EP#25 Karthik Venkateswaran – Building Jumbotail, scaling a marketplace model & hiring for values

In this episode, Karthik Venkateswaran, Co-founder & CEO @Jumbotail, joins our host Digjay, to talk about his journey from serving in the Indian army to founding his own startup, the challenges of scaling a marketplace model, hiring employees based on the company’s core values, advantage of going deep in one market before scaling to other geographies, and what founders should particularly look for in their seed stage investors.

Jumbotail aims to organise the food & grocery ecosystem in India using technology & has raised close to $50mm in funding so far from a range of Indian as well as international VC funds. Karthik is an alumnus of National Defence Academy and served in the Indian Army for 10 years, with several tenures in hard combat.  He then went on to complete his MBA from Stanford, worked as a Senior Product Manager in ebay US and Director-Products in Flipkart, prior to starting Jumbotail in 2015. Karthik is passionate about building products & technology that will create more economic opportunities for the food and grocery ecosystem, and make commerce more accessible and convenient for the next 1 billion Indians. You can connect with him here on Linkedin / Twitter

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Show notes –

1. (01:40) Karthik & Ashish’s background; Inspiration behind starting Jumbotail

2. (05:30) Jumbotail’s solutions for India’s fragmented food & grocery market

3. (12:15) Overcoming initial challenges and scaling a marketplace model

4. (19:04) Why hiring the right team is extremely critical for a startup’s success? Unpacking Jumbotail’s unique ‘values’ based hiring & appraisal system

5. (23:30) Leveraging macro tailwinds, staying agile and focusing on depth (vs breadth) while scaling up

6. (30:00) Learnings from Jumbotail’s fundraising experience; What founders should look for in their seed stage investors?

7. (35:40) Rapid fire and closing remarks