Sanjay Ramakrishnan was the Senior Director for Product Marketing at Flipkart and has led various leadership positions at literally every one of the cool places that an aspiring marketer would desire, including Google, Myntra and Ogilvy and Mather. In his current avatar, he is the co-founder of Multiply Ventures, a newly launched early-stage investment fund based out of Bangalore. We discuss some interesting stories from the early days of Flipkart, Myntra and Orkut, where Sanjay led their marketing efforts and dive deeper into product marketing and branding. My favourite one was how they entered Orkut as part of the MTV youth icon awards, and won! —> You can listen to the audio file above or find it on Spotify/ Apple or Google podcast apps or any of your favourite podcast apps. —> Sanjay’s Twitter and LinkedIn handles. Also, do check out this old Webex commercial with RuPaul that we mention in the episode. It’s something! :D Get full access to Turnaround at turnaround.substack.com/subscribe

Use Case

Marketing +2: Building power users & some marketing stories with Sanjay Ramakrishnan, Ex-Flipkart & co-founder of Multiply Ventures

In the past on the Use Case podcast we’ve discussed and debated how several Indian startups have been commanding incredibly high valuations to their business. One practical way how they do so is by creating extremely strong brands - and this is especially true for consumer internet companies. In fact there is an interesting research report by Forbes which shows, how over the last few decades “intangible assets” make up over 80% of the S&P 500 market value. And then, as the graph by Forbes above would show, within this intangible component as well, the contribution of marketing related activities is extremely significant! Well placed marketing also increases the perception of innovation, bargaining power with the customer and brand loyalty which drives the valuation higher - investors hate that, and founders love it (they’ll deny it, but they love it).And so, first in our series of episodes on Marketing, WE ARE THRILLED to be joined by Raja Ganapathy, who was till recently the Chief Marketing Officer at Sequoia Capital India, and is now the co-founder of Spring Marketing Capital, which invests in and works directly with the founders in shaping the startup's marketing and branding strategy. You can listen to the audio file above or find it on Spotify/ Apple or Google podcast apps or any of your favourite podcast apps. My favourite part of the show is when JPK and Raja play and discuss sections of this iconic talk by Steve Jobs on marketing. Do check it out!Know a friend who would enjoy listening to the series? Tell them about it! They will appreciate it, and so would we :) Best,Ravish Get full access to Turnaround at turnaround.substack.com/subscribe

Marketing + 1: Raja Ganapathy, Ex-Sequoia Cap CMO & Co-founder, Spring Marketing Capital

On a recent trip to Beijing, I was travelling in the subway during peak hours. I looked to my left - almost everyone I saw was on their phones. Looked to my right - same thing. Like a typical waiguoren (“foreigner”) I was fascinated. China has grown exponentially in mobile growth, creating new industries like livestreaming along the way. In this episode of the Use Case podcast (you can listen to it on the audio file above or find it on Spotify/ Apple or Google podcast apps), I caught up with Andy Tian, the CEO of Uplive, a live streaming + social gaming+gifting platform on building a successful internet startup in China and expanding it globally. Andy grew up in the US, went to MIT to study engineering and decided to startup in China. He is exceptionally well aware of the Indian market, which reflects a new breed of Chinese entrepreneurs looking to India as a digital economy. Check out the timestamp of the conversation - you might find a few topics of your interest. The total audio is of ~40 minutes and something cool to listen to on your next commute!Timestamp00:00- Why be pirate? Company culture of a startup05:30- Andy’s early career choices, going to MIT and moving between US & China; How has China’s startup world evolved since 2000?10:00- What makes Andy bullish on India and how did early Chinese startups survive the “Internet Winter”?15:10- Building a live steaming business - Entertainment vs Utility20:00- Can India leapfrog China?23:30- Globally, where is live streaming working and how to monetize? How does Andy look at Indian users and compare it with users in other countries31:30- How do you compete with big platforms like Tiktok?34:30- How are Chinese entrepreneurs looking at India as a market?Talking of Chinese startups entering India, we dissected the product strategy Bytedance is building to launch its new music app in India, called Resso. Check out the story here or by copy pasting this link- https://turnaround.substack.com/p/decoding-bytedances-strategy-to-tap For more such stories, subscribe to turnaround.substack.com Would love to know your thoughts, let us know what you think in the comments section.Thanks,Ravish Get full access to Turnaround at turnaround.substack.com/subscribe

