All Themes
AI as the Great Equalizer: Universal Access to Expertise
Tushar Vashisht
Co-Founder & CEO
@
HealthifyMe
The next wave of founders has an unprecedented opportunity to democratize access to essential human services—education, healthcare, coaching, and financial planning—by harnessing AI. I believe we are heading towards a world where everyone can have a near-free tutor, a near-free doctor, a near-free coach, and a near-free financial advisor, available at all times. At Healthify, we are already building AI-powered nutritionists and metabolic health coaches, blending AI with human expertise to make high-quality health and wellness advice accessible to millions. But this opportunity extends far beyond health—founders today can create AI-human hybrid solutions that provide universal access to expert guidance, ensuring that education, healthcare, financial advice, and coaching become basic rights, not privileges. With generative AI, these companies can be global from day one, transcending language and infrastructure barriers. Whether it's an AI-driven tutor empowering students in rural India and Silicon Valley alike, or an AI-assisted financial planner helping people worldwide secure their future, the potential is immense. The convergence of AI and human wisdom will be one of the defining shifts of this era, and I hope the next generation of entrepreneurs seizes this moment to build globally impactful solutions.
Tushar Vashisht
Co-Founder & CEO
@
HealthifyMe
AI-Powered Cross-Border B2B Commerce: Enabling Indian Exporters for the Global Stage
Apurva Chamaria
Global Head of Venture Capital & Startups
@
Google
India’s $770 billion export market remains fragmented, slow, and opaque, limiting Indian manufacturers' ability to compete globally. AI can revolutionize B2B trade by enhancing discovery, trust-building, and trade financing, making exports more efficient and scalable. With the China+1 strategy shifting global supply chains, India has a unique opportunity. The missing piece? An AI-first Alibaba for Indian exporters, bridging the gap between domestic manufacturers and global buyers.
Apurva Chamaria
Global Head of Venture Capital & Startups
@
Google
AI Agents for India’s SMBs & Enterprises
Apurva Chamaria
Global Head of Venture Capital & Startups
@
Google
India’s 60 million SMBs contribute 30% of GDP, yet their digital adoption remains fragmented. The next big AI opportunity lies in industry-specific autonomous agents—AI-powered co-pilots that can manage sales, customer support, operations, and compliance. Why now? Generative AI penetration in enterprises is still below 10%, but Indian businesses are actively seeking tangible productivity gains. The challenge? Fine-tuning AI models for Indian languages and industry-specific nuances to ensure seamless adoption.
Apurva Chamaria
Global Head of Venture Capital & Startups
@
Google
One-Click AI: Connecting Business Systems to Cutting-Edge Models.
Arnav Kumar
Founder
@
LeapFinance
One opportunity I’m excited about is building a Zapier equivalent for an AI-first world—a repository of one-click deployable integrations that seamlessly connect internal business systems with the latest AI models. This would allow companies to easily experiment with AI, evaluate performance improvements, and unlock AI-enabled efficiencies by integrating cutting-edge models with their proprietary data.
Arnav Kumar
Founder
@
LeapFinance
Building Smart Startups: AI-Powered Productivity for Founders
Arnav Kumar
Founder
@
LeapFinance
Another idea that excites me is a suite of AI-powered tools designed specifically for founders—a founder productivity suite that streamlines critical yet time-consuming functions like customer service, talent acquisition, and user interviews. While most founders would love to handle these tasks themselves, they often become tedious and inefficient. AI agents, integrated with internal systems, can now take over these functions, allowing founders to focus on higher-impact decisions.
Arnav Kumar
Founder
@
LeapFinance
AI for Smarter Buying, Not Just Selling
Gowri Shankar
Associate Partner
@
Antler
AI-driven sales outreach is overwhelming buyers with calls and emails. A major opportunity lies in creating a buyer-side AI assistant that filters and prioritizes outreach based on real needs—bringing efficiency to the buying process.
Gowri Shankar
Associate Partner
@
Antler
AI-Powered Document Management: Simplifying Bureaucracy for Everyone
Vibhu Mittal
CTO
@
Inflection AI
UPI revolutionized payments, and initiatives like DigiYatra and TTP streamlined airport ID verification. Yet, across many other sectors—banking, taxes, real estate, and even something as straightforward as becoming a startup director—managing, verifying, and submitting documents remains a tedious process. A potential solution could be an AI-powered virtual assistant that tracks all essential documents, keeps them updated, and seamlessly assists with retrieval, submission, and follow-ups. By reducing paperwork and automating these processes, we could make bureaucratic interactions as effortless as digital payments—bringing true ease of access to vital services.
Vibhu Mittal
CTO
@
Inflection AI
AI-Powered Personalization: Giving Every Product a Human Touch
Kuldeep Dhankar
Co-Founder
@
Last9
The internet transformed commerce by enabling centralization, frictionless pricing, seamless discovery, and viral product distribution. However, it failed to create hyper-contextual product purchase and post-purchase experiences for customers. Today, the typical online purchase happens on a marketplace where the seller has little connection to the customer, and the product is far removed from the brand or manufacturer. As a result, users are disconnected from the people who designed and built what they buy. E-commerce has always involved a trade-off between scale and experience. But with the advent of Agent AI, we are entering a new era—one where every product will have a dedicated AI agent acting as a personalized guide. Instead of static product pages, customers will interact with intelligent, human-like AI representatives that onboard, support, and assist them throughout the entire lifecycle of a product. This shift will fundamentally change e-commerce. Imagine an artificial representative for every brand—designed to build trust, answer questions, and provide a level of personalization that has never existed at scale. This isn’t just another chatbot—it’s the digital equivalent of a knowledgeable salesperson, bringing back the human touch to online commerce. AI won’t just sell products; it will give them a soul.
Kuldeep Dhankar
Co-Founder
@
Last9
Next-Gen IT Services: Full-Stack Cloud, Data & AI Solutions for Enterprises
Naveen Unni
Managing Partner
@
TVS Capital Funds
The Indian IT services sector is at an inflection point as enterprises globally shift from fragmented technology adoption to integrated, full-stack solutions that combine cloud, data, and agentic AI. This next wave of IT services will not just enhance productivity but fundamentally reshape enterprise software spend and commercial models. Agentic AI solutions will replace traditional software licenses with dynamic, outcome-driven AI services. Instead of buying software and hiring teams to manage it, enterprises will increasingly pay for intelligence—AI that autonomously analyses data, makes decisions, and optimises workflows. This shift threatens legacy IT service models but creates a massive opportunity for firms that can embed AI deeply within industry-specific workflows. Winning in this landscape will require more than just technical expertise. It will demand deep sector knowledge and a customer-first approach to designing AI-native solutions that deliver measurable business impact. India’s engineering talent, cost advantages, and execution capabilities position it uniquely to lead this transition. The firms that master full-stack AI service delivery—combining cloud, proprietary data, and AI agents—will redefine IT services, transforming them from cost centres into strategic drivers of enterprise growth.
Naveen Unni
Managing Partner
@
TVS Capital Funds
AI-Powered Innovation: Unlocking Niche Market Opportunities
Jed Rose
Partner
@
Antler
Really excited about teams solving problems in niche areas with large market potential. When founders apply AI effectively and move fast, they’re achieving greater impact while extending their financial runway like never before. This has opened up opportunities that previously seemed out of reach. Some sectors where we’ve seen significant traction include fintech, healthtech, and proptech.
Jed Rose
Partner
@
Antler
AI for Founders: Cutting Through the Noise, Amplifying Impact
Utsav Somani
Founder
@
Offline
A startup designed to help founders overcome decision fatigue. Imagine a personal AI chief-of-staff that cuts through the noise, organizes priorities, and nudges you toward high-impact actions—so you can stay focused on what truly matters. Too many brilliant founders burn out making countless small but exhausting decisions daily. It’s time for a smarter solution.
Utsav Somani
Founder
@
Offline
Building an Anti-Fragile Workforce
Rohit Chennamaneni
Co-Founder
@
Darwinbox
Organizations never had the chance to truly personalize skilling, motivation, or engagement to the unique context, emotions, and needs of each employee. Most solutions have relied on one-size-fits-all approaches, which may not be very effective. But with AI, we now have the opportunity to change this. AI makes it possible to create hyper-personalized experiences—tailored learning paths, real-time nudges, and emotional support—that truly engage employees and help them perform better. A startup that uses AI to solve this problem could completely transform how organizations manage and grow their people, unlocking massive potential at scale.
Rohit Chennamaneni
Co-Founder
@
Darwinbox
Cursor for ComfyUI
Sai Krishna V K
Contributor
@
Sentient Foundation
Cursor for ComfyUI ComfyUI is a powerful, open-source node-based interface for Diffusion & LLM models, enabling users to create images, text, videos, and audio through customizable workflows. Its flexibility lies in its modular design, where each node represents a function, and workflows are built by connecting these nodes. However, this level of customization comes with a steep learning curve, requiring users to understand complex workflows and dependencies. Building and deploying projects in ComfyUI involves creating intricate workflows, often requiring manual configuration and testing. While this approach offers unparalleled control, it can be time-consuming and error-prone, especially for beginners. ComfyUI’s potential is immense, but its complexity limits its accessibility to a broader audience. Enter Windsurf and Cursor, two AI-powered coding assistants that are transforming the way developers work. Windsurf excels in automation and context-aware coding, while Cursor focuses on precise control and Git integration. Both tools are redefining productivity by integrating AI into the coding process, making it faster and more intuitive. For ComfyUI to truly democratize AI-driven creativity, it needs an abstraction layer and an intelligent copilot. This layer would automate the creation and deployment of nodes, simplifying workflows and reducing manual effort. Imagine a Windsurf-like assistant for ComfyUI, capable of generating workflows from prompts, optimizing node connections, and suggesting improvements in real-time. Such a tool would not only accelerate development but also make ComfyUI accessible to a wider audience, bridging the gap between creativity and technical expertise. By integrating AI-driven intelligence, ComfyUI could become the ultimate platform for AI-powered creativity, empowering users to build and deploy complex workflows effortlessly. "
Sai Krishna V K
Contributor
@
Sentient Foundation
AI for All: India's SME Tech Leap
Aakrit Vaish
Co-Founder & CEO
@
Haptik
Development of AI-powered tools tailored for the informal economy and small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs). These sectors remain underserved by technology, particularly in areas like financial planning, customer management, and operations. A startup could focus on building an AI platform that simplifies tasks like bookkeeping, inventory management, digital marketing, and customer retention for micro-businesses, such as kirana stores, small manufacturers, and local service providers. The platform could use regional languages, voice interfaces, and intuitive design to cater to India's diverse user base. Integration with popular platforms like WhatsApp and UPI could drive adoption while enabling these businesses to scale digitally. Additionally, providing insights and predictions based on local market trends could be a game-changer.
