Anuj Srivastava

WorldQuant is offering 92L in India at IITs for hiring 21-y/o, which is insane It directly puts a fresh college graduate in the top 0.05% of India by income Explains why Indian parents see IITs as the fastest ticket to social mobility copied Aviral Bhatnagar

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India's economic growth slowed to near two-year low of 5.4% in July-September quarter of the ongoing fiscal against 8.1% in the year-ago period, mainly due to poor show by manufacturing sector, according to official data released on Friday (November 29).

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Can we create a "UPI Moment" for India's capital markets? India boasts 30 crore UPI users, yet only 8 crore people invest in equity markets. Why the gap? Is it only a lack of awareness or the high entry barriers for blue-chip equities? I believe tokenization can change this by enabling fractional ownership of high-value stocks. This could lower entry barriers, allowing more people to invest in premium equities and build long-term wealth—just as UPI democratized payments for millions. Of course, challenges exist: - Creating alternate markets for tokenized equities. - Navigating operational complexities and regulatory clarity. - Managing liquidity for real-time settlements. However, I believe that the potential of tokenization and fractional ownership in capital markets is immense. Startups are already tokenizing real estate, offering fractional ownership to retail investors. Could this be the next big thing for equity markets? What are your thoughts? Could tokenization democratize investing for the masses in India? Xaults Shubham Sharma Ravindra Pandey Sanjeev Shriya Kamlesh Nagware Prasanna Lohar #tokenization #fractionalownership #capitalmarkets #xaults #digitalassets #sebi

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Indian venture market has exploded. Someone reported that there are 800+ funds/networks/syndicates/ accelerators active in Indian venture market now. Not sure, if that number is correct but if you are an early stage tech founder on your fundraise journey, chances are, you would meet hundreds of people. While majority of the fund houses are doing incredible work and shaping the ecosystem. There are certain kinds of investors you need to identify & avoid to save time and stay focused: Sharing from my personal experience, top 5 such cohorts to avoid and the takeaways for the founders: 1. Data collectors: At early stage, you don't have historical data to present. Your projections are just that, Projections. I wasted one whole week discussing with a prospective angel investor on why the CLTV to CAC ratio is x, and not y. Takeaway: Discuss high level strategic numbers only without going into the details. None of the projections would be accurate anyway when rubber hits the road. 2. Document collectors: Met few folks, who would watch from the fences and ask for n number of documents, data rooms, statements without sharing the purpose of the ask or even revealing their investment intent. Takeaway: It is supposed to be a bi-directional conversation. Say 'no' often, till the time, an official relationship is established. 3. Valuer (! investor): At early stage, valuation is a function of multiple parameters, the opportunity itself, the team, or anything else except steady cash flows, because you don't have much. I wasted another week with a prospective investor trying to justify valuation, had to shut down that conversation, after both of us started quoting Aswath Damodaran and his valuation principles. Takeaway: Too much content on the internet for both parties anyway. Shouldn't be a bone of contention at early stages. 4. Facilitators posing as investors: Met numerous people, who would go to any lengths to pose themselves as serious investors, even buying paid media articles. Only to reveal at the last: The success fee. Takeaway: Avoid facilitators until Series A 5. Brokers posing as market makers: People posing as market makers sharing tons of gyaan on LinkedIn but are actually deal brokers looking to make quick %. Personal experience: Two rounds of conversation happened and then out of blue, they added a third party in the mail trail, someone who facilitates mergers & acquisitions. There wasn't even a single instance in the past conversations where we indicated any such intent. Takeaway: Avoid name & shame in public but at least share within founder communities. #venture #fundraise #startups #investing

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Gm everyone. We are hiring. This time for Ecosystem growth superstars, someone to work with Abhinav Singh ➡️📍ETHDenver at DappLooker legends to build the ecosystem, junior or senior alike! Ping TG: reach_abhinav Required: - Have a good connection in the Indian web3 ecosystem. - Good with design and content creation. - Super accountable. Don’t let things slide. - Hungry. Make things work and solve whatever problems that come in your way Good to have: - Technical knowledge of web3. Though we can get you ramped up - Strategic thinking. Though we can show you the way - completely remote

