The Neon Show

As per the recent data by Tracxn, there are 1338 AgriTech startups in India. However, with 118.7 million farmers, who contribute to a mere 17-18% of Indian GDP, many problem statements are left to be solved at a larger scale. In March 2020, we interviewed Vaibhav Domkundwar from Better Capital, where he mentioned their then-recent investment in Bijak - their first interaction with the founders and...

Since early 2020, we've noticed numerous startups becoming Unicorn one after another.  But something a bit unnoticed by the wider audience is the valuations of startups at Seed-stage, which has grown multiples in the last two years.  Bipin Shah, Partner at Titan Capital and this week's guest, says, "Till 2019, a great startup idea with an awesome team would be valued around $2Mn to...

When you hear the word Startups & Angel Investing, which cities do you most commonly think they are based out of? Bengaluru, Delhi / Gurugram, Mumbai, or Chennai.  The guest of our today’s episode, Abhishek Rungta clearly breaks this stereotype.  Back in 1997, when he was still in his graduation, he had two options post college -  - Join his father’s family business in Jute Trading - Start som...

Habits! Our habits make us who we are as a person. Since an early age we’ve been told by our parents and mentors, the distinction between a good and a bad habit.  But how often do we skip to the good one’s?  Specially as grown-ups, can you confidently say that you have the best habits in terms of -  1. Managing your finance & expenses 2. Managing your work life balance 3. Having a fruitful &am...

# 5M+ Shopping Moments Personalized #400M+ Monthly Active Users Engaged #30B+ Messages Sent Monthly #$10B+ Additional Revenue Delivered These are some of the metrics driven by WebEngage, which caters to 400+ global brands as a robust customer data platform, personalization engine, omnichannel campaign manager, and an analytics engine.  In today’s episode we have Avlesh Singh, WebEngage’s, CEO &amp...

"The world is going through one of the worst recessions, and you plan on starting a Travel venture. You must be out of your mind!" This was precisely the reaction of everyone around Prashant Pitti, the guest of today's episode, and his co-founders when they decided to launch EaseMyTrip during the 2008 Recession. In fact, when they approached a few VCs during their early days to pitc...

4.03 billion people! That’s the most recent reported number of email users worldwide. No platform even comes close to the potential reach of email. The latest Facebook statistics give them over 2.8 billion monthly active users. As of today there are almost 1 billion and 700 thousand active users of Gmail, being of the most popular email service providers. But it was launched on 1 April 2004. Prior...

A founder’s role is challenging, requiring expertise in multiple enterprises. From funding to hiring, it is entirely the onus of the founder to convert visions into reality.  In today’s episode, we’ve brought Sameer Guglani, Founder of Supermorpheus, a Community-driven seed investing platform, to simplify the founder’s role and expand it beyond finance to foster the entire Startup team’s well bein...

A notion amongst most Indian SaaS entrepreneurs is to move to the US to expand or start from the US from Day 1 itself. However, in today's episode, we've brought Anand Jain, Co-founder of CleverTap, to debunk this myth and shed more light on what an early-stage SaaS founder's roadmap should be in terms of either staying in India or moving to any global market. CleverTap is a leading...

With so many Indian startups achieving unicorn status in 2021, the situation begs an answer to the question:   # Is this growth sustainable or are we in a bubble? # What does this mean for foreign and Indian investors?  #What does this mean for the next decade of VC and Startups?  To understand this better, in today’s episode, we’ve brought Anjali Bansal, founder of Avaana Capital, that invests in...

# What is Financial Independence?  # Does everybody need precisely 10 crore to be happy?  # Is the process of “Wealth Creation = Cutting out on all your wants & desires completely”? For the past 2 years, it seems like everyone around us is investing either in stocks or crypto and also making generous profits.  And you too are probably thinking to jump in right? After all -  # Markets are at an...

Diwali just got over, and following the fatal trend of smog in the nation's capital for the past five years, it is here again. It is alarming to recognize that India is home to 7 of the top 10 cities globally, notorious for its air pollution levels. With increasing incomes, more and more people can afford cars, increasing the severity of the already worse air pollution scenario due to fossil...

