In a major move for India’s AI startup landscape, former Haptik co-founder Aakrit Vaish — along with investor Pratyush Choudhury — has launched a new $75 million venture fund named Activate. The fund is designed to support early-stage AI and deep-tech startups in India, signalling growing confidence in India’s ability to build home-grown AI innovation. The Economic Times
What Is Activate — And Its Mission
- Activate is a venture capital fund focused exclusively on AI, deep-tech, and foundational technologies.
- The fund plans to invest between US$500,000 and US$3 million per startup or founding team — often at the idea or inception stage before formal incorporation
- The idea is to enable “technical crack teams” — founders who deeply understand AI or hard-tech — giving them early resources to build infrastructure, tools, or applications.
Who’s Behind Activate
- Aakrit Vaish — Co-founder of Haptik, which helped popularize conversational AI in India and was acquired by a major conglomerate in 2019
- Pratyush Choudhury — Former principal investor at a VC firm, with deep experience evaluating and investing in early-stage tech startups.
- The fund reportedly has backing from a global network of investors — including prominent angels, former founders, and VC firms — giving portfolio companies access to mentorship, infrastructure, and global market links.
Why This Matters — For India’s AI Ecosystem
- Activate addresses a big gap: early-stage funding and support for deep-tech / AI-native startups. Such companies often struggle to get funding before they have a product or revenue.
- By backing “pre-company” teams, Activate could spur a wave of new enterprise- or foundation-model-level AI ventures from India — rather than just consumer apps or services.
- It signals growing investor confidence in India’s technical talent. With globally experienced backers, startups backed by Activate may gain access to world-class mentorship and international expansion paths.
What Types of Startups Activate May Fund — And What’s Next
Activate could back startups working on:
- Infrastructure and foundational AI — e.g. data platforms, compute solutions, tools for model training/deployment
- Foundational models tailored to Indian languages or regional needs (a big gap in global AI coverage)
- AI-driven enterprise or B2B tools — ML platforms, automation, analytics, deep-tech integrations
- Robotics, hardware-software hybrids, and other “deep-tech” that require engineering and AI together
In coming months, we may see announcements of first tranche investments and public profiles of fledgling AI startups supported by Activate.
Broader Implications — For Founders, Investors, and India’s Tech Future
This fund launch marks a possible shift: from consumer-app dominated startup funding to deeper, infrastructure-oriented, AI-first ventures.
For founders — especially in AI and deep tech — Activate could be a lifeline. For investors — it signals rising belief in India as a source of serious AI innovation. And for India’s tech ecosystem — it could seed long-term impact and push the country toward building home-grown, sustainable AI infrastructure.
