Rishabh Jain

Last night on Shark Tank India, a fintech company, stood in front of the Sharks and announced: "All our loan sales and financial advisory: powered by AI Agents." Not a pilot. Not a roadmap. Their actual sales motion, today. The platform powering it? TellyFlow. When a company walks into Shark Tank India and stakes their pitch on your product, that's not a testimonial. That's product-market fit. AI-led outbound sales isn't coming. It's already here. (Special thanks to Kunal Bahl, Varun Alagh, Viraj Bahl, Namita Thapar & Vineeta Singh for showing love to TellyFlow's Neha!) ________________________________________________________ #SharkTankIndia #SharkTank #TellyFlow #SalesAutomation #StartupIndia

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Term sheets are designed to screw founders. And most founders don't realize it until it's too late. You raise ₹10 crore at ₹100 crore valuation. Congrats! You just gave away 10% equity, right? WRONG Here's what the term sheet actually says: → Liquidation preference: 1x (VCs get their money back first) → Participating preferred (VCs get money back PLUS their equity share) → Anti-dilution protection (your equity gets diluted, theirs doesn't) → Board control (they control decisions) → Drag-along rights (they can force you to sell) You didn't give away 10%. You gave away control. The liquidation preference trap: Scenario: You raise ₹10 crore at ₹100 crore valuation (10% equity) Exit at ₹50 crore: → VCs get ₹10 crore back (their liquidation preference) → Remaining ₹40 crore split by equity → VCs get ₹4 crore more (10% of ₹40 crore) → Total VC take: ₹14 crore out of ₹50 crore (28%, not 10%) You got screwed. The participating preferred trap: Even worse than liquidation preference. Exit at ₹200 crore: → VCs get ₹10 crore back first (liquidation preference) → Then they get 10% of remaining ₹190 crore = ₹19 crore → Total VC take: ₹29 crore (14.5%, not 10%) The bigger the exit, the more they take beyond their equity. The anti-dilution trap: You raise Series B at a lower valuation (down round). → Your equity gets diluted → VC equity stays protected (anti-dilution clause) → You own less, they own the same You take the hit. They don't. The board control trap: → You have 1 board seat (founder) → VCs have 1 board seat → "Independent" board member (chosen by VCs) 2 vs 1. You lose every vote. You're the CEO, but you don't control your company. The drag-along trap: VCs want to sell at ₹500 crore. You want to keep building. Too bad. Drag-along rights mean they can force the sale. Your company. Their decision. The ratchet trap: Miss your targets? → VCs get more equity automatically → Your equity gets diluted → You're punished for their unrealistic expectations The founder reality: → You own 60% on paper → But after liquidation preferences, participating preferred, and control clauses → You might walk away with 20% in an exit → While VCs walk away with 40% The math doesn't math. Why founders don't push back: → Desperate for funding → Don't understand term sheet language → Afraid deal will fall through → "Everyone accepts these terms" But here's the truth: Everything is negotiable. → Liquidation preference: Push for 1x non-participating → Board control: Fight for founder-friendly board → Anti-dilution: Negotiate weighted average, not full ratchet → Drag-along: Set minimum thresholds The best time to negotiate is BEFORE you sign. After you sign, you're stuck. Hot take: Most founders celebrate raising funding. They should be reading the term sheet with a lawyer. Because the valuation headline is meaningless if the terms screw you. Agree or disagree? 👇

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Meesho’s IPO just got subscribed 70×+ and for me, the highlight isn’t the number. It’s the two founders behind it: Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal Everyone is celebrating the valuation today. But very few talk about how brutally hard their climb actually was. These are two IIT-Delhi batchmates who didn’t come from money, didn’t have industry connections, and definitely didn’t have the “perfect idea.” Their first startup Fashnear - failed. Not “pivot-ready” failed. It actually went nowhere. But instead of quitting, they did what real founders do: they went back to the ground. They sat with small shopkeepers. They observed homemakers selling on WhatsApp. They saw millions of Indians hustling without tools, platforms, or support. From that chaos came the insight that built Meesho. No glamour. No metro obsession. No marketplace playbook. Just two founders trying to solve a real problem that no big player cared about. But that journey? It was hell. Low order values. Broken supply chain. Heavy returns. Quality issues. Zero trust from sellers. Investors questioning everything. Founders get this pain when every metric screams “shut it down,” but your gut says “one more try.” And that “one more try” changed Indian e-commerce forever. Today, the same company that was once rejected for being “unscalable” is seeing 70×+ IPO subscription, with global investors fighting for allocation. Because Meesho didn’t just build a platform. They built a movement a way for small-town India to earn, sell, and grow. And this IPO validates one truth every founder needs to hear: If your mission is real, the market eventually catches up. this inspires me deeply. Not the IPO… but the resilience behind it. #startups #ipo #investors #meesho

