny, Dukaan, Unacademy, and Indiagold. #19 Arihant Patni: Arihant is a Mumbai-based entrepreneur, financial advisor, and angel investor whose father founded Patni Computer Systems. His portfolio as an angel includes companies like Lido Learning, TheMathCompany, White Owl Brewery, BabyChakra, and Fitternity. #18 Alok Mittal: Alok is a founding board member of Indian Angel Network and so far he's made 30 angel investments, including companies like M2P Fintech and Pando. #17 T.V. Mohandas Pai: Mohandas Pai as an angel investor has 30 portfolio companies under his belt, including Zoomcar, YourStory, and Licious. #16 Rajesh Sawhney: Rajesh started his journey as an angel with a 2010 Series A investment into American streaming service Viki, which was later acquired by Rakuten. He has since made 34 other personal investments. #15 Gaurav Munjal: Gaurav is the co-founder and CEO of India's second most valuable edtech startup, Unacademy and he has more than 35 companies in his portfolio as an angel investor. #14 Sujeet Kumar: Sujeet, is the co-founder of Bengaluru-based B2B trade platform, Udaan and he has invested in 38 companies as an angel. His portfolio includes companies like Euler Motors, Newton School, Unacademy, and OneCode. #13 Amrish Rau: Amrish is the co-founder of Citrus Pay, and his investments include fintech company Open, which recently became a unicorn, B2B fish and seafood supplier Captain Fresh, CRED, and KhataBook. #12 Girish Mathrubootham: Girish is the co-founder and CEO of Freshworks, and as an angel investor he has 39 companies including Pepul, traveltech startup PickYourTrail, logistics platform Pando, and social recommendation app Fril. #11 Vijay Shekhar Sharma: Vijay is the founder and CEO of Paytm and he began his journey as an angel in 2010 with a seed-stage investment into Indian crowdfunding platform Milaap, and has since made investments into 40 other companies including Evenflow, GOQii, Unacademy, FloBiz, and Hiver. #10 Ratan Tata: Ratan Tata began his journey as an angel investor in 2014 as a lead investor in Snapdeal and has since added another 39 companies to his portfolio, including GOQii, CarDekho, YourStory, Ola, Paytm, Urban Company. #9 Anand Chandrasekaran: Anand is a partner at American VC firm General Catalyst, and his journey as an angel started around 2014. He has invested in Indian startups like Mudrex, Pesto Tech, Evenflow, SuperK and Oye Rickshaw. #8 Jitendra Gupta: Jitendra is founder and CEO of Jupiter, and he began his investing journey in 2015 and he's added 45 other companies to his portfolio including Open, FarMart, Captain Fresh, and Dukaan. #7 Binny Bansal: Binny started xto10x Technologies to mentor young entrepreneurs and help them scale their startups. His investments include Acko, Curefoods, SigTuple, Unacademy, NIRAMAI, Superplum, Magnifi, and more. #6 Rohit Bansal: Rohit is one of the co-founders of Snapdeal, and he now has 56 companies in his own personal portfolio. It includes companies like Mamaearth, Nat Habit, Bira91, Open Secret, Bewakoof, and Flyrobe. #5 Ramakant Sharma: He began his entrepreneurial journey back in 2012 when he co-founded Zing Ecommerce, and he's invested in 61 companies so far, including Toothsi, Convin, Captain Fresh, Trell, Rupifi, and Wiz Freight. #4 Kunal Bahl #3 Anupam Mittal #2 Rajan Anandan #1 Kunal Shah