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{New pod 🎤} "𝐁𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚 𝐔𝐒-𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐚 𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐩" **Excited to share that An Operator's Blog (AOB) has now completed 10 episodes. As per Harry Stebbings - "90% of new podcasts will not make it to episode 10". So, am glad that AOB has breached this. Next milestone: Episode 50.** Was awesome to jam with Abhinav Das, co-founder and CEO of Orangewood Labs, a Y Combinator-backed, US-India robotics startup that builds affordable robots that are easy to deploy and can be programmed with natural language prompts. This episode goes in-depth into building a US-India robotics startup. We cover everything from how to build robotics MVPs, acquire early US design partners, structure and manage a global supply chain, US GTM approaches, hire deep tech talent, and finally, tips and playbooks for fundraising in Silicon Valley as an Indian robotics startup. TIME STAMPS: (01:20) Backstory of Orangewood Labs (07:27) Acquiring US design partners (16:31) The value of doing social media (20:01) Building a Robotics MVP (30:09) Structuring the supply chain (37:10) US GTM approaches (41:18) Leveraging content as a deep tech startup (45:10) Hiring and org design (48:25) Is YC relevant for US-India deeptech startups? (50:07) Tips and playbooks for Indian deeptech founders to fundraise in the Bay Area YouTube - https://lnkd.in/g8awZTt9 Spotify - https://lnkd.in/gZ_hN3Jg Apple Podcasts - https://lnkd.in/gdE3ix32 An Operator's Blog - https://lnkd.in/gPMsecFK

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India is now 4th largest market globally when it comes to potential interest and internet search on #RWA - Real World Assets Tokenisation. While US maintains the lead - with strong protocols and platforms like ONDO being able to tokenise stable coins and other assets - I'm glad to see interest picking up in India in this market - which by various industry estimates would be a USD 30 Trillion market by 2030 and would revolutionise alternative assets domain with its inherent advantages and bridging traditional assets with new-age DeFi pools. What are your thoughts on this space - and are there any specific RWA players from India that you would like to mention here? Foundership - Web3 & AI Accelerator VC Ram Patnaik Addishree . Sangeet Hemant Kumar Guneet Kaur Devesh Chawla Miten N Mehta

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I'm wondering how come there haven't been massive outcry / legal action against cab aggregators like #ola and #uber. It started with a trickle, now it's become a Tsunami. On a regular basis - the amount charged at completion is much higher than the amount shown while booking. The driver shows his screen (I need to collect ₹720) while my initial confirmation was at ₹572 and it SUDDENLY updates to ₹720. Zero explanations. Feels like having to pay on gun-point now. With Uber, there's at least a section where you report and it 'reviews' and 'finds' that it over-charged, and adds the difference to 'credit'. With Ola, when you report it, it 'reviews' and then 'finds' that everything is just fine, nothing can be done. No place to challenge this 'change'. Happened once, twice, now it's a trend. The average commission charged (difference between what we pay and what the provider gets) has anyways climbed from 15% to 30-40%. Bordering monopoly premium, but not illegal. But their unapproved over-charging seems just plain illegal #ripoff. Am super curious to hear people's views on this.

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A review of the last decade of Indian Maiboard #IPOs: India's public markets have seen significant IPO growth, #2024 will mostly break records with a forecast of ~98 IPOs. Founders also are curious to know more about the entire IPO game, to answer some of these, we analyzed a decade of Mainboard IPOs in India from 2015-2024. Below are the key findings in Part 1 of our analysis - Proceeds Allocation: A significant portion of IPO funds have gone towards Offer for Sale (#OFS), enhancing #liquidity for investors and founders. - IPO Expenses: IPO costs typically range from 3-8% of the offer size, with lower percentages for larger offers. - Filing Timeline: Companies take ~200 days on average to file for an IPO - Utilization of Funds: Larger offers often target acquisitions and debt repayment, while smaller firms focus on working capital and organic growth investments. The detailed post and report are available here: https://lnkd.in/dW3E2992 We welcome any thoughts or questions. Blume Ventures Karthik B. Reddy Ashish Fafadia Sanjay Nath Sajith Pai Arpit Agarwal Aria Pradhan Rohit Kaul Sarita Raichura Alok Mehta Mitul Mehta Ria Shroff Desai Somya Agrawal

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Building a Consumer Apps in India - Series 3 The below graph shows a breakdown of number of Android app releases on Google Play - launched and unpublished both! This shows the market trend of people building and takings apps seriously. Till about 2021 there was a significant increase in app count. There is a downward curve in effect from 2021, the reason being, Google's Policy Changes and post Covid, laptop penetration increased! And funny enough, it took an even deeper dip in 2024. It is the best time to build apps especially in India. What else do you infer?? Checkout snoodify (dot) com! #consumerapp #consumer #consumertech #snoodify