Be CEO, Be Pirate - Uplive CEO, Andy Tian on live streaming, India-China competition and growth

In today’s episode we are joined by Sanjay Nath, who is the Managing Partner of Blume Ventures, one of India’s leading early stage VC firm. From his early career when he was as a management consultant in Silicon Valley to the days when he helped his father scale a tech company (which went on to then be acquired by a global tech giant), to being one of the first angel investors to put his own money in deep tech startups before AI was a thing, Sanjay is a force to reckon with when it comes to his knowledge of building and scaling enterprise technology companies. In this episode Ravish and Sanjay go deep into the intricacies of building and scaling B2B, SaaS and deep tech startups (see timestamp below for exact topics covered). ?You can check out the show on your browser or Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or other podcast apps. Note: When Sanjay’s co-founder, Karthik Reddy was on the show he talked about the need for Indian startups to balance growth and profitability. In a similar context during the episode, we mention the Rule of 40 - which we believe is an important mental model for investors and founders to measure the balance between growth and profitability . According to it, as a rule of thumb for SaaS companies, your growth rate + your profit % should add up to 40%. So, if you are growing at 20%, you should be generating a profit of at least 20%. If you are growing at 40%, it’s okay if you are generating a 0% profit. If you are growing at 50%, you aren’t in bad zone if you have a loss of 10%. It goes to show that both the growth rate and profitability are important in determining the valuation multiple of a SaaS company and a balance between the two must be maintained. See the graph of public SaaS companies in the US plotted by Pacific Crest below.The rule was suggested by Brad Feld, MD of Foundry Group and co-founder of Techstars, based on his learnings from various board meetings of global SaaS companies. Remember though, that this is not set in stone, but just a general mental model to remember that balancing growth with profitability is important, especially as it impacts your company’s valuation.If your goal is to enhance your knowledge of the Indian startup ecosystem and learn from some of the best founders, CXOs and investors in the business, consider subscribing to the Turnaround newsletter to access more such insights. Timestamp/ Topics covered00:33 - Industry level changes in B2B/Enterprise tech startups in last 10 years02:35 – Talent and capital shifts in India; the lack of non-consumer datasets to tie real economy to enterprise technology08:10 – Dependency of Indian B2B startups on US/ other international markets for data and sales as a major barrier to entry and ways to overcome that – lead generation, sales, incubation, tips for founders16:47 – Pricing software- art or science? Understanding the difference between Asian and western markets, discounts and positioning21:45- Three chasms in growth: ARR $1mn, $5mn and $10mn; metrics & benchmarks to measure B2B/SaaS companies – Annual Recurring Revenues, Net Dollar Retention, Margins, etc...26:00- Has the larger Indian IT industry done enough to grow the domestic Indian B2B startups? 28:45- Board room shifts in B2B startups during early stages; the rule of 40 for SaaS companies – valuation as a function of growth and profitability; current market valuations34:00- Closing thoughts for founders If you like listening to the show, please consider sharing it with those you think might find it helpful and subscriber at turnaround.substack.com for more such insights. See you next time!Thank you for listening,JPK and RavishCorrection (added after publishing):At 22:30, I mix Annual Recurring Revenue and Accounting Rate of Return as the definition of ARR. Apologies for the mistake!-Ravish Bhatia Get full access to Turnaround at turnaround.substack.com/subscribe

The rule of 40 & Sanjay Nath on how to build, scale & measure growth in B2B and SaaS startups

