Innovation, Sports, and Life Podcast

In this episode, Ramit Tandon joins us right before he left for the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. He is India's top squash players while leading a corporate life simultaneously. At the time of recording, Ramit is India's ranked at #2 for India and #36 in the world.

We discuss the following

• Preparation for a high level squash tournament
• Strategies for playing at the highest levels of sport
• Mindset training
• Balancing work, diet, and staying in game shape
• How sports helps his corporate career

Follow Ramit on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramit-tandon-14a630133

Subscribe to the Innovation, Sports, and Life newsletter at https://www.innovationsportslife.com/

This episode is a conversation with Udit Goenka on SaaS, Ideal Customer profiling, Three Stage Ideation process, and more.

Udit is the founder of PitchGround his most successful startup to date, currently valued at $20M as of 2022. PitchGround is a SaaS Marketplace that bridges the gap between early-stage SaaS companies and early adopters, small-medium-sized businesses. 

In this conversation, we dig into the following:

• Understanding who your customers are, what you're building up, and what are you selling? Where are you selling? How are you selling? And why are you selling the why part is extremely important. Because if you don't understand the why you will not be able to scale up.
• The three stage ideation strategy
• How to get the risk reward in your favor before launching a product
• Ideal Customer Profiling (ICP) and Vertical ICP
• How to build SaaS products
• Living up to the service element of SaaS
• Selling without sounding salesy
• Learning from YouTube and iterating his process over time

You can follow Udit on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/uditgoenka/

This conversation is about high-performance training. We are all striving to perform at the highest levels in our domains. What can we do to improve our mental faculties. That's where Aditi Surana comes to the rescue. Recently, she coached the Femina Miss India 2022 finalists.

In this conversation, we talk about the following

• How a dyslexic became a handwriting analyst
• Learning from movies, Bollywood to understand your inner strength
• Building and honing skills as a writer, podcaster
• The Flow state
• What's a high performance mindset
• Mental workouts
• Our trigger points – mental and emotional
• Mental gyms

About Aditi Surana
She started early, first just seeing patterns in people's writing that corresponded to behavioural traits, almost 'reading between the lines' instead of on the line (didn't make her popular with school teachers) as she's dyslexic. Then analysing the handwriting for friends and family, and shortly thereafter, borne by her pioneering spirit, the regional management of a very popular coffee shop chain invited her to set up at their locations across Mumbai. She captivated her audience of students, professionals, businessmen and housewives alike, referred primarily by word of mouth, and later on her very own radio talk show (on Radio City) aged 22. 
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As she honed her skill (& intuition), she realised that she could not only decipher a person through their handwriting but also objectively identify psychological constraints, and provide corrective measures. One thing led to the next and the HR head of IBM India & ISPAT (now JSW), gave her an opportunity to use this knowledge to better corporate practises like hiring, mentorship & coaching. 
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Overtime her bond with CEOs, CFOs and COOs strengthened and many interesting opportunities came her way, one of her favourites being the re-design of company logos to create a tangible shift in their growth. She's been featured in print, and on television media in India & globally, loves to travel (and does so quite often), currently resides in Mumbai and has clients all across the world. 

www.aditisurana.com

This is a conversation with Priyal Keni, an athlete who has represented India at International Shooting competitions. She is a Chartered Accountant by profession.

Having won +117 medals & broken three national records, she represented the great Indian athlete story across four countries & multiple international championships, with career-best performances at International Shooting Competitions & World Championships. Consistently ranked #1 in +40 matches during her 7-year stint with the Indian shooting team, Priyal was conferred the Shiv Chatrapati Award in 2015 (the highest honour for sport in Maharashtra).

In this conversation, we dive into the following:

• Her origin in the world of Rifle Sports
• Experimenting with multiple sports and using different skills to compete
• Initial wins and the turning point that put her on the fast track for rifle shooting
• Physical requirements and reflexes to compete well
• Situational and mental preparation for competitions
• Learning from others
• The first time she broke a National record
• What is the zone, and how does it works
• How to stay focused
• How sports influences other areas of life especially learning in children
• Her work with the Play & Shine Foundation

Priyal's Bio
In an international rifle shooting career spanning seven years, Priyal has rewritten social perceptions with her quintessential “woman with a gun & on a mission” image.

