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The Neon Show
Siddhartha Ahluwalia
325 episodes
19 hours ago
A 14-year journey from bootstrap to scale. Exotel’s story is one of India’s most remarkable SaaS journeys. Shivakumar Ganesan, started Exotel in 2011, bootstrapping it from the ground up. In 2012, he raised a seed round of ₹2.5 crore, but for the next eight years, the company grew without any external funding. Then came COVID and revenue went from $10M to $5M and what followed were bold strategic moves. 3 funding rounds, 2 major acquisitions, and the decision to stay focused on the Indian mar...
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Entrepreneurship
Business
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All content for The Neon Show is the property of Siddhartha Ahluwalia and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.
A 14-year journey from bootstrap to scale. Exotel’s story is one of India’s most remarkable SaaS journeys. Shivakumar Ganesan, started Exotel in 2011, bootstrapping it from the ground up. In 2012, he raised a seed round of ₹2.5 crore, but for the next eight years, the company grew without any external funding. Then came COVID and revenue went from $10M to $5M and what followed were bold strategic moves. 3 funding rounds, 2 major acquisitions, and the decision to stay focused on the Indian mar...
Show more...
Entrepreneurship
Business
Episodes (20/325)
The Neon Show
15 Years Of Investing Lessons In 75 Minutes With Prime Ventures and Stellaris Partners | Neon Show
There are No Checklists or Frameworks on HOW TO BE A VC? So how do you even know if it’s the right path for you? Unlike most jobs, venture capital comes with an extremely long feedback loop. It can take years before you know whether the bets you made actually worked out. That’s why most seasoned VCs say: only choose this path if you're in it for the long haul. This conversation will help you think through that choice. Whether you’re considering VC as a career, love building businesses, ...
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6 days ago
1 hour 16 minutes

The Neon Show
Why Traditional Playbooks Are Failing & What Really Works In SAAS? | WizCommerce, Pienomial & Merlin
Vertical SaaS customers don’t buy software for 10 months, they buy it for 10 years. That’s the opportunity and the challenge. Switching costs are high, which makes it hard to get in but once you’re in, you’re in. But regular SaaS playbooks don't work here. Forget PLG. Forget design partners. These industries have been burned too many times by bad software. Here, Trust defines GTM. Think warm introductions and on-site meetings, not cold emails and Zoom calls. But for founders building in verti...
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1 week ago
1 hour 24 minutes

The Neon Show
Why Stripe Paid $150M For a Young Indian Startup | Saurya Prakash Sinha | Recko
Recko's acquisition by Stripe is one of India's biggest B2B exits. It's a great headline. But headlines don't tell the full story. They capture one final outcome not the numerous obstacles faced. In this episode, Saurya Prakash Sinha, co-founder of Recko, tells us what really happened behind the scenes. From the early days when no one was buying, no VC was funding, and they had just $500 left in the bank to building a product Stripe couldn't ignore. Saurya also shares hard-w...
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2 weeks ago
1 hour 2 minutes

The Neon Show
Zomato: $500B Consumer Tech Bet, Tesla's $30T Future & Why India must lead Nuclear Energy|Deepak Garg
The dollar will lose its status as the world’s reserve currency & the greatest wealth transfer in history is already underway - warns the founder of one of India’s fastest-growing unicorns! In this episode, Deepak Garg, founder of Rivigo and AnywhereJobs shares why Rivigo's iconic Relay model succeeded, and what ultimately limited it. He predicts Zomato's dominance, questions funding choices of startups and shares why India may miss the AI revolution without a radical energy shift. ...
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3 weeks ago
51 minutes

The Neon Show
What's Happening to VC in India w/ All In Capital, Peer Capital & Upekkha
Venture capital is much fancied today. Is this job which looks like cutting cheques for products and founders you like, for everyone? As for any work, there are traits you should have and some which won’t help you on the job. We have with us Kushal Bhagia (All In Capital), Karthik Prabhakar (Peer Capital), and Rajan (Upekkha). Three people who interestingly all began as engineers and took different career paths to today become Fund managers of leading VC firms. All In Capital’s $24M pre-seed ...
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1 month ago
55 minutes

The Neon Show
3 Tech Founders on Whether AI Will Replace Your Job ft Rahul, Ananda and Vishwa
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” In this episode of The Neon Show, Vishwa (Co-founder of ZenDuty) is joined by Rahul Sasi (Co-founder of CloudSEK) and Ananda Krishna (Co-founder of Astra Security). They share how AI feels magical now. And how as founders they are trying to sprinkle this magic everywhere from how building products to building teams and everything that matters. ------------- 00:00 Everything is being Reimagined! 00:41 Meet the New H...
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1 month ago
38 minutes