Aakrit Vaish
Co-Founder & CEO
@
Haptik
AI and the Future of Seamless Software Creation
Sangeet Paul Choudary
Founder
@
Platformation Labs
With AI, everyone can code. But today, we're only using AI to generate code to build apps. This is monolithic thinking - applying new tech to old mental models. To keep building applications in this world would be a failure of imagination. We need to reimagine the application paradigm. What will new coding environment look like? How can coding complex workflows be as simple as editing a word doc? When the cost of generating code falls to zero, how do humans interact with it? This is the missing piece today.
Sangeet Paul Choudary
Founder
@
Platformation Labs
Bridging the AI Deployment Gap: A Massive Opportunity for Technical Teams
Oliver Jay
Managing Director
@
OpenAI
There’s a growing need for technical teams to help companies transition AI solutions from proof-of-concept to full-scale production. Traditional IT teams and system integrators often lack hands-on experience with cutting-edge AI models—whether it's building guardrails, running evaluations, or optimizing deployment. This creates a major market opportunity for AI-fluent technical talent to step in and bridge the gap, enabling businesses to harness AI effectively.
Oliver Jay
Managing Director
@
OpenAI
New Jobs, New Skills: AI's Promise for India's Youth
Shuvi Shrivastava
Partner
@
Lightspeed Venture Partners
Our biggest opportunity - and challenge - as an economy is 'harvesting' the demographic dividend driving the India story. ~25 Million people turn 18 every year and we are not creating enough knowledge work jobs that can supercharge our 'emerging middle class'. Skilled unemployment or underemployment can set us back several years as it diminishes the perceived value of investing in up-skilling, especially in segments that have traditionally relied on informal labour. Our biggest opportunity could look like our biggest crisis if this is not addressed especially with key outsourcing industries employing millions of people likely to see increasing automation. But AI will also create a new set of jobs - evaluation, fine tuning, quality control, and roles we can't even imagine right now. I'm looking for entrepreneurs who can leverage and keep pace with this rapidly evolving AI wave and help India digitally service the new opportunities that get created. While the early movers in this space are already generating hundreds of millions in revenue, there's still enough and growing opportunity for new players here. Pick a high skill niche - healthcare, law, recruiting, game testing - and build enablement services or AI enabled co-pilots to offer the full proposition 'work' from India. We have the benefit of a young, hungry and talented workforce in stark contrast to most developed markets, now it's on the entrepreneurs to help them harness this energy for productive work.
Shuvi Shrivastava
Partner
@
Lightspeed Venture Partners
AI's Transformational Impact on User Interfaces As We Know It
Bala Parthasarathy
Director
@
People + AI
GenAI, with its remarkable speech understanding and generation capabilities, has the potential to transform the mobile app UI we’ve relied on for the past 15 years—one that was originally built on the web’s point-click-type interface from the Xerox era of the 80s. This shift opens up opportunities for entrepreneurs to rethink existing apps—imagine “calling” a cab through an AI-powered app, where your landmark, GPS coordinates, and destination are seamlessly processed through voice commands. It also enables the creation of entirely new applications for users who find current interfaces too complex. Consider essential SME tasks like inventory management or invoicing—these could be handled effortlessly through voice instructions and a few photo clicks, much like how people interact with human assistants today. The possibilities are vast—unlocking them will require bold imagination and a thoughtful approach to identifying the right problems to solve first.
Bala Parthasarathy
Director
@
People + AI
From Day Zero to Greatness
At Antler, we help the world’s premier talent build great technology companies at scale from the earliest stage, enabling them to go from 0 to 1 and setting them on a path to build billion-dollar startups
Build With Antler
Reimagining Insurance: AI-Powered Efficiency for a Mass Market Opportunity
Anand Prabhudesai
Co-Founder
@
Turtlemint
Nearly half of every insurance premium paid by consumers doesn’t go toward claims. Around 35-40% is consumed by operational inefficiencies, as insurers rely on outdated technology and manual processes across product creation, sales, underwriting, and claims management. An additional 10-15% is lost to fraudulent claims, driving up costs for honest policyholders. This presents a massive opportunity to build a modern, AI-driven insurance company that operates with far greater efficiency. India remains severely underinsured, largely due to the limited paying capacity of consumers. A low-cost, technology-first insurer could unlock access to insurance for the 700M+ lower-middle-income segment, bringing financial security to millions. With AI automation and data-driven underwriting, now is the perfect time to reimagine insurance - making it affordable, efficient, and scalable for a vast, untapped market.
Anand Prabhudesai
Co-Founder
@
Turtlemint
The DPI Revolution: A Population-Scale Opportunity for Entrepreneurs & Investors
Sudhir Sethi
Founder & Chairman
@
Chiratae Ventures
India’s Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) has unlocked an unprecedented total addressable market (TAM) for entrepreneurs and investors. UPI is used by over 400 million Indians daily, while Aadhaar covers nearly 1.25 billion people. Platforms like DigiYatra, ONDC, and DigiLocker already serve hundreds of millions, creating a foundation for large-scale digital innovation. This DPI-driven ecosystem enables entrepreneurs to build technology solutions at population scale—offering healthcare, loans, insurance, and consumer products to hundreds of millions. It also presents a massive opportunity to provide working capital to over 50 million SMEs. Today’s unicorns—Lenskart, FirstCry, Curefit, Zomato, and Swiggy—reach between 30 to 100 million consumers. The next wave of billion-dollar revenue companies will emerge by leveraging DPI as a platform like never before. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for entrepreneurs and investors to build scalable, transformative technology startups.
Sudhir Sethi
Founder & Chairman
@
Chiratae Ventures
Beyond Digital: Data Empowerment to Bridge India's Financial Divide
Siddharth Shetty
Co-Creator
@
Finternet
India’s fragmented financial landscape, where access to services remains uneven despite a digital boom, underscores an urgent need for a transformative approach that traditional systems have struggled to deliver. With Account Aggregator and Finternet, we believe that empowering individuals and businesses with secure, consent-driven control over their financial data can break down these barriers, ignite innovation, and propel economic inclusion forward.
Siddharth Shetty
Co-Creator
@
Finternet
Beyond the Elite: Building Inclusive Finance for a Growing India
Ashish Singhal
Co-Founder
@
CoinSwitch
The economic disparity in India, where low-income individuals lack the same opportunities as their affluent counterparts, is a critical issue that demands innovative solutions. To bridge this gap, there's a pressing need for startups focused on democratizing finance and investment, providing accessible tools and platforms for all. Embracing blockchain and Web3 technologies presents a unique opportunity for India to lead in this emerging sector.
Ashish Singhal
Co-Founder
@
CoinSwitch
AI-Powered Wealth: Tailoring Investments for India's Underserved.
Reetik Agarwal
Investment Manager
@
Antler
With only 27% of Indians actively investing in financial markets, as per a 2023 SEBI report, the need to bridge the gap between complex financial options and individual empowerment has never been more critical. Building a personalized finance and investment platform that blends cutting-edge technology with human advice, powered by AA-driven financial data, could unlock tailored wealth-building opportunities, addressing this underserved majority and revolutionizing financial decision-making in India.
Reetik Agarwal
Investment Manager
@
Antler
The 60% Gap: Why India's Small Businesses Struggle for Credit
Reetik Agarwal
Investment Manager
@
Antler
Despite lending innovations, access to fast, affordable credit remains a challenge for individuals and businesses, with over 60% of small enterprises in India still unable to secure formal loans at competitive rates, according to the MSME Ministry’s 2023 report. They struggle to obtain readily available capital with instant disbursement and low costs. A platform aggregating pre-approved sanctions from various lenders, leveraging financial and non-financial data, could solve this, streamlining access and transforming the credit landscape.
Reetik Agarwal
Investment Manager
@
Antler
The Future of Finance: Automation Over Literacy
Fady Abdel-Nour
General Partner
@
Antler
While financial literacy remains a significant challenge, financial automation presents a compelling opportunity to bypass this hurdle. Building a startup that comprehensively automates the financial backend for middle-class individuals, encompassing bill payments, savings, and wealth management, could revolutionize personal finance. This approach would proactively manage finances, removing the burden of manual oversight and fostering financial well-being through automated, intelligent systems.
Fady Abdel-Nour
General Partner
@
Antler
AI-Powered Financial Coaching: The Future of Personal Finance
Jitendra Gupta
Founder
@
Jupiter
I envision building a personal financial coach for consumers. With AA data now accessible, an AI-driven solution could help individuals navigate their finances more effectively, offering personalized guidance to achieve financial wellness.
Jitendra Gupta
Founder
@
Jupiter
AI-Driven Fintech for Bharat
Vikram Vaidyanathan
Managing Director
@
Z47
An AI-first financial services platform has the potential to revolutionize access to credit, insurance, and wealth solutions for Bharat’s underserved segments—from SMEs to farmers. The key to building a large fintech in India lies in establishing high financial trust at the right CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost). With AI layered on top of India Stack, startups can craft personalized, cost-efficient financial journeys that were previously unfeasible. However, success will hinge on seamlessly integrating 'phygital' touchpoints to build confidence and accessibility for these users. A fintech that gets this right could truly be a cornerstone of Viksit Bharat—bridging gaps and driving deep financial inclusion at scale.
Vikram Vaidyanathan
Managing Director
@
Z47
Beyond Borders: Crypto Rails Solve India's Remittance Friction
Boris Wertz
Founder & General Partner
@
Version One Ventures
The friction inherent in cross-border remittances from North America to India—complexity, cost, and time—creates a strong case for alternative solutions. Stablecoins and crypto rails offer a potential pathway to a vastly superior user experience, addressing the pain points of traditional transfer methods.
