Today’s consumers demand frictionless experiences in everything from smooth connections between digital and physical channels, to fulfillment, all the way to a speedy checkout and return process. With technology serving as the engine that powers these engagements, retail IT leaders play a critical role in delivering on those demands. Learn how you can reduce friction at your organization by listening to our 6-part podcast series, “Achieving Frictionless Commerce” with our host, a technology ...
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Frictionless Commerce Podcasts
As Far As We Know, hosted by Brain+Trust's Tracy Arrington and Tim Hayden, provides thought-provoking discussion with remarkable guests around the power of data, leadership and culture in our volatile business world. Each episode presents compelling perspectives from the most provocative arenas of media, commerce, academia, technology and science. Tracy and Tim provide key insights and guidance to embrace today's opportunities and confidently respond to change.
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Accel launched SeedToScale in August 2020 to remove information asymmetry in the startup ecosystem and make a founder's path to success as frictionless as possible. We aim to achieve this by providing the best source of knowledge and actionable insights for company building. In the three years since, we have created over 300 knowledge pieces covering all stages of building a company. We collaborated with 80+ industry experts, successful founders, and mentors to create thematic series, report ...
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Building a New Category of Applied AI: Bridgetown Research | Decoding AI Episode 7
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48:50AI is stepping into uncharted territory, assisting decision-makers with high-stakes, low-frequency calls that shape the future of enterprises. These decisions require more than historical data; they demand fresh insights, domain expertise, and a deep understanding of context. That’s where Bridgetown Research comes in.Bridgetown’s AI agents autonomo…
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AI for E-commerce: Insights from Meesho | Decoding AI Episode 6
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41:38Meesho is redefining the role of AI in e-commerce, driving innovations that scale to meet the demands of millions. From handling over 60,000 voice bot calls daily to managing 'trillions' of features, AI is embedded in every facet of Meesho’s operations.In this episode of Decoding AI, Anagh Prasad, Investor at Accel, sits down with Debdoot Mukherjee…
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Google DeepMind's Manish Gupta on Opportunities for AI Startups in India | Decoding AI Episode 5
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30:41Google DeepMind stands at the cutting edge of AI innovation, solving some of the most intricate scientific and engineering challenges. From protein structure prediction through AlphaFold to enhancing energy efficiency in data centers and advancing robotics for real-world applications, DeepMind is shaping the future of technology. But how can AI sta…
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Inside IIT Madras: India's AI Research Powerhouse | Decoding AI
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24:55India is making strides in artificial intelligence, blending academic rigor with real-world applications. In Episode 4 of Decoding AI, Prayank Swaroop, Partner at Accel, is joined by Professor Balaraman Ravindran of IIT Madras, a pioneering figure in Indian AI research and application. As the founding head of several prestigious AI-focused centers,…
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Building AI Infrastructure from India for the World: Insights from Simplismart | Decoding AI
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40:49Simplismart is an AI infrastructure company building the critical platform-agnostic middleware to deploy, train/customize, and serve open-source AI models in production. With a very small team and under $1M in funding, these two Bengaluru-based founders built the world's fastest inference engine.In Episode 3 of our Decoding AI series, Amritanshu Ja…
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Lessons on Product, Pricing, and Trust: Insights from ServiceNow | Decoding AI
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40:32GenAI is growing rapidly, evolving from a mere tool into an intelligent partner that empowers businesses to scale with greater speed and efficiency.In Episode 2 of our Decoding AI series, Vishwesh Pai, Senior Director of Product Management for AI Platform at ServiceNow, and Anagh Prasad, Investor at Accel dive into how large companies are navigatin…
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Building Agentic AI for the Enterprise with Ema | Decoding AI
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41:52With GenAI on the rise, software is evolving from a tool that needs constant supervision to an intelligent partner that handles tasks autonomously, similar to human assistants. This shift promises a future where enterprises are more efficient, with AI seamlessly integrating into daily operations.In Episode 1 of SeedToScale's Decoding AI series, Acc…
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Timeless Lessons for the Future | SeedToScale Specials
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29:572023 is particularly momentous to Accel as we complete 40 years as a global fund and 15 years in India.As we celebrate this milestone, we hope to share insights from the firm’s shared history with you, in this riveting two-part podcast series. We begin with a look at the past, and how startups and investors evolved over the years; moving on to inve…
