"Infrastructure always beats applications."

This is the core philosophy that made Sharad Sanghi one of India's most successful tech entrepreneurs.

While others built consumer apps, he built the data centers that powered them. Now at 56, he's doing it again with AI infrastructure, showing why betting on the plumbing beats betting on the applications.

Sharad Sanghi is a pioneer who built India's technology infrastructure backbone. He founded NetMagic in 1998, India's first data center company, scaling it to ₹3,600 crores revenue and 19 data centers before selling to NTT Communications for $116 million. Under his leadership, the company grew to serve 1,500+ enterprise customers with 300MW of IT capacity. After a successful exit, he's now building his second unicorn - Neysa, an AI cloud platform that raised $50 million in just 6 months. With degrees from IIT Bombay and Columbia University, and experience building the early internet backbone in the US, Sharad brings 30+ years of infrastructure expertise to India's AI revolution.

Key Insights from the Conversation:

👉Infrastructure-First Strategy: Building foundational technology layers creates more defensible businesses than applications

👉Crisis Management: Survived dot-com crash and 2008 financial crisis through disciplined focus on profitability over growth

👉Zero Layoff Philosophy: Maintained employment through multiple economic downturns, proving empathy drives long-term success

👉80-20 Cloud Strategy: Competed with hyperscalers by focusing on 20% of features that 80% of customers actually use

👉AI Market Opportunity: India's transition from labor arbitrage to product innovation creates massive global opportunities

👉Supply-Constrained Business: Data center and AI infrastructure businesses benefit from demand exceeding supply

👉Second Innings Mentality: Starting a new venture at 56 proves age is irrelevant when solving transformative problems

This insightful conversation was conducted by Akshay Datt, serial entrepreneur and host of Founder Thesis, India's leading startup-focused podcast featuring deep conversations with disruptive founders.

#DataCenter #CloudComputing #AIInfrastructure #StartupPodcast #TechEntrepreneur #IndianStartups #AICloud #Infrastructure #Entrepreneurship #TechFounder #CloudAI #DataCenters #AIRevolution #TechLeadership #StartupJourney #IndianTech #AIAdoption #TechInnovation #CloudInfrastructure #aibusinessideas

Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the speaker, not necessarily the channel

"80 to 90% of income for all artists, even Arijit Singh and Shreya Ghoshal, comes from live events only. YouTube pays barely 1-2 paise per stream today."

This shocking revelation from Gaurav Dagaonkar exposes the broken economics of the music industry. While millions stream their favorite songs, artists make almost nothing from digital plays - a problem that led him to build Hoopr, India's leading music licensing platform.

Gaurav Dagaonkar is the Co-founder and CEO of Hoopr, India's leading music licensing platform serving over 200,000 creators and 125+ enterprise clients including Myntra, ITC, and Marico. An IIM Ahmedabad MBA who rejected corporate placements to pursue music, Gaurav spent over a decade as a successful Bollywood music director working on films like Joker, Heartless, and Lanka. His YouTube channel Songfest has garnered half a million followers. After experiencing the industry's broken economics firsthand, he built Hoopr, which has raised multiple funding rounds and revolutionized how creators access licensed music. Host Akshay Datt explores how domain expertise combined with business acumen created this remarkable entrepreneurial success story.

Key Insights from the Conversation:

👉Industry Economics: Music streaming pays artists only 1-3 paise per play, forcing 80-90% of artist income to come from live performances

👉Market Opportunity: Only 1-2% of venues comply with music licensing laws, representing a massive untapped market

👉Customer Validation: Hoopr interviewed 150+ creators and 50+ brands before building their platform, ensuring strong product-market fit

👉Revenue Model Innovation: Rejecting minimum guarantee models in favor of transparent unit economics created sustainable growth

👉Creator Impact: Independent artists can earn more from a single micro-sync license than years of streaming revenue

👉Copyright Complexity: Indian artists gave away both publishing and master rights, unlike Western markets where artists retained publishing control

#entrepreneurship #startup #musicindustry #creatoreconomy #iimahmedabad #bollywood #musictech #foundingindia #musiclicensing #startupjourney #businessbuilding #artistrights #copyrightlaw #digitalcreators #musicbusiness #startupfunding #productmarketfit #indianstartups #creativeindustry #founderstory #musicentrepreneur #techinnovation #platformbusiness #revenuemodel #sustainablebusiness #startuplife #entrepreneurmindset

Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the speaker, not necessarily the channel

"Cash is just a commodity. What truly attracts top entrepreneurs is the connection you build."

