Founders Unfiltered

Raghav went to study in the US not knowing what to expect. Living there was an entirely new experience for him. Even simple things like purchasing groceries had some technology involved for increased convenience. He worked in the Bay Area as a software engineer at emerging startups including Yelp & Twitter. After 2 years, he realized the world outside SF was full of opportunities, with many problems yet to be solved, and decided to come back to India. Having witnessed the era of emerging marketplaces like Airbnb, Uber transforming the US service sector, Raghav wanted to do something similar. He started his first business in the ride-hailing space which didn’t work out. After a few months, he met Abhiraj & Varun at dinner through a common friend. The 3 of them discussed startup ideas late into the night and arrived at creating a marketplace for gig workers. Thus, Urban Company was born. Being in a highly competitive space with 60+ startups at one point in time, UC eventually emerged as the leader owing to its focus on quality user experience and mission to empower the workforce. Today, UC has 32000+ trained professionals and has served over 5M happy customers. For more visit: ajuniorvc.com/podcast

Last fortnight, India added 500 more “Tech Crorepatis” as Freshdesk Inc IPOed at a valuation of  $13 billion making it the first Indian SaaS company to get listed on Nasdaq. For more details - https://ajuniorvc.com/freshworks-india-saas-zoho-unicorn-ipo-story-history-girish/

Jaydeep grew up in a Bengali household that loved food. While working in Pune, he missed the Kathi rolls he loved growing up and decided to start a restaurant as a side project. The two launched Faasos, a restaurant serving rolls, and outsourced its operations. Jaydeep then went to pursue his MBA at INSEAD and landed a job at McKinsey London. After 5 years, he returned to India and had to choose between joining the firm’s rapidly growing India office or growing Faasos. Faasos started from a single restaurant in Pune and eventually expanded to 10 across Mumbai and Bangalore. It offered doorstep delivery, a novel concept back in the day! In spite of the customer love, Faasos struggled to make unit economics work due to the high cost of real estate - a common problem for Indian restaurants. A shift in strategy was driven by a customer survey insight - 74% of customers had never visited a Faasos restaurant! This epiphany led them to adopt a 'delivery only' model and cut down costs. Rebel Foods eventually pioneered the concept of 'cloud kitchens' - a single physical kitchen serving as multiple brands. Today, Rebel Foods is the leading internet restaurant company globally with 15+ brands and 3500+ restaurants across 10 countries. For more details visit: ajuniorvc.com/podcast

Last fortnight, Billdesk was acquired by Prosus’ PayU for $4.7Bn, making the combined provider the largest online player, and the acquisition the largest after Flipkart. For more details - https://ajuniorvc.com/billdesk-fintech-prosus-payu-acquisition-unicorn-razorpay-history/ More info on: https://ajuniorvc.com/

Tarun took the aspirational middle-class education route. Being a good student in high school, he prepared for Engineering Entrance and got a decent rank to get into IIT. Growing up, he had no exposure to how businesses worked.  This changed when out of curiosity he joined his institute’s entrepreneurship cell and gradually developed an interest in building products. But it was not something he imagined he would do in the near future. A few months later, he got in touch with his batchmate Swapnil who shared a similar experience. In college, the two would often have long discussions around sustainable energy and had worked on many projects together. Brainstorming business ideas and analyzing the worst-case scenario, the two developed the conviction to quit their jobs and build something they were passionate about. Tarun had been fascinated by the Electric vehicle space and figured as the sector grows there would be a dire need for good charging infrastructure. Thus, Ather Energy was born. Inside a student hostel in Madras, far away from the Indian startup hub, by 2 graduates who had no knowledge of Electronics. For more details visit: ajuniorvc.com/podcast

Last fortnight, OfBusiness raised $160M, joining the stampede of 26 unicorns this year. Join us for a behind-the-scenes peek at the A Junior VC piece - AJVC Unfiltered 33: Can OfBusiness help SMB's get Supply Smarter? For more details - https://ajuniorvc.com/ofbusiness-b2b-financing-supply-unicorn-india-startup-zetwerk-inframarket/

Kabeer grew up in a small town in Dadra & Haveli, where starting one’s own business was unheard of. After completing his MBA, he started working as a sales executive at Airtel and later became a product manager. After spending a few years there, he decided to leave and spent a year doing nothing before finally starting his first startup. A location based service that offered coupon codes for local shops and worked on SMS communication. He found Product market fit and eventually sold the company to hike. He again took a hiatus and decided not to work on anything for a while. After around 6 months, he stumbled across a personal problem. Kabeer had the habit of staying organised and had a system in place for efficiently doing almost everything. Purchasing groceries every week though, proved to be a challenge. This urged him to think of a solution. Not thinking of it as a business, he started by simply creating a whatsapp group for taking orders and making deliveries himself. Within 3 months, the member count reached over 10K, by word of mouth alone. It was then Kabeer realised the market for this problem is huge, and a business can be created around it. Thus, Dunzo was born. Today, it is trusted by over 5 million users across 7 cities. For more details visit: ajuniorvc.com/podcast

Last fortnight, Indian ed-tech startup Eruditus raised $650MM from marquee global investors at a $3.2Bn valuation, becoming India’s 3rd largest EdTech. For more details - https://ajuniorvc.com/ Link to the article - https://ajuniorvc.com/eruditus-edtech-unicorn-byjus-unacademy-executive-higher-upgrad/

Gaurav grew up in a family that operated a large apparel business. Seeing his Dad grow the business had sown the early seeds of entrepreneurship in him. He worked in the family business for 6 years during which he witnessed the complete business journey - From IPO to an exit to a PE firm. He decided to take a break and went to do an MBA at Stanford where he met his co-founder Shashank. The two had complementary skill sets and were clear they wanted to start a business together but didn’t know what. After graduating, they returned back to India and started searching for business ideas. They had close to 40 ideas ranging from a ride-hailing service to QSR restaurants. Over the course of a year, they dug deeper to test each idea and narrow it down on one. They evaluated ideas on 3 important parameters - The Scale of the problem, Can Technology be used as a differentiator, and the Impact generated. SME financing was something that ticked all 3 boxes. In 2013, they started Capital Float to solve the problem of SME financing. Today Capital Float has expanded its offerings to also serve consumers through Buy Now pay later and Personal Finance solutions. For more details visit: ajuniorvc.com/podcast

Last fortnight, CoinDCX became a unicorn, putting Indian crypto firmly back into the spotlight after years of wilderness. For more details - https://ajuniorvc.com/ Link to the article - https://ajuniorvc.com/india-crypto-startup-tech-coindcx-wazirx-polygon-unicorn-bitcoin/