While we interact with a new and promising AI agent every other day, the possibilities for AI to operate in the real world are equally exciting. We're thrilled to partner with @spc_india to bring you Physical AI Demo Night, a curated evening to explore the most interesting use cases for AI in the physical world, from robotics and hardware to drones, spacetech, and more. A few selected teams will present their live demos, followed by an open house to get a closer look at every product. Apply to demo or participate as audience: luma.com/physicalaidemonight

We’re excited to launch The Disruptor’s Toolkit: The 0 to 500 Crore Playbook for Challenger Brands, a comprehensive report created in collaboration with @Google and @wppmedia for new-age consumer brands to win over India’s new experimental shopper. At the launch of the playbook, @chiragchadha9 spoke about what it takes to scale a challenger brand from ₹0 to ₹500 crore. This journey no longer looks like one long sprint. Instead, it’s a relay race, and each leg asks a harder question. Can you own a single niche? Does every new channel make the others stronger? Are you building revenue, or building lasting value? As Chirag put it, “the brands pulling ahead are those that own a sharp consumer need before earning the right to go wider.” With this playbook, we give founders a blueprint on how brands break out with the margins, the team and the brand to win every leg of the race. Thank you to our partners at Google and WPP Media, and to the audacious founders whose journeys shaped this playbook. Read the full report: services.google.com/fh/files…

We’re excited to announce our partnership with Spill Games and lead their $10.5 million Series A fundraise! Spill Games is building an AI-native gaming studio that compresses mobile game development from months to weeks. With AI embedded across the development lifecycle, from discovering new gameplay formats and testing concepts to producing, launching, and optimising games, the platform helps move promising game ideas from concept to market with greater speed and precision. In a category where sustained player retention is difficult to achieve, the speed and learning velocity fueled by Spill Games’ AI-native development model are a powerful advantage. We’re excited to back Om Misra, Harsh Garg, and Tapan Ranjan as they continue scaling this audacious idea. Read our investment memo to learn what excites us about Spill Games: elevationcapital.com/perspec… @manishadvani12 | Shreedhar Malpani

We're thrilled to partner with @spc_india to showcase the builders shaping the future of AI beyond software!

We’re proud to back @mesaschool_'s next chapter as it raises ₹110 crore in Series A funding! India’s entrepreneurial spirit runs deep. Ankit Agarwal and Varun Limaye built Mesa as a new-age business school to help more young people tap into that spirit and turn their ideas into enduring businesses. Over the last four years, they’ve created a founder-led learning environment. Mesa's emphasis has been on enabling students to sharpen their entrepreneurial instincts and understand what it takes to bring an idea to market. We’re excited to continue backing Ankit, Varun, and the Mesa team as they help more young Indians become the sharpest builders of tomorrow. @mukularora | @manishadvani12

For more than two decades, billions of dollars in venture capital have gone into recruiting tools covering every stage of the hiring funnel. Yet recruiters still spend over 65% of their time manually sourcing and screening candidates. And candidates fare no better with roughly 180 applications for a single hire. Today, AI is positioned to close this gap, and we believe the opportunity looks different for every buyer in this space. Three segments are ripe for innovation through AI: → Startups hiring white-collar workers are best served by an AI-native agency → Startups hiring blue-collar workers are best served by a voice or WhatsApp-first infrastructure → Enterprises and GCCs hiring white-collar workers are best served by an orchestration layer tailored to their needs Explore our full read on how AI could create recruitment's first new winner since LinkedIn in 2003: elevationcapital.substack.co…

The AI landscape is changing faster than ever, where even a few months can completely reset the playing field and rewrite the advantage. In our latest SummitUp episode, @kpowerinfinity and @PoorviVijay unpack how the space has evolved and share their read on where enterprise AI's real value is headed next. They talk about: ➡️ How open-weight models like Qwen and Kimi 2.5 are emerging as strong frontier alternatives ➡️ The growing emphasis on building a goal-oriented harness layer and the future of domain-specific harnesses ➡️ Inference becoming the new battleground in the agent economy where agents operate autonomously ➡️ Creating lasting context to run agents on memory built up over time regardless of the model Watch the full episode here: youtube.com/watch?v=HkUjZQel…

Can startups and private companies actually break into India's massive defence opportunity? In the latest episode of our Defending India series, @AshrayIyengar sat down with Smit Shah, President of the Drone Federation of India (DFI), to talk about the role startups can play in building out the country's military manufacturing base. Smit expressed his conviction that startups will take over. But this future won't be built by one kind of company alone. He broke it down into two tiers: ➔ A handful of large-scale manufacturers with the capital and factories to build at volume ➔ A layer of 10-20 specialist firms around them, doing design, development, and production together This structure looks nothing like the conglomerate-led defence models India has historically relied on. And it has room for founders to plug into that second tier. Watch the full conversation to hear more on where startups fit into India’s defense matrix: youtube.com/watch?v=eUEzyMfv…

