Every blog post on finding early customers gives you the same advice. Talk to users, find your ICP, do things that don’t scale.

All true. None of it tells you what a founder actually does on a Tuesday morning when nobody knows their name and the browser tab is worth zero dollars until somebody pays.

So we went through Season 4 of the Blume Podcast and pulled the moments where 4 founders landed their first paying customer. The actual Tuesday morning hustle version, not the polished one, reserved for conferences.

1. Minimalist: Your ICP is probably wrong. Your customers will tell you.

Mohit and Rahul Yadav launched Minimalist in 2020 aiming at metro Gen-Z, 18-22, higher income.

Data told a different story. Half the orders came from Tier-3 towns. Addresses like “opposite the temple on the fourth gully.” Those customers didn’t want cheaper products. They wanted to know why the pH was 3.6 and not 3.8. They knew this because they handled every DM, email, and comment themselves. 10 AM to midnight. For 2 months.

So Minimalist printed the pH on the bottle, then the molecule name, then the supplier. Every time customers pushed for transparency, the founders said yes.

Within 8 months, Minimalist crossed ₹100 crore in revenue. In 2024, HUL acquired the brand for ₹2,955 crore.

The takeaway: Your first customers will redesign your brand if you let them. The only question is whether you’re close enough to the inbox to notice.

2. Razorpay: Chase the customers everyone else is ignoring.

In 2014, every payment gateway in India served enterprise. Small businesses got 4 years of bank statements, photos of their office, weeks of waiting, and usually a no.

Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar went after exactly those customers.

Their first pitch was face-to-face in a Jaipur coworking space: a tiny e-commerce site selling kids’ clothes (still on Razorpay today). From there, the founders went where their customers already hung out. WhatsApp and Facebook startup groups. Bangalore Startups. Mumbai Startups. Pune Startups. The IIT Roorkee alumni group.

Whenever someone posted a payments question, Harshil would reply personally. No pitch. Just proving Razorpay understood how payment systems actually worked.

Within months, he didn’t have to. When someone asked about payment gateways, his customers jumped in before he could: try Razorpay.

The takeaway: Customer love is earned before anyone is watching. Find them where they actually talk. Reply at midnight. Eventually they start selling the product for you.

3. E2E Networks: One marquee customer is a flywheel.

Tarun Dua’s second customer was a wrong number. Someone called looking for a different Tarun. Tarun looked the caller up, phoned him back the next morning, and closed a same-day check.

That customer ran websites in the US. E2E hosted them in India, which made them faster than anything else available. Soon, a competitor of that customer called: why are their sites so fast? The competitor turned out to be CarDekho.

CarDekho was visible. When a well-known product suddenly gets faster, people in the ecosystem ask who did the plumbing. Flipkart called because CarDekho was on E2E. Someone else called because Flipkart was on E2E.

For the first 6-7 years, E2E had zero salespeople. 100%+ growth every year, all word of mouth. 15 unicorns on their servers eventually. Each marquee customer was pulling in the next one.

The takeaway: One marquee customer, served obsessively, is worth more than a sales team. Don’t chase funnel velocity only. Land one logo big enough that the next logo calls you.

4. MakeMyTrip: If the market isn’t ready, stop pushing.

Deep Kalra and Rajesh Magow launched in 2000 with a thesis for 3 markets: inbound, outbound, and domestic. Inbound worked. The other two didn’t. Indians would browse flights on the site, compare prices, close the tab, and call their travel agent.

They could have kept pushing. Burned cash and years doing it.

Instead, they walked away from two-thirds of their vision and bet only on NRIs in the US. Smaller market. But one that already trusted buying online.

Then came the unlock: they paired the website with a call center (1-800-India-10). The site let NRIs research; the phone let them book at a better price, because airlines wouldn’t “bounce” phone-quoted fares the way they did on publicly listed web prices. Every $1,000-1,200 ticket cleared $100 of profit. Conversion climbed. Repeat buyers cut acquisition costs.

The NRI market was resilient too. Weddings, aging parents, emergencies. Those tickets get booked through recessions, through 9/11, through everything.

Every other online travel startup from 2000 vanished. By 2005, MakeMyTrip was the last one standing.

The takeaway: “Keep pushing” is sometimes advice and sometimes how you bleed out. The hardest founder skill is knowing which market deserves your next year, and which one to walk away from.

Read the full stories here: https://blume.vc/commentaries/fantastic-early-customers-and-where-to-find-them

Listen to Season 4 of the Blume Podcast, “Destiny Avenged”: https://blume.vc/podcasts/blume-podcast

Team Blume

Dear Reader,

If you have ever tried buying real estate in India, you know how exhausting the process can be. Red tape, brokers, financing hurdles, delays, and a persistent lack of transparency are all part of the journey.

Most founders avoid this sector for good reason. It is deeply broken, highly fragmented, and unforgiving. Many who tried building here before ended up burning their fingers.

That did not stop Kanika Gupta and Tanuj Shori of Square Yards, who quietly built one of India’s largest organised real estate platforms, now moving ~₹18,000 Cr of transactions annually and preparing to go public.

Interestingly, this was never the plan. Their entry into real estate was accidental.

Tanuj and Kanika were both doing well in their careers in Hong Kong. But when Kanika went through India’s broken property buying process firsthand, she spotted an opportunity and decided to build for it. Tanuj backed her as the first angel investor.

Forty-eight hours after writing the first cheque, he quit his job at Nomura and went all in too.

Their conviction proved right. Over four years, Square Yards grew revenue sevenfold, from ~₹270 Cr in 2021 to ~₹2,000 Cr in 2025.

But, for the IPO-bound company, the hunger has not faded. Tanuj is playing a twenty to thirty year game. “This is about building something that can outlive us” he says.

In the season finale of the fourth season of the Blume Podcast, Karthik Reddy sits down with Tanuj Shori to unpack how extreme risk appetite, paired with lightning-fast course correction, helped build India’s most organised real estate platform.

Here are our favorite earned secrets from the episode:

1) Build what the market actually needs

When VCs pushed Square Yards to build another property search platform (the global playbook), Tanuj refused.

His logic was simple: “If five players haven’t succeeded, the sixth won’t. The market isn’t big enough.”

Tanuj realised early that cherry-picking wouldn’t cut it—real estate is an interdependent ecosystem. Search, transactions, mortgages, interiors, property management: success meant solving them all at once.

Progress was slow and painful at first: Just ~₹270 Cr in FY21. But once the flywheel started spinning, they hit ~₹2,000 Cr just four years later, a massive 7x growth.

2) Category leadership or nothing

Square Yards doesn’t do adjacencies for incremental revenue.

Every vertical leader gets the same mandate: “Can we become the category leader? If you don’t have the right to win, don’t do it.”

The approach has paid dividends—they’re not just India’s largest real estate brokerage, but also the fifth-largest real estate mover by transaction value.

3) Hire co-founders, not employees

Tanuj’s breakthrough came when he realised early hires weren’t treating Square Yards like their life’s work.

So he did something unusual. He picked up the phone and started making calls: friends from school, engineering, MBA, anyone he could “blindly trust”. He wanted people who would go all-in with him.

He convinced 15 of them to quit their jobs. Some agreed on the first call. Others took months.

The result? Zero attrition in the top leadership. A decade later, all of them are still there, growing their categories.

4) Equity is sacred; raise smart, never sell

Square Yards has raised $175M to date of which $150M has been returned to investors.

Tanuj treats equity as “the most expensive thing in the world.” His philosophy from day one: “If this isn’t life and death for us, we cannot ask anyone else for capital.”

