Abhishek Pinninti: Hello everyone, welcome to Vigil's Pod. Today here we are with Bharat, one of the fellow founders and let us hear from him what he is building and why is he building that. Hi Bharat, how are you doing?

Bharat: Hi Abhishek, I'm good. ⁓ Just want to briefly share with your audience as well as anyone listening about the problem that I'm trying to solve. And now with my co-founders we're trying to solve. It's the messy tangled problem of getting funding in India. For every founder, there's a lot of avenues to get funding.

Abhishek Pinninti: Take care.

Bharat: And we thought we'll start with the nastiest problem first, which is government funding. So we thought, OK, let's try to detangle it at least in one phase. There's a whole journey for a founder to go from point A to point B to get that funding. The initial part where you ⁓ sort of narrow down the number of funds that are going to help you itself is such a task.

Abhishek Pinninti: I know.

Bharat: It is so complicated that we decided, okay, I only realized this because I was posting content to spread awareness about this. I started talking about funds and I noticed whenever I just share about other startups getting funding that got a bit of traction. That was okay. But then the videos where I give a spread awareness, like just mention it to people that, know, these are the funds available in India. Did you know?

Abhishek Pinninti: Hey. Right.

Bharat: If I just mention something like that, goes, people, videos are going viral and people are like so interested, know, founders as well as aspiring founders. So then I was like,

Abhishek Pinninti: What? I am also a doctor to be claimed because I am facing the same problem.

Bharat: Okay, okay, exactly. So we'll discuss that. We'll go into details about what you must be facing and all that. So yeah, this was the inception of that when I saw that, okay, this is a problem. And then when people ask me questions, I realized it's not so much that founders can't figure out the answers to their questions. even that. Now, for example, SISF is fun. Okay. If you know the fun,

Abhishek Pinninti: Mm-hmm. Right.

Bharat: you know you're eligible for it, you can go and apply for it yourself. Abhishek can go do that. But the problem starts when there are things that you don't know that you don't.

Abhishek Pinninti: Great. Okay.

Bharat: Right now, there's a lot of funds that you you don't even know exist. Okay. And it's it's free money. There's no equity there. There's nothing the government wants to help you. It's like government is holding a platter with money here and you are at this point. Right. And all you have to do is grab your take your hand and grab that money. It's for free. But but now if you don't know about that, how are you going to go about it? So that's the initial phase. That's problem.

Abhishek Pinninti: Thank you.

Bharat: precursor to the problem. Okay. Then as you go deeper into the problem, you realize even navigating maybe 10 schemes. Now you might be eligible for five to 15 schemes to narrow 140 schemes down to 15 schemes. That's an open challenge for any founder to start figuring out. It is, it's super hard. And the beauty of it is there are thousand 400 incubators.

Abhishek Pinninti: Thanks. Hmm. Bye. Right, I know. From Indian government?

Bharat: to, yeah, in all over India, which are the only portals to get the schemes, the only way to get these schemes through the incubators and more than one incubator will have access to some schemes. So one incubator might have access to multiple schemes. So how do you know you have to strategize, how do you strategize that? That's a further problem statement we are coming towards. So this is a gist of it. I think I took a bit of time to explain this.

Abhishek Pinninti: ⁓ okay. Yeah, I know.

Bharat: to you guys listening but I had to kind of show you the depth of it.

Abhishek Pinninti: See, the reason why I have texted you is because the same way I have seen your video on my feed and I was also facing the same problem where I have been to the MSME office in Delhi the last week to know what are they giving grants for because it's all scattered I didn't believe what's on the website even on is it right information or not I didn't know so I I Thought you know I have to go to the office and get to know the simple way they have answered me is go through the website

Bharat: Exactly,

Abhishek Pinninti: Right. So, and see there are n number of grants, n number of ways that we can, know, see 1000 crores as grants is what PMOD has declared. Right. So where are all these grants? How are they scattered? I want you to brief down them. What are the industries that we can apply? You know, how can See I am building an AI tool. How can I apply for a grant? How does that work? most of my audience are founders who are into D2C or building AI tools. Let's breathe this down so that you know it may help them.

Bharat: Okay. Okay, so see in terms of which industry applies for what that's not a very difficult thing. It's a semi difficult problem statement like you can Google and say I'm in this industry which grant works for me. You will get some options for sure, but there's opportunity cost like now if you put this much time towards getting one scheme Because see founders, see why we got into this is, founder's job should not be to sit and worry about funding. Okay? Your job should be at a higher abstraction than that. It should be to improve your product or grow your, market your product, hundred things that a founder has to do, right? So that's what a founder should do, not sit and worry about next month's salary, should I give one person, this person, I should take a loan from somewhere and give money, okay?

