Nitesh Singh

{New pod 🎤} "𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗣𝗠 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝗜𝗜 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗦𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗠𝗲𝗿𝗰𝘂𝗿𝘆" Was super-fun to record this with Rohini Pandhi - Product Lead at Mercury and ex-Product Lead at Square/ Block. The first half of this episode covers best practices and frameworks used by best-in-class fintech companies like Square and Mercury to build products and drive go-to-market.  In the second half, we discuss insights and learnings for PM career planning in fintech, including ways to prepare for the potential impact of AI on product jobs. Some great learnings here for fintech product leaders, young PMs, and founders. Let me know what you think! Spotify - https://lnkd.in/dJQMM9sB Apple Podcasts - https://lnkd.in/dyDaCDk7 An Operator's Blog - https://lnkd.in/dREtbx9n

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Who would invest in founders who have wasted $50M? Koo, an Indian microblogging platform, recently shut shop after raising $50M in capital. Everyone has their views on why Koo failed. IMO, the biggest reason behind its failure was a lack of PMF (Product Market Fit). Koo spent much money on marketing and didn’t build a product people wanted. It kept harping on nationalism, a Twitter for Indians, made in #India. This approach failed. However, this doesn’t mean Koo’s founders aren’t smart or intelligent. I wrote in an earlier post that we shouldn’t be surprised if Koo’s founders raise fresh capital for a new startup. To many of us, this might seem grossly unfair. Millions of smart, hardworking founders are struggling to raise capital while investors are backing failed founders who have wasted millions of dollars. How is that fair? It confirms the widely held belief that the #venturecapital industry is broken and corrupt where a few people with the right connections get all the capital while others don’t see a dime. It shows that the VC industry is a closed group, a cabal where who you know matters more than anything. While these are just complaints, most people who criticise VCs don’t understand how startup investing works. VCs welcome failures. They embrace them because they know failures are inevitable. When VCs invest in 20 #startups, they know 15 will fail. The goal is to invest in startups that can give them a 100x return. Failures are part of the game. They are unavoidable. The aim is to back founders who can build such 100x return companies. Hence, failures are not looked down upon in the VC industry. It’s similar to the American culture where society appreciates the people who take risks, and it easily accepts personal bankruptcies that result from this risk-taking approach. There’s no taboo in failing in the USA and the VC industry. I’m sure Koo’s founders have learnt from their mistakes. It’s an expensive mistake and not everyone is so lucky to have this luxury to spend $50M on their education. ;) However, most VCs will back Koo’s #founders because these founders know how to raise capital and they know how to not build and scale tech companies. Their past failures have improved their chances of future success. In the VC industry, Failure is Good.

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Thanks Bismah and Inc42 Media for the insightful coverage and deep dive into the vital role of operator VCs! Bismah's thoughtful analysis underscores the growing need for operator VCs in today's startup landscape. As an operator VC , I've witnessed firsthand how founders increasingly value more than just capital. They seek partners who bring operational expertise, strategic guidance, and an extensive network to the table. These elements are crucial for driving sustainable growth and navigating the complexities of scaling a business. At GrowthCap Ventures , we understand the unique challenges faced by early-stage startups, which is why we prioritize offering not just funding, but also hands-on support and access to our extensive network. Together, we're empowering founders to realize their vision and build transformative businesses. #OperatorVC #StartupEcosystem #Gratitude

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Zepto announces its $ 665M Series F financing at a $3.6bn valuation yesterday. They started as KiranaKart (part of YC's W21 program) & re-branded to Zepto; the firm has defied all funding winters with crazy momentum ⤵️ June '20: $50K Contrary Capital fellowship Nov '20: $125K YC W21 program  Jan '21: $700K Seed round Oct '21: $60M Series A/B round Dec'21: $100M Series C round May '22: $200M Series D round Aug '23: $200M Series E round Zepto's investors include Y Combinator, Nexus Venture Partners, StepStone Group and even Glade Brook Capital (former investor in Zomato). 📈 And, their metrics in the last few months have been astounding: (1) ~4.5M (i.e. 45 Lakh) Zepto Pass subscribers in 3 months - Initially this was free, then they began charging > ₹99 per month (2) 75% of ~350 dark stores are EBITDA positive - Time to EBITDA breakeven per store is down from 23 months to 6 months (3) ~28% market share in Quick Comm - Impressive given they are an independent company (versus Instamart or Blinkit) ✅ And, Zepto is just getting started:  (a) Entry in non-metro cities next (b) Entry into private label (Zepto Cafe & Meats) (c) Going to x2 the number of dark stores ➡ What I've seen lately in the key metro cities: There is a shift from e-comm to QC. I think it is only going to accelerate as QC co's bring in more categories & tap into long tail SKUs via larger warehouses.. Product searches first moved from Google to Amazon, now they may move from Amazon to Zepto et al. incredible to see how the Power Law plays out - these folks are going to change Commerce in India. Congratulations Aadit, Kaivalya + team Zepto! #startups #india #venturecapital

