The Desi VC with Akash Bhat

For years, a single drug sat behind a patent wall – expensive, scarce and out of reach for most of the world. And then, almost overnight, that wall collapsed. A patent expired. Dozens of Indian pharma companies moved in. Factories spun up. Regulators cleared approvals. And within days, Ozempic, one of the most talked-about drugs in the world, was suddenly available in India at a fraction of its Am...

For decades, a small group of people decided which companies would shape the future. A pitch deck. A 30-minute meeting. A partner nodding across the table. And somewhere behind closed doors, a decision that could turn a scrappy founder into a billionaire, or end the company before it ever began. That system is venture capital. An industry built on outliers, where 1 in 10 bets drives all the return...

For 56 years, one car defined power in India. A white car. A red beacon. A uniformed driver. And somewhere in the back seat, a politician, a bureaucrat, a minister - someone who mattered. That car was the Hindustan Ambassador, the legendary "laal batti wali gaadi". Built on the bones of the British Morris Oxford Series III, the Ambassador barely changed for decades - yet it became the most recogni...

In January 2008, eight envelopes were opened in a Mumbai hotel ballroom. Each contained a bid for a cricket team in a league that hadn't played a single match. The most expensive team was Mumbai Indians ($111.9M) and the second most expensive team was Royal Challengers Bengaluru ($111.6M). Today, Royal Challengers Bengaluru is expected to sell for $2B! That's an 18x return in 18 years on a...

In 2016, Russian hackers broke into John Podesta’s Gmail during the US election. That single breach exposed how vulnerable email really is – and it directly inspired a billion-dollar cybersecurity startup. At the time, even the most powerful people in the world couldn’t fully secure their inboxes. Once hackers got access, there was nothing stopping them from reading everything: drafts, attachments...

Kevin Carter is the Founder & Chief Investment Officer of EMQQ Global, a San Francisco based investment management and research firm focused on providing investors access to the fast growing Emerging and Frontier Markets technology sector. EMQQ Global invests in publicly traded internet and ecommerce companies operating in 50+ countries, including India, China, Brazil, Indonesia, Nigeria, Egyp...

Arun Penmetsa is a Partner at Storm Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on Enterprise software companies. He invests primarily in SaaS, Security, and Digital Health startups. Before joining Storm, Arun held product and engineering roles at Oracle and Google, where he built enterprise software solutions at scale. Arun is deeply passionate about the intersection of healthcare and t...

Rohan Nayak is the Co-founder & CEO of Pocket FM , a company redefining audio storytelling for the world. While we’ve recently been publishing video episodes, this one’s a throwback to pure audio. Rohan had to travel unexpectedly, but we didn’t want to miss the chance to capture his insights on building one of India's fastest-growing consumer tech companies. Pocket FM is making waves globally...

Brij Bhasin is a longtime investor turned founder and the co-founder & CEO of Snow Mountain AI , a company focused on automating business processes in finance, compliance, and legal through AI. Before founding Snow Mountain, Brij was a General Partner at Rebright Partners , and earlier helped launch GSF Accelerator, one of India’s first and largest startup accelerators. He was also part of the...

Pramod is a Senior Principal at Blumberg Capital , an early-stage venture capital firm specializing in leading Seed and Series A rounds. The firm is based in Tel Aviv (Israel) and San Francisco. Before joining Blumberg Capital, Pramod was a Principal at 11.2 Capital, where he focused on investing in early-stage cybersecurity, data, dev-tools, and AI. He led seed rounds in Coalesce, Permiso, Strike...

Anshu Bansal is a serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He co-founded Hyrecar , a peer-to-peer car sharing marketplace that allows anyone to rent their cars to Uber and Lyft drivers safely and reliably. In today’s episode, learn how a late-night Uber ride in 2014 sparked a groundbreaking business idea that would reshape the ride-sharing industry in the US. Anshu takes us through his incredib...

Aquibur Rahman is the Co-founder and CEO of Mailmodo , an interactive email marketing software that helps marketers create app-like experiences in email by adding forms, shopping cart, calendar, NPS and other widgets. It helps companies collect feedback from their users, book meetings with prospects, recover abandon carts, generate leads, all within the the body of the email. The company is backed...

Yousuf Khan is a Partner at Ridge Ventures , a seed and Series A stage venture fund investing in enterprise and B2B startups. With a deep understanding of startup growth and scaling challenges, Yousuf not only drives Ridge’s investment portfolio forward but also provides hands-on support to founders, offering guidance rooted in his extensive experience across leadership roles. He currently serves...

