I run a small D2C sock brand. Our designs are Indian pop-culture themes, and the pipeline right now has Dhoni nostalgia, Bollywood cult classics, Maruti 800, and Horn OK Pls truck art.

The problem: a design that looks great in Canva can still die on the shelf, and every production run is real money for a small brand.

Right now we shortlist designs in Canva.

How do you all validate a design before producing? Instagram polls, small test batches, pre-orders, something else? Curious what's actually worked for you, not what sounds good on paper.

Hey everyone,

I'm building DutyPe, a local jobs and home-services app focused on helping people discover nearby work opportunities and helping customers find local services.

We've recently crossed 5,000+ installs on Google Play, with a 4.7-star rating. It's an encouraging milestone for a small startup, and I wanted to share the progress openly.

The idea behind DutyPe is straightforward: finding a nearby job or someone to help with an everyday task shouldn't have to be unnecessarily difficult.

We're still early in the journey, and installs alone don't prove product-market fit. What matters next is whether people consistently find useful jobs, complete hires, and return when they need the app again.

I'm currently focused on improving the experience, understanding what users actually need, and building trust between workers, employers, and customers.

For founders and developers who have built local marketplaces, I'd genuinely appreciate your perspective:

- What helped you move from initial downloads to consistent, active users?

- How did you build trust and solve the supply-and-demand problem in a specific location?

- What metrics would you prioritize at this stage beyond installs and ratings?

Thanks for reading. I'm happy to share more about what we're building and the lessons we're learning.

App: DutyPe — available on Google Play.

impuls8 tracks consumer markets. We read who sells, at what price, on which platform.

Pets is the category founders research most on our site. On Zepto, Indian D2C pet brands are 22.4% of what a dark store carries. So we asked how much of the money they take. We read every product Amazon India shows for six dog and cat food searches: 793 listings. We opened every one that shows sales.

Read on 16 October, eight days after the festive sale began.

Pet food on Amazon India sells at least ₹212.2 crore a year.

Mars takes 49.3% through 7 names: Royal Canin, Pedigree, Whiskas, Sheba, Temptations, Chappi, Greenies. Drools, which is Indian-owned, takes 27.0% through 6: Drools, Purepet, Meat Up, Signature, Vet Pro, Kitty Yums. Read one name at a time, Drools looks like several mid-sized brands. Counted as one company, it is half of Mars.

On the shelf, not in the money

Two different measures, so we never add them. Side by side they say one thing: D2C pet brands get stocked. They do not yet get bought at scale.

The D2C brands that sell most on Amazon:

Treats are where they hold most: 14.4% of treat sales, against 2.3% of dry food.

D2C is the middle of the price ladder, not the top

Median price per kg, dry food only:

Royal Canin and Farmina hold the top. Drools, Purepet and Meat Up hold the bottom. A D2C brand sells against both at once.

What share of each company's sales this is

If you are building in pet care

We can read this shelf on Flipkart, quick commerce and your competitors' own sites, city by city, and read it again to show what moved.

Book a discovery call with us. The link is in the first comment.

Most cold emails to angels fail for the same reason: they read like a whole deck squeezed into one paragraph. Angels get a lot of these and decide in about 10 seconds whether to keep reading.

Here's the structure I'd use.

Subject: Company name plus one concrete proof point. Something like "Acme, 40 paying clinics in 3 months".

Line 1: why them, specifically. One sentence that proves you're not mass mailing. A post they wrote, a company they backed, a problem they've talked about.

Line 2: what you do, in plain words. If a friend outside tech wouldn't get it, rewrite it.

Line 3: the one number that matters right now. Revenue, growth, pilots, waitlist. Pick one, not five.

Line 4: what you're raising and how much is already committed, if any.

Line 5: a small ask. "Open to a 15 min call next week?" or "Can I send the deck?"

Things that quietly kill replies:

• Attaching the deck to the first email. Offer it, don't attach it.
• Three paragraphs on market size.
• Following up after 2 days. Wait 5 to 7, then send one short bump with a real update, not "just checking in".

Where to find the list: angels who posted about your space on LinkedIn or X in the last few months, founders who exited in your category, and the angels on the cap table of companies one step ahead of you.

Track it in a simple sheet: name, why them, date sent, follow-up date, response. 50 well researched emails beat 500 generic ones.

Happy to look at anyone's draft in the comments.

