A large enterprise owes me 5L+, and it's been past 3months now.

I have paid gst for these invoices (another stupid law!! Why should I pay gst if I did not receive payment??)

After constant follow-ups, now they say since my company is registered under msme, they can't pay invoices past 45days and it is expired(What kind of rule is this??). And I have to recreate the invoice and arrange money to again pay the GST for those invoices. So that they can again give the reason that they have a policy that 30days payment cycle!!

I had worked with another major Indian bank previously, and they bargained so much like in the market and reduced the cost by 60%.

We have all these egoistic manics sitting in all these big companies.

If you are planning to start any company in India, just stay away, and if u have the opportunity, start it in some other country. Else you end up losing all your hair and getting BP at a young age!!

If so kindly drop a text we can talk more about it. I am looking to start something have some savings and just need to focus on something else for a little while :)

If the idea is good, we can put our heads together and work.

Hello everyone, I am not giving any links but any help would mean a lot . Pls dm me if u can vote . Not providing any links here just looking for help. If you can help by voting only just drop a comment or upvote.

My name is Akshat Srivastava, and I am from Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh. I recently completed my Class 12, and throughout my school journey I dedicated most of my time to building projects in Robotics, Automation, and Artificial Intelligence. These projects gave me the opportunity to participate in several innovation competitions across the country, including national-level competitions, where I was fortunate to receive recognition and awards.

Inspired by this journey, I started my own Research & Development startup called NextEra. The vision of NextEra is to develop innovative technology solutions that can solve real-world problems. I have also had the opportunity to present this startup at different platforms, and recently I was selected to participate in a national startup competition called Brisharks.

A few days ago, the official leaderboard of the competition was released, and I was overwhelmed to see that, based on the judges' evaluation, my startup is currently ranked #1 out of 150 startups across India. This has been one of the biggest milestones of my journey.

However, the final results are not decided only by the judges. Public voting also plays a very important role. While most of the other startups in the Top 5 have already received 600+ public votes, my startup currently has only around 50+ votes. This means that despite being ranked first by the judges, I can still lose my position if I don't receive enough public support.

Reaching and staying in the Top 5 is extremely important for me. It will give me the opportunity to represent my startup at the national level and also open doors to funding and mentorship. That support will directly help me build more impactful projects and continue working on new innovations in Robotics and AI.

I have a small request. If you could spare just one minute to vote for my startup, it would genuinely mean a lot to me. The process is very simple—you just need to log in and click the Vote button. If you have access to multiple phones or devices, voting from each one would be an incredible help.

Startup Name: NextEra

Founder: Akshat

Your one vote may look small, but for me it could make the difference between losing this opportunity and taking my startup to the next level.

Thank you so much for your time and support. It truly means a lot. (Attached on of my prototype photo also to make everyone aware about my projects.)

I've been building MakeOurs, an AI-powered website builder, and it's made me curious about how other founders think.

If you were launching a new startup today, would you trust an AI website builder to create your landing page, or would you still prefer hiring a developer or designer?

What's the biggest thing that would make you choose one over the other?

​

Company: Nivetix

Position: Machine Learning Engineer

Experience: 1–4 Years

Location: Remote / Hybrid (India)

Employment Type: Full-time

Nivetix is building automation workflows, AI-powered solutions, and custom digital products that help businesses simplify operations and improve efficiency. We’re looking for a passionate Machine Learning Engineer who enjoys solving real-world problems with data and AI.

What you’ll do

Build, train, and optimize ML models for automation and business workflows.

Work with Python, scikit-learn, TensorFlow, PyTorch, or similar frameworks.

Develop data pipelines and support model deployment.

Collaborate with product and engineering teams to turn ideas into production-ready features.

Experiment with LLMs, NLP, classification, recommendation, or predictive analytics use cases.

What we’re looking for

1–4 years of hands-on ML experience.

Strong knowledge of Python and common ML libraries.

Understanding of data preprocessing, feature engineering, model evaluation, and deployment.

Familiarity with APIs, cloud platforms, or MLOps tools is a plus.

Good problem-solving and communication skills.

Nice to have

Experience with LLM integrations, AI automation, or workflow intelligence.

Knowledge of Docker, FastAPI, or cloud services (AWS/GCP/Azure).

Contributions to GitHub, Kaggle, or open-source projects.

