Nikita Dawda

Meetings getting tedious? Here is how we strived for more meaningful meetings at Meesho (1/10)

OpenAI just exited the video generation business entirely. App dead. API dead. No video inside ChatGPT. Disney’s $1 billion deal, signed four months ago, is dead. Read that again. This isn’t a consolidation into the super app. Altman told staff Tuesday that OpenAI is winding down all products using video models. Disney’s own statement says they respect OpenAI’s decision to “exit the video generation business.” The Sora research team is being redirected to robotics. The reason is sitting right there in the competitive data. Anthropic hit $19 billion in annualized revenue by early 2026 selling text and code. No video generation. No image generation. No consumer social app. No Disney deal. One product surface: chat, code, computer use, all in one place. OpenAI looked at where every dollar of market growth was coming from and saw the answer: coding and enterprise. So now they’re copying the model. ChatGPT, Codex, and the browser merge into one app. Instant Checkout killed today too. Every consumer experiment is getting cut. What remains is the Anthropic playbook: one app, code and chat, enterprise and developer focus. The Sora numbers explain the urgency. Total consumer revenue across iOS and Android since September: $1.4 million. Peak month was $540,000. Every video generation burned GPU compute that could have been running inference for ChatGPT or Codex instead. OpenAI’s own head of Sora announced generation limits because chips couldn’t keep up. At $14 billion in projected 2026 losses, every GPU matters. Google just inherited the AI video market by default. Nano Banana already lives inside Gemini. No standalone app to manage, no separate brand to support. Among the majors, they’re the only ones left. Runway, Kling, Minimax, Luma, and the other independents are still shipping, but none of them have Google’s distribution. Disney put $1 billion in stock warrants on a product that lasted six months. The deal was announced in December. Characters from Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars were supposed to be generating fan videos on Sora by now. Instead, Disney is writing a polite press statement about “respecting OpenAI’s decision” while its legal team unwinds a deal that never produced a single licensed video. Four months from billion-dollar partnership to obituary. That’s how fast the AI product landscape reprices when the unit economics don’t work.

Introducing Vaani – Your Meesho Dost, India’s first Gen AI-powered conversational voice shopping assistant, designed for the next 500 million users who inherently shop this way. Most e-commerce is built for digitally savvy users who know what they want and how to find it. A large part of India doesn’t shop that way. Shopping here has always been assisted. You walk into a store, describe what you need, ask questions and decide with guidance. That’s what we built for. Vaani brings this offline experience online. It understands natural, real-world queries, asks follow-up questions to clarify intent, and works seamlessly across the app to help users discover, decide and purchase. Early signals are encouraging. Over 1.5 million users have interacted with Vaani, with strong repeat usage indicating early habit formation and a 22% higher conversion rate among users who engage with the assistant. When technology understands you, shopping becomes simpler. When it guides you, confidence grows. And with that confidence, millions more people can participate in commerce. #Meesho #VoiceCommerce #DigitalIndia

BIG: Trump’s top counter terrorism official resigns: says ‘we started this war because of pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.. it serves no benefit to American people.. ‘imminent threat’ posed by Iran to America was a LIE..’ As MAGA coalition spilt wide open, there are still ‘patriots’ who tell truth to power! #ai

Atoms. atoms.co/vision

@chiragchhajer @burmaburmaindia Burma burma is synonymous with comfort food for me. Thanks for creating it!

We’ve taken over 12 years to open only 21 @burmaburmaindia outlets, and I think it’s worth talking about. In today’s VC and PE funded world, this is the opposite of blitzscaling. And in a world full of ESOPs, Series ABCDE news and so much more, it has taken a lot of restraint in managing how we grow Burma Burma. Given this isn’t madness, but pure method, wanted to share a few things that we’ve made our strategy’s cornerstones: Clustering: We now have 6 outlets in Mumbai MMR. While Mumbai is home for Ankit and me, it is also one of the largest metro clusters in India. We’re working on a similar strategy for Delhi and Bangalore, and they will continue to form the backbone of our network in the years to come Unit Economics: To paraphrase a not very famous bollywood dialogue- we don’t leave old relationships to form new ones. Our existing network restaurants and their growth is equally important to us as making new outlets profitable. I’d dare say Burma Burma has one of the industry’s best breakeven timelines, even as we continue to open new outlets at scale Going Hybrid: This part of our journey is still growing- apart from dine in and delivery, we are steadily growing the pie of pantry items- chips, sauces and so much more coming up These decisions are the opposite of haste, and we’re insanely lucky to find patient capital at each stage of our growth. @NeilBahal

We sold 150 resale homes in Bangalore in 2025. Most buyers are walking into a "liquidity trap" - here’s how to avoid it 🧵

