Founder Thesis

"In a gold rush, the best business you can do is selling shovels to the gold diggers". In this episode, Nageen Kommu explains how his company, Digitap, provides the essential tools for India's fintech lenders, helping them analyze data to make smarter decisions in a booming market.Nageen Kommu is the Founder and CEO of Digitap.ai, a bootstrapped and profitable B2B fintech company. In just five years since its founding in 2019, he has scaled the company to a revenue of₹8.4 Crores (approximately $3.43M) and serves over200 clients, including industry giants like KreditBee, Navi, and BharatPe. A graduate of NITK and IIM Ahmedabad, his journey is a masterclass in resilience and strategic pivoting.In this conversation with host Akshay Datt, Nageen unpacks his journey and the secrets behind building a profitable fintech startup.Key Insights from the Conversation: Solving for the Underserved: Digitap was built to solve a massive inefficiency in India's credit market, targeting the 400 million people who are "new-to-credit" or have thin files, making them invisible to traditional lenders. Alternate Data as the Engine: The company's core technology analyzes seven different types of alternate data—including bank statements, device data, and e-commerce activity—to build a comprehensive risk profile for borrowers. The Bootstrapped Anomaly: In a sector dominated by VC funding, Digitap made the deliberate choice to bootstrap. This instilled a culture of financial discipline and a customer-friendly, pay-as-you-go business model with no heavy upfront fees. Pivoting from Failure: Nageen's first venture, a sports-tech platform called Dribl, failed to gain traction and shut down after two and a half years. He leveraged this experience to identify a more lucrative market and launch Digitap with a clear, validated hypothesis. Human-Centric AI: Nageen advocates for a balanced approach where AI is a powerful tool to augment and amplify human capabilities, not replace them entirely, especially in handling nuanced financial decisions and building trust.YouTube Chapters:(00:00) Introduction: Selling Shovels in a Fintech Gold Rush(02:40) The First Venture: The Ambitious Idea and Painful Failure of Dribl (Sports-Tech)(11:49) The Pivot: How Failure Led to Finding a Real Problem in Fintech(14:55) Building the First Product: Creating Simple Onboarding & eSign Solutions to Survive(24:00) The Core Engine: Building the Alternate Data Suite to Assess Credit Risk(25:50) The 7 Data Sources: How Digitap Analyzes SMS, E-commerce, and Location Data(30:55) The Psychology of Data: Why a Customer Who Needs Credit is Willing to Share Information(33:40) The Business Model: How Digitap's Bootstrapped, Pay-As-You-Go Model Works(38:25) Growth & Traction: Scaling to 70+ Clients and Reaching Profitability(41:00) The Future Vision: Expanding Beyond Underwriting into Advertising and Global MarketsHashtags:#FounderThesis #StartupIndia #Fintech #Bootstrapping #NageenKommu #Digitap #Entrepreneurship #VentureCapital #RiskManagement #AI #MachineLearning #CreditScore #FinancialInclusion #IndianStartups #AkshayDatt

About The GuestNikhil Aggarwal is the Founder & Group CEO of Grip Invest , an investment platform he has scaled to a gross AUM of ₹250 crores, with a monthly new investment rate of ₹30 crores. He has set a target to enable half a billion dollars ($500M) in total investments by March 2024. Prior to this, Nikhil co-founded the mobility tech company Chalo , served as a Vice President at Morgan Stanley , and was a consultant for The World Bank's Transport Practice. He holds an MBA from FMS Delhi.Key Insights from the Conversation with Akshay Datt: The Core Idea: Grip's mission is to give retail investors access to high-yield, asset-backed fixed-income products (like leasing and inventory finance) by removing banks as the middleman. Product-Market Timing: The 2020 lockdown was a critical growth catalyst. Investors were at home with more savings, wary of the stock market, and unimpressed by low FD rates, making them open to a new alternative. High-Trust Growth Engine: A remarkable 75% of new investors come from organic search and referrals, proving the model's trustworthiness and the power of word-of-mouth in a new financial category. Rigorous Curation: To protect investors, Grip maintains an extremely selective process, with only 20 out of every 100 companies that apply making it onto the platform. The Second-Time Founder Playbook: Key learnings from his first startup led Nikhil to hire senior leaders very early and focus intensely on company culture from day one to build a more sustainable and faster-growing business.YouTube Chapters(00:00) - Podcast Introduction(01:04) - The Real Reason For Exiting Chalo(03:14) - The Fintech Idea I Had Before Chalo(08:10) - Our Core Products: Leasing, Inventory & Real Estate(09:50) - The 1000% ROI Gap Between FDs & Lending(14:41) - Our Risk Model: Why We Reject 80% of Companies(17:58) - Go-To-Market: How We Got "Lucky" in the 2020 Lockdown(25:17) - The Tech That Makes Alternative Investing Easy(31:35) - Inside The Numbers: 250 Cr AUM & Our $500M Goal(36:39) - My Second Startup: What I'm Doing DifferentlyHashtags for YouTube#GripInvest #NikhilAggarwal #FounderThesis #AkshayDatt #Fintech #AlternativeInvesting #Investment #WealthTech #StartupIndia #IndianStartup #Entrepreneurship #VentureCapital #FixedIncome #AssetLeasing #StartupPodcast

