Varun Sheth had a normal childhood. Growing up in Mumbai, he spent his younger years as any boy about town would. When he grew up, he worked in investment banking, the hallowed career option for many. Yet, he felt a hollowness. He saw the internet and e-commerce grow in India exponentially and decided that this would apply to crowd funding as well. Although the start was shaky and it took several years to find product market fit, the team that also had Kunal Kapoor of Bollywood fame as a co-founder eventually scaled in helping people who could not fund their medical treatments thru crowd funding. Now the team is poised for another phase of growth. Check out this episode!

Maharajas of Scale

Ep. 19: Varun Sheth of Ketto - The Boy Who Harnessed The Internet to solve people's problems

There are dreamers, there are doers and then there are some who are dreamers who are also doers. Jimit Bagadiya of Social Pilot falls into the third category. Jimit had built a fairly successful IT services business which involved developing and maintaining programs, platforms, products and tools for Clients. Yet, he was hankering for more. Sooner or later, the treadmill nature of the IT services business gets to one running it. Many dream of building a product that would relieve them from the tyranny of the revolving door nature of revenues from IT services. Making the switch from being a services company to that of a product is fraught with failure and uncertainty. Yet, once the chasm is crossed, the going gets better. The IT services business on the other hand is the direct opposite of a product business. How did Jimit make switch from services to products successfully? What were the challenges he faced? How was the journey? Can Indian SaaS companies compete with the rest of the world? Is he out of the woods yet? In spite of having scaled, no. This and more was what he faced and that is what we cover in this episode. Give his story a listen!

Ep. 18: Jimit Bagadia of Social Pilot - Making the scary switch from IT services to Product and Scaling in Ahmedabad

Meghna Agarwal graduated as a Company Secretary and a CFA around the same time 9/11 happened. It was not a great time for jobs or starting up. Yet, coming from a business family, she dug into her entrepreneurial instincts and teamed up with her soon-to-be husband Rishi. Together, they started a company in recruitment that has eventually led them to starting up Indiqube, one of India's well known emerging scale stories in the Managed Workspaces or Coworking sector. It is a witty look at a lady who is driven by passion and has a rare clarity in what she wants do to and accomplish. Does clarity beget success or success beget clarity? If that sounds like a rhetorical question, it is intended to be. Clarity of thought & strategy and a vision to scale and build something together with her partner in life and business - Rishi has taken Indiqube and Meghna to business success. Listen to this!

Ep 17 - Meghna - Indiqube - From being jobless in the aftermath of 9/11 to scaling Indiqube

Mahesh Murthy is a name that most entrepreneurs who started up in India between 2000 and 2012 know. Mahesh went from being a copy writer in Silicon Valley who helped Jeff Bezos with the "Everything store" campaign to leading Channel V and founding Seed Fund, one of India's best known seed funds that funded storied names such as Red Bus, Chumbak, Carwale, Voonik etc. Both his Seed Funds won the best fund award, a rare feat. Having funded some of India's storied startups and seen good exits, Mahesh is now trying his hand at Space, a new and exciting frontier. In this episode, he shares his wisdom on what makes ventures work, the strategies that entrepreneurs need to employ and what the space race is all about. He knows a thing or two about scaling startups and should we add that the episode is full of rare insights and pointers on how to make your venture tick, succeed and scale.  A must listen!

Ep. 16: Mahesh Murthy of Seedfund - From Copywriting to leading Channel V, India's Best seed Fund and the Space Race

A creative techie, a fount of ideas goes from IT services to Social Tech Product success. Abhishek Desai filled the gap for cricketers and came up with CricHeroes to keep tabs on their neighbourhood and local league matches. It also became a platform to showcase the talent of young aspirants. He started with "Gully" cricket and Digital Scoring. Cricheroes now has a user base of more than 4 million cricketers in over 50 countries. It is an unlikely success story coming out of Ahmedabad, Gujarat. His journey is one of passion and perseverance. This is his story.

Ep.15: Abhishek Desai of CricHeroes - Unlikely Cricket Success story, Creative mind, Failed attempts, Scored Digitally at Scale

A farmer by genes became a programmer by accident. K N M Rao observed his colleagues facing problems with their commute and believed carpooling was a way to solve that problem. It is a thought that has perhaps crossed our minds but he went a step ahead and took action. Since several startups had already attempted and failed, Rao not only had a chance to do one better but also fix what was wrong in earlier attempts. It is a master class in entrepreneurship. As an entrepreneur, he believes that one should connect to the problem, be persistent and never give up. This is his story.

Ep.14 KNM Rao of Quick Ride : Farming to a Tech Entrepreneur and putting a dent in India's Urban mobility problem

An educated MBA working in corporate world US, accidentaly jumped into his family business. Pratik Shah’s determined thinking to get into his family's retail business caused conflict between father and son. He started enjoying retail along with his equity research. Together with his wife, they planned to give SpecsMakers a shot and raised funding from angel investors. With his chakra style of management, they scaled from one store to 300 plus stores and implemented the idea of franchising. As an entrepreneur, he believes that success should not get into your mind, it should be in your heart. This is his story.

