Tathagato Rai Dastidar

𝗖𝗶𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗲 𝗛𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗲, 𝗜𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗮𝗻 𝗗𝗶𝗮𝘀𝗽𝗼𝗿𝗮, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 Our first set of customers are from the US - who wanted to co-care for their parents in India along with Citraverse Healthcare. Indians are increasingly global - some 40 million people stay outside the country and connected to families in India. Professor Devesh Kapur (John Hopkins) quotes Vajpayee that India intended to gather back richness of new ideas & best practices from its diaspora for its own economic transformation and hence started its brilliant reach-out through "Pravasi Bharatiya Divas" in 2003. But is the idea exchange smooth in terms of bringing back global, humanist, gender equal values back to home? Here are the things I notice that are problematic with our diaspora (that includes me) in my interactions so far - 1. Diaspora is confused on absorbing progressive ideas seamlessly - for e.g. they are happy to adapt to labor laws & dignity of living for workers while abroad, but they wouldn't do so when they come back to India. 2. Diaspora is also self-absorbed in their own well-being - propagate their ideas of meritocracy and do not care about uplifting the vulnerable sections of both Indian population or their adopted countries' population.    3. Psychologically, Diaspora people would still act stingy in paying appropriate prices & negotiate needlessly for the goods/services & tip less to workers at restaurants when they are back to India. At Citraverse Healthcare, we vet our customers strongly if they are not kind to our care professionals. We simply let them "go." And we educate them well before signing up as customers on our values. And we believe that is our contribution to making our country better, socially just, & equitable. 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗱𝘂𝗹𝘁 𝗳𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗲𝗹𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗹𝘆 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁(𝘀) 𝗮𝘁 𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗴𝗲𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗽𝗵𝘆 - If you resonate with us & interested in hiring a highly professional 24*7 Geriatric Care Manager for your elderly loved ones (who faces chronic illnesses / mobility issues / loneliness with physical duress) in India, reach out to us at +91 93425 29610. cc: Ganga Raj Dheeraj Rajagopal Vidhisha Balachandran

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Trying something new… I will be shortly recording an episode on “Finding your first design partners in the US as a US-India startup” with an accomplished serial founder in the SaaS/enterprise space. What questions should I ask? Thoughts please 🙏🏽 PS: more specific, the better!

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Started the business at 17 when his father died and built a 60,000 CR empire. 1. At just 17, after he passed away, Nirmal Minda had to join his father's (Shadilal Minda) automotive parts business, Minda Industries. It produced ammeters for vehicles and had a modest turnover of 60 lakhs. But Nirmal had problems. 👇 2. Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) would trust only international players with quality, let alone a 17-year-old boy in India. Nirmal also had no funds to invest in modern machinery, and a 120-day working capital became a challenge in scaling operations. He had to do something. 🤔 3. He realised he had to pivot from ammeters to high-demand automotive switches and wait for one big client to come so that people could start trusting him. But beating players like Lucas TVS, Hella, and Lumax was impossible. Nirmal persevered for seven long years and finally struck gold. 🙌 4. In 1987, Minda Industries finally received a contract from Maruti and entered into contracts with Hella and JM to set up a testing and validation kit. Minda Industries scaled to an annual turnover of Rs 1.5 CR. But Nirmal knew a contract wouldn't do; getting larger contracts from these OEMs was the main game. ✅ 5. The liberalisation policy came in 1991, and the economy opened completely. In 1992, Nirmal partnered with Toyota's group company, Tokai Rika. The joint venture became a technical license three years later as Minda Industries expanded to horns and lighting systems for even four-wheelers. And magic happened. 🪄 6. It scaled to an annual turnover of 100 CR. Since Maruti contributed around 60% of the revenue, Nirmal shifted to clients like Tata Motors and Mahindra for lighting and horn solutions in their passenger and commercial four-wheelers. And finally, the big moment was due. 👇 7. As Minda clocked a turnover of 396 CR in 2007, it listed on the stock market with an IPO that oversubscribed 30 times. By 2010, Minda Industries became a global name and served clients like Volkswagen and BMW. It became a 500 CR company and clocked a revenue of 597.1 CR. 💰 8. Minda Industries kept expanding and scaled to over 50 product lines, with 145 product patents and 165-plus design registrations by 2017. With 43 factories, 1000 suppliers and a presence in four continents, it became a 3500 CR company and leapt to revenue of 3505 CR at a profit of 384 CR. 📉 9. Today, Uno Minda (its name changed in July 2022) has 26 product lines, 252 patents, and 73 factories. With a revenue of 14,030.89 CR and a profit of 1585.26 CR, it has more than 70% market share in the 2/3-wheeler segment in India. 💪 ➡️ Who would have thought a 17-year-old boy would build his father's 50 lakh legacy into a 60,000 CR business empire? 👑

