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

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0:48 Welcome to Unstarted. What is unique about this show is this is about you. It  is for founders by founders. I'm very excited today to welcome a young  founder to the show whose services that she brings to a company called Pronto.  I hope and I think many of you would have already used very interesting background  and story, very unusual background and story, a story that I was inspired by when I  first met her. Anjali Sardana, welcome.

1:20 Great to have you here. Thank  you for having me. So Anjali, how many years? We already did this earlier. How many years in India before  before you started this company? Zero years. Amazing. I'm fresh off the boat. Fresh off the boat the other way  around. Yeah, exactly. Let's go back. Tell us a little bit about your  background growing up. I know you did something different in your undergrad  as well and how that led to this idea. Yeah.

1:47 So I am from northern Virginia, right outside  Washington, D.C. And I went to Georgetown for undergrad and majored in biology. So very,  very different from my biology. So in the US, what you major in in college and what you  do after college are completely unrelated. And when I was in college, I became very  obsessed with evolution or the idea that the exact permutation and combination of  every living organism, right, the exact, you know, order and combination of alleles,  which are form factors of genes in their body are have resulted in the exact diversity of  life that exists. How does that connect to then wanting to be an entrepreneur? Was that  something that was always in your blood? Yeah.

2:30 My both my mom and dad are entrepreneurs, so  I always knew I was going to start a company. Also, I'm terrible at listening  to other people. So having a job was always going to be very difficult. Have  your investors realized that yet? Definitely. Definitely. Congratulations on your  latest round, by the way. Thank you. Thank you. So this six factors that you mentioned, did that in any way influence what you  wanted to do? So I really love building an operations business. Effectively, what an  operations business is, is a system of people, right? Like you have this large number of  people who are fulfilling different roles.

3:07 And I think of them a lot like like the behavior  that is the output of this system of people, right? When the net result of the business is  very similar when you think about evolution. So essentially, you have a very complex  system where you can derive the inputs down to a small number of factors. And so  if you want to affect change in the output, you have to just figure out which of the few input  drivers you have to tweak and in what manner.

3:33 Wow. So you most people hate operationally  complex businesses. You like operationally complex businesses because you have a  framework around how to make it work. Yes. I think before I started  a company, this is when I was a senior in college. I thought about  what type of company I wanted to start. And there were two options in my head,  like a product first company where, you know, the company lives or dies by the  product quality. And then there's, you know, operations businesses. And I don't consider  distribution led businesses as real companies.

4:04 You know, they're not very doable,  durable in the long run. Right. And so if I was going to build a  company, I am not technical. And therefore, building a product first company  was never going to make sense because I, as the founder, would not have been critical for  the success of the company. But an operations business is where I can actually be critical  and I can be the linchpin. Very interesting. So you are saying potentially three different  pillars to building a company. Product, operations and distribution. You  don't think distribution is durable.

4:33 We can debate that, but you don't think  so. Product is not your skill set, therefore operation. I think that's  a very good takeaway for people to think through as they think about it themselves. What brought you to India and then the nature of  the business that you're doing? Why not do this in the US? This is not a real company in the  US. I mean, this is a problem statement. So I think people would know of the company, but why  don't you describe what you're doing? So we are building the world's largest labor organization  platform, starting with home services in India.

5:04 And the idea is, you know, you have end customers, whether that's B2B or B2C, though  right now our core category is B2C. And they have a certain expectation for  the services that they receive. Right. You know, they are also the same  users of QuickCommerce. Right. So, you know, everything delivered in eight minutes. Everything must be perfect. Everything  must be. I'm a very busy corporate person. Everything must be on time and on their own  service providers and especially unskilled and low skilled labor markets cannot provide  the services to the expectation of the end customers. Right. And so, you know, house  help in the offline world are unreliable.

5:39 You have hit or miss on quality and there's  obviously safety risks. Right. And so there's room to essentially build a platform  which structures this unskilled labor and provides the incentives for  workers to stay in the structure. And that's a much deeper market in India  than in the US. Yes. I mean, in the US, first of all, people don't get  their home cleaned every day. Right. And it's a super luxury service.  Demand density doesn't exist the same way.

