[EO San Francisco] Creating Real-World Connections in a Digital Age With Shalini Lunia

Shalini Lunia is the Co-founder of Cielo, a San Francisco-based platform that fosters authentic in-person connections through curated small group gatherings. She grew up in a ninth-generation family of jewelers and has lived in cities around the world. Shalini led ventures in industries ranging from jewelry to edible oils and real estate infrastructure. Her mission with Cielo is to help people overcome loneliness and build meaningful relationships wherever they are.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [3:32] Shalini Lunia describes growing up surrounded by gemstones in multiple countries
• [7:04] Why the precious stones market is booming as diamonds decline
• [11:58] Being raised to become a good wife while pursuing entrepreneurial ambitions
• [15:56] Entering the family edible oil business through design and marketing
• [18:07] Expanding into gas infrastructure for apartment buildings during a construction boom
• [20:27] How frequent relocations inspired the creation of Cielo

In this episode…

In a world where we’re more digitally connected than ever, many still struggle to find genuine, face-to-face friendships. Moving to a new city, starting fresh, or simply wanting to expand one’s social circle can feel daunting and isolating. How can we bridge the gap between online connections and meaningful real-world relationships?

According to Shalini Lunia, a lifelong entrepreneur with a global upbringing, the answer lies in creating intentional spaces for small group gatherings that foster authentic bonds. She highlights how loneliness has become a pressing issue, even in bustling urban centers, and how technology can be used to solve this problem. Her approach centers on curated, verified meetups that prioritize quality over quantity, giving people the comfort and confidence to engage. This model encourages deeper conversations, stronger community ties, and a greater sense of belonging, no matter where life takes you.

In this episode of the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast, host John Corcoran sits down with Shalini Lunia, Co-founder of Cielo, to discuss creating real-world connections in a digital age. They explore why smaller groups foster stronger bonds, how curated events combat loneliness, and the importance of safety and trust on social platforms. Shalini also shares how her personal journey inspired the creation of Cielo.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• EO San Francisco
• EO Accelerator
• Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO)
• John Corcoran on LinkedIn
• Rise25
• Shalini Lunia on LinkedIn
• Cielo

Quotable Moments

• “I grew up playing with gemstones, assorting them color-wise, shape-wise, and that’s how we grew up.”
• “As diamonds have crashed, the precious stones have boomed, multiplying many times in the last five years.”
• “We are girls, we’re brought up to be good wives, learning cooking, knitting, stitching, embroidery, and crafts.”
• “An average American moves three times in his lifetime, and it takes three months to finally make friends.”
• “Loneliness is one of the biggest issues that I think the next generation is going to face.”

Action Steps

1. Create small group gathering opportunities: Smaller groups foster deeper conversations and more authentic connections, making relationships easier to build and maintain.
2. Verify participant profiles for safety: Ensuring users are who they say they are builds trust and encourages more people to join events.
3. Focus on quality over quantity in networking: Limiting event size to a manageable number enhances interaction and prevents overwhelming social dynamics.
4. Use technology to combat loneliness: Leveraging apps to connect like-minded individuals can help bridge the gap between online and in-person relationships.
5. Encourage community involvement in event creation: Allowing members to host or propose gatherings increases engagement and strengthens the platform’s sense of belonging.

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Episode Transcript:

Intro: 00:03

Welcome to the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast, where we feature top founders and entrepreneurs and their journey. Now let’s get started with the show.

John Corcoran: 00:12

All right. Welcome everyone. John Corcoran here. I’m the co-host of this show. And you know, every week we feature smart CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs from all kinds of companies.

And if you check out the archives, we’ve got lots of great episodes for you to check out there. And this episode is brought to you by EO San Francisco, which is the San Francisco Bay area chapter of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization, which is a global peer to peer network of more than 20,000 influential business owners across 200 chapters, 61 countries. And if you’re the founder, co founder or controlling shareholder of a company, generated over $1 million a year in revenues, and you want to connect with other like minded, successful entrepreneurs, EO is for you. And the EO chat EO San Francisco chapter was founded in 1991. Today has over 100 members in a variety of different industries, so if you want to learn more, you can go to eonetwork.org/SanFrancisco or eonetwork.org. And come check out our test drive and see what we’re all about. And my name is John Corcoran, and I am the Co-founder of Rise 25 and a board member at at EO San Francisco. Been there, been on the board for about four years now and have a company called Rise25 that does done for you podcasts for B2B businesses. And let’s get into today’s guest.

