Arink Verma

Kaun Banega CTO?! Shocking insights via The Mint - Highly valued Indian startups are opting out of hiring new executives at exuberant packages to lead tech innovation. This comes when a persisting funding downturn has pushed them to put a lid on hiring and venturing into new growth verticals to control cash burn. - Several new-age companies, including Zomato and Healthify, that have relied on tech to drive disruption are now opting out of hiring replacements for the once-prized C-suite role. - Companies retaining their high-cost CTOs are pushing them to take on additional roles such as “IT management, product oversight, or broader organisational responsibilities", it said. Why? “Over the last year or so, there’s been a lot of focus on profitability and making the business viable. We are now emphasising the right mix of talent and cost, and honestly, titles don’t matter," Mota Moti: It seems the “overpaid, over-hyped, over-marketed, overvalued” CTO is coming back to becoming just another #dhandhekibaat row item :)) If you have views, please share?! My view: if you are a promoter that doesn't know Tech, then this is not an option. Article link in comments!

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🎥 Startup Spotlight by Unwiring Studios: RodBez – A Revolution in Bihar’s Travel Ecosystem 🚖✨ Our Startup Spotlight journey continues to amaze us! After featuring startups like LittleMove, Sniff and MadMantra Games, this week’s spotlight shines on a game-changing platform from Bihar—RodBez Choosing this week’s startup wasn’t easy—our team debated a lot over which inspiring story to feature next. But when we looked at RodBez, its mission to transform local travel and empower communities made the decision clear.   🌟 𝐖𝐡𝐲 RodBez ? RodBez is solving a massive pain point for travelers in Bihar by offering affordable and efficient solutions for local commutes. While exploring their story, we realized their website didn’t do justice to their incredible vision and impact. So, we went beyond just creating a video. We redesigned their website, making it sleek, user-friendly, and aligned with their purpose.   ✨ 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐖𝐞 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 ✅ 𝐖𝐞𝐛𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐞: A brand-new platform that reflects RodBez’s innovation and makes their services accessible to everyone. Check it out here: 👉 https://lnkd.in/gEFQxeEN ✅ 𝐕𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐨: A short and impactful video showcasing RodBez’s journey and mission. The best part? RodBez owns these creations completely. They can use the video and website anywhere, anytime for free, without worrying about any watermarks or copyright restrictions. Just dm us, we will share the video and website code for free :) 💡 Note: If you notice an overlay text like "Unwiring Studios powered by Unwiring Tech" on the video attached on website while previewing, that's just due to the hosting service's GUMLET title overlay. This text will not appear in the actual video file, ensuring a clean and professional look for all platforms. 🎥 𝐂𝐡𝐞𝐜𝐤 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐝 𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐚 𝐜𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐫 𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐰𝐞𝐛𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐨!   🚀 RodBez’s Vision Founded by Dilkhush Kumar and Siddharth Jha, RodBez is on a mission to make local travel affordable and accessible for everyone in Bihar. Their efforts to bring innovation to rural and urban mobility are truly inspiring, and we’re proud to support them through this initiative.   💬 Know a Startup That Inspires? RodBez is the fourth chapter in our Startup Spotlight series, and we’re just getting started! Do you know a startup solving real-world problems? Tag them below or share their story—we’d love to amplify their journey. Here’s to celebrating ideas that make a difference! 💪 #StartupSpotlight #UnwiringStudios #RodBez #CreativeStudio #Startups #unwiringtech PS: Dilkhush Kumar, your work with RodBez is paving the way for a brighter, more connected Bihar. It’s a privilege to contribute to your journey! 🚖✨ And oh, please accept my connection request—been waiting for 3 weeks now. Lol! 😜

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Appcharge, the leading direct-to-consumer platform, is excited to share a $26 million Series A funding round, led by Creandum, with participation from Supercell, BITKRAFT Ventures, Moneta Ventures and Corundum, alongside existing investors Play Ventures, Glilot Capital Partners, and angel investors. This new funding marks Appcharge's next step in driving the DTC movement forward. Web stores have become ubiquitous—our recent industry report confirms this trend—but the DTC space still has so much room to grow. Maor Sason Roei Barassi Or Ben Shimon Gil Tov-Ly To share your startup story write us on - [email protected] #funding #startup #SeriesA #Appcharge

