“I had to go to 20 different websites.”
The best products start as your own unmet need.
Everyone's on Instagram. Everyone looks the same. Likes aren't proof.
Don't add noise — be the one place riders can actually compare.
The businesses had the customers. They ran on Excel sheets and WhatsApp.
Win the supply side first — every tech business has an offline side.
License verification, two-way reviews, a fresh scoreboard.
Reputation beats reach.
He shipped the whole platform himself — saving ~6 months and ~$100k.
The tool got cheaper. Judgment got more valuable.
India is one of the biggest motorcycle markets on earth — yet booking a Himalayan ride still happens over Instagram DMs and “DM for price.” Karthik Srinivasan, a designer who rediscovered riding later in life, tried to plan a trip to Ladakh, ended up on 20 different websites because there was no common place to compare tours, schools or stays — so he and his co-founders built one.
Everything Motorcycling is a marketplace for motorcycling experiences — tours, riding schools, moto-stays, festivals, parts and races — for a community that has always run on word of mouth and WhatsApp. Karthik gets into why an entire industry never organised itself (“it’s like asking an artist to do the sales work”), the B2B SaaS backend that replaces the Excel-and-WhatsApp chaos behind India’s biggest riding businesses, and verticals like “MotoParks” with built-in trails and highway pit-stops designed to stop riders pushing 700 km in one dangerous shot.
It’s also a candid look at the build: verifying riders through DigiLocker, the safety culture transforming the sport (breathalyzers and “please don’t wear Crocs” texts before group rides), the push to make a famously masculine industry genuinely inclusive of women and families, and shipping the whole platform himself with AI tools — saving “easily $100,000” and half a year — while staying clear-eyed about where human judgment still has to sit.
Karthik Srinivasan’s Highlights:
→ Co-founder of Everything Motorcycling — a marketplace for India’s motorcycling experiences (tours, schools, moto-stays, festivals, parts)
→ A designer by trade who shipped the entire platform using AI tooling — saving an estimated $100,000 and roughly half a year
→ Building a B2B SaaS backend to organise an “unorganised” industry that still runs on WhatsApp and Excel
→ Raised investor funding that turned a rider’s side project into a real company