The Desi VC with Akash Bhat

Manish Taneja is the co-founder and CEO of Purplle , an online beauty and wellness retailer and a recent entrant into the unicorn club . He brings a wealth of experience having spent some of his finest years in venture capital (Avendus Capital), private equity (Fidelity Growth Partners India) and investment banking (Lehman Brothers), before turning a founder. In this episode we will cover: 1. Mani...

Parag Dhol is the General Partner at Athera Venture Partners . He started his VC career with ICICI Venture, India’s first venture capital company, in 1993. He followed that up with stints at GE and Intel’s corporate venture arms. Parag joined Athera (formerly known as Inventus Capital) in 2008, shortly after the first close of Fund I. Parag is/was a Board Director/Observer at redBus (acquired), Fu...

Arun Chulani is an Emerging Markets Analyst at First Water Capital , a fund focused on Indian Equities. First Water’s investment philosophy centers primarily on a long-only strategy, with a value driven and concentrated portfolio approach. Arun is a value investor focusing on hard assets (sectors such as steel, cement, rubber, oil etc.) and cyclicals, taking concentrated bets on preferred plays. P...

Chaitanya Ramalingegowda is the co-founder of Wakefit, India’s leading direct-to-consumer, mattress and sleep solutions company. He brings over 19 years of experience spanning entrepreneurship, management consulting and marketing across companies such as IBM, Cognizant, Zinnov Consulting, YourStory and LetsVenture. In this episode, we will cover: 1. The Wakefit origin story (3:25) 2. Building the...

RK Rangan is the Chairman of BLinC Invest , a v enture capital fund committed to funding EdTech and Fintech startups in India. He is a seasoned business leader with over 30 years of experience in the financial services industry across Investment Banking, Asset Management, Insurance and Consumer Banking. He is a specialist at strategic development and transformation of businesses and has held Presi...

Sandeep Patil is a partner at QED Investors , and heads the fund’s investments in Asia. Founded in 2007, QED Investors has invested in more than 180+ companies, including 27 unicorns, and has more than $5 billion under management. Notable investments include Nubank, SoFi, Credit Karma, Klarna, GreenSky, Avant, Flywire, Remitly, QuintoAndar, Creditas, ClearScore, and Konfio. He has extensive consum...

Abhishek Goenka is the Head & CIO at RPSG Capital Ventures , a corporate venture fund backed by the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group. The fund primarily invests in early-stage consumer brands in India including F&B, CPG, personal care and lifestyle goods. Abhishek brings two decades of experience across investments and M&A having spent time being part of the investments team at True No...

Madhu Shalini Iyer is a Partner at Rocketship VC . Previously, she was the Chief Data Officer of Gojek and helped grow the business into a $1 billion unicorn. She was on the board and started the Singapore office. Prior to Gojek, Madhu was an operating partner at a 150M private equity fund building startups across South East Asia. She was part of the founding team of Intuit’s Quickbooks Lending Pl...

Viral Jani has been the driving force behind several challenging projects in Consumer Tech, Television Broadcasting, Digital, Social Media and Media Planning. Armed with more than 15 years of experience in media and technology, Viral plays a key role in spearheading Investment Operations at Times Bridge. A post graduate in Communications Management, Media & Brand Management from MICA, in his p...

Mohit Kumar is the Co-founder and CEO of Ultrahuman , a metabolic health tracking platform that provides intelligent nudges based on glucose biomarkers and aims to improve users’ exercise, sleep and nutrition based on deep insights from the platform. Ultrahuman was founded by Mohit Kumar and Vatsal Singhal who were also co-founders at Runnr which later merged with India’s largest food delivery ser...

Vinay Singh is a Partner at Fireside Ventures , a fund specializing in early stage and seed investments in the Indian consumer space. With 7+ years at Hindustan Unilever as Marketing Manager for a multi-crore brand, extensive expertise in digital marketing at McKinsey & Co., and Bankbazaar.com, Vinay has a unique perspective on the intersection between consumer brands and technology. He has al...

Ankur Bansal is the Co-founder and Executive Director at BlackSoil Capital, a venture debt firm based in India. He leads the execution efforts across our large corporate clients in strategic discussions, idea origination, M&A execution, investment thesis, and negotiations. Ankur is a CFA and a CA with a large network of venture capitalists, private equity investors, institutional investors, an...