Abhishek Pinninti: Yeah. and so. Exactly. Market your marketing. Focus on marketing. Okay. Yeah.

Bharat: So, okay, fine. Now that that is out of the way, when you look at, okay, let's say an AI startup. Now, if you Googled it, you would see SISFS come. That's the first fund that comes in. Now, it's pretty easy. You apply to that and you actually will get, because SISFS is something that has a lot of movement. And especially if you have AI in your solutioning, you will get a response from them. And as long as it's...

Abhishek Pinninti: Mmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Bharat: problem that's not been attempted by many people already because they also have a loose track of it. But the interesting thing there is the incubators don't talk to each other. There are many incubators and nobody talks to each other and the funniest thing is it's just one person who will pick your call. It's one random person who will pick a call and your pitch it really depends on that moment. How you deliver it on a phone call 10 minute phone call will kind of decide.

Abhishek Pinninti: Right, Yeah. Hmm. Mmm. Mmm. Thank you. Is it like a blackout or like a lullaby?

Bharat: Which is Both, both many, many, many options are there. Like for example, okay, there's a PME drive. I posted about PME drive recently and so many people are interested because this is not exactly a scheme that will help a startup. It is to open a EV charging station. Okay, ideally, like, you know, and 80 % of the money will be given by the government. That is a little bit like a gold rush.

Abhishek Pinninti: ⁓ okay. ⁓

Bharat: kind of moment in history if you see because now yeah because when petrol bunks came if you opened a petrol bunk you would have become very very rich right. Now I guess it's a macro decision you have to kind of think about whether EV will get adoption in India or not. That risk has always been there so some people were asking me you know they were asking me you know will ⁓ how do I know that this will work nobody knows so that way it's always a risk. So PME drive for example is one where

Abhishek Pinninti: I Yeah. Right, right. Right. Yeah.

Bharat: you're getting a lot of money from the government, but it's not exactly a grant or a scheme, like in the sense of a founder. One more CMUVA scheme. This also is a pure, it's a loan, but at very good terms. It's not like an ordinary loan, close to zero interest and you get a long time to pay it back. Now see, okay, all of this kept in mind and things to navigate. Now, just in the few things that we have discussed, it's already gone haywire. You asked me a simple question.

Abhishek Pinninti: Hmm. Mmm. Hmm. Yeah.

Bharat: AI and I took you into three directions myself, my mind also got distracted. But okay, but I can't tell you off the top of my head. So this should tell you the type of problem this is. I am in the space, I posting about it regularly. I also can't tell you AI how many schemes are there, 1, 2, 3, 4, So that means what? That means it is a real problem.

Abhishek Pinninti: Wait. Wait. No, actually that is a problem. See the problem you solving is like is like I because I have come across you guys as the first one who is exactly solving this problem. Right briefing it down exactly and letting people know what is see what is available and what is not. I see I honestly tell you from the last two years, you know I know that for the first 2-3 years as an MSME, government would be giving you crats. Right? For the first 2-3 years of your business. I have been got in touch with n number of CAs, n number of bank officials to help me sort out this problem. Nobody has, you know, solution for it. Why in India this has become a bigger problem? Why do you, what is your view in it? Why is our government of India is not addressing it by keeping up a structure or like a ecosystem for it to make things easier?

Bharat: You know Charlie Munger once said, I don't want to get very philosophical here, but he's a great guy for founders also. So maybe that is something to spread awareness about. Charlie Munger said, you if you want to understand, you want to understand how systems work and just follow the incentives. Just see you understand the incentive, you'll understand the man. Okay. So the government is not incentivized to make the end to end logistical structuring smooth.

Abhishek Pinninti: Mm. Hmm. Right.

Bharat: flow of money is not their concern. Their concern and this would, I am not criticizing this government or appreciating anything. This is any government, anyone, it is very hard to sit at the top, you disperse thousand crores or how many crores and then make sure it reaches the right person is such a heavy operational task.

Abhishek Pinninti: Hmm. and took for a country like ours with 150 crore population.

Bharat: Yeah, it's insanely hard, insanely hard problem statement. I'm not, you know, forget it. It is what it is. But I would say that we should be happy that there is some money because I am telling you there is another thing I recently I was on another podcast and I recently shared this. I want to reiterate this. When people come on Amazon and they give reviews, you get a lot of bad reviews.

