Social and content startups have come a long way in India. From having literally no large Indian product five years ago to now two unicorns in the space- Dailyhunt, and Glance. Sharechat, another Indian company, has been the pioneer of social network startups in India. In 2015, Sharechat came to India Quotient’s office with an … Continue reading Building and scaling a social network startup in India: lessons from Sharechat

Pick your next startup job after applying The Twitter Filter. The Twitter Filter is comprised of two items:A. Is the founder on Twitter?B. Are they sharing their thoughts/ views in public? A. Is the founder on Twitter? Selection effect: My own opinion is that people who are on twitter are more curious, more hungry to … Continue reading The Twitter Filter for picking your next job

Written jointly with A B Chakravarthy.  AgriTech investments in India in 2020 were worth $1.1 Billion. In 2013 this figure was only $89 Million. In an economy that contributes to 15% of the gross domestic product and employs close to half of the workforce, AgriTech came as a rather late entrant to mainstream venture funds' … Continue reading The 8 F framework of Indian AgriTech investing

Originally published on Notion. As an entrepreneur, you might be wondering “I’m doing everything that an investor wants, but am still unable to raise funds for my business. Am I doing everything correctly? What am I missing?”. This a common grievance we hear as investors from entrepreneurs and to-be entrepreneurs irrespective of various sizes and … Continue reading The 5 Ws of fundraising for businesses

Let me explain with an example. Khatabook, an Indian startup has raised a total of Rs. 1221 crores till date. The company provides a mobile-based digital ledger system to retailers to help them manage their customers payments. Imagine a kirana shop: Khatabook is helping them digitize their scruffy notebook where they record which customer has … Continue reading The future of business is digital

My friend Vikash Jha and I were discussing why after the FB-Jio deal, more Big Tech companies should consider investing in Indian telcos. There were talks of Google considering an investment in Voda Idea and just yesterday we also heard that Amazon is in talks to buy a $2B stake in Bharti Airtel. Reposting the … Continue reading Big Tech should invest in Indian telecom

Bryan Caplan is my favourite thinker. Interestingly, I enjoy his writings on life and social behavior more than anything else. Here's his take on two different ways of looking at friendship and why one is better than the other: When a good friend hurts your feelings, what do you do? I normally chalk it up … Continue reading Two models of friendship

Peter Thiel begins the book with an anecdote. Whenever he interviews someone for a job, he likes to ask “What important truth do very few people agree with you on?”. Good answers to the question, he says, are as close as we can come to looking into the future. For the startup and investing world, the … Continue reading Notes on Zero to One

Earlier this week, I was at Narayana Health city. On the first floor of one of the hospital buildings, there were two providers of hot beverages to patients- Chai Point and Cafe Coffee Day. Suddenly, I thought of what Nehru would probably say about this. Something along the lines of "Why do we need two … Continue reading Chai Point, H.D. Kumaraswamy and competition

Originally published in Business Standard Recently, an MP from the United Kingdom complained that while UK was giving India aid worth £1 billion, the country decided to build a statue worth £330 million. The concern was seemingly about whether aid financed by taxpayer money was really reaching the poor. Relatedly, migration programs are an alternate … Continue reading Rethinking foreign aid to India