The Better India started as a blog back in 2008. Dhimant Parekh and his wife and co-founder Anuradha Kedia would go out on the weekends and document the positive news that was happening in and around Bangalore. Today, more than a decade later, The Better India is a funded company with 90 employees that reaches more than 50 million people every month. Dhimant Parekh was sick and tired of negative news. To combat its effects, he and his wife started going out on the weekends in search of positive, uplifting stories.They soon realised that their blog, The Better India, was making a tangible, positive impact when a school for disabled children that they had written about received a large donation from one of the blog's readers. This impact was what eventually promoted Dhimant and Anuradha to walk away from their jobs in order to grow The Better India. They weren't making any money from their small media company in those days, but remained energised by the happiness and positive impact that their website was generating. In 2013, The Better India raised a small round of funding. This enabled Dhimant, Anuradha, and their two team members, to move into an office. They were also able to invest in talented writers with these funds. Slowly but surely, The Better India began to scale. As they scaled, Dhimant tried to figure out what business model would work best for the budding media company. Instead of peppering their website with targeted but meaningless ads like many other media companies, The Better India started to work with sustainable, impactful, progressive brands whose vision's were aligned with The Better India's.Of course, with scale comes challenges. The Better India, at one point a nimble blog owned and operated by two people, was slowing down as more and more team members were onboarded. However, Dhimant combatted this by constantly experimenting with the website's content. Sometimes this meant altering the length, style, and tone of their pre-existing formats, while at other times it meant coming up with entirely new formats. By trying new things, The Better India has managed to stay relevant amidst today's ever-changing media landscape. In October of 2019, The Better India launched an e-commerce platform called Karnival. This curated marketplace connects small enterprises with The Better India's +500M audience in order to promote the conscious consumption of sustainable, eco-friendly, ethical products.If you enjoyed hearing about how Dhimant Parekh built The Better India, please make use of the links below:Dhimant's LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/dhimant/Dhimant's Twitter: https://twitter.com/dhimantDhimant's TBI articles: https://thebetterindia.com/author/dhimantparekh/The Better India: https://thebetterindia.comKarnival: https://karnival.com

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How Dhimant Parekh Turned a Small Blog into The Better India

Utkarsh Biradar and Ganesh Balakrishnan met at IIT Bombay. Almost two decades later, the duo decided to start their first company together, Momoe. Today, they are working on their second startup, Flatheads, which is set to launch an online collection of men’s footwear in November.Utkarsh Biradar and Ganesh Balakrishnan met each other for the first time at IIT Bombay, back in the ‘90s. Then, more than decade later, Ganesh found himself sitting across the table from Utkarsh while he was interviewing for a job at Honeywell. At Honeywell, the two became friends, and eventually decided that they wanted to co-found a company together.  After quitting their jobs at Honeywell, Utkarsh and Ganesh decided to found a mobile payments startup, Momoe. while Momoe was technically their first entrepreneurial endeavor, the two had both been involved in intrapreneurship at their previous companies. That said, in the three years that they spent building Momoe, they learned a lot about marketing, hiring, and partnering with other companies. Eventually, Momoe was doing so well that ShopClues decided that they wanted to acquire the mobile payments startup, and in 2016, Utkarsh and Ganesh made the switch from entrepreneurship to becoming employees at ShopClues. This experience enabled the two of them to learn what e-commerce at scale looked like. After absorbing as much as they could from their roles at ShopClues, they decided to jump back into entrepreneurship.When they quit their jobs at ShopClues, Utkarsh and Ganesh didn’t know what they wanted to do. However, after about six months, they decided to enter into India’s $12 billion footwear industry. They identified a gap in the market, between functional, affordable footwear, and expensive, imported footwear from well-established brands like Nike, Puma, Adidas, etc.Utkarsh and Ganesh intend to bring their knowledge of tech and payments into their footwear startup. Flatheads will be creating smart inventories based on what is selling, and what isn’t. They also intend to release limited edition collections of shoes. What is more, they are focusing on comfort and style. They want their shoes to be wearable in both casual and professional contexts. Utkarsh and Ganesh are creating a personality for their brand. They are targeting the kinds of people who belong to unconventional tribes, like photographers, entrepreneurs, digital nomads, comedians, actors, musicians, and travellers. They hope to build a community of people around their shoes on social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter.Over the last year and a half, Utkarsh and Ganesh have raised an angel round of funding of $500,000, moved into an office, got a team of six employees together, designed a line of shoes, and those shoes are currently being manufactured and brought over to India. Pre-orders will start soon after after Diwali. If you enjoyed this video and want to know more about Flatheads or Utkarsh Biradar and Ganesh Balakrishnan, please make use of the links below:Utkarsh’s LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/utkarshbiradar/ Ganesh’s LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/ganeshbalakrishnan/Ganesh’s Medium: https://medium.com/startupchronicles/Ganesh’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/ganeshb78Flatheads’ website: https://flatheads.inFlatheads’ Twitter: https://twitter.com/flatheads_inFlatheads’ Facebook: https://facebook.com/flatheadsofficial/Flatheads’ Instagram: https://instagram.com/flatheadsofficial/

