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 was that, much like a singles’ mixer, they could get their pitch across and find a match.

“The way [Activate] has informalised the process… takes a lot of the pressure off. It’s pretty great,” said a developer present in the conference room. He’d been looking to quit his job for some time and develop a voice-AI model for the pharmaceutical sector. Many people like him walked in with kernels of ideas instead of pitches.

Vaish likes it that way, too. Activate scouts for talent from its events and backs ideas pitched over referrals.

That reflects in his $75 million venture firm’s decree: identify technical founders early, sometimes before a company even exists, and help shape the businesses that emerge. Since its inception in December 2025, Activate has hosted 33 events, with Vaish meeting founders over coffee or dinners.

But the fund has another strategy that’s not as easy to explain over food.

In May, Activate invested in Elevenlabs, the voice-AI company whose technology already powers many of the voice products in India. (Elevenlabs runs 50,000 outbound calls a month for IDFC Bank in Hindi.) In April, the company’s global annual recurring revenue (ARR) stood at nearly $500 million. The funding round, led by Iconiq Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, has nearly doubled Elevenlabs’ valuation to $11 billion.

Essentially, Activate is seeking to help founders build independent ventures on top of AI-infrastructure platforms while also building relationships with the same platforms.

The founders may still be working on what to build. Activate, meanwhile, finds itself in a win-win situation.

A bet on both sides

Activate, India’s newest AI-focused fund, operates out of an office at the top of a building still being refurbished.