India needs its own institutions that just don't participate in AI — they shape it.
Activate is India's native-AI venture firm. We believe India's defining AI companies will emerge from the sectors where the country is already structurally strong: commerce, financial services, education, healthcare, and services. Not by building better software, but by fundamentally reimagining how these industries operate.
AI follows economic gravity.
Aakrit (opens in a new tab) ran Haptik, one of India's first AI companies (acquired by Reliance Jio). Angel investor in 100+ startups and recently Advisor to IndiaAI Mission. Pratyush (opens in a new tab) was part of the team that backed Composio, Emergent, Rocket.new from India. Runs APAC's largest GenAI community. Soaib (opens in a new tab) joined as Partner & Head of Ecosystem, previously having backed 70 startups as angel and VC, including consumer breakouts Blue Tokai, Pocket FM, Classplus, Pratilipi.
Our platform spans four pillars — Inception, Global Growth, Venture Building, and Ecosystem — designed to back founders at day zero, partner with category-defining global AI companies, incubate strategic ventures, and strengthen India's AI ecosystem end-to-end.
Community
Our LPs include some of the foremost technology leaders across the India-US corridor:
- Aakash Chaudhry, Sparkl
- Aravind Srinivas, Perplexity
- Ashish Vaswani, Essential AI
- Ashutosh Sharma, Prosus
- Avnish Bajaj, Z47
- Dhaval Shroff, Tesla AI
- Harish Bahl, Smile Group
- Harsh Jain, Dream11
- Kirthiga Reddy, Verix
- Lalit Keshre, Groww
- Mahesh Sutar, Rippling
- Manohar Paluri, Meta
- Martin Casado, Andreessen Horowitz
- Mati Staniszewski, ElevenLabs
- Micky Malka, Ribbit Capital
- Miten Sampat, CRED
- Mukesh Bansal, Nurix
- Mukul Agrawal, Param Capital
- Neeraj Arora, General Catalyst
- Nick Talwar, Rohati Capital
- Paras Chopra, Lossfunk
- Ramesh Raskar, MIT Media Labs
- Rahul Khanna, Trifecta Capital
- Ritesh Arora, Browserstack
- Ronnie Screwvala, Upgrad
- Sandeep Nailwal, Polygon
- Shailendra Singh, PeakXV Partners
- Sharad Sanghi, Neysa
- Srikanth Velamakanni, Fractal
- Sriram Rajamani, Microsoft Research
- Steve Jang, Kindred Ventures
- Varun Mayya, Aeos Labs
- Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Paytm
- Vinod Khosla, Khosla Ventures
- Vishal Misra, Columbia
Inception Investing
We partner with founders before incorporation, helping validate ideas and co-building during the earliest product stages. Our engagement goes beyond capital—we bring hands-on support to help teams move from zero to one.
We lead the first institutional funding round, investing $500k–$3M to accelerate development. From technical architecture to go-to-market, we help founders build with velocity, depth, and taste.
We invest across three theses that map to India's structural advantages:
Sovereign AI
Builds the core infrastructure that enables the AI ecosystem.
Examples
- Foundational models & model labs
- AI infrastructure & compute platforms
- AI for Science, Manufacturing, Defence
Portfolio
Mandrake Bio
Why India Wins
Talent + sovereign demand + research arbitrage
- Access to top research talent & academia
- Sovereign & strategic national priorities
- Policy support, grants & compute access
AI Services
Reimagines services businesses with AI at the center.
Examples
- AI-first IT services & transformation companies
- Vertical AI services platforms
- AI-enabled business process outsourcing
Portfolio
Aqqrue
Why India Wins
Delivery talent + cost advantage + enterprise relationships
- Deep bench of engineering & domain talent
- Global delivery advantage
- Strong enterprise & GCC relationships
Consumer AI
Creates AI-native experiences for India's mass market.
Examples
- AI Tutors, Doctors, Farmers
- AI-powered e-commerce & financial services
- Content, gaming & productivity AI
Portfolio
Holy Drip
Why India Wins
Massive domestic market + mobile-first behavior
- Large, growing digital consumer base
- Mobile-first adoption
- Strong unit economics at scale
Global Growth
We partner with category-defining global AI companies to create strategic value in India — connecting them to our ecosystem of founders, researchers, and policy stakeholders, and helping them scale in the market.
Portfolio
Activate is currently in the process of making our first few investments.
Our past portfolio as angels & backers includes: Composio (opens in a new tab), Park+ (opens in a new tab), Rapidclaims (opens in a new tab), Sri Mandir (opens in a new tab), Spry (opens in a new tab), Smallest AI (opens in a new tab), Seekho (opens in a new tab), Emergent (opens in a new tab), Eka Care (opens in a new tab), Unacademy (opens in a new tab), ZuAI (opens in a new tab), Spendflo (opens in a new tab), Rocket.new (opens in a new tab), Truva (opens in a new tab), Boba Bhai (opens in a new tab).
Projects
We run India's largest Generative AI community spanning 15k+ technical practitioners. Request here to join (opens in a new tab).
Activate Signal is our media platform focused on crafting India's AI narrative. Signal aims to be not another VC brand propaganda, but rather the defining voice of what's happening in AI in India.
Partners
Activate has exclusive partnerships with the world's leading AI labs and companies. From day one, every portfolio company receives up to $1M in credits & benefits, along with early access to new models, beta features, and dedicated co-building support.