Pratik Shah of Specs Makers - Expanding with house maid's loan, chakra management style and loving Retail

Passion for traveling turned Aditi, a professional, into an entrepreneur. ‘V’ stands for lush green ‘view’ in V resorts. Aditi gave life to small properties. They hired local talent, trained them hospitality and got women to work to make gift packs like squashes and licensed it. Initially they started with 5 resorts and scaled through contacts by words of mouth and now are proud managers of 125 resorts. UN has recognized V Resorts as First model coming out of a developing country which looks at using the local resources and is perfect in creating a secular economy.

Aditi Balbir of V Resorts - Pivoting, Scaling, Creating Impact and Profitability in Local India

With experience from working on prepaid recharge products and a technical mindset, Abhinav and Abhishek started building solutions for financial inclusion. Each time they ran out of cash they pivoted to figure out where to grow and how to survive. Eko has built an intermediate layer between consumers who do not have access to digital money and are unfamiliar with English. They have catered over 50 million unique consumers and got little over 150,000 intermediates. Abhinav shares the key to his success story to our young Indian entrepreneurs and notes hard work, patience and perseverance and the leaves to success. His journey has been filled with convolutions making it both interesting and fascinating.

Meeting Bill Gates, Missing the Smart Phone Wave and Scaling to 50 Million Users

Ranjeet Singh could barely afford to pay for his education. Coming from a not so well to do family, reading was a luxury. He satisfied his passion to read by making deals with shopkeepers who sold books to watch their stores while they were away, borrowed books on Teacher's library cards so he could borrow more and hustled his way to read. Ranjeet who mostly read Hindi books at that time and counts Nirala as one of his favorites realized that Indian Language content suffered from an access problem both in publishing as well as in reading. Pratilipi is Story Telling at Scale He opined that it should be readers’ choice to read in whichever language they want but not simply because of lack of access. His friends suggested he create a digital platform with content in different languages. He quit his job and gave it a shot and Bravo! it worked. His journey has been interesting and fascinating. This is his story.

Story Telling at Scale by Solving The Access Problem at Scale for Indian Language content with Ranjeet Pratap Singh of Pratilipi

Amit Munjal was an investment banker and a management consultant. A chance brush with Tele Medicine while vacationing in Hawaii got him thinking about how he could bring access to medicine and quality healthcare to the masses in India. American Laws prevent Doctors from practicing across states but Indian laws have no such restrictions. This and a lot of others was what Amit discovered while he launched Doctor Insta in India. The journey for him has been fascinating and frustrating. This is his story.

Healing India at Scale with Amit Munjal of Doctor Insta

Sampad, Aditya and Akash met on Twitter. They worked together before but their bonds were formed on Twitter. After building camaraderie and bonhomie on Twitter, they made two attempts at building a tech startup. Their second effort was about helping hyperlocal merchants attract users closeby. With no traction, Instamojo moved on and that is still a work in progress in the startup world. Their 3rd outing into Payments was where they hit scale. This is that story.

Failing to Scale and 3rd Time Lucky

Coming from a family of 37 Doctors, Dr. Ritesh Malik was destined to be a Doctor. Or so his family thought. From studying Medicine in near the forests which once housed the brigand Veerappan to his latest exit with Oyo, you Dr. Ritesh Malik's story is fascinating. Even more fascinating is Project Guerilla

37 Doctors, 2 Exits and Inspired to Scale

Santosh Panda failed twice before starting up with Explara. He started up Explara remotely from London in moonlight mode and bootstrapped it with his earnings till it was sustainable. Explara is a DIY event management platform for professional events that has inverted the SaaS revenue curve by being India First and World Next. With a down to earth attitude and unconventional hiring style, Santosh has built Explara quietly into successful at scale business.

Moonlighting to Scale: Starting Up Remote, 10 Yrs of Inverting the SaaS Curve

Having trouble motivating your kids or getting your kids to grasp concepts? Tired of the rote learning system that dominates India's education sector, Flinto Box and Flinto Class might be the answer. Co-Founder and CEO Arun Prasad discusses their journey of building perhaps one of India's most creative startups. At 1800+ experiences for kids across ages 2-10 thru Flinto Box and hundreds and thousands of experiences at Pre-Schools with Flinto Class, Flinto Learning Solutions is bringing a refreshing change to India's education methods. Flinto looks like a typical IT company by looks but that is where the similarity stops. Flinto's one of its kind Kids Learning R&D Lab is where all their concepts and product ideas are tested by the finest - the young kids themselves. What Flinto is doing is fascinating.

Creativity at Scale: 1800 Ways to Drive Kids' Imagination - Flinto Box

Maharajas of Scale is a Podcast focused on Indian Entrepreneurs. It is hosted by Krishna Jonnakadla, Co-founder of Mango Mobile TV and Flit. Over the years, India has been home to many stellar startups. These startups have scaled, have travelled the world and created a pathway for others to follow. We, at Maharajas of Scale, celebrate the creative mind. We will take you on a journey to understand, to dissect and to learn from the masters who have scaled it Big.

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Maharajas of Scale

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