Mohit Banka

Product Requirement Documents (PRDs) are being challenged by prompting… but not just any prompts. ‘Prompt sets’ feel like the missing link between vision and execution of PRDs in the era of LLMs. They learn from circular learning loops and break away from traditional linear steps: requirement ➡️spec➡️build ➡️test ➡️ship. Extremely interesting and actionable post below by Aakash Gupta.

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Excited to share the launch of Zepto Pay Later — a Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) experience built natively within the Zepto app. One of the areas we’ve been focused on is reducing friction in the checkout journey. While Zepto has pushed the boundaries on delivery speed, the opportunity was to make the payment experience just as seamless. With Zepto Pay Later, users can now complete their purchases with a single tap — no OTPs and without leaving the app — with up to ₹10,000 in credit available instantly. From a platform perspective, this involved coordinating across payments infrastructure, risk controls, credit partner integrations, and the checkout experience to ensure the flow remains both seamless for users and robust from a system standpoint. We’ve started with a controlled pilot for a small cohort of users and will gradually expand it across the user base soon. Great to see strong cross-team collaboration come together to ship this. 🚀Zepto

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Founders often ask: “How do we build a great employer brand?” Simple:Treat people in a way that when they leave, they still want to recommend you. No PR campaign will ever match that.

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Most PMs read dashboards. I read WhatsApp chats. At Lenskart, we thought customers picked store pickup for expert fitting. Fair assumption — but chats told me otherwise. After talking to dozens of users, I uncovered the real why: 1️⃣ They didn’t want the headache of managing deliveries — “I’m never home when it arrives.” 2️⃣ It was simply easier to grab it from a store on the way to work or back home — “There’s always a Lenskart nearby.” It wasn’t just about adjustments. It was about convenience and control. That insight led us to roll out Buy Online, Pick Up In Store — and it took off. 💡 The real answers don’t sit in charts. They sit in conversations. #CustomerObsession #ProductManagement #UserResearch #D2C #RetailInnovation #VoiceOfCustomer #LastMile #EcommerceStrategy #BuildForIndia #ProductThinking #CustomerExperience

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Okay, time to share some personal learnings : So, as of yesterday over 100,000 i.e. 1 Lakh people have purchased a monthly/annual subscription for our mobile app Stimuler over the last 2 years, from every single country we ever knew of (& more). While it is objectively not a HUGE number given internet population and giants like Spotify/Netflix, but it's big for us and for someone (like me until recently) who has never had more than 2-3 subscriptions at a time, it's a huge number to work out So lemme share some learnings I have had over the last 2 years! Here are the best things I have learnt about making people pay for your product: 1) Ofcourse, it should solve a problem they deeply care about, in our case - a desire to express themselves fluently + confidently while speaking English. Obvious stuff but you'd be surprised 90% of apps don't have this 2) It should have a very clear & specific proposition, people should know what they are paying you for, so that they can justify it in their heads. Being generic In mobile apps world rarely works. for ex- I pay Netflix for watching TV Shows, I pay Penzu for writing my journal there, I pay Spotify for listening to music etc. Can I describe why I pay for your app in 3-4 words? If not, difficult for me to justify myself 3) Your first impression is EVERYTHING here too; making onboarding super critical - a lot of people purchase during onboarding, so it should be designed to give people a feel of what the app is & why taking a paid plan would make it easier for them to reach their goals 4) Marketing-product sync is underrated and something we are still working on. Your marketing should set up an expectation of how the product would feel, onboarding should carry it forward and the core product experience should justify it! This is a consistent flywheel 5) The more social signals you can accumulate, the easier it gets. Testimonials, appstore ratings, number of downloads - every single 'trust signal' plays an incremental role in convincing the user. So that when they land on the app, they already have their credit cards out! 6) If you are freemium (like us, today) than it's very important for you to clearly lay out how free vs premium varies. 7) Control your marketing messaging as much as you can. If you rely on organic a lot like us, incredibly important to see if every piece of content you are putting out there is convincing people in the best way possible. Don't shy away from putting product details in the videos. (and if you think virality is impossible while selling the product explicitly, think again - we have evidence that it's not a correct assumption :p) Anyways, I realize every product has its own journey, but just thought will share some of my fav takeaways in case it helps anyone out there (product, marketing folks, early founders etc) Happy to answer any questions re: this Have a nice weekend folks! #product #consumer #ai #subscription

