Himagiri Mukkamala

Agilitas x Virat Kohli partnership is one of the masterstroke deals I have seen in recent times. Virat invests 40 CR in Agilitas for a 1.94% stake, putting Agilitas’s valuation around 2000 CR. 📈 In turn, Agilitas acquires one8world, making Virat a co-founder and shareholder. They now get two very important growth levers: ⬇️ 1. A powerful manufacturing (via Mochiko Shoes - a 600 CR+ footwear brand that Agilitas acquired in 2008 ), 2. India’s biggest athlete — exclusively aligned. Easily becomes a 4000 CR revenue brand in the next 5 years. Footwear + retail scale requires capital — but this partnership compresses customer acquisition, product cycles, and brand-building like few others. Even Virat said in his podcast with Abhishek Ganguly, the co-founder of Agilitas that, “I didn’t want a brand deal… I wanted to build something that outlives me.” And Abhishek said something even beautiful - “An ambition to build from India but be globally relevant.” This isn’t marketing. This is legacy building with shared skin in the game. And that is how startups work - shared ambition with one goal (to make the company big) and food (read stake) in the table for everyone! A company that can be built in the long term with culture, capital, and conviction aligned. This might be the first time in India, where an athlete joins hands with a sport company to re-imagine and build the sport ecosystem of India - truly revolutionalising the game with a clear vision. 🙌

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Every Sunday, I recap the biggest themes in AI, tech, and markets. This week, India's AI land grab intensified, regulators drew the line, attention wore a jersey, OpenAI joined the chip war. ▪️India is the world’s most strategic AI frontier - and the labs are bundling, billing, and localizing fast to become its default. ▪️The DOJ didn’t break up Google, but it broke its grip on defaults - a scalpel, not a sledgehammer, in the platform power playbook. ▪️Fantasy football is back - not just to crown champions, but to monetize ritual, identity, and belonging one Sunday at a time. ▪️OpenAI is building chips and Google is exporting TPUs. NVIDIA is still king, but surrounded by revolutionaries building guillotines in their garage. 📩 Full post here: https://lnkd.in/g7K6p4f7

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The outcome era might be the wave that propels software adoption in India For years, software vendors have struggled to crack the Indian enterprise market. Despite being a global IT services powerhouse, the country has historically shown reluctance toward subscription-based software. The common refrain is Indian buyers don’t pay for subscription software. They are seen as value-driven, focused on cost minimization than on increasing productivity or reducing headcount. Seat-based or feature-based pricing models rarely resonated. Instead, enterprises gravitated toward custom IT solutions built to their specifications, with one-time payments and long-lasting utility. This reluctance isn’t without context. Indian companies began their software journey with rigid and inflexible ERP systems. These platforms were expensive to implement and offered little flexibility. Beyond the software cost, implementation cost 2-3 times the license value. In the process they developed expectations for high-touch, personalized support. The emergence of AI-powered software presents a fundamentally different value proposition. This new class of AI-native software products is built not around access or licenses, but around outcomes and tasks. The model aligns remarkably well with the buyer psychology and feels intuitive. It’s akin to hiring an extra set of hands to get the job done. These outcome-based models also address the fundamental objection that "software isn't doing the heavy lifting." India has a history of bypassing technological stages. We skipped personal computers in a large part and went straight to mobile. We bypassed credit card and went straight to UPI. A similar pattern may emerge in enterprise software, where companies bypass the traditional SaaS era and move to outcome-focused AI tools. Of course, this transition is not without challenges. Outcome-based pricing requires robust tracking, attribution, and trust in AI capabilities. Many buyers still prefer a known vendor with predictable behavior, even if the value delivery is ambiguous. Procurement and compliance teams are often structured to approve capex-heavy software buys rather than dynamic opex-based models. India may never fully embrace SaaS in the same way Western markets have. But it may not need to. The rise of companies with AI capabilities and outcome-based pricing models creates a unique opportunity to overcome India's traditional resistance to software adoption. By shifting from "paying for software" to "paying for results," AI companies can address the fundamental objections that have limited SaaS growth in the Indian market. The next wave of adoption may not be about getting Indians to buy software, but about building software that Indians want to buy.

