Shashank Kumar

Interesting areas for Indian startups to build in: - Senior Chronic Care - Premium Oils and Staples - Back Office Automation Agents - Data Labelling for Multilingual Models - Managed Used-Goods Marketplace - Industrial Inspection Drones - Credit Scoring for SMEs - Korean Skincare Brand - Skilling Engine for Blue Collar Workforce - Vertical AI focused Chip Design - Supply Chain Visibility - Energy Intelligence for Factories Incredible decade to be an entrepreneur in India

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Excited to share this News, 888vc, Our Early-stage venture capital firm based in Bangalore, India has launched platfrom Gro8 backed by ₹175 crore (US$ 20M) fund to back startups focused on AI, deep tech, Enterprise SAAS and sustainability over the next three years. 💡 Key Focus Areas: 🔹 Average ticket size of ₹2–4 crores 🔹 Sector Agnostic Angel fund 🔹 Focus on globally scalable solutions 🔹 Launch of GRO8 angel platform for cross-border funding, mentorship & market access 📌 If you’re building in AI, deep-tech, or sustainability with ambitions to grow globally, let’s talk. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gtUcYkrx #888vc #gro8 #venturecapital #angelinvestments #startups

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Meet the man who built an ₹88,000 Crore empire by doing exactly what every VC-backed founder is told not to do: Removing targets In 2026, Zerodha isn't just a brokerage; it's the ultimate case study in Psychological Efficiency. While the ecosystem burns through billions to find "Product-Market Fit," Nithin Kamath has built a fortress by mastering the psychology of radical patience. Here are the 4 Psychological Insights from the Zerodha "Gear-Down" Playbook: 1) Most founders equate "Growth" with "Aggression." Nithin flips this. By removing all revenue and sales targets, he eliminated the psychological incentive for mis-selling and dark patterns. The result? 15.8 million customers acquired with Zero Ad Spend. The learning: Trust is the lowest-cost customer acquisition channel 🛡️ 2) While the "Hustle Culture" treats employees as disposable fuel, Zerodha has seen near-zero churn in its top 100 leadership. By capping work hours and discouraging late-night chats, they allow for cognitive compounding. When your team stays for 10 years, they build better products than a team that rotates every 18 months 🏗️ 3) Nithin’s transparency about his health (the "Golden Hour" of a stroke) is a psychological signal to the ecosystem. It challenges the "Invincibility Complex" of young founders. In 2026, the real moat is Operational Resilience - knowing when to shift gears down to ensure the founder outlasts the market cycle ⚖️ 4) By refusing to raise $1, Zerodha avoided the "VC Treadmill" where growth is forced quarter-on-quarter. This psychological freedom allows them to contemplate business death calmly and pivot into passive AMCs (Zerodha Fund House) or insurance (Ditto) without the pressure of an artificial exit timeline 🏛️ The ➡️ Insight: The 2026 winner isn't the founder who burns the brightest, but the one who has the lowest psychological burn rate. Zerodha’s 60% net profit margins aren't just a financial metric; they are the byproduct of a founder who prioritized clarity over velocity. ➡️ The 2026 Blueprint is about "Pacing for Power." If you can master the psychology of your own biology and the patience of your own capital, you don't just survive - you dominate 📈

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Building a startup is not for the faint-hearted. At first, there will be zero paying users and a buggy product. Your family might doubt your choices, and money will run out faster than you think. There will be days when the urge to return to a steady job feels overwhelming. But startup founders are a different breed—they persist when others would quit. Startup founders always embrace the uncertainty of the journey. They consider each setback an opportunity to grow, to refine the business, and to come back stronger. They turn adversity into fuel and keep trying until they succeed. Video Credit: Dagobert Renouf ~~~~~ ♻️ Found this helpful? Repost it so your network can learn from it, too. And follow me, Fazlur Shah, for more content like this. #startups #entrepreneurship #venturecapital #investing

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In 2021, I invested in a small startup. They just raised $7M. Could be my most disruptive bet yet. I still remember my first chat with the founders of Eeki. Two IIT Bombay grads… who could’ve gone anywhere in the world. But they chose to stay back and solve one of India’s hardest problems - agriculture. They told me something that hit me hard. If we keep growing food like today - we’ll have to cut 20% more forests just to feed everyone. 30% of our soil is already damaged. 90% could go bad by 2050. Water is running out. Climate is getting harsh. And vegetables are becoming expensive. So they built a new way to grow food using their patented aeroponic tech - where plant roots hang in the air and get nutrients as a fine mist. This means: up to 95% less water, no soil required, affordable prices, and perfect control over weather. And it’s working. They’ve already crossed 100+ acres of cultivation in Rajasthan’s extreme climate. And now, they’re getting ready to scale this across India. I invested because it is not just a business. It’s a mission that actually matters. Seeing them raise $7M from top investors like General Catalyst, Sixth Sense Ventures, Avaana Capital, Better Capital, Icebreaker VC feels special. Because if we get this right, We won’t just build a big company. We’ll feed a nation 🇮🇳 Next Big Thing

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Data from Peak XV’s fundraise announcement shows how venture maths has started to work. The firm said it has already returned $7.5 billion in gross proceeds till now. In addition, it holds over $4 billion in liquid stock in companies such as Groww and Meesho. Total AUM for Peak XV is about $10 billion with its latest funds. As a result, total returns plus liquidity ($11.5 billion) exceed total AUM ($10 billion). Ultimately, venture capital is judged on fund-level returns like any investment business. But this shows that, net-net, venture has started to pay off in India, even for the largest firms.

