Lalit Kundu

Sreedhar Peddineni (Co-Founder, Gainsight & GTM Buddy) and Kiran Darisi (Co-Founder, Atomicwork & Ex Freshworks) joins me on Neon show. Two founders from Hyderabad who build global SaaS companies, taking one to IPO, another to a billion-dollar exit, and then choosing to begin again (and again). In this episode, we discuss: 1. Sreedhar’s journey: Host Analytics → Gainsight → GTM Buddy 2. Kiran’s path: Zoho → Freshworks → Atomicwork 3. How to find the “Goldilocks zone” for startups 4. Building companies that last for decades 5. Common mistakes founders make scaling SMB → Enterprise 6. How Atomicwork co-founders connected & chose their problem 7. Why smaller, high-quality teams are winning 8. Is AI expanding the pie while eating it? 9. How businesses can leverage custom GPTs 10. If big AI goes everywhere, what’s left for B2B SaaS? This conversation is about the two decades of building India’s most iconic SaaS companies and what the future holds for SaaS founders from India. Episode is out on youtube.com/@TheNeonShoww

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After a fabulous two years at Kae Capital, I knew it was time to build the fund I wished had existed when I was a founder. Today, I’m launching Boundless Ventures, an early-stage, AI-native venture firm backing India-rooted founders who are building globally defensible companies at the intersection of science, systems, and culture. Boundless starts with a simple belief: the next decade’s breakout companies won’t “add AI” as a feature. They’ll be AI-native from day one, rethinking consumer products, enterprise workflows, and infrastructure with new primitives. We’ll write the first cheque ($200–400K), and then double down. We’ve proud to have already partnered with six category-shaping founding teams: • Superhealth: rethinking healthcare from the ground up • Armatrix: autonomous snake-arm robots for engine inspection • PierSight: real-time ocean intelligence • KNOT: AI-native fashion discovery and logistics • Two stealth companies in infra and consumer AI Our thesis spans four arenas: • The AI-native stack: infra, agents, and memory protocols • Make-in-India hardware: autonomous systems, design-led manufacturing • New-India consumer: culture × code • Science × story: where deep tech meets narrative leverage India is not catching up. It’s compounding. Boundless exists to back originals, with speed, belief and storytelling firepower. Link to our website & thesis below.

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Rishabh Mariwala and the Sharrp team hosted a kickass workshop for founders yesterday, and I was invited to share thoughts on how QComm is evolving and what it really takes to scale in this space. The room was buzzing: founders from startups across stages and cities, asking sharp questions, challenging assumptions, and getting into the nuts and bolts of growth. One thing that’s become clear — everyone wants to crack QComm, but there is a lot to demystify. A few questions that stood out (and sparked some solid conversations): 💬 In the era of distributed supply chains powering the 10-min experience, how should brands think about demand fulfilment? 💬 What are the right stocking levels to strike the balance between sales and working capital? 💬 For the brands just starting out, what's better? Does it make sense playing deep rather than wide in terms of SKUs? While we had very in-depth discussions on how to address these pain-points, it got me thinking - why keep all the good stuff locked in a room? Over the coming weeks, let's talk more about how brands can solve these problems to crack the growth-code on Qcomm. Feel free to drop any questions you think are worth discussing. Anand Shankar Sharrp Ventures | Harsh Mariwala Investment Office #GobbleCube #QComm

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Chakki Fresh to ₹120 Cr: How Mitra Turned Stone-Grinding Pain into Growth Gain. Founded in 2023 by Abhishek kaushik, Mitra began with a simple yet bold belief: traditional Chakki (stone‑grinding) freshness matters—not just branding, but nutrition, flavor, and trust. Targeting tier II & III markets where premium quality often felt out of reach, Mitra faced early challenges—convincing small‑town consumers that fresh, high‑goodness flour at mid‑range pricing was worth it. Winning people’s trust in the beginning was the hardest part. By fixing supply issues, earning people’s trust, and getting 9 out of 10 customers to buy again, Mitra turned hesitant buyers into loyal fans. Revenue growth exploded—from ₹11 crore in FY 2024 to ₹40 crore in FY 2025, and projected to cross ₹120 crore this year. Mitra just raised ₹14 crore in a bridge round. These funds will fuel a 3,000‑ton refined flour plant set to go live in October, plus expansion into millet‑based, gluten‑free, diabetic‑friendly flours, sugar‑free options, organic spices—and venture into GCC markets. From convincing small-town shoppers that stone-ground flour truly tastes better, to delivering repeat-purchase rates north of 90%, each milestone has been earned. India’s Flour (Wheat) Market: In 2024, the Indian wheat flour market was valued at approximately USD 8.5 billion, and is expected to grow to USD 11.9 billion by 2033 The #D2C market in India was valued at USD 42.6 billion in FY2024 and is expected to grow to USD 185.2 billion by FY2032, clocking a CAGR of 20.17%

