Business Development Intern

KaroStartup · HSR Layout, Bengaluru [Duration: 3/6 months]

About KaroStartup

KaroStartup began in 2020 as a college Instagram page. Today it's a startup media platform with a 1M+ community and 100M+ cumulative views, built on telling real Indian business stories with real numbers.

We publish across LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube and podcasts, and we work with founders and brands to build their storytelling — podcasts, founder features, content partnerships, and full content-as-a-service retainers.

What this role actually is

We have a large pipeline of founder leads sitting with us. Your job is to reach them, talk to them, understand what they're building, and figure out what KaroStartup can genuinely do for them — a podcast episode, a founder story, a content partnership, or a longer engagement.

This is not cold-calling from a script. You'll be having real conversations with founders about their business, and then designing what a good collaboration looks like.

If you like talking to people and you're curious about how businesses work, this is the role.

What you'll do

- Work the internal lead list. Research each founder and company before you reach out — what they do, how they make money, what stage they're at, what they'd want out of storytelling.
- Run outreach on LinkedIn, email and WhatsApp. Personalised, researched messages. Nothing copy-pasted.
- Get on calls with founders. Understand their business, their goals, and where they're stuck on visibility.
- Build the plan. After the call, put together a clear proposal — what we'd make for them, in which format, on which platform, and why that's the right fit.
- Book podcast guests and coordinate with the content team on scheduling, briefs and follow-ups.
- Live on LinkedIn. A big part of this job is being active there — finding founders, tracking funding announcements, spotting who just raised or launched and reaching out at the right moment.
- Maintain the pipeline. Every lead, conversation and next step tracked properly,



so nothing goes cold because someone forgot.
- Follow up. Most deals are lost to silence, not to "no."

- You'll probably love this job if

- You enjoy talking to people and don't hesitate before picking up the phone
- You're curious about businesses — you want to know how a company makes money and why it's growing
- You can read a founder's LinkedIn profile and instantly see what story they're sitting on
- You're comfortable being told "no" and reaching out again three weeks later
- You like structure — lists, pipelines, follow-up dates — not chaos

- Skills we're looking for

Must have

- Strong communication — transparent, confident, warm, on calls and in writing
- Genuine research skills. You should know the company before the founder tells you about it.
- Comfortable spending significant time on LinkedIn every day
- Written English good enough for a professional outreach message and a proposal
- Follow-through. Ownership of a conversation from first message to closed loop.

Good to have

- Comfortable in Hindi/Hinglish as well as English — a lot of our founders prefer it
- Any prior sales, BD, community or campus ambassador experience
- Basic understanding of the Indian startup ecosystem — funding stages, who the players are
- Comfortable with AI tools for research and drafting

The honest part Most of your outreach will be ignored. That's normal, and it's the job. The people who do well here are the ones who send the next 40 messages anyway, and who make each one specific enough that it's hard to ignore.

You'll also be talking to real founders early on. That means preparing properly before every call — showing up unprepared in front of someone who has built a company is the fastest way to lose them.

What you get out of it

- Direct conversations with Indian founders — the fastest business education you can get at this stage
- Real ownership of a pipeline, not just data entry
- Training in outreach, discovery calls, proposals and closing
- Certificate and letter of recommendation on completion
- Strong performers are considered for a full-time role

📌 Business Development Intern (Bengaluru)
🏢 KaroStartup
📍 Bengaluru