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Zepto founder Aadit Palicha just delivered a masterclass on Y Combinator with Garry Tan Here is what I learned: I got 2 key takeaways. First, when Aadit breaks down the 0→1 journey: While 0 →1 is a popular term, it encapsulates so much more! In reality, you go through 3 mini stages: 0→0.001: Getting out of your comfort zone to try something. Anything.  This is pure courage, not strategy. 0.001→0.01: Someone pays for your product. Maybe out of pity, maybe out of curiosity.  But sale happens (yay!), cash moves out from their account. 0.01→0.1: The hard plateau where most founders quit.  Your idea seems to be working, but not really. The rocketship dream feels impossibly distant. 0.1→1: The inflection. Something finally clicks. A real dent in the universe.  The scaffolding of a company emerges. My second learning was how Zepto founders responded to brutal feedback: "Grocery delivery has not worked anywhere in the world" "Look at the graveyard of companies before you" "Investors think you're crazy" They answered the critics with numbers. Zepto’s growth goes straight into a case study today. Here's the thing: The analytical, rational, "data-driven" founders quit at this stage. The ones who stay are those who can look at the numbers, hear the critics, and still show up the next day. That’s the real win. I've noticed a pattern in the startup ecosystem: the longer a founder stays in business against all odds, the greater their chance of staying in business. This isn't survivorship bias—it's character x motivation x tenacity revelation against all odds. Think about that when you're on the verge of giving up. And watch this interview today. Follow me for more content on startups, growth, and the India story. 

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Twin brothers from India built an AI platform that achieved $15M in ARR in just 90 days. Is this the Shopify-for-apps moment? Here’s is the full story Emergent, founded by twin brothers Mukund (ex-Dunzo CTO) and Madhav Jha (ex-Dropbox/Amazon infra), just raised $23M Series A led by Lightspeed (total $30M to date). Their pitch? A multi-agent ‘vibe coding’ platform that turns plain English prompts into full-stack apps: frontend, backend, auth, payments, deployment, all automated. And the traction is wild: 👉 YC copy in mid-2024: 700k users, $10M ARR in 2 months. 👉 By Sept 2025: over 1M people building 2M apps and $15M ARR in 90 days. Why does it matter? Because Emergent isn’t just “no-code.” It aims to be the Shopify for apps, where anyone can generate production-ready tools, deploy them instantly, and eventually monetise them. Think jewellery chains spinning up AI-pricing apps, SMBs ditching spreadsheets for onboarding tools, even healthcare patients building pain-management solutions. But here’s the catch 👇 Retention > creation. Generating millions of apps is flashy. Keeping them live, secure, and monetised is harder. Discovery and billing flows are still in their early stages. Quality & compliance. Building real apps means adhering to PCI compliance, implementing secure authentication, and maintaining safe data practices. Emergent claims in-house testing/security agents, but independent audits will matter. Competition is fierce. Replit, Builder(dot)ai, Rocket(dot)New, Cursor: Everyone is chasing “apps from text.” Emergent’s moat must be infrastructure, reliability, and a marketplace. Unit economics. Hosting and runtime LLM costs scale with the number of active users. Using cheaper models and caching helps, but the test is focused on gross margin at scale. The opportunity: The low-code/AI app market is forecast to hit hundreds of billions by 2030+. If Emergent nails reliability, discovery, and monetisation, it could be the default platform SMBs use to generate and sell apps in days, not months. Question for you: If you could build a full-stack app from a single prompt, what would you build first? ➕ Save this post and follow Zubin Kutar ⚡ to Learn & Grow 10x with AI

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1.2 Million Downloads, 18% Paying Users, ₹ 33lakhs MRR — All Under $1M Raised Most people assume dating apps need scale before they can prove viability. At flutrr , we had to prove viability before we could afford to scale. We launched with less than USD 100k raised. That meant fewer experiments and sharper decisions. No margin for vanity. Here’s what we built under that constraint: ● 1.2 million downloads ● 700,000+ active users ● ₹33 lakh in monthly revenue ● ₹10 average CAC ● 18 percent paying users ● CLTV to CAC ratio of 20 To put this in context: Most apps in our category operate at a CAC of ₹180 or more. They convert just 3 to 4 percent of users to paying users. They burn before they scale. We flipped that model. By building for Bharat, pricing through microtransactions, and designing for long-term trust, flutrr became a revenue engine with high retention and low burn. Having led large-scale P&Ls before, I can say this with confidence. Early product-market fit is not a feeling. It is a financial outcome. And once you have that, capital becomes a multiplier, not a requirement. #CapitalEfficiency #UnitEconomics #VentureScale #flutrr

