SeedToScale | Curated by Accel

At their core, marketplaces are in the business of efficiency. Deeply optimized supply was the need of the hour in the world of construction, where access to materials was fragmented and unreliable. Souvik Sengupta of Infra.Market and Prashanth Prakash of Accel talk about transforming the manner in which real estate companies buy for their projects. *** Over the past decade and a half, new-age marketplaces in India have transformed how people buy and sell products and services. From Flipkart to Swiggy, Urban Company, and Zetwerk, each has reimagined "the bazaars," shaping the future of commerce and livelihood in India. Starting November 3rd, we will share stories from the trenches about building and scaling these marketplaces, along with foundational lessons from their journeys. Learn more: https://bit.ly/3UnptTO

What does it take to build a timeless marketplace? Time. Long-lasting marketplaces have little to do with restless hustling, and a lot to do with clear research and balancing gut calls with data calls. You can trust that bit of wisdom because it comes from Mukesh Bansal who knows the ups and downs of entrepreneurship in India more intimately than most. As founder of Myntra, head of commerce and advertising at Flipkart, and now as founder-CEO at Cult.fit, the relentless entrepreneur has sold fashion, fitness, and almost everything in between. Mukesh was one of the first startup folk to have brought the Bay Area ethos to the Bengaluru ecosystem. Over the last 15 years, he has steered companies through teething problems, pivoting and scaling missions, as well as acquisitions. In this part of a series of conversations sponsored by Accel, Mukesh shares his favourite entrepreneurial hits and misses. Joining him is Subrata Mitra of Accel who has been among Mukesh’s earliest backers. He shares wisdom not just for the benefit of founders but also for venture capitalists as they go from backing two to four to 20 companies. Over the course of chatting with Pankaj Mishra, the duo sum up their journey so far in many quotable quotes. *** Over the past decade and a half, new-age marketplaces in India have transformed how people buy and sell products and services. From Flipkart to Swiggy, Urban Company, and Zetwerk, each has reimagined "the bazaars," shaping the future of commerce and livelihood in India. Starting November 3rd, we will share stories from the trenches about building and scaling these marketplaces, along with foundational lessons from their journeys. Learn more: https://bit.ly/3DqT87o

When Niraj Singh started up Spinny, the used-car market in India was already crowded with cash-rich competitors. More and more Indian buyers were leaning towards buying pre-owned cars because of the better value they offered but the landscape was still full of potholes and barriers. There were few trusted intermediaries, and no convenient way for buyers to go through the sea of options or for sellers to find the right price. That is where Spinny came in. Niraj Singh founded the full-stack platform for buying and selling used cars in 2015, together with friends Ramanshu Mahaur, a fellow alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Delhi, and Mohit Gupta, an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management Technology (IMT), Ghaziabad, who moved from Flipkart to join as operations head. A car lover himself, Singh wanted to address the pain points in the sale and purchase of a used car. “When you're buying your first car, it's a very important, very aspirational, very emotional purchase for you, and your entire family. It was very clear that we are not going just after the used-car market opportunity, but we are going to solve (an issue) of trust, experience and aspirations of people,” he said in an interview with Pankaj Mishra, co-founder of the digital media publication FactorDaily, a journalist tracking start-ups, with over two-and-a-half decades of professional experience. Sellers put in a request to sell their cars on the website. If it passes a 200-point test by an inspection team, Spinny sets a price, features the car on the site, and takes over the responsibility of selling the car. Buyers have the assurance of buying a Spinny-certified vehicle and the added benefit of a 1-year warranty. The company takes care of all the paperwork, from registration to title transfers. Among others, Spinny competes with OLX, Quikr and CarDekho in a market that was valued at $23 billion in the financial year 2021-2022 and is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 19.5 per cent until FY 2026-27, according to a report by IndianBlueBook, an auto technology platform, and Das WeltAuto, the pre-owned car business of Volkswagen India. After starting operations in the National Capital Region (NCR), centered on Delhi, Spinny has expanded into Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Indore, Coimbatore, Lucknow and Kochi. It became a unicorn with a valuation of about $1.8 billion, when it raised $283 million last year from a consortium led by Abu Dhabi-based ADQ, Tiger Global and Avenir Growth. This interview is part of a special series brought to you by the Indian unit of Accel Partners, which has backed some of the most significant marketplaces that have come up in India including food delivery platform Swiggy, e-commerce company Flipkart, TaxiForSure, which offers ride-hailing services, and Urban Company, a provider of home cleaning, appliance repair, beauty treatment and handymen services to customers at their doorstep. Joining Pankaj Mishra in the chat is Niraj Singh, who at the time of founding Spinny, already had two start-ups behind him – TechMonkey, an Internet media company, and Locus Education, an IIT-JEE prep venture with offline and online presence. They dive into the details of going from a marketplace model to a direct full-stack model, the business of trust, and the basic rules of team building.

