May 16, 2025 · 55m · neon-show
What's Happening To VC In India w/ All In Capital, Peer Capital & Upekkha
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Host Siddharth Ahluwalia convenes emerging venture capital fund managers Karthik Prabhakar, Rajan, and Kushal Bhagia to unpack the unfiltered realities of building and managing early-stage VC funds in India. The panel explores essential investor mindsets, LP fundraising dynamics, strategies for identifying non-obvious startup bets, and the structural evolution of the Indian venture landscape.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. How this is scored →
Siddhartha as informed peer 5.8 Guest teaching 3.6 Guest disagreement 2.2 Siddhartha pushing back 2.6
speaking balance: gold is Siddhartha, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 34:03 Rajan rejects the David vs Goliath premise
Rajan explicitly pushes back on Siddhartha's framing, labeling the binary comparison between emerging and large funds as lazy thinking and asserting that stage defines strategy.
Hardest push from Siddhartha ▶ 37:28 Siddhartha reasserts the structural edge of emerging managersSiddhartha refuses to drop the David vs. Goliath framing, arguing that larger funds face deployment constraints and reputation risks that blind them to non-obvious bets.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 29:26 Guests deconstruct Siddhartha's high-volume accelerator modelRajan and Kushal educate the room on why high check volume without established power-law results leads to adverse selection and LP rejection as spray and pray.
Siddhartha holds their own ▶ 42:36 Siddhartha showcases Neon's contrarian enterprise winsSiddhartha provides specific portfolio proof points with SpotDraft and CloudSEK, detailing revenue milestones and mega-rounds raised despite being passed over by tier-one Indian VCs.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Siddhartha as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Siddhartha pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Welcome and Key Traits Needed for Venture Capitalists | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Siddhartha sets an open, conversational tone exploring traits of emerging VC managers. The guests provide thoughtful frameworks and analogies (like pilot checklists and parental instincts) without friction or confrontation. | |
| Navigating the Difficult Realities of Raising Venture Funds | 6 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Siddhartha demonstrates solid industry context by citing global mega-fund sizes (Thrive, General Catalyst) and the heavy reliance on US LPs. The panel collegially unpacks family office mindsets and LP education curves. | |
| Analyzing India's Potential for a Y Combinator Equivalent | 7 | 6 | 4 | 4 | Siddhartha pitches a specific thesis to build an Indian YC by deploying $25M-$100M across high-volume checks. The guests challenge this framing, pointing out that scaling check volume prior to proving power law results in 'spray and pray' brand dilution. | |
| Emerging Managers versus Giants and Spotting Non-Obvious Bets | 7 | 4 | 4 | 5 | When Siddhartha introduces a David vs. Goliath analogy, Rajan dismisses it as 'lazy thinking,' arguing stage is strategy. Siddhartha hits back with concrete portfolio proof (SpotDraft and CloudSEK) demonstrating how small funds capitalize on blind spots left by tier-one VCs. | |
| Rapid-Fire Q&A on Missed Deals and Ecosystem Aspirations | 5 | 2 | 1 | 1 | A friendly rapid-fire closing segment where host and guests exchange candid reflections about missed deals, admiration for ecosystem peers, and formative founder feedback. |
Statements from this episode (14)
Bhagia: Half of VC is sales to founders and LPs
“We see, I think I feel half of it is a sales job. You're selling yourself to the founder when you're selling yourself to LPs that's a large part of your job.”
Prabhakar: Pitch prospective LPs for the fund after next, not immediate fund
“Whenever you're talking to anybody in my own mind, I'm thinking that I'm pitching to this person, not for the next fund, but for the next to next fund. And if something converts in this fund, great, because you're not you're not selling a product. You're actua…”
Ahluwalia: 90% of capital in top Indian VC funds is foreign-sourced
“Most of, even if you see the larger funds in India, like Bloom, Solaris or Axel of the world, 90% of their money comes from outside India, mostly US, right?”
Prabhakar: Family offices only back VC funds after attempting direct investing
“To also kind of assess during those early conversations, where are they in their learning curve? Are they at that denial point or are they at that point where they say, look, I know this works. I have tried my hand myself, but I think it's best done by somebod…”
Bhagia: Y Combinator funded 60 Indian startups in 2021 before pulling back
“So they did 60 from India in one year, 20, 21. After that, they've fallen off at least India. They're not doing as much.”
Bhagia: Valuation and dilution are founders' top priority over investor brand
“The number one thing for founders, right? No matter what your brand is, how much value you have, whatever you do, the valuation matters, what price you're giving them money at, how much ownership you're taking. That is the first priority for them. Everything e…”
Bhagia: Mega-fund strategy inherently degenerates into a capital deployment problem
“I think one big disadvantage for the larger funds also that the bigger you become, right? Your fund strategy becomes a deployment problem. Cause how many, if you run a fine and million dollar fund. Even if I give somebody five million dollars, it's like one pe…”
Bhagia: Passed on Zepto co-founder Adit Palicha's early Kirana Kart pitch
“Adit came to me also back then, right? He said, I'm in Stanford. I'm, if you give me money, I'll quit. I said, like, I've just not heard of it's like, show me something at least. And that time he was doing the Kirana card model. So it's just very hard to back …”
Ahluwalia: SpotDraft hit $20M ARR without tier-one Indian VCs
“We have a company called Spot Draft from, in Neon. Companies are 20 mil era. They recently raised 54 mil series B from Vertex Singapore. None of the Indian tier one VCs are on the cap table.”
Kushal Bhagia: Elevation's Mukul Arora is on 7-10 unicorn boards
“I think Mukul's track record even there is exceptionally good. I think he's on the board of some seven or 10 unicorns, first cry, swiggy an academy on this, the whole list of them”
Bhagia: Y Combinator is the only VC brand that outlived its founders
“I think everybody else, the, how much of an institution you build, if the people change the funds ranking changes. Like Kleiner Perkins used to be one of the top funds. They then went down, right? That cycle keeps repeating in the Valley as well by sees the on…”
Bhagia: Most Indian VCs ghost founders after pitch meetings
“Most we see in India still don't honestly close the loop with a founder. There's still a lot of ghosting and just like somebody comes and pours their life's dream out to you and you just don't reply after that.”
Bhagia: Indian VC deal paperwork takes two to six months to close
“The paperwork also in India is insane. Us sold it many years back and like here, which we take anywhere from two to six months to just close the deal. And most VCs don't think of it as their job. They just hand it off to the legal thing. This guy will do it. A…”
Bhagia: Meesho successfully took on e-commerce giants Amazon and Flipkart
“Vidit had once told, like before they went up competing against Flipkart and Amazon yet told me I'm going to do it. I was just like, this guy is crazy, man. Like was at that time, Amazon Flipkart were like these giants, right? Like you couldn't imagine that th…”