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The Partnership Paradox: Why Your 7 A.M. Uber Still Cancels It’s 7:15 AM. Laptop bag ready, coffee untouched, three apps open — Uber, Ola, Rapido. Not to see if a ride will come, but to see how long the circus will last today. The first request goes out. No one accepts. The app suggests a ₹50 “tip” to “increase my chances.” Ah yes — a modern-day bribe wrapped in UX design. Finally, a driver accepts. Then cancels. Then another accepts. Cancels again. By the third attempt, fares have surged, patience has vanished, and coffee’s gone cold. If you commute daily in India, you’ve lived this loop — frustration in 10-minute installments. And yet, this isn’t chaos. This is design. Or at least, a design that outgrew its discipline. The “Partner” Problem No One Talks About Uber doesn’t hire drivers — it creates partners. Sounds empowering, right? Except this freedom cuts both ways. When you make someone a “partner,” you share the profits — but not always the purpose. The driver becomes a free agent in a system built on shared responsibility. No surge? Cancel. Long pickup? Cancel. Low fare? Cancel. And just like that, a “partner model” becomes a permission model for unpredictability. The 6 A.M. Logic of Cancellation … What feels like unreliability to the customer is actually rational economics to the driver: ·        Low demand = lower fare per km ·        Empty runs = wasted fuel ·        No guaranteed minimum = every minute counts The system doesn’t reward showing up. It rewards waiting for better math. Freedom Without Feedback Is Friction … Rohan Ghorpade recently wrote about Uber’s “Driver Wanted” sign — how it was never about jobs but ecosystem design. He’s right. It was genius marketing — until governance stopped keeping up. Because here’s the thing: Freedom without feedback doesn’t create ownership — it creates optionality. And when everyone in a system optimizes for self, the system itself starts to fail. The Real Issue Isn’t Cancellation — It’s Calibration … Drivers aren’t the problem. Design is. Partnerships are supposed to mean shared upside and shared accountability. But when the structure is tilted toward autonomy, reliability becomes collateral damage. Uber built freedom as structure. Quick commerce built structure as control. And somewhere between the two, trust got lost in translation. The CalmOps Takeaway … Platforms love the language of “partners,” but partnership without rhythm isn’t freedom — it’s fatigue dressed as flexibility. Because in the end: You can scale people. You can scale profit. But if you don’t scale accountability, you’ll keep scaling chaos. #Leadership #SystemThinking #Operations #AutomationStrategy #CalmOps #Uber #Ola #Rapido #Governance #GigEconomy #StructureIsStrategy

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Netflix buying Warner Bros. + HBO for $82.7B is not just another merger. It changes the entire OTT industry. I can see the similar pattern Just like how Jio’s entry in India reshaped the telecom industry and forced every other operator to rethink, this move by Netflix could push the entire OTT market into a similar reset. Here’s how this impacts everyone: For other OTT platforms + More pressure to create original content. This could push quality higher. + Regional and niche platforms may double down on local stories and find their space. – Losing access to Warner/HBO content means weaker libraries for many platforms. – Content costs will shoot up as everyone fights for good IP. – Smaller and mid-tier OTTs might struggle or merge because competition gets tougher. For consumers (Pros + Cons) + One platform with a massive library. Fewer subscriptions to manage. + More high-budget originals because the stakes are bigger now. – Less competition usually leads to higher prices over time. – Too much power with one player can reduce content diversity. – Independent creators may get less visibility as big platforms focus on safe, commercial content. This deal is a bold move, but it also raises big questions. What do you think?

