Moonshot
Sequoia India & Southeast Asia
Subscribe
Moonshot profiles innovative entrepreneurs from India and Southeast Asia who dare to dream big, make an impact and accelerate change. This podcast shares actionable insights on how to start and scale enduring companies from founders and thought leaders who are helping shape the region’s startup ecosystem.
Available episodes
Newest first
Oldest first
Sep 5, 2022
Zetwerk: Digitizing India’s Manufacturing Supply Chain
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 Ramakkrushnan, Vishal Chaudhary, and Rahul Sharma launched Zetwerk, a B2B manufacturing network that offers companies manufacturing solutions across a wide variety of products. On this episode of Moonshot, we speak with Amrit Acharya, Co-Founder and CEO of Zetwerk and Shailesh Lakhani, Managing Director at Sequoia India, about how the startup is taking a bold bet to bring a centuries-old industry into the digital age.
_Show Notes: _
* Fall in love with unsolved problems (5:40)
* “We built exactly what you wanted.”: The challenges of selling software in India (9:40)
* The answer to how you pivot your startup lies in user behavior (11:15)
* Taking on a centuries-old industry (16:28)
* Finding opportunity in adversity (20:24)
* Taking a software approach to building hardware (among other things) (23:39)
* Running an international business without an overseas footprint (27:30)
* “Done is better than perfect.” (29:30)
* Showcasing India’s manufacturing potential (33:28)
* Paying it forward with Zetwerk Build (34:34)
playlist_add
Aug 1, 2022
CoinSwitch: Taking the FUD out of crypto
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 largest cryptocurrency trading apps. On this episode of Moonshot, we chat with CoinSwitch co-founder and CEO Ashish Singhal and Sequoia India Managing Director Shailesh Lakhani about how the startup is taking crypto to the masses by differentiating itself from its competitors, educating users, and tracking user gains to improve their product.
_Show Notes:_
* Start by solving a problem that you’ve encountered (1:36)
* If mom can use it: The CoinSwitch differentiator [06:03]
* Build user confidence: Educate them on how to use your product (9:10)
* Go-to-Market strategy: Web3 vs Web2 (12:11)
* Bear markets make you work harder for your users (14:52)
* Track user gains to improve your product (17:23)
* Be frugal, be focused (20:08)
* Know that there’s a right time for your idea (23:05)
* Give yourself two chances at success (28:15)
playlist_add
Jul 1, 2022
LingoAce: Accelerate Growth with Moonshot Talent
"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 that used gamification to make learning fun. In 2022, the platform rolled out its English program in just three months – something Hugh credits to hiring and acquiring teams quickly. On this episode of Moonshot, LingoAce founder Hugh Yao chats with Sequoia India & Southeast Asia Managing Director Abheek Anand about how he saw opportunity in tough times, what it takes to hire moonshot talent, and how the LingoAce team rolled out its English program in such a short span of time.
_Show Notes:_
* Differentiate yourself: Choose the hardest way to build a global company (08:00)
* Be ambitious about hiring moonshot talent (10:50)
* Hire and build out teams quickly (16:04)
* A good hire accelerates everything (17:44)
* Focus on what you can control (21:36)
playlist_add
May 25, 2022
A quick start guide to building an enduring company – In conversation with Doug Leone
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, Doug chats with Sequoia India Managing Director Rajan Anandan about some of the insights he’s gained over the past two decades working with startups, common pitfalls founders should look out for, and what it takes to build a truly enduring company. The conversation took place during an AMA at Surge – our rapid scale-up program for early-stage startups.
_Show Notes:_
* Sequoia’s culture - Spiky people with a “We, not I” mindset [7:05]
* Architect your company, not just your product [14:18]
* Fail fast: Why flops are better than slogs [18:06]
* The gross margin line doesn’t lie [24:53]
* Servant leadership starts with you [30:34]
* The number one reason companies fail [33:06]
* Focus on solving a singular problem [37:58]
playlist_add
May 5, 2022
Meesho: A No-Frills Approach to Democratising E-Commerce in India
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 millions more. Launched in 2017 by Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal, the platform is bringing down costs and lowering barriers to entry for many merchants – while helping them digitise, list their goods, process orders, track payments and manage inventory. On this episode of Moonshot, Meesho Co-Founder and CEO Vidit Aatrey chats with Sequoia India Managing Director Mohit Bhatnagar, about how bucking tradition led to the genesis of Meesho, why startup founders need to regularly talk to their users, and how taking a no-frills approach to pricing can lead to higher retention rates.
