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Time of India
4 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
Scoring with AI not enough to crack US enterprise code
Academy Empower your mind, elevate your skills Indian artificial intelligence startups, which are making a beeline to the US to be close to customers, are taking longer to conclude deals and run pilots with US enterprises, amid rising competition and changing business landscape, founders and investors startups are looking at strategic partners and investors who have deep enterprise networks and can help them connect with potential customers, they told SaaS, where the market had evolved and people were buying, founders were able to get a couple of customers through emails and messages, but in the AI world, confusion is high even for buyers, Accel India partner Shekhar Kirani said. 'So, they need assistance at least for the next 12-24 months, when it becomes obvious that the products work.' Enterprise sales have always been hard and required the founders to work on-site to gain the last couple of years, AI has changed the landscape by drastically bringing down the time taken to develop a product. This has resulted in proliferation of AI platforms and applications, cluttering the market, increasing competition and changing the enterprise sales Ayyagari, cofounder, SnowMountain AI , an agentic AI platform for banking and financial services, said with AI coming in, the time taken to close the deals have increased significantly, with some companies going as far as getting into code-level discussions to gain trust from customers.'Earlier it would take 6-9 months to get a signalling from a company, if they are interested in the product or not. Now that is taking 12-18 months. Even getting demos is hard now,' he said. He explained that more often than not enterprises are running multiple pilots and are beginning to put new pilots on pause till they have Krishnan, founder of NuWare, a US-based IT services company, said during his conversations with the chief information officers of large enterprises in the US, he has found that they are often seeing over 20 companies that are selling similar products and hardly have time to have a demo with each of these Vivek Khandelwal, cofounder of agentic AI solutions startup CogniSwitch , was in the market for a security compliance product and said he was confused.'This market is equally miserable for buyers. We are at a point where we have to flip a coin and go with whoever it is, because there are so many products and everyone's messaging is exactly the same,' he went ahead with a company that was known to him. But he agrees that the market is Agarwal, cofounder of Raga AI, which offers an agentic workflow testing platform, said though building enterprise-quality products is tough, the field has become noisy, confusing the buyers as navigate this challenge, founders are looking to partner with investors and domain experts that can help with of SnowMountain AI said his company has partnered with domain experts such as former banking executives to get customers Abbey, founder of an AI startup catering to the banking and financial services companies, said she partners with strategic investors in the US that can make warm Krishnan, who also runs investment firm NuVentures, said they are helping their portfolio companies with customer introductions, which are now becoming critical and a key differentiator as companies look to break into enterprises in the Goyal, partner, Stellaris Venture Partners, said customer introduction is one of the most critical help portfolio companies need as they search for a product-market fit and early traction in an increasing competition for enterprise founders and investors are navigating a dynamic business landscape, there are other challenges as previous tech cycles, speed is the moat in AI, as the technology evolves at a rapid pace. This means startups need to iterate fast and that is one of the reasons founders are moving to the who was cited earlier, said she flies in and out of the US to be closer to customers and iterate Goyal said many enterprises are in a wait-and-watch mode as continued competitiveness of existing solutions is questionable with underlying technology evolving so rapidly. In addition, amid the uncertain macroeconomic environment, investments are being postponed; this presents a challenge as well.
Time of India
10-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
AIFs seek higher cap on inflows from banks, NBFCs
(You can now subscribe to our (You can now subscribe to our ETMarkets WhatsApp channel Mumbai: Alternate investment funds (AIFs) have urged the banking regulator to ease the investment caps proposed for regulated entities (REs), arguing that the low thresholds suggested in draft proposals could significantly constrain capital inflows and disrupt long-tenure funds, industry sources told a representation via the Indian Venture and Alternate Capital Association (IVCA), the industry has urged the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to allow REs to invest up to 25% in a single AIF scheme, up from the 10% individual and 15% aggregate caps proposed in a May 19 draft circular, sources close to the development said. The draft rules are part of the RBI's tightening oversight of bank and NBFC exposure to stressed companies through AIF structures. Under the draft, no single RE can invest more than 10% of an AIF scheme's corpus, and total exposure from all REs combined must remain within 15%, to prevent concentration risk and influence over investment decisions. The RBI has proposed expanding the exemption for downstream exposures by excluding not just equity shares but also compulsorily convertible preference shares (CCPS) and compulsorily convertible debentures (CCDs).While industry experts say that allowing up to 5% exposure in Category I and II AIFs without triggering provisioning norms or restrictions on portfolio composition will help capital flow into AIFs, they have raised concerns on the overall cap. They have suggested that the investment cap for a single RE be increased to 25% up from the proposed 10% which could allow these entities to participate in long-tenure or capital-intensive funds, particularly infrastructure or stressed asset funds.
Time of India
01-06-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Digital Competition Law waits its turn
Live Events (You can now subscribe to our (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel New Delhi: The corporate affairs ministry is unlikely to bring in the proposed digital competition legislation this fiscal to regulate large players, as it aims to first introduce amendments to the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) and the Companies Act , people aware of the development top of that, the ministry is also tied up with plans to expand the PM Internship Scheme for youth by September-October, the people told March 2024, a panel led by then corporate affairs secretary Manoj Govil had suggested a new antitrust law with an ex-ante framework to regulate only "systemically significant digital enterprises" that have a "significant presence" in India. It had submitted with the government a draft digital competition bill, along with its report, for consideration."The ministry of corporate affairs (MCA) has received stakeholder comments on the draft bill. More inter-ministerial discussions would be undertaken to drum up consensus on it," said one of the people. "It may be finalised next fiscal."Last year, senior government officials were expecting the bill to be ready for Cabinet approval by the second half of digital competition is a rapidly-evolving and complex area, the government reckons undue haste in regulations could be counter-productive, said the people cited earlier. The idea is to come out with a law that would prevent large digital players from abusing their dominant position to hurt competition in the market, without hurting innovation or making compliance more burdensome, they ministry is learnt to have apprised the reasons for delay to the parliamentary standing committee on finance in a meeting on April 28.A senior industry executive said the government is also awaiting the conclusion of its ongoing trade negotiations with the US, which has reportedly expressed its reservation on the proposed ministry is preparing to introduce changes to the IBC in the monsoon session of Parliament, likely in July-August. This could be followed by changes to the Companies Act, expected in the winter session, the people said.
