Venture Building in the Wild: Conversation with Kiren Tanna

September 2, 2021

In the second episode, Usman Lodhi, Venture Partner, FutureLabs Ventures, speaks to Kiren Tanna. A serial entrepreneur with multi-$100M+ exits (FoodPanda, Zen Rooms), Kiren possesses incredible business acumen and expertise across both technical and commercial domains. They talk about his key learnings as an entrepreneur, and the different aspects of building groundbreaking Direct-to-Consumer ventures.

Venture Building in the Wild: Conversation with Kiren Tanna

Key highlights of the discussion

In the interview, Kiren summarizes his learnings and insights along three key dimensions: 

  1. Taking the leap from consulting to entrepreneurship – key traits that have helped him in his transition, as well as those needed to be picked up along the way. 
  2. The important areas of focus when defining and validating Direct to Consumer (D2C)  venture opportunities 
  3. Lastly, the top three priorities of entrepreneurs in the early stages of venture building journey  

 

Additionally, he also gives his advice for Intrapreneurs who may be at the earlier stages of their journey: 

  1. Regardless of whether you are an intrapreneur or not, taking initiative is the first step. Opportunities are plenty and can be spotted if you are constantly looking out for them. 
  2. Important to have alignment of interest on a vision between intrapreneur and the company. 
  3. Find opportunities to work with venture builders. Not only does it shorten the learning curve, but it also serves as a guide to help bring new ideas to fruition. 

 

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About the speaker(s)

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Usman Lodhi

Usman is a Venture Partner at Futurelabs Ventures. He is a business leader, seasoned professional and serial intra/entrepreneur with 15+ years’ experience in digital consumer, telecommunications, software and infrastructure sectors in Europe and Asia. With more than 10 years of leadership experience in establishing and growing new digital businesses across South-East Asia (Indosat, EasyTaxi), he is an expert in leveraging technology, forming ground-breaking strategic partnerships and executing data-driven methodologies.

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Kiren Tanna

Kiren is a serial entrepreneur and a veteran of the Internet startup space in South East Asia since 2007. With multiple multi-$100M+ exits (FoodPanda, Zen Rooms), he possesses incredible business acumen and expertise across both technical and commercial domains. At present, Kiren is the Co-Founder and CEO of Una Brands, a fast-growing e-commerce company that has raised $40M in seed funding to acquire and scale brands in APAC.