Conversation HighlightsIn addition to asking if the sector is unorganized, ask whether it is inefficient. Know exactly what kind of a profit pool is available there.There are businesses where a tight testbed is not possible. So find your fulcrum. It takes trial and error but look for the side where your tech intervention as a marketplace will drive the most value.Fairness is an easy sell. Both sides of the marketplace appreciate fair policies and practices. Once built, marketplaces are not static. They are in dynamic equilibrium. Pay attention to both demand and supply and balance them.Unknown mistakes are okay. Don’t make known mistakes.

Cutting out the intermediary helps many industries. Not so in manufacturing. It needed a middle layer. Suppliers routinely failed to deliver on time, and customers failed to pay on time. To improve trust and speed, Amrit Acharya and Srinath Ramakkrushnan introduced Zetwerk as a B2B marketplace for manufacturing in 2018. Zetwerk began as a hub for steel fabrication. Within six months, its business went from a topline of ₹1 crore a month to ₹10 crore a month. Since then, the company has expanded into more than 10 categories and is valued at $2.7 billion today. The company has transformed the space with high-quality products, increased transparency, and fewer and shorter delays. The backbone of its operation is technology. It uses dashboards to track each order at various stages in real time so that suppliers can stay on schedule and customers can get regular updates. Manufacturing appealed to Amrit because he had dabbled in it fresh out of college. In several ways, it prepared him for starting up – because ‘building’ things from scratch is common to both worlds. In this part of a series of conversations sponsored by Accel, Zetwerk CEO Amrit Acharya participated along with Prayank Swaroop of Accel Partners, who has backed the company right from the early days. They discuss the brass tacks of setting up a B2B marketplace with Pankaj Mishra. * Over the past decade and a half, new-age marketplaces in India have transformed how people buy and sell products and services. From Flipkart to Swiggy, Urban Company, and Zetwerk, each has reimagined "the bazaars," shaping the future of commerce and livelihood in India. Starting November 3rd, we will share stories from the trenches about building and scaling these marketplaces, along with foundational lessons from their journeys. Learn more: https://bit.ly/3DqT87o

