The Neon Show
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Hi, I am your host Siddhartha! I have been an entrepreneur from 2012-2017 building two products AddoDoc and Babygogo. After selling my company to SHEROES, I and my partner Nansi decided to start up again. But we felt unequipped in our skillset in 2018 to build a large company. We had known 0-1 journey from our startups but lacked the experience of building 1-10 journeys.
Hence was born the Neon Show (Earlier 100x Entrepreneur) to learn from founders and investors, the mindset to scale yourself and your company. This quest still keeps us excited even after 5 years and doing 200+ episodes.
We welcome you to our journey to understand what goes behind building a super successful company. Every episode is done with a very selfish motive, that I and Nansi should come out as a better entrepreneur and professional after absorbing the learnings.
327 Episodes
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Ashu Garg has backed companies like Databricks, Turing, Cohesity, Jasper, and Eightfold.ai as General Partner at Foundation Capital. Over the years, he’s seen multiple waves of innovation but in his words, nothing in the last 45 years comes close to the transformation AI is bringing right now. Ashu discusses how the next wave of AI products will be driven by combining reasoning with reinforcement learning, and cautions every startup building on top of foundation models: that their vendors wil...
A full founder’s arc: starting small, building global SaaS companies from Hyderabad, taking one to IPO, another to a billion-dollar exit, and then choosing to begin again (and again). Kiran Darisi began at Zoho, founding team member of Freshworks at 25, and stayed twelve years till the company went public. Today he is building Atomicwork, reinventing service management in the AI era. Sreedhar Peddineni started with Host Analytics back when SaaS was still called application service provi...
A 14-year journey from bootstrap to scale. Exotel’s story is one of India’s most remarkable SaaS journeys. Shivakumar Ganesan, started Exotel in 2011, bootstrapping it from the ground up. In 2012, he raised a seed round of ₹2.5 crore, but for the next eight years, the company grew without any external funding. Then came COVID and revenue went from $10M to $5M and what followed were bold strategic moves. 3 funding rounds, 2 major acquisitions, and the decision to stay focused on the Indian mar...
The software that powers 25% of India’s e-commerce transactions, processes a billion orders each year, and in 2025 alone fulfilled 20 million quick-commerce orders: Unicommerce sits at the core of India’s digital retail ecosystem. It is one of the few SaaS companies from India to go public, doing so after nearly a decade of steady growth without fresh primary capital until its IPO in 2024. In this episode of The Neon Show, we sit down with Kapil Makhija, CEO of Unicommerce, the company ...
The 21st century has shattered old assumptions about diplomacy. Relationships between nations are no longer guided by ideology or morality, but driven by pragmatism and national interest. This week, former diplomat Rajiv Sikri who served 36 years in the Indian Foreign Service, offers a deep dive into how global power dynamics are shifting. We discuss why the United States still remains the only true great power, yet its tariff policies are reshaping global trade and forcing countries li...
Ashok Atluri founded Zen Technologies in 1993, bootstrapping from Hyderabad at a time when India was importing 70% of its defence equipment and private players contributed just 5% of procurements. It took Zen five years to win its first contract from the Indian Army in 1998. Today, the company builds simulators and anti-drone systems, and has grown its market cap from ₹40 crore to over ₹13,000 crore. Ashok shares that India needs to make it easier for private, self-funded R&D companies to...
From idea to IPO and beyond. What does it take to back a company for nearly two decades? There are no written rules to navigate one of the most important relationships in a startup. One between a founder and an investor. This episode is an inside look at how one of India’s longest founder-investor relationships was built and tested, between Yashish Dahiya (Policybazaar) and Sanjeev Bikhchandani (Info Edge). In 2008, a ₹20 crore cheque was signed for 49 percent of the company, based sole...
1The global strategy consulting market stands at $39.5 billion, with Asia commanding $9.1 billion. India contributes just $1.09 billion. This is despite having the talent; Indians run global back-offices for McKinsey, BCG, Bain, Deloitte, and other consultancies. Yet, India continues to outsource strategy to the Big 4. Sanjeev Sanyal, PM Modi’s Economic Advisor joins us to break this down. We discuss the factors helping and hindering India’s growth opportunities. Sanjeev has long worked on imp...
This episode is not just about Kerala; it is about how a state with limited land, strict environmental regulations, and a long history of outmigration is approaching investment and growth. Kerala is a small, densely populated state with limited land to spare, not the typical site for industrial expansion. Yet it’s taking a distinct approach to building a knowledge based economy. P. Rajeev (Minister for Industries, Law and Coir, Govt of Kerala) joins us to break this down. We discuss how Ker...
AI is changing how companies build and scale. But most pitch decks haven’t caught up. Karthik Chakkarapani, CIO of Zuora, has heard plenty of startup pitches but only a few stand out. He shares why most pitches fall flat, how to fix them, and how to present both the founder and the company in a way that drives real interest. We unpack what should go into your 30-second elevator pitch, why “Time to Value” needs its own slide, and how to bring up AI without sounding like everyone else. SaaS is ...
