Moneycontrol Startup Conclave: India not an anti

Moneycontrol Startup Conclave: India not an anti-AI trade for global investors, say Accel, Elevation and Lightspeed

India may have, so far, lacked the obvious AI infrastructure and semiconductor plays that have made markets such as the US, Taiwan and South Korea beneficiaries of the artificial intelligence boom. But that does not make the country an “anti-AI trade”, according to leading venture capital investors.

Speaking at the Moneycontrol Startup Conclave 2026 in Bengaluru, partners from Accel, Elevation Capital and Lightspeed argued that India’s AI opportunity extends well beyond foundation models and compute infrastructure, with applications, enterprise software and AI-led businesses offering significant room for value creation.

“There is no sentiment among LPs that India is anti-AI,” Lightspeed partner Rahul Taneja said at the conclave. He pointed to the broader ecosystem that AI is likely to create, including energy, data centres, tooling and applications. “India may have just one company building foundational models. But there is a lot of opportunity in areas such as energy, data centres, connectivity, tooling, platforms and applications,” Taneja said.

The comments come amid a broader debate over India’s position in the global AI cycle. Unlike the US, Taiwan and South Korea, India has relatively few listed companies directly exposed to the AI infrastructure boom, leading some global investors to describe the country as an “anti-AI” market.

The venture capital industry, however, sees the opportunity differently.

Globally, the top end of the market is not being rewarded, as per Prashanth Prakash, Partner at Accel. “The top end is not being rewarded because there is no innovation and no growth. The bottom end is up because investors are seeing growth and innovation – so structurally there is a dissonance in how public markets are viewed and smarter investors are seeing that,” he said.

“There is also a belief that when all the dust settles on AI – there will be a role beyond the frontier models and what’s happening in the Valley. So, things will balance out and an India play is more realistic now,” Prakash added.

Elevation Capital partner Mridul Arora said the firm’s own investment activity was increasingly reflecting the shift towards AI. Nearly two-thirds of the investments made by Elevation over the previous 12–18 months had been AI-native, he said in an earlier conversation with Moneycontrol.

“We are all in on India,” Arora had said, adding that AI cuts across sectors where India is expected to create significant GDP and enterprise value.

At the conclave, Arora also stressed that India’s opportunity cannot be assessed merely by counting companies building foundation models. The bigger opportunity could lie in how AI gets embedded across sectors and how Indian founders use the technology to solve problems specific to the domestic market.

For venture investors, the distinction is important. India may not have the same concentration of AI infrastructure companies as some Asian markets, but its large domestic market, digital infrastructure and deep pool of technology talent give founders multiple ways to build AI-native businesses.

The three investors’ comments come at a time when AI has become one of the defining themes for Indian venture capital. Accel is raising a new India-focused fund, while Elevation has recently closed a $500 million Fund IX, with AI emerging as a major investment theme.

The message from the investor community, therefore, is less about whether India has an AI “trade” and more about where it captures value from the technology.

For Indian startups, that could mean building not just the models themselves, but the applications, infrastructure and businesses that sit on top of them.

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