Boris Wertz
Founder & General Partner
@
Version One Ventures
The Infrastructure Deficit: Holding Back India's Wealth Management Boom
Sandeep Jethwani
Co-Founder
@
Dezerv
The rapid expansion of the wealth management sector has created a noticeable lag in its underlying infrastructure. A significant opportunity exists for the development of modern, technology-driven infrastructure solutions. Leveraging new technologies, founders can address the evolving demands of the market, enhancing efficiency, accessibility, and security.
Sandeep Jethwani
Co-Founder
@
Dezerv
Fingerprints, Faces, and Voice: The Future of Payment is Biometric
Paroma Chatterjee
CEO
@
Revolut India
Biometrics will transform the future of payments. We're looking at a future where making payments becomes ridiculously convenient, and even more secure than they are today. Imagine a world where you no longer need to remember passwords, enter card details, or sift through OTPs. Instead, your face, fingerprint, or even your voice becomes your payment key. Biometric payments leverage a person's unique physical traits to authenticate transactions, offering a built-in security system that’s nearly impossible to replicate. While this promises a frictionless payment experience, security remains a crucial factor. Protecting biometric data requires robust encryption solutions to ensure that biometric templates cannot be reverse-engineered or exploited. The future is clear: much more convenient, secure and technologically advanced payment processing, with the use of biometrics. This presents an opportunity for new-age companies to innovate in the biometric payments space to ensure this is done right!
Paroma Chatterjee
CEO
@
Revolut India
India's Data Shield: Building RegTech for DPDP Compliance
Rahul Mathur
Associate Vice President
@
DeVC
OneTrust for India – A RegTech business focused on DPDP compliance and data security for BFSI and other regulated industries. The rollout of GDPR in the EU (2018) spurred a wave of company creation in the RegTech space, and India's DPDP Law (2023) appears poised to do the same. The publicly available information on India's DPDP Law (2023) suggests that compliance will be onerous, with companies already conducting preliminary audits. A business that integrates DPDP compliance, cyber monitoring, and cyber insurance could tap into this emerging need and build a sizeable business.
Rahul Mathur
Associate Vice President
@
DeVC
Rise of Personalization: The Future of Fintech
Ashish B. Fafadia
Partner
@
Blume Ventures
We’ve made significant strides in building the Fintech infrastructure layer, driven by Digital Public Goods like UPI and ONDC. With the RBI and banks preparing for digital currencies and AI advancing data processing, we now have a solid base infrastructure to enable personalization at scale. Looking ahead, I believe the next decade will see some of the most impactful startups emerging around this theme of personalization: Financial Services Personalization – Until now, financial products like insurance, savings, lending, and wealth management have required a critical mass of consumers to be viable. With deeper digital penetration, we’ll see hyper-personalized financial services tailored to smaller segments, embedding cross-category offerings (insurance, credit, savings, etc.) while remaining cost-effective at scale. Healthcare & Medicine Personalization – Advances in AI-driven testing, simulations, and data processing will pave the way for personalized treatments, faster diagnoses, and more precise healthcare solutions. Likewise, there will be many more areas around consumption that will thrive on the overall theme of personalization.
Ashish B. Fafadia
Partner
@
Blume Ventures
Beyond Cubicles: Building India's Manufacturing Future, One Factory at a Time
Vasant Sridhar
Co-Founder & CSO
@
OfBusiness
My loyalty has always been to rolling up one’s sleeves and building—especially in B2B and manufacturing in India. Here’s why I believe this is India’s moment: For too long, our machines sat idle while other nations built the world’s products. Now, India has a real shot at reviving its missed decades in manufacturing. The opportunities are endless—whether it’s creating world-class products for India’s evolving consumption, driving product innovation, or developing efficiency, automation, and robotics solutions for our factories. We have brilliant engineers stuck in cubicles and small factories ready to transform. The road ahead is challenging, unglamorous, and far from instant gratification, but with sharp focus and top talent, manufacturing can deliver the venture-scale returns we seek. So ditch the plush startup ideas. Move to B2B, embrace the unsexy, get used to the smell of factory floors and the sound of metal. Let’s build the next wave of global manufacturing giants—rivaling Shenzhen, Vietnamese powerhouses, and even German engineering.
Vasant Sridhar
Co-Founder & CSO
@
OfBusiness
India’s Robotics Opportunity: Leveraging Talent, Manufacturing, and Global Expertise
Soumitra Sharma
Early Stage Investor
@
Operators Studio
India is uniquely positioned to lead in robotics innovation, backed by a strong local talent pipeline from government-run universities, research labs, public-sector manufacturing firms, and domestic OEMs. This ecosystem is further strengthened by a vast network of large and SMB OEMs supporting product development and manufacturing. Supportive "Make in India" policies, combined with the global go-to-market expertise honed during the software and SaaS boom, provide Indian founders with a distinct advantage. They can build cutting-edge robotics solutions and scale them efficiently across both the Global South and Western markets—achieving significantly higher capital efficiency than their US and EU counterparts.
Soumitra Sharma
Early Stage Investor
@
Operators Studio
India's Chance to Take the Lead in Precision Biomanufacturing
Mark Kahn
Managing Partner
@
Omnivore
As B2B platforms in India advance toward precision manufacturing, a significant opportunity is emerging to establish a dedicated R&D and contract manufacturing partner specializing in biomanufacturing and biomaterials. While industries worldwide are shifting toward biomaterials, scaling up production remains challenging due to high initial capital requirements, specialized expertise, and elevated manufacturing costs. These barriers have slowed adoption in India—but they are solvable. India has already established itself as a global leader in generic pharmaceutical manufacturing. With the right infrastructure and investment, it can do the same for precision biomanufacturing over the next decade. An integrated CDMO and B2B platform focused on biomaterials is crucial to accelerating this transition and positioning India at the forefront of this growing sector.
Mark Kahn
Managing Partner
@
Omnivore
AI x Robotics: Soon to Be Everyday Life
Raghav Goyal
Head of Founder Scouting
@
Antler
The synergy of AI and robotics is bound to change everyday life, unlocking a vast set of applications. From AI chefs and cleaners to intelligent home appliances and personalized AI assistants, this convergence offers the potential to automate and enhance numerous aspects of daily living.
Raghav Goyal
Head of Founder Scouting
@
Antler
The Automation Economy: AI & Robotics at an Inflection Point
Ishavasyam Dash
Senior Director
@
Antler
- For years, we’ve been told that AI and robotics would eventually automate manual tasks—but what was once a futuristic vision has become an urgent commercial imperative. Two mega trends underline this: the working-age population in developed countries is rapidly declining and and labor costs are rising at their fastest rate in over two decades. - Picture this: It’s 2035, and Tony Stark’s vision of autonomous, intelligent machines has come to life—not in a superhero movie, but in factories, farms, and even your local bakery. Smart industrial robots, powered by AI and advanced sensors, are no longer confined to repetitive tasks on assembly lines. They’re now the backbone of a hyper-efficient, hyper-customized world. Imagine walking into a Nike store and designing a pair of sneakers on a tablet—only to watch a swarm of robots in a nearby micro-factory craft your one-of-a-kind kicks in real-time (a single production line producing thousands of unique items). Or picture a Mars colony where self-learning robots, equipped with tactile sensing and haptic feedback, assemble habitats with the precision of a surgeon. Back on Earth, these robots are revolutionizing industries: in agriculture, they’re autonomously harvesting crops while analyzing soil health; in healthcare, they’re assembling personalized medical devices on-demand. This isn’t just automation—it’s a collaboration between humans and machines, where robots handle the heavy lifting (literally and figuratively) while humans focus on creativity and strategy. - Advancement in AI is supercharging robotics, enabling machines to perceive, learn, and adapt like never before. From computer vision that allows robots to "see" and navigate complex environments, to machine learning algorithms that let them improve tasks through experience, to AI-powered simulation tools accelerating this evolution - we are at an inflection point and the canvas is larger than ever before. - Today, we are already seeing interesting innovation using robotics to help plug the gap in skilled trades - from [bricklaying robots](https://www.fbr.com.au/view/hadrian-x), [wall painting robots](https://myro.bot/), demolition robots, robot using AI and LiDAR to scan construction sites to track progress and identify errors, robots designed for [harvesting delicate fruits](https://www.agrobot.com/) to [fast-food kitchen robots](https://misorobotics.com/flippy/), flipping burgers and frying food. A recent MIT report hypothizes that around one-fourth of wages paid for labour would be “economically viable” to automate - the design space and opportunity is massive!
Ishavasyam Dash
Senior Director
@
Antler
Seizing India’s Manufacturing Opportunity
Shrishti Sahu
Managing Partner
@
SSV
Super bullish on Indian manufacturing this decade. For the first time, India could dominate the production of components that were previously imported—electronics, industrial parts, commodities, and more. Manufacturing itself is a massive opportunity, and so are tech-driven tools that improve efficiency. The China+1 shift will be felt strongest here, and we at SSV want to back these plays from seed all the way to public markets.
Shrishti Sahu
Managing Partner
@
SSV
India’s DeepTech Moment
Vani Kola
Managing Director
@
Kalaari Capital
India stands at the cusp of a DeepTech revolution with unprecedented opportunities to transform its industrial and technological landscape. With a robust talent pool, growing startup ecosystem, and supportive government policies, India is poised to become a global hub for DeepTech innovation. Advancements in AI, robotics, IoT, quantum computing can enable India to solve complex challenges across sectors like manufacturing, healthcare, agriculture, and logistics.
Vani Kola
Managing Director
@
Kalaari Capital
Personalized Objects, Intelligent Spaces: AI's Physical Transformation
Shubham Sandeep
Managing Director
@
pi Ventures
An emerging opportunity lies at the intersection of AI and our physical world, leveraging spatial intelligence to revolutionize our personal lives as well as industries like manufacturing, logistics, healthcare and others. Until now, majority of the AI penetration has been in the digital world with the advent of machine learning and foundational models. However, our physical world is still pretty dumb and that is bound to change. Imagine a smart bed that magically takes your shape depending on the person and activity. Or a humanoid robot that does all your household chores. A startup could focus on creating a platform that combines embodied AI (AI systems that interact with and adapt to physical environments) with cutting-edge spatial data analytics. Or creating synthetic data for the physical world to enable sim-to-real transfer. Or personalized physical objects with embedded AI running on edge. Such a venture would also align with India’s Make-in-India initiative, potentially positioning itself as a global pioneer in developing embodied AI products.