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Invested 57 Lakhs ($87,700) in 2015 and Exited with Rs.111 Crores ($15 million) in 2024, with <200x returns, Snapdeal Founders knows the importance of a well-executed exit strategy. A solid exit strategy is as crucial to a startup's journey as its initial business plan. The recent exit of Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal from Urban Company is a perfect example. Having a solid exit strategy is as important as having a growth strategy. Here's why: 👉It provides a clear roadmap for the future. 👉It prepares businesses for uncertainties. 👉It reduces the risk of financial losses. 👉It assures investors of their returns. For investors, an exit strategy is their ticket to turning investments into returns. It's a crucial part of their decision-making process, impacting - Where, when, and how much they invest.💵 3 principles that guide an exit strategy are: 📌Clarity about expected timeline & the type of exit you aim for. Eg: merger,  IPO, etc. 📌Exit strategy should be flexible enough to adapt to changes in market conditions.  📌 Exit might take longer than expected, but the returns can be worth the wait. Here’s my analysis of this exit strategy. - Timing the exit at the right market conditions can maximize returns. - Patience in waiting for the right exit opportunity can lead to significantly higher returns. - A well-planned exit strategy provides a clear path to financial success. What’s your take on the returns made by Snapdeal founders? Source: Economic Times

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India is at cusp IMO when it comes to consumer startups. 1. Depending on category almost 4-10x of current customer base will become "first time" customers over the next 5-7 years. thats the sheer size of the market. 2. Many categories will continue to be massive and fragmented - this means even a sub 5% market share is a couple of thousand crore opportunity. 3. With every passing year - you will have 2-3x more customers who have already brought your product/service and your repeat/retention is key if you are able to have high repeat/retention cohorts then you can continue to acquire customers at a higher CAC cos your blended CAC will be good. This means your competition will be at a disadvantage for real and it wont be a function of who has the maximum cash in the bank! If you are starting up in the consumer sector, your customer service is the biggest moat. For us at PYT - Unsolicited positive feedback (UPF) like these are the true measure of how things are. I strongly believe that if you delight customers, they do take time to call it out. The repeat/referral of such mentions are beyond any attribution, measure :) The key is to keep raising the bar and fixing the gaps. Thats what keeps us awake at night at Pickyourtrail.

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Building Consumer Apps in India - Series 1 Currently there are about 17L apps on Playstore out of which, 13.83L do not have any rating, not even from friends and family. You can consider them to be not so serious about pushing the app. If you care about your app, you are already ahead of 77% of the apps. Then comes the apps with rating less than 3.5 which shows your tech team is not actively debugging or your app is really short lived and has no consumer utility. If you stay consistent and do even bit of user research prior to build, you would be ahead of another 1.5L apps. Staying ahead of 86% apps. The real struggle for power happens between the remaining 2.5L apps. Considering the current scenario, about 1.6% of apps are social media and 4% are shopping apps and since we are building in the intersection of them, we are head-on with 14000 apps. This is where geography and other factors come in to support, and you finally have to fight against 5% of 14000 apps, ie. you effectively are competing against 700 apps to be the best amongst them. Now comes real product play. What do you think is the reason most apps fail? (Consumer Apps) #consumerapps #koo #product #appstore #playstore #developers #apps #shopping #socialmedia #social

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The Indian Gen AI prosumer, consumer landscape still remains early – Companies have hit power users but are subscale OR have low % of paying users  • Companies do not have enough cohort level data to indicate product love  • Most cos who have managed to cross few hundred thousand users (MAU) are building their US GTM machine  • They have a rudimentary hallucination check AND a rudimentary RLHF in place We at Chiratae ventures are keen to look at – 1) Vernacular AI assistants - Sarvam, Krutrim are foundational model (Sarvam – OpenHathi) based general intelligence assistants very similar to Anthromorphic or Poe, but contextualized to India. They have raised significant capital, but the space remains open still. 2) Vernacular AI search – We do not have a Perplexity, Liner for the Indian vernacular. This is a potential whitespace. We will look for a solid team, with a solid product roadmap. Product risk mitigation playbooks are being built out by investors as we speak  Some companies like Two.ai are building both assistants as well as AI enabled search platforms. 3) Co-pilots for Professional services with pre-existing spend pools which can be delivered digitally – AI generated influencers, AI based gaming, digital professionals/copilots - legal professionals, counsellors/therapists, accountants Please write in to sarthak@chiratae.com if you feel there is something you would like to discuss. If there are products or companies we should look at, please tag them in the chat below Chiratae Ventures Sudhir Sethi TCM Sundaram Ranjith Menon Venkatesh Peddi Anoop N Mandeep Julka, CFA Kailashnath M S, CFA Tanvi Dubey #GenerativeAI #Consumer #SaaS #Technology

