Viraj Gupta

Who controls the rails of digital access? 🇮🇳 ​Critical insights on why India needs a localized, open app ecosystem to sustain its massive digital growth. ​A great read on the work we are doing at Indus Appstore. Priya Narasimhan breaks down the problem and articulates our commitment to broadening the app economy through openness and choice. ​Read the full article below 👇 ​#IndusAppstore #AppStoreForIndia #DigitalSovereignty

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Agilitas x Virat Kohli partnership is one of the masterstroke deals I have seen in recent times. Virat invests 40 CR in Agilitas for a 1.94% stake, putting Agilitas’s valuation around 2000 CR. 📈 In turn, Agilitas acquires one8world, making Virat a co-founder and shareholder. They now get two very important growth levers: ⬇️ 1. A powerful manufacturing (via Mochiko Shoes - a 600 CR+ footwear brand that Agilitas acquired in 2008 ), 2. India’s biggest athlete — exclusively aligned. Easily becomes a 4000 CR revenue brand in the next 5 years. Footwear + retail scale requires capital — but this partnership compresses customer acquisition, product cycles, and brand-building like few others. Even Virat said in his podcast with Abhishek Ganguly, the co-founder of Agilitas that, “I didn’t want a brand deal… I wanted to build something that outlives me.” And Abhishek said something even beautiful - “An ambition to build from India but be globally relevant.” This isn’t marketing. This is legacy building with shared skin in the game. And that is how startups work - shared ambition with one goal (to make the company big) and food (read stake) in the table for everyone! A company that can be built in the long term with culture, capital, and conviction aligned. This might be the first time in India, where an athlete joins hands with a sport company to re-imagine and build the sport ecosystem of India - truly revolutionalising the game with a clear vision. 🙌

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Cloaked has raised a $375M Series B led by General Catalyst with participation from HUMAN CAPITAL and Lux Capital. I am fortunate to have the opportunity to work alongside Arjun Bhatnagar, Abhijay Bhatnagar, and the team at Cloaked to fight against surveillance, spam, & identity theft.

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This article, co-authored by Vardaan Ahluwalia and me lays out India's significant new Research Development and Innovation Fund initiative in the context of other successful interventions: when governments and the private sector work together, they can make a transformative difference to deep technology entrepreneurship. Equally, initiatives to help manage financial risk should be followed by structural reforms in areas ranging from intellectual property regulation, ease of clearances for start-ups, tax rationalization in capital gains and options that helps start-ups attract talent, and a visa regime that attracts leading global researchers. https://lnkd.in/gk92YSZa

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🧭 If one of the reasons for the leadership change was “missing AI opportunities,” that would be disappointing. Venture has always been about taking calculated risks, not chasing every trend. Even the best firms will pass on some winners; the real test is whether they stay disciplined enough to find the ones that fit their conviction. Sequoia’s strength has always been long-term focus and pattern recognition through cycles. The danger is not missing a single AI deal, it is losing the ability to think independently amid the noise. https://lnkd.in/eVKiCEtD #VentureCapital #Leadership #AI #Governance #Startups #SequoiaCapital

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Rozana founded by Ankur D., Adwait V. and Mukesh Christopher has raised fresh funding, pushing its valuation close to $200 million as it expands its platform serving rural and small-town consumers. While urban e-commerce markets are becoming saturated, rural commerce remains vastly underpenetrated. This segment represents: • Hundreds of millions of consumers • Rapid smartphone adoption • Increasing digital payments usage • Growing demand for organized supply chains But rural commerce requires fundamentally different business models. Companies must rethink logistics, pricing, distribution, and community engagement strategies. Investors are increasingly backing startups that can build last-mile distribution and trust networks in smaller towns and villages. At Alacrity EXTN LLP, we help companies exploring emerging markets: • Conduct deep market research in underserved segments • Design expansion strategies for tier-2, tier-3 and rural markets • Evaluate strategic investment or partnership opportunities The next generation of Indian unicorns may well be built beyond metro cities. #RuralCommerce #Ecommerce #DigitalIndia #StartupFunding #EmergingMarkets #ConsumerTech #RetailInnovation #MarketExpansion #BusinessStrategy #VentureCapital #IndiaStartups #AlacrityEXTN

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In the days following my last post, I had conversations with two consumer brands building in the D2C space. Both were operating in the same market environment. Both had found product–market resonance. Yet their realities could not have been more different. One brand was struggling for survival, mainly due constrains in working capital, inconsistent supply, and fragile distribution. The other was in the middle of a capital raise, not to fund experimentation (which is a rare sight), but because demand had outpaced its ability to supply. The contrast was instructive. What became clear, once again, is that in D2C, brand building alone does not determine outcomes. Execution across supply chain and distribution often becomes the real bottleneck. A few observations from these discussions: -> Demand is not the same as readiness. -> Early traction can be deceptive. A growing order book exposes weaknesses in procurement, manufacturing, and logistics far more quickly than slow growth does. Brands that scale demand faster than operational depth, more often than not find themselves capital-starved at precisely the wrong moment. -> Supply chains are strategic assets, not backend functions For the growing brand, early investment in supplier relationships and capacity planning creates optionality. In D2C, supply chains shape margins, customer experience. -> Distribution decisions compound over time Channel choices, be it your own website, marketplaces, offline partnerships cannot be treated just as growth levers. They define cash cycles, data ownership, and brand control. Misaligned distribution can strain working capital even when topline growth looks healthy. -> Capital efficiency is operational, not just financial Both brands spoke about capital, but the difference lay in how it was absorbed. One needed capital to survive structural inefficiencies. The other needed capital to support an already disciplined operating engine. What these conversations reinforced for me is that D2C success is rarely about a single breakthrough. It is about alignment between brand promise, supply reliability, and distribution economics. As capital becomes more discerning and markets more competitive, brands that treat operations and distribution as core strategic decisions will find it easier to sustain growth, attract long-term capital, and weather inevitable cycles. These are not prescriptions, just observations from the ground. Curious to hear how other founders and operators have navigated these trade-offs while scaling consumer brands. eFuture Ventures Post (2/52)

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"If AI can now write performance reviews, analyze engagement data, and even predict attrition - what's left for leaders to actually lead?" The answer isn't in the tools. It's in the judgement calls no algorithm can make. At the CLO Summit in Mumbai recently, I joined Kumaar Bagrodia, Krishnan Narayanan and Lt Col Sanjeev Malik to discuss this question. The conversation reinforced something I've been observing: while organisations rush to adopt AI tools, they're struggling with basic questions about when to use them and when not to. The technology is available. The judgement framework for deploying it isn't. Leaders need three capabilities today: understanding what technology can do, maintaining human-centricity despite pressure for speed and scale, and anchoring decisions in org. purpose rather than just performance metrics. The paradox is real. The same companies automating operations are simultaneously investing in "high-touch" customer experiences. The same leaders celebrating AI efficiency are quietly worried about org. culture. Technology should support human goals, not determine them. That distinction will separate effective organizations from efficient ones. How do you decide when human judgement should override algorithmic efficiency? #leadership #futureofwork #ai #beyondtheplaybook

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This development is particularly encouraging for #privateequity and #venturecapital in India. For a while now the flywheel that led to startups going #IPO has been broken in US markets. The primary exit for most startup investors has been acquisition. But the trend of startups like UrbanClap and others going IPO on the #BSE allows investors to redeploy their invested capital. #finance. https://lnkd.in/gHhzukbf

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