Sumanth Raghavendra
@sumanthr
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An entrepreneur tilting away at the windmills from Beantown, India. Co-founder and CEO, Co-founder, @thekenweb
Bangalore
Joined July 2008
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800 employees laid off...just Rs 2 cr for employee relief fund...
Over Rs 5 cr for PM Cares and other relief funds...
Strange priorities
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So Ritesh Agarwal is funding Ritesh Agarwal's company and providing a return to Ritesh Agarwal's investors.
In funding terms, this should be called a "selfie round" - to paraphrase Nithyananda, "a selfie round is basically me funding a company of me using me to show me me"
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The end of an era: Tiger exits Flipkart completely.
In absolute terms, $3.5b profit might not seem much but there is no question that Tiger's bet on Flipkart single-handedly changed the landscape of VC investing in India forever. For that alone, we owe them a debt of gratitude🙏
🚨🚨Our big Monday AM story.
#TigerGlobal
exits Flipkart with a $3.5 billion profit, selling its remaining stake to Walmart, the fund told its LPs on June 28 in a communication.
W/
@digbijaymishra1
@ETtech
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Exactly one year back, Zomato, a public company, was valued at 2X of Swiggy, its closest rival.
Exactly one year later, Swiggy, a private company, is valued at 2X of Zomato, its closest rival.
The Investor giveth, and the Investor taketh away.
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SoftBank *profit* on its ~$700m Doordash investment is worth $11.2 billion today - even if it doesn't make a single dollar from all its investments in India put together, it will still be in the black...another great example of power law returns in VC investing
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Apparently
@whitehatjunior
has claimed in court that "Wolf Gupta" is an imaginary child...but I am delighted to announce to all the Wolf-fans that I have managed to locate him...and what's more, he is endorsing something new!
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Startup-backed startup invests in another startup...
Fun times in startup funding.
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My sole ambition in life is to have a bank account balance that is as big as my CRED points balance
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Have been hearing the "Can India produce a Google?" question for the last ten years.
Looking forward to the "Can the US produce a Jio?" question for the next ten years.
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Joining a startup because they gave you a bike for free is as good a deal as buying a home because they gave you a gold biscuit for free
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Thrilled to see PVR food listed on Zomato - can't wait to order obscenely over-priced popcorn to my home and recreate the big screen experience
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Startup takes loan 💸
Press release: Top financial institution backs our startup with fresh round of debt funding 💵
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Sad to see folks dissing on Dunzo - creating a startup is incredibly hard and even the most lauded names are fragile in so many ways...and just one small mistake away from death.
Hope Dunzo can find a way back...
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Freshworks market cap has fallen to $3.2b?!
Despite $450m ARR, EPS expectations beaten by 80% and $1.2 billion in the bank?
The public markets are crazy 🤪
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What a time to be a startup founder in India!
On one hand, we have experienced founders with $2.5m ARR struggling to raise funding & on the other, we have 2 kids from IIT raising $2.5m seed rounds with no revenue, no product, no team...but with a stellar deck...in Notion no less
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At this point in time, I wouldn't be surprised if Byju's has raised enough funding to actually build physical schools that can accommodate every single child in India...
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A surprisingly large number of startup founders that I have talked to over the last couple of days are not optimistic of making it past the next 12 months.
For a cohort that is genetically programmed to have hallucinogenic optimism, this is frightening...
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July 7, 2023 - Public beta launch
Sept 29, 2023 - One million users
84 days to reach 7 figures!
Fastest productivity app to go from 1 to 1 million users...in history
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Such a warm and respectful way to say goodbye to a co-founder (there is no easy way to do this!).
Kudos
@deepigoyal
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Easy to forget that FB was originally a jokey hobby project and Google was an academic paper. Doubt if there is any such canonical thing as a "tech-first" company. Also, it is perfectly ok to aspire to build a valuable startup without the dogma of worshipping tech for tech's sake
Often when people discuss "100 unicorns in India" and "2nd largest tech startup hub" etc, the same people often are also talking of how "India hasn't produced a Facebook/Google".
There's a reason to it. There are extremely few *actual* tech-first companies in India.
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So disappointed to see folks trying to pull down Flipkart and Sachin Bansal even after this mega-exit...
Is it that difficult to just relish their achievements as fellow founders without being jealous or judgemental?
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"Since LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft, we’ve decided to move out of Azure".
Impeccable logic.
How dare they (he/she) not allow us to use pronouns as we (his/her) wish?
BTW since Microsoft's CEO is from India,
@bhash
should also move Ola out of India to Kailasa, no?
On
@Linkedin
,
@Microsoft
and their wokeness.
