r/indianstartups

A year ago we were at like 30% prepaid and the cod orders were killing our cash flow. now we're around 60%. took a year of messing with it, no single trick, but since everyone here just says "give a discount" i'll share what did it for us.

honestly the biggest thing was just making prepaid the default instead of cod, and making checkout faster. when checkout was slow people picked cod to get it over with. fixed that and a chunk shifted on its own.

discounts barely moved anything. what worked better was a small surprise gift on prepaid, felt like a reward instead of training people to wait for a sale. and partial cod for the ones who still wouldn't pay full upfront.

we tried going prepaid-only once and conversion tanked, so wouldn't recommend that. and weirdly our aov went up a bit too, prepaid buyers seemed more open to adding something at checkout.

happy to get into any of it.

Hey guys,
Just wanted to ask — is it really hard to find the right co-founder in India or network with the right people?
I feel like many people say they want to build, but finding someone trustworthy, committed, and skillful is not easy.

Also do you know any website or app for finding co-founders or networking?

How did you find yours?

Let's put ourselves in a real-world scenario.

It's your first day as the Growth Manager of an early-stage startup.

The founder gives you one objective:

Budget: ₹50,000

Timeline: 90 days

Goal: Acquire the first 10,000 users

You can invest the entire budget into only one growth channel.

Which would you choose?

I'm interested in seeing how different marketers approach the same challenge, so I'd also love to hear the reasoning behind your vote in the comments.

View Poll

Context: I'm exploring a D2C Ayurvedic women's health brand with my uncle, a practising MD/PhD Ayurvedic physician with 20 years of clinical experience. He formulates, I'd handle brand and business. Very early, nothing was built, nothing to promote. I want this idea beaten up before any money goes into it.

The idea: Every women's hormonal health brand in India owns one slice — period care brands, PCOS brands, pregnancy brands, and now a wave of menopause startups. Nobody owns the journey. A woman's hormonal life runs from first period → PCOS/PCOD (for many) → pregnancy → postpartum → perimenopause → menopause, and at every stage, she has to find and trust a new brand from zero. Our bet: one brand she trusts across all of it — honest, doctor-formulated, purity-tested Ayurveda, in a category infamous for "reverse your PCOS in 90 days" overclaiming.

First, the real question — is this idea any good?

Does a "whole hormonal journey" brand make business sense, or is it a classic founder trap — a vision that sounds great in a deck but means unfocused SKUs, scattered marketing, and a customer who doesn't actually care about the journey story?

Is "the honest brand in an overclaiming category" a real moat, or just a slower way to lose to louder competitors?

Does Ayurveda + a credentialed practising physician actually shift trust for the modern Indian woman buying online, or has the category burned that trust beyond repair?

Second: if you think it does hold up, how would you enter?

A journey brand still launches with one product. The stages on the table: cycle/PMS (huge, repeat purchase, but crowded), PCOS/PCOD (massive demand, but funded competitors and heavy claim-scrutiny), postpartum (real white space, but narrower), perimenopause/menopause (underserved and growing, but demand still forming in India). If this were your call, which wedge and what's the logic?

And if your honest answer to the first question is "this shouldn't exist", say exactly that and why. A brutal no now is worth more than polite encouragement before a production run.

We're evaluating different customer support software options because managing conversations across multiple channels is becoming increasingly difficult as we grow.

Right now, most of our customer queries come through WhatsApp, Instagram DMs, and our website chat. As the volume grows, switching between different platforms is becoming harder to manage and we're worried about things slipping through the cracks.

We're exploring omnichannel customer support tools that can bring everything into a single inbox instead of constantly switching between platforms.

For those running startups or growing businesses:

• Which customer support software are you currently using?

• Are you managing everything manually or through a shared inbox?

• What has worked well for your team, and what challenges have you faced as your customer conversations increased?

Would love to hear real experiences and recommendations before we commit to a platform.

Thanks in advance!

I've been building a SaaS product and one thing I've noticed is how difficult it is to convert Indian users into paying customers.

People will use the product, come back, ask for features, and sometimes even complain when something isn't available 😭

But the moment there's a paywall or subscription, a huge percentage just leave.

Even when the pricing is relatively low.

I'm genuinely curious why this happens.

Is it because we've become too accustomed to free apps and services?

Is subscription fatigue the problem?

Do Indian users simply not trust smaller SaaS products enough to enter their card details?

Or is the value proposition usually not strong enough to justify another monthly payment?

For founders who have successfully built SaaS products for Indian users: what actually worked for you?

Freemium with strict limits?

One-time payments?

UPI subscriptions?

