For most founders in India’s smaller cities, entrepreneurship is less about ambition and more about survival. But once you take the first step—setting up a business—the real struggle begins.
“You’re trying to grow, but who’s going to help you?” asked Meetul Patel, president at Wadhwani Foundation. “You don’t have the right resources. You don’t know what you don’t know.”
The Wadhwani Foundation wants to change this.
The nonprofit, focused on large-scale job creation, is building a virtual AI growth accelerator—a national platform that combines curated knowledge, human mentorship and AI-powered guidance to help small businesses and startups grow.
Wadhwani’s goal is to turn every company into an AI-first organisation, embedding AI across all its startup and skilling initiatives. The goal is simple but ambitious: to support millions of entrepreneurs and MSMEs with personalised, contextual and real-time help, without needing millions of human experts.
“AI lets us reach thousands of entrepreneurs simultaneously, but with the intimacy of one-on-one support,” Patel said.
Ignite, Liftoff and Accelerate
Nowhere is this vision more visible than in Gujarat, where the foundation recently launched Accelerate, its flagship venture-scaling programme, in Ahmedabad and Vadodara.
India has no shortage of startups. What it lacks, though, is structure. Most entrepreneurs drop out between initial excitement and sustainable growth. In Gujarat, this pipeline is already taking shape. Over the past year, Wadhwani Foundation has engaged with over 5,000 students across around 50 institutions (including GTU, Parul University and GLS) with its Ignite initiative.
Furthermore, with Liftoff, Wadhwani’s programme aimed at helping ventures build at zero-cost and zero-equity, over 150 startups and MSMEs have received venture-building support, and at least 20 scale-ready ventures have joined the new Accelerate programme in Gujarat.
“Most founders don’t need another pitch deck workshop,” Patel said. “They need someone to tell them where their real growth gap is, and help them fix it.”
That’s where AI steps in.
Unlike general-purpose tools that answer questions, Wadhwani’s AI system, with the help of diagnostics, intelligent workflows and curated datasets, identifies what’s missing in a venture’s growth journey—whether it’s product-market fit, investor readiness or export compliance.
It then nudges founders toward expert advice, market connections or even one-on-one coaching. Whether it’s regulatory compliance, fundraising readiness or finding the right market, the system is designed to walk founders through their entrepreneurial journey, step by step.
“It’s ChatGPT plus plus plus,” Patel quipped.
This isn’t just a chatbot dressed up with a slick interface; it’s a learning system trained on the actual journeys of Indian startups and MSMEs, including the problems they couldn’t solve. Most importantly, it’s free; not just to use, but to also build on. “It’s a shared digital public good,” Patel said. “We’re taking out the capital cost from the entire ecosystem.”
Fixing the Systemic Gaps
While India has over 63 million MSMEs, most struggle with productivity, digital adoption, and access to markets. Meanwhile, only 15-20% of startups survive beyond a few years, and even fewer scale.
Wadhwani’s AI-led programs are designed to change that by introducing execution discipline, real-time feedback and tailored interventions. Every week, the system gets smarter, pulling in lessons from founder journeys, expert sessions and partner inputs.
This feedback loop, where expert interactions are not lost in one-off conversations but fed back into the system, is what sets the platform apart.
“It’s not just about tech. It’s about how the tech is applied—at the right time, in the right way, with the right partner,” Patel said.
At the heart of it all is one mission to create jobs. By helping startups scale and MSMEs become globally competitive, the foundation is working to generate millions of livelihoods, especially in India’s Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, where opportunities are scarce but ambition runs deep.
With AI as its backbone, the Wadhwani Foundation is showing what a modern startup ecosystem can look like: intelligent, inclusive and built for scale.
“Entrepreneurship shouldn’t be a privilege,” Patel said. “It should be a path to prosperity—for anyone, anywhere.”
It’s not surprising then that many ecosystem players, from incubators to industry associations, are signing up. “There’s no commercial incentive here. But there’s a shared mission. If you’re helping students, startups, or small businesses, we want to help you,” Patel said.
While the final version of the platform is still being iterated, the foundation has already released an early version for partners to explore. With rapid weekly updates and feedback loops, Patel likens their approach to a startup itself—fail fast, ship faster.
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