Why Freshworks Fired 1000+ (While Buying Back Stock) | Roundup #165 | Startup Operator

[00:00:26] Camera 1 Check, Camera 2 Check, Oh wow we have two cameras set up now. Crazy. Alright, let's go.

[00:00:33] Hello and welcome to another episode of the Startup Operator Roundup. I'm Roshan Kariyapa.

[00:00:38] And I'm Gunjan Saha and together we break down the biggest headlines from India's growing startup

[00:00:43] ecosystem. It's been a while since we recorded a roundup. Both of us were traveling in and around

[00:00:48] Kerala. Roshan how was it trip for you? In and around Kerala, okay. Yeah it's been a fun few weeks I

[00:00:55] should say with the Diwali holidays and whatnot. Right, I mean someone I know is traveling for

[00:01:00] the rest of the year in fact. One of them is in the frame actually and it's not me so yeah.

[00:01:07] Even a producer. What that is news to me anyway. So all right let's get on with the you know bunch

[00:01:15] of things that we have to discuss. Oh yeah, there's some really cool headlines. Well starting off of

[00:01:20] course Swiggy IPO'd. This was India's second largest IPO this year.

[00:01:25] Then well of course if Swiggy is on the news Zomata will not be silent. They have announced

[00:01:30] a bunch of updates on their platform. Freshworks has also been on the news both for good and not

[00:01:36] so good reasons. They are doing a massive ease of buy back round but at the same time letting a lot

[00:01:41] of their employees go. A lot of folks on the startup ecosystem have voiced their opinions on that.

[00:01:45] We'll be discussing them. ISRO has announced a new partnership with IIT Madras. Well not that the

[00:01:51] college had any dearth of innovation going on but now ISRO joins the bandwagon as well.

[00:01:56] And Elon Musk's Starlink has been seeking permission from the Indian government for security clearance to

[00:02:01] launch satellite broadband in the country. That aside, STOVA which really made headlines during the

[00:02:08] lockdown for offering an alternate MBA program, they have decided to shut down shops and we bid them

[00:02:15] farewell. So stay tuned as we discuss all these headlines and we hope you like this new camera setup.

[00:02:22] Hope this makes it for a much more immersive experience. Immersive experience, wow.

[00:02:28] Okay but wait, before all of these, the US elections. Man I'm so glad it's done.

[00:02:33] It's finally over. But it was pretty like kind of known that Donald Trump would be doing the presidency.

[00:02:40] You know there is a theory that all the tech folks kind of figured this out early, right?

[00:02:45] Whether it is Duck or whether it is Sundar Pichai and so on. They kind of figured that which way the

[00:02:51] wind is blowing and sort of pivoted their positions, right?

[00:02:54] But Elon used to earlier voices against Trump, if you remember the last, last to last election cycle.

[00:03:01] But this time he was like, so this, I mean this, I don't want to make it an election deep dive or analysis.

[00:03:08] But this time I think the key thing is Donald Trump has swung a lot of folks who are centrist or even leftist

[00:03:16] to the side of the Republican Party, right? I mean it's pretty fascinating. And for me, I think the man of

[00:03:21] the hour aside from Donald Trump is Elon, man. I mean I think he was perhaps the most consequential guy in

[00:03:30] this election, right? To swing it in, you know, President Trump's favor for sure, right? I mean

[00:03:36] of course, I mean we're talking about a guy who took a bullet in his ear and whatnot. But still, that aside,

[00:03:43] right? President Trump aside, I think Elon buying Twitter, I think was like a watershed moment, right?

[00:03:49] And not just that, I mean once he got behind Trump, right? I mean whether it is, you know,

[00:03:55] reaching out to all of these young males and getting them to vote or whether it is like,

[00:04:01] you know, doing all these rallies in Pennsylvania and so on, right? I mean some of these swing states

[00:04:05] and all. The guy just, you know, has that single determined focus to get it done for sure.