6:05 Right. So, by the way, QuickCommerce in our  business, like the 10 minute is an emergent feature of the model rather than something that  has to be like, you know, is a marketing gimmick. So coming back, so moving to India, having  grown up in the US, spent zero days. I got the operating architecture. There must be  and there are people probably watching you who, first of all, what was the connect back  to India for you growing up? And they're probably watching you, people watching you,  inspired by you saying, but can I succeed in India? How did you think about that? I think if  you think you cannot do something, then you can't do it. If you think you can do something,  then you still might not be able to do it.

6:47 But you have a non-zero chance  of being able to do it. And so I did not tell my parents about my company.  I was just going to say when you said that, I'm like, yeah, your parents might  have a different view of that. No, no, they fully had no idea until  after I raised my seed round from BCB. I know they didn't know because I flew home  from I was living in Boston at the time, working at Bain Capital, and I flew home  and I was in the car with my dad who picked me up from the airport. And I was  like, dad, I have to tell you something.

7:18 And he said, OK, what is it? And I  was like, I'm quitting my job next Tuesday. And I'm like putting putting  my two weeks notice. And he said, OK. And I said to start a company. And  he said, OK. And I said, in India. And then he almost veered off the  road like so they had no idea. And the reason I hadn't told them is back in  April, 2024, when I was in college and I told my dad about this company idea. He  told me, first of all, that's stupid.

7:45 No one's going to use that. And second of all, you're not capable of building that. So I  was like, OK, I took that as a challenge. I was like, I'm going to build it and I won't take  any help and I won't tell them. And so I think if I had had a lot of doubt in my mind, whether like,  am I the right person to start this company or will I be able to do it? I wouldn't have been able  to do it. And I would have psyched myself out.

8:06 I think you have to have a almost blind courage,  you know, as a very, very early stage founder, almost like a fake it till you make it sort of  thing where you convince yourself that you are the alpha, like you are the man and you can  do it and nothing can stop you. And if you let doubt creep into your mind, then you won't be  able to start. I mean, that's a great framework. But how did you, what in your life experience  got you to that conviction? Conviction that I would be the right person to do it. Like you  said, you can't do it. You can't do it in India.

8:41 You can't do it. But you said I  had that blind courage. How did you get that? A bit of it was  like faking it till I make it. Like I didn't have the courage, but I just told myself I did. If you ask  my analyst classmates at Bain Capital, I was I raised my first round while I was still  there. And they we talked about this recently. Like they're like, yeah, you were definitely  faking it till you made it at that time. And you were you were scared, but you didn't show  it. And that was the way I made it through.

9:06 But the other part of it was, I think some  experiences during college where I kept pushing myself and I realized that things that I  thought I wasn't able to do. Once I pushed myself, I realized I was capable of much more. So  I love hiking and I will intentionally go on like very hard hikes, completely unprepared. So I studied abroad in college and I was I did  a couple of hikes in Europe where I was very, very underprepared. And just to see if I could  do it, which is dangerous. I don't recommend it.

9:35 But no, but there's a instructive lesson.  So you have you kept pushing yourself and then you realize that the bar  would just keep rising. Yeah. See, I think most limitations are just  like false. Like they're they're in people's minds. People are capable of  much more than they think they are. You just have to push yourself. And  now I see the connection from between the biology and the entrepreneurship.  How do you choose this business? Yeah. So the thesis I came to before starting  the company was around labor organization in India and the idea that India  is a place where labor markets are very inefficient. Right. Both for  the end providers of the service.

10:17 So, you know, your house help or your  your laborers and construction. Right. And they're faced with a lot  of, you know, underemployment, income instability, lack of safety,  dignity, respect in the workplace. And then for your customers, there's also  a lot of things broken. Right. And the idea was the more low skilled or unskilled  you get in the labor market, the wider the gap is between what end customers expect and  what service providers can do on their own.

10:43 And therefore, you can come in, build  a platform which structures this labor and then build essentially a win, win, win  business. Everyone can can benefit. You give income stability and safety and respect  to and full employment to the workers. And then you provide services, people that meets  people's expectations for the customers. And then it was an idea like, OK, how do I pick the  first category we go after? And there were a couple of things here. One was that I  wanted this category to exist for myself.

