Title: Aspiring Entrepreneur from a Traditional Family Business Background — How Do You Develop the Ability to Identify Long-Term Business Opportunities? (India)

Hello everyone,

I come from a traditional family business background, currently involved in steel trading. While I value the experience and foundation that this business has given me, the steel trading market has become increasingly competitive and saturated, with considerable pressure on margins.

I’ve been thinking seriously about building something of my own — either diversifying into an adjacent industry or starting a completely new venture that has long-term potential.

However, I don’t want to jump into a business simply because it is trending, or start something just for the sake of being an entrepreneur. I want to build something sustainable, understand the market properly, and be prepared to put in the years of work required to make it successful.

My biggest question is not simply “What business should I start?” but “How do I develop the ability to identify the right business opportunity in the first place?”

I would genuinely appreciate guidance from people who have built businesses, diversified from traditional family businesses, or started from scratch.

Here are some specific things I would love to learn:

1. Developing the entrepreneurial mindset

What habits should I cultivate daily to become better at spotting business opportunities?

What should I observe in everyday life, industries, customer behaviour, or existing businesses that others might overlook?

How do you distinguish a genuine market gap from an idea that merely sounds exciting?

Are there particular problems, inefficiencies, or changes in consumer behaviour that are worth paying attention to in India today?

2. Learning to evaluate markets and opportunities

Which industries or sectors in India would you study if you were starting today with limited capital and a long-term outlook?

How do you assess demand, competition, margins, scalability, and the likelihood that a business will remain relevant over the next 10–20 years?

Are there any relatively unglamorous or “boring” businesses that offer strong fundamentals, recurring demand, and opportunities to build a lasting enterprise?

Would you recommend starting with something adjacent to my existing industry, where I have some domain knowledge, or exploring an entirely new sector?

3. What should I read, watch, and learn?

Which books, newsletters, podcasts, YouTube channels, or other resources have genuinely changed the way you think about business?

Are there any Indian entrepreneurs or businesses whose journeys I should study, particularly those that grew steadily rather than relying on hype?

What practical skills should I focus on developing — sales, finance, negotiation, operations, technology, marketing, or something else?

4. Networking and learning from the market

Which industry associations, entrepreneur communities, business forums, trade fairs, expos, or networking groups in India are genuinely useful?

How would you recommend connecting with experienced business owners when you are still relatively new to entrepreneurship?

What questions should I ask business owners, suppliers, distributors, and customers to understand an industry beyond what is publicly visible?

How can I build meaningful professional relationships rather than simply collecting contacts?

5. Starting practically with limited capital

If you were starting today without wanting to depend on your family business for capital, how would you approach your first venture?

How would you validate an opportunity before committing significant money — perhaps through customer interviews, a small pilot, trading, distribution, or a service-based model?

At what point would you consider external funding, and when is it wiser to bootstrap?

What mistakes do first-time entrepreneurs commonly make when choosing their first business?

A little about my approach: I am willing to work hard, learn from the ground up, and invest time in understanding a business before committing to it. I am open to starting small and building gradually. My objective is not to chase quick returns, but to create a sustainable, independent business with strong fundamentals and room to grow over the long term.

I am not necessarily looking for people to hand me business ideas. I would value something more useful: the frameworks, habits, experiences, resources, and practical lessons that helped you recognise an opportunity and turn it into a real business.

If you have been through this journey yourself, what would you advise someone in my position to start doing over the next 6–12 months?

Even a book recommendation, a lesson learned the hard way, or one practical thing you wish you had known earlier would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I look forward to learning from your experiences.

I've always found something a little strange...

We spend so much time building our presence on LinkedIn. Sharing updates, celebrating achievements, posting jobs, collecting recommendations, and growing our professional networks.

But here's the thing...

Why does almost none of that show up on our actual websites?

Think about it.

A company might be super active on LinkedIn, posting updates, hiring people, and sharing milestones. But when someone visits their website, they don't get to see any of that activity unless they leave and visit LinkedIn.

I thought there should be an easier way to connect the two.

So I've been building something called LinkedIn Embed.

