Vishal Suri
1
The fluorescent light buzzed overhead as Arjun paced the narrow living room of their two-bedroom rented flat in Indiranagar, Bangalore. His glasses were fogged from the steam of the masala chai in his hand, and the laptop screen on the table blinked with the latest rejection email from a potential investor. Rajeev, sitting cross-legged on the floor, tapped furiously at his keyboard, immersed in code. He hadn’t spoken for an hour. Kabir lay stretched across the worn-out sofa, eyes fixed on the ceiling fan spinning lazily above him. No one wanted to say it, but the silence in the room spoke louder than words. Their startup—Aurora Systems—was bleeding time, money, and energy. They had twenty-three days left before rent was due. The bank balance? ₹4,732. Enough for coffee and some instant noodles. Maybe a single Uber ride if they split it three ways.
It all began three months ago, on a drunken night lit by ambition and desperation. Arjun had just quit his job at a multinational, sick of working sixteen-hour days to make someone else’s dream profitable. Rajeev had been laid off by a gaming company that couldn’t survive the recession. Kabir had walked out of an elite MBA program halfway through the semester, calling it “a charade for rich kids who didn’t want to grow up.” They had only one thing in common then—a half-baked idea about creating a hyperlocal B2B logistics platform using AI and a common hatred for the word “no.” That night, under the fairy lights of a Koramangala café, they wrote their first pitch deck. Kabir spoke, Arjun designed, Rajeev coded.
Back in the present, the sound of Rajeev slamming his laptop shut broke the silence. “The backend’s stable. At least something in this damn company is.” His voice was flat but edged with frustration. Arjun ran a hand through his hair, now longer and messier than it used to be in his corporate days. “That investor from Delhi—Ankur Mehta—didn’t even open the prototype link. Replied in less than two minutes.” Kabir sat up slowly, rubbing his eyes. “That’s the tenth one this week. And we’re running out of leads.” “Maybe,” Rajeev muttered, “we’re just three idiots who thought hustle was enough.”
But Arjun wasn’t ready to quit. Not yet. “We need one shot. One meeting where we don’t sound like three desperate college kids with a pitch deck and a dream. We need someone who sees the fire in this.” “Fire doesn’t matter if there’s no fuel,” Kabir replied. “Or if the forest is already burned.”
That’s when the phone rang.
Kabir glanced at the screen and frowned. “Unknown number. Delhi code.” Arjun snatched the phone and answered it on speaker. “Hello?” A clear voice cut through the static. “Arjun Sen? This is Isha Talwar from Mehta Ventures. I saw your prototype on LinkedIn. Ankur passed it to me. Are you free to pitch tomorrow at 11 a.m.? We’re in Bangalore for a week.”
The three looked at each other, stunned.
“Yes,” Arjun said quickly. “Yes, we’re free.”
“Good. Don’t come in with a pitch deck. Come in with a reason we should believe in you.”
The line clicked off.
The room erupted in chaos. Kabir leaped off the sofa. “Did that just happen?” Rajeev stared at the screen. “I didn’t even know it was public on LinkedIn.” “I scheduled it last week,” Arjun said, his voice trembling slightly. “Just in case.”
They had twelve hours. No deck. No guarantee. No script.
But they had one shot.
Kabir went into war mode. “I’ll prep our user flow and pricing model. Real numbers. No jargon.” Rajeev was already reopening his laptop. “I’ll set up the demo. If the server crashes mid-pitch, we’re dead.” Arjun stood still for a moment, then exhaled. “And I’ll tell them why we haven’t given up. Why we’re still in this.”
That night, they didn’t sleep. Kabir spoke to potential clients over the phone, pretending to be “Business Outreach Lead.” Rajeev cleaned up every single bug that had made them cringe for weeks. Arjun rehearsed in front of a mirror until his voice went hoarse. At 4:00 a.m., they sat down to eat leftover rice and dal. No one complained.
By 6:30 a.m., dressed in their sharpest clothes—cleanest, at least—they stood in front of a mirror. Kabir adjusted Arjun’s collar. “You don’t need to look rich, bro. Just not bankrupt.” Rajeev tucked in his shirt. “Let’s not forget to smile. Investors love optimism.” “And confidence,” Arjun added. “Even if it’s borrowed.”
At 10:45 a.m., they stood outside the 14th floor of the Mehta Ventures office in UB City. Polished floors. Quiet halls. Receptionists who didn’t blink unless necessary. The receptionist looked up. “Name?” “Arjun Sen. Aurora Systems.” She checked her screen and nodded. “You’re expected. Please wait.”
A few minutes later, a woman in a navy-blue blazer stepped out. “Arjun, Kabir, Rajeev? I’m Isha Talwar. Follow me.”
The room they entered had no table. Just a circle of chairs, a large screen, and a glass window that overlooked the Bangalore skyline. Isha gestured to the seats. “We don’t do formal pitches anymore. Just talk. Show us what you’ve built.”
And in that moment, standing in front of a room full of quiet, sharp-eyed listeners, Arjun felt a strange calm. Maybe it was sleep deprivation. Maybe it was purpose.
He opened his laptop.
Clicked play on the demo.
And began.
2
The room was too quiet. Arjun’s voice echoed against the glass walls as the prototype played on the screen. “What we’ve built,” he said, clicking to the dashboard, “is not just another logistics app. It’s a smart interface for kirana stores, street vendors, and small warehouses—those who get left behind in the big data race. We optimize deliveries not by zones, but by behavioral patterns and micro-habit data of consumers.”
One of the investors raised an eyebrow. “Behavioral patterns?”
Kabir leaned forward. “Yes, for example—if five stores in the same gali stock sugar but one of them consistently runs out by Thursday evening, we track what’s changing in that micro-region. Festivals, school schedules, even cricket matches. We’re not just mapping distance, we’re mapping human routine.”