Aparna Chennapragada is Chief Product Officer @ Robinhood, the company revolutionizing consumer finance with commission-free investing, and tools to help shape your financial future. As for Aparna, prior to Robinhood, she spent an incredible 12 years at Google, most recently as VP and GM for Consumer Shopping and also as the lead AR and Visual Search products. Aparna is also an active angel investor with a portfolio including Khatabook, Statsig and On Deck to name a few. If that was not enough, Aparna is also a board member at Capital One. In Today's Episode with Aparna Chennapragada You Will Learn: 1.) Origins in Product: How Aparna made her way into the world of product and product management? What were Aparna's biggest takeaways from her 12 years at Google? What does product management mean to Arpana today? 2.) Customer Discovery: 101 What are the 3 different stages of product management? What does great customer discovery look like? What are the best questions to ask? How should one dig deeper? Where do so many make mistakes in customer discovery? What should product people take from the answers? What should they disregard? 3.) The Hiring Process: How should founders breakdown the process of hiring for their first in product? What does the interview process look like? How should founders structure it? What core questions should teams ask of prospective candidates? What are red flags when interviewing potential product hires? What literal tests and case studies can founders do to test the quality of candidates? 4.) The Onboarding Process: How should founders structure the onboarding process for new product hires? What can founders do to make PMs successful in their first 30 days? Where do many product hires make the biggest mistakes in the first 30 days? What can product hires do to build trust with their new team? Items Mentioned in Today's Episode with Aparna Chennapragada Aparna's Fave Resource: Shishir's Executive Onboarding

The journey started as a shared vision of all the co-founders to create a digital ecosystem exclusively designed to address the needs of small businesses and merchants of Bharat so that their business operations are more efficient and profitable while bringing in financial inclusivity for all. Even though the adoption of technology was slowly making its way into the smaller cities and towns, we observed that small business owners were still not comfortable with digital transactions and relied extensively on traditional khata or ledger books. Initially, we started with kyte.ai, where we were working on an AI-based SMS inbox to manage digital transactions. This provided us with great insights into the financial struggles of users. Simultaneously, in a small Electrical shop in the tiny town of Degloor, Nanded district, Maharashtra, Vaibhav* was trying to solve the same problem to ease his father's struggle in keeping track of pending receivables of customers. Thats how Vaibhav nudged the formation of Khatabook. VO Artist: Yashraj and Suyog. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/taleha-khan/message

Amit Ranjan is best known as the co-founder of Slideshare, the world's largest community for sharing professional content including presentations, infographics, documents, and videos. In 2012, Slideshare was acquired by LinkedIn and as of 2020, it has been acquired by Scribd. Amit is also an Angel Investor and Advisor to several early stage startups in India, Singapore and the United States such as Open, Tracxn and Khatabook, among many others. Amit is currently the Architect of two projects under the Digital India Mission at the National eGov Division, Ministry of Information Technology. These are: Digital Locker: A national ecosystem for paperless governance by digitizing citizen records & enabling digital usage of these records. Open Forge: An open source initiative aimed at building a national source code sharing platform for collaborative development of egov applications. In this episode, Amit speaks to Swami and Vignesh about crossing the startup-government chasm, what it takes to build a digital nation project at scale and why technology alone isn't enough to build a great product company.

There are a number of developers who aspire to make the move from Engineering to Product Management and need some guidance for the same. Shivangi shares her story. Shivangi Shrivastava heads New Initiatives at Swiggy. She has earlier held senior Product Roles at both Khatabook and Swiggy. FWD Radio brings you actionable bite-sized insights from the best professionals in the industry. The podcast is available on your fav podcasting app. FWD is the fastest way to learn and develop in-demand skills - including Product Management - and move forward in career and life. Available for both Android & iOS. Get it here: https://getfwd.app

What are the essential traits to look for when hiring Product Managers? What kind of filters would help create a meaningful hiring funnel? Shivangi shares her view on the subject. Shivangi Shrivastava heads New Initiatives at Swiggy. She has earlier held senior Product Roles at both Khatabook and Swiggy. FWD Radio brings you actionable bite-sized insights from the best professionals in the industry. The podcast is available on your fav podcasting app. FWD is the fastest way to learn and develop in-demand skills - including Product Management - and move forward in career and life. Available for both Android & iOS. Get it here: https://getfwd.app

What are some of the key points that one has to keep in mind before choosing to become a Product Manager? Here's Shivangi with her thoughts on this question that will no doubt provide clarity to many seeking to choose this path. Shivangi Srivastava is a VP @ Swiggy overseeing New Initiatives. She was earlier the VP of Product at Khatabook and also held another Product role at Swiggy in the past. FWD Radio is an initiative by FWD Learning App. FWD is the fastest way to learn and develop in-demand skills and move forward in career and life. Available for both Android & iOS. Get it here: https://getfwdapp.com

