Sonakshi Nathani, Co-Founder and CEO of BIK (bik.ai) and Manifest AI
Sonakshi Nathani is the co-founder and CEO of BIK (bik.ai) and Manifest AI, an agentic AI CRM for e-commerce that is backed by Y Combinator and Sequoia Capital (now Peak XV). Manifest AI functions as a sales representative that lives on a brand's website , engaging visitors, driving upsell, and handling the majority of support queries automatically.
Her platform is used by brands including Lego, Durex, and Wonderchef, and has reached $4.5 million in ARR , built almost entirely on product quality and word of mouth rather than paid acquisition, which is rare in any market and especially in Indian SaaS.
Sonakshi currently splits her time between Bangalore and New York, and is one of the more distinctive founders in India's consumer tech space , known for a clear point of view on what AI agents actually change about e-commerce, and what is still just relabelled automation.
Background & Journey
Sonakshi holds a B.Tech in Computer Science from IIIT Hyderabad and began her career as a software developer at Microsoft. She co-founded the company with Ashutosh Singla, originally building Bikayi with the ambition of becoming "Shopify for India" , scaling it to millions of small businesses before making the difficult decision to pivot the entire business toward a global e-commerce SaaS opportunity. That pivot, taken after a Series A had already been raised, is one of the more instructive decisions in the recent history of Indian startups , and Sonakshi is refreshingly honest about what it cost and what it ultimately returned.
On Dilse Omni Talks
Sonakshi Nathani appeared on Dilse Omni Talks with host Saurabh Agrawal, where the conversation explored “How conversational AI is changing what an e-commerce website is actually for” , and what brands need to rethink about their digital experience.
3 Key Takeaways from the Episode
● Conversational commerce changes the purpose of a website. When an AI agent can answer a customer's intent-level questions in real time, the traditional category-and-filter navigation model starts to look outdated. The website's job shifts from organising products to facilitating a conversation that leads to a decision.
● Product-led growth is possible in India , but it demands ruthless focus. Growing to $4.5M ARR without marketing spend means every friction point in the product is also a growth problem. There is nowhere to hide a bad experience if you have no paid acquisition to compensate for it.
● Knowing when to pivot is a founder skill that can be learned. Sonakshi is candid about the decision to pivot after a Series A , what triggered it, what the team gave up, and how they rebuilt momentum. It is one of the most honest accounts of a major startup pivot in this podcast series.