Isha nodded slowly. “And how many vendors have onboarded so far?”
“Seventeen,” Rajeev answered, “with twelve more in pipeline. All within two local clusters.”
The man in the grey kurta leaned back. “Revenue?”
Arjun swallowed. “Not yet. We decided to delay monetization till the tech is stable. But we’ve saved each vendor approximately ₹1,200 per week in redundant trips and spoiled inventory. That’s our leverage.”
Isha was scribbling. The man didn’t speak. Another silence.
Then she looked up. “And why should we believe you’ll survive the next six months?”
Arjun looked at Rajeev and Kabir. Rajeev gave a small nod. Kabir, unusually quiet, just said, “Tell them.”
Arjun drew a breath. “Because we don’t have a Plan B. We’ve emptied our savings, borrowed from people we shouldn’t have, broken relationships, skipped birthdays. We’ve lost things we can’t name anymore. All for this. There’s nothing romantic about startups—it’s not about TED Talks or headlines. It’s about not having an out. We’re still here because we don’t know how to walk away.”
The silence this time felt heavier. The investors exchanged glances. Isha said, “We’ll get back to you soon.”
Outside the building, Kabir muttered, “Soon could mean next year.”
Rajeev sat down on the footpath. “I need paratha and sleep. In that order.”
Arjun stared up at the sky. “We did our part. Now it’s theirs.”
They didn’t speak for the rest of the ride home in the auto.
Two days later, the email came.
Subject: Aurora Systems – Term Sheet
Kabir screamed first. Then Rajeev tripped over his laptop charger and almost dislocated his ankle. Arjun opened the PDF with shaking hands.
₹35 lakhs. For 12% equity. Pre-seed round.
“You know what this means, right?” Kabir said breathlessly. “We’re legit now.”
“No,” Arjun replied, eyes still on the screen. “Now it really begins.”
They signed it that night, no fancy lawyer, no Champagne—just three steel tumblers of chai.
Week one of funding: panic.
They had money now, but no structure. The investor’s first ask: a roadmap with clear targets, timelines, and vertical leads.
Kabir took operations. Rajeev became CTO. Arjun stepped into the role of CEO.
“Chief Everything Officer,” Kabir joked.
They moved into a coworking space in Koramangala. It smelled like ambition and underpaid interns.
The first hire was Anjali, a product designer who looked unimpressed by all three of them. “I like the problem,” she said. “But you guys look like sleep-deprived philosophers.”
“Welcome to the circus,” Rajeev replied.
Anjali was brutal with feedback. She redesigned the app’s UI in a week and said, “Now it doesn’t look like it was made on a college assignment night.”
They onboarded fifteen more vendors that month. Two churned. One had a relative in the transport business and pulled out. Kabir was furious. “Blood ties shouldn’t defeat product efficiency.”
Arjun stayed calm. “We’ll win some, lose some. Focus on retention.”
But the cracks were forming.
Kabir worked eighteen-hour days and refused to delegate. Rajeev grew increasingly irritable about “too many meetings.” Arjun spent more time pitching at events, looking polished while everything backstage felt like it was catching fire.
One night, Rajeev slammed the office door behind him. “I’m not your employee, Arjun. Stop talking to me like one.”
Kabir muttered, “Here we go again.”
Arjun snapped, “We need structure, not sentiment. This isn’t college anymore.”
Rajeev’s voice rose. “Exactly. So stop acting like our class monitor.”
Silence.
Then Arjun whispered, “Do you want out?”
Rajeev looked away. “No. But I want to remember why we’re in.”
That night, they didn’t speak again.
But Arjun rewrote the roadmap alone.
The next morning, a fire drill in the building paused work. They sat on the footpath again—same as Day One.
Kabir broke the silence. “Remember the prototype crash in the second demo?”
Rajeev smirked. “We blamed a bug. Truth was, I forgot to connect the payment API.”
Arjun chuckled. “And that chai shop guy who called you ‘data boy’?”
They laughed.
Then Kabir grew serious. “Let’s not forget why we started. Let’s fix what’s broken inside before we scale outside.”
They bumped fists. Three founders. One fight.
All in or nothing.
3
At 3:17 a.m. on a Wednesday, Rajeev’s slack message dropped into the team channel with a single word: “Fire.” Arjun woke to the notification chime and stared at the screen, groggy and confused. Kabir had just dozed off on a pile of courier invoices. He jolted upright at the word. Fire? Real fire? Metaphor? The answer came seconds later. “App just duplicated 138 delivery orders. Clients are livid. Server log points to the auto-scheduler loop. I’m patching. Wake the hell up.”
By 3:21, all three were on a video call in grainy night-mode clarity, shirts half-worn and eyes red from exhaustion. “Did this reach users?” Arjun asked. Rajeev rubbed his face. “Of course it did. Auto-dispatch sent duplicate jobs to our partner drivers. Imagine waking up to two delivery boys with the same crate of onions at your shop.” “How did this even get pushed?” Kabir barked. “Was this in the staging branch?” “No,” Rajeev said. “It wasn’t supposed to go live. Someone merged without QA.” They all looked at each other. Kabir’s voice dropped. “It was me.” Silence. Kabir looked down. “I thought it was minor. Just a timestamp patch.” Arjun didn’t shout. He just said, “Fix it. Then we’ll talk.” The call ended with the sound of keys clacking furiously.
By 6 a.m., the hotfix was live. The bug was contained. But the damage? Not so easily patched. Two vendors dropped out. One called it “tech drama we don’t have time for.” Arjun called each one personally to apologize. One of them told him, “I trusted your boys. I need to trust your system.” The call ended with a sigh.
