Humbled and deeply grateful to receive the first-ever Lifetime Achievement Award from @RegulationAsia this evening in Singapore. Thank you for this incredible honour recognising over three decades of contributions to shaping India’s and the global securities markets. Truly a moment to cherish. 🙏 #RegulationAsia #LifetimeAchievement @nseindia

@dkagarwal Truly grateful!!

An extreme commitment to the truth makes relationships acutely dysfunctional but systems chronically functional (think Elon Musk). An extreme commitment to kindness makes relationships acutely functional but systems chronically dysfunctional (think Sweden, UK)

Think about the sheer scale of internal migration in India - millions of young people moving for jobs and education, completely untethered from their roots. The traditional support systems, the joint family, the neighbourhood 'adda', have given way to solitary consumption of content. Technology has brilliantly solved for convenience but has created a cavernous emotional void in the process. And this opens up a massive opportunity is not to build another social network that reduces human relationships to a 'like' or a 'follow'. It is to build high-trust, curated platforms that use technology as a bridge back to the real world. - Imagine a founder building a platform for amateur board-gamers - His driver? After moving to the city, his weekends were painfully empty, and meeting like-minded people felt impossible - Offering? Not a gaming session. He is selling a circle of friends Such founders can make it big in this ever-rising internal migration led economy. This is the paradigm shift. The technology is the facilitator, the digital handshake that leads to an actual one. The real product is the offline experience, the shared laughter, the human bond. And there are many such examples already in play. For instance, take The Goodfellows - brilliantly pairs empathetic young graduates with senior citizens for companionship, are the perfect blueprint for this future. The monetisation model here isn't advertising. It's a subscription for belonging, a fee for curated community, a model I call “Community-as-a-Service”. What do you think? Do share below in the comments. I have started to share my learnings as a VC more proactively here, with a note coming out every morning 8.30am. And I would love to get inputs. Thanks, Anuradha | Dexter Ventures

: One of the greatest opportunity in Indian fintech is in solving the insurance problem for the 40 crore people who our system has completely ignored. We have what I call a barbell insurance market. On one end, you have sophisticated products for the affluent. On the other, you have Govt schemes for the poorest of the poor. In between lies the "missing middle". This is not an abstract number. It is the Zomato driver I see weaving through the traffic here in Gwalior. It is the woman who runs the neighbourhood kirana store. It is the farmer whose entire livelihood is a bet on the monsoon. A staggering 77% of our gig workers have no social security to fall back on. For them, a traditional insurance policy with a Rs 20,000 annual premium is not just expensive; it is fundamentally irrelevant to the cadence of their lives. The fatal mistake is trying to sell them a smaller version of an old, broken product. The real opportunity is to redesign the product itself, from the first principle. This is the promise of micro-insurance: bite-sized, relevant, and affordable safety nets. Think of an accident cover for that delivery driver, costing just Rs 20 a day, deducted automatically from his daily earnings via UPI. The policy is active only for the eight hours he is on the road. Or imagine crop insurance for a farmer that pays out not after a six-month-long survey, but is triggered automatically. This is parametric insurance. If satellite data shows rainfall in his specific village was 30% below average, the claim is processed instantly. Trust built on data, not on endless paperwork. This is not a distant dream. It is being powered by the holy trinity of the India Stack for identity and payments, the smartphone for distribution, and Artificial Intelligence for underwriting risk and processing claims from a single photograph. The challenge for founders is to stop thinking like legacy insurers. This is not about chasing high-margin policies. It is about building a high-volume, tech-first business on a foundation of deep trust. The market is here. The need is undeniable. And the technology has finally arrived. What do you think? Do share below in the comments. I have started to share my learnings as a VC more proactively here, with a note coming out every morning 8.30am. And I would love to get inputs. Thanks, Anuradha | Dexter Ventures

