NANSI MISHRA

Honest and uplifting stories on the internet are a result of intent and sense of purpose. Content creators who leverage the undeniable force of simple storytelling are what the world needs more. Most of them don't set out consciously on this journey — instead, they figure out as they navigate, but it's not easy; it won't always be. With regular bouts of uncertainties and misfires, some creators put us in touch with their human side. And, that's where this story begins.

Nansi Mishra — the co-founder of 100x Entrepreneur, exemplifies a creator who stuck the right balance between her professional and personal life. But, a conversation with her throws light on how she hustled to sustain that balance. Voted as LinkedIn's Top Voice (2021) in the 'NextGen' category, she looks up to entrepreneurs such as Shradha Sharma, Barkha Dutt, and Vineeta Singh. 

Nansi's friends introduce her as someone who's creating an impact while enjoying motherhood, and Nansi introduces herself as the co-founder of India's leading startup podcast and the mother of a two-year-old. 100x Entrepreneur has interviewed the likes of Vani Kola, Kunal Bahl and has about 20,000 subscribers today. Let's tap into the journey that got Nansi here.

Nansi's career took off at Babygogo, a health startup that caters to parenting, as a content and community manager. Although she was only 21, she could connect with moms to understand the app’s benefits or drawbacks and how they were interacting with the product altogether. Despite fostering a connection with their users, Nansi assumed her writing skills weren’t on fleek.

"I always assumed my writing and communication skills weren't polished enough but then, I understood the difference between them. What matters is how you communicate a story in a way that people can connect with you."

With time, Nansi realized the significance of connecting with people and building an interactive community.

Nansi met Siddhartha Ahluwalia (her husband) at Babygogo, which Sheroes eventually acquired. The Babygogo team had fixed responsibilities that enabled them to learn from ground zero — that's when they started interacting and having immersive conversations with more VCs and entrepreneurs.

Since Nansi was working with Sheroes, 100x Entrepreneur was a passion project they dedicated weekends for. It went on for two years before the couple moved to Bangalore when Siddhartha found another job; they were also expecting a baby then. 

"I enjoyed a six-month maternity leave, and when it was about to end, I realized how much I relished working on 100x Entrepreneur. While I had less bandwidth, I wanted to focus on it, so I quit Sheroes. I became a part-time mother and part-time entrepreneur if I could say."

During the advent of 100x Entrepreneur, Nansi handled back-end work, transcripts, and publishing while Siddhartha traveled for work on weekdays and recorded 3-4 podcasts over weekends. After recording, Nansi would plan social media promotions and publishing.

Apart from passion, if there's one thing that all creators commonly face, it's prioritizing work. You're treading an unknown path, charting unknown territories, and most likely on your own — so, a creator is also at the helm of managing their craft, creative outlets, and time.

"It's challenging, but with time, you discover yourself, understand what matters, and prioritize your work. It takes time but you eventually also understand if your work is helping you grow or add value to others' lives. It doesn't happen overnight."

Managing a newborn and a newly-founded podcast wasn't a cakewalk — but once it dawned on Nansi that her work impacted several lives, she was keener on taking 100x Entrepreneur to the next level. However, it was challenging to focus on the baby and work.

In no time, it got 4 lakh likes, and Nansi's inbox was overwhelmed with messages from women. That incident made her realize it was okay to post such personal stories, no matter the platform.

"It's not about the platform; it's about how you share your story, which gains relevance on the platform."

When Nansi's first post on LinkedIn went viral, she understood the power of storytelling. What she also realized was that one doesn't have to arrive at a thriving destination to discuss their journey on social media. You know what they say — it's small wins that make you look forward to the next day, so why don't we often talk about them?

More often than not, a creator's journey is paved with self-doubt, no matter how much they try to shrug it off. Nansi, too, suffered her share and wondered if leaving her job to focus on creating was the right move.

When LinkedIn recognized her as a Top Voice in 2021, it somewhat squashed her self-doubt, and she was more confident about her storytelling skills and producing content for 100x Entrepreneur. It led her to make conversations more accessible, even for those not invested in entrepreneurship. For those wanting to grow in their everyday life, they could still learn from the best entrepreneurs.

It's quite evident that Nansi is spontaneous and thinks from the heart — whether it's earnest dialogue or storytelling, it comes quite naturally to Nansi. Her thoughts mostly revolve around inspiring women, and the fact that she avidly researches for 100x helps her create high-powered content.

As the podcast grew, Nansi and Siddhartha decided to engage podcast editors, content writers, and research folks. Research is the cornerstone of their team's content strategy as it brings out the most-effective episodes to help everyone in the startup ecosystem. Imploring conversations around what made the entrepreneurs choose their journey, fundraising, their milestones, and how they've become unicorns — 100x also emphasizes understanding a startup's culture and how it can be fixed.

So far, 100x Entrepreneur has recorded about 150 episodes, and Nansi handles all the operational work. It's a team of eight part-time individuals who treat the podcast as their passion project. The team works together towards a common goal — from learning about entrepreneurship and design to writing and social media growth. Nansi handles scheduling and publishing while Siddhartha hosts the show; they dedicate two slots on Saturdays to record two podcasts and conduct a team call on Sundays. Besides, Nansi has also started doing Masterclasses on Sundays. 

"I also read and refer to previous articles to avoid asking similar questions; we prefer not to cover the recent improvements as they are all covered on the internet. We also go through the tweets to understand their mindset and discuss the themes or topics they share on social media."

Nansi admits how she tried to get Vani Kola, a VC and founder of Kalaari Capital, on 100x Entrepreneur. She has been closely following her journey and posts on social media — in fact, Nansi wrote a well-researched post on Vani on LinkedIn. For that, she pored over several articles, interviews, and videos. In a way, this exercise helped her become better at researching. Eventually, Vani was on 100x Entrepreneur, making Nansi's dream come true. 

They use Zencaster to record audio and video, and since the tool is particularly crafted for podcasters, the clarity is incredible and simplifies their editor's task. They release every podcast with a transcript because people prefer reading to listening. 

Before the pandemic hit, the team would either visit the guests or invite them to their studio and have a conversation before recording the podcast but owing to the current conditions, the team has entirely moved on to hosting them online. With time, they've understood which tools and mics are better and that it’s possible to personalize conversations online too.

100x has been faring well on audio platforms; they publish the podcast on Buzzsprout — a publishing platform that also shares metrics on average weekly listens per episode. While each episode gets 5,000-10,000 listens, Nansi wants to get 50,000 listens.

YouTube is another focus area, and Nansi admits it's not performing as per their expectations because it's fairly new. They want to attain about 10,000 to 20,000 views on YouTube.

Nansi and the team usually receive feedback on their newsletter, as the readers and entrepreneurs frequently reply to the newsletter.

"We've received positive feedback from the likes of Gourav Munjal, Rajan Anandan, and when people from the ecosystem reach out, it feels great."

Prime Venture Partners has been sponsoring 100x for two years now, but the team is not entirely concentrating on monetizing their content right now.

"We want to focus on brand building and the whole aspect of content creation and distribution itself. We're sustainable enough to support the podcast at the moment."

100x Entrepreneur releases its podcast and newsletter every Monday, and Nansi is working towards making 100x India's number one startup podcast, and they've been consistently publishing and hosting 100x Masterclass on Sundays. Keeping the classes interactive and useful, it's great for beginners and seasoned experts in the ecosystem.

With a larger focus on its distribution and growing YouTube, we can safely say Nansi's hands are full. And yet, we're sure she'll make time to connect and share stories that'll touch several lives. Don’t you think so, too?