Z47 Moments

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.

Z47 Moments is a business podcast hosted by Z47, with 266 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Z47 hosts Z47 Moments, a business show with 266 episodes published.

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  Episode #259

  259: How two founders sold to a billion-dollar company with no factory | Wootz Work | Unstarted

  Aug 13, 202636 min

  Our first-ever episode with co-founders. Karan and Himanshu of WootzWork join Avnish to talk about building a hardware and manufacturing exports company out of India — and why they leaned into a market everyone told them wouldn't work. From an investment banking and Stanford GSB background (Karan) and IIT Kharagpur mechanical engineering (Himanshu), the two met at a previous company where one interviewed the other as head of engineering a one-hour conversation that ran three hours. In this episode they unpack how a single insult ("we don't talk to Indian engineers, we work with Germans") lit the fire, how they closed their first order from India with no factory of their own, and why the naysayers became their strongest signal to go ahead. What you'll learn in this episode: 1. Why starting in a market everyone doubts can be an advantage — and how to tell real naysaying from noise 2. How to win your first customer with no factory, no brand, and no track record 3. The co-founder decision that actually matters: why the answer is never "the middle" 4. How to choose a co-founder — honesty and complementary skills over everything else 5. Why customer obsession beats worrying about network or capital early on 6. Manufacturing as a system: how fragmentation held India back and how to fix it 7. Scaling global sales by hiring domain experts in their 40s–50s who are local to the market Chapters 00:00 Intro 02:00 Karan's path: banking, AirAsia India, Stanford GSB 04:30 Himanshu's path: IIT Kharagpur, ITC, and the machines 05:15 "We don't talk to Indian engineers" — the moment that lit the fire 06:30 The China vs India buying experience: what's actually broken 08:00 Why the market was ripe — and betting on exports 11:45 Customer obsession: getting the first customer in 13:15 The co-founder dynamic: why the answer is never in the middle 20:25 Turning the naysaying into conviction 22:30 The first order: won with no factory 23:12 Why the customer still needs them: engineering vs manufacturing 28:30 Managing people with 40–50 years of experience 30:30 AI and robotics in the manufacturing story 33:40 Closing: why 2.3 is the right number of co-founders

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  Episode #258

  258: Started with ₹8 Lakhs and built a Billion Dollar Company | Abhishek Bansal, Shadowfax

  Aug 6, 202642 min

  What happens if you fail with everyone's money? Abhishek Bansal never let himself ask and he thinks that's the only reason Shadowfax exists. He's the first public-company CEO on Unstarted: a middle-class kid from Meerut who quit his job without telling his parents, asked a VC for $5 million with zero orders, and was the only one still standing after the year every competitor died. In this conversation with Avnish Bajaj, they attempt to answer: 1. Should you have a co-founder and how do you actually pick one? 2. What should founders look for in a VC when there are multiple offers? 3. How do you tell your team you're failing? 4. Sustainable growth, or aggressive scaling? By the end, you understand his test: accept the failure, name the core problem, tell your team. Because teams don't break on failure — they break on how you behave in it. Chapters 0:00 Intro: our first public company CEO 1:19 Meerut, a middle-class home, and IIT Delhi 4:04 Parents didn't know he had quit his job 7:50 Q: How do you choose between VC offers? 8:47 Why he wanted a co-founder, not a skills match 11:03 Why not bootstrap? 11:28 Asking for $5 million with no product 12:23 The ₹8 lakh phone call 13:28 The angels who never sold: 1000x and counting 14:31 Three offers: $2M, $5M, $9M 17:19 Q: How do founders bounce back from failure? 17:46 The 2015 crash: five funded, one survivor 23:07 Knowing the core problem is the hardest problem 28:07 The offsite: profitable in three months 28:32 The retention numbers behind the culture 29:20 Q: Aggressive scaling or sustainable growth? 29:56 "In India, no idea is unique" 32:14 The guardrails: unit economics and 50-30-20 37:26 The CAPEX model that ran 100 iterations 39:07 When the HR team built its own hiring tool 40:20 Closing: teams compound, individuals don't

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  Episode #257

  257: India's biggest deep-tech exit that nobody knew of | Ravi Annavajjhala | Nxp

