The Entrepreneurship Journey of Shikhar Dixit & DIMISI Technologies

It all began on 15 October 2024. Swatantra and I were sitting together at my home in Kanpur, working relentlessly to complete an urgent technical showcase: an automated Face Recognition System to present at Axis College's Gandhigiri technical project presentation event.

In about six to seven intense continuous hours of development at home, we engineered a fully functional Face Recognition system from scratch. Around 8 or 9 in the evening, after successfully running the build and reflecting on what we had just pulled off, a bigger question struck us: If we could build a working AI technology at home in a single six-hour sprint, why couldn't we start our own software enterprise?

Swatantra was in immediately. He was the kind of brother and friend who would jump into a well if I were jumping in. Right then and there, we shook hands and decided to become business partners. Within minutes, we chose our very first company name: CATI — Cosmic Aura Tech Industry.

We presented the Face Recognition system at Axis College for the Gandhigiri event to great acclaim. Soon after, in the AICTE Virtual Android Development lab, we pitched the startup vision to Nishkarsh. He agreed on the spot to join our journey. Back then, we had no outside funding — just sheer technical grit and a shared dream.

On 4 January 2025, I stumbled across a LinkedIn post about the IIT Bombay E-Summit 2025. It promised job fair opportunities alongside a deep dive into genuine entrepreneurship.

The three of us had an urgent discussion. It felt early, and booking last-minute train tickets to Mumbai was a stretch on our student pockets, but the event was set for 1 and 2 February. We knew we had to be there in person.

We took the plunge and booked our tickets that very night. We arrived in Mumbai on 28 January 2025, immersed ourselves in the bustling ecosystem of founders, pitches, and tech builders, and boarded our return train on 4 February.

The trip gave us an eye-opening reality check. We saw firsthand the grit, scale, and discipline of real startups. After returning to Kanpur, there was a long, quiet stretch — we had entered our final semester and had to gear up for grueling campus placement drives.

On the evening of 13 November 2025, I was pacing alone along the quiet road in front of my home, heavy-hearted and questioning my entire career. I had just faced rejection from my fifth consecutive placement drive, despite having poured countless hours into sharpening my skills and technical knowledge.

Then my phone rang. It was my partner, Priya. She listened patiently as I vented my frustration, my doubts, and the sting of repeated rejections.

During our conversation, she asked me a simple, grounding question: Why was I letting placement rejections define my worth instead of chasing my real passion? She reminded me that I already had trustworthy, talented co-founders in Swatantra and Nishkarsh, and suggested that maybe this closed door was the exact push we needed to finally build CATI for real.

I asked her: 'What should I actually build?' She suggested creating an anonymous social media application where college students and young people could express their genuine thoughts freely, without the fear of judgment or public scrutiny.

The idea clicked instantly. I had explored a similar concept during a previous internship, so I knew the technical architecture. That night, after hanging up, I sat at my desk and coded until dawn. I built the first web prototype, named it Poll-Social, and deployed it live on kaleshpro1.netlify.app — a link that remains live to this day.

The next morning, during our AICTE Infosys AI/ML training lab, I pulled Swatantra and Nishkarsh aside to demo the prototype. Swatantra was excited on the spot. Nishkarsh, ever the practical pragmatist, immediately peppered me with hard-hitting questions: How will we build the Android client? How will the backend scale? What happens when edge cases break?

I told him to have faith — if we committed to building it, I would assemble the exact talent needed to answer every single question.

That evening around 9 PM, Priya called again to check on our progress. When I mentioned our search for the perfect, catchy identity, she suddenly said: 'What if you call it Kalesh? When people are anonymous and brutally honest, there's always going to be kalesh.' At first I laughed, thinking it was a joke, but she was dead serious.

The next day, I pitched the name to the guys. Swatantra grinned and shouted what became our rallying cry: 'Chalo Kalesh Karey!'

Now came recruitment. First, I reached out to Sheelu Singh — without question the sharpest Flutter and Dart mobile engineer in our college batch. I walked him through the startup vision and prototype, and he signed on without hesitation.

Next, I approached Mridul Mishra, a Linux and backend powerhouse whom I had gotten to know through CodeVeda, the tech club I had founded on campus. To my relief and gratitude, Mridul also agreed immediately. By 17 November 2025, our internal joining paperwork for Project Kalesh under CATI was officially sealed.

During our semester exam period, we enrolled in a practical course on Startup & Entrepreneurship led by Jayendra Pratap Singh (affectionately known as Jayant Sir). For our practical assignment, our team — consisting of Swatantra, Nishkarsh, Shubham Dey, and myself — delivered a passionate presentation on Kalesh.

While faculty usually treated student presentations as routine coursework, we were determined to prove that we were dead serious about building a real startup. Jayant Sir gave us a window to meet him.

Around 4–5 December 2025, Nishkarsh and I called him and arrived at the campus central library as instructed. We ended up waiting outside for nearly two hours. When I began to lose my temper, Nishkarsh wisely pointed out: 'Maybe Sir is testing our patience. Let's stay.'

When Jayant Sir finally called us in, we laid out our entire blueprint. He genuinely guided us, granted us access to the college studio for video shooting, and mentored us toward filling out the application form for Shark Tank India.

