Founder Thesis

In this edition of Founder Thesis, Akshay Datt speaks with Rajiv Vij, a person who became the Czar of rented cars in India. Rajiv is currently the Chairman and Managing Director of Carzonrent. An alumnus of FMS Delhi, Rajiv started his career at Hindustan Motors which gave him exposure to the taxi business at that time and at ITC’s International Travel House allowed him to interact with the best a...

You all must have heard – It is not the destination but the journey that matters. This is the same with entrepreneurship. In this episode of Founder Thesis, Akshay Datt speaks with Naman Sarawagi, Co-founder, Refrens.com, a Bengaluru-based venture that offers free invoicing, payments and expense management system. Naman started his journey as a product manager at Freecharge and then went on to wor...

"We realized that if we’re going to do this, we have to be in it for the long run… we’re here to build a legacy." - Arman Sood This quote encapsulates the commitment and long-term vision that drove Arman Sood to build Sleepy Owl Coffee from a dorm-room experiment into a leading Indian coffee brand. It highlights that true success isn't about quick wins, but about building something sustainable and...

Ever heard of the Japanese proverb, “Fall seven times, stand up eight.” That is exactly the premise of the story of our guest on this episode of the Founder Thesis podcast. In this episode, Akshay Datt speaks with Sumit Suneja, CEO, Merlin Brands, a company that houses Rabitat (a parenting brand) and Headway (stainless steel drinkware brand) under its roof. Sumit is a serial entrepreneur who embar...

Any technology aims to make it easier for its users and bring the best out of them. But in the case of sales professionals, it’s the other way round. In this edition of Founder Thesis, Akshay Datt talks with Abhijeet Vijayvergiya, Co-founder and CEO, Nektar.ai. He is an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur and a seasoned SaaS leader with more than a decade of experience in this field. It is well-known that or...

“At the core of large-scale transformations lies a single innovation. We believe that embedded finance is one such innovation.” – Aditya Kumar. In this edition of Founder Thesis, Akshay Datt speaks with Aditya Kumar, Co-founder and CEO, Niro, a second-time founder, who is on a mission to transform consumer internet platforms into fintech. Before Niro, Aditya headed Qbera, a digital full-stack...

One of the biggest impediments of the Fintech industry has been the way consumer loans are handled by large institutions. In the process of getting a consumer loan approved, an application flows from one lender to another and faces rejections. This hugely affects the credit score, and the consumer might end up with sub-par offers. In this edition of Founder Thesis, Akshay Datt speaks with Tushar S...

How did Gireendra Kasmalkar build one of India’s earliest independent testing companies, exit to a global leader, and then reinvent himself as a B2B SaaS-focused VC from Pune? In this episode of the Founder Thesis Podcast, we uncover the playbook behind his 30-year entrepreneurial journey. Gireendra Kasmalkar is the Founder of Ideas to Impacts and Managing Partner at Pentathlon Ventures. His story...

Unified Payments Interface or UPI enables instant and hassle-free fund transfer between accounts and has been one of the biggest disruptors of the Indian FinTech industry. In this edition of Founder Thesis, Akshay Datt speaks with Mandar Agashe, Founder and Vice-chairman, Sarvatra Technologies, a Pune-based company, which through its platform, has become the true enabler of India’s digital payment...

MBA is the go-to postgraduate degree in India. But there are two major issues students face. On one hand, where a minor chunk gets selected to the top institutes, the irrelevant curriculum fails to prepare students for what lies ahead in corporate life. In this edition of Founder Thesis, Akshay Datt speaks with Varun Satia, Founder and CEO of Kraftshala, India's largest online learning platform fo...

In the last five years, digital payments have picked up pace in India and our economy is witnessing a shift towards credit products. In this edition of Founder Thesis, Akshay Datt speaks with Ramanathan RV, Co-founder, Hyperface, a Bengaluru-based banking-as-a-service start-up that is helping companies in launching their credit cards. Ram is a serial entrepreneur and launched his first venture Jus...

India has a pretty strange relationship with cryptocurrency. Amidst bans, pandemics and whatnot, crypto companies continue to be bullish on the Indian market. In this episode of Founder Thesis, Akshay Datt speaks with Arjun Vijay and Vikram Subburaj, Founders, Giottus, the country’s leading crypto assets trading platform. Arjun and Vikram are alumni of IIM Calcutta and have worked in Vodafone and...

