Z47 Moments

Z47
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Zero to Infinity, by Z47, is a podcast series dedicated to the founders, startups, and all within the ecosystem through candid conversations on what we think it really takes to survive in this wild startup world. In a world where we are endlessly engulfed with information in all its forms and sizes, this is our attempt to create, curate, and bring to you the insights and reflections that we have had the luxury of having learned the hard way through all the years spent in truly understanding what it takes to build and nurture a startup from ground zero.

  1. 1d ago

    How two founders sold to a billion-dollar company with no factory | Wootz Work | Unstarted

    Our first-ever episode with co-founders. Karan and Himanshu of WootzWork join Avnish to talk about building a hardware and manufacturing exports company out of India — and why they leaned into a market everyone told them wouldn't work. From an investment banking and Stanford GSB background (Karan) and IIT Kharagpur mechanical engineering (Himanshu), the two met at a previous company where one interviewed the other as head of engineering a one-hour conversation that ran three hours. In this episode they unpack how a single insult ("we don't talk to Indian engineers, we work with Germans") lit the fire, how they closed their first order from India with no factory of their own, and why the naysayers became their strongest signal to go ahead. What you'll learn in this episode: 1. Why starting in a market everyone doubts can be an advantage — and how to tell real naysaying from noise2. How to win your first customer with no factory, no brand, and no track record3. The co-founder decision that actually matters: why the answer is never "the middle"4. How to choose a co-founder — honesty and complementary skills over everything else5. Why customer obsession beats worrying about network or capital early on6. Manufacturing as a system: how fragmentation held India back and how to fix it7. Scaling global sales by hiring domain experts in their 40s–50s who are local to the market Chapters 00:00 Intro 02:00 Karan's path: banking, AirAsia India, Stanford GSB04:30 Himanshu's path: IIT Kharagpur, ITC, and the machines05:15 "We don't talk to Indian engineers" — the moment that lit the fire06:30 The China vs India buying experience: what's actually broken08:00 Why the market was ripe — and betting on exports11:45 Customer obsession: getting the first customer in13:15 The co-founder dynamic: why the answer is never in the middle20:25 Turning the naysaying into conviction22:30 The first order: won with no factory23:12 Why the customer still needs them: engineering vs manufacturing28:30 Managing people with 40–50 years of experience30:30 AI and robotics in the manufacturing story33:40 Closing: why 2.3 is the right number of co-founders

    How two founders sold to a billion-dollar company with no factory | Wootz Work | Unstarted

  2. Aug 6

    Started with ₹8 Lakhs and built a Billion Dollar Company | Abhishek Bansal, Shadowfax

    What happens if you fail with everyone's money? Abhishek Bansal never let himself ask and he thinks that's the only reason Shadowfax exists.He's the first public-company CEO on Unstarted: a middle-class kid from Meerut who quit his job without telling his parents, asked a VC for $5 million with zero orders, and was the only one still standing after the year every competitor died.In this conversation with Avnish Bajaj, they attempt to answer: 1. Should you have a co-founder and how do you actually pick one? 2. What should founders look for in a VC when there are multiple offers? 3. How do you tell your team you're failing?4. Sustainable growth, or aggressive scaling? By the end, you understand his test: accept the failure, name the core problem, tell your team. Because teams don't break on failure — they break on how you behave in it. Chapters 0:00 Intro: our first public company CEO1:19 Meerut, a middle-class home, and IIT Delhi4:04 Parents didn't know he had quit his job7:50 Q: How do you choose between VC offers?8:47 Why he wanted a co-founder, not a skills match11:03 Why not bootstrap?11:28 Asking for $5 million with no product12:23 The ₹8 lakh phone call13:28 The angels who never sold: 1000x and counting14:31 Three offers: $2M, $5M, $9M17:19 Q: How do founders bounce back from failure?17:46 The 2015 crash: five funded, one survivor23:07 Knowing the core problem is the hardest problem28:07 The offsite: profitable in three months28:32 The retention numbers behind the culture29:20 Q: Aggressive scaling or sustainable growth?29:56 "In India, no idea is unique"32:14 The guardrails: unit economics and 50-30-2037:26 The CAPEX model that ran 100 iterations39:07 When the HR team built its own hiring tool40:20 Closing: teams compound, individuals don't

    Started with ₹8 Lakhs and built a Billion Dollar Company | Abhishek Bansal, Shadowfax

