Founder Thesis

"I asked my wife if we could sell our house to fund something new. She said yes without blinking." At the lowest point in his entrepreneurial journey, financially ruined by a failed business, Viraj Bahl made the ultimate bet—he sold his family home to fund one last dream. This single act of courage and conviction laid the foundation for one of India's most successful new-age food companies. About...

Ever thought of starting a venture from a tier 2 city? I’m sure the majority of you haven’t. It was the love for his family that brought our guest back to his hometown Jaipur and started a venture which is soon going to be a unicorn. In a candid conversation with Akshay Datt, Anurag Jain, COO & Co-Founder, GirnarSoft, takes us through his amazing journey. He is an alumnus of IIT Delhi and...

Scaling start-ups is not new to Amit Lakhotia. So, the choice of starting his venture came naturally to him. In a candid conversation with Akshay Datt, Amit Lakhotia, Founder, Park+, takes us through his amazing journey. This IIM-A alumnus has worked with various start-ups before charting his path towards entrepreneurship. An independent decision-maker at heart, Amit chose the companies where he c...

"In enterprise sales, the best product doesn't automatically win." This powerful insight from Rohit Chennamaneni dismantles a common startup myth. In his conversation with Akshay Datt, he explains that winning high-stakes enterprise deals goes beyond features and requires a deep understanding of client politics, internal power dynamics, and solving strategic business challenges. About Rohit Chenna...

India is on the cusp of a new fintech revolution. Post demonetization, where the sector has witnessed a surge in digital payments and lending, there have been very few fintech companies that focus on resolving the debt recovery opportunity. In a candid conversation with the host Akshay Datt, Rishabh Goel, Co-founder and CEO, Credgenics, takes us through his inspiring journey. He is an alumnus of t...

“There are always two roads which will emerge for an entrepreneur, and you have to take the one less travelled.” – Dr Ritesh Malik Our guest today is a person who has donned many hats – an entrepreneur, an investor, a public speaker, and a doctor. In a candid conversation with Akshay Datt, Dr Ritesh Malik, Founder, Innov8 Coworking, takes us through his amazing journey. Hailing from a family of do...

"In India, people will never pay for service, but they will always pay for credit." This was the powerful and disruptive thesis that Ashneer Grover used to build BharatPe. He understood that the real money in Indian fintech wasn't in charging for transactions but in using the data from those free transactions to create a massive lending business for the underserved merchant community. Ashneer Grov...

What you seek is seeking you. This is what describes the story of our guest in this episode. For Pulkit Agrawal, Co-founder and CEO, Trell, a visual blogging app, this search started around six years ago, with a desire to visit local pandals during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, little knowing that this would turn into a business idea which is at present has surpassed international socia...

In 2013, when Anand Jain left Network18, he knew one thing for sure: Communication in the digital world needs to be timely and quick. This led to the birth of CleverTap, a SaaS-based mobile analytics and mobile marketing company. Today, Anand is the Chief Strategy Officer and Co-Founder of CleverTap, working on larger strategic goals of helping brands leverage user data, automation, and personaliz...

"We understood that logistics wasn't just a back-end function—it was a core component of customer satisfaction." This was the pivotal realization inside FirstCry that sparked a billion-dollar idea. By reframing a major operational problem into a strategic opportunity, Amitava Saha didn't just fix a bottleneck for his company; he built an entirely new one, Xpressbees, to serve the whole e-commerce...

Every problem has a solution. You just have to be creative enough to find it. Our guest in thisepisode is a problem solver at heart, who has used the art of coding to solve real-life problems. Brace for the resilient journey of Nischal Shetty, Founder and CEO, WazirX, India’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. In a candid conversation with Akshay Datt, Nischal talks about his fascination for compute...

"We are a technology company that sells chai." This single sentence from Nitin Saluja captures the disruptive core of Chaayos. It’s not just about tea; it’s about using technology—from custom-built IoT robots to a proprietary tech stack—to solve the problem of delivering a perfectly consistent, personalized cup of chai at massive scale. In this conversation, Nitin reveals how this engineering-firs...

