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Sumit Chhazed has started four companies. The first three didn't work. Solar heating, where he was too young to win government tenders. An edtech platform built with IIT Bombay professors that was years ahead of its market and ended in a modest acquisition. Then a two-wheeler commerce business born out of a second-hand Pulsar that broke down every third day in Bombay. The fourth is OTO Capital, a lending infrastructure platform for banks and NBFCs in two-wheeler financing. In 2024, mid-growth and mid-fundraise, the round fell through. He and his co-founders stopped taking a salary for twelve months, let people go, and rebuilt the company around profitability instead of growth. They turned down buyout offers along the way. In this episode of Unstarted, Sumit talks to Avnish Bajaj about how to tell when a business isn't working, building for yourself versus building for an investor, what changes when you switch a company from growth mode to profitability, how to communicate with a team through that shift, and separating conviction from delusion. Unstarted is a series for founders, by founders, with questions crowdsourced from the audience. Chapters 0:00 Intro: three startups that didn't work0:47 What OTO Capital actually does2:42 Why this business works now and not ten years ago4:48 Udaipur, a family of teachers, and the business keeda6:26 Selling chewing gum stickers in 6th standard7:51 Telling his parents he wouldn't take a job9:41 Startup one: solar, and poor founder-market fit12:45 Startup two: CourseWave, and being too early19:48 Q: How do you know when it's working?22:44 Q: Can you build without funding?26:17 The 2024 roadblock27:12 Choosing default alive over growth27:56 Letting people go, and how to do it right31:13 No salary for 12 months33:28 Why he turned down the buyout offers36:10 The 2001 Kolkata Test37:02 Closing: it's a Test, not a T20

Srikanth Velamakanni built an AI company before most people knew the A in AI. In 2000, long before ChatGPT, he and five co-founders started Fractal Analytics with a simple bet: that math could predict human behaviour and help companies make better decisions. The market wasn't ready. HDFC took 18 months to convince. Citibank made them prove themselves against 100 in-house PhDs. They won on accuracy, stayed profitable, and 26 years later Fractal became India's first AI company to go public. In this episode of Unstarted, Srikanth sits down with Avnish to talk about the story behind the story. Growing up middle class in a small oil town in Assam. Why he never thought he was founder material, and the Narayana Murthy lecture that changed his mind. If you are building, or still unstarted, this one is full of hard-won lessons on conviction, timing, co-founders, and staying relevant across 26 years of technological change. Chapers 0:00 Intro1:15 From a small town in Assam to Fractal2:47 Math plus human behaviour: an AI company before AI3:34 "I never thought I would be an entrepreneur"5:01 The Narayana Murthy moment5:54 Not money: building a 100 year company6:57 Conviction vs market readiness9:32 When the market is not ready (ICICI, HDFC)10:27 The Citibank bake-off against 100 PhDs12:00 Compounding your core passion15:44 The two co-founder types you actually need18:39 Finding your ICP without chasing noise19:16 26 years of AI, from regression to transformers23:08 Strategy is what you refuse to do26:24 Elected CEO, then asked to leave in 6 months28:02 Defining the company's values after crisis29:19 Raising money and investor expectations31:34 Will AI make Fractal obsolete?33:58 Why Fractal was built in Mumbai36:30 Advice: build what OpenAI cannot kill