By 10 a.m., Isha Talwar called. “Heard about your duplicate dispatch issue.” Arjun felt the weight in his chest double. “We’ve fixed it.” “That’s not why I called. I have an investor flying in tomorrow. Big name. Potential follow-up round. Wants to meet early-stage founders solving last-mile problems. I’d like to bring him to your office.” “When?” Arjun asked. “Tomorrow. 9 a.m.” “Sure,” he said, even though his palms were sweaty. “We’ll be ready.” “Good. And Arjun?” “Yes?” “Don’t let another bug hit the fan before then.” The line disconnected.
For the next 18 hours, the office turned into a war zone. Kabir created a “clean zone” around the demo devices—no code updates, no patches, no rogue GitHub commits. Rajeev turned into a human firewall, watching server traffic like a hawk. Arjun cleaned the office himself—cleared chai cups, removed crumpled sticky notes, even wiped down the whiteboard which had carried a week-old doodle of a camel captioned “Investor Vibes.”
Anjali, their designer, walked in that evening and surveyed the chaos. “Wow. Are we launching to Mars?” “Investor visit,” Arjun muttered, sweeping biscuit crumbs off the couch. “Oh,” she said. “So I should remove the poster that says ‘move fast and break things’?” “Please.”
At 8:45 a.m. the next morning, the three of them stood in clean clothes—Kabir in a proper shirt for the first time in a month—waiting. A black sedan pulled up. Isha stepped out, followed by a tall man in a white kurta and aviators. Rajeev whispered, “Is this guy a VC or a Bollywood villain?” Arjun shot him a glare. The man entered the office and looked around. “Nice vibe. Smells like people actually work here.” Kabir beamed. “Some of us even live here.” The man chuckled. “I like founders who bleed into the carpet. Show me what you’ve got.”
The pitch wasn’t a pitch this time. It was a conversation. Arjun spoke of their vendor-first policy. Kabir explained the logistics partnerships. Rajeev showed off the anomaly-detection feature with such pride it was almost paternal. The man listened. Asked questions. Didn’t blink.
At the end, he said, “What do you need next?” “Mentorship,” Arjun said. “Money helps, but direction would be priceless.” The man turned to Isha. “Let’s talk. I like this tribe.” With that, he walked out.
The room remained quiet for a full minute.
Then Kabir said, “Was that… good?” Rajeev replied, “Or the calm before a term sheet storm?” Anjali walked in holding biryani packets. “Too early for champagne. But I figured celebration food should be heavy and spicy.”
They ate together on the floor. Between bites, Kabir whispered, “About that bug… I’m sorry.” Rajeev looked at him and nodded. “We fix. We don’t blame. That’s the pact.” Arjun added, “No more unscheduled pushes. No more lone decisions. We’re a team. And teams fail only when trust breaks.” Kabir smiled. “Well, the biryani’s doing its job. I’m full of forgiveness.”
That evening, a message popped up in their inbox. From Isha.
“Investor liked the pitch. Wants to lead your next round once you hit 100 vendor milestone. You’ve got 60 days.”
Kabir clapped. “Sixty days. Piece of cake.” Rajeev raised an eyebrow. “You mean a mountain made of cake.” Arjun stood, stretched, and said, “Then let’s climb.”
4
The whiteboard became a battlefield. Arjun drew circles around numbers like a coach before a final. “We have 60 days. 100 vendors. That’s 1.66 new vendors per day. Let’s just call it two a day to stay alive.” Kabir stared at the calendar. “That includes weekends?” “This isn’t a government job,” Arjun shot back. “Every day counts.” Rajeev added, “And we need retention, not just sign-ups. Churn kills.” Anjali put up a sticky note: Vendors onboarded ≠ Vendors retained. Kabir frowned. “Don’t you have design to do?” She smirked. “Just trying to save your soul from vanity metrics.”
They broke the city into zones. Kabir took south Bangalore, Arjun took east, and Rajeev—against his will—was assigned phone outreach with follow-up visits by interns. “Why me?” he protested. “I’m the CTO!” “Exactly,” Arjun replied. “You can debug a server. Now debug human hesitation.”
They hit the streets.
Kabir wore his best smile and even polished his shoes. He spent hours in marketplaces, sweating through his shirt, explaining dynamic routing algorithms to shop owners who mostly cared if their crates arrived on time. One man asked, “Will your app give me mangoes cheaper?” “No, sir,” Kabir said, “but we’ll make sure they arrive before they rot.” The man signed up.
Arjun’s strategy was different. He focused on small distributors and warehouse owners. He understood their frustrations—unpredictable deliveries, duplicate orders, unreliable drivers. He showed them case studies, real data, and most importantly, he listened. “If your tech solves what you say it does,” one supplier told him, “I’ll get my whole lane on board.”
Meanwhile, Rajeev discovered a truth more terrifying than server crashes—people. One fruit vendor thought he was from a scam call center. Another asked if he could install “WhatsApp with more stickers.” He groaned at the end of every day, muttering, “I was not built for this.” But slowly, his pitch got better. Sharper. He replaced jargon with stories. “Imagine if your son could just press a button and know where your delivery boy is. That’s what we’re building.”
By Day 12, they had onboarded 21 new vendors. But three had already dropped out. One was unhappy with a late delivery. Another said his nephew was building a similar app. The third claimed the interface was “too much English.” Anjali redesigned the flow with icons, local languages, and a tutorial mode. “Let’s not lose because of ego,” she said. “Let’s meet them where they are.”
By Day 18, they hit vendor number 40. The office celebrated with samosas and cold thumbs-ups. “Forty percent of the way,” Kabir said, between bites. “Let’s not jinx it.” Arjun smiled but said nothing. His eyes were on the roadmap. They were halfway through the timeline, but not halfway through the journey.
Then came the email.
Subject: Termination Notice – Logistics Partner
Kabir read it twice. Then a third time. “One of our major delivery partners is pulling out,” he said, holding his phone out like it might bite. “Citing resource reallocation.” Arjun read the mail. “They’re cutting ties with all micro-clients. We’re too small for their scale.” “But they handled 30% of our vendor deliveries!” Kabir shouted. “What now? We deliver on bicycles?” Rajeev stood up. “Maybe we do.”