The Neon Show
How to Hire, Train & Retain Talent to Build a Great Company | Vijay Rayapati | Khadim Batti
In this episode, we sit down with two exceptional founders. One who is going after the biggest category, and one who created a new category and became its leading player. Vijay Rayapati (Co-founder, Atomicwork) and Khadim Batti (Co-founder, Whatfix) share their hard-earned insights on what it truly takes to build a great company. From closing million-dollar deals remotely to building AI-native organisations and cultivating long-term leadership, this conversation goes deep into the real playbo...
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1 month ago
1 hour 28 minutes

The Neon Show
$1Billion CRM from India competing with Salesforce | Nilesh Patel, LeadSquared
CRM is a category often equated with its market leader, Salesforce. Hence, companies and investors question the viability of building a business in this space. Nilesh Patel, founder of Leadsquared, who built a Unicorn in CRM, joins us today. We discuss the category, the business, and its competitors. With Byju’s as their first large deal, Edtech brought over 40% of their customers. Then the industry went through a downfall, but Leadsquared survived by a well timed expansion. From lack of capi...
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2 months ago
47 minutes

The Neon Show
Can Neysa be India's AI Cloud alternative to AWS, Azure & Google Cloud? | Sharad Sanghi
Meet Sharad Sanghi who built India’s first data center, he spent 25 years building Netmagic, India’s largest data center company. He came to India in 1995, worked at VSNL as the country was discovering the internet, and built a company focused on internet for businesses. Now he is building Neysa, an AI cloud startup, which recently raised $50M to help businesses adopt AI, all from India. With Neysa businesses can use AI without writing a lot of code or use five different tools to run it...
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2 months ago
51 minutes

The Neon Show
How Accel Deploys $650M in India & Manages $5B in Growth + Late Stage | Prayank Swaroop
In this episode of The Neon Show, we bring you into the room with someone who’s spent over a decade backing India’s most ambitious companies. We're joined by Prayank Swaroop, Partner at Accel. With over 14 years in venture capital, Prayank walks us through his journey of discovering and building expertise in specific sectors—from cybersecurity and developer tools to SaaS and marketplaces—and how VCs identify the categories they truly understand. We dive into how Accel chooses best founders, a...
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2 months ago
51 minutes

The Neon Show
Lightspeed’s $500M bet on India with 1/3rd in AI Companies | Dev Khare
Is it time for investors to move beyond the valley when analyzing India? Dev Khare, Partner at Lightspeed agrees. He shares with us an interesting view on two funding models: The Silicon valley model begins with raising millions of dollars & going through huge negative cashflow for years. Hopefully building a great product or maybe even creating a new market. And a few years later, comes out with super fast growth & revenue potential of millions & billions of dollars. Wherea...
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2 months ago
1 hour 13 minutes

The Neon Show
10 Unicorns, 5 IPOs, 26 Acquisitions – India’s OG VC, Avnish Bajaj On Why Only Founders Matter
In this episode, Avnish Bajaj, Founding Partner at Z47 (formerly Matrix Partners India), shares what it takes to build one of India's most competitive VC firms and land the best startup deals. With over 20 years of experience, Avnish has been at the forefront of India’s venture capital industry. He co-founded Matrix Partners India in 2006 after a successful entrepreneurial journey with Baazee.com, which he later sold to eBay, serving as its Chairman & Country Manager. From founder to ange...
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3 months ago
1 hour 18 minutes

The Neon Show
Sharad Sharma On India’s Digital Playbook, UPI’s Rise & AI’s Future
In this episode of The Neon Show, we have Sharad Sharma, founder of iSPIRT, the technology think tank behind India Stack, Health Stack, and other digital public goods. If you want to understand where India’s digital space is headed, how AI can shape its future, and why strategic autonomy is critical, this episode is a must-watch! 0:00 – Introduction 03:12 – India’s aim to prevent digital colonization 05:00 – Democratising digital infrastructure 07:09 – UPI’s 2012 vision: intraday loan ...
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3 months ago
1 hour 59 minutes

