We believe AI in India will be built by technical crack teams. Activate is a new age venture firm purpose-built for such founders, engaging with them well before incorporation and investing $500k-$3M at inception.
Aakrit ran Haptik, one of India's first AI companies (acquired by Reliance Jio). Angel investor in 100+ startups and recently Advisor to IndiaAI Mission. Pratyush was part of the team that backed Composio, Emergent, Rocket.new from India. Runs APAC's largest GenAI community.
The Activate platform combines Capability, Community & Content — honed through 2 decades of shared experiences & deep networks.
Our LPs include some of the foremost technology leaders across the India-US corridor:
We run India’s largest Generative AI community spanning 15k+ technical practitioners. Request here to join
Activate Signal is our media platform focused on crafting India’s AI narrative. Signal aims to be not another VC brand propaganda, but rather the defining voice of what’s happening in AI in India. Follow on Youtube, Substack and Instagram.
Velocity : Imagine the fastest you have worked & shipped things before, and multiply it by 10x. Companies are getting created in days now, not even weeks.
Depth : Everyone knows everything now, the only way to achieve excellence is being an expert on your domain. It can be an industry vertical or a research topic or a particular piece of tech. You need to know more about it than 99.99% of everyone else in the world.
Taste : Intuition has never commanded more premium than before. There is no way to develop this other than surround yourself with incredible people who have it. The finer details and small decisions make or break.
Influence : Attention is all you need, truly. The game is being played at just a whole new level now. Think Cluely, Sydney Sweeney x AE, Astronomer x Gwyneth. This muscle needs to be in the DNA of every org.
Activate is currently in the process of making our first few investments.
Our past portfolio as angels & backers includes: Composio, Park+, Rapidclaims, Sri Mandir, Spry, Smallest AI, Seekho, Emergent, Eka Care, Unacademy, ZuAI, Spendflo, Rocket.new, Truva, Boba Bhai.