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The ₹50,000 Crore Bet on Trust Just watched Mangalam Maloo's interview with Vidit and Sanjeev (from Meesho), and honestly, my jaw dropped a little. Mangalam asks point-blank: "280 crore orders annualized. Charge ₹1 per order as platform fee. That's ₹280 crore straight to EBITDA. Why are you morally opposed?" Their answer? It was pure conviction: "You can't put a number to trust." Let that sink in. In the middle of IPO week - when every company is supposed to be squeezing every last rupee - Meesho just turned down ₹280 crore because it conflicts with their principles. Not hypothetically. Not a "we'll consider it." They said no. Here's what got me: 140M+ customers from tier-2, 3, and 4 cities. 1 billion+ orders processed. Zero commission from sellers. 100% payout, every single time. They went from zero to ₹50,000 crore in a decade without nickel-and-diming anyone. While the rest of e-commerce is finding ways to add convenience fees, handling charges, and peak-hour surcharges, Vidit and Sanjeev just shrugged and said: "If you introduce something at the end to a customer and they suddenly get surprised - that's where trust breaks." (even if it's ₹1, because "You can't put a number to trust.") Their philosophy is simple: surprise = broken trust. And in price-sensitive markets where options exist, you don't get a second chance at earning it back. For years, people have predicted Meesho would abandon their zero-commission model. They haven't. Same prediction about platform fees. They haven't. Because principles aren't A/B tests. They're DNA. They're customer obsessed - and that's the only differentiator that actually lasts. They've rejected the entire industry playbook (5-15% fees are standard everywhere) to solve something different: affordable access for 500M+ underserved Indians. No hidden costs. No "growth at all costs" if it meant abandoning the people who needed them most. In a world obsessed with extracting every last rupee from every transaction, watching someone hit ₹50,000 crore by asking "how do we keep earning trust?" instead of "how do we extract more?" feels almost rebellious. But this is what conviction-led founding looks like when trust meets scale. Who else is building like this? Drop names below. 👇 P.S. - The real takeaway here isn't the valuation. It's the discipline to turn down ₹280 crore (arguably, life changing money) because it conflicts with what you believe. P.P.S - Dropping an article on how companies like Rapido, Meesho have defied industry norms to create the new normal tomorrow! Follow along to hear more :) ---- Full Video: https://lnkd.in/g7h3-wJQ Full Interview: https://lnkd.in/gURjdwCr

