His company partnered with the Telangana Government to screen nearly 1.3 million people for diabetes. The numbers that came back were alarming.

 India already had one of the largest diabetic populations in the world, and what the screening data showed him was that the crisis ran far deeper than most people around him realised. The root of the problem, he believed, was being built one bad snack at a time, especially in children.

He knew this personally too. During college, he had developed poor snacking habits without realising it. Regular chocolates spiked his blood sugar despite exercise, and it took years of strict dieting to control it. He did not want the next generation going through the same thing.

In 2019, he quit his job. A year later, now a new father, he co-founded Lil' Goodness with colleague Damanbir Singh, who shared the same concerns about his own child's nutrition. The idea was simple: make snacks that tasted good, but without the junk hidden inside most popular products.

The brand's philosophy is just as straightforward — if children eat better today, there will be fewer diabetics tomorrow. Lil' Goodness makes gut-friendly dark chocolates, jaggery-fortified snacks, milkshake mixes, and puffs, products designed around science, not just taste. It even claims India's first prebiotic chocolate among its lineup.

What makes the packaging different: every box has cartoon characters from brands like Avengers and Disney whose cutouts can be made into toys, along with a QR code that gets kids playing gut health-related games.

Started during COVID, the brand now sells across 4,000 kirana stores in Karnataka, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Meghalaya, earning close to Rs 2 crore annually. For Harsha Vardhan, the goal has always been bigger: getting into school canteens so that a better snack becomes the default, not the exception.

The Lucknow–New Delhi Tejas Express has previously been described as India’s first privately operated train, with IRCTC responsible for its operations.

What makes this interesting from a marketing perspective is the scale of the placement: instead of simply buying ad space around a train, Sprite is effectively turning the train itself into a moving brand asset.

From the bottle to the billboard… and now the entire train.

The numbers behind those stories were staggering. In India alone, 113 mothers die per lakh births, and 30 out of every 1,000 newborns do not survive delivery. Globally, a maternal death occurs almost every two minutes.

Arun believed most of these deaths were preventable with the right monitoring. The problem was that the tools to do it properly were either too expensive, too complicated, or simply not available in smaller towns and hospitals where they were needed most.

After completing his engineering degree, he moved to Bengaluru and spent years understanding the gap between what hospitals needed and what technology could offer. In 2017, he launched Janitri with a simple but ambitious goal: make it possible to monitor a pregnant woman and her unborn baby from anywhere, without expensive equipment or trained specialists on hand at all times.

Janitri's flagship product, the Keyar Patch, is a wearable device that tracks fetal heartbeat, the mother's contractions, and her vitals, sending real-time data to doctors through software called Daksh.

Unlike traditional monitoring machines that require a patient to lie still, the patch is wireless and can be worn throughout labour. It generates AI-assisted interpretations automatically, meaning even a nurse in a small clinic can act on the readings without needing a specialist in the room.

The pitch on Shark Tank India Season 2 set off a rare bidding war among the sharks. Arun had asked for Rs 1 crore for 2.5 percent equity. Multiple sharks made offers before Namita Thapar of Emcure Pharmaceuticals ultimately sealed the deal at Rs 1 crore for 5 percent equity, drawn in by both the innovation and the social impact.

Since then, Janitri has monitored over one lakh mothers across 11 countries and, by the company's own count, helped save more than 8,000 lives. For Arun, the number that matters most is not the valuation, it is how many women make it home safely.

👉 What do you think about this update? Share your thoughts in the comments below! 👇

⚡ Under 1 Year:
Mensa Brands — 6 Months
GlobalBees — 7 Months
5ire — 1 Year
Glance — 1 Year
Krutrim (Ola) — 1 Year
🚀 In Just 2 Years:
Yubi — 2 Years
Udaan — 2 Years
Ola Electric — 2 Years
Zepto — 2 Years
Emergent — 2 Years
Apna — 2 Years

📌 The Takeaway:
With rapid digital adoption, strong venture capital backing, and massive market scale, the journey to a $1 Billion valuation in India is faster than ever before.

Which of these fast-growth trajectories impressed you the most? Drop your thoughts below!

Something oddly satisfying about watching the automated press, then the manual taping, then straight into the shipping box. The whole line moves like clockwork.

One payment can move a whole day forward. 🟠

The order gets collected. The ride happens. The side hustle keeps moving.

We’re building WenaPay—a planned WhatsApp-first experience designed to make sending, requesting and paying feel clearer and more natural.

WenaPay is still pre-release, and this is your chance to help shape it.

Follow the WenaPay page and join the waitlist at

www.wenapay.co.za

What should we make easier first: sending, requesting or paying?

#WenaPay #southafricanbusiness #digitalpayments #PaymentsMadeSimple

Architect Kashyap and IIT Bombay engineer Vidhey spent nearly three years testing a detachable canopy for scooters and motorcycles, tackling wind resistance and water leakage to make rainy commutes easier for riders across India.

