There is a question hanging over India right now. Global capital is concentrating into a single US zip code. Some of our best engineers are being offered life-changing packages to move there. And a consensus is quietly forming - that India is getting left behind in the AI platform shift.

We couldn’t disagree more. India isn't a spectator in this shift; we are already one of the largest AI-adoption markets on earth, and the building has barely begun. Every platform shift resets the scorecard, and this one is India's opening to leap into the next orbit. That leap will not come from playing safe, it will require us to be more ambitious than ever before and take bigger risks.

Today, with our $500 million Fund IX, we are doubling down on this once-in-a-generation opportunity for India and Indian founders.

What two decades of building has already proven

Twenty years ago, India had barely 40 million people online and only a handful of listed internet companies. The doubts were constant, and they always sounded reasonable. Indian tech companies will stay niche, serving a thin slice of English-speaking, metro India. Indian consumers will never pay at scale. New-age companies will never turn a profit. But Indian founders answered every one of them.

Today, over 900 million Indians are online. Technology is no longer a convenience for a few, it is how India transacts, shops, travels, learns and gets served. UPI processed 228 billion transactions in 2025, nearly half of all real-time digital payments on the planet, digitizing everyone from tea stalls to trucking fleets. New-age companies now deliver to virtually every pincode in the country, serve hundreds of millions of users each, and support millions of livelihoods - small businesses, delivery partners, drivers, creators. The consumers who would “never pay” now sustain large commerce, subscription and financial services businesses. And the companies that would “never be profitable” have become a growing cohort of profitable, listed businesses - more than 50 new-age companies trade on the bourses at a combined market cap above $140 billion, with 18 IPOs in 2025 alone. Alongside all of this, a first generation of founders proved that world-class software companies could be built from India for the world.

Over these two decades, startups went from interesting to mainstream in India’s economic life. In the decade ahead, they will become our primary engines.

An opportunity that is ours for the taking, but not by default

We believe multiple factors are converging to make this platform shift an unprecedented opportunity for Indian founders. But this opportunity will not come to us, we will have to go and take it.

First, going deeper into India than technology has ever gone. The domestic opportunity remains immense - over 900 million Indians online, standing on world-class digital public infrastructure, the twin rails of Aadhaar for identity and UPI for payments. Yet access to most fundamental needs like healthcare, education and financial services, remain unsolved. These are harder problems than anything we have solved so far. Solving these will require leveraging AI, but it will equally need very hard on-the-ground execution - in clinics and classrooms, and in languages and geographies, where no playbook exists. We have leapfrogged every such gap before - from no landlines straight to mobile phones, from no broadband straight to 3G, from no organized retail straight to e-commerce, from no credit cards straight to UPI. The next leapfrog is waiting to happen. We believe the best of healthcare, education and financial services will reach all of India for the first time, enabled by AI, built by Indian founders.

Second, building global category leaders, not just global companies. That world-class software companies can be built from India is no longer a question, a generation of founders has already proven it. Over the next decade, companies of every size, everywhere in the world, will rebuild their tech stack for the AI era. It is the largest re-platforming of software in history, and every incumbent’s advantage is up for grabs. We enter this race with world-class application-layer and infrastructure talent. Indian engineers have built companies which serve 100s of millions of users, and are now the second-largest and fastest-growing developer community on GitHub. As AI's value moves up the stack from models to infrastructure and applications, we will be playing to our strength. This is our opportunity to build global-maxima companies, businesses that do not just sell to the world but lead their categories worldwide. We believe the first generation of AI-native global category leaders will get built out of India.

Third, taking on problems India was never “supposed to attempt”. Rockets test-fired, drones delivered to the armed forces by the thousands, robots and precision factories taking shape - thousands of deep-tech startups behind them. These are extremely difficult, long-gestation, capital-intensive problems, the kind the old consensus said Indian startups should not go after. That consensus is exactly what this generation of founders is dismantling. We believe rockets built by Indian startups will carry the world's payloads, Indian-designed defence systems will protect Indian skies, and Indian robots will run factories that make for the world.

Multiple hundred-billion-dollar companies will be started from India in this decade, quite possibly by someone reading this.

None of this is comfortable. All of this is possible. A billion users, the hardest problems, the most powerful toolkit any generation of Indian builders has held - India is one of the best places in the world to be a builder right now, and it demands more of all of us, founders and investors alike.

All in on India

Four years ago, we announced our previous fund with these words: All in, on India. We meant it then. We mean it even more now.

We remain all in, on India. We remain sharply focused on Seed and Series A, where conviction matters most. We will partner early, partner deeply, and partner for the long run, just as we have for the last 25 years. Our deliberate design choices - deep domain expertise on every board, a stellar founder success team that accelerates the 0-to-1 journey, and a partnership that stays all in through the hardest phases - are how we show up as your partners.

Together with Elevation Holdings, the $400 million late-stage vehicle we launched last year, our commitment to Indian founders continues to deepen, and we walk with founders from the very first cheque through their life as an enduring public company.

If you are building, it is never too early to talk to us. Write to us here.

Elevation. Built for the Audacious.