The Neon Show

"Don't be afraid of failure. Always optimize for success, but be prepared for failure." - Ashish Singhal.In today's episode, we've brought Ashish Singhal, Founder & CEO of CoinSwitch, to talk about their journey globally and how they're shaping the narrative around crypto in India. Recently, CoinSwitch, caught people's attention when they used the entire front page of The Times of India to simply wish Happy Diwali, bringing back the pure festive joy, instead of bombarding users with bumper-sized Ads and unrealistic offers like 100% cashback and more.CoinSwitch currently has more than 13 million+ users, with more than 55% of their users coming from Tier 2 and 3 cities.Last month, they raised over $260 million in its Series C funding round from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Coinbase Ventures, and existing investors. With this, American venture capital firm a16z made its first investment in an Indian unicorn.During the episode, Ashish talks about the problem-statement CoinSwitch is after, how they are giving an initial flavor of crypto to first-time investors with referrals, and much more.Notes - 01:40 - Background prior to CoinSwitch05:33 - Hackathons and starting CoinSwitch08:39 - Growing globally and launching in India12:17 - Choosing the right investors for their journey15:49 - Success of the pre-launch campaign in India17:19 - Simplifying the crypto-investing experience29:57 - Current scale on platform33:14 - “Users always come first, business comes second.”Send us a text

As per a recent article by Economic Times - “Early stage investing is at an all-time high in post-pandemic India with the country averaging one seed round a day this year.”As of Sept, so far over 240+ companies have secured their first funding in 2021 v/s 302 companies in 2020, and 257 in 2019, and with a few more months remaining, this number is expected to cross last year’s benchmark. In today’s episode we’ve brought Kushal Bagia, CEO of FirstCheque, to talk about the current scenario of early-stage funding in India. So far with their first fund, they’ve done over 100+ deals, and some of the well know portfolio companies are Giva, Kaagaz, Able Jobs, and Mailmodo among others.During the episode, Kushal talks about the influx in pre-seed investing post the pandemic, how they’ve created a moat for themselves and much more.Notes - 01:19 - Background prior to FirstCheque03:00 - Various domains where they’ve invested05:35 - Performance of the companies from Fund-I07:48 - Change in valuations in early-stage funding13:18 - Top performing portfolio companies16:50 - FirstCheque’s edge in early-stage investing25:49 - Value addition by FirstCheque to foundersSend us a text

During and post the pandemic, several sectors have seen a dramatic rise in customers & sales, specially the ones which were ready to embrace the new change and leverage the new opportunity of everything going online and remote. With 2021 being the most prominent year for Indian startups achieving unicorn status, Edtech isn’t left behind. In today’s episode we’ve brought Vamsi Krishna, CEO and Co-founder of Vedantu, India’s 5th and most recent Edtech startup to become a unicorn.Prior to starting Vedantu, Vamsi, and his team had prior experience in offline education with their venture - Lakshya Institute. This definitely helped them with a lot of learnings and the initial groundwork for building Vedantu.During the episode, Vamsi talks about the Vedantu’s role being an early entrant and being a category creator, how they’ve built and leveraged organic growth over the years and much more.Notes - 02:29 - Co-founding and running Lakshya Institute for over 8 years05:28 - Pivoting from offline to online and starting Vedantu08:50 - Prior to scaling, first validate if the solution works14:47 - Revenue milestones18:49 - Conscious considerations while building new features22:41 - 3 Verticals at Vedantu24:10 - Focusing on Organic vs Paid Acquisition26:22 - Importance of referrals in Edtech30:19 - Advice to first time entrepreneursSend us a text

According to WHO, obesity has doubled since the turn of the century, and almost 40% of all adults globally, i.e. 2 billion people - are overweight or obese, resulting in 4 million deaths per year.HealthifyMe an AI driven health and fitness app startup, took up this problem statement 10 years back and has been building and solving for individuals to curate and track a healthier diet.The company crossed 25 million downloads recently and is on track to hit $50 million annual recurring revenue (ARR) in the next six months.In today’s episode we’ve brought Tushar Vashisht, CEO and Co-founder of HealthifyMe, to talk about the journey of creating a monetizable healthcare & fitness platform in India. They’ve recently raised $75M in Series C round led by LeapFrog and Khosla Ventures, with which it plans to further expand into India and South East Asia markets besides making inroads into North America. Currently, it generates around 25 percent of its revenues from overseas markets.During the episode, Tushar talks about the casual and unexpected moments when he got several breakthrough ideas, why they consider minor consistent pivots essential for thriving in the long-term and much more.Notes - 02:29 - Roller coaster moments in HealthifyMe’s journey06:02 - Strengths as a founder08:21 - Essence of assembling a team for experienced mentors as board members13:11 - Experiencing living like an average Indian15:17 - Early concerns with HealthifyMe’s model during initial funding20:52 - Advice for entrepreneurs: When to pivot vs when to be persistent?26:19 - Myth: Indians don’t pay for digital healthcare services28:05 - Growth hacks like VaccinateMe29:25 - Getting the first 1000 customersSend us a text