Amit Lakhotia moved from a village in Churu, Rajasthan to Delhi at 10, speaking Marwari and barely any Hindi. Twenty people shared three rooms. His father couldn't afford the school fees, so he made a bet with the principal: if his son didn't come first within a year, throw him out. That year Amit scored 19 out of 20 in Maths and Hindi, and 1 out of 20 in English. His tuition was waived from class four through twelve. He went on to NSIT and IIM Ahmedabad, helped scale MakeMyTrip, Paytm and Tokopedia, built a taxi business that was four times Ola's size before shutting it down, and then founded Park+ — which raised its first cheque two months before COVID shut down every mall and office in the country. In this episode of Unstarted, Amit talks to Avnish Bajaj about when to walk away from a working business, the vitamin versus painkiller test for choosing what to build, why he picked parking as the wedge into the car ownership market, how access control emerged from the worst possible timing, and why brand and revenue aren't a trade-off if you think creatively. Unstarted is a series for founders, by founders, with questions crowdsourced from the audience. Guest: Amit Lakhotia, Founder & CEO, Park+Host: Avnish Bajaj, Founder & Managing Director, Z47 Chapters 0:00 Intro: the founder who gets away with scolding me1:14 Churu to Delhi, and 20 people in three rooms2:09 Arriving at school with no English3:04 The bet his father made with the principal5:01 How he survived that first year5:47 19 out of 20 in Maths. 1 out of 20 in English.7:21 NSIT, IIM-A, and where the confidence came from9:20 Sitting in his father's shop and deciding to drop out10:12 Turning around the IIM-A souvenir store12:15 GetMeCab: profitable in month three13:42 Why he walked away from a business 4x Ola's size14:50 Q: I want to start a business. How?17:57 Vitamins vs painkillers18:38 The two ideas he shortlisted, and why parking won21:24 Q: How do you measure progress during a pivot?21:36 Two months in, COVID arrives22:52 Turning a pandemic into the access control business24:38 The metric that mattered: client acceptance25:35 Revenue vs brand, and getting signage for free27:43 Closing: build the network, and give before you take

Nikita Khanna spent fifteen years straightening her hair before she realised the problem wasn't her hair. It was that nobody had built products for it. She was on partner track at McKinsey her only job ever when she started going down YouTube rabbit holes during COVID, trying to find a sustainable way to manage wavy, frizz-prone hair. She found the answers in Brazil: similar hair texture, dozens of local brands, none of it available in India. When she asked people in the industry whether it was a business, almost everyone told her the category was too small and too random. Roughly 80% of Indians have hair somewhere on the wavy-to-curly spectrum. She built Moxie anyway. In this episode of Unstarted, Nikita talks to Avnish Bajaj about validating an idea before you quit your job, the ABC framework she now uses to evaluate any new category, why she never thought she was cut out to be a founder, learning to delegate and build an org for the first time, running a company with her husband as co-founder, and what it actually takes to build a brand in a market where launching a product has never been easier. Unstarted is a series for founders, by founders, with questions crowdsourced from the audience. Chapters  0:00 Intro: the company we should have invested in00:00 Growing up in Delhi, watching her father build a business00:00 DU, XLRI, and landing at McKinsey00:00 Straightening her hair since 13, and deciding to stop00:00 Finding the answer in Brazil00:00 "Am I even cut out to be a founder?"00:00 Q: How do I validate an idea before I quit?00:00 The ABC framework: assortment, business, consumer00:00 Everyone said the category was too small00:00 Q: How does a young founder become a CEO?00:00 Building with her husband as co-founder00:00 Why viral products aren't the goal

Aman Goel, founder of Greylabs.ai, joins Avnish on Unstarted for one of the most relatable founder journeys yet — a middle-class kid from Kanpur who was hustling for money from his first year of college and never stopped. Aman is refreshingly honest that his motivation was simply to make money. He earned his first ₹4,000 solving JEE papers, built a content-writing business with his now-wife and co-founder Harshita, and had saved close to ₹50 lakh before he even graduated.  He went on to build Cogno AI - an AI chatbot and voice company for banks - in 2017, before generative AI existed, bootstrapped it to a million-dollar revenue run rate, and sold it to Exotel at 25. Now with Greylabs.ai, he's building voice AI for India's banks and financial institutions.  In this episode he breaks down finding customers in an industry you have no network in, the "student not salesperson" playbook that got him into SBI and HDFC, why he and Harshita split the company cleanly into "she builds, I sell," how to part ways with a co-founder without a fight, picking a razor-sharp ICP, and why in a world of weekly AI launches trust is still the only thing that sells. Chapters 00:00 Intro — a genuinely relatable founder story01:00 Growing up middle-class in Kanpur02:50 "My motivation was money" — where ambition came from04:00 The internet, Silicon Valley, and deciding not to settle in the US05:50 Earning in college: ₹4,000 to ₹50 lakh before graduating08:20 How to create your own opportunity in college11:50 Starting Cogno AI — and the RED vs REL framework15:40 Building AI in 2017, before ChatGPT17:20 Getting into banks: the "student, not salesperson" playbook21:40 Negotiating with SBI as two 20-year-olds24:40 The first customer, and the referrals that followed25:30 The co-founder exit: quick decision, generous separation27:20 Harshita joins: "she builds, I sell"30:40 The exit to Exotel — doubling the ask in 10 minutes34:40 Finding the market first: why he stayed in India37:50 Founder-market fit and picking a razor-sharp ICP40:40 Can AI disrupt his AI business? Why trust wins42:50 Eating your own dog food: building internal tools on Replit44:40 AI adoption in banks — from pilots to 50 lakh calls a month46:14 The coming pricing pressure, and how service is the moat49:20 Closing advice: persistence is the one thing that can't be replicated

