Chai with Shai

Suraj Shamnani is the founder of Dang!, a beverage startup building what he describes as a healthier alternative to traditional diet sodas by introducing prebiotic fibre based soft drinks tailored for Indian consumers. His journey into beverages began after working with fermentation in Michelin star restaurants like Gaggan and GAA, where he developed an interest in gut friendly drinks. He funded early R&D partly by liquidating personal investments, tested product stickiness for nearly two years before scaling efforts, and chose to prioritize formulation and packaging over performance marketing. Before arriving at prebiotic sodas, he spent nearly a year attempting to build a kombucha brand. He pivoted only after realizing the category’s limited demand in India and the need for something more accessible and scalable across the country. Since then, Suraj has focused on building Dang as a long term beverage brand rooted in product experimentation, distribution first thinking, and consumer feedback. Along the way, he learned difficult lessons about trusting people too quickly, chasing grants that rarely materialize for consumer brands, and the realities of building in India’s high-GST beverage category, but continues to approach the company with a long horizon ambition: to build an Indian beverage brand that can eventually compete globally while staying accessible domestically.

Akshit Mehta is the co-founder of Evolucion, an Indian based, premium athleisure brand for women focusing on versatile, comfortable clothing for daily wear, travel, and workouts. Instead of chasing trends, the team focused on solving practical problems, by designing comfortable, movement friendly clothing tailored for Indian settings while keeping quality comparable to global brands but at a more accessible price point. The idea took shape after Akshit decided to finally act on his long standing goal of building a consumer brand, narrowing down from multiple categories to athleisure as a fast evolving space with strong manufacturing momentum in India.The journey to launch took nearly nine months of product testing, supplier discovery, pricing decisions, and brand positioning. This includes setbacks like forgetting to order an entire product category just weeks before launch and losing early orders due to a checkout failure on day one. After launching in March 2025, the team saw 120 orders on day one followed by zero on day two, a reminder of how unpredictable early traction can be. Since then, Akshit has focused on building narrative driven brand positioning instead of relying purely on marketing spend, experimenting with community building, learning where influencer led growth fails to convert into revenue, and emphasizing a realistic expectation for consumer startups because most D2C brands take 18 to 36 months to become profitable if they survive the early learning curve.

Shambhbi Raha is the founder of Fieldmobi, an enterprise software startup building an AI customizable, mobile first ERP platform designed to bridge the gap between headquarters and field operations. After completing her MBA, she chose to step away from the predictable path of a corporate role to build a product that makes business software more usable and adaptable for real world operations. Instead of starting with certainty, she began by identifying practical use cases, building early versions alongside her job, joining the WeWork Labs accelerator, and gradually assembling a small team through internships that later converted into full time roles.Over the past three years, Fieldmobi has evolved from early product experiments to real deployments with customers while navigating one of the hardest parts of enterprise tech, building credibility before anyone knows who you are. Shambhabi’s approach has been to stay iterative with positioning, focus on made-to-order workflows that adapt to specific business needs, and avoid over customizing for a single large client at the cost of building a scalable product. Her biggest lessons came from learning that the toughest phase of a startup is often not the beginning but the long middle, when growth slows, uncertainty stretches on, and progress feels invisible, and that surviving enterprise tech requires patience, clarity about who you’re building for, and the willingness to keep building even when nothing seems to be happening.

Anshul Khurana is the co-founder of Entitled Solutions, a startup providing financial and health services to gig and blue collar workers such as security guards, drivers, and cleaners, where nearly 70% of the workers rely on informal borrowing and most have little to no savings. The idea emerged when he noticed frontline workers and the high churn driven by financial instability. Instead of waiting for full certainty, he began building when he was only “20% sure,” validating the opportunity through conversations with employers and early partners before landing his first client within two months by cold outreach across his network.In the early years, the team focused on solving real access problems through simple distribution, running loans, insurance, and health services entirely through WhatsApp instead of building an app, and repeatedly refining the product based on employer needs. Funding was not immediate, after pitching hundreds of investors and facing frequent rejection, early support from friends, family, and eventually HDFC Capital became a major confidence boost. Through COVID disruptions, hiring challenges, and multiple near quit moments, Anshul credits persistence, strong mentor relationships, and a clear value proposition for helping the company grow, while emphasizing one lesson he learned the hard way: raising money isn’t the milestone; proving value to real users is.

