From Brothers to Founders: The Journey Behind Raven
The Journey Behind Raven: When Manufacturing Experience Meets AI
Priyansh Srivastava & Sriyansh Srivastava
Co-founder Raven AI
Life's most serendipitous moments often arise when we least expect them. For us, it took a global pandemic, a journey through Silicon Valley's startup ecosystem, and a heartfelt conversation with our father, Manoj Srivastava, a veteran of India's manufacturing sector, to discover our true calling. What began as an unplanned return home would lead us to build something we never imagined: software that could change how manufacturing plants run.
Roots in an Industrial City
Our story begins in Surat, a city known for its industrial prowess. Just a few kilometres away in Hazira, industrial giants like Reliance, ONGC, KRIBHCO, Shell, L&T, GAIL, and GSPC operated massive facilities that formed the backbone of India's manufacturing sector. Growing up in this environment, with our father working at the Reliance facility since its commissioning, the language of manufacturing became our second nature. Terms like plant shutdowns, maintenance cycles, efficiency metrics, and value chain optimization weren't just industrial jargon, they were part of our daily conversations at home. Some of our most cherished childhood memories include the family days at Reliance Hazira, where we would visit the manufacturing facilities, wide-eyed at the scale of operations and the intricate dance of machinery that kept everything running.
An Unexpected Homecoming
In late 2020, the global pandemic brought us back to Surat. By then, we had built our careers engineering scalable systems at high-growth startups like Apna and OkCredit, managing billions of notifications across multiple channels. While our expertise lay in solving complex technological challenges, our hometown reunion would spark an entirely different kind of innovation.
The First Steps: From Raven.dev to Y Combinator
During this unexpected pause, we founded Raven Dev, channelling our expertise into solutions for traditional industries. The market validation came swiftly, leading to our selection for Y Combinator's Summer 2022 batch. At YC, we raised $1.4 million in funding and transformed our vision of building a company that could create a lasting impact.
The AI Wave and a Pivotal Return
As 2023 unfolded, the technology landscape was being transformed by ChatGPT and the rise of Large Language Models. During our time in San Francisco, meeting with YC investors, mentors, and potential clients, we witnessed firsthand how AI was reshaping industries. The energy was infectious – countless startups were leveraging these new capabilities to solve complex problems in novel ways. Something clicked for us during those meetings – a growing realization that perhaps AI could bridge gaps we'd observed but couldn't quite solve before.
The Turning Point: A Family Dinner That Changed Everything
Later that year, another pivotal moment unfolded during a family gathering in Surat. Over dinner with our parents, the conversation took an unexpected turn as our father began sharing stories from his illustrious career across India's leading manufacturing companies. From his early days at Oil India Limited to leadership roles at Reliance Industries Limited, Petro Rabigh in Saudi Arabia, ONGC Petro Additions Limited, and Haldia Petrochemicals, his journey had given him a unique perspective on the evolution of manufacturing operations.
As we listened, memories of our childhood surfaced. Those dinner table conversations about manufacturing that had once seemed routine now took on new meaning as we sat there with our technology expertise and fresh perspectives.
Our father's eyes lit up as we discussed the potential of AI in manufacturing. Throughout his career, he had consistently strived for operational excellence, often lamenting the lack of tools that could truly understand and support manufacturing operations. As we shared our experiences with AI and LLMs, a possibility emerged – what if these new technologies were the missing piece to the puzzle he had been trying to solve throughout his career?
The conversation grew more profound as he unveiled the hidden challenges plaguing modern manufacturing. Despite technological advances, organizations still grappled with fragmented knowledge systems – valuable insights trapped in paper trails and scattered across disparate databases. Critical time was being lost in the struggle to locate, compile, and act upon institutional knowledge. These weren't mere inefficiencies; they represented fundamental barriers to progress, safety, and innovation.
The Vision Takes Shape
We began to see how our background in building scalable systems could intersect with manufacturing's needs. What these plants needed wasn't another complex system, but a daily operations assistant that could work alongside teams, making knowledge and expertise readily available.
Our father's extensive industry experience proved invaluable as we developed our approach. His deep understanding of how engineering and operations teams function within a plant helped us identify the real challenges faced by operators, engineers, and management teams. This insight shaped our vision: building AI systems that could seamlessly integrate with and empower existing team structures.
Birth of Raven
The combination of our technological expertise with our father's deep industry knowledge led to the creation of Raven. We designed our system to mirror how plant teams naturally work, where each part brings specialized expertise while working seamlessly with others.
This wasn't just about making things faster, it was about building operations that could adapt and thrive in an evolving industrial landscape. We focused on making complex operational knowledge instantly accessible and actionable, helping teams work smarter rather than harder.
Looking Ahead: More Than Just Technology
As brothers turned founders, we've learned and grown through every challenge. Today, Raven is more than technology – it helps plants run better and safer. We partner with leaders who want to improve their operations, focusing on making their teams' daily work easier and more efficient.
The pandemic may have brought us home, but it was the confluence of our childhood exposure to manufacturing, our technology expertise, and our father's deep industry insights that showed us our path forward. In combining these unique perspectives, we found our purpose: to create solutions that truly understand and support the people who keep our manufacturing plants running.
We look forward to collaborating with forward-thinking leaders who share our vision of transforming manufacturing operations for the future.
About the authors
Building on their experience developing scalable systems for leading startups like Apna and OkCredit, Priyansh & Sriyansh became YC-backed founders (S22). Growing up in Surat, near the industrial hub of Hazira where giants like Reliance, ONGC, KRIBHCO, Shell, L&T, GAIL, and GSPC operate, they absorbed the language of manufacturing from an early age. Raven’s mission is to bridge the gap between advanced technology and practical plant operations needs.