My experience and study says that the most defensible startups in India aren't tech companies, but the system-change companies that happen to use tech. I say so because the real innovation isn't in the elegance of the code, but in the gritty, painful process of wrestling a chaotic, offline world into a digital framework. That’s where the true value is unlocked. Think about it. You can build the slickest agri-tech platform, but it’s useless if you haven’t figured out how to deal with fifty different mandi agents, each with their own unwritten rules, or how to assure a farmer his payment will arrive on time when he has only ever dealt in cash. The app is the last mile; the first thousand miles are about building trust and processes where none existed. This is what I call inheriting the 'entropy'. When a founder builds a layer on top of a broken market - be it logistics, lending, or healthcare - they don't just get a market opportunity; they inherit decades of manual workarounds, systemic fraud, and opaque local regulations. Cleaning this up is the real moat. Anyone can copy your UI, but they can't copy the years of operational muscle you built navigating this mess. This is why many pure software plays struggle here. They try to impose a perfect, sterile software logic onto an imperfect, messy reality. The winners are those who embrace the mess. They build for India as it is, not as they wish it to be. They understand that the 'product' is not just the app; it's the entire stack, from the tech to the on-ground agent network that ensures the last-mile delivery actually happens. This is why when a founder pitches me a beautiful app, I'm always looking for something more. I'm looking for the obsession with fixing the underlying broken system. Because that is the real, unassailable competitive advantage. That is the path to building something truly monumental in India. What do you think? Do share below in the comments. I have started to share my learnings as a VC more proactively here, with a note coming out every morning 8.30am. And I would love to get inputs. Thanks, Anuradha | Dexter Ventures

I’m pretty sure that the decade ahead will see emergence of many Rs 1,000 CRORE Indian companies that most of us VCs would have passed on at the seed stage. It won’t have a flashy app or a viral marketing campaign - it will look like a boring, profitable business from Tier-2 India, quietly getting its hands dirty. I mean, see, we've been obsessed with the startup that 'looks' like a startup. But the game is changing. The first wave was about bringing Indians online. The next, far bigger wave, is about taking India's offline economy and making it more efficient. The opportunity isn't just in creating a new marketplace - it's in fixing the broken rungs of an existing, massive supply chain. Think about a small enterprise from Moradabad that exports brassware. They don't build a global B2B platform. Instead, they start by using simple software - maybe just WhatsApp and a custom-built tool - to streamline orders, manage their artisans, and ensure quality control. They solve a real, tangible problem of inefficiency and become the most reliable supplier in their cluster. Their growth isn't funded by a massive Series A cheque that demands a 10x explosion in six months. It's funded by their own profits. This forces a discipline that is rare to see. They focus obsessively on unit economics because they have to. Their moat isn't a marketing budget; it's the deep, trust-based relationships they've built over years with hundreds of suppliers and buyers, something no amount of capital can replicate overnight. And once that is secured and reaches some scale, behind the export led story, with which there is no ceiling to growth. China has seen countless such biggies be born in most un-shiny spaces. And India will see that play out in the next decade. And, to be frank, this is the quiet story already unfolding across India. From the cashew suppliers in Kerala and Odisha to the textile mills in Tiruppur. These aren't 'startups' in the traditional sense. They are resilient, anti-fragile businesses leveraging tech to solve for their own ecosystem. They are the ones building the foundational pipes for our economy, and in my experience, those who build the pipes often end up owning the flow. What do you think? Do share below in the comments. I have started to share my learnings as a VC more proactively here, with a note coming out every morning 8.30am. And I would love to get inputs. Thanks, Anuradha | Dexter Ventures

