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Jun 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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June 16, 2026Episode 24948 min

249: PhonePe CTO on how they are using AI at scale | Rahul Chari | Intelligent Indians

What does it actually take to build AI for 70 crore users?Vikram sits down with Rahul Chowdhury - co-founder and CTO of PhonePeto talk about how India's most scaled fintech is approaching AI. Not with hype or a top-down mandate, but with a quiet, deliberate, engineering-first philosophy that started four years ago with a small team focused on making developers happier.Rahul shares the inside story of PhonePe's AI journey from building their own LLM gateway and Agent Hub, to launching AI search with Microsoft, to betting on on-device models for privacy and cost. And it ends with the biggest idea of all: India's DPI stack has spent a decade making data AI-ready. The opportunity now is to use it to build the bank branch of one — truly personalized financial products for every Indian.If you're a founder, engineer, or product leader trying to understand where India's AI story is really headed, don't miss this.What you'll learn🔹 Why PhonePe avoided output metrics in year one of AI and why it worked🔹 How to build an AI culture without a top-down mandate🔹 What an LLM gateway is and why every scaled company needs one🔹 Why on-device models are the right bet for consumer AI in India🔹 How DPDP will reshape how companies think about AI and data🔹 Why India's role in global AI is in applied AI — not foundational models🔹 How DPI × AI creates the opportunity for hyper-personalized financial productsChapters0:00 Intro & who is Rahul Chowdhury02:30 PhonePe's AI journey: tinkerers to transformers06:00 The DevX team: why developer happiness came first10:00 Don't rush into AI — the engineering first mindset14:30 Building the LLM gateway & data stack18:00 Agent Hub: PhonePe's internal marketplace of agents22:00 AI Search with Microsoft & on-device models26:00 Why India needs edge models, not foundational ones30:00 DPI × AI: the bank branch of one34:00 Conclusion

June 11, 2026Episode 2481 hr 6 min

248: Got Rejected from 100 banks and then built a $7.5 Billion company | Razorpay Story | Harshil Mathur

Harshil Mathur started Razorpay after quitting the highest-paying job on his campus, a role his whole family had just celebrated, because he walked in on day one and realised he was a guy who wanted to sit and code, not step onto an oil field.Then he spent a decade away from that: walking into bank after bank getting laughed out of the room, surviving the grind no funding can fast-track, and the night Yes Bank froze with customer money stuck inside it. This is the founder story, lived experience as an edge, why the rejections compounded in his favour, why the grind always comes, and the values that made the hard calls simple.And then the thing that pulled him back: agentic AI. "It went from being an assistant to an execution engine." Six years after he last wrote real code, Harshil locked himself in a room, asked "if I were to start Razorpay today, how would I build it?" — and rebuilt everything.The second half is an operator's view of what that shift actually changes: 1. Why AI magnifies an org's weaknesses instead of fixing them2. Why an agent with no plan drifts exactly like a company with no plan3. How Razorpay flipped its leadership hackathon and the bet behind Agent Studio4. Hosted by Avnish Bajaj with Vikram Vaidyanathan this is a conversation about building, walking away from it, and being pulled back, and what that says about where AI is headed.Chapters00:00 Introduction02:15 Growing up in Jaipur & coding since 6th grade05:30 IIT Roorkee, SDS Labs & building without permission10:45 Quitting a $100,000 Schlumberger job in 6 months14:20 The Facebook comment that sparked Razorpay18:00 100 banker rejections & how rejections compound24:10 Getting into YC with zero expectations35:30 Yes Bank freezes — one decision defines the culture40:00 Going back to coding after 6 years — AI changes everything52:00 Rebuilding Razorpay from scratch with AI agentsFollow Z47Website - https://www.z47.com/Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/z47.vc/LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/z47-vc/

June 4, 2026Episode 24736 min

247: 23 years old and raised $45M in series B to build Pronto | Anjali Sardana | Unstarted

