A deep conversation with Sumeet Mehta, co-founder and CEO of LEAD group, India's largest school Edtech company with a current valuation of INR 10,000 crores! Sumeet's mission is to make excellent education accessible to every child, by transforming schools across India.

Born in Pathankot to teacher parents, Sumeet learnt innovation in education early on when his father used to teach him fractions on the dining table using a Roti. Sumeet went to Punjab Engineering college for a degree in electrical engineering, where he had his first tryst with exclusion and realization that one needs to help themselves as no one else will. He then went onto IIM-A where he really found his niche.

Sumeet started working with P&G and spent a considerable amount with the company but in 2005 took a sabbatical and travelled to India to focus and find his inner calling. During this 6 months, he tried out different things and realized that education space is the most rewarding for his ethics compass. In 2007, he quit his job full time and moved to India to dive head first into the education ecosystem. From 2007-2012 he was the CEO of the Zee Learning group. In 2012, he decided to take a break again and found his true calling during a 10 day Vipassana which helped him clear his blind spots. Soon after he started LEAD with his co-founder Smita Deorah.

According to Sumeet, the path to becoming a founder needs to go through the following-

a. To be a founder, one needs to care about a problem and persist with it. Persistence defines if one cares about that problem deeply;

b. As a founder, one needs to be open to feedback as that is the only way to continual growth and creating a worthy product;

c. As a founder, it is imperative to always surround oneself with people who care about the same problem.

Sumeet is a believer in, no failure is final, that failure is just an event and failure doesn’t define anyone. Listen in to this unique story of a humble founder.

A deep conversation with Shashank ND, co-founder of Practo, India’s leading healthcare app. A ‘youngish’ entrepreneur, Shashank started on his start-up journey at the age of 21!

An engineer from NIT Surathkal, Shashank’s tryst with entrepreneurship started when he became part of a college club at NIT called EUPHORIA (which got him interested in entrepreneurship). During his early years, he saw the gaps in the medical ecosystem from up close when his father was medically mistreated. This instance got him involved in solving the myriad problems in the healthcare infra in modern day India which led to him starting Practo in 2008.

Shashank believes that to sustain growth and success, one needs a constant “source of energy” to channel creativity and drive productivity which eventually forms the bedrock of any startup success. He opines that to create great products, one simply needs to persevere with a sense of obsession towards solving a problem and not quitting till the solution is reached.

Shashank further shares that one is ready to start on their own by focusing on solving the problem and being content with only a handful of happy customers. He says that this threshold was his litmus test when he started back when he was 21.

A firm believer of focusing on the quality of input to ensure the quality of output, listen to Shashank’s fascinating and inspiring journey.

A deep conversation with Rhea Chakraborty, actor and survivor. In the episode, Rhea speaks in a no-holds barred manner about the sequence of events which culminated into the controversy around Sushant’s untimely death. Rhea also opens up on how she coped with the relentless witch-hunt leading to her being jailed and subsequent bail. 

Rhea speaks of her experience in jail, how day 1 of being in jail was like a relief (of sorts). She recounts her first sentence which she penned in her diary when she got to jail and how the people on the inside are so much better than on the outside.  

During her time in jail, a feeling of helplessness slowly crept in but Rhea took solace in the book autobiography of a Yogi. The life lessons in the book became Rhea’s directional compass. 

Rhea believes that the only way to heal is to acknowledge, feel and address one’s emotions. According to her, the only way to remain authentic is to keep listening to one’s inner voice and staying curious to continually grow and be sane in life. Tune in to the episode and listen to Rhea for a crash course on dealing with chaos, healing and thriving.

A deep conversation with Sandeep Aggarwal, founder and CEO of Droom and ShopClues. While many entrepreneurs dream of having a profitable start-up, Sandeep has 2 successful unicorns to his credit!

Raised in Chandigarh, Sandeep started his career in the US and was part of the dot com era. Unfortunately, he bore the brunt of the dot com bust along with the 9/11 racism effects. This never deterred him and through tenacity and grit Sandeep continued to strive. But as luck would have it, he was wrongly implicated in an insider trading case from his time on the Wall Street in July 2013. This resulted in Sandeep going to jail in the US, an experience which Sandeep never wants to relive and shudders even at the thought of.

Through his sheer perseverance and outlook towards life, Sandeep worked 19 hours a day, managing Shopclues during US night time (which was day time in India) and negotiated with regulators during the US day time (regarding his case). He continued this for a few months, all of which did take a significant toll on his health and personal life.

A firm believer in integrity and value driven product offerings, listen to Sandeep to follow his eclectic and inspiring journey.

A deep conversation with Akhil Gupta Co-founder & CTO of NoBroker.com, the world's largest C2C real estate platform. Akhil holds a dual degree (B.Tech and M.Tech) from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and has worked with Oracle and PeopleFluent before co-founding NoBroker.com.

Hailing for a middle-class background, Akhil’s tenet is to focus on finding the right team, along with focusing on the correct problem statement which the product is trying to solve. According to Akhil, everything happens in line with divine timing and he opines that one should not get pegged by failures and to truly believe in the adage- Fall down 7 times, get up 8.

He is a big believer in working honestly, sticking to one’s core values and never being shy to ask for help. Listen to Akhil to follow his journey.

A deep conversation with Nitin Viijay (fondly known as NV sir). NV sir is an Educationist, a Motivator, a Physics Guru and the CEO of Motion Education, based out of Kota, Rajasthan.

Hailing from a modest middle-class background in Rajasthan, NV sir is an alumnus of IIT-BHU. NV sir started his journey as an educator right after completing IIT. In his first year as an educator, he used to travel about 44 kilometres daily to teach in a coaching institution in Banaras. He made the first significant step in his life by founding Kota Point, an independent coaching, in Banaras. In December 2007, NV sir, formally started Motion Education and the rest, as they say, is history. A firm believer of finding equilibrium in both work and life, NV sir’s funda for unlocking true happiness is finding balance. 

Listen to NV sir to follow his journey on how he became one of India’s best-known educators from Kota (and the inspiration behind the beloved character Jeetu bhaiya from the hit OTT series Kota Factory).

A deep conversation with Sneha Shah, a psychologist, a corporate therapist, a marriage counsellor, and the author of What Shape Are You. Sneha’s definition of “being the best version of you” is converting one’s potential into performance to achieve one’s true caliber. According to her, criticism is a form of violence. Part of growing up and overall growth is to develop a filter on what to take personally and what to ignore.

She is a firm believer in inculcating and sustaining a positive support system along with a healthy mentor base. According to her, mental conditioning, focusing on the present and taking a macro view of life events is imperative to keep oneself centered.

Sneha’s key to life is to not be afraid of failures and to keep trying. Every failure is part of one’s journey and helps us shape our present and future. Listen in to a therapist’s point of view on life and her life’s motto of investing in the most important relationship - i.e. with yourself.

A deep conversation with Abhinay Choudhari, co-founder of BigBasket and LaundryMate. 

An alumnus of IIM-Ahmedabad and being a 5 point someone, Abhinay got his first job in a fortune no. 1 company, but left it soon after as he felt that he wasn’t able to solve real world problems at his level. Having identified an issue of time consumption in grocery shopping, Abhinay started the basic version for BigBasket back in 2009 and hasn’t looked back since. 

In the latest round of valuation, BigBasket drew a valuation of $400 billion USD and currently has over 15million customers. According to Abhinay, a good way to start your own business is to have/build core domain knowledge in the field where you want to solve a tangible problem, and to ensure before starting out that the field is scalable for the business to grow. Listen to a founder to follow his journey from a middle-class background to setting up India’s grocery unicorn.