Valerie-Zipdial CEO &Founder

I chat with Valerie Rozycki Wagoner- the founder and CEO of ZipDial, which has 280 Million Zipdials to its credit and counting.... Valerie, from California, and with a bluechip background (graduation and post-graduation from Stanford) , has chosen to make India home for the past 4 1/2 years. In this video she discusses Zipdial's business success, as well as her personal journey and why she finds India exciting...

ZipDial is a Bangalore-based company, has impeccable bluechip credentials- its founders have degrees from top global universities and graduate schools as well as extensive professional leadership experience in both India and the US, including companies like mChek, Zapak.com, eBay, Ketera and Xerox.

ZipDial has been tested and proven through past campaigns with large customers such as KFC & Pepsi and Sanofi-Aventis as well as for small and medium businesses such as individual celebrities, NGOs and live event managers.ZipDial's technology is patent pending and available internationally.

You can follow Valerie on Twitter @Valrozycki and on Linkedin

Navneet Gosal- India Venture Partners Founder

In this video, i chat with Navneet Gosal, Entrepreneur, Angel investor and Venture Capitalist.

Navneet is a seasoned technology entrepreneur turned angel investor & venture capitalist. He relocated to India from US in 2010 to manage portfolio companies for the venture capital fund, India Venture Partners (IVP) that he co-founded in 2009. Navneet currently manages two portfolio companies for IVP – Gensol Consultants, a clean energy solutions provider located in Ahmedabad and Your Kids R Our Kids, a corporate day-care provider located in Bangalore.

Navneet is an active angel investor with various investments both in the US and India. He is also on the board of Appmobi, a mobile application development platform company based out of Lancaster, PA and RelayStrategy LLC, a mobile technology services consulting company based in Washington DC with a delivery center located in Chandigarh, India. Navneet is also a member of the Indian Angel Network (IAN).

Navneet has +17 years experience in building mission critical software systems for healthcare, aerospace and telecom industries. He was part of the founding team of Care Fusion as its CTO. Based in Reston, Virginia, Care Fusion is a leading provider of healthcare software aiming at enhancing efficiency and improving patient safety. After the acquisition by Cardinal Health Inc., he became the head of the R&D group (over 350 people) for the Clinical Services business unit of Cardinal Health.

Navneet most recently has served as Principal of SGH Holdings, an angel investment fund whose investments include Flycast (www.flycast.fm) and Goomzee (www.goomzee.com), and majority ownership in an India IT services firm, Relay Strategy (www.relaystrategy.com).

Navneet is a graduate of Virginia Tech with a BS in Computer Engineering. He is fluent in English, Hindi and Punjabi.

Sarah Khatri Cofounder of 360Living

In this video I chat with Sarah, co founder of 360 living- Sarah is originally from Charlotte, North Carolina, and has shifted to live in Bangalore and started-up as an entrepreneur. Her startup is a community/ experience platform that enables you to achieve your spiritual, emotional and physical goals.

In this video, she speaks about the startup, why she started this in India, and why she sees the future as bright. She believes passionately in spirituality , health and wellness, and holistic living and is living out her passion in Bangalore

Sarah is also a great photographer and has her collections up on www.agapefineart.com Her profile on linkedin is @ http://linkd.in/sarahkhatri

Siddharth Mangharam - Founder & CEO of Floh.in

In this video, i chat with Siddharth, the Founder and CEO of Floh.in, where the coolest singles in India meet up and find relationships. He talks about Floh, how it's different from the mainstream dating websites out there, and about its bright future as urban India gets more experience focused and prosperous.

Siddharth Mangharam is the Founder and CEO of Floh, a platform that brings single people together at awesome events with the objective of meeting like minded people. They also have very cool blog called singleinthecity.in Whilst Floh engages via the social networks and the web, the key focus is to enable members to have real, in person interactions at great events. In terms of the gender mix, Siddharth claims there are more women that are members of Floh than there are men.

Prior to founding Floh, Siddharth was Founder and CEO of Peek India, a venture-backed, mobile email startup. Before his entrepreneurial ventures, Siddharth spent many years in India and in the US working for McKinsey, Microsoft and Coca-Cola.

Siddharth has an MMS degree from Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies and an MBA from The Ross School of Business at The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is based out of Bangalore.

