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Moments from the network

The one where the eChai Women Founders Initiative came to life

Where founders meet

eChai Ventures is a slow founder network. It is built by founders showing up at open meetups, demo days and dinners: every week they gather somewhere across 25+ cities in 10+ countries, and have been since 2009. Sometimes what they find here matters right away. More often it matters years later, when something changes, and something always does: hiring, raising, going global, pivoting, moving city, starting over.

Each year eChai works with a small number of select brands as their growth partner.

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It starts in your city.

India

North America

Global

Every city on eChai

What eChai runs, and who it is for.

Different set-ups, because founders are at different stages. Most are free and open to anyone; a few are small on purpose.

Open to every founder in the city

  • Startup Open House
    01 Startup Open House

    An informal open house for founders and startup folks from across the city. You walk in.

    For anyone building a startup, or thinking about it.

    Next on Sunday 4 October in Bengaluru
  • eChai hosted D2C founders with Arjun Vaidya at iconic Times of India Building, Fort Mumbai
    02 Startup Meetups

    Founders and operators on one question at a time: AI, go-to-market, fundraising, consumer brands, climate, manufacturing, product.

    For founders working on that question right now.

  • 100s of founders show up monthly for Ahmedabad Startup Day
    03 Startup Day

    A city-wide day with local ecosystem partners: parallel tracks on themes like fintech, healthcare, consumer brands and AI, then everyone together.

    For founders, investors, enablers and startup folks across a city.

    Next on Saturday 17 October in Ahmedabad
  • Founders from 20+ countries joined eChai at Draper University, San Francisco
    04 eChai Startup Mixer

    The open gathering in cities outside India, put on once enough founders in a city want it.

    For founders abroad, and founders going global.

On stage

Smaller circles

  • FailCode
    06 FailCode

    The stories founders skip when things are going well: the launch that flopped, the hire that did not work out, the pivot that came late.

    For founders who have been through one, and those who would rather hear it first.

  • Pratiti Desai brings eChai Women Founders together every month at Mauji Cafe
    07 eChai Women Founders Initiative

    Conversations with leaders of women-led businesses, smaller and by application.

    For women founders and operators.

  • CA Mehul Shah hosted an eChai Social at his home with top founders from Surat
    08 Founder dinners

    A small dinner table, by invitation: good food, an easy pace and conversation.

    For founders, operators, investors and creators, a few at a time.

  • Startup Cricket
    09 Startup Cricket

    Every week in a city, startup folks get together for cricket. Some play, some cheer.

    For anyone who would rather meet founders at the nets than at a panel.

Between the gatherings

  • Founder Notes
    10 Founder Notes

    Founders writing about what they are building, in their own words.

    For founders on eChai, and anyone who wants to read them.

  • The Startup Grid
    11 The Startup Grid

    A city's companies on one map, and the walks through them.

    For anyone finding their way around a city's startups.

  • Explore
    12 Explore

    The answers founders reach for: starting up, AI, go-to-market, consumer brands, their own money.

    For founders in their first years, and after.

  • Harsha Bhurani and Jatin Chaudhary at an eChai gathering
    13 Hummingbird Talent

    eChai's hiring arm: executive search and leadership hiring, from inside the network.

    For founders hiring senior people.

What is coming up

Founders here come to know a few brands well.

Those are eChai’s partner brands. Over a year, founders across the network learn their names and their work, and when somebody asks around for what they do, theirs is the name that comes up.

Partner brand founders together at Zestard HQ, Ahmedabad

What a year inside eChai does for your brand.

Each partnership comes with presence across eChai, introductions to the right founders, and a team that stays involved through the year. And each one is shaped around what the brand wants out of it.

Who you meet

  • Founders learn your name, then your work.

    Over the year they keep running into you: at the gatherings, in the series, on the pages they read through the week. So when one of them needs what you do, they come straight to you.

  • We introduce you to the people you want to reach.

    After seventeen years of gatherings we know who has built what, and who works with whom. Tell us who you are after, or we come to you when the right person shows up, with your story and why you two should talk.

  • You are invited to the gatherings that fit.

    Open houses, Demo Days, the AI sessions, FailCode, the curated socials and the smaller dinners, some of them by invitation. When one fits what you do and who you want to meet, you are on the list.

What we do with you

  • We sit down with you on your story, your brand and your business.

    One to one, more than once in the year. We have heard a few thousand founders, so you hear fairly quickly what is working, what is not, and what we would change first.

  • We take your team through what AI changed for us.

    Almost everything eChai builds now has AI in the workflow. We go through what we tried, what worked and what wasted our time, and then connect you to founders further along than us.

  • You can ask us anything, whenever it comes up.

    Every week we hear what founders are building, what they recommend to each other and what they have moved on from. Twice a year we go through what it means for your category. In between we answer, or find a founder who can.

Where your name runs

  • Your mark comes round under every page on eChai.

    The wall of partner brands under the site's pages draws a different ten each time, so yours comes round on the city pages, the event pages and the notes founders read, all year. Your page on echai.ventures stays up after it, and your name runs through our LinkedIn, Instagram and X.

  • The blue tick puts you first wherever founders are listed.

    The tick and your company's mark sit beside your name across eChai, and lists of founders put the blue ticks first: your city's people, the directory, and the roster of every gathering you go to, after its hosts and speakers.

  • Your company carries its mark on the Startup Grid.

    Where your company is on a city's map of its startups, it is drawn by your mark rather than a dot, opens on your own words and pictures, and is a stop on the tour the map offers of its partner brands.

  • You write and speak here under your own name.

    You come into the series we run online (How Founders Use AI, the founder conversations, the long reads) where you have something real to say, and you write in Founder Notes, where founders across our cities write about what they are building.

The brands working with us.

The founders behind them.

How it works.

A partnership is for growth stage founders who want to come in as a partner brand, and it runs one year at a time. The brand fee for the year is paid to eChai. An affiliate share runs alongside it, linked to the outcomes we drive together. Both carry GST.

Everything a partnership comes with

To come in as a partner brand, write to me at [email protected] and tell me what you want the year to do for your brand.

Jatin ChaudharyCo-founder, eChai Ventures

Founders who came to their first meetup years ago are still turning up, in cities they hadn’t moved to yet.

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