The Neon Show

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

Did you used to get pocket money before the age of 18 to manage your expenses? I personally used to get a fixed & tiny pocket money after 10th, thanks to my parents.When I was in college, I stayed away from my hometown, in a PG with a roommate, unlike me, he didn’t had a fixed or tiny pocket money, he used to get an X amount from his father whenever the previous X amount got over. I was always a bit envious, as to why he has a free flowing pocket money, whereas I have to manage everything (Travel, Accommodation & Misc expenses) in a fixed amount. Fast forward 7 years, I’m a lot thankful to my parents for both -# giving me pocket money, and # keeping it fixed (mostly) on a monthly basis.This helped me in learning how to manage my finances better, which definitely helped, once I got into a job. Btw this is exactly what Sambhav Jain, guest of our today’s episode is trying to do with his company Fampay. Fampay, being a virtual card prepaid card for teenagers, enables them to do online transactions and manage their finances, eventually educating them to be more financially aware down the line as grown-ups. Recently after adding 2 million+ registered users on platform Fampay raised USD 38 million in funding from Elevation Capital and others.During the podcast, Sambhav shares with us how he came across the idea behind Fampay, what were the initial challenges when they approached several banks with this concept and more. Notes - 02:02 - Graduating from IIT Roorkee and working in Product roles06:28 - Concept of pocket money in western countries09:14 - Problem statement of financial literacy among kids in India16:25 - Initial discussion with Elevation Capital & achieving PMF 20:05 - Driving hyper-growth with campus ambassadors 28:14 - Building the product like a community rather than a transactional app30:02 - Initial response from traditional banks32:53 - Working of a Fampay wallet34:48 - Adoption of technology among teenagersSend us a text

Data access for App development for startups and enterprise is very complex and has a lot of security concerns. It gets even worse when you plan to scale the product.This has vastly changed since Hasura came into existence. Founded by the guest of our today’s episode, Tanmai Gopal, Hasura provides an open-source engine for developers to streamline data access in a secure and scalable way to make app developments easier.Started in 2018, it has seen adoption from thousands of developers across fast-growing startups and Fortune 500 companies.During the podcast, Tanmai shares with us how they ideated Hasura as an open-source engine, and when did they realize the right opportunity to monetize it by launching a commercial model. Notes - 01:22 - Hasura in layman’s term03:56 - Early childhood and graduating from IIT Madras10:21 - “Until you build a product and take it to market, you actually don’t know anything.”13:11 - Launching Hasura as an open-source engine; 2 Mn+ downloads in first year & 100 Mn+ downloads in the second year14:34 - Changing perspective from being bootstrapped to raising VC funding21:23 - Shifting from free open-source to a commercial model25:38 - Milestone around Mission Critical Adoption34:02 - GTM strategy - Free adoption followed by commercial conversion38:50 - Hiring for the Non-dev team41:33 - His advice to entrepreneurs building open-source productsSend us a text

Venture Capital or Angel investments aren’t a must have, to make your startup successful. This has been demonstrated again and again by several bootstrapped startups which have been very successful, namely - GrabOn, Zoho, Zerodha, Wingify & others.The guest of our today’s episode Rajdip Gupta, CEO & Founder, Route Mobile, similarly has an exquisite journey of taking his company from being completely bootstrapped to getting listed in the share market and growing to a market share of Rs.11,000 crore+. Just to understand the faith amongst retail investors in Route Mobile's strong growth potential, you must know that in September 2020 its Rs 600-crore IPO was oversubscribed 74 times. It made a stellar debut with a 105% rise on day one of listing.As a niche player operating in an extremely dynamic, high-growth segment of the cloud-communications space and catering to the digital user engagement needs of enterprises, Route Mobile has a limited number of competitors and no publicly listed rivals. During the podcast, Rajdip shares with us, what are the various offerings Route Mobile has for its enterprise customers, where it stands against its Indian competitors and how he personally tackles things to bring a work-life balance in his daily life. Notes - 01:53 - Creating a story & value from India04:17 - Solutions for enterprise customers10:02 - Scale & revenue breakup across geographies12:25 - Benchmarking against Indian competitors16:07 - Challenges during the early phase of building Route Mobile22:19 - Work-life balance and unavoidable circumstances in a startup journey36:11 - Future plans for Route MobileSend us a text

Today most companies around us follow two approaches to presenting their user data via Ads - # Company A - We have 60% of our users coming from Tier-I cities with greater than Rs.50,000 monthly income. # Companies like Uber - Rahul & Rashmi, a couple from Gurgaon take an Uber to their office everyday and get a background verified driver, with a well-sanitized car, at an affordable price. # Companies like Meesho - Sarah, a housewife from Lucknow wanted to support her family, she started her online store with Meesho and now earns Rs.25000 from home. Now which of these companies will you feel more attracted towards? Very like towards Uber & Meesho right, because they showcase real people instead of just numbers.  Well, this is exactly what the guest of our today’s episode, Roshan Abbas also tries to emphasize upon.Throughout his career he has focused on being best at storytelling for various brands. As per him, in order to be a good storyteller, you need to wrap your data with a real person’s journey & life experiences, rather than making it less life-like and treating people like Cohort A, B & C.Roshan has been a radio jockey, theatre actor, TV anchor, writer, director, angel investor & entrepreneur over his career.He credits this to his attitude to - “Listen, Assimilate & Action”.During the podcast, he shares with us how he kept successfully surfing across multiple roles throughout his career, how he picks the companies he wants to invest in, and how he enjoys life along with constantly achieving his goals. Notes - 03:23 - Mastering multiple skills; Creators are curious people05:37 - Scale & opportunities from Radio to Television06:10 - Identifying the next step11:21 - “You can’t have every skill, then you hire for the right skill.”13:17 - Importance of accountability in creativity17:53 - Being a seller of dreams22:34 - Be interesting or be interested26:46 - Building Kommune for young creators28:56 - Being militant with removing distractions42:15 - Future & the change in media consumption48:12 - Importance of having a great hook in storytellingSend us a text

