StartupFeed Quick Take
- Astrotalk’s first offline store opened in Gurgaon two weeks ago, with no founder involvement
- Puneet Gupta saw it for the first time on October 4, 2026, and said so publicly the next morning
- Five years ago an investor refused Astrotalk because the company leaned too hard on its founders
The first offline Astrotalk Store traded in Gurgaon for two weeks before its founder, Puneet Gupta, set foot inside it.
He wrote about it himself on LinkedIn on October 5, 2026. The site was picked without him. The designer was chosen without him.
The pooja was done. The doors opened. Customers walked in for a fortnight, and the man whose name is on the company found out afterwards.
The Store Puneet Gupta Did Not Know Was Open
Most founders know every door handle in their own building. They sign the lease themselves. They argue about the signage and the shelf height.
Puneet Gupta did none of that for Gurgaon. In his post he listed the steps plainly: the place was finalised, the designer was finalised, the pooja happened, the store opened, and he went to look the next day.
His own joke was that he is the one who seems to have stopped working. Behind that joke sits a thing most Indian founders chase for a decade and never catch. A business that keeps running when they are not in the room.
“Sometimes I can’t believe how far we have come as a team”
Puneet Gupta, founder and chief executive, Astrotalk. From his LinkedIn post, October 5, 2026.
The Investor Who Said No in 2020
Around 2020 and 2021, an investor turned Astrotalk down. The reason given was that the company depended too much on its founders.
That is not an insult. It is how the money thinks. An investor is buying a machine, not a person, and a machine that only runs when one man is present is worth less on every term sheet.
Gupta carried the remark for five years. He brought it up himself, unprompted, on the morning after walking into a store he had nothing to do with. Some sentences stay with a founder until he can answer them.
His answer in the post was short. The dependence is gone, he wrote, and Astrotalk simply is not raising money now.
An Astrologer, a Prediction, and Rs 1,214 Crore
Gupta did not start out in astrology, and did not believe in it. He spent about four years as an analyst in investment banking, then ran an IT services company called CodeYeti Software Solutions for roughly three years.
In 2015 an astrologer told him what the next two years of his life would look like. She told him his business partner would leave and that he would face bankruptcy. He did not believe a word of it at the time.
It happened. In an interview with BW Disrupt he said he moved within three weeks of that realisation, wanting to bring genuine astrologers into an industry full of frauds. Astrotalk was set up in Noida in 2017 and built with money earned from his earlier company, with no outside investor at the start.
Today the platform works with about 18,000 astrologers and has roughly 7 crore registered users. Total outside funding across its life is about $34 Mn, which for a company of this size is almost nothing.
The Numbers Behind the Gurgaon Store
FY25 was the year the scale became hard to argue with. Total income rose 85% to Rs 1,214 crore from Rs 656 crore in FY24, with revenue from operations at Rs 1,176 crore.
| Measure | FY24 | FY25 |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue from operations | Rs 651 Cr | Rs 1,176 Cr |
| Total income | Rs 656 Cr | Rs 1,214 Cr |
| Adjusted profit before tax | Rs 127 Cr | Rs 285 Cr |
The honest footnote belongs here too. FY25 carried a one-time employee cost of about Rs 120 crore, mostly non-cash, which pushed reported net profit down sharply even as the adjusted figure rose 125%.
Announcing the results, co-founder and chief business officer Anmol Jain credited deeper engagement and repeat consultations, with user engagement up 27% year on year.
On August 12, 2026, Astrotalk reached a $1 billion valuation through an ESOP buyback covering more than 100 employees. It was paid for out of profits, not a new funding round, and it lifted the company from roughly $300 Mn in June 2024. The staff who built the thing got paid before any outside investor did.
Rs 30 Lakh That Became Rs 1 Crore a Day
The store business started small. Astrotalk Store launched in November 2024 with an initial spend of about Rs 30 lakh, selling rudraksha, gemstones, bracelets, yantras and vastu items.
It scaled commercially from January 2025. In its first year it clocked over Rs 140 crore in revenue across more than 1.6 million orders. By August 2026 it was running at a daily gross merchandise value of about Rs 1 crore.
Gurgaon is where that online business steps onto a street. Gupta told Business Today last year that many customers still want to sit across from an astrologer, and want to hold a gemstone before paying for it. The target for the ecommerce arm is Rs 400 crore to Rs 500 crore in annual recurring revenue by FY27.
The Inauguration Is on October 11
The store is already open and selling. The team still wants a formal inauguration, and has fixed it for Sunday, October 11, 2026 at 5 PM, chosen by muhurat.
Puneet Gupta and Anmol Jain will both be there for three to four hours. Gupta has invited his LinkedIn followers to walk in, meet the team and talk.
Read that again. The two founders are attending as guests at something their own people built, on a date their own people picked.
What this means for you: If you are a founder who signs off on every hire, every vendor and every design file, this is the dependence an investor will quietly price into your valuation. Pick one function this month, hand it over completely, and do not check on it for 30 days.
StartupFeed Insight
One store in Gurgaon proves nothing about offline retail yet. Rent, footfall and gemstone margins will decide that over the next four quarters, not an opening day. The real signal is operational. A company doing a Rs 2,500 crore revenue run rate launched an entirely new format end to end while its founders were elsewhere, and that is exactly what the 2020 investor said Astrotalk could not do. With an IPO targeted for 2027, that capability is worth more than the store. Watch for a second city store before March 2027. If it comes, the Gurgaon numbers worked.
By Suraj Prajapati, Contributing Editor
Have a tip? Write to us at editorial@startupfeed.in.
Liked this story? Follow StartupFeed on Google so our reporting reaches you first.
