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Showing posts with label Venture capital. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Venture capital. Show all posts

Thursday, May 22, 2025

Rethinking VC and Angel Investing for India’s Ground Realities



Rethinking VC and Angel Investing for India’s Ground Realities

When Alibaba reimagined e-commerce for China, it didn’t just clone Amazon. It built something uniquely tailored to China’s infrastructure, behaviors, and socioeconomic terrain. It factored in low credit card penetration, informal small businesses, and a deeply fragmented logistics system. The result wasn’t just a local success—it became a global case study in adaptation-driven innovation.

Now, imagine applying the same principle to venture capital (VC) and angel investing in India.

Too often, Indian startups are judged by Silicon Valley metrics: blitzscale or die, grow at all costs, burn capital fast, and chase unicorn status. But India’s ground realities demand a fundamentally different model—one that’s more patient, locally informed, and impact-oriented.

1. Smaller Checks, Longer Runways

In the US, angel rounds often start at $500K+. In India, a $50K investment can sustain a small team for a year. Instead of pushing startups to burn cash fast, Indian investing should prioritize frugality, sustainability, and iterative growth—something that aligns more with India’s jugaad (creative problem-solving) culture.

2. Beyond Tier-1 Cities

Silicon Valley VCs mostly fund startups in tech hubs. In India, real innovation is happening in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities—in agri-tech, ed-tech for vernacular learners, micro-finance platforms, rural healthcare delivery, and more. A grounded VC model would focus on these regions, understanding hyper-local needs rather than importing urban elite assumptions.

3. Profit Before Valuation

In the US, profitability is often sacrificed in favor of rapid valuation growth. In India, the priority should be unit economics. A small profitable startup serving 10,000 customers in Bihar might have more long-term value than a loss-making urban app chasing 10 million downloads.

4. Tech for Bharat, Not Just India

India isn’t one market; it’s a patchwork of languages, cultures, and access levels. A grounded VC approach would fund tools in local languages, USSD-based fintech for feature phones, or AI-powered tutoring for government school students. These ventures may not look “sexy” to a Silicon Valley lens—but they solve deep problems for the 800 million Indians living outside the digital elite bubble.

5. Blended Returns: Financial + Social

Indian VCs must rethink success metrics. Impact investing, often treated as a niche in the US, should be mainstream in India. A startup that lifts 100,000 people out of poverty and makes a 5x return should be celebrated more than one that burns through $100M to build a food delivery app for millionaires.

6. Infrastructure as Opportunity

In the US, investors avoid sectors that depend on state infrastructure. In India, infrastructure gaps—poor roads, patchy internet, unbanked populations—are the opportunity. The VC that funds solutions to these systemic holes (like mobile education vans or solar-powered micro-ATMs) is not only backing future unicorns—they’re building the rails of the new economy.

7. Mentorship Over Capital

Capital alone doesn’t build companies—mentorship does. Grounded investing in India means local mentorship: investors who speak the language, understand local policy, know the panchayat system, and can guide founders through the maze of Indian bureaucracy, corruption, and grassroots marketing.

Conclusion: India Needs Indigenous Capitalism

Just as Alibaba adapted to China's context, India needs a VC and angel investing ecosystem that is made for India, not just imported to India. This means embracing local ingenuity, focusing on deep impact, and redefining success beyond Silicon Valley norms. The next generation of Indian unicorns won’t be built in glass towers—they’ll emerge from dusty classrooms, rural farms, and narrow startup lanes in Jaipur, Ranchi, and Coimbatore.

It’s time to fund India from the ground up.






