The Neon Show

Prashant Pansare is the Co-Founder of Eagle10 Ventures, Seed Stage Fund investing $150,000 to $450,000 as the first external check in the startup.Eagle10 has invested in 6 startups which include TravelSpice, Zestl, Pi Beam Labs, Mate Labs, Net Analytics.Prashant has been founder of Playerify, Online Prasad, Medissist.Excerpt from the podcastPrashant's 5 favourite mistakes from his entrepreneurial journey:1. When we were building Playerify, Just Play sports, we kept on building considerable amount of time. We should have shipped lot faster, we should have iterated lot often. Key thing that I have learned the hard way that iterate faster, make mistakes.2. Being overworked as an Entrepreneur. Most of the entrepreneurs think that they need to keep clocking the hours. But I learned the hard way that it is important to take a pause. Moment of reflection really helps to see, to reassess. “Even Ferrari takes a pitstop”. 3. I have made tons of mistakes in hiring and not hired the best way in my earlier journeys. You need to always hire the people who are committed to you in your vision. People who come with a short term vision of may be making quick money or not understanding your vision they usually fall apart first. They don’t contribute to you as meaningfully as you would expect. 4. I didn’t do really well which I picked up in 4th year is peer to peer learning. You need to talk to more founders, share yours and listen to their challenges and not build in silos.5. Not just go for your passion. Most of the entrepreneurs tend to start their journeys with something they are extremely passionate but it may not be a business worthy idea. Passion is something you really love but is the market large enough. Because what you are doing if doesn’t have a wider acceptance, it’s really hard to build a large company even to be self sustainable forget about raising venture capital.Send us a text

In this podcast with we explore Mayank Khanduja’s journey as an investor at SAIF Partners India. SAIF is among the Tier-1 early stage investors in India, investing across all sectors.Mayank comes from a family of engineers so getting highest education was the top priority in his family. After completing his engineering from Delhi, Mayank went on to MBA from IIM-Calcutta.After working 5 years in Technology consulting in McKinsey, Mayank itch to work closely with technology companies brought him to world of early stage investing with SAIF Partners. Some of the companies at SAIF, Mayank has been involved and invested in, are Sharechat, PropTiger, NoBroker, Playsimple, Treebo, TravelTriangle, Airblack.Mayank has spent most of the time at seed stage of the companies. SAIF had invested in 2015 in Sharechat. Back then there was no wave of content startups. It was a thesis from SAIF looking at growth of content consumption in China and asked themselves will India get to that stage in 3-4 years. Yes of course it will. And once data and handsets are available to Next Billion Users, which is a big term now. Back then they thought next 200-300 Million users what will they do first. They will like to access some content, some entertainment on their phones. And that was SAIF thesis when they invested in Sharechat there was a new wave of users coming in India and they would like to access some form of entertainment content on their handsets.In the podcasts Mayank continues to share his insights on:1. Importance of storytelling in building a large company. Can it be learned or great founders are born with it ?2. What happen when your competitor in a large market raise tons of money from VC like Softbank ?3. How to spot the Founders who create 10x - 20x value for their stakeholders ?4. Key skills for Founders to learn and keep building on ?5. The current exit scenario in India and some of the SAIF portfolio exits ?6. Book recommendations by Mayank for founders on scaling and thinking ?7. What habits Mayank attributes in his success as a Venture Investor ?8. What is the one most important factor which will have disproportionate impact on the size of outcome you generate ?Send us a text

Raja Ganapathy is the Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Spring Marketing Capital, a skin in the game marketing capital firm that partners with founders to offer capital & marketing expertise.Raja has been ex-Chief Marketing Officer of Sequoia Capital India and has delivered some of the biggest marketing campaigns like BYJU'S.Why should you listen to the podcast ?- If you would like to know success story behind the marketing campaigns of Byju, Cars24, Epigamia ?- What power can celebrities bring to your brand ?- How did Byju team and Raja came up with the idea bringing the king of bollywood Shahrukh Khan in Byju marketing campaigns ? - The process that goes behind creating Wow and Viral marketing campaigns- Raja’s journey as a investor in Startups and his 10 year stint in Sequoia India as Chief Marketing Officer - What’s the new term on the block coined by Spring marketing capital. How Raja, Arun, Vineet and their team are creating magic by marrying marketing and capital for young startups.Send us a text

