Pravendra Singh Rathore

It’s becoming harder to justify a product manager who can’t vibe code. I regularly prototype full functionality when communicating requirements to my engineering stakeholders. Tools like Cursor, Bolt, and Claude allow me to go beyond words and show what’s possible. I now even push code to GitHub, giving my engineering partners visibility into what’s under the hood. These prototypes aren’t final designs, they’re agile artifacts that provide higher context and clearer solution intent. Vibe coding empowers product managers to move faster, give engineers clarity, and ultimately spend more time with customers. And that’s always a win for products, users, and builders alike. #ProductManagement #VibeCoding #AI #Engineering #Prototyping #Agile #Leadership #ProductDesign #Innovation

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The real D2C problem isn’t traffic. It’s purchase hesitation. Over the last few months, I’ve been around a lot of D2C founders → during Jagriti Yatra, in meetups, and at expos. Same pattern everywhere: Brands work insanely hard on product + creatives + ads… and then the customer reaches the site and thinks: “Is this brand legit?” “Will it get delivered?” “What if I need a return?” That 2-second doubt kills conversion across PDP → cart → checkout. So we started building WordofMouth (HyperInt) → a trust layer for ecommerce that helps brands reduce this hesitation by: Putting proof where buyers actually look (reviews/ratings) Adding real-world signals (UGC-style social proof) Making risk feel lower (delivery/returns clarity, confidence cues) Helping proof compound via WhatsApp-based review capture We’re already live with a few brands and learning fast. If you share your category (apparel/skincare/food), I’ll tell you the first trust block I’d add. #D2CBrands #EcommerceGrowth #CRO #Shopify #CustomerExperience #CRO #Woocomerce

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Bhavin Turakhia didn’t chase hype. He built profits. 🚀 Started at 17, built Directi created global SaaS products like Radix , Flock & Zeta and crossed $1B+ in exits — mostly bootstrapped. Key Learnings: • Profitability beats valuation • Build global, think long-term • Discipline > funding • You don’t need noise to win 📌 Quiet execution builds loud results. #BhavinTurakhia #StartupLessons #Bootstrapped #SaaS #Entrepreneurship

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There's a lot to learn for founders in this note and IDfy journey. But I think there's a learning here for folks in VC firms as well - please don't tell founders that they are wasting their life with the company they are building(even if you mean well).

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Excited to share that Thread Factory has raised ₹1.5 Cr in pre-seed funding from ajvc to solve a massive problem in India’s fashion supply chain. We are building for a part of India’s $100B+ fashion market that is massive, but still works in a very old-school way. A lot of sourcing still happens through calls, WhatsApp messages, and scattered coordination between retailers and manufacturers. Which also means many buying decisions are still made without a clear sense of what is actually selling. And that gap becomes even sharper in the unorganised side of the market. While brands and online marketplaces have brought structure to one part of fashion retail, the remaining 65% still operates with very little technology. That is the part of the market we are building for. At Threadfactory, we are building a tech-first ecosystem for this supply chain – helping retailers source quality, trend-right designs more easily, while helping manufacturers plan production with better demand visibility. Our B2B platform allows retailers to discover products and place orders directly, while also capturing the commerce data needed to bring more intelligence into the system. Over the past year, we have seen early signs that this is solving something real: ~₹4 Cr ARR 60% average monthly repeat retailers 40+ manufacturers For me and Vivek, this round was a very meaningful milestone. We received a term sheet from Aviral within 10 days of our application, and that felt incredibly validating at this stage of the journey. This was when we did not even have a product, and were at zero revenue. What stood out even more was the clarity he brought to the conversation. He quickly understood the space and pushed us to think harder about what we are building and where it can go. The journey till here has not been easy. There has been a lot of learning, a lot of back-and-forth, and many moments of rethinking. But that process is also what made our conviction stronger. This round has helped us build a stronger team, improve the platform, and continue building for an industry that really needs better systems. Still early, but very excited for what lies ahead. 🚀 #threadfactory #ajvc #funding #b2b

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🚚📍 How Swiggy/Zomato shows LIVE rider movement? Not magic — event-driven system design. ⚡ Rider app streams GPS coordinates (lat/long) 🔁 Backend pushes events via WebSockets / SSE (no polling) 🎯 Order-ID–based pub/sub channels for isolation 🧠 Redis (in-memory cache) holds latest state 🗺️ Frontend re-renders marker (no map refresh) Result: low latency • high throughput • massive scale 🚀 Core lesson: Keep the database off the hot path. 🔥 Save • 💬 Comment “RT” • ♻️ Repost #SystemDesign #EventDriven #RealTimeSystems #BackendEngineering #Redis #WebSockets #Scalability #innovation #gps