Sameer Nigam, founder and CEO of PhonePe, joins Unstarted for a candid conversation on building a company that now serves over 700 million users. From a middle-class naval family to a failed music startup (Mind360), an acquisition by Flipkart, and the founding of PhonePe, Sameer breaks down the thinking behind his "asymmetric bets," why he chose UPI when the entire market was chasing wallets, and how the Big Billion Day payments collapse revealed the problem he'd spend the next decade solving. He also opens up on his 31-year partnership with co-founder Rahul Chari, why he embraces regulators instead of fighting them, what PhonePe's data reveals about how India really spends, and the story behind the IPO that was pulled at the last minute. A must-watch for founders thinking about co-founders, market timing, building for population scale, and knowing when to cut your losses. Unstarted is a show about founders, for founders hosted by Avnish Bajaj.  Chapters 0:00 Intro: meet Sameer Nigam & the "celebrity founder" tag2:15 Family background: a Navy dad and an entrepreneur mom at early TCS10:45 Why tech fundamentals still win (and the Google "75% AI code" point)17:40 First venture: Mind360, the "iTunes for India"22:10 Why it failed: wrong market sizing and the piracy era26:00 Acquired by Flipkart and the B2B pivot34:15 Big Billion Day: when India's payment infra collapsed38:00 Why wallets were never the answer41:20 The asymmetric bet on UPI44:30 Ghar Wapsi: merging back into Flipkart to buy time47:10 Demonetization: luck, timing, and near-zero competition50:00 Obsessing over infrastructure and the right foundation52:30 ICP, population scale, and the "painkiller in the hinterland"55:40 Incumbents push back: ICICI blocking and the RBI visit59:00 What PhonePe's data reveals about how India spends1:05:00 The most anticipated IPO that didn't happen1:08:30 Final advice: don't be an entrepreneur by FOMO

Saahil Goel, co-founder and CEO of Shiprocket, joins us for a candid deep-dive into how a self-taught coder from Delhi built the logistics and enablement backbone powering a huge chunk of India's direct-to-consumer commerce. Sahil takes us all the way back selling his dot matrix printer on Baazee as a kid, teaching himself HTML by hacking "view source," and building websites for cash in college. Along the way he shares the hard-won lessons behind every pivot: why Indian SMEs won't pay upfront, why you should never fall in love with your product, and how obsession with the merchant's problem kept the company alive through years when every investor said the market didn't exist. We also get into co-founder dynamics and trust, what actually changed scaling from 25 to 1,500 people, why culture is the "uncodified personality" of a company set by the founder's actions, and being a "microsurgeon, not a micromanager."  Finally, Saahil lays out his conviction on AI - from writing 70%+ of code with AI, to Shiprocket's in-house voice model built for India's 22 languages, to the "AI for Bharat" mission of reaching the next 58 million merchants. A rich, practical episode for anyone still unstarted. What they talk about: 1. From selling a printer on Baazee and self-taught coding to building Shiprocket into India's commerce shipping backbone 2. The real story behind the pivots  KartRocket to Kraftly to Shiprocket and why you stay stubborn with the problem, not the product 3. What PMF actually feels like, plus co-founders, trust, and scaling culture from 25 to 1,500 people 4. His bet on AI: writing most of the code with AI, an in-house voice model for India's 22 languages, and the mission to reach 60M MSMEs 00:00 Intro - Saahil Goel and Shiprocket02:30 Delhi boy, self-taught coder & selling a printer on Baazee07:00 Business family & knowing early he'd be a founder12:00 Meeting Gautam & the start of Bigfoot Retail Solutions17:00 Co-founders: trust, complementary skills & full commitment23:00 PMF is a journey, not a destination29:00 Stubborn with the problem, not the product35:00 CartRocket to Craftly: the pivots and hard lessons42:00 Building Shiprocket & why B2B behaved like consumer48:00 Scaling 25 to 1,500: culture, micro-surgery & builder mindset55:00 Bias to action vs bias for excellence60:00 AI at Shiprocket: 70% of code, voice for Bharat & 60M MSMEs70:00 The IPO ahead & advice for the still-unstarted

