Founder Thesis

It’s no secret that the business model of the internet is basically advertising. Think about what you spend time doing online - there’s a high chance that 80% of the time you are viewing ads. And you might think that the business of serving ads to consumers is done and dusted, but there are still opportunities for startups to win ad dollars away from the googles and the Metas of the world, and one such startup is Adonmo.Adonmo started life as a company converting cabs into ad spaces by installing screens on them. And this was a smart move if you think about it - the offline advertising market is the last great untapped opportunity, and cabs are the perfect way to run hyperlocal ads that dynamically change based on location and time of day. But life had different plans for this young startup, and they went through multiple near-death experiences before finally emerging as a dominant offline hyperlocal ads platform that has raised more than 40 million dollars from the likes of Zomato and others.Listen to the rollercoaster story of Adonmo’s journey straight from its amazing founder Sandeep Bommireddi in this episode of the Founder Thesis podcast, with your host Akshay Datt.

I can bet that almost all of you who are listening to this episode of the Founder Thesis podcast would have interacted with Vehant’s products.    The next time you go into an airport or an office building, take a look at the brand name on the baggage scanner that they are using - there’s a very high chance that you will see Vehant’s logo on it.  But Vehant is so much more than a company that makes X Ray baggage scanners, and in this episode of the Founder Thesis podcast, your host Akshay Datt interviews Kapil Bardeja who founded the company pretty much straight out of college.   The humble startup that was born in the dorm rooms of IIT Delhi is today helping the government power futuristic smart city projects and bring India at par with the western world in terms of the security infrastructure.  Stay tuned for a deep dive into the business of security and safety and subscribe to the Founder Thesis podcast on Youtube or any audio streaming app.

Globally, the market research industry is at least worth a hundred billion dollars!  We really are living in a world where everything is market researched. The ads you watch on TV, the packing designs of products you use, even the movies you watch - they have all gone through a validation process using market research. The reason for this is simple really. When a company intends to spend millions of dollars on a product, they want to reduce the risk of failure.  In this episode of the Founder Thesis podcast, your host Akshay Datt speaks with Rajiv Lamba - the founder of the market research tech company - Neurosensum and Surveysensum.  In this freewheeling chat about entrepreneurship and market research, Rajiv shares valuable insights about the business of market research, building a business with profitability as the primary goal, and b2b sales.  Stay tuned for the conversation and subscribe to the Founder Thesis podcast on any Youtube, Spotify or any streaming app

If you want to understand the evolution of Entrepreneurship in India over the decades, then there is really no better story than this.  Srikumar Misra is the son of an entrepreneur who made the mistake of taking a bank loan backed by him home, and his untimely death ended up teaching the young Sri a valuable lesson about the risks of entrepreneurship.    And you might think that this experience would scar him for life, but it was actually the opposite - despite having a successful global career in the Tata Group, he decided to quit his well-paying job and come back to India to set up a consumer brand in the dairy industry in his home state of Odisha.   And after a 2-year struggle to raise funds to get his business off the ground - Sri finally succeeded in launching Milk Mantra which sells its products under the Milky Moo brand name and is one of the few profitable players in the premium dairy segment.   After scaling Milk Mantra, Sri was bitten by the entrepreneurial bug again and he is currently building Aarna Protocol - the first of its kind AI powered crypto investing platform.   This conversation is a gem in which Sri took us from the very offline and traditional world of selling dairy products to building a tokenized decentralised finance platform to invest in crypto currency.  Stay tuned and subscribe to the Founder Thesis podcast with Akshay Datt.

Whenever we have featured founders who have scaled their businesses meaningfully, it is typically because they have been good at acquiring customers and increasing their lifetime value. But Mayur Abhaya, our guest in this episode, has scaled LifeCell to an annual revenue of about 800 crores on the back of its strong supply chain & delivery capabilities. Mayur’s father was a serial entrepreneur in the pharma and healthcare space and built Shasun Pharma into a 500-million-dollar global pharma manufacturing player. He also set up Lifecell as he saw the gap in the market for stem cell banking. Mayur joined the business when the topline was just 20 crores and over the last 16 years has expanded the business both geographically and in terms of product lines. Today just one fourth of their turnover comes from the original business line of stem cell banking, and some of their business lines are around delivering cutting edge healthcare products to the Indian consumer at amazingly affordable prices.If you care about health-tech then there is no better episode than this for a deeper understanding of the space. Stay tuned and subscribe to the Founder Thesis podcast with your host Akshay Datt.

For a lot of people, hospitality is their ultimate entrepreneurship dream, and they aspire to start a restaurant or a cafe and quit their stressful corporate world career.In this episode of the Founder Thesis podcast - we speak to a hospitality founder who has built and scaled a truly unique hospitality business and given a new age avatar to a very old business.Most of you would be aware of the concept of clubs. Iconic clubs like the Gymkhana club in Delhi have a membership wait time that is measured in decades!!!Vivek saw that there is a massive gap between such old-world clubs and the young India which also aspired for a third place where they can belong to a community, work, experience culture or just unwind. And that is the space that The Quorum club is filling. In this fascinating conversation, Vivek explains what this industry looks like, the business model of Clubs, and the playbook of scaling a very heavily service oriented business. Stay tuned to get a peek into the fascinating world of clubs and subscribe to the Founder Thesis podcast for more such sector specific deep dives.

