India’s Vertical AI Wave Takes Center Stage at Upekkha’s VIBE 2025 Launches VIBE50 Report, Showcasing 50 Startups Driving AI-led Industry Transformation

The event opened with a powerful keynote by Simon Wardley, who emphasized how LLMs becoming a utility has led to new practices being created. “AI Strategy requires a clear understanding of the changing landscape,” he said. “In the AI era, leaders must ground decisions in where agency lies - with humans in the loop or with swarms of agents taking decisions..”

Prof. Saras Sarasvathy urged attendees to embrace the uncertainty unleashed by the rapid shift in AI capabilities, as a catalyst for innovation and highlighted the need for co-creation between enterprise leaders and entrepreneurs to create new markets that drive economic and societal progress. “When AI changes happen so rapidly, it’s all the more important for us to learn how to be patient and resilient, to prepare for a marathon of changes where each change may lead to even more uncertainty.”

The day featured rich insights from leaders shaping the AI landscape. Shekhar Kirani spoke about India’s pivotal role in enterprise AI. Shruti Agrawal of Sarvam AI shared perspectives on building AI-first products, while Gaurav M of Tata Digital discussed Gen AI’s expanding role in consumer tech platforms. Bhanu Pathak of xto10x shared lessons from scaling AI across more than 30 startups, and Sharda Balaji of NovoJuris offered a grounded view of enabling AI innovation from a regulatory and compliance perspective.

A highlight of the summit was the launch of the VIBE50 Vertical AI Report 2025, spotlighting 50 Indian startups embedding AI into core industry workflows across finance, healthcare, manufacturing, logistics, retail, and energy. These startups are already delivering measurable impact—automating finance, enhancing diagnostics, and reducing downtime in manufacturing—with companies like Signzy, DeepTek, and Detect leading the way. With global enterprise spending on vertical AI projected to grow from $5B in 2024 to $47B by 2030, the report reflects a dramatic shift toward ROI-driven, industry-specific AI and India’s growing leadership in this transformation.

“The next $10 billion AI outcomes will come from systems that automate end-to-end workflows and deliver measurable ROI, not from general-purpose tools,” the report notes.

“Enterprise leaders are struggling to square the hype and promise of AI with the high failure rate from pilot to production.” said Prasanna Krishnamoorthy, Managing Partner at Upekkha. “Hearing CxOs who are ahead on the AI curve talk not only about what’s working, but also what didn’t, helps us get the clarity needed to leapfrog as an ecosystem.”

Thiyagarajan Maruthavanan, also Managing Partner at Upekkha, added, “Every vertical will have its own 'Claude' moment—sudden, exponential growth triggered by AI + human synergy. When that happens, it's winner-takes-all, and we believe many of these vertical AI startups will lead the way.”

The day concluded with VIBE Pilots, a 24-hour innovation sprint where enterprise leaders and pre-selected AI startups co-built and demoed customized pilots—designed with immediate feedback and real-world deployment in mind. While VIBE Coding makes development 10X faster, VIBE Pilots reduces months of slow Proof of Concept back and forth to 24 hours of high intensity engagement between business leaders and startup founders. The high energy in person fine tuning sessions create sparks between the enterprise and startup, potentially leading to new business opportunities between them.