The Neon Show

Founded in 2013, Portea Medical, India's Leading Home Health Care Company employes over 4000 people and covers 40+ cities in India doing 1,50,000+ home visits every month.Portea has also helped about 5,00,000 COVID-19 patients, working with seven different cities and state governments, including Delhi, Mumbai, Faridabad, Gurgaon, Chennai, Bengaluru and all of Karnataka. Meena Ganesh, Chairperson and Co-Founder, Portea Medical is one of India’s most celebrated entrepreneurs and business leaders.  She sits on the boards of numerous firms like Axis Bank, and has a string of start-up successes to her credit. She co-founded her first company, Customer Asset, in 2000 and later on sold it to ICICI. Then came TutorVista, which she ran successfully till it was acquired by British publishing giant Pearson. Before founding Portea, Meena also served Pearson India as the chief executive officer and managing director. With her incredible career and achievements, she also became part of Fortune India’s ‘50 Most Powerful Women in Indian Business’ from 2015 to 2021.In today’s episode, we talk with Meena about her entrepreneurial journey so far, learnings from building a healthcare startup in India and why even getting two large exists previously, she still thinks that journey with her third venture Portea is the most satisfying in terms of learnings. Notes - 01:36 - Intro02:04 - Family background & what got Meena into entrepreneurship08:02 - Brainstorming Ideas during the conception of Portea12:46 - Milestones after Series A till date17:53 - Her thoughts on the notion that - “It’s difficult to create money from healthcare & health-tech startups”21:36 - Zoho Sponsored – Prashant Ganti on Where do founders struggle with Payroll and how can they fix it?22:37 - How has the pricing model evolved at Portea?24:06 - Learnings from building in healthcare in India27:14 - How has she grown as a founder during her entrepreneurial journey?30:04 - Her fundraising journey at Portea30:33 - Balancing investor-founder relation over the course of a startup’s journey32:07 - Managing her time between GrowthStory, Portea and homeAlso, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur!https://zoho.to/zoho-payrollSend us a text

In startup ecosystem a lot of people talk about Category creating startups, but it is equally difficult and as it sounds glamorous and exciting. That’s possibly the reason why we don’t see a lot such Category creating startups around us very frequently. And even if they do come up, they don’t sustain very long. In today’s episode we are talking with Vijay Arisetty, Founder, MyGate, i.e. a category creating startup in its space. As of now MyGate cators to almost 4 Million+ homes across India. It is very likely that you would have interacted with MyGate directly, as its installed in your society or indirectly probably when you would have visited to meet a friend or family in a gated community, and you would have experienced the seamless flow it brings to gates of these gated communities.During the episode, catch Vijay sharing what all challenges and opportunities did they come across being a category creating startup in terms of hiring, what to offer to its customers, how to monetize better and much more. Notes - 01:51 - Intro03:11 - Family Background and joining the Armed Forces06:55 - His first startup - PurpleRoad in the Delivery space08:19 - Aha moment which led to starting MyGate?11:53 - Final Scale with his logistics startup and initial scale at MyGate before first funding14:48 - Challenges during the first funding round being a category creator21:25 - Zoho Sponsored – Prashant Ganti on Where do founders struggle with Payroll and how can they fix it?23:13 - Current and operationally capable scale of MyGate24:56 - Evolution of monetary channels29:48 - Challenges during their 0 to 1 journey and then in 1 to 10 journey37:36 - Existential crisis prior to first round of funding42:13 - Journey from Series A to Series B and beyond44:55 - How were the two years of Covid for MyGate?49:02 - Similarities between being in the Armed Forces and being an Entrepreneur54:08 - 30 Million homes untapped market by MyGateAlso, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur!https://zoho.to/zoho-payrollSend us a text