Personal branding is something that’s drawing a lot of attention from people across all domains. And the only proven way, to create a personal brand for yourself, is by becoming a consistent and quality content creator. With over 200+ speeches in 26+ countries on wealth & personal growth, the guest of our today’s episode, Raj Shamani describes his journey from 0 to a million+ followers and building a strong personal brand.Other than that, being - # One of the youngest Indians to represent India at the United Nations# Featured amongst Top 10 Young Entrepreneurs in India - Asian Age# Featured amongst Top 5 Young Influencers in India - YourStory# Featured amongst Top 10 Business Podcasts in India - ItunesAre just some of the feathers in his cap, during his personal brand building journey.During the episode, Raj talks about starting small with consistency, importance of building a team and much more.Notes - 02:29 - Becoming a speaker at small scale04:43 - Strengths from 0 to 100k followers05:21 - Getting 900k+ followers organically in just over a year10:23 - Expanding team over time13:38 - Monetizing multiple channels over multiple platforms18:50 - Recommendation to first time content creators21:19 - Journey as an investor*Sponsors*-This episode is brought to you by Prime Venture Partners, an early-stage VC fund led by Amit Somani, Shripati Acharya, and Sanjay Swamy. Prime is often the first institutional investor in category-creating tech startups in fintech, SaaS, Healthcare, and Education such as MoneyTap, Happay & Mfine. To know more about Prime visit primevp.in-This episode is also brought to you by Red Bull Basement. Red Bull Basement is back to empower the next generation of young innovators like you! Present your unique idea in a simple video of up to 60 seconds and the most impactful and creative ideas will stand a chance to represent your country at the Global Finals in Turkey! Last date of Registrations: October 25th, 2021 Register here: https://basement.redbull.com/enSend us a text

India is becoming the world's fastest-growing startup ecosystem with over 60+ Unicorn Startups, out of which 25+ have gained their Unicorn status in 2021 itself. One of the youngest amongst them is headed by the guest of our today’s episode, Amrit Acharya, Co-founder & CEO, Zetwerk. Zetwerk started in 2018, with the idea to help manufacturing managers with managing several suppliers with ease using a dashboard, as previously the role had been very “manual and prone to errors”. The product was great, but when they reached out to potential customers, they didn’t get a very optimistic response. Instead these customers wanted a marketplace solution where they could discover and connect with new suppliers. And that’s what led to Zetwerk's pivot within 6 months of starting up.Currently Zetwerk helps its customers reduce costs, optimize suppliers and execute production faster. Some stats relating to its current scale - # 15+ Countries - North American, Indo-Pacific & Middle Eastern regions# 25+ Industries - Oil & Gas, Aerospace, Automotive, Construction, Mining & more# 100+ Retained happy customers# 1000+ projectsDuring the episode, Amrit talks in-depth about the nitty-gritty of the manufacturing sector, what are some of the key focus points for customers and much more.Notes - 01:29 - Revenue and scale at Zetwerk04:26 - Solving for market access & capital expenditures for small manufactures05:31 - Zetwerk’s revenue model10:15 - Time v/s Quality in manufacturing18:30 - Nature of retained customers20:47 - Order size from $1000 to $30 Mn24:32 - Creating a catalogue for the uncatalogued market36:15 - Approach as an entrepreneur during fundraisingSend us a text

Normally for the most of us our buying focus is around products like - # Which smartphone to buy? # Which laptop to buy? # Which car to buy? And so on. But have you ever thought for a bit about which mattress should I buy? Probably No, right. This is the reason why, in almost the last 10-15 years, prior to 2015-16, we’ve barely seen any innovation in mattresses or competitive pricing amongst brands? But a lot of that has changed in the last 3-4 years, with companies like Sleepyhead, The Sleep Company, Wakefit and a few other D2C mattress brands coming up.In today’s episode we’ve brought Ankit Garg, Director and Co-founder of Wakefit, to talk about the journey of the brand and how he and his Co-founder, Chaitanya Ramalingegowda, won the hearts of several customers in this segment. Founded in 2016, in current financial year, Wakefit recorded 2X growth, clocking Rs 410 crore revenue. The year earlier, it registered a turnover of Rs 197 crore. They manufacture all their products in-house across nine factories in Bengaluru, Jodhpur, and Delhi. While they only sell online and drive most of their sales from Amazon (i.e. mostly by new customers) and their own website (i.e. mostly by returning customers), they also have over 22 experience centres — six in metros and nine in smaller towns. During the episode, Ankit talks about focusing on making their customers happy, understanding simple yet viral strategies to continue driving up their revenue and much more.Notes - 02:58 - Getting a taste of failure early-on09:05 - Working on your idea part-time during the early phase12:25 - Building a D2C vs B2B company15:17 - Initial pricing experiment of selling mattresses on Amazon18:16 - Core habit of talking to customers22:10 - Focus on NPS & customer happiness25:23 - Removing inefficiencies in the product to offer better prices26:17 - Revenue growth over the years32:09 - Approach while reaching out to investors36:13 - Wakefit’s 100 Nights Trial campaign48:01 - Wakefit’s sleep campaign50:30 - Advice for D2C foundersSend us a text

