E29 - The Power of Compounding w/Pratilipi's Ranjeet Pratap Singh

In this Episode, I speak with Ranjeet Pratap Singh, Co-Founder & CEO of Pratilipi. This Episode is called the Power of Compounding, for Ranjeet’s ideologies and Pratilipi’s journey intersect at the core belief in Compounding, a principle, which works like magic in life, and more so in Starting Up.

Pratilipi is by far India’s largest storytelling platform with over 25 million daily active users, coming on the platform for hours through the month, browsing through literature, stories, comics, audio books, podcasts and more by the best creators, writers and artists of the country, in most Indian Languages that you can think of.

Ranjeet comes from an extremely modest background and is an engineer by education, with an MBA from FMS Delhi (Batch of '12). Life was serving him well in the traditional sense of it, until he realised that he was not being challenged enough. An avid reader, he found it difficult to get the books of his choice online, for all websites only had English content.Thus, he took the onus upon himself, and set out to test if there would actually be a market for this Product. After much validation, he was convinced, and he set out to build the future with Pratilipi.

This was an extremely enthralling discussion and I found immense joy in listening to his extremely insightful and structured answers. Here are a couple of pointers in line with what we discussed:

1. (3:59) - The Power of Compounding

2. (5:32) - Compounding @Pratilipi | Growth as a by-product of doing the right things consistently for a long long time 

3. (7:51) - Betting on the Long Term

4. (9:31) - The maturity of the Indian Ecosystem

5. (12:09) - The Evolution of the Content Landscape

6. (15:15) - Building the Marketplace for Pratilipi

7. (17:44) - Instilling Ownership   within the Founding Team

8. (20:57) - Always a Student, never the Master || 

9. (25:43) - The Vision 

10. (26:46) - Format(s) Expansion & Executive - The Framework

11. (31:10) - Pace v/s Maturity | Focus is Very Important

12. (36:02) - Consumer Success at Scale!

13. (39:28) - Demographic Split & Building for India!

14. (44:10) - Setting the Record Straight

15. (47:33) - Vulnerability in Culture

16. (50:00) - Treating People as Lines and NOT as Dots 

17. (55:11) - Doing things that Don't Scale 

18. (58:22) - Innovating as a Founder (Intellectual Curiosity)

19. (64:25) - Ranjeet's Belief System & Decision Making Framework 

20. (67:06) - Parting thoughts by Ranjeet 

21. (69:26) - Summary

Hope you liked the Episode as much as I did. 

This Episode was brought to you in association with the Centre of Entrepreneurial Leadership, BITS Pilani Goa. 

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