I spent 8 years
building. shouldn't feel
Then I started building the team that builds
I'm Vijay Kanani. I spent 8 years as an engineer at firms like L&T, starting as an engineer and moving up to project engineer. The teams were good, the work was solid, but I kept noticing the same pattern outside that world.
In January 2023, I started something else first. The idea was around closing the skill gap for engineers. It didn't work. But the founders I talked to while running it kept telling me the same thing: they had the vision, they had the funding, they couldn't find people who could build.
That's when I realized the real pain isn't a skill gap. It's a matching gap. Founders aren't short on engineers in the world. They're short on engineers who can sit inside their team and execute their vision.
Enlighten Schola is what I built around that insight. We embed engineers inside US founders' teams, full-time, on one product. Not a pool, not a service desk. Just the right person inside your team, building your vision.
Outside work, I'm a family person who spends time outdoors when I can. I believe engineering work, done right, is one of the most leveraged things a person can do.
Vijay Kanani
Founder, Enlighten Schola
We built around
three beliefs
Most agencies built their offer around what's easy to sell. We built ours around what we believe should be true about engineering work.
We believe engineers should be embedded, not extracted.
One engineer, in your team, in your repo, on your standups, on one product. Not a resource we rent out by the hour.
We believe AI-Critical is a standard, not a buzzword.
Our engineers use AI to ship faster. But the architecture is human-reviewed, and every test has a reason. AI is a force multiplier for thinking, not a substitute for it.
We believe founders should manage product, not engineers.
Your hours should go to deciding what to build and who to sell it to. Not to standups, tickets, and status updates. We run the back office. You run the product.
Engineering is leveraged work. The person who does it should be set up to do it well.
What we're building
toward
We're not building this to scale fast. We're building it to be the obvious choice for the founders who care about how the work gets done.
Ten founders by 2026.
Ten founders by end of 2026. Each one a real fit, not a target we hit.
The brand by 2029.
In three years, we want to be known for one thing: engineers who use AI to ship faster, but bring their own taste, judgment, and care to the work. The kind of engineering that makes a product feel real, not just function.
Engineers who compound.
Every engineer who joins us compounds their career on real products and real founder relationships. Not on redacted client codes and hours billed.
The line we hold.
Growth pressure won't move the bar. We will not place an engineer we wouldn't hire ourselves, even if it costs us a quarter.
If you've read this far, let's talk.
Book a 30-minute No-Pitch Session with me. We'll look at what you're building, what's slowing you down, and whether embedded fits. If it doesn't, I'll tell you in the first 10 minutes.
Book the No-Pitch Session →