Good apps help users get stuff done. Great apps show them how, by harnessing customer education and personalized messaging to providing guidance and instruction that creates value for everyone. In episode #439, part of our Reimagine Growth series sponsored by CleverTap, our host Peggy Anne Salz talks with Manasi Shah, Head of Communications at Khatabook. The fast-growing app has experienced 40x growth since 2019, achieving more than 10 million active users. Manasi discusses how customization in communication and education empowers users, creating new opportunities for her company to power lifecycle campaigns, encourage the use of new app features, and build trust.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/mobile-presence8298/exclusive-contentAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to #39 episode of The Startup Operator Roundup where Roshan Cariappa and Gunjan Saha discuss - 1. Freshworks files for IPO 2. Prime Venture Partners Raise $75Mn 3. Ola Electric to raise a Billion Dollars 4. Delhivery's Acquisition of Bengaluru startup Spoton Logistics 5. Khatabook raises $100mn in series C 6. Fundraises by indiagold, Bewakoof Curefood and others Hit the like button if enjoyed this roundup, and do not forget to share among your operator friends! Listen to our interviews and conversations with investors, operators, and founders on your favourite podcast platforms. #startups #unicorns #technology #roundup #podcast #news --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/startup-operator/message

This week in Indian Startup News, CRED and BharatPe foray into P2P lending, Ola and Ola Electric IPO Plan 2022, Police gets three weeks to probe Ashok Saxena's Paytm claims, NSE prohibits stock trading platforms from selling digital gold, CarTrade IPO – stock lists at a discount and Delhivery acquires Spoton Logistics. In funding news, Zetwerk raises $150 million to become a unicorn, Khatabook raises $100 million and Curefoods raises $13 million. CRED and BharatPe foray into P2P lending: CRED has launched their P2P lending service called CRED Mint that will allow their users to lend to other users at an interest rate of up to 9% per annum in partnership with LiquiLoans. On the other hand, BharatPe has launched their P2P lending product 12% Club – which is aimed at allowing individual users to lend directly to their merchant partners at an interest rate of up to 12% per annum. Ola's electric car and IPO plans: Indian cab aggregator Ola has announced that they will IPO in 2022 and Bhavish Aggarwal also announced his plans to launch Ola's electric car in 2023. CarTrade IPO – stock lists at a discount: After a successful IPO, CarTrade's stock was listed on both NSE and BSE at a 1% discount and has continued to fall since. NSE prohibits stock trading platforms from selling digital gold: NSE has directed stockbroking platforms from buying and selling digital gold as it violates SEBI's rules. This decision will affect stockbroking platforms like Upstox, Paytm Money and Groww - they have until 10th September to comply with NSE's notice. Police gets three weeks to probe Ashok Saxena's Paytm claims: When the police failed to file Ashok Kumar Saxena's complaint against Paytm, he went to Delhi's district court and the court has now given the Police three weeks to probe his claims and file a report. Delhivery acquires Spoton Logistics: Logistics unicorn Delhivery has acquired Spoton Logistics to help them strengthen their logistics delivery network and get in new customers ahead of Delhivery's IPO which is expected next year. Zetwerk raises $150 million to become a unicorn: B2B manufacturing marketplace Zetwerk has raised $150 million led by D1 Capital Partners at a $1.33 billion valuation – making them India's latest unicorn. Khatabook raises $100 million: Digital bookkeeping platform Khatabook has raised $100 million at a $600 million valuation from Tribe Capital and Moore Strategic Ventures to help small businesses to digitize their business operations. Curefoods raises $13 million: Cloud kitchen startup Curefoods has raised $13 million led by Iron Pillar to expand the presence of their cloud kitchens to more cities across the country.