  3. Aug 4

    India's biggest deep-tech exit that nobody knew of | Ravi Annavajjhala | Nxp

    Most people assume serious AI silicon can only be built by a giant, in the cloud, burning hundreds of millions of dollars. Ravi Annavajhala did the opposite. Kinara built two AI chips for under $50M, 90% of it out of Hyderabad, and sold to NXP, one of the world's largest semiconductor companies for $307M,  all cash. It's one of the largest deep tech exits India has seen, and one of the least talked about. In this episode, Vikram Vaidyanathan sits down with Ravi to take apart how it actually happened, and what it says about where AI is heading next. You'll hear: 1. Why the disruption playbook that minted the NAND-flash exits is the same one that explains Kinara's sale to NXP 2. The clearest plain-language explanation of training vs. inference you'll find, and why inference is moving off the cloud and onto the edge3. The four reasons edge beats cloud: cost, latency, privacy, reliability 4. How you actually shrink a frontier model to run on a chip: distillation, compression, purpose-built retraining 5. Why India's real AI edge isn't talent or capital, but the industrial data sitting in its factories — and why it can't afford to become a "data colony" 6. Ravi's distinction between frugal and cheap, and why low cost has stopped meaning low capability ▶ If you're building, investing in, or just tracking India's deep tech story, this is the episode to watch. About Intelligent Indians Intelligent Indians is Z47's thesis podcast on the people building India's technology future, for builders, operators, and investors who want the operator's view, not the press-release version.🔔 Subscribe for new episodes. Chapters  0:00 A $307M deep-tech exit you didn't hear about0:45 Meet Ravi Annavajhala & the Kinara story3:10 The NAND flash lesson: how startups cash in on disruption5:45 2015: betting on edge AI while everyone chased the data center7:00 CoreViz → Deep Vision → Kinara: the naming journey9:15 Why 90% was built in Hyderabad — a talent bet, not a cost cut11:30 Two chips under $50M: engineering for capital efficiency15:20 What "the edge" actually is: training vs inference18:00 Why edge beats cloud: latency, cost, privacy & reliability22:45 Physical AI: robots, self-driving & the real bottlenecks28:30 Advice to VCs: conviction, local demand & the infra gap31:20 Frugal vs cheap: why low cost ≠ low capability33:30 Closing: India on the cusp of the edge-AI wave

    India's biggest deep-tech exit that nobody knew of | Ravi Annavajjhala | Nxp

  4. Jul 30

    How the Ex-Unacademy COO built an edtech solving India's healthcare skills gap | Vivek Sinha

    How much money is enough to make starting up safe? Vivek Sinha thought he knew: ₹50 lakh in the bank. The day he hit it, he quit.Vivek is the founder of Emversity, which trains people for the jobs India actually has in healthcare, hospitality, EPC and manufacturing.  Homeschooled till eight in a Bihar village surrounded by three rivers, he built Buildzar, lost ₹50 lakh, and spent nine years compounding skills at Mobikwik, OYO and Unacademy before starting again in a sector everyone had written off. In this episode, Avnish and Vivek take on,  1. Where did you get the confidence to do this?2. Why didn't it work? What did you think going in that didn't play out?3. Should I drop out and work full time on my startup?" 4. How do I find the right co-founder?5. How can we secure investment in a stigmatized sector despite proven traction?"6. What stays with you: build it for the right reasons  Chapters  00:00 Introduction02:00 Flood village to NIT: growing up in Bihar06:00 First startup & why it failed: market timing11:00 MobiKwik: 0 to 20 lakh merchants in 6 months16:00 OYO & Unacademy: the lessons that compounded22:00 The 9-year gap: how he killed bad ideas early28:00 Should you drop out of college?34:00 How many co-founders — and going solo40:00 Building in a stigmatised, out-of-favour sector48:00 What Mversity does + closing advice

    How the Ex-Unacademy COO built an edtech solving India's healthcare skills gap | Vivek Sinha

  5. Jul 23

    From PhD to 26 FDA Clearances: Building AI in Healthcare | Prashant Warrier

    What do you do when you've built the technology first and the first customer who tries it tells you it's not working at all? Prashant Warrier is the first PhD and the first scientist on Unstarted. A steel-town kid from Bhilai who went from IIT Delhi to a PhD in AI, he came back to India because of a stolen passport — and built Qure.ai, whose AI reads chest X-rays for TB and lung cancer across the world. In this episode, Avnish and Prashant attempt to answer:  1. How do you identify a unique problem is it about passion or market cap? 2. How do you know the technology is actually working?  3. How can founders assess whether they're early, late, or correctly timed for a market?  4. Will frontier AI kill vertical businesses or is there domain-specific stuff left to build?  5. Why build a cutting-edge AI company from Mumbai? This episode is in partnership with TEAM — Tech Entrepreneurs Association of Mumbai. Chapters  00:00 Introduction1:41 Steel town to IIT to a PhD in AI3:20 SAP, and the stolen passport that sent him home6:32 Freedom over the US visa rat race8:17 The 2012 breakthrough that started the company11:43 A research lab with no business plan13:33 "A solution looking for a problem"16:52 The reality check & the real bottleneck19:20 TB screening: 4 weeks to 30 seconds21:43 Detecting lung cancer early with AI24:23 Moats, ChatGPT & the future of AI in healthcare32:04 Why Mumbai, and advice to founders

    From PhD to 26 FDA Clearances: Building AI in Healthcare | Prashant Warrier

  6. Jul 16

    Secrets of building The Whole Truth | Shashank Mehta, Founder and CEO | Unstarted

