Startups Go B2B, Razorpay Gets RBI Nod, and Sanchar Saathi Mandate

India’s startup ecosystem finally hit an unbreakable wall: a billion consumers who love using products but hate paying for them. That reality triggered a historic pivot - nearly 200 B2C startups walking away from mass markets and rebuilding themselves as enterprise players. And let’s be honest: this shift isn’t some strategic masterstroke. It’s arithmetic. Only enterprises offer predictable revenue, stickiness, and margins that have any hope of surviving a funding winter as well as becoming profitable.

What changed? Consumer CAC in India went from “manageable” to “borderline criminal.” A startup that used to acquire a customer for ₹60 now spends ₹250-₹400 and still struggles with retention. In categories like personal finance, wellness, and D2C, CAC has gone up 3-5x while consumer spending hasn’t moved enough to justify it. Add rising competition from giants like Flipkart, Meesho, JioMart, and Blinkit, and the average consumer startup simply got crushed. They were left with great products, strong teams, and terrible math.

So the pivot began - quietly at first, then like a stampede. Edtech players moved into corporate training. D2C brands started selling private-label SKUs to retailers. Fintechs rebuilt themselves as infra providers. Even social apps suddenly discovered “community SaaS.” Many founders will tell the world they “always planned to go B2B,” but the real story is blunt: B2C stopped working, and B2B became the emergency exit.

But let’s not romanticize this moment. A pivot isn’t a magic reset button. When a B2C company jumps into B2B, it carries legacy scars: a cost-heavy team, a product built for scale instead of depth, and a mindset tuned for speed, not trust. Enterprise sales need patience, procurement mastery, and compliance. They demand founders who can win over CTOs, CPOs, and CFOs - not Instagram reels.

Still, some pivots have worked brilliantly. Zepto’s early experiments with B2B supply to kiranas didn’t turn into a full-scale business, but forced them to build strong inventory and procurement engines. Fampay, struggling in the consumer market, began building infra rails for fintechs. A handful of content startups turned their recommendation tools into enterprise APIs for publishers. Even D2C players like SUGAR Cosmetics and Slurrp Farm scaled through institutional and export channels, not Instagram clicks.

This is India’s story: the market pushes you where the money truly is.

The GCC boom accelerated this trend. GCCs now employ 2 million+ tech workers, and they’re buying tools that solve compliance, workflow, LLM integration, SKU forecasting, fraud detection, and automation. Startups who once chased Gen Z are now pitching Deutsche Bank, Walmart Global Tech, and Target. Ironically, enterprise software - once considered “boring” - has become the new aspirational playbook. Predictable revenue beats unpredictable virality.

The pivot to B2B, however, doesn’t guarantee survival. Enterprise markets move slowly. Sales cycles stretch to 6-12 months. Mid-market companies still run on spreadsheets and WhatsApp. And the biggest threat of all? GCCs themselves. With engineering armies and global budgets, they often build the same tools startups hope to sell. Competing with Walmart’s internal AI team or JPMorgan’s quant desk is harder than competing with Swiggy.

Yet, at the ecosystem level, this pivot wave is healthy. It forces discipline. It kills vanity. It reminds founders that India’s TAM is not defined by population, but by willingness to pay. And it pushes the ecosystem towards the business India is uniquely positioned to lead globally: cost-efficient, enterprise-grade tech.

The next decade will produce fewer glamorous consumer apps and far more “boring but profitable” enterprise companies. The winners will be the founders who understand procurement cycles as well as they understand product-market fit, and who can survive long sales cycles without burning the house down.

Let’s go through what else is happening in Indian startup world - Grab your simmering cup of StartupChai.in and unwind with our hand-brewed memes.

“Humari Bhi Haan Hai”: Razorpay Bags RBI License For Cross-Border Payment Aggregation

Razorpay just won the coveted RBI license for cross border payment aggregation, opening the gates for smooth inward and outward global flows. The company has been quietly tuning its international engine, from syncing with Apple Pay to giving Amazon Global sellers a zero forex markup cushion.

With NPCI International now in the mix for UPI payments in Malaysia, Razorpay seems set to stroll across borders as if they were polite suggestions rather than lines on a map.

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“Dekho Beta, Daro Mat”: Smartphone Makers Asked To Preload Sanchar Saathi App For Cyber Security

Smartphone makers have been told to ship every new device with the government’s Sanchar Saathi app preloaded and unremovable, a kind of digital seatbelt wired in at the factory.

The app promises to chase down stolen phones, sniff out fake IMEIs and guard against cyber fraud that keeps rising like an unwelcome tide. Coming right on the heels of the new DPDP Rules, the move feels like India tightening its data armour even as users quietly wonder how much armour is too much.

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“Maamla Legal Hai”: Kerala HC Summons BYJU’S RP, Glas Trust & EY India Head On Dec 5

The Kerala High Court has revisited the Byju’s conflict after Voizzit Technology claimed rights over Epic! and Tynker.

Both assets were sold despite an earlier restraint order, adding another grim note to the company’s decline. And with Byju Raveendran now preparing a ₹2.5 lakh crore defamation suit, the saga continues to darken.

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“Bas Itna Kafi Hoga”: Wakefit Sets IPO Price Band At INR 185-195

Wakefit has set its IPO price band at ₹185 to ₹195, placing the company’s valuation near ₹6,373 crore and giving the markets something soft yet substantial to land on. At the top end, the issue size touches about ₹1,289 crore, a tidy pillow of capital for a brand built on sleep.

Backed by heavy hitters like Peak XV, Investcorp and Verlinvest, Wakefit now seems ready to dream on a larger canvas while investors check if the mattress holds.

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1. Fireside Ventures has wrapped up its fourth fund at $253 Mn, ready to seed thirty to thirty five new consumer brands with cheques ranging from $1 Mn to $12 Mn. With heavyweight backers and a track record that includes boAt and Honasa, the firm looks set to shape the next wave of India’s everyday favourites.

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2. StockGro has secured ₹150 Cr from investor Mukul Agrawal, giving its social investing platform fresh fuel to expand, upgrade Stoxo and broaden its multi asset offerings. With markets hitting new highs and newcomers flooding in, the timing feels almost perfectly tuned to the moment.

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3. Modulus Housing has raised ₹70 Cr in its first funding round, backed by Kalaari, Hero and others to scale its prefab tech and cloud manufacturing setup. With the promise of completing low rise buildings in just thirty days, the startup is gearing up to take its rapid build model global.

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4. GetReplies has raised $1 Mn to push its agentic AI platform into the sprawling $200 billion martech universe, where teams still battle a maze of disconnected tools. By unifying lifecycle engagement under one roof, the startup hopes to replace chaos with something closer to clarity.

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