Our First Flight, Our First Stage: Two Founders at Innopreneurs Season 12 Nagpur

We Had Never Flown Before

Archit and I had never been on a flight before Innopreneurs Season 12.

I want you to sit with that for a second. Not because it's a dramatic detail we're proud of — it's just the truth. Both of us, 22 years old, building an AI startup from scratch, grinding every day to make something work — and neither of us had ever left the ground.

That changed on April 9, 2026. We flew Delhi to Nagpur. And two days later, we were on a stage in front of 400 people, pitching Nimitai to a panel of VCs and judges.

This is that story.

Getting the Email

The Innopreneurs selection email landed quietly. No fanfare. Just a line that said Nimitai had been shortlisted as one of India's Top 10 Innovations for Season 12, organised by Lemon Ideas.

We read it three times. Then we read it again.

Innopreneurs had received roughly 2,500 applications. They shortlisted 1,200. Then 500. Then 100. Then 25. Then 10. We were in the 10. That is a 0.4% selection rate. Fewer than 1 in 250 startups from across India.

The scramble started immediately. We had two weeks. We had a product that worked but a pitch that needed sharpening. We had a demo that was powerful but needed to be tightened to 8 minutes in front of a live jury. We had never pitched to a VC in person before.

We practiced every day. We timed ourselves. We tore the deck apart and rebuilt it. We recorded mock pitches and watched them back, which is deeply uncomfortable and completely necessary.

Delhi to Nagpur

The morning of April 9th, we were at IGI Delhi at 5 AM. Neither of us had slept much. The terminal was loud and fast and full of people who clearly did this every week. We were not those people.

We found our gate. We sat. We didn't talk much.

When the plane lifted off, Archit pressed his face close to the window. I watched from the seat beside him. The ground fell away. Delhi became tiny — the highways, the buildings, the familiar chaos of it. And then it was gone under cloud. Just white and blue and a horizon that seemed to go on forever.

It was a short flight. An hour. But something shifted in that hour. The smallness of the things you worry about when you're on the ground — the bugs in the codebase, the unanswered email, the pitch slide that isn't quite right — none of it felt heavy at 35,000 feet.

We landed in Nagpur with two days to make the most of it.

Day 1: Walking Into RTMNU

We walked into Rashtrasant Tukadoji Maharaj Nagpur University on the morning of April 10th. The Viksit Bharat Conclave. Innopreneurs Season 12.

The first thing that hit us: the scale. Standees everywhere. Viksit Bharat branding across the entrance. A full auditorium being set up behind glass doors. Registration desks. Lanyards. The kind of organised energy that makes you feel both welcome and very small.

We were given our Nimitai standee — our name, our faces, our product — displayed alongside the other 9 Top 10 startups. Seeing it there, in that hall, with all the activity around it, was one of those quiet moments that doesn't feel real until later.

Day one was about absorbing. Meeting the other founders in the cohort. Getting a feel for the room. Understanding who was who. There were aerospace startups, agri-tech founders, social enterprises — every kind of early-stage company you could imagine, all selected from the same brutal 2,500-to-10 funnel.

We were the AI startup. The sales intelligence play. We had to be ready to explain — clearly, quickly — why what we were building mattered.

Meeting Real VCs for the First Time

I have read dozens of blog posts about VC meetings. How to prepare. What they look for. The right way to answer the traction question. The theory is easy to consume.

None of it quite prepares you for the actual moment.

Harsh Deodhar, Principal at Enrisson India Capital, sat across from us during one of the lunch sessions. He was direct. He asked about our go-to-market, our differentiation from Gong and Clari, and what our early numbers looked like. He did not waste words. When he said, "You are doing well — keep it up," it was not a dismissal. It was a considered observation from someone who sees a hundred pitches a year.

Amit Singal from Fluid Ventures was different energy — more expansive, more willing to explore ideas. He pushed us on positioning. He wanted to know not just what Nimitai did, but why a sales team would trust an AI system with their most important conversations. He appreciated the clarity of our answer.

We spoke to over a dozen people that day. Each conversation sharpened something. By the time the day ended, we had a clearer sense of what to emphasise in the pitch and — more importantly — what to cut.

On Stage in Front of 400

The pitch slot arrived faster than expected. That is always how it works.

We walked out. The auditorium was full — 400 to 500 people in the seats, the jury panel set up at the front. The lights on stage made everything beyond the first few rows disappear into a soft blur of faces.

The nerves were real. I won't pretend otherwise. But the moment you open your mouth and the first sentence comes out, something clicks. Weeks of preparation flood back. Your body knows what to do even when your mind is scrambling.

The jury pushed hard. Dr. Vishesh Kasliwal drilled into our accuracy numbers and user count — clinical, specific, no softballs. Sagar Bhajani asked about the pivot story. Akash Kirtane from Acube AI wanted to understand the technical architecture. Eight minutes felt like two. And like forty. Both at the same time.

When it was over, we walked off stage and looked at each other. Nothing needed to be said. We had done everything we could.

Day 2: The Recognition Ceremony

Day two of Innopreneurs was different in texture. The pitch pressure was gone. What remained was something quieter — a sense of being part of something larger than the product or the pitch.

Maharashtra Education Minister Pankaj Bhoyar came on stage. The Top 10 were called up, one by one. When we heard "Nimitai," we walked forward and received the recognition from him — in front of the same room we had pitched in, surrounded by everyone who had made the two days what they were.

I have thought about that moment many times since. Not the applause or the photo. The actual moment of walking forward, in a city we had never been to, on a stage we had never stood on, in front of people we had never met — and feeling, fully, like we belonged there.

What It Meant

Here is the honest version of what Innopreneurs did for us.

It validated the problem. Not in the way a friendly tweet does, or a warm intro from a mentor. It validated it in the cold light of a VC asking you why your product exists and whether the market is real. That kind of validation is different. It sticks.

It compressed time. In 48 hours, we had conversations that would have taken months to arrange. We met investors, fellow founders, government officials, mentors, and potential customers — all in one room, because Lemon Ideas and VED Council built something that made that density of connection possible.

And it reset what we think is possible. That is the part that is hardest to put into words. When you grow up without certainty that you belong in these rooms — without the pedigree, the network, the prior startup on your CV — you start to build a mental ceiling for yourself. You don't notice it happening. But it happens.

I am writing this partly for the version of us that existed six months ago — the one staring at a blank Notion page wondering if this was worth doing. It is worth doing. The room is more accessible than it looks from the outside.

And I am writing it for every first-time founder in a Tier 2 city or a shared apartment or a WhatsApp group with your co-founder at 1 AM wondering the same thing.

Get in the room. Fly if you have to. It's your first flight. That is not a small thing. But neither is what waits on the other side.