As smartphones continue to penetrate into smaller towns, users are depending on mobile apps for all their needs. From shopping online to completing payments on digital platforms, everything's done at ease on mobiles. So much so that users have even started maintaining their ledgers on mobile apps. The beauty of this is it's very easy to track and offers many more benefits than doing it in primitive ways. Khatabook enables micro, small and medium merchants to track business transactions securely. It also offers features such as online payment collection through UPI and QR, sending periodic reminders to creditors via messages and report generation. Founded in October 2018, Khatabook has become India's leading business management app for MSMEs with over 20M downloads in a remarkably short period of time. We caught up with Damini Mishra, Senior Product Manager at Khatabook to get an understanding of how they are scaling customer acquisition, engagement and retention by delivering delightful mobile app experiences. Damini also shared her thoughts on: Acquiring high quality users at an optimizing cost Leveraging the power of current users to acquire new users Using SEO, offering free trials and building communities to enhance user engagement Providing contextual and personalized app experiences to each user Offering language-based personalization considering a huge chunk of their users are from tier 2 and tier 3 cities Triggering nudges to guide users at the right time in their journey to make use of the referral feature in the app Tune in to this episode to understand how Khatabook has created different user segments and engaged with each of them differently to build and retain a loyal customer base.

Suumit Shah is the CEO and co-founder of Dukaan, an app that helps small businesses by taking their stores online. Prior to starting his own journey as an entrepreneur, Suumit was the Social Media Manager for Housing and TinyOwl. Entrepreneurship: I don't know what it means but it sounds cool – Back in college, Suumit was designing websites and learned that he could make money on the internet. While he didn't know what entrepreneurship meant, it sounded cool and he was already on track to being an entrepreneur without knowing it. From being a social media manager to becoming an entrepreneur: Suumit started working for Housing and TinyOwl, where he was managing their social media – enabling them to rank their websites on search engines by focusing on search engine optimization (SEO). After this experience, Suumit decided to start his own digital marketing agency where he was doing the same but at scale for a lot more companies. He found it hard to scale his services company and that's when he decided to create a product that would help the companies to use their product suite to execute different aspects of digital marketing campaigns on their own. Key learnings from first entrepreneurship experience: In a service-based business, the best way to scale is by creating a product and monetizing it. That is exactly what Suumit did when he was unable to scale his digital marketing agency Rankz. Story of Dukaan: A text from Jockey during the pandemic changed the course of both Suumit and Subhash's lives when they realised the need for digitising local stores and helping them continue their business. Within a week of launch, the Dukaan app was already trending on Google Playstore. Feedbacks and requests from the customers kept coming in, which further helped them improve their product and today the Dukaan app has been downloaded more than 4 million times. Dukaan vs Khatabook: Things got a little out of hand for a while when Dukaan had a legal tussle with Khatabook in regards to copyright issues and source code which led to Dukaan app being removed from the Play Store for 50 days. But things have now been resolved and both Dukaan and Khatabook are busy scaling their businesses. Dukaan overview: A user first create his/her store using Dukaan app, they can then share the link of their store – which contain all their inventory and catalogue, to their existing customers and they are good to go. Now Dukaan is also enabling the store owners to expand and scale by providing simple marketing tools as well. Advice for aspiring entrepreneurs: The best way to learn to keep trying things. What you learn today might help you build something a couple of years down the line. If you have an idea, go and try it out – you will either learn or you will succeed. It's much better than killing your startup at the ideation phase, which is the most common problem.

In the middle of an engagement, the CEO of Instamojo says this:”You know Mohit, we have been running this business for seven, eight years, but it's only now we have understood what we really do”Mohit Bansal is the Founder of Deck Rooster, a Chandigarh based company that conceptualises and creates startup pitch decks.Decks that get high praise from clients:“Don't waste two per cent on a Banker, these folks at Deck Rooster rock!” - Ravish Naresh, CEO, KhataBook.“Deck Rooster guys not only helped bring our story to life with visuals, but were an equal thought-partner in helping me articulate the story. Strongly recommend.” - Vikram Chopra, Co-founder and CEO, Cars24Deck Rooster's clients include startups funded by Goldman Sachs, Accel Partners, Khosla Ventures, Sequoia, IDG, Blume VC, Y Combinator and other top investors.As the Founder and chief Storyteller at Deck Rooster, Mohit has had a fascinating journey - from being fired as an intern and being terrified of public speaking… to now confidently creating decks that raise millions of dollars in funding.In this conversation, we discuss:Mohit's unique honesty and how that helps him at workHow he uses an ‘army of referrers' to spread the word about Deck RoosterHis unique visual approach to crafting the pitch storyWhy it's critical for him to find the “anchor” of the story firstSome specific tools that he prefers to create his decks (including one by Microsoft that will surprise you!)Links to Resources:Deck Rooster Website: https://www.deckrooster.com/ The Steve Jobs Video mentioned in the interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiXK11naSfY For more information on Story Rules, you can check out the website or you can connect with me on LinkedIn.

