“Whatever has happened, has happened for good
Whatever is happening, is also for good
Whatever will happen, shall also be good
What have you lost that you cry for?
What did you bring, that you have lost?
What did you create, that was destroyed?
What you have taken, has been from here
What you gave, has been given here
What belongs to you today,
Belonged to someone yesterday
And will be someone else’s tomorrow.
Change is the Law of The Universe.”
- The Bhagavada Gita
Change is inevitable. 2021 was a year of change. It was a year of growth; a year of reflection; a year of momentum.
I want to close the year with deep gratitude. For all the lessons learned, and all the love and support we received at Kalaari. May the next year bring peace, joy, and wonderful changes into your life.
2021 emerged with a clarion call to the power of India's digital opportunity. It has shown the potential for 'Uniquely India' solutions to create a global impact. We have compiled our conversations with visionary founders who are redefining the way Indians live, work, consume, and transact.
Indian startups raised $36B in 2021, a 227% increase from 2020.
Crypto gains mainstream popularity, as the total trading volume of cryptocurrencies in India scaled to $10B in Dec '21, reflecting a 10x YoY growth
Sectors such as gaming saw new forms of monetization being unlocked, with the rise of Play2Earn and GameFi
UPI has continued to be a key driver of growth for digital payments in India, with over 30B transactions and a total value of over $770B processed in 2021
Unprecedented digitisation across sectors such as agriculture, healthcare, education, logistics, accelerating digital transformation in these industries
Online Gaming is on the rise in India. It is estimated to become a $2.2B market opportunity by 2022.
We recently hosted GameCon, one of India’s largest gaming events. We had insightful sessions by industry experts and also conducted India’s Second Axie Infinity Community Tournament.
We were privileged to lead early RMG and Social Gaming in India with Dream11 & WinZO, and are excited by the growing gaming talent in the country. The quality of founders building for this ecosystem in India is truly inspiring.
To access the exclusive insights and action from the event, click here
GuardianLink has built a no-code NFT launchpad that allows customers to mint, publish, and sell NFT's. It also has a proprietary legitimacy protocol that uses an AI engine to provide advanced data analytics and protect NFT’s from being duped.
It aims to play a pivotal role in the $15B NFT market that is expected to continue on its hyper-growth trajectory with the wide range of applications and use-cases getting unlocked.
As an R&D-focused company, it aims to build an ecosystem of tools that will make NFT commerce simpler, accessible and efficient.
Kindlife is a new age beauty and wellness ecosystem enabling commerce, community, and brands.
It is poised to capture the clean beauty market, with India expected to have over 100M+ online beauty shoppers participating in a $1.5-3B market by 2025.
Their vision is to acquire and build a powerhouse of brands leading the clean living theme in India.
Samosa Party is building a delivery-first QSR brand focused on tea-time snacks.
It aims to organize a key niche in the $40B street foods market. With over ~60M samosas being sold in India every day, they are pursuing a $750M organized market opportunity by 2025.
It wants to give India’s favourite tea-time snack a global identity and make it available to people at the click of a button while becoming India’s most loved snacking brand.
Health and wellness is an $8B market in India, growing at a CAGR of 14%. Back in 2016, Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagori saw the potential of building a large company that helps Indian consumers adopt a holistic approach to health and fitness. Since then, the team has executed relentlessly and created an incredible brand. Today, they are the market leader in the growing fitness market. Excited to share that CureFit is now a unicorn. We're privileged to have been early partners in your mission to redefine India's health and fitness ecosystem.
The Good Glamm Group enters the unicorn club with its latest Series D fundraise. Congratulations Darpan Sanghvi, Priyanka Gill and the entire team. We're privileged to have been early partners in POPxo and now The Good Glamm Group, as you continue to realize your vision of building the leading beauty and personal care brand.
Nearly 95% of India's $500B food and grocery market is unorganised, mostly made up of neighbourhood Kirana stores. Jumbotail's full stack platform provides these entrepreneurs with access to staples and FMCG products, along with financial services. Congratulations Karthik Venkateswaran and Ashish Jhina on their Series C fundraise. We are privileged to be early partners in your journey to building India's leading B2B food marketplace and new retail platform.
We are privileged to have been early partners in their journey and wish them continued growth and success.
The Power of Compounding & Playing the Long Game
Today, instances of people building a career in one field, or one company, are a rarity. But, every success story is a result of grit and perseverance.
While we understand the power of compounding mathematically and financially, we rarely contemplate the value of creating a compounding career and the benefits of sticking around.
Some reasons to play the long game:
- Leverage the power of compounding
- Cultivate authentic, long-term relationships
- Build resilience
- Be a lifelong learner
Here are some reflections on the power of compounding and how it's still relevant in the fast-paced world we live in today.
'Thinking, Fast and Slow’ is written by world renowned psychologist and Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman. In this book, he uncovers in depth the two modes that we as humans use to think. He uses scientific evidence from two decades of his work to make points and provides clear practical tips on how we can effectively control these two modes to work in our favour.
Here are some key takeaways:
System 1 and System 2: System 1 is the intuitive, “gut reaction” way of thinking and making decisions while System 2 is the analytical, “critical thinking” way of making decisions.
Important to update and challenge System 1 from time to time: While we think we spend most of our time being rational and logical, we spend our daily lives entirely using system 1 thinking, which often leads to over-reliance on what we think is true rather than what is actually true.