Having won +117 medals & broken three national records, she represented the great Indian athlete story across four countries & multiple international championships, with career-best performances at International Shooting Competitions & World Championships. Consistently ranked #1 in +40 matches during her 7-year stint with the Indian shooting team, Priyal was conferred the Shiv Chatrapati Award in 2015 (the highest honour for sport in Maharashtra).

Priyal is a community change-maker on a mission to foster a sports culture in India. Her 2018 founded non-profit initiative, “Play & Shine Foundation”, has actively worked with +500 volunteers across 10 states pan India & touched lives of 4,000+ children from underserved communities. Given her meteoric rise as an Indian sociopreneur, Priyal spearheads sport for development projects with the TATA Sustainability Group, Teach for India, Decathlon, Robin Hood Army, C.R.Y & the Education Board of Maharashtra to solve the issue of access to sport at the grassroots. She aims to reach a transnational impact of 1 million children by 2030.

Selected as a McKinsey NGWL Women Leader 2020, Priyal is 1 of India's top 15 women social entrepreneurs handpicked for SHAKTI's Incubation Program founded by a Harvard alumnus & funded by Facebook.

A 3X TEDx speaker, she was the 1st Indian to speak on “Sports for Sustainability” on TEDx, & has delivered lectures to over 200 students at the National Academy of Sports Management & the MBA-ESG Business School.

A Chartered Accountant by qualification, Priyal enjoys creative problem solving and working on consulting projects at the intersection of finance & digital transformation at Deloitte Consulting. She was the sole Indian spokesperson at the Global Woman in Consulting event organized by Deloitte Netherlands.

During her free time, Priyal mentors students via LinkedIn & Unacademy (India's largest edtech platform). Passionately working in sport and sustainability ecosystems, she has been an advisor to JSW Sports, UPACA, Sangath & the United Nations Youth India. 

Media Mentions: India Today, ToI, Hindu, Hindustan times, Deccan Chronicle, Forbes.

Priyal can be reached at [email protected]
https://www.priyalkeni.com/

In this episode, Rajiv Vaishnav shares the behind the scenes for his writing. Rajiv has been a stalwart in the Indian IT and Startup space. Rajiv has a talent to merge different domains into stories that connect.

His writing covers philosophy, startups, movies, personal matters, and more. Its profound and yet pratical.

You can read his work at his blog http://www.rajivvaishnav.com and follow him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajivvaishnav

In this episode, we discuss how Rajiv weaves his carpet of words.

We cover the following in our conversation

• What writing means to him
• Management by storytelling
• Motivating startups through stories
• Writing for yourself
• Perspectives in writing
• Osho and his works
• Listening and how to create an idea bank
• How to write for the reader

About Rajiv
Investment Professional and Entrepreneur:

Rajiv is a co-founder and Managing Partner at Cornerstone Venture Partners Fund. (CSVP Fund) (www.csvpfund.com) invests primarily in early-growth (B2B SaaS models) : Consumer & Enterprise business solutions. We are building India’s frontier ‘Enterprise SaaS’ fund!

Rajiv has over 40+ years of solid experience in building brands, developing teams, expanding the market share and building organisations from grass root upwards. He is a Member of General Body and Governing Council of Maharashtra State Innovation Society. He is on the National Advisory Board of SME Chamber of India and the Honorary Executive Chairman of Start-ups council of India. Rajiv is an Independent Director on the Board of Lumina Datamatics Limited. He is the Hon. Member of Board of Corporate Advisors of Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan's K.M. Munshi Institute of Advanced Studies, Member Of The Board Of Advisors, Bhagwan Mahavir University, Surat, Hope Foundation & Research Centre, Pune. He was heading Ecosystem & Partnerships at RIL's GenNext Venture Fund and Jio-GenNext Innovation Hub.