Abhishek Pinninti: and sit. So, Exactly. Hmm? Hmm. Right.

Bharat: Always, people love to leave a bad review, but 80 % or 90 % of people who have good experience with the product won't even give you a review. So the people who get funded are quiet, they just gone quiet and they disappeared. They already moved on. Yeah, they disappeared and they are on to making better, I am not, it's not to hold anything against them. They have things to do, man, they busy. They have products to build.

Abhishek Pinninti: Exactly. Perfect. We don't say anything. But I've seen people like this in my circle. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Bharat: customers to acquire they have so they have the next round of funding to think about they don't have time to come and tell ya I got SISF funding so

Abhishek Pinninti: Obviously, cannot help us to get the funds. That is their own problem and they have solved it.

Bharat: Exactly and my first prerequisite to get my co-founders was my co-founder should have got one government fund In his history. I myself I am NOT a serial entrepreneur. In fact, I never thought I would be a founder I thought I love I'm passionate about founders and startups So I'll post about it because I'm from Bangalore and I thought it's a shame that I'm from this city Where it's known for startups in India and I've not even spoken about it. I don't spread any awareness about it. So I thought let me do it

Abhishek Pinninti: Mm. Mmm. Hmm. Right.

Bharat: In this journey, it's like, Steve Jobs used to say, founders that just where the problem itself is attracting you to it. That's when you know you're a founder. You don't have to, I never aspired to be one. It just happened. So I found these co-founders who have gotten SISFS successfully. If you get funded by angels or VCs, that's one level of difficulty. If you get funded by a government fund, you're a little bit special.

Abhishek Pinninti: Exactly. Yeah, that is the... Yeah, especially from India.

Bharat: You are someone, Indian government, you are someone special because one is your idea had a lot of clarity. It could be communicated across different levels. You don't have to be from a tier one city only to understand. And they actually got the money in their account. That's a big deal. They got 20 lakhs. So that's no small joke without any equity. So before, I don't know how much time we have, by the way. I hope I'm not taking too much time.

Abhishek Pinninti: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. No, no, can take 25. Yeah.

Bharat: Okay, perfect, because I want to go into a little bit about that solutioning. See, what I was, what we realized is, even if we solve a like 10 % of this large problem, we won't have to, I told you in the beginning that I'll circle back to this. said that founders don't have a problem actually hustling and getting that money. Ideally, if I could solve the problem like Abhishek wants

Abhishek Pinninti: Exactly.

Bharat: 50 lakhs, 1 crore, all I have to do is connect Abhishek to that money. I could do everything. If I could do everything, I would do it. I would love to help founders. That's my passion. But what I realized is that founders don't have a problem to hustle and get the work done. The problem is with what they can't even access. So in terms of our solution, what we thought was, okay, what if we could create a sort of flowchart or some sort of sequencing where you can see all the

Abhishek Pinninti: Mmm. Yeah. Mmm.

Bharat: ⁓ funds, all the available funds and added to that all the mixing matching of incubators. So we have literally sat manually. I sat alone and did to a certain level. I've posted about it. I'm posting day by day of it and all that. All my co-founders have sat with me and we have literally mixed and matched incubators with the ⁓ fund and how much it is making. and how much extra detail, like an entire sheet of it. And then after we started filling it out, we realized even that's not enough. By the way, after all this I'm explaining, it's only like 10 % of the problem we solved. After all this. So now we created this. Now we need a filtering system. It's not a normal filtering system. We realized that filtering system also takes brain power for us to create. After we fixed it, we understood,

Abhishek Pinninti: Right. Okay. Yeah.

Bharat: If a founder comes, is the minimum amount of money? So what we decided is we'll give everything for free. Okay. If you want to use a filter, we'll charge you some base amount. We kept it as one 99, 200 rupees a month. So even if you can use it in one month, you understand and you can get out. You don't have to use our service. Don't it's okay. Because our anyway, long-term goal over this over time is two things. One is government funds. We could get it sorted in one place.

Abhishek Pinninti: 8

Bharat: angels, VCs, we keep all of this collated one data, one set. After that, we create one abstraction over that we create a community. We create a place, a safe space for founders that can just come be themselves, ⁓ communicate with each other network and also, we provide additional services because we have access to people in our cohort, in our group who can consult.

Abhishek Pinninti: paint. Hmm. Mmm. Hmm.

