Sajith Pai
@sajithpai
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VC @BlumeVentures , an early stage Indian tech fund. Writings on venture, PMF, India tech etc., at . DM me at
Delhi
Joined May 2008
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Pinned Tweet
It is here! The Indus Valley Report 2024!
@anurag_pagaria
's thread shares the highlights of this year's report.
Link to report ->
The Indus Valley Report 2024 - 3rd edition is here!! 🎉
This report is our take on India and the Indian startup ecosystem, through different lenses to sensemake what we call as “Indus Valley” - a catch-all moniker for the Indian startup ecosystem
Here are 15 lenses or frames…
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@spignal
Parkour for energy conservation is an interesting tiktok theme i never anticipated.
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~5% of Zomato users (incl some who order 100+ times a yr!) account for ~45% (could be higher too) of its total orders, & v likely >50% of total value.
This is 2.7m users (~5% of its 58m annual, 15% of its 17m monthly users).
The power law in Indian consumer internet is brutal.
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Thread.🧵
Understanding startups (or scaling startups), metrics & valuations
or
how not to be misled by analog metrics when you run digital scalable ventures.
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Excited to release the 1st Indus Valley Annual Report to the world.
Indus Valley = our moniker for India's startup ecosystem.
The 1st issue gives us a chance to take stock of its rise and evolution, take a look back at 2021 & finally look ahead to what is coming.
@amal_vats
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Are you building something for Elders in India? If so we at Blume Ventures have something interesting for you! Read on!
With a population of ~145 million, and with this cohort getting richer every yr, elders are an increasingly important consumer demographic. In recognition of…
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My room at the Mumbai hotel i am staying is called ‘The Lunchbox’. I half-expected a portrait of Nimrat Kaur inside but i got this wonderful painting of Dabbawalas. Not complaining:)
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Yesterday, we released the Indus Valley Report 2023.
It takes stock of Indus Valley (our moniker for the Indian startup ecosystem), & looks at underlying patterns + trends.
In this thread I wanted to stress on a key message we have for the Indian startup ecosystem. Let us go!
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Breaking into VC: The Rough Guide!
A question I get all the time is how to break into VC (venture capital), or what gets you selected into venture. I understand: VC is seen as a desirable job, and there is a fair amount of applicants for every role, so how does one stand out…
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The Rule of 30 and why we at Blume believe the outer limit of the Indian consuming class is ~30m households!
The Indus Valley Report 2024 edition releases this fri! Now, one of the charts we have as a fixture is our split of the India Consumer Market into India1, 2 and 3.…
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🧵 on startup 'valuations'.
Why are loss-making startups run by 20-somethings 'valued' as unicorns while similar profit-making companies are valued at half that?
Thread below has the dope, but the longer read is 👇🏽
1/23
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The most dangerous thing in a company that is going well. (Don Valentine, founder of Sequoia Capital)
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£250m / month = ₹27k crs per yr.
So Fortnite makes 3x money selling virtual clothing as India’s largest fashion co Aditya Birla Fashion makes selling real clothing.
Hmmm....and I am not even counting the margins.
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New academic / corporate brands that i am beginning to see pop up in the founders pitching to me.
- VIT
- IIIT (yes there are 3 I’s there!)
- Shaheed Sukhdev
- SRCC
- AIESEC
- Parthenon
Love how startup culture is spreading beyond usual IIT, BITS, NIT, MBB. Long way to go still!
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All successful tech newsletters and podcasts expand to become VC funds.
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Never confuse Indiranagar Market Fit* w India Market Fit.
*or Bandra or Hauz Khas:)
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Why does a VC reject your pitch? 🧵
A perspective basis my last 3 years in a seed VC.
(this is true especially of seed investing, but holds for the broad VC asset class)
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Thread.
On my new post. This is a massive ~7k words piece!
I write abt the 'Indus Valley' playbook. Indus Valley is tour desi startup ecosystem, and the Indus Valley playbook is the hacks, biz models & approaches needed to win in this unique ecosystem.
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I got this whatsapp message yday👇🏽fm a founder grinding it out, 1 month of runway left. But absolutely unwilling to give up.
