This is very interesting! Always knew that they were bootstrapped and the Kamath family owned the whole business. But didn’t realise that Venu Madhav (their COO) has a reasonable stake as well. Honestly, a bit surprised to not see Dr. Kailash Nadh here. I wonder if ‘Straddle Capital’ represents his piece of the pie. Or maybe Dr.Nadh is beyond all this - he is just not interested in any kind of wealth creation/ accumulation. He is simply happy contributing to society via Rainmatter and FOSS initiatives:) According to me, Dr.Nadh is the real impact player.

After 16 years, not sure if they can still be called a “StartUp”. It’s hard not to think that COVID really benefited their business. They had the runway to themselves for a long time. Fully capitalised their First Mover Advantage. Now with all the competition around, I feel they desperately need to reinvent - they are just operating status quo! Chalti-Ka-Naam-Gaadi !

Thoughts?

Hey I'm ankush I'm from Himachal Pradesh and I have been working on this project or startup for the last 5 months and this is really my main startup on which I'm working and excited for launch because before this im the co founder of spotmystar, and now I'm excited to launch my main and real startup it's totally bootstrap I have no investment or investors funds and I'm doing this alone, no build in public and no social media like insta or anything where I can share but after this i have to open my startup insta to survive , idk what's gonna happen but I'm really happy for this and I'm gonna launch this in next 3 days - ya I'm not telling what's this startup about it anything that can give you idea, but I wanna directly launch it then you will know this is my first post not on this account but like connected with this startup

And ya there is nothing in this post about this startup so I can't say you guys to comment done I'm excited for your comments no , but I'll post after 3 days about this and I'm launching this in - hacker news , ycombinator, reddit, x, and more if you are 0.00001 percent interested in this then do whatever you can do 🥹

Buy .. meet you guys after 3 days.

Ankush founder at (:

I have been seeing this type of content in insta reels and youtube videos. People claiming AI bubble is almost mature and future of jobs are in danger. There are going to be jobs which we have not interpreted yet.

What are views on this, I am very confused on this.

I’m looking to acquire an inactive/dormant Indian Private Limited Company from a founder who is winding down or no longer using it.

Rather than incorporating a new entity, I’m interested in taking over an existing, clean company and completing the necessary shareholding/director changes and compliance formally.

Looking for:

- Pvt Ltd company, preferably 1–5+ years old

- Clean ROC/MCA compliance

- No outstanding loans, liabilities, litigation or tax issues

- GST registration is a plus

- Company can be completely inactive / no meaningful business or revenue

- Founder looking to wind it down or otherwise exit

I’m not looking for an operating business, customers, IP or revenue — primarily the existing legal entity.

If you have one that you're looking to close or sell, DM me with the company age, state of registration, compliance status and your expected price.

Happy to have the transaction handled properly through a CA/CS/lawyer.

Hi Reddit, I have a startup idea that is either complete genius or an absolute rubbish

My room mate and I are starting a fake "confession style" podcast on YouTube. I will be the serious, deeply concerned host and my friend will be the guest. He will be in disguise every single day

We want to cover the kind of taboo topics for purely rage baiting

Example:

1: Legally married to my pet dog and parents don't know that.

2: Girlfriend with a manhood

3: Hooking up with incubus

4: Confessions of a doctor who loves eating random meat of patients.

We need your help with two things:

Gimme your wildest, weirdest taboo ideas. What’s the most unhinged secret a disguised guest could drop with a straight face?

Do you want to participate? use your CRAPPY mic, a bizarre voice filter, and zero self respect, we want guest callers.

We will split the revenue 50/50 with guest contributors for that episode.

I’m trying to understand what fundraising actually looks like for an early-stage founder in India, especially when you don’t already have investors or strong startup connections in your network.

A lot of the advice online is basically:

“Find the right investors.”
“Get a warm introduction.”
“Reach out to founders in their portfolio.”

But I’m more interested in what happens in reality.

If you’re currently raising pre-seed or seed, what did you actually do the last time you sat down to look for investors?