Anjali Sardana grew up in northern Virginia, studied biology at Georgetown, worked at Bain Capital — and then, without telling her parents, flew to India and founded Pronto: a platform building the world's largest labor organization network, starting with home services.In this episode of Unstarted, Anjali breaks down how she picked an operations business over a product business (and why), why she sees India's informal labor market as a trillion-dollar opportunity, and the founder mindset that got her through the messy, chaotic, sleep-deprived early days.She also gets brutally honest about faking confidence, hiring missionaries not mercenaries, and why she thinks most human limitations are completely made up.Chapters0:00 Intro — Meet Anjali Sardana1:20 Growing up in Virginia, studying biology at Georgetown3:10 The evolution framework that shaped her business thinking5:00 Product vs. operations vs. distribution — how she chose8:30 Why India? The labor-market thesis12:00 Moving to India with zero experience — and hiding it from her parents15:40 Fake it till you make it: raising a seed round at Bain Capital19:15 Running pilots, vibe-coding the app, and getting the first bookings24:00 The Kapil story — recruiting 30 workers in one afternoon28:00 Operating 24/7 with 5 people, sleeping in shifts31:30 Building culture: missionaries vs. mercenaries36:00 Urgency as a core value — actions beget information39:30 Conviction vs. market signals — how to balance both

June 2, 2026Episode 24637 min

246: He built India's #1 Data Centre and is now building its AI backbone | Sharad Sanghi, CEO - Neysa

India's GPU footprint is on track to grow 40x by 2030, from ~50,000 today to a couple of million. That number is bigger than any public forecast. Sharad Sanghi has the unusual standing to make it: he built Netmagic into India's most significant datacenter business, and he's now running Neysa, the only neo cloud in India that Semi Analysis has rated, backed by Blackstone.In this episode of Intelligent Indians, Rajinder Balaraman and Sharad cover:1. Why neo clouds exist as a category, and what hyperscalers structurally can't do for one market 2. The ITQ case study: how to define ROI before infrastructure 3. The three infra mistakes that quietly cost AI teams 10x their compute spend 4. Why power, not GPUs, is the real bottleneck, and why 50% of India's data centre capacity sits in one city 5. What India's AI Mission could actually unlock in the next phaseIf you're building AI infrastructure in India, tracking the space as an investor, or working on policy in the area, this is the operator view. From someone whose entire balance sheet depends on getting the call right.Chapters 00:00 India's AI Moment The Big Picture02:00 Welcome Introducing Sharath of Neysa03:30 How He Built India's First Data Centre with NetMagic06:00 How ChatGPT Sparked the Idea for Neysa18:00 India is 2nd Largest AI Consumer 21:00 50,000 GPUs Today. 2 Million by 2028 24:30 Neysa vs AWS, GCP, Azure 28:00 Why Indian Banks Are Early AI Adopters31:30 Financial Services, Healthcare, Manufacturing 35:00 PhonePe, Perfios, Hungama - Real AI Use Cases in India38:30 Why Most AI Projects Stay in Pilot and Never Reach Production52:30 GPU Obsolescence Risk — How Neysa Manages It55:00 Healthcare, Education, Agriculture — Where Founders Should Build58:30 IIT Bombay and the Bharat Gyan Project1:01:00 Why India Needs to Keep Its AI Talent at Home1:04:00 Why He Refused to Flip the Company Outside India1:06:30 What It Takes to Make India the AI Research Capital of the World

May 28, 2026Episode 24535 min

245: Building a brand that is used by 20% of India's D2C Market | Chirag Taneja, CEO - GoKwik | Unstarted