India is the world’s fastest-growing app market but it is also a competitive and fragmented market. Only a few companies have been able to scale and achieve repeated consumer engagement while solving a problem. Companies spent nearly $1.14 billion on mobile advertising to drive app installs in 2019. But nearly 77% of users uninstall the apps they installed within the first day and only 2.6% of users stick to the app even after 30 days, according to data from AppsFlyer. Image: Retention rates of apps downloaded in India. Full report by AppsFlyer here.So what goes into making a successful app for the Indian market? Our guest on the show this week as part of the Product Management series, Deepak Abbot, gives a masterclass on this topic! Deepak was until recently the Senior Vice President at Paytm where he was responsible for products and growth and he shares some very deep insights into the Indian appspace (see timestamp below).???As a BONUS for our paying subscribers on the show, Deepak gives a video presentation on app development and growth hacking as the second part of the podcast. In the presentation, he shares some benchmarking data and insights that are specific to India. He also walks us through the different stages in the lifecycle of an app and the tasks a product manager should take on at each stage. It is truly a masterclass! The video can be accessed through this link. If you haven’t subscribed yet, you could do so below and get access to all exclusive subscriber content for a year! Prices go up next week. ?You could listen to the show on your browser or Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, other podcast apps. If you like it, please give us a review on your podcast app, or show us some love by clicking on the heart button below the title. TIMESTAMP [for public content]0:00= Episode structure, bonus content announcement, setting the tone3:00= Nature of India’s app market- characteristics, size, peculiar user download behaviours, calendar trends, average monthly statistics7:00= Product design to grab the attention of the Indian user9:55= Starting point for building an app, how to choose a platform?12:00= Resource management and product development planning 14:00= Key points to always keep in mind while launching an app in India17:15= Different stages of the app life cycle, measuring performance and growth hacking for the Indian market, incentivising users, App Store Optimisation, launching an app and more22:15= Early customer ratings and recent changes in Playstore’s rating mechanisms25:50= Pre-launch app stage - tools to use, PR and other things to note 31:00= Privacy and app permissions - a double-edged sword; How Paytm asks for permissions36:00= When to raise capital, how would Deepak think about raising capital39:00= Powerpoint presentation on growth hacking for paying subscribers Here’s what’s in the video for paying subscribers?What the classic app funnel looks like?Measure the right metrics: be paranoid about the 1%?Benchmarks in different segments like games, business, e-commerce?Tips, tools and techniques to measure, retain and grow your app usersWe really appreciate your support and hope to bring you much more in 2020 from the best minds out there in the Indian startup ecosystem. See you all on the other side!Happy new year! ?Best,JPK and Ravish Get full access to Turnaround at turnaround.substack.com/subscribe

Product Management 2: Deepak Abbot, ex SVP at Paytm on Building an app for India & Growth Hacking [BONUS VIDEO CONTENT]

Every product manager has a unique story. The multi-dimensional nature of the role implies that there is no one fixed path to becoming a great product owner. Our first guest as part of the Product Management series, Sidu Ponappa, shares one such journey, which sounds like a 90s love story - only here, his love is computers ?BY THE WAY, if you haven’t signed up for the series, you can still subscribe here! Sidu served on the Board of Directors of Gojek and was Head of Gojek India from 2015 to 2019. He is a 4x founder, whose last startup was acquired by the Indonesian decacorn, where he scaled his 35 member startup team into an 700 member product and engineering organisation across 3 countries that simultaneously:shipped 18 products in 18 monthsreduced downtimes by 1000Xscaled the stack from 4K daily completed orders to 1M daily completed orders in 18 monthsNo wonder why he talks about Hypergrowth so much on the show. ?BUT THE COOLEST part of the conversation is the discussion around what makes a superapp - the underlying assets and features that are required (are they?) and more!?We also discuss how to manage and hire teams, how the Indian market is different from the Indonesian one (twice have VCs negated our claim that the Indian digital economy is far from picking up like Indonesia, but we find some redemption here!)?You could listen to the show on your browser or Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, other podcast apps. If you like it, please give us a review on your podcast app, or show us some love by clicking on the heart button below the title. ❤️️If you think someone would be interested in learning more about this, feel free to forward them this email or share it on Whatsapp/ other social media.We will be having Deepak THE KING Abbot , ex Vice President at Paytm, on the show next, teaching a master class on building and scaling mobile apps next week (we will be emailing the video lecture to only to our paying subscribers). Stay cool and Keep hustling guys! ???Best,JPK and Ravish Get full access to Turnaround at turnaround.substack.com/subscribe