"Don't be afraid of failure. Always optimize for success, but be prepared for failure." - Ashish Singhal. In today's episode, we've brought Ashish Singhal, Founder & CEO of CoinSwitch, to talk about their journey globally and how they're shaping the narrative around crypto in India.  Recently, CoinSwitch, caught people's attention when they used the entire fr...

As per a recent article by Economic Times - “Early stage investing is at an all-time high in post-pandemic India with the country averaging one seed round a day this year.” As of Sept, so far over 240+ companies have secured their first funding in 2021 v/s 302 companies in 2020, and 257 in 2019, and with a few more months remaining, this number is expected to cross last year’s benchmark.  In today...

During and post the pandemic, several sectors have seen a dramatic rise in customers & sales, specially the ones which were ready to embrace the new change and leverage the new opportunity of everything going online and remote.  With 2021 being the most prominent year for Indian startups achieving unicorn status, Edtech isn’t left behind.  In today’s episode we’ve brought Vamsi Krishna, CEO an...

According to WHO, obesity has doubled since the turn of the century, and almost 40% of all adults globally, i.e. 2 billion people - are overweight or obese, resulting in 4 million deaths per year. HealthifyMe an AI driven health and fitness app startup, took up this problem statement 10 years back and has been building and solving for individuals to curate and track a healthier diet. The company c...

Personal branding is something that’s drawing a lot of attention from people across all domains.  And the only proven way, to create a personal brand for yourself, is by becoming a consistent and quality content creator.  With over 200+ speeches in 26+ countries on wealth & personal growth, the guest of our today’s episode, Raj Shamani describes his journey from 0 to a million+ followers and b...

India is becoming the world's fastest-growing startup ecosystem with over 60+ Unicorn Startups, out of which 25+ have gained their Unicorn status in 2021 itself.  One of the youngest amongst them is headed by the guest of our today’s episode, Amrit Acharya, Co-founder & CEO, Zetwerk.  Zetwerk started in 2018, with the idea to help manufacturing managers with managing several suppliers wit...

Normally for the most of us our buying focus is around products like -  # Which smartphone to buy?  # Which laptop to buy?  # Which car to buy? And so on.  But have you ever thought for a bit about which mattress should I buy? Probably No, right.  This is the reason why, in almost the last 10-15 years, prior to 2015-16, we’ve barely seen any innovation in mattresses or competitive pricing amongst...

Have you heard about “Programmatic Advertising”? Well for those of you who haven’t, Programmatic Advertising, also known as programmatic display advertising, is an automatic process of planning, buying and selling ad inventory. Before advertising was programmatic, it was done manually, which included being in touch with a sales team, and included requesting for proposals, bidding, quotation, and h...

How often and sincerely do you help someone for free?  Moreover when it's related to building/growing their business? Only some of us can confidently say yes to the above questions. However today we have Manish Pandey, who heads Culture and Brand at Josh Talks.  Coming from Silvassa (i.e. headquarters of the union territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu), Manish had very humble...

In whichever industry or ecosystem you are, there are some people you just can’t not know about, because they are the ones who have either -  # had a major role in shaping the industry as it is today  # or achieved something at such a massive scale that no one can miss to notice it The guest of our today’s episode Vani Kola, founder and managing director of Kalaari Capital, is one such person. She...

Did you used to get pocket money before the age of 18 to manage your expenses? I personally used to get a fixed & tiny pocket money after 10th, thanks to my parents. When I was in college, I stayed away from my hometown, in a PG with a roommate, unlike me, he didn’t had a fixed or tiny pocket money, he used to get an X amount from his father whenever the previous X amount got over.  I was alwa...

Data access for App development for startups and enterprise is very complex and has a lot of security concerns. It gets even worse when you plan to scale the product. This has vastly changed since Hasura came into existence. Founded by the guest of our today’s episode, Tanmai Gopal, Hasura provides an open-source engine for developers to streamline data access in a secure and scalable way to make...

Venture Capital or Angel investments aren’t a must have, to make your startup successful. This has been demonstrated again and again by several bootstrapped startups which have been very successful, namely - GrabOn, Zoho, Zerodha, Wingify & others. The guest of our today’s episode Rajdip Gupta, CEO & Founder, Route Mobile, similarly has an exquisite journey of taking his company from being...