Jan 2025 – Present · 1 yr 5 mos · Bangalore Urban, Karnataka, India · On-site

• I fund and build AI-native startups that don’t just scale — they shift culture.
• Through the Shoonya AI Grant, I’m backing founders building real-world, soul-led AI products that blend tech with purpose.
• Here’s what we’ve funded so far:
• 🧠 Chotu.Pro – Offline voice agent built on Raspberry Pi Zero
• ⚔️ Arjunet – AI agent network for complex work automation
• 🪔 DharmaDAO – Decentralized governance rooted in dharma for KiranaPro
• 📆 Vani Bot – AI scheduling agent that knows who’s real
• 🚁 MAX Drones – AI-powered quick commerce in T-60 seconds
• 📺 AI Today – The world’s first 24/7 AI media channel
• ☕ Caffn – Liquid power for builders, doers, and dreamers
• 💬 WhatsCode – AI coding on-the-go via WhatsApp
• 🎁 Mystery Box (Name TBD) – India’s first kidult collectible preserving culture through AI storytelling
• 🌿 NeuroNest – A clarity-first app rooted in Via Negativa, focused on subtractive living
• And we’re still rolling.
• 🔥 3 new grants are being given out every month.
• If you're building something bold with AI — I want to hear from you.
• 📩 Pitch me → d@deepakravindran.com
• Past: Built products used by millions.
• Now: Fueling the next billion with belief-powered tech.
• This is Shoonya.

Oct 2024 – Present · 1 yr 8 mos · Bengaluru, Karnataka, India · On-site

May 2024 – Present · 2 yrs 1 mo · Bengaluru, Karnataka, India · On-site

• Redefining quick commerce with local kirana stores for ultra-fast deliveries and sustainability.
• Backed by Leading Investors: Unpopular Ventures, Blume Founders Fund, TurboStart and Snow Leopard Ventures.
• Checkout http://www.kirana.pro/
• Email me at deepak@kirana.pro

Nov 2014 – May 2018 · 3 yrs 6 mos · Bangalore

• I founded Lookup which raised a total of $5M from notable investors (Vinod Khosla, Twitter founder Biz Stone, Narayana Murthy, Kris Gopalakrishnan, Global Founders Capital (Oliver and Mark Samwer, Rocket Internet), Teru Sato, Kevin Mahaffey, DeNA, Tom Singh, Hiro Mashita, MKS Switzerland..).
• Lookup is a local shopping network which uses chat to connect users with local businesses. Lookup was the fastest app in India to cross a million users.
• In July of 2016, Lookup was acquired by NowFloats in India.
• https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/18/khosla-backed-lookup-acquired-by-business-discovery-service-nowfloats/

Jan 2014 – Oct 2014 · 9 mos · San Francisco Bay Area

• I co-founded Quest a location based Q&A app funded by 500 Startups.
• Quest combines its question-and-answer platform with automatic geotagging to help users find nearby people who can answer questions on the best restaurants to dine, places to see around, and so on.

Mar 2011 – Mar 2011 · 0 mo · India

• A mobile based search engine to deliver information on any topic. The SmsGyan algorithm enables users to get information on any topic through a simple SMS from their cell phones.
• "Deepak's product is a paradigm shift from standard mobile service offerings as it adopts a user cen­tric learning approach using a low cost, low bandwidth medium as its delivery mechanism."
• http://www2.technologyreview.com/tr35/profile.aspx?TRID=1000

Sep 2008 – Jan 2014 · 5 yrs 4 mos · India

• I co-founded Innoz with three college friends with a novel idea of giving Internet services to hundreds of millions of people from their standard feature phone using SMS.
• Innoz partnered with over 20 telecom operators in over 7 emerging markets to provide services including Wikipedia, Bing and Wolfram Alpha as well as sending Gmail emails, posting on Facebook or tweeting using SMS.
• Awards and Recognitions:
• World's most innovative companies rated by Fast Company (2014)
• The world’s largest offline search engine rated by Limca book of Records (2012)
• Winner of the GSMA Global Mobile Awards (2012)
• WIRED Magazine called the service 'the offline internet’ (2013)
• The service is currently open source, and the source code is available at www.offlineinternet.org
• https://www.wired.co.uk/article/offline-internet-is-open-source-innoz