This week in Indian Startup News, Zomato and MobiKwik to file for IPO soon, New SPAC to take Indian startup public in the US, Paytm's NUE plans, Y Combinator features 43 Indian startups in W21 batch and Khatabook acquires Biz Analyst. In funding news, Dream11 raises $400 million, ClearTax in talks to raise $100 million, KreditBee closes $145 million round, Moglix in talks to raise $70-$100 million, Purplle raises $45 million, Public App raises $41 million, Velocity raises $10.3 million and FloBiz raises $10 million. Zomato and MobiKwik to file for IPO soon: After Nazara Technologies, Zomato is planning to file for IPO next month and is expected to raise around $650 million at a $7-10 billion valuation. Also, MobiKwik is looking to file for IPO in May at a billion-dollar valuation. New SPAC to take Indian startup public in the US: Elevation Capital and Think Investments have formed a new SPAC called Think Elevation Capital to take Indian startups public in the US. Paytm's NUE plans: Paytm has launched its New Umbrella Entity (NUE) named Foster Payment Network which is in the final stages of submitting their bid for the NUE license. While Paytm and its three entities will hold the majority stake – companies like PolicyBazaar, Induslnd Bank, Ola, Electronic Payments Services, Centrum Finance, Suryoday Small Finance Bank and Think360.ai will also be joining their consortium. Y Combinator features 43 Indian startups in the W21 batch: Out of 350 startups from 43 nations featured in Y Combinator's W21 batch – with 43 startups India is the second most represented country. Here are all the 43 Indian startups: QuestBook, Leap Club, CashBook, GimBooks, BusinessOnBot, ZOKO, Prescribe, Chatwoot, Weekday, Fountain9, Dyte, YourQuote, Fifthtry, Voosh, Kodo, Krab, Bueno Finance, Betterhalf, Pensil, AcadPal, Pragmatic Leaders, Splitsub, Zingbus, Tilt, FanPlay, GroMo, BimaPlan, BimaPe, Zealth, Codingal, Unschool, Flux Auto, SigNoz, Pitbit.ai, Invoid, Redcliffe Lifesciences, Veera Health, Snazzy, BeWell Digital, Jeevam Health, Triomics. Khatabook acquires Biz Analyst: Khatabook has acquired SaaS-based business management platform Biz Analyst in a $10 million deal to monetize their 40 million users. Dream11 raises $400 million: Dream11 has raised $400 million in their latest secondary funding led by TCV, D1 Capital Partners and Falcon Edge at a valuation of $5 billion. ClearTax in talks to raise $100 million: ClearTax is in talks to raise $100 million in a round led by Tiger Global Management at an expected valuation of $750-$850 million. KreditBee closes $145 million round: Digital lending startup KreditBee has closed its series C round at $145 million – raising $75 million in the latest tranche led by NewQuest Capital Partners and Motilal Oswal Private Equity. Moglix in talks to raise $70-$100 million: B2B industrial goods marketplace Moglix is in talks to raise $70-$100 million in a round led by Falcon Edge Capital and it could make them India's second B2B ecommerce unicorn. Purplle raises $45 million: Online beauty commerce startup Purplle has raised $45 million led by Sequoia Capital India and Verlinvest – while giving a 22X return to IvyCap Ventures that made a partial exit. Public App raises $41 million: Public App, owned by Inshorts, has raised $41 million led by A91 Partners – doubling their valuation from $125 million to $250 million in just six months. Velocity raises $10.3 million: Fintech startup Velocity that offers credit to online businesses based on their revenues has raised $10.3 million in seed funding led by Valar Ventures. FloBiz raises $10 million: FloBiz, a startup that helps offline businesses to digitize their billing and accounting has raised $10 million in series A round led by Elevation Capital.

