LIFT-OFF NATION : WHY WE ARE ENTERING THE GOLDEN AGE OF INDIAN STARTUPS

Once upon a time India accounted for 25 per cent of global GDP. Two startup veterans – Saurabh Srivastava, one of India’s leading entrepreneurs, investors and institution builders who co-founded NASSCOM, TIE and IAN, and Rajan Anandan, ex-head of Google, Microsoft and Dell in India and now a Managing Director at Peak XV Partners – argue that it can do so again by harnessing India’s startups.

With a fascinating array of case studies and data points, they give five compelling reasons why the time for India’s startup ecosystem is now. The first is India now has world-class talent starting up. A new generation of founders have been schooled in the first-generation of ‘academy’ startups in India. Increasingly, others are starting up after experiencing world-class innovation at scale at some of the world’s largest companies.

India also is witnessing a Cambrian explosion in innovation across every sector of its economy – from consumer-focused companies to startups in core sectors like financial services and healthcare, and emerging deep-tech arenas such as space and AI. These founders are not just building for India – they are also innovating for the world, with around 40 per cent of new seed-funded startups in 2025 building for the world from day zero.

Alongside these drivers, funding has also increased dramatically with venture capital funding having grown five times over the past decade and India’s public markets being open for business to startup IPOs. Finally, India has a very supportive government which has made many regulatory reforms and created digital public infrastructure such as Aadhaar and UPI, which is the envy of the world.

The result speaks for itself. Today, India is the third-largest and fastest-growing startup ecosystem by number of startups, next only to the US and China. The combined valuation of Indian startups has raced to over $400 billion within a decade. For comparison, the market cap of all IT services companies is about $325 billion after 35 years. And this is just the start.

With interviews with many leading founders, investors and policymakers in the Indian startup ecosystem, this is an authoritative, sharply argued and deeply insightful book that gives a truly comprehensive picture of the current state and future potential of the fastest-growing startup ecosystem on the planet.

Rajan Anandan is a managing director at Peak XV, and leads Surge, its seed-stage product, for early-stage companies. Prior to Peak XV, Rajan was head of Google India and Southeast Asia and also led Microsoft and Dell in India. One of India’s top angel investors, Rajan has been active in many industry associations and government committees in India focused on start-ups and technology, including being a member of the National Startup Advisory Council, two-time president of the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and chairman of the VC Council of the Indian Venture and Alternate Capital Association (IVCA)

Saurabh Srivastava is one of India’s leading entrepreneurs, investors and institution builders. He is co-founder of NASSCOM ( IT industry body), Indian Venture Capital Association (IVCA), TIE (world’s largest organization focussed on entrepreneurship) and the Indian Angel Network, India’s first angel investor groups. His many awards include the Padma Shri and the Commerce Ministry’s Export Promotion Council for Electronics and Software’s 'Industry Icon Award'.