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.
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