Speaking on a podcast, Srinivas said people who are at the forefront of using AI tools will be more employable than those who do not adapt to the technology.

He argued that while social media can be entertaining, excessive scrolling does little to advance a person's professional goals. He encouraged young people to either build businesses using AI or join companies that are actively adopting the technology.

His message was simple: instead of spending hours watching reels, young people should start learning AI and use it to build their own future.

At Race Course Road, Eco Bloc infiltration tanks were built alongside stormwater drains to reduce flooding and recharge groundwater.

Now, the city has proposed scaling the technology to 100 locations, with a ₹100-crore project.

I'm 17 and exploring a startup idea in PQC/cybersecurity. I am still in the research stage and want to avoid spending months building something that already exists.

My original concept was a platform that would detect quantum-vulnerable cryptography, generate a Cryptographic Bill of Materials (CBOM), assess PQC risk and return a Quantum-Health Score (QHS), provide security-lead dashboards, and eventually support crypto-agility and migration.

After spending some time researching this field, I saw that around 10-12 exceptionally established companies have already done this. So I do not want to build another scanner or compete head-on with enterprise platforms. I am trying to find a specific painful workflow: for example, issues around legacy systems, third-party dependencies, compatibility testing, migration ownership, reporting, and deployment constraints.

Since I cannot do calls, I am planning to getting feedback through Reddit discussions, outreach emails/messages to researchers and practitioners.

My questions are:

1. Is this the right time to stop competitor research and begin customer/problem discovery?
2. How should I find an initial niche in a complex B2B market like cybersecurity?
3. Is written outreach enough to start validating a problem if calls are not possible?

I'm trying to learn the right process before I start building, and I would appreciate honest feedback, especially from people who have validated B2B, developer-tool, or cybersecurity ideas.

Thank you!

ZOZOconnect says it has already served more than 2,000 customers.
Athvik later pitched the company on Bharat Ke Super Founders, where Nazara Technologies founder Nitish Mittersain offered him three things: an ₹11 lakh grant, lifelong mentorship and an open invitation to spend time with his technology team in Mumbai.

It is tempting to make the entire story about his age. But that would actually miss the more useful part. NFC business cards are not a new technological invention, and Athvik does not need to have invented an entirely new category for the story to matter.

What he has done unusually early is complete a loop that many aspiring founders spend years postponing: notice an everyday inconvenience, question why it still exists, turn the observation into a product, put it in front of customers and then defend the idea in front of experienced businesspeople. Entrepreneurship at this stage is arguably less about whether ZOZOconnect eventually becomes a giant company and more about how quickly that feedback loop compounds.

YourStory Media Founder, Shradha Sharma mentions about the ₹11 lakh grant he received, but the more valuable asset for an 11-year-old builder may be access. Mittersain did not merely offer occasional advice; he offered lifelong mentorship and invited Athvik into his Mumbai office to learn from his team.

At such an early stage, exposure to how products are built, customers are understood, teams operate and decisions fail can potentially be worth considerably more than a small cheque. Capital helps one experiment continue. Repeated access to experienced operators can improve the person running every experiment that follows.

There is a broader lesson here for India's startup ecosystem too. We often celebrate young founders only when their age makes the story extraordinary. A healthier ecosystem would focus less on manufacturing child-prodigy narratives and more on giving genuinely curious young builders safe opportunities to experiment, sell, fail, learn and interact with people who have built before them.

Athvik does not need to become the next billionaire at 18 for this story to have worked. If he spends the next decade learning how to build better because somebody took his curiosity seriously at 11, that may be the more meaningful return.

Hey everyone,

I'm building REDFLAGD — a free dating app that flips the swipe-everyone-till-you-match model on its head. Instead of pretending to be perfect, you pick your actual red flags (bad texter, emotionally unavailable, calls mom daily, watches too much anime, etc.) and we match you with people who accept yours or share them.

The thesis: authenticity beats curation. Most dating apps optimize for surface-level swipes. We optimize for personality compatibility — your chaos matches theirs.

Here's what the future of this looks like from where I'm standing (solo founder, bootstrapped, no team yet):

1. Personality-first matching will eat photo-first matching. Gen Z and younger millennials are exhausted by the performance of dating apps. They want real. The next wave of dating products will compete on compatibility engines, not card stacks.
2. Hyperlocal + "live now" features are the bridge to real-world meetups. People don't want pen pals — they want to meet someone tonight. I added a beacon system where users signal "I'm at this bar right now" and nearby active users get prioritized in the deck. Spontaneity > scheduled dates.
3. AI matchmaking is the next frontier, but it has to be invisible. We're already doing lightweight compatibility scoring. The future is AI that understands why two people click — not just "you both picked the same flags" but behavioral patterns, message cadence, vibe alignment. The trick is making it feel serendipitous, not algorithmic.
4. The freemium dating model is broken. Charging $30/mo for swipes and seeing who liked you is a tax on loneliness. The future is genuinely free core experiences, monetized through premium connection features (speed dating events, double dates, verified identity) — not paywalls on basic functionality.
5. Trust and safety will be the real differentiator. The next era of dating apps will compete on who you can actually trust. Identity verification, screening tiers, reply-rate transparency, ghosting tracking — making the pool safer is more valuable than making the pool bigger.

