Farms drying before droughts. Wildfires flickering to life before they spread. Transformers overheating quietly before they fail. These are not problems visible to the naked eye, but they leave thermal fingerprints.

Ahmedabad-based SatLeo Labs wants to detect those signals early, from orbit. The startup has raised $3.3 million in pre-seed funding to build a constellation of thermal-first satellites that turn rising heat into real-time early warnings.

The round was led by Merak Ventures, with participation from Huddle Ventures, GVFL, Java Capital, IIMA Ventures, and PointOne Capital.

SatLeo Labs was co-founded by Shravan Bhati (CEO), Dr. Ranendu Ghosh (CTO and former ISRO scientist), and Urmil Bakhai (CSO).

Why Thermal, Why Now

Most Earth Observation startups focus on optical or hyperspectral data. SatLeo is betting on thermal infrared, particularly mid-wave and long-wave bands that detect heat shifts invisible to traditional sensors.

According to SatLeo’s official site, their satellites will feature onboard edge computing. This allows them to process thermal data directly in orbit and deliver faster, more actionable insights on the ground. The goal is not just to collect images, but to enable faster decisions in critical sectors.

Where SatLeo Stands Today

SatLeo Labs is currently in the engineering and payload validation phase, focusing on developing its first thermal imaging satellite platform.

The company specializes in capturing mid- and long-wave infrared data from low Earth orbit to provide real-time thermal intelligence.

This data is intended to serve sectors such as agriculture, infrastructure, and disaster management. The team is also expanding its technical staff and preparing for early pilot deployments. Their approach includes processing thermal data directly on-orbit and delivering insights through a cloud-based analytics platform.

A Platform Approach to Risk

Huddle Ventures describes SatLeo as a full-stack company. Its vision includes developing a cloud analytics layer that transforms raw thermal data into sector-specific tools for agriculture, energy, logistics, and infrastructure monitoring.

While no customers have been publicly named, the product direction suggests applications for both enterprise and government use.

What’s Next

The company is currently focused on payload validation, regulatory preparation, and team expansion. Its roadmap includes deploying its first satellite and onboarding early pilot partners.

As global temperatures rise and physical risks multiply, SatLeo Labs is working to make heat a usable signal. The team is building satellites designed not just to see the planet, but to understand when and where it might break.

Gujarat’s Space Policy Tailwind

SatLeo’s growth is happening in parallel with India’s spacetech surge. More than 190 space startups have launched since 2020, following policy reforms and increased collaboration with ISRO.

In April 2025, the Government of Gujarat introduced its SpaceTech Policy 2025–2030. The policy outlines capital support, grants, and infrastructure for satellite manufacturing and downstream analytics.

Reactions on social media

Sheetal Bahl, Partner, Merak Ventures

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sheetalbahl_satleo-labs-raises-usd-33-mn-round-led-by-activity-7323297532409741312-L5C2?utm_source=social_share_send&utm_medium=member_desktop_web&rcm=ACoAAAI-esYBPGLfFiDlILo1FUJJoIov1NM9P10

Vinod Shankar, Founding Partner, Java Capital

https://x.com/vinod_shankar/status/1917480231931371614

Sanil Sachar, Partner, Huddle Ventures

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sanil-sachar-34a7978b_the-moment-we-met-shravan-dr-ranendu-ghosh-activity-7323612857378471936-JKpY?utm_source=social_share_send&utm_medium=member_desktop_web&rcm=ACoAAAI-esYBPGLfFiDlILo1FUJJoIov1NM9P10

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SatLeo Labs is part of a growing spacetech ecosystem in Ahmedabad, which includes Peersight, co-founded by Gaurav Seth and Vinit Bansal, building a constellation of SAR and AIS satellites for maritime surveillance.

Another notable player is Optimized Electrotech, which designs electro-optic surveillance systems for defense and aerospace use cases. Together, these companies reflect the city’s growing presence in India’s deeptech and satellite innovation landscape.

Dishant was sitting across from a salon owner who was drowning in WhatsApp messages. Haircut requests, reschedule pings, payment screenshots - all jammed into one never-ending thread. He missed a few slots. A customer walked away. Revenue slipped through cracks the size of a thumb scroll. It wasn’t incompetence. It was inefficiency.

And that’s what got to him.

The world had moved on to AI agents and full-stack CRMs - but the average small business owner was still toggling between Excel sheets and WhatsApp. “What if scheduling didn’t need another app?” Dishant wondered. “What if it lived inside the one they already use?”

Dishant isn’t new to solving real-world inefficiencies. Before CalendarFix, he co-founded Gradeazy, an ed-tech tool for simplifying exams and grading. He’s spent the last few years building lean products for people who don’t have time to figure out “tools.” That salon moment wasn’t just an insight — it was years of pattern recognition snapping into place.

Not another tool — a fix

Here’s a quick walkthrough of how CalendarFix works:

https://youtu.be/C6OFpEHULSA

CalendarFix didn’t start as a moonshot. It started as a fix — a simple one. A way to help solo entrepreneurs, coaches, and small teams do the one thing that often breaks their flow: booking time. Dishant had seen it too often — time lost, leads dropped, payments forgotten. All because traditional scheduling tools felt too bulky, too alien.

