₹1,500 a Day, Two AI Startups Later

Suraj Biswas earned ₹1,500 a day delivering food for Zomato. Today he runs two AI startups.

But between drop-offs, he was teaching himself something nobody at his college had ever mentioned.

He's from Chakdaha, a small town in Nadia, West Bengal. He wanted to become a doctor. College fees ruled that out, so he studied genetics instead, then joined Zomato as a delivery partner to get by.

He'd seen up close how broken personalization in education was. Students weren't failing because they lacked ability. They were failing because the system treated every person the same. That conviction stayed with him through every delivery.

In 2021, with no funding, no office, and no co-founder, he started building Assessli. A second company, Dots-in, followed, now based in Bengaluru.

Credibility came first, and it wasn't easy to earn. Small town, unknown college, delivery bike. Nobody took the pitch seriously. Then came capital. Foundational AI research takes years, not a six-month sprint.

In January 2024, his father, a house painter who'd spent his life trying to give Suraj a better shot, passed away. It was two days after an ISI Kolkata grant had come through.

Suraj says his real mission was never the startups. It's getting the world to see what he's building as infrastructure, not an app. People once struggled to understand what an operating system was too.