đȘIndia, Stop MATING Castles on Sand.
Hustle culture. Startups. Funding. Valuation. Ever heard these words?
Ever get tired of these words? India does not.
The hottest word of last decade in India has been âstartupâ.
Ask any overly ambitious guy from any metro city what they want to do and they will say âwill do some startupâ.
What exactly? No one has any idea but they want to startup. That is not good starting point.
India is pretending to promote entrepreneurial spirit with nowhere to actually reward great ideas. We focus on inflating and boasting about trendy catchy pitch decks.
Wherever AI is mentioned, funding flows. Wherever blockchain was mentioned three years ago, funding flowed. Wherever metaverse was mentioned two years ago, funding flowed. You call this âentrepreneurshipâ.
F*ck this bs!
Indian startup ecosystem is fueling hype over substance, presentation over product, fundraising over building. Someone who is truly fighting for change is neglected largely. Because change is hard. Change takes time. Change does not fit in pitch deck. Change cannot be demonstrated in three slides showing hockey stick growth projections. They fund stories that sound like next Uber or next Amazon. So entrepreneurs learn to tell those stories regardless of whether their product resembles anything world needs.
We should be creating our own tech and products but we are busy solving for convenience.
Let me show you Indian startup ecosystem roster: Food delivery. Grocery delivery. Ten-minute delivery. Five-minute delivery. Cab aggregation. Scooter rentals. Dating apps. Social commerce. D2C brands. Fintech wallets doing exactly what banks already do but with better UI.
Thatâs mind-blowing innovation, right?
Not at all incremental optimization of consumption. Right?
This is making rich peopleâs lives slightly more convenient while calling it revolutionary technology.
India is short-sighted and one needs zoomed-out perspective on what and where we really need to solve.
I know it sounds like a distant dream but what we really need to do is that...
We need to solve pollution that is killing millions annually.
We need electricity for all, not just urban centers.
We need renewable energy resources at scale.
We need rockets and satellites for communications and earth observation.
We need semiconductor fabrication.
We need advanced materials. We need biotechnology. We need fundamental research in physics, chemistry, biology.
We need Biohacking routines, devices and ambient tech to sustain longevity.
These are problems worth solving. These are sectors where startups could actually change Indiaâs trajectory.
Very niche and small startup players exist in these segments. Why? Because these problems are hard. They require technical depth beyond what MBA can teach. They require patient capital willing to wait decade for returns. They require founders who care more about solving problem than achieving unicorn valuation. And Indian ecosystem has none of these. We have impatient capital chasing quick exits. We have founders who learn to code from bootcamp and think they can build next Google. We have investors who cannot distinguish real technology from well-packaged mediocrity.
But every other household now has their own apparel store or dropshipping shenanigans. Everyone is busy playing quick-money businessman tactic from your neighborhood.
Source something, sell something, make some money. Wow. Entrepreneurs.
F*ck that shit. This is not entrepreneurship. This middle-manning prostitution should stop right away. There is no value creation. There is no innovation. There is no technology. Just commercial transaction with startup branding. Good enough for you to survive and add that âFounderâ label on your card.
Look but hereâs a catch: if you are part of this transaction in your life where itâs just a ladder to build something bigger with whatever you make; this current money-making acrobatics is just another step into building the next holy sh*t idea. Do it. No shame in that. Make the money first, the infrastructure shall follow. But most people get consumed in the money-making phase. Thatâs the funny part. They start suffering from complacency. Thatâs wrong.
Their ideology is: âhey, I make good money to sustain myself. why do I need to go out there and change the world. why do I need to bang someoneâs door to buy my stuff anymore. I am good.â
Thatâs a very limited life.
We need hungry people. We need people in India who can promote change. Look at all companies that want to take that leap. We need more startups in sectors being ignored largely by all. But we do not get them because incentives are completely misaligned.
If young engineer graduates wanting to work on renewable energy. Where do they go? No funding. No mentorship. No ecosystem. Same engineer builds food delivery app via drones. *snap* Funding appears immediately. Mentors emerge. Accelerators accept. Media covers. They go where resources are. And resources flow to convenience optimization, not civilizational problems.
The critique here is not of entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs are responding rationally to incentives system provides. The critique is of system that celebrates collecting ingredients over actual cooking. Raising funds has become achievement. Series A. Series B. Series C. Unicorn valuation. These are celebrated as success milestones. But these are inputs, not outputs. Success should be measured by problem solved, lives improved, technology created, Indiaâs capabilities enhanced. Instead we measure success by dollars raised and valuation achieved before revenue appears.
This is India mating castles on sand.
