Satlights: India's First Startup Experience Graph

Startups don't fail for lack of ideas, they fail for lack of the right people.

Founders waste 3–6 weeks on hires who flake in the first 7 days.

10 founder interviews: all cited flakiness and time wasted on false signals (degrees, resumes, salaries).

Candidate side: most demand salaries upfront, pricing themselves by resume/university brand — not by actual performance.

Proof of Pain



Experienced candidates

Salary-anchored, not value-based.

  • Example: asked ₹70K because last was ₹57K.
  • Example: asked ₹1L because current was ₹60K.

Freshers

Willing to work at ₹10K–₹20K but high quit rate (1–2 weeks).

Result: both groups waste founder time — and no existing platform filters this.

Our Own Test

We experienced the exact same problems:

  • 1 intern quit within 1 week.
  • 1 NSIT hire at ₹70K proven incompetent in 2 days, rejected in 10.
  • 1 IIT hire wanting ₹55K salary for 5 hours of work with less than 1 year of experience (said yes to internship, ghosted last minute)

Shows exactly what founders complain about:

"How do I know they won't flake?"

Plus interviews of 10+ founders who complained of interns quitting, not thinking at all, not willing to put in the hard yards to learn anything. Quality of output is worse than ChatGPT.


Founder Voices & Operator Validation

Founder interviews

"Freshers are cheap but most quit."

"Seniors are overpriced, anchored to past salaries."

Operator testimonial (Unacademy early team)

"At Unacademy, everyone started as an intern first. Degrees and résumés didn't matter — only survival in the first weeks counted."

Takeaway: Intern-first isn't new. Top startups already used it. Satlights is productizing it.

Proof from Successful Startups

Many Indian unicorns began by hiring interns in their early stages:

Flipkart

First hires were interns managing ops.

Zomato

Grew with interns doing restaurant onboarding.

Paytm

Early product + ops staffed by interns.

Swiggy

Interns handled logistics before scale.

Unacademy

"Everyone started as an intern."

History shows: interns fuel early-stage scale → but only some survive.

Solution

Satlights = India's first Startup Experience Graph

Every candidate starts as an intern → trial by fire

Flaky candidates auto-filtered

Survivors build portable startup résumés: 0→1, 1→10, 10→100 cycles

Founders see only candidates who survived chaos, not just interviews

Product & Pricing

Entry: ₹899 JD → 3 pre-vetted interns

  • Designed for low-level HR contacts (assistants, recruiters, ops managers).
  • No approvals needed → impulse purchase.

Premium: 3% fee for trial-tested hires

Future: Verticalized startup networks (FinTech, AI, D2C)

Why ₹899 works:

Industry pricing = 8.33% of CTC → extremely expensive for founders.

Our wedge = low-cost entry, mass adoption.

Founders get flexibility to run multiple times a month without high costs.

Business Model

Entry Funnel

₹899 JD drops → high-volume traction.

Subscription

₹199/month Founder Plan (4 matches/month).

Premium

3% fee on hires (trial-tested candidates).

Future Expansion

Global startup experience graph → SaaS-style upsell.

Why Founders Choose Satlights

Takeaway: Recruiters are expensive, job boards are spam, AI is surface-level → Satlights is the only system that filters for startup survival.

Market (Bottom-Up TAM)

1
2
3
1

SOM (Bangalore + Delhi, active startups)

~3,000 startups, avg. 15–20 hires → 45K–60K hires.

At ₹199/month → ₹9–12 Cr ($1–1.5M).

2

SAM (India, active startup ecosystem)

~40K startups, ~5K actively hiring.

~100K hires/year.

Monetization: ₹10K–₹20K per hire.

SAM ≈ ₹1,000–2,000 Cr ($120–250M).

3

TAM (Global startups)

5M+ startups.

~50M hires/year.

At $500–$1,000 per hire.

TAM ≈ $25–50B.

Traction & Early Signals

3,000+

Candidates Sourced

@ ₹10–12 per resume

2

Paying Customers

Recruiter who signed up for 3% commission

10

Founders

With early access to program

Survivors retained → forming first Startup Experience Graph

Why Now

India = world's fastest-growing startup hub (~160K startups).

Founders desperate for flakiness filter, not CV spam.

Series A/B companies already pay premiums for startup-tested talent.

Remote-first tools (Slack, Notion) make feedback capture seamless.

Team

Rishab Dhar - Founder

  • ex-Deloitte
  • ex-Magnolia
  • 10+ years Software engineering
  • Last pivoted to this model in July 2025 (achieved these metrics with under $2k burn)

Current Team Composition

Ask

Raising $500k seed to:

Scale candidate sourcing

Universities, LinkedIn

Run 1-week/1-month trials at scale

Build Experience Graph infra

Onboard 1k+ founders within 12 months

Vision

Redefine startup hiring: from résumés → to startup survival records.

Satlights becomes the global Gold standard for startup talent verification.

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