Bertelsmann's Brunch Labs: Candid Conversations with Founders! Over the course of a decade, Bertelsmann India Investments (BII) has cultivated relationships with entrepreneurs in India. With the launch of this series, BII aims to facilitate the sharing of knowledge, foster a vibrant startup community, and highlight the dynamic connection between startup founders and their investors.
75,000 Jobs. 140 Micro-Markets. - The Bertelsmann X Snabbit Story
The problem may be familiar to every bachelor, but the need certainly isn’t limited to them. What began as a search for reliable home help has evolved into Snabbit’s broader approach to convenience, trust and everyday household services.
For Aayush Agarwal, Founder & CEO of Snabbit, building this business has meant building the right model - from its network of experts to the way people discover, use and return to home services.
In this episode of Brunch Labs, Pankaj Makkar and Rohit Sood speak with Aayush about the thinking behind Snabbit’s growth - from building density across micro-markets and designing for customer experience, to creating a scalable business around convenience.
Rohit and Pankaj also share the BII perspective on the journey: what stood out when the team first encountered Snabbit, what changed his initial scepticism into conviction, and how BII has worked alongside Aayush as the company has scaled.
17 Aug 2026
Inside BII's Bet on Snabbit and India's $60B Home Services Opportunity
India’s home services market is worth an estimated $60 billion, yet the category remains largely informal and barely digitised. For Aayush Agarwal, Founder & CEO of Snabbit, that isn’t just a market gap - it’s an opportunity to build a category with no existing playbook.
Aayush joins Pankaj Makkar and Rohit Sood on The Brunch Lab to unpack how a personal frustration with unreliable househelp evolved into Snabbit, why Indian households are moving from using the service “in case” to simply saying, “we use Snabbit,” and what it takes to turn everyday convenience into a habit.
For Bertelsmann India Investments, Snabbit represents a much bigger shift. BII led Snabbit’s Series C and co-led its Series D, backing Aayush as he builds a technology-led platform in one of India’s largest and least organised consumer categories. Since the investment, Snabbit has scaled dramatically, reaching more than 75,000 daily jobs across 140 micro-markets.
In this episode, Aayush and Rohit also reflect on what BII saw early in the journey, why consumer behaviour is changing, and why India may not need to borrow a global home-services playbook - it may be in the process of writing its own.
14 Jul 2026
Can better home loans help eliminate slums? | BHL | BII Brunch Lab
For millions of Indians, the biggest hurdle to homeownership isn't finding a home—it's accessing the right home loan.
That's the problem Atul Monga, Co-Founder & CEO of BASIC Home Loan, set out to solve. By combining technology with a network of on-ground experts, BASIC Home Loan is making housing finance more accessible beyond India's largest cities.
In this episode of The Brunch Lab by Bertelsmann India Investments, Pankaj Makkar and Rohit Sood sit down with Atul Monga to discuss building a phygital home loan platform that blends technology with on-ground expertise, making housing finance more accessible for families across India. Together, they unpack the challenges of building trust, scaling across markets, and reimagining one of India's most important financial journeys.
At Bertelsmann India Investments, we believe the strongest companies are built through long-term partnerships rooted in shared conviction. The Brunch Labs brings those conversations to the table - exploring the ideas, decisions and relationships behind founders building category-defining businesses.
26 Jun 2026
70 Co-Founders, One Mission: Getting Rid of Slums in India | BHL | BII Brunch Lab
What does it take to solve housing in India?
In the upcoming episode of BII Brunch Lab, Pankaj and Rohit from BII sit down with Atul Monga, founder, Basic Home Loan, who came in without a PowerPoint and left with a term sheet.
He doesn't have one or two co-founders. He has 70-80: from RM level to CEO. He's not building for an exit. He's building something his children will inherit.
The mission is simple on paper: get rid of slums. The execution runs through tier 2, tier 3 cities, hybrid digital journeys, and home loan cases for customers no bank would touch: including, as you'll hear, a shamshaan ghaat owner who wanted 4 crore rupees.
Full episode dropping soon. Stay tuned!
