Founders

Venture capital firm Peak XV, formerly Sequoia Capital India, on Monday said it has launched a new startup cohort Spark 03 with 14 companies that includes 16 female founders. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and healthtech dominate this cohort with four companies in AI and four in healthtech, while others in the group are engaged in building software as a service (SaaS), consumer and B2B platforms, Peak XV said. Elevate Your Tech Prowess with High-Value Skill CoursesOffering CollegeCourseWebsiteMITMIT Technology Leadership…

In an interview during his visit to Bengaluru where the company set up its first office outside Romania, he spoke about how robotic process automation (RPA) is being used with GenAI to enhance customer experience, and why entrepreneurs will find it hard to survive if they simply build chatbots atop large language models (LLMs). Edited excerpts: Why did you step down as co-CEO to become CIO? What does this new role entail?I was lucky to find a great CEO (Rob Enslin) to do the go-to-market…

Imagine, if you will, a contractor who approaches you with a gleam in their eye and a plan so vague it might as well be written in invisible ink. “Trust me,” they say, “I’ll work on your house for three months. I’ll spend 30% of the money on plumbing, 30% on framing and building the walls and roof, 10% on electric work, and the rest on paint and such.” When you ask if the house will be livable by the end, they shrug. “Who knows? But isn’t the journey exciting?” This is a scenario so absurd you’d laugh the contractor…

Indian founders of venture capital fund Peak XV met Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, the undisputed king of advanced chips that are now driving artificial intelligence (AI) applications, at the firm's campus in the Bay Area as part of an AI focused trip. "We're just scratching the surface when it comes to AI," the venture capital fund said in a post on X and Linkedin, posting a conversation its managing director Shailendra J Singh had with Sequoia Capital partner Doug Leone. "AI, like the internet in the 90s, is real, but…

Mumbai is emerging among the preferred startup destinations for founders and investors in the country, said Dream Sports cofounder and CEO Harsh Jain and Haptik CEO Aakrit Vaish, citing the financial capital's infrastructural advancements and increasing access to resources and talent.The entrepreneurs interacted with ET ahead of the Mumbai Tech Week, an initiative aimed at promoting the city’s thriving tech ecosystem, scheduled to take place between February 18 and 23.Elevate Your Tech Prowess with High-Value Skill…

If you’re looking at the current seed funding climate and thinking it’s rough out there, you’re not alone. The last few years have been a roller coaster for startups. First came the uncertainty in the early days of the pandemic, then came the exuberance mid to late in the pandemic when cash flowed freely to startups of nearly every stripe. Seed funding sizes were up, and so were valuations. Today, things aren’t quite so copacetic. Money is tighter, and the hurdles for startups are higher. But…

The recent changes to immigration rules in the UK have prompted some entrepreneurs to fear that they may be forced to leave the country as they don’t pay themselves enough to meet the new earnings criteria. This could prove a considerable mistake for a country that actively wants to attract and encourage startups. Immigrants make up a disproportionate share of entrepreneurs — 39% of the UK’s fastest-growing startups have at least one immigrant co-founder, despite only 14.5% of the population…

For the average individual, work makes up about ⅓ of their life. Everyone should have the freedom to not have to hide essential parts of their identity from their colleagues, business partners, or, in the case of startup founders — investors. Unfortunately, this is still far from reality.  While the tech industry is supposedly at the forefront of humanity’s drive for innovation, many people in the LGBTQIA+ community working in tech suffer as a result of archaic and obsolete prejudices. Often,…

A group of entrepreneurs has written to Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Shaktikanta Das and finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, urging them to “review” and “reconsider” the regulatory directive asking Paytm’s payments bank unit to shut its key banking services after February 29.The note, signed by startup founders including Policybazaar's Yashish Dahiya, Bharat Matrimony’s Murugavel Janakiraman, Makemytrip’s Rajesh Magow and Ritesh Malik of Innov 8 said the RBI order would have a far-reaching impact on the ecosystem…

Michelle Moon Contributor Michelle Moon is a principal at Sorenson Capital, where she invests in early-stage B2B software companies that help enterprises harness the power of data and analytics. Construction often gets a bad rep as one of the “dinosaur” industries. This is not entirely unwarranted: Productivity growth in the sector averaged just 1% over the past 20 years versus 2.8% for other industries. Nonetheless, having spoken with many developers,…