If Indian capital doesn’t fund Indian context, India dangers importing options to issues it understands higher than anybody else. That is the message from Archana Jahagirdar, Founder and Managing Accomplice at Rukam Capital, who makes a passionate case for why home capital should prioritise native innovation over borrowed playbooks.
“For too lengthy, our innovation ecosystem has mirrored the West — Silicon Valley fashions, YC templates, world TAM slides,” says Jahagirdar. “However India performs by totally different guidelines.”
The challenges India faces are distinctive and rooted in its geography, demography, and economics. From 50 lakh kirana shops nonetheless working with out ERP programs, to the silent disaster of rural iron deficiency, from EV infrastructure gaps in tier-2 cities to the money circulation struggles of women-led SMBs — these are issues born from India’s context, not Silicon Valley’s.
And but, Jahagirdar warns, an excessive amount of of the funding thesis in India stays pushed by sample recognition from Palo Alto, not floor truths from Pune, Patna, or Panipat. “You’ll be able to’t resolve India’s issues with templates from elsewhere. You want founders who’ve lived this actuality and traders who aren’t asking ‘The place’s the playbook?’ As a result of in India, there isn’t one.”
On the coronary heart of this argument is a deeper philosophical shift Jahagirdar advocates: from capital that calls for scalability at any value to capital that values context, time, and texture.
Backing the Builders of Bharat
Jahagirdar highlights the sectors the place India’s subsequent wave of IP will emerge — deep-tech, well being, agriculture, and infrastructure. Notably, these are sectors the place options typically don’t scale in a single day. “Our most respected manufacturers will converse regional languages, not simply English. Our most enduring companies received’t go viral — they’ll go village to village.”
In her view, it is a name for a affected person type of capital. One which understands India’s journey from fragmentation to scale doesn’t observe Western trajectories. “This received’t be constructed by capital that wants a 12-month payback,” she says. “It’ll be constructed by capital that understands the time, belief, and texture of India.”
Case for Indian LPs and VCs
Indian Restricted Companions (LPs) backing Indian Enterprise Capitalists (VCs) who again Indian founders — this, Jahagirdar believes, is the virtuous cycle India wants. “It’s not nearly rupees versus {dollars}. It’s about context versus template.”
When this alignment occurs, the ensuing improvements don’t simply scale — they stick. “As a result of they’re born from ground-up insights, not top-down assumptions.”
Street to Viksit Bharat
Jahagirdar’s message concludes on an pressing notice: if India actually seeks Viksit Bharat — a developed India — its capital should transfer past the hunt for what’s merely scalable. “We’ve to fund what’s true,” she says. “And reality in India takes time. It takes grit. And it takes capital that’s not simply writing cheques, however backing context.”
