Pratham Khandelwal

Who Owns Amagi? India’s Media SaaS Unicorn Eyes IPO 🚀 Media-focused SaaS unicorn Amagi has filed its draft papers to raise up to ₹1,020 Cr through a fresh issue, with big names like Premji Invest, Accel, Norwest Venture Partners, General Atlantic, Trudy Holdings, and others set for partial exits. At the time of filing, Premji Invest holds the largest chunk with a 26.6% stake, followed by Accel at 15.6% and Norwest at 14.2%, while the three cofounders together own about 14%. Backed by a sharp 72% drop in net loss and 32% revenue growth in FY25, Amagi is ready to test public market waters and extend its global cloud media play. Will this IPO boost India’s SaaS story to the next level? #Amagi #IPO #SaaS #Media #Tech #Startup #India #Inc42 #growth

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Most of the good early stage VCs in India now have visibility of at least 1-2 IPOs/year in their portfolio for the next 3 years. Understandably, this is becoming a barometer for investor-partner selection by the best founders at the early stages.

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Jason Kothari’s new startup, Mythik, has raised $15 million in a seed funding round, which it claims is the largest ever in India’s media technology space. The round saw participation from a group of investors, including Sakal Media Group, BITKRAT, Venture Catalysts-backed VC Grid, Visceral Capital, Jason Kothari (Former CEO of Freecharge), Shah Rukh Khan’s Family Office, Patni Family Office, His Excellency Saif Saeed Ghobash, Polygon co-founder Jaynti Kanani, Tridiagonal AI founder Pravin Jain, Marc Younan, and Courtside Ventures co-founder Deepen Parikh. Read the full story here:👇 https://lnkd.in/dkAKu6BG #entertainment #mythology #story #funding #investors #investment #technology #bengaluru #startup #indianstartupnews

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Some much needed positive news for the Indian gaming industry… IGPDA launches to support Make-in-India Gaming IP for the world! Proud to be a founding member of the newly launched Indian Game Publishers and Developers Association (IGPDA) — a united platform to amplify Indian creativity in gaming and take original IP to global audiences. This launch comes at a pivotal moment, with the Online Gaming Bill, 2025 laying the groundwork for structured growth and actively supporting social, casual, and cultural games. The focus is clear: build games that celebrate India’s stories, talent, and imagination. 🎮 From WCC to Ludo King, Indus, FAU-G, and more — Indian developers are ready to shape the future of gaming from India, for the world. IGPDA’s first proposed state partner is Maharashtra, with a vision to make Mumbai the global games hub. We’re just getting started. 🌐 Learn more: igpda.com Vishal Gondal #gaming #India

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Wakefit’s IPO isn’t just a listing, it’s a landmark moment for India’s D2C ecosystem. From bootstrapped beginnings to a ₹1,200+ Cr revenue powerhouse, Wakefit shows what disciplined growth, omnichannel scale, and founder-led execution can achieve. Key highlights: • Founders turn minimal capital into outsized wealth • Peak XV Partners clocks a 10x outcome • Growth investors like Investcorp & Elevation Capital stay invested • Wakefit becomes one of India’s first mature D2C brands to hit public markets As consumer brands go omnichannel, profitable, and public, Wakefit sets the tone for India’s next era of D2C growth. #D2C #WakefitIPO #ConsumerBrands #StartupEcosystem #PrivateCircleInsights #IndianMarkets #Omnichannel #IPOIndia #StartupFunding #VentureCapital

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Circle, a full-stack platform for buying and selling pre-owned products, has secured ₹3.4 crore in a pre-seed funding round led by early-stage VC firm Titan Capital, with participation from Raveen Sastry (Co-founder of myntra). The funds will help Circle improve its AI tools for pricing, product grading, and catalog matching. The startup will expand its electronics and home categories, grow its Bengaluru operations, and enter new cities by 2026. 🔗 Read full article link in comment Ankit Misra | Chirag Kataruka #circle #D2C #buyandsell #funding #startupnews #growth

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#Ad Can a Kolkata-born agency lead India’s phygital marketing revolution? At 20, Liazo Advertising and founder Chaitali Chakraborty are proving it can- by helping traditional sectors grow, scale, and go global. From AR-powered storytelling to B2B strategy and international campaigns, Liazo stands at the intersection of legacy and innovation. Read how the journey shaped the shift: https://lnkd.in/gTk2NRZy #AgencyBriefs #Phygital #MarketingAgency #Agency #Advertising #CreativeAgency #Marketing #Interview #Business #B2BMarketing #ChaitaliChakraborty