    He built a ₹100 crore brand from scratch in two years. His company rated him 2 on 5. So the question stopped being am I good at this? and became am I even the right kind of person for it? Shashank Mehta is the founder of The Whole Truth, one of the best consumer brands built in India in the last decade. We backed him early, off the strength of a blog whose readers became the company's first customers. In this conversation: 1. What do you do when you build something from zero and still get rated below the person who grew an existing brand by 5%?2. How do you tell the difference between being bad at a job and being the wrong category of human for it? 3. Is it risk that stops you from leaving — or is it fear wearing risk's clothes? 4. Why does writing your worst fear down on paper shrink it? 5. Can a single founder build a company that outlasts the founders who have co-founders? A conversation about self-knowledge as the real moat — and why the fear that freezes you is almost always smaller on paper than the life on the other side of it. Chapters  0:00 Welcome & introducing Shashank Mehta3:00 Middle class Delhi, mom's tears and the pressure to study8:00 HUL, the startup bug & discovering he's a creator14:00 First leap — joining Fasos, failing and coming back20:00 The blog, the rage and the protein bar made at home27:00 Risk vs fear — writing down what actually scared him33:00 The 2/5 rating that built a ₹100 crore brand38:00 Co-founders — why chemistry beats skill every time43:00 Brand first vs revenue first — the 20 year argument47:00 Building culture on trust and inspiration not fear and greed

    Secrets of building The Whole Truth | Shashank Mehta, Founder and CEO | Unstarted

  7. Jul 9

    The Harvard Grad who quit her job to build a deodorant for women | CEO, Laani | Unstarted

    Nirja Bhatt looks intimidating on paper: Columbia, Harvard Business School, strategy consulting. But she calls herself "a duck in water” i.e you never see what’s moving beneath the surface. It took her two years of analysis paralysis, ten abandoned ideas, and learning to normalize embarrassment before she could finally start. Nirja is the founder of Laani, a pre-launch personal care brand for women, built around the categories nobody talks about. In this episode, she and Avnish go back to the very beginning. They get into:  1. How do you start when you have ideas but no capital? 2. Why validate a problem, not an idea? 3. How do you make peace with betting your own savings on yourself? 4. Should you raise money before you have a product? 5. And what actually separates the founders who make it?6. An honest conversation about the part of the founder journey nobody photographs. Chapters 00:00 Intro: Meet Neerja Bhatt, founder of Laani01:30 Growing up in Baroda, raised by grandparents03:00 Rejected by every dream school: the USC detour04:30 How a professor's letter got her into Columbia07:30 Q1: How do I start with no capital and too many ideas?08:30 Analysis paralysis: 10 ideas and the HBS trap11:00 Moving back to India: the waste management chapter16:30 Q2: Passion vs. market gap — how to pick your problem19:00 Talking to 200 women: customer validation done right21:00 Q3 (Gubbachi founders): Hero products vs. commodity staples26:30 To raise or not to raise: funding pre-launch29:00 Final advice: persistence and eating a lot of shit30:00 Outro

    The Harvard Grad who quit her job to build a deodorant for women | CEO, Laani | Unstarted

  8. Jul 2

    How Country Delight grew its revenue to ₹200 Cr a month | Chakradhar Gade | Unstarted

    Chakradhar Gade had the résumé everyone's supposed to want: engineering, CFA, a hedge fund, and felt like he'd lost himself inside it. So he walked away to sell milk. This is the story of how a finance guy who once mapped "the IRR of a cow" learned that the spreadsheet was a lie, lost all his money proving it, and rebuilt Country Delight from first principles, one customer relationship at a time.Avnish Bajaj and Chakradhar get into the questions most founders sit with alone:   1. What do you do when a successful career leaves you with "a huge loss of identity"? 2. Should you bootstrap and survive, or raise aggressively and run? 3. How long does it really take to learn a business you've never been in? 4. How do you tell real customer love apart from people just being nice to you? 5. When the model that "looked very beautiful in Excel" collapses, what replaces it? A conversation about chasing meaning over status, why bootstrapping bought six years of depth, and why, in Chakri's words, "there's no downside" to starting. Chapters  0:00 Welcome & introducing Chakradhar Gade1:35 Growing up in Guntur, Infosys & chasing meaning4:43 From MBA to Wall Street — why he chose finance7:33 The decision to quit New York and become a doodhwala12:05 The IRR of a cow (and why Excel lied)14:51 Bootstrap or raise? The real answer17:00 Raising from friends & family without ruining relationships21:02 From ₹80 lakhs to ₹200 crores a month23:01 The milkman model & month 60 retention32:34 Final advice: take more risks, there is no downside

    How Country Delight grew its revenue to ₹200 Cr a month | Chakradhar Gade | Unstarted
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About

Zero to Infinity, by Z47, is a podcast series dedicated to the founders, startups, and all within the ecosystem through candid conversations on what we think it really takes to survive in this wild startup world. In a world where we are endlessly engulfed with information in all its forms and sizes, this is our attempt to create, curate, and bring to you the insights and reflections that we have had the luxury of having learned the hard way through all the years spent in truly understanding what it takes to build and nurture a startup from ground zero.

Information

  • Creator
    Z47
  • Years Active
    2018 - 2026
  • Episodes
    266
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Show Website
    Z47 Moments

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