We caught up with Abhishek Sareen, who’s the co-founder Thoxt , and leads dev-ops at Thoxt and to talk about the startup grind, the content revolution, and why entrepreneurs are no longer waiting for permission to build the future of their industry.
Q: So… what is Thoxt? And why the name sounds like a startup had a baby with a philosophy major?
Abhishek Sareen: Haha, fair. Thoxt is our shorthand for “your next thought” and but spelled like someone threw it into a blender with a filter. It’s what content should be today: fast, visual, personal, unpredictable.
We’re building a social publishing platform that’s part Netflix feed, part Medium, part Instagram, part microblog, part newsroom. A place where people can write deep essays and articles, but also post memes or personal diaries; and post short videos, or just drop a thought like a tweet – really find some connection with the readers; the Thoxt community and be themselves. We want to be reading or article first platform, as we believe reading is a two-way street and enhances your knowledge. We are trying to create a social media for our kids and friends, of which we can be proud of.
Today a most content available on websites is a one-way traffic, if you somebody is pushing some news out bundled with some opinions, it’s not possible to call it out with an adequate response. Thoxt empowers not only its writers but also it’s readers to engage with news. Most news sites today may have comment section, but it’s highly unlikely anybody will engage with it.
Q: Thoxt feels like it’s trying to do a lot. Isn’t that risky for a startup?
Abhishek: Maybe. Social media has already set the stage for multiple features – you have messaging, profiling, job search, video, text – all within the same platforms. But in news reading and blogging, things are still fragmented. People are tired of fragmented experiences. Creators don’t want 5 platforms to publish 5 formats; and 5 different platforms to do marketing, track analytics and earn from content. So yes, we’re ambitious. Maybe this can be the super-app for reading, blogging and journalism. But every feature we’ve added from the article composer to the feed to user access control is from real user demand. It’s chaos, but it’s intentional chaos.
Products, especially consumer products are always risky. They take a long time to develop and mature. Most companies don’t have the patience to create a product as it’s very risky. If you look around there are hardly any consumer (complex) products, especially by Indian companies. Very few companies like Mahindra, Tata, Royal Enfield, etc have made indigenous products that compete on a global stage. Rest other significantly complex products like satellites, rockets, jet engines, vaccines, etc have been funded by the Indian government, everybody else just selling a service or commodity.
At Thoxt, we are patient and want to make something great, a product that takes our society and India forward. The idea is to just create a great product made by Indians that competes on a global stage.
Q: You’re bootstrapped. How’s that going? Are ramen noodles still a thing?
Abhishek: Ramen (I mean, roti), bananas, and caffeine are basically our food groups. We’re fully self-funded, just Shilpa and I with a small, scrappy team of 4-5 people. We’re building this brick by brick, script by script. No VC money yet. And to be honest, that freedom lets us move fast, break things, and build the product we believe in not one that chases growth hacks.
Q: So what’s your role? Are you the CTO, CEO, or the guy fixing servers at 2AM?
Abhishek: All of the above. I’m co-founder, sys-admin, dev-ops guy, customer support rep, nanny, barista, and sometimes content editor when needed. I manage our AWS stack, deployment pipelines, Redis/Celery/Nginx config, security, basically anything that needs to run without crashing including Shilpa. Meanwhile, Shilpa the lead programmer and developer. We’re a two-person engine!
Q: What’s one feature you’re weirdly proud of in Thoxt?
Abhishek: Our article editor/composer – which is as robust as user-friendly. It’s super visual, real-time collaborative, and handles embedded videos, easily copy-paste images, and SEO. It’s like Notion met Medium but built for way more fun and creative expression. It has the simplicity of Medium, like a clean interface but some of the best features of WordPress, like auto-saves, the ability to assign editor/viewer roles for collaboration. And some features like copy-paste images and AI-metadata are revolutionary.
Q: What’s been your biggest “WTF” moment building Thoxt?
