Innopreneurs Nagpur: Our First Flight and First Stage

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 math behind the selection

2,500 applications. Five rounds of cuts. 10 final spots. Nimitai was one of them, chosen because we solve a real, expensive problem: B2B sales teams losing deals they should have won, with no way to know why.

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.

We were building a startup that promised to help businesses see more clearly. And for the first time, we were above the clouds, and the world looked very, very different from up here.

It was a short flight. An hour. But something shifted in that hour. The smallness of the things you worry about when you are on the ground (the bugs in the codebase, the unanswered email, the pitch slide that is not quite right) did not feel heavy at 35,000 feet.

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

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.

What we learned from talking to VCs in person

The one thing no blog post told us: VCs are also pattern-matching for founder quality, not just product quality. The sharpness of your thinking, the honesty about what you do not know, the way you handle pushback. All of it signals something. Prepare your pitch. But also prepare to have a real conversation.

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.

We started the live AI demo. A real sales call transcript, processed in real time. The audience leaned forward. That was the moment I knew we had something.

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. Archit later wrote up the five concrete lessons we took away from pitching to the judges. They changed how we approach every conversation since.

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.

The Innopreneurs Top 10

Nimitai was named one of India's Top 10 Innovations at Innopreneurs Season 12 by Lemon Ideas. The cohort represented sectors from aerospace to agri-tech to AI. Selected from 2,500 startups across India, facilitated on stage by the Maharashtra Education Minister at RTMNU Nagpur.

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 do not notice it happening. But it happens.

Two founders who had never been on a flight. Now on a national stage, called one of India's Top 10 Innovations. The ceiling moved. It moved a lot.

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 is your first flight. That is not a small thing. But neither is what waits on the other side.

The same AI we demonstrated on that stage is the product we sell today. Nimitai is $149 per seat per month, month-to-month, no seat minimum.