We believe now is an incredible time to build consumer and fintech products in India. The first wave of AI was largely about enterprise software. The next one belongs to the products people use every day to shop, learn, save and borrow, and India has already built the digital infrastructure they need. The cost of serving those users is falling fast too. Mobile data costs have fallen by more than 95 percent since 2014, which built the last generation of consumer companies, and intelligence is now getting cheaper in the same way. Building for this moment takes two kinds of help at once, from engineers who have run AI in production and from investors who have seen which business models compound. The Google for Startups (@GoogleStartups) x Lightspeed Sprint brought both to Google’s Gurugram office on 23 September, for over 100 founders and CTOs from Seed-Series B startups. Lightspeed Partners Rahul (@rahultaneja) and Ishaan (@ishaanpreet) made the case for building now. Rahul's keynote and consumer track looked at what cheaper intelligence makes possible for users most products have never reached. Ishaan's fintech track traced where Indian fintech has created value so far, and argued that financial services is the best place to build an AI assistant. Ronnie Screwvala (@RonnieScrewvala), Chairperson and Co-Founder of upGrad (@upGrad_edu), sat down for a fireside chat on building companies that last, and the afternoon went to hands-on builds with Google Cloud (@googlecloud) engineers. Thank you to the Google for Startups team for building the Sprint with us, and to the Google Cloud engineers who worked alongside the founders through the day. @ragingdas @SeekingN0rth @nityabaskar

India’s internet user base grew from 50 million to 900 million in just two decades. Yet the next 300 million consumers have remained too costly to serve. AI is beginning to change that. Earlier this week, we co-hosted the Google for Startups (@GoogleStartups) x Lightspeed Sprint at Google’s Gurugram office, a full-day build session for consumer and fintech startups. More than 100 founders and CTOs from Seed to Series B companies joined us for a morning of strategy and an afternoon of hands-on building with Google engineers. Rahul Taneja (@rahultaneja) opened with a keynote on why India is one of the most exciting geographies to build for over the next decade. A fireside chat followed, with Ronnie Screwvala (@RonnieScrewvala), Chairperson and Co-Founder of upGrad (@upGrad_edu), and Karan Kumar (@_kkumar) of Google Cloud (@googlecloud) discussing trust, scale, and building a brand that lasts. Then it was time to get hands-on. Participants split into two tracks: Rahul explored how to serve and build for India’s next 300 million consumers, while Ishaan Preet Singh (@ishaanpreet) examined fintech’s next 10x value driver. They identified promising whitespace, joined one-on-one architecture sessions with Google Cloud engineers, and put their ideas into action. Thank you to Ronnie for his time and candour, and to the Google for Startups and Google Cloud teams for bringing their engineers into the room and making the full-day sprint possible. We will share the decks from both tracks on our Substack soon. Subscribe here to read them first: lsip.substack.com/ @ragingdas @nityabaskar @SeekingN0rth

Announcing our guest speaker for the Google for Startups (@GoogleStartups) x Lightspeed Sprint: Ronnie Screwvala (@RonnieScrewvala), Chairperson & Co-Founder of upGrad (@upGrad_edu). Ronnie needs no introduction. After growing UTV into a media conglomerate and taking it through its sale to Disney, he went on to build upGrad into one of India’s largest higher education and upskilling platforms. We’ll also dive deep into what the next decade of fintech and consumer tech could look like, and where the opportunities for disruption lie. Rahul Taneja (@rahultaneja) and Ishaan Preet Singh (@ishaanpreet), Partners at Lightspeed, will share perspectives shaped by decades as operators and investors, from how AI is reshaping the way people consume to where new opportunities are emerging. If you’re a founder or CTO at a Seed to Series B startup building in consumer tech or fintech, you don’t want to miss this. Applications close September 13. RSVP: goo.gle/gemini-sprints-gurga… @ragingdas @_kkumar @MohapatraHemant @nityabaskar @SeekingN0rth

Festive season asks two questions of every consumer and fintech team: can your stack hold, and can your economics survive the spend it takes to win? On September 23 in Gurgaon, the best of Lightspeed’s investors and Google’s engineers come together to answer both. Join us for the Lightspeed x Google for Startups (@GoogleStartups) Sprint, a one-day sprint across three hands-on tracks designed to get you from idea to production: The Architecture Google engineers on the failures that only show up in production: festive-season traffic spikes, real-time fraud detection, systems that look fine until they don't. Plus access to Google's specialized repository templates. The Economics Our investors on which fintech and consumer models have compounded, which wedges are scaling now, India vs. Bharat, and what we'd love to see built. The Execution Deploy your own agent on Gemini and Vertex AI before you leave, whether that's a commerce agent for returns automation and basket analysis or a financial agent for real-time fraud detection. If you're a founder or CTO at seed to Series B startup in consumer tech and fintech, this one's for you. RSVP: goo.gle/gemini-sprints-gurga… @ragingdas @_kkumar @ishaanpreet @rahultaneja @MohapatraHemant @nityabaskar @SeekingN0rth

Excited to partner with Google for Startups (@GoogleStartups) for this Sprint in Gurgaon on September 23 – a hands-on, one-day workshop built for seed to Series B founders and CTOs in Consumer Tech and Fintech, designed to bridge cutting-edge AI architecture with venture-backed unit economics. What we'll get into: → Architecture: blueprinting cloud infra that survives festive-season traffic spikes and real-time fraud detection, with under-the-hood access to Google's engineering teams and templates → Economics: Lightspeed partners sharing tactical insights and perspectives on how to scale in an AI-first landscape → Execution: live-building and deploying production-ready AI agents in minutes 👉 RSVP: goo.gle/gemini-sprints-gurga… @ishaanpreet @MohapatraHemant @rahultaneja @SeekingN0rth @nityabaskar @_kkumar @ragingdas