In this episode, Utham Gowda, Founder and Group CEO of Captain Fresh, reveals one of the most dramatic startup transformations in Indian agritech. After raising $90 million and hitting $100 million in revenue, Utham did the unthinkable - he admitted to investors that Captain Fresh wasn't worth its $500 million valuation and shut down the entire domestic business. What followed was a masterclass in radical honesty, strategic M&A, and global expansion.

He shares the journey in this candid conversation with host Akshay Datt, unpacking how Captain Fresh went from domestic marketplace to global seafood conglomerate, achieving profitability with 3,421 crore revenue in FY25 while competitors like eFishery collapsed in fraud scandals. From wiring $49 million on a flight to acquiring 10 companies with zero debt, from living on 50,000 rupees monthly to building a $2 million revenue-per-employee machine, this is the playbook for building anti-fragile B2B platforms in the age of supply chain nationalism and capital scarcity.

What You'll Learn:

👉How Utham Gowda built Captain Fresh into a $600M+ seafood platform and survived India's funding winter with radical business model honesty

👉The equity swap M&A strategy that acquired $120M+ in companies with zero debt and zero management changes, tripling EBITDA in acquired businesses

👉Why Captain Fresh exited India's $100M domestic market and how the global pivot to US and Europe unlocked 145% revenue growth and profitability

👉How Trump's tariffs accidentally validated Captain Fresh's origin-agnostic supply chain, enabling a 45-day flip from 66% Asia to 66% LatAm sourcing

👉The "Lion vs Cow" founder philosophy behind achieving $2 million revenue per employee and targeting 27-28% ROCE by FY27

👉Inside the collapse of eFishery's $1.4B valuation fraud and why boring tech beats fake tech in B2B physical goods businesses

#UthamGowda #CaptainFresh #FounderThesis #AkshayDatt #SeafoodStartupIndia #B2BSeafoodMarketplace #AgritechIPOIndia #IndianUnicorn2026 #StartupPivotStrategy #EquitySwapAcquisitions #MandAStrategyStartups #ProfitableStartupsIndia #GlobalSeafoodSupplyChain #StartupFundingWinter #IndianFoundersGoingGlobal #B2BStartupsIndia #SeafoodExportIndia #AntiDumpingTariffsIndia #SupplyChainResilience #AssetLightBusinessModel #StartupMandAPlaybook #IndianAgritecth2025 #CaptainFreshIPO #SeafoodIndustryIndia #FoodSupplyChainDigitization #IndianStartupSuccess #FromBankerToFounder #ZeroDebtAcquisitions #OriginAgnosticSupplyChain #FrugalFounderPhilosophy Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the speaker, not necessarily the channel

In this episode, Dr. Arjun Jain - Founder of Fast Code AI - reveals why the AI industry's trillion-dollar bet on bigger models is failing, and what's replacing it. Dr. Arjun Jain isn't your typical AI founder. After training under Turing Award winner Yann LeCun at NYU, working on Apple's secretive autonomous vehicle project, and leading Mercedes-Benz's robotaxi AI, he returned to India to bootstrap Fast Code AI with zero venture capital. In just two years, his company grew 8x by doing what the AI giants won't: charging for outcomes instead of software seats, deploying Small Language Models that outperform GPT-4 for specific tasks, and building agents that actually work in production.

He shared this contrarian journey in this candid conversation with host Akshay Datt. From explaining why "we have but one internet and we've used it all" (quoting OpenAI's Ilya Sutskever) to revealing how procurement agents train by negotiating with themselves millions of times, this episode dismantles the AI hype and shows what enterprise automation actually looks like. Whether you're a founder evaluating AI vendors, an engineer choosing between foundation model labs and application companies, or an investor trying to separate signal from noise, this is the reality check the industry needs.

