The Startup Operator

The COVID-19 pandemic was a bolt from the blue. The world never expected it; neither was it prepared. This is a kind of crisis that most of us are unlikely to experience more than once in our lifetimes. Individuals and companies are trying hard to cope and adapt. The truth though is that we constantly deal with crises in our lives. A crisis can be a great opportunity for innovation. Almost every g...

This is it.    The end of 2020 is almost here.   We have Devaiah Bopanna (ex-AIB) with us again to round up the year that was. In this episode, we dive into the various aspects of 2020 that we want to take forward with us in 2021. Listen to this episode for a peculiar take on how the startup scenes have evolved in India, the grasp social media has on us, and the hits & misses of the year. What are...

About a billion people in the world suffer from lifestyle diseases. What’s more discomforting is that the numbers are hurtling to a staggering 2 billion in the span of a mere two decades. And, our current medical solutions focus on managing the symptoms but not the actual root causes.   Vivek Subramanyam, Founder & CEO of AltLife, talks to us about how his second startup venture is taking a radica...

In the latest episode of The Startup Operator, Roshan invites Prasanna Krishnamoorthy, who is a partner at Upekkha Catalyst. Upekkha helps founders build value SaaS startups.   Prasanna earlier served as the CTO at Microsoft Accelerator for India, the largest effort of its kind felt it in his bones when helping over 100 B2B startups iterate to their product-market fit.    In this episode, we under...

What would you do if you never got enough to read in your own language? Today, we have with us Ranjeet who co-founded Pratilipi to ensure that his regional language content is accessible to more and more people. Featured in Entrepreneur India’s 35Under35 2020 list, Ranjeet started Pratilipi in 2015. Today, the content platform has more than 160,000 writers and 8.5 million monthly active readers on...

One of the first episodes that we uploaded was back during the first leg of the lockdown. It was a conversation featuring Ashwin SL of MoEngage on how marketers would and should re-align their priorities to suit the times.  In this episode, Roshan and Ashwin deep-dive into how some of those ideas and strategies panned out as we near the end of 2020. If you are a marketing person, then this convers...

Sameer Brij Verma, Managing Director of Nexus Venture Partners, started his journey in India’s venture capital ecosystem back in 2007. That year, he joined Reliance Ventures, where he focused on early-stage investments in technology, media and entertainment, and telecommunications. His operational expertise lies in product management, business development, sales acceleration, recruiting, follow-on...

Anup Pai is the founder of eSamudaay, India’s first community commerce platform. eSamudaay aims to enable community commerce across cities and towns of India by leveraging the country’s entrepreneurial strengths. He previously founded Fintellix that developed compliance and risk management software with analytics, for banks and financial institutions. The company served global banks such as BoA, C...

With more than 15 years of experience, Arijit Chakraborty has been in senior leadership roles with global insurers such as Manulife and Zurich. He is actively involved in the start-up ecosystem and has been building insurtech businesses in Southeast Asia for the past years. He currently serves as the Managing Director, Asia, at Cover Genius.  In this episode of The Startup Operator Podcast, Roshan...

Deepa Bachu has had an illustrious career in using technology to revolutionize the lives of millions, globally. Through Pensaar Design, Deepa has taught over 5000 people design thinking in the last 2 years! Throughout her career of 24 years at HP, Merrill Lynch, Kana Communications, Intuit, and Pensaar Design, she has worked on products that millions of customers use across countries. In this epis...

A now entrepreneur turned investor and author, Harpreet had co-founded  CoCubes, an online assessments firm, in 2007 with his co-founder Vibhore Goyal. CoCubes got acquired by Aon Hewitt in Nov 2016 in an all-cash deal and it became part of Aon’s Assessment Solutions, the world's second-largest assessment company.   At the time of the acquisition, CoCubes had touched 3 million students across Indi...

Ashish is the CEO at Mirae Asset Venture Investment (India) with a focus on opportunities in Mobile, Internet, Fintech space. With a fund size of USD 1.5 Billion, his investments at Mirae include the likes of Ola, BigBasket, Zolostays, Shadowfax, and more.  Prior to Mirae, he was involved with Kalaari where he was actively involved in sourcing new opportunities and helping existing portfolio compa...

