Stories
In-depth founder profiles, each independently researched and sourced only from publicly verifiable information.
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Gold at Indian prices is out of reach for everyday wear, and thin plating wears off within months. Vermeil sits between the two, and she had the Jaipur manufacturing relationships to make it properly.
She was furnishing her own flat when she worked out why nothing good was available: the factories making it were shipping everything abroad. On 4 August 2026 the marketplace she built to open that door raised 65 crore rupees.
She was inside Lehman Brothers before it went under. Thirteen years later, the profitable little skilling company she built with a fellow Lehman alum is buying colleges abroad and preparing to list, while the edtech giants that raised billions around it are gone.
Seven years inside Indian microfinance taught her that villages were not short of products or of credit. They were short of somebody trustworthy to buy from. Her answer was to hire the women already living there.
Fruit and vegetables that are misshapen or the wrong size are rejected before they reach a shelf, and the farmer absorbs the loss. She and her mother built a food brand out of exactly that produce.
The name suggests a dessert. It is jewellery, founded in 2024, and it has reached around thirty retail points including a standalone store at Chennai airport.
A seventh-generation farmer with a JNU degree and seventeen years in advertising went back to the source, because the winter jaggery she grew up with had quietly stopped being the real thing.
Hand block printing has been practised around Jaipur for centuries and is mostly sold as the same few things. A textile designer stuck at home during the pandemic put it somewhere it had not been.
Millions finish degrees every year and a large share are judged unready for the jobs they trained for. Careerpedia works in that gap, with project-based training and employers attached at the other end.
Hormonal conditions are widespread among Indian women and are usually caught years after they start. LAIQA answers them in the place women already spend their day, which is a WhatsApp chat.
Hidden hunger is eating enough and still being deficient in iron and zinc. Rather than selling supplements, Better Nutrition puts the nutrients into the staples that are already in every kitchen.
Roughly three in four Indian women have brown to deep brown skin, and the counters were stocked for the rest. She left consulting in San Francisco to build the brand that stopped pretending otherwise.
