Our 2025 Request for Startups, IQ mini-reports on Rural India & Kids, new High IQ podcast ep. with Frnd, and more.
Dear Investors and Friends,
We hope the new year is off to a wonderful start for everyone!
We kicked off 2025 with our Request for Startups (inspired by Andreessen Horowitz)—a list of opportunities we’d love to see more founders explore.
If you’re working on any of these ideas—or know someone who is—we’d love to connect! Drop us a note at [IQ team member’s first name]@indiaquotient.in
IQ Press:
We added 2 new reports to our ongoing ‘20 Things About…’ mini-report series:
1. 20 Things About Kids in India
India has 400 Mn kids—that’s as many people as the entire United States population. Yet, when you think of large Indian kids’ brands, how many names come to your mind for clothes, toys, or baby gear?
The truth is, brands are just beginning to address the needs of India’s next generation and their parents, creating a big opportunity in this space.
What does being a ‘kid’ and a ‘parent’ mean today? How are kids influencing what families buy? What will brands for Gen Alpha and Gen Z look like? What are the opportunities to build in this space?
Explore all this and more in our kids’ report. Read it here.
2. 20 Things About Rural India
For far too long, the assumption has been rural India = poor India. This is not true! It’s lots of people, motivations, and nuances.
From FMCG to white goods, rural India is emerging as the next major growth engine. However, startups looking to tap into this market must understand rural consumers' unique traits.
In this report, we share quick, bite-sized insights into these unique traits, how rural India is changing, and the opportunities it holds for founders.
Read it here and let us know what you think!
We also just launched a brand new High IQ Podcast episode featuring the founders of our portfolio company, Frnd ⬇️
Due to social stigma, millions of Indians in small towns and cities have yet to have a meaningful conversation with the opposite gender.
Dating isn’t a problem to be solved for them yet, and traditional social network apps—often visual and Western in nature—fail to cater to their specific needs.
So, how do you bridge this gap in social interaction? That’s where Frnd comes in—an audio-first social network app that creates safe virtual spaces for men and women from Tier 2 and 3 India to interact and connect.
Tune into this episode hosted by Anand Lunia (IndiaQuotient) to hear them discuss:
Why is dating not a mass market problem that needs to be solved in India right now?
What are the nuances of building for the next billion users?
How do you build a strong product team that iterates quickly and truly understands user needs?
What are some unexplored opportunities in India's social space?
Check out the full conversation here. You can also find this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Kuku FM!
Portfolio Updates:
1. We are super happy to share that Curie Money has raised $1.2 Mn in its seed round led by us.
Curie is a supercharged mutual fund-backed savings account offering Indians a smarter way to save. Users can invest in high-yield mutual funds and still have access to that money at any time to make daily payments via UPI.
Read more about their seed round and what they’re building here.
2. We are also thrilled to be continuing to back our portfolio company Blitz in their Series A round led by IvyCap Ventures, with participation from us, Alteria Capital, and others.
Blitz is a quick commerce logistics enablement platform helping D2C brands deliver faster (60 minutes, same-day, or next-day deliveries).
So far, they have worked with 200+ brands, including Decathlon, Adidas, Puma, Giva, and Snitch, to provide delivery services across 800+ pin codes in India.
Read more about their Series A round and what they’re building here.
Events:
November and December 2024 turned out to be truly special for us. We were fortunate to host a series of exciting events and meet an incredible mix of founders, investors, and ecosystem enablers.
Here’s a quick look at what we got up to:
1. In November, we hosted startup ecosystem mixers in Delhi and Mumbai, bringing together 100+ founders and VC professionals at each event.
2. In December, we hosted the winners of ‘IndiaQuotient 30 Under 30’ (2023 and 2024 editions) for breakfast at our office.
‘30 Under 30’ is an initiative by us that spotlights, appreciates, and celebrates star employees from our portfolio companies. We first launched this in 2023 and brought it back this year due to the overwhelmingly positive response from our community.
Spending the morning with such talented individuals and listening to each winner’s professional journeys so far and how they have been building themselves up left us both inspired and energized. We're already looking forward to continuing this initiative next year!
3. We closed 2024 with our annual New Year’s party, Burn’25.
We all turned up in black and gold, raised a toast to the year ahead, indulged in some incredible food and cocktails, and doubled over with laughter thanks to Garv Malik's standup set.
As always, we would like to leave you with some of the things our founders and the IQ team have been saying online:
Thank you for taking the time to read this newsletter. We’ll be back with another one soon.
Cheers,
Team IndiaQuotient.