Nishant Soni

Commoditization of AI models Yesterday evening I had the pleasure of watching Aravind Srinivas' (founder of Perplexity) interview with Aarthi Ramamurthy and Sriram Krishnan . It's a great interview and I would recommend AI founders to watch it if possible. https://lnkd.in/gnM2NeS8 Couple of things that stuck me from the interview: 1. Aravind believes in the commoditization of AI models in the long run. His take his firms like Perplexity which focus on user problems and solve for it using relevant models will win. Perplexity does it quite well, do check them out if you haven't already. This is something that AI entrepreneurs should think about. Creating foundational models is freaking expensive! and for conservative capital allocators like us it is too risky a bet (not betting on AI is even riskier 😅, I guess we need to learn more) I am going to tag the platform Guru and distinguished IIMB alumnus Sangeet Paul Choudary for his take on this. 2. The initial employees (5-10) have to be truth seekers rather than social affirmers(?) It was great hearing him talk about the culture at Perplexity of seeking the truth through open conversations and arguments on Slack rather than provide positive affirmation. I think it's something that every founder should strive for. Truth will prevail in the longer run. This works in technology, finance, politics, society, anywhere. (Satyamev Jayate is true in itself!) But to be able to have an open conversation, the founders need to have depth themselves. This is something that I feel the Indian ecosystem lacks, as most of the founders seem to be managerial in nature. I find them shifting to jargons rather than simplicity when questioned deeper. (By the way this is a classic test to check whether someone really knows it, people who know what they are talking about will make it simpler, those who don't take the cover of jargons to increase complexity and portray intelligence) I understand my analysis could be biased due to self-selection, and I would love to be proven wrong. It's pretty cool that Aravind chose Larry Page as his favourite entrepreneur due to their common background of coming from academic research to entrepreneurship. What I definitely don't agree with Aravind on The idea that luck doesn't play a role in outcomes. Successful people generally attribute success to their hard work/smartness / enterprise without understanding their privilege. For e.g. A smarter/more hardworking/more enterprising Dalit girl from Bihar will never have the kind of opportunities that I had as a Tam Bram born in a lower-middle class but very well educated family in Chennai. One has tried to solve for it using our Sakhi Scholars programme, which supports gifted girls from underprivileged communities to achieve their dream through financial support. On a lighter note, Aravind is a 2017 IIT-M alum and has already built a $8 billion company, what the hell am I doing with my life? 🤔

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When you find a practical use of AI in an area that has strong tailwinds in the India growth story, you know this is a venture that has a high potential not just for value creation but for job creation in the country. Delighted to back TraqCheck founders Jaibir Nihal Singh, Armaan Mehta and @rishabh jain as they make it easier for over 200 corporations to embrace the new way of work. Traqcheck's Ai-enabled background checks of employees is way, way faster and far more reliable than traditional methods of background verification. Pankaj Bansal (पंकज बंसल)Karann Mittal Danish Dogra Aman Khan Yukta Kelkar Atreyi Dass

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Excited and looking forward to discussing the evolving challenges of raising capital for early-stage startups at SAASCON24. Join me as I dive into the current trends, what founders need to know, and how we can navigate this more challenging environment. #SAASCON24 #StartupFunding #EarlyStageStartups #SaaS #Entrepreneurship

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Luv Gupta Amrita Agrawal Ambrish Gupta Mayank Chouhan Abhinav Mehta Rohit Kumar Singh Saransh Mahere Dr. Kartikey Gupta Thrilled to unveil Forescribe's xAI suite, featuring Smart Alerts and AI Post Mortem—innovations in SaaS Ops designed to elevate strategic oversight for CIOs, COOs, and their teams. 📨 Smart Alerts delivers proactive, tailored insights, enabling faster decision-making to keep your digital landscape aligned with your vision. ✨ AI Post Mortem now offers executive summaries on product spend, usage, and benchmarks with Forrester’s Digital Transformation Maturity Model—empowering leaders with clear, instant actionable insights. With xAI, unlock real-time data to drive transformational outcomes and make every tech investment count. 💰 🥂 Kudos to the teams involved in taking this live. Learn more about Forescribe xAI initiative here: https://lnkd.in/gzxxxh6W

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The decisions and actions of our brightest minds in the coming years will play a crucial role in defining our trajectory for the century and where we land with the technology of our time. We have a special fireside chat in Bangalore this week that will explore an Investor perspective on the India opportunity in AI. We’re joined by Pratik (from Nexus VP) and Matt (from EF) who’ve been investing in AI for more than a decade. Expect us to delve into key topics like the role of capital, talent, compute, the importance of alignment and safety, and the future of AI among other things (more on this in the link). RSVP here: https://lu.ma/h589mcrs #venturecapital #technology #ai #entrepreneurship #startups #vc