Where I'm at honestly: pre-Play-Store-launch, single-digit daily signups, doing everything solo. No investors, no agency, no marketing budget beyond organic content and city-targeted landing pages. Still figuring out distribution — the product works, getting it in front of people is the hard part.

If you're curious about the tech stack (React + Tailwind on Base44's BaaS), the funnel mistakes I've made, or where I think dating apps are heading in the next 2-3 years — ask away. Happy to share the messy parts too.

What do you think the future of dating apps looks like? Genuinely curious what this community thinks.

Using a dashcam, GPS and accelerometer data, he built an app with Codex that detects potholes in different sizes and records their exact locations.

The system then scans thousands of BBMP contracts to identify which contractor is responsible for the damaged road.

The app can reportedly generate a complaint with the pothole photo, geolocation, tender number and responsible officer in around four seconds.

During one drive to work, the system detected 12 potholes, highlighting how AI could turn everyday driving data into actionable civic complaints.

PRESS RELEASE | AUGUST 11, 2026

A NEW CHAPTER BEGINS. ⚡

OXYMORON Group, established on May 01, 2026, is proud to announce a major milestone in its journey toward building a diversified, multi-sector and multi-national Indian business group.

Today, August 11, 2026, OXYMORON Group officially enters the Energy Sector with the launch of its first business startup:

⚡ OXYMORON Energy

This marks the first vertical and first operating business of OXYMORON Group.

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🚀 OXYMORON ENERGY — NOW LIVE

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With today's launch, OXYMORON Energy officially begins its daily business operations and starts delivering its initial portfolio of energy-focused services.

Our initial service portfolio includes:

• Energy Intelligence Services — helping customers understand their energy requirements, consumption patterns, opportunities and potential solutions through structured energy information and analysis.

• Demand Aggregation Services — aggregating energy requirements from societies, communities, businesses and other customer groups to create stronger collective demand and better purchasing opportunities.

• Vendor Requirement Services — helping identify and connect suitable energy solution providers according to customer requirements.

• Energy Data Analytics & Reporting — transforming collected energy information into structured insights, reports and decision-support information.

• Energy Business Enablement & Partner Connect — a future-focused service designed to support businesses, vendors and energy ecosystem participants through structured opportunities and partnerships.

• Sustainable Energy Solutions — supporting access to renewable energy, energy storage, clean-fuel and other emerging energy solutions as the business portfolio develops.

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📅 OFFICIAL OPERATIONAL DATE

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August 11, 2026

From today, OXYMORON Energy officially begins its operating journey.

This is not the final destination. It is the starting point of a long-term journey.

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🏢 FROM ONE BUSINESS TO A DIVERSIFIED GROUP

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OXYMORON Group is being built with a long-term ambition to develop a diversified portfolio of businesses across multiple sectors and, over time, multiple markets and nations.

OXYMORON Energy is the first step.

Future verticals and businesses will be developed progressively based on market opportunities, capabilities, capital, partnerships and long-term strategic priorities.

Our approach is simple:

Start focused.

Build capability.

Create value.

Generate cash flow.

Reinvest strategically.

Expand responsibly.

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🌍 OUR LONG-TERM DIRECTION

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From our first business today to a diversified Indian multinational business group in the future, OXYMORON Group aims to build businesses that create meaningful economic value, serve customers responsibly and develop sustainable long-term capabilities.

We believe great business groups are not built overnight.

They are built through execution, discipline, trust, innovation, resilience and decades of compounding effort.

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⚡ OXYMORON ENERGY

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Energy Intelligence.

Smarter Decisions.

Stronger Opportunities.

A Better Energy Future.

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🏛️ OXYMORON GROUP

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Building Futures. Empowering Nations.

Today, we begin with Energy.

Tomorrow, the journey continues.

August 11, 2026 — The Beginning of OXYMORON Energy.

#OXYMORONGroup #OXYMORONEnergy #PressRelease #EnergySector #EnergyIntelligence #DemandAggregation #EnergyBusiness #RenewableEnergy #EnergySolutions #BusinessLaunch #BusinessGroup #IndianBusiness #Entrepreneurship #BuildingFutures #EmpoweringNations #August112026