Google Picks India’s 20 Game-Changers for AI First Accelerator 2025

Welcome “India” Bulls!

Indian startups saw a funding rebound between Sept 13–19, with venture capital inflows hitting $245 million across 19 deals, up from $146 million the previous week. This surge was powered by late-stage and growth-stage rounds, each drawing about $80 million, showing renewed investor appetite after months of muted activity.

The week’s winners spanned fintech, EVs, B2B and D2C, reflecting a broad-based revival. Infra.Market led with ₹732 crore ($83M), followed by FinBox ($40M) and Blue Energy Motors ($30M). Consumer-facing names like Indkal Technologies, EcoSoul Home, Lucira Jewelry, Pelocal and spacetech startup SpaceFields also secured notable funding.

While this uptick hints at momentum, the ecosystem’s 2025 funding total still mirrors 2024 levels, making sustained capital flow critical.

Dive in to stay ahead!

P.S. The Sunday Special is designed to help you discover the most important Startup insights outside of Share Markets. Our regular Share Market updates will resume as usual on Monday.

Startup Menu

• Startups this Week

• Case Study

• Everything else you need to know

• Life Hack in Video

• Special

• Must Watch

STARTUPS THIS WEEK

Google Chooses 20 Indian Startups for AI-First Accelerator 2025

Google has picked 20 Indian startups out of over 1,600 applicants for its Google for Startups Accelerator: AI First India 2025. The selected teams - at the seed to Series A stage - will participate in a three-month equity-free accelerator to sharpen product strategy, scale, and bring AI-driven innovation to market.

Startups will gain deep mentorship from Google experts, access to technical boot camps, and hands-on support across AI domains like generative models, multimodal systems, reasoning & foundational AI frameworks. They’ll also receive Google Cloud credits, plus guidance in product design, growth, leadership, customer acquisition and more.

This comes at a moment when Indian AI founders are under pressure to not just build novel tech, but to ensure real-world traction and defensibility. With tools and backing like this, the participants may well be positioned to cross that threshold.

FROM THE WAR ZONE

Everything else you need to know

🌟 Surge: Urban Company’s IPO has absolutely smashed expectations — the home-services unicorn listed at ~57.5% premium over its issue price of ₹103, opening on NSE at ₹162.25 and touching intra-day highs of ₹179. The ₹1,900 crore offering was oversubscribed 103.6 times, making it the most sought-after big IPO in India this year.

🏗️ Infrastructure: Equinix India has dropped $69 million to build its first self-constructed colocation/IBX data center in Chennai. Located in Siruseri, the centre starts with 800 cabinets and is designed to scale up to 4,250 over the next 4-5 years. With liquid cooling, hot-aisle containment, and direct interconnect to its Mumbai campus, this is built for compute intensity - especially AI and cloud workloads.

🤖 Expansion: India’s AI Mission is getting bigger: the government added 8 more firms to build large language models (LLMs), taking the total count under the programmed to 12. IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw indicated the models selected earlier are progressing rapidly, with a goal to unveil them by the AI Impact Summit in early 2026.

💡 Reform: The GST Council’s move to simplify GST slabs - cutting down to just 5% and 18% slabs starting September 22 - is expected to reduce prices for many goods and services. Crisil estimates a short-term revenue loss of ~₹48,000 crore, but when you compare that to last year’s ₹10.6 lakh crore in GST collections, the hit looks manageable. Over time, the change could pull more businesses into the formal sector and expand the tax base.

STARTUP INSIGHTS

Canva’s Bold Bid to Sponsor Team India & Local Outreach Strategy

Canva’s bold bid to sponsor the Indian cricket team reveals how seriously the design unicorn views India. The company came in a close second to Apollo Tyres in September 2025, offering ₹554.48 crore (₹4.28 crore per game) versus Apollo’s winning ₹579 crore bid. Although it missed the jersey, Canva’s move signals a long-term commitment to brand India, tapping into cricket’s unmatched fan base of over 1.4 billion people.

Cricket sponsorship in India isn’t just advertising; it’s cultural integration. The IPL 2025 final clocked 15 billion minutes of watch time, showing how jersey logos and stadium branding build deep emotional associations. For Canva, aligning with this phenomenon could have turbo-charged its mission to reach beyond metros and into small-town India.

This push fits neatly into Canva’s local playbook: a Hindi website, flexible subscription plans, partnerships with schools and government bodies, and AI-powered tools for SMBs. Already India is its fourth-largest user market; within five years it could be the largest. Even without the sponsorship, Canva has made its intent clear: it’s not just another SaaS import but a brand vying for mainstream recognition in India’s everyday life.

LIFE HACKS

SPECIAL

How APIs Are Powering India’s Digital-First Economy

APIs have become the invisible backbone of India’s digital-first economy. As the article notes, they’re the “digital handshake” connecting banks, fintechs, businesses, and consumers - enabling payments, identity checks, and credit flows in real time. By turning once-closed banking systems into modular platforms, APIs let fintechs plug in directly and launch new products faster, making the customer experience smoother and more competitive.

The most visible examples are UPI and digital KYC, where APIs authenticate, route, and confirm billions of payments or verify Aadhaar, PAN, and bank accounts in seconds. This has transformed onboarding from weeks of paperwork to minutes on a smartphone. In rural areas, APIs power micro-ATMs and Aadhaar-enabled services at kirana stores, letting villagers withdraw subsidies, transfer funds, or even build digital credit profiles from mobile data - all without traditional collateral.

Security and regulation underpin this shift. Encrypted, standardized APIs under frameworks like Account Aggregators protect privacy while unlocking access to credit for millions. In essence, APIs are the “highways” of money, identity, and trust - embedding finance so seamlessly into daily life that users don’t even realize it’s there, while India edges closer to a trillion-dollar digital economy.

TOOL

The Local + AI Marketing Formula That’s Helping Small Businesses Win

The article explains how local marketing + AI has become a potent formula for small business success. Local intent now drives nearly half of all Google searches; 76% of users who do a local search visit a business within 24 hours, and 28% buy. This “act-now” behavior means a café, gym or plumber can capture demand in real time if they’re visible and relevant.

AI makes this scaleable. Tools once reserved for big companies - content generation, automated ad testing, chatbots, and customer insights - are now cheap or free. Examples include small restaurants auto-creating Google Business posts, gyms using AI to geo-target ads, or boutiques sending personalized emails to nearby customers. A Los Angeles tamale shop even used ChatGPT to script a video that went viral (22M views).

Entrepreneur outlines a step-by-step: audit your local presence (Google profiles, reviews, NAP consistency), use AI to automate content and support, embed neighborhood keywords, and measure results. Big brands may have budgets, but they can’t micro-target or personalize authentically at street level. With AI, small businesses can. This isn’t just marketing - it’s the competitive equalizer letting local players outperform national names in their own backyard.

Your Opinion Matters!

Got more feedback or just want to get in touch? Reply to this email and we’ll get back to you.

Thanks for reading.

Until tomorrow!

Hanoomaan India Business team

If you find the contents of this email useful, subscribe now & share with your friends.

Content, news, research, tools, and securities symbols are for educational and illustrative purposes only and do not imply a recommendation or solicitation to buy or sell a particular security or to engage in any particular investment strategy. For more details, Click Here.