Investing in dabbil-dabbi startups

So the wife has come up with this new concept – “dabbil-dabbi startups“. Check out this scene from yedurmane ganDa, pakkadmane henDthi where miser Shashikumar is looking for the money that he has stored inside a series of boxes (watch at 3:48 here).

So the wife’s point is that startups nowadays are not adding value by themselves but instead simply offering an additional layer around an already existing product/idea. This, she says is similar to Shashikumar in the above scene putting one box inside the other – basically no real value is added.

I take this analogy further, perhaps distorting it in the process, like any analogy taken too far. Basically in the above scene, Shashikumar, after opening all the boxes inside boxes, retrieves money from the innermost box and rhetorically cribs that the money hasn’t grown.

Similarly, when an investor invests in a “dabbil-dabbi” startup, his money meets the same fate as Shashikumar’s in the movie – there is no growth!

So think twice before investing in a dabbil-dabbi startup.

Put Comment