Inside the eChai x GVFL Meetup: How Founders Are Rethinking AI in Marketing

Every Thursday evening, founders gather for eChai meetup at the GVFL office in Ahmedabad for a simple ritual: real conversations, no filters.

Hosted by eChai Ventures, these weekly meetups are where strategies get shared before they’re polished, and tools get dissected before they trend. This Thursday, the conversation turned to AI in marketing — not the headlines, but the hard questions. What’s actually working inside early-stage teams? What’s just noise? And how do you build a stack that speeds you up without losing your voice?

I had the chance to co-host this session alongside Jhalak Pamnani from Missive Digital, and what made it work wasn’t the format — it was the people. We had Tanmay Shanishchara, who’s spent years running campaigns at MeDigit, Sahil Shah, who’s built audiences and brands through Hungrito and Netsavvies, and Bhavesh Patel, the co-founder of Brands.live, which is quietly powering millions of SMEs with their design tools. Each of them came in not to present slides, but to share what’s working — and what isn’t. It set the tone. No posturing. Just real talk from founders and marketers in the middle of figuring things out, together.

“AI helps us skip the blank page. But the final draft still needs taste.”

Founders across the room weren’t using AI to replace writing. They were using it to start faster. Tools like Jasper, Scalenut, Copy.ai, Peppertype, and Notion AI were common in marketing workflows — but not for publishing final copy. Instead, they help generate rough drafts, outline landing pages, or spark campaign ideas. From there, humans take over.

One marketer summed it up best: “AI gets us to version one faster. But if it sounds like everyone else, it still loses.”
That was the deeper thread — AI saves time, but not taste. And as generative content floods feeds, tone is emerging as a startup’s moat. The sharper your voice, the less replaceable you are.

“We’re not short on content. We’re short on distribution.”

Many teams admitted they’ve never had more content — or felt more invisible. The real bottleneck isn’t creation anymore; it’s reach. Platforms feel unpredictable. Organic engagement is inconsistent. Founders shared frustrations with Instagram and LinkedIn’s ever-shifting algorithms.

So the strategy is changing. Teams are turning toward direct, owned channels: newsletters, WhatsApp campaigns, Telegram groups. Tools like Gupshup are being tested for regional and B2B use cases — especially where trust and timing matter more than scale.

It’s no longer about going viral. It’s about being relevant — at the right moment, to the right person.

“If a tool saves me 10 clicks a day, I’ll keep it. If not, I won’t.”

That single sentence echoed a quiet truth about automation. Startups aren’t cutting headcount. They’re cutting friction.

Across the room, founders described using tools like Make.com, Zapier, Airtable AI, and Bardeen to tie their systems together — automating follow-ups, syncing campaign data to Slack, or organizing leads without writing custom scripts.

The focus wasn’t innovation. It was velocity. When you can move faster without pulling in a dev, you ship more. And every campaign you ship teaches you something. That’s the compounding advantage.

“We give every new tool a weekend. If it fits, it stays.”

One of the sharpest insights came not from a tool recommendation — but a process. Multiple teams shared their approach to experimenting with new AI tools: create a “sprint.” One weekend. A few hours. Clear goal. Document the results. Decide fast.

This prevented stack bloat and tool fatigue. More importantly, it created a learning habit. Instead of reacting to what’s trending, teams ran structured tests in their own context.

No hype. Just: does it help us move faster?

“The problem isn’t the tech. It’s the fit.”

This was the most consistent frustration in the room: tools with great features that still don’t stick. Why? Because they demand too much prompting. Or don’t integrate cleanly. Or break mental flow.

Founders don’t want more content — they want orchestration. The best tools feel invisible. They blend into your existing workflow. They guide you, not slow you down. If your feature needs a training video to explain, you’ve already lost attention.

For AI builders in the room, this was the wake-up call: the battle isn’t for more capability. It’s for better context.

“AI is a workflow upgrade. Not a strategy.”

By the end of the session, there wasn’t a singular aha moment — and that was the point. No playbook is perfect. But the best ones are being rewritten in real-time, in rooms like this.

Founders walked away with sharper instincts:

The story of AI in marketing isn’t about replacing teams. It’s about building systems that help you move with more clarity, speed, and intent.

And those systems aren’t being built in trend decks.

They’re being built, one Thursday at a time — in rooms like this.

While top LLMs like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity came up frequently as go-to general AI assistants, much of the meetup focused on more specific, workflow-driven tools. These were the AI products founders are actually integrating into their day-to-day — from content ops and customer engagement to video creation and backend automation.

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If conversations like these interest you, you’ll find many more through eChai. We host meetups, demo days, founder gatherings, and community-led events across cities — all focused on helping founders connect, share, and grow together. Whether you’re building your first startup or scaling your fifth, you’ll find peers to learn from and stories to relate to. Explore what’s happening next at eChai.Ventures.