eChai Ventures · Founder network and startup events across 25+ cities

A big thank you to Kamesh Vyas for conducting an insightful training workshop on AI-first coding. Coming from a highly accomplished consultant with deep experience in building global scalable systems, it was absolutely no-nonsense and hands-on.

Some key highlights from the session:

• Using AI tools and technologies to code faster with accurately
• A hands-on introduction to vibe coding and AI-assisted development best practices
• Comparative assessment of various LLM models—when to use what, and why
• How to build the right context for AI to deliver meaningful, reliable outcomes
• Practical exercises focused on AI-first code for real product and problem solving

What made this training especially valuable was its practicality—not just theory, but real workflows our teams can apply immediately.

And equally important—the value of external trainers to help us:

• Push boundaries
• Bring in fresh perspectives
• Challenge the status quo
• Offer timely reminders on priorities that often slip to the back burner amid day-to-day demands

Thank you Kamesh for an engaging and impactful session, and kudos to our teams for showing up with curiosity and intent to grow.

The future is being built by those who keep learning.

Learning at Hire4Higher Consulting & LegalWiz.in

Last Friday, we officially launched India 2047 Ventures 🇮🇳🚀

What happened next completely exceeded our expectations.

With zero marketing spend and no promotional campaign, we received 120+ applications from founders across India who are building for the future.

But this isn't about building just another startup cohort.

We carefully reviewed every application and shortlisted 50 startups for one on one conversations to understand not just what they were building, but whether their vision aligned with a bigger mission.

To build companies that can help shape India's journey to becoming a global superpower by 2047.

From those conversations, 8 exceptional startups are now part of our inaugural cohort.

For the next 3 months, these founders won't just attend an incubator.

They'll live alongside 110+ entrepreneurs, learn from founders, operators and investors, attend curated sessions, build meaningful relationships and immerse themselves in an ecosystem designed to help ambitious companies scale faster.

This is only the beginning.

India 2047 Ventures is a rolling admissions program and applications for our August Cohort are now open.

If you're building something bold that can define India's next chapter, we'd love to hear from you.

🌐 Apply here: https://india2047.vc

The next generation of iconic Indian companies won't be built in isolation.

They're built together.

5 new Hyva vehicles. Singrauli. This is what the next phase of Veracity's growth looks like on the ground.

Singrauli is one of India's most critical energy corridors — coal movement, power plant logistics, heavy material transport. Operating here demands assets that match the terrain, the tonnage, and the timelines clients depend on.

Adding these 5 Hyva vehicles to our Singrauli fleet is not just a capacity addition. It is a commitment to deepening our operational presence in a market where reliability is everything and shortcuts cost clients more than just money.

At Veracity, we have always believed that owning the right assets — not just the most assets — is what builds a supply chain business clients trust for the long term. This addition reflects that thinking.

To put our scale in context — Veracity has transported 1.44 Crore MT till date. Every tonne moved is a commitment kept, and every asset we add is built on that foundation.

India's power demand is growing at a pace that puts enormous pressure on every link in the energy supply chain. Coal movement, plant logistics, last-mile fuel delivery — the infrastructure behind the grid needs to keep up. At Singrauli, we intend to be the logistics partner that does exactly that.

"Can we build it?" is becoming the wrong startup question.

Anthropic recently published The Founder's Playbook, mapping the AI-native startup journey across four stages:

- Idea.
- MVP.
- Launch.
- Scale.

I went through it.

What stayed with me wasn't Claude, agents, or even the possibility of billion-dollar one-person companies.

It was a simpler shift.

For decades, one of the hardest questions in entrepreneurship was:
Can we build it?

AI is rapidly making that question cheaper to answer.

A founder can research a market, prototype an interface, write code, test positioning, analyze feedback, and automate operations with capabilities that once required a team.

That creates a strange new problem.

We can now build the wrong thing much faster.

So the scarce capability is shifting.

From execution to judgment.

From:
Can we build it?

To:
Should we build it?

That changes the founder's job too.

The founder increasingly becomes an orchestrator.

Not someone removed from the work. Someone operating one level above it.

Deciding what deserves attention.

- What should be automated.
- What requires human judgment.
- Which assumptions need testing.

And what should never be built in the first place.

Three other shifts in the playbook are worth sitting with.

First, validation becomes more important as building becomes cheaper.

When prototypes are expensive, teams naturally build carefully. When prototypes become almost free, restraint becomes a competitive advantage.

Second, the moat moves away from the model.

Everyone can access powerful intelligence. Far fewer companies possess deep domain knowledge, proprietary learning loops, behavioral data, trusted relationships, or workflows customers don't want to leave.

Third, team size begins to decouple from capability.

A 10-person company can increasingly carry capabilities that once required 100 people. Perhaps, eventually, one person can too.