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A few data points that fascinate me
- 37m credit cards in India
- 50m post-paid accounts
- 54m users transacting at least once on flipkart in past 12m
- 59m taxbase (as per Economic Survey 2018)
- 65m flyers (5% of popn)
Hmmm....
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Visualizing the Indian consumer stack, and the startups that cater to it.
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Thread.
Just wrapped up this fascinating book abt the economic lives of the extremely poor, and how they make economic decisions. Lots of learnings. Sharing a few.
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The FART Ecosystem😬😂 or the emerging Desi Digital 'keiretsu' network - Flipkart, Amazon, Reliance, Tata; or if you wish to be polite, FRAT.
via Bain's How India Shops Online 2021 report.
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Reflections on Strategy
[warning: this is a longer than usual twitter post]
Strategy is amongst the most ill-used terms in business terminology. Its ill-use is, if anything, even more pronounced in the startup world. There are multiple reasons for that. This essay won’t cover…
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Reading about Aditya Puri, who has led HDFC Bank over the last 25 yrs to ~$100b market cap, consistently growing 30% QoQ. Much less written abt him than other peer CEOs.
Worth noting
- doesnt carry a phone
- no computer; secy prints emails out
- leaves home daily at 5.30pm
1/4
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Blume Ventures is hiring for the investment team!
Looking for an Associate / AVP hire working closely with me in the investment team at Blume, covering consumertech, domestic SaaS, marketplaces etc.
Associate 5-7 yrs workex
AVP 8-10 yrs
Location: Bangalore
There is no ideal…
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I have said it before and I will say it again, but Gopal Vittal, CEO of Airtel, is the best (professional) CEO in the world.
Airtel is a fantastic example of how you can compete with a rival who has everything going for them, and still succeed.
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Occasionally, very occasionally, LinkedIn is a magical place.
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A startup learns about itself in 3 ways. Or rather founders learn about their startup, & how well it is doing, or not, in one of 3 primary ways.
- customers / product iterations
- interviewees / hiring
- investors / fundraising
In that order.
Let us unpack this.
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Still the single best article on productivity I have read till date. By Prof
@deviparikh
.
TLDR - Calendar instead of keeping a to do list.
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Indian founders - build your twitter, linkedin follower base & start going direct. You'll be surprised how small the readership / viewership of so-called 'mass' media in India is.
In the U.S. MSM is in a few 100ks & I get it when US founders use mass media.
But not in India.
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I find that ~25% of the killings are done with sharp objects.
Sharp objects are devastating our society.
I strongly support banning sharp objects.
I spoke to a police officer recently who told me that over 50% of the cases they see are alcohol related.
Alcohol is devastating rural Tamil Nadu. Women are the most affected and I have met many alcohol windows in our small village.
I strongly support prohibition.
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Phew. Nearing the end now.
Going with title *Indus Valley Annual Report 2022* - Understanding India, the startup ecosystem in India ('Indus Valley') and the state of the (Indus) Valley.
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This was sad to read.
Unlike in the U.S., where the sharks aren't really part of the startup ecosystem and are bootstrapped entrepreneurs (mostly), the sharks here are almost all founders who grew on the back of venture money, & their actions all reflect on the larger venture…
🚨I spoke to nearly a dozen
#SharkTankIndia
winners from Season 1 and Season 2 and they are on the verge of mental breakdown , humiliation from Sharks and society apathy, thinking of closing down ventures after 1-2 years of delay in investment.
@Inc42
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Getting out successfully at Andheri station, while on a Virar fast.
What's something that ISN'T a sport, but still FEELS like a sport?
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This is one of the best examples of the strategic use of working capital i have read. Getting your customers to pay your early, and then using that neg working capital / float to get crazy good deals from your vendors.
I believe Trader Joe's does similar stuff too.
This is…
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This article by
@dillidurast
on the 3 Indias (ya, not 2😂) is an exceptionally perceptive and empathetic piece of writing.
The 3 Indias per him are
- India Unlimited (bandwidth)
- India 1.5GB (daily download limit)
- India Unconnected (to the internet)
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Until your mid-30s, your value to your org is determined by how often you say 'yes' (to decisions, projects).
