“If the Internet, e-com, and mobile created Unicorns, then AI will certainly create the next ‘Tricorn.”
– Ronnie Screwvala, Unilazer Ventures
Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and the world’s transition to a remote working paradigm, AI, IoT, and Big Data have been critical in ensuring business continuity, assisting organizations in navigating through the crisis, recovering, and thriving. AI is now present in almost every facet of our life, including navigation, smart living, travel, education, and money. In fact, AI’s swift conquest is just the beginning. And Indian AI startups are here to prove it by developing previously unimaginable solutions to real-world issues and gaining large-scale investment interest.
With the accolade of having the world’s third-largest startup ecosystem and government backing both embryonic and maturing AI startups, India displays excellent development potential for domestic and foreign investors. Indian AI startups received over $836 billion in investment in 2020, the most in the prior seven years, representing a 9.7% YOY increase. The number of AI companies that obtained investment increased drastically from the previous year, indicating the ascent of India’s AI startups. During the period, AI application programming interfaces (API), AI-first software applications, data stack services, and platform BPO services have gained unapparelled development.
Indian AI startups brought innovation and revolution to various domains like logistics, healthcare, and fintech. While Covid-19, followed by other international crises, disrupted the global supply chain management and logistics, Few Indian Startups were able to offset the effect to a large degree. LogiNext and Locus.sh, for instance, are empowering the logistics sector by automating and optimizing the planning, scheduling, dispatching, live tracking, route-planning, and smart alerting solutions for various services.
The lockdown period fostered the growth of the Indian fintech industry and ushered in an unprecedented change in the digital adoption of new investment systems. The significant concerns constantly troubling Indian investors are predictability of markets and establishing a profitable portfolio. Robique is one such startup providing resolution for the same. On the other hand, LendingKart intends to make working capital readily available to entrepreneurs to prevent cash-flow interruptions.
Even from an employment standpoint, the future of Indian AI firms seems optimistic as well. According to a report developed by Stellaris VC and IFC, the investment wing of the World Bank, “India’s AI potential may create more than 900,000 new white-collar jobs and an additional 3.6 million indirect jobs by 2030.” In final words, considering AI’s critical role in helping companies recover from the epidemic effect and empowering the nation in doing the same, it’s evident that Indian AI-driven startups are opening new windows for the future.
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