Shree Taalib

[Shree Taalib @bendrala]

@lilynoire Can you blame me 😀?

[Shree Taalib @bendrala]

@lilynoire Would you consider an imported one, Goddess ? And a sturdy one at that!

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

The Anjali Sardana story is one of the most absurd startup trajectories I’ve seen this year.

She’s 23. Georgetown biology grad. Worked at Bain Capital and 8VC as a private equity investor. Could have stayed on the guaranteed path to seven figures by 30.

Instead she flew to India in early 2025 and noticed something: 190 million Indian households need domestic help. Somewhere between 20 and 90 million people work as house cleaners, cooks, and laundry workers. And the entire market runs on word of mouth, building guards, and WhatsApp groups.

Zero infrastructure. Zero quality control. Zero income stability for workers.

She launched Pronto in Gurugram with a single hub in Sector 56. She and her team literally slept on the office floor to make sure the first 170 daily bookings got fulfilled. Workers arrive within 10 minutes. Every “Pro” goes through a 5-day in-person training program, background checks, and a final exam. For every 300 applicants, 50 make the cut.

Nine months later: 18,000 bookings per day. Over 3,000 active Pros. 10+ cities. The top 1% of customers use Pronto 23+ times per month. Median time between first and second booking: two days.

The funding trajectory tells the whole story. $2M seed at $12.5M valuation. $11M Series A at $45M three months later. $25M Series B at $100M six months after that. $40M total raised. Sardana still owns 40%.

The market math is what makes investors salivate. India’s domestic help sector generates tens of billions in annual wages, almost entirely in cash, with no formal contracts, no labor protections, and no platform taking a cut. General Catalyst’s Rahul Garg sized it at a $35B wage pool across 35 million semi-skilled workers. Pronto’s customer acquisition cost: Rs 400 (about $5).

And she runs a largely variable-cost model. No dark stores. No massive capex. Referrals are her biggest growth channel because her workers actually like working there enough to recruit their friends.

She left the guaranteed path to wealth to go sleep on an office floor in Gurgaon and solve a matching problem in a $35B informal labor market.

That’s what actual conviction looks like.

[Shree Taalib @bendrala]

@lilynoire Always ready to be ruined by You, Goddess!

[Shree Taalib @bendrala]

@lilynoire @please_Domina You look like a lioness pouncing on her prey, Goddess! So rad!

[Matt Shumer @mattshumer_]

https://t.co/ivXRKXJvQg

[Shree Taalib @bendrala]

@lilynoire Hey Goddess… you are not gonna ride that bike all the way to oblivion like you do with your pets… right? 😅

[Thee Comfort O.🌸 @comfortomovre]

Every time you shy away from the things that feel too hard to do, you’re harming not just your future, but your present self. You slowly lose confidence, self-esteem, and grow mentally weak. So, next year, strengthen your mind. Dare to do hard things. That’s how you get ahead.

[Haroon @haroon]

It took me about 10 years longer than @SahilBloom to arrive at similar conclusions. Highly recommend you read and digest as you think about starting 2026 strong.

[Shubh @kadaipaneeeer]

Last night I spoke to a friend who left India years ago. We reconnected recently. She studied at BITS, got a scholarship for her master’s in Germany, and later on the German government funded her research on animal behaviour using computer science. Today, she has a full-time job there with a good package.

Cool. Happy for her.

But this isn’t a flex. This is a comparison.

In countries like Germany, research funding means funding actual research. You show up with a problem, data, methodology and a use case. The government backs you. Because they understand that science doesn’t need nationalism, it needs money and patience.

Now cut to India.

The Madhya Pradesh government recently spent ₹3.5 crore on “cancer cure research” using cow dung and cow urine. ₹3.5 crore. Tax payer public money.

In India, researchers struggle to get basic grants. Fellowships are delayed for months. Professors themselves discourage students from pursuing research because they know the system will not support them. If you want to do serious work, you are often told one thing very clearly: arrange your own funding.

Another friend, a classmate till 10th, went to IIT Dhanbad. Did robotics and AI. Got an internship. Finished graduation. Immediately got a job offer from Texas. Moved there. It’s been three years. Never came back.

Not because India didn’t need him. Because India didn’t deserve him.

This is the pattern

• Indian PhDs go abroad because fellowships here get delayed like train schedules.

• Top STEM graduates leave because research grants in India are buried under bureaucracy and political interference.

• Professors tell students not to pursue research because “government se funding nahi aayega.”

• Deep-tech startups register outside India because innovation here dies in paperwork.

• Indian-origin scientists lead projects at NASA, Google DeepMind after leaving Indian institutions.

And then we do this funny thing on internet. We clap. We tweet “proud Indian 🇮🇳”. After pushing them out.

Countries like Germany, the US, and France are aggressively hiring Indian minds. Not out of kindness. Because they know talent + funding = progress of their nation.

India, meanwhile, is busy deciding whether science needs evidence or belief. Studying animal behaviour using PyTorch and OpenCV sounds “useless” here. But finding a cancer cure in cow dung sounds “visionary”.

That’s not cultural pride. That’s intellectual bankruptcy. The scary part isn’t brain drain. The scary part is that no one in power seems embarrassed by it.

We’re not losing talent accidentally. We’re outsourcing our future, ₹3.5 crore at a time.

The real concern is not that India is losing talent. The real concern is that there is no serious urgency to stop it & without that urgency, slogans will continue to replace solutions while the future quietly moves elsewhere 🙏🏻

[Shree Taalib @bendrala]

@lilynoire Yes Goddess, absolutely! I adore them 😀

[Shree Taalib @bendrala]

@lilynoire “May they find such solace in that great force that they never want to leave its embrace” - your pet

[Shree Taalib @bendrala]

@lilynoire Count me in Goddess !

[Shree Taalib @bendrala]

@lilynoire I do have a Pavlovian reaction to your posts, looking forward to get properly trained by you Goddess !

[Shree Taalib @bendrala]

@lilynoire Yes, you bet !

[Shree Taalib @bendrala]

@lilynoire And you bind my spirit, lifting me in surrender.

[Shree Taalib @bendrala]

@lilynoire Yes, Goddess. Switching language to comply with your command.

[Shree Taalib @bendrala]

@lilynoire I worship at the altar of my Goddess!