Ashish Taneja completely flips the traditional investor-founder power dynamic in this eye-opening conversation with host Akshay Datt, revealing why the best founders actually choose their investors, not the other way around.

Ashish Taneja is the Founding Partner & CEO of GrowX Ventures, one of India's pioneering deep tech venture capital firms. A Chartered Accountant who transitioned from being the India CEO of Vertex (a major UK BPO firm) to venture investing, Ashish has bootstrapped GrowX from angel investments in 2008 to managing ₹400+ crores across institutional funds. His portfolio includes a spectacular 17x return from spacetech company Pixxel, and notable exits to companies like Reliance and NASDAQ. With 49 investments and 9 successful exits over 15+ years, Ashish has become a leading voice in India's hardware and deep tech ecosystem.

Key Insights from the Conversation:

👉Deep Tech Focus: India's future lies in hardware-first companies solving complex problems in space, defense, semiconductors, and advanced manufacturing

👉Patient Capital Thesis: Deep tech requires 4-6 year investment horizons versus software's 18-month cycles

👉Dual Valley Strategy: Successful deep tech investing means navigating both technology risk and commercialization risk simultaneously

👉Founder-First Philosophy: The best entrepreneurs choose their investors based on value-add, not just capital

👉Barbell Portfolio Strategy: Combining high-risk seed deep tech bets with lower-risk Series B growth investments

👉Bootstrap Mentality: Building a VC fund through personal savings, consulting revenue, and reinvested returns rather than institutional money

#VentureCapital #DeepTech #SpaceTech #HardwareStartups #IndiaVC #StartupFunding #TechInvesting #DefenseTech #Semiconductors #PatientCapital #FounderThesis #AkshayDatt #GrowXVentures #AshishTaneja #StartupEcosystem #AngelInvesting #SeriesB #SeedFunding #TechEntrepreneur #IndianStartups #VCStrategy #InvestmentStrategy #TechFounders #StartupJourney #ModernIndustrials

Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the speaker, not necessarily the channel

"Energy is the only input cost that can be systematically optimized over time."

A game-changing perspective from battery tech pioneer Sheetanshu Tyagi that's reshaping how India's quick-commerce giants think about profitability. This insight is driving EMO Energy's transformation from a hardware company to an Energy-as-a-Service platform.

Sheetanshu Tyagi is the Co-Founder & CEO of EMO Energy, a deep-tech startup revolutionizing India's EV battery landscape. With over a decade of experience at world-class companies including Rivian (as one of the first 50 employees), Ather Energy, and Ola Electric, Sheetanshu has been at the forefront of the global EV revolution. He holds 8 patents for innovative automotive systems and has successfully raised $7.86 million for EMO Energy, achieving a valuation of ₹203 crores. Under his leadership, EMO has deployed over 2,000 battery packs, covered 18.3 million kilometers, and established partnerships with industry giants like Blinkit, BigBasket, and Domino's.

Host Akshay Datt explores Sheetanshu's journey from a 2BHK startup to building India's most advanced battery technology platform.

