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Nov 2026

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Zero to Infinity, by Z47, is a podcast series dedicated to the founders, startups, and all within the ecosystem through candid conversations on what we think it really takes to survive in this wild startup world. In a world where we are endlessly engulfed with information in all its forms and sizes, this is our attempt to create, curate, and bring to you the insights and reflections that we have had the luxury of having learned the hard way through all the years spent in truly understanding what it takes to build and nurture a startup from ground zero.

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November 12, 2026Episode 27256 min

272: Masterclass on building a D2C Business - By Blissclub Founder | Minu Margeret | Unstarted

Minu Margaret launched an apparel brand with a single product. One pair of black leggings. No colors, no range. Everyone in the industry told her she was crazy. She wasn’t the IIT or IIM archetype either. She was an accountant, with a twelve-year career across Goldman Sachs, Wipro, Unilever, AB InBev and PhonePe, before she started up around the age of 30. In this Diwali special episode of Unstarted, Minu sits down with Avneesh to talk about the story behind Bliss Club, the functional apparel brand she built from a finance-first, product-first playbook. They get into why apparel is one of the hardest businesses to build (returns, discounting, design risk) and how she designed the exact opposite. Why she launched with one hero product, the Ultimate Leggings, now on its 20th version. The obsession behind it, including deepening a side pocket by 5 millimetres so your phone wouldn’t peek out. How that one product now does over a crore a month, with returns under 10% against an industry norm of 30 to 40%. Why she built the entire fabric line (Cloudsoft, Aeroflex) bottoms-up for Indian climate and bodies. Why she chose to be a solo founder even though she’s married to Meesho founder Vidit Aatrey. And an honest conversation about building as a woman, the fundraising empathy gap, and why India needs far more women founders. Chapters 0:00 Intro: a Diwali special, and not the IIT archetype 1:15 Kerala roots, the Middle East, and a banker father 4:33 Can money buy happiness? Minu’s take 7:35 Connecting the dots backwards: was any of it planned? 9:59 The side hustles before BlissClub 12:25 The Excel of ideas: why apparel won 14:23 Why now and why me 17:16 Why apparel is such a brutal business 19:54 Launching with one SKU: a single black legging 21:19 Brand first or product first? 24:11 One SKU and raising venture capital 25:43 The consumer is smarter than you think 25:55 What that one legging does now 28:58 Growth, profitability, and the men’s extension 32:52 Word of mouth, D2C first, and the path to profit 34:46 Married to the Meesho founder: why not join him 39:24 Co-founder or solo? Why she went solo 43:16 Why startups are a 20-plus year commitment 52:50 Is it a level playing field? An honest answer Unstarted is a show for founders, by founders, about the minus one to zero. Brought to you by Z47, India’s oldest venture capital firm.

November 5, 2026Episode 27130 min

271: How to build an AI startup from scratch in 2026 | Rohan Joshi | Stellon Labs

Rohan Joshi grew up in a Mumbai home where nobody said the word “entrepreneur,” but everybody lived it. His father builds pharmaceutical machinery, his mother runs a salon chain and her own cosmetics brand. So when his parents told him to “go get a job for experience,” he already knew what the experience was really for: a checkpoint on the way to building his own company. In this episode of Unstarted x Intelligent Indians, shot in the San Francisco Bay Area, Rohan sits down with Avneesh to talk about the story behind Stellar Labs (better known as KittenML), an AI research lab building open-source voice models so efficient they run on a CPU. They get into getting deep in AI before it was cool, computer vision at CMU, and three years at Meta building photorealistic avatars. Why he and his co-founder didn’t wait for permission to start building. The honest experiment that broke their first idea: pricing a local ElevenLabs alternative at full price and watching every user churn. The pivot to developers, open-sourcing a voice model, and watching it go so viral on Reddit they assumed their own analytics were broken. His framework for knowing when to build instead of doing customer research. The three inflection points coming for voice AI. And the mindset that ties it all together: the easiest person to fool is yourself, so fool yourself into believing you can do anything. If you want to build in AI, this one is a playbook on conviction, shipping fast, open source, and why the five-year grind that used to separate the experts is now something AI hands you for free. 0:00 Intro: an AI lab that runs on a CPU 1:20 Growing up in an entrepreneurial Mumbai family 2:10 "Do a job for experience": the unspoken goal 3:15 Getting into AI before it was cool (CMU, 2019) 4:30 What actually changed: data, GPUs, and the transformer 7:00 From medical AI to Meta's photorealistic avatars 8:20 Starting Stellar Labs with a co-founder from Meta 9:30 Why they didn't wait for permission to build 10:40 Conviction vs delusion: should you do customer research? 12:00 Why the biggest companies started before they were businesses 13:30 The first idea: a local alternative to ElevenLabs 15:30 The experiment that broke it: everyone churned 16:40 Why open source opens a bigger market than closed 18:20 How do you know it's working? When you doubt your own analytics 20:40 The future of voice AI: three inflection points 24:30 Compounding: what looks like talent is years of work 26:40 Voice AI that runs on a $20 server 28:00 Should you move to the Bay Area to build? 29:50 Parting advice: fool yourself into believing you can

