GTM and distribution for startups : Bengaluru edition

Name: GTM and distribution for startups : Bengaluru edition
Start: 2026-09-27T11:00:00+05:30
End: 2026-09-27T13:00:00+05:30
Location: Founder Startup House Koramangala

67 RSVPs Happened

Sunday, 27 September, 11 am - 1 pm

Founder Startup House Koramangala

No.384, 1st A Main Rd, 7th Block, Koramangala, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560095

About

Founders and operators on how startups actually find customers.

A panel conversation with founders and operators on how startups actually find their customers. Most early products do not fail because the product is weak. They fail because nobody found them. This session is about the part that comes after building: picking a channel, testing it honestly, and knowing when to double down or walk away. The conversation will cover getting to the first hundred customers, what has worked on organic, paid, partnerships, and community, how founders think about pricing and positioning, and what it takes to build distribution that keeps working as you grow. If you are building something and are stuck on getting it in front of people, come and compare notes.

Hosts & speakers

Host

Penchala Tharun

Co-Founder and CEO · Wanderfly.in

Speaker

Rahul Kumar

Founder & CEO · Retner.ai

Who was there

Software Engineer 2 · Uber

Chirag Singh

Singh’s hospitality

Debasis Maharana

Full Stack Developer | AI Engineer · Salesforce

Ekansh Agarwal

Elody S.

Co-founder · ORYON DATA

Hament Sharma

Founder · Frooty.ai

Hemanth Venugopal

Founder · JS SPICES & FOODS

Joyal Babu

Founder · BABZ

Kshitij Maheshwari

Co-Founder · Real Good GTM

Manoj KumarV

Global Senior Sales Leader- AI and Software Sales · Seqauntix PVT LTD

Mayank Parnami

Co-founder · Videobunny

Mohith Maddineni

Staff Product Manager · Freshworks

Paid Ads Marketer · Amazon

Founder · Datamagics AI

Co-Founder · AIVRA Wellness

Vimal Geethanandan

Founder · Maaya Vanam

Founder · Eta Gardens

Mohammed Adnaan Shariff

Visitor · NA

Naveen Kumar

Software Engineer · Amit

Nikitha Manala

Pavan Jartarghar

Peter Sacraiyas

AI Consultant · Provident Ops Global

Priyansh Soni

Weknd

Punit Kandoi

Principal Engineer · Aviatrix

Richa Sati

Founder and COO · Ikana Business Solutions

Rishav Prabhraj

Founder · Buildpath Labs

Rohith M

Engineering Manager · Clura

Software Engineer · AI Startup

Co-founder · NevUp AI

Yogesh G

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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.

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.