Perspective

text background image
Deep insights, inspiration, founder stories, and comprehensive reports.

SaaS from Scratch: Anish Reddy of Capillary Technologies on Scaling SaaS from India to Global

16 years, $75M ARR, 15 Fortune 200 clients and Anish Rai will tell you the biggest mistakes were the ones he saw coming and ignored anyway.

Saas from Scratch: Ashutosh Garg on Building Eightfold AI: The Outsider Mindset That Created a Unicorn

Ashutosh Garg walked into HR tech knowing nothing about HR and used that as the edge. In this episode of SaaS from Scratch, Vani Kola sits down with the co-founder of Eightfold AI to unpack how a Google engineer's outsider lens built two unicorns and a new category.

SaaS from Scratch: Dheeraj Pandey of Nutanix and DevRev on Building Category-Defining SaaS from India

Nutanix co-founder Dheeraj Pandey joins Vani Kola to unpack how he built a $20 billion company by betting on distributed systems and what he'd do differently if he were starting today.

SaaS from Scratch: Founder Playbook | 2025 Edition

What separates category-defining SaaS companies from the rest? As Indian SaaS grows from $2B in 2018 to $17B in ARR now to become the world’s second-largest SaaS ecosystem, this question matters more than ever.

SaaS From Scratch: From Zero to Category: How Fareye Built a Market That Didn't Exist

Kushal Nahata built Fareye in a category no one had defined and had to convince buyers, investors, and an entire industry that a better way was possible. Here's the playbook for building something the market doesn't know it needs yet.

SaaS From Scratch: How Darwinbox's Rohit Chennamaneni Built an HR Tech Unicorn to Take On SAP and Workday from Hyderabad

Rohit Chennamaneni left McKinsey not with a grand plan, but with a frustration consulting advice never stuck, and a product could fix that. Nine years later, that frustration became Darwinbox, India's homegrown HR tech unicorn competing with SAP, Oracle, and Workday on their own turf.

Saas From Scratch: RateGain's Bhanu Chopra on TAM Expansion and Building Category-Defining SaaS

RateGain founder Bhanu Chopra joins Vani Kola to unpack how he built a $90 billion TAM travel tech company by entering a niche no investor would have bet on and expanding it into a category no one saw coming.

SaaS from Scratch: Saahil Goel on Building Shiprocket: 7 Years of Pivots, ₹10L to India's Largest E-Commerce Enablement Platform

Every founding story has a pivot. Saahil Goel had seven years of them and built India's largest e-commerce enablement platform on the other side.

Why We Invested?

The Hindsight: How Snabbit's Ayush Agarwal Built India's First On-Demand Home Services Platform

Snabbit founder Ayush Agarwal joins Vani Kola to unpack how he built India's first on-demand home services platform by solving a problem no customer could articulate and no competitor thought to look for.
PODCASTS

The Hindsight: How SpotDraft Built the AI Layer for Legal Teams

Shashank Bijapur, the founder of Spotdraft, joins Vani Kola to talk about how he built an AI-powered contract lifecycle platform that is now trusted by legal teams from India to the US.
PODCASTS

The Imperative of Security in IoT Environments

Imagine waking up to the aroma of freshly brewed coffee, your thermostat perfectly adjusting the temperature, and lights illuminating your path as you step out of bed.
BLOGS

The Kalaari Fellowship Application is Live

Applications for the Kalaari Fellowship are open. The 2-year, full-time, immersive apprenticeship-style program is an opportunity to break into the venture ecosystem.
REPORTS

The Quantum Trifecta: India's Race Across Three Clocks

In this edition, we unravel quantum technology, three parallel races in sensing, communication, and computing converging into one strategic moment, and where India’s startups can build.
NEWSLETTERS

The Rare-Earth Chokepoint: Designing Around Dependence

In this edition, we unravel rare-earth elements - what they are, their importance and the opportunity for startups as globally industries hunt alternatives for China’s control on rare-earths.
NEWSLETTERS
Editions

The Second-Order Effects of Indian Commerce

Why live commerce, agentic checkout, and loyalty look different once you examine the pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase layers
BLOGS
PERSPECTIVE

The State of AI and Cybersecurity in 2025

AI is rewriting cybersecurity faster than enterprises can respond. Our new Kalaari report captures what CISOs are actually struggling with, and where they believe the next wave of cybersecurity companies will be built
REPORTS
PERSPECTIVE

Subscribe to
Kalaari Newsletters

Unpacking our latest investments, portfolio updates and trends that are changing India's startup ecosystem.