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Learnings from 40 Years in VC | SeedToScale Specials
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55:432023 is particularly momentous to Accel as we complete 40 years as a global fund and 15 years in India.As we celebrate this milestone, we hope to share insights from the firm’s shared history with you, in this riveting two-part podcast series. We begin with a look at the past, and how startups and investors evolved over the years; moving on to inve…
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Masterclass #9 | How Urban Company created tech-led value in the at-home services space
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46:59Know what is harder than pivoting when the going gets tough? Pivoting when the going is good.On the surface, most metrics were scaling efficiently for Urban Company (previously UrbanClap) at the end of 2015. The tech company mainly generated leads for at-home service providers. But founders Abhiraj Bhal, Varun Khaitan, Raghav Chandra recognized tha…
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Masterclass #8 | How Infra.Market offers concrete solutions through its construction marketplace
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47:21At their core, marketplaces are in the business of efficiency. Deeply optimized supply was the need of the hour in the world of construction, where access to materials was fragmented and unreliable. Souvik Sengupta of Infra.Market and Prashanth Prakash of Accel talk about transforming the manner in which real estate companies buy for their projects…
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Masterclass #7: Lessons from Myntra on how to build a long-lasting marketplace
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39:48What does it take to build a timeless marketplace? Time. Long-lasting marketplaces have little to do with restless hustling, and a lot to do with clear research and balancing gut calls with data calls. You can trust that bit of wisdom because it comes from Mukesh Bansal who knows the ups and downs of entrepreneurship in India more intimately than m…
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Masterclass #6: Spinny’s Lessons on Winning Customer Trust In A Crowded Market
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35:38When Niraj Singh started up Spinny, the used-car market in India was already crowded with cash-rich competitors. More and more Indian buyers were leaning towards buying pre-owned cars because of the better value they offered but the landscape was still full of potholes and barriers. There were few trusted intermediaries, and no convenient way for b…
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Masterclass #5: How BlackBuck drove digitization in the complex world of trucking
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49:43Conversation Highlights In addition to asking if the sector is unorganized, ask whether it is inefficient. Know exactly what kind of a profit pool is available there. There are businesses where a tight testbed is not possible. So find your fulcrum. It takes trial and error but look for the side where your tech intervention as a marketplace will dri…
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Masterclass #4: How Zetwerk disrupted manufacturing by using technology to cut delays
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49:45Cutting out the intermediary helps many industries. Not so in manufacturing. It needed a middle layer. Suppliers routinely failed to deliver on time, and customers failed to pay on time. To improve trust and speed, Amrit Acharya and Srinath Ramakkrushnan introduced Zetwerk as a B2B marketplace for manufacturing in 2018. Zetwerk began as a hub for s…
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Masterclass #3: How Captain Fresh reeled in B2B success using clarity, capital, and talent
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50:27Give someone a fish, you feed them for a day. Give someone reliable access to seafood in a supply-deprived industry, you go on to create a successful B2B marketplace for fish. Take it from Utham Gowda, the founder of Captain Fresh, an investment banker-turned-fisherman, so to speak. Three years after its birth in 2019, the company has raised $126.5…
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Masterclass #2: How Swiggy fell in love with the problem, and not their solutions
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1:00:16It’s essential to keep things as simple as possible initially, with a total focus on understanding the consumer problem statement. Because when it comes to subscriptions, users drop off a lot — they are commitment-phobic. In the next stage, startups must know how to decentralise well. A founder cannot go on micromanaging a hundred things. Many star…
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Masterclass #1: How TaxiForSure built a successful marketplace by combining data with intuition | Decoding Marketplaces
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1:15:50About TaxiForSure TaxiForSure, founded in 2011, was the outcome of a drunken conversation in a Bangalore pub between friends Raghunandan G and Aprameya Radhakrishna, who had both been to National Institute of Technology Karnataka and the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad. Raghunandan was 33 and Radhakrishna a year older. Three-and-a-half yea…
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Insights #79: Future of Insurance | Learnings from Varun Dua, Founder & CEO Acko
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46:52Like in most markets, India is a large but under-penetrated insurance market. While the COVID-19 pandemic led to a sharp uptick in life insurance premiums, bringing it at par with the global average of 3.2% of GDP, non-life premiums - health and motor insurance - continue to lag at sub 1% of GDP, compared to 2% for developing Asian countries and 5%…