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Last year, an OTT platform went PAN India and global Great content. Strong tech stack. Seamless app experience. Solid monetisation model. They launched in 5 states Traffic came in. But something strange happened. Watch time didn’t scale the way projections predicted. Subscriptions plateaued. Churn was higher outside the primary language markets. Why? Because content was available. But it wasn’t native. Subtitles were there. Some dubs were there. But localisation wasn’t infrastructure-level. It was reactive. Manual. Project-based. Every new market meant: – Vendor coordination – Turnaround delays – Inconsistent voice quality – Lip-sync mismatches – No version control discipline Global distribution. Local friction. Now imagine the same OTT — but built with DialogueDubs as embedded localisation infrastructure. Not a vendor. Infrastructure. Content ingestion → automated workflow orchestration → voice casting → lip-sync alignment → QC → multi-format delivery → pushed back into their content repository. Every new language = configuration. Not chaos. Every new region = scale. Not scramble. Turnaround time compresses. Voice consistency improves. Metadata stays intact. Enterprise security compliance stays intact. Now the same OTT doesn’t just “expand”. It localises at velocity. And velocity is revenue. Because in OTT, local relevance = retention. And retention compounds. The difference? Localisation as an afterthought vs Localisation as infrastructure. That’s the invisible layer most OTTs underestimate. Until scale exposes it. If you're building global OTT infrastructure, ask yourself: Is localisation still a workflow problem? Or is it now a systems problem? #OTT #VideoInfrastructure #GlobalDistribution #DialogueDubs #PAGOAnalytics DialogueDubs

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Left Microsoft, built a 20,000 CR company, and donates 40 lakh every year. 1. During his 8-year stint at Microsoft, Samir Bodas created history by becoming the director for SME – Sales and Marketing, Microsoft's first foray into small businesses. He was responsible for anti-piracy, licensing, and demand generation. However, the dot-com boom burst in 2000. 👇🏻 2 He left Microsoft, wanting to start his life from scratch. In 2002, he joined Disha Technologies, an early-stage IT Services firm, as its CEO, focusing on software testing and quality. He led the brand from 1 CR in sales to an acquisition by the Indian IT company Aztecsoft for 54 CR in just two years. 🙌 3. Samir returned to Pune, India, and was seeking new ideas. He met Monish Darda and got inspired by him to start a startup together. They began searching for ideas and discovered that business contracts were ripe for disruption through the use of cloud and AI. Samir wanted to take action. 🤔 4. In 2009, he decided to start a company with dual headquarters in Bellevue (USA) and Pune to attract customers globally. He named it after a suggestion by his wife on the Latin word "certa," meaning "trust." Icertis was born. 🚀 5. The idea was simple ⏩build a "Salesforce of contract management". Companies can digitise all contracts into a single repository and extract critical insights for risk and compliance. But companies were still not convinced. 🤔 6. Companies found no strategic value, and he had to compete for a limited share of enterprise IT budgets. He then pivoted to software-based contract lifecycle management solutions, providing automated clause analysis, obligation tracking, and workflow enforcement. And it worked. ✅ 7. As it helped Mercedes-Benz achieve a cycle-time reduction of 80%, Microsoft, Airtel, Hyundai, and Johnson & Johnson became its customers. Samir was now scaling on a 100% cloud infrastructure. By 2015, he raised 37 CR led by Greycroft. 💰 8. Within a year, Icertis had scaled to 500,000 users and 2 million contracts. Samir was building "the foundation of commerce" through contract intelligence. As it scaled to 750,000 users and 2.5 million contracts by 2017, it raised 162 CR led by B Capital Group. 💸 9. Samir grew with his famous FORTE (Fairness, Openness, Respect, Teamwork, and Execution) principle to over 3.5 million users and 4 million contracts processed by 2018. Five of the world's ten most valuable companies were its customers. And finally, the big news came on July 17, 2019. 👇🏻 10. Icertis raised 792 CR led by Premji Invest at a valuation of 6890 CR. It became the first contract lifecycle management unicorn globally. 🦄 11. Today, Icertis manages over 10 million contracts in more than 40 languages and across 90 countries. It is valued at 20,300 CR. 📈 However, Samir Bodas still donates Rs 40 lakh to over 170 non profit organisations every year. 🙏 #startups #india #casestudy For more such stories, read my book - Startups of Bharat, on Amazon!