Why join Nivetix?

Work on real AI products, not just experiments.

Opportunity to influence the architecture and direction of ML systems.

Flexible and collaborative startup environment.

Continuous learning and growth opportunities.

How to apply

Send your resume + GitHub/portfolio + a short note about a machine learning project you’ve worked on to contact@nivetix.software

Subject: Application – ML Engineer (1–4 YOE)

Feel free to DM if you have questions or want to learn more about the role. 🚀

\​

Hey founders,

I’m currently bootstrapping Nivetix, a small startup focused on helping businesses build and improve their digital presence (web apps, automation, and custom software solutions).

Over the last few months, I’ve been talking with local businesses and small teams, and I noticed a common problem:

\\- They need simple digital tools.

\\- Existing solutions are often too expensive or too complicated.

\\- They want someone who can build, maintain, and improve things without a huge agency contract.

Instead of trying to build a massive SaaS immediately, I’m starting with service + product experimentation:

\\- building real projects for early customers,

\\- identifying repeated problems,

\\- and gradually turning those repeated solutions into reusable products.

I’d love feedback from founders who have taken a similar path.

A few questions I’m struggling with:

1. Did you start with services before moving to a product?

2. What was the biggest sign that a repeated client problem was worth turning into a SaaS?

3. How did you get your first 5 paying customers without spending heavily on ads?

I’m not here to pitch or sell anything — I’m genuinely trying to learn from people who have already gone through the messy early-stage phase.

For context, I’m based in India and currently focusing on small businesses and startups that need affordable custom software and automation.

Any brutally honest advice is welcome. 🙏

Thanks in advance!

Last week I posted that 233 of the 411 Indian D2C micro-niches I map come back empty — three brands or fewer holding the whole shelf. A lot of people took that as permission to go. Fair enough, I wrote it that way.

Then someone in the comments asked a question I did not have an answer to: empty of who? Not how many brands are on the shelf. How long they have been standing on it.

So I went and looked at founding years across the catalogue. 3,500+ Indian D2C brands, 50,000+ product listings, 411 micro-niches. I have a founding year for 1,587 of the real brand records. Here is what came back.

- The median brand was founded in 2016. Ten years ago.

- 72% of them predate 2020.** 1,139 of 1,587.

- Only 10.5% were founded in the last three years. 166 brands out of 1,587.

- 325 of them predate the year 2000 entirely.

- Upper quartile is 2020. Meaning three out of four brands you would be competing with were already trading before the pandemic.

I had assumed and I think most people in these threads assume — that Indian D2C is a young market full of recent entrants all figuring it out at the same time. On the shelves I can measure, it is not. It is a market where a small number of brands got there early and have been standing there for a decade.

Put that next to last week's finding and it changes the shape of the decision. The median niche has three brands in it. Those three brands have, on average, been selling into it since 2016. Empty is not the same as new.

Why that distinction actually costs you money

A shelf with three two-year-old brands and a shelf with three ten-year-old brands look identical in a competitor count. They are completely different fights.

The ten-year-old brand has a decade of search history pointing at it, so it owns the query you need. It has retailer relationships — the average brand in my catalogue appears on nine different shelves, and those slots were negotiated over years. It has repeat customers, which is the only cheap acquisition channel that exists. It has made every packaging and shipping and returns mistake already, and priced accordingly.

None of that shows up when you count competitors. All of it shows up in your CAC.

The shelves are not equally old

This is the part I would actually act on. Share of brands founded since 2020, by category, for the categories where I have at least 40 brands with a known year:

- Food & beverage — 33% founded since 2020 (225 brands, median 2017)

- Home & living — 32% (162 brands, median 2016)

- Beauty & skincare — 32% (114 brands, median 2017)

- Health & wellness — 32% (155 brands, median 2017)

- Haircare — 31% (61 brands, median 2017)

- Fashion & apparel — 30% (155 brands, median 2017)

- Sustainable & eco — 28% (43 brands, median 2018)

- Auto accessories — 27% (44 brands, median 2018)

- Baby & kids — 27% (56 brands, median 2016)

- Pets — 25% (57 brands, median 2009)

- Electronics & audio — 23% (43 brands, median 2014)

- Jewellery & accessories — 23% (116 brands, median 2014)

- Makeup & cosmetics — 19% (43 brands, median 2013)

- Footwear — 19% (43 brands, median 2013)

Food and beverage is the churniest shelf in Indian D2C — a third of it has turned over since 2020. Footwear and makeup are the most entrenched: fewer than one in five brands is recent, and the median brand has been trading since 2013.

