Tech • Design • Ethnography Weekly Indian consumer insights - The India Notes 🇮🇳 (19,000+ subs) 👇
Bangalore, India
Joined November 2011
- Tweets14.6K
- Following3.8K
- Followers29.4K
- Likes33.9K
Dharmesh Ba retweeted
We got @OncourseAI to 80k+ signups as a small bootstrapped team, and I built @caddie_app in a week on the side.
So we wrote down the 15 principles we actually work by with agents
My favourite: keep at least five agents running, day and night.
usecaddie.app/blog/agents
Dharmesh Ba retweeted
remember if this can happen to a sitting MP do you really think a common citizen has any immunity from the state's unilateral impunity
Manhandled, dragged, assaulted n misbehaved inside a police vehicle and dumped by the roadside - for the crime of speaking to the media.
This is not merely an assault on an MP. It is an assault on democratic freedoms and the rule of law. More chillingly, it happened within hours of the Supreme Court issuing directions to safeguard peaceful protest and constitutional rights.
I have written to the Hon’ble President of India @rashtrapatibhvn , the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha @VPIndia and the Chief Justice of India seeking urgent intervention and fixing accountability for the police personnel, and action on the question of parliamentary privilege.
The Government cannot intimidate democracy into silence. It cannot substitute the force of the baton for the force of debate. And it shouldn’t expect the people to surrender their constitutional freedoms merely because those in power find dissent inconvenient. The strength of a democracy lies not in its capacity to suppress dissent, but in its ability to address it.
Dharmesh Ba retweeted
wait, so the indian govt actually has the capability and resources for lightning-fast, large-scale mobilization?
so we actually can make the city safer for women and improve regional security? how stupid of me to think the scale of the country was the problem.
Dharmesh Ba retweeted
First in my bloodline to see a protest has achieved its objective even before it begins
CJP
History ✌️
Dharmesh Ba retweeted
the potential I see in other people isn’t real. It is a projection of what I would have done in their position.
Dharmesh Ba retweeted
In any civilized country, this man's political career would be over. It's a shame that we live in such a feudal society that this kind of behaviour is tolerated. And sadly 95% of politicians behave the same way when the cameras aren't rolling.
Dharmesh Ba retweeted
@ChennaiTraffic can you pls help clear this vehicle. It is parked right outside home and we are not able to take our vehicle outside.
Near Mandaveli Bus terminus
Dharmesh Ba retweeted
So @district_india and @zomato @zomatocare @carebydistrict have started a new fraud scheme
1. Get people to book an event for ₹10k
2. 2 weeks before the event send 1 email to them (that goes to their spam folder) telling them the event is postponed now to be 2 months later
3. Give them 6 days notice to cancel and NEVER inform them over call or WhatsApp
4. Tell them they can't cancel or refund it because the 6 days are now over
This must easily make crores in revenue every month. Great work 👏
Dharmesh Ba retweeted
Travelled 1.5 hours for a 12:30 PM doctor’s appointment.
Doctor shows up at 1:30. By 2:15, we’re still waiting because the hospital CEO has dropped in for an unscheduled chat.
Staff: “What can we do, sir? CEO is talking to the doctor. We can’t interrupt.”
By 3 PM, three of us finally say: “There are three CEOs waiting outside too. This is Bangalore, every fifth person is a CEO. Can we see the doctor now?”
Peak Bangalore 😂
Dharmesh Ba retweeted
Products from Daily Objects seem overpriced by 50% even after being available at 50% off.
Dharmesh Ba retweeted
Same story at @foldmoney_. BillDesk application live since March, still pending.
Video KYC rejected because a director was at our Bengaluru office instead of the address on his Aadhaar, told to travel to his home state to verify a Bengaluru company. Felt like 2010.
pls help @GoogleIndia @billdesk 🙏
I have lost INR 3,00,000- INR 4,00,000 because of @Google & @billdesk - and 100s of other developers across India are facing the same issue.
>I build mobile apps with In-app purchases & Subscriptions.
>Users download the apps for free and pay for features in-app
>I publish these apps on Apple App Store & Google Play Store
>Majority of my installs come from Google, organically
Now here is what happened:
>Google Play in India requires you to be verified via a 3rd party agency,
mandated by @RBI
>The third party agency is BillDesk
>2 months ago I started my verification process with BillDesk
>My application got rejected 10-12 times without any feedback, frustrated I asked them to give me callback to explain the issue
>On the call they said I had to cancel and restart my entire application - 5 weeks ago.
>I completed all online verification formalities
5 weeks ago, Google stopped users from purchasing all IAPs in my apps because my payments account was not verified.
❌ At this point I have ~$2,000 in my Google Play account that cannot be deposited in my bank account due to incomplete verification.
❌ Unknowingly I was also spending money on paid-ads - which all went to 0 because of this.
>Now for the past 5 weeks, I have been mailing them everyday to get an update on my application
>I only get template responses
>I reached out to them via X, LinkedIn, Mail but no response
>My downloads are growing everyday but my Google Play revenue is 0
(which is supposed to be ~3L for the last 30 days now looking at the growth)
And this is not just me - if you go on Reddit and type "Billdesk verification" you will see what I mean.