How the Founders of Momoe are Disrupting India's $12B Footwear Market

When Akshay Singhal decided to found a graphene startup back in 2014, he had no idea that the deep tech startup, Log 9 Materials, would end up developing a product which is capable of replacing and surpassing combustion engines and electric-vehicle batteries (EVBs). Akshay and his team intend to disrupt the energy sector with this product, a graphene-enhanced aluminium fuel cell, a green, quiet, and powerful alternative to conventional sources of energy.Akshay Singhal was studying at IIT Roorkee when he discovered graphene. After returning from a short internship in Canada, he decided that he wanted to found a graphene startup. He eventually called this graphene startup Log 9 Materials. Luckily, Akshay's parents were very supportive, and helped him in every way that they could to start his company. After setting up a laboratory in his family's warehouse, his deep tech startup was invited to join the first batch of startups at TIDES, an incubator program within IIT Roorkee. It was with this support from IIT Roorkee and his parents that Log 9 Materials was able to launch its first product, PPuF, India's first graphene product which is a plug-on graphene filter for cigarettes.After launching PPuF, Akshay started talking to investors. He had proven that he was serious about being an entrepreneur, and the byproduct of this dedication to his startup, PPuF, convinced some investors in Delhi NCR to invest in his deep tech startup. With these funds, they were sit down and try to figure out what to develop next. They came up with more than a dozen different applications for graphene, but settled on two specific ones: cleaning up oil spills, and enhancing aluminium fuel cells. By the time they had settled on these two applications for graphene, however, they had already run out of money. Luckily they were able to raise another round from eight people worth $500,000 With newly injected funds and a pretty good idea of what they wanted to do, the Log 9 Materials team was able to build an extremely impressive graphene-enhanced aluminium fuel cell which was capable of powering a car in less than two months. Akshay believes that what Log 9 Materials was able to produce in this period of the startup's journey increased its valuation of $50 million. Log 9 Materials' graphene-enhanced aluminium fuel cell car, Ranger, caught the eyes of investors when Akshay and his team showed it off at the India-UK FutureTech Festival. However, what he soon discovered was that investors thought that the technology Log 9 Materials had developed was too good to be true. Eventually though, Sequoia India asked an American expert to validate Log 9 Materials' technology. This expert was impressed by what he saw, and told Sequoia India that Log 9 Materials was worth investing in. Eventually, this led to Log 9 Materials raising a $3.5 million Series A round from Sequoia India's Surge program, as well as Exfinity Venture Partners.One of the reasons that Sequoia India and Exfinity Venture Partners decided to invest so much money in Log 9 Materials is that the technology they are trying to bring to the market is incredible. Their aluminium fuel cell uses aluminium as a source of fuel. Aluminium is a very green, safe source of fuel, unlike fossil fuels and hydrogen fuel. Not only that, but India has huge stockpiles of aluminium, and so if it is adopted by the world as a fuel source, India would become an exporter of this fuel.In the comings months and years, Log 9 Materials intends to bring their aluminium fuel cells to the market. With the help of Sequoia India's Surge program, all of their investors, and the Indian government, Log 9 Materials hopes to irreversibly disrupt and revolutionize India's energy sector. If you enjoyed this podcast and want to know more about Akshay Singhal and his graphene startup, Log 9 Materials, please feel free to make use of the links below:

How Log 9 Materials Is Revolutionising Energy with Graphene

Video is quickly becoming the most ubiquitous form of media on the internet, but it is also the hardest and most time-consuming form of media to produce. Editing video requires in-depth knowledge about video editing software, and it also often requires a beefy computer that can handle animations and graphics. Matthew John founded Typito to do away with all of these barriers to entry.While building Typito, Matthew and his co-founder faced three major challenges: trying to figure out who their customer was, trying to build an amazing product, and talking to customers. Luckily, Matthew and his team were able to overcome these challenges by experimenting with solutions. Matthew believes that entrepreneurship is just a series of experiments. Startups are made up of experiments, and in fact, the startup itself is one big experiment. Matthew attributes some of Typito's success to this philosophy. He doesn't believe in a "finished product" or a "stable startup" because everything is always in flux due to experimental nature of entrepreneurship. One big mistake that Typito made early on was building their product for investors instead of customers. They wanted to raise funds, and this desire led them to pay more attention to what investors thought customers wanted instead of what customers actually wanted. Eventually though, Matthew realized that this was not a productive way of building a product, and decided to shift his focus towards the customer.Another key learning that Matthew acquired over the course of his journey as an entrepreneur is the value of learning. Unless your learning curve matches the rate at which you conduct experiments, you won't be able to derive value and wisdom from those experiments. If they fail or succeed, you won't understand why unless your level of experience as an entrepreneur is in sync with your experimentation.Matthew believes that your greatest asset as an entrepreneur is your learnings. The more you learn, the stronger you become, and so learning how to learn is an extremely valuable skill for all entrepreneurs.We hope that you learned something from this podcast! If you want to know more about Matthew John or his startup Typito, please make use of the links below:Matthew's LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/matthewjohntMatthew's Twitter:  twitter.com/tmatthewjnTypito's website: typito.com/create

Advice for Early Stage Entrepreneurs: Matthew John, Typito

When Ananth Nagaraj founded his first company, he did it to make a positive impact in India. Sadly, his first startup, 300 Feet Eco Solutions, did not survive. What did survive, however, was Ananth's desire to improve India. He decided to tackle another problem by creating an AI-powered ASR (automated speech recognition) engine, Gnani.ai. Ananth Nagaraj started his first company in order to clean up Bangalore. He imagined a country where, in major cities, there were dustbins located every 300 feet, so that people had no excuse to litter. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to scale this startup, and ended up shutting it down and getting a job instead. Even though 300 Feet Eco Solutions didn't work out, Ananth still wanted to improve India somehow. One day, he realized that people living in rural areas of India had no way of getting information easily. Comprehensive, high-speed mobile network coverage wasn't available in these rural areas, people didn't have smartphones which could be used to look things up on Google, and even if they did, many of them could not read and write. As a result of this realization, Ananth decided to create an AI powered speech recognition engine so that people could make a call and get the answers that they were looking for, without needing to type or rely on mobile data. Of course, building such an engine was no easy task, which is why nobody else had done it. Specifically, Ananth wanted to make an engine which could handle multiple vernacular Indian languages, and with multiple accents as well. Eventually though, they were able to accomplish this, and to their surprise, when they benchmarked their engine against other engines, Gnani.ai outperformed all of its competition.Very quickly, word got around that Gnani.ai had built an AI-powered speech recognition engine. They quickly started getting clients who used Gnani.ai in a variety of different industries such as the banking industry, automotive industry, and agricultural industry. The success of the startup caught the eye of Samsung Ventures. In mid-2019, they invested $8.5 million in four Indian startups, and Gnani.ai was one of those startups.Today, the company has several prominent customers, and looks forward to sell their SaaS speech recognition solution to even more companies here in India. If you enjoyed this podcast and want to know more about Gnani.ai or Ananth Nagaraj, please make use of the links below: Gnani.ai's website: https://gnani.ai/Ananth's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ananth-nagaraj-72762616/Ananth's Twitter: https://twitter.com/ananth_nagaraj

