Prime Venture Partners Podcast

In this PrimeVP Podcast episode, we go back to the roots of the internet with Sabeer Bhatia, the man who gave the world Hotmail. 📧

From his Hotmail journey to his bold perspectives on today’s most pressing themes, Sabeer shares unfiltered insights on:

1️⃣ How an email problem at work sparked the idea that changed global communication forever
2️⃣ Why communication skills — not just capital — make or break founders
3️⃣ Why health & discipline matter more than hustle in the long run
4️⃣ Why India’s education system needs urgent reinvention to foster critical thinking
5️⃣ Why AI today feels like the early days of the internet — and what it means for the future

⏱ Timestamps
00:00 – Introduction
02:50 – The serendipity behind Hotmail’s creation
06:40 – Storytelling vs. features: what consumers really buy
09:00 – The importance of thinking like a consumer
12:30 – The $99 smartwatch that beats Apple Watch
15:00 – Communication as a founder’s superpower
17:37 – From supercars to bicycles: redefining success
19:37 – Why AI will be bigger than the internet
20:00 – Critical thinking as the #1 future skill
24:30 – AI in medicine & education disruption
38:37 – Health as the real wealth for entrepreneurs
44:00 – Advice to young founders

💡 Top Takeaways for Founders & Professionals:
✔️ Simplicity + storytelling beats features every time
✔️ Health & discipline > hustle culture
✔️ Communication is the most underrated startup skill
✔️ India must prioritise critical thinking to stay globally competitive
✔️ AI’s impact will rival the internet revolution

💡 A must-watch for founders, operators, and anyone curious about what it takes to build, scale, and stay relevant across decades.

🎙 Hosted by Amit Somani

#SabeerBhatia #Hotmail #PrimePodcast #PrimeVenturePartnersPodcast #Entrepreneurship #IndianStartups #CriticalThinking #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Innovation #FutureOfWork #FounderMindset #CommunicationSkills #HealthAndWealth #Leadership

How do you pivot from an early idea that didn’t work ➝ to building a global SaaS leader trusted by 700+ enterprises?

In this full episode of the Prime Podcast, Khadim Batti (Co-founder & CEO, Whatfix) reveals the raw founder journey:

• The pivot moment that sparked Whatfix
• Hustling with 500 cold emails to close first customers
• Landing a Fortune 10 client at $25/month (and why logos matter more than price)
• Why product-market fit keeps evolving
• Scaling SaaS from India ➝ US with 85+ Fortune 500 clients
• Raising $270M and turning investors into growth partners
• How AI is shaping the future of digital adoption

📌 Hosted by Gaurav Ranjan, Principal at Prime Venture Partners

📌 Episode Timestamps
00:00 – Introduction
 02:40 – Creating a Category Before It Existed
 08:30 – PMF as a Moving Target
 12:20 – 500 Emails & First Customers
 15:50 – Why Focus on the US Market
 18:40 – Fortune 10 Customer at $25
 22:10 – Narrowing Down GTM
 25:00 – Selling to Enterprises
 30:00 – India vs US Sales Teams
 37:00 – Fundraising Lessons
 44:20 – How AI is Changing Digital Adoption
 47:19 – Making Investors Work for You

📺 Subscribe for more founder journeys

 #SaaS #Entrepreneurship #Whatfix #Founders #StartupJourney #VentureCapital #ScalingStartups #IndiaToGlobal #DigitalAdoption #Leadership #StartupEcosystem #FounderLessons #CategoryCreation #PrimeVenturePatnersPodcast

In this episode of the Prime Venture Partners Podcast, Sanjay Swamy hosts Mahesh Joshi, Head of Asia Private Equity at BlueOrchard and author of H.I.T. Investing.

He shares powerful insights on how companies across India and Asia are solving critical problems like:

• Financial inclusion for underserved Kirana stores
• Gender equity in small business finance
• Climate resilience through tech and EV adoption
• Leveraging UPI, DPI, and IndiaStack to scale affordable services

📌 Key themes:

- What HIT investing really means (High Impact + Tech)
- Why India is the perfect testbed for scalable impact
- How founders with deep domain knowledge are creating billion-dollar       outcomes
- ESG vs HIT: The execution gap

📣 Whether you're a startup founder, investor, or policy watcher — this is an essential conversation on the future of purposeful capitalism.

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Website: https://primevp.in

#ImpactInvesting #HITInvesting #StartupIndia #ClimateTech #TechForGood #FinancialInclusion #ESGInvesting #SocialImpact #FounderStories #MaheshJoshi #BlueOrchard #StartupPodcast #PrimeVenturePartnersPodcast

From “Virat Kohli is the best preparer in the cricket world” to reminding startup leaders of the most important lesson - “Who I am and the results of what I do are different”, our podcast with Paddy Upton has it all!