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Raised $26,000,000 with just an idea Lyskraft India Pvt Ltd - the latest kid in the block! So, Mukesh Bansal is back with another startup this time with Mohit Gupta, the former CEO of Zomato's food delivery arm. In July of last year, there were reports about Bansal and Gupta raising funds for a new venture. As per TechCrunch, both of them pitched a range of ideas to potential backers like a female-focused counterpart to Manyavar and "Infosys 2.0" a presumed upgrade to a multinational IT services and consulting firm. Now finally... The news is out and we know what they are building, Lyskraft: initially a women's only marketplace for premium brands mostly focusing on Gen-Z shoppers. Recently we have seen giant e-commerce platforms launching dedicated portals to attract GenZ shoppers, like SPOYL launched by Flipkart within its app, FWD by Myntra, also we are seeing the growth of new-age startups working in this space like Virgio(Mukesh Bansal is an investor in it), Newme(recently raised $4,500,000), Absolute Brands, Snitch, Styched and many more As per Inc42's Report, India's fashion and apparel sector is projected to reach a mouth-watering $112 Billion by 2030, which will be over a quarter of the country's $400 Billion e-commerce market!! Let's be honest, anyone will want a piece of this market. As we are already aware of how crowded this space is, let's see how Lyskraft differentiates itself from others. Mohit Gupts and Mukesh Bansal, in this crowded space building a community around your product, building digital IPs, and creating experiences through videos are the ways to elevate your brand to the next level. I the founder of Elevate would love to connect and assist Lyskraft in building a community, digital IPs and help create experiences through videos, if that sounds like something that interests you would love to connect and discuss!! sources of information : TechCrunch article 2021 - https://bit.ly/49UwkLI Inc42 article - https://bit.ly/3w0SDlb #mukeshbansal #myntra #fashion #startups #venturecapital #fundingwinter #norevenue #cultfit #community #communitymarketing #socialmediamarketing #india

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How do we ensure that not a single moment is missed during #OlympicGames when there are 20 live streams on simultaneously? Check out Key Moments 🚀 on the JioCinema app

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🔓 Do Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal really have the Midas touch? The Snapdeal duo often grab headlines for making 100–200X returns on their early-stage investments. But they are no more impressive than other top angel investors like Kunal Shah and Anupam Mittal. The duo don’t exactly break the mould; sometimes, it’s just a dash of luck. Aakriti Bhalla explains how in this story from Aug 2024. Read it for free by signing up for The Ken's 30-day free trial. Click the link in the comments. --------- #TheKen #VC #Investors #AngelInvestors

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In just one week since Meri Bhakti - Aapka Digital Dharmik Saathi launched on the Google Play Store, we have achieved phenomenal growth, and we couldn't be more excited to share this with you all! 👥 Active Users: 1.3K (a whopping 781.08% increase!) 👥 New Users: 1.26K (an incredible 912.0% increase!) Our team is doing a crazy job, and the numbers speak for themselves! We are on a mission to revolutionize the way devotees connect and engage with their faith. To ensure we deliver the best experience, we've started calling our users individually to gather their feedback. Their insights are invaluable as we strive to make Meri Bhakti better every day. We have a long way to go, but with our passion, dedication, and the amazing support from our community, we know we'll get there! We're also actively searching for seed funding to fuel our growth and take Meri Bhakti to new heights. If you're interested in being a part of this incredible journey, please DM me. Let's make this vision a reality together! Thank you to everyone who has supported us so far. The best is yet to come! #MeriBhakti #StartupGrowth #SeedFunding #FaithTech #UserFeedback #CommunityFirst #StartupJourney

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Zepto cap table - less than 1% ownership with each founder and 6-8% each with their UAE based family members. Looks like highly optimized tax structuring in case of a liquidity event (IPO). With this ownership, pushing nationalism narrative is a lost battle. Introduction of nationalism narrative in the internet consumer categories is typically not a good sign. Amazon is preferred because of its faster deliveries and better customer experiences, and not because of being American or Indian. Grocery + FMCG market has a fixed TAM at a local level with very minor increase y-o-y. It would be unreasonable to assume that because of economy growing or onset of quick commerce, an individual household will start consuming more fruits, cereals etc or food habits/lifestyle will change drastically in a short period. It will not. This means that the demand which earlier used to get fulfilled by Kiranas and other hypermarkets is getting shifted to QC. One doesn't need market reports/data to arrive at this conclusion. Hopefully, everyone could find a middle ground in this reality.

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3 days ago, our demo went viral on LinkedIn. We got 150k+ views, 300+ signups and 100+ hours of audio generated in less than 24 hours. We were also featured by some media houses: https://lnkd.in/djBabWa7 This was 100% percent organic. We never expected this. We assumed this was just a beta and would not garner much interest. But we were terribly wrong! AWAAZ gained popularity because of a few very strong user facing problems that we’re trying to solve: 1. Text to Speech models are much much more expensive than text to text models 2. Even after being expensive, they don’t have a lot of emotion controllability unlike human voice 3. If they have controllability, they take a lot of time to perform inference 5-10 years from now, we will consider it absurd that we were paying ridiculous amounts of money for generating voices that are not even realistic. Voice AI will get democratised, which will enable billions to become creators. This is what we’re building at smallest.ai. We want to democratize access to hyper realistic, super fast text to speech models to enable the creator in you! If you’re excited about this mission, and are a potential customer/investor, hit me up on [email protected], with your thoughts! Would love to understand your take on this industry.