Have you heard about “Programmatic Advertising”?Well for those of you who haven’t, Programmatic Advertising, also known as programmatic display advertising, is an automatic process of planning, buying and selling ad inventory.Before advertising was programmatic, it was done manually, which included being in touch with a sales team, and included requesting for proposals, bidding, quotation, and human negotiation. And as you can imagine, this was a very time intensive task.With Programmatic Advertising the system automates all of this for this, and as a cherry on the cake, it provides actionable data in planning and determining what Ad content is relevant to a particular user.For instance, a user is scanning some blog related to “baby food”. The Ad tech system evaluates the user and displays an Ad related to “offers on baby food items” or “baby food pouches”.The guest of our today’s episode Kshitij Jain, with his company Joveo, enables recruiters with one of the most advanced Programmatic Job Advertising Platform. Their clients include - Wells Fargo, Barclays, Rolls-Royce, Sony, HCL and several other Fortune 500 companies.Their system claims to be driving up to 2X more relevant applicants, 40% higher click to apply conversions, at 20-50% lower Cost per Hire.Kshitij who has spent over 20+ years in the online recruitment and hiring industry, is a second time founder with Joveo. His first company, MoBolt was acquired by Indeed in 2014, just under 2 years of being operational.During the episode, he talks about his experience in the industry over the year, how did he and his team made MoBolt a big success within such a short-time, his learnings from his traditional-family background in India and much more.Notes - 00:50 - What does Joveo stands for?02:17 - Insights related to online Jobs & Hiring industry09:47 - Motivation behind spending 20+ years in this industry 13:03 - Difference between Sales & Selling17:16 - Magic recipe behind Mobolt19:35 - How to focus on what the customer needs and not what the customer wants?25:27 - “Everybody who wants to be an entrepreneur needs to know how to cold call.”27:58 - Key milestones in Joveo’s journey30:22 - Learnings coming from Marwari family background39:41 - “I’m the business of the unfinished business.”Send us a text

How often and sincerely do you help someone for free? Moreover when it's related to building/growing their business?Only some of us can confidently say yes to the above questions. However today we have Manish Pandey, who heads Culture and Brand at Josh Talks. Coming from Silvassa (i.e. headquarters of the union territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu), Manish had very humble beginnings. He’s been featured on Josh Talks series - #RagsToRiches and Ranveer Allahbadia’s #TheRanveerShow, Ranveer also referred to Manish as his mentor for career and spirituality and also credits him for helping to build and grow Beerbiceps and Monk entertainment.Similarly, Manish has selflessly helped several solopreneurs and founders in building and scaling their brands for free.During the episode, Manish shares with us what drives him to help other entrepreneurs grow, his recommendations for building a personal brand and more. Notes - 02:50 - Helping Entrepreneurs and Content Creators07:49 - Introspecting life backwards to 5th standard16:04 - Meeting Ranveer Allahbadia21:12 - Advice to 100xEntrepreneur to build its Social Media Brand23:44 - Putting out one’s vulnerability 26:08 - Manish on SpiritualitySend us a text

In whichever industry or ecosystem you are, there are some people you just can’t not know about, because they are the ones who have either - # had a major role in shaping the industry as it is today # or achieved something at such a massive scale that no one can miss to notice itThe guest of our today’s episode Vani Kola, founder and managing director of Kalaari Capital, is one such person. She was listed as one of the most powerful women in Indian business by Fortune India in 2014.She started her career in the silicon valley, as a serial entrepreneur and spent close to 22 years. While in silicon valley, she founded an e-procurement company RightWorks, which was later sold for $657 million.After returning to India in 2006, she founded Indo-US Venture Partners (IUVP) in 2006, which was later rebranded as Kalaari Capital.Some stats around Kalaari Capital -# 188+ Investments; popular portfolio companies are Dream11, Myntra, Cure.fit, and Snapdeal# 23+ Exits; most notable exits include Workday, Milkbasket, and SimplilearnDuring the podcast, Vani shares with us how she approaches any new investment, how she suggests the founder to treat any failure, how yoga and meditation have positively impacted her life and more. Notes - 02:50 - “What you can’t dream, you can’t achieve.”10:32 - “What didn’t work can give you an actionable insight.”18:09 - Assessing a founder’s potential vs pedigree23:12 - Having a depth of clarity rather than just being a good storyteller38:54 - Balance to life: Meditation & Yoga41:05 - CXXO Initiative: $10 million fund for women foundersSend us a text