Key Insights from the Conversation:

👉Hardware-First Philosophy: EMO's contrarian approach focuses on superior mechanical and thermal engineering rather than expensive specialized cells

👉Fast Charging Breakthrough: 20-minute charging capability with 5+ year battery life, solving the critical downtime problem for commercial fleets

👉Immersion Cooling Innovation: Proprietary liquid cooling technology maintains uniform temperature within 1°C across all cells

👉Energy-as-a-Service Model: Transitioning from 90% hardware revenue to 50%+ software and services, offering systematic energy cost optimization

👉Strategic Market Focus: Targeting high-utilization commercial fleets rather than consumer market, doubling rider productivity to 140-160 km/day

👉Sodium-Ion Future: Predicting India's potential to bypass lithium dependency and build sovereign battery technology using locally available materials

#EVBattery #StartupIndia #DeepTech #ElectricVehicles #BatteryTechnology #EnergyStorage #Entrepreneurship #TechStartup #Innovation #FastCharging #EMOEnergy #IndianStartups #CleanTech #SustainableMobility #VentureCapital #HardwareTech #EVInfrastructure #BengaluruStartups #FutureOfMobility #StartupJourney #TechFounder #electricmobility

Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the speaker, not necessarily the channel

India’s real economic engine isn’t in big cities - it’s in the 400 million+ people building, trading, and growing across Middle India.

In this episode of the Founder Thesis Podcast, host Akshay Datt speaks with Jyotsna Krishnan (Managing Partner, Elevar Equity; CEO and Co-Founder, Epic World) on how to invest, build, and scale startups for India’s underserved majority.

With 15+ years in impact investing, Jyotsna shares how Elevar Equity has backed 50+ companies, catalyzed $3B+ in follow-on capital, and impacted over 60 million low-income households - proving that profit and purpose aren’t mutually exclusive.

She also introduces Epic World and Epic Intelligence, a data platform designed to map the $10 trillion informal economy of entrepreneurial households in India.

Key Insights:

👉Elevar’s customer-backward investment thesis

👉Why India’s middle 70% is the biggest untapped market

👉Building startups with distribution, dignity, and deep context

👉Epic World’s vision to productize ground-up insights

👉Why Middle India needs its own startup playbook

👉The real size of India’s economy - beyond GDP metrics

#ImpactInvesting #IndiaStartups #FounderThesis #MiddleIndia #VCIndia #SocialImpact #CustomerCentric #InclusiveGrowth #InformalEconomy #StartupIndia #MSME #StartupPodcast #VCPodcast #BusinessStrategy #InvestmentStrategy #StartupEcosystem

Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the speaker, not necessarily the channel

"I have this fundamental belief that you make abnormal returns not when you are right but when people don't agree with you."

This contrarian mindset from Jaydeep Barman perfectly captures how Rebel Foods built a $1.4 billion unicorn by doing what everyone thought was impossible: decoupling restaurant brands from physical real estate.

Jaydeep Barman is the Co-founder and Group CEO of Rebel Foods, the world's largest internet restaurant platform operating 450+ cloud kitchens across 100+ cities in three countries. Under his leadership, the company processes 3 million orders monthly, generates ₹1,800+ crores in annual revenue, and achieved unicorn status at a $1.4 billion valuation. A former McKinsey Associate Partner with an MBA from INSEAD, Jaydeep pioneered the multi-brand cloud kitchen model that revolutionized how restaurants operate.

In this candid conversation with host Akshay Datt, he shares the journey from a failed Kolkata roll startup to building a category-defining global company.

Key Insights from the Conversation:

👉Contrarian Strategy: Being misunderstood by competitors created a protective moat during Rebel's early growth years

👉Cloud Kitchen Economics: 12-15 month payback periods with 25-30% monthly profits, dramatically better than traditional restaurants

👉Multi-Brand Innovation: Single kitchens operating 15+ brands simultaneously, maximizing asset utilization

👉Technology Moat: Proprietary Rebel OS automates cooking processes, ensuring consistency across hundreds of locations

👉Global Expansion: Strategic approach to international markets, focusing on structural advantages rather than rapid scaling

👉People Philosophy: Hiring for "founder mentality" over CVs, creating an intentionally "abnormal" company culture

#CloudKitchen #StartupFounder #FoodTech #Unicorn #RebelFoods #EntrepreneurJourney #StartupStrategy #FoodDelivery #BusinessModel #StartupPodcast #FounderStory #IndianStartups #RestaurantTech #VentureCapital #BusinessStrategy #Entrepreneurship #StartupLessons

Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the speaker, not necessarily the channel

How do you build a $100 million enterprise tech company - without raising a single dollar from venture capital?

