From $900 to ~$18B: How an Indian entrepreneur built two US unicorn giants

In this episode, Amit Somani, Partner, Prime Venture Partners, discovers the phenomenal journey of Dheeraj Pandey to understand what it took an Indian with $900 in the US to build two multi-billion-dollar companies.

Sunday March 09, 2025 , 5 min Read

Entrepreneurship often involves navigating uncertainty and risk. Dheeraj Pandey, Founder and CEO of DevRev and famously the co-founder of Nutanix, a trailblazing enterprise software giant that grew beyond a Decacorn, exemplifies this.

Pandey shares candid insights into his journey, the evolving SaaS and AI landscapes, and what founders need to thrive in today’s market.

Taking contrarian bets: The essence of innovation

Pandey's journey began uniquely: leaving IIT Kanpur after just two-and-a-half months to retake the entrance exam, determined to shift from civil engineering to computer science. This early risk set the tone for his entrepreneurial career.

“I was a risk-taking person from early on,” Pandey says, recalling his decision to quit IIT, a rarity, and re-enter with a top-100 rank. This pivot became a metaphor for his entrepreneurial philosophy: embrace risk, trust your intuition, and always be ready to adjust.

In 2009, during the peak of the financial crisis, Pandey took another big leap by founding Nutanix. He chose a contrarian use case: optimising enterprise software for Windows virtualisation. At the time, conventional wisdom declared Windows dead. Pandey and his co-founders disagreed:

“In 2011, people started to say that Windows is dead because Apple is everywhere. We took a contrarian view: long live Windows, and stuck to the Microsoft approach as all enterprises were here already.”

This contrarian thinking, combined with relentless execution, established Nutanix as a dominant force in enterprise infrastructure.

Crossing the tightrope: Surviving early challenges

Reflecting on Nutanix’s early days, Pandey describes multiple near-death experiences, emphasising the psychological resilience that founders must have:

"Once you're on a tightrope crossing a valley, you can't turn back. At best, you adjust your stance, make micro pivots, but you never look back."

He emphasises that early-stage entrepreneurs must master “micro pivots” rather than drastic changes. Successful pivots come from seeing shifts "two, three quarters in advance" and positioning accordingly.

Enterprise software: It's all about infrastructure

Pandey highlights a critical issue for Indian startups aspiring to build global enterprise software businesses:

"Enterprise software at its core is about reliability, availability, security, and extensibility—these 'ities' are what you get paid for."

He believes that many Indian founders struggle in building scalable platforms because they underestimate the complexity and depth required for system engineering. Unlike consumer applications, enterprise products demand deep infrastructure competence—something founders themselves must deeply appreciate.

For Pandey, platform thinking was integral to Nutanix’s success, and now, with DevRev, he’s betting on it again, this time incorporating AI at the core.

AI’s impact: Breaking down departmental silos

Dheeraj’s newest venture, DevRev, tackles a core pain point in enterprises: departmental silos. His vision aligns with today's market where AI redefines how businesses operate.

"AI doesn't care about departmental boundaries," Pandey asserts. "Departments were created to organise humans. AI thrives on interconnected knowledge graphs—the richer and more interconnected, the better."

His principle is clear: future-ready organisations must dismantle internal barriers, uniting development, customer support, product management, and sales under an integrated AI-driven knowledge graph. Pandey further underscores the inadequacy of retrofitting AI onto legacy systems like Jira or Zendesk. Instead, startups should embrace native AI-driven architectures:

"You can't retrofit AI into Zendesk or Jira... The AI market is moving towards us."

Product-market fit: A continuous journey

Pandey also shares nuanced thoughts on product-market fit (PMF), which he sees as a perpetual challenge:

"There's no end to the journey of product-market fit. You have a PMF problem at $1 million, $10 million, $50 million, $100 million, $250 million, and even a billion."

He emphasises a distinction between capacity (scaling sales teams and channels) and capability (developing products, integrations, and platform capabilities). Founders who grasp this difference early are positioned for sustainable growth.

MAYA: Most Advanced Yet Acceptable

Pandey introduces the MAYA principle—Most Advanced Yet Acceptable—a design ethos coined by renowned designer Raymond Loewy. He explains how innovation should not only push boundaries but must remain accessible.

"MAYA is about crossing the chasm from early innovators to early adopters... You have to respect the past to bring people to the future."

For SaaS and AI startups today, this principle means balancing innovation with familiarity, ensuring widespread acceptance among paying customers.

Advice to founders: Learning to let go and negotiate

As startups scale, Pandey identifies key traits successful founders must adopt:

"You have to know what it means to let go. You have to build relationships and processes. Founders need to understand how to delegate and negotiate, attracting talent smarter than themselves."

He insists founders cannot rely purely on initial entrepreneurial passion or charisma indefinitely. Instead, building frameworks, systems, and attracting capable talent—people often smarter or better-skilled than the founders—is the key to enduring success.

From SaaS to AI: Navigating the new landscape

Finally, Pandey offers critical insights for existing SaaS founders adapting to the AI revolution. While many startups initially wrapped their products around GPT-driven prompts, lasting success requires deeper AI integration:

"AI is now an infrastructure problem... Anything that could have been GPT-wrapped is already commoditized. SaaS companies must move beyond simple prompt engineering to RAG, supervised fine-tuning, and reasoning—real infrastructure AI."

Bold risk-taking meets deliberate strategy

Dheeraj Pandey’s entrepreneurial journey, vividly detailed in this podcast, serves as a masterclass in balancing bold innovation with measured strategy. His journey from Nutanix to DevRev underscores a powerful lesson for entrepreneurs: Embrace risk, execute relentlessly, build deeply, and always, always stay adaptable.