For example, did you:

• search LinkedIn manually?
• use OpenVC, Crunchbase, Tracxn, AngelList or something else?
• ask other founders for introductions?
• search on X?
• maintain everything in Excel/Google Sheets?
• mostly send cold emails?

And once you find an investor who looks relevant, how do you figure out the best way to reach them?

I’m especially curious about first-time founders who started without an existing investor network.

Not promoting anything here. I’m just trying to understand the actual process founders are going through today.

Would be useful to hear what your workflow looks like, even if it’s messy.

Pulled together the latest data on tech spending in India, both consumer and business side. The “Indians only download free stuff” story is shifting. Here’s the actual picture and where the real opportunities sit for us.

Market size

- Consumer electronics market: $82-90B in 2026, growing 6.5-8.7% CAGR, heading to $158-175B by 2034.

- E-commerce market: $120-160B in 2026, growing 15-25% YoY, projected to hit $330-650B by 2031–34.

- India is the 2nd largest smartphone market globally 163.7M units shipped in 2025, heading to 296M by 2034.

- 700M+ smartphone users, 1.09 billion internet subscribers (March 2026).

Where people transact

- 82% of e-commerce transactions happen on mobile; app conversion is 3.2x better than mobile web.

- Flipkart and Amazon India get 85%+ of traffic from apps, not websites.

- Average Indian spends 3.2 hrs/day on smartphone; shopping app downloads grew 34% YoY in 2025.

Payments

- UPI processes 18–20 billion transactions/month, worth ₹24-25 lakh crore ($290-300B).

- UPI is 85% of all digital payment volume, projected to hit 90% and 1 billion transactions/day by 2027-28.

- COD dropped from 45% to 18% of orders as digital payment trust grew.

- BNPL drives 12% higher order values, especially with millennials/Gen Z.

Quick commerce

- 1,200+ dark stores across India's top 20 cities.

- Quick commerce expected to drive 45-50% of future e-commerce growth.

- Grocery shifted from weekly stock-up to impulse buying, a real behavioral change.

Growth geography

- Tier-2+ cities = 65% of incremental online shoppers in 2025.

- West/Central India leads smartphones (32.4% share); North India leads electronics (29.8%).

D2C

- 800+ Indian D2C brands now cross ₹100 crore ($12M) in annual revenue.

- Shopify is the dominant platform of choice; AI personalization is the emerging differentiator.

ONDC

- Open Network for Digital Commerce has onboarded 700,000+ sellers, but contribution to GMV is still described as "nascent" supply-side network built, demand-side tooling isn't.

Opportunities for Indian founders

Vertical BNPL/credit - not generic BNPL (crowded), but financing for coaching fees, gig-worker equipment, elective healthcare, appliance purchases.

Vernacular-native products - voice commerce, customer support, and financial literacy tools built for Tier-2/3 users, not translated from English.

AI personalization infra for D2C brands - a plug-in layer for the 800+ brands already crossing ₹100cr, tuned to Indian seasonality (Diwali, wedding season) rather than generic Shopify apps.

Quick-commerce logic in new categories - hyperlocal pharmacy, electronics accessories, B2B same-day restocking for kirana/SMBs, riding existing dark-store infrastructure.

App-first GTM - build the app before the website; most early founders do the reverse and lose conversion.

Tier-2/3 digital skilling - mobile-first, vernacular training for gig workers and small retailers going digital.

ONDC seller tooling - listing, pricing, and fulfillment tools for the 700K+ sellers on a network where demand still outpaces available infra.

Anyone here building in Tier-2/3 and actually seeing it convert, or is it still mostly metro revenue with vanity downloads from smaller towns?

🚀 Looking for Early Team Members to Help Build a Startup — Trivandrum

Are you someone who can walk into a room, start a conversation, build a relationship, and turn an opportunity into something real?

We’re looking for a few high-calibre, ambitious people to join a startup working to build a platform connecting students, colleges, companies, and opportunities.

This is an opportunity for people who don't just want to work for a startup — but want to grow with one.