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36+ Startups. 22 Million+ Users Impacted. Meet the "IT Giant" that became India’s secret Product Factory The answer is "Cognizant." Let us look at how: 👇🏻 For decades, the narrative was that Indian IT services companies only produced "delivery" talent. But the "Cognizant Mafia" has shattered that glass ceiling. By combining the operational rigor of managed services with a high-stakes appetite for product-led growth, these founders have built the infrastructure of India’s 2026 digital economy. Here are the alumni of the "Cognizant Mafia" who redefined their industries: 1) Krish Subramanian - Former Technology Specialist at Cognizant Co-Founder – Chargebee He took the complexity of global billing and turned it into a $3.5B+ SaaS powerhouse. Chargebee now manages revenue for over 20,000+ high-growth businesses globally. Krish proved that you can build "Category Kings" from Chennai by treating recurring revenue as a science, not a line item 💳 2) Amit Agarwal - Former Analyst at Cognizant Co-Founder - NoBroker Tackled the "unsolvable" broker nexus. By leveraging tech to eliminate middlemen, NoBroker has saved Indian customers over ₹15,000 Cr in brokerage fees to date. With 7 million+ verified customers, they've turned real estate from a "relationship" business into a "data" business 🏠 3) Chaitanya Ramalingegowda - Former Senior Consultant at Cognizant Co-Founder - Wakefit Utilising consulting rigor to disrupt sleep. As of 2026, Wakefit has moved from a "mattress startup" to a home solutions giant, clocking a 9-month revenue of ₹1,145 Cr and serving 2 million+ homes. They didn't just sell mattresses; they sold an omnichannel ecosystem 🛏️ 4) Madhusudanan R – Former Associate at Cognizant Co-Founder - M2P Fintech The "Infrastructure" play. M2P acts as the "API-first" plumbing for banks. By processing billions in transaction volume monthly, they enable legacy institutions to launch digital products in weeks, not years. They are the silent engine behind 600+ fintech partnerships 🛠️ 5) Pranav Goel - Former Associate at Cognizant Co-Founder - Porter He brought the "Uber-model" to intra-city logistics. Porter has now scaled to over 50M+ app downloads and a fleet of 500,000+ driver-partners. By solving for the "Last-Mile," they’ve reduced logistics costs for SMEs by nearly 25% through pure routing efficiency 🚛 6) Swathi Kulkarni - Former Strategic Leader at Cognizant Co-Founder - Elda Health Representing the new wave of FemTech. Swathi is shifting from high-scale IT to high-empathy DeepTech. Elda Health is now leading the charge in menopausal wellness, a market projected to reach $12.8B by 2030, proving that "IT training" is the ultimate foundation for health-tech precision 🩺 ➡️ The Insight: The "Cognizant Effect" is about Transitioning from Services to Systems. These founders didn't just learn how to write code; they learned how to manage massive scale (100k+ employees) and complex client requirements.

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New H-1B visa rules will change how Indian IT firms operate across the globe. Adding costs and tightening policies have made sending talent to America more expensive and selective. As companies shift away from traditional models reliant on on-site resources in America, Indian IT companies are responding by enhancing their offshore/nearshore delivery models. To utilize India's abundant talent pool to manage complex global delivery remotely, utilizing a variety of resources, while relying less on labor-intensive processes through automation and AI initiatives. This will allow teams to function long-term without relying solely on visa-reliant talent. At the same time, companies are investing in local talent in the U.S. to maintain vital client-facing roles and minimize disruptions in continuity. By establishing a sustainable "onshore" workforce, companies are reducing exposure to restricted access for foreign talent and maintaining important client-facing roles to provide successful delivery of services. These changes, in turn, are driving a strategic shift to product-led growth domestically in India, which will lead to long-term profitability. Leveraging innovation and enhancing systems and domestic platforms, IT firms can translate mobility hurdles into economic challenges for product growth. The industry is transforming from a pure services model to a hybrid model beginning with offshoring cost efficiencies and onshore presence with local innovation. This also gives India a chance to build a "brain gain" ecosystem whereby more and more individuals of Indian origin are not only staying in India but actually coming back home from the US or elsewhere, thus building India's talent pool. This will ultimately serve to ensure that India becomes a globally recognized center of technology and innovation, while simultaneously reducing the overreliance on foreign markets to attract talent back to India. Although there are potential short-term obstacles to overcome with the new H1B rules, they also provoke Indian IT firms to innovate, adapt, and rethink how best to strategize on talent. Raising nearshore capabilities means a firm can adopt a product-led growth approach, which not only mitigates some of the anticipated risk or uncertainty but also positions the Indian technology sector to evolve in an interesting way as a sustainable hub of global leadership and access to market for its next growth phase. #H1BVisaChanges #IndianITFirms #GlobalTechShift #OffshoreDeliveryModels #FutureOfIT

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At a recent panel featuring Lantrasoft CEO @Kavi Nithyanandam, the conversation moved past industry platitudes to address the actual dynamism—and friction—behind modern tech partnerships. The dialogue opened with a grounded look at what "good" actually looks like in a partner ecosystem. Rather than offering blanket praise, Lantrasoft’s leadership spoke of the shared accountability required to deliver for the end client. On the topic of Agentic AI, the perspective was clear: the market is moving away from simple, scripted automation toward autonomous systems that function as true enterprise teammates. The discussion highlighted the gap between market hype and the technical maturity required to deploy these agents effectively in complex The team meeting in Austin is just part of the boots-on-the-ground investment by IBM that shows a level of intentionality that is a departure from “business as usual.” True innovation requires partners who are willing to offer critiques as often as they offer solutions. Lantrasoft remains committed to pushing the boundaries of what is possible with IBM, grounded in a shared focus on results over rhetoric. Special thanks to Mike Verona and the IBM team for hosting a session that prioritized real-world insights over scripted answers. #Lantrasoft #IBM #TechStrategy #AgenticAI #Automation #Partnerships #EnterpriseTech