  Aug 4, 202644 min

  Most people assume serious AI silicon can only be built by a giant, in the cloud, burning hundreds of millions of dollars. Ravi Annavajhala did the opposite. Kinara built two AI chips for under $50M, 90% of it out of Hyderabad, and sold to NXP, one of the world's largest semiconductor companies for $307M, all cash. It's one of the largest deep tech exits India has seen, and one of the least talked about. In this episode, Vikram Vaidyanathan sits down with Ravi to take apart how it actually happened, and what it says about where AI is heading next. You'll hear: 1. Why the disruption playbook that minted the NAND-flash exits is the same one that explains Kinara's sale to NXP 2. The clearest plain-language explanation of training vs. inference you'll find, and why inference is moving off the cloud and onto the edge 3. The four reasons edge beats cloud: cost, latency, privacy, reliability 4. How you actually shrink a frontier model to run on a chip: distillation, compression, purpose-built retraining 5. Why India's real AI edge isn't talent or capital, but the industrial data sitting in its factories — and why it can't afford to become a "data colony" 6. Ravi's distinction between frugal and cheap, and why low cost has stopped meaning low capability ▶ If you're building, investing in, or just tracking India's deep tech story, this is the episode to watch. About Intelligent Indians Intelligent Indians is Z47's thesis podcast on the people building India's technology future, for builders, operators, and investors who want the operator's view, not the press-release version. Subscribe for new episodes. Chapters 0:00 A $307M deep-tech exit you didn't hear about 0:45 Meet Ravi Annavajhala & the Kinara story 3:10 The NAND flash lesson: how startups cash in on disruption 5:45 2015: betting on edge AI while everyone chased the data center 7:00 CoreViz → Deep Vision → Kinara: the naming journey 9:15 Why 90% was built in Hyderabad — a talent bet, not a cost cut 11:30 Two chips under $50M: engineering for capital efficiency 15:20 What "the edge" actually is: training vs inference 18:00 Why edge beats cloud: latency, cost, privacy & reliability 22:45 Physical AI: robots, self-driving & the real bottlenecks 28:30 Advice to VCs: conviction, local demand & the infra gap 31:20 Frugal vs cheap: why low cost ≠ low capability 33:30 Closing: India on the cusp of the edge-AI wave

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  Episode #256

  256: How the Ex-Unacademy COO built an edtech solving India's healthcare skills gap | Vivek Sinha

  Jul 30, 202639 min

  How much money is enough to make starting up safe? Vivek Sinha thought he knew: ₹50 lakh in the bank. The day he hit it, he quit. Vivek is the founder of Emversity, which trains people for the jobs India actually has in healthcare, hospitality, EPC and manufacturing. Homeschooled till eight in a Bihar village surrounded by three rivers, he built Buildzar, lost ₹50 lakh, and spent nine years compounding skills at Mobikwik, OYO and Unacademy before starting again in a sector everyone had written off. In this episode, Avnish and Vivek take on, 1. Where did you get the confidence to do this? 2. Why didn't it work? What did you think going in that didn't play out? 3. Should I drop out and work full time on my startup?" 4. How do I find the right co-founder? 5. How can we secure investment in a stigmatized sector despite proven traction?" 6. What stays with you: build it for the right reasons Chapters 00:00 Introduction 02:00 Flood village to NIT: growing up in Bihar 06:00 First startup & why it failed: market timing 11:00 MobiKwik: 0 to 20 lakh merchants in 6 months 16:00 OYO & Unacademy: the lessons that compounded 22:00 The 9-year gap: how he killed bad ideas early 28:00 Should you drop out of college? 34:00 How many co-founders — and going solo 40:00 Building in a stigmatised, out-of-favour sector 48:00 What Mversity does + closing advice

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  Episode #255

  255: From PhD to 26 FDA Clearances: Building AI in Healthcare | Prashant Warrier

  Jul 23, 202635 min

  What do you do when you've built the technology first and the first customer who tries it tells you it's not working at all? Prashant Warrier is the first PhD and the first scientist on Unstarted. A steel-town kid from Bhilai who went from IIT Delhi to a PhD in AI, he came back to India because of a stolen passport — and built Qure.ai , whose AI reads chest X-rays for TB and lung cancer across the world. In this episode, Avnish and Prashant attempt to answer: 1. How do you identify a unique problem is it about passion or market cap? 2. How do you know the technology is actually working? 3. How can founders assess whether they're early, late, or correctly timed for a market? 4. Will frontier AI kill vertical businesses or is there domain-specific stuff left to build? 5. Why build a cutting-edge AI company from Mumbai? This episode is in partnership with TEAM — Tech Entrepreneurs Association of Mumbai. Chapters 00:00 Introduction 1:41 Steel town to IIT to a PhD in AI 3:20 SAP, and the stolen passport that sent him home 6:32 Freedom over the US visa rat race 8:17 The 2012 breakthrough that started the company 11:43 A research lab with no business plan 13:33 "A solution looking for a problem" 16:52 The reality check & the real bottleneck 19:20 TB screening: 4 weeks to 30 seconds 21:43 Detecting lung cancer early with AI 24:23 Moats, ChatGPT & the future of AI in healthcare 32:04 Why Mumbai, and advice to founders

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