The story behind this domain has both sellers remorse (Manish said “I sold a phenomenal domain for a pittance”) and buyers terror (Anupam put 80% of cash into the domain) Manish built V1 of this iconic website in 1996 when Hotmail was just launched & India had 4.5 Lakh internet users. By the time he sold the website in 2000, our internet population grew to 56 Lakh users (0.5% penetration) By the time Wharton profiled Anupam Mittal, India’s internet population grew to 14.2 crore (11% penetration). Anupam raised his first VC round 10 yrs after starting the company. Anupam was early. Manish was even earlier. Manish had learnt his lesson: He owns several such single-world category domain names to this date. When I met him at GFF 2026, he told me that someone offered him $500k for one of these domains, which he flat out declined (apparently the bidder started at $5k 😆) We’re very lucky that Manish has catalogued this entire journey on his blog & made the original marketing collateral for the website available (this is 30+ yrs old now): celestri.org/2026/07/30/shaa…

Of course, don't treat this as financial advice. DYOR. If you want a fun statistic: this position in PB was built across 32 independent buys over 800+ trading days. XIRR was close to 25% until this morning 😂

Through the FFS 1.0 scheme, Govt of India allocated ₹800 cr across ~10 DeepTech VC funds. In total, all VC funds backed by FFS 1.0 invested ~₹4,900 cr into 280 DeepTech startups (according to ISCI in May 2026) Therefore, startups backed by FFS 1.0 include Agnikul Cosmos, Digantara, Pixxel, Dhruva Space, EtherealX, Sarla Aviation & several others. When FFS 1.0 was conceived in 2016, DeepTech in India was a mirage, we didn’t even have a space policy. As FoF 2.0 rolls out in 2026, DeepTech in India is real: Our 1st unicorn (Skyroot), our 1st IPO (SEDEMAC), our 1st ₹1000+ cr domestic order (EO PPP) & our 1st export orders. A nation compounds over decades. We won’t see the results of FoF 2.0 for at least another decade.

The traction isn’t as great as the underlying concept. I’ve broadly seen the same set of Reels over a few days (a clear indication that not enough people are submitting new content). The fundamental issue is that DTH & cable TV subscriber count is dropping across India. Hathway’s active cable subscribers have declined 20% from 56.6 Lakh in March 2021 to 45.1 Lakh in March 2026. While BARC data claims that average time spent on TV hasn’t declined, I think time spent reality would look a lot more grim than subscriber count. Hathway & its peers are fighting a losing battle. Its competition includes algo gods like Netflix & Instagram (the latter has come to TV as well). In my BLR home, we don’t have a DTH or cable TV subscription. In our Mumbai home, my grandfather retains it for posterity (or more likely because he doesn’t know how to cancel the subscription).

In fact, restaurants which pay 5% GST are negatively impacted by this MDR since they cannot claim the ITC which New Balance & other companies paying 18% GST can. Therefore, cloud kitchens like The Mumbai Pav co (which my mom has invested in) would be adversely impacted by the GST charged on MDR The challenge with imposing MDR on UPI runs much deeper than this GST edge case which I shared. Fundamentally, it is extremely difficult to charge for a previously “free” service (due to a concept called the Prince Anchoring). There is always outrage when something goes from “free” to even a nominal charge. The public backlash is expected but the industry desperately needs the MDR to make their payments business survive without Govt incentive programs. My grandfather summarized this beautifully last evening: “either way, the taxpayer pays, which has been true since I started paying taxes in 1958” 😆