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.
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.
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 Tamil Nadu near the forests which once housed the brigand Veerappan to his latest exit with Oyo, you Dr. Ritesh Malik’s story is a fascinating one. Even more fascinating is Project Guerilla. Give it a listen!
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.
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. Flintobox may spawn a whole generation of creative kids and enterprises
The India Plaza story reads like the George Lucas innovation factory having spawned India Plaza, Fabmart and Fabmall, India’s first online and offline grocery businesses. The Offline Grocery business eventually became More which came a full circle after being acquired by Amazon. Vaitheeswaran has started up again, with “Again”Drinks with his previous co-founder – Sundeep. He describes “Again” as a WTF Drink – A Wholesome, Tasty and Filling Drink that’s the world’s first drink to have no added sugar and no preservatives as well as a fantastic shelf life.
Brotherhood to Founders, 85+ Investor Rejections, Renting camping gear and beyond. GrabOnRent CEO and Co-Founder Manish Sugandhi talks about his startup journey. From conducting a Tech Fair to founding a UI/UX startup Perdix to eventually starting GrabOnRent with some of his founders from Perdix, Manish discusses it all. Minted from the Flipkart mafia, Manish also discusses how we was able to leverage that network to make GrabOnRent work.
Bootstrapping, Scaling Zerodha, Working with Family and Being Honest with Capital – turning down capital – Nithin Kamath of Zerodha Shares it all on this very first episode of Maharajas of Scale. Zerodha today has millions of users from its humble beginnings over a decade ago.
For long, almost everyone has said that it was hard to build big businesses and companies out of India serving the Indian consumer. The Indian market was too complex or the Indian consumer was not a spendthrift and the number of Indian consumers was low. Our Roger Bannisters and bees did not care or know. They went on to build and scale big.