From CFO to Founder: How Harvinder Bhatia Built & Listed Radiowalla | Corporate India Unfiltered

🎙️ In this episode of Corporate India Unfiltered, host Romit Dalal sits down with Harvinder Bhatia -- CEO & Co-Founder of Radiowalla, India's largest in-store audio and retail media network, and Venture Partner at Eight Roads. Harvinder started his career as a finance professional, rose to become CFO at Netmagic Solutions, Radio Mirchi, and the Mirjani Group and helped take Radio Mirchi public in 2006. He then made a rare move: left the safety of the CFO chair, co-founded Radiowalla in 2010, built it for 14 years, and took it public on the SME exchange. Along the way he co-founded Sochcast, chairs Vinners, serves as Non-Executive Chairman at Frenzi, and is the Honorary President of the Scrabble Association of India. In this conversation we cover: ✅ What it really takes to go from CFO to founder ✅ Why retail audio is a bigger business than most people realise ✅ How to survive 14 years of building before you see a public exit ✅ Life as a Venture Partner while still running your own company ✅ What competitive Scrabble teaches you about business negotiation ✅ Lessons from two IPOs across two very different eras Whether you're a founder, finance professional, or mid-level professional building toward leadership — this episode is packed with hard-won insight from one of India's most versatile business minds. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 👤 GUEST Harvinder Bhatia CEO & Co-Founder — Radiowalla Venture Partner — Eight Roads Co-Founder — Sochcast Non-Exec Chairman — Frenzi Co-Founder & Chairman — Vinners Hon. President — Scrabble Association of India Ex CFO — Netmagic Solutions | Radio Mirchi | Mirjani Group ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Social media Host LinkedIn:   / romit-dalal-1287541   Guest Linkedin:   / harvinderjit-singh-bhatia   📌 TIMESTAMPS 01:04 Introduction 01:44 What is in store Radio 09:58 Building Radiowalla as new category 11:35 Pros and cons of being the first in category 14:01 Journey to IPO 17:04 Radio mirchi IPO learnings 19:23 Sochcast – A platform for women 22:16 What Scrabble teaches you about business 27:48 CFO to founder 41:37 Advice for mid-level professionals eyeing the founder path