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🚀 Gurugram-based home services startup Pronto has raised $11 Mn (Series A), co-led by General Catalyst & Glade Brook Capital, with participation from existing investor Bain Capital Ventures. 💰 This comes just months after a $2 Mn seed extension from Bain Capital Ventures. 📍 What’s next for Pronto? ✅ Expansion to Mumbai & Bengaluru in 12–18 months ✅ Onboarding & training 10,000+ service professionals ✅ Scaling its 10-minute on-demand home services platform 🏠 Pronto offers instant, scheduled & recurring house help — sweeping 🧹, utensil washing 🍽, laundry 👕, kitchen cleaning 🍳 & more. 💬 Anjali Sardana, Founder: “We’re building a new era of trusted, rapid home services for India’s urban households.” #StartupNews #Funding #SeriesA #Pronto #househelp #seriesA #funding #IndiaEconomy #viralpost #scoopearth #scoopearth.in

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Why is it that out of the 4000 D2C brands doing $1M of monthly revenue on Shopify, not a single brand is from India? The answer is a mix of technical and cultural reasons. I will start with cultural. Because that is valid not just for D2C but for other industries like SAAS and tech as well. 1. Our processes rely on people instead of systems. And as warm and loving as that sounds, it simply doesn’t work at scale. It is also the reason why Indian orgs have so much internal corruption as they scale. 2. We are a risk averse nation. Government jobs. Education. Safety net. These are the values typically passed down and get hardcoded in our DNAs. So even when we start a business, concepts of credit and debt are not used as efficiently as they should be. Heck even our investor community is the most risk averse in the world. Everybody wants to copy and follow what’s working. Nobody wants to take the leap and innovate. 3. Entitlement comes very fast Anybody who has earned a couple of crores in their lives thinks they are God. Several socio economic reasons for this that I won’t get into here. 4. We care too much about not looking poor. We want to spend like the west because it “looks” cool. A person on a 50k/m salary has a 1L iphone. A person who earns 20L a year as a 40L car. A D2C business owner who earns 10L per month pays 4L in salaries. A founder who just raised a round of funding will overspend on IIM/IIT talent and swanky offices they don’t need. 5. We outsource/delegate too early. Because labour is cheap, we are quick to hire. We don’t do our dishes and laundry at home so then why would we do the dirty work of our own business? (Entitlement again) ______________ Moving on to the non cultural factors now. Specific to D2C only. 6. Founders have no grip on their P&L fundamentals. Nobody knows what their real breakeven roas is in the 0-1 stage and they keep pumping in more money until they run out. 7. Marketing, Finance, Inventory, Creatives & branding are all deeply correlated. But founders are not building businesses trying to prioritise all of these together. The founder who is great at branding ignores finance metrics completely. The founder great at performance ignores branding completely. And so on. 8. Founders don’t know enough about their own businesses. Remember point 5? This causes a gap. And this gap keeps growing with scale. 9. We are 5 years behind western markets in technology adoption. Purely because of points 2 (risk) and 5 (early delegation). Case in point -> First party data adoption. This is the one single technology switch that has enabled US brands to keep scaling without dropping MER and nobody in India is talking about it. But why is nobody talking about it? Because the people directly responsible for growth are MBA peeps, not founders themselves. These MBA peeps are even more risk averse. This would have never happened if the founder had upskilled and kept up with what’s new in the world.

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India's affiliate ecosystem is undergoing significant changes over the past few quaters, with traditional channels(Emails, RCS, Whatsapp, influencers) failing to meet outcome expectations. Resulting to small networks shutting down, retrenchment in people, movement of inventory to high return ( gaming, iGaming, Crypto campaigns ) and no one picking up the traditional high-return affiliate campaigns. Despite these shifts, the primary focus remains on outcomes for this industry, what about the risk taking abilities of the advertisers of a bygone era where inventory pools were 100% transparent and advertisers used to try new pools to open up better distribution, have the marketing teams become immune to taking risks or is it that media managers are afraid of accountability and internal selling. Just a thought. Talk to indixital or DM me if you are facing challenges as an advertiser, we are solving some of the challenges above, with Content based deliveries, 100% access to 100% transparent inventories( Platform based), API integration for distributed Lead Gen, best in class tracking and attribution, Call Center integration for disposition data and more.