Building impressive structures with no foundation. Raising hundred million dollars to deliver groceries ten minutes faster is not building anything lasting. It is burning capital to subsidize consumption until market consolidates and winner emerges to extract monopoly rents. This is not innovation. This is predatory capitalism disguised as disruption. And we celebrate it because valuation numbers are big and founders give inspiring talks about changing India.
Indian startup ecosystem has invented happiness called unicorn status. Billion-dollar valuation means you won. Means you are successful. Means you are changing India. But look closer. What changed? How is this changing India? How is this solving problems of 1.4 billion people, most of whom cannot afford these services?
It is not. But we pretend it is because we measure success by capital raised and valuation achieved rather than by impact created. This is moral bankruptcy. We are lying to ourselves about what we are building. We are building consumption optimization layer on top of economy that fundamentally needs production transformation.
We need to manufacture semiconductors, not deliver them faster. We need to generate clean energy, not create apps to pay electricity bills more conveniently. We need to reduce pollution, not build carbon offset marketplaces that let rich people feel good while doing nothing.
The problem is structural. Venture capital model requires exits within seven to ten years. This model works for software because software scales with minimal capital once built. But solving real problems requires massive capital deployment in physical infrastructure, long development cycles, uncertain outcomes. These do not fit VC model. So VC does not fund them. So entrepreneurs do not build them. So problems remain unsolved while we celebrate our hundredth food delivery startup achieving unicorn valuation.
We can learn a few things form China here...
China understood this. China directed capital to strategic sectors regardless of short-term returns. Solar manufacturing. Electric vehicles. High-speed rail. Semiconductor fabrication. Telecommunications equipment. These required decade-plus of patient capital with many failures before success. But China stuck with it because they were solving strategic problems, not chasing valuations. It led to china dominating solar manufacturing globally. China leads in electric vehicles. China built worldâs largest high-speed rail network. China is becoming self-sufficient in semiconductors.
India does what? We celebrate our food delivery unicorns. We celebrate our fintech companies that are banks with better apps. We celebrate our social commerce platforms connecting influencers with brands. These are not achievements. These are distractions. While we optimize consumption, China is building production capabilities that will determine who leads century ahead. We are mating castles on sand while they are building factories on bedrock.
India is eating seed corn. We are optimizing consumption through apps while production capacity stagnates.
We import electronics. We import solar panels. We import machinery. We import virtually everything except software and services. And even software is increasingly just customization of foreign platforms. Where is indigenous innovation? Where is fundamental technology development? Where are breakthroughs that change what is possible?
They do not exist because we do not fund them.
Because ecosystem values quick wins over hard problems. Because founders are trained to think in terms of exits rather than legacies. Because investors want IRR over impact. Because media celebrates fundraising over building.
We have collectively decided that optimization of consumption is more important than transformation of production.
Nothing. We will be remembered as generation that had resources, talent, opportunity, and wasted it on making convenience-as-a-service. Not that I hate any delivery startups or they are bad for societies. Itâs just that, future will look back at us and wonder why we did not solve pollution when we could have. Why we did not build energy infrastructure when we needed to. Why we did not develop indigenous technology when we had time. They will see our unicorn valuations and wonder why we celebrated consumption optimization while civilizational problems remained unsolved.
The answer is India is short-sighted. We measured success by wrong metrics. We celebrated fundraising over building. We valued pitch decks over products. We rewarded trend-following over problem-solving. We trained entrepreneurs to think like investors rather than builders. And we got exactly what we incentivized: lots of castles on sand that look impressive until tide comes in.
The tide is coming. As global economy slows, capital will dry up. Valuations will crash. Companies with no real product will die. Founders will discover that story is not substitute for revenue. Investors will learn that hockey stick projections on pitch deck do not translate to actual growth. Ecosystem will contract. And when tide goes out, we will see who was building on sand and who was building on rock.
Spoiler Alert folks: almost everyone is building on sand. Because that is what ecosystem rewards. Because that is what we celebrate. Because that is what we tell ourselves is success. And when everything washes away, we will wonder what went wrong. We will blame global economy. We will blame investors. We will blame government. We will blame everything except ourselves.
But it was us. We chose this. India chose to optimize consumption over production. We chose to celebrate fundraising over building. We chose to solve convenience problems for rich over fundamental problems for everyone. We chose to mate castles on sand because castles on rock are hard and take long time and do not produce unicorn valuations in seven years. This is our choice. This is our failure.
I often think about it: Is this our generationâs legacy? We had talent. We had capital. We had opportunity. We had time. And we spent it all on delivering groceries ten minutes faster. Future will judge us harshly. And they will be right to do so.
Because we knew better. We knew what problems needed solving. We knew what mattered. We just chose not to care because caring was hard and fundraising was easy.
This is our shame. This is what we built. Castles on sand.
Impressive from distance. Worthless when examined. Gone when tide comes.
This is us. This is New India. This is what we chose.