The Startup Fridays Podcast
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Startup Fridays S3 Ep3: 'If your conviction is strong, follow through, as there's rarely a right time' — Bobby Balachandran
Our guest today is Bobby Balachandran, founder, president, and CEO of Exterro Inc., which provides a sophisticated tech platform for global corporations to better manage their governance, risk, and compliance needs. Bobby started out with a BSc in computer science from Government College of Technology in Coimbatore in South India, and an MS in from Portland State University in Portland, Oregon in the US. He started Exterro in his garage in 2008. Today, the company is privately valued at more than a billion dollars
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Startup Fridays S3 Ep2: 'Deep tech founders need tech-biz grasp, patient money, and stamina for the long game' — Krishna Rangasayee
In this episode, Krishna Rangasayee, founder and CEO of SiMa.ai, a 30-year veteran of the semiconductor industry, with more than 25 patents to his name, talks about why the edge is the new battleground. He also delves into the reasons that compelled him to take his first entrepreneurial plunge after a long corporate career, building a cross-border deep tech company and what such ventures need to succeed
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Startup Fridays S3 Ep 1: 'That teaching hasn't kept pace with the world became my idea' — Aditya Prakash
Our guest today is Aditya Prakash, co-founder and CEO of Skidos Labs, an award-winning maker of a children's educational apps company headquartered in Denmark. Aditya co-founded Skidos in 2013, which today offers a software development kit that can infuse math education for children into any game. Before Skidos, after an MBA from the Indian School of Business Hyderabad and The Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth, Aditya had a successful corporate career, including work at Bharti Airtel and HT Media
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Startup Fridays S2 Ep.15: 'Entrepreneurship is about selling a future only you see' — Rajesh Jain
Our guest today is Rajesh Jain, founder and group MD of Netcore Cloud. In the world of entrepreneurship, he is best known for selling one of his earliest ventures, IndiaWorld Communications, to Sify—then Satyam Infoway—for $115 million, in 1999, one of the biggest internet deals of the time in Asia. Jain founded Netcore in 1997, and has bootstrapped it to a profitable $100 million ARR SaaS company that is preparing for an IPO
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Startup Fridays S2 Ep.14: 'We knew we were onto something when we analysed our rejections' — Vinay Nair
Our guest today is Vinay B Nair, Founder and CEO, TIFIN, a fintech venture that provides technology and expertise to business clients to apply AI to personalise their financial products and services to their end customers or consumers. Vinay has a chemical engineering degree and a doctorate in finance and economics. He founded TIFIN in 2018. Previously he has been a hedge fund manager and sold a startup, 55 Institutional Partners, an investment advisory, to JP Morgan. He is a visiting faculty member at The Wharton School and co-author of 'Investing for Change'
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Startup Fridays S2 Ep. 13: 'In any pursuit, strive to be in a place where you can add value' — Sunil Thomas
Our guest today is Sunil Thomas, co-founder and executive chairman of CleverTap, which provides a software platform that a large number of brands around the world use to better engage with their customers. Sunil started with a computer science degree, and in a career that spans more than 30 years now, he has held several top jobs in tech and business. He and two of his friends—Anand Jain and Suresh Kondamudi—started CleverTap in 2013, in Mumbai, and since then, they've expanded their operations to the biggest markets around the world
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Startup Fridays S2 Ep.12: For lasting societal impact, ventures have to grow into enduring businesses — Sandeep Farias
Our guest today is Sandeep Farias, founder and managing partner at Elevar Equity, an early-stage VC firm that backs entrepreneurs who are solving large problems for the low and middle-income communities in India and Latin America. In this episode, Sandeep talks about the 'Elevar Method' for identifying ideas that could become enduring businesses with significant societal impact
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Startup Fridays S2 Ep. 11: 'Swabhimaan,' not simply money, drives our rural youth to entrepreneurship — Madan Padaki
Our guest today is Madan Padaki, founder and CEO of 1Bridge, which provides a host of services in small towns and villages, linking brands and businesses with India's rural economy, and creating micro-entrepreneurs from among the rural youth. In this episode, Madan, who is an entrepreneur and angel investor, talks about how rural youth have the same aspirations for a better life as anyone else, and how that represents a massive entrepreneurial opportunity
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Startup Fridays S2 Ep.10: Satya Bansal on the journey from his grandfather's 'bahi' to an international banker and climate VC investor
Our guest today is Satya Bansal, founder and CEO at Blue Ashva Capital, a Singapore and India VC firm that is focused on backing entrepreneurs building sustainable businesses in 'core sectors' in this region. In this episode, Satya talks about the clear gap in climate tech funding and efforts at Blue Ashva to incubate deep tech efforts in climate change; He also talks about lessons from his own career, including his earliest learnings — from his grandfather
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Startup Fridays S2 Ep. 9: 'We need to accelerate corporate adoption of climate tech from startups' — Pratap Raju
Our guest today is Pratap Raju, founding partner of Climate Collective, an organisation that is building a platform to accelerate climate tech startups in India, by catalysing stronger linkages between the startups and large corporate buyers and users of their solutions. He is also the founding partner of a VC fund, Climate Seeds Fund, providing seed-stage funding to climate startups. Climate Collective also has a dedicated programme to encourage women entrepreneurs in climate tech
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Startup Fridays Season 2, Episode 8: We like to engage founders right from their -1 to 0 stage — Rajiv Srivatsa
Our guest today is Rajiv Srivatsa, partner and investor at Antler India. Rajiv's career spans going from software engineer at Infosys to product developer at Yahoo! to entrepreneur as co-founder of Urban Ladder to VC investor. In this episode, he talks about how each stage was the realisation of his overarching desire to always mentor people and take a deep passionate interest in helping them develop their careers