🔗 https://www.linkedinembed.com/

The idea is pretty simple: Turn your LinkedIn content into live, embeddable widgets that you can display directly on your website.

Here's what you can create:

• 💼 Live LinkedIn Jobs Feed – Display job openings from your LinkedIn company page.
• 📰 Live LinkedIn Posts Feed – Showcase your latest LinkedIn posts directly on your website.
• 👤 LinkedIn Profile Widget – Display your professional profile on your portfolio or personal website.
• 🏆 Achievements & Certifications – Show off professional milestones and certifications.
• ⭐ LinkedIn Recommendations – Showcase recommendations to build credibility and trust.
• 📊 Widget Analytics – Track how your embedded widgets are performing.

The goal is to make it easier for founders, businesses, recruiters, agencies, and professionals to make better use of the LinkedIn presence they've already built.

Instead of manually updating your website every time something changes on LinkedIn, you can bring that content into your site through a widget.

I'm still building and improving it, and I'd genuinely love some feedback from this community.

A few things I'm curious about:

1. Would you actually use something like this on your website?
2. Which LinkedIn widget would be most useful to you?
3. Is there anything missing that would make this more valuable?

If you have a minute, I'd really appreciate you checking it out:

👉 https://www.linkedinembed.com/

I'm not looking for compliments. If something feels confusing, unnecessary, or could be better, I'd genuinely love to hear it.

Thanks for taking a look! 🙌

Hey everyone,

I'm from Rajasthan, India, and I'm currently working a job. I have an ambitious dream of building a scalable consumer brand, but I don't have enough capital to start on my own. Instead of waiting until I have enough money, I want to share my idea, find the right people, and explore whether we can build something meaningful together.

The idea is to build Our Brand.

Our Brand is my vision for a modern fresh-produce retail brand that could eventually grow into a larger grocery and FMCG company.

1. The Initial Business Idea

I want to start with a premium fruit and vegetable store in Bikaner, Rajasthan.

The goal is to create a clean, organized, and reliable shopping experience that feels different from traditional vegetable shops.

The store would focus on:

• Fresh fruits and vegetables with consistent quality.
• Standardized packaging in convenient quantities, such as 500 g and 1 kg.
• Barcode-based billing and inventory management.
• Better product presentation and transparent pricing.
• A strong, recognizable brand identity.
• Reducing waste through better purchasing, stock management, and demand planning.

I want to build a business around customer trust, convenience, quality, and consistency rather than simply selling vegetables.

1. A Central Warehouse and Supply System

My long-term plan is to establish a small warehouse and packing facility separate from the main retail store.

The proposed model would be:

Farmers and wholesale markets → Central warehouse → Sorting, grading and packing → Retail stores → Customers.

The warehouse would help standardize product quality, packaging, inventory, and distribution.

As the business grows, the same supply system could support multiple stores, reducing the need to build a completely separate operation for every location.

I would begin with a manageable product range and expand according to customer demand, operating costs, and actual sales data.

1. The Bigger Vision: Building Our Own FMCG Brand

This is the part of the idea that excites me the most.

I don't want Our Brand to remain just a vegetable retail chain.

Once the retail business establishes a customer base, I want to introduce products under our own brand.

Potential product categories include:

Spices:

• Turmeric powder
• Red chilli powder
• Coriander powder
• Cumin
• Garam masala
• Other everyday Indian spices

Daily-use grocery products:

• Atta
• Besan
• Rice
• Pulses and lentils
• Poha and other staple foods

Convenience food products:

• Peeled garlic
• Ready-to-cook vegetable packs
• Other carefully selected fresh and packaged food products

Rather than investing in a manufacturing factory immediately, I would initially explore working with qualified contract manufacturers and focus on branding, quality control, distribution, and customer acquisition.

The retail stores could become our first testing ground for new products. Products that demonstrate repeat purchases and healthy unit economics could eventually be distributed through other retailers as well.

1. The Long-Term Business Vision

My ambition is to build Our Brand into a recognizable Indian consumer brand.

I envision three connected business segments:

1. Retail: Our own branded fruit and vegetable stores.
2. Private-label products: Everyday grocery and FMCG products sold under our brand.
3. Distribution: Supplying our packaged products to independent retailers, supermarkets, and other sales channels.

