dkagarwal

@Eepsita Burma Burma is great and love it's food and it's founders both Chirag and Ankit. However, Speciality restaurant market cap is 462 Cr less than Burma Burma with their EBITDA is 70 Cr, it trades at 6X EV/EBITDA

I'm annoyed. Burma Burma just raised $4M at a $53M valuation. For what godforsaken reason am I annoyed? It isn't about Burma Burma. And I'm not bringing this up from a business or F&B angle. It's at...surprise surprise...young AI and B2B startups. People who are watching a Burmese food chain hit ₹200Cr+ ARR and still think going horizontal from Day 1 is the move. For context, BB has: > Over ₹200 crore ARR > 50% CAGR Every startup wants to believe theirs is the next horizontal giant. Maximum TAM. Maximum revenue. Incredible scale. Noooo, stop! Horizontal is NOT for everyone. Until you're building something as deeply infrastructural as Stripe or AWS — or until you've amassed serious volume — going horizontal is burning your budget. Not enabling it. If I have to take the example of the F&B space itself, going horizontal would look like: → Specialty Restaurants: started with one fish restaurant ("Only Fish"), then scaled into Mainland China, Oh! Calcutta, Sigree, Sweet Bengal & more. → Zomato, Swiggy: aggregators at massive scale. Both paths required enormous capital and volume FIRST. __ Anyway, I sound like a broken record to all founders I talk to. But niche down, fellas. Most odds of success for most startups are at niching down into a category, a vertical, a geography. *Don't* do everything at once. Tl;dr: don't annoy me.

Seat belt chaukas tareeke se baandh leyo! Tag your Kanpuriya friends NOW!

@DrSanjivGoenka @rajasthanroyals @RCBTweets Sanjeev Sir, Jay Shah was 19 years old and haven't even started his career when IPL 1st started

1/ @rajasthanroyals, acquired for roughly ₹270 crore in 2008, have just been sold for over ₹15,000 crore. @RCBTweets, acquired for roughly ₹485 crore, sold for over ₹16,600 crore. Two franchises, same week, each over ₹15,000 crore. That value was built by the architecture of the IPL. The way broadcast and digital rights were structured. The governance that gave brands confidence to invest at premium levels. Much of this traces back to the vision of @JayShah.

@equities_samjho The way we used to mug on last day of our end sem and mid sem exams in IIT India also responds when presented with a crisis (BoP crisis in 1991 liberated our economic & west asis crisis will (hopefully) make us self reliant on expensive energy that we import)

You might see the government is suddenly obsessed with getting a gas pipe into your kitchen (PNG) instead of just delivering a cylinder (LPG). It actually comes down to a massive math problem we are trying to solve. Most people think gas is just gas but they’re actually totally different chemicals. LPG is the stuff in the red cylinders (propane & butane) and is basically a scrap product. When we refine crude oil to make petrol and diesel, we only get a tiny sliver of LPG (about 3%). Even though India has world-class refineries, we just can’t squeeze enough LPG out of a barrel of oil to feed 33 crore households. This forces us to import a staggering 60% of our LPG, mostly from the Middle East. If a war breaks out or a shipping lane like the Strait of Hormuz gets blocked, those cylinders stop showing up at your door as usual. Natural Gas (which is then sent as PNG), on the other hand, is a primary fuel (mostly methane). We actually have plenty of it sitting in our own ground in India. While we still import some, we aren't nearly as dependent on the Middle East for it as we are for LPG. By moving city folks onto pipelines, the government is essentially freeing up the limited supply of cylinders for rural villages where you can't easily dig pipes. It’s a huge logistical reshuffle to make sure a crisis in West Asia doesn't leave the masses unable to cook. There's also another angle here. Countries like the US and Qatar don't even need refineries to get LPG, they just suck it straight out of massive "wet" gas wells. India doesn't have those specific types of wells. So, for us to keep using LPG, we have to keep buying expensive crude oil and hoping the 3% we get as a by-product is enough. Over the long term, in hindsight, it was a losing game. Indian bureaucracy should have envisaged this and prepared in advance, esp. when Ujjwala Scheme more than doubled the number of LPG connections to ~32cr. That was a strategic mistake. Switching to PNG is basically India’s way of saying that let's stop relying on a byproduct that we lack domestically and start using the methane (natural gas) we actually produce at home. It’s safer, it’s underground (so it's harder to disrupt during a war), and it keeps the supply chain running even when global oil prices go crazy. For an average person, it’s the difference between waiting for a truck that might not come and having a tap that never runs dry.

