Karan Sehgal

In the MedTech startup world, it's not just about creating high-quality medical devices. You also have to tackle challenges like mindset, funding, collaborations, resistance, and regulations. MedTech is a long-term industry, one should not expect quick wins in terms of revenue. Remember, we live in a society where health is not given that much priority until the condition is severe or evident. We need to change how people see MedTech startups in India. Otherwise, we might just become a social venture, and to me there's nothing wrong going this way as well. We start our journey with a ground level pain, and if we are able to cure that pain to save/improve/impact even a single life, our most of the jobs are done. #healthcare #startup #medtech #business

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Great insights for anyone building any business.

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Abhiraj Singh Bhal, dropped a couple of interesting insights during Z47's "the consumer unicorn blueprint" chat a day before: 1/ While marketplaces can offer you distribution, you don't end up owning the consumer. and till the time you don't own your consumer, you won't be able to create businesses with healthy margins. Period. Any brand with a Q-commerce only or market place+Q commerce only strategy will find it increasingly difficult to create sound businesses. He offers a way out but with a caveat: 2/ To create a fundamentally sound business, with good margins- one has to go the d2c way. He talked about the challenges of creating his own D2C brand "native" in the water purifier and allied category. The biggest challenge he talked about is why should an end consumer trust you and buy directly from you? When he has the option to buy from an Amazon or a Flipkart with easy returns and complete trust in the process if anything goes wrong? That he says is the biggest roadblock which makes it 100X difficult to scale as a D2C brand. But that's also the only way to create a profitable business. Everytime i hear such inputs from industry veterans, it just reaffirms the mission we are onto at Simpl. Our 1-tap checkout is not about giving credit but rather about bridging that missing trust in a d2c brand dot com. It's about giving that feeling of safety while purchasing anything online, the same nostalgic "bharosa" feeling we have from buying from our neighborhood khata store :)

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SCOOP: Urban Company has turned profitable at PBT level (profit before tax) on a consolidated basis in the last month. The development will potentially smoothen its public listing plan which is likely to happen in 2025. My story:

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𝗟𝗲𝘁 𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗮 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆! 😊   It’s a tale of 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 (𝗼𝗿 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝘁𝗼!) 𝙨𝙘𝙧𝙚𝙬 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙗𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙤𝙧 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙙𝙪𝙘𝙩. Read on and take your own “to be or not to be” clues.  𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝘅𝘁 A few days back, my home water filter started acting up. So, I decided to explore new options and stumbled upon Livpure Smart. Their brand promise sounded tempting: ₹0 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦, 𝘮𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘴𝘵, 𝘧𝘪𝘭𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘴𝘵 – all at affordable plans. I decided to go for it.  But my primary concern was installation speed. With my existing filter barely working, 𝘐 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘯𝘦𝘸 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘣𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘥 𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘤𝘬𝘭𝘺. Here’s how the story unfolded: 𝟭. 𝗢𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗶𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗨𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿 When I called their sales number, I told the agent I had already researched their plans. My only question: 𝙃𝙤𝙬 𝙡𝙤𝙣𝙜 𝙬𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙞𝙣𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙩𝙖𝙠𝙚?   He checked my address and assured me: - Delivery today ✅   - Installation tomorrow ✅  To back it up, he confidently mentioned their office is in Gurgaon, my city, so it would all be done promptly. Trusting this, I made the payment. 𝙍𝙚𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙮: It took additional 𝟮 𝗱𝗮𝘆𝘀, countless calls, and negotiating with installers to get the job done. 𝟮. 𝗘𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿 Promise ₹𝟬 𝙞𝙣𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙘𝙤𝙨𝙩. But the installer 𝗱𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘆, refusing to proceed otherwise.  When I tried calling customer care, I discovered another irony:   Their "𝟮𝟰/𝟳 𝘀𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁" 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗺𝗶𝘀𝗲 only operates 𝗠𝗼𝗻𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝗙𝗿𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘆, 𝟭𝟬 𝗔𝗠–𝟳 𝗣𝗠 𝗜𝗦𝗧. Since it was off-hours, I begrudgingly paid the installer to get drinking water at home. 𝟯. 𝗖𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝗘𝗺𝗽𝗮𝘁𝗵𝘆 Livpure operates in an essential category—𝗱𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿. But their process showed 𝙯𝙚𝙧𝙤 𝙚𝙢𝙥𝙖𝙩𝙝𝙮 for customers' needs.  From sales to support, no one seemed to understand the urgency of having drinking water at home. Responses like “𝘐𝘵 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦 24–48 𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴” 𝘰𝘳 “𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘮 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘪𝘵” felt robotic & detached. 𝟰. 𝗦𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺𝘀 Livpure’s operations showed a lack of planning for 𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗲. Their installers are local contractors who:   - Don’t share the brand’s values or commitments. - Are motivated purely by money (e.g., charging me despite their "free installation" promise). 𝟱. 𝗖𝗵𝗼𝗼𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗔𝗺𝗯𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗱𝗼𝗿 Livpure did one thing 𝘄𝗲𝗹𝗹—they chose Sachin Tendulkar 𝘗𝘢𝘢𝘫𝘪 as their brand ambassador. 𝘞𝘩𝘺 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘸𝘪𝘯?   - Sachin is an icon of trust, loved by millions.   - His personal values align with the brand’s mission: clean drinking water at affordable costs. 𝗕𝘂𝘁… A great ambassador can only do so much. I trust Sachin Tendulkar for life but not the brand Livpure Smart anymore :(