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Wednesday, May 21, 2025

Aarthi: Schema Ventures

Two U.S. officials said a Chinese-made J-10 Pakistani jet fighter shot down at least two Indian military planes - one of them a French-made Rafale fighter. India has not acknowledged the loss of any of its planes while Pakistan's defence and foreign ministers have confirmed the use of J-10 aircraft but not commented on which missiles or other weapons were used. ......... The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) notes that China now fields 267 satellites - including 115 devoted to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and a further 81 that monitor military electronic and signals information. It is a network that dwarfs its regional rivals, including India, and is second only to the U.S.. .............. "Both in terms of space and missile tracking capabilities, China is much better off now in terms of being able to monitor things as they happen," said Neill, who is an adjunct fellow at Hawaii's Pacific Forum think-tank. ..... its top diplomat in Britain, High Commissioner Vikram Doraiswami, told Sky News on Thursday that China's relationship with Pakistan was not a concern for India. ......... "China requires a relationship with all of its neighbours, that includes us," he said. ............ Any deployment of India's BrahMos supersonic cruise missile - a weapon it developed jointly with Russia - would be of particular interest, some analysts say, given they do not believe it has been used in combat. ......... Over the last week, some trackers noted unusually large fleets of Chinese fishing vessels moving apparently in unison to within 120 nautical miles of Indian naval drills in the Arabian Sea as tensions rose with Pakistan. ......... Pentagon reports on China's military modernisation and analysts note that China's fishing fleets routinely perform a coordinated militia function that plays an important intelligence gathering role. ........ the deployment of 224 Chinese vessels near Indian naval exercises on May 1. ........... "The presence of Chinese military advisers and other personnel in Pakistan is well-known given how Pakistan's Ministry of Defence has been importing some of its most advanced military hardware from China, so we can be certain the PLA would be able to access relevant data," said James Char, a Chinese security scholar at Singapore's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

Bilawal, who leads Pakistan’s charge against India’s global campaign, warns of nuclear conflict Hours after India had announced its own seven-member delegation for a global diplomatic outreach, Pakistan Prime Minister named Bilawal to head its counter-effort ........ a nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan would have devastating consequences for the entire region and beyond. .........

Hours after India had announced its own seven-member delegation for a global diplomatic outreach, Pakistan Prime Minister named Bilawal to head its counter-effort.

......... "I was contacted earlier today by Prime Minister [Shehbaz Sharif], who requested that I lead a delegation to present Pakistan’s case for peace on the international stage. I am honoured to accept this responsibility and remain committed to serving Pakistan in these challenging times," Bilawal posted on X. .......... On Wednesday, Bilawal stated that the delegation has received initial briefings on a range of issues including the ceasefire, Kashmir, terrorism, and what Pakistan terms as the “attack” on the Indus Waters Treaty. ........

“Pakistan is one of the biggest victims of terrorism,” Bilawal said, while also asserting that incidents of terrorism have brought India and Pakistan perilously close to nuclear conflict in the past.

........ He emphasised the need for dialogue and the resolution of three key issues — Kashmir, terrorism and water — as prerequisites for sustainable peace in the region.

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Thursday, March 09, 2023

9: News Bulletin

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's big bet on A.I. is paying off as his core technology powers ChatGPT
Spotify is revamping its podcaster tools, including Anchor, and is partnering with Patreon
The New Bing and Edge – Progress from Our First Month
Apple to Shake Up International Sales Operations to Make India Its Own Region
Google One brings VPN to $1.99/month plan, adding dark web info monitoring

Chinese AI groups use cloud services to evade US chip export controls
Uber Is Considering Spinning Off Freight Logistics Division
New Low: Monthly Funding Dips Below $20B As Funds Continue Record Raises
Consensus raises $110M to inject automation into SaaS product demos
Microsoft, Google-Backed Group Wants to Boost AI Education in Low-Income Schools

Coinbase announces Wallet-as-a-Service product to simplify web3 onboarding
DuckDuckGo Releases Its Own ChatGPT-Powered Search Tool, DuckAssist

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Wednesday, March 01, 2023

Marc Andreessen



The Pmarca Guide to Startups, part 2: When the VCs say "no"
Part 3 “But I don’t know any VCs!”
Part 4 The only thing that matters
Part 5 The Moby Dick theory of big companies



