Nobody Believes You Yet By Vargab Bakshi and Harsh Pamnani

An India-first guide to go-to-market strategy, Nobody Believes You Yet examines what it takes to turn an idea into a business that customers trust, remember and ultimately advocate for. Rather than importing Silicon Valley frameworks and assuming they will work everywhere, Pamnani and Bakshi examine the realities of selling and scaling in India.

At the heart of the book is the idea of “trust-market fit”: product-market fit alone is not enough if customers don’t believe that a young company can reliably deliver what it promises.

To understand how this works in practice, the authors went directly to the people who have spent years watching Indian start-ups succeed, fail, pivot and scale. The book draws on original conversations with partners from ten leading Indian venture capital firms, including Accel, Blume Ventures, Chiratae Ventures, Fireside Ventures, India Quotient, Kalaari Capital, Lightspeed, Peak XV, Z47 and 3one4 Capital. It also features 30 case-study chapters spanning 16 start-ups and brands, bringing together the perspectives of investors, founders and operators.

The book also explores the emerging challenges of AI-led go-to-market, including how companies selling invisible or highly technical technologies can make them understandable, credible and easy to buy.

For the authors, the book grew out of a gap they repeatedly encountered in conversations with founders, investors and business-school communities: while go-to-market is among the most important challenges facing a start-up, much of the existing literature is based on American markets and does not adequately account for the realities of India.

Harsh Pamnani brings a background in branding, storytelling and entrepreneurship, and is a bestselling business author and seven-time TEDx speaker who teaches branding and storytelling at leading IIMs. Vargab Bakshi brings first-hand experience in technology, growth and market-building, having been among the early leaders to launch and grow Shopify in India, subsequently leading Wix India and serving as Chief Growth Officer at GoKwik.

About The Author

Harsh Pamnani is a marketer and brand storyteller with deep expertise in crafting narratives that build trust and drive business growth. Over nearly two decades, he has worked with unicorns FirstCry and Icertis, global consulting firm Deloitte, Fortune 500 company Cognizant, financial institutions The World Bank and HSBC, and the world’s largest startupstart-up incubator, T-Hub.
He is the bestselling author of Booming Brands, Booming Digital Stars, and From Unknown to Unforgettable. He has authored over 100 articles in leading publications such as Forbes, The Economic Times, and Financial Express. A seven-time TEDx speaker, he has also spoken at IIT Bombay, IIT Kanpur, IIM Ahmedabad, and other prestigious forums. As a visiting faculty member, he has taught storytelling, design thinking, and branding at premier institutions such as IIM Indore, IIM Mumbai, and MICA Ahmedabad. Harsh holds an MBA from XLRI, Jamshedpur, and a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from IET-DAVV, Indore. To know more about him, please visit www.harshpamnani.com.

Vargab Bakshi is a growth leader and operator who has helped build and scale global internet companies in India. He was among the first to launch and scale Shopify in India and went on to lead Wix.com as Vice President & Country Head for India. Today, he is the Chief Growth Officer at GoKwik, where he leads global growth for a platform powering thousands of direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands. Vargab also runs Grow Kwik, one of India’s leading content platforms for founders and operators, with over 500,000 followers across Instagram and YouTube, where he breaks down real-world growth strategies and startupstart-up playbooks. He actively advises and invests in startupstart-ups across SaaS, consumer tech, AI, and Web3, and has taught at leading institutions, including IIMs, IITs, SP Jain, Narsee Monjee, and Welingkar.

The official release for the book is in September 2026