Our first-ever episode with co-founders. Karan and Himanshu of WootzWork join Avnish to talk about building a hardware and manufacturing exports company out of India — and why they leaned into a market everyone told them wouldn't work. From an investment banking and Stanford GSB background (Karan) and IIT Kharagpur mechanical engineering (Himanshu), the two met at a previous company where one interviewed the other as head of engineering a one-hour conversation that ran three hours. In this episode they unpack how a single insult ("we don't talk to Indian engineers, we work with Germans") lit the fire, how they closed their first order from India with no factory of their own, and why the naysayers became their strongest signal to go ahead. What you'll learn in this episode: 1. Why starting in a market everyone doubts can be an advantage — and how to tell real naysaying from noise2. How to win your first customer with no factory, no brand, and no track record3. The co-founder decision that actually matters: why the answer is never "the middle"4. How to choose a co-founder — honesty and complementary skills over everything else5. Why customer obsession beats worrying about network or capital early on6. Manufacturing as a system: how fragmentation held India back and how to fix it7. Scaling global sales by hiring domain experts in their 40s–50s who are local to the market Chapters 00:00 Intro 02:00 Karan's path: banking, AirAsia India, Stanford GSB04:30 Himanshu's path: IIT Kharagpur, ITC, and the machines05:15 "We don't talk to Indian engineers" — the moment that lit the fire06:30 The China vs India buying experience: what's actually broken08:00 Why the market was ripe — and betting on exports11:45 Customer obsession: getting the first customer in13:15 The co-founder dynamic: why the answer is never in the middle20:25 Turning the naysaying into conviction22:30 The first order: won with no factory23:12 Why the customer still needs them: engineering vs manufacturing28:30 Managing people with 40–50 years of experience30:30 AI and robotics in the manufacturing story33:40 Closing: why 2.3 is the right number of co-founders

What happens if you fail with everyone's money? Abhishek Bansal never let himself ask and he thinks that's the only reason Shadowfax exists.He's the first public-company CEO on Unstarted: a middle-class kid from Meerut who quit his job without telling his parents, asked a VC for $5 million with zero orders, and was the only one still standing after the year every competitor died.In this conversation with Avnish Bajaj, they attempt to answer: 1. Should you have a co-founder and how do you actually pick one? 2. What should founders look for in a VC when there are multiple offers? 3. How do you tell your team you're failing?4. Sustainable growth, or aggressive scaling? By the end, you understand his test: accept the failure, name the core problem, tell your team. Because teams don't break on failure — they break on how you behave in it. Chapters 0:00 Intro: our first public company CEO1:19 Meerut, a middle-class home, and IIT Delhi4:04 Parents didn't know he had quit his job7:50 Q: How do you choose between VC offers?8:47 Why he wanted a co-founder, not a skills match11:03 Why not bootstrap?11:28 Asking for $5 million with no product12:23 The ₹8 lakh phone call13:28 The angels who never sold: 1000x and counting14:31 Three offers: $2M, $5M, $9M17:19 Q: How do founders bounce back from failure?17:46 The 2015 crash: five funded, one survivor23:07 Knowing the core problem is the hardest problem28:07 The offsite: profitable in three months28:32 The retention numbers behind the culture29:20 Q: Aggressive scaling or sustainable growth?29:56 "In India, no idea is unique"32:14 The guardrails: unit economics and 50-30-2037:26 The CAPEX model that ran 100 iterations39:07 When the HR team built its own hiring tool40:20 Closing: teams compound, individuals don't

