Mar 6, 2025

Synopsis Amid a tech and venture capital reset, many founders have left their startups to launch new ventures, leveraging past experience and networks. Emerging sectors like AI and deeptech are attracting entrepreneurs seeking fresh opportunities. ETtech Over the past 12-15 months, as the technology and venture investment ecosystem underwent a reset, more than a dozen entrepreneurs stepped down from active roles at their startups and went on to launch new ventures. Data sourced from Longhouse Consulting showed that such founders emerged from companies in broadly two buckets – first, which achieved a certain scale and the entrepreneurs wanted to build in a different segment, and the second where the original startups were struggling, being restructured or completely shut down. Upgrad founder Mayank Kumar, who stepped down from an executive role at the edtech firm in October last year , raised $7 million for his new venture, Borderplus, which operates in the cross-border workforce skilling space. Meanwhile, Priyanka Gill and Naiyya Saggi – cofounders of struggling house of brands firm Good Glamm Group – have started new ventures. Gill, who had stepped down from an active role at the Good Glamm Group in early 2024 to join venture capital firm Kalaari Capital, has launched a lab-grown diamond brand, Coluxe, in February this year. ETtech The most recent example of entrepreneurs entering their second innings as founders was of Karan Mehta and Sonali Jindal, two of the four cofounders of digital lending startup Kissht, who announced the launch of debt resolution platform Rezolv, having bagged $3.5 million in seed capital from early-stage investment firm 3one4 Capital. “A company may be built up and doing well but some founders by their nature are entrepreneurial and have a high-risk appetite. Also, because of their tenured success from initial businesses, their capability to incubate new business is comparatively higher than others. This includes capabilities to raise seed capital or angel funding given their network,” said Madhur Nevatia, partner, Longhouse Consulting. Past experiences Borderplus’ Kumar pointed out how credibility from an earlier scaled-up venture is coming in handy for his new startup. “Building a team becomes easier because you have the credibility to acquire the right talent. Earlier a lot of time would have gone for me to recruit, interview, and get the right talent pool. But now, there's a little bit of credibility, it gets easier broadly,” Kumar said. “So, a lot of work gets easier, but at the same time, expectations are much higher for me because everybody coming in believes that things will be much more structured and streamlined. It all comes with its own pros and cons,” he added. Vijay Arisetty stepped down as the CEO of Tiger Global-backed Mygate in April last year to focus more on a startup that came out of the Bengaluru-based company. Along with other former Mygate executives, Arisetty founded Aurm, which offers secure locker services. “This idea of Aurm actually originated in Mygate and the plan to set up this as a business vertical within Mygate was presented to the board. But collectively, all of us, the cofounders and the board felt that the DNA of both the companies will be a lot different,” Arisetty told ET. While Arisetty underscored that it wasn’t easier to start up again given that a new venture came with its own set of challenges, he said decision-making, particularly for risky aspects, becomes less complex. “The experience that I gained at Mygate will help me to shape this organisation, whether it is hiring, structuring, capital infusion…I think all that wisdom has now come in. We'll be able to make much more optimal decisions now than what I used to make earlier,” he said. At Aurm, Arisetty is one of four founders, and the line-up includes Ganesh Balakrishnan, the founder of direct-to-commerce footwear brand Flatheads which was acquired by fashion startup Stytched in 2023. Emerging areas With deeptech and artificial intelligence segments blowing up, founders have also been stepping away from active operations of their companies to start up in emerging areas. “Several founders are getting into building in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence because the original companies may not be AI-first companies,” Longhouse Consulting’s Nevatia said. Inshorts’ founder Azhar Iqubal, who resigned from the CEO post last April, has launched his new venture, Fenado AI – a platform that enables users to create apps or websites without coding. In late 2023, two of the three founders of ShareChat – Bhanu Pratap Singh and Farid Ahsan – announced the launch of General Autonomy , a Bengaluru-based industrial robotics startup that raised its seed money from India Quotient and Elevation Capital. Shreyans Sancheti, cofounder of Lightspeed-backed edtech startup Bluelearn, which shut shop in July 2024 , has now founded an AI-based marketing research platform called Linkrunner.