Moments from the network

The one where London founders met for the eChai Mixer at Temple of Arts, London

The one where the eChai Women Founders Initiative came to life

The one where eChai and City of Melbourne hosted global founders at The Couch

The one where eChai lit up the Mr Purple Rooftop Bar with founders in New York City

The one where eChai brought international founders together at the Startup Social, Dubai

The one where eChai hosted a startup mixer for Bali's digital nomads at Draper Startup House

The one where Ocean Protocol's Bruce Pon showed up for the eChai Berlin launch at WeWork

The one where eChai teamed with WeWork to bring Hong Kong founders together

The one where founders from 20+ countries joined eChai at Draper University, San Francisco

The one where 100s of founders show up monthly for Ahmedabad Startup Day

The one where CA Mehul Shah hosted an eChai Social at his home with top founders from Surat

The one where eChai hosted founders and business leaders from Manila at Draper Startup House Manila

The one where eChai and CoKarma give early stage founders a monthly launch pad in Hyderabad

The one where Whatfix CEO Khadim Batti hosted the eChai founders social at Whatfix Towers

The one where eChai Partner Brand founders came together at Zestard HQ

The one where eChai took AI to the business leaders of Karnavati Club, Ahmedabad

The one where Pratiti Desai brings eChai Women Founders together every month at Mauji Cafe

The one where eChai hosted D2C founders with Arjun Vaidya at iconic Times of India Building, Fort Mumbai

The one where eChai turned Draper Startup House Singapore into a full house

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 you 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.

Most gatherings are open to every founder in the city: a Startup Open House you walk into, or a meetup on one question at a time. Every month there is an eChai Startup Demo Day in cities across India. Some are small on purpose: FailCode, for the stories founders skip when things are going well, the Women Founders Initiative, dinners by invitation, and cricket at the nets. Outside India, a city gets an eChai Startup Mixer once enough founders there want one. See what is coming up at events across 25+ cities.

Between the gatherings, founders write about what they are building in Founder Notes, find each other on the network, and on Founder Dates sit down with a founder who has already done what they want to get good at. What they have figured out is on Explore: Starting Up, GTM, D2C, Wealth, How Founders Use AI and the Glossary. They also share what they are reading, watching and listening to: books, podcasts, the watchlist and startup videos.

eChai Ventures also runs Hummingbird Talent, an executive search firm for startups and global capability centres in India, finding the senior people a company is built around. Each year eChai works with a small number of select brands as their growth partner.

Join eChai Find your city

Joining is free: a photograph, your name and a way to reach you. Already on eChai? Sign in with the same email.

Events Every event →

eChai is in 13 cities in the coming weeks

17 gatherings from 12 November to 28 November, with 125 founders registered. At 6 pm on Saturday 28 November, 5 of them start in 4 cities.

Next week

4 gatherings in 4 cities

Thursday 12 November

Saturday 14 November 3 gatherings in 3 cities

6 pm

Later this month

13 gatherings in 9 cities

Friday 20 November

  • Ahmedabad 4 pm - 7 pm
    AI Cafe House of Starts

Saturday 21 November 2 gatherings in 2 cities

Thursday 26 November

Friday 27 November

  • Ahmedabad 4 pm - 7 pm
    AI Cafe House of Starts

Saturday 28 November 8 gatherings in 7 cities

11 am 2 gatherings in 2 cities

4 pm

6 pm 5 gatherings in 4 cities

Every city's gatherings, this week and after, are on Events, and every city eChai is in has its page on Cities.

Sunday 1 November 5 gatherings in 4 cities

6:30 am

11 am 2 gatherings started in 2 cities

3 pm

6 pm

Saturday 31 October 7 gatherings in 6 cities

6 pm

More past events →

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.

With a profile, registering for a gathering takes one tap.

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