r/StartUpIndia

Hey , so I am a medical graduate from national institute and during my one year of work in the emergency department I came across this problem of triaging requiring tremendous human resource which I am 100 percent sure that it could be solved using a program , doesn’t have to be AI, just a combination of algorithms to navigate common clinical presentations. So I have the clinical algorithm but I need someone who could code for me . So I know a few people in state governments to help us do a trial run. I have no capital to invest so u ll be an equal.

Okay, so for those who don't know, 80-IAC is a Startup India thing where you get zero income tax for 3 financial years if you get approved. sounds great right

applied 3 years ago. submitted everything. waited. forgot about it. followed up again. nothing.

crossed 100 crore in revenue, 6 months back, which means we're now literally out of the eligibility criteria.

so the government has been sitting on my application for 3 years, i outgrew the scheme while waiting for approval, and i will never see a single rupee of that tax benefit

it's just funny lmao

SET A US LLC

1. UniConfess

Imagine Twitter but only for college students. Post publicly or go fully anonymous — your identity is never revealed. You get two feeds: one just for your campus, one global so your voice reaches students across every college in India. There are clubs, direct messaging, a marketplace to sell old books and electronics within your campus, leaderboards, and a full admin panel where I can assign sub-admins per campus to moderate content.

I built the entire thing solo. 14,500+ lines of code. Hybrid React + Flutter architecture. Supabase backend. Firebase push notifications. It's live on the Google Play Store right now. It covers 71,000+ colleges and universities across India.

Downloads? 25. All my friends.

The app works. The product is real. It's just sitting in some corner of the Play Store that nobody visits because I have zero idea how to market anything.

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2. Scaling Yug

I started scraping Hinglish data — Hindi + English mixed, the way a billion Indians actually talk. Got to around 4-5 million rows. Then hit a wall: cleaning and labeling millions of rows manually is impossible.

So I built a pipeline. An automated one. It cleans, deduplicates and labels every row without human intervention — assigns intent, emotion, toxicity, sarcasm, quality score, label confidence. All automatically. The pipeline runs at 100,000+ rows per second.

I now have 1.5 million rows of cleaned, labeled Hinglish data sitting on my laptop.

Market value? Around $25,000–$50,000 for non-exclusive licensing. Over $100,000 exclusive. There are AI companies literally searching for this kind of data — Indic language models are starving for it.

I sent cold emails. LinkedIn DMs. Got zero responses. So I gave up and closed the laptop.

That dataset is still there. Untouched. Worth potentially six figures. On my laptop.

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3. MediYug

This one hurts the most because the problem is genuinely serious.

People are going blind. Going untreated. Not because medicine doesn't exist — but because they don't know where to go or can't afford local healthcare. Medical tourism is real and it's growing, but there's no good resource for normal people to navigate it.

So I built one. MediYug helps you find affordable hospitals in other countries based on your medical condition. It compares costs, gives you visa information, travel tips, expert advice. Everything in one place. No more Googling 20 different things and still being lost.

I finished it. It actually works.

I launched it without a domain on vercel for free because I can't afford a domain(My father is a rickshaw driver and over monthly income is around $100-$130)and $90 is emi. Just threw it out there to help people. Nobody found it. Nobody used it. Because I told nobody.

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So here I am. 20 years old. Three real products. Three real problems being solved. A dataset worth potentially $100k+. And the combined user base of all three is roughly my friend group.

I can build anything. I genuinely cannot tell anyone about it.

I'm not posting this for sympathy. I'm posting this because I think a lot of builders are in this exact position and nobody talks about it honestly. We celebrate the launches. Nobody talks about the products that work perfectly and sit completely invisible.

If you've been here — how did you get out of it? What actually worked for you?

And if anyone in AI/NLP knows what to do with a 1.5M row labeled Hinglish dataset — I'm all ears. It deserves better than my laptop's C drive.

Idk wtf is this guy doing , but he has been delaying the payment since last month saying he'll do it by end of week. Now it has become a quite big chunk of money and I am short of funds , it is getting too much frustrated.

Now if this guy doesn't pay up in next week or delays anymore , I am either gonna opensource the whole work or start finding a buyer for the source code and the API keys.

He himself rants that he is a "bootstrapped founder" and "i do not have a job, i do this only" , wtf man , that is your job , being a founder, pay up the employees, and now if he's unable , I'll have to find my way.

