Founders Unfiltered

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/

Souvik grew up in Kolkata in a middle-class neighborhood where entrepreneurship was something alienated and mainly constituted of generational family businesses. After completing his CA he started working at a construction company. He worked there for 5 years, then went on to pursue an MBA. He graduated in 2016 and witnessed the Indian startup ecosystem booming.   However, the B2B space was something that remained largely unexplored. Being familiar with the construction industry landscape, Souvik was aware of the inefficiencies and the large opportunity at hand.  His thesis constituted of 2 insights:  - the majority of the market is fragmented and served by many local manufacturers - Companies mostly set up centralized mega factories and use multiple distribution channels. Souvik started Infra.Market with the mission to digitize procurement of raw materials using an asset-light model. In 2019, they started receiving investor interest and began expanding rapidly.  Today, Infra.Market supplies across 10 Indian states and exports to markets like Dubai, Singapore, Italy, etc. For more details visit: ajuniorvc.com/podcast

Last fortnight, India added a record 20th unicorn for the year, almost double in the number of 2020, surpassing the amount of funding raised in all of the last year. Article link - https://ajuniorvc.com/india-startup-tech-upi-jio-infosys-flipkart-gold-decade/ More info - https://ajuniorvc.com/

Abhinav grew up in a traditional middle-class fashion and went on to college to study engineering. Becoming a part of the institute’s entrepreneurship cell, he got exposed to the world of startups. Interacting with founders and hearing their experiences, he had realized that he ultimately wants to become a founder one day. After graduation, he got a high-paying job at Goldman Sachs. After working for a few months in the Indian office, he went to work at the US office where he met his co-founder. The two loved discussing product ideas and study emerging market trends. While living in the US, they witnessed the Black Friday sale and were awestruck. Everyone goes on a massive shopping spree with items getting out of stock in a matter of hours. This observation made them interested in the Indian space. Amidst the Flipkart amazon rivalry, they were confident that offline retail also has an important role to play. Digging further into the Indian retail market revealed its inefficiencies and presented the large opportunity at hand. Wanting to give their best shot at the problem, they both quit their job and came back to India. Thus, Perpule was born. For more details visit: ajuniorvc.com/podcast

Last fortnight, Digit Insurance raised a $200 million round to make it one of the largest funding rounds in India’s general insurance industry, valuing the company at $3.5B. Article link : https://ajuniorvc.com/digit-insurance-lic-unicorn-india-startup-tech-general-acko/   More info on: ajuniorvc.com

Ranjeet grew up in a small village with less than 1000 population. He used to go to the nearby city on weekdays to attend school and return to the village on the weekend. As a kid he was a voracious reader, starting with first his school textbooks, later devouring Hindi literature, comics, and novels. As he grew up, he slowly shifted to reading English as there was no regional content available online. Coming from a humble background, getting a stable job was what his family wanted for him. After completing his MBA, he got a job at Vodafone. He liked the job but after a few years, he wanted to do something more challenging. So quit his job and decided to startup. As he started searching for business ideas, many of his friends advised him why doesn’t do something to solve online regional content - a problem Ranjeet often cribbed about. As he started talking to people about this problem - he received many suggestions - Indians don’t read, People don’t read long-form content anymore, No one wants regional content. But he knew that wasn’t true and had a deep conviction that there was a space for an Indian regional content player. Thus, Pratilipi was born.  Today Pratilipi is India’s largest regional content platform with over 3 lac writers and more than 2.5 crore monthly active users For more details visit: ajuniorvc.com/podcast

Last fortnight, BrowserStack raised $200M, at a valuation of $4Bn, making it India’s most valuable SaaS startup.  Join us for a behind-the-scenes peek at the A Junior VC piece - AJVC Unfiltered 28: Can BrowserStack be the World’s Software Tester? For more details - https://ajuniorvc.com/browserstack-saas-unicorn-bootstrapped-testing-app-browser-india-startup/