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Given the changing paradigms in technology and media, we know that the next 10 years will look nothing like the last 10 years. Thanks to The Economic Times for capturing our interactive media thesis for the years ahead. As we crystal ball gaze into the future, there has been no better time to invest in India. In the last few years, we have seen the market mature across key vectors - propensity to pay, quality of talent, capital inflows, and exits. This represents meaningful upside for founders and investors in this space over the coming decade. With the incredible shifts in tech, media and gaming, there are some exciting times ahead! 🚀 https://lnkd.in/gTfYa3Kw

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How do you lose monthly active user base of 100 million! It pains me to see how Gaana did just that and is getting lost in oblivion. Gaana was once the largest music streaming service in India owned by Times Internet. Now, India's music industry is complex with loads of regional, bollywood and independent artists. Combine that with various record labels with a stay-out-of-the-door approach. Any new entrant in the streaming space in India would have had to deal with these complexities along with a price sensitive user and incumbents like Gaana. The stage was set for Gaana to become a huge consumer internet product. A first for "developed in India" tag, one which is truly digital. But then, Spotify comes to India in 2019. To start, it teamed up with T-series for 160,000 songs and focussed on Hindi, English and other regional languages from the get go. It took a flexible approach while Gaana was slower to adapt. 1. Spotify offered personalised playlists like Discover Weekly, Release Radar and City Playlists based on the song preferences of people of Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi, and Chennai. 2. It used its global brand image well through campaigns like Spotify Wrapped which highlighted user's music listening patterns. This became a viral sensation. 3. This was quickly followed by non-music content like Podcasts on Spotify. 4. Spotify used AI and ML to offer much better personalised recommendations than Gaana. 5. Adaptive subscription model: While Gaana had put everything behind a paywall (what were you thinking!), Spotify was flexible and offered a top-up for 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 3month, and 6 months along with the ad supported free version. What Gaana should have done: 1. Gaana should have become on open platform offering its APIs for developers to make more application on its stack (Guys haven't we seen enough tech products doing this?) 2. Pricing: While it is easy to understand that music licensing is expensive, but that is what you know even before starting a platform like Gaana. Coming from one of India's largest business houses, Gaana could have sustained more and made a shot for the moon. My company, Queppelin, worked closely on the technology with Gaana to build the music streaming and compression over the apps. So this loss to Spotify, Apple Music and others is personal. #spotify #apple #music #bollywood #ai #ml #artificialintelligence #queppelin

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𝗗𝗮𝘆 𝟭: 𝗘𝘅𝗰𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗝𝗼𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗠 𝗛𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗻! 🚀 I’m thrilled to share that I’ve embarked on a new journey by joining the 𝗣𝗠 𝗛𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗻 by Product Space! This week, I’ll be diving into a real-world challenge for 𝗨𝗯𝗲𝗿, addressing how to optimize transportation for large-scale events like concerts. With the upcoming Coldplay concert in Mumbai as a backdrop, this case study is both exciting and relevant to Uber’s users and operations. 🔍 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘀𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝗱 𝗺𝘆 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗲: The complexity of managing high demand, traffic flow, and user satisfaction during events resonated with me. As someone passionate about seamless urban mobility, tackling these challenges for a massive brand like Uber is a real thrill! 💡 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘀𝘀𝘂𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀: Beyond logistics, it’s about improving accessibility and user experience for thousands of attendees—creating smoother journeys for concert-goers while balancing local traffic concerns. 📈 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗚𝗼𝗮𝗹𝘀: I’m eager to build on core PM skills, especially around user empathy, data-driven decision making, and stakeholder management, to deliver a comprehensive solution. 💥 𝗙𝘂𝗻 𝗳𝗮𝗰𝘁: Did you know that Coldplay’s last concert saw ticket sales exceeding 1.3 crore attempts? This is a reminder of the massive scale of events in India and the unique challenges of serving a diverse, enthusiastic audience. Join me over the next 7 days as I tackle this challenge using practical PM frameworks and methodologies. Let’s dive in and see where this journey takes us! #PMHackathon #7DayStreak #ProductManagement #Uber Tagging my mentors and supporters @~[Subhasis Chandra](https://lnkd.in/d9n8MQVR), @~[Akhil Yash](https://lnkd.in/dF52W2tK), and @~[Pamit Anand](https://lnkd.in/dX7FUfAi) for the inspiration to keep learning and growing! 

