Brands rarely interact directly with customers in the digital world, making it a challenge to create personalized customer experiences and retain clients. While working at a media company in 2013, Anand Jain, Sunil Thomas, and Suresh Kondamudi, were faced with the same problem. They struggled to find a product that could leverage data to meaningful…

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…

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 …

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…

“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 …

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 …

"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 epis…

India's manufacturing sector, which contributes 18% of the country’s GDP, is on the cusp of change. This highly labor intensive sector, which is plagued with logistical and technical issues, is undergoing a transformation as workers upskill and companies start to digitize their processes to improve efficiency. In 2018, Amrit Acharya, Srinath Ramakk…

In 2017, a group of hackers in India figured out a way to get the best prices on cryptocurrencies at any point in time by aggregating data from all the crypto exchanges. That was the origin of CoinSwitch, a startup with a mission to ‘make money equal for all’. The platform gained traction, went through a few pivots and soon became one of India’s la…

"We need to do the hardest thing. If you choose the easy things to do, many people choose that way. That route is very crowded." It’s this mindset that propelled Hugh Yao to grow LingoAce into a global startup with a team of over 4,500 teachers. The EdTech platform, which was launched in 2017, started out offering Chinese language courses for kids …

Doug Leone has led Sequoia Capital for over 25 years, overseeing the firm’s international expansion. Throughout his time at Sequoia, Doug formed partnerships with companies like Nubank, Medallia, ServiceNow and Wiz. He’s seen thousands of pitches and worked with hundreds of founders as they grow and scale their startups. On this episode of Moonshot…

Millions of people across India buy and sell goods on e-commerce platform Meesho every month. The platform fulfils an average of three million orders a day. Meesho, which started off as a social commerce platform helping millions of women and homemakers run businesses from their home, is now on a mission to democratise e-commerce in India for milli…

Instant noodles may not be the first thing that comes to mind when we think of healthy food, but Indonesian startup Lemonilo is disrupting the country’s consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry by offering a healthier version of Indonesia's favourite instant meal. The company is building relationships with communities to educate them on the importanc…

Indonesia’s food delivery sector is a crowded space - dominated by industry giants and an increasing number of startups all vying for a slice of the pie. It’s also an industry that’s rapidly growing, with more cloud kitchens opening across the country to cater to young, tech-savvy Indonesians looking for a variety of food options to be delivered ri…

The quest to find safe, toxin-free, natural skincare for their baby led Varun and Ghazal Alagh to launch Mamaearth - Asia’s first MADE SAFE® certified brand of skin and body care products. In just four short years, the startup has disrupted India’s FMCG space by leveraging tech and innovation to help millennial consumers make natural, eco-friendly …

Indonesian coffee chain, Kopi Kenangan, serves affordable brews made with local ingredients and recipes. The company, which employs a ‘Grab & Go’ model, delivers most orders through its app, making it a convenient alternative to traditional coffee houses. In this episode of Moonshot, Kopi Kenangan Co-Founder, Edward Tirtanata talks to Sequoia India…

Prukalpa Sankar is on a quest to help ‘the humans of data’ do more. In 2019, she and Varun Banka launched Atlan, a powerful collaboration platform that helps teams made up of different people, jobs, and tools, work together to translate vast amounts of data into actionable insights. The two developed the idea for Atlan at their prior company, Socia…

Building trust with first-time consumers is critical for any brand - particularly where their money is concerned. In 2019, Sigit Kouwagam and Wellson Lo launched Bibit, a robo-advisor that makes it easy for Indonesians to start investing and build a portfolio. The country’s stock market, which has long been dominated by institutional investors, is …

“Early on, we decided that we will play the high-risk high-reward game. We will not be a ‘good company’. Either it has to be a great company or it has to be a failure.” Unacademy, which is on a mission to democratize access to quality and affordable education in India, has helped over 10,000 educators reach more than 50 million learners since it wa…

Eruditus, which has partnered with prestigious universities like Harvard, MIT Sloan, Columbia and Cambridge to deliver online executive education courses, scaled by building deep relationships with universities over many years – and by making hiring a number one priority. The company, which was founded in Mumbai in 2010, currently serves students f…

Stevensang, who grew up working in his parents' shop, founded GudangAda in 2019 to connect wholesalers directly to a variety of merchants, ranging from large retail chains to independent ‘mom-and-pop stores’, or warungs. The startup has quickly become one of the country’s largest online business-to-business marketplaces. In this episode of Moonshot…

Freshworks, which just listed on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange, has become the poster child for Indian SaaS startups that want to build global businesses. Mohit Bhatnagar, Managing Director at Sequoia India, talks with Freshworks co-founder and CEO Girish Mathrubootham about the early design choices on product, pricing and positioning that made the com…