The Neon Show

# Does the word 'Compounding' excite you? # Have you always wondered what 'Value Investing' is and how can you follow this approach?# Are you biased in your investment decisions? Then, this is an episode you shouldn't miss. Our guest, Gautam Baid, CFA & Founder at Stellar Wealth Partners, and Founding Creator at Chapter talks about his journey in the stock market from his early days, learning through great books on investing to eventually becoming a writer and fund manager himself. During the episode, Gautam talks about his personal experience of gaining and compounding knowledge, his recommendations (in terms of books, checklists, biases) for first-time investors entering the stock market, and much more.Notes - 03:46 - His family background and childhood09:21 - Compounding of Knowledge: Spent on hours of learnings14:28 - "Nothing teaches you the biggest lessons of life, more than an empty pocket and empty stomach."21:19 - His thoughts about 'Value Investing.'31:35 - Checklists in his investing decisions33:15 - 3 biases every investor should know49:28 - "Time is the new status symbol."50:35 - His book recommendationsAdditional links:Link to Gautam Baid's smallcase: www.stellarwealthpartners.comLink to Gautam Baid's Chapter: https://getchapter.app/@gautamLink to Gautam Baid's book: www.TheJoysOfCompounding.comSend us a text

As per the recent data by Tracxn, there are 1338 AgriTech startups in India. However, with 118.7 million farmers, who contribute to a mere 17-18% of Indian GDP, many problem statements are left to be solved at a larger scale.In March 2020, we interviewed Vaibhav Domkundwar from Better Capital, where he mentioned their then-recent investment in Bijak - their first interaction with the founders and their thesis behind the investment. In today's episode, we're interviewing Nukul Upadhye, Co-Founder at Bijak, where he talks about how and why he started Bijak. Bijak is a one-stop agriculture marketplace where sellers and buyers can find trustworthy, reliable, and transparent counterparties. Bijak processes transactions worth more than Rs 1.5 billion on a monthly basis. During the episode, Nukul also talks about their initial challenges, leveraging the pre-existing offline supply chain, and much more.Notes - 01:48 - Creating a B2B marketplace - Bijak05:55 - Alternate ideas while starting Bijak09:24 - How does Bijak differentiate itself from traditional offline marketplaces? 17:33 - Challenges during the initial journey31:42 - How has he personally evolved over the past two years?Send us a text

Since early 2020, we've noticed numerous startups becoming Unicorn one after another. But something a bit unnoticed by the wider audience is the valuations of startups at Seed-stage, which has grown multiples in the last two years. Bipin Shah, Partner at Titan Capital and this week's guest, says, "Till 2019, a great startup idea with an awesome team would be valued around $2Mn to $3Mn, which has now gone up to $10Mn+."So far, Titan Capital has made more than 250+ investments in early-stage startups. Bipin shares his experience and the thesis around identifying, mentoring and investing in seed-stage founders.Notes - 01:18 - Joining Titan Capital06:10 - Finding Soonicorns and Unicorns08:27 - How did they manage to make 90+ investments in a year?12:02 - What support does Titan Capital offer to portfolio companies?15:58 - Thesis: Focus on bottom 50% of companies28:10 - Change in valuation at the Seed stage31:20 - Learnings in the last six years as an investorSend us a text

When you hear the word Startups & Angel Investing, which cities do you most commonly think they are based out of? Bengaluru, Delhi / Gurugram, Mumbai, or Chennai. The guest of our today’s episode, Abhishek Rungta clearly breaks this stereotype. Back in 1997, when he was still in his graduation, he had two options post college - - Join his father’s family business in Jute Trading- Start something totally unexpectedAnd that’s exactly what he did, he founded Indus Net Technologies from Kolkata, completely bootstrapped, which today has 200+ active clients across Banking, Financial Services, Insurance, Retail, Publishing, Media, Government, Healthcare and Entertainment sectors in five continents.Today his company has an ARR of $11Mn, and offers services in verticals such as:- Integrated Digital Marketing Services- Cloud Application Development (CMS, CRM, E-Commerce, ODC, OPD)- Enterprise MobilityIn parallel to this, he also started as an Angel Investor and later as an LP. During the episode, Abhishek talks about the crux of his journey as an investor, his learnings along the way, what mindset he currently carries as an investor and much more.Notes - 01:07 - Family Business Background - Jute Trading03:48 - Acquiring a global client base from Kolkata06:50 - His journey in Angel Investing12:13 - valley of despair in investing15:14 - Thesis: Investing in 2nd time founders22:05 - Diversifying your investments33:01 - Learnings to intake as an LP35:11 - Investors’ whose thesis he looks up toSend us a text

Habits! Our habits make us who we are as a person. Since an early age we’ve been told by our parents and mentors, the distinction between a good and a bad habit. But how often do we skip to the good one’s? Specially as grown-ups, can you confidently say that you have the best habits in terms of - 1. Managing your finance & expenses2. Managing your work life balance3. Having a fruitful & fulfilling daySomething similar intrigued Rajan Singh, the guest of our today’s episode, to start HabitStrong in early 2020.Prior to HabitStrong, Rajan served as a IPS officer, as a McKinsey consultant, and as an investment professional with a private equity fund.​HabitStrong started with him inviting people to join him on YouTube sharp at 5 am, for a 30-day challenge. And the next morning, he was surprised to see several people already waiting. Over the next few months, through several bootcamps, thousands of applicants and several hundreds of volunteers, HabitStrong was on its journey to positively create an impact in everyone’s life.During the episode, Rajan talks about how people run after work, money and luxury lifestyle and how it can lead to a deterioration of mental peace over time, and much more.Notes - 01:18 - Journey to starting HabitStrong05:02 - “Things that sound the simplest are often the most powerful and most overlooked.”11:15 - Why did he make the choices he made? 19:48 - Current scale of HabitStrong29:15 - What does Financial Independence mean for him?33:33 - His definition of happiness - “Ability to step back from what is not making your life meaningful.”Send us a text