They ran numbers. Reached out to part-time drivers. Even negotiated a deal with an EV startup testing electric scooters for intra-city delivery. Kabir spent two nights shadowing riders. He fell off twice, got yelled at by traffic cops, and learned that Bangalore potholes could dislocate the soul.
But they survived.
By Day 30, they had 68 vendors. Then 74. The numbers climbed slowly. But so did the cracks in their sanity.
They fought more. Slept less. One night Kabir stormed out, shouting, “I’m not a delivery boy! I have an MBA!” Rajeev retorted, “Then start managing instead of whining.” Arjun, caught in the middle, finally yelled, “Both of you shut up! This is what war looks like.”
The silence afterward was deep.
Kabir didn’t return that night.
Arjun found him the next morning sitting outside a juice stall, sipping silently. “Done sulking?” Arjun asked. Kabir nodded. “You were right. I lost the plot.” Arjun sat beside him. “We all have. But no one gets to leave midway.” “I know,” Kabir sighed. “I just want this to matter.” Arjun patted his shoulder. “It does. But only if we don’t break before it bends.”
Back at the office, Rajeev had already prepared a new logistics tracker. “Let’s try version two. Less glitchy, more forgiving.” Anjali handed out cups of cutting chai. “Less josh, more judo. Let’s use the opponent’s force.”
By Day 50, they had 94 vendors. Six more to go.
And then—without warning—came a call from an unknown number.
“Hello, is this Arjun from Aurora? We’re organizing the YuvaFounders Bangalore Demo Day. Heard you guys are on fire. Want in?” Arjun blinked. “Wait, who told you?” “A guy you pitched to last month. Said you were still raw but relentless.”
Arjun asked, “What’s the catch?” The voice said, “None. But you’ll be pitching in front of thirty VCs. It’s not for the weak-hearted.” Arjun grinned. “We’re in.”
He didn’t know then, but that call would change everything.
5
Arjun stood in front of the mirror and tried on five shirts. All of them looked the same—slightly crumpled, collar a bit too soft, sleeves rolled up more out of habit than style. Kabir walked past chewing on a pen cap. “Wear the black one. Makes you look like you know what a profit and loss statement is.” Arjun raised an eyebrow. “That one has a chai stain from week three.” “Exactly. Battle scar. Investors love survivors.”
They reached the demo venue—an industrial-chic coworking hub packed with caffeinated dreamers and pitch-perfect founders rehearsing like actors before opening night. Thirty hand-picked startups. Thirty investors. One giant pressure cooker disguised as an event called YuvaFounders Demo Day.
They didn’t speak much that morning. Rajeev was fine-tuning the backend to handle any live demo load. Kabir was rehearsing growth numbers under his breath like poetry. Arjun stared at the crowd, scanning every face, wondering which one held their future between their fingers.
When their turn came, the lights dimmed. A single mic. A ten-minute slot. No slides. Just a founder and a story.
Arjun walked up and faced the crowd.
“My name is Arjun Sen. I’m one of three co-founders of Aurora Systems. We’re building a logistics platform for the people you never think about—the kirana shop owner who gets up before sunrise to unpack crates, the vegetable seller who waits in a mandi line for hours, the delivery boy who knows every shortcut but still gets blamed when the system fails.”
He paused.
“We don’t have fancy degrees—well, except for Kabir, who abandoned his MBA halfway. We don’t have billion-dollar burn rates or celebrity board members. What we do have is grit. And ground reality. Our platform reduces delivery chaos, anticipates behavioral demand, and saves real money. For people who count every rupee.”
He clicked the remote. A live screen showed their dashboard in action.
“Today, we serve 98 vendors. By the time I walk off this stage, we’ll hit 100. Rajeev’s onboarding two more right now, one of them from a tea stall that only believed us after we tracked when cricket matches increased his sales.”
The crowd chuckled. Someone clapped.
Arjun smiled. “We didn’t come here to sound impressive. We came here to build something that outlives us.”
And with that, he walked off.
Silence.
Then applause.
Not thunderous. But real.
Kabir met him backstage. “You just summoned a TEDx talk out of a pitch.” Arjun laughed nervously. “Did I oversell?” “No,” said a voice behind them. It was a tall woman in a navy-blue kurta with a Mehta Ventures badge. “You undersold. That was one of the most honest pitches today.”
She handed Arjun a card. “Sejal Roy. I head early-stage at Calyx Capital. Let’s talk.”
More cards followed. One from a fintech VC, another from a social impact fund. They floated through the rest of the evening in a daze, nibbling on cold samosas and warm validation.
Later that night, they sat on their rooftop eating cup noodles, staring at the Bangalore skyline.
“Guess what?” Rajeev said, grinning. “Vendor 100 signed up. A panipuri guy near Koramangala. Said he liked our name. Thought it sounded like an air conditioner company. Reliable.”
Kabir laughed. “Aurora: cooling delivery chaos since 2023.”
Arjun exhaled. “One hundred. We actually did it.” Rajeev raised his cup of Maggi. “To survival.” Kabir clinked his. “To mistakes that didn’t kill us.” Arjun added, “To what comes next.”
But none of them said what they were all thinking:
What comes next might be even harder.
6
Three days after Demo Day, Arjun’s inbox was on fire. Three term sheets. Two invites to closed-door VC dinners. One request to speak at a “Young Founders to Watch” panel. The inbox wasn’t the only thing buzzing. Kabir got messages from three logistics aggregators wanting integrations. Rajeev was invited to a Discord server full of CTOs from Series A startups who spoke in half-jargon and full sarcasm. They had become, in startup terms, “hot.”
But heat attracts pressure.
On a rainy Tuesday afternoon, Isha Talwar called.
