Founders Unfiltered

A Junior VC
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May 16, 2021 • 19min

AJVC Unfiltered 24: Can Urban Company Makeover India’s Gig Economy?

Last fortnight, Urban Company raised $190M, propelling it to become a $2Bn unicorn, a record-breaking 13th for 2021. Join us for a behind-the-scenes peek at the A Junior VC piece "Can Urban Company Makeover India's Gig Economy?" Article Link: https://ajuniorvc.com/urban-company-clap-services-unicorn-gig-economy/ More info on: ajuniorvc.com
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May 8, 2021 • 47min

Ep30: Storytelling for Millennials ft. Pocket Aces

Seeing the rise of Indian talent in foreign movies coupled with their interest in film and media, Ashwin, Aditi, and Anirudh decided to come back to India and do something in the space. They started with a production studio creating films but soon pivoted to a content creation company as they witnessed the growth of social media. To build a community serving multiple interests, they created multiple brands under Pocket Aces with a unique content thesis for each. Today Pocket Aces is India’s leading original content company with over 700M monthly views. Their clients include all kinds of companies - large MNCs, FMCG brands, startups, and OTT platforms. Join us to learn how Ashwin, Aditi, and Anirudh built Pocket Aces to help solve boredom and provide entertainment to all of us. More info on: ajuniorvc.com/podcast
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Apr 23, 2021 • 37min

Ep29: Building Talent Dense Organizations ft. Scaler Academy’s Abhimanyu Saxena

Abhimanyu's interest in tech began in college where he met his co-founder Anshuman. The two of them worked together on many projects before joining as full-time engineers at young high growth startups in the US. They discovered how hard it is to scale a talented tech team. They started Interview Bit, a website that helped people prepare for tech interviews using high-quality content. But they felt there was a bigger problem at hand to be solved. Scaler Academy is a virtual university that acts as a focused guide with mentors, relevant courses, and the correct learning environment. Abhimanyu talks about how important it is for companies to hire the right talent as bad hires hit the hardest in the tech domain. He explains the hiring process and suggests ways how both companies and employees should go about it. Join us to learn from Abhimanyu about building talent-dense organizations. More info on: ajuniorvc.com/podcast
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Apr 18, 2021 • 17min

AJVC Unfiltered 23: Will boAt Ride the D2C Wave to Unicorndom?

Last week, boAt announced a ₹50Cr (~$7MM) fundraise from the venture arm of a major global technology company, on the heels of a ₹750Cr ($100MM) PE investment 3 months ago. boAt democratised audio technology in India. Will it be amongst the handful of Indian hardware unicorn startups? Listen ahead to know more!
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Apr 10, 2021 • 36min

Ep28: Social Commerce ft. KitaBeli’s Prateek Chaturvedi

After college Prateek got a job at a big bank. He enjoyed the job but often felt like a small cog in the machine. Witnessing the early Indian startup wave closely, he decided to leave his job in 2014 and startup. He launched a B2B marketing platform that after 4 years got acquired by an Indonesian firm. He moved to Indonesia and fell in love with its culture. The country’s budding startup ecosystem and sense of community led him to start Kitabeli, a social commerce app. Social commerce takes advantage of people’s behavior of sharing purchases and offers in their friend circles. This significantly reduces the logistics cost and the CAC as compared to traditional e-commerce. Join us to learn how Prateek built and grew Kitabeli to facilitate commerce in Indonesia. More info on: ajuniorvc.com/podcast
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Apr 4, 2021 • 21min

AJVC Unfiltered 22: Will Nazara's 20 Year Gaming Empire Dream Come True?

Link to detailed article: https://ajuniorvc.com/nazara-gaming-ipo-esports-mpl-dream11/ Last week Nazara Technologies became the first gaming company ever to be taken public. This INR 583 Cr IPO was oversubscribed 176 times by investors. Even before a 21-year-old Nitish Mittersain could find his foothold with his fledgling startup, he found himself in a $660K debt after the dot-com crash. Nazara.com v1.0 was kept aside, and Nitish resorted to selling bulk SMS packs to stay afloat. But the wheels of his fortune were turning, and by 2005, Nazara had landed a $1.5 MM seed investment and Sachin Tendulkar as its brand ambassador. The journey ahead could only be in one direction - upwards. But there several more twist and turn that Nitesh had to content with. What did Nazara do to eventually spring back again? Was it just COVID, or did the demographics have a role to play? Will it be able to compete with the new-age fantasy gaming industry and come out on top?
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Mar 27, 2021 • 36min

Ep27: Know your customers ft. Rupeek’s Sumit Maniyar

Sumit grew up in a town full of small business owners. His family’s nudge towards STEM education was considered the unconventional path. While working as an equity analyst, Sumit discovered a unique problem in the fintech space - Indians have very high physical asset ownership, yet asset-backed lending makes only a minority of total borrowing. In 2015, he started Rupeek to fulfill this unprecedented demand. He believes Understanding customers is an ongoing process and one should keep running experiments to learn. Today, Rupeek serves over 1 lakh happy users across 25+ cities. Join us to learn how Sumit got to know his customers and built Rupeek. More info on: ajuniorvc.com/podcast
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Mar 21, 2021 • 16min

AJVC Unfiltered 21: Can India’s Fastest Unicorn Win the Infra.Market?

Episode on youtube: https://youtu.be/aWkBTwiLQWc Last month, Infra.Market raised $100M to gain unicorn status, only 20 months after getting its first-ever institutional round. Become one of the fastest Indian unicorns. Join us for a behind the scenes peek at the A Junior VC piece Can India’s Fastest Unicorn Win the Infra.Market? More info on: ajuniorvc.com
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Mar 13, 2021 • 29min

Ep26: Fintech Payments ft. CashFree’s Reeju Datta

Growing up, Reeju had never thought of starting his own venture. It was after receiving an admit from ISB when he started thinking about what he really wants to do in life. Considering the huge expense of Bschool, in addition to the opportunity cost at hand. He made the decision of not doing an MBA and starting up instead. He met his co-founder Akash through a mutual friend. The two often used to bounce around business ideas with each other. Before starting up, they evaluated many different ideas and narrowed down on the problem they both had faced personally, Cash on delivery payments for online businesses. Today, Cashfree is used by over 50000 businesses with transactions worth $12 billion processed annually. More info on: ajuniorvc.com/podcast
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Mar 7, 2021 • 12min

AJVC Unfiltered 20: Will BharatPe Become Bharat’s Lending Tap?

The AJVC team gets  together to discuss BharatPe and how they raised $100M to reach within a touching distance of becoming a unicorn, within an incredible 3 years of founding. Join us for a behind the scenes  peek at the A Junior VC piece Will BharatPe Become Bharat’s Lending Tap? More info on: ajuniorvc.com

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