Problem and Solution Report: Vela

The Problem: The Scheduling Bottleneck Professional scheduling, particularly in high-volume environments like enterprise recruiting and sales, is plagued by a 'back-and-forth' coordination loop that consumes significant human capital. Traditional scheduling tools often fail when faced with ambiguity—such as a recipient suggesting 'early next week' or 'sometime Tuesday afternoon.' These tools typically require the sender to manually interpret the response, check their calendar, and propose new times, leading to a fragmented process. For recruiters scheduling thousands of interviews, this administrative burden can result in over 40 hours of lost productivity per month.

The Solution: An Autonomous AI Scheduling Agent Vela provides an AI-driven scheduling assistant designed to handle the entire coordination loop autonomously. Unlike passive scheduling links (e.g., Calendly), Vela acts as an active agent. Users can simply 'CC' Vela (e.g., vela@youragency.ai) into an email thread. From there, the AI takes over: it interprets ambiguous natural language, checks the user's availability, proposes specific times, and follows up with the recipient until a meeting is secured. It supports a wide array of communication channels, including Email, SMS, WhatsApp, Slack, and Microsoft Teams, ensuring it meets participants where they are.

Value Proposition and Impact The core value proposition of Vela is the reclamation of time. By automating the logistics of booking, rescheduling, and sending confirmations, Vela claims to save recruiters approximately 43.5 hours per month. The solution is built to handle complex scenarios that typically break automated systems, such as multi-party panel interviews and cross-client coordination. By eliminating the administrative friction of scheduling, Vela allows professionals at high-performance firms like McKinsey and BCG to focus on high-value tasks rather than calendar management.

Market and Competitors Report: Vela

Market Landscape and Trends Vela operates in the rapidly evolving 'AI Productivity' and 'Scheduling Automation' markets. A key trend in this space is the shift from passive 'link-based' scheduling to active 'agentic' scheduling. While the Interview Scheduling Software market is growing at a steady 7.32% CAGR (projected to reach $4.65 billion by 2035), the broader AI Assistant market is exploding with a 44.5% CAGR. This indicates a massive shift toward tools that can interpret natural language and perform tasks autonomously rather than just providing a digital interface for manual selection.

Target Audience Vela's primary target audience is high-volume schedulers. This includes:

• Enterprise Recruiters & Staffing Agencies: Who manage thousands of multi-party interviews and complex candidate/client coordination.
• Sales Teams & Consultants: Who need to book meetings quickly to maintain momentum in the sales cycle.
• Professional Services: High-performers at firms like McKinsey and BCG who require seamless, white-glove scheduling experiences without the friction of manual back-and-forth.

Competitive Landscape Vela faces competition from several categories of tools:

1. Legacy Scheduling Links: Tools like Calendly or Doodle. While widely used, these are 'passive' and often fail when a recipient refuses to click a link or uses ambiguous language in a reply.
2. ATS-Integrated Schedulers: Many Applicant Tracking Systems (like Greenhouse or Lever) have built-in scheduling features. Vela's advantage is its ability to operate across multiple channels (SMS, WhatsApp) and handle the 'negotiation' phase of scheduling that these tools often miss.
3. General AI Assistants: Broad tools like Reclaim.ai or Motion focus on individual calendar optimization. Vela differentiates itself by focusing on the external coordination and the 'agentic' nature of the interaction.

Competitive Advantages Vela's primary competitive advantage is its 'agentic' capability—the ability to handle the 'ambiguity that breaks scheduling.' By supporting multi-channel communication (Email, SMS, WhatsApp, Slack, Teams) and autonomously following up, Vela provides a more comprehensive solution than simple link-sharing. Its backing by Y Combinator and early adoption by elite consulting firms provide significant social proof and a head start in the enterprise market.

Founders and Background Report: Vela

Vela was co-founded by Gobhanu Sasankar Korisepati and Saatvik Suryajit Korisepati, two individuals with extensive backgrounds in artificial intelligence, enterprise consulting, and high-scale engineering. The founding team brings a blend of strategic business experience and deep technical expertise, which is central to their mission of building an AI-driven scheduling agent capable of handling complex, ambiguous coordination tasks.

Gobhanu Sasankar Korisepati (Co-founder & CEO) Gobhanu serves as the CEO of Vela. He previously attended the prestigious Huntsman Program at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School before leaving to pursue the venture. His professional history includes roles at top-tier firms such as BCG AI, Perplexity, and Deloitte. Notably, Gobhanu demonstrated early entrepreneurial success by founding SWIFTmfi at the age of 14. This venture disbursed over $400,000 in interest-free microloans to more than 3,200 women across 77 countries, showcasing his long-standing interest in leveraging technology for operational efficiency and social impact.

Saatvik Suryajit Korisepati (Co-founder) Saatvik provides the technical leadership for Vela, drawing on a highly distinguished academic and professional engineering background. He completed two #1-ranked programs at Carnegie Mellon University—Computer Science and Information Systems—in just two years, graduating with highest honors. Before co-founding Vela, Saatvik was an award-winning engineer on Amazon Web Services' (AWS) ML Supercompute team. He was also a Booth Scholar (MBA/MS CS) and a ZFellow, eventually dropping out of the University of Chicago to focus on building Vela's AI infrastructure.

Together, the founders have secured backing from premier startup accelerators and investors. Vela is a member of the Y Combinator Winter 2026 batch and has received investment from Pareto Holdings, Z Fellows, and Cory Levy. Their combined experience in AI development and enterprise workflows positions them uniquely to address the persistent inefficiencies in professional scheduling.