Raja Ganapathy

Raja Ganapathy is the Founding Partner at Spring Marketing Capital, a skin-in-the-game marketing capital firm with investments in companies such as Byju, CureFit, WakeFit, Practo, 1mg among several others.Raja has worked with founders for most of his working life of 24+ years. First with Ogilvy and Brand David, where he worked with founders including Muruga of Bharat Matrimony and Siddhartha Lal of Royal Enfield. His defining stint was with Sequoia India, where as CMO, Raja worked with founders from different stages – Byju Raveendran (Byju’s Learning App), Vikram Chopra (CARS24), Amrish and Jitendra (Citrus Pay), Virendra Gupta (Daily Hunt), Jaydeep Burman (Faaso’s), Kunal Shah (Freecharge), Sameer Maheshwari (Healthkart), Amit Kumat (Prataap Snacks), Alan and Nami (Truecaller).The founders he worked with at Sequoia brought a variety of diverse opportunities and challenges to the table and helped Raja decide what he wanted to do with the rest of his life – work closely with founders and founding teams. His raison d’être is to look at business challenges through the lens of marketing with a skin-in-the-game, long term approach to help build the brands of tomorrow. And that’s exactly what he seeks to do at Spring. Raja is an eternal optimist and believes strongly that creativity and entrepreneurship can change the world. He is thrilled that Spring has an opportunity to work with founders who hate the status quo, believe in positive impact and are never satisfied with the pastIn this episode we will cover:1. Insights from the pandemic (3:14)2. How did fundraising differ during the first fund vs the second, which was set largely during the pandemic months (7:00)3. Selecting LPs: What is the right strategy as a fund manager (13:51)4. What’s motivating Spring’s LPs to join them beyond return of capital? (18:01)5. How did Spring’s thesis come into being? (25:41)6. Challenges that come with Spring’s thesis (32:10)7. Where are founders in their ‘brand journey’ when they come in contact with Spring? (41:28)8. What don’t founders understand about branding? (46:40)9. How and why are celebrities thinking about venture capital? (50:55)10. Why aren’t Indian celebrities more impact / value driven? (53:10)

we’re excited to bring you the man behind the very successful campaigns of BYJU'S, Epigamia and Levis’Store that have taken over everyone’s feed - Raja Ganapathy the co-founder of Spring Marketing Capital and ex-cmo, Sequoia India.   having started his career in advertising at Ogilvy, raja moved on to head marketing at Deutsche Bank and spent over a decade at sequoia india as the chief marketing officer. in 2019, he established spring marketing capital - a one of a kind, skin in the game marketing capital firm that partners with founders to offer capital & marketing expertise. safe to say, raja is well on his way to create magic by marrying marketing and capital for young startups. for this masterclass, he will be diving deep into what it takes to build the brands of tomorrow!

In this Episode, I (@Jivraj Singh Sachar) speak with Raja Ganapathy, Founding Partner of Spring Marketing Capital. Spring Marketing Capital is a skin-in-the-game marketing capital firm, working towards building stellar brands some of which include - BYJUs, Epigamia, Practo, Cure Fit, and others. One of the most spectacularly creative firms, Spring is creating a category of its own, disrupting the ecosystem in the country. Check them out at - https://springmarketingcapital.com/ Raja Ganapathy, is a tremendously insightful and valuable individual, who has had a variety of diverse experiences throughout his career. From Ogilvy to Deutsche Bank to Sequoia India and finally, Spring.  Through the Episode we discuss the following: 1. (3:20) : The Golden Circle of Marketing for Startups 2. (8:58) : All about Spring Marketing Capital! 3. (14:25) : Raja's journey & thought process 4. (19:12) : How VC is changing & Is capital just a Commodity? 5. (24:20) : What is Brand Building & Why is it Important? 6. (33:08) : The Role of Founders in Brand Building 7. (37:13) : Is every company a Content Company? 8. (42:28) : The art of asking the Right Questions in Marketing  9. (46:42) : The Conundrum of Organic Traction & measuring Marketing 10. (51:31) : Building Marketing Teams & Hiring a CMO 11. (53:23) : The Fund-Founder Fit for Spring  12. (57:36) : The secret to Spring's performance  13. (60:05) : Raja as a Leader & the Role of Articulating Well 14. (65:46) : Parting Lessons (Surround yourself with Giants & practicing Humility) 15. (68:40) : Summary Here is the 35th Episode of the Indian Silicon Valley Podcast - Marketing 101! If you are further curious, here are a couple of interesting reads & listens by Raja -  1. Mistakes while hiring a CMO 2. Raja on the VCpreneur Podcast Thank you all for tuning into this Episode! We're available on Instagram & Twitter. Feel free to drop in your feedback! Subscribe to our WhatsApp Newsletter! I, Jivraj, am reachable on LinkedIn & Twitter! "If you never try, you never know" Stay Tuned, Keep Building.

