

Millionaire Mondays by Backstage with Millionaires
Backstage with Millionaires
Millionaire Mondays is a podcast brought to you by Backstage with Millionaires and hosted by Caleb Friesen. We bring the stories of real Indian startups told by the entrepreneurs that built them.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Jun 7, 2023 • 47min
S0E7: Millionaire Mondays - Avnish Anand, CaratLane
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In this episode of the Backstage With Millionaires podcast, we sit down with Avnish Anand, founder of CaratLane, to discuss his entrepreneurial journey.
00:00 Intro
02:50 How Avnish Got into CaratLane
08:15 First customer
13:27 Scalability of a business
17:56 Sponsor segment
19:14 CaratLane's Branding
21:28 Why Avnish left CaratLane
29:31 How the Titan acquisition changed CaratLane
46:07 Outro
Avnish first met Mithun and Srinivasa in August of 2007 while he was in the midst of a career transition. He’d done brief stints at ONIDA, Standard Chartered Bank, and DuPont India, but none of these positions left him feeling fulfilled.
CaratLane was founded in 2008, with the objective to make beautiful jewellery accessible, affordable and forever wearable.After speaking to hundreds of women across the country, CaratLane came to find that there was a common dilemma women faced - picking between expensive jewellery for special occasions, and everyday jewellery that was of inferior quality and was not keeping pace with their changing lifestyle. CaratLane was founded, to give women access to modern, fine jewellery that was also wearable everyday.
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#startup #entrepreneur #jewellery

6 snips
Apr 26, 2023 • 44min
S0E6: Millionaire Mondays - Arjun Vaidya, Dr. Vaidya’s
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In this episode of the Backstage With Millionaires podcast, we sit down with Arjun Vaidya, founder of Dr. Vaidya's, to discuss his entrepreneurial journey.
00:00 Intro
02:50 Foreign adoption of Indian concepts
06:00 Why Indian brands aren't going global?
08:38 The Restart of Dr. Vaidya's
10:05 Sponsor Segment
11:36 The struggle after Dr. Vaidya's launch event
17:36 Dr. Vaidya's breakthrough
19:04 What inspires Dr. Vaidya
20:08 Work-life balance problems
23:26 Finding the right customers
24:15 First funding round
29:57 How the pandemic affected Dr. Vaidya's
33:35 The end of Arjun Vaidya's journey at Dr. Vaidya's
Arjun Vaidya went to Brown University for his undergrad in 2009. There he witnessed the natural and organic products revolution and also saw yoga become a multibillion-dollar industry with a repackaged identity for modern consumers. This made him realize the opportunity with Ayurveda.
In 2013, Arjun moved back to India and joined a consumer sector-focused growth private equity fund called L Catterton.
In October 2016, Arjun quit his job to take on his family’s Ayurveda legacy. Dr. Vaidya’s repackaged the ancient Indian science of Ayurveda for modern consumers and emerged as India’s largest Ayurveda brand online. In 4 years, the company successfully reached 2m+ consumers across 16,500+ pin codes in India and launched 80+ products, and clocked 5,000+ orders per day.
Arjun was the first Ayurvedic Entrepreneur to be featured in the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia List and Business World 40 Under 40 List. He also won Youth SMB of the Year from Amazon and the Retail Startup Award from the Retailers Association of India.
In June 2019, Arjun sold his startup to RP Sanjiv Goenka Group, making it one of India’s first successful D2C exits.
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Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5rGPalo...

Apr 18, 2023 • 44min
S0E5: Millionaire Mondays - Akshay Singhal, Log9 Materials
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:
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Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5rGPalovc6AKsfbOyjh32p#startup #entrepreneur #ev

Mar 13, 2023 • 44min
S0E4: Millionaire Mondays - Abhishek Nayak, Appsmith
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

20 snips
Mar 9, 2023 • 45min
S0E3: Millionaire Mondays - Tushar Vashisht, HealthifyMe
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

Feb 27, 2023 • 47min
S0E2: Millionaire Mondays - Rajiv Srivatsa, Urban Ladder + Antler India
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

Feb 14, 2023 • 42min
S0E1: Millionaire Mondays - Gagandeep Reehal, Minus Zero
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In this podcast, Caleb Friesen and Gagandeep Reehal, co-founder and CEO of Minus Zero sit down to chat about self-driving vehicles, the journey of Minus Zero, and their future plans.
Minus Zero is India's first startup building fully autonomous vehicles. It was started in 2020 and the team moved their operations to Bengaluru in 2021, after raising initial money.
Minus Zero became the first company in India to test a fully driverless prototype live on unregulated Indian public roads. They are backed by Chiratae Ventures, who was the lead investor in their seed round raised in 2022.
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

Dec 13, 2022 • 1h 8min
How Fueler is Transforming Job Market in India?
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.

Nov 21, 2022 • 43min
Roshan Vadassery, Permissionless - Open Sourcing Everything, Including Facebook
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
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Nov 16, 2022 • 42min
Secrets of an American VC in India - Will Poole Interview
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/
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