The Indian Startup Ecosystem

Welcome to the first episode of our new series, Return on India. I’m your host, Romeen Sheth. India is a country filled with nuance, contradictions, and ambition for the future. And throughout this podcast series, I’m excited to share why I believe the next decade will belong to India. 

The first few episodes will focus on the macro story. The technological and demographic building blocks that lay the groundwork for future success. Then we’ll explore individual sectors, from e-commerce to gaming to fintech. All throughout, we will speak with investors, founders, and executives contributing to the next generation of Indian businesses. 

My guest today is Sajith Pai, a general partner at one of India’s leading early stage venture firms, Blume Ventures. Sajith and the team at Blume put together a fantastic report recently on the rise of India’s start-up ecosystem, and it gives us the perfect entry point into this series. We discuss the right way to segment India’s consumer class, the tech trifecta enabling economic growth, and why the start-up playbook for India is so different to the United States. Please enjoy my conversation with Sajith Pai.

For the full show notes, transcript, and links to the best content to learn more, check out the episode page here.

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Show Notes

[00:02:54] - [First question] - What he means by India being a country of contradictions

[00:04:37] - The right framework for segmenting and understanding India’s consumer class

[00:08:24] - Evaluating companies who are primarily attacking India 1 and extrapolating to the other tiers after establishing themselves 

[00:11:09] - Unpacking the idea of building “X” for India and expanding to India-first use-case products and services 

[00:14:33] - Whether or not it’s possible for a company to build for all Indian consumer classes and co’s who’ve done it successfully 

[00:16:55] - Drivers that stand out to him when evaluating the Indian ecosystem 

[00:20:29] - The rate of change in bandwidth, smartphones, and frictionless payment systems

[00:23:32] - Breaking down the concept of leapfrogging and how it applies to India

[00:26:59] - India’s low trust economy and public digital infrastructure 

[00:30:45] - Being a data challenged country and thinking about the rise of public infrastructure from the outside in 

[00:33:50] - Key phases the Indian startup ecosystem has gone through 

[00:37:14] - How the numbers look in the ecosystem today compared to a few years ago

[00:39:37] - The main sectors in their startup ecosystem and why capital pools behind them 

[00:40:59] - What’s going on in SaaS in India and unique circumstances given their geography

[00:44:12] - Differences for the playbook in launching successful SaaS companies in India compared to the US or other countries 

[00:47:23] - Thoughts about India becoming one of the biggest English speaking countries in the world and the implications of that for their economy 

[00:50:20] - Counterintuitive things about India that most people might not consider 

[00:53:15] - Why he’s long on Indians but neutral on India 

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