Junior Harsh Mishra stepped in to help us edit our pitch video. Though we ultimately didn't make the final TV cut, the experience sharpened our vision and laid the groundwork for our upcoming incubation.

With semester exams behind us, full-throttle development on the official Kalesh platform kicked off on 4 January 2026. The website was deployed live on 22 January 2026 on TheKalesh.com, orchestrated by Mridul.

During this sprint, Siddhant Shekhar joined our ranks on 5 January as a dedicated web developer. Our core lineup was now complete — a squad we proudly dubbed the Sinister Six:

• Shikhar Dixit — Chief Executive Officer • Swatantra Singh — Chief Technology Officer • Nishkarsh Mishra — Chief Financial & Operations Officer • Mridul Mishra — Backend & Infrastructure Engineer • Sheelu Singh — Android Mobile Engineer • Siddhant Shekhar — Frontend Web Developer

Following the website deployment, in February 2026, we were officially allocated dedicated physical office space in the Sand Tank area on the Axis College campus.

With official permission from college administration to hire from our new office, we brought four talented interns on board on 22 February 2026: Saumya Shukla (Social Media Marketing), Niyati Gupta (Backend), Harsh Mishra (Video Editor & Creative Lead), and Amit Kumar (Backend Intern). We had set our grand public launch target for 16 March 2026.

As 16 March approached, our high-speed momentum hit a sudden wall: Indian corporate and legal compliance. As final-year students with zero outside revenue and tight personal budgets, hiring premium corporate lawyers was out of reach.

My father connected us with an experienced advocate who walked us through the differences between a Partnership firm and a Private Limited company. Swatantra, Nishkarsh, and I resolved to do things the right way and form a Private Limited entity.

Then came another gut punch: CATI (Cosmic Aura Tech Industry) was rejected on the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) portal due to existing name conflicts. To make matters more stressful, our mid-semester exams were happening that very week.

Sitting in the exam hall with the question paper in front of me, I could barely concentrate on the subject. My mind was racing, trying hundreds of name combinations on the back of my scrap sheet. Then, a formula clicked:

DI (Dixit) + MI (Mishra) + SI (Singh) = DIMISI.

After the exam, I gathered the team and proposed the name. Nishkarsh immediately asked his signature question: 'What does it mean and why?' When I explained the formula, everyone burst out laughing. But when we checked the MCA database, there was zero conflict. Not a single duplicate fragment existed.

The laughter turned into smiles of relief. While letting go of CATI felt bittersweet — it had been our first love — we embraced our new identity. On 9 April 2026, we were officially appointed Directors of DIMISI Technologies Private Limited (CIN: U62013UP2026PTC246506).

Following incorporation, reality tested us again. As college wrapped up, team dynamics shifted: Saumya, Siddhant, and Niyati moved on to other commitments, while Sheelu relocated and transitioned to remote mobile development.

At the same time, we crossed paths with a wave of passionate, high-energy juniors eager to learn and build alongside us: Prashant, Amrit, Anushka, Nisha, and Vinay.

Needing a stable, cost-free base of operations, I spoke with my parents. With their full blessing and support, we converted one room of our family home into the official DIMISI Technologies headquarters.

On 16 May 2026, we held a humble inauguration for our new office. The very next day, on 17 May 2026, we mounted the official DIMISI Technologies board on our front gate to complete our bank account verification. We were now a fully operational, licensed company ready to face the market.

Operating a company without revenue is brutal. With statutory filing fees and operational expenses looming, we spent weeks grinding: making hundreds of cold calls and attending dozens of client meetings across Kanpur without landing a single closed deal.

One late night, thoroughly frustrated and exhausted, I went for a solitary walk down my home street to clear my head. A neighbor who saw me pacing approached and asked: 'Does your company build commercial websites? I run a tours and travels agency and desperately need an online platform.'

That impromptu street conversation changed our trajectory. Over the following week, we finalized terms and officially closed our very first commercial client: Rudra Tours & Travels.

Around this time, Somya Tiwari joined our team to assist with client management and frontend development. With our first delivery successfully completed, our confidence surged, and we soon secured two more commercial client contracts in rapid succession.

On 19 August 2026, we began architecting DIMISIPEDIA — an open, structured knowledge encyclopedia built to document our company, our people, our technologies, and this unfiltered entrepreneurship story.

Looking back from 21 August 2026, the journey that started with two friends hacking together a face recognition script in an Axis College classroom has evolved through CATI, the Mumbai train ride, placement rejections, the midnight idea of Kalesh, the Sand Tank office, the exam hall naming breakthrough, incorporation, and our first client breakthroughs.

There are still daily hurdles to overcome, codebases to ship, and internal challenges to navigate. We don't pretend to have everything figured out. But we stand here with profound gratitude for everyone who has held the line with us:

Our juniors with their tireless enthusiasm, my co-founders Swatantra and Nishkarsh for their unwavering loyalty and intellect, our core developers Mridul and Sheelu, my parents for giving us a roof to build under, and my life partner Priya for providing the spark, the courage, and the name that set everything in motion.

This is not a finished tale — it is simply where we stand today, ready for the next chapter.