1 in every 10 unicorns in the world has been founded in India.

The country is now home to almost a quarter-of-a-million startups. 

Controversial tech czars, jaw-drop valuations, soaring success, funding winters and staggering declines. India’s entrepreneurial scene is a dizzying roller coaster ride. 
But to tell its magicians from the ones spinning parlour tricks, you need the eyes of a career techie and investment pundit: meet Nivruti Rai, a veteran of Intel, and now CEO, of Investment India, an govt founded investment concierge. As CEO she is now helping big money find bright ideas in the melting pot of dreams, desire and destiny that is, in her words, ‘India 2.0’.

Meet the Interpreter of Ideas

India 2.0 though is a hyper complex universe: it represents 1/6th of humanity, has a median age of 29, is home to 25% of the world’s working population, has 800 million people online, and the world’s largest open source digital public infrastructure. Is it possible to make them part of India’s ambitious vision to become a 10 trillion USD economy? Rai argues it’s doable because we have shifted from chasing ‘roti’, ‘kapda’, ‘makan’ to building ‘infrastructure, energy and technology’. While the debate over inclusion and digital divides is always present, the numbers do not lie. By the end of this fiscal year, India will become the fourth largest economy in the world. This is indeed a generational moment. 

Rai was born in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, a region where the birth of a daughter at the time, was considered a matter of disappointment. The youngest of three daughters, Rai was a bit of a maths wizard. She could memorize a hundred phone numbers, do hard calculations in her head and would help her neighbours make two to three gas cylinder bookings in a day. After graduating, in 1994, she joined Intel in the US. In 2005, she returned to India to become the company’s director of engineering. In 2016, she took over as country head. During her reign, the firm’s India arm became the business’ largest R&D centre outside the US, and clocked record-breaking revenues. As an investment scout she now looks into her crystal ball to tell us about the future of work, technology, and investments. A future that is headlined by AI. 

A winner takes all AI race

AI is the new electricity, the new oil, the new transborder nation state. A global race has broken out with countries and continents scrambling to take charge of their AI destinies. This race is not just about tech superiority but also about ‘strategic autonomy’. To power each AI dream, however, everyone needs semiconductors, the almighty chipsets shouldering the charge for tech dominance. The US and China are feverishly making their own, as Europe prepares its punts. As Rai says, “India simply cannot afford to sit this one out’. For starters, India’s demand for semiconductors is projected to become 10 percent of the world’s by 2030. The government has expectedly placed a trillion dollar ‘manufacturing bet’ on this. A bet Rai believes India will eventually win but in different stages of “crawling, walking and finally running”. 

In terms of application, AI, she believes will supercharge productivity. “India’s 1.4 billion data producing factories are raw material for AI. The momentum is there, the velocity is there. We have to drive the acceleration,” she argues. But any version of a wildly productive AI, she argues, will have to be ‘regulated’.

Besides semiconductors and AI, Rai has identified five key sectors that will define the future of India’s entrepreneurial landscape: EVs, renewable energy, agro and food processing, textiles and healthcare. “At Invest India, I say, I want to maximise India with a maximum world, but I also want to maximise the world with maximum India,” she declares. 

The future of fortune

Rai has been raised and nurtured by tech. But her watchful gaze can spot opportunities elsewhere. From an apparel manufacturing business in Tamil Nadu to copper tubes in Gujarat, she has helped attract investment for a variety of ideas. 

But for every projectile of hope flung towards the sky, there are many that fall to the ground unnoticed. Some of them, rather dramatically. In 2024, India’s most valued start-up BYJU’s, ignominiously bit the dust. There are others, accused of inflating numbers, misguiding investors and manufacturing glorious narratives where none may have ever existed. Investments have consequently slowed, caution prevails and the heady days of prolific cash inflows seem a thing of the past. Is the honeymoon over or is this another lull before the storm?

At SYNAPSE 2025, Nivruti Rai will argue the case for India’s tech prominence, its flourishing investment opportunities, the origins of funding winters, sectoral winners and underdog big swings, how AI could change the game, the govt’s semiconductor push, where it might take us and the urgent need for innovation in deep tech. 

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