Antler is nudging aspiring founders to live their business dream. Will its 'day zero' investment strategy keep paying off?
Bengaluru, July, 2022. As a climate consultant, Hitesh Bhuraria knew that the outlook was bright and sunny. Working with Bain & Company for five years, the INSEAD alum figured out that corporates were grappling to address carbon emission challenges. For months, Bhuraria worked on understanding the market landscape, mapped existing solutions and uncovered the whitespaces. He realised that there was a massive opportunity in leveraging technology to uncover deeper insights into how companies can be decarbonised. The wannabe entrepreneur has been itching to take the plunge.
What dampened Bhuraria’s fire was his futile hunt for a tech co-founder. He spoke to dozens of engineers, found a few potential matches with the right technical skills but most of them either lacked the founder mindset or sounded non-committal. Meanwhile, Nishant Singh was also in a state of entrepreneurship limbo for a while.
(This story appears in the 18 November, 2022 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)