Their first round was a $12M angel round with nothing built out.

They’ve never done a secondary sale. Every early investor still owns their stake. And there’s an internal mandate: no co-founder sells for 10 years post-IPO.

For most of their journey, they had visibility on just three months of runway. But Tanuj had “insane confidence” they could raise when needed.

Tune into the latest Blume podcast episode here, Links below:

Youtube

Spotify

Apple Podcasts

Prefer reading over watching? Here is the full transcript of the episode: https://shorturl.at/ymi1p

Would love to hear your thoughts on this episode. What aspect of Tanuj’s journey resonated most with you? Let us know.

This is Season 4: Destiny Avenged - stories of founders who rewrote their fate by going against conventional wisdom with season partners IDFC FIRST Bank and Ultrahuman (Blume portco).

Regards,

Team Blume

Dear Reader,

Let’s roll back the clock to early 2020. India’s skincare market was overflowing with noise — bold claims, buzzy ingredients, celebrity faces, and an endless stream of influencer reels promising miracles in a bottle. In a category built on “Miracle Serums” and “Reverse Ageing”, trust was in short supply.

But in a small office in Jaipur, two brothers were looking at the industry very differently.

Mohit and Rahul Yadav weren’t trying to chase trends. They were trying to strip skincare down to its truth — science, clarity, and radical transparency. If they couldn’t explain an ingredient, they wouldn’t use it. If they couldn’t clinically prove an outcome, they wouldn’t promise it.

That philosophy became Minimalist.

What began with six serums and no influencers turned into one of India’s fastest-growing consumer brands — hitting ₹100Cr in eight months and building a loyal community from Tier-1 metros to the smallest towns in the country. Five years later, Minimalist is a global player with Hindustan Unilever acquiring it for ~ ₹3000Cr. They have retail shelves across continents, and a reputation for earning trust the hard way.

In the weekend episode of S4E7 of the Blume Podcast, Karthik sits down with Mohit Yadav to trace the journey — the pivots, the patience, the obsession with product — and how two brothers quietly built a category-defining brand by respecting the consumer’s intelligence.

Here are 3 earned secrets from the episode that you should bookmark:

Minimalist’s differentiation: start with values

The beauty category has long functioned on hyperbolic advertising and celebrity endorsements. Customers were tired of being sold claims like “Magic glow” and “Miracle serum”. Mohit and Rahul chose a different route.

They created a product that was functional and transparent with its ingredients. They highlighted the actives in their serums and their concentration along with their expected outcome. No celebrity endorsements or false promises. They even chose monochrome brand colours to represent their no-nonsense approach.

Their customers valued this since they felt like a beauty brand prioritised their needs for the first time. That clarity built trust fast — and trust turned into repeat purchases, referrals, and compounding growth.

Acknowledge tier2 and tier3 India as growth engines

While consumers in tier-2 and tier-3 cities might not earn as much as their urban counterparts, their knowledge when it comes to skin care is at par with them. As Mohit says, “There is wealth disparity, but knowledge parity when it comes to skin care in India.”

In fact, in their first year of business, 50% of their Amazon orders used to come from tier 2/3 cities in India.

With rising incomes and knowledge parity established, growing a beauty brand with tier2/3 India in mind is a legitimate growth strategy.

Not an overnight story: compounding “unseen work”

Minimalist grew from 0 to 100 Cr in its first 8 months, even though it launched during COVID. But behind this ‘overnight success’ story was a series of experiments that led to the birth of Minimalist.

Prior to Minimalist, the brothers started a personalised Haircare startup called Freewill. It built their R&D and formulation depth, and forced early reps in manufacturing through setting up a plant. It proved they could reach meaningful ARR profitably, not just grow on hype.

It also exposed what breaks at scale, especially regulatory constraints around personalised mixing. Those hard-earned lessons became the foundation for Minimalist—shaping a simpler, more scalable model that combined scientific rigour with real-world execution.

Tune into the latest Blume podcast episode here, Links below:

Youtube

Spotify

Apple Podcasts

Prefer reading over watching, here is the full transcript of the episode

Would love to hear your thoughts on this episode. What aspect of Mohit’s journey resonated most with you? Let us know.

This is Season 4: Destiny Avenged - stories of founders who rewrote their fate by going against conventional wisdom with season partners IDFC FIRST Bank and Ultrahuman (Blume portco).

Regards,

Team Blume

If you’re a CX, growth, or tech leader at a consumer brand, you’ve probably seen dozens of voice AI pitches this year. Every week brings a new “Voice AI market map.” Every day, another cold email about “the next generation voice agent.”

The demos are slick. The claims are bold.

But when it comes to evaluating which platform will actually move your numbers, — most teams are flying blind. They over-index on “does it sound human?” and under-index on everything that matters in production a la when you put the voice AI in front of the customer.

Apurv Agrawal, Co-founder and CEO of SquadStack.ai (Blume Fund II), has written a sharp, practical framework to fix this — a compelling note on how to evaluate Voice AI properly. Blume Ventures participated in putting it together.

Here are the three most important takeaways (even if you don’t read the full write-up):

Start with the job, not the vendor

Before you touch a deck or a demo, ask: What exact job are we hiring Voice AI to do? Are we replacing something humans do today? Augmenting them? Or doing something we couldn’t do before — like proactive outbound at real scale? Without a clear job-to-be-done, every pitch sounds good, every pilot looks “promising,” and nothing scales.

“Sounds human” is the wrong first filter

Most teams over-index on whether the AI sounds human in the first 10 seconds. That matters, but naturalness is much more — can it handle interruptions, language switching, background noise, a frustrated user versus a curious one? The real test: blind listening tests where your team tries to spot the AI. And hard metrics like latency (<0.8 seconds) and ADR (abruptly disconnected rate).

The one question that cuts through the noise

Ask every vendor: “Can you show me one live use case where you’re beating a human baseline on the metric that matters — with numbers?” Not a recorded demo. Not a prototype. A live, in-production funnel with before/after data, time frame, and sample size. If they can’t show this, they might be early — fine for experiments, risky for core business flows.

If you’re evaluating Voice AI for sales, support, or collections, this is a must-read before you start the long, messy journey of finding the right partner.

Read the full framework → https://blume.vc/commentaries/how-to-evaluate-voice-ai-platforms

We hope you enjoy reading Apurv’s take on finding the right voice AI partner for you.

Team Blume

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Dear Reader,

Lets roll back the clock to 2013. Then, India had no EV supply chain. No charging network. Few believed world-class hardware could be engineered from scratch in the country. Two-wheelers were ruled by legacy giants who owned every inch of the value chain.

But for two IIT Madras students sketching battery packs in a hostel room, this wasn’t a deterrent. It fuelled their fire.

Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain went all in to rewrite India’s EV landscape.

What began as hand-built battery prototypes became Ather Energy — the company that reimagined what Indian engineering could look like. Over the next decade, they battled funding winters, supply-chain delays and repeated near-death moments. Yet somehow, they built a full-stack EV company, a nationwide charging network, and a brand people equate with excellence.

Today, Ather is a public company with a market cap of nearly ₹26,000 crore. Yet Tarun still carries the same curiosity and excitement he had in that IIT Madras lab while building his first prototype.

In S4E6 of the Blume Podcast, Karthik sits down with Tarun Mehta to unpack how long-term obsession, unreasonable patience, and engineering excellence built one of India’s most admired product companies.

Here are our favorite earned secrets from Tarun:

1) EV is not about electrification — it is about experience

Tarun believes the true EV unlock is experiential.