>Some have even mentioned they ask for bribes lol
Srinivasu MN Parul Verma Viswanath Kuppa
(tagging whoever I find from BillDesk)
I usually avoid writing rant posts but I don't have anything to lose at this point :))
Dharmesh Ba retweeted
I have lost INR 3,00,000- INR 4,00,000 because of @Google & @billdesk - and 100s of other developers across India are facing the same issue.
>I build mobile apps with In-app purchases & Subscriptions.
>Users download the apps for free and pay for features in-app
>I publish these apps on Apple App Store & Google Play Store
>Majority of my installs come from Google, organically
Now here is what happened:
>Google Play in India requires you to be verified via a 3rd party agency,
mandated by @RBI
>The third party agency is BillDesk
>2 months ago I started my verification process with BillDesk
>My application got rejected 10-12 times without any feedback, frustrated I asked them to give me callback to explain the issue
>On the call they said I had to cancel and restart my entire application - 5 weeks ago.
>I completed all online verification formalities
5 weeks ago, Google stopped users from purchasing all IAPs in my apps because my payments account was not verified.
❌ At this point I have ~$2,000 in my Google Play account that cannot be deposited in my bank account due to incomplete verification.
❌ Unknowingly I was also spending money on paid-ads - which all went to 0 because of this.
>Now for the past 5 weeks, I have been mailing them everyday to get an update on my application
>I only get template responses
>I reached out to them via X, LinkedIn, Mail but no response
>My downloads are growing everyday but my Google Play revenue is 0
(which is supposed to be ~3L for the last 30 days now looking at the growth)
And this is not just me - if you go on Reddit and type "Billdesk verification" you will see what I mean.
>Some have even mentioned they ask for bribes lol
Srinivasu MN Parul Verma Viswanath Kuppa
(tagging whoever I find from BillDesk)
I usually avoid writing rant posts but I don't have anything to lose at this point :))
Dharmesh Ba retweeted
Anyone in TL who can put me through someone senior at Saravana Bhavan ? RT Pls ?
Dharmesh Ba retweeted
@airtelindia I booked Airtel Xstream Fiber, paid the advance, and I’m still waiting for installation. The installation date has been changed multiple times, the technician isn’t responding, and now I’m being told there is a backend issue with no confirmed installation time. I’ve asked the POC to cancel it, but I’m unable to find any proper cancellation journey.
When I go to the Chat option in the Airtel app, there are standard issue templates, but there is no option for a new Wi-Fi connection that has been paid for but not yet installed. I assume this is because my profile previously only had mobile services. But now I have ordered and paid for Wi-Fi — so where exactly is the customer journey to raise a complaint or cancel the order before installation?
Even when I call customer care, there is no clear language selection before being pushed through the IVR. How are you expecting customers to navigate this if you don't even establish their preferred language first?
I genuinely don't understand these user journeys. Please cancel my Wi-Fi order and initiate my refund. I don't want to keep chasing different people for something that should have a straightforward cancellation process.
Dharmesh Ba retweeted
so this is spiderman season -- look at how we did spiderman cafeteria scene, pre AI -- simply with intuition and solid engineering!
@SpiderMan
Dharmesh Ba retweeted
I've now added Wispr, Notion, Granola, Fireflies, Zoom, Gemini, Cluely, Otter, Fathom, Read AI, and Wingrep to every meeting.
Each produces slightly different meeting notes.
I send all of them to Claude and ChatGPT, which push the summaries into Slackbot and Salesforce AI. Linear agents automatically create tickets while Notion agents create follow-ups in Notion. A Zapier workflow then uses 500k tokens to draft a follow up email in Superhuman.
None of it works and all of it is wrong but man, is it beautiful.
AGI is here.
Dharmesh Ba retweeted
Today we’re announcing SPC Fund IV: $575M to help founders find their life’s work.
A decade of guiding founders through -1 to 0 brings @SPC to $2B in AUM and, more importantly, a 1200 member community of the world’s most talented technologists. We strongly believe that:
→ The person comes before the idea. At -1, generational founders are often busy reading, prototyping, discarding, and earning the right to their own conviction.
→ Ambition is social. The people you surround yourself with in the early days play a big part in inflecting your ambition.
→ Patience compounds. It is better to work on something you have deep conviction in rather than simply sprint at the first idea.
The quiet months we protect at the beginning have produced three funds in the top 10% of their vintages, and companies like @baseten, @GammaApp, @render, @GoodfireAI, @LumaLabsAI, and @profound. We are proud to have worked with all these founders in their -1 phase and beyond.
While we defined -1 to 0, we're no longer bound by it. Fund IV allows us to partner with companies well beyond launch.
We're doing this now because we've never seen a wider gap between what's possible and what's being attempted. Intelligence is abundant. The cost of trying ideas keeps falling, and problems that seemed insurmountable a few years ago are quickly becoming solvable.
To our members, to the founders who trusted us before anyone else did, and to the LPs who had conviction in our own -1 journey: thank you. This milestone belongs to you as much as to us.
To the builders looking to find your life’s work: let’s get started.