Chirag Taneja built GoKwik into 1 in 5 D2C checkouts in India. But the path there was a series of bets that didn't work, jobs that didn't last, and one moment in 2020 where the suitcases for Canada were packed and waiting in his living room.In Episode 12 of Unstarted, Chirag sits down with Avnish Bajaj to talk about what it actually means to keep tinkering, and when tinkering becomes the thing that holds you back.They get into: 1. What's really important to start a business: idea, capital, or knowledge? 2. Why choosing the right problem matters more than solving any problem 3. The Canada PR that almost happened (and the suitcases that are still in his house) 4. Probabilistic thinking, and why "generate choices" beats "make decisions" 5. Should you have a co-founder you don't already know? 6. How he thinks about ESOPs, the size of the pieUnstarted is a Z47 series. For founders, by founders. New episode every Thursday.Chapters 00:18 From the shop floor to a 1-in-5 D2C company01:35 A banker father, a single parent, and "play with intent"03:15 Why he chose Delhi College over IIT Delhi Civil05:30 The first Asian team to build a Formula race car06:25 The Maruti bet that landed him on the shop floor07:10 Q: Idea, capital, or knowledge — what matters most?08:50 How Bombay Shaving Company became the foundation of GoKwik09:35 The right problem matters more than the right solution10:55 Payments were broken in 2005. They were still broken in 2017.11:50 Pick your game: badminton or golf?13:20 The Canada PR, the suitcases, and the trip that never happened15:25 Generate choices before you make decisions17:50 When the tinkerer turns on himself19:15 Why "what worked then" stops working at 1-to-1022:45 Q: When should you have a co-founder?24:45 Why arranged co-founders are too risky28:30 Closing

May 21, 2026Episode 24439 min

244: Built a ₹1000 Cr brand with ₹5 lakh | The Souled Store Story | Unstarted

Most founders can't tell you the moment they decided to build. Vedang Patel can. He was 23, a finance analyst with IIM seats in hand, and he looked at the MBA-holder sitting next to him in office and asked himself one question: "Is that what I want to do?"The resounding no from every section of his brain, and the ₹5.25 lakh he and his co-founders had between them is what became The Souled Store. ₹1000 crore in revenue, ₹150–200 crore in profit, an NSE bell on the way.In this episode, Avnish and Vedang sit with three questions sent in by aspiring founders:1. How do you actually validate an idea?2. How do you separate polite encouragement from real market demand?Brand or revenue first?3. They also talk about the part most founders won't: the $10 million Vedang got "lost in frameworks" with, the 15-20 CR in personal-guarantee debt, and how exponential's cheque pulled him back.Chapters 00:00 Cold open01:30 From a cupboard of t-shirts to ₹1000 crore03:30 The Sunday-Monday test06:30 "She cried for days"08:30 Risk vs Recklessness11:00 Q: How do I validate my idea?13:30 ₹5.25 lakh, no money for movies15:30 Discounted PMF is false PMF17:00 Q: Polite encouragement or real demand?20:30 The empty chair of the customer24:30 When the $10 million came in27:30 "Maybe I should be inspired by Neera Modi"30:30 Q: Brand or revenue first?32:00 A brand is what the customer expects35:30 Why he never left Bombay38:30 The ESOP wall and the 5-10-85 rule41:30 "Don't overthink. Start."Follow Z47Website - https://www.z47.com/Instagram - / z47.vc LinkedIn - / z47-vc