Bharat: So that we can keep that as a high ticket because there are founders who have now they have actually gotten funded. Now they want to do something, money is not a problem anymore. And yeah, GTM, yeah, GTM strategy or even how 100,000 things. And what happens is this is the only space, founders space is the only space where other founders understand the struggle of no money.

Abhishek Pinninti: Hmm. DBM now. This is DBM. Yeah. Hmm.

Bharat: Many places when you don't have money, your customer who has money is king. But in this space, only other founders can understand a founders pains. Without any money sitting every day, persistently solving a problem, giving value for others, needs to be appreciated. So we decided that, you know what? The least we can do is founders solve everyone's Nobody sits and solves founders problems.

Abhishek Pinninti: I Yeah. Yeah.

Bharat: So we thought we should do that. So now as I explained, solution wise, is up to now, all we have done now is filter, that's it. We have come till filter. For this, I'll tell you a bit with your audience since this is a founder space also. I'll tell you a bit about tech stack has been very basic. The front end has been HTML, CSS, Angular, latest Angular 21. And we have used Tailwind CSS. So some styling library is there.

Abhishek Pinninti: Yeah.

Bharat: And ⁓ so for tables, ordering, sorting, and everything, that's done inbuilt. We didn't code that from scratch. So that was frontend. Backend, what we have done is we have used Go. So Go is our Golang. They call it Golang. That is ⁓ very lightweight. It's not like NodeJS. We purposely made a strategic decision. No NodeJS, Java, or .NET, or anything like that. We'll do Go because it's much faster.

Abhishek Pinninti: Hmm. Mmm.

Bharat: We wanted something that is light on the front end, there is no heaviness experience wise. And what we saw is that for one instance on a cloud instance, we using AWS, it is like, same thing would have taken if you had done a .NET or Node.js, it would have been double or triple processing and memory. So we decided, okay, we will go with Golang. Right now it is like 500 MB per instance, cloud instance.

Abhishek Pinninti: Mm-hmm.

Bharat: AWS T3. If you go with others, it would have been 1 GB, 2 GB and now that is a two way thing. One is the experience is faster. Second is our infra, our cloud costing is much lesser. So now we can scale also. So, and the number of founders is increasing year by year. One more thing, that is one topic. One more thing I to tell you before I forget. You mentioned that

Abhishek Pinninti: Right.

Bharat: Till now you hadn't seen, founders know this, okay? You said till now you have not seen a solution in this. You know how we know? Because we also, my team and even I because of other reasons have seen these people who sell PDFs, okay? They sell PDFs for like 99 rupees. I have bought them also. It is just nowhere close. It's just scraping of data and they put it over there. Anybody can do that.

Abhishek Pinninti: Mmm. Exactly. Yeah.

Bharat: It's not so simple. ⁓ So you buy one PDF, it doesn't solve anything for you. Why did you even buy it? Exactly. That is now. There were some people who doing this some years back also. They were selling before and charging for 99 rupees, scraping some bread using some scraper and putting it out there. But we knew that we had to create an actual tech stack, an actual website and eventually

Abhishek Pinninti: chat, less puns in the videos. That's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. ⁓ Right.

Bharat: grow that and this will scale, this will be a real help for founders. And this gap we found in.

Abhishek Pinninti: Right. ⁓ So me, I'll tell you, I'm building an AI tool for e-commerce businesses to optimize their meta and Google Ads. So this is a SaaS tool which would be rolling out into the market. So now, I've been running my own marketing agency for the last five years. I closely saw this problem and wanted to solve it. So I've been working on this from the last mid of 2025. So from then, I have been looking ways for, know, from, see, before that, I was skeptical, does these grants do really work? You know, are they just saying words for, you know, people, I mean, you know how governments work. So I didn't believe that, but see, from the last year, things have changed, really changed. Indian government has focused on startups, has focused on the startup ecosystem and the ecosystem around it. But through AI, they have doubled it.

Bharat: you

Abhishek Pinninti: the attention towards AI infrastructure. So now when I tell you honestly when I went to the MSME office and asked them is there any grant for me as an AI founder they said there are no grants for AI founders. This is a word from a MSME office guy and I see a lot of stuff outside in the web or like in other videos that there are grants for AI. So now Bharat I have come to you. This is my problem, this is my solution. Give me a consultation all life.

