Every City’s Startup Ecosystem Needs Its Narola

Every City’s Startup Ecosystem Needs Its Narola
Every emerging startup ecosystem has a few companies that quietly hold it together. They begin early, grow patiently, and create the talent base from which everything else emerges. In Surat, one of those rare companies is Narola InfoTech.

Long before Surat’s founders started using words like “startup” or “ecosystem,” Narola had already built one of the city’s first large-scale IT operations. It was one of the very few companies that showed what it meant to build seriously from Surat. For many people, Narola was where someone in the family worked, a cousin, a college friend, a neighbour, or a colleague. The company became a quiet common thread across the city’s tech generation, a place where ambition met its first opportunity.

At the eChai × Video SDK Diwali gathering, that connection came alive again. Every few conversations found their way back to Narola. Someone mentioned their co-founder had worked there. Someone else said their brother still does. A few people smiled at old memories of applying for their first job interview there. In Surat, everyone seems to have a Narola story.

What stands out about Ashish Narola and his team is the way they continue to show up for the community. When they host eChai meetups, community gatherings, or founder sessions at the Narola campus, the atmosphere always feels open and generous. Many companies today approach community engagement as part of their growth strategy, which has its own merit. Narola approaches it as a natural extension of how they have always built. It feels more like paying it forward than marketing.

With Narola AI Studio, the company has built a dedicated vertical for developing and deploying AI solutions. The studio works on automation, analytics, and intelligent systems for e-commerce and enterprise clients. It brings together Narola’s software expertise with applied AI to help businesses operate faster, make better use of data, and deliver smarter customer experiences.

Every city that wants to build a meaningful startup culture needs companies like Narola, the ones that start early, stay consistent, give more than they take, and grow alongside their people. Surat is fortunate to have a few of them, and Narola has been one of the most enduring.

Aag Lagni Chahiye

Aag Lagni Chahiye
The eChai × VideoSDK Diwali party in Surat brought together a room full of founders who’ve spent years building through uncertainty. What began as a light evening, stories, laughter, and the usual updates, slowly turned into something else. People started talking about the moments that shaped them, not the ones they post about.

It felt like an oral history of the startup ecosystem in Surat. Founders from different stages and backgrounds, connected by the same vibe of losing, learning, and starting again.

When Chetan Kanani, co-founder of Alpino, began speaking, the room settled. He talked about the night Alpino’s warehouse caught fire in Surat. The speed of it, the shock, and how by morning, everything they had built was gone.

He said the hardest moment wasn’t the fire itself, but the silence after. Walking into the burnt space with his team and realizing there was no plan, no instruction manual for what came next. They just started again, cleaning the site, calling vendors, building piece by piece.

At one point, Chetan said, “It shouldn’t happen to anyone… but sometimes I feel like it should. Kabhi-kabhi aag lagni chahiye.”

The room went still. Nobody took it as a punchline. What he meant was clear, that sometimes, the only way to see what truly matters is when everything unnecessary burns away. The fire stripped Alpino down to its foundation. What survived wasn’t luck; it was intent.



For founders, those moments of collapse become quiet turning points. They don’t show up in headlines, but they change everything, how you hire, how you decide, how you think about growth. The comeback isn’t about proving resilience; it’s about rebuilding with a sharper sense of what’s worth keeping.

As the night went on, the lights reflected off the burnt-orange walls of the old Surat building. Conversations drifted back to product launches and ideas. But that one line stayed with everyone. Aag lagni chahiye. Said softly, meant deeply, a reminder that sometimes, what breaks you is the same thing that clears the way for what’s next.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C396-72omLb/?igsh=aWZ3NmxvdXFqczNp

The Product Mind Behind eChai San Francisco

The Product Mind Behind eChai San Francisco
Over the years, eChai has grown from a small group of founders in Ahmedabad to a global network connecting entrepreneurs across cities and time zones. We have active chapters in India, growing ones in Dubai and Singapore, and a thriving community in the Bay Area. Each city carries its own setup, but what makes eChai special everywhere is the same: founders helping founders, without pretense.

San Francisco wasn’t always one of our most active chapters. We had done a few meetups when someone from eChai was visiting from India, but the consistency wasn’t there yet. That changed when Khyati Brahmbhatt decided to take the lead.

In February 2025, when Khyati was visiting India, I invited her to one of our eChai meetups in Ahmedabad. It was a typical founder evening, lively, curious, full of conversations that carried on late into the night. During that chat, she asked, “Let me know if you plan to do anything in San Francisco.” I said, “We already do, but not as frequently as in other cities.” She smiled and said, “I can help you with anything that you need.” That simple offer was the start of everything that followed.

Living in the United States, Khyati understood the founder diaspora, people who had moved for opportunity but missed the sense of belonging that eChai represents. She started small. A few mixers. A dinner. A food-truck social. Then partnerships with Zoom HQ, San José State University, and Playground Studios. She also brought key restaurants like Rooh, Fitoor, and Ettan into the mix for founder dinners. Each gathering felt intentional. She treated every event like a product, observe what works, improve what doesn’t, and make sure people leave feeling connected.

That steady approach transformed eChai San Francisco into what it is today: a familiar home for founders traveling from India and a local community for those building in the Bay Area. It carries the same openness as our Indian chapters, but adapted to a global context. And now, Khyati is extending that blueprint across North America.

