Build the next thing.
Without betting the company on it.
Kharaayo co-builds new ventures and product lines with established companies — bringing the engineering, design, and venture mechanics to your market knowledge, customer access, and strategic mandate.
For established companies and teams with a validated opportunity — not first-time founders. For early-stage founders, see Build With Us.
Innovation programs that produce decks. Not companies.
Most large organisations have tried to build something new from the inside. The pattern is familiar:
An innovation lab is set up with budget and headcount. Workshops are run. Ideas are validated in a room. Prototypes are built. A demo day happens. Twelve months later, the organisation has learned some things but shipped nothing a real customer uses. The lab is quietly wound down or absorbed back into the business.
The problem is structural, not a failure of ambition or talent.
Internal innovation moves at corporate speed in an environment built for corporate accountability — where no one wants to be the executive who backed the thing that failed. Real ventures need startup speed in an environment where failure is information, not career risk. The two are incompatible inside the same organisation.
The co-creation model solves this by moving the build outside the organisation’s operating environment — into a venture-studio structure with the startup speed, engineering capability, and accountability architecture that produces real companies. The corporate partner contributes the domain expertise, customer access, and capital. Kharaayo contributes the build infrastructure and the equity alignment that makes everyone in the room actually want the venture to succeed.
What changes when equity is involved
When Kharaayo holds equity in what we’re building together, the dynamic shifts completely. We are not advising on your innovation strategy. We are not building what you specify and invoicing for hours. We have skin in the game — and that means every architectural decision, every product choice, and every go-to-market call is made with the question “what’s best for the venture?” rather than “what closes the invoice?”
That alignment is the engine. Everything else is execution.
A joint venture, built at startup speed.
Co-Creation is a structured engagement where Kharaayo and a corporate partner build a new venture together — as genuine equity co-owners with defined roles, not as client and vendor.
What it is
A defined scope of new-venture or new-product work — typically a new business line, a digital product for an adjacent market, or a spin-out from an existing asset — designed, built, and launched by a joint team of Kharaayo engineers and designers alongside the corporate partner’s domain leads. The venture is structured as a separate entity from day one, with a cap table that reflects both parties’ contributions.
What it is not
It is not a consulting engagement where Kharaayo advises on innovation strategy and the corporate team does the building. It is not a development project where Kharaayo builds to the corporate partner’s specification. It is not an accelerator or an innovation lab program. It is not appropriate for ideas still in early concept phase — by the time a co-creation engagement begins, the market opportunity should be defined and the corporate partner should have validated access to the target customer.
The joint team structure
A lead engineer, a designer, and a venture architect — someone who has built ventures and manages the operational, legal, and commercial scaffolding.
A named product or innovation lead with decision authority, access to the target customers, and the ability to clear internal blockers.
The founding team is the joint team — not a client sending briefs to a vendor.
Two parties. Both showing up.
What Kharaayo brings
Engineering & Product Build
Full-stack AI-native product engineering. Architecture, backend, frontend, deployment, and production infrastructure — the same standard applied to Kharaayo’s own ventures.
Brand & Design
Identity, product design, marketing site, and the visual system that makes the venture credible from day one — not patched together post-launch.
Venture Architecture
Entity formation, legal documentation, cap table management, financial model fundamentals, and the operational scaffolding that turns a product into a company.
Go-to-Market Execution
Launch planning, early user acquisition, and the network access — client relationships, ecosystem partners, and community — that Kharaayo brings as a Year-2 venture studio.
Equity Alignment
The thing that makes everything above matter: Kharaayo holds equity. We succeed when the venture succeeds.
What the corporate partner must bring
Domain Expertise
Deep knowledge of the market, the customer, and the problem being solved. This is what Kharaayo cannot replicate — and the irreplaceable foundation of any venture.
Customer Access
The ability to get the venture in front of target customers at validation and launch stage. Not warm intros to one or two people — structural access to the market.
Capital Commitment
Co-Creation engagements involve a cash component from the corporate partner that covers the cost of the build. The equity split reflects both cash and in-kind contributions from both sides.
A Named Decision-Maker
A single person on the corporate side with authority to make product decisions, access customers, clear internal blockers, and act as the venture’s de-facto founding CEO. This does not work without one.
Tolerance for Startup Speed
New ventures move differently from established companies. Decisions are made in hours, not weeks. The corporate partner needs to be able to match that pace within the joint venture.
From conversation to company.
