Earlier this June, in a packed conference room in Bengaluru, Aakrit Vaish and Pratyush Choudhury were looking for the next big idea in AI.

After all, their VC fund, Activate, was built with a mandate to grow AI in India. “A natural extension of my work with the IndiaAI mission,” said Vaish, who had previously advised the Indian government on developing its AI ecosystem.

Young men and women with name tags were milling about the podium—there was a presentation on Nvidia’s inception programme with Activate. All of them were curious, and most of them had ideas. The hope........

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