Payoj Jain

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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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 The product that was once mocked for looking outdated was exactly what the audience wanted.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 raised $13B at a $183B valuation Fundraise is greater than entirety of VC in India raised in 2024, valuation is close to that of all of India's unicorns in total The crazy part is that it's a spin-off team from OpenAI, which itself is worth $300B Different scale

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When we started in 2022, we didn’t have giant warehouses, celebrity endorsements, or billion-dollar funding. Sumit Jasoria, started with just ₹50 lakh pooled together — savings, small loans, and belief. The pain point was clear: 👉 Women in India, especially Gen Z and millennials, wanted trendy, affordable, fast fashion. 👉 But the choices were either overpriced international brands or outdated local offerings. The struggle was real. We were rejected by early investors who said, “Fashion is too competitive.” Suppliers didn’t trust us with bulk orders. Customers doubted if a new brand could deliver both quality and trend. Our first collection barely sold. We thought of shutting shop. But we decided to listen — really listen — to what young Indian women wanted. Bold fits, vibrant colors, and global styles at Indian prices. That pivot changed everything. Within 6 months, we were shipping thousands of orders daily. By the end of year one, we had crossed ₹100 crore in revenue. In just 2 years, NEWME became a ₹250 crore brand. Not because we had deep pockets, but because we built a brand that spoke the language of Bharat’s new-age women. #startup Today, NewMe has millions of loyal customers, a strong presence across e-commerce, and is backed by investors who once said “no.” We’ve built not just a fashion label, but a movement of self-expression for Indian women. 📌 What Indian Founders Can Learn from NewMe’s Journey. Listen to your customers, not just investors. Pivot when needed. Feedback is free market research. Solve for Bharat, not just metros. The biggest opportunities lie in Tier II & III cities Culture sells. Build a brand that connects emotionally with young India, not just logically.

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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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On the future of evals: Ankur Goyal has been working on evals since 2016. From then all the way through his time at Figma very little had changed about evals, which gave him the conviction that many years from now evals will still be very relevant and will be the core driver of how people build AI software - which is why he built Braintrust. “The biggest difference since then is that the amount of effort it takes to incorporate what you learn from the eval into the next iteration is very little. The implementation of running evals has changed quite a bit and is going to continue to change. “We went from extremely slow updates that were very manual, to very fast updates that are very manual, to even faster updates that are partially automated. The way we as humans interact with evals is going to shift from looking at a dashboard, walking away with some inference, and then typing something to test. It’s going to be more like an LLM system suggesting and contextualizing what we should change and why.” 

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BIG NEWS: TIME just named 7 Indian leaders in its list of the 100 Most Influential People in AI. I still remember when people said India would only “use” AI made in the West. Today, we are building it, leading it, and shaping its future. What a moment! :) And the interesting part? They come from all sides → entrepreneurs, researchers, and policymakers. Here’s why this is special: → India is now present in every part of the AI story → We are creating global solutions → The focus is not just tech. It’s on using AI to solve real problems, create jobs, and lift communities This list includes one of our prominent tech leaders, Abhishek Singh, a 1995-batch IAS officer of the Nagaland cadre. He helped India secure 35,000 GPUs so that people can use AI at a low cost. He teamed up with global groups like the Gates Foundation and Wadhwani Foundation to make the mission bigger. And there are some prominent women in this list too, like Priya Donti, Navrina Singh, Maithra Raghu, and Kakul Shrivastava, who are shaping the AI revolution in their own way. People once thought AI was just about machines. But these leaders are showing it’s about people. This is just the start. As more young builders, thinkers, and leaders join in, AI in India will grow smarter, fairer, and more caring. And it’s exciting to watch India take center stage.

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Sreedhar Peddineni (Co-Founder, Gainsight & GTM Buddy) and Kiran Darisi (Co-Founder, Atomicwork & Ex Freshworks) joins me on Neon show. Two founders from Hyderabad who build global SaaS companies, taking one to IPO, another to a billion-dollar exit, and then choosing to begin again (and again). In this episode, we discuss: 1. Sreedhar’s journey: Host Analytics → Gainsight → GTM Buddy 2. Kiran’s path: Zoho → Freshworks → Atomicwork 3. How to find the “Goldilocks zone” for startups 4. Building companies that last for decades 5. Common mistakes founders make scaling SMB → Enterprise 6. How Atomicwork co-founders connected & chose their problem 7. Why smaller, high-quality teams are winning 8. Is AI expanding the pie while eating it? 9. How businesses can leverage custom GPTs 10. If big AI goes everywhere, what’s left for B2B SaaS? This conversation is about the two decades of building India’s most iconic SaaS companies and what the future holds for SaaS founders from India. Episode is out on youtube.com/@TheNeonShoww

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