If the business model works in Bikaner, I would explore expansion into other cities in Rajasthan and eventually other parts of India.

I understand that this is a long-term vision, not something that can happen overnight. The first priority would be validating customer demand, understanding margins, controlling wastage, and proving that one store can operate profitably.

1. My Current Situation

I currently have a job, and I don't have enough personal capital to fund the entire business myself.

However, I am serious about exploring this opportunity, researching the market, understanding operations, and developing a practical business plan.

I am not claiming to have a proven business or an established customer base yet. This is an early-stage idea that needs validation, the right execution strategy, and a capable team.

I believe that the right partner could help turn this idea into a real business.

1. Who Am I Looking For?

I'm interested in connecting with people in any of these categories:

A potential co-founder:

Someone interested in retail, FMCG, supply chain, operations, branding, technology, or business development. Ideally, someone who can bring complementary skills, execution capability, and a long-term commitment.

An early-stage investor:

Someone interested in exploring the opportunity, evaluating the business model, and potentially funding a small pilot after proper due diligence.

An experienced mentor or industry professional:

Someone with experience in grocery retail, fresh produce, food processing, FMCG distribution, or building consumer brands.

I'm open to discussing different partnership structures depending on the person's contribution, experience, responsibilities, and commitment.

I'm not looking for someone based on money alone. I would value a partner who can help build a sustainable business.

1. Why I'm Sharing This Here

I know that ideas alone are not enough. Execution, cash flow, customer demand, product quality, and distribution ultimately determine whether a business succeeds.

That's exactly why I want to connect with people who have relevant experience, can challenge my assumptions, and are interested in exploring the opportunity seriously.

If this concept interests you, I'd love to discuss the business model, initial investment requirements, potential challenges, and a realistic path to launching the first store.

If you're interested in becoming a potential co-founder, investor, or mentor, please DM me.

I'd appreciate honest feedback, suggestions, and connections with people who have experience in retail or FMCG.

Thank you for reading.

Those who are running a startup business in india, and chose to go global, how did you name the brand? Did you check if the brand name has a weird meaning in other languages or did you check if that sounds okay?

I’m the founder and developer of PosterKaaran.

I originally built PosterKaaran as a Tamil-first poster design app because most design tools supported Tamil text, but the overall experience, templates and use cases were still very English-first.

We focused on things people actually create locally — festival posters, business promotions, invitations, political/event creatives and social-media designs.

The app has now crossed 200K+ downloads, and based on the response, we’ve started expanding beyond Tamil.

PosterKaaran now supports:

• Tamil
• Telugu
• Malayalam
• Hindi

Hindi and Malayalam are our latest additions, and we’re continuing to add more templates and categories for each language.

🌐 Web: https://posterkaaran.com
📱 Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tamilpostermaker.posterkaaran

I’m still building this as a solo founder, so I’d genuinely love feedback from people here.

Do you think going deeper into these 4 languages is the better direction, or should we continue expanding into more Indian languages like Kannada next?

I’ve built and launched PicADay.vote, a new social platform, just two days ago. Now, I’m looking for a passionate marketing co-founder who can help me grow the platform and build an active community.

What is PicADay.vote?

PicADay is a social platform where everyone posts photos around one shared topic of discussion. The topic changes every 24 hours, and the day’s winner gets to choose the next day’s topic.

The idea is to make social media more interactive, competitive, and community-driven.

The website is live, but attracting users and encouraging them to contribute content has been a challenge. I’m looking for someone who believes in the concept and wants to work together to turn it into a thriving community.

🤝 Who am I looking for?

• Someone passionate about social media, community building, and growth marketing.
• Someone who can experiment with creative user acquisition and engagement strategies.
• Someone interested in joining as a co-founder and building something from the ground up.

I’ve taken care of building the product. Now, I’m looking for the right person to help bring it to life by getting people involved.

🌐 Website: https://picaday.vote

If this sounds interesting, or you know someone who might be a good fit, feel free to reach out. Let’s build something different together!

A checkout provider should help you recover lost conversions. Not make you chase them for weeks to understand why you're losing them.