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Two brothers from Bihar just built an AI startup that went from $50M to $100M ARR in 30 days. Let that sink in. Meet Mukund Jha and Madhav Jha, identical twins who are now building one of the fastest-growing AI startups globally Emergent Labs. But this isn’t a typical success story. Before this breakout, Mukund had already failed in two startups. No big exits, no headlines — just hard lessons that most founders never recover from. What changed everything was their insight. While the world was busy experimenting with LLMs and ChatGPT, the Jha brothers believed something deeper — that AI agents, not just tools, will become the future of software. Systems that don’t just respond, but actually execute tasks. That insight led them to ask a simple but powerful question: what if anyone could build a full app just by describing it? In 2025, they launched Emergent through Y Combinator. A platform where you type your idea, and AI builds everything—frontend, backend, APIs, deployment. No coding required. They called it “vibe coding.” What followed wasn’t growth, it was an explosion. Developers, creators, and even non-technical users started building apps. The product itself became the distribution engine. Within 3 months, they hit $15M ARR. Then came the real breakout — scaling from $50M to $100M ARR in just 30 days. Today, Emergent has over 5 million users across 190 countries, with millions of apps built on the platform. This is not just a company growing fast; this is a category forming in real time. Two failed startups didn’t end Mukund’s journey; they sharpened it. Because in the end, breakout companies are rarely about luck. They are built at the intersection of timing, deep insight, and the ability to stay in the game long enough. #startup And maybe that’s the real lesson for Indian #founders. Don’t just build for India. Build from India, for the world.

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The ₹50,000 Crore Bet on Trust Just watched Mangalam Maloo's interview with Vidit and Sanjeev (from Meesho), and honestly, my jaw dropped a little. Mangalam asks point-blank: "280 crore orders annualized. Charge ₹1 per order as platform fee. That's ₹280 crore straight to EBITDA. Why are you morally opposed?" Their answer? It was pure conviction: "You can't put a number to trust." Let that sink in. In the middle of IPO week - when every company is supposed to be squeezing every last rupee - Meesho just turned down ₹280 crore because it conflicts with their principles. Not hypothetically. Not a "we'll consider it." They said no. Here's what got me: 140M+ customers from tier-2, 3, and 4 cities. 1 billion+ orders processed. Zero commission from sellers. 100% payout, every single time. They went from zero to ₹50,000 crore in a decade without nickel-and-diming anyone. While the rest of e-commerce is finding ways to add convenience fees, handling charges, and peak-hour surcharges, Vidit and Sanjeev just shrugged and said: "If you introduce something at the end to a customer and they suddenly get surprised - that's where trust breaks." (even if it's ₹1, because "You can't put a number to trust.") Their philosophy is simple: surprise = broken trust. And in price-sensitive markets where options exist, you don't get a second chance at earning it back. For years, people have predicted Meesho would abandon their zero-commission model. They haven't. Same prediction about platform fees. They haven't. Because principles aren't A/B tests. They're DNA. They're customer obsessed - and that's the only differentiator that actually lasts. They've rejected the entire industry playbook (5-15% fees are standard everywhere) to solve something different: affordable access for 500M+ underserved Indians. No hidden costs. No "growth at all costs" if it meant abandoning the people who needed them most. In a world obsessed with extracting every last rupee from every transaction, watching someone hit ₹50,000 crore by asking "how do we keep earning trust?" instead of "how do we extract more?" feels almost rebellious. But this is what conviction-led founding looks like when trust meets scale. Who else is building like this? Drop names below. 👇 P.S. - The real takeaway here isn't the valuation. It's the discipline to turn down ₹280 crore (arguably, life changing money) because it conflicts with what you believe. P.P.S - Dropping an article on how companies like Rapido, Meesho have defied industry norms to create the new normal tomorrow! Follow along to hear more :) ---- Full Video: https://lnkd.in/g7h3-wJQ Full Interview: https://lnkd.in/gURjdwCr