Many features that are expensive or impossible on Internal Combustion Engines become trivial on EVs because of the architecture.

Cruise control, hill-hold, software-led riding modes — all easier, cheaper, and cleaner to build on EVs.

This shifts the scooter from a “different powertrain” to a new experience platform. Thats what he believes is the true unlock for Ather in the coming decade.

2) Auto is not a land grab sector

Unlike software, where incumbents can bulldoze their way to a solution and eat your market share, the auto sector does not work that way according to Tarun. You cannot lock in users or blitzscale your way to 80 percent market share.

Consumer tastes are wide, fragmented, and evolve across life stages. That means the profit pool always stays distributed.

You don’t have to build for everyone to build a category-defining company.

The real advantage comes from depth of product and brand, not aggressive territory capture.

3) Innovation becomes inevitable when tinkering is normalised

At IIT Madras, “building something” wasn’t a resume check mark. It was weekend culture.

The university gave students unrestricted access to machines, tools, and materials, making prototyping a habit rather than a résumé stunt.

Because the campus is slightly insulated from the city, students lived in a cocoon that’s perfect for deep work and long cycles of iteration. Professors didn’t just supervise; they actively pushed students to experiment, file patents, and pursue ideas.

The result: over the last 12 years, IITM has incubated 457 deep-tech startups valued at ₹50,000 crore plus.

When you make building normal, outcomes become inevitable.

4) In deeptech, capital is not the bottleneck — time is

Tarun mentions that deeptech often has a better revenue-to-capital ratio than consumer startups. Every rupee creates IP, tooling, factories, and hard assets — not paid marketing.

The real challenge is gestation. Deeptech cannot produce a “new milestone” every 12 months to feed the fundraising cycle. Progress is slow, non-linear, and mostly invisible until the product is ready. It took Ather nearly 5 years to produce their first scooter!

This mismatch puts off VCs more than the capital requirements do.

India needs more hero stories to reset investor expectations.

5) Learn the function before you hire the leader

Tarun and Swapnil follow a simple operating rule. They never hire for a function until they have fully understood it themselves.

They run the function, make the mistakes, define the principles, and learn what actually drives success.

Only then do they bring in leaders who can scale that playbook.

It’s not about micromanagement. It’s about ensuring the company doesn’t drift into someone else’s version of itself.

Founders protect the operating system by learning first, delegating second.

Tune into the latest Blume podcast episode here, Links below:

Spotify

Click here for the Apple Podcast

For those of you who prefer reading instead, here is the full transcript of the episode.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this episode. What aspect of Tarun’s journey resonated most with you? Let us know.

This is Season 4: Destiny Avenged - stories of founders who rewrote their fate by going against conventional wisdom with season partners IDFC FIRST Bank and Ultrahuman (Blume portco).

Regards,

Team Blume

Dear Reader,

Picture this: The year is 2012. Bitcoin trades at just $20. Most people dismiss it as “magic internet money”. Regulators laugh. Banks scoff. Everyone think it’s a phase.

But for George Kikvadze, a Soviet-born financier who had just been laid off the day Satoshi Nakamoto released the Bitcoin whitepaper, this was the spark for reinvention.

He went all in.

From that leap of faith came Bitfury — a company that didn’t just mine Bitcoin, but built the very rails it runs on. Over the next decade, George and his co-founder Val spun out three billion-dollar companies — from Bitcoin mining to immersion cooling to AI data centres — all while navigating crises that could’ve ended them.

Interestingly, George often links Bitcoin’s philosophy to Mahatma Gandhi’s idea of Swaraj — truth, self-reliance, and decentralisation. “If Gandhi were alive today,” he says, “he’d be a Bitcoin maxi.”

That’s the story of Bitfury — and the man who bet everything on it.

In the weekend episode of Season 4 of the Blume Podcast (Destiny Avenged), Karthik Reddy sits down with George Kikvadze, Vice Chairman of Bitfury, to unpack how a layoff, a $20 bet, and a relentless belief in truth built one of Bitcoin’s foundational companies.

Here are 4 key learnings from George’s journey every founder should bookmark👇

1️⃣ Create optionality when everyone else is hoarding

At one point, Bitfury held nearly 300,000 BTC — enough to retire ten times over.

But instead of hoarding coins, George and his co-founder chose to build an ecosystem around Bitcoin.

They spun out Hut 8 (Canada), which became one of the world’s first public Bitcoin miners; Cipher Mining (US), which raised $500M and now powers AI data centres; and other ventures in immersion cooling and chip design.

Each entity unlocked new pools of capital, giving the company institutional credibility while still staying rooted in the Bitcoin movement.

The takeaway: in emerging industries, don’t just own the asset — own the picks, shovels, and the exchanges where they’re traded. Optionality is the ultimate hedge.

2️⃣ When the one-in-a-million crisis hits, escalate like your life depends on it

In 2015, Bitfury’s new 16-nanometre chip went from a 99% yield to 1% in production — a death sentence for a hardware company.

Orders worth hundreds of millions were stuck.

Instead of folding, George flew to Taiwan, brought together top semiconductor veterans — including Samsung and TSMC’s ex-presidents — and even got Morris Chang, the founder of TSMC, personally involved.

Within a month, they found the design flaw, fixed the issue, and shipped a new batch.

The lesson: resilience isn’t stoicism; it’s action. Escalate early, mobilise networks, and buy yourself time to fix the impossible.

3️⃣ Build the belief before you build the business

When George started, Bitcoin was synonymous with scams and Silk Road headlines.

To make it legitimate, Bitfury spent years doing the unglamorous work: educating regulators in DC and Brussels, creating the Blockchain Alliance, and hosting Necker Summit with Richard Branson — where bankers, founders, and even monks debated the future of money.

This wasn’t PR; it was survival. Without regulatory acceptance, Bitcoin might’ve been banned before it was built.

Every new industry needs evangelists willing to translate vision into trust.

If the world doesn’t understand your category, it’s your job to make it make sense — or it won’t exist long enough to matter.

4️⃣ Conviction compounds faster than capital

George believes Bitcoin isn’t a speculative bubble — it’s an insurance policy against fiscal indiscipline.

His thesis: governments will keep printing money, central banks will keep debasing currencies, and Bitcoin’s fixed supply will make it the digital gold of the century.

He predicts it will hit $1 million within five years — not because of hype, but because math wins over time.

“Comfort in owning Bitcoin is proportional to the time you spend studying it.”

Tune into the latest Blume podcast episode here, Links below:

Spotify

Apple Podcasts

For those of you who prefer reading instead, here is the full transcript of the episode.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this episode. What aspect of George’s journey resonated most with you? Let us know.

This is Season 4: Destiny Avenged - stories of founders who rewrote their fate by going against conventional wisdom with season partners IDFC FIRST Bank and Ultrahuman (Blume portco).

Regards,

Team Blume

Dear Reader,

Picture this: The year is 2000. The internet barely works in India. Credit cards fail online. Most people treat the web like a catalogue, not a place to buy. Against this backdrop, building an online travel company would be daring, even for the most audacious founders. But for Deep Kalra and Rajesh Magow, the founders of MakeMyTrip, this was the bet they staked everything on.

As expected, it wasn’t smooth sailing.

Just as they started out, they were hit with the triple whammy of the dot-com bust, 9/11, and SARS — each one freezing travel. When they were about to IPO, a competitor swooped in and tried to derail their listing. Deep-pocketed competitors kicked off a hotel price war and tried to steal their market share. Then COVID arrived and slashed their revenue by 96% overnight.