Well, here's a Thursday night rabbit hole for me: > Epstein was killed August 10th, 2019. > The Epstein Files show his YouTube account, username: littlestjeff1 > The files also show he used the same username on the video game Fortnite, and he was an avid player—showing frequent in-game purchases. > 'Fortnite Tracker' shows his account reached Silver 1 (level 4 of 9—1, 2, 3 for bronze, silver, gold respectively) in the game 'Chapter 5, Season 1.' > Chapter 5, Season 1 was released on December 3, 2023. It ran until March 8, 2024. > Jeffrey Epsteins Fortnite account was playing from Israel in 2024, 4 years after his "death."

Overheard in SF: Person 1: “Rome wasn’t built in a day” Person 2: “Yes but they didn’t have Claude Code”

Walked into a busy office in koramangala 7 years ago. Worked endlessly with the most phenomenal set of people, leading up to this moment. This epic, damn moment. #meeshoipo

7 years ago, I walked into a tiny office in Koramangala. Got to work with this phenomenal bunch of people, leading to this day. This epic damn day. #meeshoipo

As the Meesho IPO frenzy hits the market in a few hours, flashbacks from the last few years are hard to ignore. In my opinion, Meesho is the boldest Indian consumer story of the last decade. Getting to play a role in that journey still overwhelms me. This is my Meesho story. Back in 2012, I walked away from a lucrative investment banking career abroad to join a young startup in India. It wasn’t a plan; it was a gut call. By 2018, that gut call was looking shaky. My bank balance had barely moved in six years. Friends were buying flats in Mumbai; I was calculating if I could afford rent in South Bombay. I was tired in a way only startup operators understand. At that point, I was ready to trade up for stability. A multi-billion-dollar popular name made me an offer. They even announced my joining in the Economic Times - the first time my name ever appeared in a newspaper. It was the kind of role where you can finally… exhale. But something felt off. I was introduced to @viditaatrey late 2017 and I had stayed in touch. Meesho was scrappy, small, but incredibly ambitious. A role emerged to head Meesho's business, but it wasn’t the "logical" choice. Friends warned me: “You already lost your hand at startup poker once. Don’t gamble again.” Their logic wasn’t wrong. But I saw the world differently. I didn’t see my previous six years as a failure. I had learned - to build from scratch and to thrive in ambiguity. These didn't look like losses. They looked like leverage. So, when the choice came - slow security or fast uncertainty - I chose optimism. I chose the story that made my heart beat faster. I chose Meesho. In a few hours, the success will be visible to the world. But for me, the real win was learning how to play the game, living customer obsession, and discovering that compounding happens quietly… and then shows up loud. If startup life is a poker table, maybe in hindsight, the table will soon know I had a royal flush. PS : Thanks @arnav_kumar for being the super-connector you are !!

Was surprised at the efficiency and integrity of police verification for passport this time around in Bangalore. They now have a direct feedback mechanism via sms that keeps officers in check/on toes. Very very good initiative..

Started reading this book but got distracted 4 times on the first page

You can now design the interiors of any home before you buy it. Try-before-you-buy, but for homes. visit jumbohomes.in and tell me what else you wish Magicbricks or housing should have built

Razorpay, NPCI, OpenAI join hands to pilot ‘Agentic Payments' on ChatGPT moneycontrol.com/technology/raz…

X is deeply concerned by the recent order from the Karnataka court in India, which will allow millions of police officers to issue arbitrary takedown orders through a secretive online portal called the Sahyog. This new regime has no basis in the law, circumvents Section 69A of the IT Act, violates Supreme Court rulings, and infringes Indian citizens’ constitutional rights to freedom of speech and expression. The Sahyog enables officers to order content removal based solely on allegations of “illegality,” without judicial review or due process for the speakers, and threatens platforms with criminal liability for non-compliance. X respects and complies with Indian law, but this order fails to address the core constitutional issues in our challenge and is inconsistent with the Bombay High Court's recent ruling that a similar regime was unconstitutional. We respectfully disagree with the view that we have no right to raise these concerns because of our incorporation abroad—X contributes significantly to public discourse in India and the voice of our users is at the heart of our platform. We will appeal this order to defend free expression.

As George Carlin once said "Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups".

My 5 year old niece just made imaginary passports for all her soft toys for US immigration. And they even stamped them.

Just look at this BMTC officer abusing an old, helpless person :| My friend takes this bus regularly, and is scared, as are many other people. He's threatened physical abuse many times @CPBlr @St_Brosephs @BlrCityPolice @DgpKarnataka, do something!! @BMTC_BENGALURU