I've co-founded two startups in Bengaluru: Pitch2Ad (2020–2021), an advertising marketplace with its own digital screen product, and Neural-i (2022–2023), an image-analytics startup for digital pathology incubated at IIM Bangalore's NSRCEL. Different markets, different customers — but some lessons showed up both times.
1. Ship before you feel ready
With Pitch2Ad and Adstick we were building hardware and software at the same time. The plan always looked cleaner on paper than in the field. Putting a real product in front of real publishers and advertisers taught us more in a week than months of planning.
2. The customer's expertise is part of the product
At Neural-i, our users understood pathology far better than we did. The best decisions came from sitting with them and understanding how they actually work — not from what the model could do in isolation.
3. Ecosystems matter
Being incubated at NSRCEL and supported as a DST-funded startup gave us mentors, structure and credibility we couldn't have built alone. Today, working at hessian.AI, I see the same thing from the other side: good ecosystems help founders move faster.
A startup is a fast way to discover everything you don't know yet.
4. Know when to learn more
Both companies showed me where my own gaps were. Going back to study AI at TU Darmstadt was a direct result of that — a chance to go deeper so the next thing I build stands on stronger foundations.