Ashish Sinha - Pluggd.in Founder & CEO

In this video, i speak to Ashish Sinha, the founder and CEO of Pluggd.in, a very different kind of media company, and THE channel to use if you want to reach the techno-savvy and the entrepreneurs of India.

I'm sure you have heard of Pluggd.in- they are mentioned by TechCrunch as the TechCrunch of india. Plugged.in has a full-fledged portal with channels on funding, strategy, jobs and an exhaustive start-up directory. This blog turned portal based in Jayanagar, Bangalore has monthly page-views of over 3.5 million and about 1.3 million visitors, ranking them as the third largest online business readership service. With Alexa India rank under 500 and global Alexa rank under 8,000 Pluggd.in is among the top 5 Business Media sites of India with significant presence in South East Asia.They even rate a wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluggd.in) .

Ashish talks about how he sees the media business- taking sides is essential to his viewpoint of a media game- and he talks about the past, present and future of pluggd.in.Very interesting conversation with Ashish who is an IIT/IIM product

Dr.Madanmohan Rao On Innovation

In this video, i speak to Dr.Madanmohan an evangelist and a community leader on innovation, who advises organisations on creating an innovation culture. A multifaceted personality, Dr Rao is a prolific author, a prolific tweeter and a prolific music enthusiast. In this interview he explores all of his passions and about his creation of K community and Mobile Monday.

Dr. Madanmohan Rao, a consultant and author from Bangalore, is research advisor at the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC). He is also the research Director of Mobile Monday, a global network of mobile and wireless communication professionals, and co-founder of the Bangalore K-Community, a network of knowledge management professionals.

Dr Rao's books are available on : http://bit.ly/TU12l

Dr Rao's twitter handle is @madanrao

Anil-Ex-CEO of IPL's KingsXI Punjab talks about Preity Zinta & Lalit Modi

In this video, I speak with Anil Srivatsa, exclusively about IPL, his stint as the CEO of KingsXI Punjab, Lalit Modi and Preity Zinta. Anil, who has had an amazing career in the media industry, went on to become the CEO of IPL team KingsXI Punjab at the behest of Lalit Modi, resigned, and now evangelizes the democratization of radio and is looking to bring back his talkshows. An amazingly multifaceted personality and extremely articulate, Anil talks about his stint as the CEO of Kings XI Punjab, the IPL cricket team.

During his 17 years in the US, Srivatsa also served as CEO (USA) and Head of International Marketing Operations at RTV UK, where he successfully launched several South Asian networks in Europe and the Middle East. Prior to his stint at RTV UK, Srivatsa was Director of Cricket and South Asian Programming at Kelly Broadcasting, where he oversaw the creation and development of the Cricket Channel. He is the pioneer of internet radio as well.

Anil's current passion is about evangelising radio stations for different businesses thro his businesses, and you can find out more about that and about Radiowalla andSpotradio in another video. on the same blog.

Anil has the @awaaz twitter handle.

Anil Srivatsa- Radiowalla-Creating Your Own Radio Station

In this video, i speak with Anil Srivatsa, who has had an amazing career in the media industry, went on to become the CEO of IPL team KingsXI Punjab at the behest of Lalit Modi, resigned, and now evangelizes the democratization of radio and is looking to bring back his talkshows. An amazingly multifaceted personality and extremely articulate, Anil talks about his current passion of evangelising radio stations for different businesses and talks about Radiowalla and Spotradio in this video.

Anil hosted the largest syndicated South Asian radio show in the US 'Anil Ki Awaaz', which earned him a place in the Limca Book of Records, before he moved to India three years ago. He held the position of executive vice-president of ImaginAsian Entertainment Inc, a US-based entertainment company before taking over as Radio Today COO. At Meow, Anil hosted the late night talk show Between The Sheets, which talked about the softer side of a woman - her sexuality, sensuality and the various problems she faces. Srivatsa dubbed it 'talk therapy'.

During his 17 years in the US, Srivatsa also served as CEO (USA) and Head of International Marketing Operations at RTV UK, where he successfully launched several South Asian networks in Europe and the Middle East. Prior to his stint at RTV UK, Srivatsa was Director of Cricket and South Asian Programming at Kelly Broadcasting, where he oversaw the creation and development of the Cricket Channel. He is the pioneer of internet radio as well.

Anil has the @awaaz twitter handle.

Ramani Sankar- Architect & Consultant Coimbatore

In this video, i chat with Mr.Ramani Sankar, amongst the most successful architects in Coimbatore. Mr Sankar is 70 and still going strong.

