#MCStartupConclave | "Everybody follows capital. We needed a catalyst - something to bootstrap the deeptech ecosystem. We used to get grants, but companies became zombies when they used to run out." Prashanth Prakash (@prashanthp), Partner, Accel, in conversation with Moneycontrol's @chandrarsrikant and @Bodhiganguli at the Startup Conclave 2026. 🔴 Track live updates 🔗bit.ly/4d98FLX 🔴 Tune in live 🔗piped.video/watch?v=JaX97vbU… #MCStartupConclave2026 #Startups #Bankings #Funding #AI #DeepTech @phonepe | @IDFCFIRSTBank | @myspinny

A decade ago, @GeetanshBamania asked something none of us had heard before: what if people rented furniture instead of buying it? He saw a shift the rest of us hadn't, cities changing, ownership starting to feel like a burden. Glad to have witnessed this special journey from day one.

At Aksha: Bharat Innovates for Social Good, our panelists reflected on a moonshot for India. Watch to hear their answers. @MSuzman | @kvijayraghavan | @prashanthp | @drsangitareddy | @ShereenBhan

HomeLane (@homelanedecors) started because Srikanth Iyer (@srikanthiy) wanted a better interiors experience than the one he'd lived through himself. Early on, the company said yes to nearly everything a customer asked for, in a business that's genuinely complex to run. What changed things: a decision about what to stop doing, and a promise to keep instead. Watch how narrowing the promise built HomeLane's edge. @tanujster • @prashanthp • #AccelFamily

Energised by @narendramodi ji's address to the nation today at Red Fort! Self-reliance has taken on new meaning in a world of constantly shifting geopolitics. Guided by the PM's mission, India is one among the few countries that started this work years ago - and the job now is to keep the momentum, especially in areas of strategic importance like semiconductors and energy. Congratulations to PM Modi for setting out the vision so clearly, and so poetically - as Sapt Dhara. As an investor, what I resonated with most was the vision to see Indian companies belong among the world's top 5. Our youth is among the most important groups that will get catapult our country there. Great to see that we are planning to leverage the country's digital strength to provide free coaching to the youth and the initiative to train 10 million youth in AI skills. Happy Independence Day 2026! 🇮🇳 A step closer to Viksit Bharat 2047. 🚀 @PMOIndia @PiyushGoyal @AshwiniVaishnaw #VIKSHITBHARAT

India's construction and home improvement ecosystem loses countless productive hours every day because of missing materials. A roll of electrical wire, the right shade of paint, a plumbing fitting, or a box of screws can bring work to a standstill, delaying projects and leaving skilled workers idle. Yet the industry's supply chain still relies on fragmented dealer networks designed for planned purchases, not urgent, on-site requirements. Fixxly is building the infrastructure to change that. The company delivers construction materials to worksites in as little as 30 minutes, using AI to route every order to the right local fulfillment partner in real time based on inventory, proximity, and demand. The company brings together two founders with deeply complementary experience. Shezan Bhojani has spent two decades in India's home and building industry, including co-founding Design Cafe, one of the country's largest interior brands. Sachith Varma has built large-scale supply chains at Zepto and led last-mile operations at Flipkart. Together, they understand both why the problem exists and what it takes to solve it at scale. Congratulations to Shezan, Sachith, and the entire Fixxly team. Every building project depends on thousands of moving parts. Fixxly is making sure that one missing item never brings the rest to a stop. @prashanthp • @SaSarthaksingh • #AccelFamily

Bengaluru's Safe Footpath Campaign begins July 1. Businesses have been asked to clear footpath encroachments before the deadline, with strict enforcement to follow. The first phase will cover nearly 2,000 km of major roads. #bengaluru #bengalurunews #banglore

This week, India's deep tech ecosystem took the global stage at Bharat Innovates 2026 (@BharatInnov2026) in Nice, France, a national initiative by the Ministry of Education to showcase the country's most promising ventures in this space to the world. Prashanth Prakash (@prashanthp), Partner at @Accel, was at the event and on the sidelines, had the opportunity to interact with Prime Minister Narendra Modi (@PMOIndia). He also moderated a panel on navigating global defence supply chains and where startups fit in building resilient defence ecosystems. The conversation surfaced a clear conviction: deep tech startups are no longer on the periphery of defence, they're central to it. Building sovereign capability, the panel concluded, comes down to focused investment on specific regions with existing supply chain advantages, and embedding advanced technology into universities so the next generation learns on real infrastructure, not just in theory. Five of the startups we're proud to back are doing exactly that. @RekiseMarine, @ND_Aerospace, @Fabheads, @DetectTechAI, and @SigTuple were among the ventures handpicked to represent India at Bharat Innovates this year. Swipe through to learn more about these startups.

