Sidhant Panda

Sreedhar Peddineni (Co-Founder, Gainsight & GTM Buddy) and Kiran Darisi (Co-Founder, Atomicwork & Ex Freshworks) joins me on Neon show. Two founders from Hyderabad who build global SaaS companies, taking one to IPO, another to a billion-dollar exit, and then choosing to begin again (and again). In this episode, we discuss: 1. Sreedhar’s journey: Host Analytics → Gainsight → GTM Buddy 2. Kiran’s path: Zoho → Freshworks → Atomicwork 3. How to find the “Goldilocks zone” for startups 4. Building companies that last for decades 5. Common mistakes founders make scaling SMB → Enterprise 6. How Atomicwork co-founders connected & chose their problem 7. Why smaller, high-quality teams are winning 8. Is AI expanding the pie while eating it? 9. How businesses can leverage custom GPTs 10. If big AI goes everywhere, what’s left for B2B SaaS? This conversation is about the two decades of building India’s most iconic SaaS companies and what the future holds for SaaS founders from India. Episode is out on youtube.com/@TheNeonShoww

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Once upon a time, in 2020, Prashant Sachan walked away from his first startup, Trell. Burnt out from conflicts, and the brutal grind of building at scale, he carried the sting of failure with him. For months, he questioned whether he even belonged in the startup world anymore. And then a new question found him: “What if technology could serve not just commerce, but devotion?” That’s how AppsForBharat was born. Its first product, Sri Mandir App, looked nothing like a shiny consumer app. It was simple with digital aartis, scriptures, mantras. Some mocked it, calling it “ancient, like a flash card from the early 2000s.” But Prashant wasn’t building for product-hunt applause. He was building for his audience, devotees who wanted accessibility, authenticity, and trust. Armed with that conviction, he pressed on despite the naysayers and hardships that plague anyone creating a revolution: - Skepticism: Investors dismissed faith as “not scalable.” - Authenticity vs. usability: How do you digitize centuries-old rituals without diluting them? - Retention: How do you make an app feel like a temple you return to daily, not one you delete after a week? He and his team Pulkit Pujara, Alpesh Bupkya, Ameya Sahasrabudhe, Viraj Verma, Tanvi Lal, and others kept listening, testing, and rebuilding. Slowly, the tide turned. A grandmother in New Jersey cried during a live streamed aarti. A priest wrote to say the platform gave his temple new life. The product that was once mocked for looking outdated was exactly what the audience wanted. By 2025, Sri Mandir had crossed 4 crore downloads, facilitated 52 lakh rituals across 70+ temples, and attracted a diaspora user base that contributed nearly 20% of revenues. The investors followed, Elevation Capital, Peak XV Partners, The Fundamentum Partnership, Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital, Kunal Shah, Sanjeev Barnwal, Scott Shleifer, Ankush Sachdeva, Farid Ahsan and many more angels. In total, over $50M raised to build temple-tech infrastructure across Ayodhya, Varanasi, Ujjain and more. Alongside it, startups like Sutradhar, Utsav App, DevDham Devotional Platform, VAMA App and many more platforms began to emerge, experimenting with puja bookings, prasad delivery, and spiritual content. Even traditional platform players like BookMyShow and Paytm dabbled in religious services during festivals. Together, they’re shaping a new category: Devotion-as-a-Service (DaaS), where rituals, temple visits, and spirituality meet tech at scale. Analysts believe this could become a multi-billion-dollar category, spanning diaspora markets, temple partnerships, and even AI-driven spiritual companions. Moral of the story: Great founders build only for customer applause, they build for conviction. AppsForBharat proved that even when a product is dismissed as “ancient,” if you know your audience and build with empathy, you can turn ridicule into reverence and in the process, create not just a company, but an industry.

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When we started in 2022, we didn’t have giant warehouses, celebrity endorsements, or billion-dollar funding. Sumit Jasoria, started with just ₹50 lakh pooled together — savings, small loans, and belief. The pain point was clear: 👉 Women in India, especially Gen Z and millennials, wanted trendy, affordable, fast fashion. 👉 But the choices were either overpriced international brands or outdated local offerings. The struggle was real. We were rejected by early investors who said, “Fashion is too competitive.” Suppliers didn’t trust us with bulk orders. Customers doubted if a new brand could deliver both quality and trend. Our first collection barely sold. We thought of shutting shop. But we decided to listen — really listen — to what young Indian women wanted. Bold fits, vibrant colors, and global styles at Indian prices. That pivot changed everything. Within 6 months, we were shipping thousands of orders daily. By the end of year one, we had crossed ₹100 crore in revenue. In just 2 years, NEWME became a ₹250 crore brand. Not because we had deep pockets, but because we built a brand that spoke the language of Bharat’s new-age women. #startup Today, NewMe has millions of loyal customers, a strong presence across e-commerce, and is backed by investors who once said “no.” We’ve built not just a fashion label, but a movement of self-expression for Indian women. 📌 What Indian Founders Can Learn from NewMe’s Journey. Listen to your customers, not just investors. Pivot when needed. Feedback is free market research. Solve for Bharat, not just metros. The biggest opportunities lie in Tier II & III cities Culture sells. Build a brand that connects emotionally with young India, not just logically.

