From making videos at home for LinkedIn to starting their own podcast series, 100X founders on their journey

This week, Nansi Mishra and Siddhartha Ahluwalia of 100X Entrepreneur give a peek into their journey of entrepreneurship, motherhood, running the 100X fund and podcast, and staying inspired one episode at a time.

Thursday June 02, 2022 , 3 min Read

In the latest episode of 100X podcast, the interviewers turn into interviewees. Siddhartha Ahluwalia and Nansi Mishra speak about their journey as podcasters, entrepreneurs, ecosystem enablers and more.

Siddhartha and Nansi met each other during Siddhartha's first entrepreneurial venture, Babygogo, and got married in 2017. Once the company was acquired by Sheroes, the duo spent a year with the group before moving on to explore other entrepreneurial opportunities.

In 2018, Siddhartha started shooting videos on LinkedIn to share his experience of starting up from a Tier II city, as the prevailing notion was that starting up was easier for those from metro cities or prestigious colleges.

“The idea was to become better through conversations with people who are much higher in their growth trajectory and have accomplished more in life,” says Siddhartha.

After publishing five episodes on LinkedIn, a listener suggested they convert the LinkedIn videos into formal podcast episodes. And this kickstarted the 100X podcast journey. Within a year, the duo completed 40 episodes. For one of the episodes, Siddhartha flew into Bangalore to speak with Amit Somani, Managing Partner at Prime Venture, who eventually offered him the position of Head of Community at the VC firm.

The 100X journey

The couple moved to Bangalore, and Nansi shares an interesting anecdote from the time Siddhartha interviewed Unacademy founder Gaurav Munjal for a podcast episode. We were sitting with Gaurav Munjhal, and that is my favourite podcast of 100x Entrepreneur for many reasons. Gaurav was asking Siddhartha what he does, because they were friends, and he just randomly asked me, what do you do?"

“I was not at all confident at that point in time. So, I couldn’t even tell him that I am the co-founder of 100X Entrepreneur. I was so underconfident at that time, and I always had doubts,” recalls Nansi.

Meeting Gaurav and shooting the episode became a helpful experience, she adds.

"From that day, I started taking more responsibility. I requested my mom-in-law to help me more with Kabir because I wanted to give more time to 100X. It was such a raw episode where he shared about how he organises, and plans his coming week every Saturday. It made me more mindful about my career,” she shares.

Throughout the years, the couple stuck to a simple and frugal lifestyle, using their personal savings and money made from their exit to Sheroes to invest back in startups. The duo has since invested in more than 30 startups including Plum, Airmeet, and eBikeGo which gave 7X exit.

Behind the weekly podcast is also a lean team working on a part-time basis.

And, Nansi's winning pitch to her team is always how they will get to hear from founders, the most passionate and inspiring set of people.