Founders Unfiltered

Join us as we talk to Aakrit Vaish, the Co-Founder & CEO of Haptik about their story.  Aakrit Vaish holds a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which he completed in 2008. Following his graduation, he gained valuable experience by working with renowned companies such as Motorola and Deloitte in the Bay Area. In 2011, Aakrit joined Flurry Inc., where he served as the Director of Global Business Operations and India, playing a pivotal role in the company's success.   In the years that followed, Aakrit went on to co-found several companies, including Flato.to and Interakt. He also served as a managing partner for Peercheque and as an advisory board member for H2 (h2.co), where he shared his expertise and insights with fellow entrepreneurs.  In July 2013, Aakrit co-founded Haptik, a groundbreaking conversational AI platform that has revolutionized the way businesses engage with their customers. As the company's CEO, Aakrit has been instrumental in driving its growth and success by building a team of talented professionals and leading the development of cutting-edge technology.   About Haptik: Haptik is a prominent conversational AI platform that helps brands create engaging and personalized experiences for users across 20 channels and 100+ languages. By using cutting-edge AI technology, Haptik enables brands to design delightful experiences that improve conversion rates throughout every stage of the customer journey.  With a vision to create the most compelling conversational commerce platform of the 21st century, Haptik has established itself as a leader in the industry. The company has a global presence with offices in New York, Los Angeles, Mumbai, and Singapore and boasts an impressive client roster that includes KFC, Whirlpool, Starhub, HP, Reliance Jio, CEAT, Disney Hotstar, OLA, and Zurich Insurance, among others.  Haptik's Conversational Commerce platform has received widespread recognition and acclaim from leading industry experts, including Gartner, G2, Opus Research, and many others, who have hailed the company as a category leader in the space. Through its innovative technology and commitment to excellence, Haptik is poised to continue driving growth and success for its clients well into the future.

Join us as we talk to Victor Senapaty, the Founder of Propelld about their story.   Victor Senapaty is a highly acclaimed Indian entrepreneur and the founder of Propelld, a groundbreaking startup that provides assistance to students in securing education loans for higher studies.   He earned his bachelor's degree in technology from IIT Madras, and his MBA from the esteemed University of Delhi's Faculty of Management Studies.  Prior to founding Propelld, Victor served as a senior analyst for Deutsche Bank and also co-founded the StockUpp app. His experience and expertise in the finance and technology domains, coupled with his vision and passion, led him to establish Propelld in August 2016.  About Propelld: Propelld is an innovative startup based in India that aims to revolutionize the education loan industry. The company was founded in August 2016 by Victor Senapaty, a renowned Indian entrepreneur with a background in finance and technology.   Propelld provides a platform that offers hassle-free, digital loan processing to help students secure education loans for higher studies. The company's vision is to make education accessible to all, and its innovative approach has helped thousands of students in India to fulfill their dreams of higher education.   Propelld's dedication to leveraging technology to solve real-world problems has made it a trusted and reliable name in the education financing space.

Join us as we talk to Raghuram Talluri, the Co-founder and CEO at LoadShare Networks about their story.   Raghuram Talluri is a highly accomplished and visionary entrepreneur who is the co-founder and CEO of LoadShare Networks. He holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. Later on, he pursued his master's degree from IIM-L.  Prior to co-founding LoadShare Networks, Raghuram held several senior leadership positions at well-known companies like McKinsey & Company and Myntra, where he was instrumental in driving growth and innovation. About  LoadShare Networks: Loadshare Networks is a technology driven new-age logistics company. They are building an asset light integrated logistics network stitching together SMEs in the logistics sector using a proprietary technology platform.  It is co-founded by Raghuram Talluri (CEO, ex-Myntra, McKinsey), Pramod Nair (CTO, ex-Freecharge, Snapdeal, MartMobi), and Rakib Ahmed (Co-Founder, ICICI, Lunate Technologies).

Last fortnight, HealthifyMe released its campaign with Mandira Bedi, hot on the heels of its campaigns with Farhan Akhtar and Sara Ali Khan as it doubled down on celebrity marketing. Tushar Vashisht is an Ivy League alumnus, and a Wall Street banker. When he got a chance to work with Nandan Nilekani on the UID project, he decided to come back to India. He and his roommate Matthew Cherian wanted to build a business that had a social impact, and made money too! They decided to run an experiment - subsist for a month on what the average Indian does - just 100 rupees ($2.04) a day. The outcome - both of them lost a significant amount of weight. People wanted a copy of the tracking journal they had maintained during this experiment. Tushar and Matthew created a business out of it. HealthifyMe was born in 2012. By 2014, it had 100K users on its app, grew 5X by 2015, and had a Series A round of $6M. It was well poised to gain traction in the $6B Indian wellness industry. By 2017, it had crossed 2M downloads. By 2020, it was making INR 100 Cr in ARR.  How did it leverage conversational AI (even before ChatGPT), and how will it disrupt the $5Tn global wellness market? Read full article here: https://ajuniorvc.com/healthifyme-business-case-study-startup-tech-india-explained-weight-loss/