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Just read about a company whose ex-employee deleted all their Github repos and AWS infra, basically wiped everything. Brutal, but honestly, not surprising. Most Indian startups (and even bigger tech companies) run exactly like this: zero basic security, everyone has admin access and ex-employee access is rarely revoked. Disaster Recovery? Forget DR, even the basics are missing. Here is the harsh reality, if you are running things this way, you are basically asking for it. Seen this happen way too many times. So here is my no-BS checklist to avoid being that headline: - Zero Trust, always: Nobody gets access by default. Only give what’s needed, nothing more. - 2FA everywhere: No excuses. - Limit codebase access: Engineers should see only what they’re building, not the whole farm. - Enable deletion protection: Github, AWS, GCP... everyone gives you this option. Switch it on. - Admin lockdown: Have just one or max two admins. Root accounts? Never use them for daily ops, keep them locked up. - Password managers are a must: Just use 1Password, LastPass, whatever, stop sharing passwords on Slack or WhatsApp. - Go for SSO plans: Link everything to Google or Microsoft. When someone leaves, you kill the email, and poof...access is gone everywhere. - If you can afford it, use Okta or upgrade your Google Workspace to Enterprise (Vault is a lifesaver for legal/data recovery). Better safe than sorry. - For Google Drive/docs, don’t make individual employees owners. Use Shared Drives (Google Workspace Business/Enterprise), or set up a company account as the owner for all important docs. Bottom line: you will need to spend a bit more, but the price of getting wiped out is way, way higher. There are smarter ways, but even if you just do this much, you will sleep a lot better at night.

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Arattai is trending #1 on app stores, but here's the real question: Can India's homegrown messaging app solve what WhatsApp won't? Last month, My firend was buying a car. The showroom created a WhatsApp group with 9-10 people—sales team, finance guy, insurance agent, delivery coordinator. They asked him to share: 📄 Aadhaar card | 📄 PAN card | 📄 Bank statements | 📄 Address proof Now 9 strangers have permanent access to his most sensitive documents. Forever. In a group chat. This isn't just my story. It's India's story. Real estate deals. Loan applications. School admissions. Medical records. We're sharing our entire digital identity in unencrypted group chats because "everyone does it." Here's what keeps me up as a tech leader: 🚨 WhatsApp has E2E encryption, but no document access control 🚨 No auto-expiry for sensitive files 🚨 No audit trail of who viewed what 🚨 No AI guardrails preventing accidental sensitive data sharing 🚨 Zero compliance framework for Indian data protection laws The AI Agent Opportunity: What if Arattai (or any serious player) built: ✅ AI-powered sensitivity detection: "Warning: This looks like an Aadhaar card. Share in a secure vault instead?" ✅ Smart document vaults: Share sensitive docs with time-limited, revocable access. Only authorized members can view. ✅ AI compliance agents: Auto-detect PII (Personally Identifiable Information) and suggest secure alternatives. ✅ Audit trails: Who accessed what document, when? (Critical for disputes and compliance) ✅ India Stack integration: DigiLocker verification instead of screenshot sharing. Example in action: Car showroom creates group → I share documents → AI detects Aadhaar → Auto-moves to secure vault → Only finance manager gets time-limited access → Document expires after loan approval → Audit trail maintained. The hard truth: Global giants won't solve this because: ❌ It's not a global problem (yet) ❌ It requires deep India Stack integration ❌ It's complex and low revenue initially ❌ We haven't demanded it loudly enough The opportunity : If Zoho can nail this with AI guardrails and compliance-first design, they won't just compete with WhatsApp. They'll own the enterprise + privacy-conscious Indian market. My ask to Indian tech leaders: We built #UPI. We built #Aadhaar. We built #CoWIN. Why are we still sharing our Aadhaar screenshots in group chats like it's 2015? It's time we demand—and build—messaging platforms that respect Indian data sensitivity. To fellow builders and users: Are we willing to switch if someone solves this right? Or are we too locked into WhatsApp's network effect? Drop your thoughts. This conversation matters. #DataPrivacy #AICompliance #IndianTech #Arattai #InformationSecurity #ProductThinking P.S. - I genuinely want to try Arattai, but "What about my 5 years of WhatsApp chats and groups?" If they solve migration + document security, I'm switching tomorrow.

