Project Dark Horse

Meet Arjun Bindra, a passionate physics teacher from Jammu, founder of @LeanLearn —an innovative edtech startup with a vision to transform education. At Project Dark Horse, we’re proud to support changemakers like Arjun by equipping them with the tools, resources, and guidance they need to bring their ideas to life. Here’s to shaping the future, one idea at a time! #edtech #educationindia #projectdarkhorse

If there is one person in the world who has taught me how to live life beyond money, it is Yash Mehrotra, my roommate from college. No wonder today I am announcing his commitment of a 10L angel cheque in Project Dark Horse at a valuation of 15cr. I am in the US meeting friends, potential customers and investors, and staying at Yash's house. Yash already pinged me a few months ago when I started up 'kuch paise chahiye ho to bata dena'. I took him on his offer a few weeks ago, loaned out 4L. When I landed at the SFO airport, he came to the airport to pick me up, when I was expecting I would rather be taking an Uber. Yash always goes above and beyond. I met a bunch of my college friends during this trip, most of these trips being accompanied by Yash. Yash saw me pitch to different friends in different ways, some friends being fascinated, some offended by the way I talk, some just being neutral about it and saying 'I do not have the risk appetite'. After all this, while we were somewhere in a parking lot, he said 'tu 25 lakh le mere se aur jo karna hai kar'. I refused him on the offer. This will be a hugely concentrated bet in his portfolio which IMHO is a poor financial decision, seeing it from a 3rd party standpoint. This. This is what 'angel investment' is supposed to be. Definition of an angel is 'a person of exemplary conduct or virtue'. Most angel investors I talk to in India are just investors, not angels. GTM, monetisation, falana, dhimkana. Is the word 'impact' even in their dictionary? Simon Sinek, in his book 'Start With Why', says that a company must have a purpose. A 'Why'. I have clearly defined a 'Why' for my company and am solely chasing that, hoping that money will come, by itself. Am I a wishful thinker? No, because this is how so many huge companies in the West were built. Google's Why: to make the world's information uniformly accessible and useful Facebook's Why: give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together Stripe's Why: increase the GDP of the internet One of Project Dark Horse's 'Why' is 'Increase the hourly wage that knowledge workers make in India'. We lead by example. In a bear economy, we are paying above market, because we know that people's best work comes out when they are financially free. An 'angel investor' recently told me that there are only ~10k angel investors in India and the way I pitch is 'wrong', and if I do not improve, word will spread fast. I apologised to him, but respectfully disagree with his feedback. Pitching, like building a startup, is a creative process, and have artists ever stayed within confines. In the world of ever-improving LLMs, human creativity will be the differentiator. Standard thinkers will slowly lose value, and free thinkers will emerge as the new wealthy. Do you think a company with the sole purpose of 'unleashing human creativity' will be successful in this new world or not? I will take my chances by building it. Wish me luck!

It has been 25 days since we started creating buzz on Linkedin about Project Dark Horse and we got the biggest validation today when PW (PhysicsWallah) is launching something in the same spirit! Kudos to PW for the support to the Indian startup ecosystem with their 100cr fund planning to help 100+ folks in a residency program. So far I have been running my own mini-version of something similar with 36 lakhs of bootstrapped money, raising 2cr to repeat the model with 100 early-career folks by 31st May 2026.

The purpose of Project Dark Horse is to find talent hiding in plain sight. There is a lot of talent in our country, especially among the GenZ population, but it is either not being utilised or being exploited in the name of a bad economy. Project Dark Horse aims to fix this problem, amongst many others, and the first step we are taking towards it is: building end-to-end software products right from ideation to profitability, while helping interns learn on the way, driving various aspects autonomously, flexibly and collaboratively. Our job description is simple: create your own job description. We welcome people from all walks of life: PM, SWE, sales, marketing, content; and let them contribute in any way they want to. A career does need to have a focus area, but at your age, you do not know what it is, and how to build depth. So we want you to optimise for breadth first, and see where you can contribute most creatively, while being motivated to make the company successful in the long run. We are less than 3 months old as a company, so expect chaos, but also expect lots of learning. What we expect is simple: you bring out your fullest self and work in tandem with all stakeholders, old and new, to build the business and to build your career.