Millionaire Mondays by Backstage with Millionaires

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

In this video, Caleb catches up with Caya from Slidebean to discuss startups. They talk about how India’s startup ecosystem is different from the United States. Visiting India’s Silicon Valley – Bengaluru: Bengaluru is the place to be to truly understand the depth of India’s startup ecosystem. You can regions inside of Bengaluru which is dedicated to startups – walk down miles and you can find hundreds of startups talking about disruption. India’s SaaS revolution: Slidebean has been a customer of a lot of Indian SaaS startups including Zoho, Freshworks and Chargebee and a lot more. What’s surprising is that even though they have been a customer of a lot of Indian SaaS startups, they didn’t even know that these companies were from India. India’s booming EV space: Even though Tesla is yet to make its mark in  India, Indian EV startups have been taking over the country in the last few years. From Tata’s Nexon to Ather’s scooters – electric vehicles are driving the revolution in India. All of this probably might not have been possible if Tesla might have entered India early. Differences between India and United States’ Fintech ecosystem: India’s fintech ecosystem is quite unique with UPI playing a significant role across the ecosystem. Transactions are a lot smoother and more seamless due to UPI, but the entire thing is dependent of India’s own ecosystem and isn’t compatible with United States’ fintech ecosystem.  Understanding salary differences: India is the place for global companies to hire a quality workforce at cheaper costs. This is only possible due to the huge salary and living expense differences between  India and the US. India’s closely-knit startup culture: The concentration of startups in a single place in cities like Bengaluru is mindboggling. You can go out for a coffee and you might bump up with some of India's leading startup entrepreneurs. The ‘Jugaad’ mentality: With a lot of the new-age startup founders coming from small towns and cities where they had a lack of resources - a  lot of Indian startups have this 'Jugaad' mentality - which keeps them frugal while building some world-leading products. Different countries, different problems: While startups in the US are more focused on streamlining and making things more efficient, startups in India have the opportunity to disrupt industries completely. India’s savings culture: India is more of a savings focused economy where people are used to buying products only from their savings and mostly stay away from taking any loans. This is why credit card penetration in the country is extremely low. On the other hand, people in the US are a lot more comfortable with buying things they can't afford. This is why credit card penetration is a lot higher in the US.   More cultural and lifestyle differences: Caya was blown away by the fact that there is a market for super expensive products in India while at the same time India's average salary is on the lower end of the spectrum. He believes that it's the cultural differences like focus on savings and salary differences that make up for these extreme lifestyle differences. India’s wealth disparity: Also, the fact that there is a growing opportunity in India's tech space for engineers who are getting paid much higher than average salary is creating a huge wealth disparity among Indians. Startups are creating disproportionate wealth and enabling the Indian markets.

Alice Besomi is the VP of Investments and known as the queen of SaaS at Jungle Ventures. They have invested in a lot of startups in India working in SaaS, consumer technology, fintech and SME tech, including Moglix (one of India’s latest unicorns), along with Livspace, LeapFinance, CityMall, Turtlemint, among many others. In this video, Alice and Prithvi discuss all things SaaS – talking about interesting SaaS business ideas to understanding key metrics while building a SaaS startup to what are the investors looking for when investing in a SaaS startup. Introduction SaaS - Building from India for the World Interesting SaaS business ideas Key metrics to understand when building a SaaS startup How VCs value an early-stage SaaS startup Drawbacks of Indian SaaS startups and how to revamp Growth of India and Southeast Asia as the land of SaaS Understanding vertical/horizontal SaaS and the CRM market When building a SaaS business: go local or global? Scalability or Profitability? SaaS business models Disruptive SaaS ideas Future of SaaS

Ram Divedi is an investor, a professor of Economic Warfare and co-founder of Pravaig Dynamics, which is an Indian EV startup building one of the country’s first premium electric car – Extinction Mark I. In this podcast, Ram and Prithvi discuss the importance of building a professional network and how it can be used for securing your dream job, raising funds for your startup or even finding your co-founders. 00:00 Introduction 05:08 How having a good network helps 09:18 Importance of building a network for someone building a startup 11:11 What not to do when building a network 13:14 Mental tool on how to think about a networking 17:02 Networking and Social Media 19:15 How to add value to your network when you are starting out and have no expertise 26:10 Benefits of being young and having no network 30:42 Finding a balance between seeking help and being helpful 33:10 Benefits of reading 37:10 Building a network across countries 39:11 Personal Branding 52:30 A Network is for life 54:00 Creating value and prioritizing networking