Shubham Sandeep
Managing Director
@
pi Ventures
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A Personal Teacher for Every Student
Pavan Guntupalli
Co-Founder
@
Rapido
Imagine a revolutionary AI-driven teacher in every pocket—making quality education accessible and affordable for all. This startup would redefine learning by personalizing teaching methods based on each student’s unique style, pace, and strengths. More than just instruction, it identifies potential early and nurtures it with tailored guidance. India’s greatest asset is its people, but to fully unlock this potential, education must evolve. Traditional models fail to reach every learner effectively. An AI-driven mobile teacher bridges this gap, providing personalized, low-cost learning that enhances skills, fosters innovation, and improves employability. This isn’t just about education—it’s about empowering a future-ready workforce and driving India’s growth from the ground up.
Pavan Guntupalli
Co-Founder
@
Rapido
Reimagining Sports Engagement for India’s Millennials & Gen Z
Anil Goteti
Co-Founder
@
Scapia
There’s a massive gap in the market for millennials and Gen Zs who want to discover, engage with, and experience sports in a more meaningful way. Today’s sports landscape is fragmented and outdated, making it difficult for enthusiasts to learn new sports, buy quality gear, find playing partners, or access sporting events easily. Building a unified, vibrant platform that brings all these elements together won’t be easy. India’s sports culture has been cricket-dominated, with other sports struggling for visibility. And launching a multi-sided marketplace is always a challenge—but that’s precisely what makes this opportunity exciting. As India’s sports ecosystem evolves, the right platform—young, dynamic, and community-driven—will be poised to capture this shift.
Anil Goteti
Co-Founder
@
Scapia
AI-Powered Adaptive Learning: Bridging Educational Gaps in India
Nandita Sinha
CEO
@
Myntra
An AI-powered adaptive learning platform could enable access to basic Reading skills, Math and Science, helping create a more equitable educational landscape where every child irrespective of the economic background has the chance to unleash their potential. Reports suggest India has close to 1.2 lakh schools with just one teacher each, as a result giving personalised attention becomes difficult. With millions of children still unable to access quality personalised education, AI has the ability to augment the system by offering individualized education tailored to each child's pace and unique learning needs, especially where teacher-student ratios are low. AI can not just boost the literacy rate in the country, but also enhance the efficacy of education while bridging regional disparity. These platforms, when designed for the near ubiquitous low-cost smartphones, could also serve offline, expanding accessibility in remote areas. At the next level, AI's ability to analyse learning styles and adjust content dynamically makes it ideal for addressing gaps in learning, including those for children with special needs, where the student-teacher ratio is further low.
Nandita Sinha
CEO
@
Myntra
The Growing Need for Digital De-addiction Solutions
Srikanth Iyer
Co-Founder & CEO
@
HomeLane
Screens have undeniably taken over our lives, and this challenge is even more pronounced for Gen Alpha. With countless dopamine-inducing apps, games, and engagement models, the digital pull is stronger than ever. In the next decade, I believe businesses focused on digital ‘de-addiction’ will become increasingly important and potentially huge. The problem is very real and already deeply prevalent, affecting millions worldwide. It's a global-scale issue that transcends geographies and cultures, with clear evidence showing that human brain development has been impacted for the worse since the rise of social media. For founders, this presents a unique opportunity to build impactful solutions that address a widespread and urgent challenge.
Srikanth Iyer
Co-Founder & CEO
@
HomeLane
GenAI and the Future of Learning
Nitin Sharma
Founding Partner
@
Antler
I've been thinking a lot about how Generative AI will disrupt education, and I’m convinced we’re vastly underestimating its impact. The downturn in edtech sentiment—partly because much of it was neither truly "ed" nor "tech"—has clouded the reality that a historically slow-moving sector is now doubling its adoption of new technology in just a year. My contrarian take? Now is the moment to build entirely new products, experiences, and business models for learning. While AI will reshape every industry, education may change the most. Every past platform shift—PCs, the Internet, mobile, cloud—wasn’t fundamentally about learning, but GenAI is. If knowledge is language, and AI can generate context, content, and mastery-driven pathways, education transforms at its core. Having worked in edtech since 2008, I’ve seen buzzwords come and go—Bloom’s Law, personalized learning, adaptive pathways, flipped classrooms—but for the first time, GenAI has the power to make these a reality. Imagine what’s possible: AI tutors that guarantee learning outcomes, shifting edtech from sales-heavy to outcome-based models. Faster learning and synthesis, with multi-modal AI generating content in any style or format. Truly interactive educational toys, not just responsive ones. Teachers focusing on competency-building, instead of just delivering content. 50-60% reduction in administrative burdens for educators. Radical shifts in university cost structures, where non-teaching expenses have soared 7x in the last few decades. Augmenting teachers in local languages in India, enhancing employability instead of just issuing degrees
Nitin Sharma
Founding Partner
@
Antler
Building Trust in the Digital Age: The Need for Scalable Fact-Checking
Sandeep Singhal
Co-founder
@
Nexus Venture Partners
In today’s fragmented world, mutual trust is more critical than ever. I wish someone were building a scalable, real-time fact-checking solution that could crawl the web and, instead of page ranking, trust-rank content using widely accepted sources of truth. This is a complex challenge, requiring solutions for ground truth validation and bias mitigation, but it is also an urgent one. With language models becoming more advanced and cost-effective, I remain hopeful that innovation will soon fill this gap—bringing us closer to a more informed and trustworthy digital ecosystem.
Sandeep Singhal
Co-founder
@
Nexus Venture Partners
Frictionless Airline Journeys: Reinventing the Travel Experience
Aditya Ghosh
Co-Founder
@
Akasa Air
Despite advances in aviation, the end-to-end airline journey remains plagued with inefficiencies that frustrate customers and increase operational costs for airlines. From redundant information requests to poorly managed disruptions, travelers encounter friction at every stage of their journey. Opportunity: Can technology revolutionize the airline experience by creating a seamless, personalized journey that anticipates customer needs, proactively manages disruptions, and optimizes resources? Key Areas for Innovation: Data-Driven Personalization: Retain customer preferences and leverage AI to eliminate repetitive information requests, ensuring every interaction feels tailored. Proactive Disruption Management: Automatically handle flight changes, cancellations, and disruptions by updating itineraries and reservations in real-time, offering alternative solutions to customers. Resource Optimization: Use predictive analytics to enhance resource allocation, reduce costs, and improve service quality. Impact: By addressing these challenges, startups can redefine customer satisfaction in the airline industry, setting new benchmarks for operational excellence. Solutions in this space also hold transformative potential for adjacent sectors like ground transportation, hospitality, and even healthcare logistics.
Aditya Ghosh
Co-Founder
@
Akasa Air
Untapped Gamers: Building Inclusive Apps for India's Female Audience
Salone Sehgal
Founding General Partner
@
Lumikai Fund
Women make up 60% of global casual gamers, and in India, they now represent over 40% of the gaming audience, closing in on the global average. Studies show that female gamers tend to monetize and retain better, yet fewer than 10% of games and apps in India are designed specifically for them. While cinema and OTT platforms have embraced diverse, inclusive, and culturally resonant storytelling, gaming has yet to catch up. Female gamers remain underserved when it comes to high-quality, immersive, and interactive experiences. With UPI-driven monetization, equal smartphone access, affordable data, and rising financial inclusion, the potential to build engaging games for this audience extends far beyond Ludo and Solitaire. Success in this space will require a nuanced understanding of user personas, thoughtful game design, and top-tier aesthetics—presenting a massive, untapped market opportunity.
Salone Sehgal
Founding General Partner
@
Lumikai Fund
The Next Wave of E-Commerce: Trust, Discovery, and Price-First Models
Chirag Taneja
Co-Founder & CEO
@
GoKwik
An emerging opportunity over the next few years lies in two key trends: - Brand proliferation is accelerating, driven by increasing discretionary spending among India 1 consumers. - Discovery of these brands is happening largely online, with influencers playing an even bigger role. However, a major challenge remains—trust in both brands and influencers. Nykaa successfully addressed this for beauty products, and a similar opportunity exists to build a trusted, influencer-led marketplace for India 1. This platform could focus on brand discovery and trends, potentially evolving into a drop-shipping model rather than a full-stack approach. On the commerce front, while hyper-personalization and embedded commerce are gaining traction globally, India's bigger opportunity lies in price-first models like TEMU. Such models can drive manufacturing growth and accelerate e-commerce adoption by prioritizing affordability—a crucial factor for the Indian market.
Chirag Taneja
Co-Founder & CEO
@
GoKwik
The Unbound Classroom: Flexible Work Fuels Homeschool Boom
Vamsi Krishna
CEO & Co-Founder
@
Vedantu
With AI rapidly reshaping industries, many traditional school-taught skills are becoming redundant. At the same time, flexible work arrangements have led many parents to move away from metros, creating a growing demand for high-quality education that isn’t tied to a fixed location. This shift presents a significant opportunity to build state-of-the-art online or hybrid home-schooling solutions that offer best-in-class learning experiences, regardless of geography. The potential in this space is immense, and forward-thinking edupreneurs should be creating the next generation of adaptive, AI-driven education models.
Vamsi Krishna
CEO & Co-Founder
@
Vedantu
Redefining Aging: Empowering India’s Independent Seniors
Harsh Gupta
COO
@
Wysa
India’s demographic shift from joint families to nuclear households is presenting a new challenge for those in their 50s and 60s. Many grew up expecting familial support but now find themselves navigating life with children living in distant cities, often leading to emotional distress and isolation. This generation requires a comprehensive support system—one that goes beyond daily chores and medical care to include emotional well-being, social engagement, and digital literacy. As the world becomes increasingly tech-driven, a holistic solution is needed to help them adapt, find purpose, and truly thrive in this evolving landscape.