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Forget the Silicon Valley Playbook. The 'Blinkit Effect' is the real secret behind India’s next $50B+ operational explosion. While some look at Blinkit as just a delivery app, VCs look at it as an Operational SEAL Team. From the high-pressure dark stores of 2021 to the disruptive founders of 2025, if you want to see where India’s execution-heavy decacorns are coming from, you look at the Blinkit Effect Here are my 5 VC-level insights into why the "Gurgaon Mafia" is currently rewriting the Indian execution playbook: 👇🏻 1) Prithvi Singh - Gameskraft Most gaming founders focus on "fun." Prithvi used his Blinkit-honed high-concurrency roots to build a platform that handles millions of real-time transactions without a glitch. He leveraged the "Zero-Latency" mindset to solve backend engineering hurdles that slower competitors simply couldn't code their way out of ⚡ 2) Varun Khurana - Otipy Varun realised early on that Agritech isn't a "farming" business; it’s a density problem. By treating every tomato like a time-sensitive delivery packet, he solved the "perishability" trap in farm-to-fork. Otipy’s hyper-local supply chain is a direct product of the 10-minute delivery DNA native to the Blinkit war room 🥦 3) Zaheer Khan - Ayu Health Proving that you can bring "Quick Commerce" rigor to healthcare. Zaheer didn't just focus on "Doctors"; he focused on a systemic pain point: fragmented hospital operations. By bringing "Blinkit-level" logistics to hospital networks, he is systematising an industry known for chaos, demonstrating the "Systemic-First" ambition of the modern Blinkit graduate 🏥 4) Manas Gupta - GobbleCube Mastering "Data-Driven Velocity." Manas took the intimidating world of e-commerce brand analytics and made it as fast as a flash sale. By focusing on real-time SKU-level precision and scalable data frameworks, he successfully navigated the "Insight Gap" for D2C brands that were drowning in slow data 📊 5) Abhishek Upadhyay - CubeAPM The invisible backbone of the 2026 enterprise. By launching an observability platform for complex digital stacks, Abhishek is ensuring that "Zero Downtime" is a reality for the global market. He proved that the Blinkit network doesn't just build apps; they build the infrastructure that keeps the world’s most complex systems running 🧊 The ➡️ Insight: The "Blinkit Effect" isn't about the bike or the bag; it’s about Urgency as a Culture. When your training ground is a 10-minute delivery window, your baseline for "fast" shifts. That psychological edge is what creates a high-velocity, $50B+ ecosystem. ➡️ The 2026 Blueprint: Don't just look for a good idea; look for an Execution Moat. The next unicorn won't just have a great product; it will have a founder who can survive the high-pressure "Blinkit" crucible and scale at 10x speed 📈

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1. Third Wave Coffee raises Rs 408 Cr led by WestBridge Capital 2. Asaya raises Rs 88 Cr from RPSG Capital Ventures, OTP Ventures, others 3. NVIDIA explores Perplexity investment at $30B+ valuation 4. Endiya Partners leads $2.5 Mn seed round in physical AI startup WATER 5. Urban Company sues Kent RO over allegedly disparaging native ads 6. ABH Healthcare SME IPO to open on Monday

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Zepto founders are not selling a single share in the Zepto IPO. After four years, $2.4 billion raised, ₹5,905 crore in losses last financial year, an Enforcement Directorate compliance notice disclosed as Risk Factor 29, and monthly active users that dipped for the first time in Q4. The IPO isn’t about them cashing out. It’s about raising ₹8,010 crore to stay in a race that has no option to pause. Zepto’s DRHP financials tell a specific story. Revenue grew from ₹4,454 crore in FY24 to ₹11,110 crore in FY25 to ₹22,624 crore in FY26, roughly doubling every year. The loss trajectory kept pace: ₹1,249 crore in FY24, ₹4,700 crore in FY25, ₹5,905 crore in FY26. Total expenses in FY26 were ₹29,027 crore against revenues of ₹22,624 crore. The company spent ₹1,389 crore on marketing alone, 6.1 percent of revenues, in a category where mature platforms spend 3 to 4. What keeps investors patient is the unit economics: the EBITDA loss per order almost halved in FY26, and Q4 FY26 losses narrowed versus a year earlier. The business is getting more efficient per order even as total losses widen, because Zepto is currently at 1,139 dark stores with plans for 1,900 more by FY30. Zepto’s problem is not product or execution. It is adjacency. Blinkit sits inside Zomato, which is profitable at the group level and can fund dark-store expansion from its own cash flows. Swiggy Instamart sits inside a listed company with permanent public market access. Zepto is standalone. Every rupee it spends on a new dark store comes from investors. The ₹8,010 crore fresh issue is not capital for celebration. It is capital for infrastructure parity. Blinkit crossed 2,100 dark stores. Zepto has 1,139. The quick commerce customer is loyal to whoever delivers faster. The only way to deliver faster is to have more stores closer to her. The race is decided by density, and density is decided by capital. What the Zepto IPO actually signals is that quick commerce has left the venture capital asset class and entered the infrastructure asset class. Venture capital bets on product and market. Infrastructure capital funds density, network, and permanence. Airports, telecom towers, and now dark stores all require the same thing: patient capital that accepts slow returns for a long time in exchange for the defensibility that physical presence creates. The public market is the only source of capital at that price and that patience. Zepto is going public not because the race is won but because the race cannot be run from the VC stable. For any founder choosing which market to enter, the Zepto IPO is the honest disclosure of what some categories actually require. Most consumer markets are venture-fundable. A great product, clear brand, and a distribution edge will get you to profitability on manageable capital. A handful of markets are infrastructure markets dressed as consumer plays.