[00:04:14] And as of yesterday or as of today, he has been announced as part of this Department of

[00:04:20] Government Efficiency, DOJ. Along with Vivek Ramaswamy. Yeah, another fantastic guy.

[00:04:26] Why does the US government have a Department of Government Efficiency?

[00:04:31] See, I think, so at last count, I mean they have some 450 or 500 government agencies, right? I mean

[00:04:38] including like this FDA and all of these other stuff, right? I mean all the three-letter agencies,

[00:04:44] basically. And the point is, I mean, do you really need it, right? And this is absolutely

[00:04:51] applicable in India's case also, right? Do we need so many agencies? Do we need all of these

[00:04:55] overlapping, you know, jurisdictions? Do we need all these laws and policies and whatnot, right?

[00:05:02] The laws are easy to make, but very hard to get rid of. Same goes with agencies and so on. And over a

[00:05:09] period of time, it just becomes this thing that exists for its own sake, right? Elon famously,

[00:05:15] you know, had said that it takes less time for him to build a rocket than actually launch it to get the

[00:05:20] clearance and everything, right? Which is a pretty telling statement considering that, you know,

[00:05:24] US is one of those, you know, it's the hotbed of innovation, right? So, so yeah, I mean, it's

[00:05:31] interesting, man. I mean, startup folks getting involved in the government can, you know, give

[00:05:35] that startup ethos and spirit. That's really what I think people are optimistic about, like founder

[00:05:41] mode. Yeah, yeah. But dude, I'm so happy that we're done with this. I mean, yeah, I got tired of

[00:05:47] people who vote in like Boman Ali and Koramangla and like Indranagar, like, you know, talking about US

[00:05:53] elections all this while. So yeah, I'm glad it's done. And yeah, congrats to President Trump.

[00:05:59] Yes. Well, let's see what's the new big headlines in the US now.

[00:06:03] Yeah, plenty of action for sure.

[00:06:05] Okay, but the biggest headlines today was the market, public market debut of Swiggy. There's

[00:06:11] a lot of love flowing between Zomato and Swiggy all across Twitter. Dipinder Goherr posted a lot of

[00:06:16] tweets, which was, which was reverted back by Swiggy folks as well. The shares of Swiggy made the

[00:06:23] debut at a premium of 8% from the listing price of 390 rupees. They listed at 420 bucks.

[00:06:29] This also marked the second largest IPO in India, raising a $1.4 billion in the market.

[00:06:35] Now we have seen the public markets are kind of trending downwards. My portfolio is on the red.

[00:06:40] I don't know how yours are doing.

[00:06:41] I haven't checked.

[00:06:43] That's how you know it's a bear market.

[00:06:46] But what do you what do you make of the IPO?

[00:06:49] Man, it's a milestone moment for sure. Right. And this whole food delivery space,

[00:06:54] both the companies in it have listed right Zomato and Swiggy. And we've seen, you know,

[00:06:59] how Zomato stock is like kind of turned around over the last year or so. I think this is fantastic.

[00:07:05] Right. I mean, also, I mean, we have, we have another set of people that we should ask for a

[00:07:12] party like quite literally, right? I mean, the about 9000 crores in ESOPs, right? Many people are

[00:07:18] going to make 10 crores, 100 crores. There are 500 people who will be fresh crores for these.

[00:07:24] Wow. Wow. I mean, one thing for sure, real estate and Kormangla and elsewhere, right?

[00:07:29] Right. But, but yeah, this is, this is absolutely amazing, you know. So good luck to the Swiggy team.

[00:07:38] I think this is the start of another journey, I would say, right? I've always been a Swiggy fan,

[00:07:42] I've preferred Swiggy over Zomato. So I'm happy that they're listed.

[00:07:46] Yeah. But it's not only the food delivery business is going to see the conflict,

[00:07:50] how we're comparing Swiggy and Zomato, right? It's also their quick commerce business,

[00:07:54] which very soon Zepto will be coming into this mix in the public markets.

[00:07:59] And also their B2B segments as well. Zomato is, it's called Zomato Hyper Pure?

