Founder Files / Pulse
Haren Chelle
He spent years selling machines that talk to customers. Then he built one that finally listens back.
He spent years selling machines that talk to customers. Then he built one that finally listens back.
The Story
Most product teams have the same secret. The roadmap that decides what gets built next quarter is mostly a hunch wearing a spreadsheet. Customer feedback arrives from everywhere at once - support tickets, sales calls, app-store one-stars, a CEO's lunch conversation, a Slack thread nobody saved - and then it evaporates. Haren Chelle decided that evaporation was the problem worth a company.
That company is Pulse. The pitch fits on a sticky note: customer feedback should drive action, not chaos. Underneath it sits something more ambitious - what Chelle calls an AI-native Feedback Intelligence OS for enterprises. Pulse ingests the scattered signals a B2B software business generates, enriches them with business context, de-duplicates the noise, scores impact, and hands product managers a prioritized list instead of a pile. The unglamorous middle of product management - reading everything, remembering everything, deciding what matters - is exactly the part Pulse automates.
Chelle is the co-founder and CEO. He started the business in 2024 with two people he already trusted: Alok Thatikunta, his schoolmate, now CTO, and Vatsal Singhal, his college peer, now CPO. The three had each run into the same wall from a different side. The reunion was less a brainstorm than a confirmation - they had all been frustrated by the gap between what customers said and what companies actually did about it.
Before Pulse, Chelle's career ran through conversational AI. At Yellow.ai he climbed from regional roles to Vice President and General Manager for Asia Pacific, scaling a business that sold AI agents to enterprises across Southeast Asia, Indonesia, Singapore and beyond. Earlier he led the global BFSI business at Kore.ai and ran APAC and Middle East consulting at AlgonoX. He also spent three years as a strategic advisor to Convin.ai. The thread is consistent: enterprise software, sold and scaled across Asia, with the customer relationship at the center.
So Pulse is not a swerve. It is the same obsession pointed in the opposite direction. Chelle spent a decade helping companies talk to customers through AI. Now he is building the AI that helps companies hear them. The voice-of-customer problem looks different from the seller's chair and the buyer's chair - he has now occupied both.
Chelle's advice to other founders is unfashionably specific. At the Fortune India Startup Summit he argued that startups should prioritize experimentation and proprietary workflows over simply comparing AI models. In a market where every pitch deck swaps one foundation model for another, his point is that the durable advantage is not the model you rent - it is the workflow you build on top of it that nobody can copy. Pulse is the argument made into a product: the moat is in how feedback moves through the system, not in which large language model reads it.
The mission, in his own framing, is to transform product management into a data-first discipline where every outcome is backed by insight rather than instinct. It is a tall order in a field that has historically run on conviction and charisma. Chelle is betting that the next generation of products will resonate because someone finally read all the feedback - and that someone will be software.
Customer feedback should drive action, not chaos.
- Haren Chelle, on the one-line thesis behind Pulse
The Climb
The Backing
The seed round was small by headline standards and loud by signal. Endiya Partners led the $1.4M. The angel list mattered more than the number: founders of Zluri and Yellow.ai - the company Chelle had just left - put personal money in, alongside other entrepreneurs and product leaders. When the people who watched you operate write you a check, that is a reference letter with a wire transfer attached.
House Rules
Pulse builds its values into both how the team talks and how the product behaves. Fitting, for a company whose entire job is making people feel heard.
Listen, learn, evolve. The product does it; so does the team.
Respect baked into communication and into product design.
Every voice, every customer insight, gets attention - the whole point.
The Texture
Three founders hit the same wall from three different angles, then realized they had been describing one problem all along. The cap table is built on old friendships - schoolmate and college peer.
A decade helping companies talk to customers through AI. Now the same obsession reversed - building the AI that helps companies hear what comes back.
His advice at Fortune India's summit: stop comparing foundation models, start building proprietary workflows. The moat is in how the work moves, not which model reads it.
IIT Patna, then executive programs at Northwestern, IIM Bangalore and Wharton Online - all while operating across Asia Pacific markets.
Hyderabad roots, a Singapore base, San Francisco ambitions. The feedback engine doesn't care where you are - which is rather the point.
ISO 27001, SOC 2 and HIPAA compliance - the unsexy paperwork that decides whether large companies will actually let you read their customer data.
We're reimagining how SaaS companies understand and leverage the voice of customers - where every outcome is backed by insight.
- Haren Chelle, on Pulse's mission
Good To Know
He sold conversational AI for years, then founded a company doing the exact opposite - listening instead of talking.
Pulse positions itself as an operating system for the voice of the customer, not just another dashboard.
The founding trio is a friend group: a schoolmate as CTO, a college peer as CPO.
His investors include founders of the very company he left to start Pulse.
He'd rather you build a defensible workflow than win an argument about which AI model is best.
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