I spent ten years building other founders’ growth. Brighterr is the partner I wish I’d had.
I’ve sat in the founder’s chair, raised money, built a team, lost a company. Then I spent a decade learning growth inside ten-plus startups across seven industries. Brighterr is everything I learned, pointed at one job: making your revenue predictable, with one partner who actually owns the outcome.
It started with a laundry van and one stubborn idea.
In 2015 I started my own company, Oble, on-demand laundry in Mumbai. Laundry isn’t glamorous, but that was the point. I had a thesis: attention is the new currency. Win a customer’s attention with a painful, recurring chore they’d happily hand off, earn their trust week after week, and you’ve got the right to sell them far more later.
We built the real thing, not a pitch deck. A main unit in Mulund, dark stores in Worli and Jogeshwari, delivery partners onboarded across the city. A team of 10 to 15. Over 5,000 customers and around 9,000 followers from campaigns we ran on a shoestring. My tech co-founder came out of NIT Nagpur. We raised funds. For a first venture, it worked.
Attention is the new currency. Earn it with something useful, and you earn the right to grow.
Then I learned the hardest founder lesson the expensive way.
Oble ended in 2018, and not for lack of customers; they kept coming. Closing my first company taught me the hardest lesson a founder can learn: a dream isn’t enough on its own.
You need execution, and you need the right people in the room, people whose incentives point the same way yours do. Get that wrong, and the best idea in the world won’t survive contact with reality.
A dream isn’t enough. You need execution, and you need the right people pointed the same way you are.
So I did something unusual. Instead of rushing into the next venture, I went to learn.
Most founders who lose a company start another one fast. I made a deliberate choice to go deep instead of wide, to master growth itself, under seasoned founders, often for less money than I could have earned elsewhere, because the learning was the pay. Over the next decade I built and scaled revenue inside ten-plus companies across seven industries. The pattern I kept seeing: the businesses that won didn’t have better ideas. They had better systems.
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ICICI Bank, where it began
Before any of the startups, I cut my teeth in retail and wealth banking across roughly 200 high-net-worth clients, 50-plus investment products sold. It taught me how real buyers make real money decisions, the foundation under everything since.
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A fintech investment platform
I built the digital infrastructure and the funnel from the ground up at around 8% conversion, building a digital sales team along the way. Founders out of IIM Bangalore.
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CareMother, taking on the giants
As Head of Growth & Marketing, I launched a maternal-health monitoring device against GE and Philips, debuting at FOGSI, the national gynaecology conference, in front of ~2,000 doctors. Doctor webinars through COVID reached 8,000-plus physicians, roughly a million in organic PR reach (Hindustan Times, Zee), and we shipped two apps. Founders out of IIT Bombay and IIT Madras.
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Younglabs, zero to scale
Co-founder and Head of Growth. We tested ~30 online-coaching categories, kept the 5 that worked (handwriting, English, Vedic maths, chess and more). We also launched SOIN, an infant personal-care brand, and built a STEM-toy marketplace with 300-plus sellers. Co-founder out of ISB. I exited to come home to Mumbai when my twins were born.
Across ten companies and seven industries, the winners never had the best idea. They had the best system.
Then I started building whole verticals, not just marketing.
After my twins arrived I took a deliberate break to be there for them, picking up marketing assignments I could run from Mumbai. That’s when consulting found me. At MarketView India I didn’t just run campaigns, I built three new verticals from scratch: business consulting, cybersecurity, and credit rating.
That experience is the seed of Brighterr. I’d watched founder after founder try to hold the whole business in their own two hands, sales, marketing, security, operations, compliance, and quietly drown. No founder is an expert at everything. Nobody is. What they need isn’t five more vendors to manage. They need one partner who owns the outcome.
One client makes the point. For a B2B consulting client, over about eight months, we lifted lead flow 25% and conversion 5%.
Today the umbrella is more than my own history, it has real, named people behind it. The finance and deal side, fractional CFO, fundraising, tax, restructuring and M&A, is led by Jagannathan M, a Chartered Accountant and former Director at KPMG Deal Advisory. So when a client raises a round, buys, sells or restructures, that’s a partner who’s done it at the top, with Brighterr accountable for the whole engagement. Meet the team →
No founder is an expert at everything. You don’t need five more vendors. You need one partner who owns the outcome.
Brighterr is the partner I wish I’d had at Oble.
Here’s the whole reason this company exists. My real gift was never a single channel or tactic, it’s connecting with founders and genuinely caring about the thing they’re trying to build. I know how lonely the founder’s chair gets, because I’ve sat in it on the good days and the day it all came apart.
So Brighterr is built the way I wish someone had shown up for me:
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We start with your revenue, not a retainer.
Sales and marketing is my own core discipline, built in-house. We install a system your team owns and runs, then we hand you the keys, instead of keeping you hooked.
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We’re one accountable partner for what comes next.
Finance, tax & deal advisory, fractional CFO, fundraising, M&A, cybersecurity, cloud, operations, the rest of your business, delivered by dedicated resources at Brighterr, with Brighterr answerable for all of it. Honest about who does what. Accountable for the outcome.
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We treat your dream like it matters.
Because I know it does. And I know a good one can be lost for want of execution and the right people in the room.
I know how lonely the founder’s chair gets, on the good days and the day it all came apart. Brighterr is built for both.
Brighterr isn’t just me anymore. It’s real, named people across your business.
One accountable partner, backed by named specialists you can check, some partners here, some independent experts we bring in through a network we vet ourselves.
- Gajanan Shewale Founder, Sales, Marketing & Growth
- Jagannathan M Partner, Finance, Tax & Deal Advisory (CA · ex-Director, KPMG Deal Advisory)
- Sushil Chandanshive Brand & Positioning Lead
- Prasad Dani Content & Founder-Branding Lead
The short version, for the skeptics.
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