SeedToScale | Curated by Accel

Check out other episodes from the Insights Podcast series at https://www.seedtoscale.com Share your feedback and suggestions at https://www.twitter.com/Accel_India 00:00 - 03:16 Introduction 03:17 - 5:26 Tough beginnings and what shaped Niraj 05:33 - 7:25 Grit to get to IIT-D 12:34 - 13:42 Support of the ecosystem being very low back in the day 14:53 - 17:23 Lost his father but bounced back in 3-4 months and started his second company 31:42 - 33:51 Going with the full stack model even though the new investors pulled the term sheet 35:22 - 37:37 Restarting with the new business model: What happened after the investors pulled back? 39:43 - 41:28 How the team stepped up during tough times? 52:46 - 53:57 Being open to feedback and it's importance

The story of Vedantu is a heady mix of grit, determination and conviction. The Bangalore based startup, which raised almost 200 million in 9 rounds, has had a journey and a story that will definitely inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs. The startup witnessed 4.5x to 5x growth in the last financial year on each of its core metrics. And the growth trajectory has been rocketing upwards with 12x to 15x growth in the past 2 years. But how did it get here? In this candid conversation with Anand Daniel, Vamsi Krishna, co-founder and CEO, talks about the unseen struggles of an entrepreneur and what it took to make Vedantu what it is today. Check out other episodes from the Insights Podcast series at https://www.seedtoscale.com Share your feedback and suggestions at https://www.twitter.com/Accel_India

If there is one thing that the pandemic is bound to teach humanity, it is the will to go with the flow and not plan too ahead in life. That said, counterintuitively, it seems important to be prepared and planned when similar outbreaks arise in the future. A healthcare startup from Canada, BlueDot, in its report, shared that the outbreak was fast spreading in China even before the World Health Organisation (WHO) had reported it. The startup’s outbreak risk software helps mitigate the exposure to infectious diseases using Artificial Intelligence. It goes to show that healthcare organisations, governments and public health officials would have to rely on these AI-based systems in the future to prevent similar outbreaks from reoccurring. On this podcast, Murali Aravumdan, Founder and CEO of nference and Radhika Ananth, Vice President at Accel cover some of the important applications of AI in healthcare, and the sub-segments that are still untouched by AI but have huge potential for disruption. We also cover the apprehension of the medical communities to adopt to new technologies and the steps to overcome them. The focus areas within healthcare for Accel are AI in diagnostics, drug discovery, precision medicine and digital therapeutics, with some recent investments made in these categories.

Taking cues from a top-down structural approach, the Agritech industry has many layers to it. On top of them however, like every other major industry, Financial services is also a critical part of Agritech. However, it is largely unorganised and has plenty of room for disruption. Most farmers in the country do not have access to credit-based lending facilities and startups like Samunnati are attempting to fill that gap. Mark Kahn, the Founding Partner of Agritech-focused impact venture fund Omnivore, chats with Prashanth Prakash and Anand Daniel of Accel, discussing the trends in Agritech in India. They talk about the major market segments Agritech is segregated into, the factors that are fueling the growth of the industry, and how COVID has contributed to the sector’s growth.

The future of digital health pertains to a myriad of technologies put together. Whether it is Artificial Intelligence (AI), advanced health sensors genomics, digital therapeutics, or all of them put together, digital healthcare is very much technology-based only on paper as of now. With the COVID-19 pandemic, we have learned in a hard way that we need to be better prepared when similar outbreaks happen in the future, and the only way to predict, prevent and manage care would be through massive digitization of the healthcare industry. On this podcast, Dr. Bertalan Meskó, Director of The Medical Futurist Institute and Radhika Ananth, Vice President at Accel cover some of the high impact trends in digital health, some north star metrics for healthcare startups, and finally how prevention and care will be delivered to the patient of the future.