Building an AI-Powered ASR Engine for Vernacular Languages

Vinay Vivekanandh first discovered a gap in the prosthetics market when he noticed a person working in his school who was missing an arm. He wasn't wearing a prosthetic, and when they asked him why, he told them that the affordable prosthetics are too heavy and cumbersome, and the good prosthetics are too expensive. After this conversation, Vinay realized that he had discovered a market gap, and so he and his co-founder decided to fill it.India has about half a million amputees, and around 23,500 people become amputees each year. However, only a fraction of these people end up purchasing prosthetics to replace their missing limbs. Why? Because the prosthetics are either too expensive because they are imported, or they are too heavy and uncomfortable to wear. Vinay Vivekanandh, one of the founders of Grasp Bionics, saw this gap in the prosthetics market and decided to fill it with PURAK, the company's affordable prosthetic hand. PURAK has a number of features which make it a unique prosthetic. Firstly, it uses a Myo mechanical control system which can be used even if the wearer is sweating profusely, which is something that happens regularly here in India. Secondly, it is built and priced with Indians in mind. Up until this point, the prosthetics market has been dominated by international products that are priced for people in countries with a much higher GPD per capita than India. According to the World Bank, India's GDP per capita is lower than 66% of the world's countries, and that is why PURAK, the affordable Indian prosthetic arm, is so important.While the opportunity to make money from PURAK and future Grasp Bionics products is huge, Vinay is more concerned with making a positive impact. He says that, even though PURAK has not officially launched yet, the happiness of the product testers has emotionally moved him. This, not money, is the real source of motivation for Vinay to launch PURAK.PURAK is set to launch at the end of 2019. Vinay and his team are aiming to launch the product for Rs. 100,000 or less. If you enjoyed this podcast and want to know more about PURAK, Grasp Bionics, or Vinay Vivekanandh, please make use of the links below:Vinay's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vinay-v-14454132/Grasp Bionics: http://www.graspbionics.com/PURAK: http://www.graspbionics.com/product.html

Finding and Filling a Gap in the Market: Vinay Vivekanandh

When you're selling a B2B SaaS product to a prospective customer, there are a lot of checkboxes in their mind that you need to fill. Building a great product isn't always enough, because the customer is also wondering whether your product is going to fit into their software stack, whether your product is worth the price that you're asking for it, and whether there are other people using your product, among other things. In this podcast, Ralph, one of the co-founders of Collatebox, explains what checkboxes you need to fill in order for a customer to buy your B2B SaaS product and continue to use it for years to come.If your product doesn't meet one of the customer's core needs, you might as well not build that product. The worst thing, says Ralph, that can happen to a SaaSpreneur is that they build a product that falls into the "nice to have" category instead of the "must have" category. Building a product which integrates into the customer's software stack can encourage a customer to purchase your SaaS product, and it can also increase customer retention!Pricing your SaaS product appropriately is actually very important. If you price it too low, customers might think that it isn't a serious business product. If you price it too high, they won't be able to justify buying it, even if it does meet one of their core needs.B2C SaaS startups come and go, and consumers are used to it. Businesses, on the other hand, think long and hard before buying a B2B SaaS product, because they need reliable support, and they also don't want the SaaS product to disappear because the startup that was providing the SaaS product failed. Businesses don't want to burn their fingers being the first to use a product. Untested SaaS products are often full of bugs which can hinder a businesses productivity, and so business owners typically look to see if other companies are using the product before purchasing a SaaS product. SaaS startups can make use of websites like Product Hunt to get some early adopters to use their product before they start selling it more seriously.We hope that you enjoyed hearing Ralph's advice on selling your B2B SaaS product. If you did, please make use of the links below to learn more about Ralph, his company CollateBox, their product Userships, and the websites mentioned in this podcast:Ralph's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralph-vaz-a57b6519/Ralph's Twitter: https://twitter.com/ralphwjzCollateBox: http://www.collatebox.com/Userships: https://userships.com/Product Hunt: https://www.producthunt.com/G2 Crowd: https://www.g2.com/

