Resilience and Reflections - Portfolio spotlight

SquadStack’s journey traces how a crowdsourced task marketplace evolved, through multiple pivots and crises, into a voice AI leader. Years of operating distributed contact centres helped them quietly accumulate massive, real-world call data. When the AI wave hit, that data…

Namma Yatri was born from a grassroots driver movement in Bangalore seeking a fair alternative to exploitative ride-hailing apps. The founders, Mags and Shan — engineers from Juspay — immersed themselves as auto drivers to deeply understand their challenges. Their empathy-led…

Pulkit Khurana and Siddharth Sikka started Battery Smart in a cramped Delhi shop with a bold vision: make EV charging as simple as filling petrol. Today, it’s India’s largest battery-swapping network, enabling over 125,000 daily swaps across 1,500 stations. Focused on…

From Wall Street to farmland, Jaisimha Rao’s journey is reshaping global agriculture. After managing billions at BlackRock during the 2008 crisis, Jai returned to India to tackle one of the oldest, most inefficient industries — farming. What started with a wheelbarrow and a camera…

Pixxel, a deeptech startup based in Bangalore, is redefining Earth observation with its hyperspectral imaging satellites that see far beyond what traditional systems can. Founded by Awais Ahmed and Kshitij Khandelwal, Pixxel has evolved from student ambition to a global…

Ethereal Machines, a Blume Ventures-backed startup, has gone from two college students tinkering in a dorm to operating a 55,000-square-foot facility manufacturing precision components for aerospace and healthcare giants. Initially dismissed for trying to build India’s first…

Ashok Hariharan founded IDfy in 2011 after witnessing how trust in India was often based on stereotypes and unverified information. Early experiences — being asked about his caste when renting a home and spotting fraudulent resumes while hiring — highlighted the need for a systemic…

Servify, founded by Sreevathsa Prabhakar, has built a win-win platform that connects brands, retailers, insurers, service centers, and logistics providers to deliver seamless after-sales service. The company manages the entire journey — from selling protection plans to handling…

“Rashida, my house-help in Mumbai, lives in Dharavi, just one kilometer from the largest HDFC Bank branch. But it took Bajaj Finance and various other players like it to cater to her. Today, she can get many financial services without any credit history, including…

“Have you watched the web series Panchayat? I love it! That’s the core audience creators and educators on Classplus cater to. Almost 80% of our student base is from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.” — Mukul…

“There were times when we didn’t have money for payroll. I staggered salaries. We operated like this for almost a year during the 2018 – 19 period,” recalls Avlesh Singh, co-founder and CEO of WebEngage. When life handed Avlesh…

Imagine being a mother of two young kids, taking a bus from Bengaluru to Chennai, one of the busiest inter-state routes in India. The seats are smelly. There’s an old film playing on a ragtag TV. The brakes barely work. Every turn makes you a little…

“I always wondered, ​‘Who copies someone else’s makeup or look?’ Then I spoke to 18-year-old Gudiya (name changed) from Calcutta. This call opened my eyes. She said women over 25 usually go to a beauty parlor for family…

Muay Thai, CrossFit, and the Birth of a Health Revolution On one side, there’s a snake mountain. On the other, there’s a beach. The story of Ultrahuman starts in Thailand. More specifically, at a martial arts camp called Tiger Muay Thai, where Mohit Kumar, co-founder and…

Imagine a startup with millions of dollars in ARR. Now, make a hard pivot because you are convinced the future is starkly different from what you see today. Give up almost all revenue. Rebuild the business brick by brick to tens…

Stellapps is an end-to-end dairy technology solutions company helping dairy farmers and cooperatives digitise & optimise milk production, milk procurement & coldchain management so as to maximize profits while minimizing effort.

If you ask ChatGPT to create a diet plan for you, it does an excellent job of creating a detailed line-up of healthy meals along with recipes. But there are numerous risks involved in listening to an AI that has no input from a healthcare professional. ChatGPT…

If you think about butterflies, the first image that comes to mind is how colourful they are. What makes them really distinct from other living beings is that not only are they colourful, but they can also see the widest range of colours than anyone else on the…

What does an average phone’s life look like? In most Indian households, the most tech-savvy person or the highest earning person in the family buys the most high-end phone. When an upgrade comes along, they pass it on to a member who uses the phone ​“only for calls” before it…

In 2021, Google Flights launched a feature where you could see the amount of carbon emissions against the flight options. For example, an Air India flight from New Delhi to New York will result in 903kgs of carbon emissions. To offset this, you need to plant roughly 30 trees.…