Shikhar Chadha

Startup - A strategy game & The Gaming Chair..... In 2018 I decided to buy myself a gaming chair post realizing that I’d be spending a lot of time in the office - at least 12-14 hours a day. While growing up I would spend hours playing command and conquer & running a dhandhaa is very similar to playing a strategy game! This is How:- 1. Goal-oriented approach: Both involve setting objectives & achieving them, whether it's conquering territories or achieving business milestones. 2. Resource management: In both scenarios, you have limited resources (money, time, manpower, etc.) that you need to allocate wisely to succeed. 3. Risk management: There are risks involved in both endeavors, and success often depends on your ability to anticipate and mitigate risks effectively. 4. Adaptability & flexibility: Just as in a strategy game where you need to adapt based on your opponent's moves, in a startup, you need to be flexible and adapt to changes in the market, customer preferences, & competition. 5. Decision-making: Both require making critical decisions under uncertainty and pressure. Whether it's deciding on the next feature or choosing the best move in a game, decision-making is crucial. 6. Long-term planning: Success in both endeavors requires long-term planning and having a clear vision of where you want to be in the future. 7. Learning from failure: Failure is a part of both running a startup and playing a strategy game. In both cases, you need to learn from your mistakes and use them to improve your strategy moving forward. 8. Competitive landscape: Just as in a strategy game where you need to be aware of your opponents and their strategies, in a startup, you need to understand your competitors and the market landscape to stay ahead. 9. Teamwork and leadership: Both involve working with a team and leading them towards a common goal. Whether it's coordinating with your teammates in a game or leading your employees in a startup, effective teamwork and leadership are essential. 10. Persistence, Patience and resilience: Success in both endeavors requires persistence and resilience in the face of challenges and setbacks. Just as in a game, where you might face obstacles on your path to victory, in a startup, you'll encounter numerous challenges that you need to overcome. Always learn to be patient. 11. Enjoy the Journey - just like how we enjoy playing games, the startup journey should also be enjoyed by every entrepreneur. Its not worth it if its not fun. Why this pic??? The gaming chair on which I'd built BellaVita was gifted to Anurag Chhabra once he had completed his first milestone at Bevzilla | IDAM House Of Brands and that was also the day he got this Gyan of the similarities between building a startup like a strategy game. Now that i'm building Unikon.ai and Wolfpacklabs.vc, I'm back on a new chair and would be the happiest if I'm able to gift gaming chairs to all the rockstar founders who join us in the journey.

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At the age of Retirement, he built a 2000 Cr+ worth company. Expecting to touch 5000 Cr+ by 2029. For more inspiring stories, check out my Instagram (Link in Comments) #startup #founder #storytelling

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Who would invest in founders who have wasted $50M? Koo, an Indian microblogging platform, recently shut shop after raising $50M in capital. Everyone has their views on why Koo failed. IMO, the biggest reason behind its failure was a lack of PMF (Product Market Fit). Koo spent much money on marketing and didn’t build a product people wanted. It kept harping on nationalism, a Twitter for Indians, made in #India. This approach failed. However, this doesn’t mean Koo’s founders aren’t smart or intelligent. I wrote in an earlier post that we shouldn’t be surprised if Koo’s founders raise fresh capital for a new startup. To many of us, this might seem grossly unfair. Millions of smart, hardworking founders are struggling to raise capital while investors are backing failed founders who have wasted millions of dollars. How is that fair? It confirms the widely held belief that the #venturecapital industry is broken and corrupt where a few people with the right connections get all the capital while others don’t see a dime. It shows that the VC industry is a closed group, a cabal where who you know matters more than anything. While these are just complaints, most people who criticise VCs don’t understand how startup investing works. VCs welcome failures. They embrace them because they know failures are inevitable. When VCs invest in 20 #startups, they know 15 will fail. The goal is to invest in startups that can give them a 100x return. Failures are part of the game. They are unavoidable. The aim is to back founders who can build such 100x return companies. Hence, failures are not looked down upon in the VC industry. It’s similar to the American culture where society appreciates the people who take risks, and it easily accepts personal bankruptcies that result from this risk-taking approach. There’s no taboo in failing in the USA and the VC industry. I’m sure Koo’s founders have learnt from their mistakes. It’s an expensive mistake and not everyone is so lucky to have this luxury to spend $50M on their education. ;) However, most VCs will back Koo’s #founders because these founders know how to raise capital and they know how to not build and scale tech companies. Their past failures have improved their chances of future success. In the VC industry, Failure is Good.