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B2B quick commerce platform Fairdeal.Market has raised $3 million in a pre-Series A funding round led by Incubate Fund Asia and WaterBridge Ventures, with help from angel investors. Fairdeal will use this money to improve its technology, expand to more areas in Delhi NCR, and add more direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands to its platform. Prateek Bansal | Yash Bansal | Rajeev Ranka | Ashish Jain 🔗 Read full article link in comment #fairdeal #quickcommerce #B2B #funding #startupnews #businessupdate

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Saavn could’ve been India’s Spotify, if it cracked subscriptions. Back in 2007, Saavn was the OG music streaming app in India. Before Spotify. Before Apple music. Before JioSaavn. It had the first-mover advantage: → Huge Bollywood & regional catalog → Early partnerships with labels → Millions of installs when 4G was just picking up For a while, it looked like Saavn would define how India streamed music. But then Spotify entered in 2019, with a global playbook. → Personalised playlists powered by data → A frictionless subscription model → Clear brand positioning as the world’s music app And Saavn struggled to keep up. Here’s what went wrong → Ads over subs → Saavn focused too much on free + ads, while Spotify made subs aspirational → Slow product evolution → Spotify’s algorithmic playlists (Discover Weekly, Daily Mix) became habits → Local rivals, no edge → Gaana, Wynk, Hungama crowded the space until Jio’s entry reshaped it By 2018, Saavn merged with JioMusic to become JioSaavn. Today it’s still relevant, but Spotify owns the mindshare. The Big Lesson Scale gets you installs. But subscriptions build habit. First-mover advantage means little if you don’t figure out monetisation. Products that create habits will always outlast hype. And when you’re competing with global giants, local catalogues aren’t enough, you need world-class user experience. For an entire generation, Saavn was the first taste of music streaming. But Spotify made streaming a daily ritual. What do you think can JioSaavn ever reclaim its spot, or has Spotify already won India’s music game? #StartupStory #IndianStartup #Jiosaavnx #Saavn #Spotify #BusinessLessons #MusicStreaming

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#Exclusive | In an exclusive piece for Mediabrief.com, Zaheer Adenwala, Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Ketto, shares how the platform is scaling trust and impact through product-led governance. He discusses Ketto’s early challenges in building confidence around crowdfunding in India, the systems they’ve designed to embed transparency into every user touchpoint, and how this governance-first approach helped them respond effectively during crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. He also reveals how features like the Social Impact Plan (SIP), community-driven accountability, and cross-functional collaboration have become pillars of Ketto’s ongoing growth and credibility. 🔗 More here: https://lnkd.in/d5bPUgSx Varun Sheth | Mahendra Nakar | Rashmi R Rathor | Kapil Mehta | Kumar Vishal | Kartik Bhadada | Vishal Jadhav | Neelay Shah #mediabrief #ZaheerAdenwala CoFounder #ChiefOperatingOfficer #COO #Ketto #crowdfunding #DigitalPayments #ProductLedGovernance #SIP #SocialImpactPlan #healthcare #marketing #media

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Fairdeal.Market has raised $3 million in Pre-Series A funding led by Incubate Fund Asia and WaterBridge Ventures. The capital will fuel tech enhancements, expansion in Delhi NCR, and D2C brand onboarding. Founded in 2022 by Prateek Bansal and Yash Bansal, Fairdeal builds a data-led distribution network for D2C brands, aiming to empower retailers and build a base of 100K loyal retailers. Competing with Intelligence Node and Bizom, Fairdeal leverages AI to optimize delivery and tech capabilities. Bizom recently raised $12 million, while Intelligence Node was acquired by IPG. #RetailIntelligence #D2C #Funding #DeccanFounders

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Has India’s gaming sector hit by a funding slowdown? VC funding for gaming startups has plunged nearly 90% in just three years. Why? Real-money gaming has been hit by regulatory fog, GST fears, and wobbly monetisation models.. But there’s more here than a funding freeze. AI is quietly rewiring the gaming value chain. Infrastructure players and tools-focused startups are still drawing investor interest. So, what’s missing? Regulatory clarity, and a national framework that doesn’t punish innovation. Until then, even solid fundamentals like low data costs, a young digital-native population can’t drive the next boom. Find the story in the comments. Outlook Business

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