Product Management 1: Sidu Ponnappa, of GOJEK on what makes a superapp, his journey & managing hyper growth

In today’s Use Case podcast, we try to understand how the media industry has changed in the recent past, what sort of business models are working and how founders of new media startups should think about monetisation. Check out the timestamps for more.Joining us to dive deep into these trends is Miten Sampat, the Chief Strategy Officer of Times Internet, the internet company owned by the Times Group. He and his team have led ~15 acquisitions and 10+ minority investments, making them one of the most active Corp VC / M&A arm in the India internet sector. He is a board member for multiple new media and internet companies such as MX Player, ET-Money, Dineout, Haptik, OML, Shuttl and Myra, among others.?Listen in to the episode on your browser or find it on Apple/Google Podcast apps, Spotify, or Stitcher; ⚡️⚡️⚡️Please consider leaving us a review and rating us on Apple podcasts if you find this episode useful. ⚡️⚡️⚡️Note: Link to Miten’s 2010 blog discussed on the show at around 27:00; some thoughts about the topic after the timestampHere are the timestamps:0:00= Introducing Miten; Media as the most disrupted industry through all industrial revolutions2:00= Two big types of transitions media has had to face in recent past4:00= Shift from advertising to subscription model; Why now?⚡️7:00= Competing with Facebook and Google for advertising- is it worth it? Can you do it?8:44= Trust deficit leading shift to influencer/ personality driven content??9:37= Competing with vs utilising Facebook and Google platforms for advertising lead business models13:30= How are advertisers responding to changes in platforms? Does advertising for India 2.0 give a return on advertising spend?⚡️16:50= Is the Indian industry growing fast enough? Are they making money?23:00= Are local Indian internet platforms beginning to be competitive enough? 27:00= Excess infrastructure leads to innovation and new opportunities⚡️29:30= Miten’s strategy/advice if he were to start a new company in the media/internet space31:00= MX PLAYER disrupting a mostly subscription driven streaming industry - Could it pivot into a video commerce company? Could it disrupt the Hotstar/Amazon/Netflix monopoly?34:50= Content producers vs content aggregators - who wins? Is the content market consolidating?⚡️37:30= Closing thoughtsIf you find this newsletter and podcast useful, consider becoming a paid subscriber. It’s only $30 a year.?For more than a decade now, I’ve read about media being in trouble. As a reporter at two leading newspapers and then as part of early teams at digital media startups, I’ve had some time to think about it. Below, I’m reproducing a piece I’d written earlier on Twitter because it’s relevant here. So we all know the media is in trouble because revenues from print advertising are falling in most markets. And that money is going to digital media. That’s a good thing right? More for digital media companies?! Well, no.For digital media startups banking on that shift, the big payday will never come. Because digital advertising will never deliver the goods to you. Because you’re competing for the same ad dollars that big tech companies are competing for.Most of the money in digital advertising goes to Google, Facebook, and platforms like Instagram with an endless supply of ad inventory. For these platforms, the cost of content is nearly zero. They like to keep it that way and invest technology to capture eyeballs and not in ‘content’ itself.You, as a journalism startup, have inferior technology, no matter how much you try, and you have the cost of content to bear. On both counts, Big Tech will always win. You could point to a few profitable digital news sites and say that it’s working for them.In the short run, it may work for a company. And some companies may even be able to grow big enough to invest in better technology, hire a direct sales team and so on. But in the end, it is bound to fail.For a moment, think of what the endgame will look like: Thanks to ad:tech, a marketer can always target your reader or readers of similar quality on Facebook or Twitter or TikTok or Spotify or an endless number of platforms. Why would they spend on your news site?In the long run, the competition for digital advertising dollars will get even