So many founders still make this mistake of believing everyone with a smartphone is their Total Addressable Market (TAM). Your real TAM is everyone you can treat with dignity. A big perk of me having been an operator before turning a VC is the learning that this thing I mentioned above is the most overlooked growth strategy in our entire startup ecosystem. For a decade, we have been obsessed with disruption. But for millions of Indians coming online for the first time, disruption often feels like disorientation. Their biggest barrier is not the cost of data - it's the fear of being made to feel foolish by a complex app or an impatient customer support agent. I've seen this firsthand. Think of a gig economy worker trying to understand a complicated payment structure, or a senior citizen attempting to navigate a healthcare app for the first time. A clean, simple interface and a support call that doesn't judge them isn't just a nice-to-have. It is the core feature. It's the moment they decide whether this digital world is for them, or against them. And don’t mistake me. This isn't about philanthropy. Dignity is a competitive moat. A rival can copy your pricing tomorrow. They can imitate your user interface next month. But they cannot easily replicate a deep-seated culture of respect that is built into every line of code and every support script. That kind of trust is priceless. This is why we need to start asking different questions during product design. Not just "Is it convenient?" but "Does it feel respectful?". Is our loan rejection message empathetic? Is our 'help' section written in a language my mother can understand? Dignity is a feature. For the businesses that will truly win India, it must be the default setting. Because, convenience solves a task, but dignity builds a relationship. And relationships are what endure. What do you think? Do share below in the comments. I have started to share my learnings as a VC more proactively here, with a note coming out every morning 8.30am. And I would love to get inputs. Thanks, Anuradha | Dexter Ventures

It’s sad how so many founders and VCs think of Bharat as “lesser India.” In my experience, Bharat isn’t the bottom of the pyramid - it’s the foundation of entire economy. Build for it with respect, context, and patience-and you’ll unlock scale that metro-first thinking can’t fathom. I’ll put it this way. For too long, the default playbook for founders has been to launch in Bengaluru or Gurugram, win over the urban, English-speaking user, and then, perhaps years later, create a stripped-down, 'lite' version for everyone else. And in all frankness - This isn't a strategy - it's a condescension. It treats the vast majority of Indians as an afterthought. Building for Bharat isn't about making a cheaper or simpler product. It's about making a *different* product, built with deep context. A very popular (a few years back) health-tech app failed because it relied on high-speed video consults. The founder now says that that he could have probably won by building an asynchronous system that worked over patchy 2/3G connections, using WhatsApp voice notes. The lesson: He shouldn't have built for a lesser India. He should have built for the real India. You see, when you build for the foundation, the rules are different. Your app must work offline. Your customer support must be human, local, and patient. Your 'user manual' might need to be a voice note in a regional dialect, not a blog post in English. These aren't 'features' - they are the very price of admission. Metro-first thinking fights for a sliver of the market. Building for the foundation means you are creating a market. The scale is of a different magnitude, and the loyalty you earn by being the first to solve a core problem with dignity is unshakable. This is why it’s so so so important for all n the ecosystem to stop seeing Bharat as the last mile. It is the starting point for building a truly monumental, pan-India enterprise. What do you think? Do share below in the comments. I have started to share my learnings as a VC more proactively here, with a note coming out every morning 8.30am. And I would love to get inputs. Thanks, Anuradha | Dexter Ventures

I spend less time reading a founder's five-year financial projections and more time looking at what their team has shipped in the last five weeks. In India, the only plan that matters is the one you can prove with action. Your rate of learning is your only real moat. I've seen too many brilliant founders get stuck perfecting their pitch deck for months. They polish every slide, fine-tune every market size number, and craft the perfect story. They come to a meeting with a beautiful plan, but with zero momentum. They've planned everything but have done nothing. This is a fundamental mistake in a market as chaotic as ours. Clarity doesn't come from a brainstorming session in a boardroom in Bengaluru - it comes from the messy reality of trying to sell your product in Bhubaneswar. You learn more from one week of doing than from six months of planning. I know I may be coming out as a rude person. But, sometimes, you just need to say things as they are. Think of speed not as being reckless, but as being revealing. Every time you ship a feature, talk to a customer, or try a new sales tactic, you get a real data point from the market. The faster you move, the more data you gather. Speed is what allows you to replace your assumptions with facts. That is the only way to navigate the fog. And I can say this 10,000 times. Early on, your competitive advantage is not your idea. It’s not your funding. It's your velocity of learning. How quickly can your team go from an insight to an experiment to a learning and back again? A competitor can copy your product, but they cannot copy the speed at which your team learns. Stop perfecting the map. Start driving, and let the road teach you the way. What do you think? Do share below in the comments. I have started to share my learnings as a VC more proactively here, with a note coming out every morning 8.30am. And I would love to get inputs. Thanks, Anuradha | Dexter Ventures