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🇮🇳 Indian Early-Stage VC & Pre-Seed Investors. 🔹 Core Pre-Seed / Seed VCs These are the firms most active before revenue or at early traction (pre-seed → seed). 1. Blume Ventures •Stage: Pre-seed → Seed → Pre-Series A •Typical Cheque: ₹2–15 Cr (~$250K–$1.8M) depending on stage & fund vintage. Early funds often wrote ~₹2–5 Cr at seed. •Notes: Highly active in tech + consumer + SaaS. Known as one of India’s most founder-friendly seed funds. 2. First Cheque •Stage: Pre-seed / idea stage •Cheque: ₹25 L – ₹1 Cr ($30K–$120K) •Notes: Often the first institutional check founders get; minimal bureaucracy. 3. Titan Capital •Stage: Pre-seed → Seed •Typical Deal Size: ₹20 L – ₹3 Cr ($25K–$375K) •Notes: Led seed rounds like India marketplace IPF (~₹3.2 Cr). 4. Better Capital •Stage: Pre-seed → Seed •Cheque: ₹40 L – ₹2 Cr ($50K–$240K) •Notes: Fast decisions, founder-friendly. 5. 100X.VC (India SAFE model) •Stage: Pre-seed → Seed •Cheque: Often ₹50 L + via India SAFE notes — founder friendly, less dilution. 6. IIMA Ventures (IIM Ahmedabad) •Stage: Pre-seed & Seed, deep tech focus •Cheque: Up to ~$500K (~₹4 Cr) in select cases. •Notes: Increasing cheque sizes for deep-tech startups early. 7. Zeropearl VC (Bipin Shah Fund) •Stage: Pre-seed → Seed •Fund Size: ₹159 Cr (~$18M) dedicated to early rounds. •Notes: Incorporated founder networks + unicorn founders; tickets sit in seed range. 8. 3one4 Capital •Stage: Pre-seed → Seed → Series A •Cheque: ~$0.5M – $5M (₹4 Cr – ₹40 Cr) across early stages. •Notes: More aggressive early checks than traditional Indian seed funds. 9. Venture Highway •Stage: Seed •Cheque: ~$1M typical (~₹8 Cr) depending on deal and traction. 10. IndiaQuotient •Stage: Seed •Cheque: ₹1 Cr – ₹3 Cr ($120K–$360K) typical (founder ecosystem estimate).

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💳 Snapmint Raises $125 Mn to Expand Its Merchant Network. BNPL startup Snapmint has raised $125 Mn (~INR 1,100 Cr) in its Series B round led by General Atlantic, with participation from Prudent Investment Managers, Kae Capital, Elev8 Venture Partners, and existing angel investors. 💡 Funding Details & Use: • $115 Mn as primary capital, rest as secondary • Expand merchant network and EMI-on-UPI offerings • Enhance tech stack and scale digital platform Nimbus 📌 About Snapmint: • Founded in 2017 by Nalin Agrawal, Anil Gelra, Abhineet Sawa • Provides installment-based credit solutions for mobiles, electronics & home essentials • 7 Mn+ monthly active users, serving 23,000 pincodes, enabling 1.5 Mn+ purchases/month • Competes with Amazon-owned axio and ZestMoney • Operates in India’s rapidly growing fintech & BNPL market, projected to reach $2.1 Tn by 2030 Snapmint #Fintech #BNPL #StartupFunding #SeriesB #EMIonUPI #DigitalCredit #Snapmint #IndiaFintech  #Microshots #october #october_updates

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