October 29, 2026Episode 27046 min

270: Company that changed health tech in India | Practo | Shashank N.D

Shashank N.D. dropped out of college to build Practo, back when dropping out just meant you couldn’t get a job. No business family. Both parents in government service. When everyone around him said “do an MBA first, you can always start a company later,” he flipped the logic: you can always get a job later, but right now I have the least baggage I’ll ever have. So he stayed in, bootstrapped Practo, and sold software to doctors one month at a time, often unable to afford even an ice cream. In this episode of Unstarted, Shashank sits down with Avneesh, who has known him for 13 years and backed Practo through its highs and near-death lows. They talk about the story behind the story. Building Practo for his father, who had been through 7-8 surgeries. Finding product-market fit purely through doctor referrals. The frameworks that held the team together for 18 years. The brutal years when doctors burned his billboards and FIRs were filed for the crime of rating doctors. Why COVID turned Practo from a pariava into the industry. And the mindset that kept him going: fall in love with the problem, and measure impact, not valuation. If you’re building, or still unstarted, this one is full of hard-won lessons on conviction, co-founders, culture, surviving crises, and playing a decades-long game. Chapters 0:00 Intro: the oldest, youngest founder 0:52 Bangalore roots and a government-service family 1:58 Discovering entrepreneurship at the E-Cell 5:50 Bootstrapping and the ice cream he couldn't afford 6:49 Co-founders, trust, and 18 years together 8:44 From stocks to legal to healthcare: finding the idea 10:00 Two business cards: CEO for VCs, sales exec for doctors 11:30 Why "Practo", and the $6 domain name 11:51 Market timing: fall in love with the problem, not the timing 15:43 The only two metrics that mattered for survival 17:35 Missionary vs mercenary founders 25:50 Culture: the WHOOPIM framework 28:57 "Do Great" and leading by example 30:47 His mother's advice that changed how he manages 35:51 Death by capital: the 2015 funding mistake 38:27 COVID: the pariah becomes the industry 40:11 Profitability, the US launch, and AI in healthcare 42:50 A note on the Matrix partnership 43:54 Advice to the unstarted: measure impact, not valuation

October 22, 2026Episode 26933 min

269: Using AI to Fix US Healthcare - From 14 Days to 5 Minutes | Ajay, Coral Health

Ajay grew up in Bangalore chasing free pizza at hackathons, trained as a machine-learning researcher, and never planned to start a company until his brother’s accident and a nightmare healthcare experience in New York pushed him to build Coral Health. In this episode of Unstarted by Z47, Ajay sits down with Anish to break down how Coral is killing traditional RPA (robotic process automation) and cutting US healthcare wait times from 14–25 days down to under 5 minutes. We go deep on workflow automation vs. “thin AI wrappers,” why the fax machine still runs American healthcare in 2026, how to tell real customer feedback from polite feedback (The Mom Test), pricing on value (the 10x rule), closing your first customer on the way to the airport, and the co-founder he recruited 5 minutes before a VC meeting. If you’re a technologist wondering how to turn deep expertise into a real business, this one’s for you. 🎧 Unstarted is the podcast for founders, by founders - from Z47, India’s oldest venture capital firm. 00:00 kill RPA, care in under 5 minutes 01:00 San Francisco & meet Ajay of Coral Health 01:45 What Coral Health does: two missions 03:00 Born in California, raised in Bangalore 04:30 Free pizza at hackathons: the love for tech 08:00 The brother's accident & stages of grief 10:00 Falling in love with the RPA problem by accident 13:00 The friend's gallbladder & the broken patient journey 16:00 Stress-testing the idea like a scientist 18:30 $5–7 to maintain every $1 of RPA 24:00 Closing the first customer on the way to the airport 26:00 The Mom Test: real feedback vs. polite feedback 31:30 Why healthcare still runs on fax machines in 2026 35:00 Why OCR fails: 55% accuracy on 720-page faxes 42:00 Why this is deep workflow automation, not a thin wrapper 44:00 Co-founders: the Aniket story (recruited in 5 minutes) 51:00 Advice to the unstarted: find a problem, solve it, have fun