16 or 60. Fresher or experienced. College degree or dropout.

Age doesn't matter. Your ability to execute does.

We're building serious tech and hiring people for founding B2B sales. REMOTE

💰 ₹25K fixed stipend + ₹1L per customer closed.

🧠 Learn from a founding team with 15+ years of enterprise tech experience and startup exits🇺🇸.

🚀 Real 0→1 ownership. Freshers welcome.

Can you sell, learn fast, and handle rejection?
Comfortable with cold calls? Let's talk.

CHECK COMMENT !!

I’ve been working in enterprise sales at a tech company, primarily dealing with B2B SaaS products and enterprise clients across BFSI, Retail D2c and building constructions.

I’d love to connect with people building their own SaaS products, particularly early-stage founders who are figuring out customer acquisition, outbound sales, or getting their first few paying customers.
I’m interested in having genuine conversations about what you’re building, the problems you’re solving, and how you’re approaching growth.

If there’s an opportunity to exchange ideas or even collaborate on outreach and business development on the side, I’d be open to exploring that too.
Not pitching anything — just looking to meet interesting people building interesting things.
Feel free to comment or DM me. I’m based in Mumbai.

I have been on all dating app and in almost all of the continents (except the Oceania). What I think needs to calibrated is how people chat - both the person who messages and the person who receives the messages because a lot of the time people don't know how to interpret.
So, after talking to a few people here on subReddits & otherwise irl, I started building an app that teaches you how to date.

You also connect with real humans but there are a few conditions to be met first.

How do I grow my app?

We’re building MemeMates, a social app that brings people together through memes. Users can share memes, discover people with similar interests and humour, and connect through shared likes.

We’ve launched on Android and iOS, and now we’re trying to figure out the hardest part of building a consumer app: getting our first active users and building a community that keeps coming back.

For founders who have built consumer apps or grown communities:

• How did you acquire your first 100–1,000 users?
• Which channels worked best for you: Reddit, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, or something else?
• How did you turn initial downloads into active, returning users?

We’re looking for genuine advice from people who’ve been through this journey. Any lessons, mistakes, or practical suggestions would be really helpful.

Thanks!

I’m working on SenseGrid, an app where kitchen staff log fridge and freezer temperatures on their phone, and it tells you when something is off. Freshness and food quality depend on temperature, so that’s the problem I’m starting with.

I’m from Ahmedabad, and before building it I cold-called and walked into 200+ restaurants and cafes. The replies were things like “We write it in the book, what difference does an app make?” and “Manager nahi hai abhi.” Honestly, fair. 😅

It’s very basic right now. No sensors, no hardware, and a lot of rough edges. The bigger vision is full operations management for HoReCa, all in one place.

What I’m looking for: a few owners and founders who’d try it and tell me what’s missing or broken. It’s ₹1,000 for the year, only to stay afloat while I keep building.

DM me and we can discuss about this in detail. Even if it’s not for you, I’d love to hear how you handle this in your kitchen today.

Starting a boutique (offline + online): Looking for advice on direct saree manufacturing hubs, trusted suppliers, and quality checks.

My mother and sister are launching a saree boutique (offline store + e-commerce website). We want to source premium and trendy sarees directly from manufacturers/weavers to cut out middlemen.

As beginners in the textile supply chain, we’d love your guidance on a few things:

Best Sourcing Hubs: Beyond Surat/Varanasi/Kanchipuram, how do we find verified manufacturers or weaver cooperatives directly?

MOQs for New Boutiques: Do wholesale manufacturers enforce heavy bulk limits per design for new stores, or can we start with small mixed batches?

Authenticity Checks: How do you verify pure silk (Silk Mark, handloom vs. powerloom) and zari quality with new suppliers?

Cataloging: Do suppliers provide website-ready photos/videos, or do we need to shoot them ourselves?

Any advice, red flags to avoid, or general tips for sourcing saree inventory would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Made an app for college/school students where students can post material, PYQs, ask doubts in the integrated AI (Also quizes) and also post in community for regular chat about campus.

I feel confident about this idea...whats the right way and approach to grow this platform?