11:07 And so that was the first thing. What  do you mean? And then I didn't I don't like cleaning my own house. Like I've done it. So this is where we are talking about household  help. Yeah. So I think that the idea was like, OK, it could it could have been any any segment  of labor, right? Whether that's B2B or B2C. And then coming to this being the first  category, it was a lot of first of all, I just wanted it to exist. Second of all,  it was absolutely the right time for this to start existing. And the third was I want  to start something that was B2C and not B2B.

11:26 Reason being, I think this is a really hard  thing to build. And like as a as a scalable platform and there is no barriers to entry in B2C  versus there's very high barriers to entry in B2B. And I yeah, I was not I'm not credible  enough to start a B2B business. Yeah. So, you know, we tell  people lived experience, experiential problem. You're coming from the US. You have some great frameworks and theory on  on what to do. Did you have lived experience in India? I know not having lived in India,  but had you experienced the problem? How did you diligence the idea? Many people here  would say, wait a minute, this is exactly the opposite of what we have been discussing here  many times. And that may well be the answer.

12:09 I think the validation came from  just trying it right. So after moving back. So so it was like a  semi transitional period before. Like I'd say I officially like moved March  5th, 2025, which was like about two weeks after we raised our first round. But there was  a period of essentially six months before that, which was a transitional period.  And that was when we ran our pilots. And so it first started with we just  like and the royal we, you know, we printed flyers, we had a WhatsApp  number and we had like one professional and we got no bookings. No. So this  was a what we it is you plus one.

12:50 No. Royal we just means  like it's myself. It's you. OK, so you were doing everything yourself.  Well, so me and then there was this guy who was on our operations team who was like  just he's the local Delhi kid. Right. So. So what we did is we had his WhatsApp number  and then we had like one professional and then we got no bookings. And I realized, OK, why? And  so we have like absolutely no value proposition.

13:14 Right. And that's when it sparked. OK, really  think deeply about what the customer cares about. Right. Which is quality, safety, reliability. And  I was like, OK, we provide none of those things. And so then it came to like, OK, how can I how  can I test this further? Right. And so then end of October twenty, twenty four, I  vibe coded the first version of our of our app before vibe before vibe coding was a thing and published that on the app store. And  then we start to get a lot of bookings.

13:42 And then we had no professionals. And then I  realized, OK, you have to actually provide a value proposition for the supply as well. And then I had  to figure out, OK, what do they care about very deeply, which is, you know, income, stability,  underemployment and dignity, safety, respect. Then it was solving for those things. And  we were we operated in Delhi for four. We launched our first pilot December  third, I think, twenty, twenty four. And we ran in Delhi for about a month. And really, it was like one week. It was like  five days where we actually operated.

14:14 And it was chaos, like absolute chaos. Reason being Delhi is a much further,  like much more spread out. Right. There's a height restriction on  buildings. You don't have as many really tall societies. Second  is that people actually have a relationship with their household in  Delhi versus in Gargaon, it's less so. And therefore, it's a little bit hard for a market  to crack. You have to be more mature as a product versus in Gargaon. People are so desperate  that like they're willing to try anything.

14:41 But so many instructive lessons learning by doing  hacking your way through. You were doing a bunch of this yourself. If you had to do it again,  people watching you would say, wait a minute. I can do this. I can throw myself into a problem.  I will also not potentially have all the answers. I'll figure my answers out on the go to those  people. Anything you would have done differently? Anything I would have done differently? I would  have. I would have tried more things faster.

15:18 Like I probably wasted a couple of months, like  September, like August to September slash October twenty twenty four. I probably could have  compressed those three months into one month if I had just moved faster and tried more  things. And I think the thing is, like you don't you don't learn anything by reading like  by reading by theory, like in starting a company. There's no such thing as theory, right? Like I  had a friend also at Bain Capital who he also wanted to start a company and he spent, I think,  six months doing expert calls. And he learned absolutely nothing from that experience.  And also the product that he came to the conclusion was needed from this like six months  of expert calls is not what he's doing today.

15:58 Absolutely. And I couldn't  agree more. Forget the experts. With all due respect, customers are your  experts and you are immersing yourself with their customers. Let's take the first question,  because it goes to as you were starting out. So I know you disagree, but for my count, you were  a second or a third or mover in the market. So it doesn't sound like an original idea. But I can also see when you talk about your  vision and your mission. Maybe it is.