Very cheap entry plans?

Giving users enough time to build a habit before showing the paywall?

I'm currently trying to understand how to attract users who are not just willing to try a product, but are actually willing to pay for it.

Would love to hear from Indian SaaS founders and users on both sides.

Hi everyone,

I run Crunch, a LinkedIn page covering Indian startup news — funding rounds, founder stories, and growth stories. We've grown to about 5k followers and 3 million impression+, all through writing.

Now I want to move into video interviews: founders, investors, and government officials talking about India's startup space. I have personal connections in the central government and can get interview access there, which most startup pages don't have.

What I'm missing is someone to lead the video side — filming, editing, and shaping raw interviews into content people actually watch.

Looking for someone who:

Can film and edit short interview videos (a phone is fine to start)

Is genuinely interested in startups or public policy

Wants to build something new, not join something already running

Being upfront: this is early-stage and self-funded, so there's no salary right now. This would be a real co-founder role — building equity in something new together, not a job.

If this sounds interesting, comment or DM me. Happy to share more about where things stand.

My brother who is a Design Engineer (Civil) is currently building a software product related to his construction field. Software is in MVP stage and it is being used by few users . It's developed as an (.exe) file, he currently shares it with people through "we transfer". Wanted to know couple of things as he is very new to this..

1. Is therr a better way of sharing the, .exe with others?

2. How can he protect the source code, is it possible for users to access the source code after installating the application or sharing the package files through we transfer

3. Related to code signing, after installing exe it asks for security related questions like is it safe to install or similar question. We want to avoid that, researched about code signing. Does it help?

Please if some can help us with above questions. It's of a great value for us.

I am looking for startups that are raising funds or facing any issues in terms of scaling or strategic positioning.

Sector agnostic, but not just at the idea stage. The product should be market-ready.

We can invest from pre-seed to Series A: Any sector.

D2C brands, Deeptech, Climate Tech are the ones we have invested previously.

Day before yesterday, my friend and I had a meeting with a founder who wanted to create a pet app in banglore through referrals. It wasn't just a simple app. He wanted features like buying and selling pets, grooming bookings, boarding, doctor consultations, pet profiles, live tracking, notifications, an admin panel, a modern interface, role based access, and a few other things we discussed during the meeting.

We spent around 45 minutes understanding everything before putting together a rough estimate. We quoted ₹1.5 lakh.

There was not any argument. He was thinking for a few seconds and said it was far beyond what he expected. He asked if we could reduce the price.

We weren't trying to overcharge. We based our pricing on the amount of work involved. If we cut half the features, the budget could decrease. But building everything he described was not less

Most of our work so far has come from referrals through my friend studying in Australia, and a 2-3 of it has been for Australian clients. We've developed business software before, but this would have been one of our first larger consumer app projects with a founder from Bangalore.

So I wanted to know If you were the founder, what budget would you expect for an app like this? And for the developers here, does ₹1.5 lakh sound reasonable, too high, or too low? Help me with this.

Hi everyone, I'm currently pursuing a degree in Data Science and as part of my Business Data Management capstone project, I'm looking to collaborate with one startup or growing business that would be interested in receiving a free business analytics report based on their operational data use.

The project involves:

1. Understanding a real business problem through a short discussion.

2. Analyzing anonymized business data (no confidential or personally identifiable information is required).

3. Identifying patterns, bottlenecks, and opportunities using business analytics.

4. Delivering a report with actionable insights and recommendations that your organization can

This is a curriculum requirement for my degree, and I'll also be required to provide proof of collaboration (with your permission).

I'm not looking for confidential information or trade secrets. The goal is to work with a real organization on a genuine business problem while maintaining complete confidentiality. I'm happy to sign an NDA if needed.

If you're a founder or work at a startup and think this could benefit your organization, I'd love to connect.

For privacy, I can share more details about my credentials through dm.

Thank you

Hi everyone,

Every ITR season, I come across founders and freelancers who delay filing because they're unsure how to report their income correctly.

Some common questions I get are:

Which ITR form should I file?

Is GST registration mandatory for my business?

How do I report startup or freelance income?

How are ESOPs taxed?

Can business expenses reduce my taxable income?

What if I also have salary, capital gains, or F&O income?

Filing an ITR isn't just about complying with tax laws. A correctly filed return can also help when applying for loans, visas, fundraising due diligence, and maintaining a strong financial record.

I'm a Chartered Accountant and I'm happy to answer general tax questions in the comments so everyone can benefit from the discussion.

If your situation requires a detailed review or professional assistance, feel free to send me a DM.