In this episode, Raja Ganapathy, Founding Partner @Spring Marketing Capital, joins our host Digjay, to talk about his background and path to venture capital, the gap in the marketing ecosystem and how Spring Marketing Capital aims to plug that using their skin-in-the-game model, importance of articulating the founder’s vision & how it impacts product roadmap, the brand as well as the culture of a startup, his experience working as a CMO at Sequoia India & how new age VC firms can build a strong brand to attract founders. Raja has worked with founders for most of his working life of 24+ years - first with Ogilvy & Brand David, and later as CMO with Sequoia India, before starting Spring Marketing Capital with his co-founders Arun Iyer & Vineet Gupta. Through his career, Raja has partnered with some well-known brands like Byju’s, CARS24, Cred, Daily Hunt, Wakefit, Epigamia, among others. You can connect with him here on Linkedin/Twitter ---- Show notes: (01:42) Raja’s background & path to venture capital (04:02) The big gap in the marketing ecosystem; The ‘skin in the game’ model at Spring Marketing Capital (08:32) How Spring Marketing differs from typical ad agencies? (12:08) Raising funds from LPs; Thesis & investment model (16:57) Working with founders to define the core value proposition of their product/service (22:48) Importance of clearly articulating the founder’s vision & how it helps in defining the culture of a startup (26:49) When should founders spend on marketing? (31:57) CMO experience at Sequoia (36:26) Building a strong VC brand like Sequoia, a16z (40:02) Rapid fire & closing remarks ---- If you liked our episode, you can subscribe to our podcast on any of the major podcasting platforms like Spotify, Apple iTunes, Google Podcasts. We would appreciate if you could leave us a review on Apple iTunes. This will help others discover the podcast. You can visit thevcpreneur.com and follow us on Twitter @thevcpreneur_ & Instagram @thevcpreneur for more episodes and interesting insights on the startup ecosystem. You can also follow our host Digjay on Linkedin/Twitter 

In the past on the Use Case podcast we’ve discussed and debated how several Indian startups have been commanding incredibly high valuations to their business. One practical way how they do so is by creating extremely strong brands - and this is especially true for consumer internet companies. In fact there is an interesting research report by Forbes which shows, how over the last few decades “intangible assets” make up over 80% of the S&P 500 market value. And then, as the graph by Forbes above would show, within this intangible component as well, the contribution of marketing related activities is extremely significant! Well placed marketing also increases the perception of innovation, bargaining power with the customer and brand loyalty which drives the valuation higher - investors hate that, and founders love it (they’ll deny it, but they love it).And so, first in our series of episodes on Marketing, WE ARE THRILLED to be joined by Raja Ganapathy, who was till recently the Chief Marketing Officer at Sequoia Capital India, and is now the co-founder of Spring Marketing Capital, which invests in and works directly with the founders in shaping the startup's marketing and branding strategy. You can listen to the audio file above or find it on Spotify/ Apple or Google podcast apps or any of your favourite podcast apps. My favourite part of the show is when JPK and Raja play and discuss sections of this iconic talk by Steve Jobs on marketing. Do check it out!Know a friend who would enjoy listening to the series? Tell them about it! They will appreciate it, and so would we :) Best,Ravish This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit turnaround.substack.com

Raja Ganapathy is the Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Spring Marketing Capital, a skin in the game marketing capital firm that partners with founders to offer capital & marketing expertise.Raja has been ex-Chief Marketing Officer of Sequoia Capital India and has delivered some of the biggest marketing campaigns like BYJU'S.Why should you listen to the podcast ?- If you would like to know success story behind the marketing campaigns of Byju, Cars24, Epigamia ?- What power can celebrities bring to your brand ?- How did Byju team and Raja came up with the idea bringing the king of bollywood Shahrukh Khan in Byju marketing campaigns ? - The process that goes behind creating Wow and Viral marketing campaigns- Raja’s journey as a investor in Startups and his 10 year stint in Sequoia India as Chief Marketing Officer - What’s the new term on the block coined by Spring marketing capital. How Raja, Arun, Vineet and their team are creating magic by marrying marketing and capital for young startups.Also, try out a 30-day free trial of Zoho Payroll, and simplify your Payroll journey as an entrepreneur! https://zoho.to/zoho-payroll