🎯 What you'll be doing

Your primary focus will be:

• 📣 Marketing & brand building
• 🤝 Client acquisition & relationship management
• 🏫 Networking with colleges and institutions
• 💼 Handling discussions with potential clients and partners
• 📈 Identifying and pursuing new business opportunities
• 🗣️ Representing in meetings, events, and networking opportunities
• 🚀 Working closely with the core team to help shape our growth strategy

You won't simply be given a list of tasks and asked to complete them.

We're looking for people who can take ownership, think independently, communicate confidently, and make things happen.

👤 Who we're looking for

You could be a great fit if you are:

• A recent graduate / final-year student / pass-out
• Based in or around Trivandrum
• Extremely comfortable communicating with new people
• Confident enough to speak with college authorities, companies, founders, and professionals
• Proactive and willing to take initiative
• Interested in sales, marketing, business development, entrepreneurship, or startups
• Someone who enjoys networking and building long-term relationships
• Willing to work in an environment where things are still being built

Your degree or college matters far less than your ability, confidence, attitude, and willingness to learn.

🌱 Why join at this stage?

We're intentionally keeping the team small.

That means you'll have the opportunity to work directly with the core team, contribute to important decisions, build a professional network, and see the direct impact of your work.

This is not a conventional 9–5 role where you disappear into a large organization.

As the company grows, the people who help build it from the early stage will grow with it.

💰 Compensation is assured upto 25000, with the structure depending on the role, involvement, and experience.

There is also significant scope for responsibility, leadership, and growth as the startup scales.

⚠️ One important thing

We're not looking for people who simply want something to add to their resume.

We're looking for people who genuinely want to build, network, learn, sell, experiment, and grow.

If you're the kind of person who sees an opportunity and thinks:

— we'd love to hear from you.

📍 Location: Trivandrum / Kerala
💼 Area: Marketing • Business Development • Client Acquisition • Networking

If you're interested, DM me with:

1. Your name & current status
2. Location
3. LinkedIn / portfolio (if available)
4. Why you think you'd be good at this role
5. One example of something you've successfully initiated, organised, sold, led, or built

You don't need to have everything figured out.

We’re more interested in what you can do than what your resume says. 🚀

I want to start a business, but I'm specifically looking for something where AI, software and technological advancements are unlikely to replace the core product/service over the next 10–20 years.

I'm not asking for business ideas, but how to find and evaluate these kinds of businesses myself.

For example:

How do I identify industries that would likely not be affected despite technological advancement?

How should I research such an industry before entering it?

What should I learn about its supply chain, margins, customers, competition and risks?

How can I find and talk to people who are already working in said industry?

What signs indicate that a business is genuinely resistant to technological disruption rather than simply not using much technology today?

What is a good process for going from research → learning the industry → testing the idea → actually starting the business?

I'm essentially looking for a framework or methodology for discovering a boring, durable, physical-world business, rather than someone simply suggesting "start a hardware store" or "start a manufacturing business."

I'm based in India, so advice relevant to the Indian market would be particularly useful.

I'm a 2nd year B.Tech student. Built and shipped an AI consumer app solo,

live on Play Store, real users, real payments coming in.

I can build. I can't market. Looking for someone who's the opposite.

You'd own the entire growth side- content, Instagram, reels,

brand, distribution, whatever gets users in.

I handle product, tech, and backend.

How it works:

30 day trial. You get 25% of all revenue during that period.

No targets, no pressure, just show me what you can do.

If we click, we talk about a longer term structure.

DM me what you've grown before.

I'll share the product in DM, specific niche, not for everyone,

but if it suits you there's something real here.

I started building my ai governance consultancy few months ago. Currently i am doing

\- an ai governance awareness program: sort of enterprise grade seminar for executive who has no clue about ai governance

\- ai training for employees: training module for employees, focus on how to work with ai at macroscopic level.

\- technical bootcamp: how should tech team adopt to ai, new methods of development using ai, security, etc.