Bharat: Okay, okay. Yeah, so that's a very good, you know, an analogy I'll give you that if you go to a police station today, right? You're a male person. I hope this is not a crude example to give but I'm going to give it because I hope people get from this something. If you're a male, okay, and you go to a cyber cell police today, and you lodge a complaint, there is zero seriousness about

Abhishek Pinninti: Mmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓

Bharat: your complaint because you are a male. ⁓ If you are a female, the escalation is serious, proof does not even matter. I have someone in my, someone I know who went through this and this is a pattern you will see with the government in a country like India. So, if you went to MSME office and you ask a person in MSME office, I am making an AI tool.

Abhishek Pinninti: Mm. Thank you. it. Yeah.

Bharat: I think the first thing, first order of business there is to explain what is AI to that person. Okay? Because it's ironic, he's supposed to be knowing that. Because MSME registration is, if you think about it, you know, point in a founder's journey, it does many, different things. I don't even know if people know this. I think one video was going viral on Instagram recently. Instagram creators can register themselves as MSMEs. Sole Proprietation.

Abhishek Pinninti: You Exactly. ⁓

Bharat: and delayed payments get punished differently, brands mess around. That's actually a problem I was thinking of solving.

Abhishek Pinninti: ⁓ there is a lot of problem. Yeah, that is a lot of problem.

Bharat: That was that was a pro, I was about to start something up and we, I'm, there's a different pivot. I might be starting something in that space, but yeah, founders don't get paid from brands on time. In India, it's a common problem. So MSME intervention there, when you get registered as MSME, you're considered a differently from the brand's perspective and a threatening email, like with some legalese in it, we'll get a lot of different response from the brand. Okay. Suddenly they'll pay you.

Abhishek Pinninti: Yeah. Right.

Bharat: I've heard people who once they send that email and they say I'm MSME, suddenly you get paid. Now if that is the power of being registered as an MSME, what should MSME office do? They should know all this stuff, right? That should be some sort of powerhouse or something where people are knowledgeable, but it's not the case. The people who have actually succeeded have not done it through some normal chance like what you said, going to MSME office and asking that person how to do it. It's not worked. That's not how it works.

Abhishek Pinninti: Thank you. Good.

Bharat: And you would see, okay, if you see it in terms of fairness level, if you go to an angel or a VC, your entire insights of your business is opened apart. Every bit is analyzed and you still have to give some equity also. But the government fund, there's not me supporting government fund, but government fund is not like that. They won't take any equity from me. The guy who's signing off is just signing off to show his boss that, boss, I have given Abhishek.

Abhishek Pinninti: ⁓ Yeah.

Bharat: a fund for his startup, it's AI. So who are these people in power who make these decisions? The people sitting in incubators. It's not the MSME office is like, no, that's not the way. now.

Abhishek Pinninti: Hmm. a small note so I have come across this PGME something Prime Minister Gramayo or something that is through I mean that guy the one I met he was telling this is there this can be up to 10 to 20 lakhs you can apply it from a national bank this is what he has suggested okay so now I'm sitting here and thinking so he says we love that form that is a basic form

Bharat: you

Abhishek Pinninti: and leave it if you have a good relationship with your banker you can get. Okay. Right. So take this into consideration and you know give your yeah continue.

Bharat: Yeah, exactly. So if you know if you look at it now one is one is this one you mentioned right this pgm scheme then there are schemes where it's only incubators then there are somewhere so all these different few few more exceptions to the incubators are what you mentioned you have to have relationship with bank manager. Okay. Now, you know why this problem has not been another theory I have why this problem has not been attempted to be solved before this you know why.

Abhishek Pinninti: Yeah. Exactly.

Bharat: It's because to get an SME for each scheme is a Herculean task. It makes no fiscal sense. Like for example, you just got a PGM scheme. You got successful. I got SISF scheme. X got something and Y got something. If someone has to get all of us in one group to give advice to other founders, you just imagine we have to do it out of the goodness of our heart. We won't get paid. Why should I sit and consult? ⁓

Abhishek Pinninti: Exactly. Exactly.

Bharat: and consistently consult founders not once. So even for us, even for us, now if you ask some PGM scheme, I don't know head or tail of it. I would have just gone through the information recently. I would have just gone through the website because I'm filling out my sheet with this. But I have no clue because there are just that many and the permutation combination is confusing. Maybe just 140 schemes it's possible to remember. But the combinations with the incubators

Abhishek Pinninti: every day. 8

Bharat: has left me and my co-founders brains fried. Now, I think by the time we really become SMEs at this, it's going to take about a year. Because we have major schemes, we have people who know about it. These obscure ones, Birack scheme, Ayush scheme, there is, you know, if you're an, if you're an agri, don't put agri tech, if you're an agri founder, you know how many options you have, it's shocking. You won't even know that you have

Abhishek Pinninti: I I know,

Bharat: one more option, then there is Ayush scheme, then even SISFS if you have some tech you can apply.

