India’s startup story has long been built on a simple promise: if you have an idea, the courage to pursue it, and the resilience to survive chaos, the company will be yours to build. That promise powered a generation of founders and helped turn the country into one of the world’s most active startup ecosystems.
That story is now changing.
A new class of institutions—venture studios—has emerged, offering a different path to entrepreneurship. These platforms promise structure, capital, and execution certainty in exchange for control. In theory, it is a rational evolution of a maturing market. In practice, it is exposing a widening gap between how entrepreneurship is marketed and how it is contractually defined.
At the center of recent debate is The Foundery, a venture studio initiative publicly associated with Nikhil Kamath. Its messaging is compelling and familiar: forge entrepreneurs, build your startup, become a co-founder, earn up to 25% equity. For many aspiring founders, it sounds like a faster, safer road to building a company.
The legal reality, however, tells a more nuanced story—one that reflects the true nature of the venture studio model rather than the mythology of independent startup creation.
Venture studios are not new. Globally, they have produced successful companies by systematizing startup creation. Ideas are generated internally, teams are assembled quickly, capital is pre-committed, and operational infrastructure is shared. The studio retains majority ownership to justify its investment and risk.
This model works best when expectations are clear. Participants are not traditional founders in the romantic sense; they are closer to operator-founders or venture partners. Autonomy is traded for speed, safety, and resources.
The friction begins when studios adopt the language of founder-led entrepreneurship without clarifying that the economics and control structures are fundamentally different.
A close reading of The Foundery’s terms highlights this distinction. Intellectual property created during the program—and in some cases even after—belongs to the studio or its affiliates. The companies themselves are owned and promoted by studio entities. Co-founder status is not automatic and may be decided only after the program concludes.
Equity, marketed as “up to 25%,” is conditional, subject to performance benchmarks, reverse vesting, and definitive agreements that favor the studio. Participants may be required to relocate, grant long-term rights to their name and likeness, and accept broad disqualification clauses.
None of this is abnormal for a venture studio. What is unusual is how rarely these conditions are emphasized alongside the headline promises. The result is an expectation gap—one that becomes visible only after time, money, and opportunity have already been invested.
The most significant price in such programs is not equity dilution. It is opportunity cost.
A multi-month residential commitment often requires founders to pause existing careers, step away from parallel ventures, and delay independent fundraising or market entry. In return, they receive a minority stake in a studio-controlled company with limited exit optionality.
For early-career builders, this may be a fair exchange—an apprenticeship in execution with reduced downside risk. For experienced operators and CXOs exploring entrepreneurship, the equation looks very different. Control, flexibility, and long-term optionality often matter more than early capital or infrastructure.
This contrast is visible when compared with platforms such as CXO Academy, which approaches entrepreneurship from the opposite direction. Rather than creating companies, it focuses on creating capable leaders.
CXO Academy does not take equity or claim intellectual property. Participants retain full ownership of their ideas and ventures. The platform’s value lies in education, peer credibility, access to investors and boards, and structured leadership development—not in controlling outcomes.
The trade-off is clear. One model reduces execution risk but limits sovereignty. The other preserves ownership but demands self-direction.
Neither is inherently superior. Confusion arises only when they are framed as the same thing.
India’s ecosystem is entering a platform-driven phase, where capital, talent, and execution capabilities are increasingly centralized. Venture studios are a natural outcome of this shift. They will play a meaningful role in producing scalable companies.
But as the ecosystem matures, transparency becomes more—not less—important. Founders today are not just dreamers; many are seasoned professionals with global exposure. They understand trade-offs, but they expect them to be explicit.
Words like founder, co-founder, and your startup carry weight. When they are used loosely, trust erodes.
The next phase of India’s entrepreneurial evolution will favor institutions that align marketing with legal reality and ambition with structure. Those that do not may still build companies—but at the cost of long-term credibility.
In today’s startup economy, ownership is no longer assumed. It is negotiated, defined, and documented.
And increasingly, the most important document is not the pitch deck—it is the fine print.