Harsh Vakharia

In venture capital, ultimately “only a handful of companies per year actually matter”. Just 7 firms led the Series A of ~60% of startups in India that are worth $1B+ today. The list of firms leading investments in these cos is fairly predictable - PANZEL + Tiger Global. Full post on India's unicorn hunters in the comments

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How does he sell products on Amazon every THREE seconds? The answer lies not just in the product, but in the PRICE. 💰 ➡️In the chapter “PRICING: THE HOLY GRAIL OF BUSINESS” from my book Startups of Bharat, we unpack the story of Varun and Tarun from Boult, one of India’s top three audio and wearable brands that has bootstrapped its way to 750 CR in revenue. 😳 At a time when international heavyweights like Bose, Sennheiser, and Marshall already dominated the premium segment, and local brands were competing on price, Boult charted its course. 👇🏻 Varun and Tarun discovered a clear gap ⏩Customers wanted premium design and sound quality — without the premium price tag. However, identifying a gap and monetising it are two distinct things. The real game-changer? Boult’s adoption of the target costing model—a method where you first decide the price customers are willing to pay and then engineer your product to fit the cost constraints. For example, if the COGS is capped at 60% and comes to 2200, with a remaining 40% margin, your price would be Rs 3080. This meant tight control over production costs, design-led differentiation, and a refusal to fall into the trap of over-innovation. Profitability wasn’t a distant milestone—it was baked into the business model from day one and reinvested to grow the business to 750 CR and take the No. 3 spot in the ever-competitive audio category. 💪 Ask yourself ⬇️ I) Would your customers still trust your product if it cost 20% more—or 20% less? II) Are you pricing based on cost or value perception? III) Is your pricing strategy helping you build a brand, or just moving inventory? IV) What does your price say about you, even before your product does? Find the answers in “PRICING: THE HOLY GRAIL OF BUSINESS” — only in Startups of Bharat on Amazon. Link in comments! Varun Gupta Surya Pasricha 🌞 BOULT #startupsofbharat #startups #india

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Natasha Malpani Launches ₹200 Crore Fund to Power India’s AI Startups Former Kae Capital partner Natasha Malpani has launched Boundless Ventures, an early-stage venture fund with a corpus of ₹200 crore, dedicated to supporting homegrown AI-native startups across India. The fund will focus on pre-seed and seed-stage investments in companies innovating across consumer AI, infrastructure, agent tooling, healthcare, logistics, deep tech, and make-in-India hardware. Boundless has already written its first cheques to startups including Superhealth, Armatrix, PierSight, Knot, and two stealth ventures in AI infrastructure and consumer AI. Beyond capital, the fund promises to bring narrative and network support to founders. As Malpani puts it, India today has a once-in-a-generation advantage talent density, digital rails, and ambition to build global AI leaders from day one. At Startup Veda, we’re thrilled to see local capital fueling the AI frontier. This fund signals rising maturity in India’s venture ecosystem—placing conviction behind AI-first founders well before the rest of the world catches on. Join the conversation: Which early-stage AI ventures excite you the most? How powerful is the mix of capital + storytelling for building AI startups? #Startup #AI #VentureCapital #DeepTech #StartupIndia #FounderStories

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🚨 Big Change for Angel Investors in India SEBI has raised the bar for who qualifies as an Accredited Investor: 📉 Earlier: ₹2 Cr net tangible assets (excluding primary residence) was enough to start angel investing. 📈 Now: Net worth ≥ ₹7.5 Cr (with ₹3.75 Cr in financial assets) OR Income ≥ ₹2 Cr annually OR Income ≥ ₹1 Cr + Net worth ≥ ₹5 Cr (with ₹2.5 Cr in financial assets) Corporates/Trusts need ₹50 Cr net worth This raises a crucial question: 💭 What happens to those who met the earlier requirements, began their angel journey, but no longer qualify under the new rules? 👉 Will they be locked out of funds? 👉 Does early-stage capital shrink? 👉 Or will new models emerge to keep them engaged? I’d love to hear perspectives from founders, fund managers, and fellow investors. Drop your thoughts ⬇️ #AngelInvesting #StartupEcosystem #IndiaStartups #VentureCapital #AngelInvestors #SEBI #InvestingInIndia