more brutal as the supply of inventory grows. For instance, two years ago, there was no TikTok in India. Now the Chinese behemoth with over 50 million users in India wants to make money from ads in India.Until last year, Gaana was the only place a marketer could advertise at scale to streaming music users. Now there’s Spotify, Saavn and at least a dozen other streaming platforms fighting for the same money.Heck, even Amazon and Flipkart are booking healthy advertising revenues.As mega-platforms and apps powered by user-generated content bring an endless supply of ad inventory to the market, news media sites that manually put out stories don’t stand a chance. Your margins will constantly come under pressure because hey, how fast can your newsroom type?!So then what’s your lever here as a news media company? Bring down the cost of content and increase ad inventory? But that’s not an option because as a news outlet, readers expect a minimum standard from you.Best case, to make content cheaper, you hire cheaper and churn out content faster. You lose credibility and in turn, your ability to sell ads. You’re then left to pick up the scraps from the table on which the giants feast.This is a downward spiral if there was ever one. Because it’s not just you who’s waiting to pick up the leftovers. Every day, there are more and more people just like you publishing online hoping to make a living out of it.Perchance, if some money dribbles down to news media sites, it is cut up into a thousand parts since entry barriers are so low and everyone is publishing. The money isn’t meaningful enough for anyone to even think of investing in quality journalism.So then, if it’s all doom and gloom, why don’t we all just go home? That’s not an option either. Because in these dark days, media has a role to play more than ever before. Can we make it work? To answer this, I like looking at how the media works. The traditional media model looks something like this.Most of the money will come from advertising, some from subscriptions and a little from intellectual property. Currently, most media companies rely on advertising because it’s the lowest hanging fruit. They hardly have any subscription revenues and IP/ events are far and few. Advertising, as we showed earlier doesn’t make enough money.The answer to our problem is in front of us really. If you look closer, you’ll realize: as you go higher up the pyramid, the value per user goes up. What it means is that you can make a dollar by showing an ad to 1000 people who land up on your site or you can make $100 by selling one annual subscription to one person. Or you can make $1000 by selling a ticket to an event or access to a database to one person.So let’s update the figure a little to reflect this. Now if you, as a media startup, flip the model: you’ll get something like this:Here, you don’t spam your reader with advertising. But you work hard to hook them to your product. Hooking a prospective user, or a loyalist is extremely vital here. This can be achieved by a combination of good product thinking and analytics to back it (Pro tip: Try this Audience Explorer Dashboard and Data Tools for News from Google). Consider the money you forgo in advertising revenues as your marketing costs.Now you build products focussed on IP and events/ conferences for the same audience groups. Which means you have to be very careful to tie your editorial stack closely to these audience groups. Again, analytics is important here.Here media companies have a natural advantage over platforms in building content related IP because of the access they have to thought leaders and data sources. It has higher margins, and scope for deeper work that rewards experienced journalists and quality stories.If you build your strategy around building a stack of this nature, it will probably start looking like a sustainable company in the long run. To make this work, it’s important to segment your users clearly, have an editorial strategy around each segment (niche?) and eventually build IP based products for the segments.If you crack one segment, perhaps you can port this model into other segments as well. Hope this helps. Get full access to Turnaround at turnaround.substack.com/subscribe

Media Industry's shifts in business models, platform economy and what to build next with Miten Sampat, CSO at Times Internet

