The Startup Fridays Podcast
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Startup Fridays Ep 19: 'Want to catalyse a global network of professionals working on climate change — Anshuman Bapna
Our Guest today is Anshuman Bapna, co-founder and CEO of Terra.do, an online school that offers an immersive deep dive into all the important aspects of climate change with the purpose of equipping professionals to take action and become part of the climate change solution. Before starting Terra.do last year, Bapna has had multiple startups to his credit. Bapna also has an MBA from Stanford University. Before Terra.do, he was chief product officer at MakeMyTrip
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Startup Fridays Ep 18: Backing outliers and seeing them succeed motivates me - Vaibhav Agrawal, Lightspeed India
Vaibhav Agrawal started out as a medical doctor, but found an entrepreneurial streak in himself, and founded Prima Clinics, a chain of outpatient clinics in New Delhi. His second startup, called Comfort, was in California, and also in the area of healthcare. He has an MBA from Stanford University, and for the last five years, he has been a partner at Lightspeed India Partners — one of the top VC firms operating in the country
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Startup Fridays Episode 17: It's time to act to ensure responsible AI - Ashwini Asokan, CEO, Mad Street Den
Ashwini Asokan is co-founder and CEO of Mad Street Den, a computer vision and artificial intelligence technologies company, based in Chennai in India, and Redwood City, California, in the US. In 2017, Mad Street Den was recognised among the 50 most promising startups in the world by Bloomberg. Ashwini has also written about her experience in making Mad Street Den a company where half the staff are women. She is an alumna of Carnegie Mellon University and a product design and user experience specialist. She is also a trained dancer
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Startup Fridays Episode 16: 'Aiming for a million scooters across 7-8 cities in 3-4 years' — Amit Gupta, Yulu Bikes
Our guest today is Amit Gupta, co-founder and CEO of Yulu Bikes, an innovative urban mobility company trying to solve the problems of access, availability and affordability for the masses. Gupta previously co-founded ad-tech company InMobi, and AnalyticsWorks, a business intelligence venture. He is also an active angel investor in multiple startups in India and the US. He has an executive MBA from Harvard Business School, and a degree in mechanical engineering from IIT Kanpur, where he is a distinguished alumnus
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Startup Fridays Episode 15: More Indian entrepreneurs will soon go global — Ray Newal
Canada-based Ray Newal was instrumental in setting up the Indian unit of Techstars, a respected global startup accelerator, headquartered in the US, in Bengaluru. Newal was actively involved in mentoring its first few cohorts, before returning to Canada. He remains an advisor to the company and also serves on the advisory boards of Canadian VC firms Brightspark Ventures and StandUp Ventures. Today, Newal is MD and head of capital and ecosystems at the MaRS Discovery District, in Toronto, Canada
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Startup Fridays Ep 14: Looking at total customer experience automation-Yellow.ai's Raghu Ravinutala
A chance discussion over a breakfast meeting with friends about poor customer experience thanks to bad internet connection became the germ for an idea that would become a successful conversational AI-driven platform. Raghu Ravinutala, co-founder and CEO of yellow.ai, the company that built that platform, now has over 700 large companies using its technologies, this includes some of the world's biggest enterprises across 50 countries
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Startup Fridays Episode 13: We offer quality support for emotional wellbeing, and also run a sustainable business — Richa Singh
Our guest today is Richa Singh, co-founder, chief conceptualiser and CEO of yourDOST. For over six years now, Richa has been working to simply make it easier for people to talk to someone who can not only listen with empathy, but also offer professional help wherever needed. And she has built his into a growing network that now touches millions of employees of corporate businesses that have partnered her organisation
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Startup Fridays Episode 12: Culture and values are paramount even to a startup-Samir Bodas
Samir Bodas, co-founder and CEO of Icertis, is an exceptional technologist, with three decades in the industry. He took his venture, in the specialised field of contract lifecycle management, from India to the US and turned it into a corporation that was recently valued at $2.8 billion. In the process, he has successfully straddled the world of entrepreneurship and the demands of corporate leadership
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Startup Fridays Episode 11: Valuable deep tech startups are here and investor interest is rising, says Manish Singhal
The founding partner of pi Ventures in Bengaluru, is a technology veteran himself, having worked at Motorola and Sling Media among others. He has built products and also contributed to the MPEG 4 standards. In the last 5 years, Singhal has backed multiple AI-led startups in India with his first fund. He is now raising his second, with a target of $100 million, to expand pi Ventures' portfolio into space technology, material sciences and biotech
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Startup Friday Episode 10: The duo building all-electric flying taxis
Satya Chakravarthy and Pranjal Mehta, co-founders of ePlane Company feature as guests this week. The duo aspire to build all-electric flying taxis for passengers, as well as cargo transport aircraft small enough for last-mile delivery. They are currently testing a scaled-down prototype and expect to have their first cargo plane ready as early as next year. The entrepreneurs have also recently raised $1 million in their series A round of funding
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Startup Fridays Episode 9: In conversation with Vivek Goyal, co-founder and CEO of PlayShifu
Vivek Goyal, our guest this week, is the cofounder and CEO of MobilizAR Technologies, popularly known as PlayShifu. He and his cofounder Dinesh Advani build award-winning STEM toys that combine physical touch-and-feel toys with digital apps that can convert children's screen time into an interactive and learning activity. PlayShifu has also recently raised its series B round of funding to expand operations and add more products