A Time Machine Roundtable: Inside India’s Startup Journey (2010 to 2025)

🚀2025 feels like a turning point for the Indian startup ecosystem.

In this special year-end episode of the Prime Venture Partners podcast, we take a step back and look at the journey from the early days of 2010 to where we are today and what lies ahead.

We talk about:

• The wild early years when founders were figuring things out as they went

• How Aadhaar, UPI and cheap data quietly changed everything

• What COVID revealed about founder resilience

• How AI is being used inside real companies today

• Why India’s startup ecosystem took longer to take off, but is now scaling bigger than expected

This is a candid, experience-led conversation from the Prime partners, shaped by nearly two decades of building and investing in Indian startups.

🎙 Episode Timestamps

00:00 Introduction

03:17 The Three Phases of the Indian Startup Ecosystem

05:16 Early Founder Reality (2010–2015)

08:09 What It Was Like to Be an Investor in Early 2010

11:36 When No One Even Talked About Exits

12:49 Early Unicorns and the First Belief Shift

15:05 Founders We Underestimated and Why It Changed Our Thinking

19:07 Backing People Over Plans

23:29 India’s “Too Operational” Companies That Scaled Big

27:46 Jio and the Moment the Internet Became Affordable

29:33 When the Internet Truly Reached Bharat

31:43 Aadhaar, India Stack, and Building at Population Scale

35:16 COVID: Revenue to Zero and Zero-Based Accounting

39:00 Crisis Decisions, Calm Leadership, and Founder Resilience

43:20 The Crypto Wave: Knowing What Not to Chase

46:34 Practical AI Use Cases Inside Real Companies

54:07 Lessons From 15 Years of Venture Investing

58:59 India’s Startup Ecosystem in One Minute 

If you care about startups, founders, or the future of technology in India, this episode will resonate.

#IndianStartups #VentureCapital #FoundersJourney #StartupEcosystem #IndiaStack #UPI #StartupLessons #Entrepreneurship #TechInIndia #InvestingInsights #PrimeVenturePartners