YC StartUps in India
Which YC funded Indian startups have been successful over the years? Successful = Profitable / Growing Revenue YoY with necessary burn / Dominant Market share. The Indian startups accepted list seems to have increased to a handful every year, but don't see any of them creating the impact that one expects from businesses selected by a seed platform that prides itself on extreme scrutiny for all applicants. Where do you think is the gap? American understanding of Indian business models / consumers / market or somewhere else?
YC interviews for ten mins. Despite how getting to the interview is a 90% dropoff. Having done an interview myself (did not get accepted)- we found it to be such a random process. The partners had clearly not read our application or checked our demo. We probably got to the interview because of our credentials. Also they do not understand India context at all. YC is probably only good as an entry point to US b2b given their extensive contacts and early customers from Ex-YC
The real problem is that backable founders and ideas can easily get better seed rounds in India.
Yc terms are really bad. 500k is barely enough to get started, and the safe note structure of the deal means that raising the next round below 10mn valuation will mean unreasonable dilution. Hence most founders I know who are not fresh out of college or not from tech industry - do not see YC as relevant beyond saas.
Pretty good if you’re doing Saas for US market though!
