As coffee enthusiasts, we've spent awful amounts of time at Third Wave Coffee, meeting friends, working or even just enjoying a great cup of coffee.

In this episode, we are excited to unpack the third wave coffee revolution that's transforming how we experience this coffee in India as well as dive deep on the business model of Third Wave Coffee, founded in 2016 as a Koramangala roastery-café by Sushant Goel, Ayush Bathwal, and Anirudh Sharma, that is leading this shift in a fast growing $1 bn market. With 200+ cafés across 12 cities, they prioritize coffee-first experiences, innovative beverages, and community spaces, challenging giants like Starbucks in urban neighborhoods for GenZ and millennial customers.

Learn more about the coffee industry, evolution of cafes in India, Third Wave Coffee's story to a professionally managed company and more. Do let us know if you enjoyed this episode!

Today, Rapido has nearly half the share of the overall ride-hailing market, with monthly active users at ~50 million across bike, auto and cab taxi versus Uber’s 30 million (as of July-25).

It’s come a long way since founding in 2015, nearly 10 years ago, fighting the Uber-Ola duopoly to emerge as a dominant player of reckon. Even Uber CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi called Rapido a formidable competitor in India in his recent podcast with Nikhil Kamath.

Also, Rapido has been in the news recently – with the launch of food delivery services ‘Ownly’ to now fight the duopoly in food delivery. And its recent partnerships with OTA (Online Travel Aggregators) to launch flight, hotel, bus and train ticketing. It’s on a steady pursuit to become the everything app, for every Indian.

In this podcast, Shantanu and I explore in this podcast how Rapido began as a B2B logistics venture called The and pivoted to the bike taxi model, the evolution of the taxi and ride hailing segment in India, key aspects from Rapido’s business model like it’s zero commission fees, optimizing for ~4 min ETA and more. Do check it out!

Key Timestamps

00:10: Rapido – Introduction & Industry Context

03:44: Rapido's Big Market Moments & Partnerships

05:07: Founding and Evolution of Rapido

06:53: Initial Growth, Guerilla Marketing & Expansion

09:50: Regulatory and Safety Challenges

11:30: COVID Pivot – Grocery & Essential Deliveries

14:32: Product Expansion: Autos and Cabs

16:25: Execution Philosophy & Tier 2 City Focus

18:40: Early Investors and Strategic Advice

20:02: Competition: Rapido vs Ola/Uber Models

21:36: Ride-Hailing Industry Timeline in India

24:57: Rapido's Diversified Business Model

27:10: Subscription Model for Drivers

29:48: Driver Earnings and Platform Stickiness

32:23: Product Strategy vs Ola/Uber

33:56: Cost-Frugal Culture & Tech Optimization

36:20: Customer and Driver Experience Innovations

38:17: Founders’ Vision and Bharat Focus

40:05: Market Share, Financial Metrics & Operational Insights

43:10: Final Thoughts on Disruption and Growth

Urban Company is a home services provider with plans to become a publicly traded unicorn soon.

Its story begins with a fundamental frustration experienced by millions of urban Indians - finding reliable, professional home service providers. Hiring a plumber, electrician, or beautician meant navigating an unorganized sector plagued by unprofessionalism, price opacity, and trust issues. Service providers often arrived late, charged arbitrary rates, and delivered inconsistent quality, while customers had no recourse for poor service.

Since its inception in 2014, Urban Company has emerged as an undisputed leader in the organized home services sector in India, perfecting a challenging service marketplace business. In this episode, we cover the journey from being UrbanClap, started as a Uber for X marketplace model to Urban Company, a full stack service provider. The co-founders, Abhiraj Singh Bhal, Varun Khaitan, and Raghav Chandra, each bring a unique skill set to the company, set a high standard of customer focus and have succeeded in building a unique institution, through training and standardization efforts that have set industry standards.

Urban Company is inspiring - a near monopoly in Indian online home services, but not without its own challenges in growth potential. There’s currently <2% online penetration of home services, the target market of mid to high income urban households in India is limited to ~13% of total households and quality supply is a constraint.Tune into our podcast episode, where we break down Urban Company's past, present, and future. We’ve also attempted to take it up a notch this time. Let us know what you think!

Links:

1/ Choti Soch Ad Campaign: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU3y54ybZqA

2/ UC Culture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEBPdaABZB4&t=198s