150 rejections, a government ban and starting over | The Dream11 story | Unstarted Ep 7

Harsh Jain built Dream11 from a family business detour and a love of fantasy football into a company that sponsored every IPL team, sent athletes to the Olympics, and had 300 million users.
Then the government effectively ended the business he'd spent 15 years building.

This conversation isn't about the rise. It's about what happens after the nuclear bomb falls — how you grieve something you loved, how you decide whether to fight or pivot, and how you keep 1,000 people from walking out the door.

The questions Avnish and Harsh wrestle with:

1. Do you really need an original idea, or do you need to be obsessed with a problem?

2. What's the difference between being in love with your company and just being attracted to the outcome?

3. How do you keep going after 150 investor rejections — and is "keep going" always the right answer?

4. What do you do when the nuclear bomb falls on everything you built?

5. Can culture actually survive catastrophe, or does it only exist in the good times?

In the end culture is the only thing that scales. Not the product or funding. The team and whether you built something worth staying for.

YouTube Chapters
00:00 The neighbour who built Dream11 
05:09 Love vs. lust: the only thing that keeps you going 
06:39 Q1: Do you really need an original idea? 
10:27 150 rejections: the napkin, the car ride 
18:37 Q2:How to know if you actually have product-market fit 
22:03 Culture is the founder's DNA 
27:43 The nuclear bomb falls 
32:54 What happens after you grieve together 
39:45 Why Harsh never left Mumbai 
41:21 — What Mumbai Tech Week is actually for 
44:10 — B talent. A culture. One big problem.

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