/shethepeople/media/agency_attachments/2024/11/11/2024-11-11t082606806z-shethepeople-black-logo-2000-x-2000-px-1.png){kind=logo}
/shethepeople/media/member_avatars/f6Hx9r9nCo86nbVoH3L2.png )
Follow Us/shethepeople/media/media_files/2025/11/18/shaili-chopra-ideabaaz-titan-2025-11-18-14-37-41.png)
In Frame (L-R): Dr Prashant Agarwal, Co-founder of SkinInspired; Arjun Vaidya, Founder of V3 Ventures and Ideabaaz Titan; Shaili Chopra, Founder of SheThePeople & Gytree and Ideabaaz Titan; Piyush Jain, Co-Founder of SkinInspired | Photo Source: Shaili (SheThePeople Copyright)
When you sit on the Ideabaaz stage, you quickly learn that pitches are the smallest part of a founder’s story. The lights, the humour, the sharp one-liners are all there. But what really stays with you is what comes before the pitch. The part that never finds space on a slide. The part that shapes the founder long before they walk onto the stage.
Not just pitches; human stories
Take the Kagpatra founders. Their story begins in a modest home where their father works long hours lifting gas cylinders, doing the kind of labour that leaves you exhausted by the afternoon.
Yet, he believes deeply in his children’s ideas and dreams. He supports them quietly, without understanding every detail, but with the conviction that they should have a chance he never did.
When they pitch on stage, what you see is not just a business. You see the weight of a family’s hope.
Then there is the founder of BabyOrgano. She came in with a calm confidence that only mothers know how to carry, but her story revealed the pressure she faced behind the scenes.
Six months into motherhood, she was questioned by her family about why she was prioritising her startup. She was told that her ambitions could wait. That her business would be a distraction.
She built anyway. She built while balancing sleepless nights, childcare, and emotional resistance from the people closest to her.
Her presence on the Ideabaaz stage became a quiet but powerful statement about the right to pursue dreams at any stage of life.
There are stories that go beyond individual ambition and speak to social impact. The ResQbot founder is one of them.
He created a mechanical device to help rescue children who fall into borewells, an issue that tragically returns to the headlines every few years.
What makes his journey extraordinary is the depth of sacrifice behind it. His father, a kisaan, mortgaged his entire piece of land so his son could fund the development and engineering of the device.
That kind of belief cannot be quantified in equity. It cannot be included in valuation discussions.
When he finished his pitch, the entire Ideabaaz stage rose in a spontaneous standing ovation. It felt like a moment India needed to witness.
And then there is Krishna from Story Tailor. A young founder from Gujarat who learned entrepreneurship the hard way.
She trusted the wrong digital agency and watched her savings drain out. It was heartbreaking for her family and deeply discouraging for her.
But she kept building. She redesigned her brand, learned the tools she never had access to before, and slowly shaped a charming children’s brand from the ashes of her early mistakes.
When she spoke on stage, she did not hide her setbacks. She owned them. That honesty is what makes her journey resonate far beyond her revenue numbers.
A founder's lens
These stories remind me why I carry my own founder lens into every conversation at Ideabaaz.
Building SheThePeople and later Gytree showed me firsthand that women’s entrepreneurship and women’s health deserve scale, ambition and investment at the same level as any other sector.
These platforms were built from scratch because women were being underserved, misunderstood or made invisible.
Today, Gytree is solving for the massive gap in midlife and menopause care, backed by research, community and a clear product vision.
SheThePeople has grown into India’s strongest women-first digital ecosystem. When I sit on the Ideabaaz panel, I bring that lived experience of building, breaking, rebuilding and scaling.
I recognise the blind spots founders face, the biases they navigate and the potential that often gets missed. That is the perspective I bring into the room: one that believes stories deserve space, and founders deserve the chance to build at full strength.
Ideabaaz does more than showcase startups. It reveals the people who are shaping India’s future. It reminds us that behind every pitch is a family, a sacrifice, a risk, a dream and often a quiet fight for a different life.
This is the India I believe in. And this is the India that deserves to be seen.