Some founders are born lucky - and some founders are born to fight against tremendous odds and adversities. This is the story of Vinod Singh who was born in a village in UP which did not even have electricity, and yet through sheer grit and willpower - ended up becoming the CTO of a startup in the UK. And you might think that this is the happy ending of the story, but like they say - picture abhi baaki hai. Vinod then started a business that was initially built around leveraging the potential of IOT technology, and which eventually pivoted to selling software to speciality insurance companies. And that was the birth of Concirrus which went on to raise more than $40mn over the next couple of years. But that is when things fell apart and the founders realised that they had diluted so much of their equity that they no longer had any control over the future of Concirrus and they were on the verge of declaring bankruptcy.Stay tuned to learn what happened next as your host Akshay Datt speaks to Vinod Singh about his amazing journey as a founder and don’t forget to subscribe to the Founder Thesis podcast.

If there is one takeaway from this conversation, then it’s simply this - Boring is beautiful.ProcMart is in the boring business of managing non-core indirect procurements for manufacturers. And by taking care of this simple but time intensive task for companies, ProcMart will cross 1000 crores in turnover this year. The credit for this massive achievement goes to Anish Popli - the founder of ProcMart who loves all things boring. In fact - he shares that their profit margins are actually much higher on simple boring products than on complex products.This episode is proof that as a founder, you must have the maturity to not get distracted by shiny new things and sexy ideas but just keep your head down and execute well. Stay tuned for this insightful conversation and subscribe to the Founder Thesis podcast for more such counterintuitive insights from successful entrepreneurs.

It is rare for D2C startups to be bootstrapped because they need to burn cash to acquire customers initially. But the Just Herbs story is proof that there are clever growth hacks that can help you grow your D2C brand while remaining bootstrapped.Arush Chopra was an aspiring actor who stumbled into a role in private equity which led to the start of his journey in the world of startups. He started Just Herbs with his wife and mother in 2014 out of his family home in Chandigarh. Today, Just Herbs outsells brands like Maybelline and Lakme in the lipsticks category and counts Marico as its primary backer.This conversation is a gem for D2C founders and Arush shares some amazing insights around product channel fit, co-building with customers and running a profitable D2C startup.Stay tuned for tons of insights and subscribe to the founder thesis podcast on any audio streaming app

About Arjun MalhotraArjun Malhotra is the General Partner at Good Capital, an India-focused, seed-stage venture capital fund that he co-founded with his late brother, Rohan Malhotra. Before becoming a full-time investor, Arjun co-founded Investopad, a startup incubator that became a vibrant community hub for entrepreneurs. The 12 angel investments made during this time, including in the future unicorn Meesho, formed a portfolio that generated a 138% IRR and has since returned over 50 times the initial capital. Recognized by Forbes 30 Under 30, Arjun has led Good Capital to build a portfolio of over 25 startups, achieve successful exits like Simsim's acquisition by Google, and is now deploying a fund targeting over $50 million to back the next generation of Indian founders.Key Insights from the Conversation The Contrarian Thesis: Good Capital's strategy is a direct rebuttal to the Silicon Valley playbook; it focuses on empowering India's massive network of intermediaries (agents, resellers, local stores) with technology rather than trying to replace them. The Power of Constraints: Capital constraints in their early days forced a highly disciplined, high-conviction investment model, which Arjun now sees as a strategic advantage against the "silent killer" of making too many low-conviction bets. Founder-Problem Fit: Arjun prioritizes founders who are "deeply entrenched in the problem statement" and on a "journey of learning," often preferring them over seasoned experts who might be constrained by conventional wisdom. Betting on Unique Behaviors: Instead of top-down market sizing, Good Capital looks for unique, counterintuitive user behaviors that, if extrapolated, could unlock massive, previously unseen markets, as was the case with Meesho. AI as an Augmentation Tool: The firm's focus is on startups that use AI to "supercharge" human intermediaries—handling tasks they aren't good at—thereby combining human trust with technological efficiency.YouTube Chapters & Timestamps[00:00] - An "Accidental" Journey into Venture Capital[02:29] - The Investopad Experiment: From "Terrible Ideas" to Community Hub[10:02] - Becoming Angel Investors & Building a 50x-Return Portfolio[14:14] - The VC Playbook: Good Capital's Network-Driven Strategy[25:06] - The "Silent Killer" of Optionality & The Launch of Fund I[33:19] - The Art of Fundraising: Pitching LPs on a "Blind Pool" of Capital[38:39] - The Contrarian Thesis: Why Good Capital Bets on Middlemen[54:15] - How to Build High Conviction: Evaluating Founders, Ideas, and Markets[1:04:16] - Learning from Mistakes: The "Anti-Portfolio" & Borrowed Conviction[1:09:15] - The VC Mindset: How to Stay Sharp and Keep LearningYouTube Hashtags#FounderThesis #ArjunMalhotra #GoodCapital #VentureCapital #StartupIndia #IndianStartups #Entrepreneurship #FounderJourney #StartupFunding #InvestmentStrategy #Meesho #ProductMarketFit #AngelInvesting #SeedFunding #MakeInIndia #StartupPodcast #VC #TechIndia #Investopad