Three failed startups. One of India’s biggest B2B exits. Then returning 75% of investor money in the next venture. An entrepreneur who’s lived that arc is bound to have insights for anyone building or thinking of building. Paras Chopra, founder of Wingify (sold for $200 million), Nintee, and now Lossfunk, joins us this week. We discuss the small decisions that quietly define your startup: what product to build, how to structure your team, and why setting the right communication culture early ...
50% of products and features built are never used. To build the right product, every founder must answer two questions: Are you solving a real problem? And are you solving it the right way? Technology has rarely been democratic, it’s often elitist. So at times, it ends up solving made-up problems that don’t really exist. Yet, some companies have built truly great products. What sets them apart? Do they share any similarities? Are there lessons for entrepreneurs? We have with us Krishna (Vasa...
Geopolitics is now measured in Nanometers. Anything with a battery or a plug has a semiconductor inside. But these chips aren’t just tech anymore, they’re shaping who becomes the next Superpower. In the 1980s, India was just two years behind the world in semiconductors. Today, we’re 12 generations behind. What went wrong? India’s top semiconductor expert, Raja Manickam, returns to The Neon Show to break it all down. We discuss how the U.S. lost the chip race it started, China’s strategic rise...
There are No Checklists or Frameworks on HOW TO BE A VC? So how do you even know if it’s the right path for you? Unlike most jobs, venture capital comes with an extremely long feedback loop. It can take years before you know whether the bets you made actually worked out. That’s why most seasoned VCs say: only choose this path if you're in it for the long haul. This conversation will help you think through that choice. Whether you’re considering VC as a career, love building businesses, ...
Vertical SaaS customers don’t buy software for 10 months, they buy it for 10 years. That’s the opportunity and the challenge. Switching costs are high, which makes it hard to get in but once you’re in, you’re in. But regular SaaS playbooks don't work here. Forget PLG. Forget design partners. These industries have been burned too many times by bad software. Here, Trust defines GTM. Think warm introductions and on-site meetings, not cold emails and Zoom calls. But for founders building in verti...
Recko's acquisition by Stripe is one of India's biggest B2B exits. It's a great headline. But headlines don't tell the full story. They capture one final outcome not the numerous obstacles faced. In this episode, Saurya Prakash Sinha, co-founder of Recko, tells us what really happened behind the scenes. From the early days when no one was buying, no VC was funding, and they had just $500 left in the bank to building a product Stripe couldn't ignore. Saurya also shares hard-w...
The dollar will lose its status as the world’s reserve currency & the greatest wealth transfer in history is already underway - warns the founder of one of India’s fastest-growing unicorns! In this episode, Deepak Garg, founder of Rivigo and AnywhereJobs shares why Rivigo's iconic Relay model succeeded, and what ultimately limited it. He predicts Zomato's dominance, questions funding choices of startups and shares why India may miss the AI revolution without a radical energy shift. ...
Venture capital is much fancied today. Is this job which looks like cutting cheques for products and founders you like, for everyone? As for any work, there are traits you should have and some which won’t help you on the job. We have with us Kushal Bhagia (All In Capital), Karthik Prabhakar (Peer Capital), and Rajan (Upekkha). Three people who interestingly all began as engineers and took different career paths to today become Fund managers of leading VC firms. All In Capital’s $24M pre-seed ...
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” In this episode of The Neon Show, Vishwa (Co-founder of ZenDuty) is joined by Rahul Sasi (Co-founder of CloudSEK) and Ananda Krishna (Co-founder of Astra Security). They share how AI feels magical now. And how as founders they are trying to sprinkle this magic everywhere from how building products to building teams and everything that matters. This episode is packed with valuable insights for anyone interested in s...
In this episode, we sit down with two exceptional founders. One who is going after the biggest category, and one who created a new category and became its leading player. Vijay Rayapati (Co-founder, Atomicwork) and Khadim Batti (Co-founder, Whatfix) share their hard-earned insights on what it truly takes to build a great company. From closing million-dollar deals remotely to building AI-native organisations and cultivating long-term leadership, this conversation goes deep into the real playbo...
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the episode ends abruptly. is the file corrupted:?
Weirdest episode so far. Siddharth was very patient and asked good questions. The entrepreneur himself wasn't very open and sounded egotistic. Being a user of healthifyme myself disappointed. Was hoping to hear more from the entrepreneur and more expressive answers. :(
Awesome
audio quality is not upto the mark for this particular episode.. you guys should try to refine audio before publishing
Great insights .... thanks again Can you also discuss with VC on “ how one can become VC ?. Also what are process / registration to be done .
amazing sir
thanks for this amzing podcast show
amazing..its totally amazing,helping me a lot
fabulous podcasts..very useful..kindly add the different segments and their timing at the cover photo/description ...for reference you can check play to potential
Agree completely with you Nimish. The narrative on how brands are built will be completely different from now.
High speed internet will be disrupting the Marketing game for all consumer based start-ups in India within 4-5 years. Excited to see how it unfolds ✨