[00:08:06] Probably, I don't know. Or something like that has become a major, major revenue driver for

[00:08:10] Zomato, right? We are yet to hear similar news from Swiggy. Well, another big winner of this IPO

[00:08:16] round was Process, right? They were one of the early institutional investors in Swiggy. And they made

[00:08:22] a bank of $2 billion from these investments. Wow. Right? They sold shares worth $500 million in this IPO,

[00:08:30] but still they have managed to retain a 25% stake in the company. So still a massive controlling stake.

[00:08:37] Amazing. Amazing. I mean, glad that, you know, they've backed Swiggy all the way. In fact, I mean,

[00:08:41] I had seen a post of one of the partners from Elevation Capital as well, who was perhaps the first

[00:08:46] institutional in Swiggy. Right? They've made a shit ton of money as well. Right? So,

[00:08:52] great, man. I mean, we need more of these liquidity stories, right? Just simply helpful from a venture

[00:08:59] capital startup ecosystem perspective, for sure. Yeah. And all of these folks who we have had on the

[00:09:04] podcast, you know, work in Swiggy, Zomato, and where not. I mean, guys, reach out, man. This is...

[00:09:10] Send us a couple of beers. I mean... Yeah. The IPO markets still remain hot. We have the BlackBuck

[00:09:14] IPO coming up and more exciting IPOs we'll be seeing before the close of this year. Moving on from

[00:09:21] Swiggy to Zomato. Zomato has made some major announcements on the platform. One being the ability to

[00:09:28] resell event tickets. And the second is that you can now buy orders that have been canceled by users.

[00:09:33] Mm-hmm. At a discounted rate. Let's talk about the tickets resale. Earlier, a couple of months back,

[00:09:40] Zomato acquired Paytm Insider. Right? And that was a brilliant marketing move, right? Soon after

[00:09:45] that, they announced Zomato Live, where Dua Lipa will be headlining. Are you going for that?

[00:09:52] Okay. The look on the face says it all. Yeah. But you would have loved to go for it. I'm not a Dua Lipa fan.

[00:09:57] I mean, no. Oh, come on. Not throwing shade or anything. You cannot say you're not a Dua Lipa fan.

[00:10:00] Okay. Some really questionable comments there. But now, Zomato users can resale their tickets

[00:10:11] directly on the Zomato app if there is a change of plans. The user can set the resale value of the

[00:10:16] ticket to up to 2x the original amount. And then Zomato will cancel the original ticket and issue a new

[00:10:24] ticket for the user. There have been concerns around this as well. While it's a very welcome move,

[00:10:30] there have been concerns about how resellers, you know, capture these tickets and then resell it for

[00:10:34] exorbitantly high prices. But the question arises, how can you prevent resellers on Zomato,

[00:10:39] on the platform like Zomato itself? You can't. I mean, you can have a few of these riders and checks

[00:10:44] and balances in terms of limiting how many tickets a person can buy and how much you can resell and so

[00:10:49] on. Okay. But yeah, it's good. I mean, I don't see this as fundamentally like earth-shattering

[00:10:55] innovation as such, but it's good. It's good. Right. Yeah. The other feature they launched is

[00:11:02] called food rescue. Now, Zomato has a very strict policy on like no order cancellation after it has

[00:11:09] been, you know, accepted by the restaurant. But now what Zomato has announced that if a customer is

[00:11:15] located within three kilometer radius of the delivery partner, if someone cancels the order,

[00:11:20] this order will show up on rest of the Zomato users account. And you can, you know, buy that at a

[00:11:26] discounted rate. Now, of course, some items are will not be part of this program, like your smoothies,

[00:11:32] your ice creams and all which really get spoiled over a short period of time. But this move is likely to

[00:11:37] save Zomato a lot of money because around four lakh orders per month go on a waste. Wow.

[00:11:44] Interesting move for sure, right? I mean, this kind of reminds me of Airbnb also and the kind of

[00:11:48] innovations that they've been doing in their product, they're soon launching this host marketplace.