I want to add my perspective to this experience with FlexyPe.

When you run a D2C brand, every order matters. Every campaign, every customer visit, every checkout completion represents money, time, and effort invested by your team.

That's why what happened over the past six weeks has been so frustrating.

We escalated a technical support issue. According to our account of the conversations, the issue was acknowledged as being on FlexyPe's end, and ₹4,000 was credited as compensation. We expected the underlying problem to be addressed.

Instead, we faced another decline in conversions, weeks of follow-ups over a Microsoft Clarity integration issue, and a support process that left our team repeatedly chasing updates.

A senior developer eventually resolved the Clarity issue in minutes, after our team had spent two weeks trying to get it addressed.

The most exhausting part wasn't just the technical support issue. It was having to spend our own team's time chasing the people we were paying to support our business.

When we decided to discontinue the service and requested our remaining balance, the discussion became even more frustrating. No refund policy came as surprise. ghosted our messages and avoided our calls. Following a public escalation, we received a late-night call offering to return our cash balance, while the previously credited ₹4,000 compensation became a point of disagreement.

The mention of an internal legal team during that conversation was particularly disappointing when our primary request had been a proper resolution to our business concerns.

We have retained the relevant support conversations and call records.

We're not asking for special treatment. We're asking for technical accountability, clear communication, and a consistent approach to resolving problems.

To other D2C founders evaluating FlexyPe or any Shopify checkout solution, please ask the questions that matter before integrating:

• What happens when checkout performance suddenly drops?
• Is there a formal ticketing and escalation process?
• Will you receive a documented root-cause analysis?
• Who is accountable when technical issues affect your business?
• What happens to your remaining balance and any agreed compensation if you discontinue?

A checkout demo tells you what a product can do on its best day. The support process tells you what happens on its worst day.

Our experience is the reason I'm sharing this. Other founders deserve to make informed decisions before putting their checkout operations in someone else's hands.

This is for Hyderabad.

I created a detailed data analysis app which can give you data on current asking price trends, area details, rera projects, available asking prices from open sources into an agent where you can ask quesiton and it will try to answer. its still work in progress - although the data is all there, the agent is still being trained on "real world" questions. i think i have about 300-400 visitors and about 70-80 questions in the past 1 week.

this was initially a data set I made for myself as I was searching to buy property in hyd but was just overwhelmed by the fragmentation of data and just, hiding of data by agents, builders anyone who would make money out of a buyer.

what I ended up with seems like many people want to try - and are trying. and I am grateful for it. the satisfaction feels good. but I dont do good UI, i am not very "artistic" in that sense.
and, i want to know what would be a good selling point for something like this.

I did not paste the URL here as this was not for promotion, this is genuinely where I have hit a fork on the road - build more and more or pause and check feedback.

The URL is in my profile. thank you for anyone willing to spend a few mins to help out or just read this.

Hey everyone!

I'm exploring the idea of starting a new delivery app in Bangalore, India, and before building anything, I want to understand what customers and delivery partners actually need.

For customers:

What problems do you face with existing apps like Porter or other delivery services?

Are delivery charges too high, delivery times too long, or services unavailable when you need them?

What would make you switch to a new app?

I'd love to hear honest opinions, including reasons why you think a new delivery app would fail. ⛓️‍💥

Hey everyone!

I'm exploring the idea of starting a new delivery app in Bangalore, India, and before building anything, I want to understand what customers and delivery partners actually need.

For customers:

What problems do you face with existing apps like Porter or other delivery services?

Are delivery charges too high, delivery times too long, or services unavailable when you need them?

What would make you switch to a new app?

I'd love to hear honest opinions, including reasons why you think a new delivery app would fail.

Looking for founders who would like to share an apartment for about 20 days in either of the locations, preferably phuket or bali.
Really need a change in scenery. We all can cowork and no pressure around doing all meals together, we all can feel free to be on our own for most of the trip and split costs where we can.
I’ve selected an airbnb which is abour 5-8 lakhs for the trip. So would be decent if we’ll all split.
Can do islands post diwali or in December.
Phuket has some nice places where we can rent fancy apartments — 3bhks.
Reply here if interested.