Yet they survived. And grew. Today, they are a ₹60,000 Cr+ company.

That’s the story of MakeMyTrip.

In the weekend episode of Season 4 of the Blume Podcast, Karthik Reddy sits down with Deep and Rajesh to unpack how they built a company that’s still standing despite the odds being stacked against them.

Here are 5 key learnings from MakeMyTrip’s 25-year journey every founder should bookmark👇

1) Price wars → change the battleground, not your unit economics

When hotels turned into a discount arms race (fragmented supply, deep-pocketed rivals), MMT refused to sell at a loss. Instead of matching subsidies, they consolidated—acquiring Goibibo (which had redBus)—to shift the edge from “price” to “scale, product, cross-sell, and lower CAC.” Lesson: if the rules force value destruction, change the game with structure, not discounts.

2) Dot-com + 9/11 + SARS (2001) → survive with a services bridge

The “triple whammy” ravaged travel and MMT was no exception. The founders cut senior salaries, shrank headcount from 42 to 24, and moved to a cheaper office. Crucially, they funded survival by building a 250 seat center for Ebookers UK (build-operate-transfer), while refocusing on NRIs with a hybrid web and call-center model where conversion and margins were better. Lesson: in existential shocks, buy runway creatively and go where PMF exists; you cannot push your idea if the market is not ready.

3) Desktop → App (mid-2010s) → jump the wave decisively

They were losing on desktop UX to Cleartrip; when the “app moment” arrived, they went all-in and never looked back. Behavior data backed the shift: desktop era had office-hour spikes; cheap mobile flipped intent to late evening, demanding tap-native flows and push-led re-engagement. Lesson: Move your product and GTM to where customer actually lives; go where the puck will be!

4) IPO 2010 → governance and market-fit for your story

Sanjeev Bikhchandani nudged them to list when they were ~$40M revenue and profitable. They chose the US because B2C e-commerce investors understood their business. Two days before listing, a rival tried to derail the deal; prep and clean governance carried it through. Lesson: Pick the market that understands you and build governance muscle early so that your IPO journey will be smoother.

5) COVID → defend the core, build the future

They reported a quarter down 96% on revenue—yet the challenge was morale, not survival: ~$500M on the balance sheet. They kept top talent engaged by incubating AdTech, Homestays, and even contributing to the government platform Aarogya Setu, while hard-resetting costs. They came out stronger post COVID. Lesson: use demand collapses to re-architect; a crisis is an opportunity to reinvent the business.

Today, MakeMyTrip is worth over ₹60,000 crore—but for its founders, it’s still Day 1. With India’s macro tailwinds and AI reshaping travel, the next chapter might just be their biggest yet.

To hear the full Weekend episode, tune into the latest Blume podcast episode. Links below.

Spotify:

Apple Podcasts:

For those of you who prefer reading instead, here is the full transcript of the episode.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this episode. What aspect of MakeMyTrip’s journey resonated most with you? Let us know.

This is Season 4: Destiny Avenged - stories of founders who rewrote their fate by going against conventional wisdom with season partners IDFC FIRST Bank and Ultrahuman (Blume portco).

Regards,

Team Blume

The best D2C founders already know how to build operating plans that actually work. Not from blog posts or decks—but from late-night WhatsApp groups and closed founder circles. These discussions are never documented or made public.

Until now.

In our latest Field Notes, we’re bringing that private founder knowledge into the open. Romita Mazumdar (CEO and founder, Foxtale) and Abhishek Agarwal (CEO and founder, Farmley)—both running ₹400+ crore brands—walked us through their actual AOP playbooks: the frameworks, the trade-offs, and the control systems that let them scale without losing grip on daily operations.

Here are some earned secrets you won’t find in typical planning advice:

🎯 The 3-Year Framework: Abhishek plans three years ahead specifically to nail year one. “The objectives should be clear for three years—revenue, product range, profitability metrics.”

📊 RoAS as Quality Control: At Foxtale, marketing spend gets monitored daily with surgical precision. “Without proper RoAS, I don’t care about revenue. That’s not high-quality revenue. If RoAS falls, costs get cut immediately.”

🔬 Channel-Category Matrix Planning: Abhishek divides his portfolio into growth buckets. “This year I want to double category A, grow category B by 70%, category C by 30%. Then each channel head projects growth for each category in their channel.”

💰 Discount ≠ Marketing Budget: Romita negotiates channel economics as complete equations. “When you say we can only sell at 10% off, I might give you ₹1 extra in marketing instead. Or I’ll approve 15% discount but cut your marketing budget or increase your revenue target.”

🌾 The 35% Buffer Rule: After nearly missing quick commerce’s explosion, Farmley now buffers 35-40% above every projection. “The cost of missing ₹5 crore in sales is far greater than paying ₹1 crore in added working capital float.”

📱 From Monthly Instinct to Daily Controls: Romita evolved from planning month-to-month in year one to building systematic controls at scale. “I used to see even ₹10 invoices. Now I only see invoices above a certain amount. We generate 100-plus invoices daily—I can’t see them all. As a CEO, you need to know without seeing—that’s where controllership comes in.”

Curious how these frameworks translate from spreadsheets to daily operations? Read our full deep-dive with step-by-step AOP construction methods from both founders.

Read the Full Article → https://blume.vc/commentaries/building-aops-that-work-real-lessons-from-seasoned-d2c-founders

Until next time,

Blume Team

In case this is your first time at Field Notes, here is what it is - Blume’s best advice for founders and operators, in your inbox, every other week.

Dear reader,

Picture this: It’s 2009. You’re in the middle of a successful tech career, living the typical Indian IT professional’s dream.

Then you quit, invest your savings into building servers in a country where reliable internet is a luxury, and bet that Indian companies will need local cloud infrastructure - at a time when even the term ‘cloud computing’ was barely known.

Investors think you’re crazy. Global tech giants are entering India. The tech infrastructure barely exists.

Sounds insane? That’s exactly how Tarun Dua and Srishti Baweja began their journey to building E2E Networks (Fund I vintage) - India’s pioneering cloud infrastructure company that would go on to achieve a ~₹7000 Cr market cap and power the early days of 15 Indian unicorns.

In the third episode of Season 4 of the Blume podcast, Karthik Reddy, co-founder and Partner at Blume, sat down with Tarun and Srishti to unpack this remarkable story of building against the odds.

Here are our top five lessons from E2E’s build-in-India journey:

Start Small, Think Big

“We had no clue. The question you asked was what will make a difference to get to the next level? I thought that money is enough. That’s a lot of money,” recalls Tarun about their first funding round of just ₹35 lakhs. Sometimes the biggest companies start with the smallest checks.

Customer Obsession Beats Venture Capital

We were the only institutional investor to back Tarun’s conviction to build E2E. While others chased funding, E2E chased customers. Their first major customer came from a wrong number call. That customer brought their competitors, those competitors brought more customers. Without a single salesperson, they grew 100% year-on-year purely through word of mouth.

The GPU Bet

In 2016, long before ChatGPT made AI mainstream, E2E took a massive bet on GPU infrastructure. “Nobody had bought that many enterprise NVIDIA GPUs in one shot,” Tarun explains. In fact, the NVIDIA HQ called them to ask why they purchased so many GPU’s since no one in India bought so many before. Sometimes you have to build the infrastructure before the demand exists.

The Power of Partnership

A CA and a technologist. A dreamer and a pragmatist. Husband and wife. Tarun and Srishti’s complementary skills proved crucial. “Tarun is very ambitious, always soaring in the sky with his big ideas. I think I am the one who has to bring him to the ground,” shares Srishti. The right partnership can be your biggest moat.

