Offline

A private members' community for the top 10% of Indian tech founders and CEOs.

[Offline @offline_members]

We’ve been building Offline for the past few months, and today we’re proud to share it with the world.

Offline is a curated private membership community for tech founders and CEOs in India.

[Yashvi Dhruv @YashviDhruvv]

It's not every day you get to sit across & hear from founders who've built at serious scale talk honestly about the journey

🗓️ This Friday
📍 Bangalore

Hosted by @offline_members

If you're a seed/pre-seed+ founder in my network & want in, DM/drop a comment

I'll sort you out

[Utsav Somani @somani_utsav]

One thing I’ve been thinking deeply about recently is how founder conversations evolve over time.

At Offline, our pods are built as small peer groups where founders come together once a month for a 3 hour block. No networking fluff. No panels. No performative “startup community” energy. Just real conversations with people who understand the pressure of building something meaningful.

The format has worked beautifully because everyone is learning from each other’s journeys. The shared trauma, shared ambition, shared loneliness of building a company creates very honest rooms. Founders open up about hiring mistakes, cofounder conflict, fundraising pressure, burnout, marriage struggles, leadership insecurities, scaling chaos, everything.

But over time, I think every great community needs fresh energy and new perspectives entering the room.

So we’re experimenting with something new at @offline_members.

We want to build a roster of incredible experts across Delhi, Mumbai, and Bangalore who can occasionally join founder pods and run intimate learning sessions. Not keynote speeches. Not workshops with 100 people. Small room conversations with top founders dealing with very real business and life problems.

Some areas we’d love to explore:

AI and productivity
Leadership coaching
Founder psychology and mental health
Team building and culture
Storytelling and communication
Personal branding
Wealth management
Relationships and family while building
Spirituality and mindfulness
Nutrition and fitness for founders
Negotiation and sales
Executive presence
Hiring and org design
Biohacking and longevity
Performance coaching
Consumer psychology
Design and taste
Writing and thinking
Public speaking
Energy management
Conflict resolution
Decision making under pressure

…and honestly anything else where you think you can create a genuinely meaningful experience for founders.

The upside is getting access to rooms full of exceptional founders and operators inside the Offline community in a very trusted environment.

If this sounds like you, leave a comment telling me what you do.

Please also send:

• a video of a past session / talk / workshop you’ve done
• or an article / podcast / anything that helps us understand your work and style

You can DM me directly as well, or reach out to anyone on the @offline_members team.

Would love to discover some incredible people through this. 🙂

[Offline @offline_members]

Off-Grid Darjeeling 🏔️

Three days above the clouds with @AltCarbonIndia. Sunset hikes, full moon tea plucking, and a front-row look at how they're turning Himalayan tea estates into carbon sinks. 🍵🪨

Founders, fog, and the future of carbon removal. ✨

Aftermovie 👇

[Offline @offline_members]

The best founder conversations happen when the cameras stop chasing perfection.

An incredible evening at The Quorum Club with Gaurav Khatri (Noise), Gaurav Bhatnagar (TBO) & Gaurav Agarwal (Tata 1mg) speaking honestly about ambition, pressure, loneliness, scale, and the real cost of building.

This is what Offline was built for.

Real conversations with people who’ve actually lived it.

[The Offline Network @OfflineOnAir]

> be Aakash Chaudhry
> dad is a schoolteacher in Delhi
> he starts a coaching centre in 1988
> you start your own venture in early 2000s
> do an MBA at ISB. Join Infosys, then Cognizant
> about to leave for a 4-year gig in Australia
> dad calls. Asks him to take Aakash outside Delhi
> says yes. Establishes Aakash Institute in Mumbai
> 2006: become the CEO of Aakash Institute
> scale it to 300+ centres & ~250,000 students
> bring in Blackstone as investor in 2019
> Aakash Institute valued at ~$500M
> 2021: Aakash Institute is valued at $950M
> 2023: Steps away from an active role
> 2024: Start over
> co-found Sparkl Edventure

The man who turned a family coaching brand into an institutional education business.

Aakash Chaudhry joins us live on TON today at 4PM.

[Offline @offline_members]

@OfflineOnAir Let's go! 🚀

[The Offline Network @OfflineOnAir]

People are trapped by the stories they tell themselves. The rare ones rewrite them.