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Ever wondered why US VCs invest more in SaaS while in India we focus on consumer? From a seed investor’s lens, the math looks very different. In the US (SaaS) → Predictable ARR means companies can raise debt early, so equity rounds are cleaner and less frequent. A seed investor who comes in at $5–10M valuation often still holds a meaningful stake by Series C. Multiples at exit (10–20x ARR) only compound that advantage. In India (Consumer) → Brands chew up capital for inventory and offline scale. That means round after round of equity, each one crushing early investors. A seed cheque at $5M valuation can shrink to a rounding error by the time the company is big. On spreadsheets, it looks like bad math. But here’s the paradox: India’s consumption depth is so large that even after ugly dilution, outcomes can still be big enough to make sense. In the US, SaaS is the logical bet. In India, consumer is the volume bet. For seed investors, it’s not about who scales faster — it’s about who leaves you with more stake once they do :)

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Once upon a time, in 2020, Prashant Sachan walked away from his first startup, Trell. Burnt out from conflicts, and the brutal grind of building at scale, he carried the sting of failure with him. For months, he questioned whether he even belonged in the startup world anymore. And then a new question found him: “What if technology could serve not just commerce, but devotion?” That’s how AppsForBharat was born. Its first product, Sri Mandir App, looked nothing like a shiny consumer app. It was simple with digital aartis, scriptures, mantras. Some mocked it, calling it “ancient, like a flash card from the early 2000s.” But Prashant wasn’t building for product-hunt applause. He was building for his audience, devotees who wanted accessibility, authenticity, and trust. Armed with that conviction, he pressed on despite the naysayers and hardships that plague anyone creating a revolution: - Skepticism: Investors dismissed faith as “not scalable.” - Authenticity vs. usability: How do you digitize centuries-old rituals without diluting them? - Retention: How do you make an app feel like a temple you return to daily, not one you delete after a week? He and his team Pulkit Pujara, Alpesh Bupkya, Ameya Sahasrabudhe, Viraj Verma, Tanvi Lal, and others kept listening, testing, and rebuilding. Slowly, the tide turned. A grandmother in New Jersey cried during a live streamed aarti. A priest wrote to say the platform gave his temple new life. The product that was once mocked for looking outdated was exactly what the audience wanted. By 2025, Sri Mandir had crossed 4 crore downloads, facilitated 52 lakh rituals across 70+ temples, and attracted a diaspora user base that contributed nearly 20% of revenues. The investors followed, Elevation Capital, Peak XV Partners, The Fundamentum Partnership, Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital, Kunal Shah, Sanjeev Barnwal, Scott Shleifer, Ankush Sachdeva, Farid Ahsan and many more angels. In total, over $50M raised to build temple-tech infrastructure across Ayodhya, Varanasi, Ujjain and more. Alongside it, startups like Sutradhar, Utsav App, DevDham Devotional Platform, VAMA App and many more platforms began to emerge, experimenting with puja bookings, prasad delivery, and spiritual content. Even traditional platform players like BookMyShow and Paytm dabbled in religious services during festivals. Together, they’re shaping a new category: Devotion-as-a-Service (DaaS), where rituals, temple visits, and spirituality meet tech at scale. Analysts believe this could become a multi-billion-dollar category, spanning diaspora markets, temple partnerships, and even AI-driven spiritual companions. Moral of the story: Great founders build only for customer applause, they build for conviction. AppsForBharat proved that even when a product is dismissed as “ancient,” if you know your audience and build with empathy, you can turn ridicule into reverence and in the process, create not just a company, but an industry.

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Anthropic just raised $13B Series F. For perspective: that’s more than double what all Indian startups combined have raised in 2025 so far. AI capital flows in US on a completely different scale compared to the rest of the world.

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