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Isn’t it amazing how start-ups’/ companies’ focus have dramatically shifted to profitability? 😯 Just in the last decade era (10-15 years back), companies like Amazon/ Flipkart, Ola/Uber, BYJU'S’s, OYO and WeWork were laser-focused on growth - revenues over everything.
 It was all about grabbing market share, even if it meant burning through cash. 💸 Today, most of them are still loss-making. But companies in the last 5-10 years? We’re seeing a shift.
 Newer players (or the ones that became prominent recently) like Meesho, Zepto, Urban Company, and PW (PhysicsWallah) are taking a different path.
 They’re not just chasing scale— most of them actually aiming and winning profitability (at least EBITDA-positive). 📊
 Sustainability is finally becoming as important as growth. Of course, it’s not a one-size-fits-all trend.
Companies like Ola Electric are loss making, while Zerodha (last decade era) have consistently made profits. But it’s fascinating to see this evolution of new tech/ business model focus to profitability.
 What do you think about this shift? 💬

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Marketing brilliance at its finest! TheHealthFactory has cracked the code with their genius strategy on YouTube. From capturing attention to driving engagement, this is a masterclass in how to market effectively in the digital age and gain attention using current youtube trend. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out their innovative approach - https://lnkd.in/dYhhmqRt What’s your favorite takeaway from their strategy? Let’s discuss in the comments! 👇 #marketingstrategy #innovation #youtubemarketing #RoastNahiToast

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From near bankruptcy to one of India’s hottest consumer brands. Meet Wakefit, a brand launched by Chaitanya Ramalingegowda and Ankit Garg in 2015. Wakefit aims to improve sleep health with sleep-efficient products. The challenge like any other business was to capture attention & retain customers. But despite the pandemic hitting the business hard, how did Wakefit’s marketing become a success? → Wakefit understood the customers’ pain points, focused on educating them about sleep, and empowered them to research and decide. → They launched the Sleep Internship campaign, where interns will sleep 9 hours a night for 100 days on a Wakefit mattress and earn Rs. 1 Lakh as an internship stipend. → Wakefit focused on D2C sales and offered high-quality products at competitive prices. This attracted cost-conscious customers who want quality products within their budget. → Wakefit's presence across digital platforms helped them reach a wider audience. Their engaging and relatable content resonated and drove growth. While traffic was good with these strategies, new users and re-engagement for the existing users were not up to the mark. That's when they implemented the 3-point strategy & used an engagement platform, MoEngage, to enhance engagement. The 3-point strategy has three digital goals: 1️⃣ Acquiring new customers Wakefit launched survey campaigns and segmented visitors into buyers and non-buyers with MoEngage’s Custom Segmentation feature. Non-buyers received product-focused notifications through on-site messaging, emails, and push alerts. Using a content-first approach, buyers received product-related messages mostly through emails. 2️⃣ Re-engaging with existing users After a 100-day wait post-purchase, Wakefit re-engaged with existing customers, based on their purchase history and wishlist. It created campaigns to drive customers to the next purchase. Users who searched but didn’t buy were prompted to complete the purchase. 3️⃣ Product awareness Using a content-first approach, Wakefit launched targeted email campaigns to both buyers and non-buyers, highlighting sleep tips, home decor ideas, and product-line awareness. The continuous and relevant communication helped them reach more customers and improve digital growth. The results were impressive: ↳ 80% adoption rate ↳ Overall daily order volume jumped by over 40% ↳ On-site messaging led to a 20% conversion rate ↳ Over 4M personalized emails were sent with an average CTR of 11.79% ↳ Push notifications reached 700k users with a delivery rate exceeding industry benchmarks Key takeaway? Understand user intent and tailor communication consequently to foster stronger relationships and more sales. In this ever-evolving digital world, business growth is driven more by passionate and personalized engagement. ✨ Which brand would you like me to talk about next? 🔁 Repost this if it is useful. 🙎‍♂️ Follow ADITYA DAS for more such useful content. #wakefit #marketing #D2C

