Founder Thesis

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Dickens said, it was the best of the times, it was the worst of the times. The words have never been truer. Best because there’s never been a better time to be an entrepreneur. Worst because the clutter is mind-numbing. Founder Thesis breaks through the noise to bring you stories of success & failure, grit & struggle, bouquets & brickbats from some of the most brilliant entrepreneurs in India.

5h ago · Video

AI in EdTech: Running a ₹250 Cr+ Startup | Vivek Sinha, Emversity

Why did a billion dollars of venture money fail to beat Kota's coaching factories? Unacademy's former COO explains what really went wrong with edtech in India, and why his new company trains nurses and hotel staff inside colleges instead of around them. Vivek Sinha was homeschooled in a flood-hit block of Bihar. He then studied at NIT Jamshedpur and ISB, and lost his first startup, Buildzar, to the 2016 funding winter. He went on to build MobiKwik's offline payments arm, OYO's luxury hotels business and Unacademy's test prep empire. Now he runs Emversity, a skilling startup that has raised $46 million to train grey collar workers for hospitals, hotels and data centres. It works across 50+ locations, and every course starts only after an employer commits to hire. In this conversation with host Akshay Datt, he argues three things. Test prep sells discipline, not education. Indians pay only for a degree or a job. Raising too much capital forces you into markets you have no right to win. It lands just as upGrad absorbs Unacademy at a fraction of its peak valuation and India rethinks graduate employability. 👉Why parents send children to Kota for discipline and FOMO, and why Unacademy, Vedantu and others raised over a billion dollars yet couldn't unseat Allen, Aakash, Sri Chaitanya or Narayana. 👉How PhysicsWallah won by disrupting book publishers and distance learning, serving the 8 lakh JEE aspirants who never enter a coaching centre. 👉What Vivek means by "capital won't change your reality", and why a $3.6 billion price tag pushed Unacademy into adjacent categories it couldn't win. 👉How Emversity flips the skilling model: employers like Taj sign up to hire before a course launches, and Taj's first batch earned a ₹15,000 monthly stipend against a ₹10,000 to ₹11,000 EMI. 👉Why Emversity skips white-collar and unskilled roles and trains only licensed grey collar jobs, such as OT technicians, lab technicians, nurses and data centre crews. 👉How AI runs a non-tech business. Subscribe to Founder Thesis for weekly founder conversations and follow Akshay Datt on LinkedIn [podm.in/ad] for daily insights. #FounderThesis #AkshayDatt #VivekSinha #Emversity #Unacademy #EdtechIndia #SkillingIndia #GreyCollarJobs #IndianStartups #StartupPodcast #WhyEdtechFailed #KotaCoaching #AlliedHealthcare #NursingJobsIndia #JobsAICantReplace #GraduateUnemployment #PhysicsWallah #StartupLessons #AIinEdtech #careerafter12th Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the speaker, not necessarily the channel.
3d ago · Video

Trading Mistakes Beginners Make | Dale Vaz, Sahi

A broker earns every time you trade, yet this one built a kill switch that tells you to stop. Former Swiggy CTO Dale Vaz explains how stock trading works in India, why your broker doesn't get to keep your money, and what an AI trading app should refuse to do. Dale Vaz joined Amazon in 2007, rose to CTO at Swiggy, and has traded the markets since 2008. Sahi, the broker he built with fewer than 10 engineers, charges ₹10 an order where most charge ₹20, and has onboarded about 6 lakh demat accounts in 18 months. In this conversation with host Akshay Datt, Dale walks through how stock trading works in India, from the exchange that matches buyers and sellers to the depository and clearing house that keep your shares and cash out of your broker's hands. He explains options trading with a pizza coupon, shows why the odds sit against option buyers, and refuses to call retail traders gamblers. The timing matters: margin funding has taken off in the last two years, SEBI's own data shows retail F&O traders struggling, and Sahi is betting its AI agent Cairo can help them make better decisions. 👉What actually happens after you tap buy, from NSE and BSE matching your order to sellers getting paid on T+1 and NSDL or CDSL holding your shares even if your broker shuts down.👉Why Dale priced Sahi at ₹10 an order, borrowing Jeff Bezos's rule that a customer should feel financially irresponsible not to choose you.👉How options trading works through a ₹10 pizza coupon, and why a 10% move in the underlying can double an option's price while the odds still favour the seller.👉How margin trading facility loans let traders buy three times their capital, and how brokers cap leverage by stock volatility and by customer.👉Why Dale thinks a general AI like Claude can't replace your broker, and how Sahi's Cairo handles "should I buy Reliance?" without giving a stock tip. Subscribe to Founder Thesis for weekly founder conversations and follow Akshay Datt on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/akshaydatt/] for daily insights. #DaleVaz #Sahi #SahiTradingApp #FounderThesis #AkshayDatt #IndianStockMarket #StockTradingIndia #HowStockMarketWorks #OptionsTrading #OptionsTradingForBeginners #FnOTrading #MarginTrading #DematAccount #DiscountBroker #AITrading #TradingDiscipline #Fintech #IndiaStartups #ExSwiggyCTO Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the speaker, not necessarily the channel.
Nov 3 · Video