So he built CalendarFix to work where businesses already worked — inside WhatsApp. No new logins. No clunky dashboards. Just a link you send. It books, collects payments, sends reminders, even nudges folks if they don’t show up. A quiet, background engine that turns chaos into calm.

The curse of being too simple

But selling simplicity is hard.

“People thought it was just another Calendly,” Dishant says. “But this wasn’t about links. It was about flow.” He had to unlearn the startup pitch game. No fancy decks. No buzzwords. Just real use cases: a yoga instructor in Goa, a therapist in Ghaziabad, a French indie brand running WhatsApp demos.

Then came ProductHunt. CalendarFix quietly launched and — to their surprise — ranked #6 product of the day. Signups trickled in from Switzerland, France, the U.S. And in two months, over 1,200 bookings flowed through their system. No PR push. Just word of mouth.

Flow over features

What makes CalendarFix sticky is not the tech — it’s the philosophy. “We’re not trying to build the next super app,” Dishant says. “We’re trying to disappear into the tools people already use.”

Their team is small — part product nerds, part design thinkers. They care less about dashboard depth and more about use-case clarity. How do you book slots if you're a coach running five free sessions a week? What happens if your client pays late? Every friction point is an opportunity to remove a step.

Changing habits, one slot at a time

Still, the biggest challenge remains: shifting habits. Users default to what they know — DMs, Google Forms, even manual spreadsheets. Convincing them to switch means showing them what they’re losing every day. “We had to learn how to tell better stories — not about features, but about time saved,” Dishant says.

And the stories are rolling in — a makeup artist who never misses a client, a workshop host who doubled attendance, a solopreneur who no longer dreads scheduling.

Betting on the invisible future

The long game? Building for where messaging becomes business infrastructure. “WhatsApp isn’t just for chatting anymore,” Dishant says. “It’s where people work. We’re just giving them the tools to do it better.”

CalendarFix isn’t flashy. It doesn’t shout. But it solves. And in a world full of noise, that might just be the most underrated superpower.

You can try it out at calendarfix.com - or, more fittingly, just DM them on WhatsApp.

Today, eChai Ventures is hosting its multi-city Startup Demo Day - happening simultaneously in 10 cities across India.

The format is straightforward: early-stage founders pitch their startups to a room full of fellow builders, get real-time feedback, and connect with the community. These are local, low-key, and regularly hosted meetups - not pitch competitions.

What’s Happening Today

Bengaluru
→ Draper Startup House, 6–8 pm
→ Also in Bengaluru: eChai AI Day at Urban Vault, HSR Layout, with
Swathi Moorthy (ET), Garvit Juniwal (Glean), Saurav Gopal (Capria), Dharmesh Ba (Business Hero). Host: Radhika Mohta

Hyderabad
→ CoKarma, Durgam Cheruvu, 6–8 pm

Mumbai
→ DevX, Andheri East (11 am – 1 pm)

Gurugram
→ Nasscom CoE, 5–7 pm

Pune
→ Ideas to Impacts, 4–6 pm

Jaipur
→ J Startup House, 6–8 pm

Surat / Vadodara / Udaipur / Rajkot
→ All hosted at DevX Coworking spaces in each of these cities, 6–8 pm

Also Happening Today

Singapore
→ AI x FinTech Social — curated gathering of early-stage founders working across Southeast Asia.

What Happened Earlier This Week

Ahmedabad
→ eChai Startup Demo Day at GVFL (Thursday evening)

Bay Area (Santa Clara)
→ AI Founders Circle —  meetup with leading AI builders in the Valley.

What’s Coming Up

Sunday, Bangalore
→ Startup Open House at Draper Startup House — informal morning meetup with early-stage founders.

Sunday, Kolkata
→ Partner-led meetup with local startup operators.


eChai hosts these meetups regularly — across India and globally — featuring Demo Days, AI Days, and founder socials.

To register for any specific event, visit eChai.Ventures.

Ever reached the airport too early and got bored?

What if, instead of scrolling your phone, you ended up meeting a bunch of interesting folks?

At eChai, we love startup mixers. So we thought - why not bring that experience to the airport?

Few months back, our friend Jaydip Parikh was attending the India SEO Conference in Pune. On his way back, he called and said, “Remember that airport mixer idea? Let’s do it right now.”

And just like that, eChai’s Airport Startup Mixer was born.

Jaydip, along with Amit from AllEvents, Rakesh Patel from SpaceO, Himani from Missive Digital, and many others, turned their wait time into a great networking session. The feedback? Amazing!

Of course, there’s one tiny risk - getting so deep in conversation that you almost miss your flight! But hey, great connections are worth the adventure.

So, next time you’re at the airport early, let us know. We’ll give a shoutout on eChai and see if we can pull off another eChai’s Airport Startup Mixer.

