
Rishabh Katiyar
1.8K posts

Rishabh Katiyar
@katrishabh
Investing @InfoEdgeVC. IITK, IIMA Alum. Opinions are personal.


'India’s middle class can now pursue startup ambitions. Govt policy made it possible' Sanjeev Bikhchandani @sbikh, member of the National Startup Advisory Council, in conversation with Rishabh Katiyar #ThePrintOpinion theprint.in/opinion/india-…

Zomato, Blinkit, Swiggy, and Zepto are, at their core, unskilled labour–arbitrage businesses. India’s quick-delivery boom runs on squeezing maximum efficiency from underpaid, replaceable workers. @goyalhiral @akm1410 and @ujval_nanavati write: themorningcontext.com/internet/etern…






2025 - It’s all there. You just got to notice. We had started out building a Chesscom, but for math. But the more we spoke to our community, the more we realised… math is just an anchor. What people really wanted was to spend time doing something that wasn’t just scrolling reels, but something that felt worthwhile. Something productive, something that didn’t make them feel dumb. This is why they stuck. Keeping this in mind, we launched Cross-Math in January, our first puzzle format. Same playbook but around a puzzle, and the response was amazing. This continued over months, from bringing in puzzles to even bringing in a memory format…all at the request of our community. We may not be the best product people in the ecosystem, but we always ensured that we spoke to our community, and they guided how we build the platform. By March, Matiks wasn’t just a game, it was a platform where like-minded people connected, competed, and spent their time productively. Until then, LinkedIn was our only source of getting new users apart from PLG, and that’s when I started putting in some effort on Twt. While most companies lean on Perf Marketing to get their initial bunch of users, it was very clear to us that we had to crack PLG to build a billion-dollar, blitz scalable platform. Thanks to @katrishabh & @saver3011 , we were never pushed out of that mindset. They were okay with us staying at 500 users and experimenting more instead of chasing volume. April is when people truly started noticing me & Matiks on Twt. The more people tried it, the more people liked it. And they even started sharing their experiences with Matiks on their tl and our metrics started getting better. I also started doing a bunch of challenges like 1 day intern for 1 lakh rupees (which @keylimepie2000 won), running 1 Km for every 10 downloads (that couldn’t last very long :D). Shamelessly tagged Matiks anywhere and everywhere. Talked to people who tried Matiks. Put in 20 hrs workdays…not sustainable, but we couldn’t let the opportunity go. Increase your surface area of luck and something will hit you. I also did the follower count challenge, posted videos of me doing fast math. Many Twt folks engaged…many helped. It’s a long list and if you are reading this…you have to know I can’t thank you enough! And if I can ever help you back…I’d be real lucky to do so. May is when I thought, let’s get a few big names to try the platform and see if they would give us a shoutout. Day 1 - I asked @nikhilkamathcio to try Matiks…many people tagged him as well…but nothing happened. Day 2 - I asked @thetanmay to try Matiks…nothing happened for 12 hrs. I went to @kamath_sutra ’s place that night to have a beer and told him what’s been happening. We were at our 2nd beer when Tanmay replied! He tried it, he loved it, and he wanted to talk. The very next day, he gave us a shoutout and things changed. More people started noticing Matiks. Day 3 - I did nothing. I was overwhelmed with the response Tanmay’s story was giving us. Many people ask what’s the increase in DAU his mention got us, but it added value that was much more than just a spike in users. Day 4 - I asked @waitin4agi_ to try Matiks and he did! He replied as well and suddenly, I was talking to the man himself at 4 am, telling him about our plans. Sometimes things don’t happen for months, and suddenly, they happen in days. It may have looked like we were chasing clout and distribution, but we had spent 7 months trying to build the best product. The love and the response we received was a result of the same. May was when for the first time in 25 years, I spent my birthday away from my parents...this time with another family, built in Bangalore, Matiks. June and July were a haze. It was a shift from working like a bunch of hacker house kids to operating like a real company. July, we threw the Matiks party along with the @OfflynLife boys. August-September-October, we sat back and worked on making the product more appealing. We also started seeing traction from outside India, more people giving us shoutouts and this time not just on Twt, but on Instagram and Linkedin as well. People also started forming their own communities around Matiks. And not to forget, we raised a round with Tanglin Venture Partners & @InfoEdgeVC with some stellar angels. By November we had grown 50x from where we were at the start of the year, all organically, but we had one question - is this thing fun to watch as well? That is when @SushantTimmapur came up with the idea of Brumble and man, was that a success!!! Looking back at the year, I did gain more than 15kgs…but that’s not the focus rn. The thing is, we didn’t plan for any of this. A bunch of kids trying to have some fun is all we are. But things started falling in line…as soon as we noticed. Currently, we are at 100x of where we were at the beginning of January 2025 and we just got to ensure we repeat the same in 2026 :) And it can surely be done…if we just don’t stop…noticing.


Facts below (1/5): In 2025, average earnings per hour (EPH), excluding tips, for a delivery partner on Zomato were ₹102. In 2024, this number was ₹92. That’s a ~10.9% year-on-year increase. Over a longer horizon also, EPH has shown steady growth. Most delivery partners work for a few hours and only a few days in a month. But if someone were to work for 10 hours/day, 26 days/month, this translates to ~₹26,500/month in gross earnings. After accounting for fuel and maintenance (~20%), the net earnings for the partner are ~₹21,000/month. Note: Earnings per hour are calculated on total hours logged in, including the time when the partner might be waiting to receive an order. Earnings per “busy hour” will be higher but that’s not the right metric to look at. On top of this - delivery partners earn 100% of tips given by customers. The average tip per hour in 2025 on Zomato was INR 2.6 and in 2024 was INR 2.4 per hour. Tips are transferred instantly, with zero deductions. We absorb the payment gateway processing cost ourselves. About 5% of the orders get tipped on Zomato; 2.5% on Blinkit.







We just raised $3.14M🥧 From solving brain teasers in classrooms to solving for scale, this one’s a big step towards making mind sports the coolest out there. Huge thanks to our investors for believing in the equation we’re building @InfoEdgeVC @UntitledVC @gauravmunjal @RomanSaini @anilgoteti @Tanuj_kh @AmanHasNoName_2 @yash_dandavate @Abhishek Patil(Growthx) Now let’s multiply the madness 🚀



Every few years, the world reminds us of our place. A threat here, a tariff there. But the message is the same: stay in your lane, India. Global powers will always bully us, unless we take our destiny in our own hands. And the only way to do that is if we collectively decide to become the world's largest most unapologetic superpower in the world. In economy, in technology, in defense, and most importantly, in ambition. There is absolutely no other way.



