The week that was: from Naveen Tewari’s art of building two unicorns to Kunal Shah backing OnePlus founder

How does one transform a second generation family business? Ask Priyanka Chigurupati and she will tell you how. She says she didn’t have the slightest inkling of what she would be doing before she joined Granules, the family business. 

In 2012, she was asked to join Granules India, the Hyderabad and US-based pharma family business, and there has been no looking back. Granules India is a vertically integrated pharmaceutical company with R&D focus and multi-product delivery capability. It manufactures Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs), Pharmaceutical Formulation Intermediates (PFIs), and Finished Dosages (FDs). 

Most brands struggle when it comes to converting paperwork to digital data. And then there are other issues like warehouse management systems, inventory tracking solutions, and ERP solutions. 

Providing a solution to these problems is Bengaluru-based Cultivo. Founded by Manish Chandrashekhar and Mausom Saikia in 2019, the startup is bringing a mix of technology and finance to de-risk supply chains, increase efficiency, and reduce back-office costs and errors.

One always hears of a Chinese investor putting money in India, but now we see a reversal. 

CRED founder Kunal Shah has backed OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei's unnamed upcoming venture. Pei, who was almost synonymous with the Chinese smartphone brand, resigned from OnePlus in October 2020 to launch his own startup. While its name stands unknown, reports indicate Pei is cooking up something in the music and audio products space, and has already raised $7 million in seed funding.

How does one build two Unicorns? Ask Naveen Tewari of InMobi and Glance.

“I think at some point of time, entrepreneurs in the country need to be able to say no to the rapid growth, asked from the investors, because there is this mixed growth fund that everybody is trying to have, and I don't see successes based on that,” he tells YourStory Founder and CEO Shradha Sharma.