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There are usually 2 ways a startup product gets built. 1) Stealth mode. Where the founder along with 1 or 2 members develops the core technology without letting anyone from the public know. Pros - Your technology (Idea) stays a secret. Patnet IP protection etc. Cons - You risk creating a product that customers don't want or creating it according to your own wishes. 2) Public mode. Where the founder openly discloses what is he doing and uses his social media community as a feedback to create final product. Pros - You have better chance to create better product. Everyone knows what your doing. Cons - You risk losing intellectual information & competition may arise. Which one do you choose as a first time founder ?? #startup #founder #technology #electricalvehicles

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Presenting Sambhashan - an Indic language LLM fine-tuned in six Indian languages viz. Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Odia, Kannada, and Hindi.   Sambhashan is Sanskrit for conversation or discourse.   The models(Llama-3 8B, Gemma 7B, and Mistral v0.3 - 7B) were fine-tuned on A100 GPU on tokenized open-source datasets for approx. 8-10 hours each to reach a certain level of rigour.   The model can take instruction-based prompts for tasks such as: 1. Translations, 2. Resource-based QnA, 3. General QnA(If the info was there in the trained text)     Features of the Sambhshan model: 1. Ability to get further trained in other languages: 2. Computationally frugal 3. Efficient quantised models can be created.   A few of the open-source and paid models understand our languages to an extent but they aren't developed or trained keeping these languages as the center point. The models won't understand the nuances of the culture and context unless they are tuned to the finer details.   In a country like India where the dialect changes every four coss(unit of measurement in India; depending upon the region, it can vary between 1 to 3 miles), the democratisation of AI or GenAI in particular would come to fruition only when everyone can leverage such technologies comfortably from their devices without paying a premium.   Education, Policymaking, Agriculture, Banking and many more sectors can take advantage of such culturally rooted and contextual models for solving problems in their respective domains.   Between the hyperbole and hope, Sambhshan is merely a humble and a small step in the direction.

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Amazing offer by SMILE Investing Advisory Services (SEBI RA). You are definitely not going to get SEBI registered Quality advisory services in this pricing. If you have not yet started your investing journey, join #SMILE for long term wealth generation.

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🌿✨ Embracing AYUSH: Empowering Health Naturally! 🌟 Did you know? Recent data from the survey on AYUSH conducted by National Sample Survey Office, India reveals that 50% of Indians used AYUSH healthcare system in the last year! 🔹 AYUSH system of medicines refers to the use of one or more of the system(s) of Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha, Sowa-Rigpa and Homeopathy 🔹 95% of rural and 96% of urban folks are aware of AYUSH traditions. 🔹 85% of rural and 86% of urban households practice Medicinal Plants/Home Remedies/Local Health Traditions. 🔹 Nearly half of rural (46%) and over half of urban (53%) individuals used AYUSH in the last year for health benefits. We at SaveIN work with several leading alternate medicine providers like Dr Batra’s Healthcare Jiva Ayurveda Madhavbaug Homeocare International among others, and are witnessing tremendous demand for alternate therapies, especially for chronic diseases and lifestyle disorders. Let's continue to explore the power of traditional wisdom in promoting holistic wellness alongside adopting the latest in healthcare! 🌱💪 #AYUSH #HolisticHealth #WellnessJourney #TraditionalMedicine #Healthcare #Lifestyle

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This post from Vaibhav Domkundwar beautifully shows how surviving long enough can position a startup to take advantage of an eventual tailwind. When we invested in Yulu, no one had a clue that Quick Commerce will become the next commerce phenomenon in the country after payments. Because Yulu intelligently survived, kept improving the product and is capital-efficient enough to be agile to market needs, it’s now befitting from QC tailwinds. Reminds me of what the Rippling founder once said - as a startup, just survive 10 years and the odds are that you will end up succeeding.

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On a road trip, there will be steep ups and steep downs. In both cases, one has to use 2nd or 3rd gear. Especially during downs, using 2nd gear is a conscious effort. Life is just one long road trip. Success / Failures are just like steep ups and downs. Be a bit more conscious during steep ups and downs. Never compare with others, keep moving.