Harsh Gupta
COO
@
Wysa
Teaching Life Skills Beyond the Classroom
Nishchay Ag
Co-Founder & CEO
@
Jar
In India, children often excel academically but miss out on essential life skills like cooking, plumbing, carpentry, electrical basics, and gardening. With increasing urbanization and the rise of nuclear families, hands-on learning opportunities are becoming scarce. While schools emphasize theory, real-world problem-solving is rarely part of the curriculum, and busy parents find it challenging to pass down these critical skills. There’s a clear opportunity to address this gap—whether through a weekend school or by creating structured programs that can be integrated into existing school curriculums—empowering the next generation with practical knowledge for everyday life.
Nishchay Ag
Co-Founder & CEO
@
Jar
Affordable Health & AI Learning
Suhail Sameer
Founder & Managing Partner
@
OTP Ventures
The landscape is ripe for innovation in two distinct areas: firstly, the development of low-cost, omni-channel medicine brands that prioritize accessibility and affordability through streamlined supply chains and efficient distribution strategies; and secondly, the creation of AI-powered consumer applications that revolutionize education, language learning, and content creation, offering personalized experiences and enhanced engagement for users across diverse demographics.
Suhail Sameer
Founder & Managing Partner
@
OTP Ventures
Democratizing Sports Analytics: Bringing Pro-Level Insights to Every Athlete
Dravisha Katoch
Community Lead
@
Antler
What if a small hardware device attached to a basketball court or a pickleball racquet could capture real-time game insights, track progress, and instantly share data with scouts from the world’s top leagues? This could be a game-changer for young athletes chasing their dreams. Currently, over 90% of young athletes lack access to meaningful performance data due to high costs—something only elite professional teams can afford. This presents a massive opportunity to democratize sports analytics. By developing an affordable, device-agnostic platform—the "Android of Sports Tech"—athletes could access professional-grade insights through low-cost wearables and smartphone apps. This innovation would transform talent identification at the grassroots level while tapping into the $5.1 billion amateur sports market, making advanced performance tracking accessible to youth athletes, schools, and community leagues worldwide.
Dravisha Katoch
Community Lead
@
Antler
The Emerging Landscape of Premiumization in India’s Consumer Market
Anjali Sosale
Partner
@
WaterBridge Ventures
India stands at a transformative moment in its economic trajectory, poised to become the world’s third-largest consumer market by 2026. This is being driven by a profound shift in consumer behavior, centered around an emerging affluent class of approximately 80 million households earning over ₹1 million annually. These consumers are not merely spending money; they are crafting intricate narratives of lifestyle, identity, and aspiration through a nuanced approach to consumption that transcends traditional market dynamics. The fundamental transformation manifests across four interconnected dimensions that we, at WaterBridge, describe as the 4S framework: how they spend, save, socialize, and savor experiences. Unlike previous generations characterized by price-sensitive and utility-driven purchasing, this new cohort represents a sophisticated consumer segment that prioritizes quality, authenticity, and meaningful engagement over mere transactional interactions. With 27% of urban household monthly per capita expenditure now directed towards non-food, non-essential goods and services, these consumers are signaling a fundamental reimagining of value. Their spending patterns reveal a deliberate move beyond conspicuous consumption towards more intentional, curated lifestyle choices. The digital maturity of these consumers plays a crucial role in this transformation. Highly peer-influenced and globally informed, these smart-phone native consumers leverage technology as a sophisticated platform for discovering, evaluating, and engaging with premium offerings. This consumer transformation signals a broader societal shift, reflecting the country’s growing economic confidence and evolving global identity
Anjali Sosale
Partner
@
WaterBridge Ventures
Unlocking EV Growth: The Opportunity in Apartment Charging Solutions
Tarun Mehta
Co-Founder & CEO
@
Ather Energy
There’s a significant opportunity for a business that sets up personal-use EV chargers in apartment complexes—ideally in individual parking spots—without drawing power from residents’ personal electricity connections. This approach could lower upfront costs by around ₹10K for most users, creating a major arbitrage opportunity for charging operators to drive strong opex margins. With EV adoption accelerating, this is quickly becoming one of the biggest bottlenecks for two-wheeler EV adoption.
Tarun Mehta
Co-Founder & CEO
@
Ather Energy
Minutes to Desire: How QCommerce is Rewiring Consumption Habits
Amrish Rau
CEO
@
Pine Labs
Quick Commerce (QCommerce) thrives on solving for convenience, a pursuit to shrink the gap between desire and delivery into mere minutes. It’s not just about speed—it’s about intuiting needs, stripping away friction, and embedding seamless access into daily life. While traditional commerce optimizes for choice or cost, QCommerce redefines value through immediacy, leveraging hyper-local logistics, predictive algorithms, and a laser focus on the "now" to turn instant gratification into a scalable business model. Convenience isn’t a perk here; it’s the core, rewiring how we think about consumption itself. It will be interesting to see the kind of opportunities that will be built on top of this mega trend.
Amrish Rau
CEO
@
Pine Labs
The Next Frontier in Consumer AI: Building Emotional Connections at Scale
Natasha Malpani
Venture Partner
@
Kae Capital
Consumer AI is one of the most misunderstood yet exciting frontiers today. It’s not a “new sector”; it’s still consumer-first. AI is simply the tool to understand behavior, psychology, and solve real problems. I’m especially excited about companionship and emotional AI, which transforms how we interact with technology and builds deeply human connections. Think beyond AI “boyfriends or girlfriends.” Imagine tools like emotional support companions tailored to cultural nuances (e.g., Wysa or Astrotalk), AI-powered toys that engage children through storytelling, or wearables like NeoSapien that augment emotional intelligence. There’s massive potential in exploring new form factors and demographics—such as AI companions for families or the elderly. India’s scale, diversity, and complexity make it the ideal testing ground for solutions that are: • Verticalized: AI focused on specific niches like education, travel, or gaming. • Emotional: Tools that foster trust, empathy, and retention through meaningful connections. • Multimodal: Voice-first and visual platforms that simplify access for diverse users. But the challenge isn’t just about building—it’s about winning. Founders need to solve for attention, retention, and monetization. This means driving engagement through strong branding, defensible data moats, and addressing real, recurring problems. The future of consumer AI will belong to those who build emotional connections at scale, creating sticky, trusted products that evolve from tools into partners in daily life.
Natasha Malpani
Venture Partner
@
Kae Capital
Premium Rides: India's Mobility Gap
Ankit Nagori
Founder & CEO
@
Curefoods
While platforms like Shoffr are emerging, they still don’t fully address the need for a seamless, premium mobility experience in India. There is a clear opportunity to develop a comprehensive mobility solution—one that offers high-end vehicles with dedicated drivers for mid to long-term use at a premium. Such a platform could cater effectively to India's top eight cities, providing a reliable and sophisticated alternative for those seeking convenience and quality in urban transportation.
Ankit Nagori
Founder & CEO
@
Curefoods
Personalized Learning, Custom Classrooms and Course Creation at Scale
Neha Reddy
Associate
@
Antler
Personalized learning is the holy grail of education, and AI is making it a reality by essentially creating a 1:1 student-to-teacher ratio. AI tutoring is likely going to be a massive opportunity in Education. A fascinating study from Nigeria already signals this potential: students receiving six weeks of after-school AI tutoring from GPT-4 showed learning gains equivalent to two years of typical education. Even more exciting is the ability to spin up multi-media and multi lingual courses on any topic in seconds. Want to explore the history of AI in Hindi? Imagine generating comprehensive, tailored learning materials instantly. Instructors can now leverage generative AI to design truly innovative learning experiences. By creating custom AI-driven exercises like simulations, mentoring, and co-creation, educators essentially become tech innovators. This approach should democratize educational tech development, allowing teachers to craft tools precisely tailored to students' needs.
Neha Reddy
Associate
@
Antler
Community Farming: A Scalable Solution for Indian Agriculture
Lalit Keshre
Co-Founder & CEO
@
Groww
India’s agricultural landscape is fragmented, with nearly 85% of farmers cultivating less than 2 hectares of land each. This small-scale farming makes it difficult to invest in modern equipment, leading to inefficiencies across the ecosystem. A promising solution lies in community farming, where farmers pool their land and labor as long-term members of a collective. This model enables economies of scale, making it viable to adopt advanced technology and mechanization, ultimately boosting productivity. The output is then distributed among farmers based on their equity. A startup could play a crucial role in enabling this transition—providing access to equipment, technology, and support in exchange for a service fee. Such an approach could unlock new opportunities to modernize Indian agriculture while reducing the financial burden on individual farmers.
Lalit Keshre
Co-Founder & CEO
@
Groww
Reimagining Healthy Eating: A New-Age House of Brands for India's Wellness Revolution
Rajiv Srivatsa
Founding Partner
@
Antler
India's growing health-conscious consumer base presents a massive opportunity for a modern-day "house of brands" focused on clean, nutrient-rich foods—think of it as the Unilever or ITC of healthy eating. With rising awareness about the impact of carb-heavy, sugar-laden, and oil-rich diets on lifestyle diseases like diabetes, heart conditions, and cholesterol, there’s a clear need for affordable yet high-quality alternatives. By strategically developing and scaling multiple brands under one umbrella, we can offer diverse options—protein-packed, vitamin-fortified, sugar-free, gluten-free, low-carb, and dairy-free—without compromising on taste. A well-structured house of brands approach allows for shared costs in production, sourcing, and distribution, making healthy food more accessible at mass-premium pricing. This vision spans categories from breakfast staples and snacks to beverages and mixes, gradually shifting eating habits across demographics. The right combination of product innovation, supply chain efficiencies, and smart distribution could redefine India’s food landscape—making wellness a daily habit, not a privilege.
Rajiv Srivatsa
Founding Partner
@
Antler
Made in India: World-Class Brands Rise
Arjun Vaidya
Co-Founder
@
V3 Ventures
India is at a unique inflection point. Think of Britain during the Industrial Revolution or the U.S. from the 1970s to 2000s—times when everything aligned for global dominance. Today, India finds itself in that position, driven by rapid GDP growth, a stable government, and the world’s increasing need for a China+1 strategy. For decades, “Made in India” was synonymous with cost arbitrage. But that’s changing. The narrative is shifting from efficiency to excellence. Indian brands are no longer limited to Ayurveda, Yoga, or Spices—they’re ready to dominate in categories we never thought possible. Global consumers are finally embracing “Brand India,” and for the first time, Indian businesses have the infrastructure, mindset, and capital to truly go global. This is a massive opportunity for Indian Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) brands. With world-class manufacturing capabilities, cost advantages, and increasing global trust, India has the potential to create global brands that are proudly Indian. I saw glimpses of this potential while building Dr. Vaidya’s, but the timing wasn’t right. Now, it is. This decade will belong to Indian companies that think beyond borders. For founders, there’s no better time to dream—and build—for the world.
