Career Canvas (#9) - Darshit Talavia

From Farmlands to Founder-VC: Darshit Talavia on Trust, Tough Markets & Thinking Independently

In our latest Career Canvas conversation, we explore the journey of Darshit Talavia — a founder, product leader, and now early-stage investor — whose story moves through farmlands, failure, and fierce first principles. An IIT Kanpur alumnus, Darshit built Khetipoint, an agri-tech platform inspired by his time in rural Gujarat that scaled to $150K ARR before being acquired by Jaikisan. Today, he backs young, rebellious founders at Grad Capital, staying close to the zero-to-one energy that shaped his own journey.

You might notice a new name — we’ve rebranded to ‘Inflection Point’ to better reflect what this newsletter has evolved into: stories and insights on how people and sectors move — fast, slow, and everything in between.

Key takeaways of the conversation:
Darshit Talavia’s journey moves through the volleyball courts of IIT Kanpur, the farms of Gujarat, and into the chaotic trenches of early-stage startups. He didn’t plan to be a founder — but leading a sports team taught him to trust his gut, act under pressure, and take ownership. That mindset quietly shaped his entrepreneurial instincts.

During the COVID lockdown, time spent in his native village made one thing clear: trust is broken in Indian agriculture. Farmers rely on pesticide sellers for advice, with no checks or expertise — a gap Darshit wanted to fix. This led to KhetiPoint, an agri-tech platform combining expert advice with a marketplace for inputs. It grew quickly but eventually shut down due to monetization challenges — until a chance encounter led to it being acquired by Jai Kisan.

Key learnings? Rural India is digitally active — but needs handholding and trust to adopt new platforms. UPI payments are thriving even in remote areas, busting common myths. Most importantly, Darshit learned the hard way that founders must be willing to pivot. He was too attached to his original idea, and it cost him.

If he were to build again, he’d focus on the output side of farming — helping farmers sell better, not just buy cheaper. That’s where the real upside and impact lies.

Now at Grad Capital, Darshit backs “rebellious” student founders — not those who are loud, but those who think originally, aim big, and carry empathy. He looks beyond the product and zeroes in on mindset: Can this person build? Lead? Adapt?

Here is the full conversation:

Looking back, was there any defining moment during your time at IIT Kanpur that nudged you toward entrepreneurship or shaped who you are today?

At that time, I didn’t really know that I’d go on to start something. But in hindsight, I can connect a few dots.

The biggest influence was probably sports. I played volleyball at IIT Kanpur for five years and even captained the team. That experience shaped how I think — especially about independent decision-making and leadership. When you’re in the middle of a match and your team is down, you can’t wait for instructions. You have to take a call, act quickly, and trust your instincts.

That mindset stayed with me and eventually helped when I decided to start something of my own. I didn’t do a lot beyond sports in college — mostly tournaments and chilling — but those years on the court built a certain approach to problem-solving and stepping up under pressure.

What led you to start KhetiPoint? And how did your background in farming influence the idea?

The idea for KhetiPoint came during COVID, when I spent around three months in my native village. My extended family are all farmers — my grandfather, uncles, everyone — so I was surrounded by the reality of how agriculture works on the ground.

One insight hit me hard: in cities, when we fall sick, we go to a doctor who gives us a prescription, and then we go to a pharmacy. But in villages, for farmers, the person selling pesticides is the doctor. If there’s a pest attack, a farmer clicks a photo of the plant, shows it to the pesticide retailer, and buys whatever the shopkeeper suggests. There’s no expert opinion, no checks, no transparency. It’s all based on trust — and that trust is often exploited.

KhetiPoint was built to solve exactly this. It had two key parts:

A platform where farmers could upload queries and get expert advice from agronomists

A marketplace to buy the right products at lower prices, thanks to supply chain efficiencies

The core idea was to separate the “doctor” and the “medicine seller” — to bring clarity, fairness, and trust to the process.

Agri-tech is a tough space — fragmented supply chains, low digital adoption, trust barriers. What were 1–2 counterintuitive insights you discovered while running KhetiPoint?

There were quite a few, actually — but two stood out and really surprised me:

First, digital adoption was much higher than I expected.
Almost every farming household we interacted with had access to smartphones and the internet. They were active on WhatsApp, YouTube, and even Telegram — which I hadn’t imagined would be so widely used in rural India. On the surface, it felt like the market was digitally ready.

But here’s the catch: they weren’t intuitively comfortable with new platforms. We had to run tutorials, go village to village, and personally show people how to use the app. Only then did adoption pick up. So it wasn’t a digital divide — it was a trust and usability gap.

Second, UPI was surprisingly dominant.
Even though we offered cash on delivery, around 50% of our orders were paid through Google Pay or PhonePe at the time of delivery. It completely broke the stereotype that rural India only deals in cash. The comfort with digital payments was real — but again, only once trust was established.

