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Sumit Chhazed has started four companies. The first three didn't work. Solar heating, where he was too young to win government tenders. An edtech platform built with IIT Bombay professors that was years ahead of its market and ended in a modest acquisition. Then a two-wheeler commerce business born out of a second-hand Pulsar that broke down every third day in Bombay. The fourth is OTO Capital, a lending infrastructure platform for banks and NBFCs in two-wheeler financing. In 2024, mid-growth and mid-fundraise, the round fell through. He and his co-founders stopped taking a salary for twelve months, let people go, and rebuilt the company around profitability instead of growth. They turned down buyout offers along the way. In this episode of Unstarted, Sumit talks to Avnish Bajaj about how to tell when a business isn't working, building for yourself versus building for an investor, what changes when you switch a company from growth mode to profitability, how to communicate with a team through that shift, and separating conviction from delusion.
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