Pooja Gupta is the co-founder of NapChief, a direct-to-consumer children’s apparel brand built around the idea that clothing can help kids feel confident, expressive, and capable of anything they set their minds to. After completing her chartered accountancy exams and working as a consultant in Mumbai, she teamed up with her brother to explore the fast growing D2C opportunity in India’s underserved kidswear market. Backed by their family’s deep manufacturing experience supplying global fashion brands, they took a leap of faith into entrepreneurship. They recognized that children today have stronger personal preferences than earlier generations and that the category had space for a premium yet accessible Indian brand.In the early days, the journey was a mix of excitement and uncertainty, from launching their website and waiting anxiously for the first real customers beyond friends and family, to pivoting during COVID from specialty infant fabrics to nightwear before gradually expanding into casualwear for ages up to 14. It took nearly four years to break even, but momentum became real when the team began spotting kids wearing NapChief in everyday places turning a small internal celebration into a symbol of brand validation. Pooja credits their growth to staying flexible, learning marketing hands on through platforms like Meta and marketplaces, being frugal early on, and trusting that conviction matters more than perfect timing, because in her words, the moment you start is the right moment to start.

Tanmay Yadav is the founder of Crave Nicotine, a consumer health startup building nicotine candies designed to help smokers quit in a cleaner, more approachable way. The idea emerged shortly after his previous startup shut down, when he began exploring new problems to solve and returned to one that felt deeply personal. He is a cancer survivor and wanted to create a product that could help others avoid similar health risks. Within weeks of validating the idea through conversations with nearly 100 smokers about their quitting journeys, he began building what would become a regulated nicotine replacement product positioned very differently from traditional pharmaceutical looking alternatives.Drawing on earlier experience working with early stage founders and consumer brands like Oziva, Tanmay moved quickly from customer research to formulation and supply chain setup, though navigating licensing and compliance stretched the launch timeline to over a year. Instead of waiting for perfect conditions, he relied heavily on founder outreach, manufacturing relationships from his venture ecosystem experience, and hands on customer conversations to move forward. His biggest lessons came from underestimating timelines, overvaluing early branding, and learning the importance of building operational backups, but his core belief remains simple: most founders wait too long to start, when progress really begins the moment you pick up the phone, talk to users, and solve a real problem.

Chanakya Shah founder of Up & Run started the company after struggling to find an effective electrolyte solution as a long distance runner. Frustrated by products that didn’t replenish sodium adequately and by the high cost of importing better alternatives, he decided to build a cleaner, performance focused hydration formula tailored for endurance athletes. Without overthinking the process or waiting for a perfect plan, he launched the brand with a simple goal: create a zero sugar, low calorie electrolyte mix with optimal sodium, potassium, and magnesium ratios that actually supports recovery and hydration during extended activity.Bootstrapping the journey while managing everything from product development to social media and operations himself, he built early traction through community engagement on Twitter. One of his biggest early lessons was the importance of building operational backups, from manufacturers to logistics partners, to reduce risk in a young startup. His approach reflects a bias toward action over analysis paralysis, with a strong focus on sales metrics, returning customers, and product reliability as the foundation for scaling a performance nutrition brand from scratch.

Shraddha Sheth is the founder of FitEduCoach, a skills focused education platform working to professionalize India’s fitness coaching industry by making high quality training accessible to aspiring instructors across the country. After spending over two decades in the fitness ecosystem, including leadership roles, driving operations, and growth at Gold's Gym India. She stepped away from a stable corporate career to build a mission led venture aimed at improving both coach livelihoods and fitness outcomes for members nationwide. For Shraddha, the idea was simple but powerful: better trained coaches leads to stronger gyms, healthier communities, and a fitter India.She bootstrapped FitEduCoach with her own savings, spent months validating market gaps in trainer education, and personally became the face of the brand in its earliest days. She ran webinars, counseled students, and built trust through free learning sessions before scaling paid programs. Known for her hands on leadership style and belief that “sales is oxygen for a business,” Shraddha continues to grow the platform steadily while focusing on community building, affordable skilling pathways, and long term credibility in a highly competitive training market. Her journey reflects the realities of building an education startup from scratch: disciplined spending, deep conviction, and a commitment to solving a real workforce problem at scale.

Krishna Tamaliya Vora is the founder of Mom’s Therapy, an Ayurvedic haircare brand built around traditional black sesame formulations passed down through generations of women in her family. A trained criminal lawyer who stepped away from the courtroom to share the magic o her grandmother’s recipes, she started the company in 2016 with just ₹12,000 and a belief that truly natural products should be honest, handmade, and rooted in Indian ingredients. What began as home-made hair oil sold at farmers’ markets and in subscription boxes slowly grew into a trusted, full-fledged skincare brand known for its purity first approach and women led handmade production.She bootstrapped Mom’s Therapy for nearly eight years before raising her first investment in 2025, navigated losing majority shares early in the journey, and rebuilt momentum after a brief five second appearance on Shark Tank India unexpectedly changed the brand’s visibility. What makes Krishna’s story unique is how deeply integrity shaped her decisions, from refusing to make claims she couldn’t prove to choosing slow, sustainable growth over shortcuts. All while building a natural beauty brand without an MBA, external funding, or a traditional business background.