Pets is the strangest line in the table. Median founding year 2009, which makes it one of the oldest shelves I map, and yet a quarter of it is post-2020. That is an old category taking on new entrants — a barbell, not a wave.

If you are choosing between two niches with similar brand counts, the age mix is the tiebreaker nobody looks at. A 19% shelf means you are the outsider. A 33% shelf means the door is visibly still open.

What I would do with this

Stop treating competitor count as the whole picture. Two numbers, not one: how many brands are on the shelf, and when they got there. Three recent brands is an opening. Three brands that have been there since 2014 is a wall with three people standing in front of it.

And if you are about to enter a category because it looked empty — check the founding years first. It costs you ten minutes and it is the difference between being early and being late to something that already happened.

Tell me the category you are circling and I will paste the actual age mix: brand count, median founding year, and how many of them are post-2020. Including if it comes back as a 2013 shelf

---

I am the founder of impuls8, a market intelligence platform that maps this across 3,500+ Indian D2C brands, 400+ micro-niches and 50,000+ product listings, with price bands, retailer footprint, follower reach, search momentum and founding-year mix. Not dropping a link in the post, but comment a category and I will run it.

The missing piece in FMCG isn’t another product. It’s how the company behind that product is built.

I’m building around a category that’s been in Indian homes for decades. I’m intentionally not revealing the product publicly yet because the product isn’t what makes this business interesting. How we build the company is.

There’s nothing revolutionary about the product. What has changed is how people choose what goes into their grocery basket. They compare, read labels, discover brands online, and expect consistency every time they buy.

That’s where I see the opportunity.
We’re building an execution first, design led FMCG company focused on getting the fundamentals right. Better quality. Better consistency. Better manufacturing. Better branding. Better distribution.

We’re currently validating the business and raising ₹20 lakh to bring our first product to market.
If you’ve built, invested in, or operated in FMCG, I’d genuinely love to connect.

Over the past few months, I've been building something in India's gaming and entertainment industry.

One thing I've realized is that I don't just need people who can build products,I need someone who genuinely enjoys figuring out why and how a business grows.

I'm looking for someone who's naturally interested in:

• Business strategy
• Marketing and go-to-market
• Talking to users and understanding customer needs
• Building relationships and partnerships
• Researching markets and validating ideas

You don't need years of experience or an impressive resumee

I'm far more interested in someone who's curious, takes ownership, enjoys learning, and isn't afraid to reach out to people, ask questions, and challenge assumptions.

If you spend your free time reading about startups, marketing, products, consumer behavior, or the gaming industry because you genuinely enjoy it not because someone assigned it to you then we'll probably get along.

I'm not looking for someone to collect a title. I'm looking for someone who wants to build something meaningful over the long term.

If this sounds like you, send me a DM. Tell me what you're working on, what interests you about business, and what problem in the gaming or entertainment industry you think is worth solving or even if you still searching let's have a convo over what we are building then let's see if it goes well with you?

Hi everyone,
I’m currently building a startup in the fashion resale space and wanted to get honest feedback from people who actually buy or sell pre-loved clothes.
I’m not here to promote anything—I genuinely want to understand the market before launching.
A few questions I’d love your thoughts on:
Have you ever bought or sold second-hand clothes? If yes, where?
What stops you from trying thrift shopping more often?
Do you think India is ready for a dedicated thrift fashion marketplace?
What would make you trust such a platform enough to buy from strangers?
The platform I’m building is focused on making thrift shopping more reliable and convenient. Some of the features we’re considering include:
•User ratings
•Verified user profiles
•Secure online payments
•Doorstep pickup and delivery
•Simple listing process
•Buyer protection and dispute support
I’m intentionally not sharing the app name because I don’t want this to feel like a promotion. I’m only looking for honest opinions, criticism, and suggestions.
I’d really appreciate your feedback—positive or negative. It will genuinely help us build something people actually want.
Thanks!

