Candid Marketing (1995 – 2006)

Bootstrapping an Industry Leader
 

My entrepreneurial journey began in 1995. I had just returned to New Delhi from the US to an India that was just opening up economically. Multinational brands were rushing in, but the infrastructure to support their on-ground marketing was non-existent.
 

I spotted the gap and launched Candid Marketing. The starting point was absolute zero: zero capital, zero clients, zero office space, and frankly, zero idea of what I was getting myself into. It was the quintessential bootstrap story, fueled by grit and the necessity to survive.
 

Over the next decade, we didn't just build a company; we helped define the "below-the-line" and experiential marketing industry in India. We grew Candid into the country's largest independent marketing services company, scaling to 300 employees across seven regional offices. We became the trusted partner for the Fortune 100, managing mandates for giants like Pepsi, Motorola, Nokia, Castrol, Unilever, and Microsoft.
 

The validation of our model came when we won the "Marketing Services Company of the Year" award. The ultimate capstone, however, was the acquisition. At the age of 34, I secured my first major exit, selling Candid Marketing to the IMS Group, a publicly listed conglomerate on the London Stock Exchange.
 

I take great pride in the fact that today, decades later, Candid Marketing remains a dominant force in the Indian industry, still serving top multinational clients on the foundation we built.

Milestone Hospitality (2010 – 2013)

Private Capital and High Finance
 

Following the Candid exit, I shifted gears from high-touch services to high-value assets. I founded Milestone Hospitality with a sophisticated financial model designed for the growing Indian real estate sector.
 

The strategy was precise: collate private capital to build hospitality assets, bring in top-tier operators to stabilize them, ensure they became high-yielding annuity products, and then engineer an exit to institutional investors.
 

We executed this model successfully on multiple projects. The viability of this approach was proven when we attracted the attention of global institutional capital. In the window of 2012-13, we successfully exited the company and its portfolio assets to a fund managed by Sam Zell, the legendary US real estate billionaire and founder of Equity Group Investments. This marked my second successful exit, transitioning from an operational operator to a financial strategist.

IndiaWorld Technologies Ltd. (2011 – 2014)

Hyper-growth and Silicon Valley Lessons
 

Running parallel to Milestone, I recognized the massive, disorganized opportunity in Indian real estate services. In 2011, I launched IndiaWorld Technologies, the world's first true end-to-end proptech services company based out of New Delhi, with massive ambitions for operations across India, the Middle East, and the UK.
 

This venture was vastly different from my bootstrapped roots. This was about speed, scale, and significant venture capital. After an initial pre-seed round from private investors, we looked west. We successfully raised a Series A from Foundation Capital in Silicon Valley, followed by a substantial Series B from New Enterprise Associates (NEA), one of the world's largest and most active VC firms.
 

Fueled by this capital, IndiaWorld grew explosively to become the largest property services company in the country. However, the venture model is a double-edged sword. The massive capital deployment required to achieve this scale led to significant dilution. Recognizing the trajectory of the business model under heavy venture structuring, I exited the business in 2014. It was a masterclass in the mechanics of Silicon Valley-style scaling.

The Interim Years & The Voice Frontier (2015 – 2023)

Strategic Pause and Deep Tech Innovation
 

After three intense cycles of building and exiting, I stepped back to recalibrate. An entrepreneur’s journey requires periods of strategic dormancy to recharge and identify the next wave.
 

During this period, my focus turned toward emerging technologies, specifically the untapped potential of Voice and AI. What followed was several years of deep R&D, experimenting with the components of voice technology and its capabilities. This wasn't about immediate productization, but about understanding the fundamental layers of a new technological paradigm. These years of quiet work laid the necessary seeds for my next chapter.

Sentim AI (2024 – Present)

Building in San Francisco
 

In 2024, the R&D phase crystallized into action with the launch of Sentim AI, my fifth company.
 

Relocating to San Francisco to be at the epicenter of the AI revolution, we are currently operating in stealth mode, building a product leveraged on years of research into voice and artificial intelligence. The journey that began with bootstrapping in New Delhi has now led to the frontier of technology in Silicon Valley, driven by the same instinct to build solutions where none currently exist.