Work related,

• I am currently building Shifu Studio and Shifu Foundation!.
• Shifu Studio is a venture-studio to co-build 100 B2B AI startups to $10M ARR each in a profitable & capital efficient way.
• Shifu Foundation is a non-profit media firm to inspire and support young Indians to upskill, join and eventually build B2B AI startups.
• Before Shifu, I co-founded a B2B startup - Almabase , which after 10 years of hustle, is doing phenominally well!
• Before Almabase, I started a non-profit, worked in several start-ups, and before that, I was heading my college student union where everything started!

Non-work related

• I split my time between Bay Area and Bangalore
• I am a huge movie buff turned movie maker, travel a lot, play a sport atleast few times a week, and big on Music!
• My never ending bucketlist includes a 10-acre farm in the bay where I plan to spend my summers with friends and family!
• Agnostic, Irrational Optimist, Nihilist, and becoming more pragmatic/ less idealist with time!
• I am 37M, 6ft, Telugu, and this is how I look

About me - Longer Version

After dabbling with Student Politics, Non-profits, B2B SaaS and main stream politics, I recently started Shifu Venture and Shifu Foundation. This is my journey!

Heading College Days 📕📕📕

Till college, life was very simple and straight-forward. My parents had put me and my sister on a proven path to get out of poverty: Study well → Good college → Good job → Live happily ever after.

We indeed studied really well, and both of us got into a premiere institute (NIT Warangal). While my sister stuck to the plan, I got drifted during my college days 🤣. I got into Student Union, worked my way up over years and got elected as the President in my final year - experienced the joy of working for a bigger cause, beyond oneself.

Starting a Non-profit 👊👊👊

I came across lot of juniors struggling to pay their fees during my Union days. So, soon after graduation, I started a non-profit focused on my college - Lakshya Foundation. We raised several crores from our alumni and gave full scholarships to lots of needy students, helped hundreds of student innovators/entrepreneurs.

Without any technology, few of us volunteering over the weekend could achieve so much. We felt with the help of right tech built for alumni relations, we could have done 10X better. This was the inspiration to start Almabase, my first startup - to build tech that empowers colleges around the world to grow their alumni donations by improving alumni engagement.

NonProfit → Entrepreneurship💰💰💰

After several hiccups in the initial years, Almabase took off and is doing pretty well now - healthily profitable at millions of dollars in ARR, recently signed a game-changing partnership with the largest US public company in our space, and looks like, it’s on the path for a great outcome for everyone involved.

My co-founder Kalyan is awesome, and more capable than me in running Almabase. He is doing a phenomenal job, and I started slowly transitioning to a non-operating role during Covid, thinking of pursuing politics. But why politics you may ask.

Entrepreneurship → Politics ⚔️⚔️⚔️

During my college, JP Garu of Loksatta, a legendary bureaucrat/politician had a massive influence on me. I adored him, fully believed in his ideology and he was almost a demi-god to me.

Meeting JP garu and Koosam Rajamouli garu (politician who transformed village near my college, Gangadevi palli to a model village), reading about legends like Lee Kwun Yew, working full-time at the grassroots via RangDe , experiencing inequality and abject poverty in Bundelkhand had a big influence during my 20’s.

They had such a pro-found impact, that my entire adulthood, I used to dream of eventually getting into electoral politics - I deeply believed that politics offers the largest canvas to provide opportunities for millions to lead a dignified life. So, I started volunteering for several honest politicians (it’s a different thing all of them lost very badly 🤦‍♂️). And the plan was to join politics full-time after achieving financial freedom from Almabase’s acquisition.

But the avoidable large-scale suffering that I noticed around me during covid, expedited the plan. I started slowly transitioning to a non-operating role in Almabase, and tried to make the plunge into politics only to understand how brutal and excruciating politics will be for me.

Few notes I had jotted down during that phase. Was heartbroken, and went through a very rough patch.

• Migrant crisis - Broke my heart

• Conversations with Chamrajnagar Victims

Due to several reasons - How murky it had become, how excruciating the journey is, the toll it was taking on my mental health and on my family - I had to reconsider my priorities. Basically, I didn’t have the founder-market fit to pursue politics, I was not tough enough🤦‍♂️

So, I decided to not pursue it any further, and was on a multi-year exploratory phase.

Back to Entrepreneurship🚀🚀🚀

Few guidelines I had during the exploratory phase

• I wanted to play a positive sum game (Eg: Entrepreneurship). I am not a fit for Zero-sum games (Eg: Politics)
• In addition to sincere politicians, passionate entrepreneurs are the only other persona I really relate to, and I see myself in them. I can happily see myself spending the next few decades working with and for entrepreneurs!
• I want to play a really long-term game. And I want to partner and work with folks with a long-term mindset

I know Prateek for many years now, he was instrumental in scaling Almabase GTM. We have a great vibe fit and share similar passion and empathy for entrepreneurs.

After spending the last two years exploring - Experimenting with several pilots, spending months alone in a secluded yoga ashram, and many months of travelling (in India and the USA) to brainstorm with literally hundreds of folks - things became a lot clearer to us. We are fully invested in building Shifu Ventures for the years to come. Shifu Ventures currently includes

• Shifu Studio , a venture-studio to co-build 100 B2B AI startups to $10M ARR each in a profitable & capital efficient way.

• Shifu Foundation , a non-profit media firm to inspire and support millions of young Indians to upskill and join B2B startups - as interns/employees/founders.

After a rough couple of years, things converged and life is so much better now. Found my Ikigai and very excited to spend the next couple of decades building Shifu 🚀🚀🚀