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Grateful to join Shripati Acharya and the Prime Ventures Podcast to discuss Uniphore’s journey and what it really takes to bring agentic AI into production at the world’s largest businesses. We covered a few themes that keep coming up with CIOs and business leaders I speak with: what industrializing AI looks like beyond pilots, why a horizontal enterprise platform (data, models, security, agents) is essential for scaling responsibly, and the challenge of making AI agents more deterministic through architecture, guardrails, and workflow design. I also shared why small, fine-tuned models can be the right approach for many business use cases, balancing accuracy, control, and cost at scale. At the center of this is the Uniphore Business AI Cloud: an end-to-end platform that helps businesses bring their data together, fine-tune models, and build and deploy AI agents with the security and sovereignty large organizations require. And, it’s increasingly enabled by a strong ecosystem of strategic partners across compute, data, and cloud, working together to help customers move from experimentation to measurable outcomes. I’m confident the next chapter of Business AI will be defined by disciplined execution and real impact at scale. Thank you Shripati for a thoughtful conversation. Let’s do it again soon. #BusinessAI

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System-level issues cause 60–70% of automation downtime. Fixing bots isn't always about the bot—it's about what’s around it. Accelirate Inc. | Mike Booker | Harsh Thakar | Pranav Agrawal | Saatvik Gupta #AutomationFailure #agenticAutomation #BOTs #AI #RPA #AIOps #BotManagement #SystemReliability #DigitalOps #ProcessAutomation #AutomationChallenges #IntelligentAutomation #TechOps

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On February 18, during India's AI Impact Summit, a company called Sarvam shipped a 105-billion-parameter model trained from scratch in India on government-subsidized GPUs, designed for 22 Indian languages. It outperforms DeepSeek-R1 on certain benchmarks at one-sixth the size. The same summit produced $200 billion in investment pledges from Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Reliance. The headlines were about the money. The real story was Sarvam. This post examines in detail why it took this long, what changed, and whether Sarvam is the first crack in an old equilibrium or a lonely exception. "Indians Rule Big Tech. Why Can’t India Build?": Link in comments.

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CLSA says the new $100k H-1B visa fee will have a limited margin/earnings impact on Indian IT cos. Hit is seen at just ~0–6% of FY27 PAT, with Persistent systems & LTI Mindtree most exposed. Mitigation: local hiring in the US, near-shore centers, & higher reliance on sub-contractors. 📊 India IT | CLSA | Sept 21, 2025

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A founder who has spent 32 Years building IP-Owned Tech in India's Defense Sector. Ashok Atluri, Founder of Zen Technologies Limited shares a growth story bootstrapped from Hyderabad: -Revenue: ₹60 Cr (FY21) → ₹930 Cr(FY24) -Market cap: 40 Cr (2012-13) → 13000 Cr today -Growth: 400X in 12 years Takeaways from our conversation: 1. India historically imported 65–70% of its defense equipment. Today, defense exports have grown more than 30× over the past decade, with the private sector contributing around 60% of exports. Domestic defense production has increased to ₹1.27 lakh crore, a 174% rise since FY 2014–15. 2. For over two decades, Zen built advanced simulators but struggled to sell them in India because single-vendor bids weren’t accepted. The IDDM policy in 2015 gave preference to IP-owning Indian companies and allocated 75% of the capital acquisition budget to local sourcing. And decades of R&D became a real market worth ₹200 billion. 3. Defense tech startups in India have raised $184 million in VC funding since 2020. Zen’s journey shows that IP-owned Tech built with self-funded R&D can build the most defensible advantage, similar to how Apple captures value through IP rather than manufacturing. 4. Zen’s anti-drone systems were proven in field operations, leading to export inquiries from over 20 countries. This mirrors the broader trend of India’s defense exports growing from ₹1,940 crore (FY14) to ₹21,083 crore (FY24). Field-tested solutions build trust far faster than lab demos or pilot projects. 5. Government fundings are rewarding innovation over manufacturing. Programs like iDEX provide up to ₹10 crore for proven concepts, while DRDO offers ₹50 crore per system under the Technology Development Fund. This shift allows companies to reinvest profits into next-generation R&D. 6. Ashok believes that not all technologies should be patented. Highly secretive or complex innovations can be reverse-engineered if patented. Instead, patent what is obvious to outsiders to protect your competitive edge. 7. Build with a focused approach on Pareto technologies with maximum impact. Instead of chasing every opportunity, Zen concentrated on the 20% of technologies delivering 80% of results, anti-drone systems and simulators. Prioritizing high-leverage areas compounds impact effectively. 8. Time market entry around overlooked gaps: In 2018, drones were a hot topic, but there was little attention on anti-drone systems. Zen entered this gap and was ready when the need became urgent, from regional conflicts to domestic security. Opportunities often lie where others are silent. 9. Create policies around your innovation: Self-funded R&D firms face unique risks that conventional procurement rules often overlook. Zen advocated for new categories rather than adapting breakthrough technologies to unsuitable frameworks, ensuring their innovations could be evaluated on merit. Full Episode https://lnkd.in/gnAFEj3f

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