I personally find it tough to invest in founders who have a plan to 'educate the market'. I back those who can show me the cultural wave they are about to ride. In India, you don’t create the wave - you learn to see it coming before anyone else, and that has made all the difference in my experience. We love to draw neat, linear S-curves for tech adoption. But India’s reality is far messier and more explosive. It’s a market that says 'no' for a decade, and then 'yes' in a single year. Adoption here isn't a gentle slope; it’s a series of vertical leaps across invisible thresholds of trust. Look at the kirana store owner. For years, founders tried to sell them complex software to manage their business. No one bought it. They trusted their paper ledger. Then, UPI arrived. It wasn't pitched as a complex software, but as a simple tool to accept payments, driven by a national push. That was the cultural unlock. The moment that QR code went up on the counter, the psychological barrier to digital was broken. Suddenly, inventory apps, digital credit, and supply chain platforms became thinkable. The adoption wasn't incremental; it was episodic. One event changed everything. The true genius of building in India is not in having the best product, but in timing its launch to coincide with one of these unlocks. Whether it’s a regulatory shift like Aadhaar, an infrastructural revolution like Jio, or a behavioural shock like the pandemic. These events create the moments when the market is suddenly ready for your idea. So, the question I obsess over isn't about the size of the market, but its readiness. What specific catalyst are you betting on? Stop trying to educate your way to success. Build the best boat you can, and be ready when the tsunami of adoption finally hits the shore. Being prepared for that moment is everything. What do you think? Do share below in the comments. I have started to share my learnings as a VC more proactively here, with a note coming out every morning 8.30am. And I would love to get inputs. Thanks, Anuradha | Dexter Ventures

I personally find it tough to invest in founders who have a plan to 'educate the market'. I back those who can show me the cultural wave they are about to ride. In India, you don’t create the wave - you learn to see it coming before anyone else, and that has made all the difference in my experience. We love to draw neat, linear S-curves for tech adoption. But India’s reality is far messier and more explosive. It’s a market that says 'no' for a decade, and then 'yes' in a single year. Adoption here isn't a gentle slope; it’s a series of vertical leaps across invisible thresholds of trust. Look at the kirana store owner. For years, founders tried to sell them complex software to manage their business. No one bought it. They trusted their paper ledger. Then, UPI arrived. It wasn't pitched as a complex software, but as a simple tool to accept payments, driven by a national push. That was the cultural unlock. The moment that QR code went up on the counter, the psychological barrier to digital was broken. Suddenly, inventory apps, digital credit, and supply chain platforms became thinkable. The adoption wasn't incremental; it was episodic. One event changed everything. The true genius of building in India is not in having the best product, but in timing its launch to coincide with one of these unlocks. Whether it’s a regulatory shift like Aadhaar, an infrastructural revolution like Jio, or a behavioural shock like the pandemic. These events create the moments when the market is suddenly ready for your idea. So, the question I obsess over isn't about the size of the market, but its readiness. What specific catalyst are you betting on? Stop trying to educate your way to success. Build the best boat you can, and be ready when the tsunami of adoption finally hits the shore. Being prepared for that moment is everything. What do you think? Do share below in the comments. I have started to share my learnings as a VC more proactively here, with a note coming out every morning 8.30am. And I would love to get inputs. Thanks, Anuradha | Dexter Ventures

