Moonshot Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia India & SEA)

Paying for things digitally is now a part of daily life – but this wasn’t always the case. In 2013, long before the reality of cashless payments had become the norm in many parts of India and the world, Amrish Rau co-founded Citrus Pay, an online payment provider built with a mobile-first focus. This was one of many ventures in his two-decades-long journey to pioneer India’s payment ecosystem in the digital age, culminating in his most recent appointment as CEO of Pine Labs. On this episode of Moonshot, Peak XV Managing Director, Shailendra Singh, speaks with Amrish about his early life and how it defined his approach to company-building, his transition from Citrus Pay to Pine Labs, and how building a company with a heart will help a startup as it scales.

Artificial Intelligence and machine learning are transforming the world of business intelligence and marketing. But before ‘AI’ became a buzzword, it was not easy to convince businesses that the technology could be a game changer for their enterprise. In 2012, Chih-Han Yu launched Appier with a vision to make AI accessible for all. That vision was tough to sell as it was a technology the world had yet to discover. In the years that followed, Appier pivoted many times on its mission to help companies adopt AI and big data to power business decision-making. On this episode of Moonshot, we speak to Appier co-founder and CEO Chih-Han Yu about what it takes to build a global AI-as-a-service company, and how he tapped on his team’s deep technical roots to build a product focused on customer-centricity.

The dawn of AI is upon us and Enterprise AI is finally getting its time in the sun. With more people experimenting with the likes of Chat GPT, Dall-E, and Midjourney, companies are also moving swiftly to implement AI tools to help them drive productivity and efficiency. One person who’s been building AI tools for over a decade is Ashwini Asokan. In 2013, she left her job as a designer at Intel and teamed up with her husband, Anand Chandrasekaran, a neuroscientist, to launch Mad Street Den, a computer vision and artificial intelligence company. On this episode of Moonshot, we chat with Ashwini about the current state of Enterprise AI, how Mad Street Den is setting itself apart from its competitors, and what it takes to build a global artificial intelligence company out of India.

“The best leaders and founders I’ve worked with have the ability to have conviction about a vision and an opinion, but also the ability to open up the decision or the moment and say, ‘OK, is there something I'm not thinking about?’ or ‘What could I have done differently?’” Claire Hughes Johnson draws on her experience leading and managing teams at Google and Stripe, and reflects on all things people management on this episode of Moonshot. Delving into insights published in her book, Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building, Claire discusses the difference between leadership and management, how to build trust and set expectations with early hires, and how startup founders can effectively give and receive feedback.

Launching a new software product and successfully driving user adoption and retention is a challenge for many startups. According to sales engagement platform Vymo’s co-founder and CEO Yamini Bhat, the secret is to ‘go live’ quickly and show users their return on investment. On this episode of Moonshot, we take a peek into Vymo’s playbook to learn about some of the key product and sales design choices the startup’s team made to attract and retain users across large enterprise customers.

"If you are deciding everything, then you are limited by your own speed". That’s a belief Groww co-founder and CEO, Lalit Keshre, keeps front and center as he and his co-founders scale the investment platform. Keshre believes that by having a decentralized structure, team members are empowered to make quicker decisions around products. On this episode of Moonshot, we chat with Lalit Keshre and Ashish Agrawal, Managing Director at Sequoia India, about key design choices Groww made to take on a market with strong incumbents.