🎯 What you’ll take away in this full episode with Paddy (mental coach to India’s 2011 World Cup-winning team):

✅ Why startup founders must evolve from individual contributors → captains → coaches
✅ How to build “personal mastery” through unsexy fundamentals
✅ The hidden costs of ego in leadership
✅ Lessons from MS Dhoni & Virat Kohli
✅ Why “success ≠ self-worth” — and how to emotionally detach from outcomes

📌 Episode Timestamp

00:00 – Introduction 

01:46 – What startups & sports have in common

03:46 – Leadership evolution: player → captain → coach

05:46 – Mental fitness: sleep, nutrition & exercise

08:16 – Separating identity from outcomes

12:00 – How to review wins & losses

15:20 – The danger of chasing shiny objects

17:35 – Lessons from Virat Kohli & MS Dhoni

🎧 Whether you’re building a startup, leading a team, or navigating your own mental game—this conversation is for you.

Hosted by Amit Somani!

#PaddyUpton #AmitSomani #Leadership #MentalFitness #Startups #Entrepreneurship #CricketLeadership #MSDhoni #ViratKohli #SelfWorth #PerformancePsychology #IndiaStartups #MindsetMatters #CoachingJourney #PrimeVenturePartnersPodcast 

🎙️ Bala Parthasarathy - Chairman & Co-founder, Freo, Director at People+AI, Senior Adviser, EMK Capital (London) -  joins us for one of our most insightful episodes.

In this full conversation, Bala discusses:
🔹 Snapfish’s dotcom-era growth, crash, and acquisition by HP
🔹 Building Aadhaar from the ground up with Nandan Nilekani
🔹 The truth about raising and deploying venture capital
🔹 What’s broken (and what’s working) in fintech
🔹 The founder's mindset in the age of AI

If you're a founder, investor, or operator, this episode is packed with lessons, stories, and perspective.

📌 Episode Timestamps:
00:00 – Bala’s background & Snapfish origins
03:00 – Dotcom boom, bust & Snapfish acquisition
06:30 – Understanding VC: what founders often get wrong
10:00 – Building Aadhaar at scale with Nandan Nilekani
13:00 – Freo, fintech & operating in regulated markets
16:00 – AI disruption & founder readiness
23:00 – How every function is being reshaped by AI
28:00 – Founder life: balance, energy & playing the long game

📌 Follow us:
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Twitter: https://twitter.com/primevp_in
Website: https://primevp.in

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#BalaParthasarathy #Startups #AI #VentureCapital #Aadhaar #FintechIndia #Entrepreneurship  #PrimeVenturePartnersPodcast 

What happens when a techie starts brewing in his garage and ends up building one of India’s most iconic craft beer brands?

Just as refreshing as Geist’s beer, this episode has Narayan Manepally, CEO & Co-founder of Geist Brewing Co., chatting with Sanjay Swamy.  It has all the flavours and ingredients - from sharing his journey as an Intel engineer in the U.S. to innovating and succeeding as a beer entrepreneur.

What you’ll learn:
🍺 How one batch of California Golden Ale changed everything
📜 Why Narayan brewed in Belgium and brought it back to India
📦 The science of building a cold chain for beer
🌳 How Geist Brewing Co.  turned adversity into an open-air beer garden
📈 From 0 to 450+ locations without compromising on quality

Timestamps:
00:00 – Introduction

03:27 – Tech at Intel → Garage Brewing

08:09 – First Brew = The Big Idea

10:08 – “Now They Say: We Love Geist!”

12:42 – What Makes a Beer ‘Craft’?

15:00 – Brewing Abroad When India Said No

18:04 – The 600K Month & Scaling B2B

20:33 – COVID Pivot: Sell to Myself

23:47 – Cold Chain & the Science of Fresh Beer

34:03 – Advice for Founders

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Website: https://primevp.in

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#GeistBrewingCo. #CraftBeerMovement #StartupIndia #FounderInsights #EntrepreneurMindset #RegulatoryChallenges #B2BtoB2C #FoodAndBeverageIndustry #ConsumerBranding #ScalingStartups #BootstrappingStories #COVIDPivot #BusinessOfBeer #FounderPodcast #PrimeVenturesPartnersPodcast

What happens when a founder builds and exits four companies, including a multi-million-dollar edtech company, before India even started talking about startups?

In this episode, K. Ganesh (Author & Partner at Growth Story) - the man behind BigBasket, Portea, Bluestone, and more breaks down the hard truths, lucky accidents, and pivots that shaped his journey.