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I 'practically' have start-up founding experience. I had launched Amazon’s new category. I hear variations of this all the time: • I launched our Fortune 500 company’s new category. • I set up our India operations. • I was a PM at a FAANG company - basically the CEO of the start-up product. • I grew my dad’s furniture business from 20 to 100 employees. Let me confess - I’ve been guilty of saying I practically had 'startup experience' too. I would justify that with my ‘intrapreneurial stints’ during my corporate life. But here’s the thing: Investors don’t count that as true founding experience. These are all valuable, high-growth roles. But founding a startup is a different beast. In the first 12-24 months, the chance of failure is brutally high. You’re underfunded, under-resourced, and racing against time. If the venture doesn’t find momentum fast, it dies. Engineers leave. Co-founders part ways. The market moves on. The spotlight fades. That’s not what happens in a ‘start-up initiative’ at a large company. You can pause a project and return to it six months later - without lethal consequences.  You can pitch again. Regroup. Get more resources. Meanwhile, your salary comes in on time. Founding experience is not just about what you build. It’s about what you risk. You only understand the difference once you’ve actually lived it. Here's that life: • Your team is mostly just you - and one engineer, if you’re lucky. That engineer is evaluating their job security. • You have one or a few customers. Each is small enough to not give substantial revenue but large enough to make a dent if they leave. • You have no money to pay yourself a salary. You’re the first one in the office, the last to leave. • When an investor says, ‘let’s reconnect in a few weeks,’ you’re one heartbeat away from shouting, ‘we may not even exist by then.’ Views personal. BOCTAOE

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₹209 crore in revenue. 6 million users. Backed by Stripe, Sequoia, and the PayPal mafia But ClearTax didn’t start with flashy numbers It started with a complaint from Archit Gupta’s father In 2010, India’s tax portal was clunky and unusable. Archit, then an engineer in the US, saw the pain firsthand. By 2011, he had quit his job and launched a simple e-filing tool with a couple of interns. Within 11 days, 1,000 people had filed their taxes on ClearTax organically Sounds like a rocketship? Not quite. For three years, Archit and his co-founders bootstrapped painfully. No investor wanted to touch a “boring” seasonal business. They had to cut costs, stretch every rupee, and survive on pure grit The breakthrough? Y Combinator in 2014. ClearTax became the first India-only company accepted into YC, and suddenly Silicon Valley was paying attention. Max Levchin, Naval Ravikant, and Sequoia India backed them. Later, Stripe led a $75M round Even then, scaling wasn’t straightforward. Tax filing was seasonal, users weren’t paying, and monetisation looked shaky The twist was GST. ClearTax pivoted from a consumer tax app to enterprise SaaS for GST and compliance. That bet transformed the company By FY2024, revenue crossed ₹200 crore and losses narrowed sharply What can founders learn from Archit’s journey? Build obsessively for user pain even if the problem looks boring Survive the lean years. Endurance matters. Pivot when policy or market cycles shift. We sat down with Archit Gupta on the podcast to unpack this journey from bootstrapping struggles to the YC turning point, and then how ClearTax reinvented itself into Clear a fintech powerhouse Listen in: https://lnkd.in/gF8kkjT9

