Anshuman Singh

Agilitas x Virat Kohli partnership is one of the masterstroke deals I have seen in recent times. Virat invests 40 CR in Agilitas for a 1.94% stake, putting Agilitas’s valuation around 2000 CR. 📈 In turn, Agilitas acquires one8world, making Virat a co-founder and shareholder. They now get two very important growth levers: ⬇️ 1. A powerful manufacturing (via Mochiko Shoes - a 600 CR+ footwear brand that Agilitas acquired in 2008 ), 2. India’s biggest athlete — exclusively aligned. Easily becomes a 4000 CR revenue brand in the next 5 years. Footwear + retail scale requires capital — but this partnership compresses customer acquisition, product cycles, and brand-building like few others. Even Virat said in his podcast with Abhishek Ganguly, the co-founder of Agilitas that, “I didn’t want a brand deal… I wanted to build something that outlives me.” And Abhishek said something even beautiful - “An ambition to build from India but be globally relevant.” This isn’t marketing. This is legacy building with shared skin in the game. And that is how startups work - shared ambition with one goal (to make the company big) and food (read stake) in the table for everyone! A company that can be built in the long term with culture, capital, and conviction aligned. This might be the first time in India, where an athlete joins hands with a sport company to re-imagine and build the sport ecosystem of India - truly revolutionalising the game with a clear vision. 🙌

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Recko | A Stripe company's $150M acquisition proved that India Talent can build world class software. Here are the top learnings from my podcast with Saurya, Co-founder, Recko: 1. Recko was founded in 2017 by Saurya and Prashant to fix the complex and broken process of financial reconciliation in fast-growing B2C companies like Flipkart and Blinkit. 2. Getting the product off the ground was really tough. Early customers openly said they didn’t need it, and investors thought the idea was pointless. Recko was trying to build in a new category where there were no benchmarks or clear paths to follow. 3. Their first big break came from Myntra, who reached out just when Recko was down to their last $500. Over the next 3 to 4 months, they worked closely with Myntra’s finance team to solve huge reconciliation problems involving millions of data rows. That work earned them the credibility to build the product. 4. Indian VCs passed on Recko for several reasons: Lack of investor-focus on B2B during 2017-18 , the perception that back-office products were unsexy and the pressure for fast hockey stick growth. In some cases, even customers denied they had the problem Recko was solving, which confused potential investors further. 5. Saurya shares that India’s B2B ecosystem has “over-indexed” on cost advantages and marketing-heavy models. But to truly compete globally and reach higher valuations, companies should start with a solid product that offers real value through Tech and product superiority, not just by being cheaper. 6. For early-stage B2B startups, the most important metrics is not ARR, but product shape & product usage- how often the product is used and how critical it is to the workflow of the business. If your product becomes part of a company’s core workflow, it’s much harder for them to stop using it- even if it’s tough to sell at first. 7. Stripe's acquisition of Recko was primarily a product acceleration and product suite completion strategy. With financial operations closely tied to payments, Recko brought deep expertise in that space- something Stripe's customers were already asking for. 8. Recko was acquired at a 75X revenue multiple of $2 million ARR - A result of the product's unique strength, very specific domain knowledge, and "thickness" in its product layer. This contrasts with companies offering easily replicable solutions or operating in crowded, benchmarked categories, which give them lesser leverage in acquisitions. 9. The acquisition process took about six months, with four of those months spent on intense due diligence. Founders must manage conflicting expectations from investors and employees while maintaining highly confidential communication throughout. 10. Saurya advises founders to prioritize long-term relationships over attempting to "squeeze the last drop" of money during an acquisition, as future collaborations are likely. 

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At just 22 and 21, Aadit Palicha and Kaivalya V. have scaled Zepto to 1.5 million daily orders, $3B in GMV, and a $5B valuation—all in under three years. YC's Garry Tan sat down with Aadit, Zepto's co-founder and CEO, to unpack how a WhatsApp group during the pandemic turned into one of India’s fastest-growing internet companies. They dive into the power of: - doing things that don’t scale (like running their own corner store and doing deliveries themselves) - building a business user-backward instead of supply chain-forward - why execution, not luck, is what really compounds https://lnkd.in/eTj83buJ

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Kluisz.ai, led by former OYO senior executive Abhinav Sinha, has raised $9.6 million (INR 82.9 crore) in seed funding. The round was led by RTP Global and saw participation from Unicorn India Ventures, Blume Ventures Founders Fund, Climber Capital, and prominent angels. Founded in early 2025, Kluisz.ai is building an open-source, AI-native cloud platform to help enterprises deploy and manage AI and edge computing workloads. Check out the full funding details : https://lnkd.in/gjs3UKNB Team Kluisz Abhinav Sinha | Venkata Surya Tej | Vamshidhar Reddy | Abhijeet Singh | #oyoCOO #OYOemployee #AiStartups #SeedFunding #CloudStartups #FundingUpdates #startupro #startupUPdates

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SCOOP: CRED is raising $75 Mn in an internal round led by existing investor GIC (via Lathe Investment), with RTP Global and Sofina participating. Founder Kunal Shah will invest ~$20 Mn. The round values CRED at $3.5 Bn — a 45% drop from its peak valuation of $6.4 Bn. #Exclusive break by Harsh Upadhyay https://lnkd.in/gF3Xu6MX

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Tribe Stays Raises $2.8 Million to Scale Premium Managed-Living Across India. Founded by Yogesh Mehra (along with partners Shantam Mehra & Aman Mehra) under the banner of Tribe Stays, the company is reimagining long-stay accommodation—from simple rooms to community-driven, hospitality-led living experiences. Ribe Stays operates across three sub-brands: Tribe Student Accommodation (hostel-style living) Tribe Commune (coliving for young professionals) Tribe Suites (executive extended-stay apartments) #startup #funding https://lnkd.in/g5y5WQpw

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Interesting to see Uber India take a page from Brex's playbook. One of the key drivers of stickiness for Brex's card is allowing users to accumulate rewards on their work spends, and leveraging them to subsidise their personal spends. This is one of the key unsaid and unadvertised value prop for employees to use Brex card. Same reason for success of HDFC Bank SmartBuy, and why employees prefer to pay for work travel using their personal credit cards, if given a choice. Recently launched Uber One in India is leveraging the same core insight, where a user gains rewards on work travel, and leverages them to subsidise personal travel. Win-win for both Uber and user.

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In venture capital, ultimately “only a handful of companies per year actually matter”. Just 7 firms led the Series A of ~60% of startups in India that are worth $1B+ today. The list of firms leading investments in these cos is fairly predictable - PANZEL + Tiger Global. Full post on India's unicorn hunters in the comments

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In the early days of Glean, there was no direct competition. This gave the team time to build– but it also meant the urgency had to come from within. Now, with more players entering the space, Arvind Jain sees competition as a good thing. It motivates the team, pushes the category forward, and even helps validate the original vision. I spoke about this perspective shift in my recent conversation with Arvind for IVPs Undaunted Series. Watch the full episode here: https://lnkd.in/gwEZ4iYr Would love to hear how you think about product differentiation– drop your thoughts below.

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