MONTH : JULY 2025

From Coldplay’s Kiss Cam to Billion-Dollar Code: What Astronomer Really Does

At a Coldplay concert in July 2025, a kiss-cam moment went viral.
The crowd cheered. Social media lit up. But this wasn’t just about two people being caught. It turned out - one of them was the CEO of a tech company you’ve never heard of.

That company? Astronomer. It’s worth over $1.3 billion.
Major global investors include Bain Capital Ventures, Insight Partners, Salesforce Ventures, Venrock, Soma Capital, Tribe Capital, Gradient Ventures (Google's AI-focused VC), Foundation Capital.

Btw, one of the co-founders is of Indian origin - Viraj Parekh

While gossip columns focused on the PDA, data engineers and SaaS nerds (like us) knew something else entirely - This company quietly powers the backbone of how giants like Apple, Airbnb, Ford, and Uber move data at scale

So what does Astronomer really do?
Astronomer is a DataOps company built on Apache Airflow - an open-source tool originally developed by Airbnb to automate data workflows

In simple terms:
If your company handles a LOT of data (millions of users, transactions, or files), you need a way to:

• Move it from A to B
• Clean it
• Schedule tasks
• Make sure nothing breaks

That’s what Astronomer’s platform, Astro does - It helps teams build and run data pipelines -without worrying about servers, reliability, or scale

 We found some interesting use case scenarios in the Indian context:

E-commerce (e.g., Flipkart, Amazon) - Managing flash sales

• When a Big Billion Sale goes live:
  • Pull in inventory data from warehouses
  • Sync prices across website, mobile app, and partners
  • Update dashboards every 15 mins
  • Flag out-of-stock items in real-time

Astronomer can help keep all these steps automated, monitored, and recoverable if one fails.

Similarly, in banking & Fintech (e.g., Razorpay, HDFC, PhonePe) - Astronomer can help in fraud detection & reporting

Think of it this way

• Every transaction gets scanned
• If anything looks suspicious (like sudden location change), trigger fraud checks
• File regulatory reports (RBI mandates) daily

Needless to say, Healthcare (e.g., Practo, 1mg, UnitedHealth) also make the most of patient data syncing

• Lab results, prescriptions, doctor notes from different hospitals
• Need to merge this data into one patient record
• Schedule data exports to insurance partners weekly

 Astronomer turns Airflow into a product (SaaS) - like making Excel available as Google Sheets for everyone. You don’t need to set it up from scratch.

So… Why Is Astronomer Worth $1.3 Billion?

Because the future of AI, analytics, and automation starts with clean, trustworthy data pipelines.

• Every business is becoming data-driven.
• Companies don’t want to manage infrastructure anymore.
• AI models are only as good as the data feeding them.

In short, Astronomer:
- Handles the plumbing
- Offers reliability, autoscaling, and observability
- Supports huge enterprise customers (like Apple, Ford, Marriott)
- Works across clouds like AWS, GCP, and Azure

It's like AWS for data pipelines.

What about Indian SaaS players?

India is building world-class SaaS too - but believe we’re early in DataOps.

Here are few Indian SaaS companies with a data/infra tilt that we found in our preliminary research:

So why did that Kiss-Cam matter?

It didn’t. But it did accidentally spotlight one of the most important software companies in the world right now - a company that's:

• Not building consumer apps
• Not chasing media attention
• Quietly powering the data engines of the world’s biggest brands

SaaS is cool now. But Infra SaaS? That’s the gold mine. Astronomer’s mining it better than anyone else.

P.S. Next time you're at a concert and see a viral moment, don’t just check the couple. Google the company.
You might find the next billion-dollar rocket ship in the background :)

How Startup Founders Can Learn from Other Founders Within a VC Portfolio

A VC portfolio is more than just a list of funded startups — it’s a built-in community of people solving tough problems every day. Yet many founders miss the chance to learn from their portfolio peers, focusing only on their own journey. By tapping into this network, you can gain practical insights, avoid common mistakes, and accelerate your growth.

1. Use the Portfolio as a Knowledge Network

Every founder in the portfolio has faced challenges like finding product-market fit, building teams, or scaling operations. These lessons are valuable, even if the sectors are different.
Action: Ask your VC for warm introductions to founders who’ve solved problems you’re tackling.

