That One Idea

WaterBridge x WeWork Labs

That One Idea by WaterBridge Ventures and WeWork Labs chronicles early-stage founder journeys. In each episode, we bring out the founder moments and journeys that led to starting up. We highlight the humans behind the founders, as they blitz through the 0 to 1 stage and transition their ideas into scale-worthy businesses.

Episodes

  1. Yellow Metal | Rahul Boggaram and Nikhil Boggaram

    03/07/2022

    Yellow Metal | Rahul Boggaram and Nikhil Boggaram

    Anjali Sosale of Waterbridge Ventures chats with Rahul Boggaram and Nikhil Boggaram of Yellow Metal. Yellow Metal is an asset-backed credit company that disburses gold loans in less than 30 minutes in the privacy of your home. Focused on rural India, Yellow Metal seeks to provide low-cost loans to small farmers and business owners who are otherwise not part of the formal credit eco-system.    We dive deep into Rahul and Nikhils's journeys and the series of experiences and events that led to them to building Yellow Metal. (1:09) Upbringing and early years (3:14) Why gold loans for rural india? (5:04) Rahul's journey after leaving home at 16 (7:10) 0 to 1 at Flipkart, Treebo, Groww and Myntra (9:51) How has consumer app design changed in the last 10 years? (11:36) UPI as the game-changer for rural India (12:41) How did Rahul and Nikhil's paths converge during the pandemic in 2020? (15:41) Early challenges in transitioning from a corporate job to a startup? (17:15) The role of empathy in the goal loan business (18:44) The story behind the name "Yellow Metal" (20:22) Yellow Metal's customer service ethos since day zero (22:43) Company culture at Yellow Metal (24:37) How to hire people when solving for rural India? (26:07) Parents' view on starting up (27:43) A day in the life of an early-stage startup founder (28:32) Transparency in gold loans pricing (30:46) Building a tech platform for rural India (33:12) 2022 and beyond

    37 min
  2. CuriousJr | Amit Shekhar, Janishar Ali and Mridul Sahu

    02/21/2022

    CuriousJr | Amit Shekhar, Janishar Ali and Mridul Sahu

    Nilesh Balakrishnan of Waterbridge Ventures chats with Amit Shekhar, Janishar Ali and Mridul Sahu - the founders of CuriousJr. CuriousJr is a mobile-first, vernacular-based coding platform that helps kids learn the fundamentals tenets of coding. Powered by strong product innovation, the CuriousJr app democratizes coding for students who might not have access to a desktop by focusing on the mobile phone user interface and using a combination of gamified and experiential learning to make coding fun. They dive deep into their founder journeys and the series of experiences and events that led to them building CuriousJr Sections - (1:27) - Early years (5:01) - The IIT Connection(s) (12:01) - How early struggles moulded the founding team (16:33) - The journey from civil engineering to coding (19:20) - MindOrks & building a 2M+ Android developer community (22:45) - The birth of Curious Jr. (28:27) - The intersection of mobile tech and vernacular education (29:36) - Putting together the dream team (35:37) - Skills vs counter-skills (37:09) - Story behind the name “CuriousJr” (38:48) - Entrepreneurship Ups and Downs (41:15) - The Covid19 push to education (42:37) - From MindOrks to CuriousJr - building products for children (46:44) - Culture & learning at CuriousJr (58:32) - Why is Curious r “That One Idea”? (1:01:07) - Conviction around the market for learning code (1:03:06) - Mridul’s experience with OYO (1:04:58) - Experiential learning via Curious Jr (1:06:57) - Entrepreneurship isn’t as romantic as it sounds (1:08:03) - When did you want to be a founder?

    1h 16m
  3. Eloelo | Saurabh Pandey

    01/31/2022

    Eloelo | Saurabh Pandey

    Anjali Sosale of Waterbridge Ventures chats with Saurabh Pandey, co-founder and CEO of EloElo. EloElo is an app that enables live-social experiences through games and entertainment. it is currently among the top 10 Apps on the Google Play Store in India, with over 2 million downloads in 2021.  Anjali deep dives into Saurabh's journey and explores the series of experiences and events that led to him building EloElo.  (4:32) Discovering himself and his love for studying human behaviour while being a college student at St Xaviers, Mumbai (5:36) Wearing skull ties and shiny shirts at his first sales job (12:14) Why his co-founder Akshay and him are like yin and yang (13:00) "Pandey Ji, Bungee Jumping Banta Hai" - the advice he got from Kunal Shah (14:02) Managing his Mom's Yoga YouTube Channel (16:30) How and why they quit Flipkart together on the same day (18:08) Why you need a solid support support around you to start-up and work 16hours a day (24:00) Pivoting away from beauty recommendation videos to live-gaming and solving for creator fan engagement and monetization (27:00) Creating the Bharath Metaverse (28:00) The name EloElo being inspired by the famous "Ole Ole" song from  (34:00) The Creator Economy Landscape in India (35:11) Why fast-eating Chicken Wings live is actually a popular game on EloElo? (42:00) What gives him shivers and sleepless nights (47.40) Keeping up with the Kukrejas! How a family of three live stream their daily life on EloElo (51:00) Creating a happiness company

    56 min

About

That One Idea by WaterBridge Ventures and WeWork Labs chronicles early-stage founder journeys. In each episode, we bring out the founder moments and journeys that led to starting up. We highlight the humans behind the founders, as they blitz through the 0 to 1 stage and transition their ideas into scale-worthy businesses.