Founder Thesis

Catch them young, watch them grow! Great thought! But when it comes to managing money, it’s always the elders who have taken decisions. And that is the sole reason that as adults, people still struggle with savings, taxes and investments and why financial literacy in India is a tough nut to crack. In this episode of the Founder Thesis podcast, Akshay Datt speaks with Sambhav Jain, Founder, Fa...

Innovation and disruption are the hallmarks of the technology world. Amidst the fintech revolution and the subsequent rise of digital banks in India, going to a bank branch is no longer in vogue. And with neobanking, this metamorphosis has reached a new level with state-of-the-art technologies and providing customers with easy, quick, and efficient financial services. The Founder Thesis podcast pr...

Innovation and disruption are the hallmarks of the technology world. Amidst the fintech revolution and the subsequent rise of digital banks in India, going to a bank branch is no longer in vogue. And with neobanking, this metamorphosis has reached a new level with state-of-the-art technologies and providing customers with easy, quick, and efficient financial services. The Founder Thesis podcast pr...

In India, Cryptocurrency is one of those tech innovations that has hit more headlines than any other! From influencers promoting it on social media to companies sponsoring major sporting events, the popularity of these virtual digital currencies has risen in India. In this episode of the Founder Thesis podcast, Akshay Datt speaks with Rahul Pagidipati, CEO, ZebPay, India’s biggest cryptocurrency e...

The end of the 2000s saw the rise in radio taxi services. In the next decade, the urban mobility market in India was captured by Ola and Uber. You might wonder what’s in store for commuters in this decade! In a candid conversation with Akshay Datt, Prof. Satya Chakravarthy, Co-founder, and CTO, The ePlane Co, takes us through his amazing journey. A veteran in the Indian aerospace arena, he is...

"How do a bunch of imperfect people, who are all in some sense imperfect, come together and make a perfect product?" This profound question from Srinath Ravichandran encapsulates the immense challenge and human element behind building something as complex and precise as a rocket. It’s not just about flawless engineering, but about creating systems where imperfect individuals can collectively achie...

Ever heard of the Japanese proverb, “Fall seven times, stand up eight.” That’s exactly the premise of the story of our guest on this episode of the Founder Thesis podcast. In a candid conversation with Akshay Datt, Ankit Prasad, Founder, and CEO, Bobble AI, has shared interesting anecdotes about his early days and the journey of Bobble. As he says, “Entrepreneurship ka keeda bachpan...

How did Rajiv Srivatsa go from building one of India’s most beloved furniture brands, Urban Ladder, to backing the next wave of founders at Antler India? In this episode of the Founder Thesis Podcast, we explore his journey through IIT, Infosys, Yahoo, Urban Ladder, and finally into venture capital, while uncovering timeless lessons for entrepreneurs navigating India’s startup ecosystem. Rajiv Sri...

Online content creation saw a drastic boom when the pandemic struck. This made content creators spend more hours with their gadgets. In a candid conversation with Akshay Datt, Raj Kundra, Founder and CEO, JL Stream, shares his journey. Born and brought up in London, Raj started his entrepreneurial journey at the age of 18. After running multiple businesses, he became an entrepreneur in I...

"Today's D2C brands will become FMCG giants of tomorrow." Shantanu Deshpande shares his conviction that the direct-to-consumer wave is creating the next generation of major Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) companies, challenging established players by building brands directly online. Shantanu Deshpande is the Founder and CEO of Bombay Shaving Company. He left a successful consulting career at McK...

All of you must be familiar with the phrase silver lining. Where the pandemic forced us to maintain social distancing, it has also enabled entrepreneurs to come up with innovative and disruptive business ideas. In a candid conversation with Akshay Datt, Shailaz Nag, Co-founder and CEO, DotPe, takes us through his amazing journey of working in top corporates to building ventures like PayU and DotPe...

"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...