How do you track an entire city’s bus fleet without any hardware? You pay the conductors to turn on their phone's GPS.This was the scrappy, ingenious first step Chalo took to solve India's public transport problem. It perfectly captures the on-the-ground hustle required to build a business that now powers millions of journeys daily.In this episode of Founder Thesis, your host Akshay Datt sits down with Nikhil Aggarwal, the co-founder of Chalo and the current founder & CEO of Grip Invest. A graduate of Delhi University and FMS, Nikhil left a high-flying career in investment banking at Morgan Stanley to co-found Chalo, a mobility platform that revolutionized public transport in India, scaling it to a system that enabled over $180 million in annual ticket sales. He has since founded Grip Invest, a fast-growing fintech platform for alternative investments.Key Insights from the Conversation: Pivoting to the Core Problem: Chalo initially started as a broad multimodal journey planner but quickly realized that the most significant pain point for commuters was the unreliability of buses. They pivoted to focus on solving a single question: "When will my bus arrive?" The "Free" Wedge: To get buy-in from government transport agencies, Chalo provided GPS trackers and ticketing machines for free. The value of the data collected was far more significant than the hardware cost, giving them the leverage to build partnerships. Data First, Commerce Second: The primary function of Chalo's high-tech ticketing machines was initially to gather accurate route data to power their ETA algorithm. This data infrastructure became the foundation upon which they later built a massive commerce and payments ecosystem. Aligning Incentives: The platform was designed to change conductor behavior by shifting incentives from collection-based metrics to timeliness and schedule adherence, which could be tracked via Chalo's system.Chapters:[00:00] Introduction: Solving India's Public Transport Problem[01:30] Nikhil's Background: From Economics at DU to FMS MBA[03:12] The "Curse of Middle Management": Why He Left Investment Banking[04:04] The Journey to Chalo: Meeting the Founder of Carwale[08:01] "Meri Bus Kab Aayegi?": Finding the #1 Problem to Solve[10:09] Using Data to Optimize Bus Routes & Operations[12:12] The First Big Hurdle: Getting GPS Trackers into Buses[12:42] The Hack: Paying Conductors to Use Their Phone's GPS[15:28] The Zero-Cost Marketing Strategy that Led to Viral Growth[16:01] Rolling Out Commerce: How Digital Ticketing Began[19:48] The Genius Insight: Using Ticketing Machines for Data, Not Just Commerce[20:32] Why Chalo is a Data Company at its CoreHashtags:#FounderThesis #AkshayDatt #NikhilAggarwal #Chalo #GripInvest #StartupIndia #MakeInIndia #Entrepreneurship #FounderStory #StartupJourney #ZeroToOne #Mobility #PublicTransport #SmartCity #GovTech #EV #Fintech #InvestmentBanking #AlternativeInvestments #VentureCapital

"In India, 35% of all Indian cities are fully planned, but 75% is all on its own... that's not where 70% live. 70% of urban is in those areas, which have all on their own lanes and by lanes."This powerful insight from Vivek Raina highlights the vast, often overlooked market that Excitel Broadband chose to serve. Instead of focusing only on the structured, planned parts of cities, Excitel ventured into the densely populated but underserved areas, bringing high-speed internet to the masses.Vivek Raina is the Co-founder and CEO of Excitel Broadband. With over 22 years in the telecom industry, he has spearheaded Excitel's growth to over 1 million subscribers by its seventh year of operation. He is driving Excitel's mission to connect more of "BHARAT" by providing affordable, high-speed, and truly unlimited internet.     Key Insights from the Conversation: Untapped Potential in Unstructured India: A significant portion of urban India resides in unplanned areas, a market largely unaddressed by major telecom players, which Excitel strategically targeted. Broadband as Entertainment, Not Just Utility: Excitel shifted the perception of broadband from a mere productivity tool to a primary source of entertainment by offering high speeds and no data caps, enabling seamless video consumption. The "Uberization of Broadband": Excitel's innovative asset-light model involves partnering with thousands of local cable operators for last-mile fiber deployment, enabling rapid scaling and capital efficiency. Hyperlocal Focus is Key: Customer acquisition in the broadband business, especially in diverse Indian markets, relies heavily on hyperlocal strategies, including feet-on-street sales and targeted local marketing, rather than mass media campaigns.Chapters: 00:00 Video Introduction and Initial Context 01:26 Viv's Background in Broadband Technology 01:50 The Evolution of Broadband Technology 03:47 Introduction of Fiber to Home in India 06:41 The Origin Story of Excitel 11:52 Excitel's Unique Approach to the Market 15:58 Excitel's Funding and Early Growth Phases 18:58 Internet Supply Chain and Cost Structure Insights 25:17 Excitel's Expansion and Market Positioning 30:15 Competition and Future Plans for ExcitelHashtags:#Excitel #VivekRaina #FounderThesis #IndianStartups #Broadband #InternetRevolution #DigitalIndia #Entrepreneurship #StartupIndia #TechInnovation #FiberInternet #Telecom #MakeInIndia #BusinessStrategy #Leadership #DisruptiveTech #FTTH #InternetForEveryone