An urban founder’s marketing playbook is often their biggest liability when they try to capture the imagination of rural India. They obsess over click-through rates, social media engagement, and search engine optimisation. But in the real Bharat, trust is not built on a screen. It's built on a shutter. I once saw two companies trying to sell affordable insurance in the same district in Uttar Pradesh. One was a well-funded, slick operation. They ran a flawless digital campaign with geotargeting, vernacular content on ShareChat’s Moj and more. The results were dismal. The other was a smaller, scrappier team. Their founder spent the first month doing just one thing: talking to shopkeepers. He didn’t sell them his product. He offered to paint their shop shutters for free. On the top half, he painted the shop’s name beautifully. On the bottom half, his company's simple logo. Within six months, his company was the most recognised insurance brand in the district (his claim). The 'sophisticated' competitor had already packed up and left. What did he understand? In a low-trust environment, constant, physical visibility is the protocol for building credibility. - Your logo on a shop front is a daily, silent endorsement from a trusted member of the community - Your name on the jersey of a local cricket team means you are part of the village's passion and pride - Sponsoring a water cooler at the temple means you are a participant in the community’s spiritual life This isn't about marketing impressions. This is about embedding yourself into the very fabric of daily life. It’s about becoming a landmark. Your brand needs to be the 'offline cookie' - a persistent, ambient presence that builds familiarity long before a transaction is ever considered. Digital channels like WhatsApp are incredibly powerful for sales and service delivery, but only after this physical-world trust has been established. So, before you design your next ad campaign for rural India, ask yourself a simpler question. How can I get my brand painted on a wall? Because in Bharat, you don’t exist until you are physically present. You are not a brand until you are a landmark. What do you think? Do share below in the comments. I have started to share my learnings as a VC more proactively here, with a note coming out every morning 8.30am. And I would love to get inputs. Thanks, Anuradha | Dexter Ventures

An urban founder’s marketing playbook is often their biggest liability when they try to capture the imagination of rural India. They obsess over click-through rates, social media engagement, and search engine optimisation. But in the real Bharat, trust is not built on a screen. It's built on a shutter. I once saw two companies trying to sell affordable insurance in the same district in Uttar Pradesh. One was a well-funded, slick operation. They ran a flawless digital campaign with geotargeting, vernacular content on ShareChat’s Moj and more. The results were dismal. The other was a smaller, scrappier team. Their founder spent the first month doing just one thing: talking to shopkeepers. He didn’t sell them his product. He offered to paint their shop shutters for free. On the top half, he painted the shop’s name beautifully. On the bottom half, his company's simple logo. Within six months, his company was the most recognised insurance brand in the district (his claim). The 'sophisticated' competitor had already packed up and left. What did he understand? In a low-trust environment, constant, physical visibility is the protocol for building credibility. - Your logo on a shop front is a daily, silent endorsement from a trusted member of the community - Your name on the jersey of a local cricket team means you are part of the village's passion and pride - Sponsoring a water cooler at the temple means you are a participant in the community’s spiritual life This isn't about marketing impressions. This is about embedding yourself into the very fabric of daily life. It’s about becoming a landmark. Your brand needs to be the 'offline cookie' - a persistent, ambient presence that builds familiarity long before a transaction is ever considered. Digital channels like WhatsApp are incredibly powerful for sales and service delivery, but only after this physical-world trust has been established. So, before you design your next ad campaign for rural India, ask yourself a simpler question. How can I get my brand painted on a wall? Because in Bharat, you don’t exist until you are physically present. You are not a brand until you are a landmark. What do you think? Do share below in the comments. I have started to share my learnings as a VC more proactively here, with a note coming out every morning 8.30am. And I would love to get inputs. Thanks, Anuradha | Dexter Ventures

In India, "I’ll get back to you" from an SME is rarely a stall. It’s a cue to follow up via someone they already trust. I've seen countless founders hit a wall after a fantastic product demo. The SME owner seems impressed, says "This is great, I'll get back to you," and then vanishes. The founder logs this in their CRM as "Follow-up in one week," assuming it's a polite stall. That's a catastrophic misreading of the signal. "I'll get back to you" is rarely a rejection. It is a quest. It means: "You are a stranger. Your product looks good on a screen, but my business runs on relationships. Now, go and find someone I already trust and get them to tell me your product is good." That trusted person is their 'social proxy'. It could be their CA, a larger distributor they admire, or the president of their local trade association. This person is their risk insurance. They are the unofficial chief technology officer, the validator, the one who won't disappear after the sale is done. Your fancy CRM tracks emails and calls. It measures the sales cycle in days. But does it have a field for "Who is the prospect's real gatekeeper of trust?" Selling to an Indian SME isn't B2B. It's B2P - Business to Person. The owner is putting their own hard-earned capital and reputation on the line. The logic of your solution is secondary to their belief in your commitment. So, when you hear "I'll get back to you," your next step isn't to send a follow-up email. It's to ask, "Who else in your circle do you think would find this valuable? Perhaps your auditor or a business partner?" The moment you start selling through their network instead of just to them, you stop being a vendor. You start becoming a partner. What do you think? Do share below in the comments. I have started to share my learnings as a VC more proactively here, with a note coming out every morning 8.30am. And I would love to get inputs. Thanks, Anuradha | Dexter Ventures