In Sales the stakes are high. And for company’s growth it is important to get it right.Thanks to multiple options of Sales engagement softwares which streamlines the sales process through integrations which enables companies to combine their sales and marketing efforts to create personalized and automated sales journeys.In today's episode of 100x Entrepreneur, we have with us Yamini Bhat, Co-founder & CEO, Vymo; i.e An intelligent sales engagement platform for financial institutions.Started in 2013, Vymo is used by 300,000+ Sales Reps across 65+ Enterprises such as HDFC Bank, SBI Life Insurance, and Sun Life Financial among others.While most SaaS startups go global from Day 1, Vymo is one of the few Indian SaaS companies which scaled to more than $10M ARR with India Enterprises as clients.During the episode, catch Yamini sharing why did they chose to focus on BFSI, how did they brought awareness for both their team and customers about their product and much more. Notes - 01:33 - Intro03:05 - Career background in Sales Transformation at Mckinsey which led her to Vymo06:48 - Family background and getting into BITS Pilani & IIM Bangalore?14:58 - Quitting Mckinsey and identifying the problem statement to startup17:29 - Till Series-A being focused on a horizontal solution20:53 - Zoho Sponsored – Prashant Ganti on Where do founders struggle with Payroll and how can they fix it?23:04 - Milestones during Vymo’s journey26:26 - Key challenges with team and customers early-on28:56 - Convincing the first few BFSI customers for an average contract value of $350K31:54 - Building a SaaS behemoth from India and then expanding globally36:16 - Her 0 to $10 Million ARR playbook for SaaS-entrepreneurs in IndiaAlso, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur!https://zoho.to/zoho-payrollSend us a text

As per a recent article,“About 60% of companies that reach pre-series A funding fail to make it to Series A, so the success rate is only 30%-40%.”Infact if you check on Crunchbase, in India you’ll find 4300+ startups at Pre-seed or Seed-stage, but only 600+ out of them have managed to reach Series-A, which bring the success rate to even lower at just 15%.  Apart from this, even in the entire Indian startup ecosystem, there are so many Product Managers, Ex-founders, and many more, who either have an idea around a Problem-statement, but don’t know how to proceed or there are students in college, who are amazed by the startup ecosystem, and want to take their early step, but afraid on how to take the next step. In order to solve this we have with us our guest of this episode, Rajiv Srivatsa & Nitin Sharma, Antler India. Antler unlike most VC firms bets on the startup ideas at Pre-seed stage with their Antler India Residency or in some cases even earlier with college students via Antler India Fellowship.During the episode, catch Rajiv & Nitin sharing their First Principles approach and what infrastructure they are building at Antler India to make the founders succeed considering the time constraints at Pre-seed stage and much more. Notes - 03:50 - Intro04:44 - Why did they choose to build Antler India? 09:35 - How did Antler happen? 12:02 - Why kind of institutional mindset do they bring in? 16:18 - How do they balance the equation of a Founder’s optimism & a VC’s pessimism between them?18:22 - Background around Antler’s India Portfolio over the last 18+ months22:08 - Zoho Sponsored – Prashant Ganti on Where do founders struggle with Payroll and how can they fix it?23:47 - What’s their approach and what’s the general cheque size? 29:48 - Learnings from the Ups & Downs in Urban Ladder Journey33:28 - Focusing on building around core foundational use-cases during times of crisis38:18 - Keeping founders from falling in love with the product and not the actual problem-story42:12 - Examples of building PeakPerformer & Bookee with Antler46:47 - How & when do founders get distracted after funding?50:08 - When do founders have the best chances of succeeding at Seed-stage?Also, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur!https://zoho.to/zoho-payrollSend us a text

Varun Mayya was in college when he along with his friends started up a t-shirt manufacturing business called SIZR. Later on, he went into building a recruitment platform, Jobspire. And they were one of the youngest teams to raise venture capital of Rs 1.7 crore even before they graduated, and scaled the company to serve 4 million requests in 2016. In 2017, they sold Jobspire to a New York-based company.Varun also authored a book named Pyjama Profit which is a guide for millennials to get started with an online freelance practice, while developing the skills needed to succeed.Along with running a youtube channel, Varun also co-founded Scenes, a community platform for creators to manage, moderate, and monetize their communities in one place. Scenes has raised funds from some notable investors including Kunal Shah, Gaurav Munjal, Kalyan Krishnamurthy, Tanmay Bhat as well Tanglin Ventures, Better Capital, Whiteboard Capital, iSeed Ventures, and Blume Founders Fund.Tune in to this insightful episode with Varun to learn about building a brand, processes around content creation, and leveraging your youtube channel to scale your business. Notes – 03:10 – Intro04:05 – His journey before entrepreneurship06:49 – Getting introduced to oDesk (now Upwork) via his mother and earning his first $10009:10 – Starting a visual version of Naukri in fourth year of college11:09 – Writing an Amazon Bestseller Book – “Pyjama Profit: The Millennial’s Guide to a Sustainable Freelance Career” 12:48 – Starting Avalon Scenes18:07 – Two rounds of funding for building a community space19:22 – Top clients and why do they use Scenes?22:11 – Zoho Sponsored – Prashant Ganti on Where do founders struggle with Payroll and how can they fix it?24:09 – What excites him the most about Scenes? 26:40 – Solving a problem really well v/s Building a large business28:41 – What’s their longterm goal with Scenes? 33:02 – Can Scenes eventually replace Discord? 34:36 – Why he continues to a creator with Scenes growing? 41:25 – Learnings on YouTube and Twitter around content creation46:15 – One of his best videos on YouTube52:44 – “I think we live in a trust-deficient economy and content is the only way to beat it.” Also, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur! https://zoho.to/zoho-payrollSend us a text