As an Indian institution, Ola is for genuine actions on diversity. We run one of the largest women only automotive plants. Not 1 out of 10 lines, or a small section, but the whole plant! Almost 5000 women now and will grow to tens of
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Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi had never met before they teamed up for Dropbox and even that happened only because YC wanted two founders...there are zero absolute rules when it comes to startup success
I have met zero companies with reasonable success where the co-founders didn’t know each other from much before starting the company.
Seems like arranged marriage model doesn’t work in building companies.
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Call me old school but this 100% WFH idea seems horrible to me - half of the joy of startup life is the communal aspect of physically building a "tribe" and of serendipitous discoveries from riffing off each other...focusing only on productivity is reductionist & joyless
@vijayshekhar
If you are starting up in 2020 an office doesn't really makes sense. I see more and more companies going 100 percent remote. And lot more companies allocating at least 30+ percent to remote or distributed teams
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Jumped through multiple hoops to pay six figure credit card bill through CRED via Paytm UPI...got Rs 8 cashback in total.
Weekend well spent...
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Wonderful to see Paytm go public.
Surreal to see how far
@vijayshekhar
and team have come in the last decade - from a small niche VAS play to India's largest payments company.
Keep inspiring 🙏
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A touch of hyperbole, a dash of cherry-picking but still great to see an Indian startup scraping for a fight with a global behemoth like Shopify...we need more such unabashedly ambitious founders!
Shopify has a SERIOUS performance problem.
Because of which you are losing thousands of dollars (or maybe more) and you don't even know this yet.
So let me demonstrate how Shopify's poor performance is impacting your D2C brand's revenues (and many other things).
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And if
@whitehatjunior
believes that using photos of Bill Gates, Sundar Pichai et al without their permission is fair game, surely others can use oh say
@realkaranbajaj
in their own advertisements...like so?
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Whether you love CRED or not, there is no denying the fact that
@kunalb11
Kunal Shah is an engaging raconteur.
Kunal talked to me at length & answered several burning questions about CRED and spoke candidly of his personal journey and motivations.
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Before anyone sues me, please note the following:
1) The ad uses WhiteHatJr's logo much the same way that it uses Google/Microsoft's logo in its own ads
2) It doesn't actually claim that Karan Bajaj used our software, it just uses some random quote he gave and juxtaposes it
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Funding: $87m
Valuation: $300m
Revenue: $0
Never imagined I would see an Indian B2B startup with these numbers in my lifetime...much less one that is less than two years old
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I would pay lakhs* to watch a discussion on money/wealth between
@kunalb11
and
@paraschopra
PS* Lakhs in CRED points
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When Chinese VCs invest in ShareChat - "Local innovation zindabad"
When foreign investors fund LendingKart - "Bharat Mata ki jai"
When UAE/Singapore LPs back IndiaQuotient - "Vande mataram"
When all others invest in India/other Indian cos - "Let's not celebrate like brown sepoys"
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A $10b valuation for OYO gives SoftBank a neat 3X valuation bump-up that it can report in its next quarterly report - timely and meaningful enough to show a handsome IRR and a hedge against any WE markdown.
Russian-doll Ponzi anyone?
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Kudos to Ola for figuring out how to squeeze in an "AI" reference to some random, completely unrelated business development.
An Ola spokesperson confirmed Gupta's exit to Moneycontrol
“As part of an ongoing restructuring, Ola Mobility CFO Kartik Gupta has stepped down from the company. This restructuring is aimed at productivity enhancement in an AI-led era that is redefining the cab-hailing industry
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Just realized that with his investment of $2.2B, Ritesh Agarwal is by far the biggest home-grown investor in India for 2019.
Now fully expecting ET Startup Awards to anoint him as the "Midas Touch Investor of the Year"...
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“Cred, but for elite tech founders”
Exactly what the world needs...
PS: Pity they only raised $2m and not the minimum $5m - so the founder won't qualify to be a member in his own club...joy
Utsav Somani's Offline, a club for elite tech founders, raises $2 million in seed round
“Imagine it to be a Cred, but for elite tech founders,”
@somani_utsav
Good one by
@deepsekharc
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The better half challenged me to survive for a week without ordering from Swiggy.
Challenge accepted.
Installing Zomato now.
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The irony of the April Fool's jokes of some Indian startups is that the joke idea sounds less funny and more credible than the real "business"
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Indian VCs and star startup founders listening to Sam Altman's pronouncements at a conference
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We are soon approaching a point where the only differentiation pitch for consumer startups in India will be "we are not in the lending business"
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$6.2m funding for a startup named Anar - is this what they call a pomegranate seed round?
💰 Anar, a business-to-business networking app, has raised $6.2 million in a seed funding round co-led by Elevation Capital and Accel India.
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Aap VC hai ya startup?
.