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Setup Your Organization Up For Long-term Growth
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22:25Welcome to Achieving Frictionless Commerce, a podcast series from Vertex developed to help IT professionals tackle friction within their organization. In this final episode, host Jeremiah Owyang, a technology analyst and entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley, is joined again by Robin Allen, Vertex’s Senior Director of Agile Program Management and Di…
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Welcome to Achieving Frictionless Commerce, a podcast series from Vertex developed to help IT professionals tackle friction within their organization. In this episode host Jeremiah Owyang, a technology analyst and entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley, is joined by eBay’s Global Head of Tax Technology, Jacqui Van der Leij. Jacqui shares how new regu…
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A Deeper Dive: Reduce Friction with Tax Tech
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21:30Welcome back to the Achieving Frictionless Commerce podcast series from Vertex, developed to help IT professionals tackle friction within their organization. On today’s episode, host Jeremiah Owyang, a technology analyst and entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley, is joined again by Peter Olanday, Vertex’s Director of Consulting - Vertical Solutions,…
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Welcome to Achieving Frictionless Commerce, a new podcast series from Vertex developed to help IT professionals tackle friction within their organization. In this episode host Jeremiah Owyang, a technology analyst and entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley, is joined again by Robin Allen, Vertex’s Senior Director of Agile Program Management and Digit…
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Welcome to Achieving Frictionless Commerce, a new podcast series from Vertex developed to help IT professionals tackle friction within their organization. In this episode host Jeremiah Owyang, a technology analyst and entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley, is joined by Robin Allen, Vertex’s Senior Director of Agile Program Management and Digital Tra…
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What Frictionless Commerce (Really) Means Today
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20:58Welcome to Achieving Frictionless Commerce, a new podcast series from Vertex developed to help IT professionals tackle friction within their organization. In this episode host Jeremiah Owyang, a technology analyst and entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley, sits down with Peter Olanday, Director of Retail Consulting at Vertex, to break down exactly w…
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Insights #78: Future of Mobility | Vivek on Bounce’s Journey & Inevitable Adoption of EVs
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58:29India, frequently referred to as the two-wheeler factory of the world, serves a tremendous market both in India and abroad. About 15M two-wheelers were sold in India in 2021 and 3.7M two-wheelers manufactured in India by the top 4 Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) were exported. By 2030, the number of two-wheelers sold in India annually is ex…
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Welcome to Achieving Frictionless Commerce, a new podcast series from Vertex developed to help IT professionals tackle friction within their organization. Presented by Vertex, a pioneer in tax automation Learn more by visiting www.VertexInc.com Vertex proudly serves over 4,000 customers worldwide with distinction and provides comprehensive tax solu…
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INSIGHTS #77: Future of Banking | Reflections from Niyo’s Vinay Bagri
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42:39Banking opportunity in India is tremendous, with overall banking assets expected to reach $3T by 2025, with deeply under-penetrated private credit markets which account for ~50% of GDP (vs. 150%+ for developed economies). Despite this large opportunity, customer experience and engagement in traditional consumer banking in India is broken and has be…
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INSIGHTS #76: Untold Seed Stories | First 500 Days of Bizongo
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42:36B2B marketplaces are different. There are tremendous opportunities, but also different challenges. This arises from the business model itself. Having to cater to both the supply and demand side is one thing, the other is adjusting to the nuances of the products and commodities being bought and sold. This is different for every domain and therefore …
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INSIGHTS #75: Untold Seed Stories | First 500 Days of Mensa
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37:54The D2C ecosystem has truly found its feet in India. There are now a lot of great brands making niche, high-quality products for targeted audiences. The e-commerce wave has given them a channel of distribution that they own. But as the market matures, there are other needs for young D2C startups. They need marketing, sales, and brand talent, things…
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INSIGHTS #74: Future of Open Source | Abhishek Nayak on Appsmith and Building Open Source Projects