[00:11:54] Right. So let's say you have a property and, you know, you don't want to go through all of the trouble

[00:11:57] of actually listing, you know, managing the property and so on and so forth. You can just

[00:12:03] pretty much hire a host from the marketplace, you know, determine like a revenue share and just chill,

[00:12:10] you know. It's amazing, right? I mean, and man, it just hit me that Airbnb is going to be like

[00:12:17] a 20 year company in like a couple of years or so, two or three years. Right. And in that time,

[00:12:21] Airbnb has become like a verb in itself. Right. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's crazy. Really crazy. I

[00:12:30] mean, all these platforms, man, whether it's Uber, Airbnb, Swiggy, Zomato, all of these folks have

[00:12:35] fundamentally changed our lives, I should say. It's changed our lifestyle. I mean, yeah.

[00:12:40] Freshworks is also currently in the news due to significant announcements involving layoffs

[00:12:45] and a simultaneous stock buyback program. Now, this has raised a lot of eyebrows across

[00:12:49] the industry and people have been voicing their concerns. Freshworks announced that it would lay

[00:12:53] off around 660 employees, which represent around 13% of its workforce. And at the same time,

[00:12:59] they've revealed that a 400 million buyback round is in progress. One of the persons who voiced their

[00:13:05] concern was Shridhar Vambu, sir, who publicly criticized Freshworks for his decision to layoff employees.

[00:13:11] He says that a company with over $1 billion in cash reserves, which is still growing at a decent rate,

[00:13:17] should not be laying off workers. The timing of the layoffs also is quite, uh, is quite dicey.

[00:13:25] They recently announced their reports and they're witnessing a 22% year on year growth in revenue.

[00:13:32] They have reached approximately $187 million in revenue in the latest quarter. Now, for a company

[00:13:39] like Freshworks where, you know, still a lot of innovation can happen. Do you think it makes sense

[00:13:44] to either lay off people to streamline operations or do you want to just move them into other,

[00:13:48] I don't know, some moonshot projects or something and take a bet?

[00:13:54] See, fundamentally, it ties to the ethos of an organization, right? I mean,

[00:13:57] you can't do one or the other if you don't truly, um, are the type of organization that is built for

[00:14:03] that, right? Zoho has been forever the type of organization that absorbs people, learns, uh,

[00:14:11] from them, coaches, uh, them. And then like, you know, uh,

[00:14:14] Zoho pretty much never hires anyone at the lateral level. You don't, uh, you know,

[00:14:19] very, very, very rarely they hire someone at 10 or 15 or 20 years experience, right? It's all homegrown talent.

[00:14:25] Right. And, uh, they again, I mean, you know, famously, they have 50 plus products and they've been around for 25 years,

[00:14:31] a billion dollars in revenue and so on, right? So the average tenure in Zoho, I think it's what seven, seven years?

[00:14:37] Dude, they have a thousand people with 10 plus years experience. I mean, that's insane. That's like absolutely insane. Right?

[00:14:43] So, so that's a different ethos. Uh, you don't make those FU salaries at Zoho, right? Uh, but I mean,

[00:14:51] you know, you learn, you grow and, uh, you can become someone significant. And, and if, and if,

[00:14:57] and if that is your ambition and so on, I mean, that's, that's what it is, right? Meanwhile, I mean,

[00:15:01] Freshworks has a very different, uh, approach, right? I mean, it's not bootstrap. Clearly it's, it's like,

[00:15:06] you know, raised a bunch of money, went, uh, IPO, um, and people made money, right? I mean,

[00:15:11] I know a lot of folks who made money from Freshworks as well. Yeah. I mean, seriously,

[00:15:16] a couple of them have bought me beers, but yeah, we'll leave it at that. Right. But it's a very

[00:15:21] different approach to that. I mean, uh, uh, the money has been more through all of the ESOPs, uh,

[00:15:27] buybacks and liquidity and whatnot, right? I mean, that's what has happened. And people seem to be