A fascinating conversation between Utsav Somani (@somani_utsav) & Nir Eyal (@nireyal) on behavior, ambition, and the psychology of high performers.

Full episode: https://t.co/Um8NGYKaZI

[Offline @offline_members]

People flew in for this conversation.

What followed was two hours on attention, technology, parenting, habits, belief systems, and the strange ways modern life shapes us without permission.

Somewhere between dopamine loops and dinner-table conversations, the room got very honest.

Founders, operators, investors, parents, product nerds.
Different backgrounds. Same curiosity.

Offline with Nir Eyal.

One of those evenings people stayed back talking about long after it ended.

[Sparsh Agarwal @sparshselim]

The Himalayan Offsite.

India's leading startup founders visit Darjeeling.

Day 2.

Darjeeling Tea. Sunset Hike. Full Moon Night.

@AltCarbonIndia x @OfflineOnAir

🧵

[Sparsh Agarwal @sparshselim]

The Himalayan Offsite.

India's leading startup founders visit Darjeeling.

Day 1.

Bengal Renaissance. Indian Manufacturing. Frontier Research.

@AltCarbonIndia x @OfflineOnAir

🧵

[Offline @offline_members]

@abhishekgawade_ Check out our eligibility criteria on our website and apply! 🌱

[Offline @offline_members]

3 days in Darjeeling 🌿

No panels. No pitch decks. No noise.
Just founders, hills, and conversations that actually go somewhere.

Pickleball in the morning, cricket in the rain.
Tea estate walks with the Alt Carbon team.
Sunsets that made everyone go quiet.
Late nights that went deeper than business.

This is Offline.
Not networking. Just real time with the right people.

Everyone went back a little lighter. A little clearer.

We’re doing more of these.

Reply with 🌿 if you want in on the next one.

[Dhruv Sharma @dhruvsharma_in]

This weekend, the @offline_members and @OfflineOnAir communities converged near Darjeeling to visit the frontlines of climate action with @AltCarbonIndia.

We toured enhanced rock weathering (ERW) sites and a state-of-the-art carbon dioxide removal (CDR) measurement lab; heard the stories behind the Darjeeling Revival Project and the Bengal Renaissance Project inside a newly commissioned biochar plant; sampled @DorjeTeas while watching a beautiful sunset on the slopes of the Selim Tea Estate; and witnessed moonlight plucking in a moving ceremony.

Thank you, @curioushrey and @SparshAgarwall, and your family and team, for your kindness and generosity. Everything you do is so distinctive and original.

The scientists, engineers, designers, and field experts at AltCarbon are elite. If you believe in protecting the earth because it’s the only one we have, seriously consider joining them: https://t.co/rEd67JdzbL.

And if you want to be a part of such experiences alongside India’s best founders, consider joining us for the next one at: https://t.co/xkghI30vD4.

Thank you @somani_utsav, Fabiola, Sharon, and the Offline team for always finding unique ways to expand our imagination.

[Utsav Somani @somani_utsav]

Off-Grid in Darjeeling 🌱

What happens when you bring together founders, a climate lab, and the mountains?

You don’t just “take a break”.
You rewire how you think.

We spent 3 days with @SparshAgarwall, @curioushrey and the @AltCarbonIndia team in Darjeeling. What they’re building here is not just climate work. It feels like a full-stack revival of a region.

We walked tea estates.
Learned how carbon credits actually get created.
Went deep into enhanced rock weathering and what it takes to remove carbon at scale.

And then switched gears.

Cricket. Pickleball.
Moonlight tea plucking under a full moon.

The contrast was wild.

One moment you’re in a deep tech lab.
Next moment you’re plucking tea leaves in silence with the Himalayas around you.

Day 1 ended with a surprise light and sound show at their biochar plant. Pure artistry. Didn’t expect that level of storytelling inside a climate facility.

Day 2 was sport, hikes, tea tasting and conversations that only happen when people are fully offline.

Somewhere in between, Sparsh gave us a masterclass on the history of Darjeeling. You could feel the intent. This isn’t just a company. They’re trying to become custodians of the region. Renaissance builders.

This is what Off-Grid is meant to be.

Not just escapes.
Not just networking.
But perspective shifts.