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Sometimes, serendipity plays a crucial role in shaping what problems we pick to solve, especially at pre PMF startups. A few months ago, a friend building an RMG from India shared two challenges. One of them was in performance marketing that he was uploading a lot of creatives and wanted suggestions for new ones based on previous learnings. At the time, we were focused on something else and didn’t have time to dive in. Later, the idea we were pursuing didn’t work out, but another agency mentioned the same challenge. So, we decided to take a day to figure out a solution. I manually gathered data from videos, putting it into an Excel sheet to run a correlation analysis. At first, I didn’t realize Google AI Studio could read videos, so I used OpenAI to analyze the video frame by frame, and it worked surprisingly well. Through some YouTube tutorials, I discovered AI Studio could do it even better and with an API. That made everything fall into place smoothly. In the video below, you’ll see this analysis for Subway Arabia. We did this as a way to showcase our work via a friend who works at Subway MENA (Middle East and North Africa), hoping to present it to them. This wasn’t an official collaboration, but the data was publicly available, so we scraped and used it. If you’re interested in the data insights or prompts, feel free to comment with “data,” and I’ll gladly share them with you on DM.

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Shutdown of Koo, India's own microblogging platform, is a significant blow to our startup ecosystem. This event highlights 2 crucial points that needs to addressed: 1. A setback for our movement towards digital sovereignty: In an era where digital sovereignty is paramount, Koo represented a step towards self-reliance. Losing such platforms makes us more dependent on foreign entities for our digital communication needs. 2. Lack of support for Tech-First startups: The closure underscores the challenges faced by tech-first Indian startups, from funding issues to scaling obstacles. I truly believe Koo's shutdown is a setback for Indian startup scene. Kudos to founders and employees for all the efforts they've put in. #Startups #Innovation #DigitalIndia #Entrepreneurship #Leadership #ProductManagement #IndiaStartups #SupportLocal #DigitalSovereignty #koo #kooshutdown

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The D2C Ecosystem has changed in the past decade. Recently at the Great Indian startup summit, Arjun Vaidya talked about the evolution of the D2C ecosystem and how the place has become very cluttered with more and more D2C brands starting every day. Earlier there were just a few brands trying to sell online and now the numbers have exponentially gone up. With this, the barrier to entry and making a slot for yourself in the consumer's mind has become much more difficult. The same channels and strategies which used to work 10 years back will not work in today's times. A very insightful perspective from Arjun. Thanks a lot for taking time out and doing this we look forward to hosting you in our future sessions. Also, Thank you Amrita Pahi and Megha Talwar from Dell Technologies, Nanda Kumar and Mitul Aggarwal from Netcore Cloud , Varun Raju, Monica Kamath and Aastha Bhandari Bansal from BluSmart , Anoop Asthana from ixigo for having faith in us and supporting us through the journey. Looking forward to working with you guys closely in the future. 🤝 The Builders Club Saloni Mehta (Kamdar) Bharat S Priyanka B. V3 Ventures ---------------------------------------------------- 🚩🚩REGISTER FOR THE BUILDERS CIRCLE 🚩🚩 The Builders Club has launched The Builders Circle - an offline community for funded founders to help in their scaling-up journey, enabled by advisors, partners and investors. What the founders get: * 🔥 Monthly Board Room Meetings * 🔥 Regular Curated CXO Mixers  * 🔥 CXO Advisory Panel * 🔥 Workshops for you and your team * 🔥 Enabler and Vendor Database * 🔥 Investor Connects and lots more! 👉 Details + Registration here: https://lnkd.in/gGydAi2i Currently open for Bangalore Founders only.

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Final AMA for AIR5 For the @AntlerIndia Residency #5, apps from individual founders are due Aug 2nd. Existing teams can continue to apply (rolling decisions). Nandini Vishwanath & I are doing one final AMA this evening (July 29, 6-7 pm IST). We cover all things Residency - the best way to move from your -1 to 0 phase to an investment decision. https://lu.ma/7n35d1z5

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This Sharkdom Tutorials part-3 would make sure that none of the Sharkdomer's ever feel dumb when it comes to silly but long professional words in the world of partnerships. This covers how Brand-Licensing Partnerships works in engaging manner. Sharkdom : Now Making Partnerships for Startups less dumb and more quicker #startups #partnership #partnershipsuccess #partnershipsforchange #partnership #partnershipsuccess #partnershipsforchange #startupsuccess #collaborations #stealth

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