Sick of being ghosted by Indian VCs just because I don't have an IIT/IIM tag on my resume.

I’ve been working on my product for the last 6 months. Our SaaS product already has real paying users, steady MoM growth, and our tech feels super solid. Customers are happy and paying us every month too.

For the past month or so, I’ve been trying to raise a small seed round of ₹1.5 Cr to scale further up.

And honestly.. it’s been an absolute ghost town!

Cold emails to VC associates go straight to a black hole. LinkedIn intros are leading to a generic "Send over your deck" and then total ghosting.

Meanwhile, I know of a team with big-college alumni badges who haven't even written a single line of code.
And they just raised ₹10 Cr with a 10-slide pitch deck for a copycat product???

It genuinely feels like if you aren't hanging out at the right networking mixers in Indiranagar or Powai, your deck goes to the trash. Investors preach that "product is king," but in reality, your college degree and network matter way more than your actual repo or revenue.

Are any other non-IIT/IIM founders hitting this exact wall or have so in the past? If yes, how do you bypass these gatekeepers when your traction is real but you don't have the "right" background?