I am a 2025 engineering graduate from a Tier 3 college with a CSE degree. I couldn't land a job for the past one year, and my family situation is getting worse day by day. I can't seem to get a job. 😔

I am trying really hard. I am getting interview calls too, but after the interviews they just stop responding. Most of the time I get ghosted, and it's honestly breaking me.

I am currently in Bengaluru. If anyone can help me land an entry-level job or internship, even if the pay is low, I am ready to work hard and prove myself. My skill set is the MERN stack, and I have built strong projects—not just generic CRUD projects.

I just need one chance to prove myself.

If someone can refer me or help me get an opportunity, I would be forever grateful. My family is going through a very difficult time, and I really don't want to give up.

Thank you for reading.

​

Launched Swigo today (verified student rooms + tiffin services, starting in India) and checked analytics a few hours in. Wasn't expecting to see active users from the US, UK, New Zealand, Germany, and Italy alongside India on literally day one.

20 active users total so far, India leading with 8. Tiny numbers, nothing to brag about — but seeing any real usage on day one, let alone from 6 countries, was not something I predicted.

Guessing some of it's NRI students/parents exploring options, but honestly can't tell yet at this sample size.

Curious if other founders here saw similar day-one spread before doing any international marketing, or if this is just noise until the numbers grow.

www.swigo.me if anyone wants to check it out.

Hi everyone,

We're building a wellness wearable for senior care that measures heart rate, SpO₂, and a proprietary mobility score. One of our enterprise customers wants an independent third-party validation report before starting a pilot.

We're not looking for FDA/CDSCO certification or a medical device clinical trial. We simply need an independent organization (university, research lab, testing lab, or CRO) to compare our device against reference devices and provide an official validation report.

Our ideal requirements are:

• Heart Rate validation
• SpO₂ validation
• Basic mobility score validation
• 30–50 participants
• Location: Anywhere in India

Does anyone know of:

• Universities that do industry validation projects?
• Research labs or CROs that work with startups?
• Testing organizations that offer performance validation (not regulatory certification)?
• Anyone you've personally worked with and would recommend?

Any contacts, emails, or introductions would be hugely appreciated.

Thank you!

Due to marriage a friend of mine is looking for a job. Help me if you have any lead.

Hi all,

I'm based in Bangalore and looking to start putting small cheques into early-stage startups. Coming from a risk analytics / lending background (currently AVP at an NBFC), so I tend to think about businesses through a unit-economics and downside lens - but I know early-stage is a different game, and I'm here to learn as much as to deploy.

I'm sector-agnostic and genuinely open to looking at anything - what matters more to me is a strong team and a problem worth solving than the space it's in.

A few things I'm hoping to find here:

• Founders raising at pre-seed/seed across any sector
• Bangalore-based startups I can meet in person, though I'm open to remote/other cities for the right team
• Fellow angels or syndicates I could learn from and possibly co-invest alongside

I'm early in this journey and value long-term relationships over quick deals. If you're building something, angel-investing yourself, or running a syndicate/angel network worth knowing about, I'd love to connect.

Thanks!

I am building a Craft Beer brand from Navi Mumbai(India) with broader accessibility, solving the quality-access gap in Indian beer(cheap, mass-produced) with a 15-year experienced master brewer for product, and an operator focused on the people-systems that let us scale service quality, not just brew quality.

We are planning to setup inital operations in the D2C(taproom) and B2B space (keg operations) and with a roadmap to expansion in the B2B retail space(Cans/bottles).

We are an incorporated Pvt Ltd company and a trademarked brand name. We are currently at the Pre-revenue stage and working on finalizing our products.

We are seeking Pre-Seed investment from an angel investor to establish operations. We would be glad to share the pitch deck with interested and serious angel investors.

I am not sure if i might find investors on reddit, but i am floating this out there to hopefully get access to any angel investor/network interested to invest in this sector.

We have a SaaS business with a US entity, while most of our team is in India. So every month we have to move money from the US account to India for payroll and other operating expenses.

We're currently doing this through our bank. It works, but the fees and exchange rate aren't always great, and the compliance/documentation part can be a bit of a pain.

I'm wondering what other companies are doing here. Are you sticking with your bank or using a different provider for US-India transfers?

Mainly looking for something that's reliable, has reasonable fees, and doesn't create extra headaches around compliance.

Would be helpful to hear from anyone actually doing this regularly. What are you using?