Give someone a fish, you feed them for a day. Give someone reliable access to seafood in a supply-deprived industry, you go on to create a successful B2B marketplace for fish. Take it from Utham Gowda, the founder of Captain Fresh, an investment banker-turned-fisherman, so to speak. Three years after its birth in 2019, the company has raised $126.5 million in funding at a $500 million valuation. In an industry where the average level of spoilage is 20-30%, Captain Fresh manages to minimize waste in seafood shipments to 2-5%. It was in 2015, while scouting for viable sectors as an investment banker, that Gowda embarked on an aquatic adventure. He was helping a seafood player become IPO-ready. Some years of diving deep into fisheries revealed a fragmented, underserved industry begging for scientific solutions. There was a clear entrepreneurial opportunity, but few had even touched the space. Quite frankly, the waters were muddy. There was a combination of problems: High perishability, seasonality, varying tastes by region and so on. Gowda rose to that challenge with a combination of his own: Research, resources, and people. As an investment banker, he knows the importance of due diligence. As a single founder, he knows the importance of finding the right talent. And as someone who started up a little before COVID-19 hit, he knows the importance of planning and stress-testing. In this part of a series produced by Accel Partners, Gowda was joined by Barath Shankar Subramanian of Accel, a vegetarian who strongly backs the fish-fuelled business. In July 2021, after many Zoom calls between Subramanian's and Gowda’s teams, Captain Fresh raised $12 million in Series A funding led by Accel. They talk to Pankaj Mishra, co-founder of digital media publication FactorDaily, about their journey. * Over the past decade and a half, new-age marketplaces in India have transformed how people buy and sell products and services. From Flipkart to Swiggy, Urban Company, and Zetwerk, each has reimagined "the bazaars," shaping the future of commerce and livelihood in India. Starting November 3rd, we will share stories from the trenches about building and scaling these marketplaces, along with foundational lessons from their journeys. Learn more: https://bit.ly/3DqT87o

It’s essential to keep things as simple as possible initially, with a total focus on understanding the consumer problem statement. Because when it comes to subscriptions, users drop off a lot — they are commitment-phobic. In the next stage, startups must know how to decentralise well. A founder cannot go on micromanaging a hundred things. Many startups fail because while they thought they solved a problem, they had no idea about its sustainability in terms of how it would scale economically. And as far as possible, until you hit product market fit, keep things as lean as possible. If you start hiring too many people for specific roles, it gets difficult to roll things back when they go wrong. Eventually, it all boils down to two questions: Who are you building for? Do they consumers like your product? In this conversation, Nandan Reddy and Phani Kishan from Swiggy and Accel's Anand Daniel share lessons learned while building and scaling their startup in a crowded market.*** Over the past decade and a half, new-age marketplaces in India have transformed how people buy and sell products and services. From Flipkart to Swiggy, Urban Company, and Zetwerk, each has reimagined "the bazaars," shaping the future of commerce and livelihood in India. Starting November 3rd, we will share stories from the trenches about building and scaling these marketplaces, along with foundational lessons from their journeys.Learn more: https://bit.ly/3DqT87o

About TaxiForSureTaxiForSure, founded in 2011, was the outcome of a drunken conversation in a Bangalore pub between friends Raghunandan G and Aprameya Radhakrishna, who had both been to National Institute of Technology Karnataka and the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad. Raghunandan was 33 and Radhakrishna a year older.      Three-and-a-half years after it started up in a 100-square-feet office in a Bangalore suburb. TaxiForSure was acquired in March 2015 by bigger rival Ola Cabs, which paid $200 million in a cash and equity deal as it attempted to fend off competition from Uber.   By August 2016, TaxiForSure was gone after Ola integrated its service with its own and fired hundreds of its employees.    Today, Raghunandan and Radhakrishna, who both worked briefly at Ola as advisors before walking away, are successful people and have funded a string of startups. The former has founded fintech firm Zolve and the latter is co-founder of Koo, the Indian version of Twitter. WasTaxiForSure a failure?. Not so if the experience and insights they gained into running a startup in a space like mobility shaped their future roles.   HighlightsResearch, research, research. When things get difficult, and they will, this user research will be your north star. There is a tendency in founders to assume the role of the customers. Stop. You were the customer when you conceptualized the marketplace, now you’re no longer a customer. Build for what the customer wants, not what you want. Happiness. The happiness of the team guarantees happiness of all stakeholders, which in turn ensures happiness of the customer. A happy customer will always reflect on the bottom line.Build a team with diverse backgrounds. If you plan to disrupt a market, try to hire from outside the market. Those within the market come with their mental blocks, and fresh perspectives guarantee innovation.Evolve to where the market will be, not where the market is currently. This will ensure that you’re ahead of the pack.

