In this episode, we delve into Rajul Garg's inspiring journey from his beginnings as a budding entrepreneur to a successful venture capitalist.

Rajul is the founder and managing partner of Leo Capital, a venture fund that invests in early-stage technology companies. A serial entrepreneur turned investor, Rajul co-founded GlobalLogic, a digital engineering services company that was acquired by a Japanese company for $10 billion. He also co-founded Pine Labs, a merchant commerce platform valued at $6 billion, which plans to launch an IPO soon. In addition, he ventured into the edtech space by co-founding Sunstone Eduversity.

Akshay Datt, a serial entrepreneur who has run ventures in employability training and hiring, hosts the Founder Thesis podcast. He has interviewed 500+ founders to date.

From founding unicorns to funding them | Rajul Garg @ Leo Capital

Join us for an enlightening episode featuring Binu Jacob, MD & CEO of Experion Technologies, as he recounts his extraordinary transition from aspiring professor to thriving entrepreneur in the product engineering services arena.   

Binu is the MD & CEO of Experion Technologies, a Global Product Engineering Services company offering enterprises future-ready and transformative digital solutions. He is a visionary with a proven track record for driving growth over his 30 years of professional experience.  

Akshay Datt, a serial entrepreneur having run ventures in Employability Training and hiring, is the host of "The Spotlight", presented by the Founder Thesis podcast. He has interviewed 400+ founders to date.



Binu Jacob of Experion Technologies on The Art of Product Development

Anand Jain lost his father when he was just 12. This experience caused him to step into an entrepreneurial role very early in life and Anand has literally done it all - from selling detergent door-to-door, to repairing and assembling computers to writing software. Despite no academic track record to speak of, Anand ended up getting hired by a tech company in the Silicon Valley in peak dot com era. 

And while he could have settled for the American dream and made big dollars, he decided to come back to India and chase impact instead. 

In India, he set up the original restaurant discovery website before Zomato, and if things had worked out differently - that startup would be a peer of Zomato and Swiggy today. 

But the best is yet to come and Anand is currently the co-founder and product head at Clever Tap - which is a 100-million-dollar Saas company with a strong focus on serving India. This puts CleverTap into a category of its own with hardly any peers. 

This conversation is proof that adversity leads to the best kind of resilience and Anand’s humility and depth of insights will leave you hungry for more.

Stay tuned for this very special episode of the Founder Thesis podcast with your host Akshay Datt.

Building a $100mn ARR SaaS company from India | Anand Jain @ CleverTap

In this episode of The Spotlight, Akshay Datt speaks to Vishesh Rajaram, co-founder of Speciale Invest. Vishesh shares some amazing stories about his journey in the venture capital scene in India, starting from his early days at Venturis back in 2007.

Vishesh talks about how he’s helped shape innovative startups and why thinking big—like really big—is key in this game and how relationships play a huge role in finding great investment opportunities and what the future of AI might look like for new businesses. 

 Listen to this episode if you’re curious about what it takes to be a venture capitalist or just want to hear some cool insights about deep tech investing in India

Pioneering deep tech investing in India | Vishesh Rajaram @ Speciale Invest

It’s no secret that the business model of the internet is basically advertising. Think about what you spend time doing online - there’s a high chance that 80% of the time you are viewing ads. 

And you might think that the business of serving ads to consumers is done and dusted, but there are still opportunities for startups to win ad dollars away from the googles and the Metas of the world, and one such startup is Adonmo.

Adonmo started life as a company converting cabs into ad spaces by installing screens on them. And this was a smart move if you think about it - the offline advertising market is the last great untapped opportunity, and cabs are the perfect way to run hyperlocal ads that dynamically change based on location and time of day. 

But life had different plans for this young startup, and they went through multiple near-death experiences before finally emerging as a dominant offline hyperlocal ads platform that has raised more than 40 million dollars from the likes of Zomato and others.

Listen to the rollercoaster story of Adonmo’s journey straight from its amazing founder Sandeep Bommireddi in this episode of the Founder Thesis podcast, with your host Akshay Datt.

The last great battle for serving offline ads  | Sandeep Bomireddi @ Adonmo   

I can bet that almost all of you who are listening to this episode of the Founder Thesis podcast would have interacted with Vehant’s products.    

The next time you go into an airport or an office building, take a look at the brand name on the baggage scanner that they are using - there’s a very high chance that you will see Vehant’s logo on it.  

But Vehant is so much more than a company that makes X Ray baggage scanners, and in this episode of the Founder Thesis podcast, your host Akshay Datt interviews Kapil Bardeja who founded the company pretty much straight out of college.   

The humble startup that was born in the dorm rooms of IIT Delhi is today helping the government power futuristic smart city projects and bring India at par with the western world in terms of the security infrastructure.  