From your mid-30s onwards, your value to your org is determined by how often you say 'no'.
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A bit late to
@kunalb11
's terrific podcast episode with
@ShaneAParrish
- Kunal is the most interesting + provocative thinker in the Indian startup ecosystem, & it shows!
Thoughts on what I found interesting + transcript excerpts👇🏽
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Thinking aloud on the likely Uber Eats - Swiggy Deal (not yet confirmed). What follows in this tweet thread is not based on facts (but hard to come by) and some theorizing and speculation.
Caveat: I am an interesed party given Blume's stakes in Zomato (via Runnr) and Dunzo. /1
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India's VC investments last yr were 22x Mexico's, when our real consumption market of ~110m users equalled a Mexico. Why we are so over-ventured? What are the consequences of that, & what does it mean to build for the next billion users? My new post.
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Performance marketing & growth hacking ruined a whole generation of startups - Jennifer Hyman
@Jenn_RTR
Really interesting observation on how pushing marketing $ to bottom of funnel instead of focusing on tofu / making customer experience better, negatively impacted economics.
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I wonder what % of folks on my TL have read Nancy Drew. Or even heard of Nancy Drew.
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It is incredible how much folks on my TL follow and comment on the U.S. Supreme court and yet know so little about, or do not follow what happens on, the Indian Supreme court.
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Gratifying to see data from our Indus Valley Report 2023 being used in this ad, jointly published by leading English newspaper publishers, on english papers' access to elite households.
Never imagined that our report on Indian tech / vc would support an ad for english papers!
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TIL that Flipkart at one point had 20% of their GMV coming from telecalling.
From
@dharmeshba
's newsletter where he talks to
@amukho
who was previously a sr product manager at Flipkart.
Not sure if any ecom players continue to have this now. I do deel like it is a relevant…
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Went down the crypto / nft web3 rabbit hole last year in a systematic way, trying to grasp the landscape + players.
A few useful resources that I leaned on.
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In early 2018, while waiting to board a flight at Bangalore airport, I saw some men dressed in white kurta dhoti, speaking Kannada, and seemingly of the the profile of rural / farmers (am possibly stereotyping, but let us presume this is true) walking around the airport. I…
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This is a great playbook fm Gaurav Munjal on controlling the narrative. We saw this w Coinbase & NYT as well.
Dont forget - many founders / startups today have an online following bigger than the journalists / media companies covering them today.
Seize the narrative!
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Every 10 or so cold pitch decks I get, I end up going to the company's website to understand what problem they are solving + what exactly the product does.
It is almost as if the pitch deck is written to obfuscate what the startup does. Or to intimidate and impress.
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Dropping the longest piece I have written thus far, tmw! At ~7k words, it is a monster!
Covers a range of topics - from the origin story of venture in India, to the forcing functions that govern the startup ecosystem, & finally the uniquely Indian playbook that has risen.
Soon!
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To the unloved founders, to the founders who are scripting their stories silently, know that you aren’t alone. And that one day your moment will come. One day those stories will be told. And your journeys will be celebrated & will inspire a thousand more startups.
Onwards.
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Such a great example of disruption.
FY14 Rev
@BlueDart_
$260m (ecom shipments 11% of rev)
@delhivery
$8.5m
Ecom was <$10b GMV
FY21 Rev
@BlueDart_
$443m (8% CAGR since '14)
@delhivery
$493m (79% CAGR)
Ecom GMV ~$40b (my estimate)
& ecom shipments are ~2% of $200b logistics mkt!
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I collect these examples of 'technological inconsistency' or the future imperfect:)
This is the year 2000 visualised in 1900. Postmen deliver snail mail (!) on their microplanes. They visualised flying cars but not email.
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New post alert. This one, my longest ever (10k+ words😬) looks back at my five years in venture capital. It also looks at the venture + startup landscape in India, as well as my thoughts on venture craft, and my personal evolution.
I hope it gives you a glimpse of life as a VC,…
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Shout out to ‘The CEO Factory’ by HUL’s Exec Director Sudhir Sitapati, per me, one of the sharpest marketing minds in India today. Brief thread on the book.
Disclaimer: Sudhir is a friend.
1/8
@HUL_News
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Why did we Indians not innovate on pressure cookers?