Some six months ago, after shutting down Factordaily, I joined Freshworks, a fast-growing software as a service company built out of Chennai. If you’ve followed this newsletter, you know that I’ve made some seemingly random career choices and it has worked out well for me. When I joined Freshworks, I didn’t quite realize how big the Indian Software as a Service industry was going to be. But then, I started learning about it. Turns out, it could potentially be a trillion-dollar industry in a couple of decades. Some signals here: ⚡️Indian SaaS startups raised over $1 billion venture capital in 217 deals in 2018 (source).⚡️The industry is set to clock $7 billion in revenues by 2022 (source)⚡️In a recent funding round, Freshworks was valued at over $3.5 billion (source)So I sat down with Rajan (Thiyagarajan Maruthavanan), the co-founder of Upekkha earlier this month to quickly dive into the world of SaaS. We start by understanding the opportunity and then dive into how early-stage founders could look at going from 0 - $10,000 in monthly recurring revenue. Listen in to the episode on your browser or find it on Apple/Google Podcast apps, Spotify, or Stitcher; Please consider leaving us a review and rating us on Apple podcasts if you find this episode useful. ⚡️⚡️⚡️ Here are the timestamps: 1:44= SaaS revenue today vs 10 years ago2:30= Shift in the way SaaS is sold because of social and cloud5:37= $1 trillion opportunity and the magic number 667:50= Shift in the way India builds software11:30= How to think about building a product and start a SaaS company17:00= Defining a persona for whom one is trying to solve a problem 21:50= BAF business framework for SaaS25:25= Definition of a ‘product’ to remember as a mantra30:00= Pricing!33:20= Marketing for SaaS companiesRavish who co-hosts the Use Case podcast along with me was in Beijing last week. We’ll bring you some great stuff from the middle kingdom in the following editions of this newsletter. If you found this podcast useful, consider becoming a paid subscriber. The content here is largely free and supported by a handful of paid subscribers. Get full access to Turnaround at turnaround.substack.com/subscribe

Indian SaaS revolution, product design and more with Rajan, Co-founder of Upekkha

Payal Arora, digital anthropologist and author of  the book, ‘The Next Billion Users: Digital Life Beyond the West’ talks to Jayadevan on the sidelines of the Design Up conference in Bangalore on designing products for the Next Billion Users or NBUs. She is presently Professor & Chair in Tech, Values & Global Media Cultures at Erasmus University and has been researching digital behaviours in different economies for over ten years.Note: If you are listening to this episode on Apple Podcasts (click here), please do consider leaving us a good rating. It takes a few seconds, but helps make the show become more discoverable. You could also find us on other platforms like Spotify and Google Podcasts. If you want to listen to this on your phone’s browser window, just minimise the browser window and it should continue playing.TIMESTAMP:1:05 - The NBU as the new focus area for businesses and investors (especially Western)2:30 - The poor-rich gap and misunderstanding the wants of NBUs3:45 - Internet as the sole “leisure economy” for the NBU5:05 - Designing products for Next Billion Users9:50 - Catching up with socio-politics around NBU design vs allowing users to create for themselves12:30 - Surviving piracy while targeting NBUs13:25 - Implications for privacy of NBUs14:55 - Adding friction into product design to reduce social risks17:50 - Social Credit System in China, the biggest NBU product20:45 - Want for fabulousness by the NBU, digital products as an equaliser between the rich and poorLink to Payal’s website: http://payalarora.com Get full access to Turnaround at turnaround.substack.com/subscribe

Designing for Next Billion Users with Payal Arora, digital anthropologist & author