This connects strongly with something I have been exploring through MSDx.

As AI commoditizes parts of Skillset, the relative value of Mindset, Drive, judgment, and agency increases.

- The machine can produce more moves.
- The founder still has to decide which game is worth playing.

That may be the real startup shift of 2026.

AI doesn't merely let more people build.

Building is becoming so abundant that choosing what deserves to exist becomes the advantage.

#DhandheKaFunda: When building becomes cheap, judgment becomes expensive.

Woke up today to a bunch of "Congratulations!" messages. Took me a minute to figure out what they were about.

Turns out Urban Vault got featured as a "Bootstrap Champ" in The Economic Times today, alongside some incredible companies.

Before I say anything else, this isn't a founder's moment, it's an everyone moment.

To the landlords who handed over their buildings to a young, unproven company and trusted us to do right by them.

To the clients, some who took a chance on us when we were 2 centres old, some who've stayed with us as we crossed 80+.

To the consultants and brokers who walked properties with us, opened doors to landlords, and closed clients on our behalf, quietly powering a lot of this growth.

To every person who's ever worn a UV badge, the ones still here building the next chapter, and the ones who moved on but left a piece of this company behind them.

We didn't build UV chasing headlines. We built it centre by centre, problem by problem, bootstrapped and profitable.

Today's feature is nice. But honestly, it's just a checkpoint. The real work, and the real thank you, is every single day before and after this one.

Nothing compounds like reputation. Let's keep earning it, one centre at a time. 🙌

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, board exam results were considered extremely important for securing a bright future. Admission to many engineering and medical colleges depended heavily on the marks obtained in these examinations.

I appeared for my board exams in 1990, but fell short of the marks required to secure admission to an engineering college. As a young student, I was clueless about what I wanted to do with my career. I moved to BSc and completed my graduation in 1993.

Later, I entered sales, but couldn't sustain the job. I then decided to pursue an MBA and joined a B-school. After my MBA, I joined media houses and eventually moved into advertising.

Looking back, it may appear that I was changing careers constantly. But in reality, I was searching for my path.

In 2004, I started my own business. It required enormous effort, and with a family to support, I also started working as a visiting faculty at B-schools. Again, it didn't seem like a straightforward journey.

But today, when I look back, I realise that every so-called failure was actually adding something valuable to my life.

Not securing the marks for engineering taught me that one exam does not define your future. The unsuccessful stint in sales pushed me towards an MBA and helped me build a professional network. Working with media houses gave me exposure and relationships. Working in advertising helped me develop a strategic mindset. Teaching at B-schools enhanced my knowledge, communication and mentoring skills.

And then came my business which taught me the most important failure lesson: our Juhapura store did not perform well initially. Instead of giving up, we were forced to think differently. We innovated, developed a franchisee network and eventually created a unique business model. What seemed like another failure became the trigger for innovation.

Today, I believe that sometimes when we face failure for a prolonged period, perhaps destiny is asking us to remain steadfast, think differently, learn from every experience and keep facing the challenge. Because the journey may be preparing us for something far greater than what we had originally imagined.

Failure may not always be the end of the road. Sometimes, it is the road itself.

What do founders discuss when the pitch decks are closed?

Today, eChai Ventures brought together founders, investors and operators in Ahmedabad for a candid conversation with Hari Balasubramanian.

It wasn't a rehearsed keynote when we met. The discussion moved from his early investment journeys involving Wow! Momo, Mukunda Foods Pvt. Ltd., Spinny, Rapido and Brevistay to some of the harder questions founders are confronting today:

▶️ Where is capital really going?
▶️ What has AI changed about building and selling software?
▶️ Is conventional SaaS becoming harder to fund?
▶️ How do founders and investors actually achieve liquidity?

Recalling the conversations, I found a few ideas that stayed with me.

▫️Capital is no longer India's biggest constraint. The constraint is whether a team has a bold enough idea and the operating capacity to deploy that capital intelligently.
▫️AI has made building faster. It has not made distribution easier. Product creation is getting cheaper, while customer access, domain expertise, trust, and monetisation are getting more valuable.
▫️SaaS is not dead. But the comfortable middle is being squeezed. Either reach enormous user scale or own a workflow so deeply that a smaller number of customers will pay serious money.
▫️Paper valuation is not a return. Liquidity is. Many meaningful companies take 10 to 15 years to build, while the structures funding them often expect answers much earlier.

Perhaps the most important lesson was this:

A strong ecosystem is not built through speeches. It is built through rooms where people speak honestly, challenge each other and make the right introductions.

Thank you, Hari Balasubramanian, for sharing decades of experience without trying to make the journey sound neat.

Thank you, Jatin Chaudhary, Umesh Uttamchandani, eChai Ventures and DevX for creating the room.

The carousel here distils the entire conversation.