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🚀 Be Agentic, Do Agentic! 🚀 Why make AI complicated? 🤔 Let’s simplify the process and get your POC up and running in just 2-5 days! That’s the power of SimplAI. 💡 AI doesn’t have to be difficult—it’s time to be the change with Agentic solutions that are fast, secure, and scalable. 🔐✨ Let’s build the future, one Agentic step at a time. 🌐 #AI #POC #SimplAI #Agentic #Innovation #TechLeadership #FutureOfAI SimplAI

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Like to order deliveries from the comfort of your own home? Zepto's recent $665 million funding will now allow the company to set up even more store across India to serve you better. Read all about it only in my new article at Entrepreneur India. . . . Follow and connect for more industry news and updates . . . #News #Update #Zepto #Funding #Investment #EntrepreneurIndia #AdityaPranMahanta https://lnkd.in/gYvATrUE

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Will we need websites at all? How can you compare the current AI boom with the age of oil exploration? What does it mean when we say in the world of AI, compute vs. data will have gravity? During the Antler India Residency 4 that concluded recently, we had our good friend Hemant Mohapatra stop by to chat with founders re: his and Lightspeed's take on AI, and especially AI for India, incl. one of their marquee investments Sarvam AI. Sharing our interaction w/ Ishavasyam Dash

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India’s Oyo, once valued at $10 billion, is finalizing new funding at a $2.5 billion valuation. This marks a steep decline from its $10 billion valuation in 2019. The startup, which has raised over $3 billion from backers like SoftBank, Peak XV Ventures, Lightspeed, Airbnb, and Microsoft, has struggled to attract institutional investors. In recent months, it has aggressively pitched to high-net-worth individuals after withdrawing its IPO application twice in the past four years. Once a red-hot Indian startup active in markets including the U.S. and Europe, Oyo has now scaled back its international presence. #venture #downround https://lnkd.in/gE2GjYnM

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Interesting and relatable piece by Nutgraf / The Ken Praveen Gopal Krishnan in my inbox today. Few VCs balance this line well, even fewer can project an authentic narrative of what they actually do. In my observation of actions, a VC is a financier first and last, and anything else is marketing until proven otherwise. #vc #startups #india #founder

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💔 From $22B in 2022 to ZERO today. The fall from grace of once the world’s most valuable Edtech startup and the froth that goes with growth at all costs. I shared an article from TechCrunch earlier this year of how investors were then valuing the company to be worth nothing. Now, the founder has come out and admitted that the enterprise he founded is worth ZERO. This is despite BYJU’s raising $200m early this year. Some crazy burn rates we are talking about here, not to mention all the liabilities that the company carries to fuel its growth ambition. Investment theses in tech companies, especially the Edutech ones, need a serious correction, along with other considerations like SAFEs “based on YC templates” offered by startups that operate in small markets and have never qualified to be YC candidates in the first place - I wonder if such founders are aware of whether these ‘SAFEs’ are safe for Who in the transaction. Yet, founders who have raised money from investors may have at one time or another, believed that their investors will back them up no matter what, when they were urged to go all out and all in to grow their enterprise, often at all costs. We could almost hear encouraging words like “don’t worry about burn, stay focused (on growth) and we will back you up all the way”, or in Chinese, that could sound like “敢敢去做,别担心。我们支持你”, and in BYJU’s case, “(The founder) alleged that many of his more than 100 investors had urged him to pursue aggressive expansion into as many as 40 markets. But, he added, those very investors got cold feet when global markets tumbled following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, sending the venture capital market into a downward spiral.” Thus, when investors back out (either for legitimate reasons or maybe they just didn’t trust the founders anymore), the deck falls and all sorts of instruments have to be called in to keep the company afloat. For BYJU’s, it was the rights issue to raise $200m this year, putting the company’s value to be $250m, from $22B just two years back. What then, is the problem here: Founder blindness? Founder arrogance? Investor frothiness? Promises broken? In any case, fingers will point, and lawsuits could fly in BYJU’s. For startup founders and business owners: - When is a suitable time to raise $? - And when they have raised the money, how should founders manage their investors and the $ they have in the bank? What are your thoughts on this? Eric Lam I help entrepreneurs scale for exit. I wrote 📙The Fast Founder: from Startup to Exit in 36 Months 📕. Delighted to have you connect with me on matters regarding startups, education & Gen-AI for the layman. #edtech #investing #fundraising #fallfromgrace #founders #accountability #investorrelations https://lnkd.in/g9TqTaHW