Today’s guest is Shalini Lunia. She is the Co-founder at Cielo, which is a platform based out of San Francisco that focuses on facilitating authentic, in-person connections through curated small group gatherings. And she has a long international background. I was just talking with her beforehand about growing up in multiple different countries, exploring the world, and very international background through her family that was in the jewelry space. So we’re going to get into that.

And Shalini is such a pleasure to have you here today. First of all, your dad at a very young age, came from India to New York, came from a family of jewelers. You said you are ninth generation jeweler. That’s insane. And he ended up in in New York and basically packed up a bag of antiques and was hosting these big, fabulous Indian parties that got all kinds of attention.

So quite the introduction to the United States. Tell me what your memories are of this era. As a kid growing up around this environment.

Shalini Lunia: 02:31

I grew up playing with gemstones. You know, most kids grow up playing with toys. I grew up playing with gemstones, assorting them color wise, shape wise. And that’s how we grew up every time. I mean, my mom had I mean, my mom was 17 when she had me.

So having young kids I think was probably tough to engage them. So we were given these also with bags full of gemstones or Gemstones are rubies and sapphires and kind of sort them. So yeah, that’s that’s.

John Corcoran: 03:06

What my kids misplaced toys all the time. I can’t imagine like, anyone seen the thousand dollar, you know, ten carat ruby. Where did it go?

Shalini Lunia: 03:14

Good kids.

John Corcoran: 03:15

We were.

Shalini Lunia: 03:15

Responsible kids. My mom always says that. She always says you never gave me trouble in your childhood.

John Corcoran: 03:23

That’s good.

Shalini Lunia: 03:24

So.

!no name provided!: 03:25

Yeah, I guess you don’t give the troublesome.

John Corcoran: 03:27

Child the bag of rubies and let them play with them.

Shalini Lunia: 03:32

So, yeah, I grew up with gemstones, but living between New York, Bangkok, Chanthaburi and Jaipur. So all very cities which have a long history of gemstones. And that’s what my background has been.

John Corcoran: 03:51

Wow. And so you grew up around that and you said your parents were hosting Indian parties. Was that like a a way of, of kind of getting attention to the business and selling selling the jewelry.

Shalini Lunia: 04:02

This is the 1970s. There were not too many Indians around. There were. We were probably maybe just ten families in New York. This is before.

John Corcoran: 04:10

Ten Indian families in New York. Wow. Wow.

Shalini Lunia: 04:13

Early 70s. You could not even go to a restaurant. I’m a vegetarian, so this was like a very close knit who just interacted with each other. So an Indian was looked. Only Indians would.

The only Indians you would see is probably with some heritage or something. So and Indian jewels at at some point were these were like museum worthy pieces. Most pieces. That they were selling are probably museum worthy today. So yeah. That had a lot of attention. And we had a lot of clients because we had a jewelry store at the hotel. So through that network, we were in the New York society and selling all these jewels. Selling these jewels in Palm Beach. Hosting parties in Palm Beach.

At that point, I don’t know what these guys were doing. I’m just. I’m always amazed at how they just came with barely any education. And they just came to New York. Just decided to come to New York and make their life.

John Corcoran: 05:19

I mean, New York is such an intimidating place, especially in the 70s, had a higher crime rate and things like that. I couldn’t imagine there being ten Indian families there and assimilating yourself to that society and then selling these expensive jewels. That’s that’s crazy. Did you your mother and father, were they great at sales? You know.

Shalini Lunia: 05:39

I think my dad and my uncle were. The jewels spoke for themselves. I think they had this great, this great collection. You know, my dad passed away in 2001. And and then briefly, when I’m working with the jewelry industry, I meet people.

I meet people at the Vegas show. I meet people and who see my name, and they actually ask me about my dad. So. It was interesting. It’s always interesting.

I got to know a lot of stories through them, which I had no idea. So yeah.

John Corcoran: 06:10

It’s crazy because I was talking to a jeweler recently because one of my sons is really interested in precious metals like silvers and things like that, and he’s kind of entrepreneurial. He goes to garage sales, finds like these like silver items, buys them and then sells them to a jeweler. And I was talking with him about the change in the diamond market. I don’t know how closely you you followed this, but, you know, we talk about like disruption from like, AI and things like that all the time here in San Francisco Bay area. But you don’t think of these like long standing professions, like jewelry being affected by changes in technology, but it really has.

He told me I was shocked. I mean, he told me that the diamond market has nearly collapsed, I think, in his words, because of these new lab grown Owned diamonds. That’s really affecting this industry?