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𝐒𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐨𝐧 𝐕𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐲 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 🇮🇳'𝐬 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐨𝐟 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲-𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐱 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐬 - 𝐐𝐮𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐞 / 𝐙𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐨 / 𝐔𝐏𝐈 Suhas Motwani and I turned the common question of "What can India learn from Silicon Valley?" on its head in an episode of An Operator's Blog. (Full AOB episode link in comments)

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India's deeptech landscape is at a crucial point. Nasscom’s latest report shows that 70% of deeptech startups are worried about not having enough capital for computing operations. On the flip side, over 70% of investment firms are hesitant because these high-potential ventures need patient capital due to their long gestation periods. It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation! To really support our deeptech startups and their groundbreaking innovations, we need to rethink our funding approach. This is where we hope the government can step in with some help. Co-investment programs, grants, and tax credits for R&D could make a huge difference. By working together, we can ensure our deeptech startups have the support they need to push boundaries and lead the way in technological innovation. #Deeptech #StartupEcosystem #Innovation #Funding #VentureCapital #GovernmentSupport #IndiaTech #RnD

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India’s Oyo, once valued at $10 billion, is finalizing new funding at a $2.5 billion valuation. This marks a steep decline from its $10 billion valuation in 2019. The startup, which has raised over $3 billion from backers like SoftBank, Peak XV Ventures, Lightspeed, Airbnb, and Microsoft, has struggled to attract institutional investors. In recent months, it has aggressively pitched to high-net-worth individuals after withdrawing its IPO application twice in the past four years. Once a red-hot Indian startup active in markets including the U.S. and Europe, Oyo has now scaled back its international presence. #venture #downround https://lnkd.in/gE2GjYnM

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EPFO is a rickety crumbling system that thousands of employees can’t deal with. Established in 1952, it wasn't designed for today's economy or technology. Read about the issues and solutions in EPFO transfer: https://lnkd.in/d2m5A3t5

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It’s undeniable that a large percentage of venture capitalists, roughly 99%, often fail to offer meaningful assistance, connections or sales assist to startups beyond mere funding. Elon Musk has previously voiced similar concerns about the role of VCs / Investors. With limited government support for startups, VCs frequently become one of the few funding avenues available. Vinod Khosla has been quite frank about the reality: around 90% of VCs / Angel Investors are unable to deliver significant returns on their investments. More often than not, their contributions lack value beyond financial backing. Simply channeling money into a venture doesn’t automatically translate into success, and ineffective board members from VC firms can further complicate matters such us big dilutions or changing agreements against the founder's benefit. The once unique VC culture of Silicon Valley that Vinod experienced while building Khosla Ventures has now spread globally. Being a VC in the tech sector has turned into a trendy profession, with Vinod’s statistics highlighting this on an international scale. Many individuals, from entry-level analysts to partners, often lack the hands-on experience needed to create products, build teams, or launch companies. Without the essential grit and determination, they may find themselves on startup boards as part of a learning process, which can lead to a lack of genuine value addition—or even harm— to the startups involved. #Startups #Entrepreneurship

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Had an incredible evening co-hosting our most electrifying AI mixer yet with Hemant Mohapatra at Lightspeed India! 🙏 We had the brightest AI researchers and founders from NVIDIA Meta X LinkedIn Uber Tesla Google Google DeepMind Square Amazon, and really exciting pre-seed/seed startups! Highlights from our discussions (h/t Hemant Mohapatra for the summary!) - The nature of knowledge: Can LLMs truly create it? - Next-gen GPUs: What's on the horizon? - AGI and scaling laws: How close are we? - LLMs + Robotics: The next frontier - Founder journeys: Finding PMF - Breaking out in crowded markets: Strategies that work - Capital markets: Current trends and future predictions - Tech industry cycles: Navigating CapEx vs OpEx These quarterly mixers keep leveling up, and I'm already excited for the next one 🔥 #AI #LLMs #AGI #Startups #Founders

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At NVIDIA’s AI Summit, I met Anshul Khandelwal, Co-founder and CTO of invideo, and attending his insightful session on their lip-sync model. They serve 25 million users, the model leverages NVIDIA’s StyleGAN with audio-driven style learning to deliver realistic, high-quality lip sync while maintaining facial identity, which stood out. Anshul also shared the challenges of scaling the model and the key lessons learned during its development. To efficiently handle their large user base, they utilize TensorRT and Triton Inference Server to optimize performance and reduce costs. The session dived into how AI is transforming video content creation, empowering creators to produce high-quality multimedia experiences with ease. It was inspiring to learn how InVideo’s platform, powered by E2E Cloud Network’s GPUs, is driving innovation in digital content. Thank you, Anshul, for sharing your journey and insights! It was a pleasure meeting you. Hoping to stay connected. Cheers! #invideo #nvidia #ai #virtualhumans #dcverse