October 20, 2026Episode 26832 min

268: Ineligible Why 800 people a day ask to meet an AI receptionist, Sarah | Confido Health

Chetan Reddy, founder of Confido, joins the Intelligent Indians podcast to explain how AI is leapfrogging one of the least digitized industries on earth: US healthcare an industry where, as he puts it, the system of record is still sticky notes. Confido builds AI teammates agents with names like Sarah and Ryan that run the front office of specialty medical practices: answering phones, handling insurance, booking patients, chasing referrals and payments. The result is striking. Around 800 to 900 patients a day ask to meet or speak to Sarah, not realizing she's AI. Fewer than 2% of callers now choose to speak to a human up from a 65% AI-completion rate when they started to 98% today. In this conversation Chetan and the Z47 team go deep on why healthcare resisted tech for so long, why "digitizing the work" has to come before any AI ROI, how Confido built and humanized its agents with 2,000+ empathy parameters and constant patient feedback, how their on-site deployed engineers (FDEs) and the "Care OS" platform make each deployment faster than the last, the India (Bangalore) team that powers 24/7 patient coverage, the open-source vs frontier-model strategy, and the bigger vision: becoming the operating standard for US specialty care. Intelligent Indians is brought to you by Z47. What you'll learn: 1. Why "digitize the work" must come before any AI ROI in a legacy industry 2. How to humanize AI agents so customers prefer them to humans 3. Why fewer than 2% of patients now choose a human over the AI 4. How on-site deployed engineers + a platform make each deployment compound 5. Why an AI-native company can beat foundation-model giants on last-mile ROI 6. Open-source vs frontier models: a practical framework for vertical AI Chapters 00:00 Intro - how US healthcare runs on 1990s software (and sticky notes) 01:30 Why AI can leapfrog the digitization friction 04:00 "Can I meet Sarah?" - 800 patients a day asking for an AI 06:00 Humanizing agents: task completion, 2,500 empathy parameters, patient feedback 09:30 Why less than 2% of patients choose a human 11:00 Can't a foundation model just do this? Why digitizing the work is the moat 14:00 What "digitize the work" actually means — the 25-insurance-contracts example 16:30 Landing deployed engineers inside a care org without conflict 18:30 The outcomes: 2–3x more patient encounters, 20–30% cost savings 20:00 Building Care OS — a platform whose customer is the FDE 23:00 How deployments compound: 6–9 months down to 3–6 25:00 Is the market as competitive as it looks? 29:00 The Bangalore team and 24/7 patient coverage 33:00 The bigger vision: becoming the operating standard for US healthcare

October 15, 2026Episode 26734 min

267: 10 minute food delivery was impossible, until Swish came | Aniket Shah | Unstarted