Subhash's journey starts in a small village in Bihar: Subhash Choudhary comes from a poor family in Bihar, his father passed away when he was just 3 years old and his mother worked as a tailor to support his education until he cleared his 12th. At the age of 17, he moved to Mumbai, learnt the basics of computer hardware and secured a job at Zenith Infotech. He learns Digital Marketing and starts a side hustle: When he saw the company fire a large part of its workforce, he realised how insecure his job was. He decided to take his destiny into his own hands by learning digital marketing and starts his own side hustle which starts earning more money than his full-time job. Subhash meets Suumit on Facebook and learns about entrepreneurship: During that time, he is connected with Suumit Shah on Facebook and they both share a common interest in building products, which brings the two closer. Suumit had a keen interest in the Indian startup ecosystem and the two end up going to a number of startup events and learn more about entrepreneurship. They start their entrepreneurial journey together: Suumit and Subhash decide to put their skills together and start a digital marketing agency to help small businesses and startups to grow their business using the internet. The two end up building two successful businesses Risemetric and Rankz. Pandemic pushed them to help their local shop owners and Dukaan is born: Coming from a shopkeeper's family, Suumit realised hardships local store owners were facing during the lockdown as their business was offline and was forced to shut down. That's when they decided to build a product that would help these small local stores in their neighbourhood to go online and continue their business and that's how Dukaan app was born. Within a month, they had managed to take nearly 1 million stores online without even raising any funds. How the Dukaan app was transformed by using input from their customers: While building Dukaan, the input and feedback they received from their early customers was crucial in transforming their product from a simple platform for taking orders online to building a more comprehensive product where store owners could keep track of their orders, receive and send a notification to their customers on WhatsApp and add new categories. Their investors showed confidence even amidst the controversy with Khatabook: Their investors continued to back them despite their initial friction with Khatabook which was later resolved. Things to keep in mind when building the core team at a startup: It's important to build a team that believes in the vision and is committed to the idea. That's how Dukaan created a small team of 12 people that helped them scale to more than 2 million customers in such a short time. Subhash believes that people can learn the skills if they are passionate about the product that they are building. The guy who built Dukaan's android app was his first-ever android app. If you enjoyed this video and would like to learn more about Subhash Choudhary and his journey, you can follow him on LinkedIn and Twitter: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/subhashchy Twitter: https://twitter.com/subhashchy Follow Backstage with Millionaires to remain updated with our latest developments. Discord: https://discord.gg/XySGGhXKep LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/backstagewithmillionaires/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/bwmillionaires/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/backstagewithmillionaires/

In this episode, Vaibhav Domkundwar, Founder & CEO @Better Capital, joins our host Digjay, to talk about his path to angel investing, learnings as a 2x entrepreneur, about Better Capital, evaluating founders at early-stage startups, bootstrapping vs fundraising, building leverage as a founder & how to build your brand as a first-time angel investor. Vaibhav is a UC Berkeley alum, a 2x entrepreneur & now a full-time investor. He founded 2 companies - Roamware which was acquired by PE firm Audax, and Better which was a self-financed startup studio that has now evolved into an early stage venture firm. Today, Better has a strong portfolio of 80+ companies which includes startups like Khatabook, OPEN Bank, Rupeek, TestBook, Yulu. You can connect with Vaibhav here on Linkedin/Twitter ---- If you liked our episode, you can subscribe to our podcast on any of the major podcasting platforms like Spotify, Apple iTunes & Google Podcasts. We would appreciate if you could leave us a review on Apple iTunes This will help others discover the podcast. For more episodes and interesting insights on the startup ecosystem, you can visit thevcpreneur.com & follow us on Twitter @thevcpreneur_ & Instagram @thevcpreneur. You can also follow our host Digjay on Linkedin& Twitter ---- Show notes – (01:26) Vaibhav's background; Portfolio strategy when investing in seed stage startups (10:46) Evaluating early-stage founders; Gut feel vs data driven decision making (15:17) How founders can simplify decision making for investors? (19:43) How founders can attract people that share the same passion & drive for their startup? (23:49) Bootstrapping vs Fundraising; Seeking support of investors as you scale up (29:20) Building leverage as a founder (30:37) Building a brand & adding value as an angel investor (36:47) Rapid fire & closing remarks

