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Your daily Indian startup newsletter with daily news and funding updates, along with original deep dives!

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1/ Union Budget 2026 just redrew the tax map for Indian tech. By lifting the safe harbour threshold to ₹2,000 crore and fixing a common 15.5% margin, the government has replaced transfer-pricing anxiety with multi-year certainty for large IT firms and GCCs.
February 6, 2026 at 7:29 AM
1/ Anthropic just rattled the foundations of the $280B+ Indian IT empire. The launch of Claude Cowork and its legal automation tools on February 3 triggered a brutal sell-off, wiping out ₹1.9 lakh crore in value from the Nifty IT index in a single day.
February 5, 2026 at 9:22 AM
1/ The departure of Ashish Agrawal, Ishaan Mittal, and Tejeshwi Sharma from Peak XV is more than a personnel update. It is a structural break in Indian venture capital, marking the move from the mega-fund era toward a landscape of specialized micro-funds.
February 4, 2026 at 11:13 AM
1/ Union Budget 2026 just blew up a decade-old liquidity strategy. By reclassifying share buybacks as capital gains and shifting the tax from the company to the shareholder, the government has fundamentally re-priced the cost of an exit.
February 3, 2026 at 10:28 AM
1/ India’s Union Budget 2026 is a builder’s budget. It signals a major shift from selling services to building systems. The state is no longer just financing infrastructure; it is underwriting the scaffolding for AI, semiconductors, and energy sovereignty.
February 2, 2026 at 12:55 PM
1/ Eternal’s (Zomato/Blinkit) push to electrify its delivery fleet is being sold as a climate move, but its real logic is pragmatic: it makes riders richer and the platform cheaper simultaneously. This is ESG as operating strategy, not just branding.
January 30, 2026 at 10:41 AM
1/ Shadowfax’s IPO debut wasn't just a weak listing. At a 9 percent discount on NSE and BSE, it was a structural repricing of the entire logistics sector. The market is moving away from tech-style multiples for delivery companies.
January 29, 2026 at 10:38 AM
1/ India’s climate transition is no longer a moral project. It is a reordering of capital. Sustainability has moved from CSR to the operating core of the growth model. Decarbonization is no longer a sector; it is becoming infrastructure.
January 28, 2026 at 12:16 PM
1/ The Angel Tax was officially scrapped in 2024, but its ghost is still haunting Indian startup balance sheets. In January 2026, a fresh wave of legacy notices has revived a fight founders thought they had already won.
January 27, 2026 at 10:49 AM
1/ For decades, India’s startup hero was the IIT engineer: solving hard problems with frugality and patience. But a new archetype has overtaken this model in unicorn creation: the BARBIE founder (Bachelors Abroad, Returned to Build in India).
January 26, 2026 at 12:38 PM
1/ For years, AI startups sold opacity as a feature. If the model was too complex to explain, it was called sophistication. The "black box" wasn't a bug; it was the business model. That era ended this week.
January 23, 2026 at 11:04 AM
1/ On January 21, 2026, Eternal (Zomato) announced that Deepinder Goyal is stepping down as Group CEO, with Blinkit’s Albinder Dhindsa taking over the role effective February 1. This is not a routine succession; it is a structural reset for Indian tech.
January 22, 2026 at 10:20 AM
1/ The software industry was built on a single assumption: code is scarce and developers are expensive. Emergent is attacking that head-on. Its $70M Series B led by Khosla Ventures and SoftBank is a bet on the end of traditional "development."
January 21, 2026 at 11:52 AM
1/ For decades, Indian wealth was something you could touch - gold and real estate. This wasn't just conservatism; it was emotional security. But in 2026, the data is unambiguous: retail participation in capital markets has officially overtaken institutional participation.
January 20, 2026 at 10:44 AM
1/ A quiet pact that governed four decades of foreign investment in India just ended. On January 15, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled that Tiger Global’s $1.6 billion Flipkart exit is taxable in India, despite the Mauritius treaty.
January 19, 2026 at 11:16 AM
1/ For a decade, India’s home services felt like a closed market dominated by one player. But the recent Snabbit-Pync acquihire confirms a massive structural shift. We are no longer in the "Classifieds" era; we are in the "Big Three" utility era.
January 16, 2026 at 11:47 AM
1/ For twenty years, India’s startup mythology was geographically rigid: if you were serious, you moved to Bengaluru. That mental map is now breaking. India is no longer trying to build one Silicon Valley. It is trying to build many specialized ones.
January 15, 2026 at 11:35 AM
1/ Dazzl’s 10-minute beauty service isn't only "lipstick on quick commerce." It’s an attempt to solve a physics problem: How do you compress human travel and service time into a utility?
January 14, 2026 at 11:02 AM
1/ India just made a massive policy move for Deep-Tech: The mandatory 3-year existence rule for DSIR recognition has been scrapped as of Jan 2026. This isn't just a minor tweak; it’s a philosophical shift in how we build tech power.
January 13, 2026 at 10:45 AM
1/ The upGrad-Unacademy merger collapse wasn’t a negotiation failure. It was a reality check. The optimism of the 2021 funding boom has officially collided with the brutal unit economics of 2026. Here’s why the "Deal of the Decade" fell apart.
January 12, 2026 at 11:02 AM
1/ India is finally entering its "Microdrama" era. Not just snackable clips, but high-drama, vertical-first storytelling that has turned into a $500M market almost overnight. It's the most aggressive shift in Indian media since mobile gaming.
January 9, 2026 at 11:07 AM
1/ Practo’s US entry is one of 2025's biggest "Reverse Innovation" stories. An India-born startup is now tackling the world's most complex healthcare market. After a soft launch in April, they've already hit a $75M GMV run-rate.
January 8, 2026 at 10:11 AM
1/ In India's beer market, you're usually told to choose: scale fast or make money. Proost Beer just chose both. In FY25, they hit ₹115 Cr revenue (174% growth) and reached EBITDA breakeven. Here is how they out-maneuvered the "burn" culture.
January 7, 2026 at 10:05 AM
1/ Kapiva is trying to build the "Scientific Ayurveda" category for a new India. Their FY25 financials reveal a high-stakes bet: Revenue jumped 50% to ₹342 Cr, while net losses widened to ₹69 Cr. It’s a race for market dominance vs. financial gravity.
January 6, 2026 at 9:52 AM
1/ FreshToHome’s ₹75 crore venture debt raise isn't a routine bridge. It's a strategic "wait-and-watch" move in a cooling meat-tech market. Debt here is being used to buy time, protect valuation, and fund a massive operational pivot.
January 5, 2026 at 10:03 AM