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130k Startups are registered under DPIIT in India. But how many get on to a growth/hyper scale path? A startup status doesn't mean anything to a VC until there is a Massive growth potential. Does 100x growth in valuation sound difficult to imagine? Not really. T0 - invest X T1 - next round at 5x T2 - next round at 5x T3 - next round at 5x Your investment now would have become 100+x adjusted for dilution. shorter time intervals would fetch an amazing IRR. If the founder does the spreadsheet and he never gets the possibility to make such growth in the next round, you are out of a VCs sweet spot. That doesn't mean what you are building is bad. It's just not enough for inorganic growth. When you build the spreadsheet, remember that the best capital is always the customer's capital and never compromise it for VC money. #venturecapital #vc #angleinvesting #startups

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⏩ ⏩ Antler is coming to Mumbai: October 25, Friday Announcing the 24-hour Fastrack to the Antler India Residency for AI founders on the sidelines of the NVIDIA summit in Mumbai The Why and What? In line with our commitment to investing $10M in 20+ startups by the end of the year, we are doing a fast-track option to bring exceptional founders (individuals or teams) into the Antler India Residency within 24 hours of us meeting you, with the potential of investing in 4 weeks or less. The Who? We are living through a generation-defining technology wave. With the unprecedented pace of AI breakthroughs changing consumer behaviours and disrupting a wide range of industries; here are some of the themes we’re particularly excited about: * Vertical SaaS, especially in industries with low digitization * Agentic automation for complex workflows in industries such as BFSI and Healthcare * Modern AI stack such as testing and monitoring of AI models, model security, retrieval infra, agent infra, specialized small language models and edge AI * Developer productivity in SDLC using AI * Models for new ‘languages’ such as robotics, genetics and material science * Differentiated consumer plays in education, health, media, gaming and personal AI hardware * Startups ‘selling outcomes, not software’ Over the past two months, via Fastrack, we have met over 150 founders and accelerated 13 of them into Residency. We have some exciting new investments from this to be announced soon! The Perks: Antler is the best place to start your company. Besides the capital commitment of up to $500K, we are uniquely positioned to help companies ‘build from India for the world’. Visit us to learn how we support our companies from inception to scale. We also provide a host of perks; some relevant ones for AI founders include up to $25K AWS credits, up to $250K GCP credits, $150K worth of perks from Microsoft, preferred pricing from NVIDIA, $100K of cloud solution credits from OVHcloud and $3K credits from OpenAI and Anthropic. The How? Send us your working demo link on the form in the first comment. Bonus: To strengthen your chances, you can also get someone in our network to refer you to me or any of our team members over email with a strong, specific, warm intro All shortlisted founders will get a direct slot with Antler India on Oct 25 to meet us IRL in Mumbai. The location will be conveniently located just a few minutes from Jio World Convention Centre incase you are attending the NVIDIA summit. You will get a decision to get into the Antler India Residency (through which we commit up to $500k for each early-stage startup) over the weekend. The deadline for being referred or sending us your demo is Oct 21 With Nitin Sharma Gowri Shankar Nagarajan Ishavasyam Dash

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I had an insightful chat with Akshay Datt on the ‘Founder Thesis’ podcast, and it’s now live! We delved deep into the fascinating world of contract staffing, uncovering its twists, turns, and immense potential. Here's a glimpse of what we covered in this episode: • Building a 600 crore staffing business with projected revenue: Insights into the strategies and vision driving our growth at Buzzworks. • Exploring Buzzworks' Future Plans: Delve into Buzzworks' ambitious vision for the future, including our strategies for growth and innovation in the staffing industry. • Transition of the sector: Navigating the evolution of the staffing industry towards consolidation and formalization. • Technology as a game-changer: How to leverage technology to enhance service delivery and differentiate ourselves in the market. • Recruiting blue-collar candidates with a fresh approach: Discussing the importance of maintaining a dynamic candidate database and exploring different hiring methods in the blue-collar space. • Customer Feedback as the Ultimate Measure of Value: How to prioritize customer feedback to continually improve services and enhance client satisfaction. From discussing market trends to sharing our vision for the future, our conversation covered it all. Listen to the Episode:  podm.in/buzzworks Whether you’re a recruiter, job seeker, or just curious about the future of staffing, this episode is packed with valuable insights.

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