#BIIBrunchLab #BasicHomeLoan #HousingForIndia #BertelsmannIndiaInvestments
29 May 2026
From Blockchain to AI: Building the Infrastructure for Global Credit | Skeps | BII Brunch Lab
What does it take to build the credit infrastructure the world never got around to fixing?
Pankaj and Rohit from BII sit down with Tushar Srivastava, Co-Founder of Skeps — the company building what Visa and Mastercard did for payments, but for lending. Point-of-sale financing was broken: merchants frustrated, banks hesitant, consumers stuck in the middle. Tushar saw the friction and decided to remove it.
In this episode, Tushar walks through the founding of Skeps in 2017, navigating the zero-interest-rate era, and why blockchain isn't dead, it's just quietly powering everything as AI comes into power.
Also featuring: BII's love of food, and why Pankaj believes that the best deals always get closed over great food and greater conversations, not in a boardroom.
The rails are built. Now comes scale.
8 May 2026
Univest Is Rewiring How Millions of Indians Invest | BII Brunch Lab Podcast| S2E4
India is changing, and nowhere is that more visible than in how people are thinking about their money. An entire generation of Indian investors is waking up to the dream of real wealth creation and intentional investing. Pranit Arora, co-founder, Univest, saw this shift before most. | Founder Truths, Unfiltered!
At BII, we think in decades, not quarters. That's the only way to back founders who are chasing something truly meaningful, and our journey with Univest is a reflection of that very philosophy.
When we first met Pranit, we didn't hear a fintech pitch. We heard someone who had diagnosed a behavioural problem hiding inside a product problem. Someone building the habits, the guardrails, and the conviction that Indian investors actually need. That's a rare thing.
In this episode of The Brunch Lab by Bertelsmann, Pankaj and Rohit from team BII recently sat down with Pranit on The Brunch Lab, on the founding moment, the idea that started it all, and what it means to build a WealthTech platform in a country just waking up to its own potential.
28 Mar 2026
Rural India's ₹399 Healthcare Subscription Has a 60% Renewal Rate. Here's Why | BII Brunch Lab. CureBay x BII.
150+ eClinics. 6M+ patients. A ₹399 membership with a 60% renewal rate. Rural India isn't just paying for quality healthcare, it's coming back for more. Priyadarshi Mohapatra didn't theorise about the problem from a boardroom. He moved to Bhubaneswar, earned the trust of communities that had been let down before, and built CureBay into what most people assumed was impossible- a full-stack, profitable rural healthcare model built on dignity.
In this episode of The Brunch Lab by Bertelsmann India Investments, Pankaj Makkar and Swati Murarka go deep with Priyadarshi on the model, the mission, and what patient capital support in Rural India actually looks like.
At Bertelsmann India Investments, we don’t just write cheques, we show up, stay in, and build alongside founders who are in it for the long haul. CureBay is what that partnership looks like.
27 Feb 2026
How Orange Health Became India's #1 Rated Diagnostic Lab | Ep 2 The Brunch Lab
Two months after Orange Health Labs raised its Series B in 2022, revenue fell by 60%. Most companies would have slashed prices or chased quick fixes. They did the opposite: saying no to discounts and doubling down on quality, speed, and trust.
In this candid episode of BII Brunch Lab, founders Dhruv Gupta and Tarun Bhambra sit down with Pankaj Makkar and Swati Murarka to unpack the moment that tested everything: conviction, culture, and the belief that healthcare businesses can win without price wars.
This is a story about rebuilding under pressure, scaling a full-stack diagnostics model across cities, and why patient capital matters when the easy path looks tempting.
️ Founder truths. Investor perspective. The hard decisions behind enduring companies.
Watch how Orange Health chose discipline over discounts, and what happened next.
Subscribe for more real startup journeys from BII Brunch Lab.
13 Feb 2026
Precision. Reliability. | The Orange Health Story| Brunch Lab S2 Teaser
Speed. Precision. Reliability
The origin story wasn’t convenience.
It was a crisis.
A broken diagnostic experience during a dengue scare became the spark behind Orange Health and what followed was a pitch we’d never heard before.
Not about price wars.
Not about growth at any cost.
But about speed, reliability, and rebuilding trust in healthcare from the ground up.
When Dhruv Gupta and Tarun Bhambra set out to reimagine home diagnostics, the ambition was clear:
Deliver reports fast.
