Problems nobody is solving
5 problems that needs your attention
Hello friends, welcome to the 18th edition of TheHustleBook. Today I want to talk about something that excites me and terrifies me at the same time. The massive problems still waiting for someone brave enough among us to solve them.
India has over 1.59 lakh startups, yet when I look around, I see problems everywhere. Problems so obvious, so painful, that I'm surprised nobody has fixed them yet.
These aren't the sexy Silicon Valley problems. These are the unglamorous, messy, complex problems that affect millions of people every single day. The kind of problems that make you wonder, "How is this still broken in 2025?"
Below, you will read about five massive problems that need attention, and I believe massive business can be built around them.
The biggest opportunities aren't in creating new needs. They're solving needs that have existed for decades but seemed too hard to tackle.
I've realized something about unsolved problems. They're unsolved for a reason. They're either too complex, too regulated, too unglamorous, or require too much patience. But that's exactly what makes them incredible opportunities for the right founder.
The founders who will build the next generation of billion-dollar companies won't be the ones chasing the latest trend. They'll be the ones willing to spend 10 years solving a problem everyone else ignored.
The best startup ideas aren't ideas at all. They are problems that make you angry enough to dedicate your life to fixing them.
Here are five problems that are worth solving:
1. Elder Care Crisis
The Problem: India has 104 million older people (60+ years), constituting 8.6% of the total population. Yet we have no infrastructure for aging with dignity. Families are nuclear now, but our elder care system is still built for joint families. Millions of elderly people are lonely, without proper healthcare, and their adult children are burning out trying to manage their care remotely.
Why Nobody Has Solved It Yet: It's not sexy. It's emotionally heavy. It requires dealing with complex healthcare regulations, insurance, and changing deep cultural patterns.
The Opportunity: Build the complete elder care ecosystem. Think Uber + healthcare + companionship + home services, all designed for seniors. This isn't just a business; it's going to be essential as India ages.
Reference
104 million people aged 60+, accounting for 8.6% of India’s population, per the 2011 Census (Source)
Projections show this share rising to nearly 20% by 2050, translating to roughly 320 million older adults (Source)
These numbers paint a clear, accelerating demographic shift—making elder care infrastructure not just a moral imperative, but a societal necessity.
2. Mental Health for the Middle Class
The Problem: India is grappling with a high prevalence of mental health disorders, including depression, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and substance use disorders. We talk about mental health, but affordable, accessible therapy is still a luxury. A therapy session costs ₹2000-5000, making it inaccessible for most people who need it.
Why Nobody Has Solved It Yet: Stigma, lack of trained professionals, and the complexity of mental health treatment. Plus, building trust in this space takes years.
The Opportunity: Create scalable mental health solutions that work for India. Think group therapy, AI-assisted counseling, peer support networks, and training programs for mental health workers.
Reference:
The National Mental Health Survey (2015–16) reports a lifetime prevalence of mental morbidity at 13.7%, with a current (point) prevalence of 10.6% (Source)
The treatment gap is staggering: 85% for common mental disorders, 73.6% for severe disorders, and 75.5% for psychoses (Source)
Another source echoes this: 10.5% prevalence with an 84.5% treatment gap (Source)
This data spotlights the vast unmet need for accessible, affordable, and scalable mental health solutions.
3. Rural Healthcare Access
The Problem: Those in rural areas seeking healthcare services must often travel distances of up to 100 km to access them. 70% of India lives in rural areas, but specialists and quality healthcare are concentrated in cities. A farmer in rural Maharashtra can't get his diabetes checked without taking a day off work and traveling to the district hospital.
Why Nobody Has Solved It Yet: Infrastructure challenges, doctor shortage, and the complexity of healthcare delivery in remote areas.
The Opportunity: Mobile healthcare units powered by technology. Think traveling clinics with telemedicine, basic diagnostic equipment, and trained paramedics who can handle 80% of common health issues.