Stay tuned for a deep dive into the business of security and safety and subscribe to the Founder Thesis podcast on Youtube or any audio streaming app.

A deep dive into the business of security | Kapil Bardeja @ Vehant

Globally, the market research industry is at least worth a hundred billion dollars!  We really are living in a world where everything is market researched. 

The ads you watch on TV, the packing designs of products you use, even the movies you watch - they have all gone through a validation process using market research. The reason for this is simple really. 

When a company intends to spend millions of dollars on a product, they want to reduce the risk of failure.  In this episode of the Founder Thesis podcast, your host Akshay Datt speaks with Rajiv Lamba - the founder of the market research tech company - Neurosensum and Surveysensum.  

In this freewheeling chat about entrepreneurship and market research, Rajiv shares valuable insights about the business of market research, building a business with profitability as the primary goal, and b2b sales.  

Stay tuned for the conversation and subscribe to the Founder Thesis podcast on any Youtube, Spotify or any streaming app

This title has not been market researched 😅 | Rajiv Lamba @ Neurosensum

If you want to understand the evolution of Entrepreneurship in India over the decades, then there is really no better story than this.  

Srikumar Misra is the son of an entrepreneur who made the mistake of taking a bank loan backed by him home, and his untimely death ended up teaching the young Sri a valuable lesson about the risks of entrepreneurship.    

And you might think that this experience would scar him for life, but it was actually the opposite - despite having a successful global career in the Tata Group, he decided to quit his well-paying job and come back to India to set up a consumer brand in the dairy industry in his home state of Odisha.   

And after a 2-year struggle to raise funds to get his business off the ground - Sri finally succeeded in launching Milk Mantra which sells its products under the Milky Moo brand name and is one of the few profitable players in the premium dairy segment.   

After scaling Milk Mantra, Sri was bitten by the entrepreneurial bug again and he is currently building Aarna Protocol - the first of its kind AI powered crypto investing platform.   

This conversation is a gem in which Sri took us from the very offline and traditional world of selling dairy products to building a tokenized decentralised finance platform to invest in crypto currency.  

Stay tuned and subscribe to the Founder Thesis podcast with Akshay Datt.

Seeking Impact, From Dairy To DeFi | Srikumar Misra @ Aarna Protocol

Whenever we have featured founders who have scaled their businesses meaningfully, it is typically because they have been good at acquiring customers and increasing their lifetime value. 

But Mayur Abhaya, our guest in this episode, has scaled LifeCell to an annual revenue of about 800 crores on the back of its strong supply chain & delivery capabilities. 

Mayur’s father was a serial entrepreneur in the pharma and healthcare space and built Shasun Pharma into a 500-million-dollar global pharma manufacturing player. He also set up Lifecell as he saw the gap in the market for stem cell banking. Mayur joined the business when the topline was just 20 crores and over the last 16 years has expanded the business both geographically and in terms of product lines. 

Today just one fourth of their turnover comes from the original business line of stem cell banking, and some of their business lines are around delivering cutting edge healthcare products to the Indian consumer at amazingly affordable prices.

If you care about health-tech then there is no better episode than this for a deeper understanding of the space. Stay tuned and subscribe to the Founder Thesis podcast with your host Akshay Datt.

The science of healthcare scale up | Mayur Abhaya @ LifeCell  

In this episode of The Spotlight, we delve into the world of air quality innovation with Dmitry, the visionary founder of Airvoice. This episode offers a fascinating glimpse into the transformative solutions Airvoice is pioneering to address air quality challenges in urban environments.

Dmitry shares his personal journey and how his experiences have shaped his passion for creating healthier indoor environments. He describes the "smell of freedom" he associates with his work and how it has influenced his decision to make this country his home for the next few years.

Listen to this episode as Dmitry, explains Airvoice's cutting-edge products, including advanced air filtration systems and indoor air quality monitors, designed to enhance both air quality and energy efficiency in buildings.

Fighting Air Pollution with Data | Dimitry Trubitsyn @ Airvoice

Dickens said, it was the best of the times, it was the worst of the times. The words have never been truer.  Best because there’s never been a better time to be an entrepreneur.  Worst because the clutter is mind-numbing. Founder Thesis breaks through the noise to bring you stories of success & failure, grit & struggle, bouquets & brickbats from some of the most brilliant entrepreneurs in India. 

Founder Thesis

Saurabh Garg talks to investors and venture capitalists about what it takes  and
how start-ups to get the funding that they need

Investor Thesis

India Booked is a podcast that uses literature as a lever to bring multiple
facets of India alive. A perfect podcast for bibliophiles, trivia junkies and
people interested in learning more about India. Every episode focuses on a
different theme and takes place via a conversation between the host with
celebrated authors.