Ajay Hattangdi is Managing Partner and Co-founder of Alteria Capital, India’s largest venture debt fund. Ajay started the country’s first venture debt program while at Citibank in 2005. He subsequently went on to create the first dedicated venture debt business in the country as the founding CEO for InnoVen Capital’s flagship India NBFC which he ran from 2007 to 2017. Alteria Capital was started by Ajay Hattangdi and Vinod Murali in 2018. It has invested in almost 20 companies including Stanza Living, Dunzo, Universal SportsBiz, ZestMoney. Vogo, Country Delight and Toppr among others. Here are some of the key takeaways from the podcast:1. Venture debt is very helpful for companies to add to their cash runway between equity rounds. It can help the startup improve valuations while minimizing dilution when taken as part of an equity round. Companies should not take venture debt where there is a binary element to their business or if the business model is still in the proof of concept stage.2. Entrepreneurs should not underestimate the importance of serendipity in achieving success. Serendipity is the combination of preparedness and timing. Once you have the opportunity and the timing is right, execute the heck out of it.3. It is very important for entrepreneurs to balance passion with cold logic to chart the path forward in their business. Passion provides the fuel that entrepreneurs need to obsess about their companies and drive forward relentlessly. But entrepreneurs that work with only pure passion may miss the signs that the business is off course. Knowing how to balance these two forces is critical for success.4. The best teams always include people with complementary skills which compensate for each other’s weaknesses. Build your teams accordingly.5. The best advice is to find something you enjoy doing, stay curious, not be afraid to revise your thinking if the facts change, take ownership for your mistakes, and don’t take life so seriously.Send us a text

Hari TN is Chief People Officer BigBasket and Strategic Advisor, The Fundamentum Partnership, Growth Stage VC Fund.Hari is also an angel investor in Rocketium, BestDoc, UnFound.ai, Jiny.ioWe discuss in the podcast about:1. Hari's learnings and lessons from 17 years journey in Startups2. The early story on team building in TaxiForSure. Also we discuss about the TaxiForsure $200 Million exit and what led it. Key lessons on building a marketplace and raising capital.3. The culture of BigBasket and key processes incorporated which makes Big Basket the largest grocery service in India4. Hari's experience in working with Daksh, Virtusa, Amba Research, TaxiForSure, BigBasket. Key lessons on why only few companies scale 100x5. If you are looking to work in startups how to choose which startups to work for. Hari has identified his key criteria on it.Send us a text

Ameera Shah is Founder and Managing Partner of Metropolis Healthcare, one of the largest and most trusted Healthcare Diagnostic company of India.Ameera joined Metropolis when it was 1 lab in South Mumbai started by her father. Over the years she expanded Metropolis to 120 Labs and 2400 collection centres. Metropolis Healthcare went IPO in April 2019. The company in recent fiscal year posted Rs 760 Crores revenue and Rs 205 Crores EBITDA.The podcast shares her journey to make Metropolis one of the most trusted names in Healthcare in India.Some notable quotes from the podcast:1. I started building Metropolis at the age of 21 in 2001. When I started building this firm the biggest issue people had with me was with my age, the lack of medical qualifications and with my gender. People couldn’t see me as somebody who could be relevant as I had none of these three attributes which people assumed to be very necessary to build something.2. To me the principles and the values that built Metropolis are probably the most important pieces of the journey. And we are very happy and proud to say that we accomplished that. Whether we accomplished the size we wanted is secondary. What we wanted is reputation. Whenever we meet anyone in the fraternity, Metropolis and I are recognised for being a clean promoter, for always being fair to people, for giving credible results and for making sure we take care of patients.3. In healthcare industry commercialisation, corporatisation and profit are all bad words. Because in India we are conditioned to believe if you make money you are not good.4. I discovered along the way that expressing your emotions in your work life actually can be a huge strength because it allows you to relate to people, it allows people to feel like they are understood, that we are not all robots coming to work and just doing our jobs but actually we are human beings. That allows ourselves to engage with each other on non professional fronts and that actually helps huge amount in building connections. Along the way I started showing my emotions. Some of my employees have seen me cry.5. I have 3 investors in Metropolis and I have made sure to deliver excellent financial returns on their investment: ICICI Ventures in 2005, Warburg Pincus in 2010 and Carlyle group in 20156. A lot of people used to ask me how are you so confident ? And what I realised where does confidence come from. Confidence doesn’t come from trying to be confident, confidence doesn’t come from suddenly you being born with confidence. Especially for women confidence comes from actually confronting the biggest, deepest fears that you have. And when you come through the biggest fear on the other side, that’s the thing that builds confidence. 7. Governance is a mindset. It’s not for everybody. But for me I was very clear I would build a company like HDFC or Kotak which is about good governance, transparency, good communication and not being overly aggressive but being consistent and delivering what we say.Send us a text