Shalini Lunia: 07:04

Yes. I work with precious stones, which means rubies, emeralds, sapphires and the other semi-precious. And they have boomed. They have multiplied. I don’t even know how many times in the last five years, because as diamonds have crashed, the precious stones have boomed.

And it’s true with AI, with technology coming in. It’s it’s becoming harder and harder.

John Corcoran: 07:33

Are you. Feel. For. that? They’ll take that lab grown technology and then apply it to rubies and other.

Shalini Lunia: 07:38

No, you cannot do it. It’s not possible. Oh, because I can give you. If you want a ten carat diamond, I can give you multiples. But if you want a ten carat ruby, I can only give you one.

I cannot replicate. So each ruby, each emerald, each sapphire is very unique. You cannot replicate. And it has its own inherent Characteristics which you cannot imitate.

John Corcoran: 08:03

It’s interesting because, you know, historically they’re you know, it used to be that, you know, immigrants could move borders and have bring a bunch of diamonds with them. And it’s like basically moving money, right? Like it was it was solid, you know, way of it still is capital is it still is.

Shalini Lunia: 08:21

So, yeah.

John Corcoran: 08:22

Interesting.

Shalini Lunia: 08:23

Precious stones have boomed a lot more now. It’s easier to move money.

John Corcoran: 08:28

Interesting. So you you grew up in New York, but then soon your family actually moves to Thailand and then eventually to India. So you actually moved around a lot as a kid. Talk a little bit about that. And and in addition to that, you said that your family would always take you to a new country every year and you’d rent a car.

This is, you know, a time when it was before the internet or difficult to travel around in these places. What was that like?

Shalini Lunia: 08:56

That, you know, I never realized it was not ordinary till I got married, and I got married into a family which did not know what travel is. They thought travel is that you do once in a lifetime when you retire and you do a world trip, and they would book through these tour agencies. So it was it was very interesting because for me it was a normal right. You get into a new country, land at the airport, rent a car, stand on those queues, which gives where you find a hotel, or you just drive around looking for hotel and ask where you should go next. I mean, there was only Lonely Planet at that point, and I don’t think my parents were even using Lonely Planet, so they would just ask.

I think my dad was very adventurous. He would just ask. He would get interested in the country and then take us next year. Wow. We went to Expo in Japan in 1985, the exposition.

We went to Greece one year. We went to Hong Kong. So it was it was a very interesting childhood.

John Corcoran: 10:08

Did. And then speaking of adventurous, you said that the Vietnam War ended and he discovered ruby mines in Vietnam, which is like, how does that happen? Like you go to a war zone and he’s like looking around for Ruby mines.

Shalini Lunia: 10:23

And I can’t even comprehend it because I don’t want I don’t even understand how he got to know of them because we don’t we don’t have Google. It’s not like it’s on the internet. And you’ve reached that. It’s obviously it’s with someone who told him and he went there and he would take his rice cooker and he was cooking there because there was no vegetarian food available there. So I’m not sure.

And he would go on his own. It was not like he was taking two people with him.

John Corcoran: 10:49

So going around in the jungle, just trying to find, you know, caves. Yeah. That’s crazy.

Shalini Lunia: 10:59

Yeah. But he kind of discovered the first ruby mines and and we were. Yeah, that’s what it is. And after Vietnam came Madagascar. He was doing the Madagascar ruby mines.

So. And then he went to the Kashmir Sapphire mine. So he was he was an adventurous guy.

John Corcoran: 11:18

He’s like a Indian Indian, Indiana Jones.

Shalini Lunia: 11:22

Yeah. Definitely.

John Corcoran: 11:26

So you’ve got this international life. You’re going to Geneva and New York, things like that. You know, you’re high society. At the same time, you’re raised in a culture where women were not allowed to work, they weren’t allowed to be entrepreneurial, but you had in you because you eventually become an entrepreneur this side to you, that was kind of bubbling up an entrepreneurial side. Tell me a little bit about what that experience was like being raised in a very entrepreneurial family, but not, you know, not at all like groomed to go into this work.

Shalini Lunia: 11:58

So We are girls were brought up to be good wives. So cooking, knitting, stitching, embroidery, any kind of crafts, you all have to learn all of that while growing up. So the goal is to become a good wife because you’re raised as one day you have to go to your own house. So you have to understand where we come from. We come from we live in a family learning to make sure that we become good wives.

And I remember after my 12th grade, we had a had a long summer break and there was not much to do. So I wanted to start working in his office, in my dad’s office. So he’s like, he gave me this Ruby packet and he told me to sort it. And these were like really, really small rubies. And I think he thought, it’s going to take me a full day to sort them.

