PhonePe, GPay & PayTM dominate UPI payments with a 97% market share.

Meanwhile, $3Bn BharatPe struggled after founder Ashneer Grover's exit last year.

But with a recent EBITDA profitable month, BharatPe seems to be coming back.

THREAD: Decoding BharatPe's comeback strategy. 1. Merchant-First Approach in a consumer-first World:

Unlike many fintechs that focus on consumers first, BharatPe plays a different game.

It targets merchants, earning through payments, loans, and soundboxes.

Backed by Kunal Shah, Astrotalk is redefining astrology.

It earns ₹1.65 Cr DAILY by digitizing a traditionally offline service.

And, has over 4.3 Crore users.

THREAD: How Astrotalk tapped into a fragmented $58B religious & spiritual market and crushed all competitors👇 First, here is some context. Astrotalk, an online future-telling app, serves over 4.3 Cr users.

People use this app to consult astrologers, numerologists, and other experts who claim to predict the future using various methods like palmistry, star alignment, birth dates, etc

boAt is a BEAST in the audio & wearables industry!

5th largest wearables company in the world.
Makes ~INR 3000 Cr in revenue.
Profitable! 🚀

But, how did it all start?
How did boAt get its FIRST 100 customers?

Here's the full story 🧵 1/ Firstly, what does boAt do?

- Consumer electronics brands: Makes audio products & wearables

- Leader in ear wear category: 27.3% market share!

- FY22: Revenue → INR 2873 Cr, Profits → INR 86.5 Cr

OYO and Airbnb are both BEASTS at SEO!

But, on Google Search, OYO beats Airbnb fair and square.

Traffic: OYO = 3.3M; Airbnb = 765K
Keywords: OYO = 274K; Airbnb = 141K

OYO's traffic is 4.3x that of Airbnb 🤯

Steal OYO's marketing strategy to defeat your startup competitors 🧵 Structure:
1. Comparing their SEO numbers
2. Similarities between their SEO strategy
3. Difference between their SEO strategy
4. Casting a Wider Net: What do we learn?

In 2012, Nykaa's operations head quit because they couldn't handle 30 orders!

After a decade, Nykaa
- grew to a $13B startup
- processes 1.5M orders/month
- and, IPO'd at Rs 5352 Cr

The best part? They are profitable!

Here's how they do it 🧵 Structure:
1. Nykaa's origin story
2. How Nykaa cracked the Beauty Industry?
3. Reaching Profitability
4. The Online Fashion Business!

Shark Anupam Mittal is the KING of online matrimony!

But what’s his SEO scorecard?

Shaadi(.)com gets 750K users every month from Google!

Steal Anupam’s marketing secrets for your startup 🧵 Structure:
1. What is Shaadi(.)com? Why do they need SEO?
2. How do they get users from Google?
3. The results and key takeaways!

IKEA’s founder says, “Hungry people buy less”.

So, IKEA started selling food to keep people hooked at the stores!

Today,

- 30% of people visit IKEA only for food and,
- IKEA food makes ~$2.5 billion in revenue!

Learn IKEA’s genius marketing strategy for your business 🧵 Structure:
1. Does IKEA really sell a lot of food?
2. So, what's the impact of the food business on IKEA's furniture sales?
3. What's so special about IKEA's food?
4. Finally, where is IKEA going with this move?

Amit Jain is the new SHARK in town!

CarDekho, his online auto startup, is worth $1.2B and made Rs 1597 Cr in revenue.

52% users come to CarDekho via Google ⇒ 32.2M people every month 🤯

Let’s learn how this shark used SEO marketing to catch users in millions 🧵 Structure:
1. What is CarDekho ?
2. How does it make money?
3. CarDekho's SEO numbers
4. Their brilliant SEO strategy
5. How is this good for business?

Godrej is the OG “Make In India” startup!

It built:
- India’s FIRST Lock
- India’s FIRST Safe
- India’s FIRST Ballot Box
- India’s FIRST Refrigerator
- India’s FIRST Cupboard

Here’s the story of Godrej’s 126-year journey from building locks to rockets! 🧵 Structure:

1. A failed venture, Pre-Independence "Make in India" and Ardeshir's dream
2. The Lock Business Unlocks the KEY to Godrej's success!
3. Godrej and India's Many Firsts!
4. Godrej: Mumbai's BIGGEST landowner
5. How is Godrej doing today?

iD went from 0 to INR 411 Cr revenue in 17 years!

But initially, people didn’t trust their “fresh food” messaging.

So, what changed?

1 brilliant marketing experiment ⇒ Trust Shops!

Here’s how iD makes money by blindly trusting customers 🧵 Structure:
1. iD Fresh's struggle with Trust
2. Positioning to become the Idli KING!
3. The Trust Shop - How trusting customers builds trust
4. So, is Trust profitable?
5. Closing Thoughts

Zilingo was known as "Zara on an API"!

In 2019, it raised
- $226M in funding
- at a valuation of $970M

While
- losing $234M
- on a revenue of $98M

Finally, in 2022, their celebrity CEO Ankiti Bose was fired!