Why Indian Game Studios Struggle to Build Global Hits | Anuj Tandon (BITKRAFT)

India banned real money gaming in 2025. Anuj Tandon of BITKRAFT Ventures never backed a single RMG company, even when it was the only bet paying off in Indian gaming. In this episode, he explains how gaming venture capital in India really works, why micro dramas (microdramas) could beat Netflix and OTT, and why Indian game studios still struggle to build global hits. Anuj has seen Indian gaming from almost every seat. He co-founded a mobile game studio in 2010, ran game publishing at Nazara, and led the India business of a listed Chinese gaming company. At KRAFTON, the maker of PUBG and BGMI, he led investments into startups like Kuku FM, FRND and Nodwin Gaming. Today he’s a Partner at BITKRAFT Ventures, a gaming and interactive media fund that manages $1.05 billion, and he leads its early-stage bets across India and the Middle East. In this conversation with host Akshay Datt, he explains why micro dramas could become the Candy Crush of long-form video, and why Istanbul is beating Bangalore at mobile games. He also talks about why India produced a wave of TikTok clones within six months of the 2020 app bans, but almost no games. If you’re building, funding or just following Indian gaming startups after the RMG ban, this is where he thinks the money goes next. 👉 Why Anuj passed on every real money gaming deal at KRAFTON and BITKRAFT, and what working for a Chinese gaming company taught him about how regulators treat cash-in, cash-out games. 👉 How micro drama apps make money through in-app unlocks and subscriptions, and why he believes they could out-earn traditional OTT drama. 👉 What separates a game studio from a publisher, and why studios that land a hit, like PlaySimple with its half-a-billion-dollar exit to MTG, end up doing both. 👉 How a gaming VC values a startup, including why a studio with $10 million in revenue asking for a $100 million valuation might get an offer closer to $15 million. 👉 What puts investors off, from Claude-built pitch decks (an orange flag) to passing off GMV as revenue, which ends the deal. 👉 Why not every business is venture investable, and why a 10 crore business making 2 crore with five to seven people is a great outcome. BITKRAFT Ventures: https://www.bitkraft.vc Subscribe to Founder Thesis for weekly founder conversations, and follow Akshay Datt on LinkedIn for daily insights: https://www.linkedin.com/in/akshaydatt/ #indiangaming #MicroDrama #VentureCapital #AnujTandon #FounderThesis Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the speaker, not necessarily the channel.
Oct 22 · Video