This episode is a fascinating story of the classic startup journey - you start with an idea, which works to an extent, and then you pivot and discover the much bigger idea. Disruptive mobility startup founder, Kapil shares insights about finding product market fit, building with a data-driven mindset, and scaling with capital efficiency.Know about:- Building a product for train travelers Problems of the bus industry Branding buses and improving customer experience Scaling up supply

IndiaLends brings efficiencies in the lending process by aggregating multiple lenders on one platform so that every customer can find a lender that meets their needs. Gaurav is a lending industry veteran, having worked with global lending companies. He talks about the 7 year-long journey of building IndiaLends, surviving the pandemic, and the Saas opportunities they are chasing in the lending space.Know about:- Business model Building a plug-and-play technology for lenders Fundraising journey Future roadmap

Abhay started India’s first pure play e-commerce website called malamall.com way back in 1998, at a time when the internet ecosystem in India was non-existent and not even 1% of India’s population was online.  This episode is a candid and honest story of the struggles of entrepreneurship and proves how grit can make you successful, even if it takes decades.Know about:- Building malamall.com, India’s first e-commerce site Experiences of building Martjack How do consumers look at waste Deposit return system

"It was clear to me all along that this is how we were going to transact in the future." Sanjay Swamy shares this profound early conviction about mobile payments, a vision he pursued with mChek, attempting to build what resembled "Apple Pay on the SIM card" years before its time. This foresight into India's digital transformation underpins his entire entrepreneurial and investment journey.Sanjay Swamy is a co-founder and Managing Partner at Prime Venture Partners, a leading Indian early-stage VC firm with approximately $300 million in assets under management that has backed over 50 startups. His work has been instrumental in shaping India's fintech landscape, including early contributions to the UIDAI (Aadhaar) project.Key Insights from the Conversation: Early Vision: Sanjay recognized the potential of mobile technology to revolutionize payments and other sectors in India far ahead of the curve. Building from Scratch: He has extensive experience setting up and scaling operations, from building engineering teams to launching entirely new product categories. The "Missed Call" Innovation: ZipDial uniquely leveraged the prevalent "missed call" behavior in India for marketing and engagement, proving highly effective. Solving for India: Both Ezetap and his work with Aadhaar focused on addressing India-specific challenges and opportunities at scale. Entrepreneur to Investor: His journey provides a deep understanding of the founder's perspective, shaping Prime Venture Partners' "founder-first" and hands-on approach.  .Chapters:00:30 Sanjay Swamy, a doyen in the startup ecosystem.01:41 Early life and education of Sanjay Swamy.03:54 Second Masters and job search in US.05:29 Design simulation software for Aerospace industry.07:21 Billing software for the Telecom industry.09:16 Mobile payments and joining mobile company.14:44 Starting Zipdial and Easytap companies.27:17 Zipdial raised about $3 million.35:37 Prime Venture Partners and raising funds.56:54 Spaces and technologies that Sanjay is interested.Hashtags for YouTube:#SanjaySwamy #PrimeVenturePartners #IndianStartups #FintechIndia #MobilePayments #VentureCapital #Entrepreneurship #StartupJourney #MakeInIndia #DigitalIndia #FounderThesis #Podcast #TechInnovation #StartupFunding #ExitStrategy

Imagine a world where a standard health checkup was more sophisticated than what your doctor can do for you today. Kiran’s venture, Ekincare is doing just that. Kiran talks about the challenges of finding the right business model, of raising funds, and the insights he got along the way about how to solve healthcare challenges for India. This episode is really a masterclass in finding product-market fit.Know about:- The relativity model of healthcare Competitive differentiation- data-first approach Target market Strategy for blitzscaling

Did you know that only 4% of Indians have a Demat account? Compared to that, 40% of Americans have a Demat account. This is the massive opportunity that Raghu Kumar is chasing with his second venture - Rain Platforms. The goal is to make the intimidating world of trading more comfortable. Raghu talks about some of the innovative platforms that Rain is building to help more Indians become active investors, including a platform for copy investing and a real money gaming platform for mock trading.Know about:- Hedge funds Social investing platform, Trading Rooms Guaranteed price pool Capital raising strategy