Building India’s Digital Sovereignty

“India should not become a digital colony,” says Tarun. E2E is championing three levels of digital sovereignty: data residing in India, hardware owned by Indian companies, and software provided by Indian firms - free from extraterritorial jurisdiction.

To hear this story of building India’s cloud infrastructure company, tune into the latest Blume podcast episode. Links below.

Youtube

Spotify

Apple Podcasts

Would love to hear your thoughts on this episode. What aspect of E2E’s journey resonated most with you? Let us know.

This is Season 4: Destiny Avenged - stories of founders who rewrote their fate by going against conventional wisdom with season partners IDFC FIRST Bank and Ultrahuman (Blume portco).

Regards,

Team Blume

Dear Reader,

Picture this: It's the 1990s. You're a Stanford graduate working at Oracle in Silicon Valley, living the American dream.

Then you quit, move back to India, and plant grapes in a remote Maharashtra farmland, hoping to strike Gold selling wine, in a country where everyone worships whisky.

Your family thinks you've lost your mind. Banks won't fund you. The government doesn't even have a wine policy.

Sounds insane? That's exactly how Rajeev Samant began his journey to building Sula Vineyards - India's largest wine company, now worth ₹2,100+ crores and hosting 350,000 visitors annually at what's become the world's most-visited vineyard.

In the second episode of Season 4 of the Blume podcast, Karthik Reddy, co-founder and Partner at Blume, sat down with Rajeev Samant, Founder and CEO of Sula Vineyards, to unpack this remarkable story of going against the grain. While you may know Sula as India's wine giant, this conversation reveals the raw, contrarian decisions that shaped an entire industry. From writing policies that helped competitors to building businesses that weren't even part of the plan, Rajeev's journey is a masterclass in patient capital and strategic rebelliousness.

Something new: We're experimenting with weekday episodes - crisp 20-minute conversations that fit your busy schedule. Think of it as our ‘shorts’ format while the full director's cut drops this Friday.

Here are our top five lessons from Rajeev’s zig-when-everyone-else-zags journey.

It’s Crazy Only Until You Do It

"People used to look at me like I was completely crazy - like where does this lunatic come from? In a place where there's only one God, and that is Whiskey, why does this crazy guy think he can actually make wine here?" recalls Rajeev.

But he had a killer pitch: "The world's richest rural regions are all wine regions." This single line convinced politicians and bureaucrats to listen. Sometimes the best ideas sound the craziest at first.

Category >> Company

Most entrepreneurs build moats. Rajeev built bridges - for his competitors. He literally co-authored Maharashtra's wine policy (they couldn't even use the term 'wines' - had to call it the 'grape processing policy') that allowed his competitors to enter. Sometimes growing the entire pie beats protecting your slice.

"It was sort of the big bang of wine in India where they just said, 'Okay, come on in, put up your wineries,'" he explains.

The Accidental Goldmine

Wine tourism wasn't part of the original business plan. Today, it's Sula's core business. "We built India's first wine tourism operation, which today is huge for Sula. Without that part of the business, this business would not survive, leave alone thrive."

A three-and-a-half-hour drive from 25 million potential consumers in Mumbai, Sula created something unprecedented - a destination that makes wine accessible and experiential. Your most profitable revenue stream might be hiding in plain sight.

Profitability Over Growth Theater

While today's startups chase valuations, Rajeev built profits. "We always said we want to show a profit at the end of the day. Early on, we were showing a profit after tax, which is extremely rare these days." Old school discipline beats new school burn rates.

The 25-Year Overnight Success

"It's unfortunate that these days, people see so many stories where it's almost like get-rich-quick - somebody started with an idea on day one and in year three it's already a unicorn. You don't realize that some of the most lasting stories are 20-year-old, 30-year-old stories."

Rajeev spent a decade just finding his footing. Today, Sula has created an industry expected to be worth ~$1 billion by 2030.

To hear the full 20-minute Weekday episode, tune into the latest Blume podcast episode. Links below.

YouTube:

Spotify:

Apple Podcasts:

Would love to hear your thoughts on this episode. What aspect of Rajeev's contrarian journey resonated most with you? Let us know.

This is Season 4: Destiny Avenged - stories of founders who rewrote their fate by going against conventional wisdom with season partners IDFC FIRST Bank and Ultrahuman (Blume portco).

Regards,

Team Blume

Picture this: It is 2014. You're trying to help small Indian businesses accept online payments. Then you realize getting a payment gateway approval is harder than getting a loan. And you've just been rejected by your 100th bank. Sounds like a dead end, right? Well, that's exactly where Razorpay's journey to becoming a $7.5 billion company began.

In the first episode of Season 4 of the Blume podcast, Karthik Reddy, co-founder and Partner at Blume, spoke to co-founders Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar, on their incredible journey of building India's leading fintech platform.

While you may have heard countless stories about Razorpay's meteoric rise, this episode takes a different path. Instead of discussing business metrics or IPO plans, we delve into the raw, human story behind India's fintech giant - before it became a $7.5B juggernaut. From late-night crisis management to pivotal early decisions, Harshil and Shashank open up about their journey's origins and what drove two engineers to take on India's complex financial system.

The full episode is now available on your favorite podcasting app (links at the end), but we wanted to share our favorite highlights from the conversation.

Early Tinkerers

Before becoming fintech pioneers, Harshil and Shashank were two tech enthusiasts at IIT Roorkee who found each other through their love for practical coding. While their college curriculum focused on theory, they created SDS Labs - a coding group that still inspires students.

"We used to spend our evenings writing code, doing practical applications... That's how we got connected," recalls Harshil.

Banking on Persistence

Getting banking approvals proved to be their first major hurdle. As Harshil humorously notes, "I went to an HDFC branch next to my home and said, 'Hey, I want to start a payment gateway.' The guy looked at me and said, 'Do you want a payment gateway?' I said, 'No, I want to start a payment gateway.'"

In Patna, Shashank encountered branch managers who hadn't even heard of payment gateways. In the conversation, Shashank recalls how they graduated from t-shirts to shirts to full suits for bank meetings.

The persistence finally paid off when they found a relatively young bank executive who understood their vision. But even then, there was a catch - a security deposit of ₹25 lakhs. It was Shashank's grandfather who came through with property sale money, becoming their first angel investor in a way that perfectly captures the Indian entrepreneurial story.

First Indian Fintech in YC

Their Y Combinator selection was serendipitious - they had "zero expectations" of getting in. But their simple yet powerful proposition caught YC's attention: making digital payments accessible to everyone in India, especially small businesses who were being underserved by existing players.

YC transformed not just their company, but their mindset. Being among founders aiming for 10-100x growth made ambitious thinking feel natural. The program's singular focus - "just build product and talk to customers" - stripped away all distractions and set the foundation for Razorpay's future scale.

Making Payments Beautiful

Perhaps most interesting is their approach to product design. Coming from engineering backgrounds, they built Razorpay's interface differently from traditional payment gateways:

"Unlike everything else, people want to minimize the time they're spending on payments. We started putting Razorpay's branding front and center, focused a lot on how this looks, how this feels, how do we give that user comfort," explains Harshil.

The Power of Customer Service

Their commitment to customer service is legendary. Even today, Harshil personally monitors customer complaints on social media, often flagging issues to his team before they spot them. As he puts it, "In B2B, servicing is the key, a lot of our sales is always through word of mouth."

