Staash was founded in Jaipur in December 2024 by two working engineers who spent enough time watching Indian store owners lose money to problems that simply should not exist in 2025 - checkout queues that push customers out, and theft that drains margins without a trace.
Both founders are engineers by profession. One builds data infrastructure. The other builds enterprise systems. Between the two of them, they understand how technology actually gets made - not as a slide, but as architecture decisions and trade-offs made at midnight. They also grew up in Jaipur, and the gap between what Indian retail could be and what it is has always bothered them.
The checkout queue problem is not new. It has been studied and complained about for years. What has not existed is a solution priced for the Indian market, built for Indian infrastructure, and designed around how Indian customers actually behave. The solutions that exist were priced for markets and budgets that have nothing in common with India. They were never built for us.
Loss prevention in Indian retail is even more neglected. Store owners absorb shrinkage as a cost of doing business because the available tools are either too expensive, too complex, or simply designed for a different world. The technology to solve this has existed for years. What had not been done was applying it specifically to this market, at a price point that actually makes sense.
Staash is the result of that decision. We are not building a product for a hypothetical Indian retail future. We are building for the stores that exist today - on the streets we have known our entire lives, for the store owners who have always deserved better tools than the world has given them.
Our backgrounds are in data infrastructure and enterprise systems - which means we know how to build things that work at scale under real conditions, not just in a demo. We are also from Jaipur, and we have been customers of the exact stores we are transforming.
As Staash grows, we will build our organisation around what people actually do - not titles borrowed from a different era. If you are an engineer, designer, or operator who wants to build something genuinely new in Indian retail, we would like to hear from you.
Join Staash →These are not values written for a website. They are the decisions we have already made in how we built the product, how we price it, and how we talk to store owners.
We do not build technology because it is interesting. We build it because it reduces a real cost or creates a measurable benefit for a store owner. If we cannot describe the outcome clearly, we do not build the feature.
Staash is an early company. We say clearly what we have built and what we have not. Store owners and investors both deserve straight answers - not a product dressed up beyond what it is.
We do not believe hierarchy produces better work. Every person who contributes to Staash should understand the whole, have a voice in decisions that affect their domain, and be recognised for what they actually do.
We are based in Jaipur, not in a metro co-working space. We pilot with stores nearest to us first and talk to store owners directly. The best product decisions come from the closest contact with the problem.
The long-term vision for Staash is not a better checkout experience. It is a fundamentally different kind of store - one that knows its customers, manages itself intelligently, and gives its owners the operational clarity that was previously only available to large chains with large technology budgets. We are starting with queues and shrinkage because those are the most urgent and most measurable problems. The platform we are building is designed to grow into every part of how a retail store operates.
Starting in Jaipur is a deliberate choice, not a limitation. It has a growing organised retail scene, accessible store owners, and the density that makes meaningful pilots possible without the noise of a metro. We are proving the Staash model here before we scale.
Staash is a proud Microsoft for Startups member - one of the first recognitions we earned and the foundation of the cloud infrastructure we build on.
Work with Staash →Whether you own a store in Jaipur, want to join what we are building, or are an investor who believes Indian retail is the right bet - we want to hear from you.
contact@stashkart.com · Jaipur, India