“Arjun, Calyx Capital wants to lead your seed round. ₹2 crore. But they want 20%.”
Arjun blinked. “Twenty?”
“That’s the ask. But they’re offering mentorship, legal help, hiring support—the whole works. And they’re fast movers. If you say yes, they’ll wire the first tranche in ten days.”
He didn’t respond immediately. “Can I think for a day?”
“You have three hours.”
He hung up, slowly. Kabir and Rajeev were already watching him.
“What’s the number?” Rajeev asked.
“Two crores. For twenty percent.”
Kabir whistled. “Valuation’s not bad. But that’s a big bite.”
Arjun nodded. “We need the money. But we also need control.”
They argued for hours. Kabir wanted to accept. “We’ll scale faster, hire better, finally have a marketing budget.”
Rajeev hesitated. “It’s not the equity—it’s the strings. Board seats. Founders becoming employees in their own dream.”
Arjun felt torn. He looked at both of them and asked, “Do we still want the same company we dreamed of?”
Kabir looked away. “I don’t know anymore. I just don’t want to fail.”
Rajeev added, “I don’t want to win and still lose.”
They sat in silence.
Finally, Arjun stood up. “Let’s do something crazy.”
Kabir groaned. “Here we go.”
“Let’s talk to Calyx—but we counter at 15%. We offer monthly transparency reports and a scaling roadmap. We show backbone. If they still want us, they’ll stay.”
Kabir nodded slowly. “And if they don’t?”
“Then we find someone who backs vision, not just valuation.”
Arjun typed the email.
Subject: Revised Terms – Aurora Systems
Body: We’re grateful for your offer. After internal discussion, we propose the following…
He hit send.
That night, none of them slept well.
Kabir kept pacing the balcony. “What if we blew our only shot?”
Rajeev was debugging code just to stay distracted. “This part of the journey sucks more than the broke phase.”
Arjun just lay in bed, staring at the ceiling fan.
At 9:03 a.m. the next morning, the reply came.
Subject: Re: Revised Terms – Aurora Systems
Body: We respect your clarity. 15% is acceptable. Let’s move forward. Term sheet incoming.
Arjun ran into the living room holding his phone. “They said yes!”
Rajeev stood up so fast he hit his knee on the table. “Ow—but worth it!”
Kabir blinked twice. “Wait, seriously? They agreed?”
Arjun nodded. “They agreed. We have our seed round.”
They high-fived, fist-bumped, chest-thumped. Then paused.
Because now, it was real.
They had money. They had a runway. They had responsibilities.
Anjali walked in with her usual calm. “So. We’re funded. Congrats. Now comes the part where we stop being underdogs and start being accountable.”
Kabir grinned. “That’s the first time you’ve congratulated us without sarcasm.”
Anjali shrugged. “Don’t get used to it.”
The next week flew by in a blur of lawyer calls, paperwork, bank formalities, investor meetings, and endless discussions about ESOP pools and dilution math. Their days felt longer than ever—and yet, their nights shorter.
They hired their first full-time developer. A content intern. A part-time accountant. The office started to feel like a real company.
They even bought three new whiteboards.
Kabir finally stopped saying “bro” in investor meetings. Rajeev created a rule: no late-night commits without two reviewers. Arjun hired a leadership coach, much to everyone’s surprise.
One day, Kabir found Arjun sitting on the stairs alone, looking oddly calm.
“Dude,” Kabir said, “you okay?”
“I was just thinking,” Arjun replied. “Three months ago, we were begging for vendor sign-ups. Today, we’re planning expansion into Hyderabad.”
Kabir sat beside him. “You still think we’re making something that matters?”
Arjun nodded. “More than ever.”
Kabir smiled. “Then let’s build like hell.”
They stood, dusted themselves off, and walked back in—into the chaos they had chosen, the mess they were shaping into something meaningful.
7
Three weeks into their seed round, things weren’t going wrong. But something didn’t feel quite right either.
The team had doubled in size. Sixteen people now worked out of the Koramangala office. They had an admin, a UX intern named Zoya who listened to lo-fi music all day, and a part-time HR consultant who liked to end sentences with “just putting it out there.” The chaos had matured, but the soul of Aurora was harder to hold onto.
Kabir had a new obsession—numbers. CAC, LTV, churn rate, funnel optimization—he’d become fluent in investor-ese. Rajeev grew quieter, disappearing into his corner with headphones on, often debugging without talking for hours. Anjali shifted to remote work for “creative space,” though everyone knew she just hated noisy meetings.
Arjun, meanwhile, lived in meetings—pitching to future partners, negotiating with distributors, handling press calls, managing investor updates. He’d started drinking black coffee instead of chai, a quiet symbol of how far from their roots they’d already drifted.
And then it happened.
They missed a delivery SLA by 72 hours for a major customer.
A grocery chain they’d recently signed up—twenty stores across Bangalore—received a wrong consignment due to a driver routing glitch. The chain’s manager sent a curt email:
“Unacceptable disruption. We expected professionalism. Consider this a formal warning.”
Kabir panicked. “If they churn, the other chains will smell blood.”
Rajeev checked the logs and frowned. “The algorithm worked. But someone overrode the suggestion manually.”
They traced it back to a new hire—Prakash, operations trainee. He’d panicked under pressure and changed the route without telling anyone.
Arjun didn’t yell. He called Prakash into the meeting room, closed the door, and simply asked, “Why?”
Prakash’s voice trembled. “I thought I was fixing it. I didn’t know who to ask. I just wanted to help.”
Arjun nodded. “Okay. It was a mistake. But it’s our mistake as leaders. We should have trained you better.”
Outside, Rajeev muttered, “We’re growing too fast. The wheels are wobbling.”
Kabir added, “We need process. We can’t keep playing whack-a-mole.”
They spent the weekend building Aurora’s first internal operations bible—a messy Google Doc titled “We’ll Fix It This Time – Version 1.0.”