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How does he sell products on Amazon every THREE seconds? The answer lies not just in the product, but in the PRICE. 💰 ➡️In the chapter “PRICING: THE HOLY GRAIL OF BUSINESS” from my book Startups of Bharat, we unpack the story of Varun and Tarun from Boult, one of India’s top three audio and wearable brands that has bootstrapped its way to 750 CR in revenue. 😳 At a time when international heavyweights like Bose, Sennheiser, and Marshall already dominated the premium segment, and local brands were competing on price, Boult charted its course. 👇🏻 Varun and Tarun discovered a clear gap ⏩Customers wanted premium design and sound quality — without the premium price tag. However, identifying a gap and monetising it are two distinct things. The real game-changer? Boult’s adoption of the target costing model—a method where you first decide the price customers are willing to pay and then engineer your product to fit the cost constraints. For example, if the COGS is capped at 60% and comes to 2200, with a remaining 40% margin, your price would be Rs 3080. This meant tight control over production costs, design-led differentiation, and a refusal to fall into the trap of over-innovation. Profitability wasn’t a distant milestone—it was baked into the business model from day one and reinvested to grow the business to 750 CR and take the No. 3 spot in the ever-competitive audio category. 💪 Ask yourself ⬇️ I) Would your customers still trust your product if it cost 20% more—or 20% less? II) Are you pricing based on cost or value perception? III) Is your pricing strategy helping you build a brand, or just moving inventory? IV) What does your price say about you, even before your product does? Find the answers in “PRICING: THE HOLY GRAIL OF BUSINESS” — only in Startups of Bharat on Amazon. Link in comments! Varun Gupta Surya Pasricha 🌞 BOULT #startupsofbharat #startups #india

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If you told me 3 months ago that a brand-new AI tool would hit $15M ARR in 90 days… I would’ve laughed and moved on. But here we are. Emergent just raised $23M after becoming one of India’s fastest-growing startups. And the numbers don’t even sound real: -1M+ people building already -25,000 paying customers -1.5M+ apps live across 180 countries It’s simple → people don’t want another “AI demo” that looks fancy but dies in drafts. They want apps they can actually use, launch, and scale. That’s what Emergent does. You chat, it builds, and what comes out is production-ready from day one. It’s not a toy, it’s a launchpad. And here’s the bigger truth → in 2025, you don’t need to be a coder, you just need to be a builder. The excuse of “I don’t know how to code” is dead. Because while you’re still waiting to start…someone else is already shipping on Emergent. And tomorrow, you’ll be their user, not their competitor. PS: If you want to try Emergent, here’s the link (30% off for the next 48 hours): https://lnkd.in/gR8ANYMZ

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📊 Wealth tech in India: The great unbundling of information providers, data hubs, and advisory services 📊 💡 Here’s a quick snapshot from the last 12 months: ✅ Dezerv raised $32M in July 2024 from Premji Invest. FY24 Val: $207M. Rev: $3M. Focused on PMS & curated debt for HNIs (69x) ✅ Waterfield Advisors, a multi-family office platform, raised $15M in Feb 2025 from Jungle Ventures to expand UHNI coverage at a valuation of $85M. FY24 revenues were ~$5M (17x) ✅ Sahi, a broker for active traders, raised $10.5M in June 2025 from Accel and Elevation ✅ Groww & Zerodha (now are incumbents, Groww going towards IPO) ✅ Powerup Money raised a seed round of $7.1 in FY2025 The market is segmenting, and wealth-tech is unbundling: data, execution, advisory are splitting. An example: 👉 Dezerv + Waterfield → HNI wealth platforms, hyper focused on advisory 👉 Zerodha, Groww → broking platforms, and now the incumbents with the distribution 👉 Sahi, Dhan (which recently raised ~$120M) → trader-first execution 👉 Powerup Money → investing + advisory for the affluent base (something I've talked about in the deep dive) 📱 Now, apps are becoming more like data hubs (via AAs & enabling account opening through the app), and LLM-based agents are taking over advisory through MCP. In fact players such as Zerodha are doubling down on AI (launched MCP server in May 2025) 📱So then, if 1) incumbents are the data hub, 2) any app can become a data hub through data pipes, and 3) personalized advisory is being taken over by AI, then what is the moat? Here's my take: 1️⃣ Distribution: Incumbents have the edge here, but this is true in any market 2️⃣ Execution UX: seamless payments, order placements, etc. AI can suggest, but apps must enable this, and where Dhan (and now Sahi) seem to be creating a differentiation: by being "trader first," on execution 3️⃣ Stickiness: habit-building flows, tax reports, alerts. Navi & Groww got this right, by becoming TPAPs (something that AI cannot do) they've created that UPI habit through the app. Navi did INR 21k Cr and Groww did 8.4k Cr in UPI txns in May '25 4️⃣ Super specialized advice: tax structuring, AIF/private access: AI can’t and may not ever be able to do end to end 📱 Apps that only offer insights + basic execution could be missing a trick here. As usage of LLMs as personal advisors grow, it's only a matter of time before they take over wealth advice too ❓ So how could this play out? 👉 HNI platforms (Dezerv, Waterfield) will stay strong 👉 Mass, affluent plays now face a pivot point, they have to become full-stack platforms to drive app usage through execution + niche offerings. They cannot be advice only, customer behaviour suggests that it'll be outsourced to AI The future looks like this. Bank + investment + customer data → via AA → into your app for UI & execution → connected to LLM advisors for insights & nudges 🧠 Deep dive in comments

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