Made in India: Meet the CEO of Stimuler

We sat down with Akshay Akash, founder of Stimuler, an app on a mission to give every global citizen access to fluency in English speaking. Designed to boost communication skills, Stimuler helps users unlock career growth, global opportunities, and greater confidence - starting with their voice. Read more:

Akshay: Coming from a small Hindi-speaking town in East Bihar, most of my primary education happened in Hindi even in an English-medium setting. But it wasn’t until college that I noticed a big delta between people who were from a non-English native background vs people who had grown up in English-native environments in terms of their fluency, and confidence in social settings and how it resulted in access to growth opportunities for them.

Over time, I became a skilled debater, and the global exposure it gave me helped me realise that fluency and confidence in speaking English was a global problem and I decided that I wanted to spend more time solving this. That’s when I thought that building an app with my best friends - Anesh Srivastav, Akshat Baranwal, and Ankit Kumar Pandey, would be an amazing chance to create an outsized impact for millions. That's why we started Stimuler.

Akshay: I think a startup journey is a culmination of a lot of pivotal moments, so it's hard to pinpoint one. But a few of the special occasions that stand out are our first funding from Gradcapital, getting our first paying user and then scaling it up to over 50000 paying users, and winning The ‘Best AI app’ of 2023 award from Google Play.

This particularly allowed us to attract good talent, and showcase the importance of the work we were doing in AI to the world. It also gave us the confidence to invest more resources that contributed towards what we do today at Stimuler.

Akshay: Google Play has been an incredible partner for us since day one. Right from the Google University Startup program during our college days, to GooglePlay AppScale Academy where we were a part of the top 100 emerging apps cohort from India, Play has been enhancing our learning experience, helping us improve design and security, and scale globally. We will always be grateful to Google for helping us grow, help and fulfill our dream of becoming a category leader globally.

Akshay: As a digital entrepreneur, to me, Independence means the freedom to take an idea from scratch and turn it into real impact, without needing permission at every step. I believe that if I have an idea that can help people, I should be able to reach them without any gatekeepers or roadblocks. My vision is simple: whether someone is in a tier-3 town, a remote village, or a metro, they should be able to access Stimuler to unlock their own Independence and chart their unique career trajectory.

Akshay: My advice for any aspiring founder is to simply start today! Don't wait for the perfect opportunity. With AI, you can create a working prototype and validate the concept very fast. You don't need to wait for the perfect opportunity to take the leap.

The second piece of advice I have is that if you want to build a new product for a consumer or an enterprise you should always be very clear in terms of why this specific product needs to exist in the world, and what unique value it brings to the table. The number of products in every category is really high, so if you have that unique value, you can build a successful company.