From Products to Poetry, Anirudh Akella Moves Across Worlds with Intention

Some careers follow a neat arc. Others take the long road—shaped by side projects, chance meetings, wrong turns, and personal detours. For Anirudh Akella, the path looks more like a web than a ladder.

Over the last eight years, he’s worked across sectors—education, recreation, finance, consumer tech—mostly at the early stage, where things break fast and clarity comes late. He’s helped unlock over $2.3 million in cumulative value across products and ventures, and none of it has happened in isolation.

A Start in Building, Not Just Thinking

Anirudh graduated from Manipal Institute of Technology with an engineering degree, but building came before theory. While still in college, he launched The ChillSpace, India’s first indoor recreational zone for students. It wasn’t backed by a fund or incubator. It was born from a gap he noticed in his environment—and a belief that students deserved a space to disconnect and unwind.

He also co-founded another education-focused startup during this time. The details differ, but the throughline remains the same: make something that serves a real need.

Growth, Strategy & Operating in the 0-to-1 Zone

Currently, Anirudh leads Global Growth and Partnerships at Etherspot, and heads Strategy at Levitate Labs, a venture fund supporting multi-million-dollar portfolio companies including Truflation, Geodnet, and Ambrus Studios.

Across these roles, he works closely with founders and operators on growth systems, BD, fundraising, and early-stage scaling. He specializes in helping startups move from 0 to 1, and then from 1 to 10—focusing on the messy middle where most growth strategies break.

He’s also consulted with companies like DZap and worked across verticals like fintech, healthcare, and proptech, often coming in during the high-stakes, build-or-break moments.

Showing Up in the Ecosystem

Anirudh’s not just behind the scenes. He’s hosted and spoken at global conferences—from ETH Vietnam and Proof of Security Summit in Dubai, to ETH CC in Brussels and the Omnichain Summit in Bangalore. In 2024, he attended over 190+ events and hosted many of his own, including The Chain Reaction meetup in Bangalore.

He’s also the co-host of Pixels & Bytes, a podcast unpacking product, growth, and tech with guests from across the ecosystem.

But one post on his feed stands out: a raw, honest note about launching the podcast while battling impostor syndrome. It’s not polished, and that’s the point. His approach to thought leadership feels less like content—and more like contribution.

A Book. A Belief. A Test.

In late 2023, after a difficult period, he started writing again. That turned into Sea Salt Caramel—a limited-edition poetry book built as both a keepsake and a mechanism for social impact.

It’s structured across four parts—Before, During, After, and Later—and tells a contemporary love story through 30+ poems. But it’s not available on Amazon or Flipkart. You can’t buy it freely. Copies are limited to 3,645, and readers must apply or receive an invite to own one.

Each book comes with a digital proof of ownership. It’s not just symbolic—it solves for piracy, creates traceability, and treats the book as a collectible. This system was built in partnership with SinQlarity, using their development layer to create a verifiable ownership model.

Proceeds from the book go into a funding pool. But it’s not a donation model. Every holder of Sea Salt Caramel gets to vote on how the funds are disbursed—via two initiatives:

→ Project Vani, named after Anirudh’s mother, supports women and queer-led causes
→ Project Yuna, named after a lost pet, funds animal welfare and conservation

A full impact report will be shared with all book holders, creating transparency from start to finish.

A Year of Movement

The writing of the book happened alongside something else: a year-long journey through 11+ countries – Vietnam, Dubai, Berlin, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Singapore, the U.S., Thailand and more.

Each place added a chapter.
→ In Hanoi, a hotel manager took time off to show him the city.
→ In Dubai, he waded through chest-deep water to get to safety during the floods.
→ In Berlin, a friend he met in Vietnam hosted him for days.
→ In the U.S., childhood friends drove across cities to reconnect after a decade.

If people shaped one aspect of his journey, experiences shaped another. He got certified as an Open Water Diver—despite not knowing how to swim. He has been training for skydiving, has cooked, danced, studied and through all of it, he found the perspective to finish the book.

Where It’s Going

Today, Anirudh works across product, growth, and strategy. He’s building distribution systems that scale. He’s running experiments in ownership and impact. He’s helping projects move fast without breaking people in the process.

And none of it is framed as a brand. It’s just how he works.

There’s no grand promise at the end of this story. Just someone trying to make sense of what’s worth building—and doing it in a way that doesn’t lose the human in the process.