Avinash Raghava 🇮🇳

I wrote about those early scooter rides, the lessons that stayed with me, and why I believe the next stretch of India's AI journey calls for a different kind of thinking here: Hope you like it! :)

“Neki kar, dariya mein daal.” Do a good deed and cast it in the river. At @AIBoomi, that spirit has long lived through our running #PayItFWD series. But over time, I’ve also wanted to create space for another kind of story. One about the people who don’t just support us from the sidelines, but quietly build alongside us. I’m calling it #BuiltAlongside, and I want to tell these stories here, in the way this platform allows me to. And I couldn’t think of a better person to begin with than Klaas Oskam. Not long ago, my colleague Keerthi Madhu and I visited @KlaasOskam and Nishant Malhotra at the DC Advisory office in Bengaluru. We arrived a little early, and while waiting, I found myself browsing their library. One book stopped me. It was a NASSCOM publication from nearly 20 years ago, featuring 100 of India’s best IT innovators. I had curated that book. My name, however, was nowhere on it. When I mentioned this to Klaas, he simply said, “You need to take the book, Avi.” I refused. It felt like an artefact that belonged exactly where it was, on a shelf documenting how far India’s technology ecosystem had come. That moment stayed with me. Klaas has watched that journey up close too. He has lived and worked in India since the mid-2000s, and over the years has developed a rare vantage point on Indian founders: how the world sees them, and how they see themselves. Later in the meeting, we asked a fairly standard question: “What kind of value have you derived from this relationship?” Klaas looked genuinely puzzled. “We don’t look at our relationship with AIBoomi transactionally. It’s about supporting entrepreneurship. Do what you’re doing, and we’ll derive value.” That answer said everything. No ask. No scorecard. No attempt to measure the relationship in immediate returns. Just trust. We walked out reminded that partnerships like these come with a responsibility too: to keep earning that trust, and to keep doing work worthy of the people who choose to build alongside us. Klaas, we’re privileged to count you among our champions. With great trust comes great responsibility. :)

Congrats on the launch @ajeets! 🚀 Few people combine Ajeet’s track record with his openness to feedback. He never stops learning, and that’s exactly why I’m so excited to see what this team does next. All the best!

Almost at the end of #TheLiftOffNation by @RajanAnandan and @TheSaurabhSri, and honestly, I don’t think any book so far captures India’s startup ecosystem the way this one does. It’s like the definitive guide of Indian startups, covering B2C, D2C, SaaS, AI, climate tech, space tech, robotics and more. It also looks at how the VC ecosystem has evolved, what needs to happen on the policy side, and where India could be by 2047. If you’re a founder, or just want to understand how India’s startups got here and where they’re headed, I’d highly, highly recommend it. We’ve got a phenomenal ecosystem out here. It’s always inspiring to hear Rajan talk about India’s potential and encourage entrepreneurs to punch above their weight! 🙌🙌 More in this video 👇 youtube.com/watch?v=a6XsNFt_…

Spent the afternoon remembering Khadim Bhatti. So many wonderful stories, beautiful memories, and reflections on the extraordinary impact one person can make. What a journey, Khadim. What a life. And what an incredible legacy you leave behind. You touched so many lives, inspired so many people, and made a difference in ways that will live on for years to come. Super proud of all that you built, the lives you impacted, and the person you were. Rest in peace, my friend. You will be deeply missed, but never forgotten. ❤️

Before any session at an @AIBoomi bootcamp, every founder scores their own company on an AI-native scale. Then the room sees the scores together. In Chennai and Hyderabad, that was the moment the two days actually started. Founders who had been describing their companies started comparing them, and the questions got specific fast. @LadyAshBorg and Anand Chandrasekaran run it again at AIBoomi Bootcamp Pune on Day 1. The afternoon goes into what an AI-led company looks like function by function, applied to each company in the room. Last few slots left. Oct 30 and 31, Lonavala. Applications close Oct 15. luma.com/BootcampPune