Yesterday at Bharat Innovates 2026 in Nice, I moderated a panel on one of the more consequential questions of this moment: 𝐧𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐠𝐥𝐨𝐛𝐚𝐥 𝐝𝐞𝐟𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐥𝐲 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬 and where 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐩𝐬 𝐟𝐢𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐝𝐞𝐟𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐬𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐬. This is a topic that has changed character in just a few years. Defence spending is at record highs, every nation is rethinking how and where to build industrial bases and sovereignty is a first order concern. How startups plug into this world has never mattered more. What made the discussion especially rich was the range of vantage points - we had views from a sovereign prime, a deep-tech manufacturing company, a strategic investor, and an Indian precision-manufacturing group with deep European roots. I walked away from this panel genuinely assured that the intent to collaborate is very strong on both sides of the India-France relationship. To get the most from it, it will be key to zero in on a 𝐟𝐞𝐰 𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐠-𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐦, 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐜 𝐟𝐨𝐜𝐮𝐬 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐬𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧. We talked about the importance of a 𝐜𝐥𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐚𝐜𝐡- specific regions that already hold supply chain advantages are the ones that can move the needle on advancement of specific tech. We also discussed a concrete and seemingly easy example of 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐝𝐞𝐞𝐩 𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐡 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐛𝐞 𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐜𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐜 𝐥𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐬  - by placing advanced manufacturing equipment directly into universities so that students learn on real machines, not just in theory. Grateful to François-Régis Boulvert, Clémentine Gallet, Florent Illat and Mohamed Bouzidi for a candid and generous conversation. @BharatInnov2026 | @EduMinOfIndia

A real privilege to join the honourable @narendramodi ji in Nice at the inauguration of Bharat Innovates 2026, along with Minister of Commerce & Industries honourable @PiyushGoyal ji and Principal Scientific Advisor Ajay Kumar Sood ji. The conviction is real and striking: India is becoming a global hub for deep tech, innovation and investment. And it is getting there not by following, but by building things that are genuinely hard. We spoke about the scale of the import substitution opportunity. So much of what India still buys from other countries can be designed and made in India. Every component made in India is a market an Indian founder can win. We have already begun efforts on the hardest problems - designing and building our own jet engines, the kind of deep capability that few nations attempt to build on their own. There is real conviction that India deep tech is now good enough to win global markets, not just our own. We agreed that the single most powerful enabling thing for deep tech founders is to become their first customer. The appetite of the government to buy from young and innovative companies is clear and growing. We also spoke about physical AI and why India is uniquely positioned to head here, given our large talent and manufacturing bases. Looking forward to days 2 and 3 of Bharat Innovates 2026 and what it will spark. @BharatInnov2026 @EduMinOfIndia

We recently hosted a closed-door conversation with some of India's top consumer tech founders. This post continues the learnings we shared a few days back. Shekhar Kirani (@skirani), Partner at Accel, walked the room through the four stages every company moves through on the path to AI transformation. Most Indian companies are stuck somewhere between stage one and stage two. The four stages are in the carousel. A few patterns stood out across the companies furthest along: → One co-founder fully dedicated to the transformation, leading a team of 5 to 10 enthusiasts. The rest of the founding team runs the business. → Individual productivity and company-level automation in parallel. Pick one slice of the business, automate it end-to-end, use it as proof, then expand. → Hiring freezes unless the team can show AI is being used. @prashanthp • @binnybansal • @ankitnagori27 • @phanikishan

#RegistrationsOpen 📢 Registrations for the 2nd edition of the Longevity India - RISE for Healthy Aging Conference are now open! 📅 6–7 August 2026 📍 IISc, Bengaluru 🔗👇Conference details and registration link: longevity.iisc.ac.in/rise @iiscbangalore (1/4)

Bengaluru has everything. But most people still don’t know where to go. Because everything is scattered. Communities. Events. Spaces. So we built HangOut. 202 communities 49 volunteer orgs 25 city guides 104 events All in one place. Go find your people → Hangout.in

It was great to bring Accel in India's consumer-tech founders to host an AI roundtable with @skirani and @binnybansal . If you are a founder keen to advance on AI in your organisation, the best place to start is by building yourself. We discussed solutions deployed enterprise wide and beyond engineering - across marketing, finance, HR, organisational reviews. I am excited to continue the conversations with CTOs next and then functional leaders. @ankitnagori27 @phanikishan @hellovaibhava @srikanthiy @Pulkit_Learn @YABAJI @AnnuTalreja @ShardulSheth | Ashish goel | Shezan | @byvidhya

A city shaped by many hands, many languages, many dreams. Jaume Plensa's "Bengaluru's Soul" says it all. Congratulations on a beautiful unveiling. @PriyankKharge @kiranshaw @HariMarar @NandanNilekani @BLRAirport

India has long been a creator of deep cultural narratives, but we have underbuilt their global expression as a scalable IP. Indiverse is a thoughtful attempt to change that. Do have a look~ piped.video/iGtVTNZKn78?si=0MR1… @amoghavarshajs | @Ashwini_PRK | @rajeevgowda | @Sowmyareddyr | @naganandd | @AmbAckermann | @rickykej @PRK_production | @AusCGBengaluru | @AusHCIndia