eChai in

Toronto

Toronto is where deep learning grew up. Geoffrey Hinton did the work at the University of Toronto that set off the modern AI wave, and the Vector Institute (now next door to MaRS in the Schwartz Reisman Innovation Centre) has kept the city at the research frontier. That lineage shows up in the companies: Cohere building enterprise large language models, Waabi building self-driving trucks, and Ada automating customer service, three AI unicorns founded out of the same U of T orbit.

Around the AI crown sits a broad, institution-backed ecosystem. MaRS Discovery District is the largest urban innovation hub in North America, and the accelerators are unusually strong: Creative Destruction Lab, the DMZ, and the Vector Institute. Wealthsimple anchors one of Canada's deepest fintech clusters on Bay Street, 1Password and Vena lead a mature SaaS scene, and MaRS' hospital row feeds a dense health and biotech pipeline. A uniquely Canadian twist runs underneath it: the big pension funds have become serious technology investors.

For eChai, Toronto is also one of the most important India to Canada diaspora stories anywhere. The South Asian founder belt across Brampton, Mississauga and Markham is the demographic core, and India-linked networks like TiE Toronto, IIT Alumni Canada and the Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce, plus diaspora-led investors like Panache Ventures and Good Future, are woven through the ecosystem. eChai's Toronto chapter recently relaunched with founder-first socials in the city. The pages below map who is building, who is funding it, where founders actually meet, and that cross-border bridge.

Join eChai What is on

What is on in Toronto.

Thu 15 Oct 6 pm eChai Toronto Startup Mixer

Every gathering in Toronto

Where founders in Toronto build.

388 of Toronto's startups, on one map where they work.

The Startup Grid puts them with the city's investors, incubators and coworking spaces, and walks you round them part of town by part of town.

Open the map of Toronto

The Startup Grid

Founders here come to know a few brands well.

Those are eChai’s partner brands. Over a year, founders across the network learn their names and their work, and when somebody asks around for what they do, theirs is the name that comes up.

Partner brand founders together at Zestard HQ, Ahmedabad

What a year inside eChai does for your brand.

Each partnership comes with presence across eChai, introductions to the right founders, and a team that stays involved through the year. And each one is shaped around what the brand wants out of it.

Who you meet

Founders learn your name, then your work.

Over the year they keep running into you: at the gatherings, in the series, on the pages they read through the week. So when one of them needs what you do, they come straight to you.
We introduce you to the people you want to reach.

After seventeen years of gatherings we know who has built what, and who works with whom. Tell us who you are after, or we come to you when the right person shows up, with your story and why you two should talk.
You are invited to the gatherings that fit.

Open houses, Demo Days, the AI sessions, FailCode, the curated socials and the smaller dinners, some of them by invitation. When one fits what you do and who you want to meet, you are on the list.

What we do with you

We sit down with you on your story, your brand and your business.

One to one, more than once in the year. We have heard a few thousand founders, so you hear fairly quickly what is working, what is not, and what we would change first.
We take your team through what AI changed for us.

Almost everything eChai builds now has AI in the workflow. We go through what we tried, what worked and what wasted our time, and then connect you to founders further along than us.
You can ask us anything, whenever it comes up.

Every week we hear what founders are building, what they recommend to each other and what they have moved on from. Twice a year we go through what it means for your category. In between we answer, or find a founder who can.

Where your name runs

Your mark comes round under every page on eChai.

The wall of partner brands under the site's pages draws a different ten each time, so yours comes round on the city pages, the event pages and the notes founders read, all year. Your page on echai.ventures stays up after it, and your name runs through our LinkedIn, Instagram and X.
The blue tick puts you first wherever founders are listed.

The tick and your company's mark sit beside your name across eChai, and lists of founders put the blue ticks first: your city's people, the directory, and the roster of every gathering you go to, after its hosts and speakers. Every blue-tick founder with a photograph is on the wall of founders a member sees on signing in.
Your company carries its mark on the Startup Grid.

Where your company is on a city's map of its startups, it is drawn by your mark rather than a dot, opens on your own words and pictures, and is a stop on the tour the map offers of its partner brands.
You write and speak here under your own name.

You come into the series we run online (How Founders Use AI, the founder conversations, the long reads) where you have something real to say, and you write in Founder Notes, where founders across our cities write about what they are building.

The brands working with us.

How it works.

A partnership is for growth stage founders who want to come in as a partner brand, and it runs one year at a time. The brand fee for the year is paid to eChai. An affiliate share runs alongside it, linked to the outcomes we drive together. Both carry GST.

Everything a partnership comes with

To come in as a partner brand, write to me at [email protected] and tell me what you want the year to do for your brand.