During my engineering days in Patiala, Punjab we frequently visited the popular Gurudwara Dukhniwaran Sahib in the city.

A beautiful concept at Gurudwaras is “langar" which means communal free food. People from all walks of life are welcome.

A lot of students visited it as well - sometimes out of faith or spirituality - and other times when low on cash and hostel mess food is bad on that day.

These langars are an excellence in operation - serving lacs of meals a day with the help of only a small staff & some volunteers. These operations are funded almost exclusively through donations. 🙏🏻

Gurudwaras or temples running langars are usually non-profit charitable organizations.

These organizations understand that langars deliver a mighty societal benefit because they are free & open to all. Extremely few beneficiaries will eventually be in a position to give back through donations or as volunteers.

If langars started charging entry fees - the societal utility would drastically drop and lose its purpose.

This made me think that maybe heavily funded startups - still without a profitable business model - are actually charities in-disguise. 😛

Their scale of users is a direct function of their products being free or heavily discounted through the generous donations of benevolent VCs.