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Indus Valley Annual Report 2025

Sajith Pai, Anurag Pagaria and team (Blume Ventures) · Blume Ventures Free Intermediate India

Blume's annual report is the single best data-grounded read on what is actually happening in Indian internet and consumption, not what is trending on VC Twitter in San Francisco. It shows you adoption curves (UPI, quick commerce, ONDC, how few households actually shop online) so you can pressure-test whether a hyped trend has the demand base to land here. Treat it as a starting map of Indian reality, then judge your specific trend against it.

  • Grounds trend-spotting in real Indian adoption data (income distribution, online-shopping penetration, UPI-native monetization) instead of imported hype.
  • Indian startups are building a distinct playbook (micro-subscriptions on UPI Autopay, DPI rails) that has no clean US analogue, so copying a US trend directly often misses the real opportunity.
  • A trend can be huge in raw numbers yet thin in monetizable demand: the report repeatedly separates users from paying users.
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It answers 12 questions

  1. What are TAM, SAM, and SOM and how do I actually calculate them?
  2. How do I tell the difference between a real trend and a passing fad?
  3. Why does 'why now?' matter so much for a startup idea?
  4. How do I size a market for India specifically when data is messy?
  5. What are the biggest emerging opportunities in India right now?
  6. How do I run customer discovery as an Indian founder building for Indian users?
  7. How do I tell the difference between a trend that only matters to Silicon Valley and one that will actually land in India?
  8. How do I build a market size slide that is credible instead of the fantasy 'we just need 1% of a billion-dollar market'?
  9. How do I tell whether a market is genuinely emerging or just a fad that will fade in a year?
  10. How do I size a market I want to sell to businesses outside the big Indian startup hubs?
  11. How do I know if a trend is big enough to build a company on, or just a small niche?
  12. How do I research market size and timing when I can only spend a weekend and have no budget for reports?

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