[00:15:32] okay with that also, right? I mean, it's, it's like both of these have their pros and cons,

[00:15:37] I would say, right? I mean, you can't expect one to behave like the other. Uh,

[00:15:40] uh, Vembo sir, definitely, definitely has a point, but then, I mean, I think

[00:15:44] given the times that we're living in, um, I don't know, man. I mean, it's just,

[00:15:49] it's just the nature of the times that we're living in, right? So Vembo sir has had an interesting

[00:15:53] exchange with Vijay Rayapathy, who is the founder of Atomic Work, right? And, uh, they've gone back and

[00:15:57] forth on, you know, capitalism, socialism, and, you know, all of these big words and phrases. Um,

[00:16:03] but, um, yeah, man, I mean, I don't think you can be like, I don't think you can be very flippant

[00:16:09] and say like, look, this is capitalist and I'm going to lay off like 600 people and yeah,

[00:16:13] let them figure their life out types, right? Um, doesn't work like that, right? I mean,

[00:16:18] we often expect people, uh, to stay loyal to companies, to build with the company and so on.

[00:16:23] But if this is the nature of employment where, you know, people can wake up one day and realize

[00:16:27] they're not required for some arbit reasons, like operational efficiency,

[00:16:31] efficiency, then, I mean, why do you expect them to be loyal to you? Right?

[00:16:36] It cuts both ways.

[00:16:37] It cuts both ways and, uh, but, but I'll be the first to acknowledge that it's, it's

[00:16:43] supremely hard to manage a large company. Okay. I mean, it's, it's just really, really, really hard.

[00:16:48] You know, we just spoke about, uh, the US government having this, you know,

[00:16:52] department of government efficiency, right? And cutting down all these, uh, you know,

[00:16:56] agencies and whatnot. Over time, I mean, bloat builds up, right? And, uh,

[00:17:01] unless you're really conscious of it, I mean, it's super difficult, right? Um,

[00:17:06] bottom line is Freshworks and Zoho are two very different organizations. I don't think one can

[00:17:10] expect the other to behave, uh, like it, uh, both of them have their own process, pros and cons,

[00:17:16] right? Um, and it's up to people. I mean, you know what they want to pick and choose basically,

[00:17:21] but both are really important for the ecosystem. That much I'll tell you. Yeah.

[00:17:24] Yeah. And both are also like the leading faces of Indian SaaS. Yeah, for sure. I mean, like,

[00:17:29] Zoho began SaaS for us, right? 25 years back or whatever, and Freshworks took it to the next

[00:17:34] orbit. So both of them are like legendary companies. The founders are absolute legends as well. Right?

[00:17:41] Um, yeah. Oh yeah. Moving on to the next topic.

[00:17:44] IIT Madras has announced a partnership with the Indian Space Research Organization to establish

[00:17:49] a center of excellence focused on fluid and thermal sciences. ISRO will provide an initial funding of

[00:17:56] 1.84 crores to support the establishment of this center. The key focus of this center of excellence

[00:18:01] is going to be on thermal management and spacecraft, combustion stability and hybrid rockets,

[00:18:06] and thermodynamics of cryogenic tanks. IIT Madras has had a longstanding relationship with ISRO,

[00:18:13] right? And this dates back to 1995 when ISRO set up the ISRO IIT M-Space technology cell.

[00:18:20] But the university itself, we have joked multiple times in our discussion,

[00:18:25] there's something magical about the waters in IIT Madras. Yeah. Right? We have seen some fantastic

[00:18:30] startups come out from there like Ather, Agnikul Cosmos, Zetwork, Unifor, right? And, well,

[00:18:37] seems like the space agency of the country is also parking its money there. 15 years back,

[00:18:43] right? Or even 20 years back. I mean, if you spoke to any of these IIT folks, I think number one

[00:18:48] option was consult. Number one was actually IB, investment banking. Second was consult. Third

[00:18:53] was like perhaps doing the masters in the US and so on. Right? A distant fourth or fifth or maybe 10th

[00:19:00] option was like startups. Yeah. Okay. This was 15 years back. 15 years, not a long time. You know,

[00:19:05] I'm not that old. Right? But today, right? That's almost flipped. You know, startups are the number

[00:19:13] one option for all of these folks at IITs. Right? And these are some of the best and brightest folks

[00:19:18] in India. Right? If we're able to harness that innovation to actually build things, build things

[00:19:24] that India needs, right? Build IP. I think that's going to be phenomenal. And organizations like

[00:19:30] ISRO are like absolutely amazing at this. Right? They all have all of the institutional capacity.