Aniket Shah quit his job with no startup idea, gave himself 18 months, and ended up building Swish one of India’s fastest-growing 10-minute food delivery companies, now serving 1 million lifetime users with 220+ freshly made items. In this episode of Unstarted by Z47, Aniket sits down with Anish to unpack the journey from Ahmedabad to IIT Kharagpur, early stints at Citibank, Jupiter, Pillow Fund (crypto) and Meesho, and the 4 PM hungry-in-a-café moment that sparked Swish. We go deep on product-market fit, why Pillow Fund shut down despite 1M+ users, choosing co-founders, the “digital-first QSR” thesis, kitchen automation, and why the best product not the first mover wins in food. Whether you’re a founder, operator, or just someone who orders a samosa at midnight, this one’s for you. 🎧 Unstarted is the podcast for founders, by founders, ⏱️ Chapters below 👇 00:00 The thesis: why 10-minute food should exist 01:15 Crypto to samosas, meet Aniket Shah 02:30 Ahmedabad childhood & unusual parenting 04:00 Memory talent: reverse alphabet, cricket stats, WWE cards 06:15 IIT Kharagpur & the entrepreneurial pull 07:45 Citibank internship & turning down the offer 09:30 Joining Jupiter: UPI product from day one 11:30 Pillow Fund: the crypto 18% interest bet 13:45 Why Pillow shut down — user love & product-market fit 17:00 How to know if you have PMF 18:30 A brief stint at Meesho 19:30 Do you need a co-founder? Chemistry over physics 23:00 Do you need an original idea? 25:00 The 4 PM café moment that sparked Swish 28:00 Owning the full supply chain & "neighborhood kitchens" 30:30 The digital-first QSR thesis 32:30 Kitchen automation, AI & consistency at scale 36:00 Counterintuitive learnings & customer food habits 39:30 Hits & misses: snacks, beverages, meals 42:00 Competition: "run against yourself" 44:00 Mumbai launch & why not expand to 5 cities at once 46:30 Advice to the unstarted: don't wait for perfect 48:30 Memory challenge & sign-off

October 8, 2026Episode 26639 min

266: 3 failed startups, 1 IIT degree, and a broken Pulsar | OTO Capital | Sumit Chhazed

Sumit Chhazed has started four companies. The first three didn't work. Solar heating, where he was too young to win government tenders. An edtech platform built with IIT Bombay professors that was years ahead of its market and ended in a modest acquisition. Then a two-wheeler commerce business born out of a second-hand Pulsar that broke down every third day in Bombay. The fourth is OTO Capital, a lending infrastructure platform for banks and NBFCs in two-wheeler financing. In 2024, mid-growth and mid-fundraise, the round fell through. He and his co-founders stopped taking a salary for twelve months, let people go, and rebuilt the company around profitability instead of growth. They turned down buyout offers along the way. In this episode of Unstarted, Sumit talks to Avnish Bajaj about how to tell when a business isn't working, building for yourself versus building for an investor, what changes when you switch a company from growth mode to profitability, how to communicate with a team through that shift, and separating conviction from delusion. Unstarted is a series for founders, by founders, with questions crowdsourced from the audience. Chapters 0:00 Intro: three startups that didn't work 0:47 What OTO Capital actually does 2:42 Why this business works now and not ten years ago 4:48 Udaipur, a family of teachers, and the business keeda 6:26 Selling chewing gum stickers in 6th standard 7:51 Telling his parents he wouldn't take a job 9:41 Startup one: solar, and poor founder-market fit 12:45 Startup two: CourseWave, and being too early 19:48 Q: How do you know when it's working? 22:44 Q: Can you build without funding? 26:17 The 2024 roadblock 27:12 Choosing default alive over growth 27:56 Letting people go, and how to do it right 31:13 No salary for 12 months 33:28 Why he turned down the buyout offers 36:10 The 2001 Kolkata Test 37:02 Closing: it's a Test, not a T20

October 1, 2026Episode 26540 min

265: From a Small Town in Assam to India's First AI IPO | Srikanth Velamakanni, Fractal

Srikanth Velamakanni built an AI company before most people knew the A in AI. In 2000, long before ChatGPT, he and five co-founders started Fractal Analytics with a simple bet: that math could predict human behaviour and help companies make better decisions. The market wasn't ready. HDFC took 18 months to convince. Citibank made them prove themselves against 100 in-house PhDs. They won on accuracy, stayed profitable, and 26 years later Fractal became India's first AI company to go public. In this episode of Unstarted, Srikanth sits down with Avnish to talk about the story behind the story. Growing up middle class in a small oil town in Assam. Why he never thought he was founder material, and the Narayana Murthy lecture that changed his mind. If you are building, or still unstarted, this one is full of hard-won lessons on conviction, timing, co-founders, and staying relevant across 26 years of technological change. Chapers 0:00 Intro 1:15 From a small town in Assam to Fractal 2:47 Math plus human behaviour: an AI company before AI 3:34 "I never thought I would be an entrepreneur" 5:01 The Narayana Murthy moment 5:54 Not money: building a 100 year company 6:57 Conviction vs market readiness 9:32 When the market is not ready (ICICI, HDFC) 10:27 The Citibank bake-off against 100 PhDs 12:00 Compounding your core passion 15:44 The two co-founder types you actually need 18:39 Finding your ICP without chasing noise 19:16 26 years of AI, from regression to transformers 23:08 Strategy is what you refuse to do 26:24 Elected CEO, then asked to leave in 6 months 28:02 Defining the company's values after crisis 29:19 Raising money and investor expectations 31:34 Will AI make Fractal obsolete? 33:58 Why Fractal was built in Mumbai 36:30 Advice: build what OpenAI cannot kill

