AIBoomi ONE: Where India’s AI-native founders ideate

In early December, while the rest of the world was easing into holiday mode, we flipped the script. We were heads-down, writing the first lines of code for India’s AI ecosystem. 

We hosted AIBoomi ONE. Our first curated gathering exclusively for the AI-native founder. For years, we’ve been championing SaaS founders and their quest to build a product nation. But the playbook is changing. We’re seeing a new cohort emerging. One that doesn’t simply add AI features to existing solutions but instead imagines comprehensive systems with an AI core.

There has been some panic in the air that SaaS is dead. That you need only AI. But AIBoomi ONE pushed back on that narrative. We have always felt that the future is not a choice between SaaS and AI. It’s SaaS evolving deeply and creatively with AI.

There is a clear distinction between the origin stories of SaaSBoomi and AIBoomi.

In 2019, when we hosted our first event, the inaugural SaaSBoomi Annual, we were working with a mature ecosystem. Founders had scaled, finessed their playbooks, and learnt lessons the hard way. Our role as champions was to be the bridge between these scaled founders and newer, first-time entrepreneurs with stars in their eyes. 

Now, we’re on the ground floor of the AI movement. Everyone is exploring, navigating, and drawing up roadmaps in parallel. 

We needed someone who has been there and done it, which is why we invited Nandan Nilekani to inspire and guide the founders.  

“Many paths exist. All of them can work or fail.” No one has all the answers yet, and that’s exactly the point.

Our work as a community, then, is simple. With SaaS, India came fashionably late to the game. Given the pace of AI’s advancement, it is prudent to avoid delays. We need to move fast, move early, and move as ONE.

A new kind of founder, a new kind of event

We decided to keep it small. Single day, over 340 people, including speakers and volunteers, and no parallel tracks. This was by design. We had been speaking to AI founders for the past few months, and they told us what they needed was:

1. A focused event. 
2. Spotlight on the technical aspects.  
3. Deeper conversations

At this early stage, rather than another networking session, they want information they cannot get anywhere else delivered efficiently, with real opportunities to engage.

In a way, AIBoomi ONE served as a collective reality check. An occasion for India’s AI-native founders to realise: You’re not alone. Others are figuring this out too.

Three words defined that day.

• Relevance: How do we stay ahead of developments as a community while the technology shifts beneath our feet every week?
• Experimentation: Founders want to hear how others solve similar problems in unique ways, then adapt those insights to their own context.
• Reflection: Early-stage founders crave perspectives from those slightly ahead in the game. Not unicorn founders with decades of hindsight, but peers who have recently cracked what they’re wrestling with today.

Breaking the conference mould

Founders are starting a lot earlier now. Many are dropping out of college, convinced that staying in school means losing precious time they could spend starting up. Get this: We even had a 12-year-old founder on stage, confidently sharing what he’s learning. 

There were other budding builders, too. From dozens of applications, we chose five young AI-native founders to be a part of our Young Innovators Showcase: Dhananjay Yadav,  Co-founder & CEO of NeoSapien, Samarth Bhasin, Founder’s Office at OnFinance AI, Abhishek Gupta, Co-founder at Riverline, Adithya LHS, Co-founder & CEO of Nyayanidhi, and Nithish Karthik, CTO of Pixa AI. They demonstrated how their products could change the broken status quo, revealed their key learnings and traction so far, and walked away with feedback from industry leaders. 

For many attendees, AIBoomi ONE was their first conference ever. Some weren’t even sure whether they were building on assumptions or actual market demand. Our team, the volunteers from SaaSBoomi working across functions in the ecosystem, became their sounding board. They were informal advisors in the lobby, fielding questions like “How do you use AI in your work?” and “Is what I’m building actually going to work in the market?”  

Steering away from the typical, our highlight was the Unconference session. We split attendees into intimate roundtables of 10-12 founders, gave them prompts (‘What’s one AI feature you shipped, and what surprised you most about how customers use it?’ and ‘What’s the most interesting AI use case you’ve seen someone else do that you want to try next?’), and let the insights unfold.

The response was overwhelming. This way, founders got to be more than passive listeners. They were actively contributing, eagerly sharing their experiments, and learning from each other’s journeys. Participants rated this among the top events of the day. (Read more about it in our impact report.)

The most striking aspect was how unrestricted the community felt. People lingered outside sessions, creating their own breakout conversations. If a speaker’s words resonated, founders would seek them out immediately. VCs were mobbed (in the best way). The scheduled programming became a launchpad for organic connection.

Reality checks and revelations

Across talks, one piece of advice cut through the noise: Don’t just be a wrapper company. Too many startups are taking existing products and adding an AI layer on top. It is possible to go deeper. The proof is in the global breakthroughs some of India’s AI-first companies are recently making. 

Take the example of Brijraj Bhuptani’s SPRY Therapeutics. Rather than add “AI buttons” to legacy software, he told the cohort, the company chose to rebuild the rails that move data, money, and work through rehab clinics. 

AI marks a “once-in-a-generation shift” in technology, as Mukund Jha, the Founder and CEO of Emergent, put it. Your workflows need AI embedded. Your thinking needs to be AI-native from the ground up. That means “betting on the future and choosing to solve hard, technical problems.”

Mukund is a poster child for how fast you can build when you’re truly AI-native, not just AI-adjacent. In a few months, they grew into one of the world’s top vibe coding platforms, achieving $25 million in ARR.

Dashverse is another example of a company solving hard, technical problems. Its Co-founder and Engineer, Soumyadeep Mukherjee, shared how his startup was putting complex production capabilities at people’s fingertips. 

Building for the world, from India

Nandan’s opening remarks kept echoing throughout the day. Instead of building a better bulb, he said, why not reimagine the grid? Great minds think alike. Because Manav Garg also compared software to electricity. AI has made software development much more cost-effective.

The best way to capitalize on this momentum is not just to focus on building global products, but also to leverage India’s unique advantages.

Our greatest asset? Our population and its astounding diversity. UPI and Aadhaar demonstrated to the world what’s possible when you make products that touch billions of lives. If your purpose and vision are sound, you’ll both serve India and find global adoption. 

Our tagline sums it up neatly. Build for the world, from India.

What’s next?

AIBoomi ONE was an experiment in curating tightly for quality over quantity. We chose a smaller cohort, the founders we believe will lead the next five years, and created room for genuine exchange, not just content consumption.

The energy in that room told us we’re onto something. Founders left inspired by ideas, connections, and a renewed sense of direction. More importantly, they left feeling less lonely in the chaotic, thrilling work of building in AI.

But ONE was never meant to be the destination.

It was a signal.

If AIBoomi ONE taught us anything, it’s that this cohort is hungry. For relevance. For experimentation. For reflection. And for a room that grows with them as the work gets harder.

That’s where AIBoomi Annual ’26 comes in.

The Annual is where this conversation opens up. Where builders at different stages, especially those navigating the SaaS to AI evolution, come together to go deeper on product, architecture, teams, and the real decisions shaping what gets built next.

ONE was the beginning.
Annual is where the work expands.

We’re just getting started. And we’d love to have you with us as it unfolds.