Rohan Mehta, 23, IIT Bombay dropout (second year), has founded StoreEasy — "India's first AI-powered hyperlocal B2B2C kirana-tech platform disrupting the unorganised retail space at scale." He has been running it for four months. He has three users. His mother is one of them. She didn't ask to be.
Rohan dropped out of IIT Bombay in his second year. This is mentioned in his LinkedIn bio, his Twitter bio, his Instagram bio, and within the first ninety seconds of every conversation he has. The dropout is his primary credential. He has not yet understood that the dropout is compelling when Zuckerberg or Jobs does it after building something revolutionary, and is simply a fact about Rohan when done before the product has launched. The product has not launched, technically. It is in "stealth mode," which in startup vocabulary means either that the product exists and is being refined before a public release, or that the product does not exist and stealth mode is the word for that. Rohan's stealth mode is the second kind. The app is a Figma prototype. The Figma prototype has been shown to forty-three people. All forty-three have said "interesting" which is the word people say when they do not want to say what they actually think. What they actually think is: this is a notebook, more complicated.
The startup is funded by ₹8 lakh from Rohan's father, who was told the money was for "living expenses and course materials" and who has since seen the Lenskart pitch deck his son sent to 47 investors through a cold email with the subject line "Disrupting ₹50,000 Cr Market — Quick Call?" Thirty-nine investors did not reply. Seven replied with form rejections. One investor — an angel who had three glasses of wine at a networking event and was feeling generous — replied asking for the deck. He has not followed up. Rohan has followed up four times. The investor has not followed up. Rohan will follow up a fifth time. The investor will not follow up. This is the fundraising process. It continues indefinitely until one of three things happens: the startup gets funded, the startup shuts down, or the founder gets a job and tells people he's "taking a break from the startup to explore opportunities," which is the LinkedIn version of closing the company without saying you closed the company.
Rohan has a co-founder. His name is Arjun. Arjun handles "tech." Arjun is also 23. Arjun has not shipped code in six weeks because Rohan keeps changing the product direction. The product has pivoted four times in four months: kirana inventory management, then kirana delivery logistics, then kirana credit scoring, then "super-app for kirana." Each pivot was announced in a voice note at 2 AM. Each pivot required rebuilding everything Arjun had built. Arjun has rebuilt everything four times. Arjun is currently rebuilding it for the fifth time. Arjun has begun looking at job listings on Naukri. He has not told Rohan. Rohan would describe this as a team alignment issue. Arjun describes it as four months of unpaid labour for a Figma prototype that has been shown to forty-three people and received forty-three "interestings." Both descriptions are accurate. Startups are the place where accuracy and compatibility are two different things.
StoreEasy's monthly burn is ₹1.2 lakh — the Koramangala apartment, the co-working space they use when they need to look professional for investor calls, the coffee shop Americanos, the AWS credits (free tier, technically ₹0, but Rohan counts it in the burn to make the business look more substantial), and one ₹4,000 subscription to an AI tool that Rohan uses to generate LinkedIn posts about the startup journey. The LinkedIn posts have 847 impressions. Three VCs liked one of them. The VCs also liked posts by 400 other founders that week. The VCs are very supportive on LinkedIn. The cheque is a different conversation. The cheque has not been written. The Figma prototype is still in stealth. The kirana owner three buildings away who Rohan is "disrupting" has been open since 6 AM and will close at 11 PM and turned over ₹18,000 today using a notebook. The disruption has not reached him yet. He is unaware he is being disrupted. He is making very good chai.