How to Govern AI Agents at Scale | Ezhilarasan Natarajan, CoreStack

The cloud and AI giants earn more when you spend more, so who makes sure you aren't overspending? Ez Natarajan built CoreStack into an AI governance company approaching $100M in annual recurring revenue, on the bet that the referee has to be independent. Ez spent years in the partner ecosystem that helped build Microsoft Azure before it even had a name, watching enterprises stall because the cloud rewrote every rule for cost, security and operations. CoreStack, now in its 10th year, is a multi-cloud governance platform. It connects to a company's AWS, Azure and Google Cloud accounts, finds every workload, and fixes cost and compliance problems automatically. Its largest customer spends about $1 billion a year on cloud. In this conversation with host Akshay Datt, Ez explains why hyperscalers welcome software that cuts their customers' bills, and why the world has less than one GPU per person. He also argues that every software company, CoreStack included, will move to token-based pricing. With AI budgets rising and per-seat SaaS under pressure, his case for independent AI governance and cloud cost optimization comes at a good time. 👉Why AWS and Microsoft treat CoreStack as a top partner even though it cuts their customers' cloud bills: a CFO's budget freeze would hurt them far more. 👉How CoreStack lets customers decide when it acts on its own, taking automatic action in dev and test environments while keeping a human in the loop for production. 👉What the GPU shortage really looks like: less than one GPU per human today, while Ez estimates each person needs 10 and Sam Altman needs 1,000. 👉How AWS and Anthropic split token revenue differently by region, and why Google, Amazon and Microsoft are hedging across OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini and Nvidia at once. 👉Why Ez plans to take CoreStack public instead of selling to a cloud or AI giant, arguing that AI governance has to sit outside the companies it polices. Subscribe to Founder Thesis for weekly founder conversations and follow Akshay Datt on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/akshaydatt/] for daily insights. #CoreStack #EzNatarajan #FounderThesis #AkshayDatt #AIGovernance #CloudGovernance #FinOps #CloudCostOptimization #MultiCloud #GPUShortage #TokenPricing #AIAgents #AgenticAI #EnterpriseSaaS #AIInfrastructure #HowCloudComputingWorks #BootstrappedStartup #IndianFounders #StartupPodcast Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the speaker, not necessarily the channel
Oct 15 · Video

Cage-Free vs Caged Eggs: What Hens Go Through | Jayasimha Nuggehalli, Global Food Partners

India's animal welfare laws look world-class on paper, yet a Bangalore court once tried to auction a rescued bear as "perishable goods." Jayasimha Nuggehalli, co-founder & COO of Global Food Partners, explains why he stopped betting on laws alone and started building a market for cage-free eggs. Jayasimha Nuggehalli has spent 26 years fighting for animals, first as a PETA undercover investigator inside slaughterhouses and factory farms, then drafting animal law and leading Humane Society International in India. Seven years ago he co-founded Global Food Partners, which helps food companies keep their cage-free egg promises and trains medium and large egg farmers across China, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand to move hens out of battery cages. In Indonesia alone, over 100 farms are now transitioning. In this conversation with host Akshay Datt, he makes a contrarian case: awareness campaigns rarely change what people buy, animal welfare only survives when it pays, and philanthropy deserves the same tolerance for failure we give startups. With global food brands struggling to meet their cage-free pledges, his effective altruism lens on building an animal welfare business has never been more relevant. 👉Why a Bangalore court treated a rescued dancing bear as perishable goods, and how that day pushed Jayasimha into law. 👉What a failed humane slaughter pilot between Pollachi and Coimbatore taught him: if animal welfare is not economically viable, it never lasts. 👉How food companies decide to go cage-free, using his cost-of-welfare versus cost-of-ignoring formula and a 20 to 30% jump in egg costs. 👉Why Save the Tiger is one of the least effective causes for an impact career, and how scale, neglectedness and tractability help you pick a better one. 👉How India's focus on quantity of life over quality of life leaves dairy cows tethered in tabelas and hens confined in cages. Subscribe to Founder Thesis for weekly founder conversations and follow Akshay Datt [https://www.linkedin.com/in/akshaydatt/] on LinkedIn for daily insights. 00:00 - The lawyer who chose animals over Infosys 05:56 - A dancing bear sparks animal law 09:32 - India's animal welfare paradox 14:34 - Why India has so many stray dogs 18:46 - From PETA to Global Food Partners 21:55 - How animal welfare public policy works 24:59 - Why animal laws stall in Asia 27:25 - Why markets beat laws for animal welfare 28:04 - Gen Z, Labubu and ethical food spending 30:21 - Sab Ka Sapna Money Money explained 31:15 - What effective altruism really means 36:13 - How to pick a nonprofit cause 40:07 - Why cash beats in-kind charity 44:37 - Why charities deserve startup-style risk 46:16 - Product-market fit for a nonprofit 51:44 - Has Global Food Partners found PMF 55:44 - Does anyone pay for cage-free eggs 59:30 - The cost of ignoring animal welfare 01:03:00 - Cage-free consulting as reputation risk insurance 01:05:16 - How Global Food Partners makes money 01:08:18 - Why India is hard for cage-free eggs 01:10:50 - Inside a nonprofit co-founder's week #JayasimhaNuggehalli #GlobalFoodPartners #CageFreeEggs #AnimalWelfare #FounderThesis #AkshayDatt #EffectiveAltruism #IndiaStartups #ImpactEntrepreneurship #Philanthropy #NonprofitLeadership #SustainableFood #FoodSupplyChain #FactoryFarming #WhatIsEffectiveAltruism #CageFreeVsCagedEggs #HowNonprofitsMakeMoney #AnimalWelfareIndia #socialenterprise Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the speaker, not necessarily the channel
Oct 12 · Video