🎙️ Hosted by Sanjay Swamy | Prime Venture Partners
📘 Featuring: Mastering Disruption by K. Ganesh

🧠 What you’ll learn:

How he went from engineer to entrepreneur by accident
The pivots that saved his companies during the dotcom crash
The GrowthStory model vs. traditional venture capital
His take on AI, relevance after 60, and learning to reinvent yourself

👉 Don’t just listen - learn, reflect, and share. This is founder wisdom in its purest form.

📌 Follow us:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/primevp
Twitter: https://twitter.com/primevp_in
Website: https://primevp.in

🔔 Subscribe for more founder-centric content from Prime.

#SerialEntrepreneur #KGanesh #StartupIndia #FounderStories #MasteringDisruption #BuildInIndia #BusinessWisdom #ConsumerTech #VCIndia #PrimeVenturePartnersPodcast

What if your product manager, designer, developer, AND CEO were all AI?

In this game-changing conversation, Xiaoyin Qu, Founder of HeyBoss, joins Pankaj Agarwal (VP @PrimeVP_in) to share how she’s building a startup where software is shipped in minutes, led entirely by AI agents.

Before founding HeyBoss, Xiaoyin was a Product Manager at Facebook and Instagram. Today, she’s scaling her company with support from the OpenAI Startup Fund.

What you’ll learn:
🤖 How HeyBoss evolved from a kids' gaming idea to an AI development agency
👩‍💼 Why Xiaoyin stepped away from day-to-day operations and let “Astra”, their internal AI, lead the team
🧱 The infrastructure behind AI agents that ship full products from a single sentence
📊 Lessons in product design, QA, and customer feedback loops — all powered by AI
🧠 Why “taste,” strategy, and human intuition still matter (and always will)

⏱ Timestamps:
00:00 – Introduction
01:00 – From Stanford MBA dropout to COVID-era startup success
04:30 – Building the first AI-run dev agency
06:40 – Meet Astra: The AI CEO
08:46 – How AI manages product, design, dev & delivery
14:53 – Prioritising quality over speed in an AI world
21:49 – Humans vs. AI: What still needs us?
33:19 – The one human skill AI can’t replace

💡 Key Takeaways:

How to structure teams of AI agents to deliver finished outcomes
Why non-technical founders are a massive unlock for AI-driven products
What the future of work looks like when humans and agents collaborate
Tactical lessons for founders exploring AI-powered SaaS

This is not just a conversation - it’s a first-hand look at where the future is already headed.

📌 Follow us:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/primevp
Twitter: https://twitter.com/primevp_in
Website: https://primevp.in

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#HeyBossAI #XiaoyinQu #AIStartups #FutureOfWork #ArtificialIntelligence #StartupLeadership #TechInnovation #AIxProduct #AIAgents #PrimePodcast #IndiaStartups #VCInsights #WomenInTech #PrimeVenturePartners

AI is no longer experimental—it's foundational.

In this explosive episode, PrimeVP Founder & Partner Shripati Acharya and Principal Gaurav Ranjan unpack how AI is reshaping B2B software—and what that means for evaluating and investing in early-stage startups.

What you’ll learn:
⚙️ The rise of Enterprise AI and its real-world applications
📈 Prime’s investment thesis in AI-first SaaS startups
🧠 What separates hype from defensible value in AI
🚀 Advice for founders building in vertical SaaS, AI agents, and more

Timestamps:

00:00 – Introduction

02:00 – AI’s impact on startup scaling and team size

03:20 – Faster sales cycles with enterprise AI

07:26 – Will AI unlock India’s SaaS market?

13:36 – Has AI neutralised India’s cost advantage?

20:19 – Models vs APIs: Where’s the real business?

25:52 – Why UI still wins in enterprise software

27:27 – Building moats through workflow depth

34:38 – How to price AI products right

39:43 – Prime’s investment themes in enterprise AI

44:58 – Final thoughts

💡 Key Takeaways:

Where AI is driving real enterprise value today
Prime's active investment thesis in AI + SaaS
The rise of function-specific AI agents across verticals
Shifts in software buying behaviour—from IT to HR budgets

This is your tactical guide to the next generation of enterprise innovation.

📌 Follow us:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/primevp
Twitter: https://twitter.com/primevp_in
Website: https://primevp.in

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#AIRevolution #EnterpriseAI #SaaSInnovation #FutureOfWork #AIEcosystem #StartupGrowth #FoundersFirst #VCInsights #TechLeadership #AIInvesting #B2BInnovation #IndiaStartups #AIxSaaS #PrimeVenturePartnersPodcast