16:28 How do you see it? Do you need an original idea  to start a company? Definitely not. I mean, a couple of things here. One is  that Facebook wasn't original. Google wasn't original. Amazon wasn't original.  None of these companies were original. So people may not know that Facebook  was not the first social network. Google was not the first. Nvidia  was not the first chip company. None of these companies were original.  Right. It's all about execution, doing it better, doing it faster.

16:55 And the long term vision of the company. I don't  think that, you know, most of the companies that were competing with Amazon had the  same long term vision as Jeff Bezos. Right. Yeah. So I think it's just about execution. I'll also say like we are building  a company that doesn't exist. Right. Like we're building a company  that doesn't have a parallel. Right. Why do you say that? Your urban company is  doing something similar. Unnamed competition is doing something similar. Third unnamed  competition is doing something similar.

17:28 So I think those are people who in our  current core category we compete with. But the long term vision of the  company is very different. Right. And I'm not here to build like home services 2.0.  Frankly, that's like a very small TAM. Right. I'm here to build a trillion dollar company, not  like a 1.8 billion dollar company after 11 years. That's like not a good use of time. That's not even a venture. That's not a  good use of a venture dollar.

17:48 Right. So the long term vision of the  company is very, very different from anything that has ever existed before. But in  the core category, we're not a third mover. We're like a 200th mover. Right. I mean, there is like innumerable amount of  people who tried to start this before. And it just goes back to all  that matters is execution. So interesting. You're saying that people  have been doing this for a long time. So nothing has scaled, nothing has become  a trillion dollar company. So what makes you think you can change or bend the curve?  Why not? Probably because there are some, I like that, but probably because  there are some structural reasons why the labor market, the way you  articulate it could never get organized, could never bridge the gap between what the  supply wants and what the demand wants. Has something changed specifically as it comes to  India that you think it's possible now? Yes.

18:43 I think that when I say we're going  to be a trillion dollar company, I will first say that like, I don't think  that'll only be in India ever. Right. Like I do think that the future of the company is very  global on India for global is, is the thesis. The second part of it is that like, I think  if you looked at our current business today, right, if you tried to start it 10  years ago, which many people did, it would never have worked. Right. So  structurally, many things have changed.

19:08 One is that, you know, data is cheap,  right? You have people are actually online, no matter what part of the economic spectrum  they're on. And you have a car, you have UPI, all these things which make the business possible.  And because especially in your business, I guess, smaller transaction sizes, the payment,  if there was payment friction, yeah. I mean, the vast majority of our  payments on our platform are UPI, right? Like our verification processes and  background check processes are done through Aadhaar, right? We would never have been able to  start this business if we didn't have the, if, if every single one of our professionals didn't  have copious amounts of data availability. And they are all now very digitally savvy even  on the, on the supply side. That's very key.

19:51 Well, yes and no, I actually  disagree with this. I think we, we have to teach them how to  use their phone. Really? Yes. Like they actually, like, so there's a reason why, if you look at it. Do they have  phones? Yes. They all have phones. Do they all have smartphones or feature phones?  Smartphones. Okay. So, so that is there. I think they all have just a few apps on  their phone, right? WhatsApp. But then if you look at like how well they even know  how to use WhatsApp, it's like there's, there's a lot of features that they don't  understand. It's the reason why if you like, like voice notes are so prevalent,  right? Because like literacy is a challenge in this market and that actually  constrains their ability to use their phone.

20:23 And so if you look at the pattern of how they use  apps on their phone, they actually just memorize where things are located on an app. So like most  people, like most blanket delivery writers are not actually reading the instructions on the app.  They just know, okay, this green thing is here. I, I like, I, I slide it here. Which means that  whenever you are giving them new technology or a new feature or something changes in  the app, we have to do a lot of training around like how do you use this? And it's  a lot of just like pictorial infographics, you know, everywhere that are just  like, okay, you, you press this.