Khatabook is a mobile app that facilitates bookkeeping for small businesses or "Kirana" shops. The app was launched in 2018 and has quickly gained more than 10 million businesses and 20 million registered users. Ved is a stellar operator having worked in multiple hypergrowth startups. Prior to joining Khatabook as its VP - Growth & Marketing, he was spearheading growth initiatives at Rentomojo, and also led the marketing team at ZO Rooms. In this episode, we try to understand how Khatabook achieved this milestone in such a short period. Here's what we spoke about - - Getting to 1 crore customers (00:10) - Use-cases Khatabook is solving for(02:04) - Customer acquisition & onboarding (04:18) - Marketing vs. Product-led Growth (06:43) - Knowing the customer (09:46) - Acquiring the next billion customers via mass media channels - (15:56) Measuring effectiveness for TVC campaigns (17:50) - Building for the Bharat User (20:40) - Business during covid-19 (23:38) - Growth plans for 2021 (28:27) - Propensity to pay for a service (31:05) - Working in hypergrowth startups (39:42) Connect with Ved - LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/vedpy/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/vedpy9 ----------------------- Found this episode informative? Let us know by following the podcast. You can also Tweet or DM us on - LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/startup-operator Twitter - https://twitter.com/OperatorStartup --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/startup-operator/message

In this episode, Jitendra Gupta, Founder & CEO @Jupiter, joins our host Digjay, to talk about his learnings as a 2-time entrepreneur, the importance of sharing equity upside with your early employees, leveraging investors and how he aims to transform the banking experience in India with his latest venture Jupiter. Jitendra is a well-known fintech entrepreneur and angel investor in India. Currently he is the Founder@Jupiter, India's first & only co-created banking experience dedicated to millenials. Prior to Jupiter, Jitendra founded Citrus Pay in 2010, which was acquired by PayU - a fintech company that provides payment technology to online merchants - in 2016. He continued to serve as a Managing Director at PayU, spearheading the credit business of the company before quiting in 2019 to start Jupiter. Jitendra is also a prominent angel investor with investments in companies like Khatabook, KarbonCard, YAP, OPEN, Bira 91, Healofy among others. You can reach out to him here on Linkedin / Twitter. ---- If you liked our episode, you can subscribe to our podcast on any of the major podcasting platforms like Spotify, Apple iTunes and Google Podcasts. Please leave us a review on Apple iTunes to help others discover this podcast. You can visit thevcpreneur.com and follow us on Twitter @thevcpreneur_ & Instagram @thevcpreneur for more episodes and interesting insights on the startup ecosystem. You can also follow our host Digjay on Linkedin & Twitter ---- Show notes – 1. (01:20) Jiten's background & path leading up to becoming an entrepreneur 2. (4:36) Building a strong foundation at an early stage of a startup 3. (9:05) Considering exit scenarios and how to evaluate the decision to sell your startup 4. (12:23) Incentivizing your early employees by sharing equity upside with them; Why is this important for the startup ecosystem? 5. (14:53) Expectations and support from investors at Citrus Pay & his new startup Jupiter 6. (17:00) Angel investing – Why Jiten prefers betting on founders more than the proposed business model of their startups? 7. (19:13) Jiten's 2nd entrepreneurial stint with Jupiter & how he aims to transform banking in India 8. (24:53) Rapid fire and closing remarks

Vaibhav Domkundwar is the Founder & CEO at Better, an India-focused early stage venture firm with 70+ investments in category-defining companies like Rupeek, Open, Khatabook, Bijak, Airmeet, Fittr, Jupiter, Yulu and many others. Prior to Better, Vaibhav was the co-founder at Roamware, a leader in telecom analytics with 500+ carrier customers globally. Roamware was successfully acquired by private equity firm, Audax. Vaibhav is a UC Berkeley alum & a lifelong entrepreneur.

The AJVC team gets together to discuss the Indian fintech ecosystem and the rapid growth of the digital ledger Khattabook. Join us for a behind the scenes peak at the A Junior VC piece “Will Khatabook Uncover Bharat's Elusive Fortune?” More info on: ajuniorvc.com