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No soan papdis were harmed during this campaign. Yet this ridiculously direct impact pitch closed 3X sales for us this diwali as compared to last year. Startups in 0-1 and 1-10 phase worrying you haven't got those emotion evoking ads yet - remember it isn't the time either. - Communicating direct impact and functional benefits work better in early days than any other format. let your tg know the problem you solve for them. period! - Content matters. Distribution matters even more. we distributed this campaign through micro influencers many of whom are using Heyo Phone - so direct TG - Brandformance is the way to go as Siddhartha Dasgupta (Sid) will tell you. weave great brand content with right targeting. Your content is your swanky car- performance marketing is the fuel you still need to move it. done right good content lowers cac. - Don't target too narrow to avoid high CACs. get the right content and copy and let meta/ google optimise. - Choose the right face to represent you. for us a key audience are buisness owners over 35 - choosing credible actors who ruled tv in 2000s made sense. insight credit to Sanadh Srivastava - Work with the right agencies. who understand roi, give flexible budgets, are super agile. Tring Sayak Mukherjee Shweta Kaushal you were great. - And finally don't forget to thank the team. Sanadh Srivastava you were a rockstar. PS: Will be decoding our strategic trio- content, user-influencer + performance in a GrowthStart podcast soon. stay tuned.

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Is PW really in trouble? I don't think so. But why? 1. Just because you're making a loss doesn't mean you're not on the right track. For instance, Zomato was operating at a loss from 2008 until Q1 of 2023. Expanding into new categories requires capital. 2. Indians take time to adopt new products. Online education wasn’t a part of our roots; it only started to gain traction in 2016, whereas offline education has been integral to Indian society for centuries. We need to give edtech at least 20 years to yield significant results. I firmly believe that every edtech company that survives the next five years will be profitable. 3. Growth itself is a roller coaster ride, you can't go linear every time. So, Enjoy your job if you are in Edtech, You are learning to navigate through the tough times. #edtech #pw #hiring

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India is at cusp IMO when it comes to consumer startups. 1. Depending on category almost 4-10x of current customer base will become "first time" customers over the next 5-7 years. thats the sheer size of the market. 2. Many categories will continue to be massive and fragmented - this means even a sub 5% market share is a couple of thousand crore opportunity. 3. With every passing year - you will have 2-3x more customers who have already brought your product/service and your repeat/retention is key if you are able to have high repeat/retention cohorts then you can continue to acquire customers at a higher CAC cos your blended CAC will be good. This means your competition will be at a disadvantage for real and it wont be a function of who has the maximum cash in the bank! If you are starting up in the consumer sector, your customer service is the biggest moat. For us at PYT - Unsolicited positive feedback (UPF) like these are the true measure of how things are. I strongly believe that if you delight customers, they do take time to call it out. The repeat/referral of such mentions are beyond any attribution, measure :) The key is to keep raising the bar and fixing the gaps. Thats what keeps us awake at night at Pickyourtrail.

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Most dating app subscriptions are too expensive for the Indian market. Tinder, for example, ranges from ₹900 to ₹3,200 per month. Indians prioritize value for money. They’ll pay for subscriptions when they know exactly what they’re getting—like Netflix, which offers a vast content library. But with dating apps, there’s no guarantee of finding love, making it feel riskier. That’s why at flutrr we’ve used a pay-per-use microtransaction model from day one. For instance, you can buy 2 Super Likes for ₹30 —here you know exactly what you're paying for. We’ve since taken it a step further by bundling microtransactions. 7 features worth ₹300 are bundled at ₹200, offering more value and flexibility. As a result, 18% of our user base are paying customers— compared to the 3-4% on other dating apps. In a market where value drives decisions, you have to be crystal clear about what you're offering. #startups #pricing #subscriptions #datingapp

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when we talk about optimizing conversions, we almost always talk about making the path frictionless. but we overlook the other equal (if not bigger) factor - motivation. If I had to put my finger on one app being the absolute worst in terms of UX will be the super app by Tata - Tata Neu. If we were only discussing about friction, I would have never gone back to the app, even the second time. But Tata has an exclusive offer for Tata Neu care holders - 10% unlimited cashback when you order from Tata Neu app. Guess who's a regular customer of Big Basket + Tata 1mg but through the Tata Neu app?! TLDR: work on the offer as much (if not more) than the copy and design of your landing page.