Abhishek Pinninti: Even these farmers also are not aware of it but who is going to take this man? I am not understanding.

Bharat: They have no idea about it. So someone has to start somewhere. We have taken one baby step. Imagine for one baby step, I've been able to talk to you for 30 minutes now about this problem. 30 minutes, I'm able to talk again and again, some different, different problems we are able to address. Now that you asked about PGM scheme and one more, just your problem statement of how will I, if I'm an AI guy, how will I go about this? Now I'm going to go talk to my co-founders about this.

Abhishek Pinninti: Exactly. What? Yeah.

Bharat: and it is going to build our repository of information. This is the only way I would rather iterate in real life IRL immediately. That is why we just, I actually originally my series in Instagram was 7 days, day 1 of 7, where I building this. But in 4 days I realized it is not going to be built in 7 days. So I

Abhishek Pinninti: Yeah. Exactly. What were you doing before this? ⁓

Bharat: Okay, so publicly, so I haven't. Yeah, so publicly when I started posting on Instagram, it was purely I was so interested in the cool stuff like the Deep Tech, Bangalore Deep Tech startups that are there. Okay. And had no exceptions with FNB brands and any brand. was like, okay, let's see. But I love tech. I'm a pure tech guy. So was like, okay, let me post about let me talk about that.

Abhishek Pinninti: Mm-hmm.

Bharat: And then I should do weekly once roundup of the funding, hottest funding rounds because I wasn't seeing anybody doing it weekly in Instagram. I searched for it, I couldn't find it. So I said, okay.

Abhishek Pinninti: Right, right. Apart from SF guys, nobody in India is that. Yeah, nobody is doing for the Indian.

Bharat: Yeah, and they're doing for their startups. What about us? Yeah, we have so many people getting funded. And even if there are a few people doing it, I thought there should be even more like more awareness about it. So I started doing that. Then, you know, as any Instagram creators journey, I thought I'm going to be a creator guy. That's about it. And I'll talk about startups. Okay. And I didn't even want to. Sorry.

Abhishek Pinninti: Yeah. Mmm. You have that Nick to become a creator.

Bharat: Thank you. That's a good, anyway, that's what I wanted to aim for. And while I work a job and I didn't even want to do this seriously. I was just having fun. So I was doing it. Then that one video where I spoke what government funds that was when that seed got planted because that was the gift that kept on giving like it was at 10k views one week. It is the one video that to this day I get comments. I posted it months and months ago in Instagram that does not happen so much.

Abhishek Pinninti: Yeah, I know, organically induced.

Bharat: If you post, yeah. organically exactly people are sharing it, people are sharing it with someone then I went in search other people talk about government funds it is either these carousels like the post of know just images where someone is talking about take this fund, take this fund or it is rarely some people talking about it is what I saw. Then I said okay fine let me talk about one specific fund, let me try once when I did that

Abhishek Pinninti: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm.

Bharat: It went so crazy. The first one was just views. Okay, fine people and comments. This one people messaging me and saying my business is like this. I applied for this. I did this. I did that. I'm not getting money. Kind of similar to how you just ⁓ asked your problem, right? You mentioned your problem. So that's a very good sign of something that is ⁓ Steve Jobs had said this. Every any time you want to figure out you

Abhishek Pinninti: Yeah.

Bharat: you can do something for a market, it's when there's a something is way too complicated than it should be. It should not be this complicated to get funded. This is very, very complicated. And if you ask me now that I know so much about funding, today if I have to go get funded, even I will be scared. I have to use my own solution just to narrow it down little bit so that I have instead of 140

Abhishek Pinninti: Yeah. Yeah, this is very complicated. I know, yeah.

Bharat: damn schemes to think about, I need to have like five or 10.

Abhishek Pinninti: So let break this down to me. What is the timeline once we start working with you guys, let's say I'm working with you guys. What is the breakdown of timeline that we have to take to achieve our goal of funding?

Bharat: That's a good question. eventually we will start doing things where if we expand, it's a direction, it's like a fork in the road for us in terms of which way we go in. See, one way is to go purely in terms of scale. As much we give one simple solution, like the filtration system we talked about, and just scale it to as many founders as we can so that we help more people instead of

Abhishek Pinninti: Nude.