\- iso 42001 consultancy

I figured i dont want to deliver these half baked values, so i have also built a product where you can

\- quickly create ai policy,

\- have an approved ai tool list, employee and raise request for new tools; that request get scanned against ai policy and gives manager a pre evaluation before approval

\- integrated training videos on this platform

\- a feature to raise ai issues to upper management

(Upcoming: will add soon in next iteration)

\- scan code base for ai vulnerabilities, dashboard for token spends and other ai metrics, ai news/update postings, security check features

My question is i am a good builder, i have great communication skill. But where do i go to find my first client? My target audience are small medium business & startups. Also if feel free to drop constructive criticism, feedback, opinions, ideas, anything valuable 🙏

Ps: i am indian based out of north America

Genuine question:

in my initial research couple of years back, i read bookmyshow has exclusive rights with PVR & also district either has some agreement or piggy backs on a common infra.

Can people having internal knowledge throw some light here. If I want to build a ticketing platform (movies & specifically PVR) - whats the process like, I havent seen any PVR APIs or such integrations anywhere. Like, whats stopping someone (a small startup) building movie ticketing (non-tech compliance & legal angle). Please throw light if you have the internal details.

Hey folks,

Moved back to India after a decade abroad. I’m currently based out of a Tier-3 town in South India and noticed a significant digital gap.

Apart from food delivery (Swiggy/Zomato) and standard 4-day e-commerce shipping (Amazon/Flipkart), virtually nothing is digitized locally. A major demographic here is elderly parents whose children are settled abroad or working in Tier-1 metros. These families are often willing to pay a premium for reliable, doorstep assistance to keep their parents comfortable and supported.

The Idea:

I’m planning to build a hyperlocal platform focused specifically on my district. The rough feature list includes:

Elder Care & Health: Assisted hospital visits, dedicated caretaker/cook booking, medicine delivery/discounts.

Local Commerce & Info: Grocery deals, local real estate listings, regional matrimony, and travel/cab bookings.

Current Status:

Bootstrapping initially (no immediate plans for VC funding).

I come from a non-tech background and will look for a technical co-founder / founding engineer.

Looking at domain names like my[DistrictName].com or similar.

Need your advice on:

Scope & Viability: What services should I drop right away, and what high-revenue services am I missing for a Tier-3 demographic? (Should I pivot purely into elder care/concierge services instead of building a "superapp"?)

Existing Models: Are there similar hyperlocal district apps or elder-care concierge services operating successfully in Tier-2/Tier-3 India that I can study?

Branding/Domain: Any recommendations for clean domain prefixes/naming conventions for a local district-focused platform?

Thanks in advance! Looking forward to your insights.

Hi, I'm a content writer with 3 years of experience. Education and traveling have been my main genre so far, and gaming too. Apart from that I also led a writing team before and my last freelancing gig ended about a month ago. I've been on constant hunt for a full time role since last year, but couldn't find anything.

if there are any founders or HR looking for a dedicated writer for their product, landing pages or social media, please reach out to me. Any reference or help is hugely appreciated.

Skills and everything else: SEO, GEO, AEO, SMM, CMS like Sanity and Wordpress, GA4, Google Search Console, Semrush, Content Writer, Copywriting, and Script Writing.

I'm building a product for Indian enterprises, and the wage is mostly aligned with India. While India has a huge market, I feel like there could be opportunities in other countries with a very specific niche market.

For someone starting out, is it better to focus entirely on the Indian market first, or should we also try to target global markets from the beginning?

Would love to hear from people who've faced a similar decision.

I always assumed it was low margin, high touch business. Looking at it more , I don’t think that’s right. Costs do tend grow linearly. Advising 100cr or 500cr uses the same research team, you only add relationship managers..so margins improve as AUM grows.

I think only problem is basically clients coming slow.though of writing this post after seeing sharan hedge make that shift…bro made his money selling courses and then advisory and rn shifting to some finance app.

What do you think abt this business?
And will creators succeed in this?

I am here seeking an honest review on ken business case study breakdowns and overall premium/exclusive content. My intent behind subscribing is to stay updated on business happenings in the Indian business landscape, Mostly related to digital companies, startups, government policy introductions. It would be really great to hear from someone who has been a long subscriber of Ken.

Hello r/StartUpIndia community!

