From Street Smarts To Smart Hiring: Madhu Basu On Grit, Failure & Reinventing Recruitment With AI Start. Scale. Exit. By Sintesys podcast

From Street Smarts to Smart Hiring: Madhu Basu on Grit, Failure & Reinventing Recruitment with AI

11d ago 52:03

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Episode Summary:

In this episode of Start. Scale. Exit., Ivan Galvez sits down with Madhu Basu, founder and CEO of Unnanu, to unpack a powerful journey from humble beginnings in India to building a cutting-edge AI recruiting platform in the U.S. Madhu shares how his early ventures—including a childhood vegetable packing business, taught him resourcefulness, resilience, and the importance of people over paper.

Together, they explore how rejection, self-doubt, and industry disillusionment led Madhu to develop a radically new approach to hiring—one that uses AI to uncover not just what candidates have done, but why they’ve done it. Madhu delves into how Unnanu mimics human understanding to eliminate guesswork, bias, and inefficiency from the recruiting process.

🔑 Key Takeaways:

Why failing college was a gift and how it taught Madhu to rethink success
How bootstrapping built more discipline than chasing early VC money
The symbolism of water, a pen, and money in Madhu’s entrepreneurial mindset
Why resumes don’t tell the full story and how AI can read between the lines
The hidden bias in traditional hiring pipelines and how Unnanu addresses it
How to lead with purpose while building with precision
Why hiring is broken—and how trust, data, and design can fix it
How to protect your “why” even when others don’t believe in your vision
What Madhu learned about business from watching life in motion in India
Why transparency and timing matter more than titles and funding

💡 Golden Nugget:

“Failure gave me the clarity that success never could. When you strip everything away, what remains is your why. That’s what you build from.”

Mentioned in the Episode:

🌐 Unnanu.com – AI-powered talent platform for modern hiring

🌐 PMCSservices.com – IT & staffing solutions for enterprise clients

🔗 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/madhubasu

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12 episodes