Technology
Today you will hear some of the best guests I have spoken to over the past 5 years. You will hear from Vineet Rajan. Co-founder of Scout My Trip - India's premier do-it-yourself platform for road trips .talks about pivoting, new insights on the India travel market , growing 5x , expanding into S.E Asia, using virtual scouts & life changing road trips! Next we have Aayush Jindal Co-founder of Toesmith. (45m.46sec) India’s first tech-driven footwear brand, offering customisation of shoes at an affordable price. Next up Vikas Jha CEO & founder of Alore CRM (1h 19m) - On building one of India's fastest growing sales platform. And last but not least I speak to The Startup Guy aka Vijay Anand , Founder of the Startup Centre (1h 54m) he talks about the Indian Startup Ecosystem - what's going right, what needs to be tweaked and where to next? So sit back & enjoy some of the best moments
Vineet Rajan. Co-founder of Scout My Trip
This is an exciting new feature called Where Are They Now ? I catch up with previous guests who came on the show. I catch up With Vineet Rajan the co-founder of Scout My Trip India’s first subscription-based travel planner powered by local travel experts. He gives us an update on what’s been happening since I last spoke to him over 2 years ago including being recognised as being of the top 50 startups to watch in india. Talks about expanding into SouthEast Asia. He explains why they pivoted and now use virtual scouts, talks about raising $500k, talks about content marketing strategies , talks about hot new destinations in india you should visit , talks about a life changing trip to Ladakh and finally he talks about eating ghost chillies in North East India and his second wife latitia(his bike!)
In this conversation we also talk about:
- Growing 5x since 2018
- A phenomenal 2019 winning 6+ awards
- Offline marketing strategies
- Business Travel market
- Working with Honda
- Climate change & sustainable travel
- Great story how he met his co-founder on the highway
- Great road trips
- Being a startup guy and his co-founder being a corporate guy
- Consumer mindset in india
- Income Tax Exemption granted under Startup India Programme
- How they use virtual scouts
- Using AI in the future
- Being trapped in the snow for 20hrs!
Aayush Jindal Co-founder of Toesmith. (45m.46sec)
'It was his birthday & I thought of customising a shoe and gifting it to him on his birthday' And so Toesmith was born! and they haven't looked back . I speak to Aayush Jindal Co-founder of Toesmith , India’s first tech-driven footwear brand, offering customisation of shoes . In this episode he talks how the 3d customisation works. Talks about customer research , pitching his parents the prototype , how they target customers via Facebook and Instagram, how many orders that get a day, quitting the corporate life, how they plan to scale the operation and finally he gives advice on building an e-commerce business & brand in India.
In this conversation we also talk about:
- Pricing strategies that don't pinch!
- Getting great feedback & design from a tattoo artist
- Walking away from nice job at Bain
- How they deal with copyright issues
- Thoughts on the offline / retail market.
- Is it pressure off or pressure on?
- Launching internationally & scaling
- Experiencing failure on his previous start-up
- Getting advice from parents who work in the shoe manufacturing business.
Vikas Jha CEO & founder of Alore CRM (1h 19m)
India is emerging as one of the fastest-growing markets for SaaS (software as a service)-based customer relationship management (CRM) firms. So today i speak to Vikas Jha founder & CEO of Alore. Alore offers everything needed to run a sales team at scale - from finding business email addresses to running automated drip campaigns to monitoring the performance of sales teams. So he talks about it all got started , how the product works. How they acquire customers around the world organically without spending money on marketing. Talks about nearly going bankrupt , talks about what makes a great salesperson, being an ex-merchant navy officer turned venture capitalist turned entrepreneur. Gives great book recommendations , talks about burnout , mental health. He talks about bootstrapping strategies what worked and what didn't work and finally he talks about how he transitioned from corporate life to startup life.
in this conversation we also talk about:
- Sales so far
- Early bootstrap strategies using Facebook groups
- Product design process
- Unique pricing models
- 2 business models
- Is email still a good way to sell?
- The 'land & expand' strategy
- Book recommendation - Atomic Habits by James Clear & OKR by John Dorr
- Seeing 800 business plans in a year as a VC and what to put in a pitch deck.
- Great hiring advice and processes.
- How he dealt with mental health & burnout
- Advice on pivoting
- Dealing with rejection
The Startup Guy aka Vijay Anand , Founder of the Startup Centre (1h 54m)
India is the third largest startup ecosystem in the world, what’s going right, and what needs to be tweaked? I speak to Vijay Anand, AKA The Startup Guy, founder of The Startup Centre in Chennai. He is an entrepreneur and has been mentoring startups in India for the past 10 years. So In this episode we talk about the state of the Indian startup ecosystem. Talk about finding India's identity - China has processes & innovation, Germany does precision machinery, US and Israel drive innovation, Japan has quality. What is India's story?The involvement of India's government - the good & bad. Talks about If someone wants to start a venture today, what areas should they focus on? talks about the 2 kinds of entrepreneur, overvaluation of startups, ethics, blockchain, dogs!, space travel, super human beings and what does he go for - the person or the idea? And much more , so please enjoy the show.
in this conversation we also talk about:
- Differences in the Indian eco-system v Israel eco-system
- Big observation about indian startups
- Indian domestic market v global market
- Bill gates & Mark Zuckerberg chat
- How do you unlearn
- Looking at a person as asset not a liability
- The 3rd wave of startups
- How to find co-founders
- What gets Vijay out of bed?
P.S
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music by Punch Deck.
https://open.spotify.com/artist/7kdduxAVaFnbHJyNxl7FWV
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