Congratulations to Dextr AI on raising $6.7M in the seed round! Hospitality is, at its core, a business of human connection. But behind every warm welcome is a mountain of repetitive work, from managing bookings and answering routine queries to coordinating between vendors and keeping operations running smoothly. Dextr AI is building a specialised AI workforce to take on this busywork. Its forward-deployed team of AI strategists and engineers works directly with hospitality operators to identify high-impact opportunities and build bespoke agents for use cases spanning guest bookings, concierge services, workflow automation, and more. By taking care of the repetitive tasks, Dextr gives hospitality teams more time to focus on the moments that make a guest’s experience memorable. We’re delighted to back Sajid Shariff and Scott Arnold as they aim to automate the work around hospitality while keeping the human touch intact. Read our investment memo to learn what excites us about Dextr AI: elevationcapital.com/perspec… @kpowerinfinity | Dhruv Jain

In a stirring speech at Basecamp Dialogues, @PawanKChandana walked us through his almost decade-long journey of building @SkyrootA. Pawan built a category-defining space tech company at a time when India lacked the policy, capital, and talent needed to build one. He emphasized the beauty of building within constraints and candidly shared how, even with all the odds stacked against them, his team continued to build on their audacious idea and went on to launch the country’s first-ever privately developed orbital rocket. His story is proof of what founders can achieve when pushing against the currents. @basecampblr

We spoke to more than 30 CTOs across India’s startup ecosystem to understand how AI is playing out within the engineering function. Our report, 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗔𝗜 𝗶𝗻 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴: 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲 𝗜𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗮𝗻 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗽 𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝗧𝗲𝗮𝗺𝘀, maps how tech leaders are doubling down on AI to create business leverage, what it costs, and how it impacts the team structure. Some key takeaways from our research: → The engineer’s role is moving closer to business outcomes. It’s expanding beyond producing code to framing ambiguous business problems, directing AI towards useful solutions, and taking ownership of the value delivered. → The hiring bar is changing with this redefined role. Product thinking, system design, and judgment are becoming increasingly important signals for CTOs evaluating engineering talent. The question is no longer just whether someone can build, but whether they have the aptitude to gauge what’s worth building and how to assess the result. → Access to AI tools is only the starting point. The teams getting the most out of AI are building the systems around it: clear codebase boundaries, contextual documentation, room for experimentation, and review practices that protect quality. Our report also explores where engineering leaders are directing AI spend, how they are measuring ROI, and what it takes to run agents reliably in production. Read the full report here: stateofai-engineering.elevat… @bansalvartika | Harsh Agarawal

We wrapped the tenth edition of Elevation Connect, our signature investor-founder connect platform, with 500+ curated meetings across two editions in 2026. Elevation Connect 2026 began with a virtual edition in March and culminated in an in-person edition in Bengaluru this September. Across both editions, we facilitated 500+ meaningful interactions between 35 of our portfolio companies and a diverse lineup of 100+ domestic and global investors across the US, SEA, UK and Middle East. A Sundowner in Bengaluru brought together our portfolio founders, investors, and the Elevation team for an evening of warm conversations and new connections, a fitting close to our tenth edition. The energy and engagement we witnessed, both virtually and in person, reaffirm our belief in the quality of founders we back and the relationships we continue to build around them. We're excited about the connections made and the possibilities ahead. Here's to the founders building the next generation of category-defining companies.

We hosted a welcome mixer with Inkle and Corgi for the Indian founders joining YC's Fall 2026 batch. The conversation ranged from the changing shape of consumer plays to vertical AI narrowing into specific niches. But hardware seemed to be the flavor of the season with teams building for a diverse range of use cases, from drones and semiconductors to personal devices. A huge thanks to @Revanth279, Founder of Prototyping.io (YC P26), for sharing notes on how to get the most out of these three months. We're excited to see this group take the next step in their journeys with YC. @kpowerinfinity | Dhruv Jain | Sanskar Jain

The latest episode of our Defending India series takes on a question that every founder in this space is trying to answer: What does it actually take for a startup to sell to India's military forces? To find out, @AshrayIyengar sat down with Lt Gen Dr Anil Kapoor AVSM, VSM (Retired), and Smit Shah, president of the Drone Federation of India. At its core, the conversation emphasizes the importance of building trust to go from a prototype to a field-deployable system. This episode shares tactical advice on how startups can engage with soldiers, procurement directorates, and decision-makers. Watch the full episode here: youtube.com/watch?v=eUEzyMfv…

At Basecamp Dialogues, @pratykumar, founder of Sarvam, made the case for why Indian founders should dream at the global scale and build for the world from day one. He walked through @SarvamAI's journey of building frontier AI models, from the ground up to their launch in February 2026. That trajectory isn't new for India, and Pratyush believes the next decade of AI in India could look a lot like the last decade of digital payments. Ten years ago, India wasn't in the global top 10 for digital payments. Today, we process roughly 60% of the world's digital transactions. That leap happened because India’s builders picked the hardest version of the problem and solved it for the world. He believes the frontier has room for more than one country to lead, and Indian founders are already showing up to claim their share. @basecampblr