We had the privilege of hosting Sriram Viswanathan , Founding Managing Partner of Celesta Capital . Based in San Francisco, Celesta Capital is a global, multi-stage venture capital firm managing $1.1 billion in assets. The firm specializes in cross-border investments between India and the United States, with a focus on deep-tech. Since its inception in 2013, Celesta Capital has invested in over 10...

In this episode, we sit down with ⁠ Sheel Mohnot ⁠ , co-founder of ⁠ Better Tomorrow Ventures ⁠ (BTV), a San Francisco-based $350M AUM fund that leads pre-seed and seed rounds in fintech companies globally, typically writing first checks ranging from $500K to $4M. BTV also runs The Mint Accelerator, a program providing mentorship, resources, and community support for fintech founders. At its core,...

After 150 audio-only episodes on Spotify & Apple Podcasts, The Desi VC is finally stepping into the world of video ! The first video episode drops on January 1st. Join host Akash Bhat every fortnight as he interviews: Top investors managing billion-dollar funds Serial entrepreneurs with multiple successful exits Operators who’ve built some of the most recognizable tech companies Get ready for:...

Dhruv Dhanraj Bahl is the Founder & Managing Partner at Eternal Capital , a 120-crore fund investing in transformative startups across technology, healthcare, and consumer sectors in India. He is the former COO of BharatPe, and a leader with extensive experience in scaling businesses and driving operational excellence across Airtel, PayTM, and Fortis Hospitals, where he spearheaded growth and...

Dhirendra Mahyavanshi is the Co-Founder of Turtlemint , an online insurance platform backed by Nexus Venture Partners, Peak XV, Jungle Ventures, GGV Capital, Blume Ventures among others. The company is on a mission to makes it easy to understand and buy insurance. Before founding this company he held leadership positions at Quikr and ICICI Lombard. He holds an MBA degree from The IIM Calcutta. . ....

Archana Jahagirdar is the founder and managing partner of Rukam Capital , to find out. Set up in 2019, the Delhi-based venture capital firm invests in early-stage consumer products and services companies with significant growth potential. The VC has funded as many as 20+ startups, including noted brands such as Go DESi, Sleepy Owl Coffee, Burger Singh, BECO, The Indus Valley, Curefoods and more. ....

Anshuman Singh is the Co-founder of ⁠ Scaler ⁠ , an edtech company designed to upskill college graduates and young software engineers in advanced computer science topics. The company has raised $55M from Lightrock, Peak XV Partners and Tiger Global Management, at a valuation of $700M. Before Scaler, Anshuman had co-founded InterviewBit, a platform aimed at helping software engineers prepare for te...

Sagar Kochhar is the Co-founder of Rebel Foods , and CEO of Eatsure . After completing his engineering degree from NIT Kurukshetra and an MBA from SCMHRD Pune, he began as a design engineer with Larsen & Toubro, then moved to Perfetti Van Melle and Vodafone in marketing roles. At Rebel Foods, he initially joined as Sr. VP of Operations, playing a crucial role in building brands from scratch to...

⁠ Karthik Prabhakar ⁠ is the Managing Partner at ⁠ PeerCapital ⁠ , an early-stage investment fund in India focused on seed to Series A rounds. Karthik has been a part of the Indian tech ecosystem since 2005, with a wealth of experience in venture capital, product development, and marketing. Prior to PeerCapital, Karthik was the Managing Director at Chiratae Ventures (formerly known as IDG Ventures...

⁠ Aditya Nambiar ⁠ is the co-founder of ⁠ Fennel ⁠ , a modern feature engineering platform that enables you to author, compute, store, serve, monitor, and govern both real-time and batch ML features, backed by Foundational Capital. Before diving into entrepreneurship, Aditya built products at Google and Facebook, and is an IIT-B alumnus. . . . Episode notes: Introduction (1:40) Why choose entrepre...

Mayuresh Raut is the Co-founder & Managing Partner of Seafund , investing in pre-Series A startups in India with investments in companies such as Wigzo, Inc42, Zippee, ClooTrack among others. SEA Fund’s mission is to help the next set of technical founders, with small amounts of early capital in getting to market to build efficient and scalable businesses. He is an Engineer and an MBA and is a...

Swati Bhargava is the Co-Founder of CashKaro.com , India’s largest Cashback & Coupons site, backed by Kalaari Capital, Korea investment partners and Affle. Swati first started Pouring Pounds with her husband Rohan Bhargava in the UK in 2011. Seeing the huge opportunity in India they launched CashKaro.com in April 2013. Swati is an alumnus of the London School of Economics and has worked at Gol...