What You'll Learn:

👉Why scaling laws have stagnated and what test-time compute and reinforcement learning mean for enterprise AI's future

👉How Fast Code AI captures "Salary TAM" (30-70% of revenue) through outcome-based pricing instead of traditional SaaS seat licenses

👉The real reason AI engineers command $10-100 million salaries, and why this won't last as foundation models commoditize

👉Why Project Athena (Mercedes-Bosch's multi-billion euro robotaxi venture) failed, and what end-to-end learning beats modular approaches

👉How Small Language Models fine-tuned on company data outperform massive generic models at 1/10th the inference cost

👉The "self-play" reinforcement learning methodology that makes Fast Code's agents reliable in production, not just impressive in demos

#DrArjunJain #FastCodeAI #AgenticAI #AIScalingLaws #EnterpriseAI #SmallLanguageModels #OutcomeBasedPricing #ReinforcementLearning #AIAgents #YannLeCun #BootstrappedStartup #IndiaAIStartups #AIServices #TestTimeCompute #FoundationModels #LLMLimitations #AIForEnterprise #ProcurementAutomation #AIEngineers #AutonomousDriving #ProjectAthena #SalaryTAM #AIInference #AIDeployment #BangaloreAI #AIConsulting #MachineLearningExplained #DeepLearning #TransformersAI #FounderThesisPodcast

Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the speaker, not necessarily the channel

Mark Kahn is the Managing Partner of Omnivore, India's pioneering agriculture and rural economy venture capital fund with over $325 million in assets under management. Since 2011, Omnivore has backed 50+ startups including DeHaat (India's near-unicorn agritech platform), Pixxel (space tech), Ecozen (climate hardware), and dozens of companies transforming India's 600 million rural population.

In this conversation with host Akshay Datt, Kahn unpacks his contrarian thesis on smallholder farming, explains why "B2B SaaS is fucked by AI," dissects the horseshoe politics blocking GM crops in India, and reveals why Trump's 50% tariffs and Modi's dairy farmers are on a collision course. From his operational years at Godrej Agrovet to building India's leading agritech VC, Mark offers a masterclass in sectoral investing, the realities of raising from DFIs, and why India's bioeconomy could hit $300 billion by 2030 - if entrepreneurs stop becoming software engineers and start doing actual biology.

What You'll Learn:

👉Why Mark Kahn believes India will never have a unicorn agritech company by traditional metrics, and why he's okay with that

👉How Omnivore's portfolio companies like DeHaat, Arya.ag, and Captain Fresh are approaching profitability and IPOs while others like WayCool imploded

👉The "Kirana shop analogy" - why Indian smallholder farmers are more productive than you think and will beat US industrial agriculture

👉Why both the Indian left and right agree on blocking GM crops (horseshoe theory), and how Indians have been eating GM food derivatives for 20 years without knowing it

👉Mark Kahn's provocative take on US-India trade negotiations: why dairy imports should be blocked but feed ingredients should be welcomed

👉The shocking reality that India's biotech sector has produced zero new billionaires in 20+ years, and what the $300 billion bioeconomy opportunity requires

CHAPTERS:

00:00 - Mark Kahn's Journey to Omnivore VC

01:18 - Why Agritech Over B2B SaaS

02:52 - India's Agritech Unicorn Problem Explained

06:37 - Bharat Economy Beyond Agriculture

09:49 - India's Agricultural Future Vision

13:27 - GM Crops Controversy and Yield Gaps

18:26 - The GM Foods Paradox

23:21 - Omnivore's Investment Thesis and Portfolio

30:35 - Fund Size and LP Strategy

31:45 - Origin Story of Omnivore

40:06 - Early Days at Omnivore

50:12 - Agriculture Protection and Trade Policy

52:25 - US-India Agricultural Trade War

57:52 - Why India's Farm Policy is Soviet

1:01:08 - The Farm Reforms That Failed

1:06:13 - AgriStack Digital Infrastructure

1:09:04 - Smallholder Farmers vs Industrial Agriculture

1:13:01 - Zero Percent Probability of Reform

1:14:13 - India Through an Immigrant's Eyes

1:20:31 - Advice for Founders Raising VC

1:26:56 - The Bioeconomy Opportunity

#MarkKahn #OmnivoreVC #AgritechIndia #VentureCapitalIndia #IndianAgriculture #AgritechUnicorn #DeHaat #RuralIndia #BharatEconomy #GMCrops #AgriculturePolicy #USIndiaTrade #TrumpTariffs #BiotechIndia #SpaceTech #Pixxel #Climatetech #ImpactInvesting #AgricultureVC #StartupFunding #IndiaVC #FarmersIndia #SmallholderFarming #AgricultureReform #FoodSecurity #SustainableAgriculture #AgriFintech #RuralFintech #DigitalAgriculture #AgriStack

Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the speaker, not necessarily the channel