Interesting Q (and a very good podcast) on food, culture, caste and music by the polymathic
@krishashok
(w
@srajagopalan
)
Ideas of India is a 🙌🏽 podcast; & also has transcripts!
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Such an interesting profile; fin-tech and line faults.
Love profiles like this where two very unlikely skill sets, interests come together.
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Delighted to announce Blume's latest Fund, our 4th & biggest ever!
We are growing bigger to match the bigger dreams & ambitions of our founders.
To back these crazy dreams & ambitions is after all what Blume was built for & why we come excited to work every day. Every day.
We're thrilled to share that we just closed Fund IV at $250M, our biggest fund yet!
Thanks to all of you who have been with us since 2011 when we started out at just $20M. Can't wait for what's next as we continue supporting founders and their ambitions 🚀
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At
@DunzoIt
HQ, where the meeting rooms are named after some of their legendary riders / delivery partners.
Who you celebrate is who you are built for!
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Such a terrific chart to dwell on. Indigo has consistently expanded marketshare (almost) every yr since its launch. Very few Indian businesses exhibit this kind of consistency, and ruthlessness. HDFC, DMart come to mind.
Yet unlike them, Indigo's share price has barely doubled…
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Lol, Dave Clark (ex Flexport CEO who was dismissed when Ryan Petersen got back) has put his Flexport stint under education (and not work ex), in his Linkedin profile!
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Fintech is so back, baby!
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Next read.
On how a Judean carpenter and his founding team growth-hacked their way to build the biggest community-led brand of all time.
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Encouraging all Cameo for India startup founders not to indulge in these expensive signals of paying celebs to create customized shoutouts to VC funds as part of your pitches.
No need to spend money on this, folks. We get the model & can visualize the product.
Save that money.
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@MohapatraHemant
@BenedictEvans
@usa
Poor guy wasnt shot very likely because he was of caucasian origin. That likely saved him.
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Paid subscriber numbers for Hotstar, Prime Video & Netflix via
@newley
Hotstar has 300m viewers but only 3m or 1% pay. & Netflix? It is 1.2m
Another interesting data point. "...only 3% of India’s 4G-enabled smartphone users subscribe to video services"
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India K12: rough notes
~270m enrolled across 1.5m schools
~2/3rds in govt schools
~45m enrolled in English medium schools
~20m in CBSE/ICSE/IB/IGCSE
The ~4m graduating fm English schools, but really the ~1.2m graduating fm national / intnl boards feed India's privilege funnel.
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One of my fave recent discoveries is Mithun Madhusudhan (ex Sharechat, Apna PM)'s newsletter The Indian Pivot. He (not on twitter i think) along w Dharmesh Ba are emerging as the leading Interpreters of India2.
Mithun's recent work 'Decoding Bharat - Further Reflections' is…
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Missing; last seen 26th Sep'22 in 'Indus Valley'. (Occasional sightings in Silicon Valley only now).
Pls come back. All is forgiven.🥲
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This is a fascinating chart of online commerce's share of key verticals.
There is like a couple of articles and half a dozen investment theses in here.
Source: Credit Suisse
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Founders & their crazy ambitions are why Blume exists, & why we come excited to work every day. Every day.
Today, we renew that commitment, to serve the next wave of dreamers & builders from India.
Delighted to announce the 1st close of our new Fund
22
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Thought this chat between
@gauravmunjal
&
@singh_sequoia
was v good. Covers lots incl investor management, why he wants at least 4 years of runway, & the most impt advice that
@deepigoyal
shared w him.
TIL he has a reading guy to summarize books!
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It is never been easier to launch a startup in India & yet never been harder to create one appealing nationwide. Increasingly startups are focusing on India1 or India2, satisfied with what that market offers. What does this mean really? Some ruminations.
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The Desi startup podcast scene is buzzing.
Here is a list of some of the popular ones I have listened to.
@100xEntr
- the OG
@therealjpk
+
@RavBhatia
's usecase
@TheDesi_VC
@IndianDreamPod
@thebetterindia
podcast
@varunvummidi
's Stars & Startups
What am I missing?
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22 year olds! Building rockets and launching satellites!