"When you say to someone, my business plan is to create a brand, it's very hard for anyone to understand or digest... the harder it is for someone to digest, the more excited one should be about doing it." This powerful insight from Rohan Mirchandani encapsulates the conviction needed to build something truly disruptive, especially when introducing a new category to a market. It speaks to the entr...

"It takes much longer than you think. Everybody thinks that things can be changed big time in three to five years. It probably takes more, you know, seven to ten years." This powerful insight from Dinesh Agarwal underscores the journey of building IndiaMART, a testament to perseverance and a long-term vision that began when the internet was nascent in India. It's a crucial reminder for founders th...

How did ex-Google leader Rahul Garg build Moglix into a category-defining force in India’s B2B procurement and industrial supply chain ? In this Founder Thesis episode, we unpack the playbook, from procurement SaaS to working-capital rails via Credlix , that powers factories across India and beyond. From IIT Kanpur to Google to founder, Rahul traces the insight that the world would shift from disc...

For the love of travelling, he would take international trips and immensely enjoy exploring diverse backgrounds. Growing up, he would travel to different destinations with his family, his first foreign trip being that to Italy.   Today, he has changed the trend of car ownership with a car subscription model providing tremendous appeal and flexibility to the millennials.  We are talk...

Our guest today is an achiever in more ways than one. Born and brought up in Chennai in a humble household, he pursued his studies from the prestigious IIT, Madras campus.  Well, he tells us that he wasn’t a risk-taker or had an entrepreneurial side to him as a kid but loved to travel and explore new places, people and communities.  In this episode of Founder Thesis, we are talking to Ba...

He is a performing artist by heart, someone who hit the stage when he was merely 4 years old and guess what, he never got off!  A creator, writer, director and entrepreneur, he gets immense joy from words, phrases, and playing with them creatively.  When kids his age would play cricket after school, he would be found doing theatre.   He tells us that his mother always aspired f...

"The interesting thing was that you have the dream and the vision, but you realize the answer is your grandmother's kitchen." This insight from Shauravi Malik highlights a core theme: sometimes the most innovative solutions involve looking back at traditional wisdom. While aiming to disrupt the children's food market with modern, healthy options, Shauravi and her co-founder realized the true marke...

"In India, ideas are everywhere, but you get rewarded for execution." This was the core conviction that led Rashmi Daga to build a full-stack food brand, taking on the immense operational challenges of controlling everything from the kitchen to the customer's doorstep—a bet against the asset-light models that dominated the startup world. About The Guest Rashmi Daga is the founder of FreshMenu , th...

We have all been lost at some point in our lives, uncertain of things and trying to figure it all out at the same time.  Growing up in Mumbai and coming from a business family, today’s guest on Founder Thesis is someone who has a passion for creating stuff and building products. Someone fascinated by the possibilities of the Internet, Mayank Bidawatka, always thought of new things and ideas t...

Today’s episode of Founder Thesis is a story of finding opportunity in adversities & seeking lessons in all the curve balls that life throws at you.  In what has been one of the most spirited conversations on the show join in as we catch up with Prateek Singh - Founder of LearnApp.com over tons of infectious laughter & incredible life experiences.  Born in Abudhabi and educated i...

Investment banker, active seed investor, problem solver and now a founder. Our guest today has worn numerous hats, but her greatest adventure yet is the one that’s allowing her to fulfil her entrepreneurial dreams.  Always driven by a passion to do something for other businesses, Founder of Kodo, Deepti Sanghi is making finance simple for startups and businesses. Imagine being a founder of a...

“Building a product and building an organisation are two different things,” says Abhinav Jain, our guest today.   A bunch of people were very excited about technology in school, they created a computer programming club. Somebody who was always up for honing new skills and specialising new crafts beyond engineering, not worried about books. Fundamentally, he always knew that he wanted to...

How did Sumeet Mehta and Smita Deorah turn LEAD School into one of India’s most impactful edtech unicorns transforming affordable private schools? In this episode, they reveal how their mission-driven journey is reshaping the future of K12 education in India. Sumeet Mehta and Smita Deorah, co-founders of LEAD School, share their journey from corporate careers at Procter & Gamble to building In...