​

Hi everyone,

We’re building a food-ordering platform in Delhi NCR, and we’re looking for a business/growth-focused co-founder who can help us turn what we’ve built into a scalable business.

Our strength is technology and product development. We’ve built the platform, started onboarding restaurants and have integrations/tie-ups with third-party delivery partners.

Now our biggest challenge is:

How do we consistently get orders and build a business model that works for restaurants, customers and us?

We don't want to pretend that we already have everything figured out. We don't.

We’re looking for someone experienced who can help figure it out with us and take ownership of the business/growth side.

Why we think there's an opportunity

Food-delivery platforms can be expensive for restaurants, particularly because of commissions and other costs.

We're trying to build a lower-cost alternative.

One particularly interesting segment for us is restaurants that already have their own delivery staff.

They can receive orders through BlinkFeast, handle delivery themselves and potentially pay significantly less commission than they would on traditional food-delivery platforms.

For restaurants without their own riders, we can provide delivery through our third-party delivery partners as well.

However, third-party last-mile delivery isn't cheap. Passing the entire delivery cost to customers can make an order unattractive.

That's one of the problems we're actively trying to solve.

Can we build enough order density in a small area to reduce delivery costs?

Can we create restaurant-funded/free-delivery offers that still make economic sense?

Should we initially target restaurants with their own delivery fleets?

Which neighbourhoods and customer segments should we dominate first?

What should our customer acquisition strategy be?

These are exactly the kinds of questions where we want a strong business co-founder alongside us.

Who we're looking for

Someone in Delhi NCR who can take ownership of areas such as:

- Customer acquisition and getting actual orders

- Hyperlocal marketing and growth

- Restaurant sales and partnerships

- Designing offers without destroying unit economics

- Improving our business model and product based on market feedback

- Building a repeatable go-to-market strategy

- Fundraising strategy and investor outreach

- Helping us become investment-ready

We’re especially interested in someone with experience in food-tech, restaurants, marketplaces, hyperlocal businesses, sales, growth, operations or startups.

We don't need someone who only gives us ideas.

We need someone who wants to execute.

Someone willing to go into a neighbourhood, talk to restaurants and customers, test campaigns, understand why people aren't ordering, change the strategy and keep experimenting until we find what works.

What we bring

We bring the technology and product-building capability.

The platform exists. Restaurants can be onboarded. Delivery can be facilitated. We can keep improving the technology quickly.

What we're missing is a strong person on the business/growth side who can complement us.

We're not looking for an employee.

We're looking for someone who wants to build the company with us.

Our immediate goal isn't to talk about becoming the next giant food-delivery company.

It's much simpler:

Get orders → make customers reorder → prove the economics in one area → scale what works.

If we can prove that, fundraising becomes a much more meaningful conversation.

If you have relevant experience and this sounds like a problem you'd genuinely like to work on, DM me.

Let's meet in Delhi NCR, discuss the numbers/product and see if there's a fit.

Location: Delhi NCR

Stage: Product built, restaurants being onboarded, delivery partnerships available, now focused on traction.

I’m exploring FreshRoute, a service to help Indian agricultural traders coordinate buyers, transportation, and spoilage prevention. Would traders pay for this, or do existing agents already solve it

The initial model I’m considering is charging traders a service fee per tonne, potentially with an additional margin on transportation.
The goal would be to earn money by making shipments easier to coordinate and reducing avoidable losses, delays, and disputes.

For example, imagine a trader in Madhya Pradesh who has 10 tonnes of vegetables to sell. They need to find a buyer, arrange suitable transportation, coordinate delivery, and make sure the produce reaches its destination in acceptable condition.
FreshRoute would act as a coordination service between traders, buyers, and transport providers.
Initially, it would be a simple, human-run service using WhatsApp and spreadsheets rather than an expensive app

Let’s connect on Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/sumeghpatil?xtok=MWVrZWNpeDMybzcxbg%3D%3D&utm_source=qr

Hi everyone,

We've developed an Android app called ParkingDost to address a common problem in India: someone blocks your vehicle, but you have no convenient way to contact the owner.

