Gauri Sreekumar

Gauri SreekumarMay 19, 2026

I'm thrilled to share that I would be joining the Faculty of Management Studies - University of Delhi for my MBA. This shall mark the end of my 3 year undergraduate studies at Indian Institute of Management Rohtak . I am grateful to my family, friends and colleagues for all the support they have extended.

Gauri SreekumarMay 7, 2026

We walked out of the Hult Prize as first runners-up, competing against some incredibly strong teams. But while preparing for it, we didn’t start with confidence or a polished pitch. We started with fear. Our idea, Human Connectors, sat at the intersection of blockchain, AI, and CSR. Big vision. Big claims. And we knew that if we walked into the competition without real market validation, we would get torn apart in the Q&A rounds. More than that, we ourselves weren’t fully sure if the market truly existed. The idea had always lived at the back of my mind, but Hult forced us to confront a difficult question: Was this an actual problem people cared about, or just something that sounded intelligent in our heads? So we decided we needed a reality check. The obvious answer was outreach. But anyone who has tried random LinkedIn DMs knows how that usually goes. Silence. No replies. No clarity. No signal. That’s when we changed the approach completely. Instead of reaching out to more people, we focused on reaching the right people. People already thinking about this space. Companies hiring ESG leaders. Teams announcing sustainability initiatives. People actively engaging with impact conversations. The issue was that doing this manually on LinkedIn was painfully slow and honestly not scalable. That’s when I found Rodz (https://lnkd.in/geRBFr7W) They gave us 100 free credits, and we used every one of them intentionally. Every lead had context. Every outreach had a reason behind it. Instead of sending “would love to connect,” we were saying things like: “I noticed your company is hiring for a Head of ESG. We’re building something around exactly that problem.” And suddenly, conversations became easier. It no longer felt like cold outreach. It felt relevant. People replied. We got real conversations, actual market validation, and even interest from some of the same companies we reached out to. So by the time we stood in front of judges, we weren’t defending assumptions anymore. We had proof. We ended up as first runners-up, but the bigger takeaway stayed with me long after the competition ended: Outreach is not about effort. It’s about timing. And honestly, this is not just useful for founders. If you’re a student trying to land internships or jobs, this becomes unfair leverage. Reaching out when a company is hiring, when a team is expanding, or when someone is already active in your domain doesn’t feel cold anymore. It feels relevant. Right now, Human Connectors is paused because all of us moved into different commitments, but this was one lesson I carried forward. If you want the link to the tool we used, just comment “interested.” https://lnkd.in/geRBFr7W

Gauri SreekumarApr 4, 2026

I almost didn't make it to the final round. Business Taxation paper. IIM Rohtak. The kind of exam you can't afford to take lightly. And somewhere across the remote settings, my teammates Amith P and Sankalp Tattwadarshi Swain were holding the fort. They were actively prepping slides, stress-testing numbers, keeping the energy alive in the whatsapp group chat. We walked into Aaramb 2026: the Innovation Challenge by IIT Delhi DMS × Toyo Kombucha as a brand new team. First time the three of us had ever worked together. No shared history, no rehearsed chemistry. Just a problem we genuinely wanted to solve: How do you take a high-quality D2C brand like Toyo Kombucha and unlock 10x distribution growth without breaking what makes it special? We went deep on the logistics constraints. Not surface-level. The kind of deep where you start questioning assumptions the industry just accepts. And then we pitched it; directly to the Toyo Kombucha leadership. We emerged as National Winners. ₹35,000 richer. But honestly, that wasn't the moment. The moment was when the founder looked at us and said our solution was the one that actually made sense. That lands differently. To Amith and Sankalp, you carried this really well, even during my substantial absence during the final preparation time. To the IIT Delhi DMS team and Toyo Kombucha, especially Vidit Jain, thank you for creating a room where real ideas get real feedback. And to anyone building in the D2C or FMCG space, the logistics problem is hiding the growth problem. Happy to talk. Special thanks to Raghav Gupta for sharing such a great opportunity and guiding us