@Rahul_J_Mathur Slow down in consumer demand is always a cause of concern. We may also experience an AI led softening in consumer demand or deflation

The 5 patterns were as follows: (1) Embrace of consumption credit 🛍️ - US went from abstaining from credit to completely (1900s) embracing consumption credit in 1920s - driven by affordable credit options from General Motors & Sears - Countries like India have shown the same pattern in the 2010s; driven by loans for white goods (2) Explosive growth of credit for speculation 📊 - Margin Loans went from $1bn in 1920 to $6bn in 1929 right before the meltdown - Margin of as low as 10% was being offered to all clients! - Seeing the same MTF boom in India right now in 2025 (3) Cash outflows from domestic securities to US stocks 💹 - Bank of England Same had to raise central bank rate from 4.5% to 5.5% to control the flow of capital out of England during roaring 1920s - India et al need to have limits (LRS) on outward capital flows (4) Speculation is always available where the eyeballs are 👀 - On 15th August 1929, stock broker MJ Meehan opened a branch in the ship called The Leviathan - Today stock trading is available everywhere: mobile apps, AI chatbots, social apps etc (5) Govt eventually realizes that Capital Markets hold a sway over the Economy 🙃 - US experienced this in 1929 when a credit squeeze followed the crash which impacted industries - Prez Hoover was in constant touch with Wall Street Titans like Lamont from JP Morgan - In India, something similar is playing out since MCap has exceeded GDP TBH:

I read 350+ pages of "1929" on my flight to SF last week The author Andrew Sorkin has done a phenomenal job tracing the "Depression" which hit the US from 1929 to 1933 The meta learning for me is that "History may not repeat but it sure does rhyme" I saw 5 clear patterns:

The Pyramid Scheme: The Pyramid Scheme follows the story of Goldy, an ambitious but impatient young man, whose quest to get rich through a pyramid marketing business spirals into a rollercoaster of chaos - risking not just his future, but also the love and trust of his close-knit joint family. #PrimeVideoPresents #ThePyramidSchemeOnPrime #ItStartsHere Production Company: The Viral Fever Directors: Ashish R Shukla, Shreyansh Pandey Writers: Akshendra Mishra Key Cast: Paramvir Cheema, Ranvir Shorey, Annjan Srivastav, Shekhar Suman, Ashish Raghav, Alfiya Jafri, Akhilendra Mishra, Smita Bansal, Indresh Malik, Sushant Singh

Sandeep Bhaiya Season 2: Sandeep Bhaiya Season 2 follows Sandeep Ohlan's journey as a civil services aspirant in Prayagraj after his fiancé, Kusum, has ended their engagement. Six years later, ALC Sandeep crosses paths with Kusum again forcing him to confront his past. #PrimeVideoPresents #SandeepBhaiyaOnPrime, New Season #ItStartsHere Production Company: The Viral Fever Director: Parijat Joshi Writers: Nitin Tewari Key Cast: Sunny Hinduja, Deepali Gautam, Punit Tiwari, Pankhuri Awasthy

It's extremely hard to take out/take away efficient players even if they don't have capital. They may not become the largest but if they survive they tend to become more efficient and then they would go for eventual kill (these folks make mistakes and then iterate and learn from those)

True, but survival is the path to efficiency. No player is sustainably profitable right now. BlinktIt has been making money in their 3P marketplace model mostly + some assortment + burn endured by Zomato and even then they are ‘adjusted’ EBITDA profitable. Zepto and Swiggy haven’t even reached this point of maturity yet.

One of my friends at a QC giant told me tha one of the players has to die so the other two can make money. Considering BlinkIt is ahead of everyone on the curve, it’s a wait and watch between Zepto and Instamart.

@VeniGupta5 Capital has a cost attached to it and not a long term advantage and this is never a long term moat Only long term moat, IMO, is inherent efficiency

I don’t think so actually. I think the player with most cash to burn will win. If a player has profit pools in one geography/pin code they can use those to undercut players in other geographies through subsidies, drive competition out and then focus on profitability. Assortment will be the bottleneck because inventory turn matters most in profitability so some differentiation can be created through differentiation in assortment.