Arjun Vaidya
Co-Founder
@
V3 Ventures
India's Silver Lining: Building Businesses for an Aging Nation
Deep Bajaj
Co-Founder
@
Sirona Hygiene
India’s rapidly expanding population unlocks significant opportunities for innovation, particularly in serving its growing affluent aging demographic. As this segment increases, so does the need for tailored solutions spanning health, financial security, fitness, and overall well-being. From personalized healthcare services and preventative wellness programs to retirement-focused financial tools, the potential for impact is vast. Beyond physical health, mental wellness is becoming a critical focus—not just for seniors but across all age groups. With rising awareness, shifting societal norms, and increasing stress levels, there is a pressing need for accessible, culturally relevant, and stigma-free solutions. Entrepreneurs who address these evolving demands have the opportunity to create lasting impact while building high-growth, sustainable businesses.
Deep Bajaj
Co-Founder
@
Sirona Hygiene
Crafting Time: India's Watch Opportunity
Manu Chandra
Founder and Managing Partner
@
Sauce
The Indian market is witnessing a strong premiumization trend, where consumers seek enhanced quality and design at accessible price points, as evidenced by brands like Mokobara, Whole Truth, and Sleep Company. Simultaneously, there's a growing desire among premium consumers for a disconnect from constant digital engagement. This creates a compelling whitespace for a new-age, homegrown analog watch brand, offering aesthetically pleasing designs within the 10-20K INR range. While established players like Titan and HMT cater to the mass market, and imported brands dominate the mid-luxury and luxury segments, a distinct opportunity exists to address the evolving preferences of the modern Indian consumer with a domestic watch brand.
Manu Chandra
Founder and Managing Partner
@
Sauce
AI Gaming: Building Hyper-Personalized Worlds for Players
Pratik Poddar
Partner
@
Nexus Venture Partners
In the gaming space, an emerging AI opportunity in India lies in AI-driven hyper-personalized gaming experiences. A startup could build an AI-powered platform that tailors game content—such as difficulty levels, challenges, and narratives—based on player behavior, skills, and preferences. Beyond adjusting difficulty, AI could analyze gameplay styles and generate dynamic storylines, or suggest in-game purchases like skins, weapons, or upgrades. It could also create immersive, adaptive NPCs (Non-Player Characters) that respond intelligently to players, making interactions feel more realistic. One can increase player engagement and monetisation using AI. Another use of AI is in AI-assisted game development, where machine learning can help developers create realistic environments, simulate large-scale multiplayer interactions, or generate assets like landscapes and textures. One can create more games and run more experiments cheaper and faster.
Pratik Poddar
Partner
@
Nexus Venture Partners
500 Million Workers, Missed Opportunities: India's Global Talent Mobility Challenge
Mayank Kumar
Co-Founder
@
upGrad
One of the biggest gaps in the market today is the lack of infrastructure to enable seamless global talent mobility. India, with over 500 million workers in its labor force, is a global leader in providing skilled talent, yet it faces significant barriers in preparing and connecting professionals for international opportunities. Despite being the largest recipient of remittances globally—accounting for $100 billion in 2022, which surpasses the country’s annual oil import bill of approximately $89 billion—a significant portion of its skilled talent remains underutilized on a global scale. Meanwhile, the world faces an escalating talent crisis, with a projected 85 million workforce shortage by 2030, representing a potential loss of $8.5 trillion in unrealized revenues. Industries like technology, logistics, healthcare, and engineering are at the forefront of this shortage. In addition, the migration process is riddled with inefficiencies: 80% of workers cite difficulties with language, compliance, and visa processes, and over 60% of companies hiring internationally report challenges in finding job-ready candidates. Addressing this disconnect could drive substantial impact, increasing India's annual remittance contribution by 30-50%, reducing the global talent gap, and enabling millions of skilled professionals to access higher-paying global opportunities. This would not only bolster India’s economy but also position it as the definitive hub for global talent, solving a multi-trillion-dollar global problem.
Mayank Kumar
Co-Founder
@
upGrad
AI Training for India's Workforce: Preparing for Automation
Rahul Mathur
Associate Vice President
@
DeVC
AI Bootcamp Academy – Traditionally, India's EdTech businesses have been centered around exam prep, engineering bootcamps, and profession-based courses. As AI advances, many labor-intensive white- and gray-collar tasks will increasingly be handled by machines. Given that India's primary global advantage is its talent, staying competitive will require training a workforce that is AI-native. Much like how an entire generation in the West had to learn Excel, India now faces a similar moment with AI. The learning curve is low—small efforts can unlock productivity gains—but the potential for mastery is limitless. Both B2B and B2C models will thrive, and early, unstructured attempts to tap into this opportunity are already emerging in the creator economy.
Rahul Mathur
Associate Vice President
@
DeVC
AI-Powered Animation: Bringing Indian Stories to Life
Ranjeet Pratap Singh
Co-Founder & CEO
@
Pratilipi
An OTT platform leveraging generative AI to produce animated and motion comic content—think Crunchyroll, but tailored for Indian narratives and built on a significantly more cost-efficient model.
Ranjeet Pratap Singh
Co-Founder & CEO
@
Pratilipi
India’s Own Social Media Based on the DPI framework
Bhavish Aggarwal
Co-Founder & CEO
@
Ola
India needs a social media platform built on its Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) framework. Leveraging DPI principles, similar to UPI, ONDC, and Aadhaar, would create a uniquely Indian social media experience. Community guidelines should be defined solely by Indian law, eliminating any corporate or individual regulation. Crucially, data ownership must reside with the creators, granting them full control. DPI's democratic and decentralized nature provides the ideal foundation for this vision.
Bhavish Aggarwal
Co-Founder & CEO
@
Ola
From Smog to Safety: Solving India's Quality of Life Crisis
Peyush Bansal
Co-Founder & CEO
@
Lenskart
I want the next generation of founders to tackle core problems that directly improve the quality of life in India. While our GDP is relatively high, our quality of life still lags. China has made remarkable progress in infrastructure, safety, greenery, traffic management, healthcare, and environmental sustainability. India needs its own innovative solutions to address its unique challenges. We need practical solutions for air pollution, road safety, lane discipline, and accessible, reliable healthcare. These are massive problems in India that require local, scalable approaches. Instead of copying US solutions, we should build for India's unique challenges. We eradicated polio and created UPI in our own way. It's time to find more India-first solutions to these critical issues.
Peyush Bansal
Co-Founder & CEO
@
Lenskart
Clearing the Air: Startups Must Lead India’s Fight Against Pollution
Amit Ranjan
Co-Founder
@
Jaunt
India’s urban centers consistently rank among the world's most polluted cities—an unfortunate distinction we must urgently address. Air quality has deteriorated to critical levels, yet political incentives have not driven meaningful progress over the past decade. The onus now falls on innovation and the market to tackle this crisis. Startups have a vital role to play in developing breakthrough solutions that can reverse this trend and make our cities livable again. It’s time to harness technology, entrepreneurship, and fresh thinking to get India breathing freely once more.
Amit Ranjan
Co-Founder
@
Jaunt
Tackling Air Pollution: A Call for Scalable Solutions in India
Snigdha Sur
Founder & CEO
@
The Juggernaut
Air pollution is one of India’s most pressing challenges—one that significantly impacts life expectancy and overall quality of life. This issue extends beyond India to several neighboring nations and emerging markets. Startups have an opportunity to drive meaningful change through two key approaches: Strengthening EV infrastructure—expanding charging networks or developing more affordable EV alternatives for motorbikes, vehicles, and public transport. Increasing green cover—scaling efforts to plant and maintain urban forests. If India follows China's approach, relocating coal plants away from cities could be another crucial step. Beyond these known solutions, innovative approaches—like Lahore’s experiment with artificial rain to reduce pollutants—could offer new breakthroughs. It would be exciting to see more progress in this space.
Snigdha Sur
Founder & CEO
@
The Juggernaut
The Operating System for India's EV Revolution
Avinash Sharma
Co-Founder & CEO
@
ElectricPe
India, one of the largest automobile markets in the world, is rapidly transitioning to electric vehicles. Unlike traditional petrol vehicles, EVs are inherently digital - much like smartphones. Yet, most EVs today lack deep software integration, operating more like feature phones rather than smart devices. This presents a massive opportunity to build a universal EV operating system (OS) that seamlessly works across different vehicle types like two-wheelers, three-wheelers, cars, and more - regardless of the OEM. Such an OS would unlock the full potential of smart, connected vehicles, optimizing costs, enhancing user experience, improving safety, and even contributing to better traffic management. Just as smartphones revolutionized navigation and daily commutes with Google Maps, an intelligent EV ecosystem could redefine urban mobility. With AI-powered capabilities, this OS could enable vehicles to learn from usage patterns, offer predictive maintenance, optimize battery performance, and even allow drivers to interact with their vehicles conversationally. A robust, standardized EV OS wouldn’t just make vehicles smarter - it would create the foundation for next-generation mobility applications. This is an emerging white space in India’s EV landscape, and the startup that successfully builds it will shape the future of transportation.
Avinash Sharma
Co-Founder & CEO
@
ElectricPe
Building a Climate-Resilient Future with Synthetic Biology
Shruti Srivastava
Investment Director
@
Avaana Capital
Synthetic biology (synbio) holds transformative potential to drive emissions reduction and enhance climate resilience across key sectors such as food, consumer goods, waste, and fuels. In food systems, synbio can produce proteins, ingredients, and flavors with a fraction of the land, water, and emissions compared to traditional agriculture, while significantly reducing climate-related uncertainties in output. In consumer goods, it can replace petrochemical-derived ingredients with bio-based materials, lowering dependency on fossil fuels. Engineered microbes can accelerate biodegradation or convert waste into valuable products like biofuels and biopolymers. India is uniquely positioned to emerge as a synbio hub, thanks to its strong biotech talent pool and cost-effective R&D ecosystem. The integration of AI in biotechnology will further accelerate and democratize technology development. Additionally, policy initiatives like BioE3 are set to create an enabling environment that supports the scaling up of synthetic biology startups, driving India’s leadership in sustainable biomanufacturing.
