This is Matt Reustle, and for this season's final episode we decided to flip the table and interview Romeen. We talk at a high level about our favorite lessons in the series, some great behind-the-scenes moments across the project, and what Romeen will be monitoring from here. Please enjoy this conversation with Romeen.   For the full show notes, transcript, and links to the best content to learn more, check out the episode page here.   -----   Return On India is a property of Colossus, LLC....

My guest today is Nishchay Ag, founder and CEO of Jar. In the last conversation we had on Return on India, we spoke with Nithin Kamath, the founder and CEO of Zerodha. In that conversation, we focused on how tier-one India is advancing up the maturity curve with respect to financial literacy. Today we explore the opposite. We explore the rest of the Indian landscape. How do non-tier one Indians think about investing, spending, and saving? And there's nobody better than Nishchay to help us...

My guest today is Nithin Kamath, founder and CEO of Zerodha. The last 10 years in the Indian startup ecosystem have been flushed with venture capital, especially from the West. The country, understandably, has hit an inflection point and capital allocators are bullish on the potential to build world-scale businesses in India today. One of the most fascinating businesses in India that's not as talked about and has taken no outside investor capital is Zerodha - India's largest stockbroker. Its...

My guest today is Prukalpa Sankar, co-founder of Atlan. Atlan is one of the most exciting SaaS businesses in India and PK was the perfect guest to dive deep into what's going on in the Indian ecosystem. When we think about startups, consumer startups at large have experienced a major shift over the years, going from low-hanging-fruit services businesses to more challenging X for Y companies, to building natively for India's use cases. SaaS and Enterprise have taken a different motion. SaaS...

My guest today is Nitish Mittersain, founder and CEO of Nazara. One of the longest-standing and most exciting consumer businesses today in India is gaming. The ecosystem is ripe with venture capital, over $2bn has been infused in the last few years, developer talent and an influx of customers with the rise of Jio. But the gaming story has been around for the last 25 years and Nazara’s been a participant since the beginning. I enjoyed getting Nitish’s perspective on the industry at large, how...

My guest today is Kunal Shah, founder and CEO of CRED. When you think of India as a society, the motivations and psychology of consumers and how they interact with brands is fundamentally different than Western societies. There's a different philosophical value attributed to collectivism versus individualism. Trust finds itself aggregating in large entities and institutions and the Indian society often function in spite of itself versus with the same efficiency and structure in the west. But...

My guest today is Ravish Naresh, founder and CEO of Khatabook. The Indian economy is set up structurally differently to the West. While the US has big box retail and all the benefits that come with it - efficient supply chains, readily established infrastructure, and access to credit - India largely operates in the backs of the MSME segment; micro, small, and medium enterprise. Understanding the MSME segment is critical if you want to understand India. It's the heartbeat of the Indian economy...

My guest today is Anand Chandrasekaran, Partner at General Catalyst. While India has become a popular investment hub in recent years, it wasn't the case just shy of a decade ago. Even more rare were investors that spent equivalent amounts of time in India and the Bay Area. Anand has a unique perspective, and it's why I wanted to bring him on to Return on India. He's operated and invested in both the East and the West. He has spent time at formidable players in both countries, such as...

My guest today is Saahil Goel, founder and CEO of Shiprocket. Over the last decade, a number of startups that have reached escape velocity in India have followed the X for Y startup model. They've taken influence from something that works in the US and western markets, and applied it to India. The next generation of winners will build Native India use cases, and Shiprocket is a perfect example. The business started out as Shopify for India and eventually pivoted to an e-commerce logistics...

My guest today is Nandan Nilekani. Nandan is one of the most transformative figures in the Indian technology landscape, both in the private and public sector. He co-founded Infosys - one of the world’s largest information technology services firms with a market cap of over $75B, and served as the Chairman of UIDAI which developed many of India’s world class public digital infrastructure initiatives such as Aadhar, UPI, OCEN, amongst others. Nandan is often referred to as India’s CTO and I’m...

Welcome to the first episode of our new series, Return on India. I’m your host, Romeen Sheth. India is a country filled with nuance, contradictions, and ambition for the future. And throughout this podcast series, I’m excited to share why I believe the next decade will belong to India.  The first few episodes will focus on the macro story. The technological and demographic building blocks that lay the groundwork for future success. Then we’ll explore individual sectors, from e-commerce to...

Welcome to Return on India, a new Colossus podcast hosted by Romeen Sheth. Through conversations with central figures in Indian business, Return on India will explore one of the most populous and promising economies in the world. We will examine the unique cultural dynamics behind emerging demographic trends and we will drill into key sectors by talking to the business leaders driving change. We plan to investigate the past, present and future as we explore India’s investment case. This is a...