The Neon Show
Zerodha’s Move Into A ₹68 Lakh Cr Industry | Vishal Jain On Expanding India’s 8% Investor Base
In this episode, we have Vishal Jain, CEO of Zerodha Fund House, who brings over two decades of experience in building ETFs and passive investment products. From launching India’s first-ever ETF with Benchmark AMC in 2001 to now leading the country’s first passive-only AMC, Vishal has contributed through various roles to India's financial markets. We break down: - The history of mutual funds in India from the 1960s to today’s ₹68 Lakh Cr AUM industry. - Why index funds & ETFs are transfor...
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3 months ago
43 minutes

The Neon Show
Investor And Policymaker Jayant Sinha On Indian Economy And India’s Net Zero Goals
A seasoned investor who ran India's Finance Ministry. This week on The Neon Show, we welcome Jayant Sinha—Investor, Policy Maker, and former Minister of Finance & Civil Aviation. Mr. Sinha shares how the government builds innovative investment solutions for startups and large-scale funding programs for institutions. He played a key role in launching a ₹2,000 crore Fund of Funds, which invests in startups through domestic VCs. He was also instrumental in establishing India’s Sovereign Weal...
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3 months ago
1 hour 18 minutes

The Neon Show
2X SaaS Founder: How To Sell Global Tech Products From India | Sharath Narayana
In this episode, Sharath shares his journey of building two successful AI-driven enterprise solutions. Sharath Keshava Narayana, founder of Sanas and Observe shares his market-product fit approach of winning enterprise clients in the US- Identifying large, underserved markets and solving their biggest problems. He also dives into fundraising stories, from getting into Y Combinator to attracting top VCs, leading to an $8 million seed round. Sharath emphasizes why founders must be grea...
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3 months ago
1 hour 27 minutes

The Neon Show
How We Closed Our Biggest Fund ($300M) | Alok & Ritesh | Stellaris Venture Partners
Venture Capitalists on Venture Capital In this episode we have Alok Goyal and Ritesh Banglani, Partners at Stellaris Venture Partners, one of India’s top VC firms. We go into details on running a VC firm in India. We discuss the ambition of Indian founders, what are the next B2B SaaS billion-dollar outcomes, market-first vs. founder-first investments, decision-making process at Stellaris and why DPI (Distributed to Paid-in Capital) is the ultimate measure of success. If you’re curiou...
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4 months ago
1 hour 29 minutes

The Neon Show
75 Minutes Of Pure Business Insights From The Man Behind BigBasket, BlueStone & HomeLane
Ganesh Krishnan is the man behind some of India’s most iconic startups, including BigBasket, Bluestone, Homelane, and TutorVista—India’s first ed-tech startup before ed-tech was even a category.Ganesh explains how he thinks about business opportunities in India, why he keeps it simple, and why Indian entrepreneurs need to keep it simple. He shares candid stories—from raising BigBasket’s first $10M on a flight to successfully exiting an ed-tech company 15 years ago.If you’re curious about Indi...
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4 months ago
1 hour 15 minutes

The Neon Show
Nvidia’s Success, Chip Race, India’s Semiconductor Mission, & Hardware Vs Software with Raja Manickam
In this episode, we take a deep dive into the fascinating history of semiconductors, their evolution over the years, the rise of old giants and new disruptors, and explore why India has yet to produce a leader in one of the most important technological races of all time. Raja Manickam, a serial entrepreneur in the semiconductor industry, shares from his decades of experience about the business and science of semiconductors and offers a glimpse into the future Timestamps 0:00 - Trailer...
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4 months ago
1 hour 6 minutes

The Neon Show
How India’s Leadership is Shaping the Future with R. Balasubramaniam, Capacity Building Commission
India’s leadership story is a fascinating journey full of lessons for anyone looking to make an impact. In just two years, opening up the space economy has led to over 100 new startups in aerospace, sparking innovation and fueling the dreams of a new generation of changemakers. And it doesn’t stop there—India is heavily investing in future-focused areas like green hydrogen, quantum computing, and the blue economy, showing a clear vision for industries that will define tomorrow. Drawing fro...
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5 months ago
58 minutes

The Neon Show
A 14-year journey from bootstrap to scale. Exotel’s story is one of India’s most remarkable SaaS journeys. Shivakumar Ganesan, started Exotel in 2011, bootstrapping it from the ground up. In 2012, he raised a seed round of ₹2.5 crore, but for the next eight years, the company grew without any external funding. Then came COVID and revenue went from $10M to $5M and what followed were bold strategic moves. 3 funding rounds, 2 major acquisitions, and the decision to stay focused on the Indian mar...