Welcoming the Founding Cohort of The Guild

We are thrilled to welcome the founding cohort of The Guild. Sixteen incredible founders will be embarking on this new journey with us.

This group has already achieved a lot. The median valuation of the startups they have founded is approximately $900 million; most of them have raised over $100 million in funding and several have exceeded that by many multiples. Together, they directly employ over 50,000 people, while creating employment for millions more through their platforms and partnerships. This group has the potential to redefine the future of many industries in this region and around the world.

We are incredibly excited that The Guild will now provide them a community and platform to learn, support and collaborate with each other. Over time this community will expand to include growth-stage founders from SaaS, Fintech, B2B, Consumer and other categories. We can’t possibly be more energized and humbled to welcome the founding cohort (in alphabetical order):

Alan Mamedi, Co-Founder and CEO of Truecaller, which has a mission to make communication safer and more efficient. Over 250 million people use the Truecaller app on a monthly basis. Each day, the Truecaller service blocks 100 million spam calls.

Albinder Dhindsa, Co-Founder and CEO of Grofers, India’s leading grocery app. Grofers has a mission to empower middle-income families to live a better quality of life. They have delivered more than 400 million items in the last year, and helped over 8 million families across 27 cities cut their average monthly grocery bill by about 25%.

Amit Jain, Co-Founder and CEO of CarDekho, a full-stack auto tech company that’s disrupting India’s automotive market. CarDekho, which today receives 40 million monthly visits across all its India portals, has also become the country’s largest omnichannel auto insurance player and a leader in the auto financing space. The company expanded to Southeast Asia in 2015 and now operates in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.

Andre Soelistyo and Kevin Aluwi, Co-CEOs of Gojek, a super app with a mission to create positive socio-economic impact for customers, driver-partners and merchants. In 2019, Gojek contributed US$7.1 billion to Indonesia’s economy, according to research from the University of Indonesia. Gojek, which processes millions of daily transactions across SEA, also runs GoFood, the leading food delivery platform in ASEAN, and GoPay, the largest mobile wallet in Indonesia.

Ankiti Bose, Co-founder and CEO of Zilingo, a technology platform powering the global fashion supply chain. The platform, which offers access to technology, financing and production solutions, connects over 25,000 small and medium-sized businesses in Southeast Asia, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh to more than 6,000 factories.

Chatri Sityodtong, Founder and CEO of ONE Championship, one of Asia’s largest sports media companies. ONE Championship is on a mission to ignite hope, celebrate values, create dreams, inspire nations and change the world through the stories of real-life superheroes. ONE Championship broadcasts across 150 countries around the world, and each event draws around 29 million viewers.

Gaurav Munjal, Co-founder and CEO of Unacademy, which is democratising access to quality and affordable education in India. The company has helped over 18,000 educators reach more than 30 million learners since it was founded in 2015. Unacademy’s subscriber base has increased more than 5X in the last year.

Kunal Shah, Founder and CEO of CRED, a members-only club with a mission to celebrate and reward credit-worthy individuals for timely credit card bill payments with exclusive offers and access to premium experiences. CRED has attracted more than 3 million high-trust, affluent Indians as members, partnered with over 1,300 trusted financial institutions and brands, and processes over 12% of all credit card bill payments in India – all within two years of launch.

Ritesh Agarwal, Founder and CEO of OYO, which has disrupted the global budget hospitality industry and today offers safe, hygienic and affordable living spaces across 800 cities in 80 countries. The company’s mission is to offer good quality living spaces for millions of city dwellers and travelers around the world, while empowering hotel and homeowners to benefit from the increase in occupancy and revenue.

Sai Srinavas, Co-Founder and CEO of Mobile Premier League, which has revolutionized eSports with a developer-friendly platform that enables dozens of studios to publish their games and create revenue from day one – and allows millions to play their favorite games with a chance to win real cash prizes. Since it’s September 2018 launch, MPL has signed up over 60 million registered users and clocked more than 2 billion transactions on its app.

Siu Rui Quek, Co-founder and CEO of Carousell, which makes selling as easy as taking a photo, and buying as simple as chatting. Carousell is one of the world’s largest and growing classifieds marketplace platforms and is now present across eight markets in Asia.

Sumit Maniyar, Founder and CEO of Rupeek, whose mission is to provide fair and convenient credit to borrowers, while helping financial institutions get access to consumers that are hard to service. Rupeek, which aims to monetize the idle gold of India by unlocking latent demand from first-time gold loan borrowers with a tech-enabled lending platform, has scaled the annual disbursement run-rate from $50 million in 2019 to $500 million in August 2020.

Umang Bedi, Co-Founder of Dailyhunt, which aims to bridge the digital divide by empowering a billion Indians to access content in their local language that informs, enriches, and entertains. Dailyhunt, which now reaches over 285 million Indians every month, has grown its user base by over 7X in the last 18 months, and their new short video app, Josh, hit 50 million downloads in just 45 days.

Vidit Aatrey, Co-Founder and CEO of Meesho, India’s largest social commerce platform, which is powered by a vision to help anyone start a business with zero investment. Meesho has enabled 5 million entrepreneurs to monetize their social communities. Meesho is creating a massive impact on society by empowering women, who comprise over 70% of the platform’s entrepreneur community, to become financially independent.

William Tanuwijaya, Founder and CEO of Tokopedia, an Indonesian technology company with a mission to democratize commerce through technology. In the last 11 years, Tokopedia has enabled more than 9.2 million Indonesians – 86% of them first-time entrepreneurs – to start and grow their business, and together serve almost 100 million users who visit Tokopedia every month.

We are excited to kick things off on October 10th. The Guild will meet twice a month, with additional guest speaker AMAs in between, for six months. These sessions will offer an opportunity to reflect, be inspired, to learn and unlearn, and to create a new body of tribal knowledge that draws on the collective experience of startup community leaders who are all at the top of their game.

Each of these founders has already achieved great success in building their startups to this level. Our aspiration is that The Guild will bring them together and act as a force multiplier to amplify their impact on the world.

This column was originally published on LinkedIn.