Why a rational person keeps making an irrational choice — and what a newborn in a foreign country taught us about the work of running a home.
Earlier this year, in a rented house in the US, Gayathri and I sat staring at a blank wall for twenty minutes. Not talking. Not thinking. The wall was simply the only thing in the house that did not need something from us.
We had just had our second kid. Zero support system, sleepless days blurring into sleepless nights, an ever-crying baby, and a six-year-old who suddenly — and understandably — started missing his parents. Every small cognitive task became a humongous effort. Even remembering to put sugar in the coffee became a marathon.
Somewhere between the wall and the coffee, we decided to do something about it. Doing something about it meant walking away from the million dollars that staying put in the US would have earned me. It also meant deciding what the rest of our lives would be dedicated to — solving this, for families and households.
To explain why a supposedly rational person walks away from life-changing money, I owe you some history.
A quick sketch of the road to that wall. Top all-India 50 ranks in class X and XII, the best engineering college and business school in the country — and then I lost my first job within two weeks of starting, in a mall theatre, watching The Raid for the third time, next to my future co-founder. Four years at Citi and a short stint at Amazon later, things got interesting.
Hypto — my first startup — began as a Groupon-inspired copy, became a Bharatpe competitor, and eventually turned into something unique: a payments platform focused on bank transfers — NEFT, RTGS, IMPS and UPI. What did Hypto look like from the inside?
But before the close came the next hard pivot. Togai — usage-based billing, born from our own pain at Hypto. Three unbudgeted months building a product we didn't plan for, funds trapped in a collapsing US bank — and then the exit: acquired by the market leader in our space, with retention clauses. The retention is what took us to the US, to Zuora — and, eventually, to that wall. The million dollars is what staying would have paid.
Yes, giving it up was a stupid decision. But, we would take the same decision 10 out of 10 times.
Here is the thing we understood, somewhere between the wall and the coffee: our situation was extreme, but it was not unusual. Families have it tough. Since Covid, the way the world has evolved, work-life balance is non-existent. AI is threatening people's jobs. Parents are getting older on one side, with health issues arriving on schedule. Kids are growing up and throwing tantrums on the other. Families are dealing with enough as it is.
They should not also have to spend what's left of their day planning the meals for everyone, buying groceries, coordinating with the house help, booking flight tickets, making dinner reservations, remembering birthdays and anniversaries, buying gifts, planning annual health check-ups, creating the budget, remembering to pay the bills — and the list goes on, and on, and on.
Now, they have Weedu.
An AI home manager that plans, coordinates, executes and learns — starting on WhatsApp, in Chennai & Bengaluru. It takes the invisible work of running a household off the one person carrying it in their head.
We are removing chores one at a time. Families should spend their time doing what they want, not what they must.
Weedu comes from the Tamil வீடு — home. A home is the one thing in your life you trust by default, use every day, and never think of leaving. That is the bar for everything we build.
Also, say it out loud once — Weedu. "We do." Whatever the chore, we do it for our customers. Yes, the pun was intentional. No, we are not sorry.
Our vision is to give back to families what they would value most — their time.
Weedu is two co-founders and, soon, three founding engineers. That's the whole org chart. Gayathri ran our household single-handedly for ten years — she is the customer, the domain expert, and the reason this product will be honest. I build things. Between us, that covers it.
The insufferable guy whose story you just read. Self-deprecating in writing, not so much in person. Built the fastest growing payment platform in the world — $30 billion processed in 18 months — then built a second startup and sold it to a NYSE-listed public company. Outside Weedu: reducing his weight through a combination of keto and intermittent fasting.
Ten years of doing a huge amount of unpaid operational work made her decide she might as well get paid. A small-time dubbing artiste whose friends keep asking her to become a Radio Jockey. Outside Weedu: ensuring SA does not screw up, and compensating for his lack of effort at home.