SeedToScale | Curated by Accel

Listen hereSpotify                                                        Apple                                            SoundcloudAlex throws light on how the entrepreneurs from frontier markets are reinventing startup best practices and offering a brand new playbook for innovation that looks different from that of startups in the valley.The podcast centres around the shift of innovation from the silicon valley to the global playground. Alex talks about the incredible stories of entrepreneurs in emerging markets who maneuver challenging environments to build resilient sustainable businesses that create large social impact.To hear more from Alex on global innovation trends, tune in to the latest episode of the Insights Podcast by Accel Notes:02:31 – Genesis of ‘Out-Innovate’, the book04:44 – Future is at the frontier: Innovation increasingly coming from emerging markets08:49 – Social impact of creators16:59 – The camel approach: Building sustainability from Day 120:50 – Going global from the Get-go23:55 – Frontier innovators = Ecosystem builders

Listen hereSpotify                                                        Apple                                            SoundcloudMukesh shares how his journey as a leader has evolved over the last decade and in times of COVID, what got him to write a book, and how he manages to carve out time to give back to the community.The podcast deals with some of the most relevant topics in today’s times: focusing on holistic health, improving performance, and giving back.Notes:02:10 – Productivity in COVID times03:39 – Settling into the new rhythm of running the company05:36 – Executing fast through decentralized decision making09:36 – Hacks for managing personal physical & mental fitness13:04 – Cracking the performance code: No Limits18:09 – Importance of introspecting about purpose20:39 – Long term strategic thinking and daily healthy habits24:00 – Supporting the Olympic Gold Quest initiative 26:14 – ACT Grants and Bharat Health Stack27:50 – Rapid Fire Round

Listen hereSpotify                                                        Apple                                            SoundcloudSubrata and Prashanth share an on the ground view of the state of the VC ecosystem in India amidst the COVID situation and what to expect for the road ahead. They share advice for founders as they plan for the tough times ahead along with learnings and observations from previous economic downturns including some of the positive outcomes.The podcast clears the air around what founders can expect the fundraising situation to look like in the next near future.01:27 – Comparing COVID-19 times with dot-com bubble burst and 2008 recession06:23 – Efforts going on in the startup- VC ecosystem around helping fight COVID09:50 – Current state of Indian VC ecosystem amidst COVID13:00 – Assessing risk at a portfolio level16:08 – Actionable advice to startup founders20:20 – Planning for cash runway- time frame and approach21:55 – Advice for founders looking to startup or in pre-PMF stage24:30 – Fast forward: view of 24 months ahead28:43 – Reinventing yourself in crisis times (INSIGHTS #13: 1999 to 2018 — Ashish Hemranjani recaps the BookMyShow journey)30:25 – Fundamental transformation of some sectors31:13 – Dealing with anxiety33:25 – Rapid Fire Round 

Listen hereSpotify                                                        Apple                                            SoundcloudThis is a continuation to podcast #46 on SaaS. In this podcast, Shekhar and Krish dive deeper into the best practices for building a SaaS company out of India.Shekhar and Krish share learnings on the important tips to keep in mind for founders looking to build a large SaaS company: spending time on market research to identify the right opportunity in your area of interest, validating the problem through multiple customer interviews, building strong context on the problem before building the MVP and having the willingness to pay conversation early on. The podcast is filled with analogies and examples from Shekhar and Krish’s more than decade-long experience in SaaS. To learn more about things you need to get right to be successful in building a large SaaS company, tune in to the latest episode of the Insights Podcast by AccelListen hereSpotify                                                        Apple                                            SoundcloudNotes:01:47 – Climbing the mountain analogy05:18 – The advantage of having a strong industrial experience09:08 – First mover advantage13:32 – India advantage for SaaS startups19:00 – Picking a good founding team21:57 – Co-creating product with initial customers23:30 – Understanding go to market29:28 – Building MVP32:15 – Testing for willingness to pay from early on35:00 – Rapid Fire Round