Rajiv was an integral part of NASSCOM’s senior management team, initiated path breaking initiatives such as Cyber Safety with enforcement agencies, Emerging IT SMEs and Product companies, start-up incubators with State Govts under 10K Startup programme, evangelised Animation & Gaming sector, lead ISO Standards initiative to establish a Global BPO & Product Quality Framework Standards out of India.

He was the first Director & Co-founder, TiE Mumbai and played a key role in establishing the organization in India.

In 2000, Rajiv was invited by the U.S. Government to participate in their International Visitors program on ‘US Trade and World Market.’

Rajiv is a Science graduate from Mumbai University. He is passionate about music and literature. is blog: www.rajivvaishnav.com

This episode is a conversation with Kuntal Joisher, the first vegan to summit Mount Everest. I’ve known Kuntal for many years – we went to the same college and later took different paths. Thanks to social media, I’ve been able to follow his work. Kuntal is a computer engineer turned mountaineer who’s accomplished four summits of 8000’ers and 20+ summits of 6000’er mountains. The most surprising part – Kuntal was scared of heights. Go figure!

It’s refreshing to hear a different voice to understand the process of achieving challenging goals.  His idea of climbing mountains is to ensure success in a healthy state. Kuntal shares his preparation techniques, both mental and physical, to conquer our inner Everests.

Highlights

• Summiting Mount Everest twice without having the expressed ambition to do so. 3:02
• Does being cautious work against you in high-risk situations? 9:32
• Difference between preparing and training for a mountaineering expedition 16:54
• What mental preparation looks like? 20:20
• How does one determine a hand-over for events when their mind doesn’t work clearly? 28:28
• What it feels like at the top of the world 35:06
• Difference between South Side vs North Side Summit expeditions on Everest 39:20
• Vegan diet and mountaineering 41:50
• Climbing with equipment that’s vegan-friendly 44:29

Where to follow Kuntal
Instagram: Kuntal A. Joisher (@kuntalj) • Instagram photos and videos
Facebook: (20+) Kuntal Joisher | Facebook
LinkedIn: (2) Kuntal Joisher | LinkedIn

Kuntal's Bio
Kuntal Joisher combines the distinction of being both an accomplished mountaineer and a high-end, computer science professional. He is an alumnus of Vivekanand Institute of Technology, Mumbai, and USC Viterbi School of Engineering, Los Angeles. His insatiable passion for mountaineering has led him to climb mountain ranges across the world, including the Western Ghats near Mumbai, the Northern Icecap in Chile, the Andes in Argentina, and the Nepalese and Indian Himalaya. Joisher has climbed to the top of Mt. Everest from both Nepal side (May 2016), and China side (May 2019). Some of his other notable climbs are the ascent of Manaslu (October 2014), Lhotse (May 2018), and Aconcagua (Feb 2020) among others. He is a well-respected photographer, and his work has been published in National Geographic, BBC Earth, Space.com, Himalayan Journal, The Outdoor Journal, Time Out, Traveler Trails, Indian Mountaineer, and several other newspapers and magazines across the world. Joisher has been named one of India’s top 30 fitness influencers, has been featured on cover of magazines across India and the world, and has also been featured on the TEDx platform multiple times. Joisher is an athlete ambassador for the Italian company “Save the Duck”, and represents them while mountaineering across the world.

Joisher regularly travels across the world to speak about his life transforming journey of climbing Mt. Everest in hopes to inspire his audience to pursue their dreams and passions. Joisher continues to train hard both mentally & physically, and his latest project is to compete in a natural bodybuilding competition, and follow it up by climbing the 7 summits – both in a 100% #Vegan fashion in the next 2 years. In addition to his dedication to mountaineering and bodybuilding, Joisher is passionate about three causes: raising awareness about the disease of Dementia, spreading the message of Veganism, and education of the underprivileged in Nepal.

When Joisher is not climbing, he works as a nutrition and fitness coach helping people make smarter choices, build better habits, and overall lead a healthy and fit life!

In this episode we learn about tennis and how it inspires startups with Vaniya Dangwal.

