The week that was: from Zerodha's Kite revolution to understanding upGrad's product roadmap

What makes a techie? Let's ask Laks Srini, the Co-founder and CTO of ZeroDown, who still codes every day. Coding, which translates into being hands-on and involves working on something new each day, came naturally to him. “There was no point at which I felt that I should pursue engineering or computer science. I found coding and programming fun,” he says.

In 2013, he co-founded cloud-based HRtech startup Zenefits, along with Parker Conrad. The award-winning people operations platform that makes it easy for small and mid-sized companies to manage employee documents, HR, benefits, payroll, time, and attendance.

Tech and product are synonymous with the problem that the startup is solving. But what does it take to ship a product? upGrad thows some light on how to do it.

Though edtech seems to be the flavour of the season, the idea of helping people upskill themselves came to Mayank Kumar, Ronnie Screwvala, and Phalgun Kompalli in 2015. Later in 2020, Rohit Dhar and Puneet Tanwar joined the core team at upGrad. Recently, in June 2020, it earmarked an outlay of Rs 150 crore to expand courses offered through its platform, acquisitions and partnerships, and announced its collaboration with Jamia Hamdard University and OP Jindal Global University.

And good products need to be funded.

MakeMyTrip Founder Deep Kalra, who is also an active angel investor in startups, believes there is ample money out there to fund good ideas and entrepreneurs in India, even as the economy reels under the heavy impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

“I clearly think India will have a very bright future going forward, COVID-19 or not, because of the quality of entrepreneurs who are coming up and ample availability of money. So for good entrepreneurs and good quality plans etc, I think there's ample money, there's no dearth of it,” Deep told YourStory Founder and CEO, Shradha Sharma, in late August.

He highlighted how there are “so many stories” of startups that have come up with a new idea and in just a couple of years, have managed to become a “force to reckon with” – both in the B2C (business-to-consumer) and B2B (business-to-business) space.

Now, we’ll end the wrap with the much talked-about unicorn, Zerodha.

Zerodha’s biggest contribution lies in the fact that it brought trading to the fingertips of the common man like never before. In that sense, it is to online stockbroking in India what Flipkart was to ecommerce. Zerodha appeals to both beginners and seasoned traders through its bouquet of user-centric products, one of which is Kite — its flagship trading and investment platform.

Kite has existed since 2015. However, its app version, Kite Mobile, launched in 2019. Founder Nithin Kamath recently revealed that Demat account openings on Zerodha hit the roof during the lockdown. Needless to say, Kite’s availability as a multilingual app enabling first-time traders may have had a role to play in it.