It included checklists, escalation charts, even emergency phone trees. Anjali added a page called “When Not to Be a Hero.”
By Monday, the office had a new rhythm.
But the tension remained.
One evening, Rajeev pulled Arjun aside. “We’re drifting.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean us. You, me, Kabir. We don’t talk anymore unless something’s broken.”
Arjun sighed. “It’s not personal. We’re just… stretched.”
“Exactly,” Rajeev said. “And if we snap?”
Arjun looked out the window, where Bangalore’s traffic blinked in patient chaos. “Then we remind ourselves why we started.”
That night, Arjun called an all-hands meeting. No slides. No agenda. Just story time.
He retold the tale of their first chai vendor, their first 404 error, their first pitch rejection.
Anjali added her favorite moment—when Kabir convinced a vendor by helping him lift a sack of potatoes.
Rajeev shared the bug that deleted their own database entry—“Yes, our app once forgot we existed.”
They laughed. And remembered.
And somehow, it worked.
The room felt lighter the next day.
One week later, Kabir got a call from someone unexpected.
His old professor. The same one he’d defied by dropping out of his MBA.
“I read about Aurora in Economic Times,” the professor said. “Impressive.”
Kabir smiled, cautious. “Thank you, sir.”
“I’m organizing a panel—‘Redefining Entrepreneurship in Emerging India.’ I’d like you to speak.”
Kabir froze. “Me?”
“You. You’ve done what we only theorize.”
Kabir said yes.
The event was fancy. Blazers and buzzwords. He stood next to CEOs, fund managers, and think tank regulars. But when it was his turn, he took a breath and said, “I don’t have a five-year plan. We’re still figuring out next week. But I know this—if your startup doesn’t hurt you a little, you’re probably not in deep enough.”
That line got quoted.
An investor messaged Arjun the next day. “Your co-founder speaks like a rebel monk. Love it.”
Arjun showed it to Kabir. “You’re now officially Aurora’s Philosopher of Logistics.”
Kabir grinned. “All I want is fewer bugs and better biryani.”
Rajeev muttered, “Let’s see what breaks next.”
Arjun smiled. “Whatever does—we’ll fix it. Together.”
But even as they laughed, none of them saw what was coming. A storm. A real one.
And this time, it wouldn’t start with code.
It would start with betrayal.
8
It began with a phone call at 6:32 a.m. Arjun was brushing his teeth when his phone buzzed. Unknown number. He let it ring. Then came a WhatsApp ping:
“Thought you should see this – Check Reddit: r/IndieFounders”
Half-asleep, he opened the link. A thread titled:
“Aurora Systems: Innovation or Imitation?”
It had screenshots—actual dashboards, user flows, even snippets of their proprietary routing logic. Someone had posted code. Confidential internal documents.
Kabir burst into the living room moments later, holding his phone, face pale. “We’ve been leaked.”
Rajeev joined seconds later. “I’m running traces. The GitHub logs show a late-night download from an internal credential. Last login—Prakash.”
Prakash, the trainee. The one who had made the routing error weeks earlier.
Arjun’s voice was cold. “Call him.”
Kabir dialed. No answer. Rajeev sent a message. Blue ticks. No reply.
Anjali, now back in-office, walked in and froze. “What happened?”
Arjun handed her the phone. She read in silence, then muttered, “This isn’t just a breach. This is sabotage.”
Kabir paced like a man possessed. “Why would he do this? He was just a trainee. We even stood by him after the mess-up.”
Rajeev’s fingers danced across his keyboard. “Looks like the code was cloned and uploaded under a new GitLab user three days ago. Username: ‘P_Ace23’.”
Anjali frowned. “That’s his email handle. It’s him.”
Arjun sat down, exhaled. “Okay. Breathe. Damage control mode.”
They sent a takedown request to Reddit. Pulled down all exposed documentation. Rajeev rotated access tokens, revoked credentials, and began securing their AWS environment.
Kabir drafted a communication for vendors. “No sensitive client data was leaked,” he read aloud. “We’ve implemented enhanced security protocols. Our commitment to operational integrity remains unchanged.”
But inside, they were shaken.
By afternoon, two investor messages came in.
“Hope everything’s under control.”
“Would appreciate a security update call soon.”
Arjun replied to both. “We’re on top of it. Full audit underway.”
But the storm was brewing elsewhere.
Prakash finally responded to Kabir’s message with a single line:
“You treated me like a footnote.”
That night, Arjun sat on the rooftop with Rajeev. Neither spoke for a long time.
Finally, Rajeev said, “He wasn’t wrong. We were too busy chasing growth to mentor anyone.”
Arjun looked up at the stars. “He had access he shouldn’t have. That’s on me.”
“On all of us.”
Kabir joined them, holding three steaming cups of chai. “I wanted to scream today,” he said, handing them their cups. “Instead, I just rewrote the vendor contract to include data indemnity clauses.”
Rajeev chuckled. “Very grown-up of you.”
Arjun said, “We just got tested. And we didn’t break.”
Kabir took a sip. “I want to build a company where people don’t feel invisible. Even the interns.”
Arjun nodded. “Then let’s start tomorrow. Weekly check-ins. One-on-ones. Feedback loops. No more flying blind.”
They clinked cups in the dark. The city below blinked and buzzed, oblivious.
Over the next week, Aurora weathered the storm. Reddit pulled down the post. The GitLab account was deleted. No legal action was taken—Prakash disappeared offline. But the incident left its mark.
Arjun addressed the entire team.
“We made a mistake. We didn’t communicate. We didn’t mentor. We didn’t listen. That changes now. We’re not just a startup. We’re a workplace. And workplaces must protect, nurture, and trust their people.”
They implemented new onboarding protocols. Better training. More transparency. Anjali started a monthly “design-and-chai” hour where anyone could pitch ideas, regardless of role.
