Offline

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.

The Himalayan Offsite. India's leading startup founders visit Darjeeling. Day 1. Bengal Renaissance. Indian Manufacturing. Frontier Research. @AltCarbonIndia x @OfflineOnAir 🧵

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

@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.

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: altcarbon.notion.site/Alt-Careers-1c…. And if you want to be a part of such experiences alongside India’s best founders, consider joining us for the next one at: offline.club/membership. Thank you @somani_utsav, Fabiola, Sharon, and the Offline team for always finding unique ways to expand our imagination.

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 🌿

Day 0 of @AltCarbonIndia x @OfflineOnAir Indian Earth Sciences for Global Carbon Drawdown

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!

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

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!

@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! 🚀

Forget the generic Silicon Valley playbooks. The Founder Manual by @somani_utsav is officially out, and it’s less of a textbook and more of a "war map" for the Indian ecosystem. @offline_members

- Dilip Kumar - Studied computer science in Delhi - Worked at Evalueserve, then Signzy. - Founded Inolyst in 2009. - Built it from IPR services into legaltech. - Founded ImStrong in 2019 for fitness and yoga trainers. - Raised ₹3 crore from Rainmatter and Raghunandan G. - Made the key shift from founder to investor in 2023. - Now leads health investing at Rainmatter. - Invested in 35+ companies. - Backed Fittr, The Whole Truth, Ultrahuman, Devils Circuit, Lissun, Niramai, Praan Health. - Believes trust is the moat in preventive health. distribution is IP. - Believes founder health is the moat of the business. asking is a superpower. - Rebuilt his body from scratch. - Went from a 32yo overweight to 40yo endurance athlete. - Finished as the third-fastest Indian at Boston in 2022. - PB: 2:55. - Sees Indian fitness where Indian cricket was before the breakout. @kmr_dilip joins The Offline Network LIVE. Today at 4 PM.

Most startup advice is clean, structured, and easy to consume. Real founder journeys are not. No playbooks. No perfect timing. No certainty. Inside The Founder Manual, 100 of India’s top founders share what actually happened — the decisions at 3AM, the pivots no one saw coming, and the moments that almost broke them. Not what they say on podcasts. Not what’s in their LinkedIn bio. The real answer to one question: “What do you wish someone had told you before you started?” If you’re building — this is the book that was missing. Out now. The Founder Manual on Amazon and Flipkart.

🌟An hour into the future. The Offline Network hosts Vishesh Khurana (@Vysheshk), Co-Founder, @ShiprocketIndia, for a one-hour LIVE workshop on building with AI. Tomorrow. LIVE at 4 PM IST. Got a question for Vishesh? Drop it in the replies 👇

A decade ago, I watched @somani_utsav cold-email @naval to bring @AngelListIndia to India. Then he decided to start @iSeedFund in the morning, and launched it by the evening. @offline_members ? Same thing. Idea in the morning, LIVE in the evening. 🧵 1/5

I spent 10 years investing in 200+ startups. Then I sat down with 100 of India's best founders and asked them one question: What do you wish someone had told you before you started? Their answers became a book. The Founder Manual is out now with @PenguinIndia. @1kunalbahl wrote the foreword. He called entrepreneurship "irrational, brave, and lonely." Hard to argue. Inside, you'll find war stories from founders who've collectively built billions in value: @lkeshre (@_groww) on why customer obsession beats everything else. @awaisahmedna on starting @PixxelSpace while still in college and convincing ISRO to care. @itsgauravkhatri on going from pilot training to building @gonoise into India's largest wearables brand. @smtgpt and @neerajKh_ on building @CoinDCX when the RBI literally banned crypto. @ankushgr8 on why innovation mode is always on at @RebelFoodsHQ. @TweetShah on what @Pepperfry learned about partnerships the hard way. @amit_lakhotia on building @parkplus_io during COVID when parking lots were empty. @RevantB on making supplements indulgent at Mosaic Wellness. Matt Chitharanjan on @BlueTokaiCoffee's journey to making specialty coffee mainstream. Arjun Vaidya on turning emotion and conviction into a modern Ayurveda brand with Dr. Vaidya's. @sparshgupta of VWO scaled Wingify without raising a single rupee. Why that was both the smartest and scariest decision. Plus insights from the founders of Shiprocket, CarDekho, HomeLane, Smartworks, LogiNext, Decentro, Bizongo, Hevo Data, TBO Tek, Awfis, OLX India, Kiddopia, TrulyMadly, GoBoult and more. This isn't a theory book. No frameworks. No 2x2 matrices. Just founders telling you what actually happened. The parts they don't put in pitch decks or mention on podcasts. The mess. The pivots. The 3 AM decisions that changed everything. If you're building something in India right now, this book was written for you. Link in reply 👇

One of our own just leveled up 🚀 Offline member Sparsh Gupta (Wingify) raises $150M. Built quietly. Winning loudly.

@OfflineOnAir 😇

"The best thing you did was introduce me to Offline." Avik Ashar shares how a founder, while shutting down their company, found strength in the @offline_members community. "Offline got me through it… and showed me it’s not the end."