Akshayakalpa is known as India’s first certified organic dairy enterprise. But in this conversation, Shashi Kumar makes it clear that the deeper story has always been farming.

In this episode of the Prime Venture Partners Podcast, Jerome Manuel speaks with Shashi Kumar, Founder & CEO of Akshayakalpa, about building at the farm level for 16 years, far away from the usual startup playbook of fast growth, quick scale and easy metrics.

Akshayakalpa began with dairy because farmers needed reliable cash flow. Once that started working, the model expanded into animal care, soil management, manure-making, beekeeping, backyard poultry and diversified farms.

Today, Akshayakalpa is a profitable ₹60-crore-a-month business working with 2,800 farmers, including 1,200 women farmers. Last financial year, the average monthly payout to each farming family was ₹1.28 lakh.

The conversation explores:

• Why Akshayakalpa raised no institutional money for 9 years

• Why Shashi refused to sell investors a hypergrowth story

• How Nithin Kamath invested ₹5 crore in 5 days during the pandemic

• Why 27 people took equity in the company when it was struggling

• Why each cluster takes nearly 7 years to build

• How 2,800 farmers produce what would conventionally need nearly 100,000 farmers

• Why 45,000 customers visited Akshayakalpa farms

• Why premium pricing is a value play

• What founders can learn from building with patience and truth

For founders building in India, this episode is a reminder that every great company does not have to be built by chasing the fastest story.

Some are built by saying the harder thing early, and still finding the right people to believe in it.

Episode Timestamps

00:00 - Introduction

00:38 - What Akshayakalpa is really building

02:06 - Why young people are moving away from farming

10:17 - Making farming economically viable again

15:37 - Scaling through role models, clusters and culture

32:16 - Why Akshayakalpa started with dairy

39:13 - The first 9 years: struggle, frugality and survival

46:02 - Building customer trust through farm visits

48:09 - Why premium pricing is a value play

51:08 - Organic food and the challenge of fundraising in farming

1:15:42 - Investor expectations, Nithin Kamath and long-term capital

1:18:10 - What still keeps Shashi up at night

Subscribe to the Prime Venture Partners Podcast for more conversations with founders building enduring companies in India.

#AgriCapital #FarmEconomics #FoodSystems

India’s UPI moment changed how money moves.

But that may only be the first chapter.

As millions of Indians become comfortable with digital payments, a bigger question is beginning to emerge: how will they save, invest, and build wealth over the next decade?

In this episode of the Prime Venture Partners Podcast, Amit Somani speaks with Ambarish Kenghe, CEO of Angel One, about India’s shift from payment adoption to wealth creation.

From his journey across Google, Myntra, Google Pay, and Angel One, Ambarish has seen India’s digital consumer evolve up close. In this conversation, he talks about what changed after Aadhaar, Jio and UPI, why Indian consumers remain deeply value conscious, how SIPs are becoming a default investing habit, and where the next wave of fintech opportunities may come from.

The conversation also explores:

• Why 2015 became a turning point for India’s digital economy

• How UPI changed everyday money movement for consumers and merchants

• Why India’s wealth creation story still has massive headroom

• What is driving SIP adoption among new investors

• How AI could create a personal CFO or family office like experience for more Indians

• How Angel One is using AI across products, operations and customer education

• Why learning, unlearning and ownership matter when building teams

For founders building in fintech, wealth tech, AI, or consumer products in India, this episode offers a sharp view of where the market has been and where it may be headed next.

👉 Subscribe to the Prime Venture Partners Podcast for more conversations from India’s startup ecosystem.

Episode Timestamps

00:00 - Introduction

02:22 - Why AK came back to India in 2015 after 18 years in Silicon Valley

06:26 - The ₹25 checkbox that Myntra shut down in two hours

09:41 - What UPI changed beyond transaction volumes

11:04 - The Google chef who used to get looted walking home with cash

13:12 - India now has million dollar millionaires. What does that mean for wealth creation.

15:57 - Where Indian retail wealth actually sits: 50% real estate, 15% gold, 15% FDs

16:37 - Equity investing at 5 to 8% in India versus 44 to 45% in the US

17:13 - Only 5% of Angel One users trade F&O exclusively

21:15 - The real opportunity for founders building in India's wealth space

27:30 - The family office for everyone and what agentic AI could make possible

29:35 - How Angel One is using AI today with Ask Angel

35:10 - What AK looks for when hiring: learn, unlearn, ownership

40:58 - The Indian founder worth a billion dollars who spends every Saturday on AI

Long before UPI, smartphones and Aadhaar transformed digital payments in India, mChek was trying to turn mobile phones into wallets.

The vision was ambitious.

The execution was complex.

And the ecosystem was still years away from catching up.

In this episode of the Prime Venture Partners Podcast, Shripati Acharya speaks with Sanjay Swamy, former CEO of mChek and Managing Partner at Prime Venture Partners, about one of India’s earliest attempts at building mobile payments.

They discuss what it feels like to build ahead of the market, the hidden cost of ecosystem dependency, and why timing is often the hardest variable for founders to get right.

The conversation also explores:

• Why being early can sometimes look exactly like being wrong

• How telcos, banks and regulators shaped the mChek journey

• The operational chaos of building fintech in 2006 India

• Why distribution does not always lead to adoption

• What changed between mChek, Paytm and the UPI era

• Why products depending on too many stakeholders are harder to scale

• The difference between having the right idea and having the right timing

If you are building in a market that still feels early, this episode is worth your time.

👉 Subscribe to the Prime Venture Partners Podcast for more conversations from India’s startup ecosystem.

Episode Timestamps

00:00 - Intro

01:07 - “Unsuccessful” vs failed entrepreneurs

02:25 - Why timing is the hardest thing to judge

03:05 - The moment Sanjay saw phones as payment devices

05:40 - India’s telecom ecosystem in 2006

09:49 - The original thesis behind mChek

17:14 - The hidden problems nobody anticipated

27:35 - Building a payments app inside a SIM card

39:00 - The moment Sanjay felt it might not work

44:04 - The biggest lesson for founders