Would you be up for it? Let’s make layovers exciting :-)

https://x.com/jatin10/status/1885196469751423431

There’s something quietly radical about a film that centers a 65-year-old widow launching a startup with her group of homemaker friends. No incubators. No accelerators. No jargon. Just instinct, lived experience, and a refusal to accept that their time has passed.

Auntypreneur, an upcoming Gujarati-language film, taps into a kind of founder energy we rarely acknowledge in India — the resilience of middle-aged women who’ve spent decades managing homes, families, and finances, but have never been called “entrepreneurs.”

And that’s exactly why I’m excited to watch it.

It’s not just the premise. It’s the intent.

In a startup culture dominated by youth, blitzscaling, and pitch decks, Auntypreneur offers a cultural reset — one where ambition arrives late, quietly, but just as powerfully.

https://youtu.be/Y254cTYFVO0?si=XjTpuCz4a1Z2xL3R

Reframing the Archetype of a Founder

The protagonist of Auntypreneur is Jasuben, a 65-year-old widow who decides to start a business with her close-knit group of homemaker friends. There are no venture capital pitches, no disruption models, no accelerator backstories. Instead, there’s lived experience, resourcefulness, and an instinctive understanding of value — the kind that isn’t taught, but earned through decades of managing households with surgical precision.

In India, where the startup narrative still largely revolves around youthful aggression and scale-at-all-costs ambition, this film inserts a different kind of founder into the cultural vocabulary — one who is older, female, and rooted in middle-class realism. It’s a portrayal that reframes entrepreneurship not as a career choice, but as a human need for agency and reinvention.

The Team Behind the Film Echoes the Story’s Spirit

Auntypreneur is helmed by Pratik Rajen Kothari, a young filmmaker making his Gujarati feature debut. It is produced by Deepali and Aryan Mhaiskar, a mother-son duo whose own collaboration across generations mirrors the film’s central theme. The project is presented by Abhishek Jain, a pivotal figure in modern Gujarati cinema, known for his work in bringing local stories to wider audiences.

There’s a meta-layer here that cannot be ignored. The film isn’t just about late-blooming entrepreneurship — it is, in many ways, a startup in itself. From the risk in storytelling to the choice of a largely regional setting and language, the film’s creators are practicing the very courage they aim to portray on screen.

A Lead Performance Anchored in Quiet Defiance

Supriya Pathak, long admired for her work across genres and languages, leads the cast as Jasuben. Her performance in the trailer alone hints at a role grounded in restraint and emotional authority. She doesn’t announce her intentions — she negotiates them. Her quiet command, dry wit, and firm resolve offer a believable portrayal of a woman stepping into her own, not with arrogance, but with earned certainty.

She is joined by a supporting cast of acclaimed regional actors including Brinda Trivedi, Kaushambi Bhatt, and Yukti Randeria. Their ensemble energy is less about comic relief or tokenism and more about collective transformation — women building not just a venture, but a version of themselves that had been long suppressed.

A Marketing Campaign that Mirrors Early-Stage Hustle

What sets Auntypreneur apart from typical film launches is the nature of its promotional campaign. The producers have bypassed conventional media routes and adopted a grassroots, community-first approach that resembles how early-stage founders market their products.

From local meetups to street activations in Ahmedabad, to real-life panels like “Reel Meets Real” featuring Supriya Pathak in conversation with actual women entrepreneurs like Pabiben Rabari, the film’s outreach strategy has been intimate and deliberate. These are not just promotional events — they are dialogue starters.

https://x.com/ama_ahmedabad/status/1913980028133707976

On social media, the messaging is sharp and culturally tuned. The tagline — “Why should boys have all the funds?” — is both a provocation and a positioning statement. It places the film directly within India’s ongoing conversation around funding disparities, gender bias, and the shifting contours of leadership.

Another standout piece features real-life women entrepreneurs — from founders to changemakers — sharing the spotlight and spirit of Auntypreneur. It’s not just a shoutout; it’s a celebration of women who’ve already turned ideas into impact, blurring the line between reel and real.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DIqTQYFMYgE/

Why This Film Matters Now

Auntypreneur arrives at a time when India’s founder landscape is undergoing both expansion and reckoning. While unicorn counts rise and venture capital flows deepen, questions around inclusivity, representation, and sustainability remain unresolved. In this context, a film that centers older women as capable, ambitious builders is not just refreshing — it’s necessary.

It is not a story about scale. It is a story about self-worth. And that, in many ways, is the foundational capital of any entrepreneurial journey.

Why I’ll Be Watching

I’m not watching Auntypreneur because I’m curious about what happens next — the trailer already outlines that arc. I’m watching because I want to witness what starting looks like when you’ve spent a lifetime being told your time is up.

The film may be predictable in its structure, but its intent is rare. And its emotional currency — the desire to reclaim one’s narrative — feels authentic.

For anyone who has ever thought, “ab kya naya shuru karun?”, Auntypreneur seems to offer a reply that is both gentle and urgent:

Start now. You’re not too late. You’re right on time.