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3 reasons why JioCinema is killing it in the #OTT space 🚀: 1. IPL 🏏 Applying the same "ScaleWithScale" philosophy, Jio won over hearts and massive amounts of installs by securing the streaming rights for one of the world's most watched events and offering it for FREE. . Can't even call this a gamble, it was a no-brainer move given Jio's muscle power and India's frenzied cricket fan base. Ok, they have downloads but the majority are free users, how is the company gonna generate their #RoI? That's where point 2 comes in... 2. Smoothest trial experience 💯 I wanted to watch #Avatar and found it being available on JioCinema and was wondering if I was gonna hit an annoying paywall that will definitely convince me to simply not watch it. Surprisingly, I simply tapped the title and started viewing... no frills. No ads, no login, no trial period message....Nothing. It almost felt like a hack or that Jio listed it for free (which was a little suspicious as Avatar is an expensive title to host) Right when I was thinking if Jio is ever gonna get my money, point 3 kicked in. 3. Investment cycle + Price After letting me watch 12 episodes for free they hit me with a paywall asking me to subscribe. The timing was perfect, just enough time and interest invested from the user(me) to want to finish the series. Makes me wonder if they have a specialized tool that analyses behavioral patterns across titles, geography, demography and dishes out personalized investment timelines for different users. It does sound like the perfect job for AI! So once the paywall hit, I felt the usual reaction of irritation and almost gave up watching until I saw the price point. The banner said ₹39. 40 bucks?! that's the cost of a sathukudi juice or 2 cigarettes. The psychological trick here was that they didn't give me option fatigue by offering a yearly package, a 3 month package, bundle package or anything else... just a simple 40 rupees option for a month (which makes sense in my head to watch an entire series considering the cost of a ticket to a movie is 300 bucks types). India's beautiful UPI integration sealed the deal as I ended up paying the amount in a matter of 7 seconds and poof, I was back to enjoying episode 13 of Avatar! (There was a sneaky move they pulled at the UPI page where they increased it to 69 from 39 that they showed me but I let that slide cos I was that deep in the user journey already. Revenue ✅ Ethics ❌) Other OTT platforms really need to take note and up their user-onboarding game. Netflix India #PrimeVideo aha Disney+ Hotstar SonyLIV Marketing YuppTV Inc. MXPlay Hungama

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5+ Cr in investment. Team in 3 countries. 18 months in the making - Layers is going bigger in August 2024. It all started when we first launched Layers in 2022, we had 0 experience of - D2C, Branding, SKUS and everything in between. We hustled, failed, but ultimately figured things out building India’s largest skins brand—100% bootstrapped, selling over 2.5 lakh skins. (The Neel who scored -2 Marks in JEE would have never imagined this.) But, the entire experience taught us 3 core things: > The confidence to succeed in markets that never existed > The freedom to think long-term and take bets in short term > The understanding of a creator-led D2C brand’s potential It wasn’t easy, but that’s the fun part. And now, we’re taking on the next big challenge. LAYERS IS LAUNCHING ITS FIRST TECH PRODUCT! In all honesty, building a tech product is ten times tougher than building the skins business. We had to revisit our entire strategy—pricing, distribution, customer service— and most importantly, the right innovation to stand out in the market. In the skins market, we had little competition. But here, we face giants with 1000X resources and decades of experience. Competing with them and building a superior tech product - bootstrapped with a lean team, is a huge challenge. I am quite nervous and afraid. Don’t know what’s gonna happen.. Until then, feel free to guess what the product is! :)

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I absolutely love this! My business, Bettermade Studio has gone through quite the journey since we started 3 years ago. We've pivoted direction a whopping 8 times, but I think we're finally starting to figure things out. We began by just offering design services for small mom and pop businesses. Now, our focus has shifted to branding and design specifically for SaaS companies. Who knows, maybe next time around we'll be creating digital products to help out marketing teams. Question: Have you made any crazy pivots? Love to here it in the comments. Sent from Bettermade Studio

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How i got 17 leads during my 1 month break from Linkedin & Fb ( Here’s my exact strategy - you can do the same to get inbound leads too ) This 1 shift which took me 3 solid months of work changed my whole game back from Apr '23 IT’S MY SIGNATURE - KA’S HYPER SENSOR ANALYSIS -> An intensive Market and competitor research to set yourself and your offers uniquely in the crowded market. I have recorded a 9 minutes step by step training on the same Comment “Training “ to get the access

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An early stage D2C startup selling over marketplace may have high CAC but they are most likely to win the game over a startup which is investing money, time and efforts to sell from their own website. It's simple math and widely applicable. Thoughts inspired from Aakash Anand. What are your thoughts? Let's help the founders. --------------------------------- 🗒️ Building: Entie | Find Investors, Cofounders, & Startups. 📈 Scaling: Meticulous B-Plans ⭕ Follow: Yogesh Thite ⚡ Tags: #Startups #BusinessDating #Networking --------------------------------