_Show Notes:_
* Bucking tradition: How college changed Vidit’s world-view (5:30)
* Affordable fashion, cheap t-shirts, and the ‘aha!’ moment (12:33)
* Talking to your users gives you a competitive edge (18:33)
* The path to PMF is non-binary – prepare to change your approach (20:48)
* Don’t do 10 things (21:41)
* Less is more: A no-frills approach to pricing and strategy (27:53)
* Design your organisation around problems (35:50)
* Start your year with ‘BHAGs’ (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) (32:01)
* Optimising for speed: An organisational design choice (33:35)
* Evaluate team members against values and celebrate them (39:46)
playlist_add
Mar 11, 2022
Lemonilo: A Community-First Approach to Building a Consumer Brand
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 importance of healthy living, while leveraging technology to get healthy snacks into the hands of consumers quickly. On this episode of Moonshot, Lemonilo's Co-Founder and CTO Johannes Ardiant chats with Rohit Agarwal, a principal at Sequoia India and Southeast Asia about the need to take a community-first approach when building a consumer brand, how Lemonilo is getting its products to market quickly, and why startup founders should pick the right problem before focusing on a solution.
_Show Notes:_
* Offer a new solution to an old problem (04:05)
* Pick the right problem and validate it (6:45)
* Don’t forget what it takes to build your MVP (10:58)
* Lemonilo’s growth strategy: Leverage communities and remain agile (18:18)
* Grow brand loyalty by listening to your customers (20:58)
* Leverage tech to shorten your supply chain (23:45)
* Get your product to market quickly (28:40)
* Bring tech and communities together to create social impact (31:05)
* Not all problems can be solved by technology (34:45)
* Ask the right questions (38:25)
playlist_add
Feb 14, 2022
Hangry: Finding New Opportunities in Crowded Spaces
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 right to their doorstep. Hangry, a fast-growing cloud kitchen startup that launched in 2019, is feeding this demand by offering international cuisines, along with local favourites, to appeal to an increasingly global-minded target market. On this episode of Moonshot, we speak with the co-founder and CEO of Hangry, Abraham Viktor, and Sequoia India and Southeast Asia’s Aakash Kapoor to discover how the startup is taking on industry giants, riding the K-pop trend, and creating a winning recipe for cloud-kitchens (and hungry customers) in Indonesia.
_Show Notes:_
* A tasty way to take on industry giants (2:07)
* Appeal to different palates with a wide variety of flavours (4:15)
* Taste and iterate: The Moon Chicken recipe for success (9:40)
* How the Hangry Academy sets outlet staff up for success (13:18)
* Count Your Chickens: Deciding on quantities with the help of technology (14:25)
* Be quick to respond to customer complaints (16:06)
* Entice your customers by nailing the basics and riding trends (18:25)
* Customer complaints for breakfast: Team Hangry’s morning ritual (20:20)
* The key ingredients of building a brand (21:50)
playlist_add
Jan 13, 2022
Mamaearth: Building and Scaling Brands for Millennials
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 choices for their bodies. On this episode of Moonshot, Mamaearth’s Varun Alagh chats with Sequoia India Managing Director, Ishaan Mittal about the strengths of building a startup with your spouse, crafting a purpose-based brand through nano-marketing, and how founders can perfect their brand through purpose, quality, and consistency.
_Show Notes_
* A personal mission behind personal care products (1:50)
* Using the three Ps framework to bring your brand purpose to life (5:30)
* It's much easier to live with failure than to live with regret (13:15)
* The bedrock of a great founding team is trust (14:38)
* The benefit of starting a conversation with potential consumers (18:10)
* Be paranoid about quality (24:25)
* Disrupting FMCG incumbents with data and tech (25:32)
* Use your brand playbook to take on other markets (30:14)
* Perfecting your brand through purpose, quality and consistency (40:25)
playlist_add
Dec 17, 2021
Kopi Kenangan: Building a Brand People Love
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 & Southeast Asia Principal, Rohit Agarwal about how he’s building a well-loved brand with authentic Indonesian flavours, a deep understanding of what customers want, and staying true to his brand’s DNA.