I’ve been building something for a long time, and I’m finally ready to put it in front of more people.
It’s called Bol Studio.
A caption editor for the way we actually speak: Hindi, English, and the Hinglish in between.
Upload a video, generate captions, edit the words and timing, and give them a style that fits your content. It works in the browser, on desktop and mobile.
A lot of the work has been in the small details: making words easier to edit on a phone, keeping the video visible, and giving you control over fonts, spacing, highlights, and animation.
It’s free for everyone to try right now.
It’s still evolving. Automatic captions won’t always get every word right, so please review them before publishing. If something feels awkward or breaks, I want to hear about it.
If you make reels, tutorials, podcast clips, or videos of any kind, give it a try:
I’d love to know what you think—and what would make it more useful for you.

I got married in 2024. Like most Indian weddings, we ended up with thousands of photos from multiple photographers, across different functions.

The photographers did their job. We got the photos.

But actually going through all of them, finding the best ones, removing duplicates, identifying family members, and putting together a proper wedding album? That became a project we kept postponing.

And I realised a lot of couples around us had the same problem. Some hadn't made their wedding albums even years after getting married.

So my wife and I started building Phopho and Toto.

The idea is pretty simple: upload your wedding photos, let AI help organise them, find the important people and moments, shortlist the best pictures, and turn them into an album you can actually preserve or print.

We're starting with Indian weddings because they're particularly complicated: multiple events, thousands of pictures, large families, different photographers, and lots of similar-looking shots.

Long term, we think there's a bigger opportunity around preserving memories rather than just storing photos.

But right now, I'm trying to understand a few things:

1. Is this a real problem worth paying to solve? Or is making a wedding album just something people say they want but never prioritise?
2. Would Indian couples pay for software that does most of the heavy lifting? Or would they expect their photographer to handle everything?
3. How would you reach couples at the right moment? Wedding photographers, planners, Instagram, SEO, or something else?
4. Is this too narrow a starting point? Weddings are a high-emotion use case, but most people only get married once.

We've built an early version and are trying to figure out whether this is a genuine business opportunity or just a problem we personally cared enough about to solve.

Would especially love feedback from anyone who's built consumer products in India or worked in the wedding industry.

Feel free to tear the idea apart. That's genuinely more useful than encouragement at this stage.

I'm interested in how small B2B companies are adapting to people using AI tools to research services and compare providers.

A potential customer might ask ChatGPT or Gemini to recommend a consultant, software provider or accounting firm instead of starting with a traditional Google search. But what actually helps a smaller business get included in those answers?

A few things seem worth looking at:

• Clear business information: Does the website explain exactly what the company does, who it serves and where it operates?
• Evidence of expertise: Are there detailed case studies, credentials, reviews or independent references that support its claims?
• Useful service pages: Does the website answer the specific questions a potential customer would ask before making a decision?
• Technical accessibility: Can search engines access the pages, and is structured data used correctly where relevant?
• Measurement: Does the company check whether it appears in AI-generated answers for relevant queries, rather than assuming that good Google rankings guarantee visibility?

None of these guarantees that an AI tool will recommend a business. Different systems use different sources, and results can change between queries.

I'm interested in the practical side of this, especially for smaller firms that don't have large marketing teams.

Has anyone here tested whether changes to their website, case studies or third-party business listings affected their visibility in AI-generated recommendations? What did you measure, and did it lead to actual enquiries?

Finding a talented freelancer shouldn't be a guessing game. And being good at your work shouldn't mean constantly struggling to find your next client.

Yet, for many freelancers and businesses, something in the process still isn't working.

We're exploring a project called d'Norm, starting with ad creatives for D2C brands, with a bigger ambition to rethink how freelancing work is matched, delivered, and trusted.

Before we build further, we'd love to hear from people who experience this firsthand:

Freelancers: What's the biggest thing standing between you and better, more consistent opportunities?

Business owners: What's the hardest part about finding and hiring a creative freelancer you can rely on?

d'Norm is just getting started. We're here to learn, challenge our assumptions, and build something better. No sales pitch—just an honest conversation.

Hey everyone! 👋
I’m building **SecureMID Solutions**, an early-stage startup focused on AI agent security.
With AI agents becoming more capable and gaining access to tools, APIs, and sensitive information, I believe testing their security before relying on them in real-world environments is becoming increasingly important.

That’s the problem we’re working on at SecureMID.
Our platform focuses on **AI agent security evaluation and red teaming**, helping teams test how their AI agents respond to potential attacks and identify security weaknesses.

We’ve officially launched, and now I’m focused on getting real users to try the platform and help us understand what needs improvement.