Bharat: becoming more profitable ourselves. We can move on to other problems or we just create community and new community direction. The other direction is something like you are talking about where we have people in our team that will kind of handhold you. We are not clear about which direction to go in because I think option two incentivizing someone to help other founders is very, very hard. It has to be like some maybe a CSR sort of direction, you know.

Abhishek Pinninti: Yeah. Yeah.

Bharat: because otherwise nobody wants to do that. Nobody wants to, even if you pay them, why would a founder want to help, unless of the goodness of his heart, there is no way to incentivize it is what we are thinking. But yeah, in terms of timeline, see, we have no lack of confidence in a founder to go get his own funding. That's not the problem. I know Abhishek is going to get his funding. The thing is,

Abhishek Pinninti: Hey. Yeah. you you

Bharat: Now, if I make your promise, then my ask is going to be what? Because we don't want to be the folks who take a percentage of your funding, the fund that you receive, then we become very accountable and then we start helping you on another level. So, if we did that thing, it would be in the, know, somewhere in the three to five month timeline. That's what I'm seeing so far, know, three to five months of

Abhishek Pinninti: Right.

Bharat: focused effort in this direction gets you results.

Abhishek Pinninti: So for an AI founder, what is that maximum limit of grant the Indian government is providing and what is the eligibility they should have?

Bharat: Eligibility varies drastically from ⁓ scheme to scheme, but for the most part, I mean, the basic tick check marks, you need to be an Indian citizen, all that obviously is there. And you need to some of them have age brackets for a reason they want the belief of the government is that younger people have lesser access to funds.

Abhishek Pinninti: Yeah. Yeah. ⁓

Bharat: They want a younger cohort and in terms of eligibility for AI solutioning. know, officially there is no technical eligibility other than sector wise, like which sector? For example, if you're in energy sector or you're in IT or you're in, you know, these ways are agri. That is one thing that the government cares about a lot. You have to be in the sector. If you were in, for example, you're doing AI in

Abhishek Pinninti: Yeah. and marketing.

Bharat: in marketing. If you did AI for hair salons, you would meet resistance. It will be more difficult to convince because you see, because hair salons is not maybe a government's, you know, they are not seriously considering that as a problem to be solved. But the fact is it actually is that because that drives the economy also. Hair salon market if you see in India,

Abhishek Pinninti: Mmm. ⁓ Yeah. Mmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Bharat: the women that use Hyacinol

Abhishek Pinninti: They are two big genes, underdogs I would call naturals and green trunks. Nobody knows their revenues and their valuation in India.

Bharat: Exactly, those two are huge. But government is going in a deep tech direction. They would love for you to say that you have cool technology because that puts India in a different space in the global stage. They want to be

Abhishek Pinninti: those were making. I know. Yeah. I I've been that's what I was in the AI summit and there because see that is the first time I didn't know AI in India is that deep rooted

Bharat: Exactly and you know in AI summit for example if you have gone you know there are so many deep tech crazy startups that haven't even gone there without them going there were so many 90 % amazing startups there I'll tell you I interviewed a deep tech you know stack vertical stack AI startup in Bangalore I have still not posted I am going to be posting it soon that is a

Abhishek Pinninti: I know. They're out, yeah. Exactly. Mm-hmm.

Bharat: You know that, ⁓ I guess the universities, Galgote University that became right. So their dog, the robot dog that is basically a china dog. This startup has made their own robot dog from scratch. One of the few ones in India that have done everything from scratch. They also have their own personal wearables device, it's pure AI and they've not even gone there. I can only imagine how many startups didn't even go there.

Abhishek Pinninti: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. ⁓ Even I was shocked perplexity was not there.

Bharat: By the way, is perplexity going to be, I think it is considered as an Indian Indian this thing.

Abhishek Pinninti: But it's been backed by the SF, you know, these things. And the company is also registered, it's not from India, but it's by the Indian, right.

Bharat: ⁓ yeah, yeah, yeah. but it wasn't there. I feel like perplexity right now ⁓ has some personal struggles in the company right now.

Abhishek Pinninti: yeah exactly because of this cloud and cloud bot coming up with agentic know actions comet might have a drawback

Bharat: Mm-hmm. Yeah, perplexity kind of made few missteps in my opinion. yeah, so I don't think you know companies that are not coming that to it's for two reasons. They wouldn't come to an AI summit. Okay, one is if whatever their cycle of showing something publicly is already over, like they've done a PR campaign already before and now on their downturn, the summit then they won't come and really showcase their thing that is one and another is if the company itself is having a bad time.