According to a recent article in Forbes, as per data of ProductLedGrowth.org,“Buyers want to self-educate.” Personalization is expected by customers—not only are 80% of people more likely to do business with a company that offers personalization but Salesforce’s 2017 State of Marketing Report found that 52% of B2C customers would actually switch brands if they weren’t getting a personalized experience. In today’s episode we’ve some Dheeraj Pandey, CEO at DevRev; Board Member at Adobe; Investor & Co-founder at Nutanix. During the episode, catch Dheeraj sharing his experience around Product-Led Growth over the past two decades, taking Nutanix Inc. public within 6 years of inceptio and much more. Notes - 01:44 - Intro02:26 - Achieving Product Market Fit - “What is the journey is not a destination.”05:15 - Identifying the problem statement for first 10 customer at Nutanix07:54 - Main value prop by Nutanix for early customers10:11 - How to identify large problems?13:22 - Whether to find a niche problem and then expand or find a problem statement of the larger market?15:07 - What’s the first Aha moment for customers on DevRev?20:04 - Zoho Sponsored - Prashant Ganti on Where do founders struggle with Payroll and how can they fix it?21:18 - Why have Startups as the target audience v/s Large Entreprises?27:10 - History of Product-led growth32:50 - First principle thought behind Product-led growth with velocity37:49 - Customer Relationship Management v/s Sales First Automation39:07 - How a B2B developer can think like a B2C developer?40:23 - What are risks of failure they need to think about?41:40 - Building an entrepreneurial culture43:47 - Dealing with the most difficult part of an acquisition (i.e. Integration)45:38 - An early childhood in Patna, graduating from IIT Kanpur & Ph.D. dropout from University of Texas50:33 - Why did he chose to startup in a downturn of 2009?54:07 - Milestones in Nutanix’s journey58:31 - Becoming a Public company59:58 - Aspirations for DevRev1:02:29 - What kind of person he is in his personal life?Also, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur! https://zoho.to/zoho-payrollSend us a text

In today’s podcast, we have Ishan Sharma with us! Ishan is a Youtuber, Entrepreneur, and Founder of MarkitUp. He droped out of his college(BITS Pilani, Goa) at the age of 20 and decided to continue his entrepreneurial and content creation journey!Ishan Sharma has around 500k Subscribers on Youtube and about 100K on LinkedIn. He also wrote a  book called "Crush It on LinkedIn" back in Mid 2020 which summarises his experience of using LinkedIn and it is a guide for college students to find opportunities.Ishan will share his YT journey so far,  why he decided to drop out, what motivated him to do so, how MarkitUp was formed, and a lot more!Let’s listen to his inspirational journey so far and what he plans to do next! 0:00 - Intro2:05 - What drives you in your life?2:49 - How did you overcome the pain of Failing in JEE Advanced Exam?6:22 - Do you remember the date you started your YouTube Channel?7:18 - What's the main reason behind starting your YouTube Channel?9:13 - What other skills have you learned after Coding & Content Creation?11:40 - When did you make your First Money?12:16 - How was your YouTube Journey & How did you reach 10,000 Subscribers?13:35 - What are your learnings from YouTube?15:24 - How did you master YouTube Thumbnails?17:47 - What are your other Income Streams beside YouTube?19:56 - What was your income in May?21:44 - When did you get your First Brand Deal & What does it takes to reach here?24:56 - What is the Sales Engine looks like for 'MarkitUp'?26:20 - Where do you want to see yourself in 1 Year in terms of numbers?27:15 - How many Brand Collaborations do you do in a month?28:52 - How much do you pay a Freelancer per month?30:05 - How does a day in your Life look like?33:14 - What made you choose not to spend any more time in college?39:00 - How do you differentiate your income?39:55 - What do you do with the money you are making right now?41:08 - Do you draw any salary from 'MarkitUp'?43:05 - What is enough for Ishan?45:02 - Why does $1 Million in Investment important for you?46:03 - What is one thing that is missing in your life?47:48 - What do you do to make your growth engine proactive?49:32 - Have you explored during 10 Day Meditation or Vipassana?50:43 - What is Your Biggest Fear right now?53:14 - Do you watch Netflix or any other OTT platform?54:16 - Do you believe in Manifestation?55:18 - What's your process for recording a YouTube Video?57:08 - What would you do if your Investment Portfolio reaches $1 Million?59:49 - OutroAlso, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur! https://zoho.to/zoho-payrollSend us a text