Why Building a Great SaaS Product Isn't Enough

Ashutosh Kumar knew that he wanted to become an entrepreneur, but he didn't have a problem to solve. Then, one day, he was talking to his dad, who has been in the construction business for 25 years, when he realized that there was a huge opportunity to disrupt the cement industry by bringing cement online. This is Ashutosh's story.Everyone around Ashutosh Kumar was telling him that he should try to get a government job or work in the IT sector, but Ashutosh wanted more from life. He wasn't interested in taking the path of least resistance, even if it was safer and less risky. While his fellow students were playing games or watching TV shows, Ashutosh was preparing himself for entrepreneurship. He was learning English and watching shows like Shark Tank. This all payed off when, in his third year, he was accepted into an entrepreneurship school program put on by the European Innovation Academy in Shenzhen, China. This experience was a turning point in his life. He came back to India after the program and decided to start something of his own. Ashutosh decided to start an entrepreneurship community back in India with one of the people that he met in China. He launched Knockstarter's first chapter in Kolkata, and the community eventually expanded to New Delhi. The community gained a lot of good traction, but Ashutosh realized that the startup had become an event management company when he went to Harvard for a business school program. He expected the community to manage itself while he was away, but instead, he was forced to run behind people from the United States. This wasn't what he wanted, and so he decided to shut Knockstarter down.After Harvard, Ashutosh returned to Bihar. One day, while he was there, he was talking to his dad, who has been in the construction business for 25 years. It was during this conversation that he realized that there was a huge opportunity to disrupt the cement industry by bringing cement online. In order to validate his solution to the problem that he was seeing, he spoke with approximately 50 people. These conversations made him realize that there was a need for cheaper, online cement, and so he started building his startup, cemX.Soon after registering cemX as a company, Ashutosh had a meeting with a friend, who ended up becoming his co-founder and cemX's CBO. Together, they started oboarding interns and employees, and the cement startup began to grow. This growth, along with a bit of publicity, led to investor attention. This attention surprised Ashutosh, as did all of the orders they they have received on their website. Somehow, cemX has managed to generate Rs. 1,000,000 (10 lakhs) in the last two months, and growth isn't slowing down.cemX is expanding, both in other small cities in Bihar, as well as into tier 1 cities like Kolkata and Mumbai. They are looking to enter into hundreds of cities in India over the next few years. However, they are expecting pushback from the people who control the cement industry in India, but they aren't going to let that slow them down.We hope that you enjoyed Ashutosh Kumar talking about how cemX is going to turn India's cement industry upside down. If you want to know more about him or his startup, please make use of the links below:Ashutosh's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashutoshjhaacemX's website: www.cemx.incemX's Facebook: www.facebook.com/cemxgroupcemX's Twitter: www.twitter.com/hexfordventurescemX's Instagram: www.instagram.com/cemx5cemX's LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/cemx

Disrupting a Multi-Billion Dollar Industry: Ashutosh Kumar

Sameera Vanekar and her co-founders have built five products. Four of these products have failed. However, in spite of this incessant failure, Sameera hasn't lost confidence in her startup, CollateBox. In this podcast, she will be explaining how to survive entrepreneurship, even when nothing is going as planned.Especially in the early days of a startup, entrepreneurs are constantly putting out fires. This can be exhausting, especially when there are multiple fires burning at once and the startup is on the verge of collapse. However, learning to accept this state of chaos and be at peace within it is one thing that entrepreneurs can do to increase their chances of success.Sameera Vanekar believes that if your startup cannot function without its founder, then the founder hasn't done a good job of building the startup. A strong startup which has a good chance of surviving in the long term is built in such a way that even if the founder goes on a trip or disappears completely, the startup can still survive.  Poor time management for entrepreneurs can lead to mental health issues, physical issues, and of course, the collapse of their startup. Knowing how to turn off entrepreneurship mode and relax is very important, and if an entrepreneur cannot do this, they might be at risk of the things mentioned above.Sameera Vanekar worked for a number of companies before taking the plunge into entrepreneurship. She wanted to gain experience before trying to build a startup. However, she doesn't advise against startup up right out of college. However, she does recommend that entrepreneurs make sure that they know what problem they are going to solve, because that is the focus of entrepreneurship. Many people these days, especially right now because of the startup boom, are becoming entrepreneurs to make money or for the title of "founder" or "CEO" - Sameera doesn't think that this is a valid reason to start up.At the end of the day, Sameera Vanekar believes that failure is an inherent part of starting up, and that there isn't anything wrong with it. Her company, CollateBox, has built 5 products, and 4 of these products have failed. However, her and her co-founder have learned from these failures, and they are fairly confident that their most recent product, Userships, will be successful.Even if Userships isn't successful, however, Sameera will not be going back to work as an employee at a regular job. She can't imagine not being an entrepreneur. We hope that you enjoyed hearing Sameera's entrepreneurial advice. Please make use of the links below if you want to know more about her or her startup, CollateBox, and their product, Userships.Sameera's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sameeravanekar/CollateBox's website: http://www.collatebox.com/Userships' website: https://userships.com/