During the pandemic & lockdown since last year:# Initially people weren’t able to visit a doctor personally;# And, currently both the patient & the doctor try to avoid meeting physically unless it's absolutely necessaryDuring this period, Telemedicine has grown silently and rapidly, revolutionizing Indian healthcare.Recent report by EY, has predicted robust growth in the country’s telemedicine (e-consults & e-pharmacy) sector between now and 2025 – at a 31% compound annual growth rate, securing up to $5.5 billion.And today we have Prasad Kompalli, CEO & Co-founder Mfine, which is acing this tailwind with an over 8x growth in users, and adding 250 hospitals to its platform, taking the total partner hospitals to over 550, in just the initial months of lockdown.Mfine, which was started in 2017, is enabling doctors to diagnose more number of patients, with higher accuracy, thanks to its AI & ML integrations.During the podcast, Prasad talks about their learnings of a customer’s journey on product, his view on the future of telemedicine in India and his advice to first-time entrepreneurs entering this sector.Notes - 02:23 - Growing up in Vijayawada; Engineering background at family10:06 - Key learnings from working at Myntra13:59 - mfine thesis: Power of mobile & healthcare being a data-driven business16:54 - Current Scale: Monthly transactions & Customer journey18:36 - Early investments from Stellaris & Prime Venture Partners29:42 - What worked: Primary care & Digitizing specialist care32:39 - What didn’t work: You can’t inflate the demand37:55 - Advice to first-time health care entrepreneur46:34 - Being a Calm vs Aggressive startup CEOSend us a text

How often do you see an entrepreneur’s last employer putting equity in their idea? Well, this is exactly what happened with the guest of our today’s episode, Shantanu Deshpande, Founder - Bombay Shaving Company.In 2015, when Shantanu decided to dominate the men's grooming space and he was quitting his job at McKinsey, then his peer’s and seniors didn’t just allow him to leave but decided to back him up with an initial Seed funding.Last year when the country went into lockdown, the company’s revenues increased by 3x. One of the interesting driving factors behind this was the women employees at the company. Their perspective was very straightforward: # Problem Statement: During the lockdown, there was a shortage of women's hair removal products and razors. # Opportunity: They were working for a company, which made razors for a living. # Solution: These women employees then decided to coordinate with the product designers, test the product on themselves, put in their inputs, and get their own women’s razor out in the market.With this the Bombay Shaving Company, which earlier had 27% women customers buying their products for the men in their life (i.e. partners, father, brother) as a gifting option, now had 50% orders coming in from women with a major share of them buying women’s hair removal products. During the podcast, Shantanu shares with us what other tailwinds he leveraged during last year’s lockdown, how he believes in enabling his investors to partially exit from the brand from time to time, and how he derives the best value from his large institutional investors. Notes - 01:38 - Growing up in Florida (US) and moving back to India06:50 - Leaving McKinsey & starting Bombay Shaving Company09:18 - “The richest source of information is a conversation with people who are in it all the time.”17:13 - Tailwinds which enabled 3x revenue post-lockdown in Mar’2019:50 - Channel-wise revenue break-up21:47 - Raising initial seed-round from McKinsey23:30 - “My belief was always, that we should never raise money to buy revenues, we should always raise money to build a brand.”26:24 - Core-target metrics since launch30:02 - 3 Crucial things to winning customers early-on33:07 - Enabling exits for early Angel investors39:57 - “Having good organic traffic is a proxy for brand strength.”44:32 - Deriving best value from financial investorsSend us a text

# Saffola - Cooking Oil# Parachute Advansed - Hair Oil# Nihar Naturals - Hair Oil# Set Wet - Hair Gel# Livon Hair Serum and many more... You must have seen or used at least one of these names in your house, on TV, or in Newspaper Ad right? Do you know what connects all these names? Its Marico Ltd, one of India’s leading consumer products companies operating in the global beauty and wellness space. Marico touches the lives of 1 out of every 3 Indians, through its portfolio of brands. In today’s episode, we have with us Harsh Mariwala, the man behind building Marico over 30+ years, with a Market Cap. of 68,000cr+ and making it a common name in every Indian home.During the podcast, he shares with us how he experienced the Ins & Outs of business from childhood at family’s dinner-table discussions and how he joined the family business - Bombay Oil Industries at an early age, and built Marico, a Fortune India 500 company. Notes - 02:02 - “When business topics get discussed in your presence, then even if you may not be able to add value, you’ll get a good understanding of the business.”04:15 - Early exposure to the brand & business at the age of 2006:02 - Forming Marico as a separate entity in the 1990s11:27 - Building the team at Marico13:50 - “Involvement brings in commitment, and you have to involve people in some organizational issues if you want their commitment.”17:46 - Thought process behind Brand-Building19:54 - First taste of success with Parachute & Saffola oil22:15 - Personal Social Responsibility initiatives by Marico26:19 - Reduction in entry barriers for consumer brands27:47 - Levers of growth as an individual30:11 - Treating your employees as Brand Ambassadors34:33 - Advice to entrepreneurs to pioneer in their segment36:11 - Source of learnings: Books & Thought leadersSend us a text