Abhishek: Several initially, our server used to crash, and the editor’s underlying complexity (saving multiple data-points while balancing race-conditions) made bugs very common while building the earliest version. There are so many error logs that we had to go through, and those initial times were very stressful. I think we have forgotten those times for the good. Then we decided to stop adding features until the editor became robust and that changed everything. Reading documentation to get the server up, my heart rates races up when you had 1000 online users at midnight and nodes are crashing. All that hard work has made it all secure and stable!
Q: One of the biggest problems today is that news is often a one-way street, no room for nuanced responses or real dialogue. How does Thoxt change that?
Abhishek: Exactly. Today, reading the news feels like watching a lecture. You get opinions shoved at you, and maybe there’s a dusty comment box below, but no one’s reading it, not the writer, not the platform, not even your mom. Thoxt flips that model.
We’re building tools that give readers a voice, not just a reaction button. And my mom certainly reads and comments now! You can write a counter-article, highlight a paragraph and respond to it directly, or even remix content into your own feed. We’re turning passive consumption into active participation. Journalism is a conversation we’re just building a mic for the other side of the table.
Q: Speaking of, what’s it like co-founding a company with your wife?
Abhishek: It’s part magic part madness. We never fight over fonts, but sometimes debate over what features to build next (a simple poll among users solves it easily)! We laugh over bugs, and Shilpa likes to debate design philosophy over dinner and when I’m trying to sleep. But honestly, there’s no one else I’d want in the trenches. We balance each other out she’s the creative visionary and techie; I’m the operational chaos manager.
Q: You went from making bicycles to building the next big tech platform. Be honest, what’s harder: managing supply chains or startup chaos?
A: At least bicycles don’t crash because of a missing semicolon. But yet, building Thoxt has been the most thrilling and humbling experience of my life. I may not be a full-time coder, but being a product guy gave me the blueprint-thinking needed to bring something from 0 to 1. This is way more complex – almost like castle made of deck of card, which you need to gradually make stronger and more robust everyday.
Watching Shilpa lead the code Thoxt from scratch day and night, while I focused on dev ops, has been surreal. Her resilience is unmatched. But what keeps us going is the clarity of purpose. Thoxt is really something revolutionary; it has the power to change the digital media and blogging industry. And yes, the chances of making it are minuscule, but these chances are increasing everyday. You only lose when you quit and we’re not quitting. Authors from around the worlds are now writing on Thoxt, and they are loving it, recommending features, improvements – it’s a great journey. That’s what makes the hustle worth it.
Q: What makes Thoxt different from everyone else trying to fix content online?
Abhishek: There are some really good attempts at online publishing – everyone does it their own way, inspired by their experiences. We’re building with our 10+ years of experiencing digital media – trying to solve whatever we didn’t like for future bloggers , for example SEO, the hassle of server maintenance, adding polls or videos, making commenting easier, etc. No pay-to-play. Just clean, immersive content for the next generation. Tools made for writers, thinkers, and storytellers. We’re not trying to be everything. We’re trying to be Thoxt and you have to experience it. People and VC try to templatise us, by associating with some apps like Medium, Instagram, etc. but what we have figured out you can’t tell someone your vision, they have to experience it once you’ve built the product yourself. And product is really an experience.
You can’t hire a coder and create your vision, everybody who has created something great were creators themselves. Thoxt has be made with infinite passion and perseverance. Shilpa has been on coding sprees day and night, and it’s still the case. Sometimes we think a larger team may slow us down, so as of now we are just building and bootstrapping. No matter what the outcome, just being able to build Thoxt makes us feel successful already.
Q: Any final thoughts?
Abhishek: Well, if you’ve ever felt like your words deserve better than a tweet, a Quora reply, a Google Doc, or a ghosted blog, come write on Thoxt. We’re building this for you.
Rajesh is a seasoned political journalist with over a decade of experience covering Indian politics, governance, and elections. Known for his in-depth analysis and impartial reporting, Sharma has contributed to leading publications like TOI, HT and Thoxt