How Venture Capitalists Pick Startups | Rajeev Mantri, Navam Capital

Most people assume venture capital is a numbers game won by spraying cheques at fifty startups and bragging about the two that worked. Rajeev Mantri runs Navam Capital on the opposite principle, and in this conversation with host Akshay Datt he breaks down how venture capital actually works, from pricing a startup that is still just an idea to the fund maths that decides who gets paid. Rajeev Mantri started in venture capital about 19 years ago at Lux Capital, the New York deep tech fund that now manages an AUM north of $7 billion, then returned to India and spent more than a decade backing IP-driven, engineering-led startups while almost every other investor funded clones of American internet companies. Navam Capital, which grew out of his family's stock broking business, closed its first outside fund at ₹315 crore, raised almost entirely in rupee capital from tech founders, large family offices and corporate treasuries. He teaches venture capital at ISB as a branch of value investing: buy something for less than it is worth, stay inside your circle of competence, never overpay. Akshay Datt pushes him on the uncomfortable parts, including why he thinks most people should stay out of venture funds altogether, where value actually pools in AI and space right now, and how fund partners really get paid. 👉Why Rajeev says most people should not be investing in venture funds, and what separates the funds that compound capital from the ones that quietly destroy it 👉How the three principles of value investing apply to startups: buying below worth, circle of competence, and why overpaying makes an investment dead on arrival 👉What "betting before the flop" means in poker terms, and how an investor justifies a ₹50 crore valuation for two people sitting in a room with no product 👉Why launch providers capture the value in space and chips capture it in AI, and the test Rajeev uses to find that layer in any new industry 👉How a venture fund actually makes money, from the 1.5% management fee to the hurdle rate, and why a 10-year fund has to at least triple its money before partners see meaningful carry 👉Why the easiest way into venture capital is through fund operations and finance, not the investing seat everyone chases Subscribe to Founder Thesis for weekly founder conversations and follow Akshay Datt on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/akshaydatt/] for daily insights. #RajeevMantri #NavamCapital #FounderThesis #AkshayDatt #VentureCapital #DeepTech #IndiaStartups #VCFunding #ValueInvesting #StartupInvesting #HowVentureCapitalWorks #VCFundEconomics #CarryAndHurdleRate #DeepTechIndia #AngelInvesting #LimitedPartner #PortfolioConstruction #SpaceTechIndia #AIValueChain #startupvaluation Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the speaker, not necessarily the channel
Oct 7 · Video

