"If you are an AI founder, buy a .com domain and not .ai domain" says Pranay Desai (MD, Z47) as CIOs often restrict access to most .ai domains within their organisational networks.
 
In conversation with Ashwin Pandian, Pranay addresses the facets of AI in SaaS, talking about various dimensions of the trade and shares insightful nuggets on the subject:

He engages with key topics, including:
▶️ The shift in role of CIOs - from enabling businesses and creativity to protecting them.
▶️ The future being consolidated stacks instead of point solutions, as clients are sceptical about giving away their data.
▶️ The founder’s conundrum: to ship fast, or take time and build a full stack.
▶️ Focus on distribution innovation to win in a mature product market.
▶️ A good AI business could be measured on the basis of product usage, repeat usage, revenue, and talkability. 
▶️ Founders building in large markets need not build their own models, unlike players in smaller markets

Globally, we are on the verge of a complete overhaul of the software stack, and India is positioned to capture a significant share of this emerging landscape due to its strong capabilities in data curation and labelling.
 
Tune into the full podcast if you are a founder interested in AI in SaaS and want to know about the markets to consider.

How do you monetise your app business from 600 million connected smartphone users in India? This is the only question founders in India’s App Economy 3.0 need to ask themselves.

Vivek Ramachandran, Chandrasekhar Venugopal and Aakash Kumar from Z47’s consumer team talk about the shifts in India’s app economy over the years and how engagement, retention and monetisation became the key pillars for app-based businesses.

They answer questions useful to any and every founder trying to succeed in India’s app economy 3.0:

▶️ What is the core nature of the value exchange in the app economy?
▶️ What effect will AI have on production?
▶️ What are the exciting trendlines?
▶️ Where do founders make mistakes when measuring success?
▶️ What key vectors do founders need to focus on building in 2024?

If you’re someone looking to build in or understand India’s app economy, this episode will give you years of insights in less than an hour.

Romita Mazumdar is channelling her love for skincare into a Rs. 1000 Cr Brand.
She started with almost 1000 interviews over a course of six months to find a market gap. And now, inspired by the likes of P&G, she has her eyes set on the Rs. 1000 Cr mark for Foxtale.
As a former VC, she closely observed consumer brands before shifting her focus to building in skincare, a category where she is a power user.

In conversation with Z47’s Rajat Agarwal, Romita recounts her journey from investment banking to founding Foxtale and answers gripping questions that all D2C founders can learn from :
▶ How consumer needs have changed in skincare
▶ How she thinks about channels for her business
▶ Where the 1000 Cr goal comes from
▶ Her thoughts on new ventures and diversification

If you’re passionate about entrepreneurship, building in skincare or branding, this episode will provide insights to help you get started on your journey.

If you’re a founder working to solve for an underserved market in unsecured lending, this episode is required listening! Vikram Vaidyanathan and Anish Patil trade trendlines in unsecured credit landscape, and highlight four key insights that underpin the Z47 thesis for this sector.

👥Solving for Under-served Market Potential
Borrowers with low, but stable incomes and good credit culture have been under-served by traditional lenders, presenting an opportunity for new lenders.  

🗂️Forecasting with Robust Payments Data
The evolution of UPI, account aggregators, and GST has streamlined underwriting, enabling precise borrower profiling, and accurate cash flow estimation, all of which allows lenders to tailor financial products.

🤳🏽Why A Phy-gital Approach Is Optimal
Digital tools enable fraud prevention, enhanced risk assessment and monitoring, while physical presence helps build trust and strengthen operations.

🌏Financial Inclusion & Strong Credit Demand 
Improved infrastructure, steady GDP growth, and better law & order, especially in northern states, have opened new credit markets. Strong credit demand and smoother operations have made previously underserved areas more appealing to lenders.

HOW IS THE INDIAN E-COMMERCE TRANSFORMING? 

With the adoption of quick commerce, the launch of the latest GenAI technology, and the increasing purchasing power of GenZ, the Indian e-commerce industry is poised for transformation.

In this episode of Matrix Moments, we analyse it further with Chirag Taneja, founder of GoKwik, a rapidly expanding e-commerce enablement startup, our founder Avnish Bajaj, who also launched one of India’s pioneering e-commerce ventures, Bazee, and Rajat Agarwal, MD at Matrix Partners India (aka Z47).