Hello everyone I would like to put some of my observations. I’m not saying this to hate on anyone or disrespect small business owners, because earning honestly is always respectable. But lately, I have been noticing something happening across India that genuinely concerns me.

Everywhere you look, people are starting the exact same kind of “business” roadside chai stalls, coffee counters, protein shake shops, fruit juice stands, cold drink setups, ice tea carts, momo stalls, and similar copy-paste ideas. One person starts it, ten others nearby do the same thing. The streets are becoming crowded with sellers, but nobody stops to ask an important question:

If everyone wants to sell, then who is left to consume?

A real economy needs balance. Not everyone can become a seller of the same low-entry products. We need builders, innovators, engineers, researchers, manufacturers, designers, creators, and people solving actual problems. But instead, many people now think putting up a table, mixing flavored powder with milk, and calling it a “startup” is entrepreneurship.

This isn’t innovation. Most of these businesses have no differentiation, no technology, no scalability, no long-term vision, and no value creation beyond surviving day to day. It feels like we are stuck in an endless loop of chai, coffee, shakes, cafés, and Instagram-style food stalls while countries around the world are building AI products, robotics, semiconductors, biotech, advanced manufacturing, and deep-tech companies.

The problem is not small businesses themselves. Small businesses are important for survival and employment. The real issue is the mindset shift happening where people are becoming afraid to build something difficult, original, or innovative. Everyone wants quick cash flow with the lowest possible risk, even if the market is already overcrowded.

Social media also plays a role. We constantly see videos saying:

Started this business with ₹5,000

Earn ₹10,000 daily from tea

Open a shake shop and become financially free

But very few people talk about sustainability, competition, margins, scalability, or market saturation.

India has incredible talent and one of the youngest populations in the world. Imagine if even a fraction of this energy went into building products, technology, agriculture innovation, healthcare solutions, automation, manufacturing, or global software companies instead of endlessly copying the same roadside business models.

Again, there’s nothing wrong with honest work. But as a country, we should ask ourselves:

Are we creating businesses that truly move society forward, or are we just recycling the same ideas because they feel safe?

Me and one of my close friends are students from India with a Computer Science background. We currently have around ₹50,000 in hand and can additionally invest around ₹10,000 every month consistently.

We don’t want to waste money blindly on trendy ideas. We want to build something practical that can genuinely grow over time.

We are open to:

• online businesses
• AI/tech-related work
• local service businesses
• digital agencies
• content businesses
• software/SaaS ideas
• anything scalable with low initial capital

Our goal is not “quick money,” but to build something that can realistically grow in the next 2–5 years.

People who have already started businesses:

• What would you start today with this budget?
• What businesses are actually in demand right now?
• What mistakes should beginners avoid?
• What skills are most valuable in today’s market?

Would really appreciate honest advice from experienced people.

Hey guys!

I’m planning to start an F1 merch store in India focused on high-quality, wearable merch at actually reasonable prices. Not just copied prints, but stuff that genuinely looks and feels premium.

Most F1 merch available here is either too expensive or poor quality, so I’m trying to build something fans would genuinely enjoy wearing.

Would love honest feedback 🙌

Every time I open a finance app I feel like I'm being sold something. The MF recommendations are suspiciously tilted towards their own AMC partners. The insurance suggestions feel like ads. Is there any platform in India that genuinely shows you all options and lets you decide without nudging you towards one? That feels like the actual problem nobody is solving.

Hi guys, my team have developed a new product that will help buyers connect directly with builders. We make sure that no spam calls are done and buyers get instant price sheet. Would appreciate some feedback and opinion. Please feel free to comment down or DM me. It is currently based only in Hyderabad and its real estate market.

Feel free to search BuySft on any app store.

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Recently, I got an offer to join a startup project in exchange for equity only (0.6%) with no cash component. The project is currently in the MVP phase and still needs to go live. I’ve been asked to take on a specific role as a backend engineer and continue my current job while contributing part-time.

Should I join, or is it too risky of a bet? One part of me feels I should join because it can work as a side project where I’ll get to learn new things.

If it succeeds, I could make good money in the future along with gaining valuable experience. And if things don’t work out, it would still be a learning experience, basically a win-win situation. Am I missing something here? Any guidance?

Any negotiation i can do here?

Same as title

Hey everyone, I really need some help or guidance here.

I run a B2B SaaS company in India, scaled the company to ~$350k ARR and decided to registered a company. The company registeration process is now completed.