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Weekend Thoughts: Running a Fund, NISM XIX-D & What I Learnt When SEBI first announced the NISM certification for Alternate Investment Funds, many of us in the ecosystem weren’t exactly thrilled. But having now completed it myself, I felt it’s worth sharing what I learnt — and unlearnt. 1. First, about the book. I’ve seen people dismiss it, saying it’s written by folks who’ve never run a fund. I see it differently. For anyone curious about venture from a financial lens — this is probably the best primer out there. It dives into valuation, exits, fund performance, benchmarking — and all the dry but critical parts that shape how investors make money, and how they return money to LPs. I get at least one message a day from someone who wants to break into venture. Many think it’s a privileged job: talking to founders, picking companies, writing cheques. What’s often missed is the accountability — the responsibility to think about how you’ll actually deliver returns, structure exits, and protect capital. 2. Running an Angel AIF has made this real for me. It’s operationally heavy — compliance, structuring, taxation, reporting. It feels more like running a financial institution than a startup. Even at the seed stage, you’re responsible for every rupee that flows through the fund. 3. The exam itself isn’t a cakewalk. Having hands-on experience helps — some answers feel intuitive because you’ve faced them at work. But it still needs real prep. There’s negative marking, multiple-choice questions, and — more importantly — case studies that test if you really understand how to run a fund. After years of not being in ‘exam mode’, I had to sit down, study properly, and I’m glad I did clear this in my first attempt! My biggest takeaway: If you’re interested in venture, first read the book. If it feels boring — well, that’s the job, sometimes. Managing other people’s money demands thought, intent, and a willingness to do the unglamorous parts well. There are no shortcuts. LetsVenture #fundmanagement National Institute of Securities Markets (NISM)

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I spent the weekend dissecting what FM Sitharaman's budget actually means for early-stage founders. Here's my honest take as a pre-seed investor: The wins are real. 1. Buybacks are now taxed as capital gains for shareholders (12.5% LTCG / 20% STCG for most non-promoters). This matters more than people realize. Secondary liquidity just became cleaner. Founders stuck between “not ready for full exit” and “need some cash out” finally have a more tax-efficient path. 2. Foreign individual investors (PROIs) can now hold up to 10% in listed Indian companies, up from 5%. Overall PROI ceiling raised from 10% to 24%. Yes, this is public markets today. But follow the thread: more global capital comfort with Indian equities → stronger IPO books → better exit multiples → more LP appetite for India venture. The pipeline matters. 3. ₹10,000 crore SME Growth Fund + ₹10,000 crore Fund of Funds for startups. That's fresh dry powder entering the ecosystem. Not enough to move the needle alone, but directionally correct. The gaps are equally real: 1. No ESOP taxation reform: Employees still get taxed at exercise, not liquidity. 2. No meaningful LP incentive structures. Domestic institutional capital into venture is still stuck at the “we’re exploring alternatives” stage. 3. No change to the startup tax holiday structure. Companies building for 7–10 year horizons? Still on their own. My read: This budget optimizes for scale-ups and public markets, not seed-stage risk capital. If you're a founder, the exit environment just improved. If you're raising your first cheque, the funding environment probably stayed the same. For pre-seed investors like us, the signal is clear: India is betting on companies that make it to growth stage. Our job is still to find them early and help them survive long enough to benefit.

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Vinod Khosla (Khosla Ventures) recently said: “AI is a bubble. It will soon burst and a lot of capital will be destroyed.” He’s probably right. Every major technological shift has followed the same pattern: excitement, noise, copycats, and a lot of capital chasing ideas that don’t deserve it. The dot-com wave had the same script. So did mobile. But here’s the part we often forget: The bubble isn’t the story. What survives after it, is! In 2000, 90% of internet startups disappeared. But the founders who took strategic risks before the crash built Amazon, Google, Salesforce, companies that defined the next two decades. AI is at that exact moment. Many AI wrappers will shut down. Capital will get tighter. Investors will say “AI was overhyped.” But for founders building with depth, those solving real problems, this phase is the opportunity.

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🚀 A Bengaluru startup just made history. Lyzr AI raised $8 million in Series A but here’s the twist: The entire round was managed by an AI agent named Sam. 🤯 Sam handled everything investor outreach, due diligence, and even Q&A. No missed details. No human fatigue. Just precision. Founded by Siva Surendira, Anirudh Narayan, and Jithin George, Lyzr AI is building what they call Organizational General Intelligence (OGI) AI agents that can autonomously run HR, Finance, Ops, and Customer Success. What began as an internal experiment soon turned into a full-blown fundraise completed in just 3 months. This isn’t your typical funding story. It’s a glimpse into the future where AI doesn’t just assist founders, it represents them. #AI #Automation #LyzrAI

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