@vedantu_learn
has invested $2 million in Instasolv, a doubt clearing app for students from Class 6 to 12, as the live online tutoring platform looks to grow its presence in Tier 3 and Tier 4 cities
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Sometimes I wonder if there are two Kunal Shahs - one Kunal raises hundreds of millions of dollars of funding and the second Kunal sly-tweets the first Kunal hundreds of million times for raising hundreds of millions of dollars of funding?
And it’s a hard to remove curse unless money you spend comes from profits.
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Haldiram’s buys Raghav Bahl's "The Quint"?
"Bahl Puri" anyone?
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"Every third user on Snapdeal is now buying safety & immunity products"
Amazing statistic.
Amazing that Snapdeal still has three users left...
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lol this is hilarious...probably because it fits so well
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Disappointed to see many startup leaders & investors that I admire add their names to this shameful letter to the govt asking for bailouts - surely at this time the govt has more important things to worry about than pay "50% of salary bills & contract wage bills paid by startups"
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The founder of a company that has raised (and burnt though) $1.8b recommends "less capital burn".
Filed under "Do as I say, don't do as I do"
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Call me old-fashioned but I reckon that there is only one way to become a founder - by deed rather than by diktat... seems rather incongruous to dole out a co-founder tag when the company was founded a dozen years back (however impressive a team member's contribution is)...
🚨🚨.
@zomato
has elevated Mohit Gupta, CEO, Food Delivery, by making him a cofounder..
@deepigoyal
said in an email sent Sunday.. that makes it four cofounders at the company,
@ettech
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I just published “Why a prize idiot like Rahul Yadav is precisely the kind of startup hero India deserves…”
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Notion is such an inspiration.
No, not because it could raise $50m at a $2b valuation in 36 hours in *this* environment.
But because it profitably got to 4m users and $30m ARR with just 42* employees.
PS: The answer to everything
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All the VC truisms that you hear about seem to be well and truly in play:
- Easier to raise on narrative rather than numbers
- Zero revenue is better than some revenue
- Momentum matters
- "Pedigree" matters more
- The easiest way to get five term-sheets is to get one
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Much like power, money doesn't make you honest or dishonest...it only amplifies your true nature.
So little point in blaming VCs and market pressure for poor founder behavior...
Corporate governance issues coming to light in Indian startups will only increase with time. While founders will be blamed, the venture capital (VC) ecosystem is equally to blame
The root cause of this is the overestimation of the size of Indian markets by founders and VCs. 1/10
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Why would anyone, much less someone with a high credit score, want to use a credit card to pay rent? Fine, you get free credit for one month but beyond that, if you roll over, you pay 40% interest.
Plus, pay an additional transaction fee to CRED?
Can anyone help me understand?
In these trying times launching 2 new features at CRED to give financial confidence to our members.
1) Rent: pay your rent with credit cards
2) Stash: instant and flexible credit line
All in the new neumorphic design.
Superb early traction, rolling out to all soon.
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500 million people create presentations each day.
We envision a world where this number is zero.
A world where people no longer have to create presentations manually.
Delighted to announce the public beta launch of - ChatGPT for Presentations
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The most tragic aspect of death is that it conclusively ends all possibilities
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Staggering to see the volume of funding $$$ attracted by "astrology tech" startups in India in the past one year.
If this isn't an indictment on the shallowness and unimaginativeness of the Indian VC ecosystem, I don't know what is...
Funding in astro and spiritual tech startups in the past 12 months
◾️InstaAstro: $2.3 Mn
◾️AstroTalk: $20 Mn
◾️Vama: $1.5 Mn
◾️Utsav: $240K
◾️DevDham (previously DevDarshan): $720K
◾️Melooha: $635K
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So Dream11 has raised $100m in funding but wants to spend a third of that sponsoring one single IPL?
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Incredibly tough times for startup founders, both financially and psychologically.
But it is also a test of character - if you can fight through this without sacrificing your ethics, it will prove that what you have been fighting for has always been worth it...
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Strange sort of situation - The number of confirmed cases seem to be rising sharply rather than falling...but people seem to have gotten back to work and life post the lockdown as if the pandemic is past us and everything is back to normal...is this wilful delusion?
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Angoor Worrykoo is my new spirit animal
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Know a few startup founders who had to shut down their cos & are trying to move back to a salaried life...but struggling to get an opening
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Daft of
@whitehatjunior
to sue
@malpani
and score a self-goal - PR humble pie looming with a side dish of the Streisand effect...
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When your mobile bill moves in sync with your startup's valuation...
It's truly incredible how much my monthly mobile bill has gone down over the last one year. By nearly 70%!
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Reliance is investing $200m into Kalaari Capital.
As a startup founder in India, would you like to raise money from Kalaari? Why/why not?
Do let me know (DM open)
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If you are in the business of SaaS, you would do well to spend time on the Dropbox S-1 filing. Fascinating on so many levels...