📲Digital penetration of Indian e-commerce stands at just 6% today.
It is set to increase drastically as GenZ consumers are on the rise while the digital public infrastructure is thriving. 

🛵 Is Quick Commerce a feature, or a standalone company? 
Every e-commerce player will have to embrace it or they’ll lose market share. This creates opportunities for infrastructure providers to facilitate this transformation.

🦾 The AI native apps are yet to come.
The enablement of consumer AI is expected to be similar to the era when mobile apps were first introduced, leading to the launch of various apps offering innovative solutions, many of which made a notable impact.

🕺🏾 Consumers no longer trust paid influencers. Co-creation is key.
The success of Freakins hints towards the opportunity that lies in co-creating with influencers instead of just paying them to promote products. 

💥E-commerce disruption is boosting competition for companies that still have a firm foothold due to strong distribution.The original mode key to building consumer brands was distribution and that is getting disrupted. 

If you are a founder exploring the e-commerce sector, this episode of Matrix Moments will provide you with insights into the diverse opportunities that are set to thrive in this space.

The Indian Internet Pioneer Starting Up AGAIN in AI 

Sharad Sanghi is a pioneer of internet in India: from the early days of VSNL to rapid cloud adoption, when it comes to internet infrastructure, he’s seen it all. He founded among India’s earliest IT infra startups, NetMagic in 1998. In 2012, the IT Services company was acquired by NTT, where Sharad also served as CEO. Sharad Sanghi was an early partner to many Indian startups, and the NetMagic story is required reading in the evolution of the internet in India. 

In 2022, Sharad & longtime NTT tech leader Anindya Das started Neysa Networks - spotting the opportunity in AI Cloud infrastructure early. Co-founded by experienced founders with deep domain expertise, Neysa is solving to democratise AI for enterprises, offering a suite of Generative AI platforms and services. Neysa’s AI Cloud products help clients discover, plan, deploy, and manage their Generative AI projects cost-effectively, and secure their AI landscapes in the cloud and at the edge in a consumption-based model. Earlier this year, Matrix Partners AKA G47 led the investment in Neysa Network’s $20mn seed round. 

On this special episode of Matrix Moments, AI SaaS investor Pranay Desai is joined by Avnish Bajaj, to talk to the Neysa leadership, Sharad Sanghi, Founder & CEO, and Anindya Das, Co-founder & CTO. From evaluating the hype around artificial intelligence to discussing the future of Indian AI startups, they break down the AI landscape in India. 

This one is unmissable, and covers: 
🚀Why AI is Different vs. other hyped up tech
✋Why AI Adoption Needs AI Infrastructure 
🤝Why Democratizing AI is the Way Forward
📈Why India Will Lead in AI 

“Not just wealth… I think experience is all about compounding” 
Says Manisha Raisinghani, founder of SiftHub. 

After her stint as the CTPO at LogiNext, Manisha Raisinghani spent some time looking for the right problem to solve before starting up again. In her search, she found a sales enablement problem that could be solved through AI: enterprise sales teams have over 100 touch-points to tap into when collecting the data needed to make an effective sale. This sapped sales team effectiveness, since sales teams spent time doing non-sales tasks. This is the problem Manisha & the team at SiftHub are setting out to solve, with AI. 

In this episode of Matrix Moments, she explains how SiftHub stands apart in a crowded space. Ultimately, just because a sector is ‘crowded’, doesn’t mean it has run out of problems to be solved. 

📍Identifying the problem: Manisha’s experience and research showed that sales resources spend 70% of their time doing non-selling activities. 

👥 Approaching a crowded market: With so many SaaS applications designed for salespeople, it gets confusing to find what information lies where, complicating an already complex sales process. 

👩🏻‍💻Building High-Performing Teams: 
Manisha’s 3-O framework for SiftHub is unmissable if you want to build high-functioning, high-agency teams. 

This episode of Matrix Moments is flush with insights on building in AI. Tune in. 

HOW DID PARK+ ACE 🛞HIRING FOR AN EARLY-STAGE STARTUP

Founded in 2019, Park+ drove through various challenges and introduced a plethora of services to find its footing today. However, it always had one clearly defined goal - to make car ownership easy and hassle-free. Park+ Founder and CEO Amit Lakhotia takes us through his interesting ways of building the team at Park+ in this episode of Matrix Moments.  

-Amit mentions how hiring when the startup is going from 0-to-1 is different as compared to when it's at 1-to-10 and why getting a good Talent Acquisition Head is essential for any startup. 

