The Neon Show

Cybercrime is predicted to drain the world of $10.5 trillion annually by 2025, making it one of the greatest threats to modern business. Shikhil Sharma, co-founder & CEO of Astra Security, is building one of today’s most trusted pentesting platforms. Just last year, Astra uncovered over 2 million vulnerabilities across customer systems, preventing more than $69 million in potential losses Shik...

“Push something a millimetre in the private sector, you make an inch of progress. In the public sector, it’s a mile of progress.” Subroto Bagchi started his career as a clerk in the Odisha government in 1976, leaving postgraduate studies. Today, eight years after serving at the rank of cabinet minister in the same government, he has certainly changed countless lives, not nameless faces. In this co...

Ashu Garg has backed companies like Databricks, Turing, Cohesity, Jasper, and Eightfold.ai as General Partner at Foundation Capital. Over the years, he’s seen multiple waves of innovation but in his words, nothing in the last 45 years comes close to the transformation AI is bringing right now. Ashu discusses how the next wave of AI products will be driven by combining reasoning with reinforcement...

A full founder’s arc: starting small, building global SaaS companies from Hyderabad, taking one to IPO, another to a billion-dollar exit, and then choosing to begin again (and again). Kiran Darisi began at Zoho, founding team member of Freshworks at 25, and stayed twelve years till the company went public. Today he is building Atomicwork, reinventing service management in the AI era.  Sreedhar Ped...

A 14-year journey from bootstrap to scale. Exotel’s story is one of India’s most remarkable SaaS journeys. Shivakumar Ganesan, started Exotel in 2011, bootstrapping it from the ground up. In 2012, he raised a seed round of ₹2.5 crore, but for the next eight years, the company grew without any external funding. Then came COVID and revenue went from $10M to $5M and what followed were bold strategic...

The software that powers 25% of India’s e-commerce transactions, processes a billion orders each year, and in 2025 alone fulfilled 20 million quick-commerce orders: Unicommerce sits at the core of India’s digital retail ecosystem.  It is one of the few SaaS companies from India to go public, doing so after nearly a decade of steady growth without fresh primary capital until its IPO in 2024. In thi...

The 21st century has shattered old assumptions about diplomacy. Relationships between nations are no longer guided by ideology or morality, but driven by pragmatism and national interest. This week, former diplomat Rajiv Sikri who served 36 years in the Indian Foreign Service, offers a deep dive into how global power dynamics are shifting.  We discuss why the United States still remains the only t...

Ashok Atluri founded Zen Technologies in 1993, bootstrapping from Hyderabad at a time when India was importing 70% of its defence equipment and private players contributed just 5% of procurements. It took Zen five years to win its first contract from the Indian Army in 1998. Today, the company builds simulators and anti-drone systems, and has grown its market cap from ₹40 crore to over ₹13,000 cro...

From idea to IPO and beyond.  What does it take to back a company for nearly two decades? There are no written rules to navigate one of the most important relationships in a startup. One between a founder and an investor. This episode is an inside look at how one of India’s longest founder-investor relationships was built and tested, between Yashish Dahiya (Policybazaar) and Sanjeev Bikhchandani (...

The global strategy consulting market stands at $39.5 billion, with Asia commanding $9.1 billion. India contributes just $1.09 billion. This is despite having the talent; Indians run global back-offices for McKinsey, BCG, Bain, Deloitte, and other consultancies. Yet, India continues to outsource strategy to the Big 4. Sanjeev Sanyal, PM Modi’s Economic Advisor joins us to break this down. We discu...

This episode is not just about Kerala; it is about how a state with limited land, strict environmental regulations, and a long history of outmigration is approaching investment and growth. Kerala is a small, densely populated state with limited land to spare, not the typical site for industrial expansion. Yet it’s taking a distinct approach to building a knowledge based economy. P. Rajeev (Ministe...

AI is changing how companies build and scale. But most pitch decks haven’t caught up. Karthik Chakkarapani, CIO of Zuora, has heard plenty of startup pitches but only a few stand out. He shares why most pitches fall flat, how to fix them, and how to present both the founder and the company in a way that drives real interest. We unpack what should go into your 30-second elevator pitch, why “Time to...