2. Join Portfolio Meetups and Sessions

VCs often host workshops, dinners, or virtual meetups. These sessions are goldmines for sharing hard-won knowledge.
Action: Show up prepared with specific questions and be open about your own learnings.

3. Learn from Universal Playbooks

Tactics for fundraising, hiring, or marketing often apply across industries.
Action: Talk to portfolio founders who have successfully scaled and adapt their strategies to your context.

4. Share and Pool Resources

Founders can save time and money by sharing hiring pipelines, agency contacts, or even templates.
Action: Create informal groups (Slack, WhatsApp) for quick exchanges of tips and resources.

5. Swap Fundraising Advice

Founders at different stages know what investors look for — from metrics to storytelling.
Action: Seek advice from founders who recently raised a round to refine your own pitch.

6. Learn from Failures

Candid conversations about what didn’t work can be as valuable as success stories.
Action: Encourage small “failure circles” with other founders to discuss challenges openly.

7. Build Real Relationships

Don’t treat portfolio connections as purely transactional. Long-term friendships can turn into a strong support system during tough times.
Action: Schedule regular one-on-one conversations to build trust beyond business talk.

Conclusion:
The more you connect with and learn from fellow founders, the faster you can move forward. Be proactive, ask questions, share openly, and remember: someone in your portfolio has likely solved the challenge you’re facing today.

When security isn’t secure: How NBFCs exploit hypothecation loopholes (and what we learned from the founders tackling It)

In our regular founder conversations at the intersection of finance and infrastructure, we recently met the team behind a startup tackling one of the murkiest corners of India’s lending system - how NBFCs pledge retail loans as collateral, and how that very mechanism is being gamed.

At first glance, it looked like compliance tech. But under the hood, it’s a story about trust, opacity, and systemic loopholes in how credit flows through the Indian economy.

Here’s what we unpacked.

The Problem: Collateral isn't always Collateral

Banks and large financial institutions often lend to NBFCs (Non-Banking Financial Companies), who then lend further to retail borrowers i.e shopkeepers, gig workers, truck drivers, etc.

To raise this capital, NBFCs pledge their retail loan receivables - the EMIs their customers are expected to pay — as collateral. This is called hypothecation. Hypothecation is the practice of pledging loan receivables (e.g., EMIs from borrowers) as collateral to a lender (usually a bank or wholesale financier) without transferring ownership. The NBFC keeps control of those receivables.

Sounds straightforward? It should be. But it’s not.

Unlike home loans or cars, these hypothecated receivables are invisible in most public registries. They’re not always tracked loan-by-loan. That opacity leaves room for NBFCs, especially the unscrupulous ones to exploit the system. This system breaks down when transparency is weak, especially in India where there’s no single loan-level public registry for hypothecated receivables leading to the following key loopholes:

Here are three common tricks:

1. Double Hypothecation (Duplication)

Let’s say NBFC-A has a loan to a shopkeeper in Indore. It pledges that loan to Bank-1 for ₹10 crore.

Quietly, it also pledges the same loan again to Bank-2 for another ₹10 crore.

Neither bank knows, because the registry isn't granular enough to catch the duplication.

CERSAI (Central Registry of Securitisation Asset Reconstruction and Security Interest of India) does record charges filed under SARFAESI, but:

• Data is not granular to the individual loan level.
• Many NBFCs don’t file promptly or accurately. 
• There is no mechanism that allows banks to cross-verify loan-level pledges across multiple lenders unless someone manually audits the loan tapes and compares borrower IDs.

RBI’s Master Directions on NBFCs (Oct 2023) require asset classification and transparency, but do not mandate loan-level charge registration for every hypothecated loans. CERSAI filings are asset-level, not receivable-level, which leaves a blind spot.

2. Fictitious Loans (also called Phantom Lending)

In some cases, the loans pledged as collateral don’t exist. No borrower, no EMI, no repayment. Just an entry in Excel backed by false paperwork. Banks take that on face value until defaults pile up.

Banks typically review an Excel loan schedule or PDF with a summary of loans pledged; there is no real-time validation against a credit bureau or API-level pull of underlying loan data.

The NBFC can inflate the book without triggering any alarms, especially if the amounts are within tolerance limits.

There is no RBI-mandated API linkage between hypothecated loan pools and credit bureau databases (like CIBIL/CRIF). Loan verification is still manual or outsourced, often happening only at the time of a deal — not continuously.