On my recent flight from San Francisco back to Delhi, I opened a book about India’s next generation of startups. Before I got to page one, I had to stop for a while. Because @RajanAnandan had written me a note. He had no obligation to do so. But he did. That’s Rajan. And that’s why this book already means a lot more to me. The Lift-Off Nation, written with Saurabh Srivastava, asks a much bigger question than where Indian startups stand today. Where could India be by 2047? I’m just a few chapters in, but the optimism feels familiar. World-class talent starting up. Founders building for the world from day zero. New companies emerging across AI, healthcare, manufacturing and deep tech. Capital, infrastructure and ambition beginning to converge in ways we haven’t seen before. For years, many of us have spoken about India becoming a #ProductNation. Perhaps the more interesting question now is whether the lift-off has already begun. Rajan has been one of those people I’ve learnt from over the years, not just because of what he knows, but because of how generously he gives that knowledge back to the ecosystem. So it feels particularly special to hold this book, and even more special to find a small acknowledgement of our own journey inside it. The Lift-Off Nation launches today, and I’m rooting for it alongside many other fellow ecosystem builders. Congratulations, Rajan and Saurabh. I have a feeling this book will start a lot of important conversations about the India we are capable of building. For now, I’m going back to reading. :)

A few weeks ago, I sat across from Sharad Sharma (@sharads) in a room full of people whose lives he has touched. For years, I've written about people and moments that have shaped me through my newsletter, Jeena Isi Ka Naam Hai. On August 24, for the first time, it stepped off the page and into a room. And as I looked around that evening, Pankaj Mishra (@anadianant) and I found ourselves thinking about how much can happen when good people come together with the simple intention of helping each other. In many ways, that has been the story of @AIBoomi over the past few weeks. We brought together 18 startups and around 25 founders for our Growth Founders Retreat. No grand agenda. Just founders opening up, comparing notes, and helping each other think through what comes next. We opened Expert Hours for the first time with Shekhar Kirani (@skirani) from Accel. More than 2.5 hours later, our notebooks were full and we were still going. Then came AIBoomi Bootcamp '26 in Chennai, with some genuinely standout teams. A big thank you to Ashwini (@LadyAshBorg) and Anand (@SirBlueBorg) for helping us put it together and pushing founders to think deeper about the companies they are building in this new AI era. Alongside all of this, Demo Rooms and smaller Roundtables have continued to run consistently across the ecosystem. The momentum has been relentless. :) Last week, another group of founders came together for our Scale Founders Retreat. This week, as I write this, eight healthcare startups are preparing to head to the US for Vertical Velocity '26, backed by an incredible group of volunteers giving their time, networks, and experience to help them find their feet in the market. And waiting for us in the Bay Area is Caravan '26. A week we have been building towards for months, with a group of founders, operators, and volunteers I am personally very excited about. Then we come home and begin again. Pune. Bengaluru. More Bootcamps. More small rooms. More Roundtables. More reasons for founders to find one another. When I think back to that evening with Sharad, perhaps that's the part that stays with me. Ecosystems aren't built by one big event or one big institution. They're built room by room, founder by founder, by people who keep showing up for one another. It has been a very full few weeks. Actually, a very full few months. August and the first half of September may well have been our busiest stretch this year, with the chance to engage deeply with 200+ AI-native founders. And I'm incredibly grateful to everyone who keeps showing up with us. Happy Friday. 💚

I went into our first-ever @AIBoomi Expert Hours with a notebook that had enough blank pages, knowing that with @skirani in the room, they wouldn’t stay blank for long. We spent more than 2.5 hours unpacking what it means to build an AI-native company, and here are some of the sharpest takeaways: • Stop selling software. Start owning outcomes. • Code is getting cheaper. Context is becoming more valuable. • If a better model makes three months of engineering irrelevant, move on. • The best way into a large enterprise may be to work with what already exists, not force a replacement. • Custom work is not always a scaling problem. Sometimes that is where the repeatable product starts. • Distribution may matter just as much as product. • The founder role is changing too. Product, tech, sales, positioning, judgment. The lines are blurring. We also got into legacy industries, the first 10 customers, AI-native services, forward-deployed engineers, and why some of the most interesting opportunities may sit in places most founders are not looking at yet. I wrote more about the session here >> aiboomi.org/blogs/ai-native-… I’m also curious to know which old assumption you are questioning right now. Drop your thoughts in the comments. I’ll read every one of them. :)