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49:20How is the world of Open Source faring in a landscape that is being overturned by Web3 and its ascendant new technologies? It’s an important question and not just in the realm of entrepreneurship and products. Open Source was the first promise of some kind of a technological revolution, where everyone could build and use things they want to with he…
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INSIGHTS #73: Future of Crypto | Raghu Yarlagadda on FalconX's flight and what it means
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43:08If you know about Crypto, you can’t have missed FalconX, I’ll still give you a brief: FalconX is a blockchain, cryptocurrency, and fintech-focused cryptocurrency brokerage and digital asset trading platform. Accel has been proud partners since the startup’s inception, and we’ve been cheering on their success loudly! Crypto is definitely here. With …
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INSIGHTS #72: Future of Edtech | Learnings from the Duolingo journey
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56:15Edtech is a category whose time has come. The pandemic and its attendant ramifications have meant that Edtech is now one of the hottest spaces for innovation and growth globally. This also means that a lot of new Edtech startups are coming up, with newer visions and interpretations of what the future of learning and education can look like. And the…
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INSIGHTS #71: Future of Credit Cards | Innovation and Challenges in Indian Fintech
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40:42Credit cards are one of the most ubiquitous financial products in the world. We all use them everyday, they are part of our lives. But as the world changes and our spending and consumer behaviour changes along with it, so have our needs with regard to financial products. We now have different financial behaviors and the exciting field of fintech is…
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INSIGHTS #70: Future of Beauty and Personal Care: Tracking the evolution of the category in India
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57:11From lipsticks to hair care to bath and body -- there’s little to nothing that the average shopper cannot find that covers all beauty and personal care needs. And what’s more, the shopper can browse through multiple brands within the same unified platform. It is to talk about this vision that I am joined today by Prashanth Prakash, senior partner a…
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INSIGHTS #69: GRIT Stories | The most resilient Indian startup you haven’t heard of
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1:01:34In the latest episode of Grit Stories, I spoke with Baskar Subramanian, founder and CEO of Amagi. Baskar has been an internet entrepreneur and startup founder since before either of those terms were really a thing. Having started and sold his first startup in his mid 20s, Baskar, along with a group of friends, started looking for new problems to so…
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INSIGHTS #68: GRIT Stories | The Ups & Downs of Aprameya's Startup Life, from TaxiForSure to Koo
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47:48Aprameya is no stranger to the entrepreneurial journey. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Koo, a microblogging platform catering to the Indian vernacular. Koo was born as an offshoot of Vokal, a vernacular question and answer platform. Within one year, it amassed over a million users and became a force of its own. Before this, he was at the helm of Ta…
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INSIGHTS #67: GRIT Stories | The hurdles on the way to Spinny's success
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59:18Check out other episodes from the Insights Podcast series at https://www.seedtoscale.comShare your feedback and suggestions at https://www.twitter.com/Accel_India00:00 - 03:16 Introduction03:17 - 5:26 Tough beginnings and what shaped Niraj05:33 - 7:25 Grit to get to IIT-D 12:34 - 13:42 Support of the ecosystem being very low back in the day14:53 - …
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INSIGHTS #66: GRIT Stories | Vedantu's Hard Road to Success by Vamsi Krishna
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1:01:09The story of Vedantu is a heady mix of grit, determination and conviction. The Bangalore based startup, which raised almost 200 million in 9 rounds, has had a journey and a story that will definitely inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs. The startup witnessed 4.5x to 5x growth in the last financial year on each of its core metrics. And the …
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INSIGHTS #65 - Understanding the Value of AI in Healthcare
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46:24If there is one thing that the pandemic is bound to teach humanity, it is the will to go with the flow and not plan too ahead in life. That said, counterintuitively, it seems important to be prepared and planned when similar outbreaks arise in the future.A healthcare startup from Canada, BlueDot, in its report, shared that the outbreak was fast spr…
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INSIGHTS #64 - Future of Agritech: The evolution of Agritech in India
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46:48Taking cues from a top-down structural approach, the Agritech industry has many layers to it. On top of them however, like every other major industry, Financial services is also a critical part of Agritech. However, it is largely unorganised and has plenty of room for disruption. Most farmers in the country do not have access to credit-based lendin…
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INSIGHTS #63 - Future of Digital Health: What lies ahead for the patient of the future?