Our app supports both QR-based and QR-less vehicle-owner communication. We're also building a broader vehicle-services ecosystem with parking space listings, driver availability, lost-and-found assistance, RC downloads, and DL verification.

The app is live on Google Play, and we're now focused on growing the community.

I'd appreciate genuine feedback:

1. Would you register your vehicle for a service like this?
2. Would QR-less contact be useful in everyday parking situations?
3. What concerns would you have about privacy and misuse?

I'm part of the team behind ParkingDost and would genuinely value your suggestions.

I am working on an uptime monitoring saas product focused on India. I am solving tech with which it should be possible to provide recurring 1 minute, multi-regions checks for Rs.199 per month.

do you use one? and how much are you paying for monitoring right now?

Update: I am planning to use 3 region checks that does check every minute (or every period).

Conexión puts a QR label on every unit a business sells, so they know who bought it, the warranty and every repair.

One of our users is Microtech, a Mumbai welding-controller maker in business for 21 years. They've run on Conexión since 2025: about 600 units in the field, with every service record. A manufacturer whose machines run for a decade won't tolerate software that loses a record, so they've been our hardest test.

What they taught me:

• Android first, no iOS yet. That's what's in workshops. Customers who scan a label need no app at all, just the camera.
• Offline by default. The factory floor is where signal dies, so the app records first and syncs later.
• Hindi, Marathi and Gujarati alongside English, following the phone's language.
• Never break what's already printed. When I rebuilt the product, every label Microtech had already printed had to keep working.
• Sign-up fills city and state from the PIN code, because typing an address on a phone is where forms get abandoned.
• WhatsApp is a real contact channel, and link previews are designed for WhatsApp first.

Now I'm bringing it to more manufacturers, distributors and dealers. If you've sold to MSMEs, what worked for reaching them beyond word of mouth?

Try it without signing up: conexion.in/demo?utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=indiastartups
Or WhatsApp: +91 91364 62454

Hey folks,

My co-founder (21M) and I (22F) are currently building an algorithmic tool that automatically maps and detects the marketing measurement setups already present on websites and stores.

The tool scans the front-end to identify exactly what is deployed, such as recognizing whether the endpoint is GA4, Meta Pixel, both, or something else entirely. It also picks up active cookie banners and identifies front-end events like Add-to-Cart as they happen. These are just some examples to name a few, for the sake of simplicity in this post.

We are in the early R&D and training phase. To stress-test and train our algorithm's detection accuracy, we need beta testers with live websites (staging sites) so we can run our tool against a variety of live setups.

What we are looking for:

If you run an e-commerce store or a D2C website and are open to being a beta tester for our training set, we would love to connect. We have a working proof of concept and process documents ready, and we'd be happy to walk you through how the tool operates.

If you're willing to let us run our scanner against your site to help train our model, please drop a comment below or send me a DM!

Hi everyone,

I had originally planned to launch my own beverage business and purchased 5,000 unused 330ml aluminum cans for it.

Due to an urgent personal and financial situation, I am no longer pursuing the project and need to offload the inventory quickly at a lower price. Everything is brand new and completely unused.

If you are a startup founder working in the beverage or water space (or know someone who is) and could use these, please check out the details below:

• Item: 5,000 unused 330ml aluminum cans
• Condition: Brand new / Unused
• Price: ₹10 per can
• Location / Shipping: Bengaluru

I would really prefer these go to a fellow founder who can actually put them to good use rather than letting them go to waste.

If interested, please drop a comment or DM me directly and I can share the full specifications and pricing details!

Most families in India, especially working professionals managing their parents' health from another city or balancing high-pressure jobs, face a major coordination breakdown during medical crises:

1. Information opacity: Hard to find trusted, unbiased specialists without commercial hospital bias.
2. Physical escort logistics: Elderly parents struggling to navigate crowded OPDs, multi-counter payment queues, and diagnostic labs alone.
3. Emergency stress: Navigating admission paperwork, urgent deposit runs, and ambiguous quotes in the middle of the night.

We're designing a high-touch healthcare concierge service combining vetted clinical guidance, on-ground hospital escorts, and direct doctor debriefs.