पहिचानको सपना देखाएको माओवादीले नै लत्तो छाडेपछि प्रदेश १ को नाम 'कोशी' राख्ने प्रस्तावमाथि बुधबार संसदमा छलफल चलिरहँदा जनता समाजवादी पार्टी (जसपा) की नेता निर्मला लिम्बूका आँखाबाट आँसुको कोशी बग्दै थियो। ...... प्रदेश १ यस्तो थलो हो, जहाँ पहिचानका लागि लामो आन्दोलन चलेको थियो। कुनै बेला ठूलो आकारको उक्त आन्दोलन अहिले खुम्चिँदै गएको छ। तर पहिचानसहितको संघीयताका लागि अहिले पनि एउटा तप्का निरन्तर संघर्षरत छ। ....... २०६२–६३ को जनआन्दोलनलगत्तै उठेको मधेस विद्रोहले मुलुकमा संघीयतालाई अवश्यम्भावी तुल्याएको थियो। त्यस क्रममा धेरैको ज्यान गएको थियो। त्यसअघि माओवादी सशस्त्र विद्रोहले पहिचानमा आधारित प्रदेशहरूको सपना देशव्यापी बनाइसकेको थियो। त्यो सपनामा प्राण भर्ने काम मधेस, थारू र पूर्वको लिम्बूवान आन्दोलनले गरेको थियो। ........ एमाले र कांग्रेस मिलेपछि नामकरण गर्न दुईतिहाइ मत पुग्थ्यो। एमालेको ४० र कांग्रेसको २९ मतमा राप्रपाको ६ मत थपिँदा आरामदायी संख्या पुग्थ्यो। यस्तो अवस्थामा फरक प्रस्ताव लैजान माओवादी तयार भएन। ........ 'नाम चाहिँ पहिचानसहितको चाहिने अनि भोट चाहिँ कांग्रेस र एमालेलाई दिने? हामीले मात्रै कति मुद्दा बोक्ने?' ......... 'माओवादी अब न पहिचानमा छ, न वर्गमा, न कुनै वैचारिकीमा,' उनले भने, 'माओवादी केवल कुर्सी खेलमा छ। त्यसैले कोशी होस् वा सगरमाथा, खास नेतृत्वका केही साँघुरा स्वार्थ सम्बोधन भए ऊ सहभागी भइहाल्छ।' ...... केन्द्रीय गठबन्धनमा राष्ट्रपति चुनावले खटपट ल्याएकै बेला माओवादी, कांग्रेस र राप्रपाको समर्थन जुटाएर नाम राख्न सफल भएको जस मुख्यमनत्री हिक्मत कार्कीले पाउने भएका छन्। ........... सत्तारूढ नेकपा एमालेको प्रस्तावमा मुख्य विपक्षी कांग्रेस, सत्तारूढ माओवादी केन्द्र र राप्रपाका सांसदहरूले समर्थन जनाउँदा प्रदेश नामकरण दुईतिहाइभन्दा बढी मतले पारित भएको हो। सभामुख बाबुराम गौतमले प्रदेशको नाम कोशी राखिनुपर्छ भन्ने प्रस्तावका पक्षमा ८२ मत परेको घोषणा गरेका छन्। विपक्षमा भने जम्मा ४ मत परेको थियो।

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Saturday, June 11, 2022

11: VC, Russia



5/8/23 Update: Goshen (NY) puts Third World corruption to shame, thanks to greedy, corrupt, unethical lawyers like Andra Dumais. ..... I toppled a Third World dictator and German Radio called me Robin Hood On The Internet. I am not going to get intimidated by some small-town racist. Andrea Dumais is a small-town racist. ....... You are treating me worse than the people 2,000 years ago.
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Wednesday, March 09, 2022

Kathryn Haun: Maverick VC





Exclusive: Why star VC Katie Haun departed Andreessen Horowitz with an audacious plan to build a $1 billion crypto investing juggernaut The a16z vet made her name with big bets on Coinbase and OpenSea. Her new venture is on track to be the biggest Web3 fund raised by a solo female VC. .

Katie Haun Seeks $900M for Crypto Funds After A16z Departure: Report Haun is aiming for $300 million for an early investment fund targeting crypto startups and $600 million for a fund focused on larger companies and digital tokens.

Crypto’s Top V.C. Is Playing the Long Game Katie Haun, a co-chair of Andreessen Horowitz’s new $2.2 billion crypto fund, is betting that the blockchain will be as big as the internet. ....... A top crypto cop turned venture capitalist is now one of the most powerful women in Silicon Valley, with more than $2 billion at her fingertips. ....... Katie Haun, who created the first federal cryptocurrency task force as a prosecutor in the Justice Department, will co-chair a $2.2 billion crypto fund Andreessen Horowitz announced this week. She is a general partner at the venture capital fund and an independent director at the crypto exchange Coinbase. Chris Dixon, also a general partner at Andreessen, will be the fund’s other co-chair. ........ A Chinese regulatory crackdown on Bitcoin is battering prices and raising questions about the value and future regulatory landscape of crypto. .............. Xi Jinping and China have made no secret of the fact that they consider crypto and blockchain a top-five national priority for China in the next decade. They’ve publicly stated this, and they are developing their own version of cryptocurrency, a digital renminbi. We know that they plan to export this, to tie trade to it, to incentivize people around the world, not just in China, to use it. ............

the tremendous staying power of a decentralized, open system like Bitcoin.

