Entrepreneurship Case Studies from India with Sramana Mitra
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The 1Mby1M Methodology is based on case studies. In this course, Sramana Mitra shares the tribal knowledge of tech entrepreneurs by giving students the rare seat at the table with the entrepreneurs, investors and thought leaders who provide the most instructive perspectives on how to build a thriving business. Through these conversations, students gain access to case studies exploring the alleys of entrepreneurship. Sramana’s synthesis of key learnings and incisive analysis add great depth to each discussion.
There are now thousands of entrepreneurs in India, and many more will get bitten by the entrepreneurial bug in due course. And from what I know of the entrepreneurial psyche, it is a path that once you set on it, is hard to turn back. Failures, setbacks, disappointments notwithstanding, entrepreneurs tend to continue to want to build on their dreams.
India’s greatest achievement in the last decade has been the consistent unleashing of the entrepreneurial movement. The risk tolerance of the Indian population has increased. No longer is it the Holy Grail to lust after fat salaries at multi-nationals. The dreams of building something of their own seduce people in India, even if that implies a built-in risk of failure.
This socio-cultural change, I believe, is irreversible.
And it is in the hands of these entrepreneurs that India’s future squarely rests. I believe, the depth of knowledge of how to build a business from scratch with customers, revenues, and profits is rapidly increasing in India. There will be hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs – perhaps not heavily venture-funded ones, but nonetheless, entrepreneurs with sustainable businesses.
During this course, I will be teaching about some of the biggest entrepreneurship success stories out of India. We will have in-depth conversations around the entrepreneur journeys of several of India’s most successful founders as well as entrepreneurs from the far-reaching corners of the county.
Designed for tech entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs with an interest in India, this course provides lessons learned and best advice from several prosperous Indian entrepreneurs in their own words.
The 1Mby1M courses are all heavily based on interview-based case studies on Innovation, Business Models, Go To Market Strategies, Validation Principles, and various other nuances of an entrepreneur’s journey. We offer extensive opportunities for entrepreneurs to learn the lessons from the trenches from successful entrepreneurs who have done it before and Investors who support their ambition.
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1Introduction
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2Entrepreneurship Case Studies from India
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3Building a Global HR Tech Business from India with Leena AI CEO Adit Jain
CEO Adit Jain and his cofounders started Leena AI in India, bootstrapped to validation, applied to Y Combinator, and got in. Since then, they’ve built a fantastic, venture-funded global HR Tech business that is successfully competing with Salesforce and ServiceNow. Superb story!
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4Bootstrapped First to Build an AI Startup with Yellow.ai CEO Raghu Ravinutala
Yellow.ai CEO Raghu Ravinutala has built an incredible, world class AI startup from India with a global base of enterprise clients. Fabulous story!
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5From Developer to Serial Entrepreneur: Hevo Data CEO Manish Jethani
Manish discusses his various experiences with customer validation in great depth, as well as his journey from being a hard-core developer geek to a successful entrepreneur CEO who has raised multiple rounds of venture capital from top firms including Sequoia Capital.
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6Building India’s First Billion Dollar Tech Company: InMobi Co-founder Amit Gupta
Amit Gupta, Co-founder of InMobi, knowing my aversion to Valuation Without Revenue Unicorns, starts off by telling us that InMobi’s valuation is firmly anchored in revenues. He goes on to discuss InMobi’s strategy for going global, and highlights the unorthodox nature of the journey.
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7India’s Flagship Global Product Story: Druva CEO Jaspreet Singh
Jaspreet Singh is Founder and CEO of Druva, India’s flagship global product success story.
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8Putting the Freshworks IPO in Context
Here I put the Freshworks IPO in context.
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94X Serial Entrepreneur from India: HyperTrack CEO Kashyap Deorah
HyperTrack CEO Kashyap Deorah had early success with three of his companies, each of which had very small amounts of friends and family financing. He pretty much bootstrapped these three startups to rapid exits. His fourth startup, HyperTrack, has been a challenging journey, but he has navigated it well, and turned around the earlier setbacks over the last five years. Wonderful story.
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10Building a Robotics Company from India: Ritukar Vijay, CEO of Ottonomy
This is a very interesting story of bringing really complex technology from India to the global market with a complex sales cycle. The long term potential is huge. The short term complexity of the business is equally huge. The founding team is doing an admirable job navigating the opportunity with commitment and resolve.
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11CoRover CEO Ankush Sabharwal Bootstrapped an AI Chatbot Startup with a Paycheck
It took CoRover CEO Ankush Sabharwal and his cofounders two years to launch their first customer, The Indian Railways. During this time, the founders held on to their jobs, diligently fulfilling their responsibilities while also pursuing their dreams. Bootstrapping with a Paycheck can sometimes be a slower path, but it obviously works.
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12Solo Entrepreneur Building a Venture Scale EdTech Company from India
Cuemath CEO Manan Khurma’s professor parents in Amritsar didn’t want him to be an entrepreneur. Now, he is changing the trajectory of Math education around the globe by leveraging an underused workforce: stay at home moms with strong mathematics background in India. Brilliant story!