How AI Builds Cancer Drugs From Scratch | Aridni Shah, Immunito AI

What if the biggest bottleneck in AI antibody discovery was never AlphaFold's problem to solve at all? Dr. Aridni Shah of Immunito AI sat down with host Akshay Datt to explain how her team builds antibodies from a target's shape alone, compressing a process that used to take animals a year and a half into hours. Dr. Aridni Shah left academic structural biology, after a PhD at NCBS-TIFR studying honeybee brains, when she hit the wall every antibody researcher knows: custom antibody generation can take a year to eighteen months with no guarantee of success. That bottleneck became the founding insight behind Immunito AI, the Bengaluru TechBio company she co-founded with Trisha Chatterjee in 2020. Instead of injecting animals and waiting, Immunito AI uses generative AI to design antibodies atom by atom, directly from a target protein's shape, a technique the company built before AlphaFold existed. Across four internal preclinical oncology and autoimmune programmes, and licensing economics that can rival Merck's $30 billion Keytruda, the company is testing whether Indian deep tech can originate novel biologics instead of just manufacturing generics. In this conversation, Aridni walks host Akshay Datt through AI antibody discovery and why Indian venture capital still struggles to underwrite biotech risk. 👉How Immunito AI's AbInitio platform designs antibody sequences and 3D structures simultaneously from a target protein's shape, without animal immunization. 👉Why Aridni Shah's PhD research on honeybee time memory exposed the yearlong bottleneck in traditional antibody discovery that led her to found Immunito AI. 👉What makes AlphaFold different from Immunito AI's AbInitio, and why protein folding prediction alone cannot design a new antibody from scratch. 👉How a single preclinical antibody licensing deal can carry a $10 to $50 million upfront fee and $200 to $500 million in milestones, similar to how Merck's Keytruda scaled to $30 billion in annual sales. 👉Why Indian venture capital funds still struggle to underwrite biotech and drug discovery risk compared to US funds like a16z. #AridniShah #ImmunitoAI #FounderThesis #AkshayDatt #AIAntibodyDiscovery #AIDrugDiscovery #DeNovoAntibodyDesign #BiotechIndia #IndianStartups #DeepTechIndia #AntibodyTherapeutics #GenerativeAI #DrugDiscoveryAI #BioE3Policy #startupindia #TechBio #CancerResearch #AIInHealthcare #IndianVentureCapital #NCBSBengaluru Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the speaker, not necessarily the channel
Sep 28 · Video

Hitting ₹120 Cr Selling Only Pants | Dhruv Toshniwal, The Pant Project

Shirts are 2x the market. Pants are 200x less crowded. Dhruv Toshniwal bet on the category everyone treats as an afterthought, and built The Pant Project into a ₹120 Cr run-rate D2C brand. Dhruv grew up around a 50-year-old textile business, Banswara Syntex. He studied finance at Wharton, spent four years at Oliver Wyman in New York, then came home to build something of his own. The first two brands he tried inside the family business didn't work. The third idea was pants. The Pant Project started as a custom-made pants brand in the middle of COVID. It got stuck around ₹30 Cr. Then ready-to-wear took off, and today it's 85% of the business, doing about ₹10 Cr a month in net sales. In this episode of the Founder Thesis podcast with Akshay Datt, Dhruv breaks down how Indian men actually buy trousers, why comfort beats logos in bottom wear, and what it takes to grow a D2C brand without burning cash. What you'll learn 👉Why 80% of men's pants sales come from just five colours 👉How fit accuracy went from 75% to 93% using customer data 👉Why 60% of sales come from the brand's own website, not marketplaces 👉How marketing efficiency went from ₹1 to ₹4 of sales per ₹1 spent 👉The 700 sq ft store format that works, and why one trial room loses sales 👉How no-fade Ink Lock jeans grew denim to 25% of sales 👉Why Dhruv says raise late, raise little, and pick partners you trust Chapters 00:00 How Indian men buy pants 03:35 Offline vs online, value vs premium 06:15 The ₹40,000 Cr bottom wear market 08:48 Why pants: low inventory risk, high loyalty 10:54 From Wharton to Oliver Wyman to Banswara Syntex 13:12 Two brands that didn't work 14:57 Starting custom-made during COVID 15:47 Fixing fit with customer data 18:21 ₹10 Cr a month and the channel split 20:15 Custom vs ready-to-wear 22:54 Fabric R&D and Ink Lock jeans 26:25 The grip that keeps shirts tucked 29:16 Margins and raising the first round 32:10 What investors asked about the family business 34:00 How funding helped hire senior talent 36:53 Fundraising advice for first-time founders 38:13 How marketing got 4x more efficient 42:51 What works in retail stores 48:15 How online ads drive store footfall 51:02 Focus as a superpower 55:30 Hiring and retaining talent 01:01:20 Where AI helps and where humans win Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the speaker, not necessarily the channel

Dickens said, it was the best of the times, it was the worst of the times. The words have never been truer. Best because there’s never been a better time to be an entrepreneur. Worst because the clutter is mind-numbing. Founder Thesis breaks through the noise to bring you stories of success & failure, grit & struggle, bouquets & brickbats from some of the most brilliant entrepreneurs in India.

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