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Can technical founders become effective CEOs? Srinath Sridhar knew he needed to step out of his comfort zone when he founded Regie.ai four years ago. Now he and cofounder Matt Millen have raised more than $20 million and landed on G2’s list of fastest-growing software products of 2024. My full conversation with Sri is in the comments.

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How do people see founders from IIT? 1. Raises investment People: "It's easy to raise money when you are from IIT" 2. Burns money People: "Investors should look beyond IIT's founders. Founders from non-IIT/IIM backgrounds would better utilise the money." 3. Build a successful company/unicorn People: "Valuation is still high. It won't sustain and will fail" 4. Shuts down after raising money People: "I told you it won't work" Meanwhile, Founders, the real ones, don't care whether they are from IIT/IIM. They keep building, keep pushing, and keep changing the world. ******* Follow Shubham Bansal for unfiltered life stories and learnings.

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𝟗𝟗.𝟓% 𝐨𝐟 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐬 𝐟𝐚𝐢𝐥 Here is an opportunity to learn from the founders of the top 1% which didn’t. We are organising a highly curated event where the founders of Sharechat, Apps for Bharat and Elo Elo will be having a focused discussion on ‘Building Consumer Tech for India’ Building for India is difficult- most apps are far from India’s realities. For example, they fail to optimise for low-bandwidth scenarios and lower-end devices to cater to a broader audience. This is important because 88% of users stop using or delete apps because of performance issues. 𝐈𝐧 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧, 𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐨𝐠𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐨 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐬: 1. Successful strategies for user acquisition, retention and monetization. 2. Understanding your target audience and building a strong brand in India.  3. How companies are leveraging AI/ML to understand consumer behaviour and improve personalization. 𝐅𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐚 𝐟𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞, 𝐰𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: - Expected traction at each stage of fundraising. - Key things investors look for in a deck - Unique Insights from successful and unsuccessful investments - Challenges a founder can face during a round and the potential impact of that on your day-to-day operations. So, if you are building in the consumer tech space in India, I would love to see you in Bangalore at the event. The link to apply/sign up is in the comments below. Saurabh Pandey , Prashant Sachan , Farid Ahsan Kushal Bhagia, Simran Patel, Ansh Pratap Singh #founders #startups

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How to check if your D2C brand is making the right money decision? Ask yourself these 5 questions. In my 6+ years of experience, I've helped D2C brands become more data-driven and better manage their finances. Through all my projects, similar patterns emerged. Those patterns led to the birth of the "Optimizator" framework. For simplicity, it can be reduced to 5 main questions (in order): 1. Do you trust your numbers? 2. Do you understand your numbers? 3. Do you test your numbers? 4. Do you action your numbers? 5. Do you monitor your numbers? Every question directly influences the next one. Every next question renders the previous one useful. They are all interdependent. Here's what each of them means: TRUSTING NUMBERS Trust = ensuring accuracy, relevancy, and timeliness If your numbers lack all, you can't trust them. Without trust, your understanding of the numbers will suffer. SOLUTION: Implement proper accounting and data management procedures. UNDERSTANDING NUMBERS Understanding = looking underneath the surface If you don't utilize and optimize systems to help interpret your numbers, you will be stuck with surface-level insights. Without understanding, your testing and action will suffer. SOLUTION: Implement a proper "system stack" that delivers deep insights on demand. TESTING NUMBERS Testing = evaluating probable outcomes If you don't test your numbers in various cases, you expose yourself to downside risk. Without testing, your action will suffer. There are no certainties - only probabilities. SOLUTION: Implement financial modeling, forecasting, and scenario analysis to evaluate the range of values for a target variable. ACTIONING NUMBERS Action = laying a roadmap for execution If you don't act on the numbers and data, you risk acting irrationally and underutilizing your main asset - data. Without action, your monitoring will suffer. SOLUTION: Implement frameworks to act on critical insights. MONITORING NUMBERS Monitor = evaluating the rate of change If you don't track the outcomes of your decisions, you won't maximize the ROI of your actions. Without monitoring, all previous efforts are rendered useless. SOLUTION: Implement reporting that paints the "before and after" picture. --- Don't overcomplicate finance management. Answer the 5 questions above to know which area is currently lacking. P.S. if you don't know how to approach those 5 questions, DM me and I will help you assess your current state. #ecommerce #finance

