Rags to Riches
How Zerodha was bootstrapped without outside funding, and gave investing away free
How Zerodha was bootstrapped without outside funding: a debt-ridden call-centre trader, a ₹20 fee cap and ₹4,283 crore in FY26 profit.
Early-stage Indian startups, funding rounds and founders.
Seed rounds, new launches and the founders building them, covered as they happen.
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Side Hustles
Make money online with AI in 2026: generative AI gigs up 90%, pay per gig down 13%
Make money online with AI in 2026: Upwork data shows gig volume up 90% and pay per contract down 13%. Voice and n8n routes checked.
Explainers
Atomberg sells fans on an electricity-bill sum and claims 46% of premium fans
Atomberg's draft IPO papers cite a 46% share of premium fans, ₹1,294 crore revenue and a ₹149 crore loss. Its pitch is an electricity-bill sum.
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Explainers
Astrotalk's $1 billion value came from a buyback, and its profit figures clash
Astrotalk hit a $1 billion value via an employee buyback with no new investor. Its FY25 profit is reported as ₹250 crore and ₹33 crore.
AI for Startups
Cut customer support costs with AI: what a resolved conversation really costs
How to cut customer support costs with AI: free inboxes from Chatwoot, Zammad and Freshdesk, what paid agents charge, and a week-one plan.
AI for Startups
AI for sales outreach and lead research: free tiers give 50 to 100 credits a month
AI for sales outreach and lead research on a free budget: Apollo, Hunter, Twenty and listmonk, with checked limits and a first-week plan.
Side Hustles
One faceless Hindi channel is estimated at $36 a month: five side hustles checked
The best side hustles to start in 2026, ranked by verifiable fees, payout rules and reported income, with the main risk of each.
Side Hustles
A Surat team gives its React template away free and reports $12,000 a month
A Surat team publishes a seven-page React dashboard under an MIT license and sells the full version for $69 to $599. Its cofounder reports about $12,000 a month. Here is how the model works, what it costs to copy and where it breaks.
Explainers
Zepto cut its loss per order by ₹57 in a year. One of the savings may not last
Zepto spent ₹10.82 to win an order in early FY24 and ₹1.01 by FY26, and its loss per order fell to ₹79. The filing shows which gains look solid and which could reverse.
Explainers
Kuku nearly quadrupled ad spend to ₹1,105 crore and still made a pre-tax profit
Kuku Technologies raised its marketing bill almost fourfold in FY26 and booked a ₹88.6 crore pre-tax profit. Subscription-only revenue, cheap volume content and a revenue-per-ad-rupee ratio that crossed one explain the result, though churn is still undisclosed.
Ecosystem
YourStory publishes its daily Indian startup news roundup for October 12
YourStory has released its Monday, October 12, 2026 roundup of news from the Indian startup ecosystem and other areas.
Founders
IndianRaga founder Sriram Emani turns to filmmaking with Jam Boy
Sriram Emani, who built IndianRaga into a global platform for Indian performing arts, is now telling South Asian stories through filmmaking.
Ecosystem
Cleantech funding surges in India in Q3 2026, with EVs leading
India's cleantech sector accelerated in the third quarter of 2026, with electric vehicles driving a funding boom, according to an Inc42 newsletter.