This customer-first DNA was forged in crisis. Early in their journey, when a payment gateway reseller suddenly pulled the plug, leaving all their customers stranded, the five-member team made a critical decision. They would personally call every affected customer, no matter how angry. "There were customers who literally abused us on phone, massively," recalls Harshil. But they kept picking up calls, explaining the situation, and finding solutions. Some of those same customers still use Razorpay today.

To hear the full conversation and many more fascinating details about Razorpay's journey, tune into the latest Blume podcast episode on:

YouTube:

Spotify:

Apple Podcasts:

You can also read the transcript here.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this episode. What aspect of Razorpay's journey resonated most with you? Let us know.

To know more about this season’s theme, Destiny Avenged, watch Karthik Reddy, co-founder and Partner, Blume Ventures deconstruct why this theme and why now.

Regards,

Team Blume

In our latest Field Notes, we decode the operational playbook of three operators who've mastered Quick Commerce—a channel that's now an essential infrastructure for D2C brands in India.

For consumer brands, Quick Commerce isn't just another sales channel. It's a complete rewiring of how inventory, pricing, and demand work. The most successful brands have realized that mastering this channel requires treating it as a distinct operating system.

For this Field Notes article, we spoke with three operators who've cracked the Quick Commerce code at different scales:

• Prince, founder of Plush – scaled from zero to ₹100+ crore with Quick Commerce as a key channel, building one of India's fastest-growing female hygiene care brands.

• Tushar, founder of Perfora – created one of India's leading new-age oral care brands, successfully scaling across all major Quick Commerce platforms.

• Sri, founder of Gobblecube – helps D2C brands optimize their Quick Commerce operations through data-driven decision making.

Here are some earned secrets you won't find in typical startup advice:

📊 The Availability Ceiling: "If you're available in only 82% of dark stores, your upside is already capped at 82% of demand," explains Sri. "Before spending on marketing, fix your availability leaks."

🏪 The Assortment Reality: "Retail's first job is assortment, pricing is second, convenience is third," shares Prince. "Customers come to Quick Commerce for variety more than speed—a counter-intuitive truth most founders miss."

🎯 The Need for the Right Hook: "We were engaged in conversations for a long time but the listing wasn't happening," shares Tushar. "Then instead of offering our regular products, we offered our tongue cleaner—they didn't have one on the platform. That hook got us into every pod they had."

🔄 The Hyperlocal Challenge: Unlike e-commerce where delayed shipments mean late delivery, missing a Quick Commerce warehouse appointment can knock you out of stock for weeks. "Each dark store is its own P&L—if you're slow in Coimbatore, your Chennai stock can't cover it."

💰 The Hidden P&L Leak: "Vendor reconciliations sound like back-office housekeeping, but they're one of the easiest ways to leak cash," warns Prince. "A platform can auto-raise debit notes for 'missing' units you never shipped. One such mistake multiplied across 30-35 cities quietly strips margin."

🎯 The Category Manager's Secret: "If the category manager personally loves your product, half the battle is won," reveals Prince. "But they need proof you can be a ₹1-crore-a-month business; others care more about a unique right to win."

Curious how these founders made these frameworks work in practice? Read our full article with detailed insights on building sustainable Quick Commerce operations.

Read the Full Article → https://blume.vc/commentaries/quick-commerce-handbook-field-notes-from-the-frontlines

Until next time,

Blume Team

In case this is your first time at Field Notes, here is what it is - Blume's best advice for founders and operators, in your inbox, every other week.

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Hey there,

In our latest Field Notes, we decode the event-led GTM motion, a key lever for B2B SaaS Go-To-Market—especially in a world where cold emails go unopened and LinkedIn DMs get ignored.

We spoke to two experienced operators who’ve turned events into a core part of their sales and marketing motion:

• Prakhar Jain, Global Sales Lead at WhatFix – a B2B SaaS company, valued at over $900M.

• Nishchal Dua, VP of Marketing at InFeedo – an HRTech SaaS company scaling across geographies.

Here are five takeaways that stood out for us.

🧪 Early-Stage? Start With Signal.
If you're under $1M ARR, skip the sponsorships or booths. Attend events to get market/competitor intel, run a focused virtual series, and test what resonates—before you scale your event spend.

🎯 Cut through the noise at trade shows
WhatFix launched a targeted campaign ahead of Dreamforce—including a giveaway—to sign-up prospects. Even before the event began, they had over 1,500 booth meetings pre-booked.

📉 Convert Doubts, Not Just Leads
InFeedo runs focused 1-hour sessions where late-stage prospects hear directly from an existing customer. No sales pitch—just candid feedback, results, and lessons. These “Power Hours” close deals that demos alone can’t.

🧠 Events can generate months of content
Both teams repurpose every event—cutting videos into short clips, posts, and newsletters. One event can feed multiple marketing channels when planned well.

💡 Event impact goes beyond direct ROI
Don’t just measure leads. Events also influence product adoption, brand perception, and customer advocacy. The right metric depends on the event’s goal.

Whether you're early-stage and experimenting with virtual masterclasses, or scaling with ABM-backed field events—this is your handbook for building a structured, repeatable event-led GTM motion.

Read the full article here 👉 https://blume.vc/commentaries/from-booths-to-boardrooms-mastering-event-led-gtm-for-b2b-saas

Team Blume

In our latest Field Notes, we unpack the capital efficiency tactics of three Indian consumer brands that have scaled significantly while maintaining financial discipline.

For B2C companies, growth and profitability are no longer mutually exclusive goals—and for good reason. The most resilient consumer brands have discovered that capital efficiency actually builds momentum rather than hindering it.

For this Field Notes article, we spoke with founders and operators from three companies that exemplify capital-efficient growth at different revenue stages:

• Dhruv Bhasin and Dhruv Madhok, co-founders of Arata – a haircare D2C brand doing ₹60–65 crore in revenue with 75% gross margins.

• Vikram Kankaria, co-founder of FASHOR – a women’s ethnic wear brand with a ₹100 crore topline, app-led D2C engine and a Blume Fund IV portco.

• Arindam Paul, Chief Business Officer at Atomberg Technologies – a consumer durables company that crossed ₹1000 crore in revenue with strong margin profile.

Here are some earned secrets you won't find in typical startup advice:

📊 Arata's "ASP Reality Check": They calculate margins on actual selling prices, not MRP. "The delusion of making money at MRP never happens," says co-founder Dhruv Bhasin. This simple shift in perspective transformed their unit economics.

🧪 Fashor's Testing-at-Scale Model: Instead of betting big on seasonal collections, they test up to 400 designs monthly in small batches, then scale only proven winners. This approach minimizes both inventory and design risk while maximizing variety.

🔬 Atomberg's R&D as Margin Expander: Counter to conventional wisdom, they've improved gross margins while scaling by investing heavily in R&D that simultaneously enhances product performance and reduces manufacturing costs.

🔄 The Channel-SKU Revelation: Arata discovered that bestsellers vary dramatically across channels. "My top products on quick commerce aren't the same as on Amazon. Amazon's top products aren't my website's top ones." This insight led to channel-specific marketing strategies.

🔮 Destination Margin Planning: Before entering any category, Atomberg models what their unit economics will look like at scale. "If my destination gross margin doesn't support my current pricing, I should change it now."

⚖️ The Marketplace Trade-off: Fashor grew from ₹12 crore to ₹90 crore in 3 years through marketplaces, spending "hardly a crore or two" on ads. The trade-off? "It ate into our D2C sales when customers found our products cheaper during marketplace sales events."

