Why Founders Rename Their Startups

Founders fall in love with their first startup name. It is on the first t-shirt, the first invoice, the first pitch deck. It feels permanent. But startups do not stay still. Products shift, markets expand, ambitions grow. One day, the name that once carried everything suddenly feels too small. That is when founders make the hard call to rename.

For Chirag Panchal, that moment came after seven years of building under the name Enerlyf. What had started with three products and a scrappy spirit had evolved into something larger. “After 7 years with Enerlyf and three products, I knew the name no longer fit the vision ahead,” he said. “The customer personas had evolved, the positioning had become more premium, and the ambition had gone global. I wasn’t iterating anymore, I was building with intent. Climyn marked a fresh start, a bold new identity shaped by experience, driven by clarity, and built for global scale.” It is the same reason Backrub became Google, when the ambition went global the name had to grow with it.

For Alpesh Vaghasiya, the decision was about perception. In the beginning, UBSApp, short for Ultimate Business Solutions App, made sense for a simple HR and payroll tool. But as the company grew into a full operating system for work, the name itself began to feel limiting. “UBSApp sounded more like a tool than a brand,” he recalled. “The old name felt like a cage. It limited how people saw us, and even how we saw ourselves.” That realization gave birth to Superworks, a single word that, in his words, “was not just a rename, it was a rebirth.” Cure.fit made a similar call when it rebranded as Cult.fit, a tighter, sharper identity that signaled fitness at the core.

Rohan Desai did not plan to rename at all. His company started as PlexusMD, a LinkedIn-like community for doctors. Then the team built something new. “When we pivoted to a more learning-centric approach and a video-first platform, we chose to rename as Medflix,” he explained. “Our idea was to run both in parallel, but very quickly the new product eclipsed PlexusMD in traction and before we realised we had gotten a new identity!” The same thing happened when Burbn turned into Instagram, once the pivot takes over, the old name does not survive.

For Bhavesh Patel, it was about scale. Their first name, BrandSpot365, reflected a narrow promise, one ready-made post every day. But as the company began helping thousands of small businesses go digital for the first time, the name no longer matched the impact. “Something started nagging us,” Bhavesh said. “The name felt smaller than the value we were actually creating and it was long too. We were no longer just delivering posts, we were helping thousands of small businesses go digital for the very first time. That is when we renamed to Brands.live. It captured the bigger vision, to make every Indian brand come alive online, not just keep them on a daily content cycle.” Amazon went through the same shift, Cadabra was too small, too confusing, for the scale Jeff Bezos imagined, so he chose a name that suggested global dominance.

Yet sometimes it's not ambition but legal reality that forces a name change. Mahindra had to drop the "e" in BE 6e after airline IndiGo challenged the use of "6E", a call sign deeply associated with the airline. Mahindra retitled its electric SUV BE 6 to avoid delays and legal headaches

Renaming is never just cosmetic. It is painful, risky, and emotional, like letting go of a piece of your own history. But it is also an act of clarity. Chirag outgrew Enerlyf. Alpesh broke free from UBSApp. Rohan’s pivot made PlexusMD fade. Bhavesh realised BrandSpot365 was too small. And just like Google, Instagram, Amazon, or Cult.fit, they all discovered the same truth: a name does not define the company. The company defines the name.