Ep 34: Ashish Sinha on Indian startups’ underbelly and going back to his product roots

Depending on who you ask in the Indian startup ecosystem, Ashish Sinha, an IIT, IIM graduate and a former Yahoo product manager, could have built an AngelList to a TechCrunch equivalent from this part of the world. For his part, he did try attempting doing these. And he failed. Not for any lack of network or the knowhow, but because he did not agree with the rules of the game. Since Sinha quit his Yahoo job in May 2009, Shradha Sharma has built and scaled startup news site www.YourStory.com to be India’s biggest media platform for entrepreneurs, and AngelList has launched its offices in the country. Over the years, I have had several disagreements with Ashish, especially with the way he paints all media with the same brush and for pooh-poohing reporters who say they are at times constrained by media ethics. He’s an Outlier nonetheless. And an admirable one at that. That’s because very few in India have the ability and the required boldness to critique a software or an Internet product, early enough, so course corrections can be made. In this episode of Outliers, I met a new Ashish with his bearded looks. We discussed the underbelly of India’s tech and startup ecosystem and more. Do listen in.