Senior Consultant

Software Developer

Finance Consultant

I like the name Blume uses to refer to it - Indus Valley, as a parallel to Silicon Valley

Staff Engineer

Welcome to Indian Startups's Private Community

Indian Startup ecosystem should change its name to?

Indian Startup ecosystem should change its name to?- Grapevine

Get me a Product Management Intern !!!!

Is Getting Jobs from LinkedIn Opportunities just a myth ??

Common "Indian Startups" do your thing🧠👨‍🦯

What do you think is the next big thing for Indian Startups?

I might sound stupid here but please hear me out. 
The market is crowded with so many startups in every domain. Older startups are much more stable, on track to become profitable or are already profitable with a huge market share. Not to forget the legacy companies with deep pockets and years of R&D and experience. Along with the competition, funding is another major pain point now because of various reasons we all know of. 
Also, somewhere I feel we don't face a lot of burning problems we faced a few years back which gave birth to a lot of startups who were actually solving some problem. Most of the new age startups out there are not really solving any problem but just offering premium products or services targeting just the high earning individuals. Most of the new ideas are repetitive with no major differentiation or value add. 
Because of all these reasons, I feel we might see very few new startups in future let alone successful ones. 

Share your thoughts please!

What's the future of start-ups and start-up ideas?

Analyst

Remember the time when we were surrounded by 5-6 startups making waves every day? They were the talk of the town, with incredible growth, innovative offerings, massive hirings, and funding galore. We couldn't stop discussing their latest feats!

But lately, it feels like a different era, with a cloud of negativity casting a shadow. 

Dear Indian startup ecosystem, you have a history of miracles and game-changing moments. We believe in your potential to inspire, innovate, and motivate the youth. Let's bring back that magic and remind everyone why we're at the forefront of global innovation. 🇮🇳💡

It's time for something great, something remarkable. Let's reignite the spark and make headlines for all the right reasons!

Kuch machao yaar, it's getting boring :)

Yep, this is the exact headline that should have been put out for Meesho's raise. VCs will literally do anything to help a startup IPO and then throw the retail investors under the bus.

Meesho to burn $300M

Founder’s Office

Getting pretty annoyed with Byju's being reffered to as an edtech startup in 2023.
Byju's started in 2011, more than a decade ago. Stop calling it a start up 😑

What are your thoughts on this?

How long does a startup remain a 'startup'?

Intern

I have evaluated a lot of startups as part of my work. My approach has changed from being optimistic to being suspicious of a lot of founders, even before the process starts. 

The sheer number of founders that I come across that try to game metrics/play around with data to make the startup look good. 

Most commonly:
1) Completely changing the definition of margins, repeat rates, etc. and never clarifying that they are using different definition. 
2) Often giving rebates/discounts to key stakeholders but finding ways to hide it from their P&L so that it’s not visible. THIS IS SO COMMON - lot’s of them start showing revenues, and then you will see another cost item rising at the same pace, and lot’s of times it will just be money moving around
3) Sometimes completely giving the wrong picture of how their product works on ground. You then speak with their customers, and they describe something completely else.

Things like these are eating up the ecosystem. These founders also end up fooling some VCs, and then capital get’s kept away from actually good founders who have good intentions.

There was a recent major investment in the commerce space, and that is another one such example of a startup doing this. Needs to stop.

RANT: Founders who fake metrics

Product Owner

I look forward to moving out of my current organisation hence posting for support from this community.

I would prefer joining startup, which has good culture.

Please suggest best startup company names for interview.

Data engineer

Came across this post on X recently, the point sounds valid in my opinion but wanted to know from the community cuz I recently took a decision between a unicorn b2c start-u which is super popular vs a b2b SaaS startup which is known among the tech community.

Post link: https://twitter.com/amuldotexe/status/1738243872231428484?t=V2-6pMSYCvl7L-w_f8IggQ&s=19

A big name in tech Vs 0-1 high growth place

Product Manager

Hello everyone,

I'm Varun, the co-founder of Mesa School of Business. We’re Asia’s first startup focused business school focused on fostering the next generation of startup leaders in India.

Prior to Mesa, I was a Sr. Product Manager at Amazon in Seattle, and did my MBA from Kellogg School of Management.