......... There’s this myth that crypto founders want the Wild West. They’re really kind of desperate for regulators to say what the rules are. It takes so much time, money and resources — specialty resources — to figure out how to navigate the morass of agencies ranging from the C.F.T.C. to Treasury, let alone the regulators in 50 different states. .......... I’m full-time in the industry with experts all around, and I can’t keep up with the pace of this technology that’s changing so fast. ............ anyone today with an internet connection and a VPN can pretty easily go access products and services that are offered in other countries. It’s incredibly hard, if not almost impossible, for the U.S. to police what’s happening overseas on offshore platforms......... Criminals are early adopters and in some ways they make great beta testers for new technology. They’re always looking for a way around the system. Frankly, law enforcement officials actually really like when payment is made in Bitcoin as opposed to fiat. I think it’s funny because as a former prosecutor, I take this for granted. There’s a real false sense of security where wires are used or traditional financial services are used. People think, “Oh, we know everything about that. So we’ll just go subpoena. The bank will give us these records and we’ll just go get the money.” That is just so far from the reality of the situation. .......... I prosecuted many of the Justice Department’s largest online money laundering schemes. In fiat systems, 99.9 percent of money laundering claims succeed. Actually, the thing that really stands out about the ransomware attacks — the Colonial Pipeline is a great example of this. It is unprecedented that the Justice Department would be able to recover the proceeds from international criminal activity so quickly. ........

One of the only things that unites Congress lately is China

, and I think U.S. policymakers and lawmakers are starting to realize that China and other countries are moving forward, recognizing that crypto and blockchain is a real priority, and that we are behind, unlike in the internet, where DARPA and the U.S. government had a hand in helping create it. ............. There’s something fundamental going on right now with the internet and culture, and I think crypto is at the epicenter. .......... A lot of people that I talk to about NFTs think, “oh, yeah, digital art.” I think it’s so much more than just about art. It’s about much more than gaming, it’s about much more than goods. It’s about this new business model for creators and bringing entirely new audiences to crypto, entirely new types like creators, sports fans and media types......... Then the third category is DeFi or decentralized finance. ......... With crypto, we think that its potential for growth is as big as the potential for the internet.





Katie Haun on the Dark Web, Gangs, Investigating Bitcoin, and the New Magic of “Nifties” (NFTs) (#499) . Previously, she spent a decade as a federal prosecutor with the US Department of Justice, where she focused on fraud, cybercrime, and corporate crime, alongside agencies including the SEC, FBI, and Treasury. She created the government’s first cryptocurrency task force and led investigations into the Mt. Gox hack and the corrupt agents on the Silk Road task force. ....... While serving as a federal prosecutor with the US Department of Justice, she also prosecuted RICO murders, organized crime, public corruption, gangs, and money laundering. She held senior positions at Justice Department headquarters in both the National Security Division and attorney general’s office, where her portfolio included antitrust, tax, and national security. Katie has testified before both houses of Congress on the intersection of technology and regulation. .......... She teaches a class on cryptocurrencies at Stanford Business School and previously taught cybercrime at Stanford Law School. ....... Katie clerked for US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and is an honors graduate of Stanford Law School. She is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations. ....... Katie gives us a rundown of how blockchain technology both powered the Silk Road darknet market and dropped the breadcrumbs that led to its downfall — as well as the arrest of the corrupt agents who were exploiting the investigation for their personal enrichment. .......... As a federal prosecutor, Katie never lost a case. ...... While working to put violent criminals behind bars, what was the self-talk that kept Katie level-headed when risks to personal safety were of valid concern? How large are these criminal organizations, and how much reach do they have in the outside world? ........ What developments does Katie expect to see in crypto or blockchain over the next three to five years? .