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{New pod 🎤} "𝐆𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 0-𝐭𝐨-1 𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐔𝐒-𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐚 𝐝𝐞𝐯 𝐭𝐨𝐨𝐥 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐩" This episode is an in-depth discussion of going 0-to-1 as a US-India dev tool startup. We cover everything from how to identify market gaps, ways to think about dev tools MVPs, leveraging the India developer market to build global products, comparing various GTM channels like Hacker News, GitHub, Reddit, LinkedIn & open-source communities, learnings from shuttling between the US and India and finally, harnessing the power of open-source. Joining me for this discussion is Pranay Prateek, co-founder of SigNoz, an open-source observability platform that is native to OpenTelemetry and provides logs, traces, and metrics in a single pane of glass. He has been a developer in the past, worked in product roles in companies like Microsoft, and is a champion of open-source. TIME STAMPS: (00:47) Introduction to Observability (04:50) Identifying market gaps in dev tools (07:43) Leveraging the India developer market to build global dev tools (12:44) Acquiring the first set of US design partners as a US-India dev tool startup (17:34) Scoping out dev tools MVPs (28:36) GTM models for open-source dev tool startups (41:34) Learnings from shuttling between the US and India as a dev tools founder (49:41) Is YC relevant and helpful for US-India dev tool founders? (54:48) Harnessing the power of open-source in a dev tools startup YouTube - https://lnkd.in/g98wXYcT Spotify - https://lnkd.in/gH9Vkxq9 Apple Podcasts - https://lnkd.in/gbc8je-j An Operator's Blog - https://lnkd.in/gEaf5sX3

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Someone from a Tier 1 Indian VC told me a couple of weeks ago that their 10-year-old fund has a total paper return (illiquid) of ~3x. That happens to be exactly the same return as the Sensex over the past decade.* And an ETF tracking the Sensex is liquid, marked to market daily, and has lower costs. VC funds raised mega-funds of $200M+ on the India story during 2010 to 2020. Most of them are now unable to deliver the promised returns to their investors, which are usually 4-6x on the total sum invested. Contrast this with disciplined domestic funds like Blume and Sauce who did not succumb to the temptation of raising mega-funds to earn more management fees - even as they grew more successful. It’s easier to return funds when they are smaller—but you have to be willing to accept lower salaries and management fees as VCs. Blume’s founder Karthik illustrates this perfectly with a graph of his salary over time below. :) * Another metric to measure returns is IRR which takes into account when the money was actually invested investments. VCs don’t take all the committed money from LPs upfront; rather it’s in installments over time.

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The Creator Economy in India has taken off big time with significant cost arbitrage and global expansion opportunities 👇🏻 We have been part of a few fund raise calls with India's fastest growing "creator economy" focused startups over the past few weeks and the cost arbitrage is just insane as startups here expand their platforms globally - A subscription pack of Rs. 29 per month in India is being successfully sold for $5 (Rs. 415) per month globally. That's 14X! Purely on the back of the 1) cost differential 2) successful global growth and 3) Building in India for the world, the Indian creator economy / platforms are the key race horses to bet on for fantastic returns.