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46:38The future of digital health pertains to a myriad of technologies put together. Whether it is Artificial Intelligence (AI), advanced health sensors genomics, digital therapeutics, or all of them put together, digital healthcare is very much technology-based only on paper as of now. With the COVID-19 pandemic, we have learned in a hard way that we n…
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INSIGHTS #62 - Untold Seed Stories: First 500 Days of Freshworks
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59:40Podcasts have been one of the ways we try to bring out untold stories of startup founders. Continuing with this tradition, we at Accel are excited to introduce our new podcast mini-series: Untold Seed Stories. This new show aims to unravel the first 500 days of our founders’ startup journey — ranging from how they first conceived the idea and met t…
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INSIGHTS #61 - Untold Seed Stories: First 500 Days of Swiggy
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57:20Podcasts have been one of the ways we try to bring out untold stories of startup founders. Continuing with this tradition, we at Accel are excited to introduce our new podcast mini-series: Untold Seed Stories. This new show aims to unravel the first 500 days of our founders’ startup journey — ranging from how they first conceived the idea and met t…
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INSIGHTS #60 - The Scale Playbook: Key Ingredients to Drive Scale & Value Creation
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49:48Most of our other podcasts are targeted towards early-stage founders looking to build and scale their companies. But now we are also launching a new podcast mini-series keeping in mind the founders of fast-growth companies. The Scale Playbook, as the name suggests, will help unravel the playbook of large startups for founders to understand how to s…
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INSIGHTS #59 - Untold Seed Stories: First 500 Days of Urban Company
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45:19Podcasts have been one of the ways we try to bring out untold stories of startup founders. Continuing with this tradition, we at Accel are excited to introduce our new podcast mini-series: Untold Seed Stories. This new show aims to unravel the first 500 days of our founders’ startup journey — ranging from how they first conceived the idea and met t…
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INSIGHTS #58 - The Scale Playbook: Scale lessons from Flipkart's Engineering & Strategy Heads
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45:45Most of our other podcasts are targeted towards early-stage founders looking to build and scale their companies. But now we are also launching a new podcast mini series keeping in mind the founders of fast-growth companies. The Scale Playbook, as the name suggests, will help unravel the playbook of large startups for founders to understand how to s…
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INSIGHTS #57 - Untold Seed Stories: First 500 Days of Ninjacart with Thirukumaran
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50:14Thiru is a serial entrepreneur in its truest sense. He founded six startups including a coaching academy and a Biryani cloud kitchen before he landed on Ninjacart - which, interestingly, isn’t the same business as it was initially perceived. Though the first six companies failed to take off, he did not give up and kept charging ahead with one idea …
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INSIGHTS #56 - Sairee Chahal on building SHEROES
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47:38The 56th episode of the INSIGHTS podcast features Sairee Chahal, Founder and CEO of SHEROES- a social networking platform with over 20M women. Sairee is also an Aspen Fellow and serves on the board of Paytm Payments Bank. She has been an entrepreneur for 15+ years. In this episode, Sairee shares insights on building successful products around commu…
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INSIGHTS #55 - Vetri Vellore on using OKRs to build a resilient and agile business
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38:48In this episode, we hear from Vetri on what OKRs are, how they are different from other goal-setting frameworks, how businesses can go about adopting them, and some common challenges and pitfalls to be careful about. To learn more about how you can adopt OKRs as a powerful tool in your organization to increase alignment and engagement around achiev…
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