India Booked

किस्से कहानियाँ हमारी ज़िंदगी का उतना ही अहम हिस्सा हैं, जितना शायद खाना और पीना
। कहानियाँ हमें हँसाती हैं, रुलाती हैं, सिखाती हैं। वो बचपन में सुलाती हैं,
बड़प्पन में रुलाती हैं। कहानियाँ हमें वहाँ ले जाती हैं, जहां हमें गाड़ी या जहाज़ भी
शायद न ले जा पाएँ । तो चलिए हम भी चलते हैं दूर कहीं, कुछ कहानियों के साथ । आप का
तहे दिल से स्वागत है इस पॉडकास्ट पर, जिसका नाम है ‘कहानियों का गुच्छा’। इसमें आप
सुनेंगे हिन्दुस्तानी ज़बान के प्रसिद्ध लेखकों की कहानियों की कई शृंखलाओं को,
जिनको चुना गया है किसी न किसी विषय वस्तु के आधार पर। तो सुनते रहिए ‘कहानियों का
गुच्छा’। We are the stories we tell! Stories are as important in our lives as
probably food and shelter. Stories make us laugh, cry, and learn. They carry us
to the mysterious worlds of our imagination. So here we are, ready to take you
along with us on a ride with some great stories by some great writers. We invite
you to this podcast ‘Kahaniyon ka Guccha’ where you will hear carefully curated
series of stories written by some of the greatest writers in Hindustani
language. Stay tuned to some of the greatest stories with us in ‘Kahaniyon ka
Guccha’.

Kahaniyon ka Guccha

At The Spotlight, we go behind the scenes and identify and highlight the upcoming disruptors from the startup space!

The Spotlight

Welcome to the podcast where all stories are welcome. This is a podcast with no
agenda. Hidden or otherwise. In a freewheeling conversation over coffee, Sheba
gently nudges people to shake off their masks and share their real selves. Hear
what keeps people ticking, what helps them make sense of the world, and what is
the inner, most private conversation people have with themselves. Hear people
being, well….human. Expect to hear from the quiet introverts, because Sheba has
a soft corner for them.

SoulBrews with Sheba

Marketing is often considered a nice to have, not a must have. “Let’s get business first”, is what one has often heard. However, MARKETING WHEN DONE RIGHT, GETS BUSINESS. In this show marketing stalwarts talk about how marketing works in the real world. In this show you will learn how marketing will help you to - win business - acquire new consumers - grow the brand - build defensibility - command higher pricing power. Vani Dandia is an award winning marketeer who has spent over two decades in advertising and marketing with Unilever, PepsiCo, Reckitt Benckiser, Henkel, BBDO and Leo Burnett. Her claim to fame includes turning around Kurkure and successfully launching brands like Quaker, Veet, Sunsilk Colour, Fa in India and Asia.

Marketing with Vani

Hosted by Nakul Kumar, this podcast will feature some interesting personalities
from various domains of life. From sportsmen to artists and entrepreneurs, we'll
speak to a line-up of unconventional people. What will always remain constant is
our focus on how technology shapes their lives and their go-to hacks & tricks.
We will explore their unique relationship with technology and try to soak in all
that can enhance our and our listeners' relationship with technology. Hacks,
tricks, insights, upcoming tech or innovations, you name it and we'll have
covered it in this stream. So sit back, relax, plug in your earphones and let
the fun begin. About Your Host When not coming up with killer ideas to help the
users of his co-founded app, Cashify, Nakul Kumar is a full-time tech
aficionado, a cook, a proud dad, and a gaming geek. Of late, his super-honest
"2-minute reviews" on the latest smartphones on YouTube have turned him into a
tech influencer to be reckoned with. Through his new podcast on The Podium,
Nakul aims to change our general view of the world of technology and disruption.
Lend him your ears and we're sure you'll go back with your own tech eureka
moment.

Upgrade with Nakul

The minds behind brands, the minds behind ads. 

 

Tune into Marketing Connect as Saurabh Garg, a marketer, startup enthusiast, and filmmaker, gets up close and personal with some of our most celebrated marketers in India. Watch him pick their brains on the method and madness that is marketing, as art and as a discipline. And so they answer the most important question: what does it take to succeed as a marketer in this day and age?

 

Bringing you the first season of the Marketing Connect Podcast, where Saurabh chats with marketers from real estate, to fashion, content, food, retail, and just about any industry you can think of.

 

Hear, learn, and get inspired from the marketers handling the brands you and I consume each day!

Marketing Connect

We get up close and personal to some of the most celebrated marketers in the country. We understand from them the method and the madness behind how they look at marketing as a discipline and what it takes to succeed as a marketer in this day and age. In the first season of Marketing Connect Podcast, we speak to marketers from businesses ranging from real estate to fashion to content to food to retail, and a lot more! These marketers manage some of the largest brands in the country today!

Akshay Datt

Shows