She picked up tennis when she was 12. Soon she made the Top 10 rankings of Indian junior tennis, turned pro and achieved a WTA ranking of 1031. She now helps startups in India reach the next level. More about her below.

We spoke about her tennis story and how it inspires other work. Here are the broad things Vaniya shared:

Individual Challenges

• The world of sport athletes in India especially at the junior levels
• How she dealt with moments when she wanted to give up
• Carving a way despite the lack of an ecosystem and no blueprint.
• The area she worked the hardest to improve her game – the dreaded serve
• Importance of the mental aspect of the game
• Data she had access to for match preparation

Ecosystem

• The world of a budding sportsperson – daily travel, coaches, support system.
• The gaps at the junior levels of tennis around mental coaching
• Tendencies of Indian players including solo travel compared to international players who benefit from a group setup

She now uses her experience to help the Indian startup ecosystem. If you're a startup, listen in to know what's the equivalent of the serve in tennis for your world.

About Vaniya Dangwal
She started playing Tennis when 12 and soon played her first tournament. She was in the India top 10 for junior tennis and had a world ranking of 434. She's won the All India Inter university Championship for Delhi University and Inter state Women’s National championship for Delhi on 2016. Vaniya also held a WTA rank of 1031 and has travelled the world for tennis. She's an economics grad from Delhi university and MBA in Marketing from Goa institute of Management. She has worked with Citibank and Mindhouse (now Shyft), founded a F&B company by the name of Mike’s Hotdogs. Currently, Vaniya works with Headstart, helping startups build and reach the next level while also enabling the enablers of the ecosystem.

In this episode, we learn the power of micro habits from Amit Agarwal, the author of Small is Big.

He discovered this principle during a painful experience in a meditation program. The discovery changed his life and he's on a mission to share it with the world.

We can complete challenging exercises such as a marathon by focusing on one step at a time. I was more curious about learning approaches that can help with professional goals. How do I even identify a habit in the first place?

Amit shares a doable approach to develop micro habits that strengthen family bonds and bring joy to your life

For professional lives, he provides an optimal way to schedule and run meetings. We discuss the most effective durations and how to get everyone's best input. His book shares various templates based on the purpose.

We also discuss resonance and how it applies to all experiences, both positive and negative. Amit used this to achieve the highest sales quarter in his company's history. The interesting part was that this was when they were in a tough spot. Amit also shares how can prepare for raising capital by understanding resonance.

This podcast was an idea to make yourself the best person you can be. Not by an overhaul. We make big things happen by matching with small steps.

I truly enjoyed this conversation and am positive it will help you in your goals.

I had an opportunity to interview Michael Haase, the CEO and founder of Plant Jammer. They have developed an innovative AI solution to reduce food wastage at home. 33% of food is being wasted every day. Of that, our homes contribute to approx half of that problem.

One way of solving it is by emptying the fridge. I've tried this but genuinely do not know how to be creative about it. It's hard to come up with dishes that will be palatable. That is not surprising. 

Michael's research indicates that an average person cooks just abouten10 recipes or so in a year. With such a limited diversity around what we can cook, it's a challenging problem. So how do you solve food wastage around these themes? 

We talk about the various innovation approaches that anyone can adopt. Listen in to the interview here

• My takeaways from the conversation
• How to scope the problem space?
• How do you pick the right problem to attack? 
• How do you bring tech to effect change at the personal level?
• What jamming means at work and how it builds an excellent team culture. 
• What journey mapping is and how it helps uncover empathy?

Book resource that we covered during our conversation is the The Mom Test 

A good football team in NFL, the American Football League, is known for how well it executes the two-minute offense. When its back is against the wall facing a time constraint, it has to march the troops across the field and score points. The two-minute drill defines a team and usually its performance in the playoffs. 

How does all this relate to innovations? Crunch time situations call for Mind-Blowing teamwork. Planning for these worst-case situations will bring out unique ways of solving the problem. In this episode, we dive into preparing teams for your two-minute drills. This scenario planning will add fire to the innovators in your crew.