Listen hereSpotify                                                        Apple                                            SoundcloudHow are Indian Startups dealing with the COVID-19 situation?This is a special podcast episode that deals with the tough situation that the world is facing today amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and features how the startup ecosystem in India is responding to it.We have 4 guests on the podcast this time around:  Vivekananda Hallekere, CEO & Co-founder of Bounce (two-wheeler scooter sharing solution operating in Bangalore & Hyderabad)  Abhiraj Bhal, Founder and CEO of Urban Company (managed market place for all kinds of home services) Suman Gopalan, Chief HR Officer of Freshworks (Software-as-a-Service company focused on customer engagement) Girish Menon, Head of HR, Swiggy (online food ordering and delivery platform)Podcast SummaryOur guests today represent startups employing over ten thousand employees and take out time from their schedule to share some of the best practices for dealing with the disruption to business operations. Vivek, Abhiraj, Suman, and Girish cover some of the most critical themes for business owners which include communicating within the organization and with the customers, prioritizing the health and safety of all stakeholders, planning for business continuity and dealing with challenges that come along the way. To learn more about how these leading startups are dealing with the COVID-19 situation, tune in to the latest episode of the Insights Podcast by AccelListen hereSpotify                                                        Apple                                            Soundcloud Notes -02:04 – Vivek on dealing with business continuity challenges at Bounce05:48 – Abhiraj on steps taken to continue Urban Company’s business line10:24 – Suman on the steps they’re taking at Freshworks globally15:12 – Limiting exposure vs. extreme measure at the cost of losing business20:45 – Best practices on communicating to customers21:58 – Girish on educating customers and 2 lakh + delivery executives at scale27:30 – Dealing with challenges in rolling out Business Continuity Plans for work from home35:24 – Keeping employee productivity in check38:40 – Impact of COVID-19 on business plan and runway

Spotify Link: https://open.spotify.com/show/1YQdnQ50mmenzWVA2MBsQy Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/insights-podcast-series/id1364412685The several success stories of Zoho, Freshworks, Browserstack, Icertis who have all reached several hundred million dollars in ARR with most of their product built in India give proof points for the possibility to build large scale SaaS companies coming out of India.Unlike the 90s when software was a one-time sale, the subscription nature of SaaS pricing ensures that the interests of the customer and the software vendor are well aligned. Today, there are over a hundred thousand software companies serving over two thousand categories with over five hundred billion dollars spent on software purchases. The SaaS industry is just one hundred fifty to two hundred billion dollars, so there’s another three hundred billion dollars of traditional on-prem software that needs to be replaced. Another opportunity exists in creating a product for the customers currently being served by custom software solutions built by the large IT services companies. At the same time, new industries are seeing digitization, creating more opportunities for building software. In terms of liquidity as well, SaaS as a sector offers significant options- from an active M&A market and active interest from venture capital and private equity to fund growth to several examples of companies going public. Krish ends by quoting Jason Lemkin, “In a SaaS business, once you cross $10M with good momentum, you basically become unkillable because of the recurring nature of the business”