Shruti Srivastava
Investment Director
@
Avaana Capital
AI as a Catalyst for Collective Action
Anshuman Bapna
Founder
@
Terra.do
Many of humanity’s biggest challenges, like climate change, are collective action problems. While AI is often seen as a tool for enhancing productivity—or even replacing human labor—what if its true breakthrough lies in enabling better collaboration among well-meaning individuals? Imagine an AI agent constantly engaging with large communities (like Reddit or a platform like Terra.do), conducting mini-interviews to understand individual goals, and forming “pods” of people with aligned visions but complementary skills. This AI could then guide these teams through project development—flagging prior attempts, identifying pitfalls, suggesting funding opportunities, and connecting them with global initiatives. Could such an AI-powered community builder accelerate project formation by 1000x and unlock unprecedented climate action worldwide?
Anshuman Bapna
Founder
@
Terra.do
Asia's Urban Heatwave: Can Innovation Cool Booming Cities?
Rosalind Bazany
Partner
@
Antler
Amid global uncertainty, one trend is certain: Asia’s urbanization is accelerating, driving economic growth and reshaping cities. India, with its rapidly growing urban centers like Surat, Bangalore, and Hyderabad exemplifies both the potential and challenges of this transformation—particularly in tackling urban cooling. The urban heat island effect, where dense construction creates localized hotspots up to 7°C warmer than surrounding areas, threatens livability, public health, and sustainability. This challenge extends beyond Asia, impacting urban centers globally from Phoenix to Paris. What makes this challenge compelling is the diversity of solutions it inspires: reflective cooling panels, solar-powered paints, modular microforest pods, and smart shade systems. Cities like Singapore are pioneering green building initiatives, demonstrating how technology and urban planning can mitigate heat challenges. With the market for sustainable cooling in developing economies set to reach US$600 billion annually by 2050, urban cooling represents a high-potential investment opportunity. Scalable, impactful, and critical for building future-ready cities, this is the space I would focus on if I were starting a company today.
Rosalind Bazany
Partner
@
Antler
AI for Clean Air: Tackling India's Pollution Crisis with Data-Driven Solutions
Harsh Jain
Co-Founder & CEO
@
Dream Sports (Dream11)
The persistent challenge of air quality in India is a compelling area for AI-driven solutions. Imagine the potential of AI to analyze vast datasets—from meteorological patterns to industrial emissions—to predict and mitigate AQI spikes. This could involve developing sophisticated early warning systems, optimizing traffic flow to reduce pollution, or even designing targeted air purification strategies. The impact of such a venture would be immense, offering a tangible improvement to public health and urban living.
Harsh Jain
Co-Founder & CEO
@
Dream Sports (Dream11)
Clearing the Air: The Billion-Dollar Opportunity in Fixing Pollution
Nikhil Basu Trivedi
Co-Founder & General Partner
@
Footwork
If India can tackle air pollution in its major cities through entrepreneurial innovation rather than waiting for government intervention, the economic upside could be enormous. Technologies like Direct Air Capture or other breakthrough solutions could significantly improve air quality, leading to better public health, higher productivity, and a major boost to GDP. The company that successfully develops and commercializes such a solution stands to become an industry giant.
Nikhil Basu Trivedi
Co-Founder & General Partner
@
Footwork
The Squeeze on India's Cities: Innovation to Improve their Liveability
Sriharsha Majety
Co-Founder & CEO
@
Swiggy
As India continues its rapid urbanization on the path to becoming an economic powerhouse, our cities will face mounting pressure—strained infrastructure, congestion, and environmental challenges—all of which could impact liveability. There’s a growing need for innovative solutions that enhance the quality of urban life. It would be exciting to see entrepreneurs explore viable business models aimed at making our cities more enjoyable and sustainable. Whether through technology, urban planning, mobility solutions, or public-private collaborations, there’s immense potential to improve everyday experiences. Some of these ideas may work independently, while others could thrive in partnership with governments, local bodies, and civic organizations.
Sriharsha Majety
Co-Founder & CEO
@
Swiggy
AI-First Chronic Condition Management Tool: A Health Coach That Fits Your Life
Mohit Sadaani
Managing Director
@
DeVC & Z47
I would love to see an AI-first tool that finally makes managing chronic conditions effortless, especially for people who are time-starved, overworked, and constantly on the move. India is in the middle of a chronic disease crisis—with 77 million people living with diabetes and 1 in 4 Indians at risk of heart disease. We all know we need to eat better, move more, and sleep well—but the reality is, between work, travel, and family, who has the time to track everything, let alone make drastic lifestyle changes? I can see a real possibility of an AI-powered health companion that seamlessly plugs into your smartwatch or smart ring, tracking food, exercise, and sleep without you even thinking about it. It wouldn’t just throw generic advice at you—it would nudge you daily with practical, doable suggestions, personalized to your life, your schedule, and your priorities. Maybe it suggests a better meal choice at the airport, a quick stretch before a long call, or a minor sleep tweak that makes a real difference. Over time, this AI coach could help reduce diabetes, lower cancer risks, and improve heart health—not by demanding impossible changes, but by making small, realistic improvements that fit into your life. Hopefully, someone builds this next year!
Mohit Sadaani
Managing Director
@
DeVC & Z47
Empowering Healthcare Innovation in India
K. Ganesh
Promoter
@
BigBasket, BlueStone, HomeLane & Portea Medical
The next wave of founders should leverage India’s incredible digital infrastructure—DPI, India Stack, startup grants, and AI advancements—to solve one of our biggest challenges: affordable, high-quality healthcare for all. During the pandemic, we saw millions pushed below the poverty line, exhausting savings and taking on crippling debt just to afford medical care. This is unsustainable. The future of healthcare innovation must focus on prevention, early detection, and affordability—leveraging Generative AI, Quantum Computing, IoT-driven point-of-care devices, and real-time data analytics. Imagine AI-powered diagnostics accessible via mobile, community-driven preventive healthcare, and cost-effective early intervention tools that use cutting-edge tech. A founder who can integrate these solutions with India's existing policy framework and incentives will not just build a great business but transform lives at scale.
K. Ganesh
Promoter
@
BigBasket, BlueStone, HomeLane & Portea Medical
The Future of Preventative Healthcare: AI-Driven Early Detection
Magnus Grimeland
Founder & CEO
@
Antler
There is a massive opportunity in preventative healthcare—leveraging advanced AI models to conduct comprehensive body and blood scans. By segmenting solutions based on cost vs. impact, we can enable early detection of health risks and drive lifestyle changes that reduce inefficiencies in the healthcare system. An ideal solution would combine accessible entry-level screenings with more advanced diagnostics, ensuring a scalable, cost-effective approach to proactive healthcare. With AI rapidly evolving, now is the time to build solutions that can transform early detection and disease prevention at scale.
Magnus Grimeland
Founder & CEO
@
Antler
AI-Driven Gut Health
Lavanya Indralingam
Partner
@
Antler
I’m deeply into biohacking and the preventative side of health. One of the most exciting emerging opportunities in wellness is real-time, AI-powered gut microbiome optimization. While microbiome testing has gained traction (the whole "gut is the second brain" idea), most current solutions provide only a static snapshot, missing the microbiome’s constantly evolving nature. Our gut ecosystem shifts daily based on diet, stress, environment, and lifestyle, yet most available solutions rely on generic recommendations rather than real-time, adaptive insights. Imagine a system that continuously monitors the microbiome, using AI to analyze biological signals and dynamically adjust diet, supplements, and interventions—paving the way for truly precision-driven health. India is well-positioned for something like this. Gut health is deeply connected to diet here, microbiome variations are significant, and conditions like IBS, diabetes, and metabolic disorders are rising. As AI advances and sequencing costs drop, real-time microbiome analysis could become widely accessible. India also has a unique advantage in its deep-rooted gut-health traditions—Ayurveda, fermented foods, probiotics—all aligning with modern biohacking principles. While Western companies are repackaging these ancient practices as premium wellness solutions, India has the opportunity to lead the future of personalized gut health by blending traditional wisdom with cutting-edge AI.
Lavanya Indralingam
Partner
@
Antler
Personalized Health: Consumer Care's Next Era
Kanwaljit Singh
Founder and Managing Partner
@
Fireside Ventures
Consumer healthcare is undergoing a transformative shift driven by the fusion of self-care, heightened health consciousness and "OTCfication" of healthcare. Modern consumers are increasingly proactive, seeking solutions that combine high efficacy, empowerment & personalization to address their unique health needs. This creates opportunities to offer personalized health insights and program-led solutions that address common health concerns such as gut health, hormonal imbalances and sleep disorders.
Kanwaljit Singh
Founder and Managing Partner
@
Fireside Ventures
Unlocking India's Demand for Toxin-Free Food
Dhruv Gupta
Co-Founder
@
Orange Health Labs
The growing awareness of health and the increasing presence of pollutants in India's air and water are driving a strong demand for reliable, toxin-free food sources. This creates a significant opportunity for innovative businesses, ranging from cloud kitchens sourcing high-quality, low-toxin ingredients from trusted farms to premium suppliers of certified toxin-free vegetables and fruits. The demand extends to meat, dairy, and eggs. In each of these areas, there is a market to be found, and brands to be built.
Dhruv Gupta
Co-Founder
@
Orange Health Labs
The Rise of India’s Wealthy 50s: Opportunities in Longevity & Wellness
Nidhi Mathur
Venture Partner
@
Axilor Ventures
The demographic cohort shaped by India's liberalization and IT service sector boom is now entering its 50s, representing a high-earning group poised to inherit substantial wealth. This confluence of factors makes the silver economy—encompassing healthy aging, rejuvenation, longevity aesthetics, and geronutrition—a particularly promising sector. These areas are set to experience significant growth, driven by the increasing financial capacity and evolving needs of this demographic.