Seasoned Indian business journalist and author of ‘Big Billion Startup- The untold Flipkart story’, Mihir Dalal shares the ups and downs in Flipkart’s growth story and the journey of the people who built it. He and Ravish unpack some stories from the book that have never been told in the media before. Lots of lessons to learn from the big Indian unicorn!Listen in to this episode on your browser window (if you’re listening on your phone, the audio should continue playing even if you minimise the window) or find us on the podcast app of your choice. We’re live on Spotify, Apple, Google Podcasts & Stitcher. If you like the episode please consider leaving us a review on your favourite podcast app. Timestamp:00:50: Amazon’s influence on early Flipkart, Two Pizza teams and culture06:00: Taking risks even when there isn’t a lot of visibility, turning down early acquisition offers11:00: On pompous Venture Capital Lords and Flipkart15:00: Enter the Tiger, Lee Fixel and Deep Kalra19:00: With $10 million, Flipkart powers ahead20:01: Flipkart’s official sex appeal bringer25:00: Iyappa, the Human ERP at Flipkart29:00: Cash on Delivery as a game changer32:00: How to hold inventory without inventory33:00: Sujeet Kumar- the man who got things done37:20: Competition heats up as Amazon enters India39:00 General Atlantic shocker and emergency funding41:03: Fixing the broken bits: Kalyan Krishnamurthy 48:30: After the funding boom, Snapdeal and other rivals51:15: Mihir reads out a chapter!  Enter Softbank!64:30: Market consolidation, exits and acquisitions Get full access to Turnaround at turnaround.substack.com/subscribe

The untold Flipkart story with Mihir Dalal, Author of Big Billion Startup

One of the rising stars of the Indian fin-tech space, Nikhil, co-founder of Setu, shares with us his experience building the BHIM app, how the Fintech space is changing, his tips and tricks for building a successful SaaS startup in India, starting a business in the age of Big-Tech competition and more. We also have some fun moments discussing productivity hacks, favorite books, podcasts and more.Timestamp:1:30= Nikhil’s background and journey; 4:30= Thinking big; 8:00= Building BHIM app; 14:30 = Future of Fintech and opportunities; 19:00= Shift to value added services in payments and convergence of SaaS & Fintech business; 30:30 = Building Setu as an API business; 37:30 = Productivity, podcasts and booksYou can also listen to the show on iTunes: http://bit.ly/usecasepod Google: http://bit.ly/2nIa0DF & Spotify: http://spoti.fi/2n4elRe Get full access to Turnaround at turnaround.substack.com/subscribe

Building BHIM, future of Fintech in India & more with Nikhil Kumar

It was 2012. I'd just started working at Pluggd.in, the startup and tech site run by Ashish Sinha. Yourstory also covered startups those days. Mainstream media was still covering quarterly results at IT services companies and listening to the same "management commentary," every three months.A new fund had launched a few months ago. They called themselves a micro VC and they were writing cheques faster than you could get from Silkboard to M G Road in Bangalore. I exaggerate, but you get the drift. The fund was called Blume Ventures. It was run by Karthik Reddy and Sanjay Nath. Using their first fund, about Rs 60 crore of Indian capital (most of the money that comes into Venture Capital in India is foreign), Blume backed 70 companies. Some of them are well-known names now. Blume was also a backer of FactorDaily, the media company Pankaj and I started some three years ago (Read Lessons from a rookie entrepreneur by Pankaj here). Cut to 2019.Plugdd.in is NextBigWhat. Yourstory is Yourstory. You've been reading my story on this newsletter. Mainstream media has dedicated startup pages now. Blume is raising its third fund (nearly $100+ million). India has over 20 companies valued at over a billion dollars. This year alone about half a dozen of them were born (thanks to Softbank and some late-stage investors). Indian startups have been in hot pursuit of growth, sometimes even showing utter disregard for unit economics. Many times this is because companies heavily subsidize goods for new consumers hoping to create new market behaviours. After the WeWork fiasco, we've started hearing some chatter about profitability. In the balancing act between profitability and growth, the Indian ecosystem should have grown enough by now to show a few big exits, but apart from Flipkart, there aren’t many.Truth be told, profitability is nowhere in sight for many startups. Some have begun to question if this has become a “mindset” feature of the Indian startup multiverse.Earlier this month, Karthik wrote a provocative blog about why Indian companies need to show that they have the mettle to go public or list their stocks to be traded at an exchange. He argued that though this brings on the burden of compliance, it is high time Indian startups started showing "cash exits," and not markups to paper valuation. Ravish and I decided to do this week's Use Case podcast with Karthik to unpack what he meant by that and why it was important. With Karthik, who has shaped Blume’s investment philosophy for almost a decade and brings a wealth of prior experience across financials, technology and media, we also tried to contextualise what is happening with venture capital in India. We hope you like it. This one is meant to create ripples!You can listen to the show directly in this browser on your phone/desktop by clicking on the play button at the top of the email. Alternatively, you can find this episode of the Use Case podcast on Itunes/ Spotify/ Google Podcasts. Listen to it directly, or download it for later. If you do like the podcast, consider asking a friend to subscribe to this newsletter. Or share it on your social feeds. We'd really appreciate a shout out. Should you have any thoughts on the subject, please feel free to write to us on email or tweet it out!Other recommendations this week? Mihir Dalal's book on Flipkart which was published earlier this month. Check out here.? Sajit Pai's Tweet thread on Karthik's blog post. Read here.? Set of talks by Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Bhavish Aggarwal and others from TechSparks 2019 by Yourstory. Check here.Cheers,JPK Get full access to Turnaround at turnaround.substack.com/subscribe