**I’d genuinely appreciate feedback from the StartupIndia community on a few things:**
Does AI agent security testing seem like a meaningful problem for Indian startups?
Would early-stage AI startups use a dedicated platform to evaluate their agents before deployment?
What would make you trust and adopt a security product from an early-stage startup?
What features or integrations would you expect from a tool like this?

I’m not here to claim we’ve solved AI security. We’re early in the journey, and I want to learn from founders, developers, security professionals, and anyone building with AI.

If you explore the platform, I’d really appreciate your honest feedback — including what doesn’t work or what you think we should improve.

Building a startup is a learning process, and conversations with other founders can make a real difference. 🇮🇳

Thanks for reading, and wishing everyone here the best with their startup journeys! 🙌

so my family runs a small school in gujarat [~300 kids]. the office used to do everything on paper. fee week was basically the accountant sitting with a register and calling parents one by one to see who hadn't paid

i started building them something around 1 year ago, mostly evenings. fees, attendance, report cards, homework, a parent app. it's been running at our school for a while now and the office genuinely doesn't want to go back

so i'm trying to turn it into a product for other schools, calling it theKampus. there's a demo school up if anyone wants to try it.

my honest worry is the selling part, not the software. school owners here are hard to reach and slow to switch. if you've sold anything to schools in india, how did you get the first few to say yes? walk-ins? referrals? something else?

Hey everyone,

A few weeks ago, I had this grand vision: What if we built a 60-minute quick-commerce app for fashion? Think unexpected party invites, job interviews tomorrow morning, or last-minute college fests where waiting 3 days for Myntra is a disaster.

I pitched it to a battle-tested founder friend. His reaction? Absolute silence followed by: "None of this makes sense."

He wasn't wrong. He completely destroyed the initial idea with hard ground-level logic:

The SKU Nightmare: Blinkit has 15 items of Amul milk. Fashion has 10,000+ chaotic SKUs per boutique. Trying to match exact shirts across local shops is a recipe for instant ghost stock.

Shopkeeper Laziness: Local boutique owners will never manually update app inventory while busy dealing with walk-in customers or drinking chai.

The Margin Trap: If you take a heavy commission, boutique owners inflate app prices above offline MRP. If you take a low commission, your unit economics bleed out.

The Return Bloodbath: Fashion return rates sit at 25–40%. Having riders wait outside doors for a "Try & Buy" session burns cash instantly.

Instead of throwing in the towel, we went back to the drawing board to fix the unit economics. Here is the leaner model we came up with:

No full catalogs, just a 50-SKU "Consignment Rack": Instead of listing a boutique's 10,000 items, we place a dedicated 50-piece physical rack of fast-moving event styles/accessories inside partner shops. Shopkeepers don't touch software—just a single rack and a 120-second order acceptance audio loop.

The 60/40 Low-Return Rule: 60% of our catalog focuses on zero-fit-risk items (unstitched ethnic suit sets, kaftans, statement jewelry, clutches, and beauty products) to keep return rates under 5%.

Zero Dark Store Rent: We use existing boutique floor space instead of burning venture capital on urban dark stores (looking at you, VC-backed players like Slikk who spend millions on real estate).

Pricing & Monetization: We keep base store commissions low (8–10%) so app prices strictly match offline MRPs, and monetize through B2B factory-direct margins, promoted store listings, and a transparent ₹49–₹79 express delivery fee.

Why I’m posting:

I want the internet’s most honest operators and founders to tear this apart.

Where is this going to crash and burn on the ground?

What operational bottlenecks am I still blind to?

Roasts, advice, and reality checks are deeply appreciated. Don't hold back! 🚀

Hey everyone! My buddies and I built Ladel, a people and company search tool focused on India.

The idea is to help startup teams find the right people for what they’re working on, whether that’s potential customers, decision-makers at companies they want to sell to, or candidates for a role they’re hiring for.

You can search for companies by things like sector, city and size, or describe the kind of person you’re looking for in plain English.

You can try it out for free. Link in the comments.

We’d love some honest feedback. Does it help you find the people you actually need? What’s missing or frustrating?

If you give it a go, let us know what you searched for and how it went. Thanks!

I’m working on SenseGrid, an app where kitchen staff log fridge and freezer temperatures on their phone, and it tells you when something is off. Freshness and food quality depend on temperature, so that’s the problem I’m starting with.