Show up on time.
Make reliability the product.
At Bertelsmann India Investments, we back founders who don’t chase vanity metrics or short-term spikes. Patient capital means standing behind conviction especially when it challenges category norms.
Over brunch with Pankaj and Swati from our team, the Orange Health founders unpack:
* The dengue crisis that sparked it all
* The pitch that changed everything
* What it really takes to build trust in healthcare
* And how to scale without playing the discount game
A story built on urgency, conviction, and the discipline to do it differently.
Teaser out now. Full episode coming soon.
6 Feb 2026
S2E1 | AI Beats Humans in 50% of Sales: SquadStack's Turing Test Breakthrough
"Our AI has crossed an inflection point truly matching or beating human performance in 50% of our traffic, across 50% of the overall market."
That's Apurv Agrawal, Co-Founder & CEO of SquadStack.ai, in a conversation that goes far beyond the usual founder playbook.
Over brunch with Pankaj and Rohit, Apurv unpacks the evolution from human+AI telecalling to building the world's first contact center AI to pass the Turing Test and what it really takes to scale in India's $20B+ sales execution market.
The Brunch Lab isn't just a podcast. It's where founders and investors from BII sit down after years of shared journeys, honest debates, and hard-won insights to talk about what it truly takes to build enduring companies.
Season 2 opens with an unfiltered look at the future of Conversational Superintelligence: one call, one breakthrough, one founder truth at a time.
6 Feb 2026
AI Beats Humans in 50% Market | How did SquadStack Pass The Turing Test?
Our AI today has crossed that inflection point, where AI is truly Beating or Matching the Human Performance, in 50% of our traffic, and 50% of the Overall Market.” That’s what Apurv Agrawal, Co-Founder and CEO, SquadStack.ai told us, when he sat down with Pankaj and Rohit for Brunch Lab, Season 2! 7,81,000+ conversations a day. 20 crore interactions and counting. One clear mission: Reimagine Sales and CX with AI-Native systems. From a human+AI telecalling model to the world’s first contact-center AI to pass the Turing Test, SquadStack.ai’s journey has been anything but incremental. In our Season 2 opener of Brunch Lab, Pankaj and Rohit sit down with Apurv to unpack what it really takes to build and scale in India’s $20B+ Sales Execution market, beyond the hype, deep into the hard calls. The future of Conversational Superintelligence is being built. The teaser is live. Full episode coming soon!
11 Aug 2023
BII Brunchlabs: Shiprocket's Voyage to Unicorn Excellence
Join BII's investors and Shiprocket's founders for a Brunch Labs episode as we break bread and boundaries with Shiprocket, the eCommerce logistics unicorn. In a fascinating conversation, we learn about eCommerce logistics with Shiprocket's meteoric rise and revolutionary shipping solutions. From last-mile delivery to seamless order fulfillment, Shiprocket empowers businesses of all sizes. Explore the role of technology in eCommerce logistics and witness Shiprocket's innovative approach reshaping the landscape. Tune in for inspiration, innovation, and insights. #BrunchLabs #Shiprocket #eCommerceLogistics (Feed generated with FetchRSS)
12 Jul 2023
BII Brunch Lab: A Meaty Discussion with Licious Founders
Join Pankaj Makkar as he engages with Abhay and Vivek, unveiling the blend of trust, shared vision, and mutual respect that has forged extraordinary relationships. In this episode, you'll see how these dynamic partnerships have sculpted industries, disrupted norms, and reimagined success. Extract invaluable insights from years of hard-earned victories and occasional stumbles. Don't miss out on this riveting episode that exalts the power of partnerships. Stay tuned for the second episode. Watch The Brunch Lab now! (Feed generated with FetchRSS)
Brace yourself for a sizzling episode as we serve up a hearty discussion with the founders of Licious, the trailblazers of the meat industry in India. Join these culinary disruptors and their enablers as they unravel their quest to create a unicorn startup from the vibrant Indian Startup Ecosystem, all over a stimulating brunch. This succulent conversation is marinated, cooked, and ready to be served on July 12th. Mark your calendars, stay tuned, and prepare to devour insights like never before! (Feed generated with FetchRSS)
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