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13Is Growth at all Costs Desirable with Pallav Nadhani, FusionCharts
Pallav Nadhani, CEO and Co-founder at FusionCharts, is someone I have known for a long time, and he will always have a special place in my heart as a young entrepreneur from Calcutta, where I was born and raised. Pallav has bootstrapped an $8 million a year product company from Calcutta, and we discuss the philosophical question “Is growth at all costs desirable?”
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14Scaling a Cloud Telephony Company in India: Ambarish Gupta, Knowlarity
Ambarish Gupta, Founder and CEO of Knowlarity, discusses the business of selling SaaS to Indian SMBs.
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15ApartmentADDA CEO Sangeeta Banerjee Bootstrapped with a Paycheck in India
ApartmentADDA CEO Sangeeta Banerjee discusses bootstrapping with a paycheck in India
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16Spotlight on Bootstrapping to Exit with Abinash Saikia, EnCloudEn
Abinash Saikia, Co-founder of EnCloudEn and former 1Mby1M Premium member, has successfully bootstrapped his venture to an exit and discusses the process in great depth.
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17Vantage Circle Co-founder Anjan Pathak on Bootstrapping from Guwahati
I am always thrilled to do stories of pioneering entrepreneurs building technology startups in remote locations. Anjan Pathak, CTO and Co-Founder of Vantage Circle, brings us into the nascent scene in Guwahati, in the North-East Indian state of Assam.
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18BannerBuzz CEO Nishant Shah on Bootstrapping to $35 Million
In these unusual times, many who once dreamed of funding are forced to bootstrap. Well, bootstrapping is good during good times, and necessary during bad times. Here BannerBuzz CEO Nishant Shah talks about bootstrapping to $35 million.
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19UJET CEO Anand JanefalkarTakes on Giants in the Contact Center Space
We’re seeing new SaaS companies emerge that are taking on giant categories. In such businesses, positioning is extremely important. Listen to how UJET CEO Anand Janefalkar has positioned to get to 40 customers in the contact center software category.
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20AppDynamics's Jyoti Bansal on Going From Zero to $3.7 Billion
Jyoti Bansal started as a first-time entrepreneur trying to do a fat startup. Read how he managed to navigate the chicken and egg, and build a Unicorn-level success. Superb story!
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21Earnin CEO Ram Palaniappan Turns Philanthropy into a Double Bottomline Business
When people have to live paycheck to paycheck, life can easily get unbearable. CEO Ram Palaniappan tells us how Earnin offers loans against paychecks as collateral to alleviate this incessant pressure to low income families at affordable rates.
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22Qentelli CEO Sanjay Jupudi Wants to Disrupt Itself in the AI Era
AI will disrupt outsourcing services companies in a very big way. We talk to Qentelli CEO Sanjay Jupudi on how he plans to prepare.
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23ConnectLeader CEO Senraj Soundar Bootstrapped First, Raised Money Later
ConnectLeader CEO Senraj Soundar has bootstrapped his company to over $10M in revenue and is contemplating raising some growth capital now. He will, most likely, have numerous offers from investors. We love stories like this that reinforce our philosophy: “Do not go to VCs as beggars, go as kings!”
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24Ameyo Founder Sachin Bhatia on Bootstrapping a Technology Product Company
Some of us have worked relentlessly for decades to bring about the change in India from a largely services-driven technology industry to one that today produces credible products sold all over the world. Ameyo is one of the early examples of this shift, and Founder Sachin Bhatia, an early visionary in this journey.
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25AdPushup CEO Anit Oberoi Follows Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship to $30M
Great entrepreneurs continuously learn from the market. AdPushup CEO Ankit Oberoi’s story is one of really diligent learning.
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26Kovai CEO Saravana Kumar on Bootstrapping with a Paycheck and Scaling in Coimbat
I love doing stories of entrepreneurs who are long-time readers of the 1Mby1M blog. Kovai CEO Saravana Kumar is one. A wonderful story of how this entrepreneur is scaling a SaaS company from Coimbatore!
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27More Entrepreneurship Case Studies from India
In India, significant startups can be built in small towns, not just in major metros. Here are some case studies that I hope will help to illustrate this point:
Happily Bootstrapping: Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu (2007)
Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho (2016)
Building India’s Amazon: Flipkart CEO Sachin Bansal
Bootstrapping a SaaS Company in India: Greytip CEO Girish Rowjee
Rohith Bhat’s Exhilarating Journey with Robosoft from Udupi, Karnataka
Bootstrapping from Guwahati: Anjan Pathak, CTO and Co-Founder of Vantage Circle
Bootstrapping to $6M from Durgapur, West Bengal: Pinnacle CAD CEO Bimal Patwari
Solo Founder, Bootstrapping to $7 Million in India: Wingify CEO Paras Chopra
Bootstrapped Journey of a Child Entrepreneur in India: Varun Shoor, CEO of Kayako
Bootstrapping with a Paycheck in India: Sangeeta Banerjee, CEO of ApartmentADDA
Bootstrapping a Technology Product Company from India: Sachin Bhatia, Founder of Ameyo
Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship to $30 Million from India: Ankit Oberoi, CEO of AdPushup
Bootstrapping with a Paycheck and Scaling in Coimbatore: Kovai CEO Saravana Kumar
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28Do You Need to Move to Silicon Valley to Create a Great Tech Company?
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29Startup Ideas For India