When Sunita began selling her homemade spice blends from her home in Ujjain, it was not a leap of entrepreneurial ambition but an act of necessity. With her husband’s income uncertain, her enterprise became the household’s spine. She negotiates orders on WhatsApp, accepts UPI payments from customers, and keeps a careful mental account of costs… Continue reading Mind the gap: Financial products that women in India need but don’t have!
Indian health-tech startups, striving to build AI-based products, are often stumped by their limited access to relevant medical data. Most commercial and open-source datasets originate from Western archives based on medical studies conducted on the Caucasian male, who, for the longest time, represented the whole of humanity. Furthermore, unverified third-party datasets are riddled with obsolescence,… Continue reading 5C Network: A Socio-Technical Approach to Building Data Moats
I am at a rural homestead with my colleague in a quiet village in the Kamrup district of Assam. The house is well-built and roomy, with a sloping roof – a deliberate design requirement in this part of the world on account of frequent rain. A couple of goats are tethered to a pole, creepers… Continue reading Women of Bharat: Vibha Kalita, Assam
Apollo 11 made history. And, it took us 57 years to recreate that. The Orion Spacecraft (Artemis II mission) flew four humans around the moon. They travelled a distance of 252,756 miles, which is roughly 10 times around the Earth or the entire length of India 126 times over. The distance is demanding. The engineering that… Continue reading Journey to the Moon: How 11 deaf men made space travel possible
The RBI recently released a whitepaper for public consultation on tackling digital payment fraud. The paper presents pre and post-transaction strategies for P2P fraud prevention that safeguard against Authorised Push Payment (APP) frauds i.e. frauds where the victim consensually transfers money to the fraudster. In this blog, we focus on one particular strategy: lagged credit… Continue reading Lagged Credit and the Fight Against APP Fraud
India has almost 958 million internet users; more Jan Dhan account holders than the population of the USA, and a UPI stack that processes more than 20 billion transactions every month (that’s roughly 7500 per second). But the benefits of this infrastructure favour those who have the most leverage. Keeping a gender lens on internet… Continue reading The other internet: Infrastructure waiting to be adopted
Women’s economic empowerment is tied to their agency—their ability to make financial decisions and control resources. This extends to their active participation in the economy through self-employment and entrepreneurship. According to the 2025 Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises (ASUSE), nationwide, women entrepreneurs run 21.38 million proprietary establishments. However, their capacity to scale their enterprises… Continue reading What women need from fintechs is not another feature (but a community of peers)
The Government of India spends over INR 3 trillion on subsidies: food, fertilisers, healthcare and cash transfer. However, a significant chunk is lost before it reaches the person it was meant for, sometimes due to inefficiency and sometimes to middlemen. And even when the money does reach the beneficiary, they are more often than not… Continue reading Two Innovations, One Aspiration: e-Rupee and eRUPI
No country has been asked to do what India is being asked to do. Home to over 1.45 billion people, it is the world’s sixth largest economy by GDP and the world’s third largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter. It is also the 9th most affected country by the adverse consequences of climate change. The climate… Continue reading India’s Climate Tightrope: What the Approved NDCs Mean for Startup Builders
Organisational culture is widely recognised as central to a startup’s success and failure, yet most of the understanding on culture formation and evolution is rooted in the context of large, established organisations. How do cultures form and evolve in early-stage startups, when they are small, fast-changing, and founder-dependent, is still largely unknown. This paper addresses… Continue reading How Startup Cultures Form: Founder Imprint, Early Choices, and a Toolkit for Shaping Culture
We’re in Space 2.0. Version 1.0 was sponsored & supported by the Government. Version 2.0 has been supported by the venture capital & private investments, assisted by the Government. This iteration is focussed on commercialisation & on revenues – as any other business category. Private capital is investing heavily, 78% of global turnover already… Continue reading Indian Spacetech Playbook: What startups should build
Suta, a handcrafted saree brand co-founded by sisters Sujata Biswas and Taniya Biswas in 2016, quickly became a recognised name in India’s slow-fashion movement. Known for its flagship “Made in Heaven Mul” sarees and founder-led storytelling, Suta built a digitally native, community-driven brand with more than 600,000 social media followers and a loyal urban customer… Continue reading Suta: Genesis and Growth of a Slow-Fashion Saree Brand in India