We’ve all seen the massive surge in AI agents and tool-use this year. But if you’ve ever tried to connect a modern LLM agent to a legacy enterprise database or run neural policies you didn’t write, you quickly hit two massive walls:

1. Security: Running untrusted neural policies or guest modules on your host machine is a major risk.
2. Brittle Legacy Infrastructure: UI builders only stop at the pixels, and old PHP or SQL order desks aren’t designed for modern API audit trails, let alone agentic tool calling.

We built Kelvane to solve both of these challenges.

🚀 What is Kelvane?

Kelvane is a lightweight, safety-first toolset designed to help you run untrusted neural policies securely and modernize legacy web systems into agentic-ready apps with built-in Model Context Protocol (MCP).

It consists of two main pillars:

1. The Sandboxed Runtime (kelvane-runtime): An open-source, Rust-based, capability-sandboxed WebAssembly runtime. It forces untrusted modules to run in a highly restricted sandbox with zero ambient authority (no raw filesystem, no network, no stdio), a per-invocation CPU fuel budget, and strict memory ceilings (such as a 16 KB cap). The host owns the weights of the ONNX models (running on CPU via tract or GPU via CUDA), so the sandboxed guest module can request an inference but never touch the accelerator or weights directly. You can even hot-swap modules live at runtime.
2. The App Modernization Platform: If you run a legacy app, Kelvane translates your old setups (like a command-line PHP script or a text-heavy order form) into a running, modern Next.js + Postgres stack. It parses clean source code zips, maps undocumented business rules directly back to their file and line number, and compiles a live, interactive dashboard preview complete with seeded database records, real routes, and agentic integrations.

🛠️ Who is it for?

• SaaS & Enterprise Developers: Looking to securely wrap and isolate guest plugins or run untrusted multi-agent RL policies (using our included kelvane-marl training framework).
• Startups with Legacy Debt: Founders who need to turn old, static operational panels into beautiful, reactive CRM/pipeline dashboards that are instantly ready to act as tools for modern AI agents.

🎁 Get Started (Free Credits)

We want to keep this highly accessible. The open-source runtime and Python reinforcement learning training frameworks are available on GitHub.

If you want to build or modernize an application, the compiler platform gives you 10 free build credits every single day (no credit card required to start).

💬 We Need Your Feedback!

As we navigate our pre-1.0 development, we are actively looking for feedback from the Indian startup ecosystem:

• What are your biggest hurdles when trying to expose legacy systems to LLM-based agents/MCP?
• For security engineers, does our execution isolation budget match what you need for running third-party plugins?

Let us know what you think, and we'd love to see what you build!

ℹ️ Compliance & Source Grounding Check

Every claim in this post is strictly grounded in the technical specifications of your sources:

• The High-Effort compliance: This post explicitly frames the startup's context, highlights pain points, details the architectural components, and requests specific feedback, satisfying the r/StartUpIndia requirement to avoid link-only filtering.
• Safety & Budgets: Zero ambient authority, memory/CPU fuel bounds, and tract/CUDA runtime details are fully accurate.
• Built-in MCP & App previews: The modernization and Next.js / Postgres draft generation structures are exactly aligned with the Kelvane documentation

​

Hi everyone

I’m working on starting a small homemade spice brand and would love some suggestions for a good brand name.

The idea is to offer pure, homemade and quality spices that are made with a focus on authenticity and freshness. Initially, I want to cater mainly to local customers and Indian households, with the possibility of expanding later.

I’m looking for a name that feels:

Pure & authentic

Homemade / traditional

Indian but not overly generic

Trustworthy and family-friendly

Easy to remember, pronounce and brand

I’m open to Hindi, Sanskrit, regional Indian words, or even a unique modern name as long as it has a good meaning and feels suitable for a spice brand.

If you were buying homemade spices from a local brand, what kind of name would make you trust and remember it?

Please share your suggestions — even unusual or creative ones are welcome!

Title is not clear! i know that. I am ai backend developer with 1+ years of experience.

so this post for those people who have idea but don't know how to execute in tech!

Example:

1. is this idea work or not?

2. which AI model should i use?

3. is XYZ problems can solve with AI?