Nidhi Mathur
Venture Partner
@
Axilor Ventures
AI-Powered Early Cancer Detection: Unlocking India's Healthcare Potential
Sharad Sharma
Co-Founder
@
iSPIRT Foundation
Many Indian states maintain Cancer Registries, and the data is alarming—most cancers are detected at Stage 3 or 4, often too late for effective treatment. The impact of enabling early detection would be transformative, both in terms of public health and economic benefits. For this to become a reality, AI-driven Point-of-Care diagnostic tools are essential. However, their effectiveness hinges on access to diverse, high-quality training data from multiple hospitals. Unlike the US, where privacy regulations and structured contracts enable data sharing, India needs a different approach. A promising pathway lies in leveraging DEPA (Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture), a Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) designed for secure, consent-based data exchange at scale. Startups that integrate DEPA early can gain a significant competitive edge while solving critical healthcare challenges. And cancer detection is just the beginning—India offers countless similar opportunities where innovation, DPI frameworks, and technology can bridge systemic gaps and drive large-scale impact.
Sharad Sharma
Co-Founder
@
iSPIRT Foundation
AI-Driven Personalized Health: Unlocking Deeper Insights from Your Data
Erik Jonsson
Partner
@
Antler
The stark contrast between the hyper-personalized recommendations we receive from online platforms and the generic feedback from traditional health checks highlights a significant gap. Despite the wealth of data contained within our blood, current health assessments often provide only broad warnings, lacking personalized insights into daily well-being. The absence of context—ethnicity, age, diet, lifestyle—further diminishes the value of these assessments. The conflicting advice often encountered, even from medical professionals, underscores the need for a more data-driven, personalized approach. While AI tools offer potential, the lack of assurance regarding their data sources raises concerns. This situation underscores the urgent need for a robust, evidence-based platform that delivers truly personalized health insights.
Erik Jonsson
Partner
@
Antler
Proactive Health: Opportunity to Reduce Disease Burden
Dilip Kumar
Investments
@
Rainmatter
Healthcare presents numerous opportunities, particularly in the realm of preventive care. We need more entrepreneurs who can create solutions that reduce the country’s overall disease burden. One area that feels especially underserved is health solutions tailored for kids (8-15) and seniors (60+), helping them proactively manage their well-being. There’s a massive need for innovative, scalable approaches that make preventive healthcare more accessible and effective for these groups.
Dilip Kumar
Investments
@
Rainmatter
Building Businesses With Trust as a Moat
Nithin Kamath
Founder & CEO
@
Zerodha & Rainmatter
Through Rainmatter, we meet countless entrepreneurs each year, shaping our perspective on areas that need the most support. Here are a few key takeaways: Fintech: There’s a significant gap in financial awareness and education, especially for first-time investors in capital markets. Entrepreneurs have the opportunity to build products that prioritize customer well-being over immediate business outcomes. As technologies like LLMs continue to evolve, their applications in financial advisory and personal finance will be interesting to watch. Health: Preventive health solutions for kids, adults, and seniors need greater focus. While India is a young country today, in 20-25 years, we will have 350 million seniors—investing in preventative solutions now can help us manage this demographic shift more effectively. Another area with huge potential is increasing access to sports. Can we enable more young Indians to play and use that as a platform to identify talent? This is something we’re keen to support. Climate: The challenges here are vast, but key areas include clean food, livelihood creation, and better market connections for small farmers to improve price discovery. There's also a need for better guidance on soil health and education around the long-term impact of fertilizers and additives on productivity. Across all these sectors, one core piece of advice for founders: Build trust as your moat and focus on driving meaningful outcomes.
Nithin Kamath
Founder & CEO
@
Zerodha & Rainmatter
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India's AI Leap: Building Global Giants from the Ground Up.
Mukul Arora
Co-Managing Partner
@
Elevation Capital
The AI era presents Indian startups with an unparalleled opportunity to build dominant global platforms. In the SaaS/cloud era, Indian companies started a decade late, often targeting smaller markets or niche solutions. But AI is rewriting the rules, reshaping major SaaS markets long dominated by Salesforce, ServiceNow, and others. This time, Indian startups are starting at the same line as their global counterparts. We now have successful SaaS pioneers who have shown how to sell globally from India, and open-source foundation models like Llama and DeepSeek providing strong building blocks. With India’s exceptional talent, the opportunity is clear: think bigger, go after the largest markets, and challenge incumbents. Over the next decade, India has a real shot at creating $50B-$100B global AI companies—and at Elevation, we’re thrilled to be part of this once-in-a-lifetime moment.
Mukul Arora
Co-Managing Partner
@
Elevation Capital
Scaling India’s Talent: The Next Wave of Global Services
Gautam Mago
General Partner
@
A91
India produces 10 million college graduates annually, yet we haven’t fully harnessed this vast, young, and skilled workforce to serve the world. The next generation of IT services and BPO (3.0/4.0) must blend AI with human expertise—leveraging automation without sidelining people. India’s strength lies in its talent, and the biggest opportunities will come from models that combine technology with large-scale employment, rather than purely high-margin, highly automated services. By building people+tech-driven global service businesses, we can create millions of jobs, drive economic growth, and position India as the world’s service hub once again.
Gautam Mago
General Partner
@
A91
Reinventing B2B Buying: A Smarter, More Interactive Experience
Srikrishan Ganesan
Co-Founder & CEO
@
Rocketlane
A next-generation B2B buyer experience should make it seamless to find the best-fit solution for any need. This means guiding buyers through the process—helping them craft the right requirements or RFP documents, build vendor assessment scorecards, and automate initial vendor filtering. Key features would include recorded video demos addressing specific requirements, with vendors having the ability to review, add more videos, and engage with buyer queries directly on the platform. Each selected vendor would have a dedicated vendor interaction room, consolidating all conversations, documents, and content for streamlined engagement. Buyers could track their comments, scores, and vendor ratings while ensuring vendors have a clear opportunity to address gaps and receive feedback—creating a more transparent and efficient decision-making process.
Srikrishan Ganesan
Co-Founder & CEO
@
Rocketlane
Beyond the Giants: How India SaaS is Set to Disrupt the Status Quo
Susmit Patodia
Associate Partner
@
Antler
India’s SaaS spending is poised to exceed expectations. Here’s why: The formalization of the economy is accelerating. Just a few years ago, India had 60 million enterprises contributing to a $2T GDP. In the next five years, GDP is projected to reach $6–8T, with a more consolidated base of 15–17 million enterprises. SaaS adoption closely follows cloud penetration. A key insight Aadit of Zepto was the near 1:1 correlation between cloud and SaaS spend—an observation supported by industry data. India’s cloud spend is currently estimated at $10–15B (with $8B in public cloud), having tripled in the last five years. Initially, major players like SAP, Salesforce, and Microsoft dominate, but as the market expands, the long tail of SaaS providers is set to grow exponentially.
Susmit Patodia
Associate Partner
@
Antler
Building India’s Own Software Giants: A $100B Opportunity by 2035
Gowri Shankar
Associate Partner
@
Antler
India’s tech narrative has long been defined by global outsourcing, but a transformative shift is underway. While multinational players dominate today’s $20 billion domestic software market, the landscape is changing fast. As highlighted by us in the report by SaaSBoomi & 1Lattice, Beyond The Valley: Unlocking India’s $100B Domestic Software Opportunity, this market is set to expand fivefold by 2035—creating a $100 billion opportunity. With Indian companies poised to capture up to 50% of this growth, the time is ripe for homegrown software giants to emerge. From procurement and people management to CRM and compliance, vast untapped opportunities exist for founders ready to build.
Gowri Shankar
Associate Partner
@
Antler
The Next-Gen CRM: Optimizing for Outcomes, Not Just Actions
Amit Kumar
Ex- Managing Director & CEO
@
OLX
Traditional CRMs and process orchestrators focus on the doer first, treating the desired outcome as an afterthought. This approach leads to inefficiencies, requiring teams to navigate complex workflows before achieving their objectives. The future of CRM will flip this model upside down—starting with what needs to be accomplished and optimizing the path to get there with minimal resources. By prioritizing outcomes rather than tasks, next-generation CRMs will redefine productivity, enabling organizations to achieve more with less friction.
Amit Kumar
Ex- Managing Director & CEO
@
OLX
Pressing need for Cypersecurity at Scale
Anant Vidur Puri
Partner
@
Bessemer Venture Partners
Cybersecurity and data privacy have never been more critical for India. With the rapid rise in data breaches, leaks, OTP frauds, and impersonation scams, there’s a pressing need for an India-focused solution that protects both enterprises and consumers. A well-built solution could not only address these challenges domestically but also scale beyond borders to become a global player in the space.
Anant Vidur Puri
Partner
@
Bessemer Venture Partners
Productivity Reimagined: The Rise of Efficient Part-Time Teams
Ashish Gupta
Co-Founder & Managing Director
@
Helion Ventures
There's a significant untapped potential in creating an outsourced consulting model that leverages primarily part-time workers, specifically those available for 4-5 hours daily. This necessitates innovation across operational processes, including seamless handovers and specialized software, to ensure productivity parity with full-time teams. Furthermore, novel HR practices are crucial to attract, retain, and maximize the job satisfaction of this workforce. This model, applicable across diverse sectors like BPO, IT consulting, and legal services, taps into a vast, underutilized talent pool, offering both operational efficiency and enhanced employee well-being.
Ashish Gupta
Co-Founder & Managing Director
@
Helion Ventures
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence
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Next Era of Consumer
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From one-click AI deployment to anti-fragile workforces — explore ideas democratizing intelligence and reshaping the future of work, code, and decision-making.
Redesigning finance for the next billion –– discover new-age fintech ideas focused on closing credit gaps, personalizing wealth, and building on top of India’s digital rails.
From everyday robots to biofoundries, the Deeptech wave is building India's industrial backbone — and this time, hardware isn’t hard, it’s inevitable.
Consumers are going premium, personal, and playful — dive into ideas redefining learning, shopping, gaming, mobility, and even how we age.
A new wave of climate ideas fighting India’s air crisis, and engineering planet-first solutions in EVs and synthetic biology — all before it’s too late.
Health meets intelligence — explore ideas at the intersection of AI-driven diagnosis, preventive care, personalized wellness, and consumer trust.
India’s next $100B SaaS wave is here — fueled by AI-native products, global ambitions, and reimagined tools for enterprise outcomes, talent, and trust.
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