Here he explores the India he encountered whilst growing up, and discusses what makes him tick, his philosophy of life and how he overcame obstracles. A very motivating conversation.

MukundMohan AngelInvestor

My conversation with Mukund Mohan , serial entrepreneur and Angel Investor who has had 3 successful exits after which he turned Angel- he has invested in multiple companies and is looking to invest in more. His investments include Bluberry Retail (restaurant), Plivo, Social Hues and three others-an e-commerce venture, a SaaS developer recruitment platform and Kinetic Brains.

Here, he talks about what he looks for when he invests and gives good advice to entrepreneurs on what they need to look for when they choose investors. An interesting conversation

He also shares his personal journey- of 16 years of the US, running a $ 250 MM business for HP and his startup Buzzgain.He founded and sold BuzzGain, a leader in Do It Yourself PR, to Meltwater in January 2010. He has founded and successfully sold 3 Silicon Valley startups in the Internet & Enterprise software market.

He studied at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County pursuing a Master's degree in Computer Science and holds a Bachelor's degree in engineering and computer science from the University of Mysore.

Burrp- Differentiation thro' User Reviews- Vishal Anand

In this Video, i chat with Vishal Anand, the Head/Director of Burrp about Burrp's business and his own journey.

Burrp is a leading local search service provider with 1.5 million users like me who depend on it for their decisions on where to go, where to eat and which TV channel to watch etc... Their key competitive differentiation is in the volume and high quality of user reviews they have. They are present in 12 cities and have feet on the ground on each of these cities and are looking to expand, of course.

Vishal talks about the model, how it works, how they are different and what the future holds. He also talks about his personal journey- he has spent ~15 years in the US in Seattle, and has worked with Real Networks- remember them- the Real Player? and Infospace.

Vishal is based in Mumbai

Rakesh Godhwani-Creating a 800 Cr Endowment Fund for IIMB

I have a very exciting conversation with Rakesh Godhwani, CEO IIM Bangalore Alumni and Fundraising office.

Rakesh has infused an entirely new life and passion into the Alumni activities of IIM Bangalore which has taken off . Here, in this video, he talks about his audacious goal of raising 800 Crores over the next 10 years for IIM Bangalore's Endowment Fund and some of the stuff he has planned.

He also talks about the stories and his inspiration for writing his newly released book Plunnge which is available on http://bit.ly/plunngeonflipkart which promises to be fascinating reading.

Finally, this conversation is also about Rakesh's personal journey. He graduated from IIMB, worked with corporate high-paying technology jobs and then followed his passion to create and build something new and live a dream.

All in all, a fascinating story. You can reach Rakesh on his email

SanjeevGadre-Indian Entrepreneurs ignore Marketing

I catch up for a quick chat with Sanjeev Gadre to discuss his experiences in advising small entrepreneurs on marketing.

Sanjeev comes with a great pedigree. With bluechip academic credentials ( IIT/IIM), he has most recently been the Global head of marketing at Adobe for the Print  and Publishing business- he left this role to evangelise marketing to Startups. He is currently a fractional CMO ... and does a bunch of speaking to help startups with their marketing.

Sanjeev thinks Indian entrepreneurs tend to ignore marketing or at best look at the function as an afterthought. Listen to the video for more. You can look up Sanjeev at his linkedin profile @ http://linkd.in/AgqpDE

Nithyanand-DAFFCO-Building One of India's Largest Furniture Plants

In this video- i chat with Nithyanand, the Head and Director of Dark Forest Furniture Company, a leader in the Cafe Coffee Day Group, and discuss his efforts to create one of the largest furniture plants in India.

Coffee Day group is already strongly backward integrated, with the Coffee for the chain being sourced from the group's own plantations, they are the largest producers of Arabica coffee in Asia .

For Cafe Coffee Day, furniture costs are ~ 30% of the Capex in a typical Cafe, hence there is significant savings to be made by backward integration. They are able to save 30-50% of the cost as compared to furniture they used to import from China/ Malaysia, and of course, they are able to customise their production to suit their specific requirements.

But the idea is to think bigger than just supplying to Coffee Day. They have significant timber assets already owing to their plantations, and they have also acquired  significant forest land at Guyana and made scale investments into the furniture factory in Chikmaglur, near Bangalore in India. They intend to to move beyond into the retail space, and more ambitious plans are afoot, where they plan to compete with the global majors...