One intern suggested a feature that let vendors mark upcoming holidays on the dashboard so delivery planning could adjust. They called it the “Festival Flex.”
It went live within a week.
Their next newsletter highlighted it—and their open culture.
The response was overwhelming.
One vendor messaged: “Never thought anyone would build something that actually listens to us.”
Kabir smiled. “We just turned a leak into loyalty.”
But they knew one truth now, permanently etched:
Growth without empathy is a ticking bomb.
And Aurora—born from broken rules and sleepless nights—was learning to build not just fast, but right.
9
Two months after the Calyx Capital deal, Arjun stood at the edge of a flyover in Hyderabad, watching traffic crawl below in heat-soaked waves. Kabir had sent him to “scout the city.” Rajeev called it “the expansion gamble.” But to Arjun, it felt like déjà vu—a reboot of their Bangalore hustle, only this time with slightly more funding and slightly less fear.
He was meeting a man named Aslam, a spice distributor with 78 stores across Telangana. If Aurora could onboard him, the Hyderabad launch wouldn’t just be real—it’d be big.
Aslam greeted him at his warehouse, a cavern of cumin and cardamom. “You’ve come far, beta,” he said, shaking Arjun’s hand with surprising warmth. “But I’ve seen many boys with apps and dreams. What makes yours last?”
Arjun didn’t pitch tech. He pitched time. He spoke about early mornings, delayed crates, confused drivers, redundant routes. He explained how Aurora didn’t just move goods—it anticipated movement. Predicted patterns. Saved hours, not just rupees.
Aslam listened. Then pointed to a stack of returned chili packets. “You can fix this mess?”
Arjun nodded. “We already have. In Koramangala. In Malleswaram. In BTM.”
Aslam smiled. “Good. Show me here.”
Back in Bangalore, Kabir and Rajeev were bracing for another kind of fire.
They had just rolled out Aurora Pulse, a new analytics suite for vendors. It was beautiful—graphs, heatmaps, predictive tips. But it wasn’t loading on 40% of older devices. Smaller vendors panicked. Orders dipped. Support calls exploded.
Kabir was furious. “We should’ve tested on legacy phones!”
Rajeev snapped. “We don’t even have those devices in-house!”
Anjali walked in, calm but blunt. “You didn’t design for your real users. You designed for investor demos.”
Kabir went quiet.
Arjun called mid-crisis. “How’s Pulse doing?”
Rajeev hesitated. “Pulsing, yes. But not in the right direction.”
Arjun groaned. “Okay. Pull it down. Roll back. Apologize to vendors and tell them we’re fixing it.”
Kabir protested. “But the press article’s going live tomorrow—‘Aurora Launches AI Dashboard.’”
“Let them report a correction,” Arjun said. “We fix first. We impress later.”
By midnight, Pulse was offline. Rajeev stayed up all night rewriting the front-end. Kabir personally called five vendors to apologize.
One of them, a sweet shop owner, said, “Beta, I don’t care about charts. I just want my rasgulla delivery to be on time.”
Kabir smiled. “Noted.”
Back in Hyderabad, Arjun spent a week shadowing Aslam’s network—watching how orders were scribbled on notepads, how drivers used instinct more than maps, how trust was measured in tea, not contracts.
He returned to Bangalore with notes, photos, voice memos, and a plan.
“We’re not copy-pasting Bangalore,” he said. “We’re customizing for Hyderabad. Language toggle. Different product bundles. Route logic for old city traffic.”
Rajeev nodded. “We’ll need a local dev consultant.”
Kabir added, “And a Telugu-speaking vendor success team.”
Anjali chimed in. “I’ll build the new UI like it was born here.”
They worked for three weeks straight, building a second version of Aurora for a second city. They called it Aurora Twinlight.
Launch day arrived.
Aslam onboarded. Three more vendors followed. Then ten. Then forty.
The Hyderabad dashboard blinked to life.
But just as they started to celebrate, Kabir got a message.
“Need to talk. Problem. Now. — Isha.”
A chill settled.
They jumped on a call.
Isha’s voice was clipped. “Another startup just announced a partnership with a national retail chain. They’re in your space. They’re calling themselves ‘the AI for Bharat’s Last Mile.’ And guess what? Their backend? Looks a lot like yours.”
Arjun’s voice went cold. “Are they… copying us?”
“Or working with someone who did.”
Kabir swore under his breath. “Prakash?”
Rajeev checked the rival startup’s press kit. “Wait… this guy. Their ‘tech advisor.’ That’s him. They’re hiding him behind a fake designation.”
Arjun stood up. “Then it’s war.”
10
Arjun’s fingers hovered over the keyboard, heart racing. A startup war wasn’t something you prepared for—it chose you. The rival company, “LastStep,” had just posted a glossy press release: a ₹4.5 crore partnership with a retail chain Aurora had been in talks with for weeks. Their tagline—“We optimize chaos.”—sounded eerily familiar. Rajeev scanned the screenshots. “This routing engine—they’ve lifted our structure. Even the iconography. I can trace exact logic blocks.” Kabir seethed. “They didn’t just borrow—they stole.” Arjun’s voice was steel. “We build. They steal. But we’re not going down shouting. We move smarter.”
First, they secured their IP. Rajeev filed a code repository hash-based timestamp with their legal advisor, marking proof of ownership. Anjali scrubbed through design files, creating a dossier of visual infringement. Arjun, meanwhile, contacted Isha and Sejal from Calyx. “We need help. Not just legal muscle—we need PR control.” Sejal replied within ten minutes. “Get me a briefing doc. We’ll position you as the original innovator.” Kabir still looked furious. “I say we sue.” Arjun nodded. “We might. But we win first in the minds of our users.”