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On this Independence Day, we are proud to announce the launch of Vizuara's first-ever AI product Our product team (Pritam Kudale and Pranavodhayam P R) has been working on this for months, and today we're launching DynaRoute - an intelligent router that automatically selects the best language model based on your query complexity and category. Here is the problem we solved: Most applications use one expensive model (like GPT-4) for everything. Simple questions like "What is the capital of France?" get the same treatment as complex reasoning tasks. It's like using a hammer for every job, even when you just need a screwdriver. DynaRoute analyzes each query and routes it to the optimal model. Simple questions go to efficient models like Gemini Flash. Complex reasoning tasks get routed to more powerful models. The result? 50-70% cost savings while maintaining performance. We tested this extensively. On our GPQA benchmark, we achieve a 9.7:1 performance-to-price ratio compared to 6.9:1 for single model solutions. For typical enterprise queries, we're seeing 93% cost savings over 300k tokens. What makes this different from AWS or Azure routers is the full spectrum access. We support open source and closed source models across GCP, AWS, and Azure. Their routers lock you into their ecosystem - Microsoft only gives you GPT models, Amazon only Claude/Llama. The integration is seamless. Drop-in replacement for OpenAI API, works with CrewAI agents, includes an MCP server for Claude, and comes with a comprehensive dashboard showing real-time savings. This is Vizuara's first AI product for enterprises, and Raj Abhijit Dandekar, Rajat Dandekar, and I are incredibly proud of what the team built. We have transitioned from education to solving real industry problems. Try it at https://lnkd.in/dGSx2KRq - free tier includes 50k tokens to test the $$ savings yourself. We just posted our product launch video on Vizuara's YouTube channel, where we give you a very detailed product walkthrough. We also explain how you can use this as an individual customer or as an enterprise to save $$$: https://lnkd.in/dtEHtHMn We will soon be publishing a paper on the concept of dynamic intelligent routing. Stay tuned. Happy Independence Day to my fellow countrymen! 🇮🇳

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"Founders have to get on a plane and provide air cover to their team." That's Sharath's mantra for building enterprise business, and it has shaped how we run ours. Sharath didn’t just write a check for us, he sponsored us. He put personal credibility on the line, introduced us to our first enterprise prospect, and stayed involved until the contract was signed. Here’s what I learned from him: - Enterprise trust is earned face-to-face, not screen-to-screen. - Customer obsession beats any feature list. In our early days we tried to run everything remotely, demos, deployments, renewals. It worked, but what really bent our growth curve was 'getting into the planes.' Once we started boarding planes, founders, FDEs, support leads, our velocity changed. We whiteboard in customer war rooms, walk their call floors, and co-create solutions. That is the kind of air cover Sharath modelled, and the culture we carry forward. Everyone has a product slide. But in real-world deployments, what matters isn't what's on the slide, it's whether you're in the room to make it real.

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Once upon a time, in 2020, Prashant Sachan walked away from his first startup, Trell. Burnt out from conflicts, and the brutal grind of building at scale, he carried the sting of failure with him. For months, he questioned whether he even belonged in the startup world anymore. And then a new question found him: “What if technology could serve not just commerce, but devotion?” That’s how AppsForBharat was born. Its first product, Sri Mandir App, looked nothing like a shiny consumer app. It was simple with digital aartis, scriptures, mantras. Some mocked it, calling it “ancient, like a flash card from the early 2000s.” But Prashant wasn’t building for product-hunt applause. He was building for his audience, devotees who wanted accessibility, authenticity, and trust. Armed with that conviction, he pressed on despite the naysayers and hardships that plague anyone creating a revolution: - Skepticism: Investors dismissed faith as “not scalable.” - Authenticity vs. usability: How do you digitize centuries-old rituals without diluting them? - Retention: How do you make an app feel like a temple you return to daily, not one you delete after a week? He and his team Pulkit Pujara, Alpesh Bupkya, Ameya Sahasrabudhe, Viraj Verma, Tanvi Lal, and others kept listening, testing, and rebuilding. Slowly, the tide turned. A grandmother in New Jersey cried during a live streamed aarti. A priest wrote to say the platform gave his temple new life. The product that was once mocked for looking outdated was exactly what the audience wanted. By 2025, Sri Mandir had crossed 4 crore downloads, facilitated 52 lakh rituals across 70+ temples, and attracted a diaspora user base that contributed nearly 20% of revenues. The investors followed, Elevation Capital, Peak XV Partners, The Fundamentum Partnership, Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital, Kunal Shah, Sanjeev Barnwal, Scott Shleifer, Ankush Sachdeva, Farid Ahsan and many more angels. In total, over $50M raised to build temple-tech infrastructure across Ayodhya, Varanasi, Ujjain and more. Alongside it, startups like Sutradhar, Utsav App, DevDham Devotional Platform, VAMA App and many more platforms began to emerge, experimenting with puja bookings, prasad delivery, and spiritual content. Even traditional platform players like BookMyShow and Paytm dabbled in religious services during festivals. Together, they’re shaping a new category: Devotion-as-a-Service (DaaS), where rituals, temple visits, and spirituality meet tech at scale. Analysts believe this could become a multi-billion-dollar category, spanning diaspora markets, temple partnerships, and even AI-driven spiritual companions. Moral of the story: Great founders build only for customer applause, they build for conviction. AppsForBharat proved that even when a product is dismissed as “ancient,” if you know your audience and build with empathy, you can turn ridicule into reverence and in the process, create not just a company, but an industry.

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