Most people assume serious AI silicon can only be built by a giant, in the cloud, burning hundreds of millions of dollars. Ravi Annavajhala did the opposite. Kinara built two AI chips for under $50M, 90% of it out of Hyderabad, and sold to NXP, one of the world's largest semiconductor companies for $307M,  all cash. It's one of the largest deep tech exits India has seen, and one of the least talked about. In this episode, Vikram Vaidyanathan sits down with Ravi to take apart how it actually happened, and what it says about where AI is heading next. You'll hear: 1. Why the disruption playbook that minted the NAND-flash exits is the same one that explains Kinara's sale to NXP 2. The clearest plain-language explanation of training vs. inference you'll find, and why inference is moving off the cloud and onto the edge3. The four reasons edge beats cloud: cost, latency, privacy, reliability 4. How you actually shrink a frontier model to run on a chip: distillation, compression, purpose-built retraining 5. Why India's real AI edge isn't talent or capital, but the industrial data sitting in its factories — and why it can't afford to become a "data colony" 6. Ravi's distinction between frugal and cheap, and why low cost has stopped meaning low capability ▶ If you're building, investing in, or just tracking India's deep tech story, this is the episode to watch. About Intelligent Indians Intelligent Indians is Z47's thesis podcast on the people building India's technology future, for builders, operators, and investors who want the operator's view, not the press-release version.🔔 Subscribe for new episodes. Chapters  0:00 A $307M deep-tech exit you didn't hear about0:45 Meet Ravi Annavajhala & the Kinara story3:10 The NAND flash lesson: how startups cash in on disruption5:45 2015: betting on edge AI while everyone chased the data center7:00 CoreViz → Deep Vision → Kinara: the naming journey9:15 Why 90% was built in Hyderabad — a talent bet, not a cost cut11:30 Two chips under $50M: engineering for capital efficiency15:20 What "the edge" actually is: training vs inference18:00 Why edge beats cloud: latency, cost, privacy & reliability22:45 Physical AI: robots, self-driving & the real bottlenecks28:30 Advice to VCs: conviction, local demand & the infra gap31:20 Frugal vs cheap: why low cost ≠ low capability33:30 Closing: India on the cusp of the edge-AI wave

How much money is enough to make starting up safe? Vivek Sinha thought he knew: ₹50 lakh in the bank. The day he hit it, he quit.Vivek is the founder of Emversity, which trains people for the jobs India actually has in healthcare, hospitality, EPC and manufacturing.  Homeschooled till eight in a Bihar village surrounded by three rivers, he built Buildzar, lost ₹50 lakh, and spent nine years compounding skills at Mobikwik, OYO and Unacademy before starting again in a sector everyone had written off. In this episode, Avnish and Vivek take on,  1. Where did you get the confidence to do this?2. Why didn't it work? What did you think going in that didn't play out?3. Should I drop out and work full time on my startup?" 4. How do I find the right co-founder?5. How can we secure investment in a stigmatized sector despite proven traction?"6. What stays with you: build it for the right reasons  Chapters  00:00 Introduction02:00 Flood village to NIT: growing up in Bihar06:00 First startup & why it failed: market timing11:00 MobiKwik: 0 to 20 lakh merchants in 6 months16:00 OYO & Unacademy: the lessons that compounded22:00 The 9-year gap: how he killed bad ideas early28:00 Should you drop out of college?34:00 How many co-founders — and going solo40:00 Building in a stigmatised, out-of-favour sector48:00 What Mversity does + closing advice

What do you do when you've built the technology first and the first customer who tries it tells you it's not working at all? Prashant Warrier is the first PhD and the first scientist on Unstarted. A steel-town kid from Bhilai who went from IIT Delhi to a PhD in AI, he came back to India because of a stolen passport — and built Qure.ai, whose AI reads chest X-rays for TB and lung cancer across the world. In this episode, Avnish and Prashant attempt to answer:  1. How do you identify a unique problem is it about passion or market cap? 2. How do you know the technology is actually working?  3. How can founders assess whether they're early, late, or correctly timed for a market?  4. Will frontier AI kill vertical businesses or is there domain-specific stuff left to build?  5. Why build a cutting-edge AI company from Mumbai? This episode is in partnership with TEAM — Tech Entrepreneurs Association of Mumbai. Chapters  00:00 Introduction1:41 Steel town to IIT to a PhD in AI3:20 SAP, and the stolen passport that sent him home6:32 Freedom over the US visa rat race8:17 The 2012 breakthrough that started the company11:43 A research lab with no business plan13:33 "A solution looking for a problem"16:52 The reality check & the real bottleneck19:20 TB screening: 4 weeks to 30 seconds21:43 Detecting lung cancer early with AI24:23 Moats, ChatGPT & the future of AI in healthcare32:04 Why Mumbai, and advice to founders