Aurora went on offense. They launched a rapid campaign—#BuiltNotBorrowed. Kabir coordinated testimonials from vendors: small business owners speaking about how Aurora changed their deliveries, their margins, their lives. Rajeev pushed an update showcasing unique backend features with open technical logs. “Transparency beats buzzwords.” Anjali rolled out a page titled Inside Aurora—a raw, timeline-based history of their journey. It ended with a single line: We’re not the loudest. We’re just the first.
The page went viral. Founders, indie coders, even some rival vendors started tagging Aurora as the “real deal.”
Then came the twist.
One morning, Arjun got a call from someone unexpected.
“Aslam bhai?”
“Yes, beta. Just wanted to say—LastStep reached out. Offered me discounts. Promises. But I said no.”
Arjun’s breath caught. “Why?”
“Because when you stood in my godown and counted every broken packet with me, I saw something in your eyes. I don’t trust code. I trust people.”
Kabir clapped when Arjun shared the news. “There it is. Loyalty can’t be faked.”
Rajeev added, “But let’s still outbuild them.”
The next three weeks were a blur. Aurora didn’t just defend—they sprinted. They launched smart alerts, real-time traffic rerouting, a vendor referral system, and even a WhatsApp chatbot that worked in Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, and Bengali. “We go native now,” Anjali declared. “No more English-first assumptions.”
Meanwhile, LastStep’s glow began to dim. An anonymous Medium post appeared, highlighting the similarity between their app and Aurora’s open components. Code sleuths joined in. Reddit flamed again. Someone wrote, “They should’ve named it CopyStep.”
On a Monday morning, Aurora received an email from the same retail chain that had earlier signed with LastStep.
Subject: Let’s Talk
Kabir’s jaw dropped. “They want back in?”
Arjun read the mail aloud: “We’ve been reviewing both solutions. What you’ve built offers more depth and commitment. We’d like to revisit the conversation.”
Three hours later, they were on a Zoom call with the retail chain’s procurement head.
He smiled. “We went with the shiny thing. But we realize now—it’s the steady one that delivers.”
By Friday, the deal was Aurora’s.
₹5.2 crore. Direct onboarding across three states.
Kabir screamed so loudly the chai guy downstairs thought someone had fallen off the roof.
Rajeev stared at the final numbers. “It’s poetic. They stole from us. We took it back—with interest.”
Arjun looked at them and smiled. “We didn’t fight back. We built forward.”
They stood there for a moment, silent.
Then Kabir said, “Let’s go get biryani.”
11
The Aurora office at Koramangala looked different now. Not just because of the new ergonomic chairs or the fresh coat of wall paint that smelled vaguely like peppermint, but because of the people. Thirty-seven of them now. A team, a tribe, a micro-nation of dreamers and doers. There was a hum in the air, the kind that only comes when something bigger than survival is being built.
Arjun stood at the window, coffee in hand, watching the Bengaluru drizzle lace the glass in fine silver threads. He barely recognized the man in the reflection. Sleepless, yes. But stronger. No longer holding the startup together with tape and adrenaline—he was leading.
Behind him, Kabir paced with a printout in his hand. “So here’s where we are—last quarter revenue: ₹2.8 crore. MRR up by 42%. Active vendors: 318. And oh, Hyderabad crossed the 100 mark yesterday.”
Rajeev, sitting cross-legged on the couch, added, “Uptime 99.98%. Bug reports down 64%. I now sleep at least five hours a night.”
Anjali entered holding three paper cups. “And our design got shortlisted for the Good Tech Award.”
Kabir took a sip. “Tastes like validation.”
There had been no dramatic lawsuit with LastStep. Just the slow, quiet satisfaction of watching them fade—press turning cold, customers trickling away, investor buzz dying. Eventually, their website went down for “maintenance” and never came back.
But Aurora kept climbing.
Isha Talwar visited again, this time with two partners from Mehta Ventures. They took photos in the office, posed beside the whiteboard with the scribbled quote: Build slow. Scale fast. Love deeply.
Anjali rolled her eyes. “We need a new tagline.”
But the one person who didn’t change was Arjun. Not really.
One Friday evening, as the office cleared out for the weekend (yes, they had weekends now), Arjun stayed back. He opened an old Google Doc titled “Initial Pitch – March”. The writing was chaotic, fonts mismatched, typos everywhere. But it had a sentence he’d nearly forgotten.
“We’re not here to win headlines. We’re here to serve the people who never asked to be disrupted.”
Kabir walked in, holding two beers. “I knew I’d find you time-traveling in your drafts.”
Arjun laughed. “Just revisiting ghosts.”
Kabir handed him a bottle. “Well, the ghosts seem to like what we’ve done.”
They clinked the bottles and sat side by side.
“You know,” Kabir said, “we’re not underdogs anymore.”
Arjun nodded. “I know.”
“Does that scare you?”
Arjun smiled. “A little. But we earned it.”
Kabir looked at him. “What’s next? IPO dreams? Global expansion? Unicorn club?”
Arjun shook his head. “Next? We build version two of our purpose. This time, slower. Wiser. We bring in founders from tier-two towns, we invest in supply chain schools. We give back.”
Kabir raised an eyebrow. “You’re becoming a philosopher like me.”
“Someone has to.”
Rajeev walked in, holding a tablet. “Guys, there’s something you need to see.”
He flipped the screen toward them.
A job post on LinkedIn:
“Aurora is looking for the next generation of builders. Come join the storm.”
Hundreds of applicants already.
Kabir grinned. “Looks like they’re lining up to join the rebellion.”
Anjali called from the doorway, “We’re ordering momo. Anyone alive?”
They all got up.
On the way out, Arjun looked at the whiteboard one last time.
Then quietly picked up a marker and wrote below their old motto:
“Built in chaos. Growing in calm.”
They walked into the night—three friends who once had nothing but a glitchy prototype and a rooftop promise.
And now?
Now, they had something harder to earn, and even harder to keep.
Legacy.
THE END
