About
India has built a thriving startup ecosystem. The bigger question is how many of those startups can grow into enduring businesses.
The ambition exists everywhere. Walk into any co-working space in Bangalore, Mumbai, or Delhi and you will find founders building hard, pitching constantly, and hustling in ways that would exhaust most people yet it is getting harder and harder to find a clear path from early traction to sustainable, deliberate growth. The kind that does not burn the founder out or fall apart the moment it picks up speed.
At IncX, this is a challenge we keep coming back to. In Feb 2024, we took a step towards addressing it.
The entrepreneurs we work with keep running into the same problem: growth either stalls when it shouldn’t, or takes off faster than they can manage. Neither comes with a clear playbook. What they need is access to people who have been through these challenges firsthand, figured out what works at scale, and are willing to get into the specifics of how they did it, beyond the usual conversations about funding rounds and headline numbers.
So we did what we do best: we made some calls, pulled in some favours, and brought the right people to the same room.
The result was the Bangalore Growth Fest, a two-part event that brought some of the sharpest growth minds in the world to Bangalore for the very first time.
We brought the right people into one room: a lineup of growth leaders, headlined by Sean Ellis, who hardly needs an introduction, though there’s plenty to say about his journey:
Sean Ellis coined the term “growth hacking.” Before that phrase existed, he was the person behind the early growth of Dropbox, Eventbrite, and LogMeIn, and he literally wrote the book on it. “Hacking Growth” remains one of the most-read playbooks in the startup world. Getting Sean to Bangalore for the first time was the anchor around which everything else was built.
Joining him on the lineup:
Ganesh Balakrishnan, co-founder of Flatheads, became widely known after his appearance on Shark Tank India. His story, later documented in Down But Not Out, offers an honest look at what building a startup can involve when things don’t go to plan.
Arjun Vaidya, co-founder of V3 Ventures and former CEO of Dr. Vaidya’s, built an Ayurvedic brand into a recognised name in India’s D2C space before its acquisition by HUL. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honouree, he brought firsthand experience of building, scaling, and eventually exiting a consumer brand.
Sonica Singh, co-founder of Thrill Two Birds, focuses on helping businesses grow sustainably over the long term, with an emphasis on building growth that doesn’t depend on constant fundraising.
Sandeep Balaji, CEO of IncrementumX, host of the Building In India podcast, and an operator and investor himself, brought the event together, drawing on his own experience of working with founders and businesses.
Manan Bajoria, Group VP of Growth Marketing at ixigo and formerly with Lenskart, brings experience scaling growth across two of India’s leading consumer businesses.
We ran two formats. A smaller, more intensive Masterclass for founders who wanted to go deep, and a larger Main Event for the broader community.
Outreach stayed streamlined, too. Most of it happened on LinkedIn and Instagram, where we built interest around the event, introduced the speakers and what they’d be talking about, and shared key takeaways and moments from the event afterward.
The focus was on bringing the right people into the room; people who would connect with the conversations and leave having gained something from the event.
Results
Over 75 founders and operators came to the Masterclass while more than 300 people joined for the Main Event.
The numbers reflected the interest we’d managed to build:
On LinkedIn, the event drove over 500 new followers, 6,683 page views, and 256,000 impressions across the campaign period.
On Meta, we reached nearly 74,000 accounts.
On email, 6,541 invitations went out and 2,537 were opened, which in anyone’s inbox is a number worth paying attention to
The numbers spoke volumes, but what stayed with us most was what attendees shared after the event:
The founders who had been grinding for months walked out with a clearer picture of what their growth problem actually was. Some left with a strategy they could actually act upon in the following week. Others left the venue feeling less alone in the problem, which is often the most valuable thing a room full of honest and experienced people can offer.
India has plenty of people building businesses. The question is how we help them build better ones. That takes conversations with people who have done the work, ideas worth taking back to the drawing board, and a room full of people who have something to learn from each other.
This was the thinking behind Bangalore Growth Fest, and seeing it come together has us looking forward to what we can build from here.
If you want to be part of the next one, you know where to find us!