विधायक :- मैं चंद्रभान सिंह बोल रहा हूं...मत करो बदमाशी..मेरी गाड़ी का चालान करोगे..? RTO इंस्पेक्टर :- मैं भरूं थारी गाड़ी का चालान...? विधायक :- अति कर रहे हो उपाध्याय विस्फोट हो जाएगा..जिस दिन मेरे को मिल गए न ठीक से इलाज कर दूंगा...! ये वायरल ऑडियो राजस्थान के विधायक चंद्रभान सिंह और RTO इंस्पेक्टर सुशील उपाध्याय की बताई जा रही है..! RTO इंस्पेक्टर ने विधायक जी की रेल बना डाली..सुनिए वायरल ऑडियो..!

@sandypuns_ @CFAinstitute @Dexter_Capital Thanks Sandipan. Dexter has contributed 10+ fine investment bankers who may otherwise would have tough time getting into investment banking

@dkagarwal @CFAinstitute @Dexter_Capital Everyone please read this - this sounds fantastic. Absolutely nothing like coupling CFA with a long duration IB experience 💯

Honestly, if you really want to make it in finance - get in a good B-School or break into boutique IB internships instead of running behind CFA. The CFA tag in this country is just a solitary line on your resume and for that amount of money/time, you’d rather use it elsewhere.

1. Would AI cause deflation? (Kids in college are struggling to get jobs and a lot of folks are losing jobs => drying up demands) 2. Would AI cause CIVIL wars or chaos? 3. How will the new world deal with job losses resulting because of AI?

@alwaysalkagoel Well before that how does one identify during an interview?

Hustle, agency , can do attitude - how do you train for that ?

I spoke to a few IPO bankers friend and as of now IPO markets are virtually shut, anyone who got approval before last year may need to refile and get approval again as it takes at least 3 months to get a decent size IPO once work starts. The second order effect of this is more money available for the secondary market via DIIs which may provide cushion for falling markets

If PhonePe can’t command the valuation or investor interest it wants despite dominating UPI payments, I worry about Zepto's IPO...

@wizardofid @TheBigGeek @Tyagi0G Incorrect. They manufacture and sale in India. Top 5 store hotels, cafes, airports are their clients

@dkagarwal @TheBigGeek @Tyagi0G That's the OP's point. Most well known brands in India retail other (well known) international brands, and service them. At best, they might source local assembly. But it's not developed and branded by/from India.

It's a Question many have asked, but a good espresso shot is about perfection, perfection of temperature control, perfection of the heat exchanger, perfection of the boiler, and perfection of engineering. Only a Few German Companies, a lot of Italian Companies, and a very few Chinese companies have really mastered this. I know of a few innovators who have built some amazing machines in India but have failed - precision engineering in India is available, but not accessible to any, and if the precision engineered espresso machine is going to cost the same as a global brand - who will buy a new Indian brand. Yes a lot of machines are imported into India, but there are Indian made machines too, and a lot of local manufacturing is ramping up. But for someone who (claims to) understand Espresso, and is surrounded by people like @lightroastguy @Abhishek_Rai @ImRo45 one learns a lot more. Case in Example, I was evaluating a Profitec 600 and ended up buyinga. Lelit Bianca, why [a] Temperature Difference between Boiler to Group Head less than 1% [b] Power Efficiency of Double Boiler System (one for the Milk Steamer, and one for the Group Head), higher efficiency than Profitec [c] The LCC gives me some amount of flexibility (though am a person who likes to control how I extract my shot) The Chinese Manufacturers have been working hard and have put out only 1 or 2 Machines that are worthy of their salt. Espresso is not just hot water extracted at pressure, it's the change of temperature over the 30 odd seconds of extraction, the change of pressure, and the ability to control all that. Let's build in India, but let's not forget that the companies here, (the photo shows a professional La Marzocco), Lelit, Profitec, ECM, Victoria Arduino, Rancillio and others have put decades of work on perfecting what they put out, and one should understand precision engineering is not something we are really good at (while @prakdadlani may disagree with me here) There are cheap Indian coffee machines, then there is the Pod System, then there are Bean 2 Cup Machines, each has a buyer, and each has a capability. You can't just pick up a 10,000 Nespresso Machine and put it in a Coffee Shop, it will fail, similarly you can't put a Commercial machine at home - you will run a huge electricity bill. I have heard similar things in the fountain pen space, in the watch space, in the Pencil (yep wooden pencil) space, to even in the vehicle space. None of our Indian Vehicles come close to the engineering a Japanese or a German Vehicle has (@ShivrattanDhil1 and @volklub may add more here) We produce the shittiest pencils in the world, yes Doms is changing a bit with their partnerships, but write with a Mitsubishi Pencil or with a Blackwing - you will never pick up an Indian Pencil (what say @pacificleo) The other day @nimishdubey bhai had tweeted about a Blackwing Sharpener (Those are amazing), the Nail cutters from Seki Japan and Victorinox are amongst the most amazing things out there - everything is a rabbit hole of geekery, and one has to understand it's not - chalo yeh bana lete hain. I can go on and on, but will let others add. Yes we need to build capabilities, but we have to remember at the end we are a jugaad nation - take design for our famous brands (copies), take inspiration (copies), even software or app (mostly copies). Amongst the most amazing companies that I have seen in India, that have built a product that is amazing and the world loves to use it, is @Paytm, Tally (no one comes close to replacing them), UPI...to a handful more. Where we need to excel [a] Our GI tagged Agri Products are amongst the best in the world, the Rantagiri Mango, the Darjeling Tea, Alphanso Mango, Banarsi Sarees, Kanchipuram Silk, Lakadong Tumeric, Mysore Nuggets Coffee, our whole Arabica Series - We need to work hard that these are amongst the best in the world, and our priced exports [b] Services, we have been recognized as the service nation of the world, our services are still not the worlds best, we did get a lot of contracts because of wage differences - but have we ever got it - because we are the best - we need to really build skills here [c] Build For Masses - We are 140 Crore Indians, The India Stack (Adhaar, UPI, Digilocker) are products that touch every one, Parle-G as a food product manages to touch everyone and in the recent years Haldiram did that too - we have the capability to produce for 140 Crores, and produce something they need day in day out (Lux Soap is also a good example here) India needs to build for Bharat, and the world. We don't really have to worry about a 100,000 odd (that is a very high number) of espresso machines we are importing - let the best in the world produce them, and let us use them to put the best cup of coffee out there.