I have been consuming services/servers from various providers outside of India which requires monthly payments in USD (these services are not at all replacable with any Indian providers so please no solutions related to shifting the providers)

Because of the nature of our work, we need to make frequent payments — sometimes bi-weekly ($3k), and sometimes montly (~$5-8k). The services does not have a fixed payment it depends based on the usage and our requirements.

So far I used pay all payments via my credit card because it had 0 forex markup. Now after company registeration, I do understand that I cannot use that option anymore and I need to use my company account for everything.

I spoke to IDFC First Bank representative, but they said for every single international payment (even $1), I need paperwork and a CA certificate. Along with that using debit card is not an option at all (he strictly said no that it is not at all possible, he mentioned if I use debit card I will face a lot of issues at later stages with compliances). On top of it they also mentioned whatever payments I make I need to first get the Vendor approved by bank everytime vefore making any transactions. Only route they suggested was do wire transfer for the services.

Since debit card is out of picture, my problem is how do I do payments now specially for the subscriptions that I have. It is practically impossible to do transactions each week and the manual work seems very tedious. Plus not using debit cards take a lot of options out like Paypal, etc. I can use Paypal to pay in INR but then they charge more than 4% forex markup, which makes it not sustainable in long-term.

I chose IDFC First Bank since they offer lowest forex markup from my research. Even when I went there they offered best currency conversion rates as well as lowest forex markup. But the other terms and conditions are a deal breaker for me. But I am not sure which bank to choose.

Also is he right about using debit cards for international payments will really cause major issues if I use it for USD payments?

Is anyone here running a business in India and making similar, frequent international payments?

If yes, how are you managing it? Which bank do you use.

Would really appreciate any advice or real-world experience. This will become a major bottleneck for us.

Is it this hard to do payments in USD, like when I was not a registered company and just an indvidual running a company it was way easier while I understand it is difficult for businesses but I never thought it would be this difficult. Any advise and guidance is appreciated.

Thanks in advance 🙏

I want to start a travel startup. I am non tech guy, one of the freelancer is asking 2 lakh rupees to develop the website. I want functional website where user can compare the tours from different operators.

Hi everyone,

I’m currently exploring a consumer internet opportunity around trust, useful discovery, creators, content, and genuine products.

My background: I’m an IIM graduate and have spent 8+ years building a China–India sourcing and logistics business. That gave me a close view of products, suppliers, small businesses, buyers, and how difficult it is for genuinely good things to get discovered without large marketing budgets.

The problem I keep coming back to is this:

People have more content than ever.
More product options than ever.
More influencers than ever.
More reviews than ever.

But decision-making still feels broken.

For many categories, people still depend on friends, WhatsApp groups, Reddit threads, YouTube comments, or personal recommendations before buying.

That makes me feel there is still room for a more trust-led discovery layer in India.

I’m thinking deeply about the zero-to-one stage and would love opinions from this community:

1. If you were building in this space, what would your first 90 days look like?
2. What would you validate before building the full product?
3. What early roles would matter most — product, engineering, growth, content, community, creator partnerships, or something else?
4. What kind of people would you bring in early?
5. What are the biggest traps in building consumer internet products in India?

Especially interested in views from people who have built or worked in startups, consumer products, marketplaces, content platforms, creator economy, D2C, or community-led businesses.

Hello,

I am Mohammad Abbas, founder of a unique beverage concept - Cocktail Bombs. These are ball-shaped flavor bombs that you simply drop into soda or sparkling water, and your cocktail is instantly ready.

We are now looking for wholesale buyers, distributors, or partners who can help us bring this innovative product to a larger market. The Cocktail Bombs are convenient, fun, and perfect for parties, bars, and retail outlets.

If you are interested in wholesale or distribution, please reach out to discuss pricing, bulk supply, and partnership opportunities.

Looking forward to connecting with you

Hi,

I am a founder myself, and Im planning to get a mac book pro for development work! I had a couple of questions I want to discuss with any techie who has bought a laptop recently for heavy coding.

Please dm me, would be helpful 😄

Few questions I had -

1. I've been a mac use for the past 5 years, but the costs are too high (~4 lakhs for a high end mac book). Is it worth it? Or does linux based systems work (Lenovo, Asus are providing high specs for a lower cost). Just wanted to check how the experience has been for development compared to mac.

2. There is a 18% tax write off if you are purchasing it under companies name. I'm trying to understand if its possible to bundle it with any personal credit card to get further discounts. Has any one done this?