Three failed startups. One of India’s biggest B2B exits. Then returning 75% of investor money in the next venture. An entrepreneur who’s lived that arc is bound to have insights for anyone building or thinking of building. Paras Chopra, founder of Wingify (sold for $200 million), Nintee, and now Lossfunk, joins us this week. We discuss the small decisions that quietly define your startup: what pro...

50% of products and features built are never used. To build the right product, every founder must answer two questions: Are you solving a real problem? And are you solving it the right way? Technology has rarely been democratic, it’s often elitist. So at times, it ends up solving made-up problems that don’t really exist. Yet, some companies have built truly great products. What sets them apart? Do...

Geopolitics is now measured in Nanometers. Anything with a battery or a plug has a semiconductor inside. But these chips aren’t just tech anymore, they’re shaping who becomes the next Superpower. In the 1980s, India was just two years behind the world in semiconductors. Today, we’re 12 generations behind. What went wrong? India’s top semiconductor expert, Raja Manickam, returns to The Neon Show to...

There are No Checklists or Frameworks on HOW TO BE A VC? So how do you even know if it’s the right path for you? Unlike most jobs, venture capital comes with an extremely long feedback loop. It can take years before you know whether the bets you made actually worked out.  That’s why most seasoned VCs say: only choose this path if you're in it for the long haul. This conversation will help you...

Vertical SaaS customers don’t buy software for 10 months, they buy it for 10 years. That’s the opportunity and the challenge. Switching costs are high, which makes it hard to get in but once you’re in, you’re in. But regular SaaS playbooks don't work here. Forget PLG. Forget design partners. These industries have been burned too many times by bad software. Here, Trust defines GTM. Think warm...

Recko's acquisition by Stripe is one of India's biggest B2B exits.  It's a great headline. But headlines don't tell the full story. They capture one final outcome not the numerous obstacles faced. In this episode, Saurya Prakash Sinha, co-founder of Recko, tells us what really happened behind the scenes.  From the early days when no one was buying, no VC was funding, and they h...

The dollar will lose its status as the world’s reserve currency & the greatest wealth transfer in history is already underway - warns the founder of one of India’s fastest-growing unicorns! In this episode, Deepak Garg, founder of Rivigo and AnywhereJobs shares why Rivigo's iconic Relay model succeeded, and what ultimately limited it.  He predicts Zomato's dominance, questions fundin...

Venture capital is much fancied today. Is this job which looks like cutting cheques for products and founders you like, for everyone? As for any work, there are traits you should have and some which won’t help you on the job. We have with us Kushal Bhagia (All In Capital), Karthik Prabhakar (Peer Capital), and Rajan (Upekkha). Three people who interestingly all began as engineers and took differen...

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” In this episode of The Neon Show, Vishwa (Co-founder of ZenDuty) is joined by Rahul Sasi (Co-founder of CloudSEK) and Ananda Krishna (Co-founder of Astra Security).  They share how AI feels magical now. And how as founders they are trying to sprinkle this magic everywhere from how building products to building teams and everyt...

In this episode, we sit down with two exceptional founders. One who is going after the biggest category, and one who created a new category and became its leading player. Vijay Rayapati (Co-founder, Atomicwork) and Khadim Batti (Co-founder, Whatfix) share their hard-earned insights on what it truly takes to build a great company. From closing million-dollar deals remotely to building AI-native org...

CRM is a category often equated with its market leader, Salesforce. Hence, companies and investors question the viability of building a business in this space. Nilesh Patel, founder of Leadsquared, who built a Unicorn in CRM, joins us today. We discuss the category, the business, and its competitors. With Byju’s as their first large deal, Edtech brought over 40% of their customers. Then the indust...

Meet Sharad Sanghi who built India’s first data center, he spent 25 years building Netmagic, India’s largest data center company. He came to India in 1995, worked at VSNL as the country was discovering the internet, and built a company focused on internet for businesses. Now he is building Neysa, an AI cloud startup, which recently raised $50M to help businesses adopt AI, all from India.  With Ney...

In this episode of The Neon Show, we bring you into the room with someone who’s spent over a decade backing India’s most ambitious companies. We're joined by Prayank Swaroop, Partner at Accel. With over 14 years in venture capital, Prayank walks us through his journey of discovering and building expertise in specific sectors—from cybersecurity and developer tools to SaaS and marketplaces—and...