Grateful to the Alt Carbon team for hosting and to everyone who showed up fully present.

More of this 🌿

[Sparsh Agarwal @sparshselim]

Day 0 of @AltCarbonIndia x @OfflineOnAir

Indian Earth Sciences for Global Carbon Drawdown

[The Offline Network @OfflineOnAir]

Sachin Tendulkar. Virat Kohli. Gukesh Dommaraju. India's World Cup Winning squad. India's hockey team.

One man behind all of them.

This is the story of Paddy Upton.

- born in Johannesburg, South Africa
- sport-obsessed kid; played cricket & rugby
- retired from competitive sports at age 25
- became S&C coach for @ProteasMenCSA ‘94
- co-founded Street Universe in Cape Town
- rehabilitated ~400 hardened street children
- 2008: Gary Kirsten recommends him to the @BCCI
- Paddy joins Team India as Mental Conditioning Coach
- India became World #1 in @ICC Test rankings
- core member of India's 2011 World Cup-winning staff
- became Performance Director of South Africa Men’s Cricket Team
- South Africa became World #1 across all formats
- head coach, Pune Warriors India ‘12
- head coach, @rajasthanroyals ‘13-‘15 & ‘19
- took team from the bottom to playoffs; 13 straight home wins
- head coach, @ThunderBBL ‘14-‘18; BBL05 champions
- head coach, @DelhiCapitals ‘16-’17
- Rahul Dravid brought him back to Team India in 2022
- mental coach to 150+ pro athletes across 11 sports
- mental coach to India's men's hockey team (@Olympics bronze at @Paris2024)
- mental coach to @DGukesh (World Chess Champion)
- Professor of Practice, @Deakin
- author of "The Barefoot Coach"
- and a surfer by heart

From being obsessed about why people break under pressure to teaching champions how not to.

@PaddyUpton1 joins us LIVE on TON at 4PM!

[Offline @offline_members]

🌱

[Sparsh Agarwal @sparshselim]

getting ready to welcome @OfflineOnAir @somani_utsav in darjeeling

[Offline @offline_members]

An evening of comedy, and then the real magic.
Offline Mumbai with Anirban Dasgupta—good laughs, even better people.

[The Offline Network @OfflineOnAir]

From a small town in Churu to building multiple billion-dollar companies.

This is the story of Amit Lakhotia.

- born in Churu, Rajasthan
- engineering from NSIT Delhi
- MBA from @IIMAhmedabad
- joined @makemytrip (2007)
- scaled the B2B business to ₹500 crore revenue from scratch
- became 1/3rd of MakeMyTrip's business
- MMT listed on @Nasdaq at $478M in 2010
- left MMT to launch GetMeCab, India’s first online cab aggregator
- became India's #1 cab company by revenue (pre-Ola/Uber)
- left it to join @Paytm in 2012
- built Paytm wallet to 100+ Mn users in 16 months
- acquired a market share of ~75%
- saw QR codes in China; deployed 2Cr+ before demonetisation
- built India's first cashless rails; scaled to 100M+ users
- left Paytm in 2015 and joined @tokopedia in Indonesia
- scaled it up & left it in June 2018
- Tokopedia eventually merges with @gojekindonesia → listed in 2022 at ~$28B
- Amit came back to India in 2018
- became an early investor in @bharatpeindia, exited later with 80x returns
- founded @parkplus_io in 2019, solving all car-related worries
- raised $11M Series A (2020)
- COVID hit, demand died
- Park+ pivoted to an unassailable moat
- raised $25M Series B (2021)
- raised ~$17M Series C (2022)
- 20M car owners, 100+ cities, 3k+ parking lots, 10k+ residential partners
- ₹96 Cr revenue in FY23
- ₹175 Cr revenue in FY25

Turned Park+ from a parking app into a full car super-app: stacked in FASTag, challans, insurance, car wash, and servicing

And today @amit_lakhotia joins us LIVE on TON at 4PM!

[Offline @offline_members]

@dhruvilsanghvi @somani_utsav @lkeshre @srikanthiy @darpan_sanghvi @albinder @farooqadam @eldsjal @TweetShah @itsgauravkhatri @Vysheshk So good to have our members featured in this awesome compilation of war stories and lessons! 🚀