Curious how these brands made these frameworks work in practice? Read our full article with detailed case studies on each company.

Read the Full Article → https://blume.vc/commentaries/the-insiders-guide-to-capital-efficient-scaling-ft-arata-fashor-and-atomberg

Until next time,

Blume Team

In case this is your first time at Field Notes, here is what it is - Blume's best advice for founders and operators, in your inbox, every other week.

Subscribe now

Most founders know ESOPs are a powerful tool for hiring and retaining top talent. But structuring them right—without creating future headaches—is where things get tricky. Mismatched expectations. Tax surprises. Confusing strike prices. Messy cap tables.

A well-designed ESOP program can be your biggest competitive advantage—or an administrative nightmare.

That’s why we put together this deep dive: to help you avoid the common pitfalls and set up ESOPs the right way from the start.

Why This Is Not ESOP 101

Most ESOP guides cover the basics: what they are, why they matter, and how to issue them. But for a founder navigating real-world scenarios, theoretical playbooks don’t help.

The real questions—the ones being asked in late-night WhatsApp chats, boardroom discussions, and investor calls—are far more complex:
❓ How do you set the right strike price without hurting employee incentives or your P&L?
❓ What happens to ESOPs in a down round or an acquisition?
❓ Should you set up an ESOP trust, or is it unnecessary overhead?

These aren’t academic hypotheticals—they’re make-or-break decisions that can impact your ability to attract and retain top talent.

Who We Spoke To (And Why You Should Listen To Them)

🎙 Varun Rajda, Founding Partner at Constellation Blu – An expert in ESOP structuring, legal frameworks, and financial optimization, working with hundreds of startups to design equity programs that actually work.

🎙 Mitul Mehta, Head of Finance at Blume Ventures – With years of experience in startup finance, Mitul has seen how different ESOP strategies play out in the real world, helping founders navigate the fine print of stock options.

These aren’t just theoretical perspectives—they come from people who have structured and implemented ESOPs across multiple startups and funding rounds.

4 Actionable Takeaways for Founders

We know that you’ll bookmark the article to read it later. But we also know that life can come in the way. So we are sharing the four most important takeaways for you below. The link to the full article is at the end of the mail.

✅ Create your ESOP policy at incorporation—don’t wait for a fundraise.
Many founders make verbal commitments around stock options early on, assuming they can formalize them later. But without a legally binding ESOP policy from Day 1, you risk confusion, mismatched expectations, and potential disputes with early employees. A simple, low-cost ESOP policy at incorporation prevents major headaches down the road.

✅ Be strategic with your strike price—it impacts both employee wealth and company financials.
A lower strike price makes ESOPs more attractive for employees but increases the company’s P&L expenses. On the other hand, a high strike price makes ESOPs less appealing but reduces accounting costs. The best approach? Keep it low in the early stage, introduce a discount for mid-stage hires, and align it with the latest valuation for late-stage hires.

✅ ESOPs during M&A: Accelerated vesting is not guaranteed.
Many employees assume that in an acquisition, their unvested ESOPs will immediately vest. That’s not always the case. Some acquirers offer fresh stock options, while others honor existing vesting schedules. Founders should be clear on their ESOP treatment during M&A discussions to ensure employees understand what happens in different exit scenarios.

✅ Use vesting structures to align incentives—one size doesn’t fit all.
Time-based vesting (e.g., 4-year vesting with a 1-year cliff) ensures stability, but performance-based vesting can be a powerful tool for alignment. Consider tying vesting to key milestones, such as revenue targets or product launches, to ensure ESOPs reward real contributions rather than just tenure.

📖 Read the full piece here: ESOP 201: Beyond Basics to the Questions That Actually Matter

Thanks for reading.

Team Blume

Last year, Omega Files Episode 1 took a bold step by openly sharing details of Blume Fund I, from fundraising and portfolio construction to performance metrics, which sparked over 25,000 views and ignited conversations across the VC landscape. This year, we’re going deeper.

What’s Inside Episode 2:

• Public vs. Private IRR: How Blume Fund I + IA’s returns compare with India’s top public market indices, even in a record-breaking bull market.

• Portfolio Insights: Detailed analysis of 70+ Fund I and IA companies, revealing patterns like the power of timing, cash efficiency, and the outcomes of acquisitions.

• Peer Insights: Performance data from three early-stage peer funds—Kae, YourNest, and Micromax Corp VC arm—offering a broader view of the 2011-15 VC vintage. Even with limited international institutional dollars, longer exit time horizons, and a nascent venture market, our analysis shows that Indian funds are capable of competing for global LP capital.

Our goal? To provide transparency and to show that Indian venture funds can compete on the global stage, delivering results that meet and even exceed the best global standards.

Explore Episode 2 of the Omega Files here.

We look forward to your thoughts and questions.

Blume Ventures

Link to Omega Files Episode 1

In this deep dive, we talk to: 

• Jeff Nelson, Creative Director at Subko (80K+ followers)

• Sumit Jasoria, Co-founder & CEO at NEWME (481K+ followers)

• Shivita Sharma, Founding Member at NEWME

You'll discover:

• Why Subko has completely avoided influencer marketing to date

• How NEWME gives their Gen Z content team freedom to fail

• The controversial take on content calendars (and what to do instead)

• Why you should stop selling on Instagram (yes, really)

Our favourite counterintuitive insight, you ask? 

“ROI in content is at least a six-month game. A lot of D2C brands pump resources into ads, thinking they'll invest in content after raising funds. The problem is, paid is not scalable.”

Want to know how these brands built massive, engaged followings by throwing out the rulebook? Read our latest Blume Beacon article here: https://blume.vc/commentaries/growing-organically-on-instagram-an-anti-playbook-for-d2c-brands.

Thanks

Blume Ventures

But first, what’s this season about?

This season’s theme is “Winning Beyond Boundaries,” with every episode exploring the stories of founders, celebrated personalities, and change-makers who have scaled their businesses and careers to make a mark on the global stage. 

We've charted five incredible journeys, each offering unique insights into building world-class products, exporting innovation, and competing against the best globally. From multi-generation business builders to sports legends, this season is an eclectic and exciting mix of guests who spill the beans on what it takes to win internationally. 

Whether you're a founder, investor, or simply curious about India's global success stories, read on to discover what we have covered thus far.

Episode 1: Building a $3.5B global giant, from Chennai to NASDAQ, featuring Girish Mathrubootham

Girish Mathrubootham, fondly known as "G" in the startup world, is the founder and executive chairman of Freshworks, the OG SaaS company that put India on the global tech map. This conversation is packed with valuable lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs and anyone interested in the future of tech.

Girish discusses the company's journey from a garage in Chennai to getting listed on NASDAQ, including critical choices in business model, product strategy, and team building at every stage of their growth.

Our favorite snippet is when Girish describes the process of going public, comparing it to a "big fat Indian wedding." He explains that while everyone is excited about the IPO and wants to celebrate the event, much like wedding guests, the real work begins after the celebration. Just as newlyweds must navigate their new life together after the wedding, a newly public company faces ongoing responsibilities and scrutiny.

He also peeks into the future, sharing his excitement about AI's potential and vision for India's role in the global tech landscape.

Episode 2: Game, Set, Match: Mahesh Bhupathi's Story of Global Domination

Mahesh Bhupathi, one-half of the famed "Indian Express" of tennis, is a true legend of Indian sport. With an astounding 12 Grand Slam titles in men's doubles and mixed doubles, Mahesh has conquered tennis and made a significant impact beyond the court.