Join us as we talk to Amrit Acharya, the Co-founder and CEO of Zetwerk about their story.   Meet Amrit Acharya, one of the co-founders of Zetwerk, an India-based online manufacturing platform that connects businesses with manufacturers.  Amrit, along with co-founders Vishal Chaudhary, Srinath Ramakkrushnan, and Rahul Sharma, started Zetwerk in 2018, and it has since become a leading player in the Indian manufacturing industry.  Amrit holds an engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, and completed his MBA from the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business in 2016.  With a wealth of experience working with companies like McKinsey & Company, Monsanto Growth Ventures, ITC Limited, Avaya, and Robert Bosch, Amrit is dedicated to digitizing the manufacturing sector and making it more efficient, accessible, and transparent for businesses of all sizes.   About Zetwerk:  Zetwerk is a B2B manufacturing platform that connects businesses with suppliers to streamline the manufacturing process. The platform provides tools for businesses to manage their orders, track production progress, and collaborate with suppliers. It also allows suppliers to easily manage their orders, inventory, and production schedules  The goal of Zetwerk is to make manufacturing more efficient and cost-effective for both businesses and suppliers by providing a seamless and transparent platform for communication and collaboration  Today Zetwerk manufactures over 9M parts for 1,800 active customers delivering Indian made customer products to over 20 countries

Last fortnight, Kreditbee raised $80M, getting close to a $700M valuation in a funding market that was suffering from lack of capital.    Read The Article Here: https://ajuniorvc.com/kreditbee-tech-fintech-lending-unicorn-loans-startup-india-case-study/  #ajvc #startups #india

Join us today, as we revisit the conversations with our previous founder guests on - "How They Acquired Their First Customers?" Timestamps 00:00 Intro  00:33 DUNZO  02:10 BukuWarung  04:01 Wakefit  05:54 FamPay  08:15 Ather Energy  10:11 Pratilipi  12:07 NoBroker  13:13 Perpule  14:25 Jupiter  15:45 Bewakoof  17:05 Bizongo  19:17 CoinSwitch

Last fortnight, DMart reported ₹11.3K Cr of quarterly revenue, clocking a 25% YoY growth, putting it on track for ~₹40K Cr of annual revenue.  Radhakishan Damani was a stock trader in Dalal Street. In the 80s, he was head-to-head with Harshad Mehta. Mr D lost big with Apollo Tyres - his first encounter with Harshad. But Damani is not a man to accept defeat easily. Damani learnt the art of trading under Manu Manek - the cobra of D-Street. By the turn of the century, Damani was doing significantly well for himself as a trader.  He had won the battle against Harshad, been a value investor alongside Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, and an early predictor of HDFC Bank's supreme success.  Yet, he felt anxious to start a business that brought value to Indian consumers for every rupee they spent. D-Mart was born, with its first store in Powai. Since then, it took eight years to grow to 10 stores, but only 5 years for the next 50 stores. It IPOed in 2017, and thereafter never touched the offer price again.  With strong unit economics, focus on frugality and high customer satisfaction, will DMart continue being the blue-eyed boy of Dalal Street?   Read full article here: https://ajuniorvc.com/dmart-ipo-story...

Welcome to 2023 with our first podcast. Join us as we speak to our first guest from the United States, who is expanding his startup to India. Amjad was born in Jordan, where he grew up with a computer long before others had it. Like any emerging market, his parents wanted him to get a good education. Instead, he became a hacker who built Replit as a side project while working at Yahoo. In 6 years, Replit went from a side project to a company. Today it supports 17M+ developers and is on its way to being a developer unicorn Replit is a browser-based integrated development environment for cross-platform collaborative coding available worldwide. Replit raised from YC after failing thrice to get there. Replit has raised $100M from investors such as Coatue, a16z and YCombinator.

What a year!   We started with our predictions a few years ago. Now we can't stop waiting for the year to turn and see how we fared against our predictions.   Last year we made six predictions on IPO and unicorn counts, D2C, Creator ecosystems, deep tech and fintech.   During a year when people saw crazy overnight changes in the status quo (Ukraine invasion, interest rate hikes), we scored a mad 9.5/10 on our predictions.   This gets us pumped to crystal gaze into the next 12 months.     Read our recap of 2022, and the predictions for 2023 here: https://ajuniorvc.com/2022-predictions-2021-recap-ipo-d2c-fintech-indian-startup/