Writing

Thoughts on building, finance, and founders.

From my LinkedIn newsletter Architects of Scale. Every week I pull apart one founder's story and what actually made the company work. All articles written by Neeraj Bansal.

Article 016 · 1 views

She Was Rejected by Over 100 Investors. Then Built a $49 Billion Company Used by 240 Million People.

Melanie Perkins was rejected by over 100 investors, then built Canva from Perth into a $49 billion company used by 240 million people. Here is what founders can learn from the most patient pitch in startup history.

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Article 015 · 1 views

From Charging Cables to India's Biggest Audio Brand. The Aman Gupta Story.

Aman Gupta left a corporate career, failed at his first startup, then co-founded boAt with Rs 3 lakh of his own savings and turned it into India's largest audio brand.

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Article 014 · 1 views

She Wanted to Be a Brewmaster. Nobody Would Hire Her. So She Built a Biotech Empire Instead.

Rejected by every brewer in India because she was a woman, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw built Biocon in a garage with Rs 10,000 into India's largest biotech company.

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Article 013 · 0 views

He Inherited a Cooking Oil Company at 21. Then Gave Away $21 Billion.

Azim Premji left Stanford at 21 to run a small cooking oil company, turned it into Wipro, and then gave away $21 billion. Here is what founders can learn from fifty years of building on integrity.

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Article 012 · 5 views

Deepinder Goyal Built Zomato in 18 Years. Here Is What He Is Building Next.

He scanned restaurant menus at Bain in 2008, built a company that fed a billion people and listed at $12 billion, then walked away in 2026 to build a brain health wearable.

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Article 011 · 0 views

At 50, She Bet Everything on One Idea. It Became a $4.4 Billion Empire.

Falguni Nayar left a twenty year investment banking career at 50 and built Nykaa into a beauty empire that made her India's richest self made female billionaire. Here is what founders can learn from the slowest, most disciplined build in Indian consumer internet.

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Article 010 · 5 views

Chamath Palihapitiya's Journey: The Refugee Who Became Silicon Valley's Loudest Voice

He arrived in Canada as a refugee, worked fast food at fourteen, and went on to write the growth playbook that Facebook and half of Silicon Valley still run on.

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Article 009 · 5 views

I Left CA Halfway, Moved to Delhi With Nothing, and Started at Rs 14,000

I grew up in a small town in Madhya Pradesh, ran out of money before I could finish my exams, and took my first job in Noida for Rs 14,000 a month. Here is what happened next.

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Article 008 · 11 views

Quantum Tech 2026: 10 Companies Leading the Race

Ten companies are racing to build the machines that will define the next era of computing. Here is where each one actually stands in 2026.

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Article 007 · 12 views

Tobias Lutke's Journey: The Dropout Who Accidentally Built a $180 Billion Empire

He moved to Ottawa to sell snowboards. The store failed, the software he built to run it became Shopify, and a high school dropout from Koblenz ended up powering millions of businesses.

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Article 006 · 11 views

Kunal Shah's Journey: The Delivery Boy Who Now Runs the World's Biggest App

A philosophy graduate from Mumbai worked as a delivery boy, sold FreeCharge for Rs 2,800 crore, built CRED into a $4.5 billion company, and now runs WhatsApp for three billion people.

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Article 005 · 2 views

Pawan Kumar Chandana and Naga Bharath Daka: The Men Who Gave India Its Own Sky

Two ISRO engineers left the safest jobs in Indian science, built rockets in a Hyderabad garage, and put India in the same club as the US and China.

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Article 004 · 3 views

Shantanu Narayen: How a Hyderabad Boy Built Adobe's Empire

How a boy from Hyderabad quietly took Adobe from under $1B to $25B in revenue, killed the boxed-software business at its peak, and became proof for a generation of Indian-origin CEOs that it was possible.

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Article 003 · 3 views

Liang Wenfeng's Journey: The Man Who Shocked Silicon Valley With a Side Project

How a 39-year-old from a fifth-tier Chinese city built DeepSeek as a side project from a hedge fund, treated chip constraints as a design brief, and accidentally rewrote the rules of the global AI race.

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Article 002 · 4 views

Nithin and Nikhil Kamath's Journey: The Brothers Who Democratised Wealth for India

In 2010, two brothers from Bengaluru launched a brokerage with zero fees and no external funding. Fourteen years later, Zerodha had 12 million clients, 4,700 crore rupees in annual profit and a company worth $8 billion. Built from savings, stubbornness and a belief that ordinary Indians deserved better.

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Article 001 · 1 views

Narayana Murthy's Journey: The Man Who Put India on the World Map

In 1974, a young Indian engineer was detained at a Bulgarian railway station for five days. He walked out with a conviction that would build Infosys and put India on the global technology map.

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