From Crimefighter to ‘Crypto’: Meet the Woman in Charge of Venture Capital’s Biggest Gamble Kathryn Haun was the Justice Department's go-to prosecutor for Bitcoin-related felonies. Now she's one of cryptocurrency's most important investors. Here's why her career change is a watershed moment...... In one corner is Paul Krugman, the New York Times columnist and Nobel laureate in economics. In the other is Kathryn Haun, an accomplished federal prosecutor recently turned venture capitalist. .

Federal Prosecutor Kathryn Haun On How Criminals Use Bitcoin -- And How She Catches Them . The first time federal prosecutor Kathryn Haun heard about Bitcoin was when someone asked her if she’d like to prosecute it. ....... The assistant U.S. attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice in San Francisco, who had previously focused on organized crime, prison gangs and murders, very quickly realized that wouldn’t be possible — that it would be like “trying to prosecute cash,” but it set her off on a path of discovery. She is now also DOJ’s digital currency coordinator, teaches Stanford Law School’s first class on digital currency and cybercrime, and, last year, put away two federal agents who tried to steal more than $800,000 in bitcoin. ......... begins with her being tipped off by an investigative journalist about one of those agents ....... when I started looking into this matter, I was doing it from the perspective of, I want to clear this person’s name, but I quickly learned that wasn’t going to be the result.” ........ She describes how she uncovered what were actually “the perfect criminals” — being federal agents, “they knew how to cover their tracks,” she says. ......... she was able to follow the bitcoins, how tracking those patterns revealed to her that there were two dirty federal agents, not one, and what telling detail led her to suspect the second must also be a federal agent. ........ she thinks it would be particularly revolutionary in the area of public records. “Of all the kinds of cases that I’ve ever done, whether you’re talking about the Hell’s Angels, marriage fraud, the bank officer I prosecuted for impersonating dead people or the criminals I’ve prosecuted using cryptocurrency, they all have one thing in common: there’s always been, somewhere along the way, a forged, counterfeit or stolen public document — even a murder case I tried,” she says. ........ in the United States, more than 6,500 entities can issue birth certificates on 14,000 different types of forms, making it easy to counterfeit a birth certificate. “We call these ‘breeder documents’ — because they quite literally breed new identities,” she says. “You get a forged, fake or stolen birth certificate and a name, and you take that down to the DMV and you get your photo taken with that, and now you all of a sudden also have a driver’s license. You take the driver’s license and birth certificate to the passport office and now you’ve gotten yourself a passport. And all of a sudden, with these three kind of identity documents, the sky’s the limit on what kind of criminal activity you could do — you could file for fraudulent benefits from the government, you could commit some kind a terrorist offense, you could purchase weapons, you could traffic in people, you could obviously commit drug smuggling.” ............. Another problem she sees in public records is that they are kept in centralized databases, which are subject to tampering. For instance, in 2008, the city of San Francisco’s network administrator became disgruntled and changed all the admin passwords and held all the records hostage. .

LinkedIn

Biden Takes Step Toward Regulating Cryptocurrencies The president signed an executive order that will coordinate efforts among financial regulators to better understand the risks and opportunities presented by digital assets...... President Biden signed an executive order on cryptocurrencies Wednesday, in the face of “explosive growth” in digital assets.Credit... ......... President Biden signed an executive order on Wednesday that will direct the federal government to come up with a plan to regulate cryptocurrencies, recognizing their popularity and potential to destabilize traditional money and markets. ......... The order, under development for months, will coordinate efforts among financial regulators to better understand the risks and opportunities presented by digital assets, particularly in the areas of consumer protection, national security and illicit finance. ....... The order lays out a national policy for digital assets across six areas: consumer and investor protection; financial stability; illicit finance; U.S. leadership in the global financial system and economic competitiveness; financial inclusion; and responsible innovation........ “We’re operating in a gray zone and in a sandbox. And time and again, someone comes into the sandbox and arrests somebody, and that’s not the best way to grow an important part of the economy.” ........ “We’ve seen a complete lack of any strategic direction or thought from the federal government for years. The industry still doesn’t know what’s a security, for example, and what’s a utility token that is exempt from regulation. Those are things that would help us.” .

Crypto-related companies and funds jump after Biden signs executive order on cryptocurrencies
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Tuesday, January 14, 2020

AVC 3.0 (Newsworthy)



AVC 3.0







Netizen Has Arrived: A Link From AVC











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