The international logistics industry is a critical enabler of global trade and commerce. In India, it is around 13% of GDP. However, in this era of technology and digitization, most of the activities of this industry are handled in traditional ways, which are not only time consuming but also prone to errors. In this edition of Founder Thesis, Akshay Datt speaks with Sanjay Bhatia, Co-founder and C...

Financial inclusivity is the only way to improve economic growth and reduce poverty. While with the evolution of FinTech and newer technologies, things have certainly improved, still a lot needs to be done at the rural level. In this edition of Founder Thesis, Akshay Datt speaks with Ajeet Kumar Singh, Managing Director and CEO, Save Solutions Pvt Ltd. Founded in 2009, this Bihar-based venture is...

The most successful businesses are the ones that are built around solving a problem for others. In this edition of Founder Thesis, Akshay Datt speaks with Kunal Popat, Founder, R For Rabbit. Inspiration knocked at his door when he became a father and couldn’t find any certified and safe baby gear in India. He realized the massive potential this segment had and started R For Rabbit in 2014, al...

"Education is about addiction, not content." This provocative insight from Anshuman Singh challenges the very foundation of modern education. He argues that the secret to effective learning isn't just delivering the best lectures or materials, but creating a highly engaging, motivating, and supportive ecosystem that gets students "addicted" to the process of self-improvement, leading to incredible...

When it comes to innovation, India has come a long way. But there is still a lot to be achieved! In this edition of Founder Thesis, Akshay Datt speaks with Vidit Jain and Shridhar Gupta, Founders, LocoNav. They have worked together at ClearTax before starting with their entrepreneurial journey. Intrigued by the complex nature of the fleet management business and to make the life of fleet owners ea...

‘Karna hai, toh karna hai!’ – This is one mantra that our guest today lives by! In this edition of Founder Thesis, Akshay Datt speaks with Sasidhar Nandigam, Co-founder and CEO, CredR, an omnichannel platform for buying and selling used two-wheelers. With more than a decade of experience with various venture capitalist funds, his eureka moment came when he had an unpleasant experience in buyi...

With a huge market opportunity to grab, it’s a golden age for digital-first businesses. And with plans to accelerate growth for the digital-first economy is Klub. In this edition of Founder Thesis, Akshay Datt speaks with Anurakt Jain, Co-founder and CEO, Klub, a Bengaluru-based start-up that is pioneering revenue-based financing in India. Anurakt, a graduate of IIT Delhi and The Wharton Scho...

The universe is made up of stories, where everyone is a storyteller. In this edition of Founder Thesis, Akshay Datt speaks with Ranjeet Pratap Singh, Co-founder and CEO, Pratilipi. He is an alumnus of FMS, Delhi and has worked with Vodafone before starting off with his entrepreneurial journey. Belonging to a modest background, Ranjeet has always been a voracious reader and preferred reading conten...

It’s 2022! By now, everyone knows that FinTech has taken India by storm and fascinating things will happen when such disruptive technology finds its applications in other sectors. In this edition of Founder Thesis, Akshay Datt speaks with Chris George, Co-founder and CEO, Qube Health. A serial entrepreneur and an alumnus of NYU’s Stern School of Business, Chris started his entrepreneurial journey...

Thanks to COVID, Creators’ economy has boomed in the past two years. Worldwide, there are more than fifty million creators. But most of them do not get paid. In this edition of Founder Thesis, Akshay Datt speaks with Nipun Goyal, Founder and CEO, LikeMinds. He is a serial entrepreneur who has worked in corporate before venturing on this journey. An alumnus of IIT Delhi, Nipun launched his first ve...

In this era of start-ups in India, invention, innovation, and disruption have become a reality. Founder Thesis presents you the journey of one such duo of techies who are on a mission to enable robots with human-like vision, which could unlock endless possibilities. In a candid conversation with Akshay Datt, Nikhil Ramaswamy and Gokul NA, Founders, CynLR, have taken us through their journeys. Nikh...

Is first mover really an advantage! In this episode of Founder Thesis, Akshay Datt speaks with Abhinav Sinha, Co-founder, Eko India Financial Services, a company that envisioned the innovations FinTech brought in recent years, more than a decade ago. Eko started operations in 2007 with an aim to bring banking to consumers 24X7 through a network of business correspondents. After numerous pivot...

Passion, patience, and perseverance are the ingredients to be a successful entrepreneur. In this episode of Founder Thesis, Akshay Datt speaks with Rashi Narang, Founder and Creative Director, Heads Up For Tails (HUFT), whose entrepreneurial journey is nothing but perseverance and grit. Rashi, an ardent animal lover, found her calling when she realized that the Indian market has nothing to offer w...