‘Anachronistic, unnecessary power-play’: Shaadi.com’s Anupam Mittal on startups flipping domicile outside of India

Shaadi.com founder Anupam Mittal, in a social media post on X, said that it is important for the startup ecosystem to get on with the times and relook at rules requiring domicile to be outside of India. Mittal, who called the practice “anachronistic” and an “unnecessary power-play”  was quoting a post by Paul Graham, investor and co-founder of startup accelerator, Y Combinator. 

Graham had said that he feels a bit out of touch these days and gave an example of an Indian founder who asked him if he should base the company in India or San Francisco. “I feel a bit out of touch with current fashions, because a couple days ago an Indian founder in the current batch asked if he should base the company in SF or India, and I said the Indian startup community seemed to be thriving and it would be fine if he wanted to go back,” he said. 

In a reply to one of the comments, he acknowledged that he would not have given this advice some 20 years ago. To another one who asked what makes him feel out-of-touch, he said, “Because everyone on Twitter seems to be talking right now about how you have to be in SF.”

Mittal, quoting the post said: “Time to get with the times and change your rules requiring companies to flip their domicile outside of India. Not only is it anachronistic and an unnecessary power-play, it’s a disservice to these companies and founders given global macros. And AYK, reverse flips can be super-expensive and wasteful.” 

Graham’s post kick-started a debate. Kaushik Srinivasan, co-founder of Fiddle Cube AI, reasoned, “An Indian founder who recently moved to SF thanks to YC, I think the reality is quite nuanced today. If you are building for consumers or for India, India is definitely the place to base your startup. But if you are building AI or other foundational tech - SF is the place.” 

Capital Mind founder and CEO Deepak Shenoy thanked Paul Graham and said “every bit” helps the startup ecosystem in India. 

Patrick Kavanagh, co-founder at Atlantic Money, said, “India’s population with any western equivalent wealth is 50M people. The US is approximately 6 times this. So unless you are building a low cost commodity business, it’s a smaller market for most products.” 

Paul Graham, a PhD in Computer Science from Harvard, is also the author of On Lisp (1993), ANSI Common Lisp (1995), and Hackers & Painters (2004). In 1995, he and Robert Morris (also founder at Y Combinator) started the first SaaS company, Viaweb, which in 1998 became Yahoo Store. 

Also read: 'Google, Apple new East India Company': Shark Tank judge Anupam Mittal slams 'tech bullies'