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First, the fact that this is an internal round tells us that there is not a single external investor (yet) that believes that OYO is really worth $10b
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Given its reputation as being one of India's first and best design-first mobile apps, disheartening to see
@CRED_club
resort to dark UX patterns.
A short thread...
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VC to portfolio founder -
In private: Sorry, can't lead your next round
On twitter: Love your passion and persistence
Gotta love 'em VCs...
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If an Indian startup needed the government to ban its Chinese competitor to succeed, it would seem like a rather hollow victory...largely unearned, no?
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I just published “How the Nasscom Product Conclave became the Bellandur Lake of the Indian Startup Ecosystem”
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Such a pity that we have only one
@Nithin0dha
in the Indian startup ecosystem...
Raise money because you can get a high valuation now, and then?😬 What happens to investors who come in at higher valuation? An entrepreneur's job is to also create value for investors from whom you actively seek capital & those who take the risk, at every stage-IPO/VC/PE/Angels.
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Looks like my chances of getting funding from
@IndiaQuotient
just went from a whopping 0.000001% to a flat 0%...BMKJ, ab tumhare hawale watan sathiyo
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Also a great founder wears a jogging shoe on one foot and a 10 inch stiletto on the other
A great founder has a telescope in one eye and a microscope in another.
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Received an email invitation be an angel investor in a fund.
Weeping with joy that someone actually thought that I had enough money to invest in a fund...god bless
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Dear
@_sachinbansal
please allocate at least 10% of your $834m windfall for angel investments...pay it forward!
#oktxbye
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We now live in a time where an individual angel investor is leading a Series D funding...even two years back, it was inconceivable that an angel would lead even a Series A...
Amazing how far the ecosystem has come...
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Whether
@BKartRed
&
@sanjaynath
provide a blockbuster IRR or not, they have changed the way VCs work in India forever...kudos folks!
When your investor gives you a book with handwritten message. WOW. Thanks for the gesture
@BlumeVentures
@BKartRed
@sanjaynath
@RomanSaini
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What Shankar Nag is to autorickshaw drivers in Bangalore, Sundar Pichai is to edtech startups in India
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"Ashok Varma—the life and death of a startup founder"
The saddest story that I have written...a terrible tragedy that puts our own startup lives/goals into perspective
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Had registered for vaccination for my parents today - the hospital is claiming that they have run out of stock. Other places saying the same thing.
Are companies hoarding vaccines until May 1st to profiteer post the price deregulation?
If so, there is indeed no limit to avarice
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Need to get some software built...is that kid from the
@whitehatjunior
ad still available? Willing to fight off those Anglo-Indian VCs in a cage death match if so...
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Interesting too see Hrithik Roshan endorse WhiteHat Jr following SRK endorsing Byju's...
The last brand that they both endorsed was...wait for it...Home Trade 🤯
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Has Wolf Gupta been put in charge of Gmail and Google Docs?
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Ha ha, this is so true.
Also true - these days, the number of VCs claiming that they are "open for business" is far outpacing the total number of VCs...
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Every publication in India seems to have reported that OYO is valued at a whopping $10b post its aptly-named F round...
Not true.
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Discussion about "SaaS - built in India for India"...available only on an iPhone 🤯🔫
@ku1deep
@nutanc
@joinClubhouse
@soaibgrewal
@pjain
@raviteja2007
@avlesh
@helloanand
I am discussing “SaaS - built in India for India ” with
@ku1deep
,
@pjain
,
@soaibgrewal
, and
@AntarYaami
. Saturday, 24 Oct at 7:00 PM IST on
@joinclubhouse
. Join us!
Please RT and tag people who would like to join.
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Second, it also tells us that even the existing investors don't believe that it is worth $10b!
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Interesting that the said twitter bio (that ostensibly evokes "some envy") fails to mention that the said IIMB degree is for Software Enterprise Management (a part-time weekend course) and not the regular PGDM program
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If jingoism was the essential ingredient for creating world-class products, all the stuff we use would have been coming from North Korea
I suspect this comment might well be the most effective & motivating rallying cry that India Inc. has ever received. Thank you for the provocation. We will rise to the occasion...🙏🏽
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"“Sir, I’m also a customer. I called regarding a complaint myself”.
Oyo had connected me to another customer."
This looks like a Monty Python sketch - real life is more bizarre than reel life...
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The purported news "leak" that Amazon is exploring acquiring Flipkart is a rare game theory stratagem in action - the non-cooperative win-win game
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Why are VCs in India behaving like PE firms?
Sure, there might be an opportunity to back D2C brands following the "consumption" hypothesis but this feeding frenzy seems like a hasty retreat to conservatism over backing non-linear, non-obvious tech bets
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