I will go first: Supam Maheswari, 3 unicorns, 2 of them are profitable (FirstCry, Xpressbees) (Globalbees)
Kishore Biyani, founder BigBazaar
Kishore Biyani was stalwart of Indian retail but the way he lost the plot, somehow shows a big missed opportunity.
@ElonMast he diversified himself way too much. Any with the jio boom, it got hard for him to compete against the online channels
D-Mart sustained the online era very well. So maybe it’s not online Vs offline, by his own submission pilferage was pretty high at BB. Also, the whole circus of sale to amazon, reliance retail somehow put a question mark on ethics as well.
Having said all these things, I admire his humility and deep retail knowledge and personally I am nothing in front of him. But the way things turned out at BigBazar, made me question certain things.
Wahi ghise pite unicorn wale naam bas.
It's a travesty that Bhavin Turakhia doesn't even get a mention here.
Thanks for mentioning him. Just read about him and wow. He defines all the laws of a stereotypical indian unicorn ceo. He just made to my list :)
1.Razorpay founders - top notch execution
2. Ather founders - truly world class made in India product. Incredible resilience given how many times the company nearly died. Ola does not even come close to the quality despite orders of magntidue greater funding
3. Girish @ Freshworks - grandaddy of VC funded SaaS. Now running his own fund
4. Deepinder @ zomato - shit culture but multiple pivots navigated well. Somehow still ahead of swiggy and growing rapidly. Great biz chops
5. Supam - same reason as the OP
6. Raghu @ TFS - great product. Company shut down due to bad luck. Now again looks to be building something promising
7. Prashant, Subrato and Shekhar @ accel - OGs of Indian VCs. Have run a top tier ship for a while
8. A91 founders - backed their conviction to leave Sequoia and start a uniquely Indian mid market PE - smart bets
TFS?
TaxiForSure
No one mentioned Aashish hemarajini, founder & CEO of Bookmyshow , the OG of Indian startups
You can listen to him here - https://open.spotify.com/episode/2RfiCuM4R9stlYRidWFYD3?si=NrzLuKJRTgOL8QALSrM4fA&utm_source=copy-link
Thanks for mentioning. Will definately read more about him
Oh
Let's ignore what's wrong with startups, keep this an optimistic thread. Which startups make you excited about their future? The ones that have cracked product, GTM, model, or something else.
Name the best Indian startups :)
Grapevine 🙏🏻❤️
Might be a good bet to filter out the ones with good culture, and apply there if you want a somewhat safe but growing career. Does anybody know startups here with good culture?
