The Neon Show

In this episode, we talk with Mithun Sacheti, the founder of CaratLane, who has disrupted the traditional jewellery industry in India by leveraging technology and innovation. He started CaratLane in 2008 with the vision to provide access to beautiful jewellery designs at an affordable price.  Mithun Sacheti comes from a Marwari family and joined the family jewellery business, Jaipur Gems, after gr...

Manish Mundra is an Investor, a film producer, and a man whose story is an inspiration for all the small-town people with big dreams. Manish was born in a Marwadi family based in Deoghar, Jharkhand. He along with his family experienced a difficult time when his father’s business suffered a setback. From selling sarees to cold drinks, he had done it all to support his family. Manish later on focuse...

In the recent episode of Shark Tank India which went viral, we saw Ganesh Balakrishnan, the Co-Founder of Flatheads Shoes, pitch his sustainable and ethically-made footwear brand to the Sharks.  Although Ganesh faced some initial skepticism from the Sharks, he didn't give up and continued to present his vision with confidence and determination. And through his pitch, he made everyone realize...

The Indian Grocery market was at 396 Billion Indian Rupees in 2022.  Over 95% of Indian grocery stores are made up of Kiranas or small grocery stores.  While supermarkets account for about 4% of total grocery shares, online groceries are not even near one percent.  Which stands as a huge potential market for companies like BigBasket, Blinkit, Swiggy Instamart, Zepto, JioMart, and Dunzo to scale. Z...

SaaS startups in India have seen significant growth in recent years. The country's SaaS market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 22.5% from 2020 to 2025, reaching a value of $6.3 billion.  A few of the factors driving this growth are: Increasing adoption of cloud computing Availability of advanced tech infrastructure in India Support from the Government of India for fund...

Why the DARLING Edtech in 2021 became a taboo in 2022 for VCs? What do students really expect?  Why do Edtech entrepreneurs fail?  And what's the most important factor in EdTech Success? Today we talk with Manan Khurma, Founder at Cuemath who answers all these questions for us.  During our conversation he shares how building an Education venture is not like building on a rocket ship, but buil...

Recently the trend in startups has been around growing fast, scaling faster, and becoming humongous with viral products, ideas & marketing.  But in most cases, such ideas come crashing down in a short span of time, because of the lack of depth either in the product or the customer base. In this episode, almost after a year and half since we published NoBroker Founder Amit Agarwal’s episode, we...

Where was the Indian Startup Ecosystem back in 2010-12, where is it now in 2022 and where is it headed 5 years down the line, in terms of -  # Digital Infrastructure # Tech Talent # Innovative mindset amongst founders # Investments from VCs and Angel Investors and more.  In this episode, we will talk about all of it, with our guest, Santosh Panda, Co-founder, Foundership where he is Incubating &am...

As of today, only 15% of India’s population lives in the top 50 cities, and the remaining 85% which accounts to around 119 crores, live in towns or villages.  According to an ASER survey, the availability of smartphones in rural India was 67.6 % in 2021, primarily bought for kids’ studies amid the pandemic. With this, we can make out that even in towns and villages, the penetration of smartphones...

The direct-to-consumer market, known as the D2C market had a size of about $33 billion in India in 2020. By 2025, the total addressable D2C market is forecast to grow almost threefold and reach $100 billion. In today’s episode, we have with us, Abhishek Goenka, Head of Investments, RPSG Capital Ventures. RPSG Capital Ventures is an early-stage consumer VC fund focused on investing in the D2C ecosy...

Karthik Jagannathan, after working for more than two decades across cross-functional experience in Telecom and Internet businesses, with a specific focus on SMBs, decided to build a solution to help SMBs scale faster with Gallabox. In today’s episode, Karthik shares the backstory of what led him to starting up at the age of 50, building something for SMBs, and more.  Notes -  01:36 - Serving a bus...

With so much happening in our work and personal lives on a daily basis, how do you keep track of things?    Which one of the following do you generally practice?  1. Just try to remember all of it with your brain 2. Save reminders or alerts with a calendar or events management app 3. Maintain a daily diary 4. Some other way!   As argued and mentioned by most founders and VCs on our podcast so far,...

There’s been a high rise in global data breaches for several years, and 2022 has been littered with information thefts.  As per Analytics India magazine, the data breach cost averaged Rs.176 million in 2022, reaching an all-time high. In July, Twitter suffered a data breach of 5.4 million accounts, and throughout the year so far, there have been several cases of data theft of various scales. Our t...