Sunil Goyal is the Founder and Managing Director of YourNest , a deep tech and enterprise focused fund in India. Before becoming a full-time, early-stage investor and fund manager, he had gained comprehensive experience of leading complex projects in the areas of M&A, business turnarounds and strategic partnerships. He has spent over two decades working at CXO levels at Bharti group and Dabur....

Sunit Gajbhiye is the Co-Founder, Business Head at Financepeer . Prior to this he was Product Manager at EdgeVerve, Infosys. Sunit is an IIM and VJTI alumnus with 6+ years of experience in Business Operations and Product Management. Financepeer, a Series B fintech startup backed by Aavishkaar Capital, QED Investors, 9Unicorn and Earlsfield Capital. The startup provides the entire year fee collecti...

Swati Khanna is the VP of Human Capital at Sequoia India where she plays a vital role in supporting portfolio startups in attracting and retaining top talent required to build the country’s next big unicorns. Prior to joining Sequoia, Swati founded Meyrahkee, a talent advisory firm focussed on helping companies with talent solutions, and spent four years at Accel as a Talent Partner, helping Accel...

Varun Alagh is the CEO and co-founder of D2C unicorn, MamaEarth , a personal care brand that specializes in baby and toddler products. Varun is a master marketer having worked for the world’s most valuable brands Coca-Cola as well as its Diets and Lights portfolio for India and South West Asia (Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka). Before this role, he worked with Diageo and managed World's No.1 spiri...

Radhesh is amongst the most seasoned B2B investors in India who brings with him rich operational experience in the enterprise technology space. He is Founder and Managing Partner at Suvan Ventures , a B2B focused cross-border fund. Before Suvan Ventures, he was Managing Partner of Arka Venture Labs which was created in 2018 August with the objective of investing and mentoring B2B companies between...

Pranav Marwah is the Director of Investments at the Marwah Family Office , who are investors in a number of funds and startups. He looks after cross-vertical day-to-day operations, group strategy & growth, and group company investment portfolios. Today, the group companies business interests are diversified across real estate, hospitality, sport, and investments across other asset classes...

Ravi Saxena is the Managing Director and CEO of Wonderchef , one of India’s premium brand of healthy and innovative kitchen appliances. Armed with an MBA degree from IIM Ahmedabad, Ravi began his professional career when he joined VIP Luggage as the Brand Manager for soft luggage business. His brand Skybags had been stagnant for the past many years and was a poor cousin to the main business of mou...

Prashant Pitti is the Co-founder and Director at EaseMyTrip , India’s second largest travel and hospitality company which provides hotel bookings, air tickets, holiday packages, bus bookings, and white-label services. In September 2021, it became a unicorn after its market capitalization crossed $1 billion. Prashant Pitti is responsible for marketing, branding, investor relations, hotel, bus and m...

Arjun Rao is a Partner at Speciale Invest, one of India’s leading deep-tech focused funds. He has spent over 15 years in the technology and Internet start-up ecosystem in India. He started his career with Yahoo! and later joined Ibibo as Product Manager. The entrepreneurial bug led him to start an edutech startup and also a travel tech startup, Travelyaari. He has led tech and product teams, and s...

Jitesh Luthra is leads Community for Bridge , and was previously the Platforms lead at Blume Ventures . Jitesh founded his first startup while still in college at Manipal University in the media space. After graduating with a degree in Computer Engineering, he worked with KPMG as part of their business Intelligence team, before embarking into the world of venture. At Blume, he played a pivotal rol...

Anjali Bansal is the Founder of Avaana Capital which invests in and provides scaling up support to innovation-led startups for catalyzing impact at scale while delivering commercial returns. Anjali has invested in and mentored various successful start-ups including Delhivery, UrbanClap, Darwinbox, Nykaa, and Lenskart. She is closely associated with NITI Aayog’s Women Entrepreneurship Platform, dig...

Misbah Naqvi is the Co-founder and General Partner at i2i Ventures, an early-stage fund investing in startups solving some of Pakistan's biggest problems. Misbah brings over 20 years of global experience in finance, development, fintech and impact investing. She was previously Head of Market Development at Boloro Global Limited, a US-based fintech startup. While at Boloro, she led the company’s ex...

Arjun Vaidya is the Venture Lead for Verlinvest , a leading family owned investment group with over €1bn assets under management backed by families who have together built one of the world’s largest consumer businesses. Before embarking on his venture journey, Arjun was the co-founder and CEO of Dr. Vaidya’s , a new age Ayurveda consumer startup which was acquired by RP Sanjiv Goenka Group in Marc...