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I participated in a “SMART MANUFACTURING” panel with Gayathri Radhakrishnan, Rohini Chakravarthy and Abhijit Supekar (moderator) last week at TIECon 2024. The coolest part of the panel was 3 Women VCs talking about a topic that has not traditionally been discussed by women. I never imagined I’d see this in my lifetime. Things have indeed changed! We had a very lively discussion of whether we can expect lights out factory in 5-10 years. Automation is happening in all stages but full automation manufacturing is tough because it requires human like adaptability. It is not converting text into instruction or code - it is about precision. Robotics + AI is making this happen and we will get there. AI is going to bring the cost down for complete solution for example: there are robotic arms that can do more tasks and learn like a human and not just some specific tasks. Also check out our portfolio companies Micropsi Industries and RGo Robotics that are making it happen in this space. Thanks to Anshu Bahadur Hrishikesh Sathawane Nilesh Dixit for organizing the panel and Anita Manwani and Surbhi Kaul for making this happen! #TiECon2024 #AIUbiquity

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Only TWO days left to apply for the RippleX Fellowship program! If you are a student/dropout/recent grad building a b2b software company in Canada/US, this is the program for you. In our last batch we had some amazing mentors like: - Braden Ream (CEO, Voiceflow): Mastering storytelling and navigating selling into enterprises - Rahul Parmar (Prev. Senior Director of Sales, Drata): Sales 101 – Converting pilots to real revenue, creating urgency among buyers, and best practices to manage a sales process - Nicholas Chepesiuk (CEO, OnCall Virtual Care, now part of Qualifacts): Striving towards product-market fit, utilizing creative outbound strategies, and the importance of building trust with customers in the early days - Justin Sky (CEO, Rose Rocket): Identifying venture-scale markets, learning when to pivot, and building strong organizational culture - Josh Gray (CEO, Artemis): Conducting customer validation, segmenting your ICP, and advice for young founders Apply here: https://lnkd.in/e2iAu6vi

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🌟 India’s Incredible Contributions to AI in the U.S. 🌟 Did you know that Indian innovators are leading the charge in building some of the largest AI-focused billion-dollar companies in the U.S.? 🇮🇳✨ Here are some remarkable achievements: 🔸 HighRadius – Valued at $3.10 Billion 🔸 Uniphore – Valued at $2.5 Billion 🔸 Eightfold.ai – Valued at $2.2 Billion 🔸 Moveworks – Valued at $2 Billion 🔸 H2O.ai – Valued at $1.5 Billion 🔸 Cambridge Mobile Telematics – Valued at $1.5 Billion 🔸 SparkCognition – Valued at $1.4 Billion 🔸 SeekOut – Valued at $1.2 Billion These companies are transforming industries with cutting-edge AI technologies, thanks to Indian founders and co-founders. India’s talent continues to redefine global innovation in technology and artificial intelligence. 🚀 #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #India #Innovation #TechLeadership #Startups #Entrepreneurship #Technology #GlobalImpact #IndianTech

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🚀 A $7 TRILLION economy by 2030 - the biggest wealth creation opportunity of our generation is unfolding in #India. But how will we get there? This week, we launched #Upstart - a groundbreaking series that decodes India's unprecedented growth story through the lens of its innovators and architects. The numbers are staggering: 👉🏼 97 million people joining the workforce in next decade 👉🏼 371 million middle-class consumers (world's largest) 👉🏼 40% of power capacity from renewables 👉🏼 Digital payments transactions highest globally, 2-10x of developed nations 👉🏼 Services exports hit record $341.1 billion in FY24 But numbers only tell half the story. In Episode 1, we sit down with Pranav Pai, Founding Partner of 3one4 Capital, one of India's most influential VCs who has backed 70+ category leaders including Licious, DarwinBox, and Open. Highlights from the episode: 💡 Why services are "India's LeBron James" for the next 30 years 💡 How PLI schemes are transforming manufacturing 💡 The critical policy shifts needed for global competitiveness 💡 Where the biggest startup opportunities lie in this transition Want to understand where the next decade of opportunity lies in the world's fastest-growing major economy? 👉 Watch Episode 1 of Upstart today! https://lnkd.in/gjqcU47W WeWork India | #WeWorkLabs | Aniket Jagtap | Mohini Kumar | Shenjit Basu | Akanksha Sarma | Tanuj Ahuja #Startups #VentureCapital #Founders #MakeInIndia #StartupIndia #IndianEconomy #Leadership #Entrepreneurship

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First is always special & so is our first #podcast. Thank you Avinash Tripathi & YesUsers Re-Lived the journey & early days especially. 3D-Secure & Nodal the game changers! #fintech landscape is an upward curve since inception of our journey. Loving to continue been meaningful & leveraging our learnings now for Light! Listen Us to Know Us! Syncing in with Vidhi Bhatt #podcast #entrepreneurs #startuplife

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OpenAI's Sam Altman interviews serial founder and legendary VC investor Vinod Khosla. Sam asks "What percent of investors are good company builders?" Vinod responds with 3 powerful statements: 1️⃣ 90% of VCs add no value 2️⃣ 70% of VCs add negative value 3️⃣ If you haven't built a company before, you haven't earned the right to advise an entrepreneur #VentureCapital #Fundraising #Founders

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