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Forget the Silicon Valley Playbook. The 'Blinkit Effect' is the real secret behind India’s next $50B+ operational explosion. While some look at Blinkit as just a delivery app, VCs look at it as an Operational SEAL Team. From the high-pressure dark stores of 2021 to the disruptive founders of 2025, if you want to see where India’s execution-heavy decacorns are coming from, you look at the Blinkit Effect Here are my 5 VC-level insights into why the "Gurgaon Mafia" is currently rewriting the Indian execution playbook: 👇🏻 1) Prithvi Singh - Gameskraft Most gaming founders focus on "fun." Prithvi used his Blinkit-honed high-concurrency roots to build a platform that handles millions of real-time transactions without a glitch. He leveraged the "Zero-Latency" mindset to solve backend engineering hurdles that slower competitors simply couldn't code their way out of ⚡ 2) Varun Khurana - Otipy Varun realised early on that Agritech isn't a "farming" business; it’s a density problem. By treating every tomato like a time-sensitive delivery packet, he solved the "perishability" trap in farm-to-fork. Otipy’s hyper-local supply chain is a direct product of the 10-minute delivery DNA native to the Blinkit war room 🥦 3) Zaheer Khan - Ayu Health Proving that you can bring "Quick Commerce" rigor to healthcare. Zaheer didn't just focus on "Doctors"; he focused on a systemic pain point: fragmented hospital operations. By bringing "Blinkit-level" logistics to hospital networks, he is systematising an industry known for chaos, demonstrating the "Systemic-First" ambition of the modern Blinkit graduate 🏥 4) Manas Gupta - GobbleCube Mastering "Data-Driven Velocity." Manas took the intimidating world of e-commerce brand analytics and made it as fast as a flash sale. By focusing on real-time SKU-level precision and scalable data frameworks, he successfully navigated the "Insight Gap" for D2C brands that were drowning in slow data 📊 5) Abhishek Upadhyay - CubeAPM The invisible backbone of the 2026 enterprise. By launching an observability platform for complex digital stacks, Abhishek is ensuring that "Zero Downtime" is a reality for the global market. He proved that the Blinkit network doesn't just build apps; they build the infrastructure that keeps the world’s most complex systems running 🧊 The ➡️ Insight: The "Blinkit Effect" isn't about the bike or the bag; it’s about Urgency as a Culture. When your training ground is a 10-minute delivery window, your baseline for "fast" shifts. That psychological edge is what creates a high-velocity, $50B+ ecosystem. ➡️ The 2026 Blueprint: Don't just look for a good idea; look for an Execution Moat. The next unicorn won't just have a great product; it will have a founder who can survive the high-pressure "Blinkit" crucible and scale at 10x speed 📈

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If Surge Pricing Is Accepted Everywhere… Why Not Value Teachers the Same Way? We accept higher pay for complexity everywhere. Senior lawyers charge more for complex cases. Specialist doctors charge more for high-risk surgeries. Consultants earn lakhs for strategy. Tech architects earn more than junior coders. Nobody calls it greed. We call it expertise. But when it comes to teachers, society becomes sentimental. “Teaching is noble.” “Teachers shape the nation.” “Teachers are like God.” Beautiful words. But respect without compensation is exploitation wrapped in poetry. A teacher doesn’t just teach a subject. They shape thinking, confidence, discipline, emotional intelligence, and career direction. One sentence can change a life. One bad experience can damage it for years. And teaching today is not simple delivery. Handling 45 students. Managing board pressures. Preparing for NEET/JEE. Dealing with anxious parents. Creating digital content. Counselling teenagers in crisis. That’s not “just teaching.” That’s strategist + psychologist + mentor + evaluator + content creator — in one role. Complexity exists in education too. Coaching rank holders. Supporting slow learners. Designing curriculum. Building future-ready systems. If complexity deserves higher pay in medicine and law, why not in education? Here’s the hard truth: If we want world-class students, we must attract top 5% talent into classrooms. And top talent does not choose low-paying professions. Right now, brilliant graduates choose corporate jobs — not because they don’t respect teaching, but because society rewards corporations financially and teachers emotionally. You cannot build a world-class nation on gratitude alone. Yes, Agreed! Teaching is a service. But so is medicine. So is law. So is governance. Calling it service should not mean underpaid, overworked, and financially insecure. When teachers are stressed..... They burn out; They take excessive tuitions; They leave academia; Standards fall; And.....society complains. Higher pay doesn’t just reward teachers. It raises entry standards, accountability, professionalism, research, and student outcomes. A surgeon saves one life. A teacher shapes thousands over decades. Teaching has compound interest impact on society. If we understand ROI in finance, we must understand ROI in education. Underpay teachers — you attract mediocrity. Value teachers — you attract excellence. If we are willing to pay surge pricing for convenience, urgency, and entertainment… Surely shaping a human mind deserves premium value. Teaching is not charity. Teaching is nation-building. And.... nation-builders should never be underpaid!!! #ValueTeachers #RespectTeachers #NationBuilders

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Most brands are considering to launch an app But few know if it’s 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗹𝘆 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴. In our latest "Dilse Omni talks" podcast, I asked Abhijeet Singh ( cofounder Appbrew : Why do companies hesitate to build apps? “They aren’t skeptical - but dont know how to measure success.” And that’s where most go wrong. At top D2C brands with App benchmarks 👇 • Apps drive 50%+ of total D2C sales • Deliver 2-3x better conversion rates • Give 30-40% higher AOV • Achieve 2x higher retention • And boost LTV by 2-3x Yet many brands still don’t track these numbers. Because having an app is easy. But having a successful app needs measurement. Check out the full episode link in comments 👇 & learn how to make your app your biggest growth driver.