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The biggest scam in startups is worse than a financial fraud. It is a false hope sold as opportunity which eventually waste the time and kills the startup. I have been through this. Sometimes I got impacted, and honestly, sometimes I unknowingly did the same thing in the past. I learned it the hard way. 1. Today, many founders are getting rejected for funding even before they pitch. Not because the startup is weak, but because the founder never reaches the right investor / people. The rejection happens early, silently, and often without any real understanding of the value proposition by someone else. 2. What hurts more is the government ecosystem and its associates like incubators, in many cases, startups are being curated and rejected by people who don’t understand even 1% of startup basics. I have seen this personally. The selection is sometimes more about templates, paperwork, and comfort zones than real innovation. 3. At the same time, the startup ecosystem is getting flooded with meetups, events, dinners, and “networking” nights. But many of these rooms have no real investors, no decision-makers, and no meaningful feedback. Just photos, tags, and noise. The founder feels busy, but nothing moves. 4. Then comes the next layer. So called investment bankers are mushrooming everywhere, charging hefty amounts in advance for “investor connects”. But founders should pay for success, not access. 5. And paid pitching events are booming, everyone is selling stage time. But the real question is simple: who is actually making money here? And how many such events should a founder keep paying for before they realize it is not leading anywhere? 6. And now one more trend I am noticing. Even some angel network & pitching event are charging investors just to join the network, in the name of curated deals. But when both founders and investors start paying just to participate, it becomes less about investing and more about monetizing the ecosystem. The end result is painful, real founders and real investors are getting lost, getting frustrated, exhausted, and confused. I understand, everything I mentioned above may have some reason(s), and that is why many of these things are functioning the way they are today. But at the end of the day, some points has to be corrected for the real growth of the Indian startup ecosystem. Now I genuinely feel it is high time we correct this. I am doing my bit, through different initiatives. [Entie Angels, Entie Pitch Days, Entie Bharat Pitching] Founders and Investors: Have you faced this? Just to be clear, the ecosystem is not bad. I can confidently say this, there are dozens of credible people, funds, and networks in India who genuinely drive outcomes, not noise. I will highlight them in my next post. --------------------------------------- Building: Entie | Find Investors, Cofounders, & Startups. Scaling: Meticulous B-Plans (DPR & Pitch Deck) Follow: Yogesh Thite

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We just announced the highest-ever fee reduction for sellers in Amazon India's history — and I couldn't be more proud. 🙌 Starting March 16, 2026, here's what changes for millions of Indian entrepreneurs: ✅ Zero referral fees on 12.5 Cr+ products under ₹1,000 — a 10x expansion from last year ✅ 20%+ reduction in Easy Ship fees for products under ₹300 ✅ 90%+ savings on fees for the second unit shipped together ✅ Up to 70% total fee savings across 1,800+ categories From fashion jewellery and sneakers to earphones, sarees, and kitchen essentials — this covers it all. Every rupee saved is a rupee reinvested into someone's dream. At Amazon, we don't just build a marketplace. We build futures — especially for small sellers in Tier 2 and Tier 3 India. 🇮🇳 #TarakkiKaUtsav #SellOnAmazon #AmazonIndia #SmallBusiness #SellerEmpowerment Neelotpal Shukla Amit Nanda Rohit Bafna Vikram Deshpande Samir Kumar Amit Agarwal

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The Uber founder built India's best cloud kitchens and still failed. Here's what went wrong. Travis Kalanick's Kitchen Plus had everything: → Best infrastructure I'd seen in India → Unlimited funding   → Global expertise from Uber and international cloud kitchens But they couldn't crack the Indian market. Their mistake? Building American solutions for Indian people. The cultural difference: - US: Customers pay premiums for maintenance services because they're used to fixing things themselves or paying experts. - India: We have house help for cooking, drivers, and local vendors for everything at a fraction of the cost They hired premium agencies for operations and site management. Great service, but restaurant owners already bleeding from Zomato-Swiggy commissions couldn't justify the costs. Nobody wanted to pay premium for services they could get locally for less. At Speed Kitchen, we learnt from their experience and understood that brands/owners are looking for effective services at affordable pricing. - 24/7 support? Yes. - Premium agencies for basic fixes? No. - Focus on what customers value vs. what they'll pay for. Four years later, we're still learning and expanding while Kitchen Plus and many competitors had to exit due to market challenges. Key learning: Even with expertise, funding, and first-mover advantage, companies can struggle. Product-market fit, customer understanding, and execution often matter more. Your competitors aren't just competition, they're your most valuable educators to understand what works and what doesn't. Sometimes having less money forces you to understand your market better. What's the biggest market misjudgment you've seen a "successful" company make?

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