[NEW] spent the last few weeks reading earnings presentations and transcripts of 23 of India's most important financial services companies. The result: 160 slides, 100 insights from 23 financial firms, compiled into a simple report. Here's a quick snapshot of what I found:

Let’s Goa!

Interesting use case. Wonder if the merchant gets to know the users price intent to enabling them to actually drop prices and increase conversion.

Quick reflections after 100 live streams of @OfflineOnAir: Live streaming is still a niche format, but it pushes guests to think on their feet and speak their mind. Spontaneity and candour produce honest insights. We observed that headlines and television interviews covered major milestones, and most podcasts focused on retrospective reflections. What was missing was a product/format that captured the regular milestones, setbacks, and decisions that make up 98% of any startup’s journey. Our hunch was that drawing insights from the long, often lonely stretches between major milestones would be far more useful to active builders. We didn’t plan this, but TON is becoming a neutral archive of first-person narratives from the ecosystem. As the current generation of companies matures, it may prove to be a valuable record of how they were built. We don’t ask gotcha questions at TON. Accountability matters, but boards, investors, shareholders, and the media are better suited to provide it. We see our role as surfacing what a company does well so builders can learn from one another and skip avoidable mistakes. I see TON's mission as complementary to our mission at @AngelListIndia, which, at a high-level, is to increase the odds of startup success. Founders are the true stars of TON, as they should be. TBPN is a worthy inspiration. But TBPN is never going to cover the Indian ecosystem. So we took from TBPN what TBPN took from ESPN, and built an independent identity for TON. Our post-stream clips do a great job of amplifying the most useful insights from each conversation. But tuning in live has its own advantage: you can ask a question mid-stream and go from being a passive listener to an active participant. Excited for stream #101 next week. Have fun building!

my trading agent being humbled by the markets. it bought NTPC at open, saw it was trending down, sold at loss, and now reeling from the slight uptick.

all vc stories coming out are shocking but known by everyone. same names, same firms. unfortunately, no consequence, because no incentive to change founders have to pitch/raise from lesser evils. power dynamics continue. bar is low. the best indian vc is yet to be built!

similar to electric companies in the 1900s, building the toaster and washing machine to induce demand, LLM labs are building/will build token-heavy use cases to induce demand.

Rajesh Exports still have a market cap of more than Rs 3000 crores AND.... AND.... LIC owns 10.80% of the company!!! The only DII to own it. 🤦🤦🤦

At this point, I want to give ₹10K in @OpenRouter tokens to every founder that pitches without a demo.

it's an absolute delight to work with people are quick to reply/decide.

New post: returns dispersion gets more pronounced as you go from managing public stocks to private. that dispersion means picking the right fund manager is everything. this post makes a case in that direction. osborne.vc/blog/picking-gps

thank you for reading my ted talk on how early stage founders can find what sticks with customers and succeed - experiment, learn, and iterate.

India could have the highest efficiency gains due to AI with timely investments in tech by India Inc

Disagree with this. I think people should vibe code more apps and experiment a lot. Not all need to be useful, but the more you experiment, the faster you’ll learn a new trick or be smarter about a process. And then that one app you build with all the learning’s will be 🚀

will anthropic acquire vercel?

the best way to increase the response rate of your cold email is to add proof of work. looking for work: write what can you do/what you've done? looking for investment: show a demo/prototype looking advice: write what you've already tried/thought about basically, do good work

The Age of AI demands planetary-scale Carbon Dioxide removal. @AltCarbonIndia is using volcanic rock dust to geochemically pull carbon out of the atmosphere — and we just proved it works at scale. The world's largest issuance of carbon credits through Enhanced Rock Weathering. ~10,000 tonnes of CO₂ removed. Enough to offset a small AI data centre. India has a history of scientific breakthroughs that stun the world — across medicine, space exploration, energy, & financial inclusion.🇮🇳 Climate Change is the most significant existential threat to our species. It demands Himalayan Ambitions. We're moving mountains to make that happen. Literally.

Used Claude Opus 4.7 via API for a writing agent and it burned through $10 in tokens in <5mins. Don’t think I have the stomach to use Opus vi API again.