I'd love to chat with you folks about my journey in building Mesa, my thoughts on higher education, 0-to-1 building, amongst other things.

Ask me anything! :)
I'll be back at 5 pm and start answering.

I'm Varun, Co-Founder at Mesa School of Business. Ask me anything!

Founder

Majority of Indian startups has toxic work culture and the same is not true for any US or Europe based startup. Indian startups just copy paste ideas from the west and apply it to Indian context. We don't have original product barring few such as Postman and all. Why is it so and how we can improve the situation?

Majority of Indian startups are shit.

The startup is Accel and Elevation backed. 

The company raised seed funding because the founder and team is from IIT- Kharagpur, and Accel + Elevation have people from IIT-Kharagpur working in their team. 

The founder has no prior work experience, no manners on how to speak with anyone (office boy, or women employees) keeps firing people who don’t agree with him, insists on being in the office for 12 hours because he pays us. 

Hiring criteria is -
1. Single people, so no distraction. He asks are you single or in a relationship (in the interview)
2. No married people 
3. Hire women only if they can stay in office till 5 AM (US based startup)
4. Everyone has to be in office for 12 hours compulsory for all 6 days of week

He boasts on how the VCs will save his ass even if the product fails, has said that worst case scenario I will make money because I know company will be acquired. 

He hires domain experts, makes them create playbook and train juniors to do the work, and then fires them saying "We have to stay lean, and this is a bad market". He did this with 3 departments already. 

How are the VCs not asking him basic due diligence questions? He is now raising 8 million follow up round.

RANT.

This is grapevine for godsake. Name the damn startup.

Recruiter

Let's ignore what's wrong with startups, keep this an optimistic thread. Which startups make you excited about their future? 
The ones that have cracked product, GTM, model, or something else.

Name the best Indian startups :)

One for the believers: Which startups in India do you feel are going to make it really big? 🚀

Corporate Strategist

Come at me, I'm not scared. There is a reason why FAANG engineers are top-rated VS some random startup engineer.

Here are the reasons why I think that Indian Startup culture is pure cringe:

1. The random use of the following emojis- 🚀💰📈📊💡
2. Fake enthusiasm for every little thing - "Wow! 25M people ordered condoms WOWOW!!!🚀"
3. Claim that you are a verb("company name"): "I am a (Zoman, Flipster, Swiggster or whatever)" but no one really knows about it outside of your company.
4. The HR is a proper softie in the name of Employee wellbeing but will end up being a sadist the moment layoffs happen.
5. Think hard if you really want to work in a place that is your LinkedIn feed on Steroids.

Indian startup culture is the cringiest thing ever

Bruh you high? 
 Have you not seen the infinite amount of cringe generated by so-called faang engineers on blind?  
 Startup or faang, shit is the same everywhere.

Growth Manager

Welcome to Office Gossip's Private Community

Just got to know from a friend who's a higher up HR at DealShare, one person from their leadership does heroin on company funds, he even asked this resourceful guy to procure.

Indian Startup investors are a joke.

Another day, another startup shenanigans

Backend Engineer

Brace yourself everybody. Another big fraud coming and this will be bigger than what we have seen so far. Sequoia (Peak XV) portfolio company.

NCR based startup are mostly lala run startup. recently a founder didn’t know what’s their interview process or why they want to hire , after making offer , they are saying we want to close position in next 1-2 months not now. 

i pity on investor who invested in them. also one more reason to never join ncr based companies.

don’t join NCR based companies

Kya dikat hai bhai, udane do paisa. Tumhare thodi hai. 

Good firms genuinely perform well and return money. The ecosystem is not forgiving -- you don't survive very long if you don't create any big wins. It's an extremely high stress job with very little WLB. You do make money but it comes at a cost.

Layoffs are sad but at least those jobs existed in the first place? They wouldn't without VC money. India's VC scene is extremely young and it'll take time before we produce a Google. Entrepreneurs are not always right, they are not always nice either; but they definitely are courageous.

Unpopular Opinion: VCs get a lot of crap for no reason

VCs kill many startups with unrealistic targets that the main problem. Not every business is designed to give ultra quick returns VCs want . They ruin well potential startups

Indian Startup ecosystem should change its name to?

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