_Show Notes_
* Kopi Kenangan’s sweet start (01:31)
* How a ‘One Cup, One Customer’ approach and leveraging technology helped Kopi Kenangan weather the pandemic (07:09)
* Growing brand equity with great service and coffee (12:48)
* Stay true to your DNA to build brand love and recognition (16:24)
* Commitment to your customers is hard for copycats to replicate (21:32)
* Differentiate yourself based on your strengths (24:14)
* Creating new brands and verticals to achieve compounding distribution (26:54)
* Think big, start small, fail fast (30:45)
* Build and lead from your heart (33:00)
playlist_add
Dec 9, 2021
Atlan: Leveraging Founder-market Fit to Build a Global SaaS Brand
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, SocialCops, a data-for-good startup that partnered with the World Bank, and helped build India’s national data platform. In this episode of Moonshot, Prukulpa talks with Anandamoy Roychowdhary, a Principal at Sequoia India, about how her first-hand experience as a ‘human of data’ shaped the data leader she’s become today, the importance of making tough design choices early in your startup’s journey, and how empathy has been Atlan’s greatest competitive advantage in its mission to build a global SaaS brand and become the icon on the desktop for every data team.
_Show Notes_
* Building a collaborative workspace for ‘the humans of data’ (01:23)
* Unifying data teams on a single platform (04:44)
* How empathy can be a huge competitive advantage (07:27)
* Leveraging data to build personal conviction (11:09)
* Driving impact through founder-market fit (18:50)
* Having the conviction to choose long-term goals over short-term wins (23:50)
* Rallying your team towards your mission with clear, effective communication (25:56)
* Focus on problems that are most likely to make you fail long-term (30:09)
* Building a global SaaS brand out of India (34:37)
* Driving decisions with conviction (41:17)
playlist_add
Nov 18, 2021
Bibit: Building Trust In A Category That's New To Consumers
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 now attracting more retail investors as Millennials and Gen Z look for new ways to grow their savings. The Bibit team started a Telegram group early in their product journey and invited users to share complaints, ideas and questions. Some of the app’s key features - such as a shared portfolio for spouses and an auto debit function - emerged from that customer feedback. On this episode of Moonshot, Sigit chats with Rohit Agarwal, a principal at Sequoia India & SEA, about how Bibit is empowering Indonesians to make sound investment decisions, and building a brand that first time investors trust by actively engaging with them.
_Show Notes_…
playlist_add
Nov 3, 2021
Unacademy: To Create Iconic Products, Set Iconic Goals
“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 was founded in 2015. Their subscriber base has grown by more than five times in the last year alone. On this episode of Moonshot, Gaurav Munjal, Co-Founder and CEO of Unacademy, talks with Shailendra Singh, Managing Director at Sequoia India, about building and scaling iconic products, creating a culture of experimentation, and the role that ‘Founder’s DNA’ plays in a startup’s trajectory. The conversation took place during an AMA at Surge – our rapid scale-up program for early-stage startups.
_Show Notes_
* How crucial pivots define the trajectory of the company (6:08)
* Deciding early to be great, not good, and alignin…
playlist_add
Oct 22, 2021
Eruditus: Powering Growth With An A-plus Team
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 from over 80 countries in multiple languages. In this episode of Moonshot, Eruditus co-founder and CEO Ashwin Damera chats with Sequoia India Managing Director GV Ravishankar about why playing the long game is crucial to his business, the need to have founder-startup fit, and why it's so important to hire A-plus talent.
_Show Notes_
* Patience, faith and perseverance: The path to an enduring company (5:42)
* Knowing when to let go: Lessons from Travelguru (09:01)
* Go after big ideas and large opportunities (12:03)
* Assessing founder-market fit at every stage of the company (21:44)
* To build a great company, hire A-Plus people…
playlist_add
Oct 11, 2021
GudangAda: Building a Business Based on Empowerment Vs. Disruption
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, Stevensang talks with Sequoia India & SEA Managing Director Abheek Anand about how he drew on more than two decades of experience in leadership roles in Indonesia’s FMCG industry to assess the market size and industry structure - and design a business model that empowers wholesalers and retailers alike.
_Show Notes_
* Digitizing Indonesia's FMCG supply chain (1:18)
* Evaluating the market size, industry structure and opportunity in Indonesia’s FMCG supply chain (6:35)
* Choosing to empower instead of disrupt the industry (9:14)
* How GudangAda hacked distribution (12:00)
* Securing supply by building relationships and…
playlist_add
Sep 23, 2021
Freshworks: Dream in Increments to Create Products That Scale
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 company so successful. The conversation took place in July 2021 during an AMA at Surge, our rapid scale-up program for early-stage startups.
_Show Notes _
* Everything begins with framing the customer problem well (2:19)
* Dreaming in increments to create a wedge (4:36)
* Sharpening product differentiation to support outbound sales (6:16)
* Using pricing as a weapon, and landing the first set of customers (10:33)
* How churn is a killer in product-led growth (13:05)
* Building a global company with its soul in Chennai (15:23)
* Increasing your standard of giving (18:45)
* Feeling like an Indian athlete that has a chance to run…
playlist_add