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Is Zomato’s new 'Food Rescue' feature really going to solve for food wastage or is it just a PR stunt?! Lets find out. While we can do some guesstimates based on available data, but only time will tell if it truly delivers on the expected impact, like: - How much food is actually saved? (Conversion rate from food rescue notification to order) - Are there second-order effects impacting BAU (Business as usual)? (Think: changes in cancellation rates, order trends, or AOV in areas with higher cancellations). While the idea sounds great, I’ve learned to stay focused on the problem, not the solution—that’s how we iterate faster and solve effectively. One thing I found curious: if Zomato tested this feature in smaller markets first, wouldn’t they have mentioned initial results in their PR? Since I don't have the test data, Lets proceed with some guesstimates: Some data we have(thanks to Perplexity) - 400K cancellation per month, 13K per day, 550 Pincodes of Operations, ~20 Million DAU - 24 cancellation per pincode - in 24 hours, 1 cancellation per pincode per hour - 36K active users per pincode The success of this idea depends on several “ifs”: - User proximity: Must be within 3 km of the cancellation point (~36K DAU per pincode, assuming 3 km per pincode). - Notification read/action: Within 10 minutes. India’s average notification read rate is ~8% within 3 hours; assuming active users read 3x faster (~24%), this becomes 1.3% for a 10-minute window (24%/18). - User hunger: 80% of orders happen during meal times, with a 50% chance the user is hungry, giving ~40% probability. - No other food plans: ~20% probability they haven’t made other arrangements. - Food preference match: ~25% probability, assuming 50% chance for veg/non-veg and 50% for cuisine. - Acceptance of deal price: ~50%. (These are some back of the envelop estimates, don't hold me for these ;)) Combining these, we might find ~5 users likely to convert. But even if the conversion rate is as low as 0.00001, that’s okay—since there’s only one item to sell. So, the odds look decent for saving the food :) ! As a product person, I know these kind of interesting ideas are often discussed in backlogs but shelved due to some “pessimism” or because they don’t seem to move any needle on growth or cost savings. Yet, hats off to the product manager who pushed this forward! Here the leadership who approved this probably knew that even if the metric value wasn’t huge, it would make for great PR. This is a great reminder that sometimes it’s worth building features that might not directly impact key metrics but are simply good for customers or society—and, as a bonus, they often bring some free PR. #ProductManagement #ProductImpact #Zomato #FoodRescue

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Days ago, we wrapped the 4th offsite of the Dexter group of three companies spread across Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi and Jaipur. And humbled and overwhelmed is what I feel ❤️ We were 15 people in 2021 when we did our first offsite to Goa. And, now we were 3 times as many people this time, at our 4th annual offsite, which we held in Pattaya. When you are growing so fast, with teams of all three group companies spread across 4 cities, it’s obvious that a large set of people have been working together, but not met. Offsites, for the last 4yrs have been our annual festival to address that, bring the old and new guard together, cherish how far we have come along, count our blessings and discuss what’s the broader and bigger vision for the times ahead. .. That said, this year we were also joined by some special members. Some brought along their spouses/partners. And some, like Devendra and I, our kids. Thus, it was no longer just an event for colleagues across four cities to come and bond. But, an event which helped build stronger ties between the families of many who we work with. And that turned out to be a delight. .. Though, given we have been growing so big as a team, so fast, I had always held the concern that we should end up building regional groups within Dexter. The offsite busted all such concerns to smithereens. That was because every team is spread across geographies, and we saw people sharing lovely camaraderie with others from their teams as well as cities. For instance, we have Taran from Delhi, who works with and shares a great bond with Varun who operates out of Mumbai, and also with Rishabh who leads our investment banking practice in Delhi. Likewise, another example is that of Shubham, who operates out of Jaipur, but shares great bonds with Jayanth and Yash who operate from our Bangalore office. This boosted my conviction, that as we are growing larger as a team, we are building a healthy organisation. And that is such a comfortable spot to be in :) .. Rest, all of this was made possible by Arushi and Shubham, who organised everything, stay, events, logistics and coordination with vendors and teams, all by themselves. .. That said, as Devendra always puts it- We’ve been blessed with an opportunity to build something big. And we must not fritter it. On that course, we remain at Day 1, committed to continue on this fun ride full of growing together as a team, as a group, and as a family. Thanks to all the team members and their families for being a part of our annual festival :) Best, Anuradha

