𝐒𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐝𝐡𝐚 𝐒𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐦𝐚

🚨🚨 Today, I finally got down to launching Full Stack, a separate space for my opinions, views & commentary on the new economy. Why Full Stack? Cos these will be rounded, balanced views & talk as much about tech companies & startups as the people who inhabit it…

NEW: Zepto has been meeting public market investors to make the pitch for its planned June-July IPO What has the company been telling these institutional investors? ⬇️

@onnonya_tweets Aspiring to be!

Are they really dmart?

🚨🚨Zepto’s IPO pitch to public market investors is that it’s modelled on DMart. They want to differentiate themselves from Blinkit ( the largest company in the sector) by pushing a narrative of value commerce. Along with that the pitch is of still clocking 25-30% growth despite an overall slowdown in the quick commerce for older players. The management has told potential investors over the past weeks in meetings in Mumbai that it’s trimming its cash burn and aiming for full profitability by FY29, @pranavmukul reports for @ETtech The 5-year old startup reduced its quarterly cash burn to Rs 850-900 crore in the January-March period, down from roughly Rs 1,200-1,300 crore a few quarters ago driven by lower per-order costs and a pullback in network expansion, with its dark store count holding at around 1,100. But will the cost control hold post IPO? Also with both Eternal and Swiggy stock seeing a correction of 20-30% in recent months, Zepto’s $7 billion valuation will be hard to sustain in this market..

NEW: Meta has been attempting to build photorealistic, AI-powered characters. But so-called 3D "embodiment" is difficult due to compute demands and latency issues So Meta is now focused on developing an AI clone of Zuckerberg And the CEO is personally training and testing it

All the President’s Men turns 50 today. This famous “six‑minute shot” is a masterclass in phone acting and pure technical nerve. Director Alan J. Pakula and cinematographer Gordon Willis pull off a single, unbroken slow zoom: from a wide, humming newsroom to a tight close-up on Redford. No cuts. No safety net. Tension builds in real time. Redford carries it with typical quiet confidence. Six minutes of note-taking and talking into a phone, no flashy “Oscar clip.” He even flubs a name (“McGregor” for “Dahlberg”), corrects himself naturally, and Pakula keeps it because it feels authentic. The background is part of the story. As Woodward hones in on his phone call, everyone behind him huddles around a TV watching Senator Tom Eagleton resign. The contrast is deliberate: they chase the “obvious” headline, while the camera drifts past them to Woodward, and the real story. To hold Redford and the busy background in focus early on, they used a split‑diopter lens, then had to ease it out as the camera moves in. A technical tightrope. The timing of both actor and cinematographer is spot on. As Woodward closes in on the truth, the world literally falls away: the newsroom blurs, the noise fades, and we lock into his obsession. It’s one of cinema’s great moments: Redford doing almost nothing—and somehow everything at the same time. What makes this shot brilliant is the contrast it carves between Redford and the newsroom around him. The visual language does the talking: he’s locked in, disciplined, driven, all focus and fire. He stands apart because the work matters more than anything else.

🚨 Tata Sons chairman orders probe in TCS Nashik case Chairman N Chandrasekaran has called the allegations "gravely concerning". economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/informati…

🚨🚨BharatPe cofounder Shashvat Nakrani has stepped down from his role in the company He had stayed back in the firm after both Ashneer Grover and Bhavik Koladiya quit the fintech startup. BharatPe's current CEO is Nalin Negi

Meta Platforms is expected to surpass Google to become the world’s leading digital-advertising business on.wsj.com/4mqXjGE

YC’s first-ever India Startup School is on April 18 in Bengaluru. We spoke to @agupta about the timing of the Startup School, how seed stage capital in AI is still lagging, YC’s earlier India cohort of Meesho, Razorpay, Groww, Zepto who had to flip back to India and pay huge taxes as the listed or plan to list and also the recent ARR controversy around another portfolio firm Emergent. On the funding gap. “There’s too much capital going to a small number of companies at the very top, and not nearly enough going to seed stage firms.” On the Emergent ARR controversy: Emergent, a YC S24 company, claimed $100M ARR just 8 months after launch sparking a debate on vanity metrics. Gupta said without specifying anything on Emergent, “It's totally possible there are some companies picking a metric that makes them seem better or worse or whatever. But one thing I’ll encourage everyone to keep in mind…if you look at the growth of the top model lab companies, people consistently believe it is impossible for them to achieve their growth, and then they do it over and over again.” On flip back tax from YC portfolio ( which makes it mandir to domicile outside of India) Groww: $160M. Meesho: $280-300M. Razorpay: around $150M. “We have a lot more information now… we’ve seen the experiences of those companies, so we know how to prepare them for what’s ahead.” W/@pranavmukul @ETtech

The report refers to an @ETtech story on how large ecommerce players Amazon and Flipkart doubling down on opening more dark stores and competitive landscape changing. Flipkart, Amazon expand dark stores as profit check slows quick commerce majors by @pranavmukul economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/technolog…

Something small happened on my flight yesterday. IndiGo flight. Sitting next to a guy, well put together, well dressed. The kind of person you’d point to and say “educated, aware.” He finishes his snack. Looks at the trash in his hand. And places it on the floor under the seat in front. Not accidentally. Deliberately. The cabin crew came through for trash collection. Did their job perfectly. Collected from everyone’s hands, every tray table. The stuff on the floor, easy to miss from that angle, stayed. We landed. His cups and food box were still sitting there on the aircraft floor. And I just sat with this feeling I couldn’t quite name. It wasn’t anger. It was something closer to disappointment. Or maybe exhaustion. Because we’ve been having this conversation about civic sense in India for decades now. And nothing moves. Here’s what I’ve come to believe. It’s not an awareness problem. It’s not an education problem. It’s not even an income problem. It’s a “whose problem is it” problem. Most people in India have unconsciously decided that shared spaces, flights, roads, parks, footpaths, are not their responsibility. Someone is paid to clean it. Someone will handle it. Me? I’m just passing through. And that mindset is exactly where the problem begins. Because civic sense isn’t just about what you do. It’s about what you normalize. Every time someone litters and nobody reacts, the bar drops a little lower. Every time someone cleans up after themselves in a space nobody’s watching, the bar rises. We are all, quietly, setting the standard for each other. Choose the standard you want to live in.

Sad. BTW, ma'am, it's "Miranda House". Since 1948. Always helpful to know the real names of institutions you're invited to. Vīvat līberum arbitrium @mirandahouse_ @du_mirandahouse

bro was right. Atlassian down 75%. HubSpot down 69%. Figma down 86%. Almost all of them down 30–70% from their 52-week highs. AI is literally eating software alive and repricing every company in real time. SaaS is cooked fr 😭

@sama— I am sorry to people I’ve hurt and wish I had learned more faster. I am also very aware that OpenAI is now a major platform, not a scrappy startup, and we need to operate in a more predictable way now. It has been an extremely intense, chaotic, and high-pressure few years.