Discovery & Opportunity Definition2–4 weeks
A structured engagement to assess the opportunity: market size, competitive landscape, the corporate partner’s specific advantage, customer validation approach, and the venture architecture. Output: a written Opportunity Brief — a clear definition of what we’re building, who it’s for, and why the joint team is the right one to build it.
Both parties must be willing to walk away if the Opportunity Brief doesn’t support proceeding. This phase protects both sides.
Venture Design2–4 weeks
The venture is designed: product scope, brand direction, technical architecture, entity structure, cap table framework, and a build-and-launch plan with defined milestones. Output: a signed co-creation agreement and a venture design document. First line of code is not written until this document is agreed.
Build & Launch10–20 weeks, scope-dependent
The joint team builds. Two-week sprints with weekly cross-team syncs and milestone reviews. Working product, branded and deployed, with first users by the end of this phase.
Venture Operations & Growthongoing
The venture launches and operates as a standalone entity. The corporate partner’s named lead runs the venture day-to-day. Kharaayo provides ongoing engineering and creative support at standard rates (now as a service to a portfolio company) and holds its board seat. Growth, capital, and scaling decisions are made jointly.
Co-Creation engagements involve a cash component from the corporate partner to cover build costs, plus equity in the new venture. The exact split is negotiated based on the scope of each party’s contribution — capital, build investment, and market access all factor in. This is discussed openly in Phase 1. [PLACEHOLDER — confirm with Daniel whether any specific commercial parameters (minimum engagement size, equity range) should be stated publicly.]
This is right for you if:
Right fit
- You represent an established company with a defined market opportunity. Not an early idea — a validated observation that there is a real market need your organisation is positioned to address better than anyone currently does.
- You have customer access, not just customer theory. You can get the venture in front of real target customers within the first month. Access is structural, not a cold email to a connection.
- You need a co-builder with real equity alignment. You’ve concluded that consulting, development-for-hire, and internal innovation programs don’t produce the outcome you need. You want a partner with skin in the game.
- You can name the person who will run it. You have (or can identify) a single individual with the authority, commitment, and capability to operate the venture — someone who can act like a founding CEO within the broader organisation.
- You have capital to contribute. Co-Creation involves a cash commitment from the corporate partner. It is not a pure equity-for-build arrangement — both parties commit capital and capability.
Not the right fit
- You’re still in early ideation. If you don’t yet have a validated market opportunity and defined customer access, a co-creation engagement will spend its first phase on work better done elsewhere. Reach out for a preliminary conversation — we’ll tell you where you are in the readiness spectrum.
- You want Kharaayo to build it while you observe. Co-creation requires genuine joint participation from the corporate side, specifically around customer access and product direction. Passive corporate partners produce ventures that don’t fit the market.
- Your internal approval process will block startup speed. If every product decision requires three layers of sign-off, the venture will move at corporate pace. Co-creation requires the partner to carve out a genuinely autonomous operating environment for the joint venture.
An early-stage founder rather than an established company? Build With Us is the right starting point. Build With Us →
Evaluating a services engagement rather than a co-creation partnership? See Kharaayo Tech. AI-Native MVP →
Also exploring the investor relationship? See For Investors. For Investors →
We’ve done this from the inside. Now we’re doing it with partners.
Co-Creation as a program for external corporate partners is new. The method it’s built on is not.
The same venture-building infrastructure that powers Co-Creation — the engineering capability, the brand and design system, the entity formation support, the investment ledger mechanics, the equity architecture — is what Kharaayo has used to build ProLeap, Agenhost, and Vetyo internally.
ProLeap is the clearest proof. It started as a thesis inside Kharaayo — a conviction about what talent development in eastern Nepal could look like. The Studio team built the brand. The Tech team built the platform. The operational team handled incorporation, financials, and the legal structure for a future raise. Today, ProLeap has paying learners, an operational team, and a digital platform in active development — and is preparing to graduate as its own independent company with Kharaayo Inc. as majority shareholder.
That is the venture-building machine. Co-Creation opens it to corporate partners who bring what Kharaayo does not have — market access, domain expertise, and the capital that de-risks the build from the other side.
What this means for a corporate partner
You are not betting on Kharaayo’s theoretical capability. The Studio that will brand your venture is the same Studio that built ProLeap’s identity. The Tech team that will build your product is the same team that built ProLeap’s platform and is building Agenhost and Vetyo. The venture mechanics — entity formation, investment ledger, equity architecture — have been applied to real companies, not just described in a framework.
The track record is internal and in-progress. It is real.
[PLACEHOLDER — confirm Agenhost/Vetyo naming is approved given current stage; add sanitised in-progress corporate prospect context if available to strengthen this section.]