Reference:
In rural India, people may travel up to 100 km to access basic healthcare services (Source)
Many rural providers lack formal qualifications, and staggering 90% of rural populations are uninsured, paying out-of-pocket or taking loans for services. (Source)
A recent healthcare innovation: Tele-Special Newborn Care Unit (Tele‑SNCU) by AIIMS‑Nagpur, is already showing results by reducing neonatal mortality in remote tribal areas via telemedicine. (Source)
Similarly, the “10‑Bed ICU” tele‑ICU initiative uses remote specialists to drastically reduce rural patient transfers—by about 70%—ensuring critical care closer to home. (Source)
Combining these stats shows the depth of the problem, and early proof that tech-enabled care can make a powerful difference.
4. Skill-Based Hiring Revolution
The Problem: This one's personal. India has a massive hiring mismatch. Companies can't find skilled people, and skilled people can't find good jobs. Traditional hiring is broken. It's based on degrees, not abilities. College brands, not real skills. Interview performance, not actual work quality. At Fueler, we see this every day - brilliant developers getting rejected because they didn't go to an IIT, creative professionals struggling because they can't "sell" themselves in interviews.
Why Nobody Has Solved It Yet: Changing hiring practices is like changing culture. It's slow, requires buy-in from both sides, and challenges the entire education-employment pipeline.
The Opportunity: This is exactly what we're building at Fueler. A career portfolio platform where hiring happens through real work, not just resumes. Companies post assignments, candidates submit actual work, and decisions are made based on skills, not pedigree. We're solving unemployment, underemployment, and the skill gap all at once by making hiring about what you can do, not where you studied.
Reference:
More than 50% of Indian graduates are employed in low-skilled jobs, even though they’re qualified for more advanced roles (source)
A striking datapoint: only 8.25% of graduates hold jobs that match their qualifications; over 50% are in roles below their skill level (source)
Reports also point to a widening mismatch between job availability and employer needs; lack of skilled candidates is hurting industries from construction to IT (source)
This says exactly why Fueler’s skill‑based hiring model isn’t just innovative; it addresses a national-level inefficiency.
5. Food Waste to Food Security
The Problem: India wastes 40% of the food it produces while 200 million people go to bed hungry. Farmers can't sell their produce at fair prices, and food rots in warehouses while people starve in the same district. It's a logistics nightmare that somehow hasn't been fixed.
Why Nobody Has Solved It Yet: It requires coordination between farmers, logistics, technology, government, and consumers. The complexity is overwhelming, and the margins are thin.
The Opportunity: Build the food supply chain India needs. Direct farmer-to-consumer platforms, smart storage solutions, and distribution networks that can get surplus food to where it's needed.
Reference:
Nearly 40% of food produced in India is lost or wasted owing to supply chain inefficiencies like poor storage and transportation (Source)
That’s enough food to feed over 200 million people who face food insecurity (Source)
Quantified economically, this waste equals around ₹92,000 crore per year, which is close to 1% of India’s GDP (Source)
It’s a systemic paradox: abundance paired with hunger, inefficiency alongside huge unmet need.
Why these problems matter
These aren't just business opportunities. They're generational challenges that will define India's next decade.
The founder who solves elder care will impact 104 million lives today, and 300 million by 2050.
The founder who cracks rural healthcare will serve 900 million people who currently have limited access to quality care.
The founder who fixes hiring (like we're attempting with Fueler) will unleash the potential of millions of talented people who are currently overlooked by the system.
The biggest problems create the biggest opportunities. But only for founders who are willing to play long-term games.
These problems won't be solved with a simple app or a clever algorithm. They'll require years of patience, deep understanding of Indian context, and the willingness to build unsexy infrastructure.
But that's exactly what makes them incredible opportunities.
If any of these problems made you angry or excited, maybe that's your calling. The best founders don't choose problems logically. They choose problems that keep them up at night.
Pro tip: You need to fall in love with the problem (Header Image), live with the problem every day, understand the problem surface area, to spot the cracks in the system, so that eventually you can find and create fixes for it
That's it for this edition. I will see you at the next one very soon.
Your friend,
Riten
P.S: Which of these problems resonates with you most? Or is there another unsolved problem in India that makes you frustrated every day?
Hit reply and tell me. Maybe we can brainstorm the solution together.