Building Brand @altcarbonindia Abundance coded. True blood hedonist. Cenosillicaphobic. Logophile. Curious. Scuba diver, paraglider, adrenaline junkie
Bangalore
Joined April 2010
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You'll be amazed at how hard it is to explain something complex to its simplest, most interesting digestible form.
Storytelling is an art. And that art is sharpened only when you read fiction.
Funny to see Indian VCs scrambling to voice their deeptech bets after @ashleevance laid out ground truths.
If you peel the layers of some orgs mentioned, it's laughable what is considered "deeptech"
Sidenote: how many Indian VCs have invested more than $10mil in deeptech? 🤭🤷
Adithya Venkatesan retweeted
@AltCarbonIndia - has the best fucking indian website out there. period.
holy shit, what is level of storytelling!
Adithya Venkatesan retweeted
I used to love playing werewolf and mafia as a kid and now we've built a whole event around that exact genre of lying to your friends and questioning everyone’s intentions.
Come join!
In the 1970s, scientists from an institution wanted to study tigers in India. They were turned away amid war and suspicion of CIA links. They took their research to Nepal instead, and their work there ended up proving India’s tiger count wrong.
This institution was founded in 1846 with money bequeathed by a British chemist who never once set foot in the country that now hosts it. Its collections include the Hope Diamond, Dorothy’s ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz, and Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis.
Name the institution. (answer in the next tweet)
Alter Issue #7 event is a riot for all. It decodes India's rich history in saving the big cat. But...
But...
We custom-built a game for the event. 50 people in one room with ninety minutes to untangle an escape-room puzzle that will stretch your mind, test your friendships, and demand you win over a room of rivals and allies.
The objective is simple: FIND THE TIGER.
📅 31st October
🕒 3:00 pm
📍 Sthala (MG Road)
💺 50 seats
REGISTER ASAP:
luma.com/ghyfu6jt
Piranesi is such a wholesome book, it's my favourite piece of fiction this year.
Please please read it!
Adithya Venkatesan retweeted
Participated in internal game, and i was blown away by the details and work behind it.
Felt like a whodunnit novel being played out in front of us.
Can’t exaggerate how fun it will be, join us next saturday!
In the 1970s, scientists from an institution wanted to study tigers in India. They were turned away amid war and suspicion of CIA links. They took their research to Nepal instead, and their work there ended up proving India’s tiger count wrong.
This institution was founded in 1846 with money bequeathed by a British chemist who never once set foot in the country that now hosts it. Its collections include the Hope Diamond, Dorothy’s ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz, and Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis.
Name the institution. (answer in the next tweet)
Alter Issue #7 event is a riot for all. It decodes India's rich history in saving the big cat. But...
But...
We custom-built a game for the event. 50 people in one room with ninety minutes to untangle an escape-room puzzle that will stretch your mind, test your friendships, and demand you win over a room of rivals and allies.
The objective is simple: FIND THE TIGER.
📅 31st October
🕒 3:00 pm
📍 Sthala (MG Road)
💺 50 seats
REGISTER ASAP:
luma.com/ghyfu6jt
Adithya Venkatesan retweeted
How do you like them apples?
Fascinating how the chips have fallen in the Swiggy-Zomato casino table.
The backstory behind these numbers is equally fascinating.
In the halcyon days, there was only one arbiter in the India startup ecosystem - Softbank.
Both Swiggy and Zomato campaigned vigorously to earn a mandate from Softbank - the tacit implication was that the startup blessed by Softbank would rule the market by the sheer gravitational force of capital concentration.
Softbank chose Swiggy... and backed it with hundreds of millions.
Zomato only had a few million in its bank...and no other VC would touch it because what is the point of trying to battle the king/king-maker?
This apathy from private investors was the primary reason why Zomato went public!
And the rest was history...
I suspect that no one, not even Zomato, would have imagined this would be the denouement - a market cap 5X of Swiggy's.
Folks, we custom-built an escape-room like game! Dogfooded it internally, and was a riot.
90-minutes.
An Alter event unlike any other. (would expect nothing less)
A cracking article that takes you on a rich and complex journey on how India saved the tiger.
Only 50 spots!
In the 1970s, scientists from an institution wanted to study tigers in India. They were turned away amid war and suspicion of CIA links. They took their research to Nepal instead, and their work there ended up proving India’s tiger count wrong.
This institution was founded in 1846 with money bequeathed by a British chemist who never once set foot in the country that now hosts it. Its collections include the Hope Diamond, Dorothy’s ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz, and Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis.
Name the institution. (answer in the next tweet)
Alter Issue #7 event is a riot for all. It decodes India's rich history in saving the big cat. But...
But...
We custom-built a game for the event. 50 people in one room with ninety minutes to untangle an escape-room puzzle that will stretch your mind, test your friendships, and demand you win over a room of rivals and allies.
The objective is simple: FIND THE TIGER.
