There may never have been a better time to start a business in India.

That is the view of V. Vaidyanathan, MD & CEO of IDFC FIRST Bank. Hailing from a bank that has gone out of its way to support startups, he often spots nuances others miss. And he's of the opinion that the infrastructure surrounding Indian entrepreneurs has fundamentally changed.

In a conversation with Moneycontrol's Chandra R. Srikanth as part of Leap to Unicorn Season 4, Mr. Vaidyanathan traced that change from the digital rails that enabled India's first startup boom to a new generation building rockets, drones and AI-led businesses; from college students bootstrapping their first ideas to the persistent hunt for capital; and ultimately, to what it takes to turn a promising startup into a company built to last.

The ecosystem caught up with the ambition

Ten years ago, starting up in India meant building around what the ecosystem lacked. Today, founders can draw on digital infrastructure, AI, venture capital, private equity, mentors and increasingly, successful entrepreneurs backing the generation behind them. "The whole startup ecosystem is coming alive," Mr. Vaidyanathan said. "If you're doing a startup today, compared to say 10 years ago, you are plugging into different parts of this ecosystem and bringing it alive. It wasn't there years ago. So we shouldn't take it for granted."

His conclusion is emphatic: "It is the best time to start up. It is really the best time. It's the best time ever India has seen." Not the easiest. The best.

Because while many of the barriers to beginning have fallen, the hard work of building an enduring business hasn't disappeared. If anything, the changing ecosystem is allowing founders to confront that challenge earlier.

A generation that isn't waiting to start

Mr. Vaidyanathan saw that first-hand during a recent interaction with students at his alma mater, BIT Ranchi. "At least 20 of them told their entrepreneurial stories in college," he said. One was finding co-founders on campus. Another, working on AI, had found a co-founder studying in Bengaluru. Others were putting together ₹1-2 lakh and bootstrapping their way into business.

"It is a thing," he said. "Where did we see this before?" What has changed isn't simply that entrepreneurship has become more attractive. The distance between having an idea and trying it has collapsed.

Cloud infrastructure can be rented. Payments are ubiquitous. AI can compress work that once needed teams. Co-founders don't even have to be in the same city. For a generation that........

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