In the first episode of 2020's #InsightsPodcast series, we take a look back to round up the learnings that 2019’s series left us with.We kick-start 2020’s #InsightsPodcast series with a special episode that offers a quick roundup of our 2019 podcasts and presents the top 12 highly recommended insights for entrepreneurs. Finding the right opportunity The bare essential task of identifying the right opportunity is something that every founding team must go through. 1.Farid Ahsan of Sharechat shares how he and his co-founders went about discovering the idea. “We started observing why people were making WhatsApp groups and sharing content on them.” 2.Ritesh Arora of Browserstack shares the importance of thinking global from early on, helping expand the opportunity set for the startup. 3.Kunal Shah of Cred shares his framework on how startups can validate whether their idea is creating a delta change in consumer behaviour and emphasises the importance of picking a market opportunity with good tailwinds. “Great product-market fits even with mediocre founders create a lot of value while terrible product-market fits with great founders can never create value. Fighting headwinds only burns fuel.” Building a team and culture to go after that idea The team forms the building block of any organisation and is an integral contributor to the success of a startup. A good culture keeps the team motivated to keep going after the problem. 4.Naveen Tewari of Inmobi talks about the importance of having a co-founder in the roller-coaster of a journey that entrepreneurship comprises. “Most of the moments in the journey are low moments. The co-founder’s role is to bring you out of these low moments that you’re in and vice versa.” 5.Binny Bansal of Flipkart shares about the importance of being willing to ‘let go’ and empowering your team. “We realised that only way to scale the company was to hire people like us, to do the things that we do - there were going to be hundreds of things to do and we would need hundreds of people would need to work like we work, every day.” 6.Girish Mathrubootham of Freshworks talks about focusing about culture and building a work environment that motivates and inspires the team. “Anybody can create a happy work environment, but the real happiness is when people really feel that they’re playing to their strengths, the job is tapping their potential and giving them an opportunity to learn, and that they have managers who they see as role models.” Raising money and building a sustainable company With a boundless vision comes the need to find the right support, and finding the right investor can really help a startup. 7.Harsh Jain of Dream11 talks about the advantage of meeting investors ahead of fundraising. “Meet VCs six months or a year before raising money and get honest, open feedback. When the journey and progress is shared with VCs, they’re much more vested.” 8. Deep Kalra of Makemytrip talks about the importance of unit economics and scaling sustainably. “Irrespective of the kind of business, you should not be losing money on a variable cost basis.” Key lessons for founders’ growth In the greater scheme of the startup journey, the founder’s individual self often gets ignored. Here are some key insights on keeping a founder’s growth on track. 9. Shradha Sharma of YourStory talks about the founder’s growth journey being more internal and how entrepreneurship is a journey of patience and perseverance. “You have to internally reflect very deeply on what you want.” 10. Nandan Nilekani of Infosys and the man behind the Aadhaar programme talks about the importance of being execution-focused. 11. Ritesh Agarwal of Oyo talks about the importance of perseverance. 12. Dheeraj Pandey of Nutanix shares his valuable insights on balancing family life along with running a startup.

In this edition of the #INSIGHTSPodcast series, we have with us Aditya Agarwal and Ruchi Sanghvi, both of whom were early members of Facebook's engineering team. Aditya was the first Director of Product Engineering at Facebook. He also co-founded Cove, a modern collaboration software company that was acquired by Dropbox, where he went on to join as the VP of Engineering and Chief Technology Officer. He was also on the board of Flipkart. Ruchi was the first female engineer at Facebook, and went on to co-found Cove along with Aditya and Akhil Wable. Cove was a collaboration, coordination and communication product for organisations and communities. On acquisition by Dropbox, she joined in as the VP of Operations. She also established South Park Commons, a residential and professional tech space that functions similarly to a hackerspace. Ruchi graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a degree in electrical computer engineering in 2004, a time when it was tough for international students to find a job in the US. While extending her stay at the university so she could interview with more companies, Ruchi became a power user of Facebook, was fascinated about what they were building and went on to join them as their first female engineer. Growing up in Southeast Asia, Aditya graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a degree in computer science and joined Facebook as one of its first five engineers. Facebook's hacker culture Aditya and Ruchi share their Facebook experience, including being part of some of the earliest architecture - the Facebook search engine and the News Feed. Giving a glimpse into Facebook's hacker culture from the early days, Ruchi and Aditya share how the engineers were always into building something- a minimum usable version- much before the concept of MVP was talked about. Aditya talks about the importance of focusing on tooling and infrastructure to be able to deploy faster even at scale with a conscious effort to improve iteration speed and tracking it just as closely as the business metrics. Ruchi speaks about the importance of adding light-weight processes that are built for the work environment of your company, and updating these processes every four months to make the product management practice in the organisation stronger. After Facebook, Ruchi and Aditya decided to start up on their own to change the way organisations communicate and collaborate with Cove. The startup went on to become Dropbox's first acquisition. Culture of original thinking Discussing the pros and cons of starting a company with your partner, Ruchi highlights the importance of being cognizant of each other's strengths and weaknesses, making sure that one partner isn't dragging the other along and that both want to participate, and finally having a clear understanding from the start on who's taking the lead. On the hiring front, Ruchi says, "When companies find product-market fit, everything feels like it is falling apart. You need to hire enough people to keep things going. At that point, most people are often looking for the unicorn hire - someone who is perfect when the company is just 50 people but can also scale with the company when it gets to 100 people, is an individual contributor, and an excellent manager. It becomes impossible to find this unicorn hire at that stage. People need to reset expectations on how this person can help your company today and in the next one to two years, and be comfortable that their roles might evolve over the next few years." Aditya and Ruchi end by sharing tips on how they manage their personal lives and their excitement for the way the Indian startup ecosystem is shaping up.