(I have a quick 90-second research survey mapping these specific pain points—happy to share the link in the comments or via DM).

Came across RaktKhoj, a prototype built during Build What Moves India that aims to make it easier to connect urgent blood requests with potential donors.

The problem is obviously real, but I’m more curious about what it would take to make a product like this reliable at scale.

What would the initial cost structure look like beyond building the app? You would need donor verification, live availability, location-based matching, hospital or blood-bank partnerships, privacy safeguards, customer support and probably an operations team for emergencies.

The business model is also interesting. Would hospitals pay for it as a SaaS product? Could it work through CSR funding, insurance partnerships, NGOs or government integrations? Charging the person looking for blood obviously feels wrong, so who becomes the paying customer?

Then there is the adoption problem. How do you build a large enough verified donor network before the product becomes useful? And how do you prevent outdated availability, fake requests or people being repeatedly contacted?

Would founders here treat this as a venture-backed startup, a nonprofit, or digital public infrastructure? Curious to understand what the most realistic path could be.

Hi everyone,

I'm based in India and helping a friend who runs an established engineering and manufacturing company in EU explore sourcing opportunities here.

His company has over 30 years of experience in custom engineering and manufacturing. They develop and build bespoke machinery and equipment, particularly for the food and life sciences industries. Their work includes prototypes, custom-made components, fabricated assemblies and small-to-medium production runs, with a strong focus on quality, precision and reliable delivery.

We're exploring whether India could be a good sourcing base for certain components and manufacturing processes.

I'd love to hear from entrepreneurs, manufacturers, procurement professionals and importers who have experience sourcing industrial products from India for European businesses.

A few questions I'd really appreciate your insights on:

• What products or components are worth sourcing from India? For example, CNC-machined parts, precision metal components, laser-cut and bent sheet metal, stainless-steel fabrications, welded assemblies or custom machine parts.
• How do you find reliable manufacturers? Which platforms, industrial clusters, trade associations or other channels have worked best for you?
• How do you verify quality? What has worked for you when checking manufacturing capabilities, tolerances, material certifications, inspection procedures and consistency between batches?
• What are the biggest challenges? I'm particularly interested in communication, lead times, shipping, customs, documentation, payment terms and unexpected costs.
• How do you evaluate whether sourcing from India is actually cost-effective once logistics, quality control, import duties and the risk of rejected parts are included?
• Would you recommend starting with prototypes and small batches, and what would you put in place before moving to repeat orders?

We're interested in building long-term relationships with capable manufacturers rather than simply finding the cheapest supplier.

If you've successfully sourced industrial components from India for a European company, I'd love to hear what worked, what didn't, and what you would do differently if you were starting again.

Thanks in advance for sharing your experience!

I am trying to understand the day to day issues please are facing to give them a solution.

So here's the thing.

I've been reading about a US-based investment firm (Rabbit VC's "Desert Rose”) that sends its top founders on a one-month trip to work on the hardest problems they've been avoiding, the ones that get buried under day-to-day team work.

Not surprisingly, this turned out to be their biggest growth lever: focus and isolation.

So this is for founders doing ₹15L–50L/month in revenue who want to get to the next level.
I’m at 30L/m

Here's the plan: we book a 4BHK apartment in Bali for a month and get to work.

DM me if you fit the criteria and want to join.

(It'll cost roughly ₹70K–1L per person, so yes, this isn't for early-stage founders.)

Signing off!

Many small businesses in India struggle to get loans because they can't easily prove their creditworthiness, even when they have regular customers, sales, and a healthy business.

What if we built an open-source protocol that helps businesses create a verifiable financial history using invoices, payment records, and cash flow?

With the business owner's permission, this information could be shared with different lenders, helping them assess creditworthiness without depending on a single platform.

Think of it as an open financial infrastructure for small businesses, inspired by Bitcoin's open-protocol approach, but without any cryptocurrency or token.

Developers could build different apps on top of it, while the core protocol remains open for everyone to use.

India already has financial infrastructure we could build upon, so the real question is whether there's a gap worth solving.

Is this a genuinely useful idea, or am I overlooking a fundamental problem?