What are some of the valuable learnings and inspirations Siddhartha and Nansi got after recording 200+ episodes with the most successful entrepreneurs, VCs, and creators on the 100x Entrepreneur podcast? The new episode with our duo is out now!  Tune in to learn how to start a podcast, what you can expect after a certain number of podcast episodes, how you grow with each conversation, and which gu...

In 2021, 125 Indian companies raised over $18 Bn through initial public offerings (IPO) in public markets. Out of $18 Bn, over $7.3 Bn was raised by 11 Indian Tech Startups from Nazara to MapmyIndia. In today’s episode, we talk with Abhishek Goyal & Neha Singh, Co-founders, Tracxn, which recently went IPO. But unlike the other major tech startups which went IPO in recent years, at Tracxn, they...

What are those 5 key decisions Siddhartha and Nansi took to building 100x Entrepreneur? The new episode with our duo is out now! Tune in to hear their journey, learnings, and the hard work they put into bringing the best startup podcast to you all!  We hope you enjoy this podcast.  Make sure to watch it till the very end and share it with your friends! Also, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Pay...

The number of retail grocery retailers across India in 2022 amounted to about 13 million.  Grocery retail account for about 65% of India's overall retailers. And the most common problems faced by these retailers on a financial front up until a few years back were -  Accepting digital payments such as UPI or Cards Easy & Quick access to loans for expanding business or in the form of workin...

As per Statista, Market size of the cosmetics industry across India which was at $3 Bn in 2010 is expected to grow to atleast $20 Bn by 2025. In today’s episode, we talk with Manish Taneja, Co-founder and CEO, Purplle, which was started back in 2012. During the podcast Manish talks in detail about -  How he along with his Cofounders have always thought for the long-term? Problems they faced back i...

Thinking about Entrepreneurship or Startups which of the following do you think really matters -   # Having Degree from a Tier-1 college? # Having or finding the right Co-founder? # Sky-rocketing your scale up as soon as you secure funding?  # Pouring in your resources to get as many customers as fast as possible via Ads? Well the short answer to all the above questions is, IT DOESN’T. In today’s...

As per Statista, globally there are more than 2.6 Mn Apps on Google Play Store, and when you’re building in today’s age of internet, you need as much as visibility possible around -  # Accurately measuring the impact of your marketing initiatives # Actionable insights on your user behaviour # Potential Competitors & on what metrics do they compare with you and where do you & your team need...

Today being an entrepreneur and starting with a new idea, you can take either of the two approaches -  1. You can build on top of an existing category in the market and bring your unique offerings 2. You can take the riskier bet and create an entire category.  In India, companies like Flipkart, Oyo, Ola etc. are the ‘Regional’ first movers. Although their concept was inspired from the global compa...

How can an experience being a VC come handy while starting up? To answer this today we’ve with us Divyaanshu Makkar, Co-Founder, Sourcewiz. Prior to starting Sourcewiz, Divyaanshu had already tasted entrepreneurship with his first venture in EdTech space, Connect2Teach in London. Post that after working with EY-Parthenon for a brief period of time, he joined Bessemer Venture Partners in California...

The Indian market is seeing several startups offering innovative products in the D2C & FMCG segment.  One such innovative brand is Rage Coffee.  Founder Bharat Sethi launched Rage Coffee in the year 2018. It offers a variety of vegan-friendly, vitamin-infused instant coffee flavours. The brand is currently present in 2,500+ retail outlets pan-India and plans to expand its offline presence 5X w...

Founded in 2013, Portea Medical, India's Leading Home Health Care Company employes over 4000 people and covers 40+ cities in India doing 1,50,000+ home visits every month. Portea has also helped about 5,00,000 COVID-19 patients, working with seven different cities and state governments, including Delhi, Mumbai, Faridabad, Gurgaon, Chennai, Bengaluru and all of Karnataka.  Meena Ganesh, Chairp...

In startup ecosystem a lot of people talk about Category creating startups, but it is equally difficult and as it sounds glamorous and exciting.  That’s possibly the reason why we don’t see a lot such Category creating startups around us very frequently. And even if they do come up, they don’t sustain very long.  In today’s episode we are talking with Vijay Arisetty, Founder, MyGate, i.e. a catego...