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While running SRE at Zomato, one thing stood out very quickly: Delivering a great user experience at scale requires an extraordinary amount of discipline. Zomato puts an insane amount of effort into quality. In practice, almost 30–40% of the time before a release goes into carefully verifying every part of the app, making sure no bugs reach users. That investment is deliberate. At that scale, even small issues show up immediately and matter to real customers. From an engineering point of view, it’s natural to ask: Why not automate more of this work? Tools like Appium and Selenium existed long before AI, and teams explored them seriously. But what became clear over time was that the ROI of end-to-end mobile automation using traditional frameworks was close to zero. Not because teams weren’t capable. But because the problem itself was hard. Mobile interfaces change frequently. End-to-end tests were brittle, expensive to maintain, and often failed to provide the confidence teams actually needed. What this experience highlighted wasn’t a gap in effort or intent. It highlighted how difficult reliable verification really is. Later, working with fast-scaling teams, I kept seeing the same pattern: strong engineering teams, fast release cycles, and a large amount of human attention devoted to making sure things felt right. That accumulation of experience eventually led us to start Zenact AI The idea is simple and modest: Verification should behave like a careful human reviewer - but be easier to sustain, earlier in the cycle, and continuous. Not more tests. Better assurance. We’re still learning what that looks like in practice, and we’ll share what we learn as we go. #EngineeringThoughts #SRE #ReliabilityEngineering #FounderPerspective #B2BSoftware #ZenactAI

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After 5 major ESOP buybacks and 10 years of building CARS24, let me share how we've ensured ESOPs aren't treated as paper wealth - The last few days have been noisy around ESOPs. And one event can shake trust across the ecosystem. ESOPs are crazy. They’ve created life-changing wealth for many. But often, they haven’t. That’s why founders must treat ESOPs as a trust instrument, never as a compensation negotiation tactic. At CARS24, we’ve stayed anchored on a few principles: 1. ESOPs must become real, not just paper wealth. It’s our job to create liquidity and belief. 2. Terms can’t be one-sided. Employee-friendly by design. No draconian clauses. 3. Sharing wealth doesn't divide it. It multiplies it. ESOPs are recognition for the real builders - not a tool to reduce cash salary. And trust isn’t built through talks. It’s built through actions. We’ve done 5 MAJOR BUYBACKS so far. The first was in May 2018 - way before anyone else. It was early, intentional and driven by a simple belief: liquidity will multiply trust into CARS24 ESOPs by 10x. And it happened! At the onset of COVID, when most orgs were executing mandatory pay cuts, we opened a voluntary pay cut window and offered 2x fully vested ESOPs to anyone who opted in. We were scared how business would shape up, and cash conservation was key. 300+ people volunteered, contributing from a few thousands to tens of lakhs. Six months later, as the industry tailwinds became clear and favourable, we opened a buyback at 2X THE PRICE. So volunteers effectively got 4x back in cash, in less than 6 months. That wasn’t math. That wasn't logic. That was trust returned with trust. Last year in December, we did a cashout for our AU and UAE teams so newer members could experience what ownership means in practice - not just on paper. Ask any ESOP holder at CARS24 what it means to them. You’ll get stories - not opinions. My advice: yes, contracts and terms matter. But what matters most is intent at the top. If the intent to share wealth is genuine, ESOPs are absolutely worth the risk:reward. Don’t let one-off events hurt your confidence in ownership. Let them raise your bar for what “employee-first ESOPs” should look like. #ESOPs #Startups #Leadership #Trust #CARS24 CARS24 Arabia CARS24 Australia

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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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During the SaaS boom in India, the VCs were the ones who had knowledge of the playbooks that worked. They had a grasp of the metrics that had to be tracked and you could actually "engineer" growth. So when they gave gyan you would sit up and take note(at least the good VCs). In this AI boom, there are no experts. Most gyan from VCs is just guess work. Most are just funding the token subsidy and hoping their horse will win. Very few who are actually giving good advice. Most advice is 4 lines generic gyan expanded to 40 lines of ChatGPT slop. The point I am trying to make is, no one has a playbook. Don't wait for someone to show the way. For now at least, you need to find your own way.

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Mobility is broken — opaque pricing, unfair to drivers, frustrating for users. TEZ is rewriting that story with transparency at its core. In just 1.5 months, starting from Ahmedabad, we’ve onboarded 10,000+ captains (drivers) and welcomed 5,000+ riders — all with minimal marketing. Unlike traditional aggregators, TEZ is built on a driver-first, user-friendly model that can scale quickly in any city. Our mission goes beyond taxis — we aim to build a global travel platform where booking a taxi, bus, train, or flight happens seamlessly, with honesty and fairness as the foundation. 🌍 This is just the beginning. The road ahead is long, but every ride takes us closer to rewriting the future of mobility. 🚕🛺 #BuildingTEZ #Mobility #Transparency #StartupIndia

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