They are younger and younger these days, and more and more ambitious than ever.
We are happy to announce our investment in
@PixxelSpace
(India's first private earth imaging co)
@awaisahmedna
& Kshitij are building a constellation of earth imaging micro satellites that will solve some of the world’s most pressing problems.
Read more:
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Payments as a loss-leader to sell devices was the fintech plot twist we never saw coming!
Soundbox accounts for over 1/3rd of Paytm's payment rev.
Also Soundbox is a fascinating indigenius innovation. V curious about the origin story, and who invented it?
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Enjoyed this podcast where
@deepakshenoy
chats w the ever interesting
@kunalb11
Brief thread of what I found interesting.
(there is also a transcript if you prefer that)
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Good read on the Blinkit turnaround. Interesting the higher SKUs + daily POs, unlike zepto w smaller SKUs but weekly POs. Another was on how they share information in advance.
This is the 2nd big pivot / turnaround that Deepinder has pulled. The first was the pivot to full…
If you're wondering why Blinkit is having a dream run and what it's doing right vs competitors,
@deepsekharc
and I dive deep to tell you its turnaround story.
@chandrarsrikant
From downbeat Grofers to thriving Blinkit: Inside Zomato's brahmastra
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The 40-40-60 rule that we use at Blume, to keep our writing interesting!
40k feet. 40 feet. 60 degrees.
A bored reader is worse than a non-reader.
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App Idea: OLX for Liquor. You enter your excess liquor in the app, and 'seekers' get to know who in their building / complex has daaru. They can ping u + buy your supplies.
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For a venture nerd like me, this was such a terrific read (the transcripts are the best thing abt Colossus podcasts).
Brief thread🧵 on what I found interesting from
@roelofbotha
's convo w
@patrick_oshag
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New (and a tad long) post on elite colleges in India,, national economic mobility, privilege and what it says about us.
Thread.
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Some chartbait.
Indian ecommerce + commerce majors and their GMVs (FY21) - via Bernstein.
(Reliance's digital / nondigital colours seem to have inverted. The lighter blue is for offline, and darker blue is online).
Meesho's $5b is interesting. (Flipkart includes Myntra)
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Time to update my mental model for what the size of the internet audience in India is.
In India, whatsapp is effectively the internet. Perhaps 5% of the audience who uses the net doesnt use whatsapp. Perhaps less. Going by that, overall India internet MAUs are ~425m.
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I have been tracking the food ordering market for a few months now. Mildly obsessed with the numbers & what it stands for. Fascinating that Swiggy was at 200k orders /day & Zomato at 180k/day (likely includes Middle East) in Mar18. 6m on I estimate S at 666k/day & Z at 466k/day!
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Tailwinds > Moats.
A thread.
Worth noting that when Softbank acquired ARM in ‘16, both NVidia and ARM had similar market cap - in the early $30bns. Now Nvidia is at $300b and ARM is being acquired for $40b!
1/7
Nvidia is acquiring Arm for $40 billion
SoftBank bought Arm in 2016 for $31 billion
www.theverge.com
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This by Nicholas Wade is a terrifying read.
On how the COVID-19 virus could have emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. And that hypothesis cannot be easily dismissed.
Compelling + well-argued read building on the work by
@ydeigin
@StevenQuay
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Hmmm.... Only 46 lifestyle brands in India > ₹500crs in rev in '22. Something for Digital Native brands to keep in mind.
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I could talk for hours on this map.
Percentage of population that is vegetarian in Indian States (2014)
Source: Union Government Sample Registration System Baseline Survey 2014 [large states] + Nutrition Journal [NE States]
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The next VC platform / founder support service seems to be around founder well-being.
Essentially provide founders w health + mental support / services akin to what elite athletes get.
Some VC programs doing this...
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This surprised me.
That as much as ~15% of Indian beauty content on Youtube is powered by Nykaa's content farm.
Via a Jefferies research report.
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Tweet thread alert!
Is it just me, or did others too feel that this yr’s Mary Meeker deck was a tad muted?
Anyway, here is my take / what I found interesting. Reflects my biases!
Report is here
#marymeeker
#2019internettrends
#internettrends2019
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