How to Survive Entrepreneurship: Sameera Vanekar

Altaf Ganihar is the founder and CEO of Snaptrude, a Bangalore-based SaaS startup that is backed by Accel and Brigade. Altaf Ganihar was working on the Indian Digital Heritage (IDH) Project, constructing a 3D model of Hampi, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, when he realized that 3D design is full of pain points. He built a crude prototype in his spare time and showed it to some architects, who expressed interest in his project. This was a turning point in Altaf's life: he decided to pursue entrepreneurship instead of the safe, conventional path of getting his PhD and becoming a researcher. The first order of business was raising some funds to turn his prototype into an MVP. He turned to his professors and raised a small round, with which he was able to hire some interns and work on his SaaS product for a year and a half. This product helped customers to visualize a space, e.g. a house, apartment, or office, before purchasing it. The product was able to take a 2D floor plan and convert it into a 3D model.Sadly, Altaf soon realized that his SaaS product was nowhere near achieving product/market fit, and was forced to pivot. At this point, the funds he had raised had all but dried up, and he had to let go of his interns. He got a part time job to stay afloat, but things weren't going well for Altaf and his startup. Luckily, he got connected to Brigade, one of the top real estate developers of South India, and they invited him to join their real estate startup accelerator program. This program enabled Altaf to continue pursuing his dream of being a successful SaaSpreneur.Altaf realized that he needed to build his SaaS solution for architects, not buyers. With his newfound realization, he made a product pivot. Instead of converting a floor plan to a 3D model, his new SaaS product would convert a hand drawn sketch into a 3D model.Altaf spent the next few months building the prototype for his new product, and was invited to a conference to show off how it worked. The people at the conference loved it, and soon his startup was getting visibility. Snaptrude was covered by VCCircle, and he was also invited to Disrupt, an annual tech conference held by TechCrunch. This visibility caught the attention of a number of investors, including Accel Partners, who was part of Snaptrude's seed round of funding along with Brigade and a couple of angel investors. With this injection of funds, Altaf was able to hire employees. Today, Snaptrude is a team of 11 sitting out of Accel LaunchPad in Bengaluru, India. They have launched their SaaS product in beta, and are looking forward to revolutionizing and disrupting the architectural 3D design space. VCCircle article: https://www.vccircle.com/this-hubli-boy-rejected-foreign-offers-to-come-up-disruptive-real-estate-software/TechCrunch list: https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/03/meet-the-feature-pavilion-startups-at-disrupt-sf/Altaf's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/altaf-ganihar-54512367/Altaf's website: https://sites.google.com/site/altafganihar2/homeAltaf's Twitter: https://twitter.com/altafganiharSnaptrude's website: https://snaptrude.com/Snaptrude's Twitter: https://twitter.com/snaptrudeSnaptrude's Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/snaptrudeSnaptrude's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/snaptrude/

How Altaf Ganihar Is Disrupting 3D Design with Snaptrude

Backstage with Millionaires aims to become the largest repository of entrepreneurship content online. The idea behind this initiative is to invite successful entrepreneurs to candidly share their experiences so that they might be of use to both aspiring and successful entrepreneurs. BwM was ideated and initiated by two 23-year-old individuals coming from very different backgrounds. Prithvi, an Indian entrepreneur, has been a media professional for most of his life and loves to engage with and build communities. Caleb, on other hand, is a Canadian professional photographer and videographer. He came to India to travel, but decided not to leave.

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Backstage with Millionaires

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