She builds communities the way great product and growth leaders build teams: with empathy, clarity, and the confidence that small iterations compound faster than grand gestures. You can see that thinking in everything she does, in how she listens to feedback after every event, how she notices what keeps founders coming back, and how she quietly improves the experience without making it look like a strategy. It’s about designing trust, one experience at a time, until people start to feel like they belong without being told they do.

As Khyati now lays out her plans for eChai North America, I’m excited to see what’s next, for her, for the founders she connects, and for this journey we’ve started together. If the past eight months are any indication, the best chapters of this story are still to come.

The Invisible Hand in the Algorithm

The Invisible Hand in the Algorithm
(Screenshot from Google Deepmind Youtube Channel)

In cities, power rarely announces itself. You can feel it in the way traffic lights favor certain routes, in how park benches are missing in some neighborhoods, or how some areas stay forever under construction while others get beautified every election cycle.

For years, I’ve thought of this as the invisible hand of urban planning, quiet, consistent, shaping lives without debate.

Now, that same invisible hand is moving into the digital space. Algorithms have become our new city planners. They decide who gets seen, who gets heard, and who gets forgotten. The question I keep asking is simple: who plans the algorithm, and who lives in its blind spots?

In the episode “The Ethics of AI Assistants” from Google DeepMind: The Podcast, Iason Gabriel, Senior Staff Research Scientist at Google DeepMind, spoke about a future where “millions or billions of agents” could act on our behalf. He called it “a world quite different from the one we live in now.” When AI systems begin to make choices for us, much like city bureaucracies do, the consequences compound invisibly.

Gabriel also noted that these assistants will be “plugged into different kinds of tools that will allow them to take action in the world.” That is the moment when algorithms stop being reflections and start becoming actors, when a line of code can move resources, shape opportunity, or quietly deny it.

If algorithms are the new governance, then ethics must become the new activism.

Just as citizens once demanded transparency from municipalities, we now need to demand it from models.
Cities and systems both need public scrutiny; otherwise, progress becomes a gated colony.

https://youtu.be/aaZc-as-soA?si=ybTWv_mwdLluuppf

Doing your life’s work means the story keeps changing, but the purpose stays the same

Doing your life’s work means the story keeps changing, but the purpose stays the same
Arjun Kava has been building in video for nearly a decade, yet it has never really been about video itself. It has always been about presence, about the feeling of being seen and heard across distance. Each time the form evolved, the question stayed the same: how do you make digital connection feel alive?

Before founding VideoSDK, where he now serves as CEO, Arjun spent years inside the architecture of communication. As CTO at Zujo.co, he worked on social-video systems that let people interact through shared moments instead of static posts. Earlier, at Coruscate Solutions, he explored how performance, latency, and design could change how people experience one another online. Each chapter looked different, but the thread ran through all of them. What began as curiosity became continuity. The code changed. The intent never did.

Founders do not build companies; they build continuity. The ones who stay close to their question learn to see it from every angle. Doing your life’s work is not about chasing novelty. It is about refining one idea until it becomes part of who you are.

That kind of persistence rarely looks dramatic. It takes shape quietly, through small refinements and long attention. Over time, curiosity deepens into craft. The goal shifts from proving something to revealing something. The more you build, the more clearly you see what has been guiding you from the start.

Arjun’s journey shows what that looks like in practice. VideoSDK is not a new beginning but a continuation of a decade-long pursuit: turning moving images into shared experience. What once looked like a social app now powers classrooms, collaborations, and consultations where presence matters more than polish. Each layer of his work has made technology feel a little less mechanical and a little more human.

Doing your life’s work demands patience and conviction. It asks you to stay with one problem long enough to see its hidden dimensions. The tools evolve. The syntax changes. Yet the sentence remains the same. You grow with the idea until it starts to grow with you.

The reward of that persistence is quiet clarity, the moment you realize you have not been starting over at all. You have been writing one story in different dialects, learning to say the same thing more honestly each time. That is what it means to do your life’s work.

The eChai Effect - In Their Words

“I have no hesitation in saying that my association with eChai has been a gateway into the startup ecosystem. Through this platform, I’ve had the opportunity to connect with many young and dynamic entrepreneurs. These interactions have been immensely enriching - I’ve learned a great deal and have always tried to offer guidance whenever approached. It’s a truly symbiotic relationship that I deeply value, and it wouldn’t have been possible without eChai.”
Syed Nadeem Jafri - Founder, Hearty Mart
Syed Nadeem Jafri
Founder, Hearty Mart
"From late-night brainstorming over chai to early morning founder calls, eChai has been more than just a network for me; it’s been home base for ideas, impact, and inspiration. What started as a simple meetup years ago turned into a powerful movement, connecting founders, creators, and dreamers. I’ve had the privilege of seeing startups find product-market fit, marketers (like me) find unexpected collaborations, and most importantly, people finding their tribe. संगच्छध्वं संवदध्वं – Let us move together, speak together. It’s not just a verse from the Rigveda — it’s how Jatin and the entire eChai community truly operate. We don’t just network, we grow together. Forever grateful to be a part of the eChai Effect.
Jaydip Parikh - Chief Everything Officer at Tej SolPro
Jaydip Parikh
Chief Everything Officer at Tej SolPro
"eChai is playing biggest role in my personal and professional life together. Its a community where i meet like minded people to share idea and learn from their idea. Even while playing cricket i learn something and i implement something new from that learning. Its my entry point for building network in different countries where my base is not established yet. Personally my only fun activity day in a week is eChai cricket and social."
yash shah - Chairman, ES Group of Companies
yash shah
Chairman, ES Group of Companies

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