Kunal Khattar is the Founder and Managing Partner of AdvantEdge Founders, an early stage Venture Capital Fund focussed on transportation and mobility sectors in India.The big investments of the fund include Shuttl, Rapido and Chalo.We discuss in the podcast about:1. Why AdvantEdge chooses to focus on only mobility startups ?2. In India 300 Million commutes happen every day India. How AdvantEdge plans to solve for it via investing in technology mobility startups3. Why the fund chooses to focus only asset light models ?4. Impact of Uber and Lyft IPO5. Kunal past experience as founder of Carnation, one of the earliest marketplaces in India for used automobiles.6. Why home startups have an advantage as compared to overseas startups in India7. The early story of Shuttl, the largest intracity bus service in India.Send us a text

Sarbvir Singh is Managing Partner at Waterbridge Ventures, an early stage Venture Capital Fund based out of India. Sarbvir started his journey as a Venture Capitalist in 2007 with Capital 18, the VC arm of media conglomerate Network 18.Back then he was one of the first institutional checks in Bookmyshow, which is today a Unicorn and Yatra, which went public on NASADAQ.Waterbridge was started by Manish and Sarbvir in 2016. It has invested in 16 companies some on which well known ones are Unacademy, Chalo, Ziploan, MagicPin and DoubtNut.Here is what we are going to discuss on in this podcast:1. Why did Manish and Sarbvir start Waterbridge Ventures ?2. What is Waterbridge looking in early stage ventures while evaluating them ?3. What qualities is Waterbridge looking in Founders ?4. The most common mistakes founders make while pitching ?5. What should be the number 1 or 2 slide that should be in your pitch-deck and which thing you should be spending your most time on in investor pitches ?6. What value does Waterbridge ventures add in their portfolio companies ?7. What makes some companies 50 to 100x ?Send us a text

Rajan Anandan is an Angel Investor and Ex-VP, Google India & SEA.Here is what we discuss in this podcast:1) We seem to have entered a new phase of the Indian startup ecosystem..what has changed ?2) Is monetising getting better for consumer startups ?3) Views on SaaS ?4) Big spaces like e-commerce and mobility seeing a lot of renewed interest..what is happening?5) 3 of Rajan's recent investments we are very excited about and why?6) What segments is Rajan focused on as an angel investor?7) What has been different about Rajan's investee companies who have been mega hits?Send us a text

Kanwaljit Singh is the Managing Partner and Founder of Fireside Ventures. Fireside Ventures is early stage Venture Capital Fund investing only in Consumer Brands.Kanwaljit Singh is also known as the gardener of new Consumer Brands in India. Before Fireside, he invested personally in Paperboat, IDFresh. Both of them showed interesting sparks of what was happening in the Indian consumer market. He continued to personally invest in Epigamia, Licious, Yogabar, Vahdam Teas.FireSide has invested in 18 companies in the last 2 years which include MamaEarth, boAT lifestyle, Bombay Shaving Company.Kanwaljit Singh talks in the 100x Entrepreneur podcast about:1. Why he started FireSide Ventures ?2. How Indian consumer has changed in the last 5 years ?3. What’s are two large factors coming together in India which will give rise to hundreds of new consumer brands ?4. How new brands can be built in 5-7 years ?5. The new channels of engagement and sales which have completely shifted how new age brands are built ?6. Why disruption is must have thesis for the companies Fireside invests in ?7. What Founder DNA he is looking to invest in ?8. The evaluation process Fireside Ventures follows in investing ?9. His advise for Founders to deliver excellence in their business ?Send us a text