Rebuilding a Startup Life in India After 8 Years in Canada — And Finding a Community That Got It

Almost 8 years in Canada, and now back in India for the past 8 months.

I call this the ultimate reset, starting everything from zero.

There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t question if I made the right decision.
Reverse culture shock is real.

So is building something that doesn’t exist — and maybe won’t, unless I do it.
I want to say I love it.
 
But I also hate it at the same time.
This new journey comes with a weird fog.

You feel like you’re doing something wrong, just because you don’t see anyone around you on the same path.

No like-minded people. No similar shoes. Just you, jumping without a parachute.

When I moved back, I didn’t want to do it alone.
 I wanted to start a community, not just a product.
 A crew of people inside the ecosystem who were also figuring it out from scratch.

That’s when I found eChai Ventures and Jatin Chaudhary
What they’ve built over more than a decade is impossible to replicate.
It’s the kind of force that holds together the chaos of India’s startup system.
And the more I spent time around them, the more I realized: their impact is bigger than you can see upfront.

They’ve been part of people’s journeys for so long, they see things the rest of us miss.
Insights you won’t get anywhere, not even if you’re paying.

I started going to their events. They do a lot of them.

Not just across India. Globally.

They made the ecosystem feel less like a club and more like a campfire.

From weekly box cricket to being in the rooms where real AI conversations happen at Upsquare®.