He built a ₹100 crore brand from scratch in two years. His company rated him 2 on 5. So the question stopped being am I good at this? and became am I even the right kind of person for it? Shashank Mehta is the founder of The Whole Truth, one of the best consumer brands built in India in the last decade. We backed him early, off the strength of a blog whose readers became the company's first customers. In this conversation: 1. What do you do when you build something from zero and still get rated below the person who grew an existing brand by 5%?2. How do you tell the difference between being bad at a job and being the wrong category of human for it? 3. Is it risk that stops you from leaving — or is it fear wearing risk's clothes? 4. Why does writing your worst fear down on paper shrink it? 5. Can a single founder build a company that outlasts the founders who have co-founders? A conversation about self-knowledge as the real moat — and why the fear that freezes you is almost always smaller on paper than the life on the other side of it. Chapters  0:00 Welcome & introducing Shashank Mehta3:00 Middle class Delhi, mom's tears and the pressure to study8:00 HUL, the startup bug & discovering he's a creator14:00 First leap — joining Fasos, failing and coming back20:00 The blog, the rage and the protein bar made at home27:00 Risk vs fear — writing down what actually scared him33:00 The 2/5 rating that built a ₹100 crore brand38:00 Co-founders — why chemistry beats skill every time43:00 Brand first vs revenue first — the 20 year argument47:00 Building culture on trust and inspiration not fear and greed

Nirja Bhatt looks intimidating on paper: Columbia, Harvard Business School, strategy consulting. But she calls herself "a duck in water” i.e you never see what’s moving beneath the surface. It took her two years of analysis paralysis, ten abandoned ideas, and learning to normalize embarrassment before she could finally start. Nirja is the founder of Laani, a pre-launch personal care brand for women, built around the categories nobody talks about. In this episode, she and Avnish go back to the very beginning. They get into:  1. How do you start when you have ideas but no capital? 2. Why validate a problem, not an idea? 3. How do you make peace with betting your own savings on yourself? 4. Should you raise money before you have a product? 5. And what actually separates the founders who make it?6. An honest conversation about the part of the founder journey nobody photographs. Chapters 00:00 Intro: Meet Neerja Bhatt, founder of Laani01:30 Growing up in Baroda, raised by grandparents03:00 Rejected by every dream school: the USC detour04:30 How a professor's letter got her into Columbia07:30 Q1: How do I start with no capital and too many ideas?08:30 Analysis paralysis: 10 ideas and the HBS trap11:00 Moving back to India: the waste management chapter16:30 Q2: Passion vs. market gap — how to pick your problem19:00 Talking to 200 women: customer validation done right21:00 Q3 (Gubbachi founders): Hero products vs. commodity staples26:30 To raise or not to raise: funding pre-launch29:00 Final advice: persistence and eating a lot of shit30:00 Outro

Chakradhar Gade had the résumé everyone's supposed to want: engineering, CFA, a hedge fund, and felt like he'd lost himself inside it. So he walked away to sell milk. This is the story of how a finance guy who once mapped "the IRR of a cow" learned that the spreadsheet was a lie, lost all his money proving it, and rebuilt Country Delight from first principles, one customer relationship at a time.Avnish Bajaj and Chakradhar get into the questions most founders sit with alone:   1. What do you do when a successful career leaves you with "a huge loss of identity"? 2. Should you bootstrap and survive, or raise aggressively and run? 3. How long does it really take to learn a business you've never been in? 4. How do you tell real customer love apart from people just being nice to you? 5. When the model that "looked very beautiful in Excel" collapses, what replaces it? A conversation about chasing meaning over status, why bootstrapping bought six years of depth, and why, in Chakri's words, "there's no downside" to starting. Chapters  0:00 Welcome & introducing Chakradhar Gade1:35 Growing up in Guntur, Infosys & chasing meaning4:43 From MBA to Wall Street — why he chose finance7:33 The decision to quit New York and become a doodhwala12:05 The IRR of a cow (and why Excel lied)14:51 Bootstrap or raise? The real answer17:00 Raising from friends & family without ruining relationships21:02 From ₹80 lakhs to ₹200 crores a month23:01 The milkman model & month 60 retention32:34 Final advice: take more risks, there is no downside