And I think I gave it back to him like within the hour. And he just wrapped it up and he said, Whatever you want to do, you will have to do after you get married, because I think you realize that I was too quick and that was not encouraged because that it was like, if you learn too much about business, then you might want to do business when you get married, so it might work out for you. So stick to the home skills. So I learned cooking at the age of 14. Anyways, so that was that.

And then that was my growing up. And then I got married into a family where we went through a huge crisis. Some more hands were required. So I started helping them with their design and their we launched a new edible oil company. So we.

John Corcoran: 13:48

This is a this is a company that sorry, it was a family business that was in agricultural commodities and edible.

Shalini Lunia: 13:55

Everything from cement to rubber to granite to edible oils. We were one of probably one of the largest companies in India at that point of time.

John Corcoran: 14:04

What was that like entering into a family and a family business like that?

Shalini Lunia: 14:11

You know, in those days. Even if you had something like that, it was still the lifestyles are very similar. There was not a big gap. How it is today, it was different at that point. I think only family backgrounds mattered. And you just got married into the disparity was not as high up, but it was.

It was interesting because there was so much it took me. So when I got married, I’ll tell you a funny story. When I got married, I knew they were into oils, so in my mind I thought it was the engine oil. I didn’t think it was edible. I mean, how would I know?

No one told me. And their brand was called rocket and. In. In the local language, diesel is called Raquel. So everywhere on the gas stations, the petrol pump, I would see these signs saying you get Rocketeer, you get Rocketeer.

I was very impressed. And I was buying it. And I was living between Pune and Bombay and in my Bombay house I was buying a rival brand, Edible Oil. And one day my husband saw me. He’s like, why are you buying this?

And I was like, oh, this is a good brand. It’s a good edible oil. And as.

Shalini Lunia: 15:34

And then, like you do know, we make oil. And I think it was only about a year and a half, two years that I, I did not know that we make edible oil. So that’s how protected you are when you.

John Corcoran: 15:48

Wow.

Shalini Lunia: 15:49

When you get married. So that that’s my first.

John Corcoran: 15:51

And you actually got involved eventually in that line of business. Correct?

Shalini Lunia: 15:56

We got and I got involved because I started designing The posters. And then I got into the marketing and distribution of edible oils, because just starting the. Edible oil brand. So that started my entrepreneurial journey. It was supposed to be only two hours in the office, and then it just grew more and more.

John Corcoran: 16:18

Why was the family? Was it because of your family member that they were okay with you? A woman getting involved in the business side because you said, on the one hand, women and girls are not allowed to be involved in business, but on the other hand, you stepped in. Or was it a process over time where they built trust and or was it? Times were changing in India.

Shalini Lunia: 16:39

Oh, it wasn’t intentional. I only went to design in the posters. I only went in like I would only visit. I would only go to office just to visit my husband because there was so much time. I mean, I didn’t know anyone in the city that I got married to, so that was my pastime.

Like go for lunch and have lunch and then, oh, you know, we are designing this poster. Okay, I can help. And that’s how it started. And then when we were posting, I had to choose. Oh, what areas would you like posters to be?

And then I had. And then when I was shopping, I say, oh, these markets don’t have edible oils. These stores don’t have edible oils. So it was a it was not intentional. I just got into it.

Yeah. I didn’t see it as work. It was more like, oh, you know, these stores don’t have. So I’ll go approach them or send one of them, one of the staff to. That’s how it all started.

John Corcoran: 17:33

And then an opportunity came along through this business in the early 2000. So construction was booming in India and and apartment buildings were being built. And it was a situation where previously in India, every house had a cylinder that had their, I guess, their heating oil. And so these apartment buildings, instead of having cylinders, they needed infrastructure where the oil would will be supplied to the apartment buildings. And you saw this opportunity for you guys to step into that.

So talk a little bit about what you did there.

Shalini Lunia: 18:07

So the opportunity actually started because we one of the parties we met these head from the Hindustan Petroleum guy. And in those days there was only two companies which were supply the gas. And we were just talking and all the construction and you know, how much space and the safety of the cylinders, because those days the cylinders would burst and there were fires. So we just talking and like, oh, we’re looking for people. I said, oh, great opportunity.

And we have a real estate background. And most of my friends were in real estate. So I saw this opportunity and then we started talking about it. But these are also desperate times because we as, as the company had completely crashed at that point. So we were looking to make something.

I don’t think at that point they looked at if it’s a woman or not. It was just the need of the hour. And then we started with Puna. And then we expanded into Bangalore, Goa, Delhi. By the time I left, I think we had about 40,000 units.

Wow. We were working with.

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