On a lane in Gurugram’s Udyog Vihar industrial area sits a two-storey office of Optimist, the startup that’s positioning itself as a challenger to India’s air-conditioner giants.

The building doesn’t quite resemble an R&D unit. Inside it, however, two rooms are devoted solely to research and development. In one room, the company’s engineers are monitoring the readings of the internal unit of an Optimist AC. In the other, they’re tracking its cooling efficiency and the effect of temperature changes on its external unit.

For a company that........

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