In this episode, host Akshay Datt speaks to Rajesh Sinha, Founder of Fulcrum Digital and Culinary Digital, shares his remarkable story of scaling two global businesses to ~$100M ARR - fully bootstrapped.

From building a customer-funded SaaS + services hybrid model to leading the shift toward autonomous AI agents, Rajesh reveals his frameworks for disciplined growth, tech innovation, and global expansion.

He also unpacks how AI agents - powered by SLMs (Small Language Models), governed by secure enterprise frameworks, and orchestrated via Fulcrum's proprietary FT Rise platform - are set to reshape the future of business software.

Whether you're a startup founder, enterprise AI strategist, or services operator, this conversation is packed with insight on how to scale without capital, differentiate in crowded markets, and win in the age of AI.

Key Topics Covered:

👉How to bootstrap a $100M SaaS and digital services company

👉The evolution of Fulcrum through 5 tech eras: Web 1.0 → AI economy

👉Why vertical and horizontal AI agents are the future of work

👉How Fulcrum is using SLMs vs LLMs for cost-effective AI delivery

👉The mechanics of AI agent governance, pricing, and orchestration

👉Fulcrum’s global delivery model: India, Brazil, Argentina, and beyond

👉Navigating enterprise sales, customer concentration risk, and culture

👉Why Rajesh now sees the value of investors - but didn’t need them

#BootstrappedStartup #AIAgents #DigitalTransformation #TechEntrepreneur #StartupGrowth #CustomerFunding #IntelligenceAmplification #PlatformBusiness #EnterpriseAI #FounderThesis #TechServices #ScalingWithoutVC #AIStrategy #BusinessAutomation #TechLeadership #StartupPodcast #Entrepreneurship #SaaS #GlobalBusiness #techinnovation

Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the speaker, not necessarily the channel

"Venture debt is like an umbrella - you buy it before it starts raining, because once it starts raining, everything becomes expensive."

This analogy perfectly captures the strategic timing required for startup capital - smart founders raise debt when they don't need it, not when they're desperate.

Vinod Murali is the Co-founder and Managing Partner of Alteria Capital, India's largest venture debt fund managing ₹4,500 crores across multiple funds. Widely recognized as the pioneer of venture debt in India, he has over 17 years of experience in the space and has personally backed more than 220 startups including unicorns like Spinny, Rebel Foods, Country Delight, and OneCard. His firm has deployed over ₹7,500 crores to date, making him one of the most influential figures in Indian startup financing. Before founding Alteria, Vinod spent nearly a decade building India's first venture debt business at Silicon Valley Bank and later InnoVen Capital.

Key Insights:

👉Private Credit Evolution: Venture debt sits within the ₹2 trillion private credit ecosystem, filling the gap between traditional banking and equity financing

👉Indian Market Adaptation: India required a complete rewrite of the Silicon Valley venture debt model due to its execution-heavy versus IP-heavy nature

👉Risk Framework: Successful venture debt relies on evaluating four key risks - selection, performance, payment, and resolution

👉Capital Timing Strategy: The best time to raise debt is when you don't need it, not during crisis situations

👉Portfolio Performance: Alteria has achieved less than 0.5% losses across their ₹7,500 crore deployment

👉Regulatory Arbitrage: The shift from NBFC to AIF structure unlocked better capital access and tax efficiency for venture debt funds

#VentureDebt #StartupFunding #IndianStartups #PrivateCredit #StartupCapital #VentureCapital #AlteriaCapital #StartupAdvice #Entrepreneurship #StartupStrategy #VinodMurali #FounderThesis #AkshayDatt #StartupFinance #VentureFinancing #StartupEcosystem #BusinessStrategy #StartupGrowth #FinancialStrategy #startuppodcast

Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the speaker, not necessarily the channel.