If you’re a startup enthusiasts, its highly likely that you would have read or atleast heard about the book - Saying No to Jugaad: The Making of Bigbasket by by T. N. Hari & M. S. Subramanian.In today’s episode we have Hari Menon, BigBasket’s founder sharing the his experience in the Indian Ecommerce Ecosystem over the last two decades. In May 2021, Tata Digital invested $375 Mn in BigBasket. They have also recently launched their quick commerce vertical called BBNow and will now compete alongside the existing players such as Swiggy, Blinkit, Zepto and Dunzo.During the episode, catch Hari talking about his learning from his first venture, his thoughts on the current market and the investment slowdown, and much more. Notes - 02:20 - Building India’s online grocery market in the last two decades14:37 - Starting BigBasket at the age of 5021:16 - Dividing equity between the founders21:42 - Mistakes & Biases which got carried from his first venture24:15 - Becoming a part of Tata Group and growing bigger27:16 - Top learnings and observations from Tata Group29:30 - His thoughts on “10-minute delivery”33:14 - Any similar patterns between June 2022 and 1999 boom and bust?35:14 - Business which are not building a profitable model will suffer the most38:22 - Indian Startup Ecosystem in the next 5-10 years40:20 - Framework to identify large opportunities: Scale & Profitability42:36 - Culture at BigBasket which keeps people from moving out46:45 - Growing with the business as CEOSend us a text

We’ve heard inspiring stories of founders of Facebook and Microsoft who’ve dropped out of Harvard and even some of the well known Indian Entrepreneurs who’ve dropped out of IITs to build on their dream venture. But in today’s episode we’ll talk with Anish Achuthan, who ran away from his hometown during his Class 11th with dreams to build something big in the Dotcom space and currently is the Cofounder of Open, which recently became Kerala’s first unicorn start-up.Listen to Anish talk about his journey through his various ventures over the last two decades and how he’s building for Open to democratize the Neobanking space in India. Notes - 02:42 - Being born in Govt service-oriented family in Kerala to getting inspired by Dotcom06:11 - Meeting his cofounder & life partner07:49 - Cumulative learnings from his previous companies11:27 - Product Offerings by Open for SMEs, Banks and Fintech Entreprises13:57 - Key milestones in Open’s journey15:49 - Current metrics on the platform16:56 - What are his plans with Open for the long term19:17 - Their moat against other Neobanks and traditional banks23:04 - Product & distribution strategy for the first 100 to 1000 users31:46 - Licenses and certifications needed for Neo Banking33:47 - Challenges while cracking the first banking partner35:27 - Monetizing their services on Freemium model36:55 - Advice to early-stage entrepreneursSend us a text

On the podcast today, we have with us Sandeep Jain, Founder, GeeksforGeeks. GeeksForGeeks is one of the largest online learning platforms for coding enthusiasts, budding engineers, and anyone involved in the tech domain. Sandeep is from Firozabad which is 40 kms away from Agra in UP. He studied in a government school before doing his graduation from UP Technical University, Mathura, and masters from IIT Roorkee. In the year 2009, he created a blog with the intent to help engineering students prepare for placements. What started as a blog is today a 1000 Crore+ annual revenue Edtech company with 250+ team members. Let’s dive deep into his journey from leaving his engineering job to becoming a teacher to 10 Million+ registered 'Geeks' from across the world.Notes - 03:07 - Growing up in Firozabad to growing the love for coding07:20 - Joining D. E. Shaw & Co after graduation09:24 - 30% Salary cut in his first Teaching job v/s being a Software Engineer10:00 - Starting GeeksforGeeks in 200916:03 - Hiring the initial team18:26 - Annual revenue growth to 1000 Crore+24:12 - Learning the skills and growing in the role of a CEO30:35 - Growing against well-funded competitorsSend us a text