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"In Ahmedabad, 6 out of 10 cab users faces, multiple cancellations, when they book ride to airport in early morning hours"- We found this during an internal survey. In the same survey , we also found few other pain areas of users like:- - Driver not running AC in car. - Less boot space to accommodate baggage. - Very limited availability in app, for MPVs (Large size vehicles). - Fluctuation in prices. - No helpline to talk. Now, we have an answer to it! - 24X7 Ride to Ahmedabad Airport, that comes with The SMART taxi's commitment for : - ZERO Cancellation. - Same price all the time. - Pickup to drop billing. - IVR Free Telephone helpline for assistance. - Well maintained AC Cars with assured boot space/carrier on top. - MPVs (Ertiga or similar) when travelers/bags, are more. #ahmedabad #zerocancellationassurance

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Hello Folks, it's been a while! Today, I want to discuss it in the interesting scenario of Zomato's valuation. Zomato, the food delivery giant, has witnessed explosive growth, captivating investor attention. But its true worth has sparked discussions, with the market's exuberance often clashing with the measured analysis of financial guru Aswath Damodaran. Zomato Valuation : Market Vs Damodaran This offers valuable lessons for anyone interested in financial analysis and market behavior. key takeaways: 1. Market Optimism vs. Discounted Cash Flow (DCF): We see the clash between the market's optimism for future growth, often reflected in high valuations, and Damodaran's focuses on a company's present value using DCF techniques. 2. Growth Potential vs. Profitability: Zomato's story hinges on the immense potential of the Indian food delivery market. However, Damodaran emphasizes the importance of profitability, urging investors to consider a company's current financial health. 3. Long-Term vs. Short-Term: The scenario also highlights the difference between long-term growth prospects and short-term market fluctuations. Investors must weigh both factors while making investment decisions. A Heartfelt Thank You : I'd like to express my sincere gratitude to Mr. Balachandran Venkataraman, CFA Sir for assigning this insightful topic. This internship has provided me with a fantastic opportunity to explore the nuances of financial analysis and valuation. By delving into real-world cases like Zomato, I'm gaining valuable knowledge that will be instrumental in my future endeavors. Let's Discuss! 1. What are your thoughts on Zomato's valuation? 2. Do you think the market is overvaluing growth potential, or is Damodaran being overly cautious? Share your insights in the comments below!!!! It'd be great if you can give you view of seeing the Zomato on different Level🚀 #Zomato #valuation #investment #finance #AswathDamodaran #DCF #growth #profitability #financialanalysis #internship #learning

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New business model !! With zepto raising a billion dollars in just 2 months to swiggy’s blockbuster IPO listing to Zomato’s back to back profitable quarters once thing is for sure : qCom is gaining land by length & breadth !! There seems to be a huge opportunity for 3rd party hyperlocal delivery companies to flourish. Just came to know from Arjun Vaidya that Zippee is leading the move. This is great opportunity to start one in your locality looking at the expansion plans for all the hyperlocal app companies. Delivery fleet + Optimised ops with tech = get ready

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🚨Zepto's cash burn zooms to Rs 250 crore a month on rising capex, closes Rs 2,500 crore funding round Zepto founder Aadit Palicha confirmed the HNI round in a statement to Moneycontrol "Investors are confident with the mature store profitability proven and the forward indicators of EBITDA for new stores, which is why we have successfully raised the largest ever 100 percent domestic financing for a private startup in Indian history. We are raising this Indian capital as a first step to quickly becoming a fully Indian-owned company within the coming fiscal," The Zepto effect Digital marketing spends ⏫ Talent costs ⏫ Cost of Google keywords ⏫ While Zepto burnt Rs 250 crore (around $30 million) in September, the monthly cash burn went as high as Rs 300 crore (about $35 million) in October, two of the persons cited above said while adding that it is likely to stay in the Rs 300 crore range for November as well. But sources close to Zepto say this number is closer to 250 crore. with Tushar Goenka https://lnkd.in/gmkNyaMs

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Why do top brands like Zomato, Wendy’s, or Netflix playfully banter online or post memes? It might seem trivial at first, but this is where the magic of social media comes in. When Zomato shares a meme about Swiggy’s IPO or Netflix comments on Prime’s posts, they aren’t just having fun but building visibility and connection. These interactions keep brands at the top of your mind and show personality. They stand out because they’re not just selling; they’re engaging. The truth is, that brands are competing not just for sales, but for attention. If your post or reel is the first thing people see in their feed, chances are they’ll notice it. They may never scroll down that far if it’s buried in position 20. Without smart, engaging content, businesses often spend big money on ads just to get noticed. But with the right social strategy, your brand can build organic reach and meaningful relationships beyond just one sale. Social is not just entertainment—it’s strategy. #DigitalMarketing #SocialMediaStrategy #BrandEngagement #MicraDigital #BusinessGrowth

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