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{An Operator's Blog - Episode 12 🎤} 𝐀𝐈 𝐀𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐋𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐬𝐜𝐚𝐩𝐞 𝐈 𝐏𝐢𝐯𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐔𝐒-𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐚 𝐒𝐚𝐚𝐒 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐩 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐠𝐞 𝐎𝐟 𝐀𝐈 This episode goes in-depth into the current state of the AI Agent landscape and how US-India SaaS founders should manage this AI transition. In the 1st half, we cover key facets of the agentic market, including horizontal and vertical use cases, how customers are adopting them, challenges in going from zero to demo to production, and what startups can do to stay relevant in this fast-evolving opportunity. In the 2nd half, we discuss how US-India SaaS startups can pivot and survive in the post-AI world, including thinking long-term while formulating AI strategy, leaning into trust with existing customers, leveraging data moats from existing product stack, iterating on AI-first business models, and finally, tips and advice for US GTM. Joining me for this discussion is Karthik Suresh, Co-founder of DoubleO.ai. Karthik's diverse experience spans building products for consumer and enterprise markets, working with early-stage startups like Craft, and established firms like Facebook. His career journey has taken him from Wall Street to Silicon Valley, and he has had the privilege of working and living across multiple continents. TIME STAMPS: (00:52) Karthik’s founder backstory - Ignition & DoubleO.ai (04:49) SaaS vs AI Agents  (08:14) Agent use cases that are working well (12:23) Challenges in getting AI from zero to demo to production (15:00) Considerations for an India-based founder starting up in AI (19:15) Does being physically present in Silicon Valley help in AI? (24:59) MVPs in the age of AI (28:46) Are AI tools going to replace technical co-founders? (31:30) [CASE STUDY #1] SaaS to AI pivot: Early traction startups ($100k-$1Mn ARR) (34:57) [CASE STUDY #2] SaaS to AI pivot: Growth stage startups ($10-50Mn ARR) (38:43) AI-first business models (42:37) US-India GTM playbooks YouTube - https://lnkd.in/g-g39Ecf Spotify - https://lnkd.in/gcTwmuT2 Apple Podcasts - https://lnkd.in/gF_hSH23 An Operator's Blog - https://lnkd.in/gqUQeb9R

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Mayank Bidawatka, Koo's co-founder, raised a $4M seed for his new consumer internet startup. Koo raised $50M+ before shutting down early this year. Most #founders would struggle to raise $0.5M at such an early stage. Koo's investors lost their shirts when it shut down (not literally but you get the gist). Then why are new investors backing a founder who lost other investors millions? Koo shut down and lost money. You might think this shows the founders were incompetent. VCs don't think like this. In the #VentureCapital industry, failure isn't bad. Sometimes, it's good. VCs look at Mayank and Koo in a different light. Here is a founder who raised $50M and scaled a consumer #technology startup to a certain level. He has the vision to build a product like Koo. He has the skills to hire and retain good people. He knows how to sell his story to investors. He understands what it takes to build tech #startups. VCs want these traits in founders. There must be different reasons for Koo's failure. IMO, it failed because it was a poor product harping on nationalism to find users. However, VCs backing Mayank think Koo failed because the Indian market wasn't ready for it or some other reason. They believe Mayank will be more successful this time because he knows how to build and scale consumer technology companies. VCs find this story of one billion users and a dollar opportunity credible because it comes from a celebrated founder. If it were you and me with the same product or vision, they wouldn't be so easy with capital.

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Day 856 India’s election results show that different sections voted for different reasons that are close to their heart. However, Web3 was never a point of discussion in the parties agenda items. India’s Web3 ecosystem will grow from 30M to 100M in the next few years. We should ensure we start discussing Web3 on a larger scale. We start the work now so that by next elections, I would consider it a win if we’re able to have ‘India’s Web3 growth’ as one of the agenda items from various candidates. Let’s work towards making India a dominant force in Web3 🚀 #BuildWeb3

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Some VCs propagate the idea that good IITians fresh out of college earns INR 80L/yr in India (meaning pays yearly income tax on 80L). In the context of freshers, They want to talk about the growth of the best in the scale of decades but not the growth of the median IITian in similar time scale because median IITian doesn't align with their dreamy beliefs. Now the number itself is almost unbelievable and unlikely but I am open to learning more. Even if its true only a handful of them will get it. I would also love to know which company is paying someone fresh out of college ~7 lacs monthly (in India)? Reality check needed in setting expectations. What does anyone gain by misrepresenting reality.

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From Code to Cosmos: India’s Deep Tech Surge Seed investments in India’s deep tech sector have surged 5.3X in 8 years—but the average seed cheque is still 50% lower than global standards. The potential is immense, and the time to act is now. Key drivers of this revolution: ▪️ Green Hydrogen: Leading the global energy transition ▪️ Generative AI: Transforming industries ▪️ Space Tech: Startups like AgniKul Cosmos targeting 10% of the $700B space economy ▪️ Biotechnology: Addressing global challenges What’s fueling growth? ▪️ IITs & IISc turning research into commercial tech ▪️ Government initiatives like the National Deep Tech Startup Policy ▪️ Private capital backing innovations in energy, healthcare, and advanced manufacturing Challenges remain—capital intensity, market adoption risks—but with R&D investment, non-dilutive funding models, and a supportive ecosystem, India is set to lead the global deep tech revolution. #innovation #deeptech #news #revolution

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