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Raised $26,000,000 with just an idea Lyskraft India Pvt Ltd - the latest kid in the block! So, Mukesh Bansal is back with another startup this time with Mohit Gupta, the former CEO of Zomato's food delivery arm. In July of last year, there were reports about Bansal and Gupta raising funds for a new venture. As per TechCrunch, both of them pitched a range of ideas to potential backers like a female-focused counterpart to Manyavar and "Infosys 2.0" a presumed upgrade to a multinational IT services and consulting firm. Now finally... The news is out and we know what they are building, Lyskraft: initially a women's only marketplace for premium brands mostly focusing on Gen-Z shoppers. Recently we have seen giant e-commerce platforms launching dedicated portals to attract GenZ shoppers, like SPOYL launched by Flipkart within its app, FWD by Myntra, also we are seeing the growth of new-age startups working in this space like Virgio(Mukesh Bansal is an investor in it), Newme(recently raised $4,500,000), Absolute Brands, Snitch, Styched and many more As per Inc42's Report, India's fashion and apparel sector is projected to reach a mouth-watering $112 Billion by 2030, which will be over a quarter of the country's $400 Billion e-commerce market!! Let's be honest, anyone will want a piece of this market. As we are already aware of how crowded this space is, let's see how Lyskraft differentiates itself from others. Mohit Gupts and Mukesh Bansal, in this crowded space building a community around your product, building digital IPs, and creating experiences through videos are the ways to elevate your brand to the next level. I the founder of Elevate would love to connect and assist Lyskraft in building a community, digital IPs and help create experiences through videos, if that sounds like something that interests you would love to connect and discuss!! sources of information : TechCrunch article 2021 - https://bit.ly/49UwkLI Inc42 article - https://bit.ly/3w0SDlb #mukeshbansal #myntra #fashion #startups #venturecapital #fundingwinter #norevenue #cultfit #community #communitymarketing #socialmediamarketing #india

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Who k*lled Koo? Is it X or YouTube? Koo is a publishing platform and gets its revenue from advertisement listed on the platform. Where all Indian online advertisement spend is going? Any guesses? Yes, it's YouTube (or Google) and Meta which has sucked in a major portion of India's social media advertising spend. Google's (including YouTube) 2023 ad revenue from India was whopping Rs. 28000 Crore!! And Meta earned Rs. 18300 Crore during same period in India through online ads! Now through WhatsApp advertising Meta will suck in a lot of other revenue from print media. Do you see the challenge here? These platforms are operating in India for more than 15 years now. They didn't make any money (or lost a lot of money) in the initial years and now making profit. They were able to survive because of their deep pocket. But for a startup like Koo it is an uphill task to compete with such giants unless it has a runway of minimum 10 years! Koo got just 4 unfortunately. Perhaps they should have been more conservative with their spent but sometimes investors themselves want founders to spend money quickly 🤔 Oh well - hopefully a good lesson for all the founders out there.... Thoughts? **** edurigo.com #koo #google #youtube #meta #whatsapp #socialmedia #advertising #ad #revenue #startup #competition #india #funding

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myHQ by ANAROCK offsite- after 4 years: Team size grown 4X, Spread across 8 cities- We dearly needed it (it was only a question of when can we afford it). The team had promised a stellar Q4 of last FY, which made us profitable and honestly made this ask- very tough to refuse. And Goa was finally happening! We wrapped the offsite last week and loved every bit of it. Whether it was a game of tug of war, some impromptu dance performances or just a fun gala night- connecting with everyone on a personal level outside work was worth every second spent. 🎊 My 4 learnings:- - Zoom /Hangout/virtual can never replace in person- would have had 100 hours of calls with the person, but in person is just different. - Play more games/activities & less sessions (Specially for hybrid/spread out teams- bonding happens only over games, activities) - Outsource liquor arrangements to the Hotel/Organizer- not worth the hassle + whatever you arrange will never be enough! 🥂 - This idiotic, yet addictive game- "Ek machli pani me gayi, chappak" (Must play with friends: 4+ group) Looking forward to a much grander offsite in 2025 as the team targets another 3-4X jump this year. Onwards and upwards! 😃🙌

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Fintech space is compacting with only experienced founders getting into 📳 Newbees without background are facing huddle from all angles at later stage too - Regulatory, VCs, Licensed Partners etc. A fintech with 680 crore AUM ; 100 Crore + Revenue ; 25 crore profit ; Less than 1% NPA is getting acquired mainly because of this stance 🙌 #Compliancefirst

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