I have learned that in India, you don't build a new river - YOU BUILD A BETTER CANAL. The most powerful force here is not a novel technology, but an existing human behaviour. The most disruptive startups I've seen are not inventing new habits, but simply digitising trusted, age-old ones. Many founders try to copy-paste Western models that require users to adopt entirely new behaviours. They spend crores trying to convince people to trust a new, algorithm-driven system. This is an exhausting, uphill battle against culture itself, and from my experience, culture almost always wins. The real genius lies in observation. Think of the informal 'committee' or 'BC' systems that have enabled lending in communities for generations. Or how hiring for small businesses almost always happens through word-of-mouth referrals. These systems work because they are built on a foundation of pre-existing social trust. A startup that tries to replace this with a cold, impersonal app will likely fail. And many have failed. But one that wraps technology around this existing behaviour? That's where the magic happens. Imagine an app that helps a group of women manage their lending circle more efficiently, or one that helps a factory foreman track and reward employee referrals. They aren't changing the behaviour - they are amplifying it. When you formalise a trusted process, you inherit the trust for free. Your user isn't trusting your code - they are trusting a system they've known their whole life, which your product now makes simpler and more transparent. This is the ultimate growth hack in India. So, it’s almost always futile to look for things to disrupt. Look for what is already working organically, and ask how technology can pour fuel on that fire. The biggest opportunities are hidden in plain sight. See them, formalise them, and you will build something that lasts. What do you think? Do share below in the comments. I have started to share my learnings as a VC more proactively here, with a note coming out every morning 8.30am. And I would love to get inputs. Thanks, Anuradha | Dexter Ventures

Before I became a VC, I was a founder, building Multibhashi. And that experience taught me, that in an ecosystem that worships speed, the most crucial founder trait for building an enduring company in India is patience. We celebrate velocity, but it is endurance that builds engines that don’t stop. Winning here is not a sprint; it is an Ironman triathlon. You see, we are constantly told to move fast, to grow at all costs, to achieve viral scale overnight. But the Indian market operates on its own clock speed. It is a country where trust is earned in drops, not floods. Where payments are perpetually delayed, and where a sudden regulatory shift can dismantle your best-laid plans in an instant. I've seen more startups die from founder burnout and impatience than from a lack of ideas. I remember a B2B founder who spent two years navigating bureaucratic hurdles to land his first major client. His peers in flashier sectors were raising huge rounds while he was showing almost zero revenue. Many investors passed. But he persisted. But, that single, hard-won contract became the foundation of an unshakeable business. And mind it - This isn't a passive, sit-and-wait kind of patience. It is an active, stubborn resilience. It's the grit to make the tenth follow-up call for a pending invoice. It’s the humility to simplify your product yet again because the market isn't ready. It's the fortitude to keep building, iterating, and believing when all external signals are telling you to quit. This has fundamentally shaped what I look for. Ambition is common. But what is the founder's frustration tolerance? Are they building a business that can withstand a long winter, not just a business that looks good in a pitch deck? Velocity might get you your first headline, but endurance is what will get you to the finish line. The winners will not be the fastest out of the gate, but the ones who simply refuse to give up. What do you think? Do share below in the comments. I have started to share my learnings as a VC more proactively here, with a note coming out every morning 8.30am. And I would love to get inputs. Thanks, Anuradha | Dexter Ventures