May 19, 2026Episode 24350 min

243: Why Indian AI founders are not building in India | The Reality of Indian AI

India's AI moment is louder than its rank. 100M+ ChatGPT users. #2 globally in usage. Still 76th in the world on per capita penetration. So what's actually happening on the ground?In this episode of Z47 Moments, Vikram Vaidyanathan and Ashwin Raguraman (Head of AI, walk through The India AI Edge: a three-month primary research effort by Z47, OpenAI, and Zinnov. The report draws on first-party ChatGPT data from OpenAI and interviews with 100+ CXOs across India's largest enterprises, traditional businesses, and emerging companies.They unpack: Why India's AI map looks nothing like its tech map: Delhi #1 in GDP penetration, Ahmedabad in the top 5 for coding, Assam 3x the national average on education usage The flip nobody saw coming: in mid-2024, Gen Z (18–24) overtook 25–34 as India's dominant AI cohort, and now drives nearly half of all ChatGPT messages Work-to-non-work: how India went from 60% work usage to 65% non-work usage in a year, and what that says about penetration The four enterprise adoption archetypes: Tinkerer, Democratizer, Transformer, Enforcer, and why ~1 in 4 Indian enterprises is stuck in the wrong one The trillion-dollar gap to Viksit Bharat, and the specific role AI would have to play to close it The four pillars India needs to scale: compute (200–250 MW today → 7 GW needed by 2030), talent, data (and the "data colony" question), and the companies actually being built To read the full report, go to: The India AI Edge Website: https://z47.com/how-india-uses-aiLink to report: https://www.ai-edge.z47.com/The-India-AI-Report.pdfChapters00:00 — Cold Open: The Stats That Set the Frame00:49 — Inside the Report: 100M Users, 100+ CXOs, OpenAI Data02:14 — How AI Is Redrawing India's Map04:59 — The Gen Z Takeover11:24 — Work to Non-Work: India's Usage Flip15:01 — Enterprise AI: The Four Archetypes25:27 — The Enforcer Trap (And How to Escape It)33:21 — Can AI Close India's Trillion-Dollar Gap?37:22 — Compute, Talent, Data, Companies: The Four Pillars47:15 — India's AI Ecosystem & Closing

May 14, 2026Episode 24254 min

242: Building India's most viral sneaker brand | Utkarsh Gupta | Unstarted

What do you do when the resume is perfect but the work isn't yours yet?Utkarsh Gupta grew up in the Dainik Jagran family in Kanpur, a thirty-person joint family, a media legacy, and a grandfather who once left an entire newspaper page blank during the Emergency and went to jail for it. By thirty-two, Utkarsh had built his own answer: Comet, the Indian sneaker brand that put a mango shoe and a rubber-ducky shoe into the world before it ever touched a marketplace.In this episode, Avnish Bajaj and Utkarsh sit with the questions most founders never say out loud:Was the MBA real, or was I procrastinating? 1. How do you build your own legacy when one's already been handed to you? 2. How do you tell persistence apart from stubbornness when the first launch sells two pairs? 3. When everyone says list on Myntra, why wait two and a half years?A masterclass in brand building, told as a confession.Chapters0:00 Introduction0:50 Growing up in Kanpur's joint family1:13 How Dainik Jagran started on a cycle in 19402:09 Why he left a media dynasty to build his own thing4:47 Doon School changed everything at age 116:20 Grandfather's lesson: don't be afraid to scale11:50 How Chicago's sneaker culture sparked Comet13:31 Creating your own surface area of luck14:55 Finding co-founder Dushyant23:24 The 4-pillar brand strategy that built Comet27:09 Why they waited 2.5 years before joining Myntra28:55 The Mango shoe sold 2 units in 4 days — they persisted anyway31:40 3 metrics every founder should track41:46 Building the sole from scratch (4-5 moulds, 6 months)43:02 Creasing problem: sourced a secret material from Korea46:12 Instagram → Stores → Myntra: the distribution sequence49:43 Exclusive reveal: the Rubber Ducky drop (May)

May 7, 2026Episode 24138 min

241: How 3 IIT engineers built one of India's biggest beauty brands | Manish Taneja | Unstarted