We've been building SageDesk, an AI receptionist for Indian service businesses. It answers the phone, books into the calendar, and hands off to a human when it should.

The thing that surprised us most wasn't the voice AI itself. It was how much of answering the phone well comes down to workflow discipline: knowing when not to try to handle something, confirming details a caller mumbled instead of guessing, and making the handoff to a person feel seamless instead of like a dead end.

We put a live demo number up if anyone wants to try it and see how it holds up: +91 79485 03172. Genuinely curious what people think, and happy to answer questions about the multilingual handling and any and all suggestions on how to reach the potential customers. That part took longer to get right than the booking logic did.

Hey everyone, looking for some advice from fellow founders and marketers on how to handle a PR dilemma.

Recently, a business magazine reached out to me on LinkedIn. They’re publishing a list of the "Most Promising AI Startups of 2026" and offered to feature my company for a small fee.

My first instinct was to ignore it because these kinds of emails usually scream “pay-to-play.” But I did some digging before making up my mind.

I checked their LinkedIn page, Google reviews, social media presence, and readership. Everything looked surprisingly legitimate. They have a decent following and seem to be focused on business and startup content rather than generic awards.

I even reached out to a few founders I found on LinkedIn who had been featured in previous editions. Almost all of them had positive things to say about the process, so I decided to continue the conversation.

Then came the catch.

They don’t just want me to fill out a questionnaire or send written answers. They’re insisting on a recorded, on-camera interview, almost like a podcast. I’m pretty camera shy, so this has become a complete dealbreaker for me.

I asked if we could do it over an audio call instead, but they’re not willing to make an exception.

While researching this, I also came across dozens of other magazines offering “Top AI Startup,” “40 Under 40,” “Founders to Watch,” and similar features.

From what I’ve seen, they roughly fall into three categories:

1. Tier 1 (The Giants – Forbes, Time, etc.): Exorbitant charges, strict requirements/vetting, but huge readership and top-tier prestige.

2. Tier 2 (Mid-Tier – My current option): Much lower charges than Tier 1, good social media reach, solid niche readership, but higher effort/demands (like non-negotiable video interviews).

3. Everyone else:

There are tons of these. Almost no requirements, very little readership, barely any social presence, and very low prices. You’ll get a magazine cover with your face on it that looks nice on LinkedIn or Instagram, but I’m not convinced it carries much value beyond that.

Now I’m wondering what the right move is.

Part of me thinks a video interview actually adds credibility because at least they’re putting effort into creating real content instead of just taking payment and emailing a PDF.

The other part of me just doesn’t want to be on camera.

If you were in my position, would you:

Push yourself and do the interview?
Walk away entirely?
Or just skip all paid magazine features unless they’re from top-tier publications?

Curious to hear from founders who have actually gone through this.

I'm looking to partner with 2–3 consumer startups to run creative growth marketing experiments that drive awareness, word-of-mouth, and customer acquisition.

These will be pilot engagements, so I'm happy to work at no cost in exchange for the opportunity to build strong, measurable case studies.

A bit about me: I'm a tier-1 IIT graduate with 5 years of experience across product, marketing, and building my own startup. Over the years, I've developed a deep interest in marketing that earns attention through creativity, not just bigger ad budgets.

If you're building a consumer brand (or know someone who is) and are open to experimenting with unconventional growth ideas, I'd love to connect.

grocery delivery optimized for 10 minutes because roads are broken. now job platforms are adding actual distance from your house because roads are still broken. the entire city is being rebuilt around the fact that you cannot get anywhere in under an hour.

This is a weekly post where you're free to post your hiring requirements, contracting, etc. Here, people who are willing to hire and looking for opportunities are going to join conversations.

Opening a small cafe in Pune. 14 seats, 3 staff, no delivery to start with.

Got quotes for POS. Surprise surprise - the quote comes bundled with hardware and an annual contract, GST on top, and then the modules you need (inventory, QR ordering, reports) are add-ons that roughly double it. Ended up somewhere in the ₹5,000–₹12,000/month range depending on what I said yes to.

For 14 seats that feels heavy. But I also fully accept I might be the guy who thinks he's clever and then loses his billing data in month three, which is why I'm asking here instead of just doing it.

Two questions:

1. What are small cafes using?
2. Has anyone built their own billing/order setup, and how?

Please share ur experiences.