These two insights changed how we approached both product and distribution — we went phygital, leveraged local influencers in villages, and prioritized word-of-mouth over paid ads.

Was the decision to sell KhetiPoint to JaiKisan opportunistic or strategic? And what did you learn from that phase?

Honestly, it was neither. We didn’t plan for an acquisition — it just happened after we’d already shut things down.

By the end, KhetiPoint had scaled to an ARR of around $150,000 across three districts in Gujarat. But we weren’t monetizing effectively — our model was free initially, and I hadn’t figured out a pivot in time. We were burning cash fast, and eventually had only two months of runway left. We even interviewed with Y Combinator, but they rejected us — and told us agri-tech in India hadn’t worked well for them either.

So we decided to shut it down, pay the team, and move on. But the app was still live.

Then one day, someone from JaiKisan’s team — they were on the ground in Maharashtra — saw a farmer using our app. They found it interesting and reached out to me on LinkedIn. That’s how the conversation started.

A couple of months later, they acquired the product, and I joined them.

Looking back, the biggest lesson was this: I didn’t realize I could have pivoted. I was too attached to the original idea and too young to think beyond it. At JaiKisan, I saw what it meant to experiment relentlessly while staying true to a long-term vision. That mindset — of building, failing, and learning fast — is something I deeply carry forward now.

If you were to rebuild a product in agri-tech today, what problem would you focus on?

I’d focus on the output side of farming — the part that begins after the harvest.

When I built KhetiPoint, we were on the input side — selling pesticides, micronutrients, etc. What I realized is: that side is incredibly hard to scale. It’s commoditized, margins are thin, and branding doesn’t stick. Even if you try to build a “premium” product, it’s tough to differentiate. The retailer still has outsized influence, and it becomes a price war.

The output side is very different. That’s where farmers sell what they’ve grown — grains, vegetables, fruits, whatever. And here’s the thing: a huge portion of their profit is lost to middlemen. If you can reduce that chain, give farmers better price discovery, help them access larger or institutional buyers — the impact is direct and tangible.

There's also more economic upside in solving output problems compared to the input side. On an average a farmer earns 50K revenue from 1 acre of land and requires roughly 5K worth of pesticides in one season. If we help a farmer get the same inputs for 4.5K the upside is only 500 rupees. But if we help farmers earn 60K instead of 50K the upside is 10K, from which as a company I can make some money.

Of course, the output side has its own complexity: logistics, perishability, local market dynamics. But it’s where I’d build again — because the value created is more obvious, more defensible, and more meaningful for the farmer.

At Grad Capital, you talk about investing in rebellious student founders. What does ‘rebellion’ mean to you in this context?

For us at Grad Capital, rebellion isn’t about being loud or contrarian for the sake of it. It’s about independent thinking — the kind that shows a founder sees the world differently and has the courage to act on it.

We don’t invest in ideas; we invest in people. Sometimes, we’ve backed founders even before they had a solid idea — just because their way of thinking stood out. Over time, I’ve come to define rebellion as a mix of three things:

Independent Thinking
Can the founder form original views and challenge defaults? I usually pick this up from how they speak, the metaphors they use, or the mental models they bring to conversations. It’s not something you can fake — it shows.
Ambition
Rebellion without scale is just noise. I look at what they’re trying to build — how bold or paradigm-shifting the idea is. For example, we’ve backed people building biotech companies that store data in DNA. That’s wild — and that’s what excites us.
Compassion
This is underrated but essential. If you’re building something big, you’ll need a team, early believers, customers. And to bring people along, you need to genuinely care about them — not just the outcome.

Together, these traits define the kind of founder we bet on. Rebellion, to me, is about vision + courage + empathy — and it’s surprisingly easy to spot when you’ve met a few hundred people trying to build.

You’ve been a founder, a product person, and now a VC. Which lens do you default to most in startup discussions — and which one do you intentionally suppress?

I default to the founder lens — that’s always been my starting point.

I try to understand how the person thinks: are they original? Can they build a team? Can they lead through uncertainty? It’s a lot like evaluating a sports captain — not just skill, but mindset and presence.

What I intentionally suppress is the product lens. It’s easy to get distracted by UI, features, or execution details. But early-stage investing is more about the person than the product. If the founder has clarity and conviction, the product will evolve.

So I focus less on “what’s built” and more on “who’s building and why.”

Quickfire Questions

One underrated skill for 20-year-olds today?

Doing independent projects in college. I didn’t do enough myself, and I regret it.

A founder you’ve recently met who inspired you?

We just invested in Spot, a startup by four fresh grads from IIIT-Hyderabad. They’ve done so many projects in just four years — it’s insane.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years — back to building, or deeper into VC?

I don’t know yet. I’m enjoying what I’m doing now. We’ll see where it goes.

Shoutout to Darshit, for this insightful and candid chat. Do share your thoughts in the comments.