@StartupArchive_ So apt

Vinod Khosla: “70% of investors add negative value to a company” When junior team members at Khosla Ventures ask Vinod if they can serve on portfolio company boards, Vinod responds:) “You haven’t earned the right to advise an entrepreneur. Just because you got an MBA and joined a venture firm doesn’t mean you’re qualified to advise an entrepreneur.” Vinod believes one of the best ways to earn that right (but not the only way) is to build a large company yourself: “Have you gone through how hard it is, how uncertain it is, how traumatic it is to go through?… If somebody has never dealt with this decision-making under ambiguity, they’re not qualified to help you… Whose advice to trust on what topic is the single hardest decision an entrepreneur makes. It’s also where the right investors can really help you.” He gives the example of asking a marketing executive at IBM for marketing advice: “They’ve never dealt with things where the market isn’t established… They’re not qualified to invent whole new markets.” He also recalls a recent argument with a co-investor who wanted their healthcare portfolio company to hire a healthcare executive from an established company: “They wanted this healthcare person who had never dealt with change beyond 2% a year, and I’m like, experience doesn’t matter. The rate of learning matters [for a role like this].” Video source: @ycombinator (2019)

@brahma_4u There is a company called Trufrost and Butler in which we have invested. The founder earlier built cell frost and sold it to a German company

Coffee machines everywhere in India. Thousands of such coffee machines are imported in India every year. The majority of them cost beyond 10 Lakhs INR. (90% of them cost 30-40 Lakhs) I believe there's a big market for Indian manufacturers to not just build for India but for the world. Coffee market is here to stay and boom. 🇮🇳🚀

This is plain and stupid, IMO, FII taxation should be at par at domestic taxation. FDI can have a friendlier tax regime as that's a long term capital We also need capital gain lower on any asset which is productive (like equities or debt or corporate bond) vs non productive assets (like gold or real estate)

#MCGlobalWealthSummit | Energy bill could rise 25–30% within 15 days of conflict, potentially adding $50 billion to India’s import bill, warns Shankar Sharma, Founder, GQuant. Speaking to @SurabhiUpadhyay , Shankar Sharma said the situation underscores the need for India to remain friendly towards foreign capital amid external sector pressures, while retail participation in markets should come with checks and balances, especially in derivatives. #MCGWS2026 #Markets #Energy #Investing #IDFCFirstBank @1shankarsharma @IDFCFIRSTBank