Launching a startup and building it worth an acquisition should be an achievement for a youngster out of college. Launching another company which would find investments from a leading startup accelerator like Techstars Seattle is indeed another feat. This is what has happened in the life of 28-year-old Arjun Menon, a native of Kerala’s Kochi.
Chi., a tech startup founded by Arjun Menon and his friend Maneesh Shaji earlier this year, is one of the two Kerala-based companies selected for the recent round of Techstars Seattle funding. The other company is Produx AI.
Chi. is a startup enabling software developers to know how new code deployments affect other pieces of software throughout an organisation. The company offers actionable
intelligence for microservices built and managed by software engineering teams. “This intelligence enables engineering teams and leaders to streamline testing and deployment, freeing them from quality assurance worries associated with distributed
systems. Effectively allowing any software engineer to deploy code with confidence that they won't break systems built by other engineers in the organisation,” Techstars Seattle said in a statement announcing the selection of the Kerala startup.
Arjun tried to simplify what his company does: “We are into what is called IT incident management. Organisations may often encounter several problems with the software they run. When there is an issue, the usual procedure is to raise a ticket, find the reason and solve the problem. It often takes a lot of time. We have developed an AI tool which will look into the programmes and identify the problem in a time-saving manner.”
The company is eyeing clients mainly from sectors like fintech, health-tech, retail and gaming. It took six months for the startup to develop its AI tool.
Arjun said Chi. will be looking up to build a strong base with the Rs 2.5 crore Techstars funding. The company is also figuring out its expansion plans.
Techstars Seattle offers early-stage startups the opportunity to accelerate their growth and increase their chances of success. With access to funding, office space, a supportive community, and experienced mentors, they help founders find product-market fit quickly and overcome common startup challenges. Techstars Seattle actively recruits startups globally, inviting them to participate in a three-month accelerator experience in Seattle — a city renowned as a hub of major innovations in software, and home to tech giants such as Microsoft and Amazon — before the companies return to their home cities to build and scale their businesses.
(Startup Saturday is Onmanorama’s weekend series featuring promising startups from Kerala. Find the previous stories here)