: The greatest source of alpha in the Indian VC today isn't a new technology. It is simply conviction. The courage to write a cheque when everyone else is still waiting for permission to believe. I've seen the fundraising landscape up close for years, first as a founder, and now as a VC. There is no real shortage of capital here. What we have is a shortage of capital that is willing to be first. So much of it is 'fast-follower' money, waiting for a signal from a marquee co-investor or a headline about a hot-new sector before it dares to enter. This creates a dangerous dynamic. A founder with a truly unique idea in an unglamorous space, say, improving cold storage for fisheries, struggles to get a first meeting. Meanwhile, a dozen 'me-too' AI startups in a trending category get funded, not because they are all brilliant, but because they fit a recognisable pattern. Capital is flowing to what feels safe and familiar, not necessarily to what is innovative. This behaviour of chasing social proof makes our ecosystem fragile. It creates valuation bubbles in certain sectors while starving others of oxygen. It rewards founders who are good at networking over those who are good at building sustainable businesses. This is why my advice to founders I connect with has become simple: seek conviction, not just capital. Find an investor who understands your vision when it's just a whisper, not one who only joins when it's a roar. Real alpha is generated in the silence before the crowd arrives. Pattern recognition is a game of safety. Contrarian intuition is the only path to truly outsized returns. What do you think? Do share below in the comments. I have started to share my learnings as a VC more proactively here, with a note coming out every morning 8.30am. And I would love to get inputs. Thanks, Anuradha | Dexter Ventures

We've successfully digitised transactions in India - the next trillion-dollar opportunity lies in digitising trust and decisions. The first wave of our digital revolution was about building the pipes. We made it possible for anyone to pay a bill, book a ticket, or buy a product with a single click. But in solving the problem of access, we've created a new, more complex one: the paradox of choice. This information overload is the single biggest friction point for the Indian consumer today. Think about it. A factory worker of a food delivery guy now has ten apps offering him credit, each with fine print he can't decipher. A family looking for a mid-range smartphone for their child is bombarded with hundreds of models and thousands of conflicting reviews. The problem is no longer "can I buy this online?". The problem now is "which one should I buy, and why?". Most startups I see are still building better pipes - faster checkouts, slicker interfaces for transactions. That race is already won, and the infrastructure is now a commodity. The real whitespace, the massive, untapped market, is in building compasses, not just roads. We need startups that help people navigate this jungle of choice. I'm not looking for another app that offers 100 mutual funds. I'm looking for the app that understands a user's life goals and helps them confidently pick the right two funds. This isn't just about curation. It's about building decision-support systems rooted in empathy and context. The moat is no longer in the transaction. The moat is in becoming the trusted starting point for a decision. The companies that solve this problem of choice paralysis won't just get a user's business. They will earn their unwavering trust, which is a far more valuable asset in a market like India. What do you think? Do share below in the comments. I have started to share my learnings as a VC more proactively here, with a note coming out every morning 8.30am. And I would love to get inputs. Thanks, Anuradha | Dexter Ventures

Was talking to a founder (not from our portfolio), who shared how most founders blame the wrong culprit for payment drop-offs. I felt, my learnings were significant. Thus, sharing a summary below. —— For years, we've obsessed over optimising the payment funnel. One-click checkouts, saved cards, smoother UX. Yet, we ignore the most critical variable: the real world. Think about it. We see a 25% drop-off at the OTP page and immediately blame the bank's server or the payment gateway's integration. We never ask: when did we ask the user for their money? Was it at 7 PM, when they're packed into a metro with patchy network, making an OTP delivery a prayer in itself? Was it on the 1st of the month, when lakhs of salary credits are hitting the banking system, slowing everything to a crawl? The industry knows that payment failure rates can touch a staggering 30% on some days. We're losing billions in potential revenue. But we're misdiagnosing the disease. This isn't just a technical glitch. It's a failure of empathy. It's a systemic blind spot for startups that build products without understanding the rhythmic pulse of Indian life. The opportunity here is immense. It's not about building another payment aggregator. It's about building intelligence. Imagine a checkout system smart enough to say, "Network seems busy. We've saved your order. Shall we remind you to pay in an hour?". That's not just reducing a drop-off. That's building trust. That's showing your user you understand their world beyond their screen. What do you think? Do share below in the comments. I have started to share my learnings as a VC more proactively here, with a note coming out every morning 8.30am. And I would love to get inputs. Thanks, Anuradha | Dexter Ventures