Podcasts have been one of the ways we try to bring out untold stories of startup founders. Continuing with this tradition, we at Accel are excited to introduce our new podcast mini-series: Untold Seed Stories. This new show aims to unravel the first 500 days of our founders’ startup journey — ranging from how they first conceived the idea and met their co-founders, to details of how they secured their first funding and challenges along the way. For the fourth podcast of our Untold Seed Stories, we chat with Girish Matrhubootham, Co-founder and CEO of Freshworks. Founded in October 2010 in Chennai, Girish and his CTO Shan Krishnaswamy grew the company to a Series-H stage, after its latest fundraise of $150 million.

Podcasts have been one of the ways we try to bring out untold stories of startup founders. Continuing with this tradition, we at Accel are excited to introduce our new podcast mini-series: Untold Seed Stories. This new show aims to unravel the first 500 days of our founders’ startup journey — ranging from how they first conceived the idea and met their co-founders, to details of how they secured their first funding and challenges along the way. For the third podcast of our Untold Seed Stories, we chat with Sri Harsha Majety, Co-founder and CEO of Swiggy. (Bengaluru-based hyperlocal food delivery platform. Founded in 2014 by Harsha, Nandan Reddy and Rahul Jaimini, the startup now operates in more than 600 cities in India.

Most of our other podcasts are targeted towards early-stage founders looking to build and scale their companies. But now we are also launching a new podcast mini-series keeping in mind the founders of fast-growth companies. The Scale Playbook, as the name suggests, will help unravel the playbook of large startups for founders to understand how to solve scale challenges across different business functions like engineering, product, sales and strategy through candid conversations with specialists from some of the most successful startups in the ecosystem. A lot has always been said about secret sauces, key factors and the different drivers of value creation and growth to build any business. It’s a subject that has received a lot of attention over the last 30 years, that does not just confine to venture-backed or self-funded private companies but also public companies. For digital companies, in the recent past, Venture Capital firms around the world have started to observe this aspect closely. Including some analysis from within the Accel Community through the lens of digital companies, there are four key drivers that primarily contribute to value creation in a company. In our second episode, Ajay Sethi, Venture Partner at Accel takes us through these four key drivers. Over the years, Ajay has worked with most of our portfolio companies to help them achieve deliberate and sustainable growth. Listen now to learn how Scale, Habit, Brand and Network Effects can contribute to value creation in your company

Podcasts have been one of the ways we try to bring out untold stories of startup founders. Continuing with this tradition, we at Accel are excited to introduce our new podcast mini-series: Untold Seed Stories. This new show aims to unravel the first 500 days of our founders’ startup journey — ranging from how they first conceived the idea and met their co-founders, to details of how they secured their first funding and challenges along the way. For the second podcast of our Untold Seed Stories, we chat with Abhiraj Singh Bhal, Co-founder and CEO of Urban Company. (Gurugram-based home services marketplace that offers services in cleaning, painting, spa & beauty, plumbing, carpentry and so on.) Now having its centers in 22 cities across India, Singapore, UAE and Australia and Singapore, Urban Company boasts of 30,000+ service partners and more than 10,000 beauticians.

Most of our other podcasts are targeted towards early-stage founders looking to build and scale their companies. But now we are also launching a new podcast mini series keeping in mind the founders of fast-growth companies. The Scale Playbook, as the name suggests, will help unravel the playbook of large startups for founders to understand how to solve scale challenges across different business functions like engineering, product, sales and strategy through candid conversations with specialists from some of the most successful startups in the ecosystem. For our first episode we have two industry stalwarts from Flipkart — one of India’s largest ecommerce platforms. Jeyandran Venugopal is the Chief Product and Technology Officer at Flipkart. He has previously led several engineering and product teams at Myntra, Yahoo and Amazon. Naren Ravula is the Vice President and Head of Strategy at Flipkart. He was leading product strategy and operations at Salesforce and NetApp previously. Today’s episode is focused on building a strong engineering team and strategy. We will also touch upon Flipkart’s Leap Accelerator program which is targeted towards early-stage founders.