When more than half of India's recognized startups have at least one woman director, it is no longer a diversity story. It is the mainstream story of Indian entrepreneurship. We trace how this transformation happened — and what it means for the economy, the culture, and the next generation of Indian founders.
: Byju Raveendran could not speak fluently as a child. He stammered, was laughed at in class, and was told he would never be a good teacher. He taught himself techniques to overcome his stutter, discovered a love for mathematics, and started teaching friends in a small room in Chennai. That side hustle became Byju's – India's most valuable edtech startup, once valued at $22 billion, with over 150 million users. Then the pandemic boom turned into a post-pandemic bust. Byju's faced a liquidity crisis, layoffs, and a dramatic fall from grace. This article traces Byju's journey from a passionate teacher to a billionaire founder, and then through the challenges of hyper-growth, aggressive acquisitions, and debt. It's a story of ambition, vision, and the brutal reality of startup economics.
In 2007, Sanjiv Bajaj was given a challenge by his father, Rahul Bajaj: take a small, struggling division of Bajaj Auto and turn it into a financial services powerhouse. Sanjiv had no banking background. He was an engineer from India and a management graduate from the US. But he understood the middle-class Indian — someone who needed loans for a scooter, insurance for the family, and a credit card without hidden fees. He built Bajaj Finserv into a $50 billion conglomerate, with subsidiaries like Bajaj Finance (one of India’s most profitable lenders) and Bajaj Allianz. This article traces Sanjiv’s journey from a reluctant heir to a fintech pioneer. We analyze his “customer obsession” model, his bet on small-ticket loans, and his ability to out-innovate both traditional banks and new-age startups.
Excerpt: In 1999, Ashish Hemrajani was a young entrepreneur trying to sell movie tickets online. India had barely 1 million internet users, and most people had never used a credit card. He was called crazy, foolish, and ahead of his time. But he persisted. Today, BookMyShow is India’s largest online ticketing platform, selling over 500 million tickets annually for movies, sports, live events, and concerts. This article traces Ashish’s two-decade journey from a small Mumbai office to a company valued at over $2 billion. We analyze how he survived the dot-com crash, the shift to mobile, and the pandemic near-death experience. His story is about patience, adaptation, and believing in a future that nobody else could see.
: In 2008, Shradha Sharma was a journalist at CNBC TV18, tired of covering the same big corporate news. She wanted to tell the stories of small entrepreneurs — the people building India’s future but ignored by mainstream media. So she started a simple blog called YourStory. Today, YourStory reaches over 30 million readers a month, has published 100,000+ startup stories, and has become the voice of Indian entrepreneurship. This article traces Shradha’s journey from a single-woman media startup to a profitable digital platform that has covered unicorns like Flipkart, Ola, and Zomato before they were famous. We analyze her unique “storytelling first” model, her refusal to chase clickbait, and her impact on India’s startup ecosystem.
For the first time in India's startup history, women-led ventures are attracting capital not as a social good investment but as a hard commercial bet. Behind this shift is accumulating evidence that the market has been systematically mispricing the best female-led opportunities — and sophisticated investors are now correcting that mispricing.
In 1997, Vijay Shekhar Sharma borrowed ₹10 from a friend to buy a train ticket to Delhi. He had no money, no connections, and no degree (he had dropped out of engineering). He started a content company, then pivoted to mobile payments, and built Paytm, India’s largest digital payments platform, with over 350 million users. This article traces his roller-coaster journey: the IPO disaster (stock crashed 80%), the banking license, the battle with Google over app billing, and his relentless focus on financial inclusion. Vijay’s story is a reminder that entrepreneurship is about surviving humiliation and coming back stronger.
After a record-breaking 2025 for startup listings, 24 Indian startups have filed DRHPs with SEBI while 26 more finalize plans for 2026. But the class of 2026 is different from what came before — shaped by markets that have learned hard lessons about the difference between growth stories and business fundamentals.
In 2011, Sahil Barua was a management consultant at Bain & Company in Delhi. He noticed that moving goods within a city was a nightmare — no reliable, tech-enabled service. Couriers were slow, expensive, and untrackable. So he quit his job, bought a scooter, and started Delhivery as a courier service between two Delhi neighborhoods. Today, Delhivery is India’s largest integrated logistics provider, serving 18,000+ pin codes, valued at over $3 billion post-IPO. This article traces how Sahil built a network of 60+ fulfillment centers, 11,000+ partner vehicles, and an AI-powered routing engine. We also analyze how Delhivery survived the pandemic, the competition from Amazon and Flipkart’s in-house logistics, and its path to profitability.
In 2007, Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal returned from the US with dreams of building an e-commerce business. Their first venture, a social network for buying and selling, failed. Then they noticed that people loved discounts. So they built Snapdeal — India’s third-largest e-commerce platform at its peak, valued at $6.5 billion. But the Amazon-Flipkart war crushed them. Instead of giving up, Kunal and Rohit pivoted the company into a fintech and SaaS platform called Titan Capital. They used their experience to become some of India’s most successful angel investors, backing over 200 startups including Unacademy, Ola, Razorpay, and Mamaearth. This article traces the rise, fall, and reinvention of these Delhi-based entrepreneurs. We analyze what went wrong at Snapdeal (over-hiring, over-spending, losing focus) and how Kunal and Rohit turned their losses into one of the most influential angel networks in the country.