In this episode of the #INSIGHTSPodcast series, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Chairperson and MD of Biocon, talks about starting up and her strategic shift to the biopharma industry, and gives young entrepreneurs advice on innovation, problem-solving, and mentorship. We continue with the #INSIGHTSPodcast series and on this episode, we have with us Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Chairperson and Managing Director of Biocon. A pioneer of the biotech industry in India and the head of the country’s leading biotechnology enterprise, Kiran is a highly respected business leader and has been named among Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. She’s a recognised global thought leader in biotechnology and has been awarded the Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan, two of India’s highest civilian honours. Today, Biocon is one of Asia’s largest biopharmaceutical companies — 12,000-people strong with 30 percent women, most of whom are scientists. It focuses on diabetes and cancer as thrust areas and has a vision of making global impact on healthcare by providing affordable access to life-saving drugs. On this podcast, Kiran talks about her journey, building Biocon, how she started out, built a great team, and went on to take the company to IPO. She also shares insights on how founders can find a good work-life balance by prioritising what matters most to them. An accidental entrepreneur Kiran calls herself an “accidental entrepreneur”, starting Biocon when she was discriminated against as a woman while applying for the job of a brewmaster. She set up Biocon in 1978, initially focusing on the enzyme industry, and made a strategic shift to the biopharmaceutical industry as it was a much bigger opportunity — riding the shift in cancer care from chemotherapy to immunotherapy. Starting up at the age of 25, in a field that was not understood by many, raising capital was not an easy task. Especially at a time when a woman entrepreneur without collateral was considered a high financial and business risk. Hiring talent was another challenge. As Kiran started building her company, she aggressively pursued building the team, hiring people with complementary skills to form the core team, and incentivised them with rich stock options. A bottomline-driven business In 2004, Kiran did a lot of roadshows and went IPO, to raise capital for the business. She wasn’t concerned about raising the value of the company, but made sure it was profitable in the last four quarters before going public and had clear visibility on profits in the foreseeable future. She says today’s companies are topline-driven in contrast to her business that is “bottomline-driven”. Opportunities to learn On her personal growth, Kiran says she used her team as a think-tank and used her mentors to draw inspiration and for brainstorming. “Mentors in an entrepreneur’s journey should only help stay focused. I don’t think any entrepreneur should keep going back to a mentor asking ‘what should I do next’? That is not entrepreneurship,” she says. “Entrepreneurs need to script their own journey, figure out their own things, and solve problems. If you keep running back to your mentor at the drop of your hat, you’re not an entrepreneur. A true entrepreneur is a risk-taker, problem-solver, a person who’s willing to face challenges and failure.” Kiran says she encourages young entrepreneurs to not worry about making mistakes and see them as opportunities to learn. Adding to her advice, she urges them not to wait to develop the perfect product and to instead go to market first. Continuing to reiterate how AI can help transform healthcare, she also gives her take on work-life balance. Kiran believes the answer to this question is only one: “Prioritisation”. Tune in to the podcast to hear more interesting insights from Kiran’s journey of launching and growing Biocon.

INSIGHTS #42 Madhavan Ramanujam of Simon-Kucher gives his take on monetising innovation by Accel