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.
Haroon Siddiqui
Founder and editor, The Startup Fever
Haroon Siddiqui founded The Startup Fever to cover early-stage Indian startups, the founders behind them and the business ideas worth learning from. He is based in Toronto and edits every story that goes out under this name.
Stories
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.