Vaibhav Domkundwar

Trying something new… I will be shortly recording an episode on “Finding your first design partners in the US as a US-India startup” with an accomplished serial founder in the SaaS/enterprise space. What questions should I ask? Thoughts please 🙏🏽 PS: more specific, the better!

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This is Must-Read for all founders Navigating the pre-seed funding landscape is painful, especially in an ecosystem like India. I recently read "The Pre-Seed Playbook" by Eximius Ventures and WeWork Labs, and it's packed with insights that every early-stage founder needs! Key takeaways: 1. The crucial distinction between pre-seed and seed funding. 2. How to value your start at pre-seed stage. 3. The importance of having a strong, well-rounded team at the pre-seed stage. 4. How to avoid common mistakes that derail startups in the early stages. 5. Tips on finding the right investors and networking strategies that work. I highly recommend this guide to pre-seed founders or aspiring founders. Thank you, Eximius Ventures and WeWork Labs at WeWork India, for putting together such an insightful resource. #startups #entrepreneurship #preseed #funding #startupjourney #founders #innovation

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Zepto’s $665mn fundraising is a testament to what makes a consumer spend. A winning product aims to nail 3 aspects: 1. Does it elevate my identity/status? (core human behavior)  2. Do I experience delight?  3. Is there a lot at stake? (cost + trust factor) Apple makes you think that just buying a phone can elevate your status Nvidia elevates your status in the gaming community and provides a visual graphic experience by buying a GPU Even OpenAI now gives you the power to think, design, and structure almost anything Improve status + Delightful experience + Low-cost entry/switch = Sure, why not? But unlike them, Zepto is a service. Not the end product in itself! While Swiggy and Zomato try to make consumers stick with their monthly pass, it is never about sticking to one platform as the end objective is to get the food delivered, regardless of who delivers it! But Zepto's USP overpowered the actual outcome it provides (i.e. delivery of consumer goods) You don't order from Zepto to just get your products You want to see whether it delivers before the timer runs out! And this led to a staggering 14X growth in just one year. Crazy! What do you think? #perspective #thoughts #leadership #startupfunding #product #consumertech #saas

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V3 Ventures Deal Announcement: Creme Castle - A tech first driven assembly line bakery for Bharat! 🔥 While I was evaluating this file, a lot of people said - bakery? There are 100s of home bakers. How is this scalable? I would have agreed, until I met Pranjay Mittal, who brought innovation from IIT-D, FMS and CarDekho Group to his mom’s humble bakery in Noida. You might remember their Shark Tank episode where his mom famously said, “Main neend mein baking kar sakti hu” 😊 That passion is exactly what we want in founders! From a small bakery in Noida to now clocking monthly sales of over 1 Cr, Creme Castle is disrupting the $12.6 billion Indian bakery industry. 🎂 Here is why we invested… ✅Changing consumer behavior from mithai → cakes & desserts India is a land of festivals and no festival is complete without mithai. However, cakes & desserts are now taking center stage in these celebrations. as the Gen Z takes over. We all know India is trading up. So, there's a growing demand for Tiramisu in Tier 2 and 3. But, we’re lacking a player. ✅The Assembly Line Model: And, we need a player that’s standardized. The biggest problem with F&B is that when you order from the 2nd and 3rd outlet - the product isn’t as good. This is the most unique part of Creme Castle. Cakes are made in 3 components in a central kitchen - base (sponge), icing and customization. At spoke kitchen it’s only about putting these parts together - thus ensuring quality! ✅This industry is regionalized and heavily fragmented: Think about it, growing up, we all had cakes from our favorite local bakery. Every city has one, but when we moved for college or work - it wasn’t there. Cakes have a nostalgia factor associated with it and so making this change is hard. With all of this Creme Castle is can offer something India hasn’t seen before: - 100% customized cakes in just 2 hours - World's highest # of flavor profiles to choose from They have >10 Lakh loyal customers with a 60% repeat rate and we’re all geared up to expand from NCR to Jaipur and Chandigarh! We’re excited to back the mother-son duo of Veena and Pranjay to disrupt India’s cake market 🎂 What’s do you order cake? PS: Delhi-NCR folks, give us a try. Even available on Blinkit! #india #investment #startup #investor #entrepreneur

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Congrats to Zingly.ai, Gaurav Passi and the entire team on their launch. We are proud to be investors from Day 1. This is once in a decade style opportunity. It's 2024, and You and I, as customers, still continue to struggle with 1-800 numbers, ineffective AI Chatbots and spelling our names, account numbers and other info over and over again ... It's time to change all that. Zingly lets a business's customers drive the experience they want as they want it (quick answer from AI or a real conversation with human agents or a hybrid), how they want it (text, audio, video), and from any device without having to repeat info over and over again - all from a single personalized Zingly Room. Sounds obvious! But the best ideas are the simple obvious ones! #FutureOfCX #AIRevolution #CustomerExperience #Startups #Entrepreneurship #VentureCapital https://lnkd.in/gV9mk7je

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The process of getting deeper into the Indian start-up ecosystem as an angel investor and limited partner (2 new hats of mine since 2023) is well on its way. Today spent the day attending Ivycap day 2024 as a special attendee. getting to understand the dynamics of investing, assessing business models and plans, valuation and most importantly founders. should have started a bit earlier but then no regrets. these new hats are part of a larger connecting the dots am attempting.

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{New pod 🎤} "𝐋𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐔𝐒-𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐚 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐩 𝐆𝐓𝐌" Was super-fun to jam with Nivas Ravichandran and Nitya Baskar, the Marketing ninjas of Spendflo, on how US-India startups can use curated events to drive US GTM. We discussed what type and stage of startups are most suited for leveraging an event-based GTM strategy, operating learnings around event design and planning, a deep dive into the CXO roundtable format, and tracking the ROI of these events For all early-stage founders, GTM leads, and growth marketers in the US-India corridor, this is as operating & tactical as it gets. Let us know what you think! Spotify - https://lnkd.in/gtvWFN-B Apple Podcasts - https://lnkd.in/gGysaHsW An Operator's Blog - https://lnkd.in/gkdV228e

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The debate about whether AI will benefit incumbents or startups more continues to unfold. Undoubtedly, we will see the emergence of groundbreaking companies creating products that are currently beyond our imagination. We have also, of course, already observed how some of the world's largest corporations have reaped significant advantages from this ongoing shift in paradigms. However, based on firsthand observations of developments at Ramp, I am convinced that the future truly belongs to those organizations that have reached this pivotal moment in history with the necessary scale, momentum, focus, agility and talent. I continue to witness that through tremendous effort and unparalleled execution, you can unlock opportunities that to many on outside look unbelievably lucky. Well, here’s to the best lucking team I’ve ever known 💯🙏🗽 Bravo Eric, Karim, Gene, Michael, Geoff, Scott, Max, Jacob, Daniel, Sam, Colin, Nik, Megan, Yunyu, Rahul, Will, and so many others who continue to astound me with their work.

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