Why don't more Indian startups IPO? With Karthik Reddy, Blume VP

In this episode we meet up with Ankush Gera, the CEO of Junglee Games to learn more on the start-up and gaming industry in India. We learn what the state of the nascent but fast expanding gaming industry in India is like, what it takes to build a product based business that grow at a 100% YOY, the hustle of an entrepreneur, the right way to acquire customers, and much more.  Check out our newsletter, Turnaround on Substack at https://turnaround.substack.com/about For sharing feedback or if you want us to forward your questions to our guests, please DM me on Twitter @RavBhatia Get full access to Turnaround at turnaround.substack.com/subscribe

Ankush Gera, CEO of Junglee Games on gaming industry in India & building successful product business

This week’s episode is especially for entrepreneurs who are looking to raise their first round of capital as we speak to Vinit Bhansali from Orios Venture Partners on what makes the perfect pitch deck. Some key topics covered in the episode include: What are the key elements of a pitch? Team, product, business model, long term strategy - what is the investor looking for in 10 min conversation after a conference? How can you make a VC, who gets 200+ pitch decks a week, remember your pitch? Vinit’s personal experience as an entrepreneur and pitching Common biases that VCs have while listening to pitches and what to take note of Vinit also goes on to kindly agree to mentor founders on refining their pitch and can be reached out to via Linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/in/vinitb/    If you have ideas on what you’d like to listen on the show next, please DM me on Twitter at @RavBhatia Get full access to Turnaround at turnaround.substack.com/subscribe

Mastering the start-up fundraising pitch with Vinit Bhansali from Orios Venture Partners India

We head to Beijing and meet up with Dr. Dongmin Chen, Dean of School of Innovation at Peking University who works closely with various provincial governments, WIPO and Chinese Academy of Sciences on China’s innovation policies and try to go beyond the noise in western media to have a candid discussion on what is really happening on the ground in China.    In this episode we find out not just how the Chinese government is trying to create an innovation driven economy but also how it is  thinking about it. We also probe whether the common perceptions about Chinese market in western media are true and try to answer If there is a small tech bubble emerging in China. We further discuss how universities engage in commercialisation of technology, the culture of failure and entrepreneurship in China, civil military technology diffusion and much more! Media: Trapped by YouTube Audio & Donald Trump says "China" by Huffpost Entertainment Get full access to Turnaround at turnaround.substack.com/subscribe

China's Innovation Model with Chen Dongmin, Dean of Peking University's School of Innovation

Exploring the start up world in India and learning from some of the most accomplished entrepreneurs, investors, and CXOs in India. Part of turnaround.substack.com turnaround.substack.com

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