I have a complicated relationship with public speaking. When I started speaking at the Annual, I chose the closing slot. Usually, by the end of the session, the crowd thins out, people are tired and are often distracted. It’s the best time to showcase a few slides, speak from the heart, thank people for their support, and then end the session.
But not this time.
No one left. Everyone stayed in their seats. And this time, no one was distracted. It’s almost like people knew something special was going to happen.
It was.
I announced that this was, in all likelihood, the last Annual as we know it.
The theme this year was “Build What’s Next”. A phrase originally conceived by Varun Thirumalai as a tagline for AIBoomi, one we had kept as a dormant option until Maansi Sanghi brought it back as the theme for Annual ‘26. And one that turned out to be more prophetic than we anticipated. It kept echoing back to us as the year went by. Because what’s next, it so happens, is no longer a continuation of what came before. The time has come for a genuine reset.
SaaSBoomi grew because SaaS grew. The model was remarkably simple. As Indian SaaS companies scaled, the ones that had figured it out would reach back and help those still looking for answers. The principle was that a rising tide lifts all boats, but only if the people on the bigger boats throw down some ropes.
For nearly a decade, that model worked flawlessly. Annual became the culmination of that work. A gathering in Chennai, the city where Indian SaaS was born, to celebrate what had been built and recommit to what was still being built. We started calling it Annual only in 2019, but its essence went back further than that.
Then AI arrived. It shifted the landscape and scrambled the GPS. The playbook that made SaaS legible was to find the companies that have scaled, learn from them, and pass it on. That, in the AI era, runs into a fundamental problem. Despite the staggering capital hyperscalers are raising, AI is still in its infancy. Founders are still configuring their businesses, rethinking their sales models, and product leaders are once again in their learning stages.
In that sense, many founders have gone back to Day 0. And so have we.
The honest answer is, we’re recalibrating. Recalibrating so that we can move forward. Revisiting the practices that built this community before it had a name, before it had an Annual, before it had anything other than a few people who cared deeply about Indian founders and were willing to offer their time.
In effect, that means fewer large events and many more intimate gatherings, roundtables, and bootcamps. Think curated rooms of fifty to seventy-five founders. The kind of format where something real can be said and heard clearly. We did this successfully a decade ago. We think it’s what the present moment calls for.
All this involves moving. Chennai will always hold a particular significance for us. It’s where we took those first bold steps, where everything started. But AI is decentralised; people are creating products in hotel lobbies, coworking spaces, and airport waiting rooms across the country. It means we’ll be in Bangalore, Hyderabad, NCR, Mumbai-Pune and every other city where founders need direction. Essentially, we’ll follow wherever the energy takes us.
And increasingly, some of that energy is in the US. If you want to build something that matters in AI, you need to be close to where it’s being shaped. We plan to organise events for Indian and Indian-origin founders with deep, immersive bootcamps with small cohorts of 50 to 75 people, bringing the best thinking from both sides of the world into the same room. The community has always believed that Indian founders deserve access to the sharpest conversations happening anywhere. That belief doesn’t change. We’re just acting on it differently.
Annual has been a magical place where founders discovered their mission, and many important companies were conceptualised or found their feet, in part, due to the Annual. It became a gathering that mattered to a lot of people, and that mattered because of the pains many took. Volunteers, partners, speakers, and the hundreds of founders who flew in from across the country and trusted that it would be worth their time. I have found friends, partners and companions while hosting the Annual. I’ve been humbled every time. Leaving this behind, the love and camaraderie have given me pause. A friend had once told me, “Always give yourself a moment to breathe once you’ve left something behind. Be it a relationship or a job.” This post is my pause to consider and to plan.
There is a lot of evolution still to come, but Annual will be the inspiration for everything we build henceforth. The fact that Indian founders are capable of building products for the world, and that they deserve a community that fully believes in them before the rest of the world does, has not changed.
We started Annual because we believed in what was being built. We’re reimagining it because we believe we can build what’s next.
I take great pride in saying this: We’re just getting started. Once again.
