AI communities in India kinda suck

This is going to ruffle some feathers, but someone needs to say it: most AI communities in India are disappointing.

I've been part of dozens of them. Telegram groups with 10,000 members and zero signal. Discord servers that are basically tech support for OpenAI's API. LinkedIn groups where every post is either a job listing or someone sharing a generic "10 AI tools you need to know" thread.

Where are the people actually building? Where are the deep technical discussions about inference optimization, evaluation frameworks, or production deployment challenges?

Here's what I think went wrong:

First, the incentives are broken. Most communities are run by people trying to sell something — a course, a newsletter, consulting services. The community is a funnel, not a destination. So the content optimizes for reach, not depth.

Second, everything is online. Look, I love the internet. But there's something different about being in a room with people, debugging code together, sketching architectures on a whiteboard. The serendipity of overhearing a conversation and realizing you're working on the exact same problem. You can't replicate that in a Slack thread.

Third, there's no filter for builders. When anyone can join, you get a lot of spectators. People who want to "learn about AI" but never actually build anything. That's fine for education-focused communities, but it dilutes the signal for people who want to ship.

Fourth, the global communities don't fit our context. YC's community is great if you're a funded startup in SF. But what about the indie hacker in Bangalore building AI tools for local businesses? The researcher in Chennai working on multilingual models? The designer in Hyderabad rethinking AI interfaces for Indian users?

This is why we started United by AI differently:

We meet in person. Every two weeks, minimum. Build nights where you show up with your laptop and actually work on something.

We filter for builders. Not in an elitist way — but we want people who are making stuff, not just consuming content about it.

We're India-first. The problems we discuss, the contexts we optimize for, the connections we facilitate — they're grounded in what's actually happening here.

We keep it small enough to matter. 500 active members is better than 50,000 lurkers. We want everyone to know each other, to help each other, to build together.

Is this the perfect model? Probably not. We're figuring it out as we go. But we think it's a better starting point than what exists.

If you've felt the same frustration with AI communities, maybe come check us out. Worst case, you'll meet some cool people and get some work done.