Abhishek Pinninti: Wow. Mmm. Exactly. Great.

Bharat: publicly like these types of AI. But yeah, but yeah, so overall, I would say, know, ⁓ yes, I think we have really taken a lot of time really, really.

Abhishek Pinninti: Yeah. I think we need to do a part 2 man, we need to do a part 2 because I don't want to explode it that you know there is lot to talk about this because

Bharat: Yeah, yeah and by the time. When we do a part two also, you know, we should space this out by the time my we would have already done a lot. We're doing day by day progress going to a lot of places by the time we do a part two, there'll be a lot more to talk about also. I feel like.

Abhishek Pinninti: Exactly Exactly Exactly Okay, so it's like maybe a four weeks later that would four to six weeks and And meanwhile I'll be working with you guys closely

Bharat: could do that for sure. It will be. can do that for sure man you can do that yeah yeah

Abhishek Pinninti: yeah and let's see so to conclude so this is kind of a dashboard you guys are building for founders ⁓ yeah

Bharat: Phase one. Yeah. Exactly. Phase one is a simple dashboard. Where Abhishek can go have his own list of funds that he can curate. You'll have one homepage where you have a list. There you can add your funds. Okay. Birak fund or this or that. So all these, you know, different funds and you can have that in a list where it's curated for you and you can look at that. Okay. Okay, let's go. And if you can do that manually yourself, the product is free. Do it. Okay. But if you need the help of the filtering that we have done, it's going to get tiring to sit and do it every day to go through thousand 400 incubators is no small task. So for that reason, we created that, you know, filter, okay, which we had to really, really break our heads about, but, but yeah, it's as simple as that.

Abhishek Pinninti: Yeah. Right.

Bharat: See, of course there are going to be people that we work with through this process like yourself. We're going to talk to you, we're going to... That's going to happen. Eventually, is that a sustainable solutioning model that's yet to be discovered? Let's figure it out. For now, like you said, it's a dashboard as simple as you can keep your funds in one place, track it. You can also track it. Eventually, we are going to keep a system where we can track the exact timeline of you sent one email.

Abhishek Pinninti: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. God.

Bharat: or you applied on the website and it's here for now we started off this is phase one.

Abhishek Pinninti: yeah that would also help a lot of founders for sure because you are at least keeping everything at one place and showing the process

Bharat: Think about it when you go and apply for these different places and you put an Excel sheet, what kind of an overhead is that in your basic job when you sit and do basic Excel nowadays, it's such an overhead to sit and apply change this change that changes in that tip. And so we foresee that this is going to be something that is going to help founders for now. Phase one right away is going to help right now since I've been posting it. We have had This is one more thing I want to announce. We had five paying users already. So it's a real problem. For us, mean, of course, it's peanuts of money. It's not much. So yeah. So then out of 20 to 30 people who visited a site, we've literally posted it four days back. It's 20 to 30 and it's not normal people, it's founders or aspiring founders. These people all in out of that five people have already paid for it.

Abhishek Pinninti: I'm also a banger. Mm-mm-mm. Yeah.

Bharat: They understood a founder, only a founder will know this is a real problem. So, that is about it conclusively phase one this is the final thing.

Abhishek Pinninti: Exactly. I hope you guys can you know solve it in a very you know better and a huge way to see volumes is again a bigger question here you ⁓ I've Try something which you can solve to number of and number of audience and you know Help founders and Indian entrepreneurship to grow That is that is where you guys are. I think if you guys can do that Indian government can recognize you guys as well

Bharat: That could be an amazing result of that.

Abhishek Pinninti: They get that feeling from you guys man. That is how I can see you guys. That is how you have to vision yourself.

Bharat: That's a beautiful vision. That's also something I should echo with my co-founder. That's beautiful. Thank you for that. Thank you for that and thank you for a great conversation.

Abhishek Pinninti: Good shot. keeping 1000 dollars in your portfolio and helping n number of startups is like dream to anybody.

Bharat: Absolutely, if we could say that we helped even one startup, know, get that fund and then get its results end of it, you know, it started from here. There's nothing like it.

Abhishek Pinninti: Yeah, we can do that man. Anything is possible.

Bharat: Thank you so much for the positive words Abhishek and the great conversation.

Abhishek Pinninti: Yeah, for sure man. We'll catch up soon and I'll get in touch with you and we'll discuss about you know my pain points. I'll see you man. Thank you. Thanks for your time. Bye.

Bharat: Let's do that. Done. Let's do that Abhishek.