Do you need an original idea to start a company? Do you need to be a consumer of your category? Do you need the "right" co-founders?Manish Taneja was none of those things. He grew up in Faridabad a self-described "frog of his own well." He went to IIT and "felt very small." He became a banker, then an investor, then started a beauty company with two other male engineers, with no female co-founder, and no personal stake in the category. He still built Purplle into one of India's largest beauty platforms.In this episode of Unstarted, Avnish Bajaj and Manish sit down to work through the questions that every founder without a clear edge asks themselves:1. Do you need an original idea, or is it okay to be a "copycat entrepreneur"? When VCs tell you your team is missing something 2. Do you fix the weakness or back your strength? – How do you find a wedge in a category where everyone else has more money, more experience, and more insider knowledge? 3. What do you do when your ego won't let you leave — and is that the thing keeping you in the game? 4. How do you build responsibly without losing your edge?Manish's answer to all of it, in the end, comes down to two lines: back your strengths, and build responsibly. This conversation is about how he got there.Chapters00:00 The $100 million mistake01:55 Faridabad, the frog in the well03:03 Feeling small at IIT, and the speech that changed everything05:31 Lehman, Avendus, and the long apprenticeship08:52 "I was the original copycat entrepreneur"12:58 The feedback from Matrix: no woman co-founder14:54 Why beauty, and why now17:52 Dabau early: the rosemary water playbook22:00 How Purplle won Kerala (and met the priests)26:02 The internal compass, and saying no to Thrasios28:53 Why your ego won't let you leave30:36 Why he built in Bombay33:17 The IPO question35:49 Build responsibly

April 30, 2026Episode 24045 min

240: The man who sold his company to Jio for Rs. 700 Cr | Aakrit Vaish | Unstarted

What do you do with the regret of being right too early?Aakrit Vaish started Haptik in 2013: an AI chatbot company nine years before ChatGPT. By 2016 he knew the market wasn't ready. He kept going anyway. In 2019 he sold to Reliance Jio. In November 2022, he watched the world finally catch up to the thesis he'd carried for a decade and for a few weeks, sat with the sentence: "This should have been me."Today he's co-founder of Activate, an AI-native VC firm running with two partners, one employee and seven agents, and an advisor on the India AI Mission. In this episode, Avnish Bajaj sits down with a founder who has rejected him more than once, and asks the questions most founders quietly carry:1. How do you know whether you're early, late, or correctly timed?2. Why do you keep going when the rational move is to stop?3. When the world eventually proves you right, what do you do with the grief?4. In AI today, what does it actually mean to be in the 99th percentile — globally, not locally?5. How does a high-agency founder stay ahead when the tools keep rewriting the job?6. What Aakrit lands on: market timing matters, but identity matters more. 7. Mission over everything else. And the only advice he gives, seven times a day, to anyone who'll listen: have agency. Build. Don't wait.Chapters00:00 Why Did You Let ChatGPT Happen?02:30 Welcome to Unstarted — Introducing Aakrit Vaish04:00 Growing Up in Juhu — Normal Mumbai Business Family06:30 UIUC, PayPal Mafia & Moving to Silicon Valley09:00 Why He Came Back to India at 2711:00 What Was Haptic? India's First AI Chatbot Company14:00 The Alexa Moment That Started It All (London 2012)18:00 How Founders Can Know If They Are Too Early or Too Late23:00 2016 — He Knew It Was Too Early. He Kept Going Anyway27:30 Fear of Failure vs Fear of Not Trying Hard Enough31:00 The Pull vs Push Test — The Clearest PMF Signal35:00 Why He Sold Haptic to Reliance38:30 ChatGPT Launched. His First Reaction Was Personal43:00 "Should That Have Been Me?" — The Honest Answer47:00 From Reliance to India AI Mission to Activate VC51:00 How to Know Which Problem Is Worth Solving With AI55:30 99th Percentile or Nothing — The New Bar for AI Founders59:00 Why AI in India Is the Most Ignored Opportunity1:03:00 Anthropic vs OpenAI — Two Different Strategies Explained1:07:00 Voice AI, FinTech & How GDP Will Actually Grow1:11:00 The K-Shift — GDP Growth at the Cost of InequalityFollow Z47Website - https://www.z47.com/Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/z47.vc/LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/z47-vc/