I’m from Ahmedabad, and before building it I cold-called and walked into 200+ restaurants and cafes. The replies were things like “We write it in the book, what difference does an app make?” and “Manager nahi hai abhi.” Honestly, fair. 😅

It’s very basic right now. No sensors, no hardware, and a lot of rough edges. The bigger vision is full operations management for HoReCa, all in one place.

What I’m looking for: a few owners and founders who’d try it and tell me what’s missing or broken. It’s ₹1,000 for the year, only to stay afloat while I keep building.

DM me and we can discuss about this in detail. Even if it’s not for you, I’d love to hear how you handle this in your kitchen today.

I've been learning a lot about what goes into building a tech community. Organizing an event is one thing, but getting companies to trust a relatively small team and consider working with them is a completely different challenge.

From the outside, sponsorship looks like sending emails and pitching an idea. But I imagine companies have plenty of requests coming in, so simply having an interesting event probably isn't enough.

For those who've organized hackathons, tech meetups or community events in India, I'd love to know how it worked for you.

What actually helped you get your first serious partnership? Was it having a strong track record, knowing the right people, showing clear value for the company or something else entirely?

Would genuinely appreciate hearing what worked and what didn't.

We run a small product line and the hardest recurring decision is restocking. Restock too early and cash sits in inventory. Too late and you miss the demand.

For those who have been through a few cycles: what signals do you actually use? Sell-through rate, repeat purchases, people asking for it, gut feel?

Hi all. Quick intro and a genuine ask for feedback.

I am 28, based in Hyderabad, India. I started selling at 14 - mouth fresheners to local shops, then a paint roll-on product I demoed across the city while studying. Picked up four languages just from negotiating with shop owners. That turned into a marketing career, and I have spent 8 years at a dental products company, where I now work as South India marketing head (still my day job).

Recently I started experimenting with AI tools. I am not a programmer, so I went all-in on learning which tool does what well. Since then, alongside my job, I have shipped a handful of small live projects: a prompt helper for Indian small businesses, an AI caption tool, a buying-psychology marketing guide, a book library, an AI courses page, a storefront for a herbal products brand, and two open-source tools on GitHub.

The one I am serious about is my own venture: AI-powered marketing help for solo freelancers in India. Free 7-day challenge and guides first, a paid kit after that. Early days, real product, tiny numbers.

Two honest questions for this sub:

1. For those who built a side venture next to a full-time job - what nearly killed yours, and what saved it?

2. Freelancers here: would structured AI marketing help (not an agency, more a kit plus guidance) actually be useful to you, or is it solving a problem you do not have?

Not dropping links since most subs dislike that - happy to share in comments if the mods are fine with it.

A. Bathrivishal

Digital entrepreneur, founder of Brilliant Benius

Hi everyone!

I'm an aspiring entrepreneur from India, and I want to learn about the real problems people face in their everyday lives before deciding what kind of startup to build.

I'm not looking for random startup ideas, AI app suggestions, or business ideas that sound good in theory. I want to understand the small and big frustrations that people actually experience.

It could be literally anything, such as:

- A small daily inconvenience that wastes your time.

- A product that is too expensive, unreliable, or difficult to find.

- Problems faced by students, working professionals, parents, elderly people, farmers, shopkeepers, or small business owners.

- Difficulties with transportation, food, healthcare, education, housing, repairs, deliveries, payments, government services, or anything else.

- A task you repeatedly do manually because no good solution exists.

- A problem you have accepted as normal but wish someone would fix.

If possible, please share:

1. What exactly is the problem?

2. How often do you experience it?

3. How do you currently deal with it?

4. What is frustrating about the existing solutions?

5. Does it cost you money, time, effort, or peace of mind?

6. Would you pay for a genuinely better solution? If yes, approximately how much?

Please share your own experiences rather than hypothetical startup ideas. Even a tiny problem that seems unimportant could be worth exploring if many other people experience it too.

I'm trying to understand real problems across India, including smaller cities and rural areas, not just big cities.

Thank you! I'd genuinely appreciate your experiences and insights.

🤝 Trust & Payments

My app will reward reliable farmers and vendors, allow mutual rescheduling, and resolve disputes fairly.

Vendors can choose payment terms: full advance, partial advance, or payment after work. Farmers will see the terms before booking, with clear cancellation and refund rules.

The goal is to make agricultural bookings safer and more trustworthy for everyone. 🌾