Just a year ago, we talked about the age of IPOs and celebrated the wave of maturity among late stage startups. Twelve months later, after a record-breaking year for Indian startup IPOs and as we mark the fifth National Startup Day, it’s once again time for the startup ecosystem and the various stakeholders to recalibrate.

No one can deny that India’s startup ecosystem has grown at a scale and speed few countries have matched and this is exactly why the National Startup Day was brought in and till today, it remains one of the only instances of such a day in the world.

From a handful of early-stage ventures a decade ago, the country has now become the third-largest startup hub globally, hosting over 200,000 DPIIT registered startups across sectors. But there’s a new reality about to hit these stakeholders — from startup founders to investors to policymakers.

This National Startup Day, the focus has turned from businesses heading to IPOs to artificial intelligence, how Indian can build its sovereign AI stack and the massive $126 Bn AI opportunity in the next half a decade, as revealed in Google and Inc42’s comprehensive Bharat AI Startups Report, 2026

More than anything else, the report clearly spotlights a convergence of forces that is poised to take the Indian AI economy to new heights in the next decade.

The startup ecosystem has produced 126 unicorns and more than 147 soonicorns, VCs and private equity have poured billions and lawmakers have created policies that have led to new categories. But AI is about to change it all.

As always, Inc42 serves as the bridge between startups and policymakers, guiding the conversation and shaping the agenda. And this is exactly the right time for these stakeholders to work together to realise the full AI opportunity.

The Government Lens: Infrastructure Push

Over the past two years, the government of India has taken an ambitious, multi-pronged approach to AI, led primarily by the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) via the IndiaAI Mission, approved in March 2024 with INR 10,371.92 Cr outlay to be spent in five years.

Thanks to that, compute capacity in India has been expanded from 10,000 to 38,000 GPUs, which are available at subsidised rates for researchers and startups, supported via public-private partnerships and an AI marketplace.

On the data side, platforms such as AIKosh now host more than 5,500 datasets and 250-plus AI models spanning 20 sectors, while the government has backed early foundational AI efforts by startups such as BharatGen, Sarvam AI and Soket AI, which are building large-scale, multilingual models tailored for Indian languages and use........

© Inc42