20:59 Cause literacy is the ultimate  challenge to tech literacy. But you know, you're helping  them with that. What else, what are the other shocks to the system? And  let's take a question while we are doing this. How do you, how do you build a culture  in a company that has to do this really well? And I know you lead by example a  lot, but let's ask the question as well. Hey, I'm Hanal, the co-founder of  Playlist Speak. This is my second year running business and my first time  having a bunch of employees. What I really want to do more is the kind of work culture and  expectations I need to set and expect from them.

21:34 So if you can give me your top three  in terms of work culture that would make them more efficient, productive  and motivated at the same time. So, and give us the war stories. Give us, give  us how you have done a lot of it yourself. Well first I'll caveat this because obviously we  got a question from someone who's been a founder for two years and I've been a founder for one  year, so I'm probably less qualified to answer this than them. But maybe or may not be because  you are taking probably a much bigger leap on, on your background versus what you're  doing. So I think it'd be very interesting.

22:08 Yeah. So I think in the early days, there's a  couple of things here. I, you have to, you have to hire people who are mission driven, right?  Like mission oriented above everything else. There is an operating partner at Gladebrook,  Sharish who gave me this advice very early on that goes around like mission versus versus missionary  versus mercenary. And this is very true of our, of our early team, right? Between even before  we launched and then even like PR series. What is missionary versus mercenary? Missionary  is someone who's here to grow the company, right? Wants to see the company succeed is not, is not self optimizing, right? They're  not looking for, for personal gain.

22:48 They're looking just for, for, for like the team  win and mercenary is someone who's optimizing for themselves, right? And they're more likely to  treat something as a job, right? As just a nine to five, because if they don't see the incremental  value for themselves beyond a certain point, then they don't do any work beyond that. Right.  And they're not going to be high ownership. They're not going to be high agency. And in  an early team, if your team is mercenaries, you're going to die, right? Like I, I would  guarantee that, right? Because you need, you need people who are going  to be extremely high ownership, extremely high agency, because there's not  enough hours in the day. And if you have to delegate everything and, and push people  to do everything, then you won't survive.

23:26 Right. And so our early team before a  series a was me and, and four people, right. And our maximum age  was 24 and minimum age was 20. So it was like, we had, we had like five  people, including myself. I was 22. So, uh, we were, everyone was just mission driven. And I think when I hired all these folks, we,  some had signed on before, um, seed round where we had $0 raise and a few, you know, signed on  in the, in the weeks afterwards. And at that time we had zero credibility. I went to a college  where no one in India had ever even heard of.

24:00 And although it's one of the top U.S.  universities. Yes. But like, I mean, how many people in India know Georgetown? Like  maybe, maybe, I don't know, like 0.001% of people. Right. So no one's heard of it.  I didn't work at any company, which people would have heard of though. People do think Bain Capital and Bain  are the same, but they aren't. Um, so no pedigree and no IIT IIM.  Uh, and I also raised my seed round from a non-Indian investor  who never made an India investment.

24:29 So truly zero credibility. And so the only reason  that people signed on was because they believed in the mission and they believed in me and they  want to be part of the journey, right? There's no, I was not offering high compensation. I  wasn't offering, you know, a resume booster. Um, and I'm glad that I hired those folks when  we were so, when we were so early and, and, and to this day, I don't hire people by sell.  I don't, I don't sell people to join Pronto based on, you know, any sort of money you've  raised exactly how much money we've raised or, you know, my background or lack thereof or,  or, or like who our investors are. It's just about the mission because if you're  hiring mercenaries, even to this day, um, if you're hiring mercenaries, I  don't think you're going to go anywhere.

25:12 This is very good. Very good. And people joined  you because they believed in the mission. And I think those people also are the people  who are going to put up with how hard, very, very early stages. Talk about how  hard building a business like this is not because of your background,  because of the nature of the business, some war stories and how your team  therefore learns the culture. Yeah. So, um, before our launch, which was April 2nd, 2025, we had to recruit, recruit our first  set of professionals. And so I knew, okay, I'm not the person who's going to be able to  recruit them. Like who's going to listen to me? I know you call them professionals,  but I have to be clear with people.