📅 31st October
🕒 3:00 pm
📍 Sthala (MG Road)
💺 50 seats
REGISTER ASAP:
luma.com/ghyfu6jt
Who are some of the smart deeptech operators in Bangalore? Trying to expand my network here, would love to get connected with folks in the trenches.
Adithya Venkatesan retweeted
Does the world need another VC podcast?
It’s the question I kept coming back to when I started building one at Lightspeed.
We set ourselves a high bar: only do it if it surfaces something Indian founders can’t get anywhere else.
That led us to the part of venture almost nobody sees, which is the Investment Memo. It’s not the story told years later, once the outcome is known. It’s what we believed before anyone knew how large a company could become.
That’s what makes this show different. In The Investment Memo, we read that memo to the founders it was written about, section by section, and let them respond.
In Episode 1, @kumarharsha2212 and @PriyalMotw89880 read our memo to Manavdeep Singh Grover and Gurjot Kaur of @SuperLivingApp.
What follows is a frank conversation about how a young consumer AI company holds its own against the largest AI platforms in the world.
So, did the world need another VC podcast? Probably not.
But it needs this one!
Thank you to Harsha, Priyal, Manavdeep, Gurjot and everyone who made this happen.
youtube.com/watch?v=B1LDJF7U…
Exhibit A Founder advice: Never get enamoured with the marketing of the work than with the work itself.
Adithya Venkatesan retweeted
Zero Indian VCs mentioned in this article btw
Somehow, @srajagopalan and @lachygroom have managed to fund a hard-tech revolution in India.
There's something rather massive going on, and everyone else has missed it.
Our story - corememory.com/p/a-new-india…
Adithya Venkatesan retweeted
When did you last use Ola Cabs?
1%Today
3%Last week
4%Last month
91%I don’t remember
3,110 votes • Final resultsI don't know if fellow builders feel this, but there's mad joy in taking an obscure idea, executing it & building perception around it.
What a high it is to see the fruits of collective labour that build a focused-narrative you shape.
Ed Bernay-esque high :P
Ordered chicken from KFC after a looong time, and immediately regretted it. Blood and undercooked 🤮
Why is India a dumping ground for fast food chains? Why do we get the most unhygienic, diagusting remains? Hate that we put up with these subpar products, and they go unchecked
Adithya Venkatesan retweeted
Yesterday, @praan_inc opened up limited, invite-only access to Sanctuary - the culmination of nearly a decade spent building one of the most advanced air technology stacks in the world.
Temperature. Humidity. Pressure. Particulates. Microbes. VOCs.
Every dimension of air, intelligently orchestrated and tuned to human physiology.
Sanctuary lets you Design Your Air.
Imagine downloading the air of the Swiss Alps or the French Riviera into your room. Or having your environment intelligently adapt to your physiology, preferences, and the way you want to feel.
Designed to interface with existing air infrastructure, Sanctuary can scale from a single room to an entire airport.
We've patented the hell out of the technology behind this one, so there's only so much I can reveal for now.
We first unveiled Sanctuary at an architecture and design event in May this year. In the 60 days that followed, developers signed on to bring Sanctuary to over 5 million sq. ft. of spaces.
For now, we're opening Sanctuary to a select few through invite-only access.
Much more to share on official launch day.
praan.io/sanctuary/
Unpopular: If you take the 'vibe' and 1/2 coffees out of Araku, it's fairly substandard.
Does not have a single good dish or remarkable beverage.
Adithya Venkatesan retweeted
10 things (among others) I learned from our Tigerfeathers piece on @tohands_ with @PraveenByBuy
1. There are only two pieces of hardware that have made it onto at least 20 million shop counters across India - the Soundbox and the calculator
2. To win offline commerce in India you need to think in 'lanes' not pincodes
3. The position of a charging point in a store can dictate the long term retention of a new hardware device
4. Refunds are one of the best sources of product insight you’ll ever get - don't waste a refund
5. 'Replacement' is a stronger psychological trigger than 'Addition' when it comes to pitching a solution to offline merchants in India
6. Indian hardware has a ‘death valley’ between 100 and 1 lakh units, where it's difficult to find a manufacturer that will take a bet on you
7. Shopkeepers won’t pay for something they can’t see (like software), but they will pay for something tangible (like paper rolls), which is why 'bundling' works as a promotional strategy
8. The ‘aha’ moment doesn’t create trust with a new product - it takes ~100 transactions before a shopkeeper commits to a new device
9. If you want to build for a segment, hire from it. 60% of the Tohands team comes from shopkeeper families, which a key question in their hiring process
10. Never surprise users who have built their workflows around your product, even if you’re making it better.
BONUS - Your best bet to get a new product adopted is to disguise it in the form of a familiar solution
Shoutout to our friends at @WisprFlow for supporting our efforts🫡
(Much more in our story if you missed it on Friday - link to the piece in comments)
The best piece of fiction I've read this year.
Don't think twice, it's a magical page-turner and you're going to thank me for it. Incredible stuff 😍💥