Saurabh is a 3x Ed tech entrepreneur. He was earlier Co-founder at Vedantu, which is valued at $600M as of Nov 2020 and is one of the most successful Ed Tech startups in India. Saurabh founded Uable post his Vedantu journey to help children discover and develop their creative potential. In this fascinating conversation, we understand the contours of building in the Ed Tech space, how parents and i...

There is a lot of talk about "being future ready", but most of this centers around specific technologies or certifications and don't address higher order thinking and behaviors that will improve people's competitiveness at a more fundamental level. Choose to Thinq is an exception. Harish and Ramanand help individuals and teams inculcate systems that can 'uplevel' and transform them for the future....

As a startup operator, you would have attended many events and meetups to connect with your counterparts from other startups. HelloMeets is one of the largest and most well-known startup community in India, having conducted over 800+ events in the last 5 years. But what makes a community interactive, engaging, and valuable for its members? Today, Roshan speaks to Sahiba Sethi, who started HelloMee...

Dr. Srikanth Sundararajan is an innovator, technologist, entrepreneur, professor, and investor.  He has 30+ years of global experience in the software product and services space. He has worked at Hewlett Packard, Informix, his own startup(s) - Pretzel Logic software, and International Decision Systems in the USA.    Prior to joining Ventureast, he was a venture partner at Helion Advisors. He has a...

Rekuram Varadharaj, or RV as he is known to all, is the Co-founder and COO at Healthi, India’s fastest growing preventive healthcare company. At Healthi, RV leads sales, marketing and user experience and delight.   Roshan engaged RV in an hour-long conversation to understand the fundamentals of the healthcare industry in India and how the sector is shaping up during this pandemic. Some of the thin...

An operator turned founder turned investor, Shwetank has lived and experienced the entire spectrum of the startup journey. Based out of Singapore, he is currently an early-stage venture investor in India and South East Asia with Leo Capital focusing on Digital Health, Insurtech and Fintech. Shwetank's portfolio companies include the likes of WayForward, GetRia, CoverGenius, and BeatOApp to name a...

People lose countless hours to mundane activities such as commuting, chores, and staring at their phones. What if we could turn these little blocks of unallocated time into memorable and precious moments of joy, learning, and reflection?   Forbes Asia 30-under-30, Chand Lal Bisu co-founded KuKu FM to do exactly that. The online podcast platform has one-upped traditional radio with audio content th...

The biggest irony about over-night success stories is that they were in years of making. Kaagaz Scanner came under the spotlight after it received a special mention at the AatmaNirbhar Bharat App Challenge.  In this episode of The Startup Operator Podcast, we have with us Snehanshu Gandhi, who co-founded Sorted. AI in July 2019 as a personal assistant that would make you more productive. And as a...

Razorpay has been one of India's most prominent fintech businesses that have seen rapid growth since its inception. The company was founded in 2014 as India's first payment gateway for startups & SME businesses.   Vedanarayanan, or Veda, manages the SME growth mandate, P&L covering marketing & sales for RazorPay. He has helped build and grow multiple digital products & brands across verticals for...

An engineer turned investor, Anurag Ramdasan heads Investments at 3one4 Capital, that recently raised $100 Million to fund early-stage startups. Some of the portfolio companies include such as Yulu, Luscious, PocketAces, and much more. Anurag works extensively on the investment side managing evaluations of new startups and doing diligence on them. Anurag also spends a lot of his time working with...

An author, CEO, & an Operator, but firstly, Jessie Paul is a marketer. In her marketing career spanning over 25 years, she has grown from being an account executive at Ogilvy & Mather, to being the Chief Marketing Officer of Wipro where she helped quadruple the giant's revenue. In 2010, Jessie  founded Paul Writer, a marketing advisory firm, that works with global and Indian clients to maximise ma...

An explorer, technology enthusiast, and entrepreneur, Amanda is currently heading Buffer's diverse group of product partnerships & integrations. In a career spanning over a decade,  she has helped build valuable partnerships for companies such as Shopify & Buffer. In this episode, Roshan speaks with Amanda to understand more about building partner ecosystems. Tune in! --- Send in a voice message:...

After having completed his studies in the US, Narayanan "Nadu" Ramakrishnan returned to India to build assistive technology products that empower mankind. He is currently the CEO of Avaz -  a company that creates assistive technology products to empower children and their caregivers.  Children with difficulty in communicating use Avaz to select pictures from a vocabulary of 5000+ words, from which...