25:51 These are the maids who come home and,  and the household help. Yes. So, um, I was like, okay, this is not my strength. And we were in Gurgaon at the time. So I was like,  okay, I need someone who's truly local. Right. And so we hired someone. His name is  Kapil. He's now our NCR supply manager. Right. And so he, he, he's like  very, very local. And I was like, okay, he'll be able to connect with folks better.

26:14 Um, and so we were in sector 56 Gurgaon  and he went to Gata, which is in sector 55, which is a slum area there. And he showed up and, and he's like trying to recruit folks.  And then he got like almost beaten up. Like no one, no one would talk to him.  Uh, and this is like his first day on the job. So he's like, and then we made  him quit his other job with no notice.

26:34 Uh, and so he's like, okay, okay. Uh, what do  I do? I can't let the team down. So he goes to a store, he buys this like white button  down shirt and a 120 rupee gold chain. And he goes and rents a car.  And then he drives the S block, uh, which is near Nathapur in Gurgaon.  And he, he goes and he like stands on top of the car and he says, uh, like listen  up everyone, I'm hiring for a huge company.

26:55 And the next day he showed up at the hub  with 30 people. Yeah. And now that's, that's one of the wins that  we had a lot of hard ones. So we all also live together in the sector  56 hubs. So they were in the hub, there was like a cabin, um, and there was a couch where  I would, I would sit on. And this was amazing. I remember this. So your initial team actually cohabitated for a long  time. So it wasn't intentional.

27:18 It was just that everyone lived a little far  away and also we were working nonstop. Uh, and so no one had time to go home. And then I had, I had a room which was like a five minute  walk away, which I'd go to sometimes. Um, but we were in the hub from, from  like 5am to 2am basically every day. Uh, and so for some God knows what reason, uh, maybe  you remember what my justification was back in the day. We used to operate 24 seven, but we only  had five people on the team, including myself.

27:46 And then, and so we would take turns sleeping.  So I would sleep from, from like 6am to 8am. Uh, and then at night I would stay awake  to see if there were any bookings. And when there were, uh, we had like these  security cameras installed in that cabin. Uh, but they also had a speaker. So if there  was a booking, then I could just like, I would just like open the speaker  and then shouted them to wake up.

28:04 Uh, so it was, it was fun times. It was also very  ironic because we had the, we were like a cleaning service and that room was like a disgusting,  like it was absolutely the filthy. How would you describe the culture of, and it sounds early  versus now, but I know it's moving at warp speed. How would you describe the culture that  you've built? Yeah, I think it's the same, um, mission driven, mission driven,  but I think that the core values that we have are a lot around urgency  and ownership, right? Like, uh, I think a lot about what, uh, what the default  timeline of a company is, right? Like, okay, someone says, okay, we like, we need to do that.  Like whatever it is, this, this, this project, um, is a default timeline. Let's get it  done by next week, next month or tomorrow.

28:47 Right. And like we should, the default  timeline in Delhi is always but yeah, but like aggressively pushing  people to like condense it, the default timeline. And my number one  fear is that default timeline slipping. Cause I think it's hard to bring  it back. Um, because the thing is, um, like actions be yet information, right.  Or unlock the ability to do further actions, right? So you look, every action you  take either allows you to like compound whatever that is or unlock some information,  which are used to pivot your next action.

29:18 Wonderful. Great lesson to call out. Often in  our business, we talk about shipping velocity, um, doing things, hustle, um, run fast. I think you have given a great framework around  it, that those actions beget information that you can use to further improve the next action.  Yeah. And that's one great way of, for doing it. Let's take the last question. It's about founder conviction versus market readiness  by coach symbol. It says in a capital disciplined ecosystem, which  you're not in, but we'll come to that.

29:48 How should founders balance strong personal  conviction with real market signals, especially when early traction is still  ambiguous. So amongst your competitive set, you are actually more capital constrained, uh, yet you are succeeding. And like I said  earlier, congratulations on your latest round. How do you get the conviction that more money  is just not going to win necessarily? Yeah. Um, so in the early stage, I will say that I  think early stage is inherently not rational, right? Like very, very early  stage as you would know. Yeah.

30:25 I mean, we didn't invest, so clearly  it's not rational. Yeah. Um, I think. (This file is longer than 30 minutes. Go  Unlimited at https://turboscribe.ai/ to transcribe files up to 10 hours long.)