Like in most markets, India is a large but under-penetrated insurance market. While the COVID-19 pandemic led to a sharp uptick in life insurance premiums, bringing it at par with the global average of 3.2% of GDP, non-life premiums - health and motor insurance - continue to lag at sub 1% of GDP, compared to 2% for developing Asian countries and 5% for developed economies. In a low-income economy, paying up premiums to protect against potential long-term downside is not a top priority for people. However, this will grow. As India’s GDP and per capita income grow, more people will begin insuring themselves and their assets. This has happened globally and India is no different.Second and more important, the state of insurance in India leaves much to be desired, both for the insurer and the insured. Improving this can be vital to changing the Indian consumer’s relationship with insurance, and building enduring private companies in the space.We spoke to Varun about his journey building an insurance company, how he approaches building a brand in an industry with established players, and what he sees in the future. He is joined by Abhinav Chaturvedi and Subrata Mitra, investors at Accel who have had a ringside view of Acko and Coverfox.Key Segments3:19 - 7:20 - Varun’s journey from Coverfox to Acko14:13 - 17:43 - Technology’s role in insurance: Underwriting Distributor vs Underwriting Customer17:44 - 20:11 - Future of Insurance: Ancillary Services21:36 - 25:30 - Learnings from the US Insurance Sector36:32 - 40:12 - Managing regulations in Insurance44:31 - 46:31 - What’s next for AckoThe Accel team wishes Varun and Acko all the best in their mission.Blog authored by Sankalpana Agarwal from AccelCheck out other episodes from the Insights Podcast series at https://www.seedtoscale.comShare your feedback and suggestions at https://www.twitter.com/Accel_India

India, frequently referred to as the two-wheeler factory of the world, serves a tremendous market both in India and abroad. About 15M two-wheelers were sold in India in 2021 and 3.7M two-wheelers manufactured in India by the top 4 Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) were exported. By 2030, the number of two-wheelers sold in India annually is expected to reach 35M representing an about $30B market, growing at the back of limited penetration of affordable public transport (public transport only serves 7% of the total trips at present) and the ever-increasing cost of not-so affordable four-wheelers.However, with rising fuel prices and the increasing cost of Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) scooters, ownership of personal two-wheelers has become financially challenging.Owing to this, customers are now looking for reliable and affordable personal mobility solutions for their daily commute. This new customer demand, along with increasing environmental concerns and favourable government regulations, has created an urgency for electric mobility and set the stage for the rapid adoption of electric vehicles (EVs).As Accel, we have always looked for new-age solutions that add immense value to consumers and Bounce with its dockless mobility solution presented a great investment opportunity in 2018. What started out as Wicked Ride - a luxury bike rental platform and pivoted to a dockless mobility solution has today become a full-stack EV mobility solution for the Indian masses with 3 core business verticals - electric scooter manufacturing, Battery-as-a-Service and dockless mobility. With a capacity of 220K+ scooters per annum, Bounce launched its Infinity e1 electric scooter in early 2022 and has already received 60K+ pre-orders. It completed 5M+ EV rides covering 27M+ EV mobility kilometres with 1M+ swaps by building India’s largest battery-swapping network present in 40k+ locations across India.To understand this new era of mobility which is rapidly unfolding, we spoke to Vivekananda Hallekere, Co-founder and CEO of Bounce, who has been at the helm of EV mobility adoption in India.In this conversation, Vivek talks about his journey, the various phases of Bounce, EV trends in India and abroad, the inevitability of EV adoption and the need for regulatory support.Key SegmentsBounce’s journey from luxury bike rentals to full-stack EV mobility - 1:15Battery charging, battery swapping and Battery-as-a-Service - 17:00Future of Electric Vehicles - Global and Indian - 26:06State of regulatory environment in India - 44:46Future of Bounce and Energy-as-a-Service - 50:46We thank Vivek for coming on and sharing these insights with us and we wish him and Bounce team all the best for this amazing journey of revolutionizing personal mobility for India.Blog authored by Lakshay Bansal from AccelCheck out other episodes from the Insights Podcast series at https://www.seedtoscale.comShare your feedback and suggestions at https://www.twitter.com/Accel_India