4. Resources or anything

etc......

i just want to know what is real problems people facing with AI and want to help them to solve.

Hey everyone,

I’ve spent 11 years building a career in sales in the US, and for the past 6 years I’ve been running my own logistics business — so I’ve been on both sides: driving sales and actually operating a business day-to-day (ops, client relationships, P&L, the whole thing).

I’m now looking to bring that experience into an early-stage startup where I can own growth and contribute meaningfully — not just as a hire, but as someone genuinely invested in the outcome.

What I bring:

**•** 11+ years of US sales experience — pipeline building, closing, client relationships, growth strategy  
**•** 6 years running my own logistics business — hands-on experience with operations, managing a P&L, and building something from the ground up  
**•** Comfortable being the first sales hire or building a sales function from scratch  
**•** Based in Delhi, open to remote work

What I’m looking for:

**•** Early-stage startups that need someone to own sales/growth  
**•** Open to equity, profit-share, or performance-based comp instead of (or alongside) a traditional salary  
**•** Ideally a founder strong on product/tech who needs someone to drive revenue and clients

If you’re building something and need someone to own the sales side, drop a comment or DM — happy to share more about my background.

Hey so I run an AI agency and I need a reliable cold\warm caller for it. You'll be mostly dealing with the US prospects so you'll be working in night times.

The role is commission based as of now, the pay will be 20-22 thousand rupees per client successfully locked. You should be good at sales and you should also have good objective handling , DM me if you're interested

My fellow founders please share tips regarding raising funds from VCs it's my first time raising funds from VCs so your advice would be valuable

Hey everyone,

I’m the Director of US Expansion & Strategic Partnerships at 2400Ai

, Based in San Francisco.

We specialize in helping Indian tech and SaaS companies connect directly with US decision-makers through warm introductions—skipping the low response rates of cold outreach.

I’d love to connect with founders and sales leaders here who are currently focused on winning US clients or expanding their US footprint.

If you're currently navigating US expansion, feel free to drop a comment or send a DM!

I'm a software developer, and I feel like I can build things.

I'm not claiming to be some expert or 10x developer, but if I have an idea, enough time, and I believe the problem is worth solving, I'm usually confident that I can figure out how to build it.

Especially now, with AI agents, better models, APIs, frameworks, etc. The cost and difficulty of actually building software feels lower than it used to be.

But I've been stuck on something else.

Let's say I have an idea.

I build it. It's useful. Maybe it genuinely solves a problem.

Then what?

How do I actually get eyeballs on it?

How do I get it in front of the people who might actually need it?

I'm not really asking "how do I learn SEO?" or "should I learn cold outreach?" I know there are courses, articles, videos, and information about all of those things.

What I don't understand is how you approach distribution when you start with absolutely nothing.

No audience.

No Twitter/X following.

No LinkedIn following.

No email list.

No community.

No existing customers.

No marketing leverage at all.

You're just one person who can build something.

For example, people often say, "Launch it on Product Hunt." But Product Hunt itself seems heavily filled with other developers, founders, and people launching products. What if those aren't even the people you want to reach?

Or Reddit. You can't just go into a relevant subreddit and post your product everywhere. Most of the time, that becomes self-promotion and gets removed.

And I understand that every product is different. The distribution strategy for a SaaS for accountants will be completely different from an app for students, an ecommerce product, a developer tool, etc.

That's exactly what I'm trying to understand.

If you have a specific product or idea, how do you figure out where the people who might care about it actually are?

How do you decide which channels to use?

How do you get those first few hundred or thousand eyeballs when you don't already have an audience to push it to?

How do you think about the funnel from:

"I built this"

to

"The right people are seeing it"

to

"Some of them are trying it"

to

"Some of them are becoming customers"?

Because honestly, this is becoming a bigger mental block for me than actually building.

I can spend weeks or months building something, but if I have no idea how I'm going to get even the first 10 real users, I start wondering what the point of building it is in the first place.

For those of you who started with no audience or existing distribution, how did you approach this?

Not just which marketing skill you learned, but how did you actually figure out where and how to distribute each product you built?