Here's how VCs went from LOVING this startup to HATING it! 🧵 Structure:

1. What is Zilingo?
2. Zilingo's origin story
3. Evolution of their business model
4. The rise and almost becoming a unicorn
5. So, why did it fail?
6. What do we learn?

This founder burnt $500K in VC funding & yet could NOT buildd his startup’s MVP!

Then, he used NoCode tools:
Bubble — Platform
Postmark — Emails
MixPanel — Analytics
Hookdeck — Webhooks

And built the product in:
Time — 1 month
Cost — $500/mo

Here’s his story 🧵 Structure:
1) Tough lessons after buildd-ing products from scratch
2) Discovering the magic of NoCode
3) What is UserLoop?
4) User-driven development of building!
5) How NoCode gives you Wings?
6) UserLoop's NoCode Stack
7) The impact!
8) Shortcomings with using NoCode

FTX, a top Crypto exchange, lost $32B in a few days!

Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX’s founder:
- sank $2B funding
- owes $3B to creditors
- and, lost funds of millions of people!

Here’s how this startup’s crash was inevitable 🧵 Structure:
1) How did FTX come to be?
2) Bankman goes from Billionaire to Bankrupt
3) A single move that unravelled the scam
4) Magical tokens that make infinite money
5) SBF: It was a PONZI scheme all along!
6) A state full of doe-eyed onlookers

NoCode is the FUTURE of building startups!

A head hunter built his startup to:
- $100,000+ revenue
- 30,000 SEO traffic
- in 2.5 months!

$500/mo NoCode tech stack VS. $800K to $1M to buildd from scratch!

Here’s how Bubble & Webflow powered a jobs marketplace 🧵 Structure:
1) What is FiveTeams?
2) What problems did they face?
3) NoCode Tech Stack!
4) Impact of using NoCode
5) The downside

PepperTap was the brainchild of an IIM-A grad.

Launched in 2014, it quickly

- raised $51M
- expanded to 25 cities
- reached 20K daily orders
- competed with Grofers & BigBasket

But, its flight came crashing in 2016!

Here's how heavy marketing spending ended this startup 🧵 Structure:

1. What is PepperTap?
2. PepperTap's origin story
3. The rise of PepperTap!
4. Why did they fail?
5. What do we learn?

Indians LOVE cricket!

So much so that a simple cricket news website, CricBuzz:

- gets 398M monthly traffic
- makes $7.8M in revenue
- beats LinkedIn, Microsoft & Flipkart

Here's how this startup hit the keyword JACKPOT and became the 15th most visited website on Google! 🧵 Structure:

1. What exactly is CricBuzz? How does it make money?
2. Let's look at CricBuzz's SEO numbers
3. Hitting the SEO keywords jackpot
4. CricBuzz's goldmine of keywords
5. Final Takeaways! And, how to do keyword research for your startup?

StayZilla was the Airbnb of India!

But, after raising $34M, in just 5 months they,
1. fired 210 employees
2. ran out of $13.5M in capital
3. and, landed their founder in JAIL! 🤯

Here's how poor finances & marketing cash burn led to this startup's EPIC downfall! 🧵 Structure:
1. What is StayZilla?
2. StayZilla's rise in India
3. So, what happened to StayZilla?
4. Why did it fail?
5. What do we learn?

Canva & Zapier use SEO + PROGRAMMING to get millions of users!

But, what if you could buildd a programmatic SEO website with
- $50/mo tech stack
- in ONE month
- without writing a single line of code!

Here's how you can use NoCode & SEO marketing to buildd your next startup! 🧵 Structure:
1. Inspiration behind the project
2. Building a programmatic SEO website
3. But, why go the NoCode way?
4. NoCode Tech Stack!
5. Shortcomings of using NoCode
6. What was the final impact?
7. NoCode Lessons!

In 2010, Steve Jobs openly ATTACKED Adobe Flash.

A decade later, Flash was completely shut down!

But, why did Adobe shut down Flash, after it acquired its parent startup, Macromedia, for $3.4B?

Let’s find out! 🧵 Structure:

1. The story of Adobe Flash
2. The birth of Adobe Flash
3. The Peak Era!
4. Many problems with Adobe Flash
5. Did Steve Jobs kill Flash?
6. Lessons!

NoCode is incredibly POWERFUL!

A 15+ year marketing expert built a Shopify app:
- in 5 months
- working part-time
- on a $500 NoCode stack

And scaled it to:
- 1500+ clients
- $50,000 MRR
- in just 1.5 years!

Read his story to know how you can buildd your startup with NoCode 🧵 Structure:
1. Journey of Analyzify
2. What exactly is Analyzify?
3. What problems did they face?
4. How did NoCode help?
5. Analyzify's NoCode Tech Stack!
6. Final Impact?
7. NoCode vs Code
8. Key Takeaways!

Maggi is Nestle’s BIGGEST cash cow!

- 90% market share for 25 years
- Makes 30% of Nestle’s revenue
- Beats giants like ITC & Nissin

Maggi came to India in 1983, and we quickly fell in love with the brand.

Here’s how Nestle’s startup turned Indians into Maggiholics 🧵 Structure:
1. Maggi's Origins: From Switzerland to Japan to India
2. Winning over Indian consumers: How Maggi positioned itself
3. Maggi's marketing strategy
4. The making of a HIT product!