September 24, 2026Episode 26430 min

264: From a village to building a profitable business in 3 months | Amit Lakhotoia | Founder, Park+

Amit Lakhotia moved from a village in Churu, Rajasthan to Delhi at 10, speaking Marwari and barely any Hindi. Twenty people shared three rooms. His father couldn't afford the school fees, so he made a bet with the principal: if his son didn't come first within a year, throw him out. That year Amit scored 19 out of 20 in Maths and Hindi, and 1 out of 20 in English. His tuition was waived from class four through twelve. He went on to NSIT and IIM Ahmedabad, helped scale MakeMyTrip, Paytm and Tokopedia, built a taxi business that was four times Ola's size before shutting it down, and then founded Park+ — which raised its first cheque two months before COVID shut down every mall and office in the country. In this episode of Unstarted, Amit talks to Avnish Bajaj about when to walk away from a working business, the vitamin versus painkiller test for choosing what to build, why he picked parking as the wedge into the car ownership market, how access control emerged from the worst possible timing, and why brand and revenue aren't a trade-off if you think creatively. Unstarted is a series for founders, by founders, with questions crowdsourced from the audience. Guest: Amit Lakhotia, Founder & CEO, Park+ Host: Avnish Bajaj, Founder & Managing Director, Z47 Chapters 0:00 Intro: the founder who gets away with scolding me 1:14 Churu to Delhi, and 20 people in three rooms 2:09 Arriving at school with no English 3:04 The bet his father made with the principal 5:01 How he survived that first year 5:47 19 out of 20 in Maths. 1 out of 20 in English. 7:21 NSIT, IIM-A, and where the confidence came from 9:20 Sitting in his father's shop and deciding to drop out 10:12 Turning around the IIM-A souvenir store 12:15 GetMeCab: profitable in month three 13:42 Why he walked away from a business 4x Ola's size 14:50 Q: I want to start a business. How? 17:57 Vitamins vs painkillers 18:38 The two ideas he shortlisted, and why parking won 21:24 Q: How do you measure progress during a pivot? 21:36 Two months in, COVID arrives 22:52 Turning a pandemic into the access control business 24:38 The metric that mattered: client acceptance 25:35 Revenue vs brand, and getting signage for free 27:43 Closing: build the network, and give before you take

September 17, 2026Episode 26345 min

263: Building a ₹100 Crore hair care brand in 2 years | Nikita Khanna, Moxie

Nikita Khanna spent fifteen years straightening her hair before she realised the problem wasn't her hair. It was that nobody had built products for it. She was on partner track at McKinsey her only job ever when she started going down YouTube rabbit holes during COVID, trying to find a sustainable way to manage wavy, frizz-prone hair. She found the answers in Brazil: similar hair texture, dozens of local brands, none of it available in India. When she asked people in the industry whether it was a business, almost everyone told her the category was too small and too random. Roughly 80% of Indians have hair somewhere on the wavy-to-curly spectrum. She built Moxie anyway. In this episode of Unstarted, Nikita talks to Avnish Bajaj about validating an idea before you quit your job, the ABC framework she now uses to evaluate any new category, why she never thought she was cut out to be a founder, learning to delegate and build an org for the first time, running a company with her husband as co-founder, and what it actually takes to build a brand in a market where launching a product has never been easier. Unstarted is a series for founders, by founders, with questions crowdsourced from the audience. Chapters 0:00 Intro: the company we should have invested in 00:00 Growing up in Delhi, watching her father build a business 00:00 DU, XLRI, and landing at McKinsey 00:00 Straightening her hair since 13, and deciding to stop 00:00 Finding the answer in Brazil 00:00 "Am I even cut out to be a founder?" 00:00 Q: How do I validate an idea before I quit? 00:00 The ABC framework: assortment, business, consumer 00:00 Everyone said the category was too small 00:00 Q: How does a young founder become a CEO? 00:00 Building with her husband as co-founder 00:00 Why viral products aren't the goal