The Neon Show

With so many Indian startups achieving unicorn status in 2021, the situation begs an answer to the question:  # Is this growth sustainable or are we in a bubble?# What does this mean for foreign and Indian investors? #What does this mean for the next decade of VC and Startups? To understand this better, in today’s episode, we’ve brought Anjali Bansal, founder of Avaana Capital, that invests in innovation-led start-ups creating sustainability and impact at scale while delivering outsized returns. Previously, Anjali has been Global Partner and MD with TPG Growth PE and a strategy consultant with McKinsey and Co. in New York. She’s also the former non-executive Chairperson of Dena Bank, where she successfully led the resolution of the stressed bank.She has invested in and regularly mentors various successful start-ups including Delhivery, Nykaa, Alpha Vector, Lenskart, Urban Company, Darwinbox, Coverfox and FarMart.She is closely associated with NITI Aayog’s Women Entrepreneurship Platform and Digital Solutions and is on the Expert Advisory Committee for the Start Up India Seed Fund Scheme. She has been appointed as President, Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and serves as an independent director on several leading boards including Tata Power, Kotak AMC, and Piramal Enterprises.During the episode, Anjali talks about the volatility in the Indian startup ecosystem, the opportunities for entrepreneurs and investors; she also shares learnings from her portfolio and much more.Notes - 00:40 - Intro and background02:55 - Working at ISRO and early career04:59 - Ideology behind Avaana Capital08:22 - Is the Indian startup ecosystem in a bubble?17:21 - Common patterns and learnings from the winners20:50 - Mistake: Investing in the idea and not the team22:44 - Ability to move quickly as a fund34:49 - Learnings from early-career at Mckinsey36:29 - Potential in Indian startups41:01 - What all she prefers to read on a daily basisSend us a text

# What is Financial Independence? # Does everybody need precisely 10 crore to be happy? # Is the process of “Wealth Creation = Cutting out on all your wants & desires completely”?For the past 2 years, it seems like everyone around us is investing either in stocks or crypto and also making generous profits. And you too are probably thinking to jump in right? After all - # Markets are at an all-time high # Crypto is “The New Thing” and you don’t want to miss outWell, just wait for a moment, before you begin, in today’s episode we’ve brought Deepak Shenoy, Founder and CEO at Capitalmind (SEBI registered - Portfolio Manager). During the episode, Deepak will help you have the right mindset to begin your investment journey, what to and what not to expect off your investments, and how to evaluate an investment opportunity much more.Notes - 01:40 - Beginning of his investing journey04:33 - Where would your 1st crore of wealth come from? 07:17 - Behavioural changes in growing from 1 to 10 crore wealth10:29 - True definition of financial independence14:20 - Are emotional buying decisions hindrances in wealth creation?24:13 - Has investing become mainstream in 2021?33:30 - How to find under-valued investment opportunities?41:43 - His upcoming book “MONEY WISE: Timeless Lessons on Building Wealth”Send us a text

Diwali just got over, and following the fatal trend of smog in the nation's capital for the past five years, it is here again.It is alarming to recognize that India is home to 7 of the top 10 cities globally, notorious for its air pollution levels.With increasing incomes, more and more people can afford cars, increasing the severity of the already worse air pollution scenario due to fossil fuels.All this emphasizes the need for greener transportation alternatives. Despite the bad news, we have several large companies and startups leading the way to clean modes of travel, be it the prominent players like Tata Motors, MG, and Hyundai or the startups like Ola Electric, Ather Energy, Yulu, and Blu Smart, among others.In today's episode, we've brought Arpit Agarwal, Director at Blume Ventures, to talk about the current scenario of EV startups in India. During the episode, Arpit talks about the various challenges and opportunities for EVs in India, some of Blume's portfolio companies, how they contribute to India's EVs revolution, and much more.Notes - 02:40 - Future of EVs in general06:01 - Adoption by TCO positive segments07:25 - 5-year use case of an electric scooter10:13 - Key challenge in EV market17:22 - Challenge with charging stations24:30 - Opportunities for EV in India under various sub-segments32:53 - Large players engaging with the EV ecosystem34:12 - Funding & duration of developing an EV from scratch37:28 - Future of mobility C.A.S.E.Send us a text

"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