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.

In this edition of eChai’s Books for Entrepreneurs series, I want to explore a question that’s been on my mind:

What if AI doesn’t replace us—but helps us become more of who we already are?

That’s the central idea behind Superagency, and it hit home.

The book is co-authored by Reid Hoffman — co-founder of LinkedIn, partner at Greylock, and someone who’s been at the heart of Silicon Valley’s most transformative moments, from PayPal to OpenAI. What makes his perspective stand out is that he’s not observing AI from the sidelines — he’s actively shaping it.

His co-author, Greg Beato, adds a sharp cultural and editorial lens. Together, they make Superagency feel less like a tech manual, and more like a thoughtful invitation to build more consciously — and more responsibly — with AI.

I picked up Superagency one quiet evening, thinking I’d skim through it.

But somewhere between page 10 and 30, I realized… this wasn’t just a book about AI.

It felt like a mirror — one that made me reflect on how I think, design, and build in tech. And more than anything, how we show up as founders and product people inside this massive wave of change.

Reid talks about something he calls “superagency” — the idea that AI, when built right, doesn’t replace us.

It amplifies us.

It helps individuals — not just institutions — make faster decisions, navigate systems better, and express themselves more fully.

That clicked instantly for me.

As a product strategist and community builder, I’ve seen how badly we need that kind of tech. Not just smart. Not just scalable. But human-first.

One metaphor that stuck with me was this:

You still set the destination.

You’re still the driver.

But the AI helps you navigate faster, with fewer wrong turns, and more context.

That’s how I now look at GenAI tools.

Not as a replacement. Not as magic.

But as possibility multipliers.

Another line I underlined:

I paused after reading that.

Because in our race to integrate the latest models, plug in AI features, and use the right buzzwords…

we rarely ask: What kind of agency are we actually giving the user?

Are we designing for decision-making?

Or just for dopamine?

Reading Superagency made me more intentional.

Because here’s the thing: founders and PMs may not control the whole AI narrative —

But we do decide how it lands in the hands of users.

This book won’t give you 10 frameworks or a product checklist.

But if you lead product, build startups, or simply think about what tech should mean in the next 5–10 years, it will reframe your mental model.

I closed the book feeling more responsible — and more optimistic.

And that’s a rare combo in this space.

I’ll leave you with Reid’s line:

If you’re building AI-first, AI-lite, or even just AI-curious — I’d say: read this one.

It’s thoughtful. Grounded. Real.

And it’ll stay with you longer than your average AI blog post ever could.

PS: If you're curious to hear Reid Hoffman unpack these ideas himself — this conversation with DJ Patil at Commonwealth Club World Affairs is worth your time. 

It’s not just about AI trends — it’s about what kind of future we want to design.

They explore everything from AI tutors and healthcare breakthroughs to the moral responsibility of builders.

If you're a founder shaping with tech, this one’s for you.

https://youtu.be/y0zsSR0r3BM?si=yYa2zwcgqY1WOo_f

What folks are talking about it

https://x.com/krynsky/status/1895291445206229366

Superagency!

https://x.com/reidhoffman/status/1913265771087626547