This is also about Nithyanand's journey- he used to lead Way2Wealth, a financial services company in the group, and found his passion in design and furniture.

From GUI to NUI- Harish Vaidyanathan, Evangelist @Microsoft

In this video, I chat with Harish Vaidyanathan, Director, Technical Evangelism @ Microsoft. Harish talks about the focus on Experience that Microsoft is working on, and talks about the key platforms- the mobile, the tablet , the desktop and the surface and the Kinect platforms and the cool stuff Microsoft is developing.

From Mango to Metro (win 8), from Pixelsense Surface 2.0 to Kinect- this is your insight into what Microsoft is thinking and doing...

InMobi- A Global Innovation Coming out of India- AmitGupta-Cofounder

You have perhaps heard of InMobi, a Company that is a poster-child for Indian innovation on the global stage, that is well on its way to become a global giant in the mobile advertising. InMobi has recently been given a turbo boost of $200 Million by Softbank- in this video, i chat with Amit Gupta, co-founder of InMobi.

Amit spearheads InMobi's growth efforts by focusing on strategic alliances as well as managing publisher relationships. He has also played a key role in developing the company's business strategies and entry into various geographies.

Prior to InMobi, Amit founded Analyticsworks, a company focused on business intelligence and which he brought to profitability before starting InMobi.

Amit has also worked in a Bay area startup, Andale, where he successfully contributed in developing the business strategies and processes of the startup. He worked directly with the CEO to help initiate new areas of revenues for the company. Amit also gained deep insight about how to leverage technology to enable business during his early professional years.

Amit completed his undergraduate studies from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IIT). Amit loves explaining any complicated topic to a novice by articulating relevant real life examples.

The growing usage of mobile phones in the developing markets inspired Amit to co-found InMobi. Amit aspires for InMobi to be one of the globally successful internet product companies emerging out of India.

Putting Design at the Heart of Business- RohitSinghal,CEO,Sourcebits

In this fascinating conversation, I caught up with Dr.Rohit (yes, he is a qualified medical doctor, with an MD in Radiology), CEO, Sourcebits -he describes how he put design at the heart of his business and created a very successful company that has +350 apps in appstores and millions of downloads.

Rohit is the founder and CEO of Sourcebits, Inc, started in April 2006 in a garage on a shoestring budget. Five years later, Sourcebits has revenues running into multi-million dollars ,+ 300 employees and offices in Bangalore's Electronic City as well as the United States. Sourcebits has created +350 applications including Robokill, Knocking Live, Night Stand and Skyfire (a mobile browser for Android, iPhone and iPad). Rohit holds an MBBS in Medicine from Rohtak Medical College and an MD in Radiology.

Sourcebits was recently funded to the tune of 10 MM by Sequoia Capital and IDG.

Wait, you havent seen anything yet - Vaithee-Indiaplaza-CEO on Ecommerce in India

In this video, I catch up with Vaitheeswaran, the CEO of Indiaplaza, the leading e-commerce company in India. Vaithee describes Indiaplaza's business model and also shares his predictions for the future of e-commerce in india, which is, needless to say, very bright.

Indiaplaza is India's first e-commerce company, started in 1999, and offering different products for sale on their website.(www.Indiaplaza.com) They are the pioneers in the online shopping space in India and were formerly known as Fabmart.com and later Fabmall.com,

Indiaplaza offers nearly 8 million products online including books, CD-ROMs, cameras, mobile phones, apparel, jewelry, flowers, chocolates, watches, and food items, and has nearly 1.5 million customers worldwide.

Mastercard's Chayan Hazra- Mobile payments in India will explode!

I speak to Chayan Hazra, Vice President, Mastercard @ MobileIndia2012 @ Bangalore and get his insights on the status of mobile payments industry in india.

He is responsible MasterCard initiatives for Mobile, UID, Remittance, Processing & Transit in South Asia.

He believes this industry will explode due to three factors, the most interesting of which is the government itself...see the video for more...

Sunder, Infosys- Influencer Marketing, THE cornerstone of B2B marketing- and how to get it right

I speak here to an old friend and colleague from Infosys, Sunder Sarangan, who has spearheaded a very successful influencer relations program @ Infosys marketing and here he gives his insights on what makes for a good influencer program and how it relates to business, sales and the other parts of marketing.