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Sujith Nair, Beckn's WhatsApp-averse, badminton-loving chief mover and shaker, gave us a peek into the world's first # e-commerce protocol. Imagine if Colgate wanted to sell a lot of toothpaste, would it open separate exclusive stores on every street? NO! Instead, it ensures its products are available in all stores where people come to shop, and not just toothpaste. Similarly, Beckn is a way for an online business to make its products and services available on other stores (popular daily-use consumer apps) instead of setting up its own store (its own consumer app) and waiting for customers to come in droves! The Beckn Protocol underpins Open Network For Digital Commerce (ONDC) and is a universal translator for e-commerce platforms. We would normally call it the Rosetta Stone for digital services, but now we have BHASHINI 😉 . It allows disparate systems to "speak" to each other seamlessly. The Beckn Protocol has become a verb in the tech world. "Just Beckn it!" has become a common phrase among developers when discussing open-source solutions for digital commerce. In fact, we like it so much that we are using Beckn use cases as our episode artwork (instead of our normal groovy cover art) to spread the word in our own little way. Some may even argue that the yellow and black in the artwork denote open mobility networks (read taxis) 😀. The even more nerdy might catch the movie reference in the title 🎬. So, is it an app? Is it an aggregator? Is it a platform? No. It is a Super Capability - #decentralised and #open. Listen, learn and use. sujith nair | Pramod Varma | Sanjay Purohit | Shankar Maruwada | Shireesh Joshi | T Koshy | Namma Yatri | FIDE | Antler | Bingepods (Ideabrew Studios) | OpenExO | Thinkers360 | IBM Alumni | Microsoft Alumni Network | The RSA (The royal society for arts, manufactures and commerce) | World Economic Forum | Digital India Corporation | nasscom | Abhishek Singh | Nilesh | Sheetal https://lnkd.in/dydrjnbU

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We asked our PM Fellows to create a Tear down of a product of choice. Akash Sharma created this tear down of Kuku FM. Nice attempt Akash. Want to do something similar? Join our upcoming batch on ProductHood School #productmanagement #teardowns

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Execution > Being First 🚀 Swiggy wasn’t the first to start food delivery in India. Remember Foodpanda? They were early in the game 🍱 but couldn’t sustain. Yet Swiggy went on to dominate the market and now has a successful IPO 💼📈 What’s the takeaway? It’s not just about having the idea first 💡. It’s about executing it better, understanding the market, and evolving with customer needs 👥 Being first is great, but nailing execution and adapting to the market is what truly drives success ✅ What are your thoughts on this? . . . . . #startup #sales #entrepreneurship #swiggy

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Just had an amazing catch-up with Karan Verma at WeWork Gurgaon, founder of Faad Capital—one of India’s top angel syndicates. 🎯 Turns out we grew up just miles apart! Funny how life circles back. Karan’s journey is next level—quitting his day job 9 years ago with nothing but a name, testing ideas, pivoting, and now FAAD is a $40M powerhouse with 105 investments (and counting)! 🚀 We had a great chat and came away with some fascinating insights: 1️⃣ India is going all-in on deep tech—think defense, drones, and EVs! 🌍 Founders are targeting the global south (Africa, SE Asia), and with local gov support + investor backing, it won’t be long before Indian startups are selling to the West. 2️⃣ Investors are digging across the board—from early-stage to the current favorite pre-IPO secondaries. Everyone’s looking for that quick IPO pop 💥. Swiggy’s the belle-of-the-ball, and even SMBs are getting attention! 📈 3️⃣ My favorite: B2B SaaS. The big challenge? Cracking the GTM for US buyers. It’s easy to overbuild and complicate the product because of distance from customers and overstaffing the early team. 🛠️ The best solution? Get your co-founder or product lead on the ground in the US—no amount of SDRs or playbook consultants will fix the gap! Curious if anyone’s seen a creative solution to the GTM issue? 👀 #DeepTech #VentureCapital #Startups #B2BSaaS #GTM #StartupIndia

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1. A crore is still a crore regardless of how big the company is. You’re still answerable to shareholders. 2. Even if they had a crore to spare, this would only encourage others to do the same and make a quick buck. 3. Domain squatting, while is a grey area in India, is illegal in many countries and is unethical regardless. 4. Buying a domain (and possibly many others as a backup) is not an entrepreneurial skill. It costs barely ₹300-400 to buy a domain these days.

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