Mahesh shares his journey from a tennis-obsessed child to a global champion. He offers insights into what it takes to become a world-class athlete, including the importance of family support, discipline, and the right mindset.

He also explores the challenges of doubles partnerships, the mental trials of competing at the highest level, and the transition from professional sports to mentoring young talent.

Episode 3: Scaling Marico to Rs 86,000 Crore Global Brand | Harsh Mariwala’s Winning Formula

Harsh Mariwala, the visionary founder of Marico, shares his journey of transforming a commodities business into a leading multinational FMCG company. This conversation is a masterclass in building and scaling a global FMCG business from India.

Mr. Mariwala delves into the key decisions that shaped Marico's success, including talent acquisition, the importance of innovation, and competing in only those categories where Marico can become a market leader.

We especially loved his anecdote about how they elevated Saffola from just another edible oil to a premium health brand. By initially positioning it as "good for the heart" and focusing on cholesterol reduction, they gradually evolved the brand to become synonymous with a healthy lifestyle. This clever repositioning allowed Marico to command premium pricing, making it one of the highest-margin edible oils in the world.

He also discusses the company's journey from an Indian brand to a multinational player through strategic and well-timed acquisitions and the expansion of local brands to other countries.

His passion for fostering entrepreneurship, evident through initiatives like the ASCENT Foundation and Marico Innovation Foundation, inspires and guides emerging entrepreneurs.

Episode 4: Amitabh Kant's Vision for India's Transformation: From Incredible India to Invincible India

Amitabh Kant, a distinguished leader in the Indian Government, shares his diverse experiences from grassroots development in Kerala to high-level diplomatic roles as India's G20 Sherpa.

From spearheading the iconic “Incredible India” campaign to driving initiatives like “Make in India” and “Startup India,” Mr. Kant’s career offers insights into India’s economic transformation and aspirations to become a global powerhouse.

In this episode, he explores key factors in India's growth: digital public infrastructure, the rise of entrepreneurship, and the importance of becoming a global market leader.

Our favorite insight of the episode is his roadmap for India to become a $30 trillion economy by 2047. He emphasizes the need for India to focus on cutting-edge areas like electric vehicles, battery storage, quantum computing, and green hydrogen, all driven by entrepreneurship and innovation, to become a developed nation by 2047.

Mr. Kant's perspectives on leadership, team building, and navigating complex negotiations offer practical advice for entrepreneurs building world-class businesses from India.

Episode 5: How Anand Deshpande Built a $9 Billion Powerhouse: The Persistent Systems Story

Anand Deshpande, founder of Persistent Systems and the OG tech entrepreneur, shares his journey of building a $9 billion global tech powerhouse from humble beginnings in Pune. This episode is a masterclass in entrepreneurship, innovation, and strategic mindset for founders.

In this episode, Mr. Deshpande shares insights from Persistent's journey through various growth stages, which he calls "orbits."

He explains that business growth is not sequential but rather occurs in S-curves or orbits. Each orbit requires a different approach, team structure, and set of skills. Mr. Deshpande emphasizes that recognizing these transitions and adapting accordingly is crucial for sustained growth. This concept of "orbits" offers a fresh perspective on business scaling, highlighting the need for companies and founders to reinvent themselves to overcome plateaus and achieve new levels of growth.

He also shares his perspectives on coming back to build in India three decades ago, going public, and celebrating entrepreneurship beyond his company.

These episodes are full of insights and inspiration, and we’re confident when we say the rest of the season won’t disappoint. If you missed out, take a weekend to catch up because we’re definitely brewing more.

Happy watching!

While vertical SaaS has been around for a while, it has experienced massive growth over the last decade. We believe the industry is on the cusp of a transformative expansion. This growth will be driven by the use of industry insights, proprietary data, and vertically trained LLMs to build deeper and more valuable industry-specific workflows that weren't possible earlier.

India is uniquely positioned to excel in vertical SaaS markets. With our vast, affordable talent pool in engineering and customer support, we can meet the high customisation and service demands of industry-specific software, and build exceptional products.

To go deep into the world of vertical software, Blume’s Anurag Pagaria and Sajith Pai interviewed individuals from Uolo, WizCommerce, Toddle, Classplus, PetPooja, Spyne, Zenoti, PowerPlay, FleetX, Innovaccer, and Vymo. They also deeply studied successful vSaaS companies like Toast, Shopify, SiteMinder, RateGain, PlanGrid, Procore, Veeva, and AppFolio.

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They distilled their observations into 12 key learnings on how to build a successful vertical SaaS company, which founders building in the space would benefit from. Here’s a glimpse.

• Identifying and addressing the most critical user pain points

  • Establishing a wedge drives faster sales cycles and sets the stage for future expansion into adjacent workflows.

• Limited TAM is a feature, not a bug (and can be gradually expanded on)

  • Most successful vertical SaaS companies often start with a narrow focus and gradually expand their offerings through three routes:

    • Adding new stakeholders / ICPs to serve in the same industry

    • Launching in adjacent industries

    • Developing more products for the same audience

• SMB-focussed vSaaS companies at scale earn as much as 20% to 25% of their net revenue from transaction-based use cases (payments, marketplaces, etc).

  • Transaction-based revenue models unlock growth opportunities. For vertical SaaS companies, particularly those serving SMBs, incorporating payments can drive significant ARPU growth.

• The majority of vSaaS companies have either a sales-assisted or a complete sales-led GTM strategy

  • Vertical SaaS often requires complex, industry-specific integrations and customisation, making sales-led approach far more effective than product-led GTM. High-touch sales, especially for enterprise accounts, are key to addressing specific client needs.

• SMB vSaaS grow via integration, whereas enterprise vSaaS grow via customisation

  • SMB and mid-market buyers value integration with other products far more than customisation and also tend to stick around for a longer time based on the integrations you can provide.

To learn the full secret plyasheet, read the article below.

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But what if we told you we have a cheatsheet so that you dont have to play on the hard mode.

Here’s our ConsumerTech Playbook, co-authored by Marmik Mankodi and Nachammai Savithiri, part of Blume’s consumer investment team.

Download the ConsumerTech Playbook

Here are the authors - Marmik Mankodi comes with a 9-year experience in scaling consumer tech brands across India and SE Asia, and Nachammai Savithiri is a consumer investments specialist with a keen eye for emerging trends. Together, Marmik and Nachammai have created a comprehensive guide that combines hands-on experience with innovative strategies.

Now, let's dive into why this playbook is a game-changer: 

1. Cutting-Edge Strategies: Dive into the ACR (Acquire, Convert, Retain) framework and learn how to optimize each stage for maximum impact.

2. Data-Driven Insights: Leverage analytics to drive success, from clickstream analysis to cohort retention strategies.

3. Actionable Advice: Whether you're launching an app, optimizing your landing page, or fine-tuning your pricing strategy, we've got you covered.

4. Investor Perspectives: Insights on pitching to investors at different stages of your startup journey.

5. Real-World Applications: Packed with examples and case studies to help you implement these strategies effectively.

Who Should Download This Playbook?

• Aspiring entrepreneurs in the consumer space

• Early-stage founders building consumer products or services

• Growth and product leaders at emerging startups

• Marketing executives looking to refine their strategies

• Innovation teams within established companies

• Consultants and advisors working with consumer businesses

Download the ConsumerTech Playbook

We're confident that this playbook will become an indispensable resource in your entrepreneurial toolkit. If you find it valuable, we encourage you to share it with your network and help spread the knowledge.

As always, we're here to support you on your journey. If you have any questions or would like to discuss the playbook further, don't hesitate to reach out.