-0-to-1: At this stage, a startup needs people who can deal with ambiguity and are naturally inclined toward solving problems.  

-1-to-10: This is the stage where a more disciplined team is required since the answers are already figured out. 

-Amit has an interesting way of training leaders. He hires people with 4-8 years of experience to work in the founder's office for six months and understand how each department works. Later, they’re allocated to a specific department. 

Amit says, “We are not going to randomly hire, we are not going to randomly fire.”

His conscious hiring method has helped find the right folks to bring on board. This has helped with solving new consumer problems, leading Park+ to offer services like issuing FASTag, car washing, parking, challan, and more. 

If you’re a founder stepping into an untapped territory, this episode of Matrix Moments will provide you with meaningful insights. 

IS GreyLabsAI PLAYING THE AI GAME BEFORE TIME?  

The founders of a leading speech analytics platform for financial institutions, GreyLabsAI, Aman Goel and Harshita Srivastava, take us through the journey of identifying their market, building the product, and distributing it over the past few years. Setting up an AI business in India might seem a bit earlier than recommended, but is it?

This episode of Matrix Moments unpacks the nitty-gritty of a young AI startup.  

📍 Identifying a meaningful problem  
Customer service chats are recorded to be analysed later. GreyLabsAI helps large enterprises with analysing this data. The problem proves to be quite meaningful for enterprises.

🤝 Collaboration among co-founders
They stress on how compatible traits and mutual trust are necessary among co-founders. It allows them to create clear boundaries. While Harshita builds the product, Aman handles the business aspect of GreyLabsAI.

🌏 India or USA?
Working for American clients while living in India brings a larger risk from companies functioning completely in the States. Aman and Harshita chose India as the base for their company as well as their market.

🦾 Is it too early for an AI start-up?
While Harshita sees the opportunity NOW as the technology is reasonably mature to solve real-world problems but hasn’t been explored yet, Aman believes that it’s the right time to gain the trust of the customers.

✨ Distribution in a new market.
Although Financial enterprises have a lot of tech spending, it’s necessary to establish trust. Furthermore, one can analyse more customer problems and solve them with new products.

Harshita says, “It is said that sometimes little things happen in decades and sometimes decades happen in little time.”

If you’re a founder exploring the potential of AI products in India, this episode of Matrix Moments will give you pointed insights on various aspects of building and distributing young technology in India.

WHAT’S THE FUTURE OF FINTECH IN INDIA?

The Indian Fintech ecosystem is entering its middle journey. With $100bn+ in market cap already created by these businesses, the twin engines of Compounding and market penetration project potential for large-scale growth. Anand Khetan and Vikram Vaidyanathan dissect the past, present, and future of the finance industry in this episode of Matrix Moments.

On this Matrix Moments episode: 
•⁠  ⁠What can FinTech learn from the success of Financial Services behemoths like HDFC & VISA?
•⁠  ⁠What is the importance of TRUST while building a FinTech brand? 
•⁠  ⁠How can FinTech businesses compound without growing user base? 
•⁠  ⁠How should founders view regulation & the costs of compliance? Is it a feature or a bug?

How should founders think about using offline channels for growth? Is phygital a real option or just a mirage? Rajinder Balaraman and Vikram Vaidyanathan double-click on the myths around phygital, bust them and share learnings for founders thinking of going phygital. 

👉MYTH #1 Phygital has a higher CAC - It depends basis category, users and ticket size - Dezerv who employs a phygital model has a lower CAC than its competitors, whereas OneCard, operating purely online has a CAC that is 4-5x lower than SBI cards. 

👉MYTH #2 Going offline slows you and makes it harder to scale - When you employ the right tech, scalability at speed becomes possible. Mamaearth’s online presence has spiked from 15% to at least 50% in 3 years.

👉MYTH #3 Customer experience journey is too complex in phygital - The journey is actually complex, but is an opportunity for founders to create an edge, and potentially a long-term moat. 

👉 MYTH #4 Phygital is not relevant for all sectors - While there are sectors in the extreme who don’t need a phygital model, a significantly larger number benefit from creating a phygital experience. SaaS is an excellent example, where prima facie it looks like a purely digital model, but the sector spends much more on offline branding and events. 

If you are a founder who is evaluating going phygital, this episode of Matrix Moments would help you make an informed choice.