[00:19:35] They have the resources and so on. So if they work closely with all these institutes, I mean,

[00:19:40] who knows? You know, we can come up with cutting edge innovation for sure.

[00:19:44] Starlink is seeking Indian security clearance for its satellite broadband internet. Elon Musk is in the

[00:19:50] process of getting the necessary clearances to launch the services in India. India's telecom

[00:19:55] minister, Mr. Jyothi Aditya Sindhya announced that the Indian government is open to granting a

[00:20:00] satellite internet license to Starlink. But this will be based only if they meet the compliance with

[00:20:06] specific security and regulatory requirements. Now, this primarily involves laws around, you know,

[00:20:11] local data storage and mandating that all user data must be stored within the borders of the

[00:20:19] country. Initially, Starlink was not in favor of it, but now it seems to become more malleable towards

[00:20:25] it. What is interesting is that unlike other, you know, broadband services where all the spectrum is

[00:20:30] auctioned out, this allocation is not going to be auctioned, but rather going to be directly given by

[00:20:36] the government. Now, I'm not sure like how the other industry players are going to react to it. But we

[00:20:42] know Jio and Etel are the leaders in providing broadband internet and BSN has done a fantastic job

[00:20:48] catching up as well. But now for Starlink, so the way it is priced currently, I think it's a one and a

[00:20:55] half lakhs per year. So how they're going to bring down the costs down for a country like India is

[00:21:01] The connection is supposed to be fantastic, right? I mean, you have people like Jorogan, for example,

[00:21:07] raving about it, like using it in the mountains at like, you know, the zero issues and whatnot. But look, I think the

[00:21:19] more pressing problem is a national security issue. Okay. There's no telling what, you know, this data can do.

[00:21:29] Right. And we saw that, you know, this came into the fore, even with the Russia Ukraine war as well.

[00:21:35] Right. I mean, Starlink was a key part of key part of that. So I'm not very sure, actually, I mean,

[00:21:42] as a consumer, I would love I would love more options. But I think I would prioritize national security above

[00:21:47] all else. We should have stringent norms in terms of how they can operate. But at the same time, I don't

[00:21:54] know, man. I mean, I think we have like perhaps the cheapest data cost in the world. Right. So

[00:22:01] the internet consumption in India only has surged from less than from around 300 MB in 2014-15 to

[00:22:09] around 20 and a half GB as of March. The average download speeds have improved from 4.18 MBPS to

[00:22:16] 105.85 MBPS. See, even if Starlink is accessible in India, they'll have to compete like hell.

[00:22:23] Exactly. To sort of beat these costs and all of that.

[00:22:26] I don't think Motavai is gonna look at it.

[00:22:28] Oh, of course, of course not. Of course not. Right. They're going to compete like hell to

[00:22:32] sort of be cost effective, economical to the Indian audience.

[00:22:36] Another interesting space, like another interesting thread that we'll see emerge out of this,

[00:22:40] right? The Prime Minister has also been talking a lot about 6G internet services. Right now,

[00:22:45] how satellite broadband is going to play out with terrestrial broadband,

[00:22:49] how that will complement each other. Again, nice innovation to see.

[00:22:54] New and exciting innovations brought to you by Gunjan Saha.