3. Collateral Swapping

Even after a deal is signed, the NBFC may quietly remove high-quality loans from the pledged pool and replace them with lower-quality ones usually without informing the lender.

Most lending contracts don’t include real-time monitoring clauses. There is no continuous reconciliation of the pledged loan tape with actual EMI collections or credit bureau records. In the absence of technology, banks trust periodic reports sent by the NBFC often just PDFs or scanned summaries.

The Solution

The founders are building a risk monitoring and validation platform to tackle exactly this. On paper, this kind of infrastructure B2B tool that regulators, banks, and NBFCs should embrace. The team had deep experience in structured finance and BFSI technology.

Despite appreciating the problem and the thoughtfulness of the founders, we chose to pass the deal at this stage. Here’s why:

1. Regulatory Whiplash Risk

This feels like a problem that RBI should own. If regulators mandate granular charge registration or centralized loan validation (which they’ve shown signs of doing), the entire value prop could become redundant overnight.

2. Data Access is a Wall

The solution depends on NBFCs voluntarily sharing sensitive, possibly compromising data. That’s a big ask, especially in a system that often rewards opacity, not transparency.

3. Execution Gap

While the team had strong domain expertise, we didn’t see the complementary muscle needed to build and scale a SaaS business into slow-moving financial institutions. No pilots, no revenue yet, and limited clarity on GTM (go-to-market) strategy.

Final Word

We often meet startups that feel ahead of their time. This was probably one of them. 

We respect founders who tackle invisible, messy infrastructure problems but timing, regulation, and stakeholder incentives must align.

If RBI moves slower than expected or if banks decide to proactively invest in risk tools  this solution might still find a wedge. We’ll be watching closely.

In the meantime, we’re grateful for the conversation and our learnings out of it - thought our findings were worth sharing. This reminded us that in lending, as in life, the devil’s in the collateral.

Why Investors Must Build Deeper Relationships

The startup world is often seen as a zero-sum game. One fund’s loss is another’s win; one investor’s success is another’s missed opportunity. But this mindset is both outdated and limiting. The reality is: the best ecosystems are built on collaboration, not competition.

The best founders know how to build networks. They cross-pollinate ideas, intros, and resources. Why shouldn’t investors do the same?

Why Investor-Investor Collaboration Matters

1. Better Deal Flow for Everyone
   When investors trust each other, they’re more likely to share promising leads early. The goal isn’t to hoard the best startups—it’s to build a track record of helping companies raise well-rounded, value-aligned capital.
2. Smarter Co-Investing
   Co-investing with aligned partners means shared due diligence, complementary skill sets, and stronger board representation. It also signals strength to the founder—funds that can work together, likely bringing harmony to the cap table.
3. You’re Showing Up for Founders
   Collaboration with fellow investors is a quiet, powerful signal that you are founder-first. Sharing deal flow, pooling expertise, or helping close a round faster—all of this communicates that you're not in it for turf or ego, but to do what’s best for the company. That trust compounds.
4. Faster Learning Curves
   The best investors are constant learners. Having open channels with peers means you hear about new models, emerging geographies, or founder insights faster. Think of it as a meta-version of founder-market fit—investor-market fluency.
5. Collective Ecosystem Impact
   Working together, investors can push for better governance norms, healthier founder relationships, and more diverse capital access. Instead of a scattered approach, a connected network of investors can amplify the impact on the startup landscape.

So, How Do You Build These Relationships?

• Be Generous First: Share deals, share notes, share insights—without expecting anything in return. Give > Get.
• Go Beyond the Surface: Don’t just meet at demo days or on cap tables. Build real relationships. Meet 1:1. Talk values. Understand each other’s investment philosophy deeply.
• Create Micro-Communities: Small WhatsApp groups, regular Zoom calls, or in-person dinners of like-minded investors can go a long way. Keep them intentional and trust-based.
• Normalize Vulnerability: Talk about what didn’t work. Share lessons from missed deals or internal mistakes. That’s where the real learning—and bonding—happens.

Reframing the Game: From Scarcity to Abundance

 At its best, investing isn’t about beating others—it’s about building with others. The pie isn’t fixed. The more we support each other, the bigger the opportunities become—for funds, for founders, for the ecosystem at large.