Looking forward to helping the community. What's your biggest challenge with ITR filing this year?

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I'm the founder of Token Buddy, a healthtech startup in India that helps patients book OP tokens before reaching the hospital, reducing long morning queues.

Our journey so far:

- Launched our app on April 3.

- Onboarded 25 hospitals.

- First booking came on May 1.

- Initially, we got almost no traction despite trying influencer marketing, auto-rickshaw announcements, wall posters, and pamphlets.

- Then one of the largest hospitals in our city adopted Token Buddy. Today, that hospital generates 300+ bookings per month through our platform.

- We recently onboarded another hospital that's generating around 10 bookings per day.

The challenge is that the remaining 23 hospitals generate very few online bookings.

This makes me believe the product works, but our distribution and hospital activation model isn't yet repeatable.

We have around ₹1 lakh available to invest, and I'm trying to decide whether to focus on hospital activation, local marketing, hiring field executives, or something else.

I'd love feedback from founders who have built B2B2C, marketplace, or healthtech businesses:

- How would you approach scaling from here?

- How do you activate hospitals instead of just onboarding them?

- What growth experiments would you run first?

We're also beginning conversations for our next fundraising round. If you're an angel investor or know someone interested in early-stage Indian healthtech, I'd be happy to connect and share more about what we're building.

Thanks for reading, and I appreciate any honest advice.

Thinking of starting social media but is that actually helping because everyone is doing the exact same thing, for example let's say something like 'day 1 of building my brand'. Is that really helpful or should we use it as our portfolio to build trust?

1. Provide Google login: The majority of people wouldn't create an account otherwise.
2. Charge immediately: Stay away from free trials. Paid users = serious users.
3. Launching is the start not the end: Post-launch is 4/5 marketing, 1/5 product.
4. Promote shamelessly: Plug in your product everywhere, not just where it's "safe".
5. Value the unsubscribers: They're giving you the most valuable input.
6. Use your own product as much as you can: You'll find bugs your users haven't reported yet.
7. Retention > acquisition: The most valuable revenue comes from existing users.
8. Cut your MVP in half: Then cut it again. Ship the core, nothing else.
9. Think bigger: $10k/month feels great until you realize $100k requires the same effort.
10. Pay attention to market: If it's not converting after real attempts, the market is telling you something. Listen.
11. Your landing page has 5 seconds: Clean, fast, obvious value prop or they're gone.
12. Talk to your users: Email your users. DM them. Get on calls.
13. Price based on value, not competition.

Most SaaS founders fail because they give up too early

Stay in the game...

A few friends of mine started The Bharat Frontier and they're looking for startup stories, do get in and let others know, link to submit startup is in the comment.

PS - they might not talk about your startup if you're already well funded, they're looking for those stories which doesn't get the limelight but deserve more than anyone else.

They’re not asking for any money, they genuinely want to tell the stories of startups who are doing the real work, solving real problems, solving hard problems, innovating, grinding and making things happen. They feel today every media feature a startup if either it raised funding or if it pays them - this is not how India will achieve greatness.

A lot of great startups die because some VC didn’t have conviction in them, they had the right product but not the money or limelight to take the GTM forward. Building has become much easy now but selling is hard and it needs money, they want to try and break it, by talking about startups who deserve to be heard not because they raised funding or they want to pay, only if their story is worth telling.

These are serious folks who are operators themselves, innovators themselves, built startups themselves and know the serious gap that exists and the reason so many great companies fail even before they get started. I feel it is very noble idea and the folks behind it are sincere folks, so if you’re building something great or you know someone who is, do the needful.

Hi everyone,

I’m a solo developer from India, and after about six months of work, I’ve just launched the public beta of Xenode Storage, an open-source, end-to-end encrypted cloud storage platform.

The product is live, the code is open source, and I’m continuing to improve it based on user feedback. Every new user gets 5 GB of free storage forever, and my long-term goal is to build a complete privacy-first ecosystem around it.

One thing I’m struggling with isn’t building the product—it’s getting it in front of the right people.
I’d love to hear from founders who have grown developer tools, SaaS products, or open-source startups.

Some questions I have:

How would you get the first 100–1,000 users?

Which channels have worked best for you (Reddit, LinkedIn, Product Hunt, X, communities, etc.)?
How do you build trust when you’re competing with established companies like Google Drive, Proton Drive, or MEGA?

If you were in my position, what would you focus on over the next 6–12 months?

I’m not looking to advertise here—I genuinely want to learn from people who have gone through this journey.

I’d really appreciate any advice. Thanks!

Edit : I used ai help to better understanding and grammar corrections