[00:22:58] Stoa founder Raj on a LinkedIn post announced that he'll be shutting shop

[00:23:02] on Stoa School. During the lockdown, Stoa School was doing really well, right? They came with this whole

[00:23:07] alternate MBA program and people were really appreciative of it. The testimonies that users

[00:23:12] were writing on LinkedIn, Twitter, after they're completing the program. Well, I in fact considered

[00:23:17] doing it as well. But for whatever reason, I did not do it. But Raj mentioned in the post, right?

[00:23:25] Post the lockdown, there has been a serious dip in the number of enrollments you are having.

[00:23:30] Now, one of the options he had was to pivot to an offline mode. But he says the economics of scale just

[00:23:35] wouldn't work with it. Yeah, pretty much everyone's pivoted, right? I mean,

[00:23:39] Baidu's of course is, you know... I think is Baidu still operational?

[00:23:44] They're bankrupt. So I'm not very sure. Yeah, but on Academy, right? They're offline and...

[00:23:51] GrowthX, they also started online now. Yeah, yeah. So that is the way forward, right? For sure. I mean,

[00:23:57] this was like a COVID phenomenon where everyone thought that, you know, all education will be 100%

[00:24:01] online, but that obviously hasn't panned out. But I did like Stowa's promise of B skills for a startup,

[00:24:10] right? I think that promise still holds, you know? There are certain skills that are uniquely suited

[00:24:17] for startups. And building curriculum on that is absolutely amazing, right? I mean, look, you go to

[00:24:25] one of these IIMs or any other MBA college, and you learn something that happened 25 years back.

[00:24:30] I'm sure some of that is generally applicable, but none of that is like specifically relevant,

[00:24:35] you know, to the kind of stuff that you would perhaps do on a Monday morning. And Stowa, you know,

[00:24:42] that was a big promise with Stowa, right? I mean, that we will give you actionable insights and

[00:24:47] education that matter to a startup today, right? So you don't have to make that stretch from what you

[00:24:54] learned about something that happened 25 years back to, you know, what's happening now. Right?

[00:24:59] So I think that central promise holds. But startups are hard, man. They're incredibly hard. You know,

[00:25:06] I mean, a startup success is an outlier. So yeah, I wish, I wish the Stowa founders and the team all the

[00:25:14] very best. I hope they come back in another avatar and perhaps work on another, you know,

[00:25:21] transformative idea. Let's see. Okay. Let's talk about some of the fundraisers from the week.

[00:25:25] Spacetech startup Galaxy raised $10 million from Mount Tech Growth Fund, Mela Ventures,

[00:25:31] Speciale Invest, IdeaForge and Samarthi Investment Advisors. Robotech startup Sinder raised $10 million

[00:25:37] from P.A. Stone, Athena Venture Partners, Speciale Invest and InfoEdge. Drone technology firm Marut Drones

[00:25:45] raised $6.2 million from low capital. We are going to shoot an episode with the Sinder folks.

[00:25:52] Yeah, yeah. We were due to shoot with them, but you know, had to cancel that. But yeah, we will

[00:25:58] shoot with them. They make these very cool robotic arms. I'm excited to visit there.

[00:26:02] Yeah, yeah. I mean, so we're going to do a field shoot for this, right? So we'll show you all of the

[00:26:07] cool stuff. Yeah. Folks also let us know how, like, what do you think of the new format of episodes

[00:26:12] we've been putting out? We are trying to, you know, visit founders in their office, see all the cool

[00:26:17] stuff that they are doing in their home ground and bring the stories to you right from there.

[00:26:21] That's it for this week's roundup. We hope you have enjoyed this discussion. We'll be back again

[00:26:26] with more exciting updates, maybe in less than three weeks time now. But yeah, the weather is changing

[00:26:33] in Bangalore. Folks do take care of yourselves. It's a flu season going around. Yeah.

[00:26:39] I think I'm down with something.

[00:26:40] The question seems to be off the charts. Half sleeve, full body.

[00:26:44] All right. It's time to wrap up. Thanks for joining us, folks. And if you have suggestions

[00:26:49] on who we should host on the podcast, let us know. And until next time, tada. Bye-bye.