# 5M+ Shopping Moments Personalized#400M+ Monthly Active Users Engaged#30B+ Messages Sent Monthly#$10B+ Additional Revenue DeliveredThese are some of the metrics driven by WebEngage, which caters to 400+ global brands as a robust customer data platform, personalization engine, omnichannel campaign manager, and an analytics engine. In today’s episode we have Avlesh Singh, WebEngage’s, CEO & Co-founder, sharing insights on how they’ve built a seamless full-stack Retention OS.During the episode, Avlesh talks about how companies can reach out to their own users, reducing churn and increasing retention, instead of reaching out to third-party ad platforms, and much more.Notes - 01:45 - Intro to Webengage05:06 - “Marketing will only put a certain amount of value to the software, only if we are able to bring more users back to the platform.”13:20 - Current scale in terms of revenue & customers36:51 - Learnings from his experience as a founderSend us a text

"The world is going through one of the worst recessions, and you plan on starting a Travel venture. You must be out of your mind!"This was precisely the reaction of everyone around Prashant Pitti, the guest of today's episode, and his co-founders when they decided to launch EaseMyTrip during the 2008 Recession.In fact, when they approached a few VCs during their early days to pitch for an investment, they received multiple preset filters and nuances -# A B2B travel venture won't grow big enough# You're late; there are so many travel startups alreadyHowever, proving everyone wrong, they've grown leaps and bounds since inception, so much so that they were one of the first internet companies to go public during Covid.During the episode, Prashant talks about how they are thankful for not being VC-funded, some of the tough calls they took during their journey, which propelled their growth, and much more.Notes - 01:02 - Starting a travel venture during recession02:52 - Problem statement solved by EaseMyTrip for Travel Agents05:49 - Impact on growth because of not charging “Convenience Fees”07:44 - Being extremely efficient and disciplined as a company13:41 - Decision behind going public16:59 - How did EaseMyTrip remain profitable even during Covid?25:31 - Why does EaseMyTrip prefer hiring Non-IITians?Send us a text

4.03 billion people!That’s the most recent reported number of email users worldwide. No platform even comes close to the potential reach of email. The latest Facebook statistics give them over 2.8 billion monthly active users.As of today there are almost 1 billion and 700 thousand active users of Gmail, being of the most popular email service providers. But it was launched on 1 April 2004. Prior to Gmail, the tech trend of that era was Hotmail, and if you had a Hotmail account, that was something worth showing-off. Founded in 1996, by the guest of our today’s episode Sabeer Bhatia and his co-founder Jack Smith, Hotmail was the world's first web-based email when it launched.Back then, they sold it two years later to Microsoft for an estimated $400m. Since then Sabeer, became the face of tech entrepreneurship, and has been inspiring generations.Recently last year, in 2020, he’s back with an idea, which might lead to another tech revolution, named ShowReel. Consider this as a short-video version of Linkedin, where your profile, all your posts, and feed will have just videos. During the episode, Sabeer talks about his vision with Hotmail, what are his current plans with Showreel, what all founders can learn from his entrepreneurship journey and much more.Notes - 01:02 - Right timing as an entrepreneur03:06 - What led to Hotmail’s acquisition?09:55 - His journey as an entrepreneur & investor post acquisition11:27 - Problem statements being solved by ShowReel17:21 - His opinion about Web 3.023:47 - “Only crazy entrepreneurs change the world.”Send us a text

A founder’s role is challenging, requiring expertise in multiple enterprises. From funding to hiring, it is entirely the onus of the founder to convert visions into reality. In today’s episode, we’ve brought Sameer Guglani, Founder of Supermorpheus, a Community-driven seed investing platform, to simplify the founder’s role and expand it beyond finance to foster the entire Startup team’s well being. Supermorpheus (the evolution of Morpheus) is a curated global community of founders and folks in the startup space focussing on consciousness-driven creation of Startups and wealth with 350+ founders and 40+ investments.  During this episode, Sameer talks about how startups need to focus on integral growth, optimizing startups for the long run, and prioritizing excellence over the competition. Notes:3:12 Birth of Supermorpheus29:12 Fundamental Changes in the Indian Startup Ecosystem33:00 Role of Financial freedom in Sameer's Journey38:49 Time spent on self-development43:17 Similar Patterns observed among foundersSend us a text

A notion amongst most Indian SaaS entrepreneurs is to move to the US to expand or start from the US from Day 1 itself.However, in today's episode, we've brought Anand Jain, Co-founder of CleverTap, to debunk this myth and shed more light on what an early-stage SaaS founder's roadmap should be in terms of either staying in India or moving to any global market.CleverTap is a leading customer engagement and retention platform, trusted by over 10,000 apps, including Gojek, AirAsia, Sony, Vodafone, Carousell, and Cleartrip.During the episode, Anand talks about how a company needs to adopt new market plans to continue growing one milestone after another, his learnings early-stage SaaS entrepreneurs can consider in their journey, and much more.Notes - 00:55 - Founding CleverTap06:57 - $45 Mn ARR and customer growth Y-o-Y10:43 - “What got you to 45 will not get you 100.”16:55 - Is moving to the US to expand as a SaaS company necessary?24:03 - 3 Key points in his $1 Mn to $10 Mn ARR Playbook27:10 - Mistakes in his journey building CleverTap40:10 - Game Plan to market your product in newer markets and different ARR levelsSend us a text