DECODING DRAUPADIOur Story
Draupadi asked a question no one in the room wanted to answer. We've been asking questions ever since.
2022
It started with two 22-year-olds and a blog.
Decoding Draupadi started in 2022 at C4E, a creative collective in Mumbai. Chandni Menda and Anshika Kushwaha were 22, working their first jobs, and tired of reading about women's issues as if they were distant, unsolvable things. They weren't unsolvable. Nobody was talking about them.
We named ourselves after Draupadi because every woman we knew had something in common with her. Strong, outspoken, and still misread by almost everyone around her. Our job was to decode her: to understand each woman and bring her story to life.
2022 to 2023
We made things before we had a plan.
We followed one rule from day one: ready, fire, aim. In our first six months we shipped six projects.
A 2023 calendar
Twelve women artists, each answering what freedom meant to them.
Show, Don't Tell
A library of stock photos of real brown women, because search results didn't look like us.
Draupadi on the Dais
A list of women experts for event organisers who said they couldn't find any.
In the Folds of Our Truths
An anthology of women's stories, made with the Purple Pencil Project and published in 2024.
Not everything worked. FeMela, our first big women-only gathering, never happened. We learned to start smaller.
2024
Then we found the room.
In January 2024 we hosted our first meetup, in a corner of Doolally in Andheri. That May we held Sisoti, our first open mic: 12 women on stage, 30 in the audience, nobody in a hurry to leave.
A WhatsApp group for women freelancers grew into Draupadi at Work, a community of 500 women who answered each other's questions faster than any search engine. We also took on our first brand work, helping a women's health brand talk about pain as something women shouldn't have to put up with.
Today
Now it's a sisterhood.
Today Decoding Draupadi is a community of 10,000+ urban working women, a newsletter, a podcast, and 90+ stories of women who don't make it into Forbes but should.
In February 2026, 150 women turned up to a Galentine's party in a Mumbai garden. A month later, women in 15+ cities walked out at 8 am on the same Sunday to photograph their cities, most of them meeting for the first time.
We're still asking the question we started with: does this help a woman move forward at work and in life? If it doesn't, we don't make it.
The short version
2022
Decoding Draupadi starts at C4E
Dec 2022
First calendar and Show, Don't Tell
2023
Draupadi on the Dais and the women freelancers' community
Jan 2024
First meetup, at Doolally, Mumbai
May 2024
Sisoti, our first open mic
2024
In the Folds of Our Truths, our anthology with the Purple Pencil Project, is published
Feb 2026
150 women at our Galentine's party
Mar 2026
Decoding 100 Gazes photo walk across 15+ cities
2026
The podcast launches